Sunday, April 24, 2011

Strange Choices

So Eli has been Nisbiting here and there, when who should appear at the bird feeder in the window than Ethon. No decent liver out there anymore in Boulder he says, but spotted some good bird feed up at AU, and then Eli's pal began to talk about the grift.

Curious he said, but this Nathan Cummings Foundation that fronted the $$ to Matt Nisbet, why they are the dollars behind the Breakthrough bunch, which funnily enough has this Sr. Fellow, with whom Ethon assumes you, Eli, are well acquainted. It's a strange thing Ethon pointed out, but the author picked the reviewers and paid them the proverbial pittance to do something, though it is not clear what, because one of them jumped ship, and on the way out mentioned that he was only shown a small part of the report. And you know what, this is not something submitted to a journal for publication, but a report for some faculty guys with a web site of which the fellow who took the payments is the director. Makes you think of an S. Fred Special, you know the environmental tobacco smoke is good for you if, as Fred did, you use the wrong statistic, or maybe that NIPCC report that the old boy wrote for a 100K or so. Seems to be the going price this decade.

Anyhow, Ethon was a very hungry bird and he took the bait. Read the thing, and he pointed out something very interesting, not that interesting things had not been pointed out, and oh, did that make the usual suspects berry, berry cross, but this is supposedly a report on who spent what for influencing public opinion, and in that there are three things to look at: lobbying, advertising and political contributions.

On political contributions

A clear financial advantage still held by the conservative movement and industry allies exists in the arena of election spending, as a recent analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics indicates. In 2010, following the Citizens United court ruling, conservative and allied industry organizations engaged in unprecedented independent campaign spending. The Chamber of Commerce ($33 million), American Crossroads ($22 million) and Crossroads GPS ($17 million) combined for $73 million in independent expenditures. In comparison, the League of Conservation Voters ($5.5 million), Defenders of Wildlife ($1 million) and the Sierra Club ($700,000) combined to spend $7.2 million.
and you know, even the good Matt proves that money talks in politics, because there was one case where the shoe was on the other foot
In total, supporters of the proposition raised approximately $10.6 million. In comparison, the “No on Proposition 23” coalition raised at least $25 million, resulting in a more-than 2-to-1 financial advantage over their opponents.
which enabled the opponents of the proposition to run more ads, contact more people, etc. So on political contributions, advantage climate change rejectionists

On advertising:
the Alliance (for Climate Progress) spent $34 million on advertising, short of the widely publicized $100 million-a-year goal.53 Similarly, by the end of 2009, the Alliance had signed up 2.5 million “members” to receive news and alerts, short of the 10 million target.54 In terms of advertising by other environmental organizations, according to their 2009 tax records, EDF spent $9.6 million; NRDC, $2.3 million; and Sierra Club, $1.8 million. In all, the Alliance and these groups spent $47.7 million on advertising. . . .

In comparison, according to their respective tax returns, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent $71 million on advertising in 2009, the American Petroleum Institute spent $57 million, the American Coalition for Clean Coal spent $31 million, the National Association of Manufacturers spent $4.5 million, and the Heritage Foundation spent $3.7 million, for a combined total of $167 million. Not all of this ad spending was on climate change. For example, as discussed earlier, much of the spending by the U.S. Chamber was aimed at health care legislation.

but, of course, not all of the environmental groups' advertising was on the Cap and Trade bill either. IOKIYAACCR. And, of course, the oil and coal companies had their own advertising,
Image advertising by the major oil companies is also relevant, as this advertising may influence the perceived need among lawmakers and the public for cap and trade legislation, even if the ads did not directly address the debate, and even as some of the companies supported the bills. . . .

Figures on advertising spending by oil companies in 2009 are not available, but an analysis by the firm Kantar Media CMAG for the Alliance for Climate Protection provides some insight on the scale of spending by these companies. During the first 10 months of 2010, Exxon Mobil spent $29 million, Shell spent $9.7 million and Chevron spent $7.2 million. In responding to the oil spill, BP spent $126 million.
So on advertising, advantage climate change rejectionists

On lobbying, as Joe Romm has pointed out, Nisbet has to use a bizarre method to get the numbers for pros and cons to come out even. His argument is based on the idea that
With the exception of the figures for the environmental groups, this comparison of lobbying expenditures across coalitions should not be interpreted as reflecting the actual amounts spent on cap and trade legislation. Instead, in the aggregate, these totals are representative of the capacity for power and influence that each side could apply in 2009.
But he then trawls into the pro cap and trade lobbying totals the total lobbying for all of the companies who were members of the US Climate Action Partnership. Somehow, the author forgot to include the total lobbying budgets for all of the members of the American Petroleum Institute or the US Chamber of Commerce on the other side. Unfortunate yet EVEN with that lack of manipulation**,
Through their work building coalitions and alliances, the environmental groups were able to forge a network of organizations that spent a combined $229 million on lobbying across all issues. In comparison, the network of prominent opponents of cap and trade legislation spent $272 million lobbying across all issues.
In spite of putting his big toe on the scale, in all three rubber meets the road categories, political contributions, advertising and lobbying the climate change rejectionists had significantly more resources (and if you think 43M$ is not a lot, Eli would like to talk with you about buying carrot and bird seed futures).

And then, of course, we have to (NO WE DON'T!!!!!) talk about the full Wegman, Nisbet's learned dissertation on how the AAAS is full of socialists who were born in Kenya. Science birtherism as it were. Was there a point there? Yes, Michael Mann published with a lot of people since 1998 and Obama's father came from Kenya.

** Nisbet's accounting puts Eli in mind of the three candidates for a CFO job who, at the interview were asked what 2 + 2 was. Three said the first, and was asked to leave. Four said the second and was told to take a seat in the waiting room. What would you like it to be said the third, and was hired.

36 comments:

Pinko Punko said...

1) What does it mean that there is an embargo on something that isn't submitted for peer review? Is it because the item is presumed to be a draft copy and may be changed?

2) Note that Revkin could tweet about it salaciously but that doesn't count as broken embargo, even if the tweet is a purported conclusion.

3) Note that Dear Nisbet seems to want to Pielkify our discourse. Let's not be meanies! Your doing it wrong! I shall be the judge!

4) Dear Chris has gone all in with Dear Nisbet and unfortunately has had to ramp up his umbrage (INCIVILITY) because CM feels that questions of proven facts should not be up for falsely equivalent discussion.

5) Note the irony giving you a rash.

Brian Schmidt said...

Prop 23 in California was a special case - when even the Republican nominee for Governator wouldn't support it, you pretty much knew it was sunk. The forces of evil switched to their backup priority, Prop 26 (preventing fees on pollution), where they outspent reality supporters by 3:1 and won by 2.5%.

Not bad strategy, unfortunately, but it doesn't Prop 23 shouldn't necessarily be taken as proof the good guys can outspend the bad ones. It is evidence that when the good guys do outspend, they win.

Anonymous said...

You can never tell the whole story. You are so predictable I won't even spend more than 30 seconds on this one.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303339504575566481761790288.html



Celery Eater

Anonymous said...

Celery is obviously not a brain food.

The WSJ article goes on and on about public employee unions. I don't recall hearing much about public employee unions running ads to promote cap and trade or carbon taxation...

Anonymous said...

Perhaps anonymous abouve missed this portion of the article.

On political contributions


A clear financial advantage still held by the conservative movement and industry allies exists in the arena of election spending, as a recent analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics indicates. In 2010, following the Citizens United court ruling, conservative and allied industry organizations engaged in unprecedented independent campaign spending. The Chamber of Commerce ($33 million), American Crossroads ($22 million) and Crossroads GPS ($17 million) combined for $73 million in independent expenditures. In comparison, the League of Conservation Voters ($5.5 million), Defenders of Wildlife ($1 million) and the Sierra Club ($700,000) combined to spend $7.2 million.


How does your foot taste?

Always attack the poster and ignore any facts or issues that have been brought up.

Yep Eli, no communication problem at all lol.


Celery Eater

Anonymous said...

In right-wing bizarro-world, pro-conservation organizations being outspent 10:1 gives them an unfair advantage...

Like I said, celery is no brain-food.

Former Skeptic said...

I don't know whose brain farts are more hilarious - Celery Eater, or Tom Fuller?

Anonymous said...

I know put your heads in the hole in the ground like good lemming-bunnies.

Don't let any facts intrude upon your ignorance.


The fact that the largest political spender last election cycle was AFSCME, is just that a fact, no matter how much you dodge the point nor no matter how much yuou try your best at petty insults.

Quite hilarious. You guys need a new routine this one is getting old, worn, and boring.




Celery Eater

David B. Benson said...

"Let's go. Yes, let's go. (They do not move)."
- Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

EliRabett said...

AFSCME had a position on Cap and Trade??

Anonymous said...

Ha! Eli does not read his own posts, hilarity continues.

On political contributions


A clear financial advantage still held by the conservative movement and industry allies exists in the arena of election spending, as a recent analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics indicates. In 2010, following the Citizens United court ruling, conservative and allied industry organizations engaged in unprecedented independent campaign spending. The Chamber of Commerce ($33 million), American Crossroads ($22 million) and Crossroads GPS ($17 million) combined for $73 million in independent expenditures. In comparison, the League of Conservation Voters ($5.5 million), Defenders of Wildlife ($1 million) and the Sierra Club ($700,000) combined to spend $7.2 million.



Celery Eater

EliRabett said...

The Celery Stalks at midnight, but sheds no light.

1. The rejectionists had more money to oppose cap and trade legislation in political contributions, advertising and lobbying

2. They won

3. Nisbet has the black and white on this buried in his report

4. Nisbet then does some weird math and says those favoring cap and trade had more resources.

EliRabett said...

Oh yeah, in the one case he can find when the environmentalists had more resources, they won (Prop 23)

Anonymous said...

Rabbet regurgitates some facts w/o checking them, then tries the redirect play to another point.

Perhaps you should delete the part of your post for which I was responding.


Thanks for the latest laughs, have fun in fantasy land



Celery Eater

Anonymous said...

Romm wrote this:
"With the exception of the figures for the environmental groups, this comparison of lobbying expenditures across coalitions should not be interpreted as reflecting the actual amounts spent on cap and trade legislation. Instead, in the aggregate, these totals are representative of the capacity for power and influence that each side could apply in 2009. "

Of course. what a complete load of unadulterated swill.

Jim Bouldin said...

"Quite hilarious. You guys need a new routine this one is getting old, worn, and boring."

I've personally never equated hilarious with old, worn and boring, nor do I know anyone who would, but then again I'm not an expert in making things up either.

Eli, did Singer really take 100 grand for speaking at the NIPCC?

Anonymous said...

Jim,

Your right. I want to correct that statement.

"Quite pathetic. You guys need a new routine this one is getting old, worn, and boring."

Thanks!

btw, What did I make up? Did I make up the fact that the largest politcal donor of the 2010 election cycle was a public sector union, making contributions to the Democrats?

Is that what I made up?


Celery Eater

Anonymous said...

You're, sorry.



CE

EliRabett said...

Actually 143K$ for writing the thing

Anonymous said...

Ben Santer was just elected an AGU fellow, an honor that is bestowed upon only one in 1,000 AGU members each year.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, deniers!

Craig Allen said...

Hey Eli, do you mind if I ask a way off topic question?

In another forum I've got a guy arguing that if we try to replace coal with renewables and include a lot of wind and solar but not nuclear, then we are vulnerable to societal collapse if a Tambora style eruption reduces incoming sunlight. Do you have an idea of how much a really mega eruption could theoretically cut insolation by? Pinatubo apparently cut it by somewhere between 1.4 to 4.1%

a_ray_in_dilbert_space said...

Uh, Celery Eater, dude. I think you need to get some real nutrition into you. STAT! Merely repeating the same obscure point over and over is NOT a way to win an argument.

And then raising an nonsequitur about a union with no position on cap & trade...well, that doesn't make much sense.

Oh, I know! You've been dipping your celery in a bloody mary, haven't you?

Anonymous said...

I understand a_ray your only purpose is to crawl up to the host and show your lemming loyalty to the team. I made my point, that you cannot understand it speaks more to you than me. I replied directly to a portion of the post.

Have fun in fantasy land.



Celery Eater

adelady said...

Craig. Firstly, a Tambora style eruption would cause far more problems with agriculture and temperature reduction than messing up the efficiencies of solar generation.

As for insolation generally, it really depends on where you live. Where I am, who'd care about a decline? (Much the same latitude as Los Angeles.) Closer to the poles, more of a problem.

Surely such questions merely reinforce the argument for widely distributed and multi source power generation with handy dandy smart grids to move power to the right places at the right times. Wind, tidal, run of river, solar PV, CSP, hydro, geo - different mix for different places. Silly to rely too much on any one thing.

a_ray_in_dilbert_space said...

Celery Eater,
Yes, I've always had a hard time understanding imbeciles and bat-shit crazy people stinking of urine. It's a weakness of mine. I hope you'll forgive it.

But, CE, we're concerned. Your first post came before 10:00 AM--awfully early to be drinking to the point of incoherence. Were you maybe trying to drown your sorrows over the fact that Obama has a real US birth certificate after all. So, what do you nut job teabaggers drown your sorrows in? Long Island iced tea?

Anonymous said...

a_ray,

I never contested Obama's place of birth, sorry do not fit in that box for you.


Here I'll type this slowly so you can follow along.

The post's first main point was just on political spending

"On political contributions


A clear financial advantage still held by the conservative movement and industry allies exists in the arena of election spending, as a recent analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics indicates..."

I responded with a link providing a fact that last election the above is simply not true. It was later in post when the comparisons about spending on climate legislation were made.

All Rabett Lemmings have come out and attacked the poster, a very weak offering from very weak minds.


Of course this is all you have, ignorance, name calling and trying to fit people in your boxes for easy dismissal (teabagger, birther, denier).


Still not a single comment on the largest political contribution group in last election cycle which none of you were aware of and still continue to ignore.


Celry Eater

luminous beauty said...

CE,

The WSJ apparently over-estimated the contributions from AFSCME by a factor of 7 or so.

Craig Allen said...

Thanks Adelady.

Sorry everyone else for going OT.

The guy I was responding to is pushing the line that solar and wind energy are a waste of time and that we have no choice but to go hard on nuclear. I'm a flip-flopper on nuclear, but he's using a bunch of climate denier style flimflam to argue his case, which is certainly not helping him convince me. I've read this "if we install too much solar then we'll eventually be doomed by eruptions cutting electricity production" line a few times lately.

I replied with the following:

As the facts below demonstrate, even if an utterly catastrophic series of eruptions occurred, solar insolation could not be reduced by much more than 10%. Even if we were completely reliant on solar then we could deal with that by temporarily shutting down the production of steel and aluminium for example.

I asked Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies about the effects of a super eruption on wind patterns. He said that they would alter, but not enough to significantly impact on wind energy production. Think about it - does the wind stop blowing in winter because it is colder?

* The average amount of solar radiation is 1,366 Watts/m2 (see Wikipedia.

* The Mount Pinatubo eruption reduced average global insolation by between 3.4 and 7W/m2 which is a 0.3-0.5% reduction.
- Changes in Earth's Albedo Measured by Satellite (Wielicki et al. 2011)
- Effects of Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption on the hydrological cycle as an analog of geoengineering (Trenberth & Dai 2007)

* According to sources cited on the Wikipedia Tambora page, the Tambora eruption reduced northern hemisphere temperatures by 0.5 degC. About the same as Pinatubo. So it presumably had a roughly comparable impact on insolation.

* The largest volcanic eruption in recorded history was the Laki eruption of 1783-84. Modelling has suggested that it caused a maximum localised decrease in insolation (at high latitudes only) of about 7%.
- Modeling the distribution of the volcanic aerosol cloud from the 1783-1784 Laki eruption (Oman et al. 2006)

* The global average isolation reduction caused by a nuclear war in which a third of the Worlds arsenal is used would be 100 w/m2 or 7%. This would cause temperatures to drop on average by about 10degC. And by 20-30degC over most of North America and Eurasia. There would be total crop failure. A 7% drop in energy production would be irrelevant in that circumstance.
- Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences (Robock et al. 2007)

Anonymous said...

Luminous Beauty,

Thank you for the information. I did find this:

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/10/22/afscme-public-employees-union-is-no-1-election-spender-for/

"More than 90 percent of the chamber's campaign spending is going to help Republicans. The group is the No. 1 campaign spender, aside from party committees, in a chart from the Center for Responsive Politics. The chart lists AFSCME as sixth but does not include all of the union's spending."

They linked to your link in that last sentence.


The link above ends with this:

"The Supreme Court's Citizen United decision in January opened the floodgates for unlimited campaign spending by unions and corporations. Disclosure is not required of them or the groups they give to. The Sunlight Foundation estimates that nearly $100 million in "dark money" has been spent on 2010 elections so far. "


Which I agree with a lot of dark corrupting money on both sides.



Celery Eater

a_ray_in_dilbert_space said...

Celery Eater,
Oh, I'm sorry, were you not aware that this was a climate blog? Well, I guess that's what happens when you try to read in an alcoholic haze, huh?

I guess that's how you also wind up quoting a rag like the Wall Street Urinal, too.

luminous beauty said...

CE,

I don't think you understand this non-disclosure thingy. Political groups are allowed not to disclose the identities of outside donors, but they must still file spending amounts with the IRS. Union donors are the rank and file so that isn't really an issue, is it?

The federal 527 contributions from AFSCME not included in the CRP outside group chart are $2,707,373. That still doesn't move them out of sixth place.

EliRabett said...

Well, if you want batshit insane, take thee over to Lucia's swamp, where Kim is doing the birther bamba Pass the popcorn

No One said...

I'm not sure what prompted me to wander by this horrid wasteland after more than a year of sensibility, but I see you still can't write an article that makes sense. The sad part is that your handful of regulars still kiss up to you and refuse to point out you are missing your sensibility.

By the way, what's the purpose of the dig at Lucia? She thinks the birthers are nuts too, just like most of us sensible folk. Are you upset she lets a nut post comments on *her* blog?

amoeba said...

I just got this one about Exxon from the Post Carbon Institute

'University Vows to Lock Out Students Opposed to ExxonMobil'
It seems students who object to Rex Tillerson, may be denied their diplomas.

For the full story see:
http://www.postcarbon.org/blog-post/319561-university-vows-to-lock-out-students

Apologies for being slightly OT. But this needs wider coverage.

EliRabett said...

They are just asking for it, Tillerson is going to have a lot of trouble being heard, if he is lucky.

amoeba said...

Eli was right, reading between the lines, it seems that the University stirred-up a hornets' nest.

An update on the Worcester Polytechnic Institute Exxon / Tillerson speech, apparently, the University has seen sense and back-tracked and students who object to the Tillerson speech will be allowed back in.
Update at the link provided previously.