NY Times Andrew Revkin Walks Back Some of His “Overstated” Phrases About Peter Gleick — Or Does He?

The media loves he-said, she-said stories. Those have the most narrative drama and require the least amount of actual judgment on the part of reporters or editors. Just relate the core facts and then slap some opposing quotes and you are done!

And so we have the Washington Post‘s story on the Heartland affair, “Climate scientist admits duping skeptic group to obtain documents.”

Of course the piece had to quote Heartland Institute President Joseph L. Bast. But recall that several leading climate scientists slammed Heartland last week for “spreading misinformation” and “personally attacking climate scientists to further its goals.” Bast himself told Climate Progress last year, the “ecological impact” of mining and burning fossil fuels is “not negative”!  And remember his 2006 quote on second-hand smoking that “no victim of cancer, heart disease, etc. can ‘prove’ his or her cancer or heart disease was caused by exposure to secondhand smoke.”

Surely one representative of the misinformers is more than enough in any serious news article on climate. But no, the WashPost actually quotes the long-debunked Richard Lindzen to close its piece — please, put your head vises on for this one:

Richard Lindzen, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has questioned whether climate change will cause effects as severe as some predict, said he has been struck by “the viciousness” of his opponents. But Lindzen feels obligated to keep questioning what Gleick and others say about climate change impact “because they’re lies, it’s that simple. What would you do if people were truly misrepresenting things, and it has consequences for society?”

The WashPost quotes Lindzen attacking others for telling lies and misrepresenting things?  Here are RealClimate scientists debunking a “series of strawman arguments, red-herrings and out and out errors” by Lindzen. Then we have climatologist Kevin Trenberth explaining that the flaws in Lindzen-Choi paper “have all the appearance of the authors having contrived to get the answer they got”.  Here is The Atlantic‘s Marc Ambinder debunking Lindzen, “Global warming denialists have been re-discredited”

How could the Washington Post run those head-exploding quotes from Lindzen?

But they are sober stuff compared to Lindzen’s crocodile tears about how he’s been “struck by ‘the viciousness’ of his opponents?” Last year, he smeared his one-time close friend climatologist Kerry Emanuel:

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When the House of Representatives voted on a transportation bill, H.R. 3408, that expands oil drilling into long-protected areas and forces construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, Republican lawmakers proved their complete allegiance is to Big Oil. Although Republicans like House Speaker John Boehner have parroted the myth that the pipeline would “lower gas prices” and “reduce our dependence on hostile, unstable sources of energy,” their actions show that helping American families is only an empty promise.

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) offered an amendment to the bill during the Feb. 15 vote, giving the House a chance to “ensure that if the Keystone XL pipeline is built, the oil that it transports to the Gulf of Mexico and the fuels made from that oil remain in this country to benefit Americans.” But the amendment failed 173-254.

Not surprisingly, the 254 members who voted against the amendment have collected seven times more total campaign cash from oil and gas interests. The 254 members (230 Republicans) took in $37.3 million in career campaign contributions from oil and gas companies and executives.

On average, each member who voted against banning exports collected $146,808 from the oil and gas industry. This is contrasted with the $5.2 million total for the 173 in favor (9 Republicans) of the export ban – or an average of $29,951. In other words, legislators who want to export refined gasoline and diesel from oil sands received five times more oil money than the legislators who want to keep these fuels here.

	254 votes to reject amendment (230 Republicans)	173 votes for amendment (9 Republicans)
Total oil & gas money in career contributions	$37,289,233	$146,808
Average oil & gas money per vote	$5,181,599	$29,951

* Data from the Center for Responsive Politics at OpenSecrets.org

The vote shows that House Republicans will not even support their own spin about the supposed benefits of increasing U.S. oil and gasoline supplies from the Keystone XL pipeline. In fact, the pipeline does nothing to impact production and Time magazine concurred that “Keystone would have little immediate [price] effect, especially since there’s already sufficient pipeline infrastructure in place for the next few years.” At best, gasoline prices in the Gulf Coast region would be only one and three-quarter cents lower per gallon, while prices would increase in the Midwest because the current oil glut keeps prices there lower.

Although the evidence shows the pipeline won’t help Americans, Republicans continue to fight to boost Big Oil’s profits at the same time the industry raked in record-breaking profits of $137 billion in 2011.

Fox shows yet again it has a hard time with hard data

by Shauna Theel, cross-posted from Media Matters

In a segment falsely blaming Obama for rising gasoline prices, Fox News’ America’s Newsroom aired the following chart yesterday. It shows three data points — including the vague “last year” — plotted nonsensically on the x-axis:

“Last year” refers to gas prices last February; Fox’s chart omitted what happened in the 13 months between February 2011 and last week. Here’s how Fox’s source, AAA, displays the data (green line):

This piece was originally published at Media Matters for America.

Energy consumption figures just released by the Chinese government underscore how quickly coal use is booming in China, a country that is already the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

In 2011, China’s coal consumption increased by 9.7%, the most year-over-year growth seen since 2005. The country also saw a substantial increase in natural gas consumption, which climbed by 12% in 2011. The figures, released this week by the National Bureau of Statistics, show just how much work needs to be done in order to de-carbonize China’s rapidly growing energy system.

There are a few positive trends to report, however. Overall energy consumption per unit of GDP declined another 2% — continuing the 19.1% decline in energy intensity since 2005. In addition, solar installations increased by an astonishing 547% and wind installations grew by 48% last year.

Non-fossil fuels — solar PV, solar thermal, wind, and hydro — now account for 9.4% of China’s primary energy consumption. Officials expect renewables to make up roughly 11.4% of consumption by 2015 and energy intensity to decrease another 16% by 2015. China is also in the process of rolling out provincial greenhouse gas trading programs in an attempt to decrease emissions 45% by 2020 compared to 2005 levels.

These developments are promising, but they still don’t stop China’s rapid growth in emissions. Assuming a business-as-usual approach to energy development, the International Energy Agency projects that by the mid-2020s, China’s emissions will double those in the United States.

Related stories:

• The Deniers’ Fantasy World: EIA Projects 40% Rise in CO2 Emissions by 2035
• Interactive Graphic: China’s Explosive Consumption of Coal

Global Ice Loss from 2003-2010 Could “Cover the Entire United States in One and Half Feet of Water”

Changes in ice thickness (in centimeters per year) during 2003-2010 as measured by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites, averaged over each of the world’s ice caps and glacier systems outside of Greenland and Antarctica. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Colorado. [See figure of Greenland and Antarctica ice loss below.]

This piece was reposted from the NASA website

In the first comprehensive satellite study of its kind, a University of Colorado at Boulder-led team used NASA data to calculate how much Earth’s melting land ice is adding to global sea level rise.

Using satellite measurements from the NASA/German Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), the researchers measured ice loss in all of Earth’s land ice between 2003 and 2010, with particular emphasis on glaciers and ice caps outside of Greenland and Antarctica.

The total global ice mass lost from Greenland, Antarctica and Earth’s glaciers and ice caps during the study period was about 4.3 trillion tons (1,000 cubic miles), adding about 0.5 inches (12 millimeters) to global sea level. That’s enough ice to cover the United States 1.5 feet (0.5 meters) deep.

“Earth is losing a huge amount of ice to the ocean annually, and these new results will help us answer important questions in terms of both sea rise and how the planet’s cold regions are responding to global change,” said University of Colorado Boulder physics professor John Wahr, who helped lead the study. “The strength of GRACE is it sees all the mass in the system, even though its resolution is not high enough to allow us to determine separate contributions from each individual glacier.”

About a quarter of the average annual ice loss came from glaciers and ice caps outside of Greenland and Antarctica (roughly 148 billion tons, or 39 cubic miles). Ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica and their peripheral ice caps and glaciers averaged 385 billion tons (100 cubic miles) a year. Results of the study will be published online Feb. 8 in the journal Nature.

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One in a series of posts about the Heartland Institute’s inner workings, from internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green. ThinkProgress is among several publications to have published documents attributed to the Heartland Institute and sent to us from an anonymous and then unknown source. The source later revealed himself. Heartland Institute has issued several press releases claiming that one document (“2012 Climate Strategy”) is fake and asserting other claims regarding the other documents. ThinkProgress has taken down the “2012 Climate Strategy” document as it determines the document’s authenticity.

As ThinkProgress Green first revealed last week, the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank funded by the Koch brothers, Microsoft, and other top corporations, is planning to develop a “global warming curriculum” for elementary schoolchildren that presents climate science as “a major scientific controversy.” This effort, at a cost of $100,000 a year, will be developed by Dr. David E. Wojick, a coal-industry consultant who sees CO2 as “the global food supply“:

CO2 is not pollution, it is the global food supply. Watching a child grow is watching atmospheri­c CO2 being reprocesse­d.

Wojick has now spoken out, defending his intention to teach children the conspiracy theory that man-made climate change is “one of the great scientific debates of history,” instead of a scientific fact built upon decades of research. In a Huffington Post comment, Wojick described his work as a taxpayer-funded consultant for the Department of Energy on science education, and his desire to fight “the company line about dangerous human induced warming“:

It is true that DOE has not funded me to do climate research, but they have funded me to do science education research. Under a DOE SBIR grant my team of teachers developed a model of the concept structure of K-16 science education. The result for DOE was a search algorithm that sees the grade level of science education writing. The prototype is running on http://www­.scienceed­ucation.go­v. They also fund me to study the cognitive structure of science itself, in order to improve their science communicat­ion database systems.

My expertise in the climate science debate comes from 20 years of study. My Ph.D. is in the philosophy of science, especially the logic of complex issues. My funding comes from free lance writing and policy analysis. While climate scientists study climate, I study their reasoning.

These two research thrusts came together when I noticed that almost all of the Web-based educationa­l resources on climate change merely parrot the company line about dangerous human induced warming. There is very little on the scientific debate, which I see as one of the great scientific debates in history. So I have set out to fill this void. The debate is now so widespread that any science teacher who cannot demonstrat­e knowledge of it will quickly lose credibilit­y. But the grand challenge is that scientific controvers­y is not typically taught in K-12, even though it is the heart of the scientific frontier. This is the fun part.

Previous comments on Huffington Post expose Wojick as an ideological conspiracy theorist, who seems to earnestly believe that the global scientific consensus on climate change is the “global warming scare,” a “catastroph­e theory with an agenda,” a “political and ideologica­l struggle,” and perhaps even “Eco-Marxism.” He makes the baseless claim that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an “advocacy organization,” rather than the neutral scientific body it actually is.

Wojick repeats some of the most absurd canards of climate deniers, claiming that “CO2 is not pollution, it is the global food supply,” that increased CO2 “might even be beneficial,” that there has only been warming “for one 20 year period,” and that the role of CO2 in global warming is “unknown.”

This is the ideology that the Heartland Institute hopes to bring to classrooms across America. As yet, none of the corporations supporting the think tank, including GM, Pfizer, and PepsiCo, have committed to ending their support for this anti-science group.

Read excerpts from his conspiracy-theory comments below: Read more

On February 19, the Heartland Institute’s General Counsel, Maureen Martin, sent a letter by e-mail and post addressed to Think Progress in response to revelations about the Institute. Yesterday, Debbie Fine, General Counsel for the Center for American Progress Action Fund, replied to Martin.

The letter sent to the Heartland Institute is well worth reading and reprinted in full here:

Dear Ms. Martin:

I am General Counsel of the Center for American Progress Action Fund (“CAP Action”). This letter responds to your February 19 message regarding our reporters’ coverage of documents related to the Heartland Institute. Please be assured that CAP Action takes the accuracy of its reporting seriously.

Your letter asserts that the document entitled “2012 Heartland Climate Strategy” is “fabricated and false.” CAP Action has no interest in attributing a fabricated document to Heartland. Given the seriousness of this charge, and the fact that this document’s “tone and content closely matched that of other documents that [Heartland] did not dispute,”¹ we ask your assistance in verifying that the document is in fact “fabricated” rather than, for example, a draft of which you were not immediately aware. Please let me know the efforts that Heartland undertook to ensure that the document “was not written by anyone associated with Heartland,” as well as the “obvious and gross misstatements of fact” it contains. We have removed this document from the website while awaiting your response.

Your letter also notes that “Heartland has not authenticated” the remaining documents in the week since they were made public. To my knowledge, Heartland has never claimed that these documents were fabricated, and your February 15 admission that they were sent by a Heartland staff person to “an unknown person” posing as a Heartland board member suggests they are genuine. So does Heartland’s February 15 apology to the donors identified in the documents. Subsequently, the newly-admitted source has indicated that he received these documents directly from Heartland and has not altered them. Nevertheless, we await the outcome of your continued efforts to “authenticate” these documents.

Finally, your letter suggests that publication or even discussion of the Heartland documents “is improper and unlawful” because Heartland deems them “confidential.” The Supreme Court has flatly rejected this notion, repeatedly declaring that the First Amendment protects the right to publish information obtained lawfully – even if underlying sources act improperly, erroneously, or in violation of the law. See, e.g., Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514, 535 (2001). As CAP Action has reported, our bloggers received the documents via an anonymous email. Our reporters did nothing to purloin any documents, they did not encourage anyone else to do so, and they did not know the sender’s identity until many days later, on February 20, when the Huffington Post article titled: “The Origin of the Heartland Documents” was published. Faced with a substantially similar set of relevant facts in Bartnicki, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment prohibited recovery of damages for dissemination of an illegally-made recording that was left in a defendant’s mailbox because “a stranger’s illegal conduct does not suffice to remove the First Amendment shield from speech about a matter of public concern.” Id.; see also Jean v. Massachusetts State Police, 492 F.3d 24, 29 (1st Cir. 2007) (applying Bartnicki). The same is true here, although we note that CAP Action takes no position as to whether the documents were lawfully obtained by the source.

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by Michael Conathan

This doesn’t qualify as much of a news flash, but just in case you were curious, hypocrisy is alive and well in the Koch family. And this time it’s going to cost one of them half a million dollars.

After a lengthy series of lawsuits he filed against his better known brothers, Bill Koch has often been described as the “black sheep” of his family. And while Bill’s public and messy falling out with his $50 billion brothers has led to only a slightly less lucrative career as founder of the dirty energy conglomerate Oxbow Carbon, he has largely steered clear of his siblings extreme climate denial and political wrangling. Except when it comes to one pet peeve: offshore wind.

Earlier this year, Cape Wind became the first offshore wind farm to receive the green light from federal regulators despite Koch’s funneling over $1.5 million dollars to a nonprofit group, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, formed to combat Cape Wind. The site where the project will be built just happens to be visible from backyard of Koch’s mansion on a private island country club community in Osterville, MA. One of the favorite arguments used by Koch and the Alliance is that the project was the beneficiary of a “sweetheart, no-bid deal.”

Apparently, Koch only likes sweetheart no-bid deals for his own operations. Last week, Gunnison Energy, a subsidiary of Oxbow Carbon, was slapped by the Justice Department with a $550,000 fine “related to an agreement not to compete in bidding for four natural gas leases sold at auction by the U.S. Department of Interior.”

According to the complaint, [Gunnison Energy] and [co-conspirator SG Interests VII Ltd.] were separately developing natural gas resources in Western Colorado. In 2005, GEC and SGI entered into a written agreement under which they agreed that only SGI would bid at the auctions and then assign an interest in the acquired leases to GEC…. As a result of the agreement between GEC and SGI, the United States received less revenue from the sale of the four leases than it would have had SGI and GEC competed at the auctions.

Not, of course, that Bill Koch has ever been interested in allowing the federal government to get its fair share. His run to capture the America’s Cup yachting trophy in 1992 was fueled by tax breaks from donating his own money to a foundation set up to fund his pursuit of the prize. The donations saved him “a couple million dollars” on his taxes.

It should come as no surprise that a dirty energy magnate with a history of bilking the federal government might try to pull a fast one on federal regulators. Let’s just make sure we remember this one next time he accuses a clean energy company of working the system.

Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at American Progress.

By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Republican presidential candidates have a few things to learn about the value of our public lands.  A few weeks ago Mitt Romney told the Reno Gazette-Journal that he doesn’t know “what the purpose is” of public lands.  Ron Paul called for eliminating public lands by having “the best parts sold off to private owners.”  Rick Santorum told Idaho residents that public lands should go “back into the hands of the states and even to the private sector.”

In preparation for the Republican debate in Mesa, Arizona tonight, ThinkProgress Green has organized the most important facts about public lands in the state.

- Some of America’s most treasured natural places are located on Arizona public lands. Grand Canyon National Park, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and Sonoran Desert National Monument are just a few examples of the dozens of places in Arizona that are protected for all of us to enjoy. Arizona’s 22 national parks saw 10.5 million visitors in 2010. And tourism at the Grand Canyon alone supported more than 6,000 jobs in 2009. [NPS, 2012 and Headwaters Economics, 2011]

-  Arizonans view public lands as essential to their state’s economy. A recent poll from the Colorado College State of the Rockies Project found that 90 percent of voters in Arizona believe that “our national parks, forests, monuments, and wildlife areas are an essential part of Arizona’s economy.”  [Colorado College, 1/30/12]

-  Arizonans feel that public lands are essential to their quality of life. The Colorado College poll also asked whether voters agreed with the statement that “our national parks, forests, monuments, and wildlife areas are an essential part of Arizona’s quality of life.”  The response was overwhelming, with 97 percent of Arizonans agreeing. [Colorado College, 1/30/12]

-  Interior Department activities in Arizona leverage $2.4 billion and 29,000 jobs every year.  This includes oil, gas, mining, recreation, timber, grazing, and other uses.  This number does not include lands managed by the Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. [Interior Department, 6/21/11]

-  Recreation opportunities abound on Arizona’s public lands.  Families living in Tucson can take a day trip and a picnic to Saguaro National Park and the Santa Catalina Mountains located just 30 minutes outside of the city.  City dwellers in the Phoenix area can hit the Tonto National Forest, one of the most visited urban national forests in the U.S.  And sportsmen can take advantage of a variety of wide open spaces across the state, featuring unique animals such as javelinas and Gila trout.  Recreation on Interior Department lands in Arizona provided $1.97 billion in economic benefits in 2010. [Interior Department, 6/21/11]

-  Outdoor recreation – a $5 billion economy in Arizona– often takes place on public lands. Tourists travel to Arizona from around the country and world to experience a wide range of outdoor recreation opportunities.  The Outdoor Industry Association found that the active outdoor recreation economy contributes over $5 billion annually to Arizona’s economy and supports 82,000 jobs across the state.  Hiking, climbing, camping, hunting, fishing, and mountain biking are just a few of the outdoor activities enjoyed on public lands. [Outdoor Industry Association, 2006]

-  Hunting and angling—a $1.3 billion economy in Arizona—often take place on public lands. Millions of acres in Arizona are open to hunting for game and waterfowl and to fishing.  The Arizona Game and Fish Department reported that sportsmen in the state spend $958 million every year, which creates $1.34 billion in economic impacts and 17,000 jobs. [Arizona Game and Fish Department]

-  Oil, gas, and minerals from Arizona’s public lands provide $900 million per year in economic impacts. Mining and drilling on Interior Department-managed lands in Arizona create a tremendous amount of economic opportunity. [Interior Department, 6/21/11]

On February 19, the Heartland Institute’s General Counsel, Maureen Martin, sent a letter by e-mail and post addressed to this ThinkProgress reporter, in response to revelations about the Heartland Institute’s inner workings. Yesterday, Debbie Fine, General Counsel for the Center for American Progress Action Fund, replied to Martin.

The text of the letter sent to the Heartland Institute is below.

Dear Ms. Martin:

I am General Counsel of the Center for American Progress Action Fund (“CAP Action”). This letter responds to your February 19 message regarding our reporters’ coverage of documents related to the Heartland Institute. Please be assured that CAP Action takes the accuracy of its reporting seriously.

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Politicians say they want to support the “Keystone Economy.” Here’s why that vision means fewer jobs, no impact on gas prices, and more pollution

by Daniel J. Weiss

Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY) told reporters during a recent press conference on the economy on that “Solyndra and Keystone represent what’s at stake this November.  Two very different visions — I think Solyndra and Keystone typify them.”

She is not the first Republican official to make this comment, promoting a vision that means relying on a very flawed pipeline project that benefits foreign oil companies.  It sharply contrasts with President Obama’s clean energy investment vision.

A “Keystone” economy means:

• No additional oil produced for the United States.  The State Department’s final “Keystone XL Assessment” concluded:

“WORLD and ETP studies indicate that building versus not building Keystone XL would not of itself have any significant impact on: U.S. total crude runs, total crude and product import levels or costs.

“This is because changing WCSB [oil sands] crude export routes would not alter either U.S., Canadian or total global crude supply.” (emphasis original)

Additionally, there are indications that a significant portion of the oil sands piped through Keystone to Gulf Coast refineries will be made into products for export rather than kept here.  At a December Congressional hearing, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) asked the CEO of pipeline owner TransCanada whether he would agree to keep all refined products from oil sands in the United States.  He declined.

On February 15, Rep. Markey offered an amendment to H.R. 3408 to “ensure that if the Keystone XL pipeline is built, the oil that it transports to the Gulf of Mexico and the fuels made from that oil remain in this country to benefit Americans.”

The amendment failed 173-254.  Rep. Buerkle voted against it, opposing retention of Keystone oil in the United States and instead supporting its export to other nations.

• Same oil prices for the United States. The analysis determined that the pipeline will only have a tiny impact on the price of crude and other products:

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Other stories below: Judge rules town can ban hydrofracking; GM to Gingrich: You can put a gun rack in a Volt

GOP Not Listening to Even Conservative Scientists on Climate Change

Katherine Bagley, InsideClimate News

A number of prominent U.S. climate scientists who identify themselves as Republican say their attempts in recent years to educate the GOP leadership on the scientific evidence of man-made climate change have been futile. Now, many have given up trying and the few who continue notice very little change after speaking with politicians and their aides.

“No GOP candidates or policymakers want to touch the issue, and those of us trying to educate them are left frustrated,” Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a registered Republican, told InsideClimate News. “Climate change has become a third rail in politics.”

Heading into the 2008 presidential election, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee, warned about the dangers of global warming. He was one of a group of moderate Republicans who used to be leading climate action advocates, acknowledging the scientific consensus on climate change and the need for federal policies to address it….

Brigham Young University geochemist Barry Bickmore is a Mormon and active Republican, serving as a county delegate for the GOP from 2008 to 2010. Bickmore first got involved with his party’s handling of climate change when he and other scientific colleagues in the state banded together to try to stop a 2010 Utah resolution that cast doubt on climate science and urged the Environmental Protection Agency to halt its efforts to regulate carbon emissions. The scientists said the resolution was riddled with scientific errors, but it won passage anyway….

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