The Global Warming Naysayers, Part 2

This is a continuation of a previous post on the credentials of Delaware's "experts" who have signed the Oregon Petition denouncing the Kyoto treaty and denying the existence of global warming. Looking back on the research I did on that post, it's obvious that many of these folks seem to have ties to one another, making it look rather as if somebody printed out a bunch of these petitions and brought them to meetings or passed them out to their friends. Or just signed 'em all up without asking. The main groups represented are UD's Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) dept. and DuPont chemists, as well as a smattering of folks who seem to work together at smaller firms. In the first part of the list, there are also a couple of women who share a last name with a man on the list but have no credentials of their own anywhere, which leads me to believe they signed because their husbands did, but have no particular expertise of their own except for the ability to join the Junior League, play contract bridge and make donations to Republican candidates, since those were the only kinds of records I was able to find for them.

Since there seemed to be an overabundance of old guys in the "A though G" section of the list, I decided to track their ages for this post. I was able to find the ages of 27 of the 30 individual signers listed here; wonder of wonders, I found that the average signer researched in this section is 73 years old! Now, obviously these folks are intelligent and undoubtedly know a lot about their chosen fields, but I somehow doubt that all of these retired DuPont chemists and engineers have devoted their golden years to keeping up with the latest cutting-edge studies of climate change.

That said, we pick up our list with the H's:

• Chin-Pao Huang, PhD - Dr. Huang teaches in the Civil and Environmental Engineering dept. at UD and lists his interests as "Industrial wastewater management; aquatic chemistry;soil and groundwater remediation; environmental nanomaterials and processes."Age 67.
• Robert G. Hunsperger, PhD - with UD's electrical and computer engineering dept. researching photonic and microwave devices and circuits. Has also collaborated with UDs CEE dept, which is the field many other DE signers specialize in. 64 years old.
• Mir Nazrul Islam, PhD - cites a permanent address in Newark but currently lives in Panama, where he is President of Mir Agro-Industriales, S.A. Panama, a company devoted to the development of food and pharmaceutical industries geared to aging and degenerative disease. Age 50
• Harold Leonard Jackson, PhD - Dupont chemist with patents as early as 1975 and late as 1992. Age 86
• Vladislav J. Jandasek - DelDot engineer, retired. Age 69
• Paul R. Jann - Air Quality Consultant, DuPont Engineering and Technology Section. There is at least one letter from Mr. Jann to DNREC's Air Quality Management section  objecting to a proposed regulation, saying "this regulation will cause financial hardship on small businesses, commercial and institutional facilities, as well as R&D facilities that operate electrical generators and, by this regulation, are required to burn more expensive low-sulfur fuels, install high cost emissions controls that may or may not be able to achieve the proposed emission limits, perform expensive source emission testing, and comply with extensive record-keeping and reporting requirements." I'm sure he's completely impartial on the question of global warming, though.. Age 65
• George K. Janney - only record is a listing of his address in Newark that lists his job as "Dog Gone Geese," and a lawsuit where he sued a property management company for mismanaging a rental property. No professional references anywhere. No age.
• Charles S. Joanedis - retired vice president of Getty Refining & Marketing Co. Hmm, don't suppose there's a bit of bias there, do you? Also made donations to UD's chemical engineering program. 83 years old.
• John Eric Jolley, PhD - another retired DuPont chemical engineer, 80 years old
• Louise Hinrichsen Jones, PhD - another (probably former) UD computing department member. Published a paper on microcomputing in 1973. There's also a Louise Hinrichsen Jones who's received $126,000 worth of federal subsidies in the last 15 years for raising corn and soybeans in Ohio, so I'm confused unless she retired and literally "bought the farm." Age 80.
• Robert John Kallal, PhD - there's a Robert Kallal in his 80's living in Hockessin who's received USDA farm subsidies, and there's a Robert Kallal who wrote about computer languages in the mid-90's. Age 88.
• Robert James Kassal, PhD - another DuPont chemist, age 73
• John T. Kephart - another DuPont engineer, age 84
• Charles A Kettner, PhD - another DuPont chemist, pharmaceuticals this time, age 63
• Charles O. King, PhD - the only Dr. Charles O. King I was able to find is a wealthy dermatologist in Alabama who makes a lot of donations.
• Joseph Jack Kirkland, PhD - another DuPont chemist, age 84
• Henry Kobsa, PhD - another DuPont engineer, age 79
• Theodore Augur Koch, PhD - another DuPont chemist, age 84.
• Robert F. Kock - no record of a Robert F. Kock in Delaware except as a petition signer
• Bruce David Korant, PhD  -- another Dupont employee, a biochemist this time, age 65
• Carl George Krespan, PhD -- another DuPont chemist, age 83
• Palaniappa Krishnan, PhD -- an associate professor in the University of DE's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Seems to specialize in computer modeling. A youngster at 56.
• Wo Kong Kwok, PhD - another DuPont employee, possibly specializing in contamination control, age 73
• Douglas R. Leach, PhD - another DuPont chemist, the baby on the list at age 54
• Bernard Albert Link, PhD - currently vice-president of Leads & Libraries at Athena Biotechnologies, a Newark firm that "provides chemicals and enzymes for pharmaceuticals, agrichemicals, and industrial and therapeutic enzyme markets." According to his bio, he "spent 26 years with DuPont in research, marketing and management positions."Age 69.
• Royce Zeno Lockart, PhD - another DuPont biochemist, age 81.
• Francis M. Logullo, PhD - in a 1996 bulletin board posting, he describes himself as a "Retired DuPont Regulatory Affairs Consultant." 70 years old.
• H. Y. Loken, PhD -- another Dupont employee, probably an engineer. Age 64.
• Rosario Joseph Lombardo, PhD -- only info I was able to find is that he graduated from Penn State in 1951, there's a Rosario J. Lombardo Scholarship in Engineering, and he's 87 years old.
• Ruskin Longworth, PhD - another Dupont chemist, age 82.

To be continued...

The Tea Party's "Grassroots"

Went and checked out the "Contract From America," which consists of 10 principles that the teabaggers have thankfully embraced, grateful to finally have principles to stand for as opposed to just hanging out being angry all the time. HuffPost reported that the principles were chosen by teabaggers who visited the Contract website and selected the ones they liked the best from a list. The question on my mind was "Who made up the list?" According to the website, this initiative represents "a grassroots-generated, crowd-sourced, bottom-up call for real economic conservative and good governance reform in Congress." So, supposedly this was all formulated by "real Americans" of the kind that Sarah Palin loves -- you know, those ordinary patriots with no political experience who have risen up to create this great grassroots movement to protest Obama and his socialist agenda. You know, call me cynical, but I'm just not so sure about that.

The "About Us" section of the site thanks several Tea Party Patriots from local chapters as being instrumental in getting the intitiative going, before going on to thank operatives from a number of organizations that the site lists as "Founding Partners."  Let's see who those "Founding Partners" are:

• Tea Party Patriots - According to SourceWatch, "TPP consists of a website (http://teapartypatriots.org), the ownership of which is masked by ProtectPrivacy, located in the Netherlands." There is no no staff listing or other information identifying any individual as responsible for the site. SourceWatch also states the group was founded not by ordinary patriots, but by FreedomWorks; according to SourceWatch, is still tightly controlled by that organization. A Facebook page listing its National Officers pushes Glenn Beck's 912 Project. One of these officers, Rob Neppell, is the owner of a privately-held new media corporation in California.  Another, Mark Meckler, bills himself as an "internet lawyer" and new media consultant, and moonlights as a GOP operative. A third, Jenny Beth Martin, is a former GOP operative who became a teabagger after she and her husband filed for bankruptcy when their temp agency went belly-up in 2008-- they owed the Feds half a million bucks, so they must have been doing pretty well before that. A fourth, Amy Kremer, left TPP for Tea Party Express, which the TPP regards as overly tied to the GOP. Martin and Kremer are both from Georgia, which is also where the TPP trademark was registered. Hmmm.. isn't that where Newt Gingrich is from?
• American Solutions - Speaking of Newt, he happens to be the founder and chairman of this group, which bills itself as a "citizens' action network." I thought that "Contract From America" title sounded familiar!
• Americans for Tax Reform - founded by Grover Norquist at the request of Ronald Reagan, according to their website. Norquist was also part of Iran/Contra, helped get George W. Bush elected, was a co-author of "Contract With America" along with Newt Gingrich, and served as a staffer on the GOP's Republican Platform Committee in 1988, 1992 and 1996.
• National Taxpayers Union -- group with heavy funding from Big Tobacco. Grover Norquist worked here before going on to found Americans for Tax Reform.
• Liberty Central -- founded by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' wife, Virginia
• The Liberty Lab -- one of several sites run by Scott W. Graves, another "new media and political communications" guru and head of an outfit called "Partisan Media Group." Really.
• Let Freedom Ring - Founded by the son of millionaire philanthropist John Templeton, recent projects include a documentary about the faith of George W. Bush, Sen. Rick Santorum and Sen. Zell Miller that the organization hopes will mobilize envangelicals to vote.
• FairTax - founded by three Houston multimillionaires who put up $1.5 million each as seed money.
• Regular Folk United -- founded by Lori Roman, whose previous jobs include stints as Executive Director of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Chief of Staff of the Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the U.S. Department of Education. ALEC pushes legislation that favours big business and rollbacks environmental regulations.
• The Heartland Institute - libertarian think tank founded by the millionaire owner of a Chicago investment securities firm
• The Next Right -- founded by Soren Dayton, best-known for getting fired from John McCain's presidential campaign for tweeting a link to a video linking Obama to Malcolm X; Jonathon Henke, who served as New Media Director for the Republican Senate caucus and Online Brand Manager for Fred Thompson's campaign; and Patrick Ruffini, a well-known Republican party new media strategist.
• TeaParty365 - the New York City branch of Tea Party Patriots.

Ya know, there's not actually a lot of plain ordinary folks on this list, are there? It amazes me how easily-led the teabaggers are -- a bunch of rich guys and GOP operatives have created their umbrella organization and now have written their guiding principles, and they still think not only that they're a grassroots organization, but that they actually control their own thoughts and actions. Amazing.