rossiter, caleb

stats risk assess, entine? STATS gmu?

michaels and FB BS:

Maloney is the co-founder of the Media Equality Project.

ref to pat michaels WE

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/facebook-has-another-go-at-climate-truth-arbitration

no lnx

Facebook has another go at climate truth arbitration

by Patrick Michaels | June 29, 2020

Last year, Facebook briefly slapped a “false” label on an op-ed I wrote with statistician Caleb Rossiter on the poor performance of the computer models that predict future global temperatures. That label blocks Facebook users from seeing and sharing an article. We explained in detail in a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the label was “unsupported by the data and analysis of UN and U.S. government agencies.”

I am a climate scientist. I know the U.N. data because I was an author and reviewer of many of the U.N. climate reports, even as I grew increasingly unsatisfied by their gradual evolution from real science into advocacy science.

To its credit, Facebook removed the “false” label and indeed adopted a new policy of not “fact-checking” op-eds. But Facebook has slapped another “false” label on a YouTube video of my Oct. 21, 2018, interview on Life, Liberty & Levin. They probably would have let it pass except for the fact that nearly 3 million people have watched it.

The arbiter of climate truth is a group contracted to Facebook called Climate Feedback, itself funded by professional climate alarmist Eric Michelman. It gets exercised about anything deviating from its apocalyptic religious view of climate change. It was particularly upset by Michael Moore’s recent film on the true environmental and financial costs of wind and solar projects, which turn out to be anything but “renewable.” In fact, as Moore showed in his folksy "Believe me; I’m an amateur" style, these boondoggles require massive fossil fuel energy inputs to build the infrastructure that provides their intermittent and costly power and so don’t even reduce net carbon dioxide emissions.

Climate Feedback accused me of stating erroneously that “about half” of the warming of nearly a degree in Celsius since 1900 is caused by carbon dioxide. But this is a fact, not an opinion. There are two warming spells that occurred in the 20th century. The first one started in 1910, long before we had put enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to create much of a warming effect. And interestingly, the rate of warming in the early 20th century is indistinguishable from the rate of the second warming, beginning in 1976.

In rebutting my assertion, Climate Feedback relies on a computer climate model simulation from the United Nation’s collection. The U.N. uses 105 model runs, and 104 of them are incapable of simulating the three-dimensional behavior of the entire global tropics. The one model that does work predicts hardly any global warming, but call the special prosecutor; it’s a Russian model.

Climate Feedback was also upset that I said warming may have stopped from the late 1990s to the beginning of the big El Nino warming of 2014-16. In my extended piece on Climate Feedback’s shenanigans, I included a graph of global monthly surface temperatures from the most pristine scientific record we had at the time of the Levin taping. This clearly shows the “pause,” which was discussed a great deal at the time it happened.

Is Facebook aware that all of those vaunted climate models are “parameterized” (i.e., fudged) to get the answer the modelers want? I’m exaggerating about this, right? Well, here’s what climate modeler Thorsten Mauritsen wrote in the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems a mere two months ago:

We have documented how we tuned the MPI-ESM1.2 [Max-Planck Institute Earth System Model 1.2] global climate model to match the instrumental record warming; an endeavor which has clearly been successful. Due to the historical order of events, the choice was to do this practically by targeting an ECS [equilibrium climate sensitivity—the amount of warming resulting from a doubling of carbon dioxide] about 3 [degrees celsius] using cloud feedbacks, as opposed to tuning the aerosol forcing.

What this means is that his climate model (like everyone else’s) was unable to simulate the climate of the 20th century from first physical principles. So, he forced the issue by mucking around with the cloud parameters even though that was likely to induce massive errors in the tropics. After all, the only truly unpardonable sin would have been to come back with a model that stood out too much from everyone else's.

Unfortunately, Facebook is back to censoring informed, defensible scientific opinion with less defensible scientific opinions.[does he mean his youtube vid] It was a great platform when it upheld the free exchange of ideas. Michaels is a former professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a former president of the American Association of State Climatologists. He is the author of Lukewarming (2016) and Scientocracy (2019) and a senior fellow with the CO2 Coalition in Arlington, Virginia.

A 2018 TPPF video promoting the continued operation of a coal-fired power plant on the Arizona Navajo reservation has been rebranded with the Life:Powered name. The video showed images of smokestacks with a voiceover by a young Navajo girl saying, “Papa says it’s the heart of the land. I can hear it beating.” [22]

The video’s closing text reads:

“Extreme environmentalist politics will eliminate jobs, destroy families, and spike electric bills in the Navajo Nation and across America. The Navajo don’t need to be told what to do. They’ve been protecting the environment for centuries.” [22 [vid]

Local environmental groups responded with claims that the plant’s consumption of billions of gallons of groundwater has led to contamination and depletion of the reservation’s water supply. The executive director of a Navajo non-profit organization told the Statesman: [22]

“The pro-coal supporters have made it all about jobs. There’s more to it than that. What’s happening on Black Mesashows that jobs and revenues is not all that it’s made out to be. When you lose your own potable water source, that’s life or death right there.” [22]

Peabody Energy, a TPPF donor, operates the Navajo Generating Station, which will be shuttered at the end of 2019. [22]

Another TPPF:{ }:{ on the topic of }::{“}::{Energy Poverty” featured}::{ Caleb Rossiter}::{ of the :{CO2:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Foundation}::{ }::{promoting wider adoption of fossil fuel-generated electricity in the developing world. }:[22]

Life:Powered plans to target future messaging in New Mexico, the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, and Alaska in opposition to renewable energy and carbon reduction initiatives. [22]

cmd 7/20

Facebook is “aiding and abetting the spread of climate misinformation,” said Robert Brulle, an environmental sociologist at Drexel University. “They have become the vehicle for climate misinformation, and thus should be held partially responsible for a lack of action on climate change.”

Brulle was reacting to Facebook’s recent decision, made at the request of climate science deniers, to create a giant loophole in its fact-checking program. Last year,Facebook partnered with an organization, Science Feedback, that would bring in teams of Ph.D. climate scientists to evaluate the accuracy of viral content. It was an important expansion of the company’s third-party fact-checking program.

But now Facebook has reportedly decided to allow its staffers to overrule the climate scientists and make any climate disinformation ineligible for fact-checking by deeming it “opinion.”

The organization that requested the change, theCO2 Coalition, is celebrating, E&E news reported on Monday. The group, which has close ties to the fossil fuel industry, says its views on climate change are increasingly ignored by the mainstream media. Now it plans to use Facebook to aggressively push climate misinformation on the public—without having to worry about fact checks from climate scientists.

How it all started

A column published in the Washington Examiner in August 2019 claimed that “climate models” were a “failure” that predicted exponentially more warming of the earth than has occurred. The piece, co-authored by notorious climate science denier Pat Michaels, was quickly shared more than 2,000 times on Facebook.

There was just one issue: It wasn’t true.

This is exactly the kind of mess that Facebook’s network of independent fact-checkers is supposed to solve. In May 2019, Facebook partnered with Science Feedback, a site dedicated to explaining “why information is or is not consistent with the science.”Science Feedback’s process is extremely rigorous. Each piece has multiple reviewers, and each reviewer “holds a Ph.D. and has recently published articles in top-tier peer-reviewed science journals.”

Five scientists reviewed the Washington Examiner article for Science Feedback. The scientists identified a number of problems with the piece: “false factual assertions, cherry-picking datasets that support their point, failing to account for uncertainties in those datasets, and failing to assess the performance of climate models in an objective and rigorous manner.”The article was rated “false” by Science Feedback and logged in Facebook’s system.

That should have been the end of the story. The Washington Examiner article should have had a warning overlaid each time it was shared on Facebook, and its distribution on Facebook should have been dramatically reduced.

But that’s not what happened.

Instead, an organization affiliated with Michaels, the CO2 Coalition, wrote Zuckerberg and complained about Science Feedback’s rating. Among other things, the coalition claims that Science Feedback’s analysis amounted to “simple differences of opinion.” The coalition asked Zuckerberg to “remove Facebook’s censorship, labeling, and restrictions on this article.”

Amazingly, it worked.In September, Facebook removed the false rating, overruling the judgment of Science Feedback. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook found that the misinformation about climate models was an “opinion” and, therefore, not eligible for fact-checking.

Now, the CO2 Coalition has announced its intention to exploit this loophole to spread climate misinformation on Facebook.

How Facebook’s fact-checking program is supposed to work

The rules for Facebook’s fact-checking program are clear. Facebook does not conduct the fact-checks itself. Instead, it has outsourced the process to third parties that are certified by Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network.

If a publisher has a dispute about a rating it receives on Facebook, it should “reach out directly to the third-party fact-checking organizations.” The rating can only be removed by the organization that issued the fact check — either because the fact checker is convinced by the publisher’s dispute or the publisher corrected the false information. There is no mechanism to appeal a fact-check directly to Facebook.

According to Facebook’s rules, all “public, newsworthy Facebook and Instagram posts, including ads, with articles, photos, or videos,” are eligible for fact-checking. The only type of content that is listed as exempt is original content posted by politicians or political candidates.

The Wall Street Journal reported that, after receiving the complaint from the CO2 coalition, Facebook planned to create a new rule exempting “opinion pieces” from fact-checking. But Facebook did not “respond to requests for comment” on the new rule. No such rule has been publicly acknowledged by Facebook in the months that followed.

In response to a request for comment, Facebook did little to clarify the situation, reiterating the company’s official fact-checking policies but not addressing its decision to overrule Science Feedback. “The focus of Facebook’s third-party fact-checking program is combating viral misinformation,” Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said. “There’s an appeals process in place for publishers to appeal directly to fact-checkers to dispute ratings.”

How climate science deniers plan to exploit Facebook’s loophole

Creating an unwritten exemption for “opinion” content, which is enforced by Facebook and not its fact-checking partners, creates a giant loophole for misinformation. The CO2 coalition told E&E News that they plan to exploit it.

After the quiet decision by Facebook, the coalition says it and other groups that attack consensus climate science can share content that climate scientists have labeled as misleading because Facebook will consider it “opinion” and therefore immune to fact-checking.

The CO2 Coalition is increasingly focused on using Facebook to reach more people with its message that climate change fears are overblown and that burning more fossil fuels would help humanity, Executive Director Caleb Rossiter told E&E News this week. He sees the battle over its climate-related posts as part of a larger proxy war over how to reach an audience outside of conservative media.

Rossiter said Facebook was increasingly important because “the mainstream media” is no longer willing to amplify the group’s opinions. But the reason the “mainstream media” is not willing to amplify the group’s opinions is because they’re not opinions at all. They’re falsehoods.

Climate facts are not climate opinions

Andrew Dessler is one of the five climate scientists who originally fact-checked the CO2 Coalition’s op-ed by Pat Michaels. It was “complete bullshit,” he said. “We gave it a bad review, which it 100 percent deserved.”

The article claimed computer models used by climate scientists to predict warming have proved overblown, and thus shouldn’t be trusted. To prove it, Michaels compared “actual temperatures since 1979 with what the 32 families of climate models used in the latest U.N. report on climate science predicted they would be.”

The comparison was flawed. Michaels compared the earth’s present temperature with past climate models that predicted more carbon pollution than actually occurred. If we had polluted as much as the models predicted, the world would have warmed as much as the models predicted.

We know this because actual climate scientists have published research assessing the accuracy of climate models. That research, which went through the rigorous peer-review process, says computer climate models have been largely accurate for the last 40 years.Michaels’ analysis, on the other hand, didn’t go through any peer-review process, nor is Michaels climate scientist himself.What Michaels did was amateur Google sleuthing. What the scientists did was science.

Dessler thinks Michaels should be able to state his opinions about climate change without getting fact-checked. “Things like, ‘we should [implement] a carbon tax,’ or ‘subsidize nuclear energy, or even ‘we shouldn’t do anything about climate change,'” he said. “Those aren’t facts; they’re policy choices.”

But statements about the physical condition of the planet; the effect of carbon on the atmosphere; the historical accuracy of climate models—those are scientific in nature. “Those are not opinions,” Dessler said. “They’re either true or false.”

“The earth is warming. Climate models have done a good job,” he added. “That should be covered by fact-checking.”

The dire consequences of not fact-checking climate denial

The CO2 Coalition told E&E News that it is getting assistance from a “‘conservative’ Facebook employee.” Facebook says that claim is not true, but did not specify who at Facebook reversed Science Feedback’s ruling.

American political conservatives have a long, well-documented history of perpetuating climate disinformation in order to delay climate action. Disinformation—that is, the intentional spread of misinformation—has been a key strategy of the fossil fuel industry and its political allies for decades. The less people understand about climate science, the strategy goes, the less likely they will be to support aggressive climate policies, which threaten the fossil fuel industry’s immense profitability.

The CO2 Coalition’s use of Facebook’s op-ed loophole “fits right back into that strategy of trying to promulgate misinformation to the public in order to keep alive the lack of public concern over climate change, to stop meaningful action to address it,” Brulle said. And by having the loophole, Brulle said, “Facebook is becoming part of the problem, not part of the solution, to climate change.”

Naomi Oreskes, an acclaimed Harvard University professor who co-wrote “Merchants of Doubt,” agreed that Facebook’s op-ed loophole is “potentially very damaging.”

“We know that many people, particularly young people, are getting their information heavily, or even primarily, from social media,” she said. “For social media to propagate disinformation, without any attempt at screening, is for them to become, in effect, part of the disinformation machine

fucking bowtie

credentials

M.A., mathematics, American University (2004). [1]
Ph.D., policy analysis, CornellUniversity (1983). [1]
M.S., Education, Cortland State (N.Y.) University (1976). [1]
B.S., Human Development and Family Studies, Cornell University (1973). [1]

Background

Dr. Caleb Rossiter is a professor and consultant with a background in international policy. Between 1984 and 1990 he served as deputy director for foreign policy of the Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus of the U.S. Congress. In 1992, he founded Demilitarization for Democracy, a think tank focused on arms control policy, and helped found the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines. In 1998, Rossiter made an unsuccessful bid for Congress in New York’s 31st congressional district. [2], [3]

Rossiter joined the School for International Service at American University in Washington D.C. in 2002, teaching quantitative analysis, international relations, African history and politics, and the “use and misuse of statistics and models in the climate change debate.” [3], [1]

In 2014, it was reported that Rossiter’s Associate Fellowship at the :{Institute for Policy Studies was terminated:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: after he published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journalin which he referred to the scientific consensus on climate change as “unproven.” [4]

According to Rossiter’s website, he continues to teach at AU as an adjunct professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, and the AU website lists him as a faculty member of the College of Arts & Sciences. He is a member of theCO2 Coalition, a non-profit organization that receives funding from the :{Mercer :(style="background-color:#ff9900;"):}:Family Foundation, and refers to climate change science as “greatly exaggerated.” [3], [1], [5]

Stance on Climate Change

September 12, 2014

Writing in an op-ed for American University’s *The Eagle*, Rossiter dismissed a fellow columnist’s appeal for AU to divest from fossil fuels:

“As someone who has guided students through the models and statistics of climate change here at AU for the past decade, I can tell your readers that the models, while fascinating in their construction, are in their infancy, both in looking backwards and in looking forwards. They certainly have misfired badly over the past 15 years, predicting one of those degrees of temperature rise but seeing, in reality, absolute zero.” [6]

Key Quotes

July 25, 2019

Appearing at the Heartland Institute’s climate conference at Trump Hotel in Washington D.C.:

“We must treat this as a war of publicity.” [19]

October 31, 2018

In an article published byRealClear Energytitled “The UN’s Terrifying, But Ever-Receding, Human-Caused Climate Catastrophe,” Rossiter criticized a UN IPCC report as being overly alarmist and based on faulty science:

“But don’t be too frightened: the same governments who authorize the UN reports never take the steps needed to reduce the supposedly horrifying carbon dioxide level. Hidden behind their teeth-chattering fear of fossil fuels is their awareness that oil, gas, and coal have helped bring dramatic improvements in health, welfare, and life expectancy, and that alternative methods of generating power are currently available only at unacceptable economic (and hence political) cost.” [7]

September 9, 2014

In an op-ed for American University’s *The Eagle*, Rossiter encouraged AU students todoubtthe contribution of climate change to extreme weather events:

“We certainly hope that students will form an opinion, based on the way we have taught them to analyze evidence for themselves, about whether it was more likely natural fluctuation or industrial gas that caused the one degree rise in temperature from 1860 to 2000, and whether that one degree rise has led to havoc in hurricanes, droughts and sea level rise. But the data are weak on all of these questions, and it is not our job to make those judgments for them.” [6]

Key Deeds

September 19, 2019

Rossiter spoke at an event at Georgetown University designed to rebut a nearby official climate change debate forum for 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. [20]

The Georgetown event, “Climate Forum: a Rebuttal,” was sponsored by the Georgetown University College Republicans (GUCR), also featured Marc Morano, CFACT’s Paul Driessen, Kenny Stein of the Institute for Energy Research, and Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute. [21]

GUCR advertised the event on Facebook as “bringing five climate policy &[sic] climate science experts to provide an alternative perspective.” [21]

As the forum began, student protesters disrupted the proceedings, causing campus police to remove everyone from the room. The event resumed when college staff prohibited protesters from holding signs, and with the promise of removal if they continued to disrupt the speakers. [22]

Rossiter’s presentation, “There’s No Climate Crisis, Just an Energy Crisis: How Fossil Fuels Save Lives in Africa & America,” suggested climate change was caused by the sun rather than humans. [23]

“There is not enough evidence,” he said, “to support high confidence that humans’ carbon dioxide has affected temperature enough to change the overall trend.” [23]

May 9, 2019

Caleb Rossiter, representing the CO2 Coalition, signed on to an open letter organized by the American Energy Alliance designed to fight against an electric vehicle tax credit. [16]

“The American Energy Alliance has organized a coalition to proclaim in one unified voice that there should be no expansion of the misguided electric vehicle tax credit,” Thomas Pyle wrote in a statement,quoted at *The Daily Caller*. “There is no question that the electric vehicle tax credit distorts the auto market to no gain.” [17]

According to Pyle and others who signed the letter, electric vehicle tax credits “overwhelmingly benefit the rich.” DeSmog'sKoch vs. Clean projecthas systematically debunked this, among other well-rehearsed talking points and misinformation put forward by industry about electric vehicles. [17]

The letter cites research by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a group that has received over $600,000 from ExxonMobil and millions from “dark money” groups DonorsTrust andDonors Capital Fund.

May 6, 2019

Rossiter was announced as the new Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition, taking over the organization's daily operations. In a press release, Rossiter said: [18]

“We're the scientists and economists saving the people of the planet from the people who claim to be 'saving the planet.” [18]

May 1, 2019

Rossiter co-hosted a CO2 Coalition briefing with Craig Idso on Capitol Hill to present findings from a report titled “What Rising CO2 Means for **Global Food Security**.” [14]

The Coalition’s report described carbon dioxide as “a non-polluting, non-toxic gas” and “a powerful plant food.” [14]

The briefing also suggested that increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 would result in higher crop yields:

“The CO2 added to the air has already ‘greened’ the planet: since 1900, it has increased crop production on the order of 15 to 30 percent, and satellite imagery shows that deserts are even shrinking in places as new plants encroach on their edges. […] this effect will only improve as carbon dioxide continues to rise from four one-hundredths of one percent of the atmosphere today to, perhaps, six one-hundredths of one percent in 50 years.” [14]

Rossiter also revealed that the CO2 Coalition would be targeting their message at first- and second-term members of Congress who haven’t made up their minds about climate change. “They’re up for grabs,” he said. [15]

January 22, 2019

Attending the annual LibertyCon convention in Washington, D.C., which was funded in part by the Mercer Family Foundation, the Charles Koch Institute, and Google, Rossiter gave a presentation in which he stated:

“There has been no increase in storms, in intensity or frequency. The data don’t show a worrisome trend.” [8]

He also proclaimed that carbon-based fuels improve life expectancy in developing countries by increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, acting as a “fertilizer,” and ensuring electricity generation, concluding:

“I come not to bury your carbon but to praise it.” [8]

2017

Rossiter appeared in the film “Climate Hustle,” which was co-written by ClimateDepot.com's Marc Morano. Speaking about the role of carbon-based fuels in spurring economic development, he said:

“Climate justice in limiting carbon dioxide emissions is a crime against Africa.” [9]

In a document to support the film, a bio of Rossiter stated he was a member of the Democratic Party and was proud to be “politically left”.

June 18, 2014

An article for *The:{ College Fix:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:* recounted the story of how Rossiter once flunked a student who had submitted a paper affirming the role of human activity in climate change:

“I had to raise her grade because she certainly had cited the evidence they had given, but I just couldn’t give her much of a grade because she should have been able to see – as most people should be able to see – that the computer models were just guessing and sort of notional, and just kind of playing around to get a good fit, but didn’t have much scientific basis.” [10]

May 4, 2014

Rossiter published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled “Sacrificing Africa for Climate Change,” in which he criticized Western climate policies for limiting economic expansion on the continent, referring to anthropogenic climate change as “unproven science”:

“The left wants to stop industrialization—even if the hypothesis of catastrophic, man-made global warming is false. … Western policies seem more interested in carbon-dioxide levels than in life expectancy.” [11], [12]

In response to Rossiter's op-ed, the Institute for Policy Studies terminated his Associate Fellowship, telling him in an email:

“Unfortunately, we now feel that your views on key issues, including climate science, climate justice, and many aspects of U.S. policy to Africa, diverge so significantly from ours that a productive working relationship is untenable. The other project directors of IPS feel the same.” [11]

March 2010

In a blog post titled “Climate Catastrophe: Convenient Fibs and Dangerous Prescriptions,” Rossiter derided acceptance of climate change by “the left” as a distraction created by the likes of the IPCC and Al Gore:

“American skies and waters are a lot healthier today than they were in 1970 because the environmental movement forced elected politicians to cater to their beliefs, but acceptance of America’s global role of domination remains as fixed in mainstream politics as ever. Leftists are trying to use global warming as a “giant lever” to link the two concerns, but they are expending resources on what is certainly a non-solution to what is most likely a non-problem, and providing legitimacy to the liberals who control the climate change debate…” [13]

Affiliations

:{CO2 Coalition:(style="font-weight:700"):}: — Executive Director. [18]
:{Texas Public Policy Foundation:(style="font-weight:700"):}: — Fellow. [1]
Institute for Policy Studies — Associate Fellow, 1992-2014. [1]
American University — Adjunct Professor, 2010-2018. Assistant Professor, 2002-2004, 2005-2007, 2009-2010. [1]
Center for International Policy — Research Fellow, 1983-1984. [1]
Cornell University — Graduate Assistant/Instructor & Adjunct Assistant Professor, 1979-1986. [1]
American Exceptionalism Media Project — Director, 2012-present. [1]

Social Media

C aleb Rossiter on Facebook (Official Page)
@caleb_rossiter on Twitter
Caleb Rossiter on LinkedIn

Publications

According to his website, Rossiter has published numerous books and reports, primarily on the subject of international relations, and his articles and op-eds have been featured in the Washington Post and the SAIS Review. [1]

His books include:

Let’s Talk About Not Talking: The Left’s opposition to debate is dangerous – especially for anti-imperialists (2018)
The Chimes of Freedom Flashing: A Personal History of the Vietnam Anti-war Movement and the 1960s(1996)
The Turkey and the Eagle: The Struggle for America's Global Role(2010)
Ain't Nobody Be Learnin' Nothin': The Fraud and The Fix for High-Poverty Schools(1987)

Resources

“Curriculum Vitae,” calebrossiter.com.Archived January 29, 2019. Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/J0udL
“Biographical Sketch,” calebrossiter.com. Archived January 29, 2019. Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/8JDp3
“Caleb Rossiter,” american.edu. Archived January 29, 2019. Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/Yru6K
“Global Warming Witch Hunt Continues With Caleb Rossiter,” Investors Business Daily, June 16, 2014. Archived January 29, 2019. Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/IV3JY
“About,” co2coalition.org. Archived January 29, 2019. Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/f8YPr
Caleb Rossiter. “Divestment brings certain harm to Africa,” The Eagle, September 12, 2014. Archived January 29, 2019. Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/RdOTk
Caleb Rossiter. “The UN’s Terrifying, But Ever-Receding, Human-Caused Climate Catastrophe,” RealClear Energy, October 31, 2018. Archived January 30, 2019. Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/KRiVz
Stephanie Mencimer. “Google, Facebook, and Microsoft Sponsored a Conference That Promoted Climate Change Denial,” Mother Jones, January 22, 2019. Archived January 28, 2019. Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/Yir8O
“Climate Hustle – Full Cast & Crew,” IMDB.com.Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/7VZqB
Dominic Lynch. “EXCLUSIVE: Prof Fired For Calling Global Warming ‘Unproved Science’ Stands Firm,” The College Fix, June 18, 2014. Archived January 30, 2019. Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/74OL5
Marc Morano. “Fired for ‘Diverging’ on Climate: Progressive Professor’s fellowship ‘terminated’ after WSJ OpEd calling global warming ‘unproved science’,” Climate Depot, June 12, 2014. Archived January 30, 2019. Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/XQjXl
Caleb Rossiter. “Sacrificing Africa for Climate Change,” Wall Street Journal, May 4, 2014. Archived January 30, 2019. Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/rI8Ix
Caleb Rossiter. “Climate Catastrophe: Convenient Fibs and Dangerous Prescriptions,” calebrossiter.com, March 2010. Archived January 30, 2019. Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/d0iiN
“May 1 Event: What Rising CO2 Means for Global Food Security,” CO2Coalition.org, April 25, 2019. Archived April 30, 2019. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/apt99
Scott Waldman. “Defenders of CO2 expand presence in Congress,” E&E News, May 2, 2019. Archived May 7, 2019. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmog.
“Dear Senator Grassley, Senator Wyden, Representative Neal and Representative Brady:” May 9, 2019. Retrieved from The Daily Caller.
Christ White. “CONSERVATIVES WARN LAWMAKERS: TESLA’S TAX CREDITS ‘OVERWHELMINGLY BENEFIT THE RICH’,”The Daily Caller, May 9, 2019. Archived May 9, 2019. Archive.fo URL: https://archive.fo/qzvF3
Press Release. “Former Greenpeace Leader Dr. Patrick Moore to Chair CO2 Coalition,” StreetInsider.com,May 6, 2019. Archived May 10, 2019. Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/vAb7s. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmog.
Joe McCarthy. “’We must treat this as a war of publicity’ Caleb Rossiter of the CO2 Coalition says after asking (to boos) if people want to pay $13 a gallon for gas,” Tweet by @notjoemccarthy, July 25, 2019. Retrieved from Twitter.com. Archived.png on file at DeSmog.
Jenni Fink. “Georgetown College Republicans Host Rebuttal to Climate Forum Featuring 2020 Candidates,” Newsweek, September 19, 2019. Archived September 19, 2019. Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/nkuC3
“Climate Forum: A Rebuttal,” Facebook, September 19, 2019. Archived .pdf on file at Desmog.
Annemarie Cuccia, Sarah Watson. “Protesters Disrupt Rebuttal to Climate Change Forum,” The Georgetown Voice, September 19, 2019. Archived September 20, 2019. Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/gGu5f
Riley Rogerson. “College Republicans’ Climate Forum Rebuttal Met With Protests,” The Hoya, September 20, 2019. Archived September 25, 2019. Archive.is URL: http://archive.is/0wqbq

Other Resources

Caleb Rossiter | DeSmog

https://www.desmogblog.com › caleb-rossiter

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:{:{Caleb Rossiter:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: Credentials M.A., mathematics, American University (2004). ... at AU as an adjunct professor in the Department of Mathematics and :{Statistics:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, and ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Global Warming Disinformation Database | DeSmog

https://www.desmogblog.com › global-warming-denier-database

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:{Welcome to the :{DeSmog:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: Climate Disinformation Research Database where you can search and browse our extensive research on the ... :{Caleb Rossiter:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:.:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Caleb Rossiter, Ph.D. - CO2 Coalition

https://co2coalition.org › members › caleb-rossiter-phd

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:{Climate statistician :{Caleb:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: Stewart :{Rossiter:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: is the executive director of the CO2 ... He was also a :{statistics:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: professor in South Africa at the University of the ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Missing: desmog ‎| ‎Must include: ‎desmog

Caleb Rossiter falsely claims that climate models are “running ...

https://climatefeedback.org › claimreview › caleb-rossiter-falsely-claims-th...

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Claim: The models predicted about three times the amount of warming in the world we’ve seen since [1988].

Claimed by: Caleb Rossiter

Fact check by Climate Feedback: Inaccurate

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Richard Tol | DeSmog UK

https://www.desmog.co.uk › richard-tol

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:{Jan 11, 2017 - Robert Giegengack; Judith Curry · Richard Tol; :{Caleb Rossiter:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:; Ivar Giaever .... Andrew Gelman, a professor of :{statistics:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: and political science at ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/01/google-facebook-and-microsoft-sponsored-a-conference-that-promoted-climate-change-denial/

Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have publicly acknowledged the dangers of global warming, but last week they all sponsored a conference that promoted climate change denial to young libertarians.

All three tech companies were sponsors of LibertyCon, the annual convention of the libertarian group Students for Liberty, which took place in Washington, DC. Google was a platinum sponsor, ponying up $25,000, and Facebook and Microsoft each contributed $10,000 as gold sponsors. The donations put the tech companies in the top tier of the event’s backers. But the donations also put the firms in company with some of the event’s other sponsors, which included three groups known for their work attacking climate change science and trying to undermine efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Among the most notable was the CO2 Coalition, a group founded in 2015 to spread the “good news” about a greenhouse gas whose increase in the atmosphere is linked to potentially catastrophic climate change. The coalition is funded by conservative foundations that have backed other climate change denial efforts. These include the Mercer Family Foundation, which in recent years has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to right-wing think tanks engaged in climate change denialism, and the Charles Koch Institute, the charitable arm of one of the brothers behind Koch Industries, the oil and gas behemoth.

In the LibertyCon exhibit hall, the CO2 Coalition handed out brochures that said its goal is to “explain how our lives and our planet Earth will be improved by additional atmospheric carbon dioxide.” One brochure claimed that “more carbon dioxide will help everyone, including future generations of our families” and that the “recent increase in CO2 levels has had a measurable, positive effect on plant life,” apparently because the greenhouse gas will make plants grow faster.

In a Saturday presentation, Caleb Rossiter, a retired statistics professor and a member of the coalition, gave a presentation titled “Let’s Talk About Not Talking: Should There Be ‘No Debate’ that Industrial Carbon Dioxide is Causing Climate Catastrophe?” In his presentation, Rossiter told the assembled students that the impact of climate change on weather patterns has been vastly exaggerated. “There has been no increase in storms, in intensity or frequency,” he said. “The data don’t show a worrisome trend.”

He insisted that when he hears the news that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are rising, “I’m cheering!” That’s because, he said, carbon dioxide “is a fertilizer” that has made Africa greener and increased food production there, reducing human misery.

[google was a platinum sponsor, ponying up $25,000, and Facebook and Microsoft each contributed $10,000 as gold sponsors.

Rossiter also claimed that carbon dioxide emissions correlate with wealth and that the greenhouse gas “improves life expectancy” because poor countries that start burning fossil fuels have a more consistent power supply and can then clean up their water. “I’m happy when carbon dioxide is up, because it means poverty is down,” he declared.]

I come not to bury your carbon but to praise it,” he concluded.

Rossiter’s presentation puts him on the far fringes of the climate denial world. Not even Exxon is trying to make such arguments anymore. And it’s a long way from what Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have said about the dangers of carbon dioxide; all three companies have committed to reducing their own carbon footprints. Microsoft has pledged to cut carbon emissions by 75 percent by 2030. Google claims to be committed to a “zero carbon” future and is aggressively pursuing renewable energy sources for its operations to reduce its carbon footprint and help combat climate change. And Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg criticized President Donald Trump after he announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, writing, “Stopping climate change is something we can only do as a global community, and we have to act together before it’s too late.”

The presence of the tech sponsors at a libertarian conference is not itself unusual, as governments around the globe move to try to regulate social media and online privacy. Tech companies see libertarians as natural allies in the fight against regulation. Indeed, Google sponsored two different sessions at the conference, one on why “permissionless innovation” needs to be defended and another on whether the government will “continue to let the Internet be awesome.” But the companies’ underwriting of a conference with a climate denier on the schedule shows the hazards of trying to advance a policy agenda through interest groups without also supporting their fringe elements.

The CO2 Coalition wasn’t the only group sponsoring LibertyCon that is known for its work undermining efforts to combat climate change. Along with Facebook and Microsoft, the Heartland Institute was also a gold sponsor of the event. Heartland is a longtime player in industry-funded efforts to undermine climate science and fend off efforts to reduce carbon emissions. The conservative Heritage Foundation, which pushed the Trump administration to withdraw from the Paris climate accords and has long featured experts who argue that global warming is a myth, was also a sponsor.

A Facebook spokesman responded to questions about its sponsorship of LibertyCon by sending a link to its political engagement page, which says, “Sometimes we support events that highlight Internet and social media issues” and features a long list of third-party groups it has worked with in the past. He noted that LibertyCon met its criteria for support and cited the number of sessions unrelated to climate change.

A spokesperson from Google defended the company’s LibertyCon sponsorship, saying, “Every year, we sponsor organizations from across the political spectrum to promote strong technology laws. As we make clear in our public policy transparency report, Google’s sponsorship or collaboration with a third party organization doesn’t mean that we endorse the organization’s entire agenda or agree with other speakers or sponsors.”

On Wednesday, Microsoft said in a statement, “Our commitment to sustainability is not altered or affected by our membership or sponsorship of an organization. We work with many groups on technology policy issues and do not expect or anticipate that any organization’s agenda will align to ours in all policy area...

ref

https://www.wired.com/story/google-and-facebook-backed-an-event-denying-climate-change/

google, Facebook, and Microsoft have publicly acknowledged the dangers of global warming, but last week they all sponsored a conference that promoted climate change denial to young libertarians.

All three tech companies were sponsors of LibertyCon, the annual convention of the libertarian group Students for Liberty, which took place in Washington, DC. Google was a platinum sponsor, ponying up $25,000, and Facebook and Microsoft each contributed $10,000 as gold sponsors. The donations put the tech companies in the top tier of the event’s backers. But the donations also put the firms in company with some of the event’s other sponsors, which included three groups known for their work attacking climate change science and trying to undermine efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

The WIRED Guide to Climate Change

Among the most notable was the CO2 Coalition,a group founded in 2015 to spread the “good news” about a greenhouse gas whose increase in the atmosphere is linked to potentially catastrophic climate change. The coalition is funded by conservative foundations that have backed other climate change denial efforts. These include the Mercer Family Foundation, which in recent years has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to right-wing think tanks engaged in climate change denialism, and the Charles Koch Institute, the charitable arm of one of the brothers behind Koch Industries, the oil and gas behemoth.

“I come not to bury your carbon but to praise it,” he concluded.

Rossiter’s presentation puts him on the far fringes of the climate denial world. Not even Exxon is trying to make such arguments anymore. And it’s a long way from what Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have said about the dangers of carbon dioxide; all three companies have committed to reducing their own carbon footprints. Microsoft has pledged to cut carbon emissions by 75 percent by 2030. Google claims to be committed to a “zero carbon” future and is aggressively pursuing renewable energy sources for its operations to reduce its carbon footprint and help combat climate change. And Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg criticized President Donald Trump after he announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, writing, “Stopping climate change is something we can only do as a global community, and we have to act together before it’s too late.”

The CO2 Coalition wasn’t the only group sponsoring LibertyCon that is known for its work undermining efforts to combat climate change. Along with Facebook and Microsoft, the Heartland Institute was also a gold sponsor of the event. Heartland is a longtime player in industry-funded efforts to undermine climate science and fend off efforts to reduce carbon emissions. The conservative Heritage Foundation, which pushed the Trump administration to withdraw from the Paris climate accords and has long featured experts who argue that global warming is a myth, was also a sponsor.

Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment. A Facebook spokesman responded to questions about its sponsorship of LibertyCon by sending a link to its political engagement page, which says, “Sometimes we support events that highlight Internet and social media issues” and features a long list of third-party groups it has worked with in the past. He noted that LibertyCon met its criteria for support and cited the number of sessions unrelated to climate change.

A spokesperson from Google defended the company’s LibertyCon sponsorship, saying, “Every year, we sponsor organizations from across the political spectrum to promote strong technology laws.As we make clear in our public policy transparency report, Google’s sponsorship or collaboration with a third party organization doesn’t mean that we endorse the organization’s entire agenda or agree with other speakers or sponsors."