Free Republic

Peter H. Gleick, a water and climate analyst who has been studying aspects of global warming for more than two decades, in recent years became an aggressive critic of organizations and individuals casting doubt on the seriousness of greenhouse-driven climate change. He used blogs, congressional testimony, group letters and other means to make his case. Now, Gleick has admitted to an act that leaves his reputation in ruins and threatens to undercut the cause he spent so much time pursuing. His summary, just published on his blog at Huffington Post, speaks for itself. SNIP---- The Heartland Institute had already signaled...

........."If you believe that freedom is at the core of what it means to be human, then theWarmists and what they stand for are instinctively repulsive to you. On the other hand, if you believe that human society must be organized into a moral collective for the betterment of all, then theWarmist idea provides a wake up call compelling us to form into ranks and goose step in recycled rubber boots into the green future. It’s an exaggeration, but that’s what debates over the proper role of man tend to become. We don’t fight wars over temperature gradients. The passions...

From Gleick's Huffington Post confession: Given the potential impact however, I attempted to confirm the accuracy of the information in this document. In an effort to do so, and in a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else's name. The materials the Heartland Institute sent to me confirmed many of the facts in the original document, including especially their 2012 fundraising strategy and budget. I forwarded, anonymously, the documents I had received to a set of journalists and experts working on climate issues....

Yesterday Germany’s most important daily newspaper The Bild called the “ experts” opinion on CO2 lies and pure fear mongering. Coming from Europe, this a thunderous body blow to the global warming hoax and makes our Supreme Court look foolish for ruling that CO2 causes greenhouse gases. Using that ruling, the federal EPA unleashed an endless stream of assine regulations that are crippling our economy. The Bild joined a publishing house that print a new book which is a scathing attack on the legitimacy of climate science claims about CO2. It was written by a heretofore revered father of Germany’s...

...Were this a story in any field other than "Climate Science" it would be given massive play by both the BBC and in the print media – for what has happened here is a national scandal. An institution which was manifestly good has now been made bad, for no other reason than the arrogance and egotism of three blinkered men who took it upon themselves to behave like political activists rather than scientists. You don't even need to be a climate sceptic to understand that what May, Rees and Nurse have done is wrong. All you need is a rudimentary...

The hypothesis of man-made global warming has existed since the 1880s. It was an obscure scientific hypothesis that burning fossil fuels would increase CO2 in the air to enhance the greenhouse effect and thus cause global warming. Before the 1980s this hypothesis was usually regarded as a curiosity because the nineteenth century calculations indicated that mean global temperature should have risen more than 1°C by 1940, and it had not. Then, in 1979, Mrs Margaret Thatcher (now Lady Thatcher) became Prime Minister of the UK, and she elevated the hypothesis to the status of a major international policy issue. Mrs...

Criticisms Convince State To Back Off Projections of Dramatic Sea Level RiseState officials still pushing coastal counties to prepare for a one-meter rise By Sara Burrows Feb. 20th, 2012 RALEIGH — State officials are pressuring local governments to plan for a one-meter sea-level rise by 2100, even though many independent scientists have argued the rise is highly unlikely if not impossible. Even though a state advisory panel no longer recommends regulations based on the one-meter projection, local government officials worry that state regulators will try to implement those rules. Such a policy, they say, would have a devastating impact on...

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio - Portraying himself as a native son of Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum Monday emphasized his heritage as the grandson of a coal miner and railed against environmental regulations that have diminished the coal industry in the region. "Ladies and gentlemen, we need someone who understands, who comes from the coal fields, who comes from the steel mills, who understands what average working people in America need to be able to provide for themselves and their families," Santorum said to a crowd of about 500 people in the Democratic-leaning eastern edge of the...

Rick Santorum’s spokeswoman Alice Stewart said in a TV interview on Monday that Santorum was referring to President Barack Obama’s “radical Islamic policies” when he said the president’s agenda was driven by “phony theology” — but then quickly called up MSNBC after the segment aired to say she misspoke. “There is a type of theological secularism when in comes to the global warmists in this country. That’s what he was referring to. He was referring to the president’s policies in terms of the radical Islamic policies the president has,” Stewart said on “Andrea Mitchell Reports.” Mitchell later said on the...

Rick Santorum says President Barack Obama is pushing a radical environmental agenda that unwisely limits energy production and turns its back on science. Santorum told voters in eastern Ohio on Monday that science is on the side of those who want to aggressively produce more oil and natural gas in America. He said the notion of global warming is not climate science but "political science."

If you want a prototypical example of how climate science has ceased being true science and instead become little more than an ideological battleground, look no further than a study released yesterday showing that, contrary to earlier claims, global warming has had zero effect on the depth of the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountain range...

Receiving an email with a statement like “You should resign, and if you don’t, I’ll work to see that you are fired” or “I know where your kids go to school” would be unsettling enough. But they “pale compared to what other climate scientists are getting,” says Raymond Orbach, director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, at whom the first threat above was aimed. Now climate scientists—in atmospheric physics and chemistry, geophysics, meteorology, hydrology, and oceanography, among other disciplines—have begun to fight back. “I think the community is finding a voice,” says Ben Santer of...

The state of California has made a full-blown commitment to reducing reliance on fossil-fuel energy and other limited resources. Utilities are required to use solar, wind and geothermal sources for a third of their electricity supply by 2020, while owners of homes and businesses are being urged to install solar panels. The state is mandating that automakers dramatically ramp up sales of battery-powered and other low-emission cars. It is imposing new cap-and-trade emission controls on business with hefty fees. Essentially, the state is trying to force California into an entirely new economic structure, claiming, in Gov. Jerry Brown's words, that...

Guest post by David ArchibaldThe most skillful climatologist the World has seen was Hubert Lamb (1913 – 1997). He can be credited with making the first prediction of the current solar minimum. This was in 1970 in a report (Weiss and Lamb) for the German Navy.He did it by making a reconstructed record of the average frequency of southwesterly surface winds in England since 1340. Quoting Lamb “We sense a cycle or periodicity of close to 200 years in length.” and “There may be a valuable indication of the origin of this apparent 200 year recurrence tendency, in that the...

My recent post, “What if They Are Wrong,” explored the possibility that human-generated CO2 will be determined, after all is said and done, to have no appreciable affect on climate. The post generated a lot of discussion. I want to follow up on some of that discussion with this brief post.CO2 is, after all, a trace gas and humanity has added to it a trace amount. An essential requirement that it have a major influence on our climate is a set of feedback mechanisms that magnify its effect. Most notably, for CO2 increase to have any seriously dangerous ramifications for...

It was recently announced that yet another green energy firm supported by massive amounts of US taxpayer money had gone bankrupt. Ener1, which Vice-President Biden once incorrectly, but perhaps presciently, called “Enron1” filed for bankruptcy. Only a year ago, Ener1 received $118 million in stimulus funds...

Link only per posting rules: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2012/02/obama-bypasses-congress-on-climate-change/1#.Tz6MF8mF_9I

Josh from CartoonsbyJosh.com writes: Another ‘Gate’ – but this one turned round and bit the owner.Leo Hickman and co at the Guardian thought they had a bona fide leak of incriminating information on the funding of climate skeptics by the Heartland Institute.Two problems, the funding turns out to be rather small beer, especially in comparison to the vast sums of money paid to promote Climate Change Alarmism. Secondly it looked like the funds were going to fund scientists and with another trenche for a website to explain climate science research.Hardly a surprise, and not exactly incriminating. It is what the...

Presidential candidate Rick Santorum has touted himself as the staunch conservative to Republican primary voters, and when it comes to the environment his views are informed by his Christian faith, or rather his interpretation of it. "We were put on this Earth as creatures of God to have dominion over the Earth, to use it wisely and steward it wisely, but for our benefit, not for the Earth's benefit," Santorum told an audience in Colorado last week, according to the Colorado Independent. Santorum has argued that climate change is beyond human control, and any attempts to mitigate it are part...

Yesterday afternoon, two advocacy groups posted online several documents they claimed were The Heartland Institute’s 2012 budget, fundraising, and strategy plans. Some of these documents were stolen, at least one is a fake, and some may have been altered.The stolen documents appear to have been written by Heartland’s president for a board meeting that took place on January 17. He was traveling at the time this story broke yesterday afternoon and still has not had the opportunity to read them all to see if they were altered. Therefore, the authenticity of those documents has not been confirmed.Since then, the documents...