http://www.sourcewatch.org/ index.php?title=Democracy_Alliance

But…

“The Democracy Alliance tries to keep a low profile and its wealthy donors prefer anonymity. According to published reports, organizations funded by Democracy Alliance are asked not to reveal the funding.”

No objection to this, but (Joe) you would have more credibility if you were more up front about it.

If you are for taking action on climate change, you must be against the positions of the Republican Party. It’s that simple. Bush in particular, has been a disaster on this issue, along with his enablers in the Republican Party leadership.

So, the “agnda” is to support those who are proactive on climate, and oppose those who aren’t.

Fundamentally, climate change ought to be a completely nonpartisan issue, but conservatives have decided they would rather win an election than preserve the health and well-being of future generations.

The funders of the Center for American Progress are a matter of public record and it wouldn’t take you very long to find them. I can assure you, for whatever it is worth, I have never received a single phone call from any funder telling me what to write or what not to write. Indeed, I have complete editorial control of this blog.

And to expand on what Daniel said, I have probably written more than half a million words on this blog, so the notion that any of my agenda is hidden is kind of funny.

But if you have a different way of avoiding catastrophic climate impacts, Robert, than what has been laid out on this blog, I long to hear them.

Given that one of the Bush administration’s first acts upon entering office was to go back on its promise to support the Kyoto protocols and its continuting denials and delays related to climate science, I’m not the slightest bit concerned about what Climate Progress’s “agenda” is. I’m willing to bet that the Republican Party’s 2008 platform will be so thoroughly weasel-worded about climate change that it will be nearly indistinguishable from the Bush administration’s. And McCain will be equally obtuse. Obama’s not perfect, but he won’t deny the science the way the Republican Party has and he will offer solutions that are genuine and address the real subject matter.

I can now see why Gore and his climate change message has/is having such a hard time being accepted by much of the public.

What you’re maybe missing is something that could be described as “correct deployment of troops”.

You, and a few others here, are the generals - highly skilled at presenting a message and getting it to hit home to the major decision makers who matter.

I’m one of the GIs - trying to do my bit but frankly without the wide-ranging science and political knowledge needed for the top levels.

Likewise, the deniers have their generals (Pielke Jr?) and a lot of foot soldiers (a hell of a lot of them, it sometimes seems, but usually of a very low standard!)

It doesn’t make sense for the top brass to waste time combatting the foot soldiers. Your skills and time are too valuable to waste on attempting to beat back the tide of silly/deliberately lying/misinformed blog posts!

What I’m trying to say is: reserve your rhetoric to the debates that matter. Meanwhile give us GIs some guidance, like in your post, on how to deal with false claims - and leave us to get on with it.

So more posts on techniques will be welcome, but don’t feel you have to get stuck into any of the silly skirmishes!

Modern humans continue trying to use ideology to influence global temperature — even trying locally, such as watching a pot boil. This has never worked. Alas only a slight increase in human body temperature appeared after loud discussions and even here a direct cause could not be established.

Despite constant failure, humans will keep trying to use pure emotions derived from their politics, religion and hubris to effect physical change in their environment.

Fortunately, our atmosphere and oceans do not follow politics - so trends and changes will proceed according to known physical and thermodynamic laws.

[JR: Excellent Point — Nothing is harder to do than practice what one preaches. But at the very least, I have my commenters to keep me honest. I have now put a sticky on my screen to remind me, along with “posture” and “Don’t bury the lede”!]

Beyond that, however, I have to wonder whether studies like the one with sugar are relevant to, say myths about energy or climate change. One interpretation of that study is that people are reacting to an existing, deep-seated, cultural fear of sodium cyanide. There is no corresponding fear-object when it comes to inflating tires. There must be many more studies along these lines not subject to this criticism, but if the conclusion holds up, it makes our task much more difficult.

Which is also why he has to have a good Vice President candidate. Someone who can talk back to these people with a tough, rough attitude instead of that nice logical guy that Obama is giving us now.

Politics is a rough business. So I suppose is all influencing of public opinion, especially if that public just wants to listen to the easy and entertaining.

Thanks for the information about debunking myths.

Obama is an excellent writer and prepared speaker, but he is not a natural rhetorician. He says uh uh uh way too much. He does not seem to understand that every word he says can be blown out of proportion and even be misrepresented. Today’s “gaffe” with the seven year old girl is typical. Everyone is now arguing whether he said inappropriately negative things about America. It drowns out the rest of his message. Tomorrow someone will ask him to explain his remarks and the explanation will dominate the news after a week of tire pressure

Watch the video. The girl asks him why he decided to run for president. He responded, “Uh uh uh” and it was downhill from there.

[JR: Yes, the content changed after I did more research for the version of this on HuffingtonPost. I will probably come back to the other article.]

Robert,
As Claude Raines said in Casablanca, “I am shocked that there is gambling going on around here.”

Steve McIntyre, after 3 years asking to be given some data from Wahl & Ammann and getting all kind of “delayer” responses from the science magazines, the IPCC and the author himself, has finally been able to reach the Supplementary Information of one of their articles. This information is important because it proves McIntyre’s point. The relevance of this issue is that it proves that the Hockey Stick is WRONG because it has no statistical significance (you can get a hockey stick from red noise just by using W&A’s invalid methods). W&A have been making claims of a 99.99% significance in dendros reconstruction like that of MBH98, based on premises that they didn’t want to release (because it was invalid and had been rejected twice by official publications), and that once relased, show the opposite that they were claiming.

The good news for the alarmists is that, as McIntyre can now claim that the Hockey Stick defense performed by W&A is a complete fraud, following Joe’s reasoning, this will make people remember the Hockey Stick as something undoubtedly true. Congratulations!

Read all the related information here:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3393

Especially worth reading comment 16 from McIntyre himself, explaining the whole story and comparing it to what true scientists did in a different case with a different topic.

Most of the IPCC AR4 claims in the Paleoclimate chapter relied on W&A’s article. I bet realclimate won’t comment on this.

I have a very simple, minimum standard for scientific claims and it’s called reproducibility:

Has the author published all the raw data and the methodology he or she employed for each step, such that another expert can reproduce the results of the study?

Whether the expert may agree or disagree with the methodology is a separate matter. If they don’t have enough information to even reproduce the result, then the author is either sloppy or hiding something.

In the case of W&A referred to above, it looks like they were hiding something (i.e. the fact that W&A threw out all data that didn’t fit their claim and then said the remaining data was 99% consistent with their claim).

But regardless, with their 2 year’s delayed release of the Supplementary Information, at least W&A now meets the minimum standard of reproducibility. You can now follow their steps and get their result.

Many of the most commonly cited articles in Climate Science (inlcuding Mann’s foundational hockey stick graph and virtually all of Briffa’s work) do not yet meet this standard.

McIntyre has been literally begging them to release their data and their methodology (Briffa in particular) and they have so far refused.

And so if their goal is to convince people, sounds like they are playing from a different playbook than the one Joe suggests above.

Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A decade-old first paper isn’t perfect!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stop the presses!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Golly, good thing a dozen other studies have found the same thing as the MBH98 paper, so we can move on now.

Oh, wait: the rest of the planet has already have moved on.

I guess you two and the other bots at CA are stuck in the ignorant past. Your mommy is calling. Dinner’s ready.

Best,

D