Quote:

---

James Delingpole reports at Breitbart:

Quote:

---

"Lying about climate change to advance the environmental agenda is a good idea, say two economists..." http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/04/04/Lying-About-Clima
te-Change-To-Advance-The-Green-Agenda-Is-Good-Says-Peer-Reviewed-Paper

---

http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/tag/fuhai-hong/

---

Quote:

---

[Update: Authors of paper claim "misrepresentation" by media.: The authors Fuhai Hong and Xiaojian Zhao sent out a note to members of the media which read in part: "Unfortunately, our points in the paper have been mis-interpreted and exaggerated by a few media. In the link below, please see our reply to the blog of Jayson Lusk. http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2014/3/6/information-manipulation-revisited - Hopefully, this link helps clarify our point. We never advocate lying on climate change."] http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/04/04/shock-peer-reviewed-paper-advoc
ates-information-manipulation-exaggeration-in-global-warming-debate-to-enhance-global-welfare-published-in-american-journal-of-agricultural-economics/

---

Quote:

---

You are singular sir. One of the smartest absolute fools I have ever come across. Rush is just a mean opportunistic prick; YOU actually seem to believe the shit you spew.

---

Quote:

---

Thanks Kiki, you're right; any further time wasted on this is just that, a waste...Obviusly now he's trolling, and since I just took a bit of time to debunk his latest lie, anything beyond that is feeding the troll...

---

Quote:

---

Any cite for where the authors say that is not what they wrote?

---

Quote:

---

The authors Fuhai Hong and Xiaojian Zhao sent out a note to members of the media which read in part: "Unfortunately, our points in the paper have been mis-interpreted and exaggerated by a few media. In the link below, please see our reply to the blog of Jayson Lusk. http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2014/3/6/information-manipulation-revisited - Hopefully, this link helps clarify our point. We never advocate lying on climate change." http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/04/04/shock-peer-reviewed-paper-advoc
ates-information-manipulation-exaggeration-in-global-warming-debate-to-enhance-global-welfare-published-in-american-journal-of-agricultural-economics/

---

Quote:

---

1. Our paper consists of two parts of messages, one positive (why there is media bias), while the other normative (what is the outcome of media bias). For the first part, media bias emerges as the unique perfect Bayesian equilibrium in our model. This provides an explanation on the phenomenon we observe from reality. Our abstract thus states that "This article provides a rationale for this tendency by using a modified International Environmental Agreement model with asymmetric information." By the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, rationale means "the reasons and principles on which a decision, plan, belief etc is based." Our "rationale" is essentially an explanation on why the media has incentives to accentuate or even exaggerate climate damage. It belongs to the approach of positive economics and is value neutral, up to this point.

2. Then we do have a "normative" analysis on the media bias. The main difficulty of the climate problem is that it is a global public problem and we lack an international government to regulate it; the strong free riding incentives lead to a serious under-participation in an IEA. We show that the media bias may have an ex post instrumental value as the over-pessimism from media bias may alleviate the under-participation problem to some extent. (In this sense, we are close to Dessi's (2008, AER) theory of cultural transmission and collective memory.) Meanwhile, we also address the issue of trust/credibility as people have Bayesian updating of beliefs in our perfect Bayesian equilibrium. We show that, ex ante (when there is uncertainty on the state of nature), the media bias could be beneficial or detrimental, due to the issue of credibility; as a result, the welfare implication is ambiguous.

---

Quote:

---

“It appears that news media and some pro-environmental organizations have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency by using a modified International Environmental Agreement (IEA) model with asymmetric information. We find that the information manipulation has an instrumental value, as it ex post induces more countries to participate in an IEA, which will eventually enhance global welfare. From the ex anteperspective, however, the impact that manipulating information has on the level of participation in an IEA and on welfare is ambiguous.” http://ajae.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/02/24/ajae.aau001.ab
stract

---

Quote:

---

Do you have a link to their article? If so, please share it.

---

Quote:

---

Does it disturb you that the media and others are lying about climate change facts to advance support for climate change action?

---

Quote:

---

Statisticians who analyzed the data found a distinct decades-long upward trend in the numbers, but could not find a significant drop in the past 10 years in either data set. The ups and downs during the last decade repeat random variability in data as far back as 1880. Saying there's a downward trend since 1998 is not scientifically legitimate, said David Peterson, a retired Duke University statistics professor and one of those analyzing the numbers. [Associated Press, 10/25/09 http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2009/13]

---

Quote:

---

The difference between climate variability and climate change is critical, not just for scientists or those engaging in policy debates about warming. Just as one cold snap does not change the global warming trend, one heat wave does not reinforce it. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the global average surface temperature has risen 1.33 degrees Fahrenheit. Evidence of global warming has been documented in widespread decreases in snow cover, sea ice and glaciers. The 11 warmest years on record occurred in the past 13 years. [The Washington Post, 3/21/09 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/20/AR2009
032003191.html]

---

Quote:

---

Even as man-made greenhouse gases exert a consistent pressure on the climate, trapping more heat close to the surface of our planet, surface temperatures from year to year will fluctuate depending on the naturally variable forces at work around the globe. In the early 1990s, the mass of sulfates blasted into the atmosphere by the eruption of the Mt. Pinatubo volcano reflected sunlight and counteracted much of the man-made warming effect for several years. In 1998 El Niño combined with the man-made effect to give us one of the warmest years ever.

Allowing for this variability, global warming theory does not posit a linear, year-to-year increase in temperatures. Nor does it say that harsh winter weather will simply end. What it does say is that increasing concentrations of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, with unchecked growth, will contribute a greater and greater warming influence on the world's climate. [NASA, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2/23/10 http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/201002_coldsnap/]

---

Quote:

---

The sun has powered almost everything on Earth since life began, including its climate. The sun also delivers an annual and seasonal impact, changing the character of each hemisphere as Earth's orientation shifts through the year. Since the Industrial Revolution, however, new forces have begun to exert significant influence on Earth's climate.

"For the last 20 to 30 years, we believe greenhouse gases have been the dominant influence on recent climate change," said Robert Cahalan, climatologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
[...]
Before the Industrial Age, the sun and volcanic eruptions were the major influences on Earth's climate change. Earth warmed and cooled in cycles. Major cool periods were ice ages, with the most recent ending about 11,000 years ago.

"Right now, we are in between major ice ages, in a period that has been called the Holocene," said Cahalan. "Over recent decades, however, we have moved into a human-dominated climate that some have termed the Anthropocene. The major change in Earth's climate is now really dominated by human activity, which has never happened before."
[...]
Unless we find a way to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning, the solar influence is not expected to dominate climate change. But the solar variations are expected to continue to modulate both warming and cooling trends at the level of 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.18 to 0.26 Fahrenheit) over many years. [NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center, 5/7/08 http://erc.ivv.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/solar_variability.
html]

---

Quote:

---

[BBC:] G -- There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global or not. If it were to be conclusively shown that it was a global phenomenon, would you accept that this would undermine the premise that mean surface atmospheric temperatures during the latter part of the 20th Century were unprecedented?

[JONES:]There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented.

We know from the instrumental temperature record that the two hemispheres do not always follow one another. We cannot, therefore, make the assumption that temperatures in the global average will be similar to those in the northern hemisphere.

--Jones: Cause Of Previous Warming Periods Differs From "Recent Warming," Which Is "Predominantly Manmade." During his Q&A with the BBC, Jones stated that "the warming rates" of previous warming periods after 1860 are "similar and not statistically significantly different" from the most recent warming period. Jones was later asked, "If you agree that there were similar periods of warming since 1850 to the current period, and that the MWP [Medieval warm Period] is under debate, what factors convince you that recent warming has been largely man-made?" Jones responded, "The fact that we can't explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing." He further stated that it would not be reasonable to conclude that "recent warming is not predominately manmade" from the evidence that there have been previous periods of warming since 1850.

--Jones: "There's Evidence That Most Of The Warming Since The 1950s Is Due To Human Activity." Jones was asked by the BBC, "How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?" Jones stated that "I'm 100% confident that the climate has warmed" and that "I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 -- there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity." As noted above, Jones also stated that "[t]he fact that we can't explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing" indicates that recent warming is manmade. [BBC News, 2/13/10 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm]

---

Quote:

---

Claims that the e-mails are evidence of fraud or deceit, however, misrepresent what they actually say. A prime example is a 1999 e-mail from [CRU director Phil] Jones, who wrote: "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." Skeptics claim the words "trick" and "decline" show Jones is using sneaky manipulations to mask a decline in global temperatures. But that's not the case. Actual temperatures, as measured by scientific instruments such as thermometers, were rising at the time of the writing of this decade-old e-mail, and (as we've noted) have continued to rise since then. Jones was referring to the decline in temperatures implied by measurements of the width and density of tree rings. In recent decades, these measures indicate a dip, while more accurate instrument-measured temperatures continue to rise.

Scientists at CRU use tree-ring data and other "proxy" measurements to estimate temperatures from times before instrumental temperature data began to be collected. However, since about 1960, tree-ring data have diverged from actual measured temperatures. Far from covering it up, CRU scientists and others have published reports of this divergence many times. The "trick" that Jones was writing about in his 1999 e-mail was simply adding the actual, measured instrumental data into a graph of historic temperatures. Jones says it's a "trick" in the colloquial sense of an adroit feat -- "a clever thing to do," as he put it -- not a deception. What's hidden is the fact that tree-ring data in recent decades doesn't track with thermometer measurements. [FactCheck.org, 12/10/09 http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/climategate]

---