by Judith Curry
Peter Gleick Admits to Deception in Obtaining Heartland Files
Check it out at Dot Earth, HuffPo.
I don’t even know how to react to this, I’ll sleep on it.
Can’t sleep.
Gleick on integrity:
- A brief lesson in the integrity of science
- Climate Change and the Integrity of Science, Again
- AGU’s new task force on scientific integrity and ethics begins
- Threats to the integrity of science: congressional testimony
I even referenced his testimony in my uncertainty monster paper.
My first interaction with Gleick was he invited me to speak in an AGU session that he was organizing on the integrity of science, my presentation can be found here.
He has made it known to me via email that he has been displeased with my “behavior.” I seem to have gotten his goat to have been mentioned in the fake Heartland strategy doc (hard to believe that he didn’t write this).
The irony of it all, this coming from a scientist that has made a particular point about integrity and written many essays and even testified to congress on the subject.
This is yet another example of ethics being over-ridden by passion for a cause.
Wow! I have been traveling today and had the impression the UN’s IPCC, the UK’s RS, the US NAS and all of the research agencies they control (NASA, DOE, etc) were going to ride out the Climategate storm!
This breaking news may mark the beginning of the restoration of integrity in government science, the return of constitutional government, and make the next election worthwhile!
Thank you, thank you, thank you Professor Curry and all of the others who helped produce this breaking news!
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
Ii is my understanding that Dr. Peter Gleick is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences who gave the keynote address at the 2011 Sustainability Summit at UC-Berkley.
The BBC dubbed a Dr. Gleick a “visionary on the environment.”
http://www.pacinst.org/about_us/staff_board/gleick/
Below is his complete testimony three months ago before the US Senate Subcommittee on Water and Power of the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources:
http://www.pacinst.org/publications/testimony/new_national_water_policy.pdf
Oliver thanks for these links
It is also an example of MSM “science” mavens’ failure to acknowledge their own culpability in the dissemination of claims they have failed to verify before publishing.
How often have they unquestioningly taken the word of a Gleick, a Mann, an IPCC press release … and any and all who are on the side of these noble saviours of the planet, simply because A Climate Scientist Said So!?
But it should be noted that Gleick even uses his “confession” to repeat his baseless claims about the evil forces of darkness! But he was driven to his acts by “frustration”. Oh, the poor little lamb!
You’d think that he would have come clean before now – rather than silently letting his “15” friends make fools of themselves. It’s almost as if he was hoping against hope that the silly “Open Letter” from the gang of 7 luminaries would divert attention from the increasingly mounting evidence of his self-inflicted wounds.
Heartland had initially indicated that the legitimate documents had been obtained by an individual impersonating a board member. In light of the piece in the American Spectator – in which Gleick was specifically named as a prime suspect – my guess would be that HI had succeeded in tracing the “fingerprints” of the impersonator and that someone, on HI’s behalf, confronted Gleick with the facts.
Ergo, he had left himself with no exit – except to come (at least partially) clean.
Does Dr. Peter Gleick have any association with UC-Berkeley now?
Was he involved with the 2011 Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) report on global temperatures?
NO involvement of Gleick with BEST
Thanks, Professor Curry.
From the last page ( p. 23) of Dr. Peter H. Gleick’s testimony before the US Senate on 8 Dec 2011:
He . . . “played a leading role in highlighting the risks to national and international security from conflicts over shared water resources . . . produced some of the earliest assessments of the connections between water and political disputes . . . briefed major international policymakers ranging from the Vice President and Secretary of State of the United States to the Prime Minister of Jordan on these issues . . . testified regularly for the U.S. Senate, House of Representatives, and state legislatures, and briefed international governments and policymakers.”
Dr. Peter H. Gleick became a major player in the unfolding story of power politics and global climate science that started corrupting US government science in ~1971 and ended the Apollo program and the nuclear arms race:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/Climategate_Roots.pdf
Peter
Surely that is the factor that underpins much of life and politics? Climate science is no exception to an over riding passion, although I would like to believe that the most extreme forms are limited to a few top level climate science evangelists.However those few are very influential and speak very loudly.
Gleickgate and Climategate. How many further gates need to be opened before our politicians start to wonder if the climate advice they are being given should be heeded?
tonyb
Hmmm – Peter Gleick twitter silence for a few days – time for ‘semi plausible explanation’?
I wonder if the 2 documented events below, just priot to this, pushed him possibly into a rash action.
ie the style and forbes connection and other feature, make him a candidate for the ‘fake now’ I must accept.
Peter had accused me of being ‘incredibly offensiv’e on twitter (ie i thought my followers would mean like the vile abuse Katie Hayhoe had receieved.’
And it TOOK THREE climate scientists, Dr Tamsin Edwards, Prof Richard Betts (met Office, IPCC), AND Prof Katie Hayhoe herself to get him to back down..
in the email exchanges (published with permission) that followed Peter Gleicks thoughts about me, his worldview to ‘sceptics’ and his attitude to Dr Tamsin Edwards is very enlightening. ..
http://www.realclimategate.org/2012/02/clarifications-and-how-better-to-communicate-science/
What started this is Peter took issue with Dr Edwards blog name, where he pulled the senior scientist card (rather assertively, because some sceptics liked it (me) and it should be said UK climate scientists liked it as well!
http://allmodelsarewrong.com/all-blog-names-are-wrong/
This made me wonder, a bit, just after Heartland..
http://twitter.com/PeterGleick/status/169574788069720065
The cold logic of “The ends justify the means” at work.
It differs from the “logic” invoked in defense of the climategate thieves, how exactly?
“Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!”
Yes, only it wasn’t the first time that Gleick tried to deceive, was it? We have the phony Amazon book review of a book he clearly hadn’t read, just for starters. And the beat goes on. He uses his “confession” to attempt to perpetuate another batch of untruths.
Limited Hangout.
Classic propaganda technique.
Behold now, Gleik is a martyr for the cause, dontchaknow? Al Gore’s PR machine is helping him undo his “mistake”. And he’s being praised by part of the blogosphere. I’m trying hard not to puke.
It would be easy to feel sorry for Gleick but he has been pretty unkind to some people in the past. Just a bit too rabid for his own good.
Noble Cause Corruption at work.
“Nobel” Cause Corruption, perhaps?
Good one!
Gleick can’t help but put in his bit about AGW. The AGW conjecture is basd on the concept of “backradiation” from the atmosphere somehow increasing the rate of warming of the surface in the morning and decreasing the rate of cooling in the evening. Each would require the addition of thermal energy which would be the equivalent of a heat transfer from cold to hot.
Does the energy in radiation from a cooler layer of the atmosphere get converted to thermal energy when it strikes a warmer point on the surface which is already being warmed by the Sun at, say, 11am somewhere?
If it does, then this means there is a heat transfer from that cooler layer to that warmer point on the surface at that time, thus violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
If it doesn’t (as I say) then the Second Law is not violated and there is absolutely no radiative Greenhouse effect because there is no way in which such radiation can affect the temperature of the surface unless it is converted to thermal energy.
This really is fairly elementary physics well covered in upper levels of undergraduate courses throughout the world.
.
What has this to do with the topic?
The laws of thermodynamics apply to the whole system and can be easily broken when you only look at one small part of the system. Amazing how some people don’t understand basic Physics. Enough said.
Comment #2 at dotearth:
“Peter Gleick is standing up for the nobility of science. He deserves support for doing so. It is the abject failure of many too many scientists to stand up for what they believe to be real and true about the global predicament facing humankind that is unacceptable and pernicious. The silence of so many scientists has allowed the ideological idiocy Peter has exposed to triumph over science for way too long. At this moment, I want to salute Peter Gleick. That scientists follow his example is long overdue. Peter, thanks for standing up and speaking out so loudly and clearly.”
Now we know how this will be spun, Gleick will become a hero or a martyr or something.
Saw that one. Disgusting. The faithful are surely blind.
Read DeSmogBlog for puking session.
Take bags with you. Lots.
What he has become for me is a person without integrity.
He’s a poster-boy for fanaticism.
I hope Gleick takes many of this type of “scientist” down with him as he goes.
Anybody with any sense will run a million miles from this guy.
The martyrs of fools are history’s despots
Dr. Curry,
It’s going to be a spectacle of course. Should I list Peter Gleick as an “advocate” or a Green/Left-wing/AGW Zealot? What do you think is most appropriate or should we assume it’s mostly about the “science” debate itself?
Not that this is a political thing, so don’t misread, but there are plenty of people who worship at the alter of Che Guevara, and, despite the horrific things he did, hold him up as a cultural hero. In that respect, making Gleick a hero for this is not really that disturbing, is it??? ;-)
Aw man, well I was going to say “Tu Quoque doesnt work”, but you surely put a smile on my face. Yeah, well life goes on!
How Comrade Bill Ayers and his wife who helped launch the Obama career? Both tied to murder for the cause;
http://www.conservapedia.com/William_Ayers
“How about Comrade Bill Ayers”……correction.
And please do not forget that scientists are encouraged to steal and, well, do just about anything if it is done against the “ideological idiocy Peter has exposed.” Vladimir Ilyich Lenin would be so proud.
What a bunch of craps! These AGW people are really shameless to beyond belief!
Go have a look at DeSmogBlog. They’re running around high-fiving each other. Even after Gleick’s admission, they still think this is all a huge victory over the Deniers.
Unbelievable depth of self-delusion.
If, as I am told, desmog is funded by one John Lefebvre, my respect for him and his otherwise benevolent activities, has gone down into the depths of my septic tank. Seemed like a nice, community-conscious guy when I met him. Wonder if the FBI are following this topic?
I fully support that comment! I support the idea that other scientists should follow his example even more! The only thing I’m in doubt with is whether they should follow his example by committing same crimes, or by confessing to crimes they already committed.
That’s a joke, people! The commenter was being humourous, satirical, ironical, whatever. Can’t believe JC didn’t catch on that. Why do you think it has so many thumbs up!
I followed up to say that I’d been doing science for 35 years, and had never noticed lying and fraud were part of the process. I said this shows the nobility of science only if one remembers Baron Munchausen was a member of the nobility.
Evidently Revkin has suppressed this comment.
So the alleged “debate” is about science and effective communication?
I think not. With Climategate I, Climategate II,Gleickgate, and many others, it’s perfectly apparent to any rational observer that the “climate debate” mentioned by Gleick, Mann, Trenberth, Jones, et al is actually a repellent cesspool of lying and flagrant dishonesty.
Just as skeptics have been saying all along.
You know, had his deceptions actually turned up anything USEFUL, or on-par with climategate (“hide the decline”, “redefine peer-review”) I would actually agree: it is heroic to risk ones personal career and reputation to expose insider information.
However, from what I’ve seen, the (real) material is something only an environmentalist could rally behind. After he got the material, why did he even bother to forward it? The $25k from Koch’s? C’mon Man!
“I am shocked,shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”–Captain Renault in “Casablanca”
FYI: Steven Earl Salmony is one of two or three William-Connely-like gate-keepers that have recently been camping on DotEarth. He serially posts ‘rebuttals’ and ‘refutations’ to any and all posts that stray in any way from the CAGW Party Line. In my opinion, which I have shared with Mr. Revkin, is that these gate-keepers are making it hard to follow comments on DotEarth for those who wish to engage in real conversation or seek enlightenment of other viewpoints.
I have a simple, yes/no question for Judith.
Do you also condemn the theft of the climategate files?
I don’t suppose you’ll give a simple yes/no answer, if you answer at all. And that will make my point: You only prescribe integrity to your enemies, while you ally yourself with those that, like yourself, have none.
I have a simple, yes/no question for Settledscience.
Have you stopped beating your wife?
I don’t suppose you’ll give a simple yes/no answer, if you answer at all. And that will make my point: You only prescribe integrity to your enemies, while you ally yourself with those that, like yourself, have none.
A post on integrity is coming later tonite
I look forward to it.
My concern is with the integrity of scientists, not with unknown whistleblowers or hackers.
How convenient!
Either ethics matter to you in this policy discussion, or not. Many “scientists” allied with the lukewarm/denial/etc. half of the spectrum have invoked the stolen climategate files in defense of their opinions. Now, either the use of stolen data is ethical in all cases, or unethical in all cases.
You cannot have it both ways, according to your convenience, preference and IDEOLOGY.
Someone blew his dog whistle and oh God, the attention he pays.
===========
Regardless of whether or not they were ‘stolen’, in only one of the cases were they faked.
Peter, I understand the distinction you’re making, but I don’t recognize any relevance to it.
“Regardless of whether or not they were ‘stolen’, in only one of the cases were they faked.”
In both cases, one party used unethical means to attempt to taint the reputation of another party.
Do you believe one is more unethical than the other? If so, which one, and why?
Besides, there are several warmist websites which have used the material, which is both faked as well as ‘stolen’, on their websites.
Where then is their integrity?
Do you also condemn the theft of the climategate files? I don’t suppose you’ll give a simple yes/no answer, if you answer at all.
That’s because a simple Yes / No question is carefully constructed to hide a vital distinction – that the Climategate files relate to publicly funded work, and therefore should be open for all to see in the first place. If citizens can’t keep tabs on what their government is doing and funding, how can government ever be made accountable ?
Your ignorance of the basic facts is noted.
Steven McIntyre received perfectly clear form letters explaining that some data could not be made available to him because certain “Information is covered by a confidentiality agreement.”
http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/24/cru-refuses-data-once-again/
More specifically,
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/CRUupdate
“It is well known within the scientific community and particularly those who are sceptical of climate change that over 95% of the raw station data has been accessible through the Global Historical Climatology Network for several years. We are quite clearly not hiding information which seems to be the speculation on some blogs and by some media commentators,” commented the University’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research Enterprise and Engagement Professor Trevor Davies.
The University will make all the data accessible as soon as they are released from a range of non-publication agreements. Publication will be carried out in collaboration with the Met Office Hadley Centre.
The procedure for releasing these data, which are mainly owned by National Meteorological Services (NMSs) around the globe, is by direct contact between the permanent representatives of NMSs (in the UK the Met Office).
“We are grateful for the necessary support of the Met Office in requesting the permissions for releasing the information but understand that responses may take several months and that some countries may refuse permission due to the economic value of the data,” continued Professor Davies.
The remaining data, to be published when permissions are given, generally cover areas of the world where there are fewer data collection stations.
“CRU’s full data will be published in the interests of research transparency when we have the necessary agreements. It is worth reiterating that our conclusions correlate well to those of other scientists based on the separate data sets held by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS),” concluded Professor Davies.
Sorry, Punksta, just because there are government funds involved does not give you or anybody else the right to others’ property, especially not to data not owned by your government, but only “on loan” under restrictive agreements with other nations. It may not be ideal, but it’s how it is. Deal with it.
ss, in only one of the cases is it clear that the documents were obtained by fraudulent means, and in only one of the cases that at least one of them was faked – with the identity of the faker strongly suspected.
Yet the warmist press were very quick to take advantage of the ‘information’.
Untrue. We all know the “climategate” files were stolen. The difference between Peter Gleick and the “climategate” thief is that Gleick is man enough to take responsibility for his actions.
Haha, ss slides into the ditch on the learning curve. You’ve only flattened a coupla tires so try again.
============
Hey, I got a great idea to settle this science. Why doesn’t someone submit an FOIA request for those international agreements?
Only difference? My, my, my.
============
No we don’t. If we did then we’d have a fair idea of the culprit’s identity.
Gleick only ‘owned up’ to the ‘lesser offence’, probably under legal advice, when it became clear that people were onto him.
And where are the ethics of the warmist bloggers who are hailing him as a hero?
ss,
Please show us it was even a theft.
Show us the forgeries snuck in with the docs.
You believers are borrrrrrring.
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/statements/policeseizure
ss,
A news release from UEA is their opinion.
Are you truly this confused?
I was wrong. It’s four flats and only one spare.
===================
SettledScience,
Your ignorance of the basic facts is noted.
The pack of lies given by Jones et al to McIntyre that you here slavishly regurgitate changes nothing.
* There were no such confidentialtiy agreements that could be produced, and no basis whatever for discriminating between sending what was requested to someone who conclusions he was happy with (Webster), versus McIntyre. Jones, remember, is famous mainly for his comment “why should I show you my data when I know you’ll try and find something wrong with it”?
* McIntyre was not requesting data that was freely available. This is evident from the fact that Davies had to make up the lie about confidentiality agreements. And also from a number of emails of the Climategate crooks themselves, where they discuss refusing McIntyre’s request.
Sorry, Punksta, just because there are government funds involved does not give you or anybody else the right to others’ property.
It’s not “other peoples” property, it’s public property. Paid for with public funds, for which there are no secrecy agreements.
And your urging to just sheepishly accept blatant injustice and dishonesty (“Deal with it”) falls on deaf ears I’m afraid.
But my congratulations on truly living down to your moniker.
I call to your attention the despicable behavior of one of your allies, CTL.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/20/breaking-news/#comment-176981
“I have a simple, yes/no question for Settledscience.
Have you stopped beating your wife?”
Just answer the question.
Peter317,
the fact that you consider that a legitimate question to even be asked reveals you to be a contemptible excuse for a human being, which has no place in any discussion of ethics.
You are beneath me.
If you can’t take it, don’t dish it out.
What I “dish out,” Peter, does not and never has included anything like casual accusations of domestic violence as if it’s a laughing matter, and you know it.
You really are beneath me, and you know it.
Settledscience, why don’t you just answer the simple yes/no question?
Have you stopped beating your wife?
You’ve already laid the precedent of using the answer to a loaded yes/no questions as the sole criterion for judging someone’s integrity, so why won’t you live up to your own standards? (I note that you’re quite like the dishonest fraud Gleick in this regard, lecturing people about ethics and integrity while displaying a complete failure to meet the criteria you lay out for others.)
That wasn’t a question about domestic violence, and you know it.
Then you’re illiterate as well as dishonest, Peter, because “beating your wife” absolutely is what “domestic violence” means, and you three barbaric imbeciles (yourself, “CTL,” and “kim”) have absolutely been treating it as a laughing matter.
ss,
Now asking a famous unanswerable question as a rhetorical device to point out how misleading your question is, is despicable?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3Z2MP8vMWU
You guys are so lost.
ss, how about educating yourself before you make yourself appear even more foolish.
For starters, have a look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question
I’m a bot not a barbaric imbecile and I’m laughing at you not domestic violence. Hey it’s not a matter of just fixing up the tin, you know.
================
ss;
Do you always respond in such a way as to reinforce your insufferable self-righteousness?
Behold, Judith, what kind of persons come to your defense when you dodge a clear, direct, challenging question about your own ethical standards. The question I put to you was not unanswerable, as one of the chorus of barbaric imbeciles has asserted. Either you have the same standards for all and condemn equally everybody who uses unethical means to sully the reputations of their opponents, or you have a double standard.
It is that simple.
Take a good, long look at what kind of person rushes to inundate a thread in your defense when you’re challenged, and ask yourself, is this the salon you intended to create? Is that the sort of person for whom you studied, and researched, and toiled for years in obscurity to serve? They are beneath me. Are they not beneath you, as well? Do you not have more, and better, to contribute than the half-truths and dishonest innuendo that their ilk lap up?
I’m sure this seems harsh, but you deserve it. But I also wouldn’t even bother asking if I held out no hope at all that at long last, you were capable of finally exhibiting the same integrity you preach to others. You can speak very eloquently about integrity. Now let’s see you practice it.
Again, Settledscience, why don’t you just answer the simple yes/no question?
Have you stopped beating your wife?
You’ve already laid the precedent of using the answer to a loaded yes/no questions as the sole criterion for judging someone’s integrity, so why won’t you live up to your own standards? (I note that you’re quite like the dishonest fraud Gleick in this regard, lecturing people about ethics and integrity while displaying a complete failure to meet the criteria you lay out for others.)
No need for another wordy tantrum on your part. Just a simple “yes” or “no” response to a simple question, as you demanded of Ms. Curry.
They are not beneath you, my darling. The contrary I think. You are wasting our time, and space.
ss, when you start off by insulting your host with:
(my bold) then you make yourself fair game, deserving of everything that gets thrown back at you.
Joshua, willard.
I trust the lesson has been instructive.
steven, your analysis was nothing short of amazing. very impressive. i am convinced we will find out eventually tha pg also authored the fake document.
As to what, steven? That the climate debate is dominated by tribalism?
Gee. I never realized that before.
Now I’m just kicking myself for never posting on the ubiquity of tribalism in the past.
What debate, Joshua? You and yours have never done anything but make pronouncements about what “climate scientists” say, then demand draconian political policies. Debate offers are regularly refused. All or nearly all of those members of “The Team” who wrote that screed to the WSJ have been regularly invited to the Heartland conferences to present their case – and have all refused.
The CAGW “The End is Near!” crowd are afraid to defend their “science” in public debate because they know it isn’t actual science. Their studies are based on secret data, secret computer programs, secret statistics, in deliberate and blatant violation of the Scientific Method. Yamal, short-centered PCA, R-squared values, Upside-Down-Tijlander, stripbark tree cores, ‘Hide The Decline’ – ring a bell? Steve McIntyre documented all this long before Climategate – and Phil Jones admission that violating the Scientific Method is POLICY for warmists. And those emails have just documented that “The Team” knows they are engaging in scientific fraud.
As for your tribes? Some of gladly adhere to the principles of the Enlightenment Tribe. Not your Lysenko Tribe.
Andrew –
Which “draconian” policies have I demanded?
I gotta admit – that is absolutely beautiful. The “enlightenment tribe” vs. the “Lysenko tribe.”
1. applying leverage.
2. moshpit on style- wink
steven –
You’ve told me of your ability to look into the “window of my soul and come up with something about my attitude about a certain class of woman, or something to that effect, based on your analysis of the text of my comments. You spoke of a very scientific process.
I’ve challenged you numerous times.
Crickets.
Go for it, big fella. I’m all ears.
You still dont get it joshua. two lessons.
the right leverage at the right time.
knowledge is power. You have to learn when and how to apply it.
when the time is right.
until then try this:
Joshua I’m still waiting for your apologies to us all, after spamming the entire blogosphere going berserk for someone having the temerity of even asking Gleick if he was in fact the culprit of this whole mess.
Guess you were utterly and amazingly wrong. And still you continue trolling. Amazing.
Josh,
Beyond demonstrating that no, you did not learn anything from Gleickgate, wtf does tribalism have to do with wire fraud and forgery?Oh, yeah: tribalism is how you avoid actually dealing with topics you do not like.
Andrew,
Notice how Joshua pretends that if he didn’t directly make the point, then it is invalid to talk about believers in general? And, btw, I am not at all certain Josh, in his subtle dissembling and thread jacking hasn’t pushed for the idiocratic bits of AGW.
But hey, Josh is back in the mix, doing his Olympic standard best to thread jack. So let’s see where he goes this time.
Where? Where? Oh where, oh where can he be?
===========
Apparently at Lucia’s they want to refer to you henceforth as Dick F****ng Tracy.
Concur.
DFT it is.
many people helped, but I knew the first time I skimmed the document
If I ever want to fake a doc and circulate it online, remind me to check Mosher’s vacation schedule.
That’s Sir DFT to you random ;)
steven,
Congratulations. You are vindicated. Your kung fu is da best.
Gleick’s long-winded rationalization and partial confession just means he did the entire trick: id theft, wire fraud and forgery.
Joshua has one maybe two tricks:
Whining about mommy and talking about tribes.
If he learns anything from this it will be a pleasant surprise.
Thanks for your posts here and elsewhere.
steven mosher: Joshua, willard.
I trust the lesson has been instructive.
why? have you the least reason to trust that they learn anything?
Still living in your head, eh Matt?
Well, good thing I order cable. Look for the technician on Wednesday. Some time between 12-3:00 PM.
Grasshopper. When you can walk the paper and not tear it your steps will not be heard.
But Master, why do you call me Grasshopper?
Because you are ugly like and insect.
And I was saying that either Mosher had “incredible intuition” or the guess was ridiculously speculative.
I don’t take it back, Steven. You have an incredible intuition sir!
Judy:
He wrote it.
Remember, it was the forgery that triggered Steven Mosher’s “spidey sense” that it was Gleick.
The chance that someone else who writes like Gleick is the author of the forgery? Well, to quote Banacek (anyone else remember that George Peppard TV series?): “The odds just went through the roof”
Other people’s spidey sense might wonder if it was Mosher who faked up that one document.
Makes sense, I guess…but only if he knew that Gleick was gullible enough to fall so hard for it that he would proceed to break the law and ruin his reputation, possibly his career to confirm a reasonably obvious fake.
I thought only Karl Rove was that devious…
HollyStick,
You mistake your spidey sense with your paranoid delusions.
Hollystick.
No, that wouldn’t occur to anyone except a desperate warmist. I assume you to be more rational than that Holly.
tonyb
tonyb –
you assume Holly to be rational?
Holly? :)
HUH ???
I always wondered if Holly Stick was a bot.
No wait, perhaps Holly is on to something…
1. Mosh IS in the Pacific time zone
2. With his knowledge of PG’s style, he COULD have ghost written the forgery
3. I own an EPSON Stylus7400 all-in-one printer/scanner and I have had blog-comment interactions with Mosh in the past.
Steven Mosher, You Magnificent B**tard ! You read Peter’s book!
I’m betting you are a real challage to your nanny.
Noble cause corruption.
Do as I say, not as I do.
Many liberals believe that the know what is best for everyone, and seek the power to force others to behave as they dictate. These same liberals do not feel that these rules apply to them
Anent which, I find it entirely characteristic that AGU made this appointment last Nov.:
“‘Peter Gleick, Chair, Task Force on Scientific Ethics”
The irony could hardly be more pointed.
Sequal to ‘The Smoking Gun,’ featuring Steve Mosher:
Camera pans to closeup of twitching face of Eli Wallach look alike.
New comer in town: ‘What’s that cowboy sayin’ old timer?’
Old Timer. (Spits.) ‘Somethin’ about the ends justifyin’ the means,
whatever that means.’
Lights fade out.
Theme music of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.’
I want to see how this plays out in court. As much as I dislike legalism, it would be nice to see someone pay for defamation and slander. But I’m Soros will pick up Gleik’s penalties.
I believe in modern political parlance, this is described as a “teachable moment.”
The open letter from Mann, Trenberth, et al. just does not read the same to me anymore. http://junkscience.com/2012/02/18/open-letter-from-michael-mann-to-heartland-institute/
Quote: “As scientists who have had their emails stolen, posted online and grossly misrepresented, we can appreciate the difficulties the Heartland Institute is currently experiencing following the online posting of the organization’s internal documents earlier this week. However, we are greatly disappointed by their content, which indicates the organization is continuing its campaign to discredit mainstream climate science and to undermine the teaching of well-established climate science in the classroom.”
Dave Appell says he’s called the Pacific Institute and they’ve confirmed to him that Gleick merely scanned the doc, he didn’t fake it. How on earth would the PI know?
Ryan –
I’m probably going to regret asking this, but how does Gleick’s admission change your view of the Mann, Trenberth letter?
“As scientists who have had their emails stolen, posted online and grossly misrepresented, we can appreciate the difficulties the Heartland Institute is currently experiencing following the online posting of the organization’s internal documents earlier this week.”
Seeing as one of their comrades obtained the documents via fraud it kinda makes the whole thing looking like it’s being said with a sh*t eating grin?
Joshua, I don’t begrudge Mann, Trenberth, et al. writing the “open letter”, but their “concern” for the Heartland Institute seems hollow. Especially with a holiday weekend and media/public disinterest, they should have waited until the provenance of the fake memo was established. Now, they need to issue a “clarification” to distance themselves from the whole thing. Odd public relations strategy to attempt to become part of this type of story…
Ryan –
Ok. I get that. It was not a straightforward expression of sympathy. I agree.
The concern with quotes is ubiquitous. I wholeheartedly agree.
@Joshua;
The continuing attempts to compare Gleick’s brazen fakery with the vital whistle-blowing that set off Climategate are risible. Naturally, you buy into them and attempt to forward them.
Which says all that needs to be said about you.
Ryan
While I cannot gather your interpretation of the letter from your comment, I thought they were very objective in sympathizing with the Heartland Institute while also displaying concern for the content of the information. After all, the people on that letter have been the victims of harassment for a decade or so, and have been persecuted to the level of receiving death threats, having their family threatened, etc. Little has been said about this.
The manner in which Gleick obtained information was professionally irresponsible, illegal, and possibly immoral. So was the hacking of many personal e-mails by climate scientists, and even moreso the intentional misrepresentation of their content (you will note that our host Judith Curry did very little to alleviate that). We still need to see how the authenticity of the “Climate Strategy” document plays out, but even more disturbing than Gleick’s methods were the content within the documents.
“…but even more disturbing than Gleick’s methods were the content within the documents.”
Son, that’s called the Dan Rather defense, and Rather was shown the door. You are treading around the refuge of scoundrels. But you know that.
How were the e-mails misrepresented?
Did Phil Jones conspire to delete emails to avoid FOIA requests?
Did he send confidential manuscripts that he wasn’t supposed to send to his colleagues?
Did he…
well, that’s not the topic of this thread is it?
randomengineer,
I don’t endorse what he did, but it would be interesting to see the people here, at WUWT, and ClimateAudit (really, all the same type of commenters) to apply the same sets of standards here as they did Climategate. In climategate, no one cared about the illegal and immoral actions to infiltrate e-mails. In contrast, they only cared about making sh*t up concerning what the e-mails meant.
Chris Colose –
If you could be so kind as to explain for the rest of us just exactly what in the documents you find more disturbing than Gleicks “…professionally irresponsible, illegal, and possibly immoral…” actions, I for one would appreciate your thoughts. Please try not to quote the fake memo, and do remember in your reply that Heartland is a lobby group with a clear mission statement.
Since our resident observer of tribalism has a distinct rooting interest despite his disclaimers to the contrary he probably forgot to note that Mr Colose is making a “Mommy Mommy! They do it tooouuuuuu!!” argument.
You spin me right round baby right round like a record baby right round.
I cant believe there is anything more stark than the contrast in attitudes between you and Judith. It gives me great comfort that there are still some scientists who conduct themselves with the great amount of dignity that she does.
kch –
Not to speak for Chris – and not to say that I think that one situation is “more” disturbing…
The Heartland documents show a systematic effort, on the part of an inherently political organization, to politicize climate science.
Does that disturb you?
Menth,
I specifically mentioned that I do not or will not endorse Gleick’s actions, nor do I think that this type of thing has any role in the climate debate. It is just a shame that so many people spent years making a huge deal out of it when it applied to the people attacking climate scientists, yet have nothing to say about what Heartland themselves do, such as creating ‘modules’ to feed disinformation to K-12 students.
Joshua,
Your tribal skirt is showing again.
menth –
You have obviously been reading my comments.
That’s a start. Very good.
Now let’s see if you can apply the lessons you’ve learned critically on both sides of the debate.
You’ll get a gold star if you show you know how.
Chris,
Confusing your opinion with fact, and accusing those who disagree with your opinion of lying is getting rather annoying.
You are obviously bright, but you are still a boy. Man up and stop the childish bs.
The hateon you increasingly creepy fanatics have towards groups that dare disagree with you is starting to rub the wrong way.
HI is an honorable group that openly pursues its ideas, like any other think tank. Gleick and pals sought to deprive of their liberty by stealing and lying about them. You seem to be aiding and abetting in this, even after the theft is confessed to. What does that say about you?
hunter –
One of your more spectacular comments. Read your comments over at Collide w/r/t eugencists and Lysenkoists. Then come back and we’ll talk.
Joshua-
“…not to say that I think that one situation is “more” disturbing…”
One of these days you really should take a stand. Otherwise people might start to think you actually believe in nothing….but I digress.
“The Heartland documents show a systematic effort, on the part of an inherently political organization, to politicize climate science.”
Does this disturb me? Of course not. Why should it, when it’s not even an accurate statement of affairs? Climate science is *already* politicized, and has been from the moment it began to impact on public policy. I also am not surprised or disturbed at the opposing groups which also attempt to politicize climate science.
I mourn for the effect on science itself, but this will be an inevitable result to anything that comes to the attention of public policy makers.
If you want the politicization to cease, you have to stop the ability of governments to influence science through funding. As this implies a much smaller governmental structure, I don’t expect it to happen. Too bad.
Chris — In climategate, no one cared about the illegal and immoral actions to infiltrate e-mails.
Good point. Leaking information to the public from public institutions paid for by taxpayers who were illegally refused the requested information is EXACTLY like stealing stuff from a private organisation and also releasing completely faked documents.
Yeah. These are *so* equal.
kch –
And now we get down to it. First, I will point out that what you are advocating is in direct opposition to the will of the citizens of this country, as well as the will of the citizens of every democratic country on the face of the planet. It is also a wish that would, if applied retroactively, undo the very standard of living that you enjoy as a birthright of having been born in this county, a legacy that you enjoy in contrast to the vast majority of humans who have ever lived, and who have not had the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of American government spending on science.
All I can say is that I hope that some day you will add some nuance to that binary way of viewing the world, and consider a more mesured analysis that evaluates the benefits against the costs of living in a society where your government funds science.
“The manner in which Gleick obtained information was professionally irresponsible, illegal, and possibly immoral. So was the hacking of many personal e-mails by climate scientists”
Ass-u-ming of course that the emails were indeed hacked and were forged by someone who acknowledged he was the Heartland Insider but wasn’t. . . .of course! If it turns out that way, then I would agree with you.
Other than that I can read English and don’t need somebody to translate for me. Hide the decline, Mike’s trick, were no doubt done in the name of open and transparent science. I got the spin. I didn’t fall off a turnip truck yesterday.
I should note that two wrongs do not make a right! But so far we don’t know who the “CRU Insider” was. We do know who Gleick is and we know he signed his name as the “Heartland Insider”, the guy who allegedly provided the fake memo so we know who that was too.
Josh,
I gave you the last word on our conversation on that thread because you are such whiny little boy. I did not agree to allow you to determine in anyway what I choose to write about. If you want to compare how Gleick’s sleaziness compares with tactics of Lysenkoists we can do that. If you want to talk about the way eugenicists massaged the science to support their prejudices in deciding their policies, we can do that as well. But I am willing to bet that instead you will feign offense that those topics even came up and have another attack of the vapors. After all, you cannot allow yet more negatives on AGW to go forth without claiming it is all because of tribes and mommyism.
Joshua –
“I will point out that what you are advocating is in direct opposition to the will of the citizens of this country, as well as the will of the citizens of every democratic country on the face of the planet.”
I believe that my final ‘too bad’ expressed my realization that it wasn’t going to happen, because, yes, for all its faults I do believe in democracy. I might be an inveterate small government free-marketer, but I also see the the necessity of being part of society, and our society currently leans far away from that. With luck, some day the balance will change.
We could also go around for days on “…the benefits of American government spending on science…” but that would be for another blog. Really OT here.
That being said, in society, *all* issues touching upon governance will be politicized. Why it disturbs some people when they note this I will never quite get.
One last point: your assumption that I am American amuses me. It is a tribal outlook to assume that all libertarians come from the US….
kch –
What disturbs me isn’t so much the reality of politicization, but the selectivity of the “concern.” Admittedly, it bothers me more on one side than the other – but I do recognize that it is counterproductive on both sides.
Good point. I wasn’t making an assumption on the basis of you being libertarian – but it was a mistaken assumption nonetheless.
We all make mistaken assumptions, kch. Those types of mistakes are inherent in our reasoning processes. Please see my earlier posts to you when I described how you mischaracterized my statements. For me, the important test to hold myself to a commitment to acknowledge those types of mistakes when I make them. I don’t always live up to that goal.
Mr. Colose,
It may have escaped your attention that there is no evidence that the Climategate emails were obtained by anyone outside of CRU. That there was no personal information released in any of the emails. That none of them were faked. That they in fact revealed a crime, rather than committed one.
I fail to see any parallel at all between the two cases. Kindly link them up for us who are unable to see what you have seen.
Chris, You are clearly young and inexperienced. There is no evidence that the emails were released by a hacker. There is evidence that they were relaased by a whistleblower, namely, the redaction of personal information. I note that Gleik had no such ethical qualms. He is probably a felon and I have no sympathy for him. Perhaps Soros will pay his legal bills. Heartland is just your run of the mill interest group, protected by the 1st amendment, perhaps something you don’t agree with. In any case, its the overflowings of liberty. Get used to it.
Joshua –
I think we’re probably in substantial agreement on the politicization of science, albeit from opposite starting points (just my impression, mind you).
As for assuming I’m American, don’t sweat it. I was mostly amused because if I’ve learned anything from your comments, it’s to check my assumptions at the door…
Finally, I think we both spent some time in mischaracterization – oh, the joys of argument. If it’s not deliberate, I don’t apologize for that and never expect anyone else to – at least we didn’t start slagging each other like kids.
Really, I have enjoyed the back and forth, but I’m out of popcorn, so adieu for now.
Chris, then you will not object to people writing fake but true phony climategate mails.
Chris Colose,
Heartland has absolutely zero power over the education system in the US. You are living in fantasyland if you think any “anti-science” will ever make it into required textbooks. This is a strawman jubilee.
“and possibly immoral” … only a climate scientist could be agonising on whether Gleick’s actions were immoral.
Chris,
I appreaciate that you take the time to comment here. Unlike some, I have not seen the sort of condenscending attitude towards people who disagree with you.
I would like to ask why you characterize the CRU emails as personal. Emails sent from one’s work account, even if of a personal nature, are not by definition “personal”. They are the property of the employer. Furthermore, the contects of the emails released to date are not of a “personal” nature. They discuss the work the senders and recipients are engaged in. I can’t help but conclude that describing these emails as “personal” is an attempt to obfuscate or confuse.
I would like to ask why you characterize the CRU emails as personal. Emails sent from one’s work account, even if of a personal nature, are not by definition “personal”. They are the property of the employer. Furthermore, the contects of the emails released to date are not of a “personal” nature. They discuss the work the senders and recipients are engaged in. I can’t help but conclude that describing these emails as “personal” is an attempt to obfuscate or confuse.
I’m confused. Are you arguing that it was legal or illegal to steal the CRU emails on the ground that they weren’t personal?
If the former, this should make it legal to steal insider information during the quiet period when a company is about to go public, etc. Those able and motivated to do so will be thrilled to know this.
Ryan,
If I was Holly, I would wonder if Mann & gang were in on the theft and forgery with Gleick.
It is interesting that those well educated authors do not see a difference between their leaked authentic e-mails being reprinted and quoted in full, and Heartland’s docs being stolen by ID theft and wire fraud, embellished and mixed in with fabricated documents.
In this case, the Climate Science Rapid Response Team needs to “slow their roll.”
Also, Scott Mandia’s http://climatesciencedefensefund.org/ may need to open up another store front on the West Coast…
Scott Mandia in the Guardian:
“Peter Gleick, a scientist who is also a journalist just used the same tricks that any investigative reporter uses to uncover the truth. He is the hero and Heartland remains the villain. He will have many people lining up to support him.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/21/peter-gleick-admits-leaked-heartland-institute-documents?newsfeed=true
Menth, nice find.
Scott Mandia: “He will have many people lining up to support him.”
Yes he will. Fanatics is all that will be left of the climate science cult.
As scientists who had the emails revealed showing we were engaged in dishonest conduct, we can appreciate the difficulties of having one of our colleagues fake a document to slander you, because there was nothing dishonest or unethical in your real documents.
We will make our peace offer again. You stop telling the truth about us, and we’ll stop lying about you.
Orwell’s Animal Farm has come full circle.
It always does.
McKitrick’s comment at Climate Audit is worth the read:
http://climateaudit.org/2012/02/20/peter-gleick-confesses/#comment-324812
Thanks for linking that – because I’ve never seen McKitrick calling people a coward before.
Oh.
Wait.
Strike that.
His objection to the tribalism in the climate debate is duly noted.
Joshua.
True.
To.
Form.
A.
Believer’s.
Believers.
Gosh Joshua,
I thought calling people cowards was the way it was done in climate science.
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/01/28/413955/james-hansen-on-cowards/?mobile=nc
Of course, you’re so busy commenting on other people’s tribalism, that you may not have noticed.
Well, well. What have we here?
Just can’t quite put my finger on i…… Oh, wait a minute. By jove, I’ve got it!
“Mommy, mommy, they did it firrrrsssssttttt.”
Never seen that before!
Judith, I don’t understand how you could possibly be surprised; nor should you lose sleep over it. Just read the emails. Again.
Wait until you see what will be unearthed about what the did to you behind your back when the discovery process unfolds.
PJM
meant “they did to your”
maybe “they did to you”?
Third time’s a charm.
Hey Peter Gleick is an expert for Ethics.
He just tried to do the ethical thing.
The fate of the planet is at risk if you believe in CO2AGW. What’s a little wire fraud and forgery in the fave of that?
You own it.
The time is long overdue: the governmental education complex must be dismantled.
Judith, you find it ironical that a rabid AGW supporter is a hypocrite on integrity? Where have you been living? The RC guys will lecture anyone on integrity, as will Phil Jones and the rest of the un-indicted Climategate co-conspirators. Michael Mann loves to lecture people about integrity.
Me, I’m shocked that you are surprised. I find it perfectly in keeping with the nature of the post-normal scientific beast.
w.
I also predict that the declarations of the death of Peter’s career will prove to be greatly exaggerated. He will be a martyr whose heart was in the right place. “Sure he broke the law…….BECAUSE HE’S TRYING TO SAVE THE BIOSPHERE FROM EVIL DENIERZ!!!!!!” etc etc etc.
The ELF destroyed millions of dollars in property, could have killed people and are currently starring in a sympathetic documentary that’s nominated for an Oscar. Never underestimate the ability for human beings to rationalize for a cause or shared moral sentiment.
Assuming you meant “Earth Liberation Front” (ELF),
Birzer, Bradley J. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-Earth. 1st ed. Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2002
Page 127: “Just as the forum proceedings were about to begin, a lawyer representing an environmentalist group known as Elf Lore issued a subpoena claiming a misuse of the term and word ‘E.L.F’ (Earth Liberation Front). Said a member of the Elf Lore group, while pointing at the spokesperson for E.L.F., ‘you all are not Elves of any kind, but Orcs!’”
:-)
“Me, I’m shocked that you are surprised.”
Are you really shocked? Dr. Curry can’t mention what political party these people lean towards. Can you explain that? You expect candor from a base of honesty like this?
I’m shocked you would be shocked, you have more sense as a rule.
I keep looking for evidence of science from the AGW crowd but all I find is religious fervor.
Didn’t seem like all that long ago that the alarmists were crowing about the eeeevil heartland institute and their billion$ in oil money, attacking Dr Wojick, etc “Finally!”, they said, “…the climategate shoe is on the other foot!”
Guess not.
Judy:
Gleick’s statement was written with the help of lawyers and therefore needs to be parsed very carefully. He actually does not say he did not write what we now refer to as the fake strategy document, only that he did not change the HI documents and the original anonymous document – which he may or may not have forwarded with genuine documents.
Your well-founded instinct and Mosher’s perspicacity may yet be accurate.
Peter ‘Piltdown Man’ Gleick Admits to Deception in Obtaining Heartland Files
Heartalnd has sent their statement to me in advance of their website update
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/20/statement-by-the-heartland-institute-on-gleick-confession/
When “Climategate” broke, I preferred “Fabrigate”, but CG ran away with it.
Perhaps it’s not too late to revive it?
I’ll second that – I think Fabrigate is right on the money :)
Thanks, Anteros, I’m starting to be pleased it didn’t take earlier on – the pun works MUCH better with Gleick!
Wow–surely Peter Gleick understands that feedback effects are in dispute, and the difference influences the sign of the externality in terms of what some climate economists say (Robert Mendelsohn at Yale, for one).
And if he did not know before, Dr. Gleick should realize that 1) the Heartland side is heartfelt, 2) that energy affordability is key for just about everyone 3) central climate planning all but gets the climate police to the door, and 4) corporate rent-seeking is handmaiden to climate alarmism/policy activism (remember Enron?).
Perhaps this episode will encourage the present generation of neo-Malthusians to check their premises and consider, just as an option, that wealth creating capitalism is the best insurance policy for whatever the future holds, anthropogenic or natural.
I suspect Peter Gleick is getting a lesson in “negative feedback” this week.
Heh!
Nice one Stephen.
I have alluded before to the image of the CAGW branch being sawn through while the climate monkeys huddle nervously on the wrong side of it. Several, as recent posts here have revealed, are surreptitiously devising ways of getting to the safety of the trunk without getting shredded on the way. The Glieck monkey seems to have decided the best thing to do is to jump up and down a bit…..
Not that there was any credibility to begin with, but… Go have a look at PG’s congressional testimony linked above–especially the appendix. Pure projection. What an ass. Should be kicked out of the NAS–make room for some real scientists. How fellow scientists, especially “climate” scientists (and I use that term with significant reservation–sorry Judith) react to this jerk will be especially telling. Do they rally behind his ridiculous explanation that the ends justify the means? Or call him out and shun him while fessing up to their own crass and unethical behavior?
I know where my money is bet.
I continue to be appalled and angered by this bunch of clowns giving all of science a bad name. Science is settled… 97%… Appeal to authority… Just disgusting.
How fellow scientists, especially “climate” scientists (and I use that term with significant reservation–sorry Judith) react to this jerk will be especially telling.
Good point. If there were *any* integrity at all, there would be outrage and a rather swift and severe housecleaning. Never going to happen.
Some great self-proclaimed and published climate scientist, Steven Earl Salmony, has rationalized that Peter is a brave soul who only did it for the nobility of science. And that more scientists need to follow his example.
Sadly, he is a psychologist. Think on the advice someone gives who condones lying and stealing gives to the psychologically vulnerable.
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
Read his bio that is linked here and note the part about his interests, and his claims about population.
hunter, I found Salmony’s diatribe horrifying. Our greatest resource – our ingenuity, adaptability and innovatiess – is infinite.
Faustino,
I am afraid that Salmony needs to work on his own psychology in the same way Gleick needs to work on his own integrity.
As an example, how long with AGU leave him as chair of its Ethics Taskforce?
http://www.agu.org/about/governance/committees_boards/scientific_ethics.shtml
If I were a member of that society, I’d be on the phone to the Executive Director first thing in the morning.
The board members of the Pacific Institute would be wise to begin a new search for a President and make sure they have a good attorney on retainer (or better yet, shut down operations and give back the grants).
http://www.pacinst.org/about_us/staff_board/board.htm
Seems that PG took that famous Schneider quote to heart.
Joshua,
The term politicize has become practically meaningless. Most people use the term as an insult. Is it possible to come to different conclusions without politicizing the issue? Can i try to influence others opinions without being political and if the answer is yes what are the rules?
chuckr –
I think that a vision that splits the politics from the science is a false dichotomy.
I don’t think that politicization of the science is evil. I don’t think it’s desirable, but I think that at some level it is inevitable. The goal should be to understand and control for the politicization, and to mitigate it’s impact with careful and comprehensive cost/benefit analysis and comprehensive stakeholder dialog.
My point of contention with many “skeptics” is w/r/t a selective “concern” about politicization of the science on one side only. Of course, a parallel selective “concern” exists on the other side of the debate.
Selective reasoning will not advance the debate – it will only protract the tribalism.
“I don’t think that politicization of the science is evil.”
Eugenics? AGW?
Time to get a clue Joshua. Tonights event was all about politics, “it’s a about science” is exposed for the joke it’s been for decades. Gleick was always a partisan hack, now we have perfect proof. “Settled Science” Joshua. Settled Science.
I will give you credit, cwon.
While you are selective about the politicization of the science also, at least you are more inclusive with your “concern.”
Most “skeptics” are only “concerned” about politicization of the science when it’s done by liberals.
You’re “concerned” when it’s done by anyone to the left of Attila the Hun.
When Attila the Hun was finished, hardly anyone was Left.
chuckr,
Joshua has no idea. He just drones on and on and on and on and on and on and on about his one topic of interest. He is like a cat playing with a piece of string but imagining he is a might tiger.
Hunter,
How many strawmen and hyjack topics do you think Joshua will create in the next 48 hrs?
A. The usual 100 or so.
B. More than 250?
C. Records will be broken, no question.
I’m leaning toward “C” tonight.
cwon14,
“C” is the clear answer.
The correlation between Joshua’s thread jacking and how negative a given topic is towards the AGW consensus is extremely positive. Gleick’s meltdown/ Mosher’s vindication is very negative for the consensus indeed.
hunter,
Of course, Mosher taunted the cat. I have had many cats. If you don’t want their attention, don’t give them your attention.
NW
My cats love to play. I enjoy holding the thread and pulling it slowly so they jump on it. It is cute to watch. Almost as much fun as watching Joshie with his one trick tedium.
Hunter,
Joshua is like a Chicago Cubs fan, unlimited self-hatred and ability to absord pain and humiliation. He’ll take a few Xanax and struggle on in the coming days.
:) to one and all.
cwon14 | February 21, 2012 at 12:31 am
+10 ROFLMAO
cwon,
That’s unfair. Real Cubs fans don’t do Xanax, we do beer.
Leave the cubs out of this, cwon..effin southsider, Ill bet
Politicization and tribalism are not the issue. Politicization and tribalism are not by definition evil, they are simply sources of bias. Like propaganda, they are value neutral terms. One can engage in all three without being dishonest.
But forgery, slander, and lying are, plainly and simply, acts of evil. And those are the issue here.
Correct Gary.
It is unfortunate that Joshua dioes not recognize this in HI. He has stated and implied attributes and motives to HI without evidence or support. I do not believe he is honest in his appraisal. Whether it is because he is intellectually dishonest, or confused, or whatever, I don’t know, or care.
He has made an assumption that politicization and tribalism are uniform. In the sense of an institution that may be true, but not necessarily to the individuals of the institution. To call a member of an institution a hack for being political, and then noting that we are all in a democracy, and involved directly or indirectly in government and politics, means we are all hacks and tribes. He is the same but like in his desert of though is the prophet preparing the way for the Truth. His errors are his own, I am sure.
Stifle debate….puhleeeeeeeeeeeeeease!! It is Glick and Co who do not wish to answer any questions
In the church we are not surprised when this happens – it is the outworking of original sin which none of us are free of. Doesn’t excuse him, but the guy’s confessed. Good.
Sorry, David, we have volition, we can choose wholesome or unwholesome actions. I choose wholesome ones. Gleick didn’t.
I believe a confession, absent true remorse, is wasted breath.
What’s breaking down – and is most evident in Judith’s dismay above – is the breaking down of trust that is the foundation of the invisible colleges among scientists.
This is all a consequence of the original climategate. Of scientists lashing themselves to the mast of government funded hypothesis driving climate science.
This is also where Judith began her pre-blog entry into skepticals-ville, if I may add a neologism for her cause.
Scientists need to trust other scientists. They can’t check everything each other ays and does or doesn’t do. This is a crisis of trust – and growing distrust.
Welcome, Judith to where the unwashed masses are about government funded climate science: mistrusting.
Terence Kealey could almost write another book about it. He needs to.
Orson, that’s the damnedest thing. There were plenty of scientists and other experts in certain fields jumping up and down saying that “they’ve got it wrong!” It wasn’t about scientists trusting scientists, it was about ideologues affirming ideology.
To me, the most amazing revelation that has ever come to light in the years I’ve been reading all these climate matters is the same one that shocked Steve Mc way back in the beginning — no one had ever expressed any interest in checking the hockey stick study.
Science without accountability isn’t science. It’s some bizarre kind of quasi-religion.
#2 was Jones to Hughes. Hey, we don’t need no stinkin’ science around here!
Integrity was heading for the big flush from the moment that scientists stopped replicating other significant studies because they were too busy chasing evermore grant funding.
Hey Chris,
Can you please give me some links on these modules feeding disinformation to K-12 students? I can’t seem to find them, maybe your internet is better.
Don’t expect much from a crackpot!
I’m not certain that these are what you want, but here they are anyhow:
Curry, Judith A. “Climate Classroom.” Scientific. Climate Etc., January 20, 2012. http://judithcurry.com/2012/01/20/climate-classroom/
Wolfgang, Ben. “Scientists Want Climate Change in Young Minds.” The Washington Times, January 16, 2012. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/16/scientists-want-climate-change-young-minds/
“the ongoing efforts — often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated — to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate”
i.e. ‘As I apologize for my fraud and dishonesty, I choose to take this opportunity to make another slanderous attack on those who disagree with me.’
Still ugly and clueless to the end.
I want to hear Revkin explain the process by which he confirmed that the docs were legit.
He confirmed them by getting them from either PG or DeSmear…… these are the people we’re supposed to trust, but at best, they have no discernment. At worst, they knew it was fraudulent and went with it anyway.
I want to hear Revkin explain the process by which he confirmed that the docs were legit.
In simple terms, he either knowingly aided and abetted a smear (libel!) by lending credibility of journalistic impartiality, or he’s incompetent. If the world we live in was just, he just neutered himself. In the world we actually live in, Steven Earl Salmony and those like him will rally around the cause, i.e. trying to defeat the evil oil funded denial machine smearing innocent journalists for seeking the truth. To me, he’s roadkill, but to the Trve Believers he’ll be Woodward and Bernstein.
If I sound despairing it’s because I despair. TANJ.
Just a few days ago I said …
“Some months ago I suggested on this blog (if my memory is correct) that the global warming scare looked like a fraud and was heading for collapse and that the best model was a corporate fraud like Enron.
“I said we were at the stage when people were asking serious questions and the equivalents of the CFO and CEO were showing righteous indigantion at the questioning and obfuscating. I said that following that model things woulld get worse before they get better AND THAT MOST OF THE CRIMINAL ACTS WERE YET TO COME. They come not as proponents behave blindly, stupidly or are misled but as they try to maintain support for the unsupportable and try to cover their tracks and enter a state of denial of the truth. It is a basic behaviour pattern that can be found in in criminology texts in describing some forms of white collar crime.”
One commenter kindly provided the details:
“DocMartyn | February 17, 2012 at 9:57 pm | Reply
John the Kübler-Ross model has:
“Denial — “Short term fluctuations are hiding the long term signal.
You need a 15, 19, 37 year period to detect the warming trend.
Extreme cooling is shown in the global warming models.”
“Anger — “scientists like me who are trying to communicate the potential dangers of continued fossil fuel burning to the public as a threat. That means we are subject to attacks, some of them quite personal, some of them dishonest.”
“Bargaining — “If we had more computing power we could have higher resolution temperature estimating and convincingly show that snow in May is a result of rising CO2…”
“Depression — “I did think about it, yes. About suicide. I thought about it several times, but I think I’ve got past that stage now.”
“Acceptance — ‘Guilty M’Lud.'”
Here we go … and it looks as though these comments will be repeatable in the future …
John,
Good points. Please keep posting your observations. This appears to be potentially unfolding much more quickly than I thought possible.
Climate Depot for the ultimate gloat experience;
http://www.climatedepot.com/
I only wish more was learned in the warming community, it isn’t going to happen.
Dr. Curry,
The pride behind Gleick’s fall is discussed well by the likes of CS Lewis.
The irony of his being the point man on integrity, yet lacking in it is not so different from an anti-drug crusader showing up busted.
His failing is significant but very human.
The open letter from Mann, Trenberth and pals seems for multiple reasons to be a bit too cute in the context of Gleick’s confession, It makes one wonder how much and when when they knew about what he was doing?
+1 I wonder how many folks on this blog have read the space trilogy? I am sure you have.
I only wish people would get over the funding biz. I suspect that ideologies, religious fanaticisms and so forth are mostly voluntary, and not caused by materialist bases. There’s plenty of heterogeneity in human beliefs, and I think NSF, Heartland, Greenpeace and everyone else attract scholars whose research agendas agree with them. I doubt their money suborns lies: Rather their money attracts people who tend to agree with their viewpoint. It is a selection process, not a motivational process. From that standpoint, you get on with the business of arguing with positions rather than funding.
The sorriest thing about the Gleick saga is the tedious notion that everyone is easily suborned. Look into your own heart and ask whether that is true of yourself, and then apply the Principle of Charity to others.
Nicely put. Thanks.
Nice post. I think that you may underplay the influence of funding to some extent – but in the main I think you are spot on.
I hope that the fact that I offered a compliment doesn’t have a negative impact. If so, you can just consider that I’m a warmist/eco-zealot/Lysenkoist/eugenicist/socialist/communist/pissant progressive/misgynst/racist/bigot/idiot/putz, as I’ve been told so often here at Climate Etc. That would make it easier to just dismiss my compliment.
Josh,
Maybe a putz at times, but I don’t see any of the others applying.
er… thanks?
NW, I have never been easily suborned, often at great cost to myself. Indeed, I learned that I was seen as a threat at the highest levels of the Queensland Public Service because of my “honesty, integrity, intellect and analytical rigour.” I’m sure I’m not the only one who ranks honesty and integrity above short-term, falsely perceived, self-interest.
The sign above the meditation centre of the great teacher U Ba Khin translates roughly as “Truth will triumph.” Indeed.
Joshua,
An amazingly positive and refreshing comment.
it is certainly something neither a lysenkoist nor a a eugenicist would say.
I am sincerely impressed.
On another topic, here is a link to Heartland Institute donor page. I have never supported them before, am not a libertarian, but I do think when a group is under assault for their ideas from people who think theft, wire fraud and forgery are valid tools, it is time to stand with them.
http://giving.heartland.org/donate
And do note at the website just how many areas they work on. Climate is not their largest area of interest. For Gleick and gang to claim that HI is devoted to ‘anti-science’ is just deceptive.
Is Gleick claiming he received the faked document in the mail?
“t the beginning of 2012, I received an anonymous document in the mail describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland Institute’s climate program strategy. It contained information about their funders and the Institute’s apparent efforts to muddy public understanding about climate science and policy. I do not know the source of that original document but assumed it was sent to me because of my past exchanges with Heartland and because I was named in it. ”
Was Gleick named in any of the documents other than the strategy memo?
The fun may just be starting.
Anyone contemplating litigation against Gleick might want to consider filing quickly, and getting a court order preventing the destruction or discarding of any records, hardware, email servers, etc. The claim that he received the strategy document in the mail sounds laughable on its face, but climategate and the FOIA sagas show that things have a way of disappearing.
destruction of documents by ANYONE assocaited with this would
be obstruction.
Given that the prosecutors with jurisdiction are all of the Democrat persuasion, prosecution is far from a sure thing, and might well be seen as less of a threat than the disclosure of the underlying trail and potentially huge civil damages. There has to be a reason Gleick made an admission that no criminal attorney in his right mind would advise.
the biggest danger to Gleick is defamation with Malice.
He had confessed to the “pretexing” . Even if convicted, its not that
bad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett-Packard_spying_scandal
defamation with malice, however, is probably a bigger problem for him.
If he can claim he didnt know the mail was fake, he can slither away from malice.
simples.
That is correct. But Gleik’s “admission” has no impact on the issue of malice. Denying he created the strategy memo does him no good, and does not explain the admissions of what he did do.
It would still be a good idea to establish an express “litigation hold” on whatever documents, hardware, etc. might be involved.
But then, free legal advice is worth exactly what you pay for it.
The end always seems to justify the means for these people. Ethics is only a consideration for the other side and even then they seem to believe that criticism of their position is “unethical” or something.
My first inclination is to say this is beyond belief. But considering what we have seen over the years with secrecy, “adjustments”, “smearing” of data to make things appear worse than they are, I suppose I am not really surprised. This seems more to fit the character of what we have been seeing for the past few years than to be an exception.
Wow.
The scientific debate goes on, but just about everything I read lately from the orthodox side reinforces my impression that they realize that their agenda has been defeated for the next several years and they are desperate.
The Guardian story on this is pretty terrible. Even for them.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/21/peter-gleick-admits-leaked-heartland-institute-documents?newsfeed=true
Indeed. The Guardian story is pathetic and absolutely another sign of desperation.
The Guardian article includes this telling quote from Gleick’s Rapid Response team-mate Scott Mandia:
“Peter Gleick, a scientist who is also a journalist just used the same tricks that any investigative reporter uses to uncover the truth. He is the hero and Heartland remains the villain. He will have many people lining up to support him.”
It is absolutely untrue to say that ‘any investigative reporter’ would do what Gleick did. It is the kind of behaviour which has seen several of Rupert Murdoch’s reporters and their associates arrested and charged in recent weeks. No reputable journalist, or journal, would regard misrepresenting one’s identity to obtain private documents as even faintly acceptable.
Mr Mandia, however, seems to have no problem with the fact that his ‘hero’ behaved in this unethical and potentially illegal fashion.
Google HP pretexting.
Gleick learned from HP. a supporter of his.
He would also learn about it if he did any research on someone else
he disliked: Carli Fiorina
From that article:
“In a sign of combat to come, Gleick has taken on a top Democratic operative and crisis manager, Chris Lehane.”
I’m betting the advice to issue the “apology” came from the political operative, Lehane, not the criminal attorney who is representing Gleick. To me it looks like the powers that be are willing to throw Gleick under the bus, or rather encourage him to jump under it himself in return for them paying his hospital bills.
I can’t imagine a competent criminal attorney advising a client to “apologize” for criminal behavior. He admits to obtaining private documents by false pretenses, and using them with an intent to harm the object of his fraud. Not to mention making his authorship of the strategy memo much easier to prove by admitting his intent.
This had to be a political decision.
He admits to obtaining private documents by false pretenses, and using them with an intent to harm the object of his fraud.
100 quatloos says that he thinks this is academic word games and/or mere political wrangling, not a legal or criminal matter. Explains everything.
The fact that he has engaged the services of a criminal lawyer already, suggests to me that he has already been contacted by one of the law enforcement agencies. It may well have been this contact that persuaded him to make the (partial) confession.
“Gleick’s admission was seen by some as crossing a new line in the increasingly vitriolic debate between scientists, campaigners, businesses and politicians who want action on climate change and a small but well-funded group of those who deny the existence of man-made climate change.”
Damned effective, that group. You’d think that if this were true and scientists etc were really so much brighter, at least one would have the brains to say “so… what’s it take to get these guys to work for US?”
Apparently Suzanne there isn’t thinking this through.
Menth, did I not call it out exactly what Mandia and the Climate Rapid Response Team would do?
Now, the key for the left is to not let this “crisis go to waste.” Pious yet hallow cries of moral equivalency will emanate from the usual sympathetic outlets in an effort to spread the blame around. I think the buzzwords and talking points [if a media outfit dares report on this] will be “toxic atmosphere” due to endless “harassment” of climate scientists from the deep pocketed Koch Brothers, or some related refrain. Mandia has already used the “ends justify the means” meme, but that may have been a trial balloon to line up prospective legal fund donations.
Peter Davies summarized it best in the first comment here.
[Climategate I and II were other examples.]
Yet the beat goes on…
Max
Amazing that he, or they, thought he or they could get away with it. I presume some thought went into the charade, but I just can’t fathom the risk reward calculation that would allow anyone to proceed with something so obviously false and bound to be unmasked. No respect for the intellect of their victim? No respect for the intellect of anyone with opposing views? A sense of entitlement so strong that they expect no consequences to result from fraud once it is publicly known? All of these?
Judith Curry
The slideshow you presented at an earlier AGU session a few years ago addresses the integrity issue head on.
Your remarks at that time appear to originate from the standpoint that climate scientists are honest, open to studies that conflict with their preconceived notions and willing to change their position based on such new data. IMO this is most likely because that description would fit for you.
You mention that Peter Gleick reprimanded you more recently for your “behavior”.
Peter Gleick has been an outspoken advocate for integrity in science, as you point out, and this seems to dismay you even more, in light of his concession that he faked the Heartland data.
But isn’t it true that those who preach integrity most loudly are those who often lack it themselves when push comes to shove?
Max
Looks like someone stepped on their Pen.., er, Dic…, er Peter! yeah, that’s it.
Joshua: Consider me an example of the larger “Target Audience” . . . an un brain-damaged, reasonably educated adult found fit to for Military Command ………. tragically, pitifully, weak construction and presentation. You should find something to be good at – it ain’t here.
Something is happening here, and I Do know what it is . . . . .
“Looks like someone stepped on their Pen.., er, Dic…, er Peter! yeah, that’s it.”
Stop all your weeping, swallow your pride / You will not die, It’s not poisoned.
As it happens, this weekend I was researching Eric Hobsbawm, the celebrated British historian, who is also a committed communist.
As late as 1994 Hobsbawm defended the Soviet Union’s extermination of ten million plus people on the grounds that the Soviets might have been opened the way for the true revolution.
God and Arrogant Species followed by Gleick’s apology. You can’t buy star crossed adjacent headlines like this – it is like a syzygy of climate stupid.
Have to strenuously disagree. If you are a young academic climate scientist, you are frantic to get published, to get hired, and to get tenure eventually. American academia has been thoroughly politicized by the left. This means that if you try to publish something is not politically correct (anti CAGW, for example), you will have an extremely difficult time getting it published. Getting tenure is hard enough without committing political suicide.
What is the point of spending several very intense post grad years, deferring gratification while laboriously earning a Phd, if you can’t get a decent job in your extremely specialized area? Most people are not heroes and are not going to risk their economic livelihood courageously bucking the political mainstream in academia.
I was responding to NW above.
I have some life experience with this, being a small-time maverick in academe. You can carve out a niche for yourself even if you are out-of-step with the prevailing fashions and fads. There are people like Christy etc. to inspire the young. I sympathize with the notion that the academy is over-run with people of a left-center bent, but you can negotiate a critical distance from that, and still find the support you need to get on with your work. And the pendulum swings back and forth.
I have a young colleague who is publishing like gangbusters (and raking in the grants) following a research agenda that is quite au courant, and while I sometimes envy his early successes (and suspect we will lose him soon), I don’t think he is mercenary… he is just a product of the current environment. And I don’t want to be him.
JC:
“He has made it known to me via email that he has been displeased with my “behavior.” I seem to have gotten his goat to have been mentioned in the fake Heartland strategy doc (hard to believe that he didn’t write this).”
What makes you think he didn’t?
Everything we know about Gleick and that document, including the very selective parsing used in his “confession”, points to the fact that he did…
Has he communicated with you … recently?
JJ, Judith writes “hard to believe that he didn’t write this” so she thinks that he did write it.
I wonder how long it will be before he is forced to admit that he did write it?
Ryan Maune Feb 20@10.56pm
Re: open letter- from michael- mann to heartland-institute-
What a piece of work is mann!
H/T to Wm Shakespeare.
:)
Questions:
Was the Peter Gleick faking an aberration or symptomatic of a pattern?
How about Climategate I and II?
Or the recently exposed IPCC exaggerations/lies in the AR4 summary?
Or, for that matter, the hockeystick with its “hidden decline”?
Max
I’ve already trademarled the word ‘Gleick-gate.’
tonyb
Mac
I’ve also trademarked the word ‘trademarled.’ :)
tonyb
I like TomFP’s suggestion of Fabrigate..
Anteros
I like fabrigate as well, but its too general and could apply to anything. Gleickgate and Climategate have very particular connotations.
tonyb
tonyb, you make a fair point, and I don’t want to get all precious about my ‘bon mot’, but try looking at it from the other end of the telescope. The name Glieck is only familiar (so far) to those of us who do this sort of thing instead of something sensible. So unless you already know the story, “Glieckgate” is likely to be a scroll-by. I would like, as I’m sure would you, to introduce the name Glieck to a much wider audience, and I think a half-decent pun may be the one of the ways to do it.
If my vote counts, put me down for Fabrigate (as a fan of the lowest form of humor), although Gleick-gate, would be more affective for pursuing partisan goals.
But even there, Gleick-gate is too specific a reference to be valuable beyond the blogosphere. I recommend you go back to the drawing board to come up with something more effective. You want something that will resonate for those who are not already converted, who have limited background knowledge, etc.
C’mon boyz, bitter framing of opponents with sarcastic and ridiculing language is your specialty. You can do better than this!
Fabrigate, to my mind, has the advantage of being funny. Fakegate was nearly there, but now PG has fessed up, I think fabrigate does the job perfectly.
I hadn’t seen fakegate. You guys should definitely go with that. It’s much more effective from a tribal standpoint.
Stupid boy – now he’s operating at the same level as the CRU email hackers.
Strange thing though….that is much fetd here.
Tom and Joshua
I would point out you have both infringed my trademarked name ‘gleick-gate’ l even though I gave you fair warning. Its a $100 fine each in damages which I shall donate to Heartland :)
tonyb
So Michael,
You too have the problem of being unable to differentiate between documents which are valid and those which are not, as well as being unable to distinguish the difference between what is clearly illegal, with an admitted participant and what is as yet an unknown individual who may or may not have committed an illegal act.
I really think it should be Climategate Part III even though Fakegate is funny. How many in the series? And we can argue about which ones to include.
Oh the irony.To THINK Peter Gleik lectured our faIr minded host, upholder of the open society, on ethical behaviour. Where is Kim, Judith’s poster non pareil of the witty summary?
Beth
I can’t keep up with Kim but:
First there was Mike.
Now there’s Gleick.
Yike!
Max, OT, but you remind me of the (very old) Limerick,
There are three people called Stein,
There’s Gert and there’s Ike, and there’s Ein.
Gert’s poems are bunk,
Ike’s statues are junk,
And no-one can understand Ein.
Sorry Judith…
Ready, Set, Gleick. It’s a Hail Mary, to the WRONG ENDZONE!
===============
!FLASH!
Or correspondent has just learned that the recent Heartland story with the faked documents was, in actual fact, a plot by deniers of climate science supported by nefarious big oil and coal interests and their minions in the Republican Party.
Peter Glieck, who has been posing as a defender of ethics and staunch supporter of the IPCC cause in the war against human-induced climate disaster, is actually a climate denier and a Heartland mole!
His recent admission of faking documents was made to discredit the AGW cause.
A well-known climate scientist who asked to remain anonymous told our correspondent, “I always suspected that Gleick was on the other side – but this latest action has confirmed it. It only shows how low the anti-science denial machine will go in order to confuse the public with its lies.”
Oh, My!
Are we still in Kansas, Toto?
Was reading something the other day that described this as ‘Mobyism’ – to assume an opposing position to the one you truly hold, and then do such an appalling job in defence of the assumed position as to seriously undermine it.
If this isn’t an act of Mobyism, it is truly mind-boggling that someone as previously well-respected is so committed to the narrative of cAGW as to commit illegal acts and then try to defend them by continuing to play to the narrative (to paraphrase from his apology – well funded organisation of deniers).
The fact is that whenever the unauthorised release of information occurs it is inevitably going to involve at least a breach of trust and often dishonest and/or unlawful behaviour, so unless one takes the view that the unauthorised release of information is always wrong then we have to accept that there are times when we will condone such behaviour and take the view that the ends justify the means. So I’m not convinced by those who find Gleick’s behaviour terribly shocking whilst seeing the climategate leaker/hacker as some kind of heroic figure.
Personally I have the same approach to the two cases that I do to all others which involve the unauthorised release of information – I base my judgement on whether I think the wider public interest is served by the release of the information whilst acknowleging that the person responsible has to recognise that there may be personal consequences for their actions and accept them accordingly.
I have zero problem with the Heartland docs being released, with the caveat that if personal information relating to some individuals should have been redacted, as I think that the activities of organisations which attempt to influence public policy should be open to scrutiny in general, and especially where they are pushing misinformation on scientific issues to further a political agenda. I wouldn’t be losing much sleep if similar documents were released relating to, say, Greenpeace (although I think they are a more honourable organisation than Heartland).
My beef with Gleick would be not so much for obtaining an releasing the Heartland documents in the manner that he did (which would be hypocritical on my part) – he will rightly have to face the consequences in any case, including possible criminal charges. Nor do I think that it necessarily means he is an unprincipled individual. But it was a stupid thing to do given his position and his actions will doubtless be used unfairly cast doubt on his scientific work and to impugn the characters of his fellow scientists.
Had Gleick just obtain the documents, I would have considered the situation the same as Climategate. Embellishing, stepped over my personal view of the ethics of the situation. Lying should be left to the politicians, oh wait?
In what way did Gleick “embellish” the documents?
capn’n –
Actually, you are on record as contradicting that statement: You already made it clear that you considered the politicization of science in Climategate differently than the politicization of the science confirmed by the Heartland documents.
aa,
The fact is there is a difference between a whistle blower leaking data and a thief using ID fraud and wire fraud (and possibly mail fraud?) to steal documents. Climategate 1 & 2 show no evidence of being stolen by outsiders. 3 will likely be the same. None of climategate was faked.
And, by the way, I believe you would be amazed if you the raw feed from Greenpeace or WWF or other big green NGOs were released. No embellishment or fabrication would be needed. Notice that for the AGW movement to win, the promoters need to lie about the data and their opponents. To stop the AGW movement we just need to tell the truth.
hunter,
I’m not going to claim Gleick’s actions were lawful – he clearly seems to have obtained the documents under false pretences, but “identity fraud” is way over the top – it means a lot more than pretending to be someone else on the phone. As for the climategate emails, even if they were an inside job that doesn’t make the actions of the hacker/leaker lawful and we don’t have any evidence that this was in fact the case, so you have to allow for the possiblility that they were obtained as a result of hacking UEA’s computer system and that’s a more serious offence than what Gleick did. And I don’t remember ever seeing a skeptic claim that they would withdraw their support for the release of the emails if it turned out that it was in fact a hack (nor would I ask them to). Nor is there any evidence that Gleick either had any knowledge of or was actively involved in the faking of any documents (if indeed any were actually faked).
When I politely pointed out simple, innocent errors made by Peter Gleik on his HUFFPO Blog, my comments were “disappeared.”
Any explanation of why this headlong rush from simple denial into fabrication?
orkenygal
I just went to the HP article by him and it said comments were closed for the article. I dont remember seeing such a statement before. Perhaps what they were seeing was not to their liking.
Orkneygal
Climate science is much more fragile than is admitted, and challenging it subsequently brings over reaction. Think of soldier ants rushing to protect their queen. Over the years a number of environmental groups/ Ngo’s/ Govts have successfully created a sophisticated and plausible facade that demonstrates that the science is ‘correct’ but if anyone has any doubts all right thinking people have a duty to agree with it anyway.
This was a policy promulgated by the UK govt after they were persuaded by a variety of groups that traipsed through the various Parliamentary committees set up to investigate climate change, and who managed to persuade those that set policy, that it was a serious matter that needed urgent attention. I wrote about that process here;
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/crossing-the-rubicon-an-advert-to-change-hearts-and-minds/#comments
Al Gore himself visited Parliament and it resulted in the Worlds first legally binding climate change Act with only a couple of MP’s dissenting.
Those most loudly proclaiming the sanctity of the science such as the BBC and the UK govt and the Guardian, follow a set of guidelines created by a PR co for the UK Govt. It is called ‘The Rules of the Game.’
http://www.futerra.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/RulesOfTheGame.pdf
This little gem from their front page;
“Changing attitudes towards climate change is not like selling a particular brand of soap – it’s like convincing someone to use soap in the first place.”
Scott Mandia has clearly read the rules of the game and of course is one of the scientific task force who advises the Guardian and the BBC.
This further little gem from the Rules perhaps puts Gleicks actions in context, and the rest of the document explains why the desmog crowd and –disappointingly- Scott Mandia-think he is a hero.
“We need to think radically, and the Rules of the Game are a sign that future campaigns will not be‘business as usual’. This is a truly exciting moment.’
tonyb
tonyb,
What is the ACTUAL evidence that is the AGW theory?
Based on many other theories, the AGW uses Venus as a basis of the same parameters as Earth due to the theory of gravity and density. This is what Earth should be like with a run-away co2.
Yet many parameters are ignored in this theory as strictly temperature data for a model is the ONLY factor. Motion was NEVER included in past scientists consideration as it was NEVER reproduced in laboratories studying planets and gases(observed science). The velocity difference alone is immense along with NO reflecting gases or reflecting substance on the planet surface.
Gravity in motion is influenced hugely by the velocity of the planet that generates centrifugal force.
The models used currently by our scientists NEVER need a moving planet!
Averaging an orb for a calculation takes away ALL the different factors that an orb is so that a single calculation can say that the WHOLE PLANET is reacting at once INSTANTLY….hmmmm.
Joes World
I see you ask for actual evidence of the AGW theory. I see Tempterrain seems to be hanging around, so I will invite him to answer it. Just make sure he doen’t point vaguely to AR4 and say ‘its all in there.’
tonyb
I think the tone of congressional testimony on Climate Change may change somewhat in the future.
Obvious point that seems (?) to have been missed so far: if Gleick received the fake strategy document before he obtained the board papers, why did it not occur to him as strange that the strategy paper was not among the board papers? Why did he proceed to publish it online claiming that it was part of the board pack when he knew it was not?
Andrew Revkin has commented “The broader tragedy is that his [Gleick’s] decision to go to such extremes in his fight with Heartland has greatly set back any prospects of the country having the “rational public debate” that he wrote — correctly — is so desperately needed.
Many of us, no doubt, would have been motivated by a desire to engage in a rational debate to begin with. I would say the general feeling, up until a couple of years ago, was that if scientists took the trouble to better explain to the public, to come down from their ivory towers as Judith put it, and understanding of the danger of allowing atmospheric CO2 concentrations to rise out of all control would develop and rectifying action would start to be taken. That seems so naive, now, looking back.
The scientific community didn’t realise what they were up against. They do now. The gloves are off and, though it’s sad to say, but in a cultural war, like all wars, anything goes.
So Gleick sacrificed his reputation and ethics for the “cause”? How Nobel.
I have debated with scientists many, many times. As far as they are concerned, they are absolutely correct and no matter what is shown will be ignored.
Try debating with a Newton professor who is head of the Newton Museum…do you think he may be biased to his position?
Joes World
For a future article I am going through a number of scientific papers concerning historical temperature records. The authors ( all well known names) are most bemused that their models do not correspond with the instrumental records, which they then assume must therefore have a warming bias and have adjusted.
tonyb
tt –
It’s not a war that can be won by a opposing utilization of force. The balance of power is too even. It’s a matter of physics.
tt,
Whilst I sympathise with that view I’m reminded of the saying about never wrestling with a pig because you both get dirty and the pig enjoys it.
The problem is that in a democracy the pigs, as you put it, have the vote. I’d like to be able to ignore the anti-science crowd and keep spotlessly clean. We can do that on some other issues but not this one.
tempterrian,
Bunk. The AGW movement embraced Hansen and the rest of the catastrophists for decades. What ‘the scientists’ are up against is choosing to be honest or dishonest.
Too many allowed allowed Schneider and many others to fuzzy the line and rationalize lying for far too long. Gleick is the natural outcome of that moral failure.
hunter,
I have no problem whatsoever embracing Hansen – he is one of the leading scientists in his field who has made a great contribution to our understanding of climate. As indeed did Schneider. As for choosing to be honest or dishonest, well you guys flunked that one when you chose to dishonestly misrepresent Schneider’s words.
Good. You can have him all to your self. His enrichment on the public teat, his deceptive books, his support for xenocide, his criminal behavior, his calls for war crimes trials, his delusions about Earth turning into Venus,
Schneider, and his pal Ehrilich, you might have failed to notice, were wrong. Schneider’s contribution to climate science was to rationalize lying.
You can have him as well.
Hansen’s contribution was crippling the science and strengthening the dogma.
Matt Nisbet has a good essay: Climate Scientists Getting A Little Bit Angry For their own good
http://bigthink.com/ideas/42563
Nisbet unconsciously confirms what I’ve been saying (my emphasis):
Believing is for religion. Science is about demonstration. How many people, I wonder, don’t believe in gravity? We don’t believe in gravity we recognize and acknowledge it. Nisbet wants to think that people should recognize and acknowledge global warming but unconsciously he knows it’s a narrative and narratives are either believed or not believed. Freud, a better known narrative scientist, would be having a field day explaining Nisbet’s slip. It was probably something his mother did or didn’t do to him as a toddler. :-)
David,
Once again we are reminded Dr. Curry’s “communication” is about consensus manipulation not science reform. Nisbet’s views are appalling and contrived to sell the warming product; eco-left party line on AGW.
National Center for Science Education in Oakland – appointed Peter Gleick to it’s board to fight climate change denial
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/19/comparing-climate-skepticism-to-creationism-in-the-classroom/
Does education really need his sort of ethics?
Thanks for reminding us of this. This is a very strong argument for something like what David Wojick is proposing.
Education doesn’t need his sort of ethics. Indoctrination does.
Everyone has to understand that it’s all about SAVING THE F@*~ING PLANET!!
No other excuse is needed.
Btw, Dr Curry, you may have upset Gleick and hence his ultimate insult (in his terms) to you of being someone who can be ‘turned’; I wonder what Revkin did that so annoyed him?
I suppose that’s right in a way. If there is a clear danger and a hardcore minority choose to dismiss that danger, and undermine the scientific evidence, for what are patently narrow ideological reasons, then there is a big problem.
So what to do? There’s no point in being nice. We’ve just got to fight it out.
tt,
The only people messing with the evidence are the AGW promoters.
What to do when a small elite of people get caught more than once messing with the data, misleading the public and acting out against their enemies in order to create the impression that a dangerous situation exists which only they can manage at great personal profit?
I would suggest that this is much closer to the actual description of who is doing what.
temp,
When you say “If there is a clear danger … ” do you realize that the most import word id “If”? To date, there is no real evidence of any danger. The fact we have been repeated told there is, is what many like me have a problem with.
Whether it be
millions of climate refugees
disappearing polar bears
disappearing island
spread of tropical diseases
increasing numbers and intensities of storms
increasing war and conflict
etc, etc, etc
Every
Single
One
of these has yet to be happening or shown as unlikely to happen.
It is not that some hardcore minority is dismissing a danger. It is that no one has proven any danger exists.
I am not a troll, I just have not had the time to follow this. I need a quick update.
How much of what Gleik released was true and how much false ?
Who knows – but I’m not sure if Gleick is the person to ask.. :)
Horace,
The actual part that he merely stole by deception shows HI is like any other group with a relatively small budget pushing ideas in the public square. AGW believers sought to damage HI by releasing not only policy papers, but private personnel records. Gleick, so far is the only person who admits to the actions that led to this scandal. My bet is others were helping him.
“My bet is others were helping him.” You really think so, hunter? Gleick clearly has an advanced messiah complex – he seems to p*ss off plenty of people his more circumspect brethren prefer to keep on side, and to revel in any kind of attention he can get, whether “good” or “bad”. He’s the sort of bloke that could start a blue in an empty room.
Practically anyone he chose to consult, save perhaps for that strange little Craven guy, would have commanded him, in the name of Gaia,to desist.
My guess is (isn’t this FUN?) there’s a little bit of little Peter that wanted to get caught – and he wouldn’t want to share that delicious, heroic notoriety with anyone, now would he?
My own bet would be – lone job, perhaps a hit on the crack pipe, but no participation by anyone who didn’t share his stratospheric egomania. Climate “science” has a few of those, I grant you, but can you imagine two of them cooperating for long enough to pull this sort of stunt?
Still, I’m the guy that thought Richard Curtis (10:10) was having a laugh….
Horace
Depends what you mean by ‘true’ and ‘false’. Additionally, quite a lot of it, at least in general terms, was available in the public domain anyway (such as the Heartland support for the NIPCC, and that the scientists writing this are paid for their time).
Factually, the large majorty of what was released was true, regarding both donations and expenditure. The one exception was reference in the fake ‘strategy memo’ to $200K from the Koch Foundation to support Heartland’s work on climate change. Koch only contributed $25K, specifically relating to healthcare research, and the $200K was an aspirational figure in Heartland’s 2012 budget.
Largely, the genuine documents just showed a conservative lobby group engaging in the sorts of things a conservative lobby group would do. Now, what your opinions on the morality and rightness of these activities are is clearly going to depend on your political standpoint. As an outsider, I can’t express much of an opinion beyond saying that the US system is clearly very different from that here in the UK (for example the idea of a political lobby group developing education modules on potentially controversial and politically divisive issues such as climate change).
The more significant issue is the fake ‘strategy memo’ , which is where the juicy quotes that have interested the media and the ‘warmist’ blogs. The articles by Megan Macardle give a good breakdown of the differences between the contents of the genuine documents and the faked memo:
http://www.theatlantic.com/megan-mcardle/
Climate High Command to Joshua: Get with the programme ffs. PG is a heroe, standing up against the massed hordes of the denialist machine! Your mission should you choose to accept it (and if you don’t your a Denier) is to (1) disrupt this thread like you do all the others.
(2) Introduce “tribalism” always good for disruption.
(3) Question that arch Denier heretic Judith (can’t bring ourselves to mention her surname ugh) as to her motives, bias etc etc and this time GET HER TO RESPOND .
(4) Compare this heroic action to the filthy scums thieving nay lying nay child killing of the completely innocent saviours of the planet in what these deniers call “Climategate”
(5) Re above don’t repond to anyone who mentions that HI is a Private Institute and so has certain protections under the law whereas CRU, NASA etc are publically funded bodies and don’t ( and don’t say we mentioned that… mums the word)
(6) do what TT did above after all “all fair in love and war”
If you complete this mission as described your place in Gia heaven on earth is assured as is your remuneration for the rest of your days. Go for it Big Boy
Theendisnightnot
Class!
Hah! I emailed Anthony Watts on February 16th telling him to look at the National Center for
Selling EvolutionScience Education which recently added Gleick to the organization and announced it was adding climate change to the list of scientificdogmadisciplines needing its protection in the public schools. I have a copy of the email and so does Watts.No surprise here. None at all.
All is fair in love and culture wars, I guess.
Science, like Elvis, has left the building.
A long time ago both climate science and evolutionary biology were legitimate sciences. But both are more or less forensic sciences not amenable to experimental confirmations so in the final chapter they are narratives of the past. But the practioners don’t see it that way. They want to be like chemists and physicists and experimental biologists. In other words they want to be a so-called ‘hard’ science. These can never be that but in the zealous attempt for their conclusions to be accepted as hard science the practioners escape the bonds of integrity and start using deception, strong arm tactics, politics, and the courts to make sure their narrative is the only narrative the public learns or accepts.
I like to close this particular rant by asking “How many times have you heard it said that evolution is as well proven as gravity?”. Now tell me how many times you’ve heard a PHYSICIST say that. This illustrates the desire of historical biology to be taken as seriously as nuclear physics. They want their science to be settled and it never will be because that is simply not a characteristic of forensic sciences. That is a characteristic of experimental sciences. Evolution and climate are and will forever remain soft sciences. Get used to it.
Careful, David – there are many folks in these here parts who get very upset if you talk about evolution in the context of the climate debate.
I’m sure that they’ll be along in droves to voice objection.
Any minute now.
I’m sure.
Any minute.
“A long time ago both climate science and evolutionary biology were legitimate sciences. But both are more or less forensic sciences not amenable to experimental confirmations so in the final chapter they are narratives of the past”
Er, one can perform experiments in evolutionary biology to confirm or reject hypotheses. Indeed, this is done all the time. One should also compared the level of ‘dogmatic inertia’ of the field of evolutionary biology. When the possibility horizontal gene transfer was demonstrated on the basis of sequence analysis, it was then shown experimentally. The whole field underwent a >95% against to greater than >95% for.
Again, the presence of Neanderthal genes in the Western European population was very much a minority position. When genetic analysis of the Neanderthal and modern human genomes showed the presence of some Neanderthal genes there was no march of traditionalists carrying flaming torches and pitchforks. Indeed, the speed at which the evolutionary biology community underwent a shift in thinking is EXACTLY the opposite of the current situation in climate science.
To put it simply, everything in the biosphere evolved. The mechanism of evolution is by natural selection. Individual details of every species transition from the first replicate are varied and unique, yet we can pretty much have a good stab. Also noteworthy is way that evolutionary biologists use highly conservative statistical analysis to defend they analysis.
Every biologist has a sense of wonderment, and most a huge sense of humility, when they consider the size, depth and heritage of the biosphere. On the whole, they know that they are only observing the tip of an ice-berg and that everything they postulate is only an inadequate description of a massively complex system.
Even the feuds are trivial, Chris Stringer was the leader of the single origin/out-of-Africa hypothesis and was somewhat skeptical of Zilhao and Trinkaus identification of a skeleton of a Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon hybrid 15 years ago. He did not sabotage their work, keep them out of the literature, quash their grant applications. Instead he waited for further research and then completely changed his mind about the origins of modern humanity.
Chris Stringer’s 2011 book ‘The Origin of Our Species’ is quite different from Chris Stringer & Robin McKie’s 1997, ‘African Exodus. The Origins of Modern Humanity’. In the latter he argued a single, non-hybridizing out of Africa origin of all humankind, whereas now he rejoices in the added complexity of our hybrid genetic character.
He is happier to know the truth, even if it means that his views over the majority of his working life were wrong.
Compare and contrast.
Doc
Good summary.
Judith….. I wrote to Bob Corell yesterday. Once, he was my model of science integrity. (I wonder, esp., about the “old” sell-outs, those ostensibly in retirement who could fight for science, who have little to lose. McPhaden, Corell….Wunsch, Briscoe…)
Heartland worked — hard — to engage Gleick, and, I am sure, many of the others. To debate, to represent science.
(I think Delingpole had the deepest razor cut on (maybe) Gleick’s strategy memo:
“My favourite giveaway clue that Watts-y has spotted is this one:
6. Key sentences are rather clumsily written and some make no sense. This contrasts with purposeful language in the other documents. This one sentence in particular has gotten a lot of attention:
His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.
I can’t imagine pitching “…dissuading teachers from teaching science.” to a board of directors at a meeting. It is a sure recipe for a public relations nightmare.
“No, indeed. If you’re going to pretend to be one of the “enemy” at least have the intelligence to try to think like the “enemy” would. I know this is going to come as a major shock to the kind of foam-flecked, cerebrally-deficient eco-zealots who scrawl in red crayons for DeSmog blog or earn lavish salaries as propaganda shills for the Grantham Institute or fester at the Guardian’s environment pages, but here’s an amazing fact…
“Ready for your amazing fact, fruit loop eco-loons?
“OK. Here goes.
“We climate realists don’t think of ourselves as anti-science.
“No, really. We think we’re pro-science. That’s what we want science teachers to teach kids in schools: hard science – physics, chemistry, biology. Stuff that’s empirical. Theories that are falsifiable. Not the kind of junk science they teach in places like the school of “environmental” “science” at comedy institutions like the “University” of East Anglia. Because that’s not science at all. It’s computer-modelling, projection, which is more akin to necromancy.
“So, next time you try to fake your Protocols of the Elders of Climategate document, guys, at least try to credit the people you’re trying to smear with a bit of integrity. Not everyone is like you, you realise?”
A long time ago, in another universe about another matter, Bob Corell said to me, “I think Patrick Michaels has been widely discredited. Be careful.” I was shocked, as was my brilliant physist/engineer husband.
I would not dismiss Peter Gleick. Like Michael Mann, he needs to be properly tromped into the ground. Over time. Carefully.
Heartland Inst. engages, believes in science. The irony that Gleick “believes” — is this a disease? — that Heartland stops debate! is soo over the top.
Judith, I understand your aloneness, confusion. I wish I could help you. ….smile….. but I don’t even understand half of this blog. I wish it were easier to pick the White Hats from the Black Hats.
You go, girl! ….Lady in Red
Aside from the ethics of obtaining the documents, I wonder about the ethics & integrity of the confession….
Greg Laden (a green blogger) unequivocally accepts Gleick’s statement as entirely true and complete, and reasons that therefore the strategy memo must be real and fake.
If Gleick does know anything more about the strategy memo that he hasn’t disclosed (including if knows it’s fake), he just threw one of his supporters under a bus.
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2012/02/the_heartland_science_denial_d.php
Gleick are you reading? Does this aspect at all prick your conscience?
I suspect that the much-discussed divide in the blogosphere’s judgement of the improbable Dr. Gleick’s latest misadventure is not so much “tribal” in character(though there may be some element of that sort of thing) but, rather, derives from two entirely different notions of morality.
As “proletariat morality” would have it, ol’ Pete is pretty much a moral paragon. According to the ethics of “proletariat morality”, that which promotes “the cause” is moral. And that the tool-kit of “the cause” might contain bold-faced fibs; half-baked half-truths; scams; bait-and-switches; limited hang-outs; false-flags; fraudulently-obtained documents; thread-jackers; Lysenko scientists; hustlers; useful booger-eaters; youth-masters; agit-prop weenies; prestigious institutions in on the deal; co-opted dorks; zit-impaired, brainwashed kids; and award-winning, carbon-swine eco-hypocrites of some girth and growing is neither here nor there from a moral perspective. Just tools of the trade–perfectly moral in character when employed to promote the cause.
And while the unfortunate Dr. Gleick’s little “fabrigate” (H/T TomFP) problem may elicit an occasional condemnation, of the conventional, “bourgeois morality” type, from a greenshirt pal or two, I think we can safely classify such humbug as nothing more than PR “damage control”. No, Pete’s only failing in the eyes of his fellow good comrades, I recommend, is that he is a doofus screw-up who got caught. But Pete’s heart is in the right, or should I say “left, place, so to his comrades, he remains a hero.
Consequently, I anticipate an in-your-face defiance of St. Peter’s tormenters by the eco-faithful, and that, following his up-coming martyrdom in the public square, we’ll find Pete’s earthly remains, at the end of their journey, in an enviro-friendly reliquary after all–maybe even with a low-carbon state funeral to go with it. And his sainted memory will even, I predict, be preserved among the “believers” as an inspiration to future greenshirt generations, on the one hand, and as a cautionary-tale–don’t get caught!–on the other.
Seriously good rant. You could ghost write for Ann Coulter. Actually for all I know you could BE Ann Coulter.
I wonder if any journalists are going to try harassing the National Academy about the behavior of its members. NAS advises the federal government on science policy and so this a matter of public interest far more so than Heartland which is just a picayune private concern that advises no one in particular.
If I were interviewing NAS my first question would be “How many quarterly letters sent to your members are to prison addresses and do you anticipate any increases in this number going forward?”
Ms. Curry writes, “I seem to have gotten his goat to have been mentioned in the fake Heartland strategy doc (hard to believe that he didn’t write this).”
This is the part I’m having a hard time figuring out.
In Gleick’s confession, he says he first received the strategy memo anonymously, then obtained the legitimate documents by deceiving Heartland. Then, since they seemed to be more or less consistent, he leaked them all. It sounds like Ms. Curry favors a different explanation, in which Gleick obtained the legitimate documents, then forged the strategy document using the information obtained from them.
This doesn’t make sense to me, though. If he already had the legitimate documents, why would he risk undercutting their impact by also releasing the forged strategy memo? There’s nothing substantive in the strategy memo that isn’t also in the legitimate documents. So why add the forged document to the mix? It would just be handing Heartland a convenient way to take the moral high ground (since they would immediately know the document was fake and identify it as such, as actually happened).
If Gleick is telling the truth about the sequence of events, though, his inclusion of the forged memo makes more sense: He included it in the release because he didn’t know it was fake. The legitimate documents he had obtained from Heartland seemed to confirm the details in the strategy memo, so he assumed that it was legitimate. But this scenario has a problem that bothers me, too: Who forged the strategy memo and supplied it to Gleick?
The details in the strategy memo show that whoever forged it had access to internal Heartland budget and planning information. So I guess we can go back to the original speculation from last week about a disgruntled insider, former employee, or Heartland board member. But here again, something doesn’t match up. If someone with access to the real budget and planning documents inside Heartland wanted to discredit the organization, why not leak those documents to Gleick? Instead, this hypothetical insider appears to have used the information in the real documents to forge a credible-sounding, but demonstrably fake, summary, and supplied that to Gleick. Why would the forger do that? What purpose could be served by leaking Gleick a document that could be easily denounced as a fake by Heartland, when the insider could just as easily leak the real thing?
Ross Kaminsky of Heartland was quite prescient in a blog post at The American Spectator last Friday in which he singled out Gleick as a likely source of the leaked documents. In that piece he pointed out the similarity of this incident to that of the forged “Killian documents” that brought down Dan Rather. I agree with him that the similarities between the two cases are striking. Many people said at the time of that earlier incident that Rather (or his producer Mary Mapes) must have forged the Killiam memos, just as Ms. Curry appears to be saying that Gleick may have forged the Heartland strategy memo. To me, though, that’s reminiscent of Conan Doyle’s phrase about giving the accused “credit for having too much imagination and too little.”
It’s all very curious.
Indeed. The ‘forensics’ of all this are being discussed at ClimateAudit
http://climateaudit.org/2012/02/20/peter-gleick-confesses/
“If he already had the legitimate documents, why would he risk undercutting their impact by also releasing the forged strategy memo?”
Go back and look at the posts on the various blogs, including this one, by CAGW advocates. They uniformly were trumpeting the contents of the strategy memo, the faked document. Without that, this was a yawner. heartlan, an organization pilloried for advocating skepticism and publishing the NIPCC report, is shown to…wait for it…advocate skepticism and publish the NIPCC report.
The forged strategy memo was the story. And fortunately for us, it still is, just not as Gleick planned.
Gleik would be in some very serious trouble if he admitted to forging a document. Given I generally believe in the presumption of innocence and Occam’s Razor I presumed someone received a Xerox copy of the alleged forgery. Actually I presumed they received it by fax which would explain the errors made by the optical character recognition. A fax is tough to send anonymously though but a US post office letter is not so that makes sense too. But Gleick might be just protecting the source too. At this point we now know he’s a liar and we’re merely trying to determine how far the lies go.
As it stands the only criminal activity I see is criminal stupidity for a Heartland staffer send materials to an unknown email on the say-so of someone who calls on the phone and claims to be someone important. Gleick isn’t going to jail over that. Heartland may have some sort of civil case but I don’t see any upside in it for them worth having a messy discovery phase that sours even more investors. I believe Heartland was actually damaged but their own employee bears the blame for taking no reasonable precaution whatsoever to verify that the confidential materials were being sent to someone who was authorized to receive them. That’s exceedingly incompetent. Gleick looks like a juvenile delinquent committing a petty act of vandalism but Heartland now looks like a ship of fools for so easily giving out confidential materials.
That’s probably criminal. Calling up a secretary and telling her you’re a board member who lost some materials and needs them sent to an address not associated with the board member? That’s criminal stupidity IMO of a Heartland staffer but probably not criminal in the eyes of the justice system.
From the California penal code:
“528.5. (a) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, any person
who knowingly and without consent credibly impersonates another
actual person through or on an Internet Web site or by other
electronic means for purposes of harming, intimidating, threatening,
or defrauding another person is guilty of a public offense punishable
pursuant to subdivision (d).”
Or try this one:
“529. (a) Every person who falsely personates another in either his
or her private or official capacity, and in that assumed character
does any of the following, is punishable pursuant to subdivision (b):
…
(2) Verifies, publishes, acknowledges, or proves, in the name of
another person, any written instrument, with intent that the same may
be recorded, delivered, or used as true.”
Not that any Democrat prosecutor in California would pursue a good progressive like Gleick for doing the Lord’s, I mean the State’s, work.
David,
Little will happen legally Gleick. It doesn’t mean this isn’t huge, thousands of AGW operatives are exposing their fanatical views to the more objective center who already know what a fringe movement AGW was already. It’s a huge confirm moment similar to Climategate.
The Green stigma grows everyday in this cycle. It’s time for Dr. Curry to rollover on the point and admit the obvious about what the motives of Peter Gleick really are and were. AGW is driven by leftist ambitions even more than money. That’s the endgame, that’s when honesty is reached.
“Gleick looks like a juvenile delinquent committing a petty act of vandalism but Heartland now looks like a ship of fools for so easily giving out confidential materials”
My wife nearly giveaway our bank details and SS#’s in response to a Phishing email. The majority of the links on the form were to our credit union, except the last.
People who fall for a confidence tricksters are not always stupid.
Frank William Abagnale (Catch me if you can), wrote how he hired a Security Guard uniform, placed a sign on a night-safe stating
“Out of order: Leave money with Security Officer”
then took all the cash from a retail outlet. Escorted by two cops who wanted to make sure he was not robbed.
Falling for a criminal deception is unfortunate, it does not make ‘criminal stupid’.
Someone at HI was conned, and probably is going through some sort of personal hell. Gleick has placed someone in a position where they can potentially lose their job and have a very poor letter of recommendation, merely for being helpful.
David, your analysis shows you have the empathy of a shark.
John Callender | February 21, 2012 at 10:25 am | Reply
“Ms. Curry writes”
Uh, no. That would be either “Curry writes”, “Dr. Curry writes” or “Prof. Curry writes”.
Ah, good point. Apologies to Dr. Curry for any offense I may have offered. It was inadvertent. Thanks for the correction.
If temptation can overtake the Oracle of Scientific Integrity, one has to wonder how corrupt this religious organization has all become. If the strong can fall, how vulnerable must the weaker members of the church be? Are their scientific proclamations and prophecies based on science, with a hint of faith, or are they faith, with a hint of science?
It has been almost 40 years since I read Eric Hoffer’s work. The actions of Peter Gleick certainly seem to be covered by Hoffer’s work-
“A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.”
— Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (1951)
“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”
— Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, aph. 222 (1955), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations
“Vehemence is the expression of a blind effort to support and uphold something that can never stand on its own…Whether it our own meaningless self we are upholding, or some doctrine devoid of evidence, we can do it only in a frenzy of faith.”
— Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind (1954), thanks to Laird Wilcox, ed, “The Degeneration of Belief”
From Wikipedia-
“There have been 23 editions of The True Believer published between 1951 and 2002.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer
” Thesis and background:
The book analyzes and attempts to explain the motives of the various types of personalities that give rise to mass movements; why and how mass movements start, progress and end; and the similarities between them, whether religious, political, radical or reactionary. As examples, the book often refers to Communism, Fascism, National Socialism, Christianity, Protestantism, and Islam. Hoffer believes that mass movements are interchangeable, that adherents will often flip from one movement to another, and that the motivations for mass movements are interchangeable; that religious, nationalist and social movements, whether radical or reactionary, tend to attract the same type of followers, behave in the same way and use the same tactics, even when their stated goals or values differed.”
Thanks for these quotes, MarkM, and hunter, if you’re reading this, this captures an aspect of Glieck’s neurosis rather better than I did:
“A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.” As I said earlier, the man’s not fit to plead*.
*In Curry’s virtual court, that is – I trust he will be found eminently fit to plead in whatever real court he ends up in).
Has Senator Inhofe’s office weighed in on this yet? That’s the next circus act. It’s already a three ring production with HI, NCSE, and NAS. Those who thought Gleick a lion tamer must be disappointed to find out he was just a clown.
Pass the popcorn.
David,
Should Sen. Inhofe, who has been ridiculed for pointing out the unethical and dubious behavior in the AGW community now be silent? Should you maybe admit that he, along with people like Steven Mosher, are now vindicated?
I call everyone’s attention to the piece on CBS;s 60 MInutes on February 12 concerning the scandal at Duje University over falsified data used in the “study” of a supposed new breakthrough treatment for cancer.
This piece presented a thorough and exact description of not only the fakery at Duke U., but also (presumably unwittingly on CBS’s part) of the methods used by the AGW fascists to support their claims about CO2 and global warming (though CBS, given its hopelessly leftist-fascist bias, would never acknowledge the parallel).
Apropos the 60 Minutes piece I have written my congressman asking fir an investigation by Congress and the Justice Department into the methods of AGW “science” and the false statements likely made on AGW “scientists'” applications for federal research grants.
The fraud the AGW people are committing makes Bernie Madoff’s peculations look like pocket change by comparison. I frankly hope to see criminal prosecutions and forced public retractions of the filth these people have been peddling.
Yes, Chad you’re on the right theme. This is also beyond the politically correct protocals found on this site.
There is no left vs. right in Dr. Curry’s narrative therefore following that rule we can’t guess what the motives of Peter Gleick or for that matter the entire AGW movements might be politically.
It doesn’t make much sense but even skeptics here help support the protocal on this site. Dr. Curry will not comment on the topic.
Delingpole;
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100138560/peter-gleick-the-johann-hari-of-climate-science/
Yes, it’s material for a book for sure.
The various outlets of MSM have reacted exactly as one could expect. Telegraph like that, Guardian and Washington Post in a very different way.
Nothing new in that.
After the first furore this episode will be a minor addition to what we had already and have very little influence on anything except perhaps on a few persons including Peter Gleick and possibly also David Wojick, but not necessarily very much even for them.
Pekka:
“…this episode will (…) have very little influence on anything except perhaps on a few persons including Prter Gleick (…) but not necessarily very much even for (him).”
I certainly hope you are wrong about Gleick
And likewise wrong about Wojick. I try not to take either side of this debate (with the result that both sides picture me as on the other side), and have so far pictured DW as a model of rectitude, up which these unfortunate disclosures have obliged me to add a rod to maintain it.
I’m reminded of advice first given by my grandfather to my dad and from him to my brothers and I.
Never give anyone cause to call you a liar, a thief or a cheat.
I’m thinking Dr Gleick could have used that advice from his father. He’s already up for two of the three and possible all three if he authored the fake document. Talk about a hat trick.
I have to applaud Peter Gleick. Just for the wire fraud he could spend ten years in federal prison, making him one the first high-profile leader of the CAGW movement who has taken actions that could substantially reduce his carbon footprint.
+1
DY, I’ve been as impressed with the depth of your technical understanding of the details of these climate-relevant issues as I’ve been unimpressed with your ability to assemble them into a coherent picture.
I imagine you staring through a microscope at the Mona Lisa’s smile trying to decide whether it’s really a smile, without ever thinking to back away and look at the painting as a whole.
If no one else has ever suggested this to you, let me be the first.
Vaughan, I appreciate your input. But in fluid dynamics, the details of the dynamics matter!! :-)
They think of Mona Lisa as a 2D mesh.
Hey, isn’t everything a partial differential equation? :-)
It is not easy to be a serious scientist if people like mr Glick is the leader of the witch hunt any time a scientific truth is found. Many thanks for this revelation of what mainstream science means in climatology
Hans Jelbring
PhD climatology
MSc civil engineering electronics
BSc Meteorology
Thanks for including your list of degrees.
Now I can list your opinion along with your degrees the next time a “realist” appeals to authority.
Oh.
Wait.
Go away Joshua. You don’t have the nouse to speak to Mr Jelbring in any manner.
The ClimateGate Burglar has saved the economy $trillions. Gleick should be pilloried for such a sick try at undermining his huge success.
(Just trying to boil the consensus of this thread down to a tweetable 140 characters.)
Who is the real criminal here, Gleick, climate science, or the 193 or so countries of the world that object to China and the US cranking out so much CO2? Well, whoever, they’re all standing in the path of economic recovery. Crucify the bloody lot of them, We Want Our Money Back!
I would venture a guess for a tweet: Gleick is a hypocrit of the first order and his transgressions will result in a setback for his cause. FOIA has exposed important scientific issues that are not reflected in the literature, most significantly, there are serious problems with Mann’s work that was prominently displayed by the IPCC. Gleick’s dump exposed nothing of importance and was an attempt to smear his enemies that backfired.
Gleick’s dump exposed nothing of importance
How is this any different from what your enemies said about the Climategate burglary, David?
They are not my enemies. My quesiton for you Vaughan is what scientific question is at stake in Gleick’s dump? Please inform me on this. Clearly, Mann Hockey stick was an important question that the emails were relevant to. There is no moral equivalence as usual.
Mann Hockey stick was an important question
Hockey stick, yes. Mann hockey stick, well, I’m sorry David but I have great difficulty there.
There is a community that includes Mann, McIntyre, and a great many other people, for whom a huge amount is at stake as to whether MWP was ever as warm as today. Maybe I have some kind of cognitive dissonance or impairment or something, but even after a great deal of thought I’ve been unable to see any more relevance of the MWP to modern climate change than whether someone could get killed by parking in front of a culvert.
If you run into the same culvert at high speed it’s an entirely different thing.
Take any half-century period in the last thousand or even million years. Has any such half-century period witnessed anything like the rapid rate of climb of temperature of the most recent such period?
(The exit from the coldest part of the Younger Dryas some hundred or so centuries ago is a very interesting candidate if you’d like to bring that up. I think it’s well worth discussing.)
As any bungee jumper will tell you, it’s not the location of the extremum but how hard you hit it.
If high temperatures like those threatened for 2100 are intrinsically bad, how come the dinosaurs thrived at a great many degrees above that?
But if rapid change at today’s rate is harmless, how could one meteor could wipe out a whole planet’s dinosaur population, assuming the mechanism was a dramatic reduction in temperature resulting from a huge cloud of ash in the stratosphere?
.
Every rapid change in temperature in the past half billion years that I’m aware of has been linked to mass extinctions. What puzzles me is that conservatives seems spectacularly unable to appreciate the downside of rapid change. Surely this is backwards. What is a conservative if not someone opposed to rapid change?
Yes, Rapid change can be bad. I am not claiming otherwise, merely that we need better science to guide our policy decisions. Sound science is not helped by the Hockey stick illusion. I doubt however if current change is faster than the emergence from the last ice age. Vaughan, my problem here is the integrity of science, not a preconceived notion about what the answer is. I’m just saying that climate science is very politicized at the moment. Witness Gleick. You won’t find this nonsense in any other field, not even in medicine where evil corporations have even more money at stake. And we all know that better science is not engendered by what we see at Real Climate. It might be engendered by what Judith is doing here. You are acknowledging my point by posting here and not at Real Climate. I think I know why you are doing this. I suspect that you too know how science advances just as well as I do.
I’m just saying that climate science is very politicized at the moment.
You win that one hands down, David. ;) Not unlike evolution, tobacco, etc. at comparable times.
Witness Gleick. You won’t find this nonsense in any other field, not even in medicine where evil corporations have even more money at stake.
For all I know you’re right, David. Even though both my parents were medical doctors, with my father a fellow of the relevant college of his profession, this is all very much outside my experience, If you like I could run this by some of my friends in Stanford’s School of Medicine to see where they would rank Gleick’s peccadillo in the grand scheme of recent subterfuges in medical science.
most significantly, there are serious problems with Mann’s work that was prominently displayed by the IPCC. Gleick’s dump exposed nothing of importance and was an attempt to smear his enemies that backfired.
David, are you saying this out of concern that I might not yet have accepted your statement that “climate science is very politicized?” Have no fear, I bought it already. :)
Having been trained as a scientist, I think I know a scientific statement when I hear one. And you do make them occasionally, but it would be reassuring to hear another one from you within the next week or so.
Being of that extreme age where some of my neighbors, friends, and colleagues have started showing signs of dementia (and some have even recently passed away from it), I find myself wondering how the tone of Climate Etc.would change if a couple of dozen demented posters were to descend on it and start expressing their thoughts.
I may well be one of them, but would we all have the same understanding of climate, and of those with theories about climate?
My sense is that the majority of them would reflect the majority opinion already expressed here. Your mileage may vary, as they say.
Vaughan, I appreciate your sympathy with my plight as a geezer who is approaching senility. We can both appreciate Judith’s role providing a forum for us to hold forth. You know, fine wine is however helping me delay the inevitable. I am now enjoying a Soos Creek Champoux Vinyard red that I suggest you try.
I am now enjoying a Soos Creek Champoux Vinyard red that I suggest you try.
Funny you should mention Washington wines on Climate Etc, David. ;) The strongly expanding recent growth of wineries in the state’s Columbia Valley bears mute testimony to the warming WA has experienced since 1950 when CO2 was at 310 ppmv, global land-sea temperature was 0.7 C colder than today, and wineries were essentially nonexistent in the state.
One of our faculty here at Stanford has suggested planning ahead and investing in likely future wine country in British Columbia, in the expectation it will some day surpass California as a wine-growing region as a result of global warming. He argued against Washington as having too much precipitation, though the Columbia Valley would seem like a plausible counterexample.
In the meantime Washington residents face the question of whether to invest some of their retirement money in their own backyard industries that are not as high-tech as Boeing, Microsoft, and Amazon. If history is any indication, those climate skeptics who are forecasting an imminent return to mid-20th-century temperatures should not be putting any money in Washington viticulture!
Were I faced with that decision I’d certainly invest in it, as I expect the global land-sea average for the period 2015-2020 to exceed HADCRUT3VGL’s average for 1995-2000 by at least 0.3 C, which would do wonders for Columbia Valley’s production.
Meanwhile I’m following your example, albeit with a 2003 Jarvis Petit Verdot (Bill Jarvis is a neighbor of mine, I support local viticulture). My next postings will accordingly ramble progressively more, though you won’t notice because I’ll be defending post-1950 foundations of mathematics on a blog convinced that pre-1950 foundations can’t be improved on. :)
You are acknowledging my point by posting here and not at Real Climate. I think I know why you are doing this. I suspect that you too know how science advances just as well as I do.
Exactly right, very astute of you. Believe no one, question everything, especially the orthodoxy. (This really ticks off the orthodoxy, who hate being questioned.)
Among orthodox blogs, Real Climate is particularly bad because
(a) it dismisses analysis of climate that is not grounded in known geophysics, and
(b) it insists that paleoclimate calibrates us on modern climate.
The history of geophysics, e.g. plate tectonics, shows that (a) is complete nonsense, while consideration of the relevant time constants shows the same for (b).
‘Being of that extreme age where some of my neighbors, friends, and colleagues have started showing signs of dementia (and some have even recently passed away from it), I find myself wondering how the tone of Climate Etc.would change if a couple of dozen demented posters were to descend on it and start expressing their thoughts.’
I am of the opinion that this has already happened – so no change at all. There is as well at least one idiot savant and someone who imagines he’s a cowboy. Sheesh.
Vaughan, Actually, viticulture has been alive and well for a long time in Washington state. Chateau Ste. Michelle has been producing good reds since at least 1970. You will be interested to know that we had very heavy cold weather damage in 2008 that resulted in a reduced crop. I attribute most of the progress here to better methods and a lot of trial and error involving determining where to plant, what sites are less susceptible to cold, etc. It gets very cold in the Columbia valley during the winter and 0.7 K is probably not significant. Just my guess. But I do believe that for the price, Washington wines are a bargain. We apparently have a marketing problem outside the Northwest. Wereas quality has improved dramatically. Wine Spectator’s 100 best wines in the world for 2011 had not less than 8 Washington state wines on it and #6 was a $35 Bordeaux blend called Baer Ursa. I had 110 bottles at one point.
Vaughan Pratt
From Wiki:
Looks like this had absolutely nothing to do with global warming
Max
Actually, viticulture has been alive and well for a long time in Washington state. Chateau Ste. Michelle has been producing good reds since at least 1970.
Indeed, and growing rapidly. My only point was that wine was nonexistent there before the 1950s.
You will be interested to know that we had very heavy cold weather damage in 2008 that resulted in a reduced crop.
Tell me about it. We’ve experienced much the same with the fruit trees in our own back yard. Lately we’ve been having to put covers over them in mid-winter to protect them from the intense cold. We moved here from Massachusetts in 1980 when this was not a problem. In the meantime global land-sea temperature has climbed 0.4 C. Summers have gotten a couple of degrees hotter and winters a couple of degrees colder, less the 0.4 C net increase presumably. I’m anticipating this increasing fluctuation is only going to get worse, as a consequence of rising disequilibrium.
Wine Spectator’s 100 best wines in the world for 2011 had not less than 8 Washington state wines on it and #6 was a $35 Bordeaux blend called Baer Ursa. I had 110 bottles at one point.
You said for 2011? That would come to 110/12 = 9 bottles or $315 a month. Suddenly cellular data plans sound like a bargain. ;)
The roots of the modern Washington wine industry can be traced to the mid 20th century
Max, you seem to suffer from some sort of cognitive disability. How is this in the slightest bit different from my point that the Washington wine industry was nonexistent before the 1950s?
Looks like this had absolutely nothing to do with global warming
What you quoted backs me up 100%. Looks like this had everything to do with global warming.
Your batting average to date is 0.000. I am looking forward to the day when you get something right, Max.
Megan McArdle has suggested that some kind of mental imbalance has been driving recent events concerning Gleickgate, which has been my read on AGW zealotry for some time. There really is an observable mental illness at work in the CAGW community, probably driven by all-consuming hatred.
Vaughan Pratt
To answer your question about “who is the real criminal here?”, it is arguably Peter Gleick in this specific instance. However, whether or not he ends up being tried for a misdemeanor (or even a felony) is still open (but doubtful in my mind, so he will not end up being a convicted “criminal”).
“Climate science” is a very generic term, including scientists with such divergent opinions and James E. Hansen or Kevin Trenberth and Roy Spencer or Richard Lindzen.
It is true (unfortunately) that “climate science” (in general) suffered a loss of public confidence as a result of all the scandals (Climategate I and II, the exposed IPCC AR4 falsifications and now this latest Heartland fiasco). A Rasmussen poll (USA) has shown that 69% of the respondents believe that climate scientists falsify data. Our host has expressed her dismay with this sad state of affairs and suggested that the IPCC “consensus process” may be largely to blame. But that process cannot be described as “criminal” IMO (others here may disagree).
At present the EU, Australia and New Zealand have “signed on” to CO2 reductions (even though they are not implementing any real actions in this direction – so it has remained political posturing, to date). China and India have opted out (as has the USA). Japan has stated it would not join in unless China does, so the “united front to save our planet” has crumbled. But I would not call all these nations “the real criminals here”.
In fact, unlike some other posters here, I would say there are NO “real criminals” – because no real crime has been or is being committed.
Max
A Rasmussen poll (USA) has shown that 69% of the respondents believe that climate scientists falsify data.
Max, what is your own opinion on whether Richard Muller’s Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature has falsified data? If you believe BEST has done so, what is your evidence for this? If not, why do you prefer to believe 69% of nonscientists over 99% of scientists on the AGW question? Some sort of rebellious streak that runs in your family, or do you simply regard scientists as crooks and liars that can’t be trusted as far as you can throw them?
no real crime has been or is being committed.
Quite right, Max. Pollution such as pumping 50,000 gallons of oil into 240 miles of river in Montana is not a “real crime,” though lying about war medals is. You might not find that concept of “real crime” weird but there are some who do.
Not true Max – Australia signed onto decreasing emmissions to 108% of 1990 emissions and have made great strides in converting open woodland to dense stands of woody weeds across the entire landscape – wth dire ecological consequences. Please God – preserve us from any more progress on global warming.
Not true Max – Australia signed onto …
What are you saying, CH? That any behavior that Australia considers criminal is automatically a crime elsewhere in the world? Who’s supposed to police such crimes, Australia or the country where they’re committed?
There’s no reason why you should be up to date on US federal and state laws, but having your baby eaten by a dingo is not considered grounds for incarceration in most states in the US.
Dr. Pratt asks,
“How is this any different from what your enemies said about the Climategate burglary, David?”
The answer is because climategate told truth, and Gleickgate tells lies.
Also because in Gleickgate, Heartland Institute is shown to be diong nothing wrong, and in climategate e-mails, there is a long list of wrongs exposed.
As to the wine industry:
Now Dr. Pratt claims that an industry in which wine grapes have been grown since the 1950’s is evidence of global warming.
Hmmmmm…..is there nothing CO2 cannot do?
It can’t be that hardier grapes were developed, that viniculture advanced, that irrigation and farming techniques permitted grapes to be grown in new areas? It is always CO2, no matter the question?
Did you know Peter Gleick well, by the way?
‘(Just trying to boil the consensus of this thread down to a tweetable 140 characters.)’
Ha, bit slow Vaughan, I can do it in 3.
Gleick’s a charlatan.
Ha, bit slow Vaughan, I can do it in 3. Gleick’s a charlatan.
Hey, we’re all slow here on Climate Etc, MF, don’t be so quick to pat yourself on the back as an exception. So far your report card reads
Latin: F (no clue what “ad hominem” means — accuses others of ad hominem attacks when they’re not, then makes actual ad hominem attacks himself without realizing he’s doing so)
Arithmetic: F (thinks 21 = 3, or else doesn’t realize “word” and “character” mean different things)
Keep on posting. ;)
Oops. a bit too quick on the send key Markus. No matter. We all make mistakes and that’s what the topic of this thread is really about.
I find some of the ad hominens on Peter Gleick to be distasteful. Sure he has made a mistake, and that it was compounded by his hypocracy, but lets not be too harsh on him as we might well be judged ourselves one day.
The real question for commenters here on this blog is whether we can just note what happened with Peter Gleick and simply move on in searching for the truth about AGW and a greater understanding of the complexities of climate change..
“The real question for commenters here on this blog is whether we can just note what happened with Peter Gleick and simply move on in searching for the truth about AGW and a greater understanding of the complexities of climate change.”
It’s not over till the fat lady sings, Peter. you are right I am a bit distasteful of alarmist scientists. My attack on his inhumanity is justified, regardless of what forms simpletons think the descriptor must take.
Peter,
If a skeptical opinion leader had done the same thing to, say Greenpeace, do you think believers or the media would be making calls for moving on, or largely ignoring the scandal?
While the expected behaviour of the pro AGW camp would be purely hypothetical, I accept your point Hunter, but this should not be any reason for me or any other genuine sceptic to stop living by principles.
Peter,
No, we should not just move on. At least not until we know the actual case, who if anyone assisted him, and what his own Pacific Institute is going to do with him. If this turns out to be a group of fanatics working to squelch a player in the public square, that is a significant issue, byway of example.
Above, our Joshua sees this merely as evidence of tribalism, neatly avoiding the increasingly obvious point that at the root of the CAGW consensus is a pervasive and unapologetic dishonesty. Allowing, inter alia, a blatant fraudster like Glieck to not only be accepted in the science community, but to be elevated to a position of heading up an ethics initiative.
Are there in fact any scientists who believe in CAGW, who are not crooks / enmeshed in advocacy ? If so, their deafening silence is not helping. But of course they have families to support, and no doubt fear losing their government jobs and grants if they diverge from political correctness, so we have to try and understand.
Punksta, you write “Are there in fact any scientists who believe in CAGW, who are not crooks / enmeshed in advocacy ? If so, their deafening silence is not helping.”
This, surely, is the key issue, and has been for some time. The silence of the proper scientists whose support for CAGW, for whatever reason, makes them stay silent. We must await what the Royal Society, and the American Physical Society say about this. But my guess is that they will maintain a complete silence, and stick to the mantra that CAGW is real and dangerous.
For all those who use a ‘forged but true’ defence.
Take the forged memo. Remove from it all text that can be found elsewhere in the Heartland documents as supplied.
Read what is left.
That is what you are defending.
Richard H,
Using the ‘false but true’ defense creates a visceral “yuck” factor in most people. I hope they stick to this and that AGW extremists continue to demand Gleick be given an award.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/23/fakegate-why-the-perps-should-be-prosecuted/
Loony toon Christopher Monckton writes a long diatribe on why he thinks Gleick committed wire fraud.
I gotta ask myself why a guy like Monckton who should be very well connected, didn’t ask a real lawyer about it before shooting his mouth off?
I’m beginning to think Monckton is like the proverbial red-headed stepchild who everyone tries to ignore including any attorneys who are in his circle of acquaintences.
At any rate it’s absolutely ridiculous for anyone to think this rises to the level of wire fraud. There must be some tangible money, property, goods, or services that the perp acquired. Gleick got an email with some files attached. There was no intellectual property owned by Heartland in those documents. There was no property of any type in that email hence there was no crime.
Monckton is a moron.
David Springer
I’ll agree with you that there will very likely be NO criminal action against Peter Gleick (or, if there is, it will fail to prove his criminal guilt).
However, I do believe that Heartland will continue with its plans to start civil action against Gleick.
In such a case, I believe Gleick will have no option but to disclose the name of the originator of the “faked” document, which he “leaked”.
If this turns out to be Gleick himself (most probable), he is in a lot of trouble.
If it turns out to be an accomplice (who then, under oath, admits he did it), then they are both in a lot of trouble, because they both knew it was a fake before they released it.
This story stlll has legs, David, and we do not know exactly where it will go – but we do know for absolutely sure that it has further weakened the already low public credibility of the proponents of the IPCC’s “mainstream consensus” CAGW premise. (Several months ago a US Rasmussen poll showed that 69% of the respondents believed that climate scientists falsified data – and this is a vivid confirmation that this is so)
A classical “shot in the foot” by a rather opinionated and arrogant individual who turned out not to be too astute.
Max.
This is a message to Christopher Monckton.
I’m the Queen of England. I accidently deleted your private phone number and vacation plans for next year from my address book. Be a good chap and email it to me, okay?
So if Monckton is as stupid as Heartland’s staff, which isn’t a big leap in logic at this point, and sends me his phone number and vacation plans, have I just committed wire fraud?
Inquiring minds want to know.
ROFL
Somehow, David, should you find yourself on the same in-person debate stage as Monckton, you would be well-advised to feign appendicitis or coma to avoid being figuratively skewered, drawn, quartered and thoroughly humiliated by a person with at least twice your IQ. And you guys are allowed to vote! Sigh….
P.S. Mark
Please address me as “Your Highness”. I’m still lying in ambush for Monckton to send me his private phone number and vacation plans. Then I’m going to turn myself in to the local police station as Monckton advises and get famous enough to write a best selling book about the experience – “How I stole the Queen of England’s ID”.
Can you believe Monckton actually wrote that someone, anyone should march down to their local police station and tell them Gleick committed wire fraud and they’d then be duty bound to investigate.
I got news for Monckton. The only investigation that would result is the police investigating the sanity of the person going down to turn Gleick in. Monckton’s sanity for making the suggestion is already a matter of grave doubt. I mean I’ve seen the guy go over the top many times before. It’s not like parachuting in to the latest global warming shindig is out of character for the legend-in-his-own-mind windbag but this latest gush of drivel is simply outstanding even for him. This is what happens when you have a breeding aristrocracy with too few members. Recessive genes like BsC (batsht crazy) match up too often…
Ya figure Monckton has an IQ over 300? Wow. I’m scared. Scared for you.
David Springer
This is all a bit OT here, but Wiki tells us:
and
He has been very successful in debating various opponents on the CAGW premise (check the recent debate with Australian economist, Richard Deniss). The strength of his debate comes from his superb logic, punctilious use of the English language and excellent debating skills.
Some have described Monckton as “imperious” or “snooty”. One may well disagree with his opinions, but I would say that Monckton’s debating success alone has shown that he is no dummy.
[And, no – like Al Gore, Paul Nurse or Tim Flannery – he’s NOT a climate scientist – but he seems to have learned quite a bit about climate science along the way.]
Max
He certainly won’t be winning any debates requiring much knowledge of the law given that asinine analysis and putting forward the notion that any US citizen in any jurisdiction can walk into an U.S. police station, inform them of Gleick’s phishing expedition, and expect that PD is then duty-bound to investigate. Seriously? Monckton put his big brain to work and that’s what came out of his mouth? Incredible. I bet when he walks among his peers they kind of turn away and hope he doesn’t notice them.
In the interest of due diligence I’ve just begun watching the debate between Denniss and Monckton. The first thing I’d note is that Denniss an economist not a scientist or engineer. So let’s see what the debate is about.
I would also note that Monckton has been challenged and refused moderated written debates where time is given for fact checking. Scuttlebutt has it that Monckton is fast. Fast and loose with the facts that is and won’t engage where there’s time to check facts.
I’ll note anything I hear in this debate from him that is questionable and see how well it holds up. Fair enough?
A high IQ is no guarantee of common sense or rationality of thought.
“A high IQ is no guarantee of common sense or rationality of thought.”
Seems these days Education is no guarantee of common sense or rationality of thought.
Alrighty then. Here’s my notes from Monckton’s debate with Denniss for as long as I could stand to listen (45 minutes). My comments have a “-” preceding them.
Monckton opens saying climate is chaotic or acts like it is so it is impossible to predict its behavior
-perhaps in microstates but clearly it is an equilibrium system that has maintained a remarkably steady state for billions of years despite large disruptions such as asteroid and comet strikes, super volcano eruptions, and a sun that has increased in intensity some 10% over the course of history
opposes notion of consensus @ 16 minutes, cites argumentum ad populum etc
– he gets this wrong – there are qualifications to appeals to authority specifically when they are legitimate recognized authorities – in this case the authorities are legitimate credentialed experts
22 mintues – contradicts himself now by saying there is no physical mechanism possible to go from 1C warming/century to 5C warming in such a “remarkably stable” system
-in a chaotic system, or one that acts like one, this would be very possible but unpredictable in when it might happen or what may trigger it – either the climate system is chaotic or it isn’t – he tries to have it both ways – the question is whether this is an honest mistake by someone who is not very literate in science & engineering or someone who deliberately redefines the facts as needed to suit his argument
24 minutes states that the only question for science is whether or not warming is going to proceed at predicted rate
-this is just the opening question it is also science which assesses what consequences can be expected in regard to living things including but not limited to the human population
25 minutes makes his own appeal to authority (himself) by saying he’s an accomplished mathematician who sold a million mathematical puzzles he designed.
– By that measure I’m even more brilliant as I made more money than he did designing computer hardware and software but that’s also an appeal to authority and while I’ll sometimes use it to demoralize an opponent or impress an audience I’m quite well aware it’s totally bogus in formal debate. Al Gore won a Nobel prize. Does that make Al Gore smarter than Monckton?
25 minutes says it is blindingly obvious rate of warming is not enough to satisfy catastrophic consequences but even if it were enough…
-why argue about something that is blindingly, obviously not true unless you don’t really believe it? My son drove my car and put a dent in it. He said “I didn’t drive your car. But even if I did I returned it without a dent in it. And besides that dent was already there before I drove it.”
26 minutes then says it’s 40 times less expensive to do nothing now and deal with global warming later.
-How does he know this? The climate is a chaotic system according to him. The butterfly effect may kick in and the mere fact that we started using CFL light bulbs was all it took to stop global warming in the past 10 years. That’s cheap and as far we know all it took in a chaotic system where you don’t how much or little it takes to perturb it. His statement
is unsupportable in light of his supposition that we can’t predict the behavior of a chaotic climate. If it’s unpredictable then you can’t predict economic costs because you have no idea how much or how little has to be done now or in the future.
38 minutes Monckton equates warmists to Nazis because one of them said climate skeptics should be tatooed and another raised the bar saying they should be gassed.
-See Godwin’s Law and the logical fallacy called Reductio ad Hitlerium. In modern intelligentsia calling your opponents Nazis is automatic loss of the argument.
39 minutes he says he is apogizing for making that remark about Nazis in the days preceding that debate.
-What, he’s just now heard of reductio ad hitlerium in the past few days? Has he been living on another planet to not know of Godwin’s Law? Or maybe he’s just memorized the names of a few logical fallicies but
doesn’t really understand how or why to avoid them. Seems pretty shallow in either case.
41 miutes he claims to be an expert in “climate sensitivity”
-WTF!? This is beyond appeal to authority. It’s wholesale invention of authority fercrisakes. I may become ill before I finish listening to 20 more minutes of this bug-eyed train wreck shooting off his pompous ass pie hole.
41 minutes says climate sensitivity since 1750 is 0.9C in response to almost a doubling of CO2
-Huh? CO2 went from 280ppm to 390ppm. That’s a damn long ways from a doubling. My third grade calculus says that’s almost a 40% increase. That’s a serious distortion of a very basic fact. There are few enough reliable facts in this controversy and CO2 concentration is among those few we can call reliable. That’s very, very bad. I guess we DO need better K-12 climate education materials and Monckton is a poster child for the reaons why.
43 minutes – unfortunately his opponent is even less informed and didn’t catch the fundamental mistake in CO2 percentage increase since 1750. But I can forgive his opponent because he’s an economist. Monckton is ostensibly, and by his own bluster, a “mathematical expert in climate sensitivity” yet he can’t think fast enough to figure out that 390 isn’t very close to double 280. There are three possibilities to explain it: 1) he’s really not very bright 2) he’s ignorant of the facts or 3) he’s dishonest
45 minutes in response to a question of why he hasn’t put his expert opinions to a peer reviewed publication for analysis he mentions Al Gore hasn’t gone through peer review either
-it’s probably ill advised to compare oneself to Al Gore in regard to scientific expertise but I’m certainly quite willing to agree with him and place them in the same category when it comes to science literacy. The inventor of the internet and the inventor of some takeoff on Rubic’s Cube. Two peas in a pod. Precious.
46 minutes he mentions by name a physicist who “reviewed” something he wrote then castigates the pretty young lady (is Monckton a misogynist too?) for not doing her homework
-Okay. First of all in peer reviewed literature you don’t know who your reviewers are so by definition you can’t name them. Secondly Google scholar doesn’t have f*ck all listed for Monckton in peer reviewed literature. There are a few citations of a non-peer reviewed article and
a book he wrote. Yet another lie exposed. Too bad the poor girl didn’t have time to google his sorry ass like I just did. This is why Monckton refuses written debates.
I’m not going to bother with that last 15 mintues of this “debate”. If what I alread found isn’t enough then it would be a waste of time finding more.
HI isn’t a corporationIf not then it’s a pricey way to make a point and corporations with limited budgets already strained by a recession aren’t likely to do it. It probably won’t be viewed positively by anyone if all that happens is they bankrupt Gleick. He’s already a tragic figure. Have you seen a picture of him? He looks like an abused, disheveled puppy. I’m pretty sure that, unlike Gleick, Bast didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday and isn’t going to throw good money after bad. Of course working on the presumption that Gleick’s a fool and Bast isn’t may be a fundamental mistake on my part.
– HI isn’t a corporation.
– It is a ideolgial association with a social purpose.
– Claiming damages against Glieck would unlikely be their aim, save for costs and loss off donations.
– HIs’ donors might see Glieck as the camel on the haystack and be gleeful at knowing they can a dispense with both issues with one stone.
– Why spend $Mil’s on prosecuting a anti-AGW case in open debate, when the construct of the AGW consensus can be heavily damaged in a courrt of law over the criminal behavor of on of it’s main propitiators.
– Cold lawyer heart, I’d say advert the risk of costs, but this is a heartfelt matter. Lack of prosecution funds won’t make it go away.
– Prima facie, HI will win.
David Springer | February 23, 2012 at 7:55 pm |
Monckton put his big brain to work and that’s what came out of his mouth?”
So should you Springer. Nice society you want to live in where members of society can’t report crime because they have not been directly affected by it. In Law, Police Officers are duty bound to accept any complaint in a relevant jurisdiction, and investigate it before prosecuting or not. Wire fraud is a federal offence and it has a capital punishment (max over 10 years imprisonment).
Moreover, it is the moral responsibility of every citizen to report any crime.
So go report it and see what happens. Let us know how it works out.
Ask HI how they went.
No need actually, we are all going to find out soon.
Markus
Unless you have seen news that I have not HI’s furious demands that Gleick be criminally prosecuted have resulted in precisely nothing. It’s been 4 days since Bast gave the video interview calling a Gleick a criminal who should be prosecuted. How long do you think we should wait before concluding that no charges will ever be filed?
The next step in the justice process after failure to secure criminal punishment (like when OJ Simpson was found not guilty) is to go after Gleick in civil court. There is little chance of that because of discovery and depositions. During discovery a lot more of HI internal documents will become part of the record and worse, because HI must show damages, donors and potential donors will be subpoenaed and asked if the documents Gleick revealed caused them to reduce or withhold donations to HI. Ya think HI is going to put donors through that? I should think being incompetent enough to mail sensitive documents to a dipstick like Gleick is already chilling enough on the donors without it.
It will probably take 2 – 3 months for the prosecutors to amass a brief. I’ve seen them take 3 years to do it. There is no limitation.
Not much to discover about HI in a criminal charge.
Civil? Be careful what you wish for. Discovering why Glieck was driven to to did it (His AGW ideology) would be fun for HI.
Okay then Markus. If I read you right it may take three or more years for us to find out if criminal charges will be filed against Gleick.
Did you take a page from the warmist handbook to only make predictions that are so far in the future there’s an outstanding chance no one will notice you were wrong? Well played.
Markus
A civil suit won’t be “fun” for HI. It will be costly, high profile, poor PR, and drag on for years. Moreover there’s the old saying “you can’t draw blood from a turnip”. Does Gleick have anything of value to acquire should HI be awarded any compensation for damages? If not then it’s a pricey way to make a point and corporations with limited budgets already strained by a recession aren’t likely to do it. It probably won’t be viewed positively by anyone if all that happens is they bankrupt Gleick. He’s already a tragic figure. Have you seen a picture of him? He looks like an abused, disheveled puppy. I’m pretty sure that, unlike Gleick, Bast didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday and isn’t going to throw good money after bad. Of course working on the presumption that Gleick’s a fool and Bast isn’t may be a fundamental mistake on my part.
@ Markus
“Civil? Be careful what you wish for.”
I don’t wish for any specific outcome. This is cheap entertainment for me and nothing more. The extreme positions on both sides I see as two ships of fools. I love to argue is all and this particular debate forces me to expand my knowledge base in interesting areas. In years past I did the same with intelligent design creationism (two more ships of fools) and learned far more about biology and genetics than I ever thought I’d need to know. I’ve a natural curiousity for all kinds of science, have encyclopedic knowledge in many areas, but the threat of losing an argument sends me into hyperdrive learning what I need to know in order to win.
Markus Fitzhenry. | February 23, 2012 at 8:10 pm | Reply
“Moreover, it is the moral responsibility of every citizen to report any crime.”
I served four years in the United States Marine Corps. I figure that concentrated stint of responsible citizenship paid off my moral obligations to the country for life but then I added on to that by paying more income taxes than most poor country boys like me earn in a lifetime. Perhaps your situation is different. What have you done for your country?
Isn’t “I” such a great physiological indicator.
We are similar in that we are both curious about science. Now, if you want to get into warp drive argue with me.
Oh, what have I done for my country. I show my countrymen how to go walkabout with in liberty with dignity.
Peter Davies | February 23, 2012 at 9:04 pm |
“A high IQ is no guarantee of common sense or rationality of thought.”
My wife would certainly agree. She’s been married to a guy for over 30 years who has an IQ of 153 according to SAT and GCT tests which are accepted measures of intelligence quotient by almost all high IQ societies. That’s 99.97th percentile. Such people seldom worry about running into people who are faster thinkers. IQ is really a measure of speed of thought. It still takes just as long as just as much effort to acquire facts because without the facts arrayed in one’s head speed of thought doesn’t help in finding solutions. It’s like a microwave oven with no food. Google has changed things a lot in that regard. Missing facts can be retrieved at astounding speed compared to the old days when it had to be looked up in a book. So basically there’s an infinite supply of facts you can carry around in your pocket the processing of which is limited only by speed of thought.
Ah David, if anyone knows about Law here. It’s me.
Ah David, I’ve never lied and I’ve never been wrong.
“Q is really a measure of speed of thought.”
Zip.
& I read facts.
David so does my wife. Are you in Mensa? My initial statement is based on the personalties that I have encountered in Australia Mensa.
The tests measure speed sure, but what is just as important is accuracy. While my raw score is not quite up to yours I also find that the really bright ones seem to have more relationship issues in general.
The criterial for mensa membership is 98th percentile on a standard test of intelligence. The association claims its purpose as to foster intelligence, yet dissuades 97% of human intelligence from participation.
Well at 99%, I refused the offer to join such an elitist bunch of wankers.
Markus you obviously either sat the test or applied to join with other evidence but chose not to accept their offer to join.
Fair enough but if you already knew that it was an elitest bunch of w***ers why did you apply in the first place?
Then one wonders what information you had to have made such an assessment if you never had any involvement with the organisation or its membership?
In truth, if one looks hard enough, we can find w***ers anywhere, including this blog and some of the more voluminous commenters. Membership of Mensa is therefore not neccesarily a pre-requisite for this distinction.
Peter, my psychologist recommended me, as she was in. I have already expressed here the fact that I read.
Sorry Markus, I misunderstood you. I thought you said that you were offered a membership.
Sure, there are many disfunctional people in this organisation but I also find many with whom I am pleased to be counted as great friends.
The organisation doesn’t discriminate on any grounds whatsoever, the simple criteria for membership is well understood. Full Stop. (As Demitris would say)
Who do you believe has the higher IQ, Al Gore (inventor of the internet) or Kristen Byrnes (Ponder the Maunder)
I, too, gave up after a year of trying to find comfort with a gang of quasi-elitist and/or poorly socialized but witty misfits. But it can be fun playing the yokel when in the presence of stuffed shirts.
I joined for a while a few decades ago, but left after a few months. The thinly disguised one-upmanship got old real fast. I suspect a self-selection mechanism at work.
It is highly unlikely that there will be any prosecution of Gleick, unless something more damning comes out of any civil action filed by Heartland.
The prosecutors with jurisdiction are all hard core Democrats. The state attorneys general in both California and Illinois, the District Attorney in Gleick’s home county, and the State’s Attorney in Heartland’s home county, all are lifelong Democrat politicians. And of course the U.S. Attorneys in both jurisdictions are members of the most politicized Department of Justice in my lifetime.
The illegality of Gleick’s conduct, though likely chargeable (particularly if he forged the strategy document), is irrelevant. These politicized prosecutors will do nothing to interfere with one of the core planks of Democrat theology – CAGW.
apologies, this got caught in spam
Gary
Identity theft and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) are both involved. It doesn’t need a link to money, the fax machine was enough. It’s federal case as they say. That’s why Heartland called the FBI.
Of course the Obama/Holder justice department is the most corrupt in history as well.
You’re right though, the agenda isn’t stopped on a single event. That the troops are circling on the “noble cause” of fraud isn’t helping them. They’re running on pure emotion right now. This event looks one way right now, another way three months from now but over time, even years may be involved it’s a disaster for the “cause”. The media will spin and bury but the public understands, at least many do.
Gleick is betting on a political pardon or a later plee deal IMOHO. His odds aren’t bad (given the Obama/Holder corruption factor) but it’s still a huge and symbolic event. There is also the discovery impact, somehow/someway these things just tend to grow. All the links for example to the media are now very fair game in the event. Revkin might well have far more to worry about then his recent esculation stance lets on for example.
GaryM,
Sadly, you are likely correct. Maybe they can bring in Penn State or Lord Oxburgh, if he is not too busy pushing windmills, to cover it up for the faithful.
What’s in a name?
‘Settled Science?’ is like:
‘The One Religion,’
‘The Chosen People,’
And those other exclusion terminologies,
pernicious dogma of a close society
….. .and closed minds