I have not posted to the blog in a while but I am still “living and kicking” as my grandfather used to say.

I have been busy. Last year I was selected to be one of former Vice President Al Gore’s “Climate Messengers”. In less than a year, I gave over 40 presentations on climate  change related issues including a debate at the Southern New England Weather Conference as to whether current global warming is natural or human driven.

This fall I was selected to be the new Head of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Science at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. Our Department has a new undergraduate degree program in Environmental Sciences that is part of the intercollegiate Colleges of the Fenway Joint Environmental Sciences Program. The program only started this year and we already have 17 first-year students.

Another project that I have been working on is the Encyclopedia of Earth. Think of Wikipedia but with peer-reviewed encyclopedia entries. I am both an author, topic editor, and a member of the EoEarth Stewardship Committee. Some of the articles on EoEarth have been organized into collections. I am one of the lead persons helping to coordinate and expand the Climate Change Collection of entries for the EoEarth.

While the entries to the Encyclopedia of Earth are written and edited by experts in their fields who have been approved by the Stewardship Committee and those entries only become published to the public after peer and editorial review, there is a related site to EoEarth that is a “Blog” open for submission and comments by a larger group of participants. If you like reading Blogs and are interested in possibly contributing to an environmentally-focused Blog, check out the Earth Forum.

In August, Congress passed and President Bush signed into law the America Competes Act of 2007. Taking seriously the National Academies’ “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” report and the Council on Competitiveness’ “Innovate America” report that I discussed on this blog previously, here and here, politicians in Washington garnered the political will to include int he legislation actions that will help mitigate American students’ poor literacy rates in math and science compared to those in countries worldwide that compete with the U.S.

EdNews summarized the major points in the act:

Increase Research Investment by:

• Doubling funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF) from approximately $5.6 billion in Fiscal Year 2006 to $11.2 billion in Fiscal Year 2011.

• Setting the Department of Energy’s Office of Science on track to double in funding over ten years, increasing from $3.6 billion in Fiscal Year 2006 to over $5.2 billion in Fiscal Year 2011.

• Establishing the Innovation Acceleration Research Program to direct federal agencies funding research in science and technology to set as a goal dedicating approximately 8% of their Research and Development (R&D) budgets toward high-risk frontier research.

• Authorizing the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) from approximately $703 million in Fiscal Year 2008 to approximately $937 million in Fiscal Year 2011 and requiring NIST to set aside no less than 8 percent of its annual funding for high-risk, high-reward innovation acceleration research.

• Directing NASA to increase funding for basic research and fully participate in interagency activities to foster competitiveness and innovation, using the full extent of existing budget authority.

• Coordinating ocean and atmospheric research and education at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies to promote U.S. leadership in these important fields.

Strengthen Educational Opportunities in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Critical Foreign Languages by:

• Authorizing competitive grants to States to promote better alignment of elementary and secondary education with the knowledge and skills needed for success in postsecondary education, the 21st century workforce, and the Armed Forces, and grants to support the establishment or improvement of statewide P-16 education longitudinal data systems.

• Strengthening the skills of thousands of math and science teachers by establishing training and education programs at summer institutes hosted at the National Laboratories and by increasing support for the Teacher Institutes for the 21st Century program at NSF.

• Expanding the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program at NSF to recruit and train individuals to become math and science teachers in high- need local educational agencies.

• Assisting States in establishing or expanding statewide specialty schools in math and science that students from across the state would be eligible to attend and providing expert assistance in teaching from National Laboratories’ staff at those schools.

• Facilitating the expansion of Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) programs by increasing the number of teachers prepared to teach AP/IB and pre-AP/IB math, science, and foreign language courses in high need schools, thereby increasing the number of courses available and students who take and pass AP and IB exams.

• Developing and implementing programs for bachelor’s degrees in math, science, engineering, and critical foreign languages with concurrent teaching credentials and part-time master’s in education programs for math, science, and critical foreign language teachers to enhance both content knowledge and teaching skills.

• Creating partnerships between National Laboratories and local high-need high schools to establish centers of excellence in math and science education.

• Expanding existing NSF graduate research fellowship and traineeship programs, requiring NSF to work with institutions of higher education to facilitate the development of professional science master’s degree programs, and expanding NSF’s science, mathematics, engineering and technology talent program.

• Providing Math Now grants to improve math instruction in the elementary and middle grades and provide targeted help to struggling students so that all students can master grade-level mathematics standards.

• Expanding programs to increase the number of students from elementary school through postsecondary education who study critical foreign languages and become proficient.

Develop an Innovation Infrastructure by:
• Establishing a President’s Council on Innovation and Competitiveness to develop a comprehensive agenda to promote innovation and competitiveness in the public and private sectors.

• Requiring the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a study to identify forms of risk that create barriers to innovation.

Yes. That is correct. Today the majority of Republicans voted against the war funding bill that President Bush wanted and signed into law. I thought I was reading the results incorrectly at first but check it out.

H R 2206 passed today, 221-10, with 3 not voting and President Bush promptly signed it into law. But it was 219 Democrats who voted for the bill and 195 Republicans who opposed. Only 2 Republicans voted for the legislation.

So what gives? The President got the bill he wanted with no timelines for withdrawal included. Are the Republicans now against the continued funding of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not long ago the Republican congressional leaders were lambasting the Democrats for not supporting the troops and the military leaders with the funds they needed.

Even today, John McCain and Mitt Romney assailed Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton for voting against the measure in the Senate. (One might ask why Mitt and John did not savage their own Republican House members for also voting against the measure).

So again, what gives? Well the bill includes spending for a number of Democratic domestic priorities and the first increase in the minimum wage in a decade. Minimum wage earners would get a pay increase to $7.25 over the next two years. This increase amounts to a 2.4% increase per year over the 12 year period since 1997 until 2009 when it goes into effect. A 2.4% increase per year is less than the current annual inflation rate and also less than the average yearly inflation rate during the past decade.

I guess the Republicans just couldn’t stomach providing minimum wage earners a basic pay raise that might actually bring their earning potential anywhere close to being able to keep up with inflation.

It is good to know that the United States is ahead of Turkey (the country) in public acceptance of evolution.

One really has to wonder just how far the American “news” media is willing to move away from the Principles of Journalism. In 1997, the Committee of Concerned Journalists of the Project for Excellence in Journalism outlined nine Principles of Journalism (below). Ten years after the formulation of these principles, it appears that every major American television news outlet, including CNN, has abandoned the nine core principles that are supposed to comprise the basis of objective journalism.

1. Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth
2. Its first loyalty is to citizens
3. Its essence is a discipline of verification
4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover
5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power
6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise
7. It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant
8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional
9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience

As I posted on this blog years ago, an October 2003 report by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the university of Maryland found that “a substantial portion of the (American) public had a number of misperceptions that were demonstrably false, or were at odds with the dominant view in the intelligence community.”

According to the PIPA study, which consumers of the mainstream “news” media who were polled showed the highest frequency of misperceptions regarding events related to the Iraq war? The chart shows that the inappropriately named “Fox News” clearly won the misperception contest. But you know until now, I had not paid that much attention how closely behind Fox all the other television news outlets and even the print media were in their race to promote misperceptions and to abandon the nine principles of journalism.

But now it seems that CNN has upped “the ante” in the race to be the most disingenuous television news outlet in America.

On May 2, 2007, CNN aired a disinformation program on global warming hosted by Glen Beck entitled Exposed: The Climate of Fear. Beck seems to be CNN’s answer to the ratings grabber and Ad hominen attack specialist Bill O’Reilly.

A new study from Indiana University found that Bill O’Reilly calls “a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night.” The study shows that O’Reilly frequently employs multiple propagandist techniques that have been documented to have been in popular since after the end of World War I.

The May 2 CNN program brings back on to the stage a cadre of the well-known climate change deniers (many of whom are funded by Exxon Mobil and other industry powerhouses) as well as their tired arguments which have been thoroughly debated and debunked by scientists and the few remaining American news outlets that actually attempt to uphold the Principles of Journalism.

CNN promoted the program as being a vehicle to present the “other side of the climate debate that you don’t hear anywhere.” But in fact the program is rife with techniques that the climate deniers have been using ad naseum for decades including Ad hominen attacks on the deniers’ preferred high profile target, former Vice President Al Gore.

From Glen Beck, the man

• who claimed that the movie Happy Feet was a propaganda tool designed by a Hollywood director to indoctrinate children from being able to think for themselves about issues including global warming, and
• who uses the same name-calling techniques as does Bill O’Reilly,

one could not have expected anything more in this “television special” that purported to look “for answers and solutions about why Earth is warming and what man can do about it.”

But from CNN and Time Warner, outfits that claim to be “The Most Trusted Name in News” and offer “socially responsible programming” whose “actions must be guided by the highest standards of ethics”, one could and should expect a tremendous amount more.

It is time for American citizens to insist that CNN and many of the other once great and trusted American news media outlets change the direction of their race. To now move away from disingenuity and the promotion of misperception and distasteful discourse in the obvious quest for greater ratings. And to now move back to the objective Principles of Journalism.

President Bush is inadvertently drawing attention to the huge amounts of money directed to military spending in the United States.

Mr. Bush is claiming that Congress’ attempts to limit the length of the Iraq war by placing language to such effect in the $124 Billion supplemental bills will hurt American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What Mr. Bush fails to acknowledge is:

1. That HE would be the one to halt the supplemental funding process by carrying out his threatened veto.
2. That the military budget for Fiscal Year 2007 is $481 Billion dollars not counting Iraq war funding.
3. That the above $481 Billion in the normal defense appropriations alredy included about $70 billion for Iraq war related expenses
4. That the U.S. has already spent over $414 billion on the Iraq war
5. That the $124 Billion emergency supplemental funding for the war is in addition to the $414 billion already spent on the Iraq war and is in addition to the $489 Billion dollar FY military budget
   
6. That the Congressional Research Service has indicated that the Pentagon can get along just fine without the additional money through July by juggling other accounts in its half-trillion-dollar budget.
7. That last year facing the same deadlines, the Republican Congress didn’t get around to approving a supplemental $94.4 billion in war-fighting money until June without hectoring by the White House

So let’s take this a step further. Could there possibly be any FAT in the Pentagon’s almost half trillion dollar budget for this year?

Well we see in the spreadsheet for the U.S. Budget that there are some interesting categories that could be looked at.

How about the $73 Billion dollars that is supposed to be spent this year on Research and Development?

How about the $84 Billion dollars that is supposed to be spent this year on Procurement? Do we actually need all the aircraft and missiles that may be in the budget that could perhaps have been more suited to a conflict with the former Soviet Union?

How about the almost $13 Billion dollars that is supposed to be spent this year on Military Construction? Didn’t the BRAC commission just a short time ago propose to close a bunch of U.S. military bases?

The cartoon below is a few years old. We now spend 56% of the Federal Budget on military expenditures (see pie chart above). But the cartoon gives you a good idea about the enormity of money our government spends on the military relative to all of our other pressing domestic and international needs.

In a stunning revelation, United States Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell has now explained America’s humanitarian role in acting for many years as the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions.

George W. Bush and other representatives of the Administration had previously stated that a major reason why the United States was only one of two countries in the world that had refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was because it gave an unfair advantage to developing countries like China and India and because it would harm the U.S. economy.

Apparently that earlier argument for America’s inaction on curbing emissions of greenhouse gases did not clearly show America’s humanitarian basis for the policy. Mr. Sell has now set the record straight. He has enlightened us that the U.S. emission of 7,074.4 teragrams of carbon dioxide equivalents in 2004 (24 megagrams per person), both the largest per country and per person emission rates in the word, actually is a sign of America’s moral mission to help millions of starving people in developing countries.

You see, Mr. Sell said that the United States, as the world’s top energy consumer and economy, was NOT morally obliged to lead rapidly developing countries in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. If the U.S. took a lead in reducing greenhouse gas emissions that might actually compel the leaders of developing countries to follow our lead and such measures would keep “hundreds millions of people in poverty” in China and India.

Currently those countries are not obliged to place mandatory cuts on emissions under any international agreement. By Mr. Sell’s reasoning, if America actually took a lead role in the world and applied our ingenuity and brainpower in improving energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, those efforts could lead to a humanitarian catastrophe for millions in developing countries worldwide by their leaders trying to emulate our silly ways.

Thank goodness America’s leaders, like Deputy Energy Secretary Sell, have now stepped up to the plate to show the world the true meaning of “compassionate conservatism.”

Mr. Sell can be proud that America’s inaction over the past decade regarding the curbing of greenhouse gas emissions has sent the right signals to leaders of countries like China. Estimates are that China is on course to overtake the United States this year as the world’s greatest carbon emitter. Mr. Sell will be disappointed to learn that the U.S. will still retain the champion title of per-person carbon emitter (at the rate of 6.25 times the amount per person in China) and that China’s emission per-person rate is actually below the average for the world’s countries. (China only “wins” as being the top emitter on a per country basis by having so many damn people).

Mr. Sell has now “spilled the beans” behind the Administration’s true secret policy basis for America’s steadfast inaction on curbing greenhouse gases. Like for so many other ingenious policy initiatives developed by the current Bush Administration, the genius behind this one should immediately be rewarded. We should request that the current Administration identify the individuals behind the secret humanitarian plan to NOT curb greenhouse gas emissions. In keeping with this Administration’s practice, those individuals should be immediately nominated and awarded the Congressional Medal of Freedom.

GOP should catch up with constituents

sununu

In response to my Letter to the Editor of the Nashua Telegraph, John Sununu writes his own letter to the newspaper and accuses me of fabrication.

My response is below.

================================

Sununu: Letter had erroneous information

The Nashua Telegraph: Published: Saturday, Mar. 24, 2007

I write to correct a series of false statements in a letter to the editor from Mr. Stephen Nodvin that appeared in The Telegraph on March 22 regarding climate change. As Congress examines this issue, your readers deserve the most accurate, objective information available.

The letter states, falsely, that prior to my election to the U.S. Senate, I headed an organization funded by Ex­xon Mobil, Chevron, Eli Lilly and Philip Morris, and that I ran a disinformation Web site regarding global warming funded by Exxon Mobil and Philip Morris. Both points are patently untrue.

Before being elected to the Senate in 2002, the residents of New Hampshire’s First Congressional District elected me to
three consecutive terms in the U. S. House of Representatives. Prior to 1996, I held the position of chief financial officer and director of operations for the Manchester, N.H.-based Teletrol Systems Inc., a manufacturer of information systems and networks.

The letter’s author and his colleagues did meet with my staff in Washington. However, at no time did they discuss global warming with my chief of staff, to whom Mr. Nodvin inaccurately attributes a quote in his letter.

Last year, I wrote legislation adding wilderness protection to 35,000 acres in the White Mountain National Forest. I have voted against the administration’s unfair new source pollution policy and supported tougher standards for mercury emissions from power plants. In 2005, I received recognition from Taxpayers for Common Sense, a bipartisan coalition, for my work on environmental issues.

I understand that no one will agree with my vote on every issue. But it is inexcusable for critics to resort to fabrication to score partisan, political points. The voters of New Hampshire deserve better.

U.S. Sen. John Sununu
R-New Hampshire

My response is below:

In a letter published in the Nashua Telegraph on March 24, 2007, Senator John Sununu accused me of "fabrication to score partisan, political points."  His statements were in response to my Letter to the Editor, published on March 22 in which I questioned the Senator’s motivation for being the first Republican Senator to call for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Every citizen has the right to question the motivations of her or his elected officials in Washington, whether they be congresspersons, senators, or the president.  That is one of the things that makes America such a great country.  However, I think it is another thing when a Senator accuses one of his constituents of purposely spreading partisan-based falsehoods.  I would like to take this opportunity to respond.

In his letter Mr. Sununu said that my "letter states, falsely, that prior to my election to the U.S. Senate, I headed an organization funded by Ex­xon Mobil, Chevron, Eli Lilly and Philip Morris, and that I ran a disinformation Web site regarding global warming funded by Exxon Mobil and Philip Morris. Both points are patently untrue."   

My training as a scientist compels me to not make any statements without having a basis either by direct observation or reference source. I my letter to the editor I sourced several published articles and the book Washington Babylon (page 13) which stated "John Sununu" headed Consumer Alert, the industry funded front group that had fought against improved automobile safety standards and had helped the establish and maintain the disinformation web-site: http://www.globalwarming.org .  I have now spoken with Ken Silverstein, one of the authors of the book Washington Babylon, who has informed me that the "John Sununu" referred to was actually the Senator’s father and former Chief of Staff in the first George Bush Whitehouse. 

I apologize to Senator Sununu for the incorrect attribution.  Both the father and the son go by the same first and last names and one of the sources that I used incorrectly attributed the association with Consumer Alert to the younger Sununu.

However, my observation that the Senator is a long-time climate change denier remains unchanged.  In a letter the senator sent to me on January 26, 2005, the Senator stated "scientists have been unable to agree that there is a direct increase between … temperature increase (during the second half of the 20^th century) and human activity."  This statement is, and was at the time, untrue or misleading at best.  While there are a handful of vociferous dissenters with scientific credentials, the overwhelming majority of scientists worldwide have reached the conclusion that human activity has been the primary cause of global warming during the past 40-50 years.  

In the Senator’s letter to the paper he states: "The letter’s author and his colleagues did meet with my staff in Washington. However, at no time did they discuss global warming with my chief of staff, to whom Mr. Nodvin inaccurately attributes a quote in his letter".  Mr. Sununu’s statement implies that we did not discuss global warming with his staff during our meeting.  The Senator’s statement is misleading because we did indeed discuss that issue. In my letter I did err in stating that I and two other scientists from New Hampshire met with Mr. Sununu’s "chief of staff."   I should have used the title "Legislative Assistant."

The staff person that we met with in the Senator’s office in Washington at 3:30 pm on September 20, 2005 to explicitly discuss global warming was Peter Phipps, the Senator’s Legislative Assistant for Environment, Energy, Elections, Telecom, and Agriculture.  It was Mr. Phipps who told the three New Hampshire scientists sitting in front of him that day that there was no scientific consensus on the cause of global warming.  It was astounding to us to hear such a statement from our Senator’s Legislative Assistant for Environment when we had explicitly traveled to Washington to inform our representatives that exactly the opposite was true.

The Senator’s implication that my questioning of his motives and actions were "partisan" and "political" follows a popular refrain among elected officials to cry "partisanship" when a citizen questions her or his representative’s actions.  My visit to the Hill on September 20, 2005 included meetings with staff members of all four of New Hampshire’s representatives in the House and the Senate.  It was only in Senator Sununu’s office that we scientists received a lecture on what scientists believe about global warming.  In fact, during our visit to Senator Gregg’s office, I was particularly impressed with the depth and awareness of Mr. Gregg’s Legislative Assistant for the Environment, with whom we spoke, about the problem of global warming. 

There were some unintentional errors in my letter to the Telegraph.  However, in his letter to the paper, Mr. Sununu never addressed the main issue of my concern which was why Mr. Sununu is now calling for the resignation of the Attorney General when he had formerly provided strong support for Gonzalez and his policies. 

The Senator’s current stance on the Attorney General contradicts the support Mr. Sununu provided to Mr. Gonzales in a letter the Senator sent to me on February 28, 2005.  In that letter, Senator Sununu not only supported Mr. Gonzales appointment to the post of Attorney General but, to my amazement, the Senator also defended Mr. Gonzalez’s and President Bush’s justifications of their circumvention of Geneva Convention protections.

Stephen C. Nodvin, Ph.D.

sununu

If you have not heard of Lyndon Larouche, you will soon.

Lyndon Larouche is:

• a convicted criminal who spent 6 years in prison for conspiracy and mail fraud
• a political extremist
• a conspiracy theorist
• a cult leader
• someone who has been accused to be an anti-Semite

Even the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation has said that Larouche “leads what may well be one of the strangest political groups in American history.”

But, above all, Larouche is an opportunist.

His tactics are well known:

1. Find high profile targets to attack
2. Develop a series of conspiracy theories that paint the targets as a cabal of Judas and the anti-Christ
3. Recruit young impressionable people to become “followers” of your “movement”

The most recent high profile targets that Larouche has chosen for his newest crusade are Al Gore and climate science.

Larouche’s cult-like minions have begun showing up at public forums on global warming and have been vacuuming e-mail addresses off the web to spam people with their new “expert” knowledge of all things science.

If you want to see some of the vitriol Larouche and his minions can spew, read Larouche’s attack on Gore called:

Blood and Gore.

Greetings to contacts of the LaRouche Youth Movement in Boston!

Our organization is mobilized to destroy the reputation of mALthusian GORE, the buffoon most avidly promoting a neofeudal form of oligarchy and population reduction converging on genocide under the banner of ‘man-made Global Warming’. This, when the Democratic party must be MOVING in coordination with LaRouche to reorganize an utterly bankrupt world monetary-financial system and rebuild the physical economy. Al Gore’s popularity stunt is the latest plot by the Anglo-Dutch financial establishment to foster hysteria in the population and lure the global economy into a planet-wide Dark Age. We must ruin big, fat, loser Al Gore by exposing his vile past and blatant lies in order to establish Lyndon LaRouche’s undisputed leadership in the Democratic Party. Civilization is on the line…

Do Your Part!? Master this material and become a beacon of truth. Pass this e-mail on to your close contacts. This information is your survival kit for the present political period.

Recent Findings by 21st Century Science and Technology refute the scientific method of Al Gore’s IPCC.
http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/press_releases_files/2007/0223_inconvenient_gore.shtml
http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/press_releases_files/2007/0223_inconvenient_gore.shtml

The Great Global Warming Swindle: an excellent British documentary with leading scientists debunking the global warming fraud.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU

LaRouche’s March 7 Webcast: “Implications of the Gore Hoax for International Policy”
http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/audio_video_files/2007/070307_webcast.shtml

An Article by an EIR Intelligence Team on Gore’s Connections to the British
http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/otherartic_files/2007/0312_blood_gore.shtml

A Thorough Annihilation of the Global Warming Fraud by a leading glaciologist
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_10-19/2007-11/pdf/38_711_science.pdf

http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_10-19/2007-11/pdf/38_711_science.pdf

The email talks about: “LaRouche’s undisputed leadership in the Democratic Party. Civilization is on the line…”

If that sounds just a bit egomaniacal to you, you are beginning to get the point of where these people are coming from.

This film is a fraud and a sham. It uses every trick in the book to deceive its viewers and it has been debunked:

• Desmoblog debunking the film
• A PowerPoint dissecting the falsehoods in the film
• A full page video version of the above PowerPoint Presentation
• Google video of the PowerPoint
• A dissection by Monbiot
• Another Monbiot analysis
• A Rebuttal (pdf) to the film put together by Colin Chase
• British Antarctic Survey response to the film
• An analysis of the errors in the film by The Independent

Most of the people who appear in the film are NOT respected climate scientists but long-time climate deniers: many of who have received significant funding from companies like ExxonMobil and Philip Morris. The arguments used are the same warmed-over arguments that have been thoroughly and carefully considered by the majority of climate scientists… and rejected.

According to George Monbiot, “this is not the first time that the director, Martin Durkin, produced a film full of fraud attempting to make the same points. In 1997, Durkin, produced very similar film series called “Against Nature”, which also maintained that global warming was a scam dreamt up by environmentalists. It was riddled with hilarious scientific howlers. More damagingly, the only way in which Durkin could sustain his thesis was to deceive the people he interviewed and to edit their answers to change their meaning. Following complaints by his interviewees, the Independent Television Commission found that “the views of the four complainants, as made clear to the interviewer, had been distorted by selective editing” and that they had been “misled as to the content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part.” Channel 4 was obliged to broadcast one of the most humiliating primetime apologies it has ever made. Are institutional memories really so short?”

• The article is NOT a peer-reviewed scientific article. It is mocked up pretty professionally to to look like one to get unsuspecting people to think it is one.
• If you look at the “article”, you will see n the bottom left hand corner the word “Science.” This is an obvious attempt to confuse the unsuspecting readier into thinking that this was printed in the journal Science
  which is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). I am a member of AAAS and I can assure you that the journal Science would never publish this.
  • Here is a link to the real journal Science:
    http://www.sciencemag.org/
  • And here is a link to a statement on climate change approved and
    released by the board of AAAS.
    
    http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2007/0218am_statement.shtml
• EIR (Executive Intelligence Review) is NOT a scientific journal but nothing more than a publication and press service produced by the Larouche organizaion.
• The article lists as its author Zbigniew Jaworowski: a known long-term climate-change denier. His arguments are not new, have been considered and dismissed by the scientific community.
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Jaworowski
  
  http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Zbigniew_Jaworowski

• Prepare slick-looking polemical presentations including films and documents that “appear” to have an air of credibility.
• Incorporate many half-truths - people who are “already in your court” are ready and willing to believe: just give them something that sounds that it could be truthful (Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness”)
• Provide false dichotomies: most people are easily fooled by the use of the false dichotomy
• Use selective or even distorted data
• Use Ad hominen attacks. Forget reality: attack the messenger. Attack those money-grubbing climate scientists and that liberal Al Gore. People will believe you more if you get them first angry at the other side. (If you are going use this technique, you might as well lie when smearing the messenger: people who buy this approach are already NOT thinking about the content of your arguments).
• Appeal to authority: Make sure to find at least a few people with advanced degrees to support your arguments. It won’t matter to the “true believers” in your audience or those easily persuaded that your “experts” represent only a tiny fraction of the population of scientist and experts who might be working in this field. Your audience won’t know that hundreds of peer-reviewed papers and thousands of other scientists disagree with “your experts.”
• Finally, quote out of context. Al Gore NEVER said that he “invented the Internet”. Doesn’t matter. That did not stop people from taking his words out of context and from endlessly repeating that and other misquotes to paint Gore in a bad light when he was running for President in 2000.