Posted on February 28, 2012 by Steven Hayward in Climate
The Unbearable Gleickness of Being: An Omnibus Climate Update
The Gleickgate hits just keep coming. (Or is it Fakegate, as Heartland is calling it, or Gleick-Out, as Ive called it? Doesnt matter.) First, Gleick has taken a leave of absence from his post as president of the Pacific Institute in California, which had initially issued the McGovern-like statement that they were 1,000 percent behind Gleick. Maybe that lasted until they began to notice how much damage Gleick had done (or started to hear from donors). The president of the American Geophysical Union issued a pretty strong statement on the matter:
During the third week of February our global community of Earth and space scientists witnessed the shocking fall from grace of an accomplished AGU member who betrayed the principles of scientific integrity. In doing so he compromised AGUs credibility as a scientific society, weakened the publics trust in scientists, and produced fresh fuel for the unproductive and seemingly endless ideological firestorm surrounding the reality of the Earths changing climate.
Dont forget that Gleick had been chair of the AGUs task force on ethics. Evelyn Waugh couldnt make this stuff up.
Second, it is beyond irony and parody to take in again the fixation with Heartlands tiny $4.4 million budget last year next to the recent news that the Climate Works Foundation, one of the major climate campaign organizations, just got another $100 million fillip from the Hewlett Foundation. This brings the grand total of Hewlett grants to Climate Works to nearly $600 million. I believe this one grant history to just one organization rivals the total combined assets of all the main conservative foundations. And these folks get their knickers in a twist about Heartland and the Koch brothers? The paranoid climateers make the cliché Victorian woman standing on a chair afraid of a mouse look like a Spartan warrior by comparison. I repeat: what a bunch of losers.
Footnote: Climate Works was run until recently by Hal Harvey, who came to the organization from the Hewlett Foundation (how convenient). Our friends at the Philanthropy Roundtable have several times extended an invitation to Harvey to debate energy policynot climate science, just energy policywith me at the Roundtables annual meeting. He has always declined.
Meanwhile, since were on this left obsession with funding sources, dont miss Bryan Walshs Time online story about the Sierra Club taking $25 million from fossil fuel interests. Now thats some real fossil fuel coin.
Third, I know Ive shared the Warmlist here beforethe compilation of all the things global warming is either causing directly or making worse (but ratsthe link to the climate-acne nexus has gone dead). It would be easier to list the bad things that climate change isnt supposedly causing or making worse. This is the mark of what philosophers call a non-falsifiable hypothesis. Now the Guardian of London is warming that global warming is going to cause . . . earthquakes and volcanoes. The lede is hilarious:
The idea that a changing climate can persuade the ground to shake, volcanoes to rumble and tsunamis to crash on to unsuspecting coastlines seems, at first, to be bordering on the insane.
Um, you should stick with that insane meme, mate.
Finally, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals if hearing a challenge to the EPAs greenhouse gas endangerment finding this week, in what could be a significant setback to the Obama EPAs agenda to gain a stranglehold on the U.S. economy. Michael Greve has the best review of the case and the issues involved in his Law & Liberty blog. Definitely worth a read.
