Sorry but I spent quite a bit of time responding to points raised in this debate … I would expect that even with the absence of cut and pastable responses that at least some feedback be provided. If I can sift through these debates and find points of contention… maybe others can, too? or is the Faith in Global Warming a be all and end all?
[quote]Fox News Climate Coverage 93% Wrong, Report Finds
Primetime coverage of global warming at Fox News is overwhelmingly misleading, according to a new report that finds the same is true of climate change information in the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages.[/quote]
Why would anyone believe anything they hear on Fox? If I knew someone who was constantly spouting off nonsense and incorrect analysis of established science, I wouldn’t bother listening to anything they had to say on any subject.
Someone has been drinking the Kool-Aid at the latest Union of Concerned Scientists party again… Seriously?! The Union of Concerned Scientists? Haven’t we seen this/been there before? It has already made several prominent retractions… most notably with regard to GE… is this about to be next? 
I’m afraid to read that. I don’t want to get all butt-hurt.
[quote]For almost four decades, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has manipulated
the high reputation of “science” to serve the low ends of politics. It has done a good job
of cherry-picking scientific facts to stir up public fears to advance its agenda. This time
it is promoting alarmist claims about global warming by leveraging the prestige of the
“concerned scientist.”
You Too Can Be a Concerned Scientist
A credulous media usually falls all over itself to defer to UCS every time the group
takes a political position. For instance, when it issued a report in 2004 criticizing President
George W. Bush’s handling of science policy, the Union was described as “a scientific
advocacy group” (New York Times), “a group of scientists” (Reuters), “an independent
Cambridge-based organization” (Boston Globe), and a “nonprofit…advocacy group in
Cambridge, Mass.” (Newsday). The Baltimore Sun provided no description at all; it
must have decided that “the Union of Concerned Scientists” conveyed all that needed
to be said. After all, who but concerned scientists would pass judgment on President
Bush and conclude that he was a scientific ignoramus manipulating science in order to advance a partisan agenda?
That the Union of Concerned Scientists is a highly partisan operation, well funded by left-leaning foundations and Hollywood celebrities— and happy to ignore established scientific methodologies for its own purposes— is apparently not newsworthy. The
group has a long history of being just plain wrong on many scientific issues, and its current agenda conforms to the extremes of environmentalist ideology. Moreover, UCS is neither representative of the scientific community at large nor is it a gathering of top
scientists. Instead, a cadre of senior staff whose credentials are steeped more in Washington policy making than in scientific research rides herd over a grassroots membership that comes from all walks of life.
[color=#FF4000]
You too can be a Concerned Scientist for a new member fee of $35!
[/color]
In 2006, UCS decided to attack ExxonMobil, the world’s largest private energy company,
over the issue of global warming. It also decided on its tactics:[color=#FF0000]
It would demonize the
oil company by comparing it to cigarette companies.
[/color] ExxonMobil, said UCS, was
“adopt[ing] the tobacco industry’s disinformation tactics…to cloud the scientific
understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue.”
In a paper issued January 3, 2007 (“Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses
Big Tobacco’s Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science,” available at
ucsusa.org/news/press_release/E x x o n M o b i l - G l o b a l W a r m i n g -tobacco.html) UCS accuses ExxonMobil of
funding “front groups” opposed to the climate- alarmist agenda of groups like UCS and former Vice President Al Gore. The company,
said the UCS report, had distributed $16 million to 43 advocacy groups from 1998 to 2005 “to confuse the public on global warming
science.” (Apparently, UCS and the senators who cite 29 groups can’t keep the numbers straight.)
[color=#0040FF]
Let’s leave aside the fact that $16 million over eight years can’t match the $2 billion that the federally funded Climate Change Science Program spends each year on global warming,
[/color] or even the $4 million annual budget of just one of many well-funded global warming advocacy groups, Strategies for the Global Environment (the umbrella organization for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change). Moreover, the UCS document is hardly an investigative breakthrough.
ExxonMobil itself publishes its philanthropic contributions to nonprofit organizations
online. (Its environmental giving summary for 2005 is available at http://
exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Fil … nviron.pdf.) [color=#4040FF]
What’s most interesting, however, about the UCS report are its distortions of fact and what they reveal about UCS political tactics.
[/color]These should have undermined the group’s credibility long ago were it not for that highminded name: Union of Concerned Scientists.
Conspiracy?—Not!
UCS plays the game of Washington politics using hardball tactics, including innuendo,and its report on ExxonMobil epitomizes this approach. The UCS document cites what it terms a “conspiratorial communication” between one of the authors of this
article, Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Phil Cooney, then-chief of staff to the chairman of the White House
Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). In 2002 Ebell sent Cooney an email message expressing his distress over the Bush administration’s handling of the global warming issue. (The email was disclosed through a Freedom of Information Act request.) A front page New York Times story had reported that the Bush administration was conceding that global warming was a big problem. According to Times reporter Andrew
Revkin, the administration had quietly sent a document called Climate Action Report 2002 (CAR) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The report contained extremely inaccurate materialsfrom the National Assessment, an overview of the climate change issue produced by the Clinton administration. The Bush administration had disavowed the National Assessment as a result of a lawsuit filed by CEI. But Revkin reported that Climate Action Report 2002 used a big chunk of the National Assessment. As soon as this story broke, CEI sent out a press release sharply criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its then-administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, for sending the report to the U.N.
At that point Phil Cooney left a message on Ebell’s answering machine asking him to call him, saying that he needed his help. Soon after, Ebell left a message on Cooney’s answering machine. After not hearing back from him for several hours, Ebell sent him an email saying that we would be glad to help. This email is described in the UCS report as a “conspiratorial communication.” If anyone from the Union of Concerned Scientists had bothered to ask Ebell, they could have gotten the facts straight. When Phil Cooney called Ebell back, he
explained that he wanted CEI to stop attacking EPA and refrain from calling on President Bush to fire Whitman because she had nothing to do with the report. Cooney said EPA was not ultimately responsible for what was an interagency document on an environmental issue. Cooney further told Ebell that his own agency, the Council on Environmental Quality, was in charge of conducting the interagency review and producing the final version of the report. As CEQ chief of staff, Cooney had directed the review and made the final edits. Cooney said that if Ebell wanted anyone fired, it should be him. Ebell replied that CEI would stop attacking Whitman, but would not attack Cooney because he was not an appointee nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. So much for this “conspiracy.”The story doesn’t end there.
UCS doesn’t focus its attacks on the actual work produced by the organizations it targets; but instead it tries to discredit its opponents
using ad hominem innuendo. And that’s what gets the attention of the media. For instance, when astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas determined that the Earth’s temperature had actually been warmer at earlier times in history—a premise endorsed by a\ National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel— UCS ignored the research but attacked the researcher personally, noting that Baliunas was affiliated with the George C. Marshall
Institute, which it said had gotten $630,000 in ExxonMobil grants for its climate science program.
Putting Politics before Science The track record of the Union of Concerned Scientists is bursting with examples of how it puts politics ahead of science. The group was founded in 1969 by a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientists who were concerned about the threat of nuclear war. Currently, the group claims a membership base of over 100,000 “citizens and scientists,” and an annual budget of over
$10 million. True to its peacenik roots, UCS organized opposition to President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in the 1980s,
fearing that it would push the world to war. But history showed otherwise. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would call Reagan’s
decision to go ahead with SDI the “one vital factor in the ending of the Cold War.” UCS continues its anti-nuclear activism today.
The 1980s were not a good decade for the Union’s predictive powers in other ways. In 1980, UCS claimed that, “It is now abundantly
clear that the world has entered a period of chronic energy shortages.” As is now abundantly clear, known energy reserves are higher
than ever. Middle East oil reserves alone are estimated to have increased from 431 billion barrels in 1985 to 742 billion in 2005. Of course,
if UCS achieved its stated aim of capping energy production from fossil fuel sources and closing down nuclear plants, then the
world most certainly would face a major energy shortage today.
More recently, UCS has been consistently wrong in its stated concerns about genetically modified crops. In 1999, it publicized reports that corn modified with the natural pesticide Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is harmful to the monarch butterfly, findings that were subsequently rejected by the National Academy of Sciences. Another NAS report found that increasing CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards
contributed to between 1,300 and 2,600 additional traffic deaths per year because manufacturers downsize cars to increase their
fuel economy and comply with the regulation. Yet the UCS website still maintains, “To reduce fuel consumption and address global
warming, CAFE standards must increase.” UCS helped coordinate a campaign to discredit Danish statistician Bjørn Lomborg,
whose 2001 best-selling book, The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, presents compelling statistical
evidence refuting many of the modern environmental movement’s alarmist claims.
In other matters—abortion, suburban “sprawl” and the war in Iraq—UCS stakes out policy positions that are predictably those of a far-left pressure group.
UCS likes to attack free-market groups for accepting corporate donations, but much of its own funding comes from foundations established by conservative businessmen but subsequently hijacked by left-wing partisans. Unlike the leftists on many foundation boards, companies like ExxonMobil make grants from money that they actually earned.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has given the Union of Concerned Scientists $3.09 million since 2000. Long a major funder of leftist peace and environmental causes, the foundation owes its independence and generosity to its careless founder, John D. MacArthur, who neither formulated a mission for his foundation nor provided clear instructions as to how its money should be spent. He told lawyer William Kirby, who in 1978 helped set up the foundation: “I figured out how to make the money. You fellows will have to figure out
how to spend it.” In 1987, the foundation’s then-president admitted to USA Today that if MacArthur were alive to see how his money
was spent, “I think a lot of it would just make him furious.” And how! In a 1974 interview, MacArthur, an insurance entrepreneur, denounced
environmentalists as “bearded jerks and little old ladies” who “are obstructionists and just throw rocks in your path.” (For more
on the MacArthur Foundation, see the August 2003 and September 2005 editions of Foundation Watch.)
Other prominent businessmen whose namebearing foundations fund UCS include Henry Ford ($950,000 from the Ford Foundation
since 2000), Time magazine founder Henry Luce ($400,000 from the Henry Luce Foundation during 2001-2002), and J. Howard Pew
($1 million from the Pew Memorial Trust during 2002-2003). Like Ford, Pew must be turning over in his grave. In a 1957 deed establishing
the J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust, he wrote that the trust’s mission was “to acquaint the American public” with “the evils
of bureaucracy” and “the values of a free market.” (For more on the Pew Charitable Trusts, see the May 2004 edition of Foundation
Watch.)
Indeed, UCS took in more money from 1998 to 2005 than ExxonMobil contributed to global warming skeptics during the same period.
In that seven-year span, ExxonMobil contributed $16 million in grants to all groups that combat climate change alarmism, while UCS
alone received nearly $24 million in foundation grants.
The UCS Political Circus
The Union of Concerned Scientists has powerful allies in the U.S. House of Representatives as well as the Senate. Recently,
UCS took advantage of a congressional hearing to publicize yet another report smearing its political opponents. On January 30, 2007,
Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform, held a hearing on “Political Interference
on Government Climate Change Scientists.” Waxman, a member of the radical Congressional Progressive Caucus (see the January
2007 edition of Foundation Watch) and other Democrats took the opportunity to once again pillory former CEQ chief of staff Phil Cooney over his editing of Climate Action Report 2002 and his allegedly conspiratorial email exchange with CEI’s Myron Ebell. Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) commented that the committee has “been trashing a lawyer we’ve never met.”
One of the witnesses, UCS spokeswoman Francesca Grifo, announced the publication of a new UCS survey that allegedly showed political interference by the Bush administration into climate science (“Undermining Science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush Administration”). But, as Issa noted,
this survey was hardly representative, since only 19% of the 1,600 scientists polled responded— a response rate so low that it suggests bias in favor of a self-selected minority with a political axe to grind. Grifo had no response to this criticism.
[/quote]
So Mr Smith, 2 minutes of Googling finds you an article criticizing the UCS. That’s good. You’d probably never heard of them before.
I can’t help but notice that you don’t paste a link to where you got that article.
It wouldn’t be from (either wholly or derived) the Capital Research Center, would it? If so, then it’s interesting how it talks so much about sources of funding and Exxon in the article, don’t you think? Especially seeing as the CRC received donations well into the six figure range from Exxon in the same time period. I suppose that’s just a coincidence.
It’s also cute that it makes mention of big tobacco tactics. Of course, the CRC knows a lot about them. In the 1990’s they produced a number of reports criticizing the anti-smoking campaigns of the likes of the American Heart Assoc. and the American Lung Society. The funding CRC got from Phillip Morris was obviously another coincidence.
If you wanted it, I would have been happy to supply.
Gosh, you have already found the site so why are you asking for it? Gosh… What did that take you two minutes? As you say… amazing how easy Google is to use!
Yes, Exxon has provided funds to this site as well. In the SIX figure range? Got a source for that? And would you like to suggest that this is more than Exxon’s donations mentioned in the above link to global warming alarmist think tanks? Careful, you are getting into the same trouble that your “Union of Concerned Scientists” did. Only thing, UCS made a retraction. You never will.
What is cute is that you have not been around for quite some time. I noticed. I answered your cut and paste job criticism (another two minutes of your time?) of my cut and paste job point… and you never responded because you cannot find a cut and paste job to answer me can you? So what is cute is that you cannot think for yourself. You need to have cut and paste jobs to articulate and you cannot think critically so you have to have them to speak for you. I do not. And here you are again… back with your global warming alarmism… and your Big Tobacco scares… when it is the climate change movement using strawmen to suggest that any criticism of global warming alarmism is akin to organizations that said smoking was not dangerous and how doctors used to be in ads on TV to sell cigarettes… except no one is really making those arguments so your analogy is pointless AND stupid. I think that the study involved that you seem to be referring to may have questioned, like many, the effects of SECOND-hand smoking which were perhaps overly alarmist… which reminds me of the whole global warming alarmist movement. Take smoke (haha, get it? haha) and then say it comes not from a cigarette but a spewing ash-belching volcano… THAT is the better comparison and ExxonMobil didn’t need to give me millions of dollars to come up with it.
sourcewatch.org/index.php/Ca … rch_Center
Read all about them. I love that they criticize organizations over funding but then go and do the very same thing.
Lets all ignore the inherent conflict of interest in the report and just post done more nonsensical babble.
It’s always good for a laugh at least, if nothing else.
FWIW, the tobacco report had nothing to do with passive smoking.
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Yeah… I agree completely COMPLETELY… Um… which organization was it that you were referring to again? 