Usually, when I read a blog post, I just respond based on what I already know. Quick response is, after all, the strenght of blogging. Yesterday was an exception! Reading Judy Curry’s post I knew a few things weren’t quite right. I’d been to the meeting while Judy was quoting. I would have posted, but I had a few questions I wanted to ask Jim Lakely, so I delayed.
But all is not lost. Today, I’m going to comment on a few items in Joe Bast’s response, which runs at Watts up With That. So, now, my comments on what Joe Bass wrote,
Concerning ICCC-7,…. the mood was decidedly upbeat.
I agree with Joe on this: The mood was upbeat.
Whether it ought to have been is a value judgement. Some will think it should not have been upbeat, but I’d say the mood was upbeat. Is it true that ‘Speakers spoke about being “victimised†by “warmists†and “alarmists†‘. Yep. Some did. (Though I’m sure they all would have spelled it “victimized”.) But oddly, people saying this at were nevertheless upbeat.
Joe Bast continues,
Opponents (including “Forecast the Facts†and Occupy Wall Street) promised to disrupt the conference and failed utterly – fewer than 50 people showed up for their rallies. Those who did show up wore boots on their heads and refused Christopher Monckton’s invitation to debate.
This is misleading. It’s true fewer than 50 showed up. I would say it’s true that the group did not want to debate. But Joe makes it sound like they were all wearing boots on their head: only one had a boot on his head.
Responding to people who noticed Joe said this was the last ICCC, Joe Bast writes,
I’ve said after nearly every conference since the 3rd one that “this is probably our last conference,†and I’ve made a fundraising pitch, because the ICCCs are expensive and I suspect they are subject to the law of diminishing returns, but we keep doing them due to popular demand. Stay tuned for news about ICCC-8.
The possibility that Joe Bast always said this was the last ICCC occurred to me. After all, it seemed to me that ICC7 had been quickly planned and scheduled causing me to write this in comments:
BTW: On the lack of plans for future ICCC conferences… I didn’t save the link but I read that this one wasn’t planned until Gleick did his identity-theft-to-get-documents manoeuvre. If true and the planning began later than usual, that could explain a smaller turn out than two years ago.
(See link for more.) Barry Woods cited my comment at Twitter, I realized I should ask Jim Lakely if my recollection was correct. So I emailed him.
Lakely confirmed the ICCC7 was not scheduled until after Fakegate and also told me that Joe Bast frequently says this is the last ICCC conference.
I didn’t post because due to uncharacteristic caution and politeness I wrote Lakely back to get permission to quote the email! Anyway, the same response now appears more formally at WUWT. (Damn! I can never scoop Anthony!!!)
In response to those reporting Heartland’s financial health is in dire straits Bast wrote,
Concerning Heartland’s financial health, we’ve raised more money since the Fakegate incident than in the previous 11 months, and are on track to double our income this year.
When I arrived at the conference, I cornered Jim Lakely and asked him about fall out from The Billboard. I wanted to know both the the financial situation and about the exit of the DC office. Not being a good reporter, I didn’t record or take notes, but I got more or less the same story. If I recall correctly, Jim told me that: a) net donations were up since Fakegate, b) the exit of the DC office had been in the works and was not entirely due to the Billboard.
As I am absolutely no good at grilling people, that’s the sum total of what I learned.
It’s worth also reporting that when the protesters took their stroll in north to the crosswalk and then south past the Hilton, I sidled up to a guy (who I think turned out to be Brad Johnson.) Among other things I broached the topic of the fall out from The Billboard. He said a bunch of things (which I did not record). I mentioned Lakely told me that the impact was not as bad as outsiders believed and that the number of donors were up since Fakegate. I don’t remember details of what Brad said, but I do remember he used the word “truth-value”. (We discussed other things too. I do wish I’d been recording. I would have been had I had a clue this was the main organizer.)
So, what is the situation with Heartland’s finances? Like I know? I can tell you what the Guardian and Forecast the Facts report which is that many donors decamped, I can tell you that Lakely said things are not so bad as they seem and Joe Bast agrees with Lakely.
When talking to Brand I think I responded by saying what I thought at the time (and still think.) That is that we outsiders will only truly know whether the net effect of The Billboard was to hurt Heartland’s balance sheet later on when we have access to publicly available IRS documents.
Since the financial health of Heartland makes absolutely no difference to my bottom line, I am content to just sit in the peanut gallery and see what happens.
Joe then defends his billboard
I am not surprised or disappointed that you and other bloggers disapprove of our tactics. It is simply not your role in the controversy to be aggressive or controversial. But it is ours.
My response to this? I understand groups working in political arenas are often controversial or aggressive. Many are. Maybe these groups can only survive if they are controversial and aggressive.
Nevertheless, in instances, I don’t condone what these groups do.
In this one: I don’t and can’t condone The Billboard. I think it was distasteful– appalling.
As I previously wrote, I don’t think The Billboard is a reason to not cover the meeting– or to not cover the protest. So I went; I also posted a lightly edited youtube video of the protest.
It seems to me I’m not the only one who thinks the billboard is no reason to not cover the meeting. Suzanne Goldenberg attended the meeting; I’m pretty sure she didn’t approve of The Billboard. I also saw a cameraman wearing PBS credentials.
I also don’t think the fact that Heartland ran an appalling Billboard is any reason to mis-diagnose the mood of the meeting. I think any claim the mood of the meeting was downtrodden is incorrect– the mood was upbeat. Joe was smiling. Many of the staff did seem busier than one armed paper hangers– doing lots of jobs at once– but overall– whether one likes it or not– since I did to to the meeting, and I did ‘interview’ Lakely, I can tell you the mood of the audience, speakers and Heartland staff struck me as upbeat. The meeting did seem smaller than the 2010 meeting–and being smaller. But that doesn’t mean people were moping around. If the people who came or those hosting were depressed, they are doing an awfully good job hiding that fact. The mood was upbeat.
Pity you didn’t ask Suzanne Goldenberg exactly who ‘cleared’ Gleick; she states he was cleared of being a forger, but not who carried out the investigation or the forensic methodology.
DocMartyn,
If I’d recognized her I might have asked. Now that I know she was there I think I saw her and may even have spoken to her.
I am very curious who ‘cleared’ Gleick and wondered when I read the article.
OK, everyone felt upbeat. But about what, exactly?
This comes back to my earlier question. Was it just a reunion? Or did someone actually say something about climate change?
Nick–
My impression is that a number of speakers and the audience think they are making headway in increasing the number of people who share their view.
No more than most meetings. Some people who only see each other at meetings saw each other here. That happens at many meetings.
In comments elsewhere, after one of your questions you will find that I said discussions of climate change took place. However,
1) I attended only 1 day,
2) On that day I learned the protest was going on so I left the building to cover that. Obviously, I did not listen to talks while I was outside.
3) I didn’t realize there were parallel sessions which meant I wasn’t able to find many of the more sciency ones. It was only at mid-afternoon when I discovered the upstairs conference rooms. Prior to that, I had listened to the breakfast talk in the dining room and 1/2 the lunch talk in the dining room. The talks during meals tend to be less specifically scientific– there is no doubt about that.
4) I heard Anthony’s talk discussing his temperature measurements which they are preparing for submission (he cited Zeke.)
5) Once Pat Michaels let me know there was an “upstairs”, I went to the 3rd floor and heard a talk on wind energy and one on changes in the pattern of the Indian Monsoon.
6) I went to cover the atmosphere of the meeting. I never suggested I was going for any other reason. I figure the substance of any talks will be made available on the web. If I just wanted to see those, I could save $10 in metra fare and watch from home. I’m sure you can watch them too.
I’m sure you can obtain a schedule of the talks if you like. As your question has been answered (and in fact, more than once) I might suggest that your point in asking it is not to get an answer. You may be trying to make some sort of obscure point. If there is some point you want to make, I suggest you make it directly so we don’t have to guess what it is.
Lucia,
No, no obscure points. In past ICCC’s we heard quite a lot about scientific presentations. I even remember Chip Knappenberger talking about some work thsat you were involved in. But this time I see at WUWT only talk of retired NASA folk continuing their campaigns, Klaus, and lately Willis also talking about ambience. And protesters – it seems as if they and Peter Gleick were the stars of the show. I’m thus just wondering if this reflected the focus of the conference.
I know that Willi Soon presented. So did Sebastian Luning. But I didn’t see those talks. Soon presented at the same time as Watts– I watched Watts. Willis gave a talk– I missed it because it occurred when I went out to cover the protestors.
I didn’t discuss the science talks after the 2010 meetings either. Just as this time, I figured you can see those from the videos. I’m covering what can’t be covered by reading the stuff on line; the atmosphere. It seems to me that Suzanne Goldenberg made the same decision.
If you want different coverage, you are going to have to go yourself or fund someone to go. When I go, I cover the atmosphere.
Nick–
FWIW– Gleick was definitely not the star of the show. Not even during the banquet sessions I attended. There were Gleick t-shirts in the lobby. I didn’t take any and the pile didn’t seem to shrink while I was there. The protesters also weren’t the star of the show. But I wanted to cover that– and that took some time. I can’t be in two places at one time so it means that I didn’t see Willis’s talk nor any other taking place while I was outside either waiting for the protest to start, while it was going on, nor as it waned down.
Obviously, a protest is going to get coverage. That doesn’t mean the conference revolved around it. Very few of the 300 some attendees inside the building went out to the protest. You can see that only a few attendees went. The bloggers covering the meeting went– and that included me.
I didn’t see Suzanne Goldenberg covering the protest. Maybe she can tell you what she thought of willis’s talk. (If she listened to the talk. Which, based on where I saw the woman I think she is once I learned what she looked like, I seriously doubt.)
lucia:
Let me guess… she was at the bar.
(Probably this is the the most interesting place to be, if you want to hear people speak frankly.)
re:”Quick response is, after all, the strenght of blogging.”
Of course spelling would not be the strenght of blogging.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Very nasty John Norris.Are you saying that Lucia does not know how to spell?Never made a typing error yourself?
Can’t spell properly,she must be dumb,don’t bother reading her blog.
Is that how it goes? One fact that drove me crazy when I read Judith Curry’s post was how she never used the capital I when referring to herself.I blame my teacher for that,She drummed it into us.I certainly didn’t judge her,what presumption that would be(I never got past 3rd year high schoo)I put it down to laziness.Who in their right mind would call Lucia or Judith Curry dumb?
If you want to know what was presented at the talks, most of them are available online. If you don’t want to sully your ears with actually hearing the evil denier’s presentations and want to be told what they said, well too bad, that’s just being lazy and contradicts a claim to any curiosity about what was said. If you can’t watch video on your computer or are otherwise technically unable, I am sorry.
You can rewatch the live streams here:
http://climateconference.heartland.org/watch-live-2/
The ones uploaded to the archive so far here:
http://climateconferences.heartland.org/iccc7/
“Gleick was definitely not the star of the show.”
Lucia, I looked at the email Joe Bast wrote explaining how JC had it wrong about ICCC. He made 7 points:
a)”…Opponents (including “Forecast the Facts†and Occupy Wall Street) promised to disrupt the conference and failed utterly …”
b)”…50 warmists invited to speak refused to show up…”
c)”…since the Fakegate incident…”
d)”…had not Peter Gleick stolen and revealed our donor list…”
e)”…Our PR response to Fakegate…”
f)”….”
g)”…There has been no positive coverage of skeptics since Fakegate broke…”
Climate change not mentioned.
I watched Anthony’s pitch. he discussed Filnet, Shap and Tobs.
he showed charts of Ushcn version1 adjustments.
At some point people have to realize that ushcn version 1 is not even used anymore.
willis talked about his species extinction work. that was nice.
The cold sun guy showed some charts.
I didnt see much in the way of science.
Its time for Ice bets Lucia
At some point people are going to have to realize the Hockey Stick’s been debunked. Bet the Blade, Now. Go baby ice bets, go!
================
No. There was a cash bar Tuesday night. I didn’t see her there (but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t there.)
I did see a woman with wild (in a good way) black hair in the banquet hall during meals- which is not where the science talks were. I saw her talking to the tall thin PBS guy with a camera. I also saw that woman in the hall outside the conference rooms with the PBS guy during the conference talks. They appeared to be waiting for people to come out of the rooms. Willis and I stopped to ask if they’d seen “the crazy guy”. (We didn’t call him that. We gave a physical description. He had been in the conference room for a little while.)
The reason I doubt she listened to willis’s talk is I did not see her in the room during Anthony’s talk– willis was sitting at the speakers table and would have spoken later. (I left for the protest.) So, I very much doubt she listened to his talk.
Of course, I didn’t have my eye on her and maybe she sat in the way back corner during those talks. But — though this seems to bug Nick– I wasn’t there so much to listen to the talks. I spent more time trying to spot “who” was there. There was a lot of empty space in the banquet hall– people had split up to go to parallel sessions and the banquet hall sat about 200. Media weren’t required to stay in the back corner– and I don’t think anyone did stay back there– I did look over there. So, I doubt if she sat in on willis’s talk.
Of course climate change is not mentioned in Bast’s response to Judy’s blog post. He’s responding to the points she made in her blog post — which had nothing to do with climate change. He’s not required to go on a tangent to provide proof to Nick Stokes that the conferences had sessions that discussed climate change.
Mosher– I’ll try to remember to start icebets on Monday!
They can’t afford to employ enough staff to run the conference.
bugs–
I don’t know why you think that. The conference went off smoothly. It is a big event and they are busy that day– but they had enough staff.
lucia,
There was a woman at ICCC-7 who could have been Goldenberg based on a rough likeness to the photo WUWT had of her in one of Anthony’s posts about Gleick. But I do not know if it was Goldenberg and do not know, based on my personal observations, that she was actually at ICCC-7. She made brief eye contact with me several times as she passed by tables I was sitting at during activities in the 1st floor ballroom, so I could have returned that eye contact with an invitation to talk. If it was Goldenberg I would have liked to interview her given a setting where there were friendly witnesses to an exchange and friendly witnesses with tape recorders to document any conversation with her. Trust Goldenberg? NOT.
I had the chance to privately shake Bast’s hand and offered my encouragement to carry on through the current peak in public ‘give-and-take’ surrounding HI’s aggressively styled skepticism. He smiled and said HI is doing fine and is carrying on well.
Virtually all of my knowledge of HI is only from the climate blogs for the past ~3 years. This was my first attendance at an HI event. I went to see the science AND to assess the whole philosophical discourse of which the science is only a part; a necessary part but not a sufficient part to actually counter the whole spectrum of the ideologies surrounding the IPCC centric CAGWism.
I went to ICCC-7 with the impression that HI and I share a lot of fundamental philosophical underpinnings in the philosophical areas of metaphysics, epistemology and ethics; I found that we do share a significant amount metaphysics and epistemology which form the fundamentals of hard science concepts; also share some ethical fundamentals but not all ethical fundamentals. The two remaining areas of classical philosophy are the political and aesthetical areas. HI focuses more on political area of philosophy than I do. I hold little focus on political, unlike HI, because I consider politics to be strictly derived from the first three areas I mentioned and therefore for me not of prime importance. I think, to prevail in the climate discourse, the key arguments to be made against ideologies that support IPCC centric CAGWism must be made first in metaphysics, epistemology and ethics . . . . not primarily in politics. Not that HI is wrong when they put some focus on political area of philosophy; it is one of their specialties but not a prime interest to me. I encourage HI to go for it.
John
PS – Nick, I attended all the hard science sessions (except where some were in parallel) and they were energized . . . . I got an emotive live audience impression that the intellectual momentum of the climate science discourse is not on the IPCC centric CAGWist’s side. : ) Since my experience is that hard scientists make appallingly bad actors and absurdly inept liars, then I conclude that what I witnessed in person was an honest emotive display.
PSS – lucia, apologize for the wordy/lengthy post. : )
1) Since you were there, looking with your own eyes, listening with your own ears and
2) since you got it right
I score it Lucia 2 – Judy 0
Hey nicky, maybe if a few of the invited warmistas had attended they would have talked about the science, which is settled, so what would be the point.
Now snidely inquire about what went on at the conference a few more times, you moron.
Living close to Chicago and had I the time, I would have probably enjoyed attending the Heartland conference and meeting people with whom I have had conversations on these blogs and taking in live a few talks of interest to me.
Heartland appears to me to be too far from my libertarian ideals and too close to some of Rush Limbaugh’s responses to the other side. The lack of a real apology from Heartland for the posters and a restatement of their mission in light of those posters does little to change my mind. That situation would not prevent me from the enjoyment of seeing and talking to people attending the conference – and spending time at the lake front and Art Institute.
If I only conversed with those with whom I agreed politically and on the issues of AGW, I would think I might not be speaking to anyone – you know kind of like Ted Kaczynski.
Thanks for a thoughtful assessment of ICCC-7 …
Did they pass out the tinfoil hats at the door or did everyone bring their own?
Tom R,
There was just one…
Shaped like a boot and painted black.
Tom R (Comment #96483)
May 26th, 2012 at 7:28 pm
Did they pass out the tinfoil hats at the door or did everyone bring their own?
= = = = = =
Tom R,
Sarc on/
Nah, we did better than tin foil hats. We just paid indulgences to Lovelock for Mother Gaia to protect us from aliens and the climate alarmists.
Then we all sat around in circles holding hands in the evening singing Kumbaya and swaying in unison.
Sarc off/
John
Billboard idea for HI.
: )
John
PS – posted also at JC’s and WUWT.
Where white, old males meet, the atmosphere is always upbeat.
Neven,
I never got that impression when I visited father at his nursing home.
That’s not where white, old males meet. That’s where they live.
Neven, what’s the atmosphere like where racist, ageist, sexist people meet?
Neven–
Are you trying to make some point or are you posting some sort of zen philosopy?
Lots of people are upbeat when they meet voluntarily in their free time. Young male teens are upbeat at their meetings, young female teens are upbeat at their meetings, middle aged males and females are upbeat at their meetings, older males and females are upbeat at their meetings.
My point in writing that the meeting was upbeat is to point out that Suzanna Goldenberg’s description was not accurate. If you think it’s obvious she was wrong and she couldn’t possibly have been right, you should have displayed your insight into the human condition and pointed out the meeting must have been upbeat when Judy first took Suzanne’s report as correct.
Niven et al. – Nothing shows the character flaw of a person as clearly as gratuitous comments made just to denigrate a person, a group, an event. If you have something to say that is worth hearing there are plenty who are willing to listen. But remarks like yours just serve to turn me off.
A good summary (telegram-style) on climategate dot nl by Theo Wolters (who attended the show) albeit in Dutch (http://climategate.nl/2012/05/26/iccc7-in-telegramstijl/#more-19367) maybe google translation will help?
Nah.. just trying to be funny…http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/Not_Funny033110.jpg