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cook, russell

rediscovered 820 on ozone BS, has an anti-Gelspan blog?!

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iccc2

Russell Cook

Day Job: Blogger and Contributing Editor, Environment & Climate News; writes regularly about the "smear of skeptic scientists" for Breitbart.com and RedState.

Industry Ties: He's an "expert" for Heartland

Climate Expertise: None

He said it: "No skeptic scientists ever had an opportunity to present the myriad faults in the idea of man-caused global warming."

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Environment & Climate News (E&CN) is a monthly publication of the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based corporate funded think tank. Although it describes itself as an "outreach publication for common-sense environmentalism," in fact it consistently takes positions contrary to those of most environmental organizations.

Sample headlines from E&CN's June 2005 issue exemplify its anti-environmentalist leanings:

"Alaska Disputes EPA Mercury Guidelines" argues that "the federal government's precautionary approach to mercury may be causing state residents more harm than good."

"EPA Approves Chemical Control of Aquatic Weeds" begins, "Local governments and private individuals should not be required to obtain a special environmental permit prior to applying chemicals to control invasive aquatic weeds and other pests..."

"Analysis: Oil Refineries Not Damaging Houston's Air Quality"

"Blue-Ribbon Government Panel Lauds Nuclear Energy"

"Survey Shows Climatologists Are Split on Global Warming"

"Solar Power: Too Good to Be True"

Contents  [hide]

1 Case study: Apologizing for tobacco

2 Personnel

3 Articles and Resources

3.1 References

3.2 External links

Case study: Apologizing for tobacco

In August 2003, E&CN published a piece by editor James N. Taylor, titled "Secondhand Smoke Fears Overstated, Study Finds." According to Taylor,

A 38-year study of Californians, begun by the American Cancer Society and concluded by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), has concluded that secondhand smoke has little if any negative impact on mortality.

The study, published in the May 17 issue of the British Medical Journal, throws cold water on the efforts of state and local governments to ban smoking in restaurants and other public places in the name of public health.

However, Taylor's piece deceptively omitted important facts needed to assess the validity of the study:

The study's authors, James E. Enstrom and Geoffrey Kabat, have both worked for the tobacco industry and its front groups. Gene Borio's Tobacco.org website has compiled a list of tobacco industry documents that detail Enstrom's industry ties. [1]

The study was not "begun by the American Cancer Society," and in fact the ACS has condemned it as a "tobacco industry study" that engages in "inaccurate use of data." Funded by the Center for Indoor Air Research, the Enstrom/Kabat study uses data taken from the American Cancer Society's Cancer Prevention Study I (CPS-I). However, ACS researchers point out that the Enstrom/Kabat methodology is unreliable, because its "analysis is based on a small subset (10%) of the CPS-I data" and also "suffers from a critical design flaw: the inability to distinguish people who were exposed to secondhand smoke from those who were not." [2]

To buttress his claims, Taylor goes on to quote other "experts," who like himself hail from industry-funded front groups: Jacob Sullum of Reason magazine; and Kimberly Bowman of the American Council on Science and Health. He concludes by claiming that other new medical research suggests that the nicotine in tobacco may prevent Alzheimer's disease. This, too, is misleading. Some studies have found that patients with Alzheimer's Disease are more likely not to have smoked than the general population, which has been interpreted to suggest that smoking offers some protection against Alzheimer's. However, the research in this area is limited and the results are mixed, with some studies showing that smoking increases the risk of Alzheimer's. A recent review of the available scientific literature concluded that the apparent decrease in Alzheimer's risk may be simply due to the fact that smokers tend to die before reaching the age at which Alzheimer's normally occurs. "Differential mortality is always likely to be a problem where there is a need to investigate the effects of smoking in a disorder with very low incidence rates before age 75 years, which is the case of Alzheimer's disease", it stated, noting that smokers are only half as likely as non-smokers to survive to the age of 80. [3]

Personnel

James M. Taylor, Managing Editor

Articles and Resources

Think tanks

Global warming skeptics

References

External links

Osvaldo P. Almeida, Gary K. Hulse, David Lawrence and Leon Flicker, "Smoking as a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease: contrasting evidence from a systematic review of case-control and cohort studies," Addiction, Volume 97, Issue 1, Page 15 - January 2002.

"American Cancer Society Condemns Tobacco Industry Study for Inaccurate Use of Data" (news release), American Cancer Society, May 15, 2003.

James E. Enstrom and Geoffrey C. Kabat, "Environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality in a prospective study of Californians, 1960-98," British Medical Journal, May 17, 2003.

Jon Krueger, "Enstrom and the Tobacco Industry," Tobacco.org, May 20, 2003.

"Responding to the Enstrom and Kabat Study on Secondhand Smoke," Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, November 2004.

Categories: TobaccowikiEnvironmentGlobal warming skepticsThink tanksrk he and CFACT are doing for communities in Uganda and the Yucatan -- and he has been a...more

Environment & Climate News (E&CN) is a monthly publication of the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based corporate funded think tank. Although it describes itself as an "outreach publication for common-sense environmentalism," in fact it consistently takes positions contrary to those of most environmental organizations.

Sample headlines from E&CN's June 2005 issue exemplify its anti-environmentalist leanings:

Contents

  [hide] 

Case study: Apologizing for tobacco

In August 2003, E&CN published a piece by editor James N. Taylor, titled "Secondhand Smoke Fears Overstated, Study Finds." According to Taylor,

A 38-year study of Californians, begun by the American Cancer Society and concluded by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), has concluded that secondhand smoke has little if any negative impact on mortality.The study, published in the May 17 issue of the *British Medical Journal*, throws cold water on the efforts of state and local governments to ban smoking in restaurants and other public places in the name of public health.

However, Taylor's piece deceptively omitted important facts needed to assess the validity of the study:

  1. The study's authors, James E. Enstrom and Geoffrey Kabat, have both worked for the tobacco industry and its front groups. Gene Borio's Tobacco.org website has compiled a list of tobacco industry documents that detail Enstrom's industry ties. [1]
  2. The study was not "begun by the American Cancer Society," and in fact the ACS has condemned it as a "tobacco industry study" that engages in "inaccurate use of data." Funded by the Center for Indoor Air Research, the Enstrom/Kabat study uses data taken from the American Cancer Society's Cancer Prevention Study I (CPS-I). However, ACS researchers point out that the Enstrom/Kabat methodology is unreliable, because its "analysis is based on a small subset (10%) of the CPS-I data" and also "suffers from a critical design flaw: the inability to distinguish people who were exposed to secondhand smoke from those who were not." [2]

To buttress his claims, Taylor goes on to quote other "experts," who like himself hail from industry-funded front groups: Jacob Sullum of Reason magazine; and Kimberly Bowman of theAmerican Council on Science and Health. He concludes by claiming that other new medical research suggests that the nicotine in tobacco may prevent Alzheimer's disease. This, too, is misleading. Some studies have found that patients with Alzheimer's Disease are more likely not to have smoked than the general population, which has been interpreted to suggest that smoking offers some protection against Alzheimer's. However, the research in this area is limited and the results are mixed, with some studies showing that smoking increases the risk of Alzheimer's. A recent review of the available scientific literature concluded that the apparent decrease in Alzheimer's risk may be simply due to the fact that smokers tend to die before reaching the age at which Alzheimer's normally occurs. "Differential mortality is always likely to be a problem where there is a need to investigate the effects of smoking in a disorder with very low incidence rates before age 75 years, which is the case of Alzheimer's disease", it stated, noting that smokers are only half as likely as non-smokers to survive to the age of 80. [3]

Personnel

Articles and Resources

References

External links

Categories: 

no lnx/format

http://gelbspanfiles.com/?page_id=18

a denier blog?! russell cook

pbs nova 2000 pretty convince pro agw but he cites as root of his dissent

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/27gwwarming.html

About

Physicist John Droz recently told state legislators in North Carolina that “real science is about adjudicating the facts, not casting aspersions on the source.”

As common citizens without science expertise, the majority of us are forced to leave the debate over the actual causes of global warming to the scientists. But we can participate in another process, namely finding out for ourselves whether the narratives about the issue and its scientists ring true.

The Accusation

At this web site, I dig deeply into the accusation that scientists and others who express skepticism about the theory of man-made global warming are being paid by the fossil fuel industry to lie about the issue.

The origin of this claim goes back to the early 1990s, when some book references and magazine/newspaper articles suggested skeptic scientists were out to “reposition global warming as theory (not fact)” at the behest of the coal industry, which supposedly had produced a memo with that implied instruction. But this insinuation, lacking real evidence and general believability, was falling flat in the eyes of the public.

Then an ex-Boston Globe reporter named Ross Gelbspan began repeating the accusation in December 1995, more or less simultaneously with his infamous Harper’s magazine “The Heat Is On” article, and in an NPR “Living on Earth” radio show interview. In the latter, he reworded the memo phrase as “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact.”

From that point forward, luminaries such as Al Gore credited Gelbspan as a Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist who discovered and exclusively exposed the “reposition global warming” memo and other associated leaked memos, which were “evidence” of a fossil fuel industry disinformation campaign reminiscent of the way the tobacco industry employed ‘shill experts’ to confuse the public about the hazards of cigarette smoking.

http://gelbspanfiles.com/?p=5573

We Have to Stop These People …. somehow

Posted on August 15, 2017

From an October 10, 1993 Newsweek magazine article by Sharon Begley, there is this first item:

… ecorevisionists have been filling books, op-ed pages and radio airwaves with attacks on what many scientists consider one of the most menacing global threats, and the one on the strongest scientific footing: depletion of the planet’s protective ozone layer by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). … Rush Limbaugh says that anyone who claims that CFCs destroy ozone is a “dunderhead alarmist.”

Time flies in the world of menacing global threats. Who does Rush Limbaugh call ‘alarmist’ these days? But there’s more in that old article. It goes on to state that the backlash concerned whether CFCs do actually deplete the ozone layer (over twenty years later, this is still a serious topic for debate), and whether it is harmful if they do. Then it detailed this exchange:

… ozone critic S. Fred Singer, of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, concedes, “Most, though not all, of the chlorine reaching the stratosphere is from CFCs.”

Even if the Antarctic ozone hole is caused by CFCs, say critics, that doesn’t mean anyone other than penguins has to worry. “The ozone hole is real and genuine,” says Singer, “but you cannot prove from existing data that global ozone depletion [due to CFCs] has occurred” anywhere outside Antarctica. … Atmospheric chemist F. Sherwood Rowland of the University of California, Irvine, calls that argument “disingenuous: the ozone changes over the Northern Hemisphere are outside the range of natural loss.”

For readers who are new to this blog, there is far more to that particular situation than just a disagreement over scientific pronouncements, as I detailed in my January 16, 2015 post.

But here’s what the article was ultimately aiming for:

Who cares if skeptics pummel ozone science? After all, the global pact calling for the phaseout of CFCs by 1996 is unlikely to change. (Ozone loss will reach 10 percent or more around the turn of the century, estimates physicist Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund. Then, thanks to the CFC ban, it will recover over the next 100 to 150 years.) Yet by calling ozone science a sham, ideologues have a better chance of derailing the next environmental treaty: to control gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.

In October 1993, you could just as well say, “we’re going to ram through our ban on CFCs whether you like it or not.” But the can’t-miss thing there is the bullhorn call: “We need to shut down these critics, otherwise the next most menacing global threat might not have any success at being perceived as a threat.”

How do you do that? Try prompting a guy named Justin Lancaster to say Dr Singer committed a nasty act when he tricked Al Gore’s mentor and former college teacher Roger Revelle into recanting his long-held views on the harm of global warming. No need to stop there – try prompting a nationally recognized network TV journalist to say Dr Singer is a paid shill of the fossil fuel industry.

Oops, that worked out well. As detailed in a 2006 Marc Sheppard American Thinker article,

A libel suit was filed in April of 1993, prompted by Lancaster’s words, which also included suggestions that Singer’s purpose in listing Revelle as a co–author was “to undermine the pro–Revelle stance of [then] Sen. Gore.” It was revealed during the suit’s discovery period that Gore had called Lancaster shortly after learning of the New Republic article. Numerous links between Gore, Gore’s staff, and the actions of Lancaster were also discovered …

‘Concurrent with Mr. Lancaster’s attack on Mr. Singer, Mr. Gore himself led a similar effort to discredit the respected scientist. Mr. Gore reportedly contacted 60 Minutes and Nightline to do stories on Mr. Singer and other opponents of Mr. Gore’s environmental policies. The stories were designed to undermine the opposition by suggesting that only raving ideologues and corporate mouthpieces could challenge Mr. Gore’s green gospel. The strategy backfired. When Nightline did the story, it exposed the vice president’s machinations ….

[Ted Koppel:] ‘There is some irony in the fact that Vice President Gore, one of the most scientifically literate men to sit in the White House in this century, that he is resorting to political means to achieve what should ultimately be resolved on a purely scientific basis.’

Yet, even in the face of Gore’s blatant abuse of public office, the suit was, ultimately, settled. On 4/29/1994, Dr. Lancaster issued a statement in which he “fully and unequivocally” retracted his claims against Dr. Singer.

So what do you do in the face of twin wipeouts? Give up? No, you just ignore the Roger Revelle episode (who?) and abandon efforts to dazzle seasoned journalists you can’t actually control, but you still concentrate on refining that second angle, since everybody with a brain in their head hates somebody who is paid to lie.

A “Pulitzer-winning reporter” ought to do fine, he can say he was a believer in the global warming issue when he was tapped to co-author a March 1995 newspaper article, then a skeptic, then a firm believer once he discovered months later that skeptic climate scientists were part of an industry misinformation campaign. Just make sure Lancaster keeps his mouth shut about specific dates, and actions, and make sure no journalists ever question the core evidence this ‘Pulitzer winner’ discovered or question anything else associated with him, lest they report the whole effort is an accusation built on a foundation of sand.

In my January 15, 2016 blog post, I noted that Sharon Begley was one of the “repeaters” of Ross Gelbspan’s “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” phrase, since her own Aug. 13, 2007 Newsweek “Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine” article repetition of it looked more or less like that. But from revisiting Begley’s article containing the repetition – click image below – the situation may be worthy of deeper examination, considering who appears in close proximity to the phrase and what that person says:[[pix/]

The reaction from industries most responsible for greenhouse emissions was immediate. “As soon as the scientific community began to come together on the science of climate change, the pushback began,” says historian Naomi Oreskes.

Back in late 2009, when I first told Dr Singer about the lack of substance behind narratives about ‘corrupt skeptic climate scientists’ and who those filtered back to, he replied, “If I can find a multi-millionaire willing to underwrite the legal expenses, I would sue them all: desmog, Gelbspan, Begley etc.” I still have the email.

At that time, I didn’t think much could be made of Sharon Begley’s amplification of the seemingly already virally repeated “reposition global warming” phrase in her 2007 Newsweek article, and I didn’t attach any significance to her bit about initial pushback against the idea of catastrophic man-caused global warming. But regarding the way she all but put out a clarion call for somebody to do something about potential pushback in 1993 over a matter she had no science expertise to judge, and considering how her 2007 article quoted Naomi Oreskes, one of the few people who actually saw those Western Fuels ICE documents firsthand, it might be worthwhile for other more intensive investigators to find out just what level of involvement Begley had in formulating and carrying out character assassination efforts to shut down Gore’s critics.

This entry was posted in mainstream media reporting and tagged Al Gore, Justin Lancaster, Naomi Oreskes, S. Fred Singer, Sharon Begley by Russell Cook. Bookmark the permalink.