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EPA Investigates Threats Against Global Warming Skeptic

The global warming hucksters are getting desperate. Realizing they don't have science behind them, they are resorting to thuggish intimidation:

Getting hotter

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency says he will investigate a threatening letter sent by the leader of an EPA-member group, vowing to "destroy" the career of a climate skeptic.

During a Capitol Hill hearing yesterday, Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, confronted EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson about the strongly-worded letter written July 13 by Michael T. Eckhart, president of the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) that was sent to Marlo Lewis, senior fellow of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

"It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar," Mr. Eckhart wrote. "If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on."

What a bully and a punk. Trying to silence someone who doesn't worship the same false religion. And this is not his first offense:

In a written response sent to Inside the Beltway last week, Mr. Eckhart apologized to "all the public who were offended" by his choice of words. He said he intended his letter to be a "private communication" in the context of "personal combat and jousting."

However, this column earlier this week published another letter Mr. Eckhart sent in September to CEI President Fred Smith, saying "my children will have a lesser life because you are being paid by oil companies to spread a false story."

He said he would give CEI, which advocates "sound science," 90 days to reverse its "position" on global warming, "or I will take every action I can think of to shut you down," including filing complaints with the Internal Revenue Service "on the basis that CEI is really a lobbyist for the energy industry."

As usual the left is blind to irony, Eckhart claims the moral high ground -and thinks he can destroy other peoples' lives- simply because his victims (allegedly) receive money from oil companies.

But where does Eckhart get his money from? As usual, a simple trip to google gives the answer....

Mr. Eckhart is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative. He also works through Solar International Management, Inc. on the financing of solar energy (SolarBank), and on the development of a new international debt security called Global Development Bonds (GDB) for the financing of sustainable development in the developing countries.

Of course Eckhart wants the global warming scam to continue, he has millions of dollars riding on it. He whines about others (allegedly) being funded by oil companies but he has a vested interest in bad science.

So he's a bully, a thug AND a hypocrite.

If ACORE wants to retain any credibility, they'd do well to send Eckhart packing.

UPDATE: It seems the thug has tried to defend himself in a blog post. At least one reader reports that any comments critical of him get deleted. Not completely surprising since this guy seems to like silencing people he doesn't agree with. Perhaps I'll wander over and see how long my comments last... You're welcome to do the same.

On a more amusing note he proposes settling the science behind global warming by internet poll. Add "loon" to his list of titles.

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Comments (105)

Gee color me surprised. No... (Below threshold)
David:

Gee color me surprised. Not!

"What makes your post so st... (Below threshold)
cirby:

"What makes your post so stupid Paul is that you act as though the science is on your side. "

...which, as we keep finding out, it seems to be.

On the other hand, as shown above, much of the "science" behind GW theory is based on coercion, not actual science-type stuff.

Look, for example, at the temperature "rises" we've seen over the last couple of decades. Someone finally went and looked at the temperature-monitoring stations, and found that a lot of them were set up in places that biased their results. Putting a temperature monitoring system downwind of a running air conditioning system doesn't exactly make for good measurements (go outside and stand next to an external AC unit and try to figure out how this works).

"it reminds me of the right... (Below threshold)

"it reminds me of the right wing's boycott of the Ditzy Chicks"

Yeah, how DARE people stop buying their records simply because of disagreement with what they said! (LOL)

They oughta be forced, FORCED I say, to buy those records, so the Ditzy Chicks will have the money they deserve!

Global warming may be happe... (Below threshold)
Mac Lorry[TypeKey Profile Page]:

Global warming may be happening, but that's not the real issue. Understanding the cause is the issue. If humanity is just along for the ride with little we can do, then there's not much political or monetary gain to be made from it.

As we can see, Eckhart had a vested interest in pushing the human caused global warming case. When others bring up a competing theory that has growing support in the scientific community, people like Eckhart try to shut them up by every means they can think of. Anyone who thinks that passes for science is confused at best.

Yeah, how DARE someone call... (Below threshold)
Brian:

Yeah, how DARE someone call someone else a charlatan to the Harvard community simply because they believe they are not being truthful. How DARE they write a letter! They oughta be forced, FORCED I say, to believe what the skeptics are saying, so those who disagree with them will have the money they deserve!

Wow brian, that is one of t... (Below threshold)
D-Hoggs:

Wow brian, that is one of the more ignorant things I've ever read. You're an idiot.

>What makes your post so st... (Below threshold)
Paul:

>What makes your post so stupid Paul is that you act as though the science is on your side.

You keep telling yourself that.

"What makes your post so st... (Below threshold)
Mycroft:

"What makes your post so stupid Paul is that you act as though the science is on your side. Which it would be, if only EVERY major scientifc body in the country (and most in the world ) weren\'t of the opinion that climate change is real and most likely man made. Lucky for you you are a moron who can ignore that.

2. Posted by cowardly Republicans"

Right, that is why a recent poll showed that 53% of Climate scientists DO NOT BELIEVE IN GLOBAL WARMING. How is that consensus going now?

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=c47c1209-233b-412c-b6d1-5c755457a8af

Mycroft thanks for that lin... (Below threshold)
D-Hoggs:

Mycroft thanks for that link, good stuff.

Right, that is why a recent... (Below threshold)
BarneyG2000:

Right, that is why a recent poll showed that 53% of Climate scientists DO NOT BELIEVE IN GLOBAL WARMING. How is that consensus going now? mycroft

Do you have a problem reading your own source material? Here is what it said:
"In a November, 2006, survey of its members, it found that only 59% think human activities are largely responsible for the warming that has occurred"

So only 59% of Bush administration scientists from the EPA and other government agencies regulating the energy industry believe that global warming is man made.

It looks like you do not know what you are talking about.

Wow brian, that is one o... (Below threshold)
Brian:

Wow brian, that is one of the more ignorant things I've ever read. You're an idiot.

Well, thanks for your thoughtful feedback, but I didn't write it. I just substituted the words to show how asinine the sentiment was. So you can direct your admiration to the original author. Or you can shove it up your ass.

Global Warming. BS. I'm s... (Below threshold)

Global Warming. BS. I'm still waiting for the hurricanes Al Gore promised when he flew out to speak in Washington on his CO2-producing private jet.

"So only 59% of Bush admini... (Below threshold)
Mycroft:

"So only 59% of Bush administration scientists from the EPA and other government agencies regulating the energy industry believe that global warming is man made.

It looks like you do not know what you are talking about."


No, the EPA is not made up of Climatologists, but IS made up of activists. So my numbers are right, YOU don't know how to read.

Funny how when a liberal has a core belief challenged, they go all to pieces.

And read the begining of the piece. 53% of CLIMATOLOGISTS. That means scientists who study the climate. 53% do not believe in Global warming.

This whole global warming s... (Below threshold)
Radical Centrist:

This whole global warming scam is getting ridiculous. Earth's weather has always been chaotic and variable. It's been much colder in the
past it's also been much warmer in the past all without the presence of man and industry. If the current warming trend is so bad then these
supersmart guys should be able to tell us precisely when the earth's climate was most optimal.

You didn't write it brian? ... (Below threshold)
D-Hoggs:

You didn't write it brian? Cool, tell me where I can find one of those keyboards that types your deepest idiotic thoughts for you.

Heh. Like the drip, drip, d... (Below threshold)
Les Nessman:

Heh. Like the drip, drip, drip of a melting polar bear, the 'There Can Be No More Debate' club is slowly giving way to the 'Well, Some Scientists Disagree, But They Are The Fringe' club.

Soon it will turn into the 'Huh. Lots Of Honest Scientists Think This Thing Is Debatable' club. And then maybe we can have a real scientific debate about it.

Better hurry to get in on the Karbon Kredits scam or the EthanolNow! scam. They may not be around too much longer.

Good stuff. The Diplomad (... (Below threshold)
Miami:

Good stuff. The Diplomad (he's back!) has a similar rant on Global Warming.

Mycroft, you still do not k... (Below threshold)
BarneyG2000:

Mycroft, you still do not know what you are talking about you said this:
"..a recent poll showed that 53% .."

Here is the part of the article you pulled that from:

"S o said Al Gore ... in 1992. Amazingly, he made his claims despite much evidence of their falsity. A Gallup poll at the time reported that 53% of scientists actively involved in global climate research did not believe global warming had occurred"

Are saying that a poll done in 1992 is a recent poll?

I lifted the citation in the article of the 2006 poll (recent) that showed a consensus of 59%.

barney and Mycroft, you are... (Below threshold)
D-Hoggs:

barney and Mycroft, you are actually both wrong, it is neither Bush admin stoolies, nor the EPA, the article clearly says:

A more recent indicator comes from the U.S.-based National Registry of Environmental Professionals, an accrediting organization whose 12,000 environmental practitioners have standing with U.S. government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy.

They have "standing" with the agencies, they are not employees of the agencies.

The guy tried to defend him... (Below threshold)

The guy tried to defend himself with a blog entry on his organization's web site. But the entry was pretty much an exercise in smearing the CEI because they don't agree with ACORE 100%. What's interesting is I've been checking in throughout the day. There were six comments earlier, all critical, and some quite long and well thought out. Later, there was only one. Then, two, the second being particularly long and detailed in its criticism. Now, no comments are left!

Michael T. Eckhart, you are, at least, consistent. Consistenly fascist when it comes to opposing viewpoints, that is, deleting them when possible, threatening people when not possible.

Good catch John... Of cours... (Below threshold)
Paul:

Good catch John... Of course the guy will delete anyone who shows him what a horse's ass he is.

He's so worried about his kids... I wonder how he's going to explain to them that he's a thug who tries to bully and intimidate people who disagree with him.

Of course they probably know that just from living with him.

cowardly Republicans, how m... (Below threshold)

cowardly Republicans, how much of that "consensus" is enforced by thug tactics such as above?

More interesting, how much of the above organizations have a monetary interest in the AGW hypthesis in terms of expanded research funds?

Even within the organizations you list, there are controversies such as when Chris Landsea resigned from the IPCC over the misrepresentation of hurricane research.

can anyone here tell me how... (Below threshold)
Oclarki:

can anyone here tell me how global warming, whether man made or not is a bad thing? What temperature is the Earth supposed to be?

Was the right temperature the when the dinosaurs ruled the jungle, or when mammoths walked the tundra, or when England was a wine producing region, or when the Sahara was full of lakes?

The left's obsession with global warming is just a form of religion.

Rush L. ran a commercial to... (Below threshold)
BarneyG2000:

Rush L. ran a commercial today where he endorsed the new GM trucks because of their environmentally friendly flex fuel technology.

If Rush is for lower greenhouse gas emissions, than so am I.

Good stuff. The Di... (Below threshold)
Opinionated Vogon:
Good stuff. The Diplomad (he's back!) has a similar rant on Global Warming.

19. Posted by Miami

Miami, thanks for the heads-up. The diplomad was a favorite of mine. His posts during the aftermath of the December tsunami were incredible.

Anyone who thinks of the UN as a valid organization that the world needs should go read his blog posts from that time and learn the truth. Yet another reason to be skeptical reading IPCC reports on climate change.

Barney, You're for... (Below threshold)
Oclarki:

Barney,

You're for wasting resources to grow corn for ethanol so poor people in Latin america can't afford to eat? Me too!

Global Warming is a cyclica... (Below threshold)
WildWillie:

Global Warming is a cyclical process. If you get into the nuts and bolts of all the reports, the disagreements on what is causing GW grows very much. Also, scientists have shown that Mars' climate is changing. I guess we did that also. I have noticed lately that the left is getting a little carried away with themselves. No self control. I wonder if it has to do with the last election and all those promises of change that never happened, or all the arrests and impeachments that would happen. Or maybe it is because the SCOTUS is finally conservative and will remain so for a number of years. Global Warming is being shot further down every day. ww

No one has answered my ques... (Below threshold)
Oclarki:

No one has answered my question. What temperature is the earth supposed to be?

CR you're a fool. The scien... (Below threshold)
Paul:

CR you're a fool. The scientific community has archived "consensus" about thousands of things that where later proven wrong. That a subset of them today agree to anything is not impressive.

I don't expect reason or logic to work on you... but for everyone else, I'll explain why science *can't* be on the hucksters side.

Basically you have to believe a few things to believe GW. -- And, to make things clear, by global warming, I mean "The planet is warming because of mankind and we're all going to die" (or similar)

To believe that you have to believe basically all of these things.

1) That ~150 years of temperature readings is statistically significant on a planet roughly 4,000,000,000 years old.

2) That the measured warming in the last 30 years is both a) measured correctly AND statistically important on a planet roughly 4,000,000,000 years old.

3) That we KNOW what the optimal temperature for the planet for the maximum benefit of mankind.

4) That we are there presently.

5) That without man we would stay for forever EVEN THOUGH the planet has never had a static temperature.

6) That computer models that can't model hurricanes much better than a coin flip and can't even model THE PAST without a 300% margin of error are valid.

OK as I said, you basically need to believe all of them but the debate can be distilled further; you MUST believe one of two of them... YOU MUST believe either #2 OR #6...

That is, that the last 30 years of temps are statistically valid proving we're warming OR (not and) the models are valid.

The problem is that both of these are false.

1) 30 years of temps on a 4,000,000,000 year old planet is not even worth discussing. It's meaningless.

2) The computer models CAN'T be modeling 100 (or 400 and Mann claims) years in the future with any accuracy.

I've NEVER met a programmer who wrote computer simulations who actually believes in global warming. Simply put, the models only spit out what we tell them to. If we tell them to model that we'll get colder if C02 hits the air, the models will predict global cooling. If we tell the model that C02 will warm us, the model will predict global global warming. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Remember, the computer does not know "the right answer" the computer only does a bunch of math and tells us the result.

Consider this
Let's take a far less complicated system. Let's take a football game. Bettors look at the stats of each player, they look at stats of the coaching staff, home records, away records etc etc etc... and they place a wager.

Now many years ago, I was hired to write a program to beat the odds.. We put in every stat you can imagine. We worked on it for 2 years... We got about 52%.

--My side method of simply measuring the height of all the starters and betting on the bigger team got us about 55% BTW--

To this day, MILLIONS of dollars have been spent on computer simulations of financially important events. We can't do it.

We can't tell you what the stock market will do next week and -no- we can't even figure out who will win a simple football game with only 22 players on the field.

So CR... if you're still reading... you show me a computer model that can predict the outcome of a simple thing like a football game and I'll pay more attention to computer models that claim they can model the climate of an entire planet 400 years out.

It's bullshit. We can't do it.

30 years ago the same clima... (Below threshold)

30 years ago the same climate people told us to prepare for an ice age, and there were serious proposals to coat the ice caps with coal dust in order to stave off impending doom!

Look, weather forecasts are a joke in the Great Lakes (as often wrong as right), and the hurricane forecasts for the past two years have been laughably wrong. Why should we believe that people who forecast for the whole PLANET, with thousands of times more variables to deal with, are any better at what they do?

I need to make a c... (Below threshold)
Paul:
I need to make a correction. I said,

"ALL of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries. support the idea that GW is real and man made."

I was wrong, I should have said all but The American Association of Petroleum Geologists accept the GW is real and man made.

Considering you're cutting and pasting your bullshit, you'd think you'd get it right the first time... BTW in case you're new here, I have this nasty habit of using google.

Plagiarism will get you banned.

Cowardly republican: you ju... (Below threshold)
bryanD:

Cowardly republican: you just got the beat down from Paul. How bad does it hurt?

From the link given in post... (Below threshold)
Mac Lorry[TypeKey Profile Page]:

From the link given in post #10

What of the one claim that we hear over and over again, that 2,000 or 2,500 of the world's top scientists endorse the IPCC position? I asked the IPCC for their names, to gauge their views. "The 2,500 or so scientists you are referring to are reviewers from countries all over the world," the IPCC Secretariat responded. "The list with their names and contacts will be attached to future IPCC publications, which will hopefully be on-line in the second half of 2007."

When (if) the names are published they will likely be asked individually by media folks to affirm their support of the IPCC's position. How many will back up the IPCC?

An IPCC reviewer does not assess the IPCC's comprehensive findings. He might only review one small part of one study that later becomes one small input to the published IPCC report. Far from endorsing the IPCC reports, some reviewers, offended at what they considered a sham review process, have demanded that the IPCC remove their names from the list of reviewers. One even threatened legal action when the IPCC refused.

Like many organizations, the IPCC is controlled by a few individuals who use the organization to amplify a single position. Many of the reviewers may have a different position and the consensus could disappear when exposed to scrutiny.

Funny think about that IPCC... (Below threshold)

Funny think about that IPCC report, by the way. When you start asking the actual scientists listed by IPCC as endorsing catastrophic global warming, many say they only talked about one small side issue with IPCC, and that, in fact, they do NOT support what the IPCC says about the sky falling.

For a laugh, look at 1970s environmental books for predictions about the year 2000. They abound with apocalypse: no more wild animals in North America, worldwide crop failures, etc. None came to pass. Ooops.

CR- I'm not interested in y... (Below threshold)
Paul:

CR- I'm not interested in you cutting and pasting talking points.

If you'll like to reply to people in this thread and defend your position with ideas, you're more than welcome here.

Cutting and pasting bullshit will get you banned. That rules isn't just for you, look around, it applies to everyone.