I love, and hate, Pink Floyd’s The Wall. The first time I saw it, it was with my sister, and it was a profound moment of awakening for me. I didn’t get it all, of course, I was only in junior high, but I got that Pink was a seriously screwed up dude right off the bat. And based on my first watching, I concluded that The Wall was one movie that everyone should see at least once, an opinion I still hold. I also went out, bought the album on cassette, and proceeded to listen to it so much that the cassette stretched and distorted the music. My junior year of high school, my then-girlfriend and I sat down to watch it on her parents’ couch. At the time I was so in love with her that I would have given up my future to be with her. We broke up but stayed friends until we drifted apart after she went to college, and then a year later I did.

The third time I watched The Wall was five years later. I was a senior at Penn State and I dragged my then sort-of-girlfriend along with some other friends from the dining hall with me to watch it play in one of the classrooms on campus. It was amazing – again – just as I expected. But it was watching the movie this time, listening to the music, that The Wall finally drove home what I’d only suspected until then – The Wall is about many things, but it’s ultimately a story about one man going insane.

I used to say that The Wall was so depressing that you had to listen to it when you were happy – listening to it when you were depressed might leave you suicidal. I don’t any more. These days I listen to it when I’m pining for my college years or remembering my first lost love. It seems to demand to be listened to, in its entirety, when I’m the most depressed or scared or stressed. In other words, when I’m feeling the least stable myself, it seems to stabilize me. I’m not exactly sure why I have to listen to The Wall in those periods of my life. Maybe it’s as simple as I’ve often told people – no matter how screwed up I feel, I’m WAY better off than Pink is. But I really don’t know.

The song that sparked this post, however, is Matchbox 20′s Unwell. You know the chorus, I’m sure:

I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell
I know, right now you can’t tell
But stay awhile and maybe then you’ll see
A different side of me
I’m not crazy, I’m just a little impaired
I know, right now you don’t care
But soon enough you’re gonna think of me
And how I used to be

This song once nearly made me have to stop my car because I was about to have a hysterical crying fit while driving. And while it doesn’t do that to me these days, it’s not because it couldn’t – it’s because I’m in a better place in my head than I was at the time I nearly stopped the car. Whenever Unwell comes on the radio, no matter how much I want, need to change the channel, I can’t. It compels me to listen, to remember, and to ensure that my head never gets that bad again. Unwell is therapy, of a sort.

The blog posts and the op-ed each contain multiple errors and misrepresentations that are in character for an organization that has a thoroughly documented history of manipulating facts and misrepresenting science to serve their ideology.

In his New Mexican op ed, Heartland President Joseph L. Bast makes a number of erroneous claims. First, he claims that “31,000 American scientists” have rejected human-caused climate disruption. This is a reference to the “Global Warming Petition Project” that defined anyone with a Bachelor’s of Science degree as a “scientist.” S&R investigated the petition and found that, by the petition’s own criteria, 31,000 was approximately 0.3% of scientists, far less than even the 3% surveyed in recent published papers.

Second, Bast says that “there is no broad agreement as to the causes of the warming.” Bast must know is a lie. It’s not realistic to believe that someone in his position would be unaware that 19 national Academies of Science, dozens of other scientific organizations, and multiple studies of practicing scientists all agree that humans are the cause of most of the climate disruption being caused by global warming.

Third, Bast wrote

Boslough falsely accuses Harrison Schmitt of making a false statement in 2009 about Arctic sea ice having returned to 1989 levels, and then failing to correct the error.

This also not true. What Boslough actually said is this:

In 2009, Schmitt submitted a white paper to NASA. He stated, “Artic (sic) sea ice has returned to 1989 levels of coverage.” I wrote to him, politely pointing out that this was not true, and directing him to the data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (the ice extent in 2009 had not recovered, and as of this writing is at an all-time winter low). He responded, but never made the necessary correction. Anyone can make a mistake, but scientific integrity requires that authors own up to mistakes and fix them. (emphasis added)

The emphasized portions clearly show that Bast was lying about what Boslough said – Boslough accused Schmitt of making a mistake and then failing to correct it when the error was pointed out, not of lying.

The passage Boslough quotes is at the end of the second paragraph on page five of Schmitt’s paper, available here.

Furthermore, Bast himself would have committed an ethical breach were he a scientist. He claimed that “the National Snow and Ice Data Center records show conclusively that in April 2009, Arctic sea ice extent had indeed returned to and surpassed 1989 levels.” As Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute showed in the image below, Bast very carefully selected April as it was the only month in 2009 where Arctic ice extent was actually greater than in 1989 – the rest of 2009 was far below 1989 levels. This is known as “cherry-picking” and is considered unethical by scientists.

In addition, the principle scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center wrote their own letter to the Santa Fe New Mexican in which they took issue with both Bast’s and Schmitt’s claims regarding Arctic ice levels. They wrote that “the 2009 maximum extent, minimum extent, and annual average extent values were all well below 1989. Based on these facts, it would be incorrect to suggest that 2009 represented a recovery of Arctic sea ice to 1989 levels. “

On February 8, in response to Gleick’s demonstration cherry picking on the part of Bast and the Heritage Institute, James M. Taylor, a lawyer with no science training who edits Heartland’s Environment & Climate News publication wrote in a blog entry that “Boslough publicly accused Schmitt of lying about Arctic sea ice data in a paper Schmitt wrote and submitted to NASA in early 2009.” Taylor also wrote that “Boslough accused Schmitt of lying.” These are essentially the same claim that Bast wrote in his New Mexican op ed, and it’s just as false for the same reasons – Boslough accused Schmitt of making a mistake and failing to correct it, not of lying.

Taylor also attempts to redirect Gleick’s criticism of Heartland to Schmitt instead. Taylor wrote that Glieck accused Schmitt of cherry-picking his Arctic ice data. This is incorrect – Glieck accused Heartland of cherry-picking, not Schmitt. Schmitt wrote in the paper in question that ice levels in 2009 had recovered to 1989 levels. It was Bast who cherry-picked April:

the National Snow and Ice Data Center records show conclusively that in April 2009, Arctic sea ice extent had indeed returned to and surpassed 1989 levels. (emphasis added)

Given that Taylor wrote his criticism of Gleick on February 8, no “clairvoyance” on Schmitt’s part was required, only a clear lack of scientific ethics on the part of the Heartland Institute. S&R

This isn’t the first time that Heartland has misrepresented and lied about facts, data, and critics’ own words. S&R found that a Heartland press release about a Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) published study distorted the study’s conclusions. Furthermore, publicly available documents show that the Heartland Institute was created in part to cast doubt upon any science that might put free market ideology at risk. In fact, in the course of researching their book Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway found that Phillip Morris “used Heartland to distribute reports that they (Phillip Morris) had commissioned,” that Heartland had “met with members of Congress on behalf of the tobacco industry, organized ‘off-the-record’ briefings, wrote and placed op-ed pieces, and organized radio interviews and letters to editors.” For this, Phillip Morris paid the Heartland Instituted $50,000 in 1997 alone. Oreskes and Conway found that this work was done in support of casting doubt upon the science underlying the health risks of second-hand smoke.

The Heartland Institute has a long history of misrepresentation and outright lies. When it comes to facts and science vs. ideology, for the Heartland Institute, ideology always wins. It is instructive to note that Bast, the president of an institute that prides itself on free-market, libertarian ideals and that publishes regularly in support of free speech would call for Boslough to “be banned from future debates on this topic [climate disruption].”

Other sites that have discussed the Schmitt/Boslough/Heartland exchanges:

• Knight Science Journalism Tracker
• Climate Crock of the Week Video
• Bad Astronomy at Discover Magazine
• Skeptical Science
• Climate Progress
• Prof. Scott Mandia

On the surface, this is a completely reasonable thing for a Republican to say. After all, Republicans generally are against regulations on the laissez-faire premise that all regulation is bad for business. But Upton is also on record supporting repeal of last year’s healthcare law, something else that would put American manufacturers at an “unfair disadvantage.” After all, one of the major reasons why appliance and auto parts manufacturers like those in Upton’s district have a hard time competing with foreign manufacturers is that foreign manufacturers don’t have to pay for medical insurance. So you’d think that someone as pro-business as Upton claims to be would want to strengthen the health care law instead of repeal it.

We shouldn’t be surprised by Upton’s hypocrisy, however. Upton shifted from calling climate disruption “a serious problem that necessitates serious solution” in April, 2009 to climate disruption denial at the same time that the lion’s share of his political donations dramatically shifted from the communications and health care industries of his own district toward out-of-district and out-of-district electrical utilities and oil/gas companies.

Now, thanks to the miracle of massive databases and people who know how to code them, we have available a new Monckton debunking tool. John Cook, physicist and creator/editor of the website SkepticalScience.com has put together a page devoted exclusively to debunking Monckton’s many, many, many myths.

When it comes to the science and data underlying anthropogenic climate disruption, Monckton’s favorite approach is the logical fallacy known as “proof by verbosity,” aka the “Gish Gallop” whereby Monckton throws out so many erroneous facts and figures that no-one can possibly counter them in any debate or even a timely manner. It took John Abraham (the aforementioned prawn) months to counter all of Monckton’s claims in a large set of PowerPoint slides available at Abraham’s University of St. Thomas website, for example.

What the Skeptical Science page does is collect all of Monckton’s arguments, in order from most used to least used, in a single place. For example, according to Skeptical Science, Monckton has made the claim that predictions of sea level rise are exaggerated eight times, yet the best available data shows that sea level is actually rising faster than the predictions. For every claim Monckton has made, Skeptical Science has the counterpoint immediately available on the website with a clickable link to what the science and data are actually saying. Cook has conveniently included a search feature so you can search the entire database for something Monckton has said, and you can also request a specific rebuttal on any Moncktonism that doesn’t appear to be included in the database. The page is rounded out with a bunch of links to other sites where Monckton’s misleading and false statements have also been debunked.

Monckton, a non-scientist who has claimed that he’s cured the common cold and his own Grave’s Disease and who accused NASA of intentionally crashing their carbon dioxide monitoring satellite as part of a conspiracy, has been asked to appear beside actual climatologists as if he is some kind of expert on climate. He’s not an expert, and it’s an embarrassment that climate disruption deniers in Congress keep inviting him to testify. 21 scientists felt so strongly about Monckton’s error-packed testimony that they wrote a detailed refutation of his testimony and submitted it back before the 2010 election. At least now if Congressman Fred Upton or Darrell Issa call Monckton to testify again in the US House of Representatives, the Democrats on the committees will have ready access to detailed refutations of pretty much everything Monckton says a couple of clicks away on any laptop or smartphone.

With any luck, this will represent the beginning of the end of the Monckton Gallop.

In December 2007, then President Bush signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA). It contained a section that was added by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) that prevented the federal government from contracting to buy alternative fuels with high lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions such as coal-derived synthetic fuel, oil shale, and bitumen from tar sands. When the Canadian government realized that Section 526 could apply to bitumen extracted from Alberta tar sands and exported to the United States, energy experts within the Canadian Embassy and the government exchanged a flurry of emails between January and March of 2008. Some of the embassy emails have been obtained in a redacted format by the Pembina Institute via the Canadian equivalent of the Freedom of Information Act.

The embassy emails reveal how seriously Canada took Section 526 and its possible application to Alberta tar sands-derived bitumen. The emails show that diplomats within the Canadian Embassy were involved in a multi-prong effort to influence legislation and regulations through oil industry lobbying and by directly lobbying the Bush Administration and Congress.

On Jan. 22, 2008, Paul J. Connors, then Energy Counsellor at the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC composed an email in which he indicated that the Canadian government had already brought up its concerns regarding Section 526 with the US Department of Energy (DOE) and that the DOE planned to determine the section’s implications “in the coming weeks.” This email was sent not to another government employee, but to Susan E. Carter of ExxonMobil.

In another email sent to government colleagues two days later, Connors said that he had not only contacted ExxonMobil, but also the American Petroleum Institute (API) and other bitumen-importing oil companies. Connors specifically mentioned BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Encana, and Marathon. Connors indicated that the API formed a working group to pressure Congress and an alternative fuel working group on the Section 526/bitumen issue as a result of his communication. He also wrote in the email that the oil companies themselves were not concerned because they didn’t feel that Section 526 had broad enough scope to apply to bitumen.

The emails also revealed that the Canadian Embassy had been asked by the Bush Administration to “help [the Bush Administration] to interpret Section 526 in a narrow manner” by saying the restriction on bitumen might run counter to NAFTA trade requirements. Jason Tolland, then the Canadian Embassy’s Counsellor on Energy and the Environment, wrote on Feb. 8, 2008 that “[t]he US government – read administration – is looking to us to provide support for their work to kill any interpretation of this section that would apply to Canadian oil sands.” In an email on Feb. 14, 2008, Lynda Watson of Canada’s National Contact Point trade committee, wrote

It is true that the Administration relies up on other countries to point out these actual or potential inconsistencies with trade agreements, to open the door for the Administration to press its point (“see, even Canada says this runs contrary to…”).

On Feb. 22 Michael Wilson, Canada’s Ambassador to the US, wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Gates in which Wilson said that “Canada would not want to see an expansive interpretation of Section 526, which would then include commercially-available fuel made in part from oil derived from Canadian oil sands.”

By Feb. 25, Connors wrote that the Bush Administration is “proceeding with a definition of conventional fuel which would include oil sands-derived fuel as conventional fuel, not as an alternative fuel, for purposes of Section 526.” In the same email, Connors also wrote that the Embassy was communicating with the Chair of the US Government Interagency Working Group on Alternative Fuels, then Paul Bollinger of the USAF, and that the Working Group had met the previous week “to consider the US Administration’s response to Section 526.” There is no indication in the emails what that response was.

Ambassador Wilson’s letter to Secretary Gates is only the most public of Canada’s direct lobbying efforts directed at the Bush Administration. The released embassy emails show that there was also a great deal of behind-the-scenes lobbying of Bush Administration officials.

Canada didn’t just lobby the Bush Administration – they directly lobbied Congress too. In Connors’ Jan. 24, 2008 email to Helene Viau and Peter Stokoe, Connors wrote that the Embassy “will call on key Democratic energy staffers, including the author of the provision on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (Chair is Rep. Henry Waxman D-CA).” In the Feb. 14 email, Watson pointed out that “the time to influence legislation is during the legislative cycle (now).”

Furthermore, Connors email of Feb. 25 mentioned a “backlash” from pro-biofuel and “security-comes-first” members of Congress who wanted “to see Section 526 neutralized.” In the last released email on March 18, 2008, Connors wrote that “Canada appears to have won this battle” but that “ongoing advocacy in the United States will be critical.” Connors also wrote that he was continuing his advocacy by speaking directly with Democratic staff members of the Senate Energy Committee, the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, and with Bollinger of the US Interagency Alternative Fuels Committee.

The first of many legislative attempts to explicitly repeal Section 526 was submitted on March 31, 2008. In a May 2, 2008 letter from Waxman to Senators Carl Levin and John McCain, Waxman wrote that

section 526 does not bar federal agencies from purchasing generally available fuels that may contain incidental amounts of fuel from tar sands. The provision would block a federal agency from using government contracts specifically to promote or expand the use of fuel from tar sands.

On June 26, 2008, a section was added to the Saving Energy Through Public Transportation Act of 2008 that would amend Section 526 to match Waxman’s claimed intent in his letter to Levin and McCain. This amendment did not exit the Senate Armed Services committee.

The embassy emails also reveal some inconsistencies between what was being said by Bush Administration officials publicly vs. privately . For example, the emails state that the Bush Administration wanted to narrowly interpret Section 526 and they imply that the decision had been made by March 18, 2008. Yet prepared remarks by Department of Energy Acting Deputy Secretary Jeffrey Kupfer for a speech before the C.D. Howe Institute in Calgary, Alberta, contradict this. Kupfer’s prepared remarks state

I can tell you that the U.S. Government has made no decisions that would affect the use of oil sands feedstocks. Our experts continue to analyze the implementation of this provision.

In addition, an Executive Secretariat Executive Commitments System Congressional Report on the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 said that the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy office of the DOE “will issue guidance on incorporating consideration of lifecycle GHG emissions in all Federal contracts” by August 1, 2009. A detailed search of the DoE and Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy office website in Dec. 2010 turned up no published guidance on how to comply with Section 526. If a decision had actually been made in March 2008, it was kept hidden behind closed doors even after President Obama took over.

On Aug. 19, 2009, the Defense Energy Support Center (DESC) released its Interim Implementation Plan Regarding Section 526 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 where tar sands-derived crude oil was defined as “conventional” petroleum based on the ASTM standard for refined petroleum. The interim plan also pointed out that nearly all of the petroleum in the US was partly derived from Canadian bitumen, a point made in the embassy emails and Ambassador Wilson’s letter to Secretary Gates. In response to the interim plan, the Sierra Club and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) filed a federal lawsuit on June 18, 2010 to overturn the plan based on allegations that the DESC didn’t follow the federal rulemaking, that the DESC should have ruled tar sands-derived petroleum as “nonconventional,” and that the DESC failed to perform an Environmental Assessment and write Environmental Impact Statement. The DESC interim plan was the only published rule on whether or not Section 526 applied to tar sands-derived bitumen since the law was signed by Bush in Dec. 2007.

The Sierra Club/SACE lawsuit may have been rendered moot on Dec. 19, 2010, when President Obama signed into law H.R. 3237, the Charles `Pete’ Conrad Astronomy Awards Act, in which Section 526 is amended. The changes to Section 526 permit federal fuel contracts so long as they a) don’t require alternative fuels, b) aren’t specifically to buy alternative fuels, and c) don’t help pay for refinery upgrades to process alternative fuels. H.R. 3237 passed the House by voice vote and the Senate by Unanimous Consent, both without amendment, resulting in no recorded votes in either Congressional body.

These changes appear to meet the goals of the two different Congressional groups identified in Connors’ March 18, 2008 email, namely to “neutralize” Section 526. As for the status of the federal lawsuit, SACE did not respond to a request for comment.

Put all together, the released embassy emails illustrate how a foreign government lobbies both the US Administration and the Congress for changes – via direct contacts, via staff members, and via proxies in friendly industries. But the emails also reveal how the US government can use third-party actors to influence its own internal politics, both foreign governments (Canada) and private parties (oil companies and a petroleum industry association).

2010 saw widespread and growing evidence of rapidly warming global climate and strengthening scientific understanding of how humans are contributing to climate change. Yet on the policy front, little happened to stem the growing emissions of greenhouse gases or to help societies prepare for increasingly severe negative climate impacts, including now unavoidable changes in temperature, rainfall patterns, sea-level rise, snowpack, glacial extent, Arctic sea ice, and more. These physical impacts will lead to sharply increased disease, military and economic instabilities, food and water shortages, and extreme weather events, among other things. Without appropriate risk management action, the United States will be hit hard. There is no safe haven. Yet confusion and uncertainty about climate change remain high in the minds of too many members of the public and Congress.

Why? In large part because of a concerted, coordinated, aggressive campaign by a small group of well-funded climate change deniers and contrarians focused on intentionally misleading the public and policymakers with bad science about climate change. Much of this effort is based on intentional falsehoods, misrepresentations, inflated uncertainties, and pure and utter B.S. about climate science. These efforts have been successful in sowing confusion and delaying action – just as the same tactics were successful in delaying efforts to tackle tobacco’s health risks.

To counter this campaign of disinformation, we are issuing the first in what may become a series of awards for the most egregious Climate B.S.^* of the Year. In preparing the list of nominees, suggestions were received from around the world and a panel of reviewers – all scientists or climate communicators – waded through them. We present here the top five nominees and the winner of the 2010 Climate B.S.^* of the Year Award.

Fifth Place. Climate B.S. and misrepresentations presented by Fox “News.”

There are many examples of bad science, misrepresentations, omissions of facts, and distortions of climate reality coming from Fox “News” (far too many to list here, but we note that Joe Romm just gave Fox his 2010 Citizen Kane Award for “non-excellence in journalism” for their misrepresentations of climate science). It seems that Fox has now made it their policy to deny the reality of climate change and has told its reporters to misreport or cast doubt on the science. This policy of disinformation was implemented by Fox News executive Bill Sammon, who ordered staff to cast doubt on climate data in a memo revealed this month. Fox’s political commentators have long used this tactic in their one-sided and biased discussions on climate change but Sammon’s memo seems to direct News staff to slant reporting in direct contradiction to what the scientific facts and scientists actually say.

Fourth Place. Misleading or false testimony to Congress and policymakers about climate change.

While Congress held more hearings in 2010 on climate change than in other recent years, these hearings elicited some astounding testimonies submitted by climate deniers and skeptics filled with false and misleading statements about climate science and total B.S. Examples?

Long-time climate change skeptic Patrick Michaels testified before the House Science and Technology Committee and misrepresented the scientific understanding of the human role in climate change and the well-understood effects of fundamental climatic factors, such as the effects of visible air pollution. Including these effects (as climate scientists have done for many years) would have completely changed his results. Michaels has misrepresented mainstream climate science for decades, as has been noted here, here, and elsewhere, yet he remains a darling of the skeptics in Congress who like his message.

A newer darling of Congressional climate change deniers is Christopher Monckton, who claims to be a member of the British House of Lords (a claim rejected by the House of Lords). Monckton testified before a Senate committee in May and presented such outlandish B.S. about climate that experts (such as John Mashey, Tim Lambert, John Abraham, and Barry Bickmore, to name a few) spent uncounted hours and pages and pages refuting just a subset of his errors.

Third Place. The false claim that a single weather event, such as a huge snowstorm in Washington, D.C., proves there is no global warming.

In February 2010 a big winter storm dumped record piles of snow on the mid-Atlantic U.S., including Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, prompting climate change deniers to use bad weather to try to discredit the reality of global warming.  Limbaugh said, “It’s one more nail in the coffin for the global warming thing.”  Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe got attention with an igloo on the national mall and labeled it “Al Gore’s new home” (combining bad science with a personal attack).  Senator Jim DeMint said, “It’s going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries ‘uncle.’”

Record snowfall is not an indicator of a lack of global warming, as has been pointed out in the scientific literature and many, many rounds of Congressional testimony.  It merely means that there was a storm and temperatures were close to or below freezing.  Indeed global warming can contribute to greater snowfalls by providing extra moisture.  Many scientists testifying before the Senate and House of Representatives have explained the difference between a steadily warming planet and occasional extreme cold events in particular spots. But we can expect to see more examples of this kind of B.S. when it gets cold and snowy somewhere, sometime, this winter.

Second Place. The claim that the “Climategate” emails meant that global warming was a hoax, or was criminal, as Senator Inhofe tried to argue. In fact, it was none of these things (though the British police are still investigating the illegal hacking of a British university’s computer system and the theft of the emails).

Global warming deniers used out-of-context texts from the stolen emails to claim that global warming was a hoax or that scientists had manipulated data or were hiding evidence that climate change wasn’t happening. These claims are all B.S. A series of independent scientific and academic investigations in the U.S. and the U.K. unanimously concluded that nothing in the stolen emails made any difference to the remarkable strength of climate science (see, for example, the Penn State vindication, the Independent Muir Russell and Lord Oxburgh reviews, a British Parliamentary Panel review, and other assessments).  Unfortunately, the media gave far more attention to the accusations than to the resounding vindications, and climate deniers continue to spread B.S. about this case.

The bottom line of “Climategate?” As a letter in Science magazine signed by 255 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences said in May 2010: “there is nothing remotely identified in the recent events that changes the fundamental conclusions about climate change.”

AND THE WINNER OF THE 2010 CLIMATE B.S.^* OF THE YEAR AWARD

First Place goes to the following set of B.S.: “There has been no warming since 1998” [or 2000, or…], “the earth is cooling,” “global warming is natural,” and “humans are too insignificant to affect the climate.”  Such statements are all nonsense and important for the general public to understand properly.

The reality is that the Earth’s climate is changing significantly, changing fast, and changing due to human factors. The reality of climatic change can no longer be disputed on scientific grounds – the U.S. National Academy of Sciences calls the human-induced warming of the Earth a “settled fact.” The evidence for a “warming” planet includes not just rising temperatures, but also rising sea levels, melting Arctic sea ice, disappearing glaciers, increasing intense rainfalls, and many other changes that matter to society and the environment. The recent and ongoing warming of the Earth is unprecedented in magnitude, speed, and cause.

This winning set of B.S. appears almost daily in the conservative blogosphere, like here and here and here,  consistently in the statements of climate change deniers, and far too often in real media outlets. Actual science and observations from around globe have long shown the opposite (for example, here and here are nice rebuttals with real science). The planet continues to warm rapidly largely due to human activities, and average global temperatures continue to rise. The most recent decade has been the warmest decade on record and 2010 will likely go down as either the warmest or second warmest year in recorded history.

Associated B.S. argues that the famous “hockey stick” graph has been disproved. This graph shows the extraordinarily rapid warming of the twentieth century compared to the previous 1000 years. The graph and analysis have been upheld by subsequent researchers and numerous scientific assessments, including one from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

To the winners: congratulations, it is long past time your B.S. is recognized for what it is – bad science.

And to the public and the media: be forewarned: all of these and similar bad arguments will certainly be repeated in 2011. It is long past time that this bad science is identified, challenged, and shown to be the B.S. that it is.

The 2010 Climate Bad Science (B.S.) Detection and Correction Team

Peter Gleick, Kevin Trenberth, Tenney Naumer, Michael Ashley, Lou Grinzo, Gareth Renowden, Paul Douglas, Jan W. Dash, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Brian Angliss, Joe Romm, Peter Sinclair, Michael Tobis, Gavin Schmidt, John Cook, plus several anonymous nominators, reviewers, and voters.

[* “B.S.” means “Bad Science” doesn’t it?]

For more information, contact Dr. Peter H. Gleick or Nancy Ross, Pacific Institute, 510 725-2385. nross@pacinst.org.

And that’s the reason that Richard Cohen of the Washington Post called in his column today for Amos to resign. It may well be that, as Cohen says, Amos “is one step short of being a bigot” and has “not an iota of sympathy for what might be their difficulties or any tolerance for their lifestyle.” But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Amos should be forced out.

Instead, Amos should be given a choice: lead or leave. Either implement the changes that come with the repeal of DADT, or step aside and allow someone who can implement the changes to do so. However, if Amos is constitutionally capable of implementing the changes, he may well be the best person to do it.

Think about the psychological impact of having your top commander transition from “Keep DADT as the law of the land” to “This is the law of the land now, and we will implement it, starting with me.” That would be leadership, and if Amos can do it, then that level of leadership would ease the transition for the Marine Corps.

It is up to the Pentagon and the President to say whether General Amos is constitutionally suited to the challenge the now faces. If Amos isn’t capable of guiding the Marines through repeal, then he has to get out of the way. But for the sake of the Marine Corps, I hope he’s up to facing what may well be the greatest challenge of his career – reinventing himself along with the Marine Corps.

Yesterday we discussed these issues. Today we look in greater detail at the public statements of various individuals and organizations to see if they are actually serious about cutting the deficit, or if they just claim to be serious.

Since President Bush II presided over a massive expansion of government during his eight years in office, the GOP has, in most respects, become the party of “spend and don’t tax.” This analysis relies largely on two documents – the2008 GOP platform and the 2010 guideline document called “A Pledge to America” (APtA).

• Cutting Medicare Benefits: APtA does not directly discuss cutting Medicare benefits, but there are a couple of statements that, combined, provide some information about the GOP’s view of Medicare. The section on repealing the health care legislation discusses the costs of the legislation and how it relates to Medicare, specifically saying that “the new health care law includes… $528.5 billion in Medicare cuts, which will be used to create new programs not related to seniors” and that the cuts “will fall squarely on the backs of seniors.” The implication is that the GOP would not be willing to cut Medicare in a way that forces millions of seniors out of Medicare, but the APtA is not more specificThe 2008 platform commits the GOP to fixing Medicare by “rewarding quality care, promoting competition, [and] eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.” In the past, such vague language has meant that the GOP is interested in cutting Medicare benefits, but it is unclear whether this would be sufficient to effectively address Medicare’s effect on the deficit.
  Judgment: Unclear
• Cutting Social Security Benefits: APtA mentions Social Security only twice, and in neither case does it discuss benefit cuts. The 2008 platform, however, has more information. For example, while the platform says that current and near retirees shouldn’t be affected by Social Security reforms, it calls for “comprehensive reform” that would create “personal investment accounts which are distinct from and supplemental to the overall Social Security system.” Shifting Social Security from a public system to a largely private system based on “personal investment accounts” would dramatically cut spending on Social Security.
  Judgment: Serious
• Cutting Defense Spending: According to APtA, the GOP is committed to doing “all that is needed to protect our homeland, support our troops and the veterans who have so honorably served us…” and to “ensure critical funding is restored to protect the U.S. homeland and our allies from missile threats from rogue states such as Iran and North Korea.” The first statement has no dollar amount expressed, but the language implies no limits. The second statement goes further and calls for putting missile defense money back into the budget, a clear increase in the defense budget.The 2008 platform goes much farther, however, calling for the GOP to “significantly increase the size of our Armed Forces,” and an expansion in the size of the armed forces is incompatible with cutting defense spending.
  Judgment: Not Serious
• Exiting Iraq and Afghanistan: The APtA doesn’t mention US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan at all except in relation to Iran. The 2008 platform, however, says that the GOP “[owes] the commitment that American forces will leave [Iraq] in victory and with honor. That outcome is too critical to our own national security to be jeopardized by artificial or politically inspired timetables.” This is clearly an open-ended commitment, a position that is incompatible with exiting Iraq (and presumably Afghanistan) in time period appropriate for deficit reduction.
  Judgment: Not Serious
• Raising Taxes: According to APtA, the GOP plans prevent the Bush-era tax cuts from expiring in order to “help the economy by permanently stopping all tax increases, currently scheduled to take effect January 1, 2011.” Furthermore, the GOP will lower small business taxes by allowing “small business owners to take a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their business income.” The 2008 platform said essentially the same things but with more detail. These policies are explicitly against the need to increase taxes.
  Judgment: Not Serious

The official stated positions of the Republican Party are contrary to deficit elimination on three of five issues and unclear on a fourth. Only on Social Security is the Republican Party actually serious about doing what must be done to eliminate the deficit. As a result, the Republican Party must be considered not serious about eliminating the deficit.

The Democratic Party has been long branded the “tax and spend” party, but in recent years it too has morphed somewhat to a “spend but don’t tax” position. The party website has an issues page where an overview of the party’s views on all the issues below is available. The 2008 Democratic platform document has more detail.

• Cutting Medicare Benefits: The Democratic party website touts improvements made to Medicare in the health care bill that “will improve care across the board, reduce fraud, and finally close the hole in Medicare drug coverage” as well as provide “free coverage for certain preventive services.” The 2008 platform goes further, however, saying that Democrats “will protect and strengthen Medicare by cutting costs, protecting seniors from fraud, and fixing Medicare’s prescription drug program.” While all these things are good to do and will help Medicare, none of them are going to be sufficient to truly fix Medicare – benefit cuts will also be required, and there appears to be no indication that the Democrats will be willing to take this step.
  Judgment: Not Serious
• Cutting Social Security Benefits: The website also touts Democratic successes in stopping “Republican plans to privatize Social Security.” In addition, the website touts a February 2009 Recovery Act payment to Social Security recipients that added directly to the deficit in 2009. While opposing privatization is not inherently in opposition to cutting Social Security benefits, adding to the deficit directly with one-time payments is.The 2008 platform calls for “safeguarding” and “strengthening” Social Security, and for ending penalties for public service, all things that imply a rejection of Social Security benefit cuts and may indicate actual increases.
  Judgment: Not Serious
• Cutting Defense Spending: The party website calls for “modernizing” the military while also “eliminating outdated programs and unnecessary spending.” The 2008 platform goes further, calling for the government to “renew the defense R&D system” and “increase the size of the Army by 65,000 troops and the Marines by 27,000 troops.” While modernizing and weapons research are not inherently budget busters, boosting the number of soldiers in the military is.
  Judgment: Not Serious
• Exiting Iraq and Afghanistan: The party website touts Obama’s removal of 140,000 troops from Iraq and the “ending the US combat presence,” but regardless of whether the remaining troops will be funded using deficit “supplemental” funding of rolled into the defense budget, leaving troops in Iraq clearly isn’t “exiting” Iraq. And the “surge” of troops into Afghanistan with an uncertain timetable for leaving again also doesn’t qualify as exiting Afghanistan.
  Judgment: Not Serious
• Raising Taxes: The Democrats claim to be for “ending tax loopholes that let corporations hide profits overseas,” “tax cuts to small businesses,” and providing alternative energy tax credits. Closing loopholes increases taxes, small business cuts decreases taxes, and alternative energy tax credits would decrease taxes, but it is unclear how much. None of these issues directly relate to payroll or income taxes, which represent over 80% of federal taxes.However, the 2008 platform talks about eliminating federal income taxes for millions of seniors, exempting start-ups from capital gains taxes, ending “tax penalties on married families,” and offering “additional tax cuts for middle class families” beyond refusing to raise taxes for households making less than $250,000 per year. And while closing corporate loopholes and increasing Social Security payroll taxes on the wealthy will offset some of these issues, the additional revenues will be small compared to what is lost in the cuts described above.
  Judgment: Not Serious

The official stated positions of the Democratic Party are contrary to deficit elimination in all five issues and so the Democrats must be considered not serious about the deficit.

The Libertarian Party focuses on small government and maximal personal freedom. They wrote a platform for the 2010 election.

• Cutting Medicare Benefits: The 2010 platform claims that retirement planning is an individual responsibility, and that the Libertarians support “restoring and reviving a free market health care system.” Combined, these two positions imply that the Libertarians would eliminate Medicare entirely.
  Judgment: Serious
• Cutting Social Security Benefits: The 2010 platform says “Libertarians would
  phase out the current government-sponsored Social Security system and transition to a private
  voluntary system.”
  Judgment: Serious
• Cutting Defense Spending: The 2010 platform calls for “the maintenance of a sufficient military to defend the United States against aggression.” Such a military would have few if any foreign bases, would require little if any deep water navy, and could support a radical reduction in air and strategic forces. All of these produce a major reduction in defense spending.
  Judgment: Serious
• Exiting Iraq and Afghanistan: The 2010 platform calls for the US to “avoid entangling alliances and abandon its attempts to act as policeman for the world.” Given that our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan could be interpreted as “policeman” roles, this implies exiting both nations.
  Judgment: Serious
• Raising Taxes: The 2010 platform says that the Libertarians “support the passage of a “Balanced Budget Amendment” to the U.S. Constitution, provided that the budget is balanced exclusively by cutting expenditures, and not by raising taxes.”
  Judgment: Not Serious

The Libertarian Party is serious on four of the five issues above. The last, balancing the budget without raising taxes, is technically not serious but requires a major caveat – the Libertarians would slash so much spending that taxes would naturally drop dramatically as well. Because of this, the Libertarian Party has to be considered serious about the deficit.

The Green Party initially created a detailed platform in 2004, but have since updated certain issues.

• Cutting Medicare Benefits: The 2004 platform says that the Greens would “pursue savings and cuts from abundant waste and fraud, eliminate unnecessary services that benefit providers more than patients, and rein in pharmaceutical industry price-gouging.” However, there is no call for benefit cuts for anyone in the platform.
  Judgment: Not Serious
• Cutting Social Security Benefits: The 2004 platform specifically calls for maintaining Social Security’s integrity, opposes privatization, and expanding effectiveness. These may, or may not, include cuts to Social Security Benefits.
  Judgment: Unclear
• Cutting Defense Spending: The 2004 platform calls for foreign military bases to be shut down and demands that the US cuts the defense budget by half.
  Judgment: Serious
• Exiting Iraq and Afghanistan: The 2004 platform doesn’t mention either Iraq or Afghanistan, but two different recommended 2010 updates call for an “immediate cessation of US combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan” and a complete withdrawal of military forces and bases from both nations.
  Judgment: Serious
• Raising Taxes: The 2004 platform and 2010 recommendations suggest raising both Medicare and Social Security taxes by applying payroll taxes to all income, not just the $110k, boosting corporate taxes and taxes on the wealthy, imposing a carbon tax, and more.
  Judgment: Serious

The Green Party is serious about three of five issues, unclear on a fourth, and not serious on the last. However, given the willingness to increase taxes and to radically cut defense spending, it’s entirely possible that the Green Party’s unwillingness to cut Medicare benefits would be more than offset by cuts in defense and additional tax revenues. For this reason the Green Party is considered serious about the deficit.

In conclusion, these four political parties take eliminating the federal deficit with varying degrees of seriousness. The Democrats take the deficit the least seriously, the Republicans slightly more, the Greens even more, and the Libertarians the most. This doesn’t take into account the political palatability of the solutions into account, however, and so it’s possible to make an argument that the Green approach to the deficit is the most serious because it’s more likely to be acceptable to voters than the Libertarian approach.

There are a slew of high-flying political VIPs who also claim to care about the deficit, but in most cases they’re no more serious than the party or special interest they represent.

• Nancy Pelosi:Pelosi’s statements at her House website are not clear on the idea of Medicare or Social Security cuts, support the withdrawal of forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and are generally supportive of lowered spending at the Pentagon. However, she appears to be enamored of lower taxes, meaning that on balance Nancy Pelosi is not serious about tackling the deficit
• John Boehner: Boehner, soon to be Speaker of the House, is very good at making his views on his House website so vague as to be nearly meaningless on Medicare and Social Security. However, as one of the primary architects of “A Pledge to America,” that document’s lack of seriousness on deficit reduction, along with Boehner’s admitted desire to cut taxes, means that John Boehner is not serious about eliminating the deficit.
• Harry Reid: Reid has worked to increase the size of the military and lower taxes when what is necessary to address the deficit is lower defense spending and higher taxes. His stance on Social Security and Medicare benefit cuts are unclear based on his Senate website, but he does support withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. Because of his stance on defense spending and taxes, Harry Reid is not serious about tackling the deficit.
• Mitch McConnell:According to McConnell’s website, he is opposed to cutting Medicare benefits and has no opinion whatsoever on Social Security. He opposes tax increases but doesn’t specifically advocate cuts on his website, but he does oppose any specific timetable to withdraw from Afghanistan. As such, Mitch McConnell is not serious about eliminating the deficit.
• Jim DeMint: DeMint’s website indicates that he supports lower taxes, wants to privatize Medicare and Social Security, and supports high levels of defense spending. His statements about military “honor” imply an unwillingness to withdraw from Iraq or Afghanistan as described “A Pledge to America,” even though DeMint was not officially associated with its writing. From his stated position, Jim DeMint is not serious about eliminating the deficit.
• Rand Paul: Paul’s stated positions don’t match up with his rhetoric on reducing the deficit. While Paul would like to discuss changes to Medicare and Social Security, he believes in increasing defense spending and is unwilling to consider tax increases. Therefore, Rand Paul is not serious about tackling the deficit.

The President is in a unique position with respect to his ability to influence the deficit. First, he’s a member of the Democratic Party and is allied with members of his party in Congress. Just looking at his allies and party would suggest that his positions on reducing the deficit is not serious. After all, the Democratic Party’s position on the deficit was the least serious of all the parties and both Senator Reid and Congresswoman Pelosi are also not serious about eliminating the deficit.

Obama has also produced a Fiscal Year 2011 Budget that represents his national priorities. It’s easy enough to look at the summary tables and see that deficits are reduced by not eliminated between 2011 and 2020. If Obama were some other president, this might have been enough to declare him as being not serious about the deficit, but Obama has done something that most other Presidents haven’t – he created the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (NCFRR) specifically to investigate how best to eliminate the deficit.

And what does the NCFRR recommend? In essence, they recommend cutting all spending instead of just defense spending, raising taxes by eliminating loopholes and deductions, cutting Social Security benefits by raising the retirement age and other cuts, cutting Medicare benefits by limiting Medigap plans and eliminating dual-eligibility (with Medicaid) and other cuts, and eliminating “supplemental” spending requests by building such spending into the budget explicitly. There are many details in the official plan, but on the face of it, it appears to meet all the requirements of being serious about reducing and ultimately eliminating the deficit.

As for what this says with respect to President Obama’s seriousness about eliminating the deficit, it’s probably fair to say that it’s unclear.

So how can we tell whether someone is serious about addressing the federal debt? First and foremost, anyone who says that the deficit can be eliminated without significant reforms to Medicare isn’t being serious. According to the Office of the Management of the Budget (OMB), Summary Tables S-3 and S-4 for the Fiscal Year 2011 Budget, Medicare accounted for 17% of the deficit in 2009 and under current tax policies will account for 48% of the deficit in 2020. If the President’s 2011 Budget were enacted as proposed (and it never is), Medicare would actually account for 63% of the deficit in 2020, but that’s because the 2011 Budget assumed that taxes for the wealthy would be going up in January. Either way, however, Medicare represent a massive portion of the deficit and there’s no way to be serious about the deficit without fundamentally changing how Medicare pays benefits and significantly increasing Medicare payroll taxes.

Second, anyone who says that we can eliminate the deficit without cutting defense spending isn’t being serious either. According to the OMB Summary Table S-11, spending by the Department of Defense is greater than spending by all non-security agencies combined by more than 40%. Furthermore, even if we shut down every federal department except the DoD, the annual deficit would only be cut in half. Given that shut down would mean no federal law enforcement, no federally funded scientific research, no road and bridge maintenance, and no food safety monitoring (Departments of Justice, NASA and the National Science Foundation, Transportation, and Agriculture respectively) among others, shutting down every department except for the DoD isn’t a wise idea. Shrinking just the defense budget by 5% saves more money than zeroing out the combined budgets for the seven smallest agencies (by funding). Put another way, there are only four non-security agencies that are larger than the amount of money that would be saved by cutting the defense budget 5% – Health and Human Services, Transportation, Education, and Housing and Urban Development. While I’m sure that there are efficiencies to find in every federal departments, there’s no way to address the deficit without shrinking the defense budget.

Getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan is the third thing that anyone serious about reducing the deficit needs to consider. The problem is that the money needed to keeping soldiers in both nations is paid for using “contingency” or “supplemental” spending bills that are 100% deficit spending. In percentage terms, Iraq and Afghanistan directly account for between 5% and 7% of the deficit.

Fourth, anyone who rejects ever addressing Social Security payments is also not serious. Social Security represents about 20% of the entire federal budget (and expected to exceed defense spending in 2016), and payroll taxes largely cover Social Security payments today. But because Social Security is such a massive program, the aging US population will mean that the impact of Social Security payments on the the deficit will rise fro 2% in 2009 to to between 9% and 12% by 2020. However, because Social Security is such a small part of the deficit at present, fixing it with small reductions in benefits and/or small increases in payroll taxes will be easier and can be done later than the other changes discussed above. As a result, it’s possible to be serious and still reject addressing Social Security today, but not to reject addressing Social Security ever.

And last but certainly not least, anyone who is unwilling to accept any tax increases of any kind is not serious about shrinking the deficit. Individual income taxes accounted for about 44% of federal revenue in 2009, payroll taxes accounted for another 42%, and corporate taxes accounted for another 7%. Combined, these three sources of revenue account for about 92% of all the money the federal government brings in every year. Given that beneficiaries will be unwilling to accept drastic cuts to Medicare services, the Medicare payroll tax is certainly going to go up. Also given that the Social Security payroll tax is reasonably close to balanced with Social Security payments and will likely stay there, there are really is only two taxes left to raise – corporate taxes and personal income taxes, with the lion’s share likely coming from increasing personal income taxes. Serious people can debate how best to increase taxes and how much to increase them, but anyone who says that we can eliminate the deficit without increasing taxes at all is simply not serious about the deficit.

These five points represent a simple way to determine if someone is actually serious about reducing or eliminating the federal deficit. They can be reduced down to three basic points – cut entitlement benefits, cut defense spending, and raise taxes. Anyone who doesn’t accept all three of these basic points isn’t serious about reducing the deficit.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the stated positions of various organizations and politicians and see how serious they really are about reducing the deficit.

First, the bad joke:

What’s the oldest dirty joke in the world?

A caveman fell in the mud.

———-

A Wiccan dies and finds herself standing before St. Peter and the Pearly Gates. Peter smiles and says, “Welcome to Heaven, sister.” Confused, the Wiccan asks, “Um, why am I here? I expected the Summerlands, not Heaven.”

Peter smiles kindly and says “Ahh, you must be a Wiccan. Please, follow me.” Peter escorts the Wiccan through the gates, after a brief walk through some trees, show her to her the Summerlands where she will spend eternity surrounded by unspoiled nature. The Wiccan is clearly relieved, but is surprised to hear crying. Turning to investigate the noise, she sees people pointing at her and the other Wiccans in the Summerlands and then collapsing into tears while raking their bodies bloody with their own fingernails. “Who are they,” she asks.

“Oh, them? They’re fundamentalist Christians,” replies Peter.

“Why are they crying and injuring themselves?”

Peter responds “Because they’re in Hell – God doesn’t like being told what he thinks.”