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Dennis Avery at the Hudson Institute pushed out a story the other day claiming that: “The atmospheric CO2 levels at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa observatory have declined since 2004.” He’s totally wrong and admitted he was, but has failed to correct this mistruth and now the story is bouncing around the right-wing media echo chamber.

Here’s the graph from the Mauna Loa observatory:

First off, how could Avery, who claims to be an “environmental economist” get this so wrong?

I’m not a scientist or an economist, but it seems to me that this graph is pretty darn clear. This is far from an innocent mistake and Avery is doing nothing to stop the echo machine. If Avery had any sense of ethics he would make sure that every single outlet who carried this blatant misrepresentation corrected him on the record.

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Matthew Reichbach of the New Mexico Centre for Independent Media contributes another name and another quote from scientists objecting to being added to the Heartland Institute's overcooked list of scientists who deny climate change.

"From what I can tell, the list was compiled mostly from reviewed scientific articles in which authors proposed or identified various sources of natural variability in climate; in my case solar irradiance and cosmic ray flux. I’m not sure of the intent of the compilation of 500 names, but the supplied information seems to suggest 500 authors have questioned human induced variability. This does not hold in my case and probably does not in the case of many others."

Roger Y. Anderson, University of New Mexico

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Here is a brief taste of some of the emails that have been flying this week to the Heartland Institute in protest over their distribution of a purported scientific paper that announces 500 Scientists with Documented Doubts about Man-Made Global Warming Scares.

Notwithstanding these requests - and many more, as well - as of 4 p.m. EST on Friday, May 2, 2008, the offending article remained on the Heartland website with the names all still attached. There is no apology, clarification or correction. It's as if Heartland President and CEO Joseph Bast just doesn't care about the accuracy of his output or the credibility of his organization ….

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We can now count the dead and the imaginary among the shrinking number of scientists in the Heartland Institute list of 500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares.

"Bond, G., Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory;" "Bradbury, J. Pratt, USGS;" and "Keeling, Charles D., Scripps Institute of Oceanography" are all deceased and therefore unable to join the chorus of legitimate scientists who are demanding that their names be removed from the list.

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UPDATE: we have received notes now from 45 outraged scientists whose names appear on the list of 500. We've published more quotes here.

Dozens of scientists are demanding that their names be removed from a widely distributed Heartland Institute article entitled 500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares.

The article, by Hudson Institute director and Heartland "Senior Fellow" Dennis T. Avery (inset), purports to list scientists whose work contradicts the overwhelming scientific agreement that human-induced climate change is endangering the world as we know it.

DeSmogBlog manager Kevin Grandia emailed 122 of the scientists yesterday afteroon, calling their attention to the list. So far - in less than 24 hours - three dozen of those scientists had responded in outrage, denying that their research supports Avery's conclusions and demanding that their names be removed.

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I view that the inclusion of my name in such a list without my permission or consensus has damaged my professional reputation as an atmospheric scientist."

Dr. Ming Cai, Associate Professor, Department of Meteorology, Florida State University.

Earlier today we broke the story about dozens of scientists outraged at the use of their good names in an article by Heartland Institute's "Senior Fellow" Dennis Avery (inset) posted on their website entitled 500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares.

The letters are pouring in from angry scientists, with over 45 scientists now demanding that there names be stricken from the list, some are going much further and threatening legal action.