Climate Science Legal Defense Fund Needs Your Help!

I'd like to pass along the following public service announcement. 

Please if you can help can, do help, 

because the denialists are getting nastier by the minute.

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Climate Science Legal Defense Fund Needs Your Help!

The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) was launched in January 2012 by Scott Mandia and Joshua Wolfe to provide valuable legal resources to our climate scientists who are in need. CSLDF needs your help.

CSLDF needs to raise $80,000. The great news is that philanthropist Charles Zeller has graciously offered to MATCH the first $40,000 that is raised and philanthropist Peter Cross has offered to put up the first $10,000. This means CSLDF already has the first $20,000 of the $80,000 goal. We need YOU to help CSLDF reach its goal.

For the previous two years, CSLDF has been managed by Scott and Josh  “from their kitchens” They both have full-time jobs and families with small children and neither receives compensation for their time. Scott and Josh have accomplished much over the years on a part-time basis. To date, CSLDF has:

·       Raised litigation fees to help Dr. Michael Mann defend climate science from politically-motivated witch-hunts. 

·       Provided resources to legal experts from PEER so they could offer free legal advice to scientists at professional conferences. 

·       Offered legal counsel to scientists hit with frivolous Freedom of Information Act requests. 

·       Provided legal workshops to scientists at professional conferences. 

·       Offered a series of legal education webinars partnering with American Geophysical Union (AGU).

But now it is time to “go professional” and that is where you can help. $80,000 can move the organization to this next level. CSLDF will use your tax-deductible donations to hire a full-time Executive Director who will manage the day to day operations of providing legal help to our experts as well as increasing fundraising efforts. Having the full-time professional helps to assure that CSLDF will be there for our scientists years down the road. After all, climate change is not going anywhere and the sad fact is that neither will the legal attacks on our scientists.

Donations are tax-deductible and can be sent by visiting the CSLDF website at climatesciencedefensefund.org and clicking the Donate button. Donations are sent to our fiscal sponsor PEER but are earmarked for CSLDF. Through PEER, a private non-profit organization organized under Section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue code, your contribution will be tax deductible.

You can also send a check made out to PEER, with Climate Science LDF on the memo line, to support effort to help scientists defend themselves:

Climate Science Legal Defense Fund

c/o PEER

2000 P Street, NW #240

Washington, D.C. 20036

International donors can use PayPal. Send to info@peer.org as the recipient and put CSLDF in the subject line of your payment.

Marcia McNutt's ill-considered endorsement of Keystone XL Pipeline

Looking more like Mordor than planet earth - Canadian tar sands mines larger than Greater Manchester dominate the landscape next to the Athabasca River, with no proven way to reclaim the boreal forest. Oil sands are a mixture of bitumen and sand. The province of Alberta has proven reserves of 174 billion barrels of oil, second in size only to Saudi Arabia. (WWF)

Credit: © Rezac / WWF-UK Source: WWF-UK

This image comes from an article that documents how Anthony Watts and friends blatantly misquotes and lies about what scientists have said.

http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/03/hansen-this-is-game-over-and-anthony.html?

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Skeptical Science has published a story that takes Science Magazine's Editor-in-Chief, Marcia McNutt to task for her endorsement of the XL Pipeline.  In the process Andy Skuce has produced a concise review of the many reasons why this pipeline needs to be stopped.  It's something worth passing around, so thanks to their generous sharing policy, I'm reposting it here.

For myself, from the beginning the entire XL tar sands seemed a project out of touch with down to Earth realities.  The amount of land, wildlife, biosphere, fresh sweet water and fossil fuels that needs to be consumed (and destroyed) during the production of this alternate fossil fuel is something that could only be justified within a system run by people completely addicted to profits über alles, folks who possess a complete disregard, if not total oblivion, to the life support system that is our biosphere… and that we humans desperately need to stop destroying, if for no better reason than our own lives depend on it's health !  

But, I better stop and let Andy Skuce take it from here.

Posted on 3 March 2014 by Andy Skuce

The Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine is wrong to endorse Keystone XL (via Skeptical Science)

Posted on 3 March 2014 by Andy Skuce An editorial by the Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine, Marcia McNutt, conditionally endorses the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline. Her argument is that: the absence of the pipeline has not stopped oil sands development…

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