JetStream is an “online weather school” hosted by the Southern Region Headquarters of the U.S. National Weather Service (part of the NOAA). Great idea – except one page reads used to read like something from Marc Morano or Ian Plimer, as discovered by Philip Machanick over at RealClimate.
Not only has the page in question contained misinformation since 2003, but someone inserted highly misleading statements about the temperature record in 2007, echoing a common contrarian confusion between the U.S. and global temperature record.
[Update, Nov. 3: The dubious CO2 lesson has been removed from the overall lesson plan, although it remains unchanged and no longer exists. It used to be #10 in the Atmosphere section, right after “Canned Heat”.
Update Nov. 11: The carbon dioxide lesson has been reinstated, with the previous misinformation removed from the discussion section.]
The JetStream website features a series of short pages on various topics, along with illustrative home experiments. It was started in 2003 and “is designed to help educators, emergency managers, or anyone interested in learning about weather and weather safety”.
The page in question is a “learning lesson” on carbon dioxide with the cute title of “It’s a gas, man”. The lesson describes a simple of home experiment to demonstrate the warming properties of carbon dioxide.
But the discussion section soon veers off into a surprising discussion of global warming (as seen in this early version from October 15, 2003).
It has been thought that an increase in carbon dioxide will lead to global warming. While carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been increasing over the past 100 years, there is no evidence that it is causing an increase in global temperatures.
In 1997, NASA reported global temperature measurements of the Earth’s lower atmosphere obtained from satellites revealed no definitive warming trend over the past two decades. In fact, the trend appeared to be a decrease in actual temperature.
The largest differences in the satellite temperature data were not from any man-made activity, but from natural phenomena such as large volcanic eruptions from Mt. Pinatubo, and from El Niño.
The behavior of the atmosphere is extremely complex. Therefore, discovering the validity of global warming is complex as well. How much effect will the increase in carbon dioxide will have is unclear or even if we recognize the effects of any increase.
Obviously, this is totally at odds with the scientific information to be found elsewhere on the NOAA. And the reference to the outdated satellite data from 1997 is truly bizarre.
Things got even stranger in 2007, when someone added the following passage (emphasis added):
In 1997, NASA reported global temperature measurements of the Earth’s lower atmosphere obtained from satellites revealed no definitive warming trend over the past two decades. In fact, the trend appeared to be a decrease in actual temperature. In 2007, NASA data showed that one-half of the ten warmest years occurred in the 1930’s with 1934 (tied with 2006) as the warmest years on record. (NASA data October 23, 2007 from http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt)
The 1930s through the 1950s were clearly warmer than the 1960s and 1970s. If carbon dioxide had been the cause then the warmest years would have understandably been in the most recent years. But that is not the case.
And that’s how it remains to this day.
This second passage appears to have been added by a fan of Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit. The NASA GisTemp data quoted is, of course, not even global data. It’s NASA’s U.S. surface data – the same data set in which McIntyre found a data collation error from 2000 on, necessitating an infinitesimal correction to NASA’s global temperature record. That incident also led Ian Plimer and Lorne Gunter to mistakenly declare that NASA had suddenly declared the 1934 to be the warmest year on record globally (one of many variations on the “global cooling since 1998” myth).
In a weird twist, whoever inserted this passage also created a copy of the data on the NOAA server.
A number of people have drawn the attention of the NWS to this problem. I’m betting that the misinformation will be gone this time tomorrow.
But explanations may take a while longer. I think a rogue employee may have been involved, but I suppose hackers can not be excluded (especially that last part).
Update Nov. 2: I wrote this morning to SRH Deputy Director Steven Cooper, advising him of the above situation:
… I would suggest immediately editing the page to remove all of the “discussion” passage (except the first paragraph). Of course, the removed material should be replaced with a simple statement summarizing the AGW scientific consensus. Shockingly, the misinformation has been in place since 2003, and maybe even from the start of JetStream. I thank you in advance for rectifying this problem immediately, so I can report it fixed at my blog. I would also appreciate a short explanation on how such a problem could have happened, and whether it was a rogue employee or a hacker (or some combmination).
Cooper is travelling this week but took the time to reply to me on his Blackberry. He has asked someone else to look into this, and promises to address the issue further upon his return to the office later this week.
Update Nov. 3: As noted above, the dubious lesson on carbon dioxide has been unlinked from the overall lesson plan but is still there. I presume it will be reinstated once it is fixed.
Update Nov 5: As noted in comments, there is a second version of the CO2 lesson. This version of JetStream was apparently copied from the original SRH version as part of NOAA Year of Science education project. I’ve written Bruce Moravchik, the NOAA contact for this education program, and he has already replied to the effect that the problem will be rectified as soon as possible.
Update Nov. 11: Steven Cooper has informed me that the carbon dioxide lesson has been reinstated, with the previous misinformation removed from the discussion section.
Deep Climate 
I am guessing a rogue employee. A hacker has bigger targets. Still very sad.
Fascinating another strange govt. associate website that has some interesting contrarian education options is the Vermont State Climatologist. A student working on a climate change in the Green Mountains noticed this. First link under understanding climate Fraser Institute.
http://www.uvm.edu/~ldupigny/sc/
>Fraser Institute
Amazing.
http://www.google.com/search?q=sourcewatch+Fraser+Institute
I just sent her an email and asked her why that link is there.
Two SourceWatch articles that I was quite involved with:
http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fraser_Institute
http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Independent_Summary_for_Policymakers
(They’re also on the sidebar).
The Fraser Institute “Understanding Climate Change” that Mauri Pelto points to is a “light” version of the Independent Summary for Policy Makers (co-ordinator: one Ross McKitrick). I’ve run across it before (yep, I read ’em all so you don’t have to).
DeepClimate,
you made Watts cry! 😀
It still exists at a different location:
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/yos/resource/JetStream/atmos/ll_gas.htm
One of the comments has a hat tip to this blog:
“It had to go. There was some resemblance to real scientific method and the questions were not rediculously biased. It needed to be replaced by propaganda like the childish rubbish we see at RC of Deep climate.”
Another one:
“Also the comments about the 1997 NASA report that satellite data showed no warming but rather a cooling was a surprise. Maybe someone at NASA and NOAA has good sense but not enough rank.”
One comment mentions the “low science coefficient”
It’s funny that they are all attacking the experiment as being obviously rubbish, yet the obviously rubbish statements about 1934 and the satellite record are given a pass. In fact one comment implies it makes “good sense”
Apparently they found another copy of the same set of lessons online at http://oceanservices.noaa.gov. You might let NOAA know about that one, too.
OT, the commenters there sure are dumb. I just lost about 1/2 of my life wading through the comments. Perhaps the worst one was one “P Wilson” who proudly proclaimed that if there is a greenhouse effect it only takes place in the first 15 meters of the atmosphere. Gawk!
I did not hear from the Vermont State Climatologist so I just fired a letter off to her Dept. Chair.
Well the experiment could be valid — just let the bottles cool to the same temp before exposing to the lamp. I’m pretty sure the Alka Seltzer reaction is exothermic.
I did a Google search for the file name of the Fraser Institute document titled Understanding Climate Change and discovered a few occurrences. One is listed at:
http://www.eeinwisconsin.org/net/content/go.aspx?s=68065.0.22.2209&mode=p
Environmental Education in Wisconsin site
Apparently, the Fraser Institute has sent this document to thousands of Canadian school teachers much like Heartland Institute’s Skeptic’s Handbook was sent to many here in the US. One of my biology colleagues even received one.
Anyway, I sent an email to EE Wisconsin to alert them.
I did let NOAA know about the second version of JetStream and the contact responsible has already responded to let me know that the problem will be fixed as soon as possible. See update above.
Environmental Education in Wisconsin just removed the Fraser Institute document. 🙂
Scott,
I did a similar search, and found a reference in the newsletter of the Canadian Embassy in Washington.
http://www.connect2canada.com/resources/newsletters.jhtml?id=31217
There are 30 plus references to the Fraser Institute in that newsletter over the past while, and only one to the Suzuki Foundation. Sounds about right for our Conservative government.
Might blog about this some time if I can get the time (sigh).
mspelto wrote on Nov 2:
Hank Roberts wrote on Nov 2:
SourceWatch states regarding the Fraser Institute:
Five out of six of these foundations are on my list:
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Inc.
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/index.php?mapid=1469
27 organizations on the Exxon list have received $100,000 or more from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation from 1985-2005. The grand total given by the foundation to these 27 organizations for this period is $64,707,196. Strongly libertarian.
*
Aggregated Grants of Scaife Foundations
Includes: Scaife Family Foundation, Carthage Foundation, Allegheny Foundation and Sara Scaife Foundation
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/index.php?mapid=1468
For the period from 1985 to 2006… 41 organizations in the ExxonSecrets database, $121,418,540. Big time funders of the religious right as well as libertarian causes.
*
Aggregated Grants from the Charles G. Koch, David H. Koch, and Claude R. Lambe Foundations
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/index.php?mapid=1467
20 organizations in the ExxonSecrets database for have received $100,000 or more from the Koch/Lambe foundations from 1986-2004. Total given: $36,815,538. Major funders of the religious right as well as libertarian causes.
John M. Olin Foundation belongs to history, however, as it closed its doors in 2005.
The Fraser Institute link still appears on the VT State Climatologist Home Page despite several emails from me to her and her Chair and a phone conversation with her Chair.
The link was put there by Dr. Lupigny because, in her own words, “The document was chosen for its explanation of the key elements of the climate system.”
I was also told that the site is in redesign by a student and “that my concerns will be addressed in the new design.”
Of course, Dr. Lupigny never told me why the link was there in the first place. It also takes a few seconds to remove a link yet it remains.
I have contacted the Univerity of Vermont President and also two officials at NCDC. I will keep you updated.
As I have read more about Fraser Institute, I get angrier and angrier. Do you folks realize that the Fraser Institute actually sends out climate change lesson plans to school teachers? Check out this propaganda:
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/researchandpublications/publications/6819.aspx
As noted above, Steven Cooper has informed me that the carbon dioxide lesson has been reinstated, with the previous misinformation removed from the discussion section.
Scott Mandia wrote:
Here is a taste of what has Scott steamed: a few excerpts from the fifth lesson plan of the publication which even purports to teach students about the scientific method…
Introduction to Lesson 5:
Reminds me of a textbook by the title, “Of Pandas and People: the central question of biological origins” put out by the Discovery Institute.
Thanks to Scott and Timothy for further digging on the Fraser Institute’s “Understanding Climate Change”.
The original publication was by Nicholas Schneider and was based on Ross McKitrick’s ISPM, as I noted above.
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/researchandpublications/publications/5183.aspx
What Scott has uncovered (as elaborated by Timothy) is a lesson plan resource based on Schneider’s work. It was published last June, and is presumably hitting schools for the first time this fall.
This seems to be classroom propaganda aimed at discrediting climate science and suggesting that other global problems are much more pressing.
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/researchandpublications/publications/6819.aspx
The acknowledgments include recognition of support from one Michael Chernoff.
Chernoff is a geologist who struck it big in oil exploration in Ecuador. After a series of buyouts, he became a major shareholder in Encana, Canada’s largest oil and gas company.
Chernoff is best known in recent years for his attempt to distribute Martin Durkin’s “Great Global Warming Swindle” film to British Columbia schools as a counterweight to Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”.
There are of course other documented links between Encana and the Fraser Institute.
I’m preparing my next blog post on all this, so I’ll ask you to hold off on commenting until it’s up later today.
Timothy what is the Exxonsecrets database. Scott thanks for your doggedness with respect to VT.
If you want a break from the battle and just want the science, the weak underbelly article at realclimate will be just that.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/is-pine-island-glacier-the-weak-underbelly-of-the-west-antarctic-ice-sheet/
Deep Climate wrote:
Anything that I can do to be of service — all you have to do is ask…
mspelto wrote:
Exxon Secrets is an interactive online database with Flash GUI put together by Greenpeace for tracking Exxon’s funding of the denialist network. They keep track of all the organizations, how much Exxon has funded them over the years, the people who belong to a given organization, the organizations that a given individual belongs to, biographical data, historical data, quotes, sources, etc.. And they let you map out your own diagrams based upon the relationships you find in the database.
Ealier I listed some foundations and how much they had given to organizations in Exxon’s denialist network. However, the foundations give to other causes, so I took the list of organizations a given foundation had given money to, cross-checked it against the list of organizations that are in the Exxon Secrets database, then added up the amounts that the foundations had given to only the organizations that are in the database. Media Transparency gave me the original list of organizations a given foundation had given money to. They also gave me the amounts that the foundation gave to those organizations. (The website for Media Transparency is currently down, but you can find the urls of its webpages using Google, then look those webpages up in http://www.ar chive.org.)
As such, I was able to create a diagram using the Exxon Secrets database like so:
Aggregated Grants of Scaife Foundations
Includes: Scaife Family Foundation, Carthage Foundation, Allegheny Foundation and Sara[h] Scaife Foundation
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/index.php?mapid=1468
This shows all of the organizations and includes all individuals in the database that belong to two or more of the organizations in the network of denialist organizations the foundation gave money to.
*
mspelto wrote:
Trust me, I am fascinated by the science, particularly with what is taking place with glaciers and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. I have been reading the post as well as the comments, but I try not to contribute too much unless I actually have something of value to say.
Timothy, do you know if Dr. Douglas Leahey (President of FOS) has ties with the FF industry?
I’m curious to know how “Friends” of Science can pay for two radio ads in all major urban centres across Canada for an entire month.
I smell a rat.
Go to desmogblog for more information on their absurd ad campaign.
ML,
Most visible members of Friends of Science are retired geologists or engineers with a background in the oil industry.
The latest radio ad campaign was announced back in July as described in this post:
As I mention there, past funding for Friends of Science projects came from oil and gas companies and various foundations funneled through Science Education Fund at the Calgary Foundation. Those projects included the contrarian video “Climate Catastrophe Cancelled” and an anti-Kyoto (and anti-Liberal) radio ad campaign targeted at key Ontario ridings during the 2005-6 federal election.
It seems likely that some money that same source is still finding its way to FoS, especially their joint projects with the Frontier Centre.
More on Friends of Science at Sourcewatch:
http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Friends_of_Science
Desmogblog’s Kevin Grandia on the new cross-Canada radio ad campaign:
http://desmogblog.com/friends-science-ads-are-wrong-and-should-be-pulled
Thanks DC, so can’t they be audited? Is FOIP an option? If other groups have to openly disclose their funding sources, FOS should be accountable to, although they do have a history of money laundering, so that might prove challenging.
FOS (i.e., Doug Leahey) is now also trying to dictate and manipulate CMOS policy on global warming….FOS do not play fair and have no shame.
MapleLeaf wrote:
I am not sure that I will be telling you anything you don’t already know.
Neither Doug Leahey or Friends of Science show up in Exxon Secrets.
SourceWatch has a fairly good writeup on http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Friends_of_Science“>Friends of Science with hyperlinks to material on various members.
DesmogBlog tied FOS to oil companies back in 2006. Please see:
12 August 06
Oil Companies Funding Friends of Science, Tim Ball takes the brunt
http://www.desmogblog.com/oil-companies-funding-friends-of-science
… but at this point DesmogBlog doesn’t have a great deal on Leahey — although many of the others at FOS are well-known and well-connected to fossil fuel interests. One article ties him to “Bercha Group, an Alberta Oil and Gas Consulting firm” which calls him an “independent consultant to the oil and gas industry.”
Please see:
9 June 06
Dr. Doug Leahey: Do any of the Friends of Science not lead back to oil and gas?
http://www.desmogblog.com/dr-doug-leahy-do-any-of-the-friends-of-science-not-lead-back-to-oil-and-gas
The webpage they refer you to:
http://www.berchagroup.com/about_us/about_us-team.htm
… shows the Bercha Group refering to him as one of their experts.
Bercha also has a long list of fossil fuel companies as clients…
http://www.berchagroup.com/about_us/about_us-clients.htm
However, the funding that goes to FOS sometimes gets funneled:
The above article continues:
Looking at the pdf of the audit, it states at one point:
Looking at the SourceWatch article entry for APCO Worldwide, we see that it was heavily involved in the defense of tobacco, and that:
… and naturally enough, there are some interesting pdfs on APCO, TASSC and their relationship with Philip Morris on the web nowadays. See for example:
… and:
Friends of Science was created in 2002, nine years after The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition was created by Apco as a front group for Philip Morris. And Friends of Science is getting “billed” by Apco through University of Calgary accounts. Looks to me like Friends of Science may be a front organization dreamt up by Apco in the same manner as TASSC.
FOS’ earliest webpage (at least according to the WaybackMachine) is October of 2002.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.friendsofscience.org
… and by November of that year they are already working with Apco Worldwide in a press conference:
But who are the oil interests? Leahey came in late, and and unfortunately the 2006 audit at the University of Calgary left out that detail, but I suspect either Tim Ball or Apco know who is playing the role of Philip Morris this time around.
ML,
The best bet is pressure from the media. If you read the Friends of Science background info I pointed to, you’ll see that a lot of revelations came from the Globe and Mail in 2006, and several articles by Mike de Souza of CanWest last year.
I’m working on developing a new Alberta media contact and I hope I can get someone to start asking the right questions in front of a larger audience. I don’t think FOIP is an option with Alberta based societies or foundations (although it was an option for the University of Calgary, when they were involved).
The CMOS connection (Canadian Meterology and Oceanography Society) is interesting.
It’s worth mentioning too that I’m working on a response to the U of C audit mentioned by Timothy Chase. That audit and the closure of the U of C research fund followed a year or so of my correspondence with the U of C as documented at SourceWatch (I wrote 90% plus of that article). The report will shed some light on the early days of FoS, including new details about its early funding.
FoS is just coming out of a quiescent period and has been on the move again with the Monckton tour and new radio ad campaign. The timing is of course related to the upcoming U.N. climate conference. I’m reasonably certain that at least some of their funding is coming via the Frontier Centre and ultimately the Calgary Foundation, but until there is public, media and political pressure on these organizations to be more forthcoming, not much will be revealed.
DC and Timothy,
Thank you both for looking into this. You rock.
FOS, funded the Monckton tour?! OMG. These guts are rolling in it. I know for a fact that there is no way that any other group which represents a scientific discipline or disciplines (CMOS for example) would have that kind of money. Someone with deep pockets has very clearly started giving them money in the last six months or so to prepare FOS for Copenhagen.
I have Leahey’s email should you wish to ask him some questions in private. Is there a way of sharing that information without making it public? Then again, Timothy probably knows more than anyone here on FOS. Great detective work Timothy! We are clearly dealing with a malicious group here (FOS) and they need to be exposed for the frauds that they are.
Thanks again for the time and effort, much appreciated.
MapleLeaf — actually I did a little bit of digging and then didn’t want all the material to go to waste. Personally I think FOS is another brainchild (like TASSC) of Apco.
But honestly, I had little more than heard the name “Friends of Science” a few times before today. Deep Climate is a bit more familiar with them. And what he has said about Frontier Centre for Public Policy and the Calgary Foundation, well, I can see they are important in Canada, but they aren’t coming up in the lists of organizations funded by the major foundations I listed earlier today — which means there are some major elements I am missing.
Besides, whatever digging I do is pretty much dependent upon what others have done and made available on the web — and I am strictly amateur. Sounds like DC has been strongly involved in SourceWatch for a while.
I regard SourceWatch as fairly reliable — about as reliable as you can get with stuff on the web. At the same time, it always pays to check the references — particularly with decentralized, volunteer-based, Wikipedia-like approaches.
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The revised NOAA page still has this:
Summer Safety Rules
Help reduce additional heat to the atmosphere by following the following conservation measures:…
That would be good advice for advising heatstroke if they made it clear they were advising how not to make the house any warmer. But the amount of “heat” added to “the atmosphere” is trivial whether in summer or winter. This page still needs more help.
Giving information about the quantity of heat produced from human activity versus the amount of heat captured by the greenhouse effect would make this less misleading.
Hank,
I agree the page still needs a lot of work. The “summer safety” tips don’t make sense in the context of AGW and CO2, although energy conservation is always a good idea. The “additional heat to the atmosphere” line just makes it worse.
I meant to point this part out to NOAA too, but I forgot. I’ll follow up …
I think the NOAA strategy right now is to remove misinformation quickly and then go back later and add some relevant information.