Heaven is high, and the emperor far away. The ever credulous Anthony Watts reports roving Heartland Institute Ambassador S. Fred Singer, former science advisor to noted oriental potentate & Washington Times publisher Reverend Moon
has been dispatched to Beijing to present a puzzled Chinese academics with a translation of Heartland's downmarket parody of an IPCC report. :
Heartland’s NIPCC report to be accepted by Chinese Academy of Sciences in special ceremony
Posted on June 12, 2013 by Anthony WattsA little Rectification of Names seems in order, because Heartland is trying to pass off this staged event as an endorsement of the bogus report by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Note: I’ve been aware of this effort being underway for sometime, and I’m happy to be able to report it today. The fact that the Chinese undertook the effort speaks volumes. – AnthonyHere is the Heartland press release from their website:The Chinese Academy of Sciences in June 2013 translated and published a Chinese edition of Climate Change Reconsidered and Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report, two hefty volumes containing more than 1,200 pages of peer-reviewed data on climate change originally published by The Heartland Institute in 2009 and 2011.The two books present a sweeping rebuttal of the findings of the United Nations’ controversial Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose reports were widely cited as the basis for taking action to stop or slow the advance of climate change. More recently, the IPCC has been surrounded by controversy over lapses in its quality control and editorial bias.The Chinese Academy of Sciences is the world’s largest academy of sciences, employing some 50,000 people and hosting more than 350 international conferences a year. Membership in the Academy represents the highest level of national honor for Chinese scientists.
The wheeze works like this. As a very emeritus Professor Singer has long preyed upon academic courtesy by asking universities to invite him to speak. Many oblige him on the strength of his 1984 thesis that the Earth captured the Moon , a theory that so fascinated Reverend Moon that he made Singer The Washington Times' Science Guy. This academic schmoozing led to a deal with a Chinese university press of sorts , the Lanzhou branch of the National Science Library, to translate parts of the 800 page anthology Heartland paid Singer $100,000 to concoct.
The reality is that the Chinese Academy of Science has nothing whatever to do with this book, and that the launch party isnt even at Beijing's University of Chinese Academy of Science, which in any event no more speaks for the prestigeous Chinese Academy than the American University in Beirut represents America's National Academy of Science.
The CAS views on climate forcing are so antithetic to the report that its authors might as well have claimed Royal Society endorsement by hiring the Academy of St. Martin In the Fields to sing it aloud, on the grounds that it's an Academy, and its royal warrant is as good as the RS's down the road.
University and academic library presses provide translation services for all comers, including think tanks fronting for PR firms (such as Mrs. Fred Singer's- she's a registered lobbyist and former Moon employee as well) but Heartland's latest chinese fire drill recalls Reverend Moon at his most delusional - he once had himself crowned King of Peace in the Capitol building.
This just in:The Chinese Academy of Sciences is not amused.
It has issued a formal démarche, and demanded a retraction from The Heartland Institute and its minions:
To which rescript, Heartland President Joe Bast has kowtowed thus :
Somewhere in China , a fatted duck is breathing easy--the link to Heartland's launch party, not as Watts reports, at the Academy, or the University, but a hired hotel banquet room, has been taken down.