When All Else Fails, Manipulate the Data

My wife received an email from Washington Conservation Voters. It goes like this:

Did you know that here in Washington, unlike many other states, we elect a Commissioner of Public Lands? Well, we do. And this year’s race is going to be a doozy!

Sign our petition to show your commitment to Washington Forests.

Four years ago, Washington Conservation Voters helped elect Commissioner Peter Goldmark, a rancher from Eastern Washington, who committed to cleaning up shabby logging practices in forests around Washington, protecting Puget Sound, and addressing the challenges that climate change is bringing to our region.

Apparently, Goldmark’s commitment to clean water and healthy forests has angered one man: Clint Didier.

Didier, a tea-party activist and ex-NFL player, has run unsuccessfully for office before and this year he is challenging Goldmark. He has made it very clear that protecting the environment is not one of his values.

You say tea-party activist like it's a bad thing! Tea parties simply want to re-acquaint American citizens with our government's founding principles. If you disagree with the founding principles, why don't you just admit it? We the People should be able to protect the environment voluntarily, without forfeiting our inalienable rights. But you and Goldmark want to force everyone to do what you happen to think is right, when there is considerable latitude for honest people to disagree about what the problems are, and what the right solutions are. In a free country, private citizens would make those decisions. Does that guarantee success? Better than government, it usually turns out. The screed continues:

• In fact, he has said, the only way to make forests sustainable is “if Man puts his footprint back in the forest.”1
• Shockingly, he believes that “science has been altered so as to make it (global warming) look like it is truly happening.”2
• He believes that trying to protect our state’s waterways from herbicides and pesticides is elitist.3

Wow. Denying climate change. Opposing a healthy Puget Sound. Clint Didier, your policies are too extreme for Washington! Sign our petition and add your name to a growing list of Washingtonian committed to protecting our water and forests.

Wow. You say "denier" like it's a bad thing! What you call "denial", I call "skepticism", and skepticism has been the fundamental truth-detector in science since the discipline was first invented. The burden of proof is on the accuser. That applies to forestry, global warming and stormwater runoff.

What's more, the science has been altered! The famous hockey stick graph was falsified and the data manipulated to present the illusion of a correlation between human industrial activity, CO2 and global warming. So the correlation is much weaker than the IPCC claims, and as any decent scientist knows, correlation does not imply causation. There is no experiment that you could run that can reproducibly and reliably prove causation for global warming, if it exists at all. Why do we have to keep debunking this fraudulent science? The email closes with:

Edie Gilliss
Political Director, Washington Conservation Voters

PS: As fires continue to rage in Central Washington, and throughout the west, we are thankful to have, in our highest environmental office, a man committed to addressing the realities of climate change, since science has shown the link between bigger and more frequent fires and climate change. Please sign our petition now.

1) July 14, 2012, Whatcom Freedom Rally. 7/14/2012. Youtube.
2) Ex-NFLer Clint Didier tackles Murray, and a lot more,” Joel Connelly, 1/11/2010, Seattle PI.
3) Angry Crowd Enlivens County Meeting,” by Mark St. J. Couhig, 9/28/2011, Sequim Gazette.

I will not sign your petition, and we would not be having nearly the problem with the fires if someone who truly understood what freedom and liberty means, was allowing knowledgeable citizens to to manage the forests intelligently and productively. Clint Didier understands what freedom truly means. Vote for Clint!