This is vewwwy vewwwy sewwwious

cite as: F. Bi. 2009. This is vewwwy vewwwy sewwwious. Intl. J. Inact., 2:78

Question: Out of the following events, which is the most serious of them all?

1. The Heartland Institute, a think-tank which opposes global warming regulation (among other things), was found to move its ‘conference’ audios around on its web server, causing some hyperlinks to the audios to become broken for a short while.
2. Global warming ‘skeptic’ Anthony Watts reports that another ‘skeptic’, Steve McIntyre, suddenly finds that some files originally on a climate research center’s web server are now missing. The files might have been purged, they might have been moved; who knows. But let’s just assume that there’s something really big and really sinister going on. [cached]
3. A think-tank was found to send anti-climate-regulation letters with forged letterheads to a US Senator. (A brave act of civil disobedience, I suppose.) [cached]
4. Watts slaps a bogus DMCA complaint onto a YouTuber for reproducing the cover page for one of his ‘reports’. [cached]
5. I need a drink.

Answer: According to Watts, the correct answer is 2. But I beg to differ: the answer should be 5.

Senator Inhofe is not getting paid enough for this junk!

cite as: F. Bi. 2009. Senator Inhofe is not getting paid enough for this junk! Intl. J. Inact., 2:9–10

Michael Tobis says,

The [global warming] conspiracy theorists put that [$200 million dollars spent on climate science] up against some tens of millions spent by the conspiracists’ PR arm, but that is unfair. They claim to be outspent 5 to 1, but the $200 mn actually goes to people doing science, not to people doing outreach. The main outreach efforts from the climate science community are unfunded (RC [RealClimate], blogs, public talks typefied by Hansen’s). [...] So the climate science community has unpaid, untrained volunteers telling the truth while the bad guys have tens of millions for PR professionals.

One might have hoped for a change recently with the unveiling of Gore’s “We” campaign, but I am sorry to say it strikes me as oblivious to the playing field and woefully incompetent.

Listen to Morano at the “2008 International Conference on Climate Change” whinging about how Inhofe isn’t getting paid enough by oil companies (!) (360KB, 2′ MP3). Source: extracted and re-coded from a video from the Heartland Institute web site.

What’s more, the “bad guys” — the climate inactivists — fail to include the money that’s spent in the upkeep of the US Senate Committee of Environment and Public Works’s web server (epw.senate.gov). Now, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) and his sidekick Marc Morano see fit to use this public server as a vehicle to propagate inactivist propaganda opinion pieces, to the point of cutting-and-pasting entire newspaper op-eds wholesale. Ordinarily such an act would be seen as a flagrant misuse of the taxpayer money that’s gone into maintaining the web server, but I guess there’s a special exception to this rule for Republican Senators.

In fact, Morano tells us that Inhofe actually deserves to be paid more for this junk! The logic is that, well, since the UN spends lots of money to fund such trivial pursuits as running climate models and surveying research literature, therefore Inhofe should be allowed to

• get more money from oil companies which goes directly into funding his own campaigns, and then
• use public resources — funded not by Inhofe or Big Oil, but by taxpayer money, your money — to cut-and-paste op-eds to please the oily interests!

That’s ‘balancing the debate’, my friends. Certainly, in this time of financial crisis, Inhofe’s commitment to protecting taxpayer money has never been greater.

International Conference on Climate Change: The Remix Challenge

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. International Conference on Climate Change: The Remix Challenge. Intl. J. Inact., 1:197–198

Jeepers creepers, I just discovered that the Heartland Institute, which organized the inactivist “2008 International Conference on Climate Change” in March, actually ran a YouTube video promoting the ‘conference’ back in January.

Now, if I have enough time, I’ll probably try to remix it in time for their “2009 International Conference on Climate Change” next year. For one thing, the background muzak is ripped from the opening of A Little Less Conversation, and is too cheesy (in my very very humble opinion). Maybe I’ll replace the background muzak with the opening strains of Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. Or something by Paris Hilton, I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll also work in some references to

• Al Gore and his Fat Fat Fatness;
• the vast conspiracy of THIRD WORLD KLEPTOCRATS!!! that lurks under your bed;
• the prizes and awards which Professor Lindzen and Viscount Monckton so badly need and so clearly deserve; and
• some random stuff, like kittens.

However, I’m somewhat short of time at the moment, so I’ll leave this as a creative challenge to all of you: How would you like to promote Heartland’s conference next year? Remix the promotional video in whatever way you wish, and let us know what you come up with! :-)

Update 2009-01-24: By yours truly. Not a remix, but it does use Also sprach Zarathustra. :)

“Wall Street crisis” cancelled!

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. “Wall Street crisis” cancelled! Intl. J. Inact., 1:148

If you can solve a financial crisis by altering the scale of a graph axis, will you do it? Now, a Dow Jones plunge of about 500 points may sound like a lot, and it may even actually hurt your savings, but if you look at it the right way then perhaps it’s not so bad after all! Really! :-B

(This graph was inspired by Jennifer Marohasy’s recent ‘proof’ that there’s no global warming — in turn probably inspired by Ron Rychlak’s presentation at the Heartland denial-fest.)

Tom Harris may need some helium

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. Tom Harris may need some helium. Intl. J. Inact., 1:143

Announcement: Sign the “Sue Us” Petition and urge Monckton and others
to sue Gore and Hansen as repeatedly threatened! 60 signatures so far!

Primo

Well, here’s a (long-overdue) update to my genealogy of climate conspiracy theories. It now includes

• the conspiracy theory laid out by Tom Harris in his presentation at the Heartland Institute’s “2008 International Conference on Climate Change” (specifically, Slides 5–7 and 13); and
• Peter Morgan’s theory, which was discussed by Matthew Dentith.

(As before, you can view the updated genealogy by clicking on the sultry girl.)

Secundo

And, speaking of Harris and Heartland… apparently the freedom-loving Heartland Institute, in an act of supreme inactivist freedom, has now removed the link to the conference proceedings from their web site! The audio recordings are now on a different page, but many of the hyperlinks are broken — including the link to Harris’s speech.

Fortunately, I’ve already archived Harris’s presentation and a section of his speech, so you can still continue to experience the joy of learning about “coordinated local activism” by listening to his mellifluous voice. ☻

Update 2008-09-19: The audios are now back — at different addresses. Perhaps Heartland simply moved the audios and forgot to update the hyperlinks to them.

The Way of the Astroturf

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. The Way of the Astroturf. Intl. J. Inact., 1:118–121

The how…

Climate inactivist realist Tom Harris from the, um, “International Climate Science Coalition”, speaking at the “2008 International Conference on Climate Change” in March:

[...] We need regular high-impact media coverage of the findings of leading [global warming skeptic] scientists — not just one or two publications, but we need to have hundreds all over the world. We need to have a high degree of information sharing and cooperation between groups, so that when Vincent Gray for example has an article published in New Zealand, we can take the same piece and we can (say) submit it to newspapers all over North America and Europe.

Then we have a nicely well-coordinated response, where letters to the editor and phone calls are made. “Congratulations on publishing that article!” You know, it’s interesting because I’ve had many of my articles opposed so strongly, by environmentalists through phone calls and letters to the editor, that they just simply dry up, they just won’t publish us again. So this does have feedback, I mean, these are people that run these newspapers, and they’re scared, and impressed, and encouraged, depending on the feedback they get.

We have to have grassroots organizations doing exactly that kind of thing: coordinated local activism.

And finally, as I said, we need unbiased polling and good press coverage.

(This is at 15′ 57″ into the 25MB, 20′ 40″ MP3, and Slide 20 in his PowerPoint presentation.)

Well, we all know what “information sharing” means here. But what about “coordinated local activism”? How does it work?

Crapmill back in action on May Day

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. Crapmill back in action on May Day. Intl. J. Inact., 1:23–25

Well, understandably, the global warming inactivist blogosphere blogocave¹ has decided not to report on the “Heartland 500” fiasco at all. Instead, Anthony Watts and the folks at Jennifer Marohasy have quickly latched on to a new talking point, this time from US Senator James Inhofe regarding a Nature article. So I decided to ask them via blog comments why they weren’t talking about the Heartland list:

Dear Ms. Marohasy,

I deeply regret to observe that, despite your reporting of the “global cooling to 2015″ story, you have failed to make any mention in your blog of Heartland Institute’s recent list of scientists who have cast doubts on global warming. Here is a sample of the list, available via http://tinyurl.com/6zjxy4:

… Rahmstorf, Stefan, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany; Randall, David, A., NASA; Ratto, N., University of Buenos Aires, Argentina; [...lots more names...] Schilman, Bettina, Geological Survey of Israel; Schmidt, Gavin J., University of Virginia; Schmith, Torben, Danish Meteorological Institute; [...yet more names...] Tappa, Eric, University of South Carolina; Thomas, Chris D., University of Leeds; Thompson, L.G., Ohio State; …

http://tinyurl.com/6zjxy4

As a concerned citizen and defender of freedom and all that it stands for, I have a few questions I need to ask. May I know why you are being silent on the Heartland 500 list, and the oppression from the scientific inquisiton against the academics that are mentioned on the list? Has your good self been intimidated by the forces of the Left into keeping quiet as well? Is your blog now selling out to the freedom-destroying agenda of Al Gore?

I would appreciate it if you can offer me answers to my humble questions. Thank you.

– Frank Bi, International Journal of Inactivism, http://frankbi.wordpress.com/

What happened was this:

Milloy’s brilliant plan to stonewall climate change regulation

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. Milloy’s brilliant plan to stonewall climate change regulation. Intl. J. Inact., 1:10–14

I was originally going to talk about yet another pig-headed article on The Register¹, in which Andrew Orlowski praises Freeman Dyson for spewing complete nonsense². But that’ll be shooting fish in a barrel.

So instead I’ll discuss the talk which Steve Milloy³ gave during the “2008 International Conference on Climate Change” ⁴. Anyway, the talk is intriguingly titled How to Stop Climate Change Legislation in the US, and is available as a whopping 27MB, 23-minute-long MP3.

Milloy presents the problem

Well, what did Milloy say? Let’s hear him out. During the first five minutes there’s the stuff about how the anthropogenic global warming theory is “utter hogwash”, how Al Gore was wrong, and all that. But after that it starts getting interesting.