by Judith Curry
How can we reconcile Gleick’s possibly criminal behavior with his essays and testimony on scientific integrity?
For background, see my previous post that describes Gleick’s writings and activities on the topic of scientific ethics and 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
In ethics, integrity is associated with honesty and truthfulness in one’s actions. However, integrity is a word with complex meanings and nuances, some of which do not necessarily relate to honesty at all. Some statements from the Wikipedia article on integrity:
Integrity is a concept of consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, and outcomes.
One can test a value system’s integrity . . . consistency against that entity’s espoused value system.
The “integrity” of a brand is regarded by some as a desirable outcome for companies seeking to maintain a consistent, unambiguous position in the mind of their audience.
UNFCCC/IPCC ideology
Gleick’s ‘integrity’ seems to have nothing to do with scientific integrity, but rather loyalty to and consistency with what I have called the UNFCCC/IPCC ideology. From my previous post No Ideologues:
Now there is nothing prima facie wrong with ideology. Wikipedia has this to say on ideology:
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one’s goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things . . . The main purpose behind an ideology is to offer change in society . . . Ideologies are systems of abstract thought applied to public matters and thus make this concept central to politics.
There does seem to be an IPCC/UNFCCC ideology, let me try to lay it out here.
- Anthropogenic climate change is real.
- Anthropogenic climate change is dangerous and we need to something about it.
- The fossil fuel industry is trying to convince people that climate change is a hoax.
- Deniers are attacking climate science and scientists.
- Action is needed to prevent dangerous climate change.
- Deniers and fossil fuel industry are delaying UNFCCC mitigatory policies.
This is a political ideology. #1 is about science. #4 is in principle about science and scientists, except there is the automatic assumption that a bonafide scientific criticism is a political attack. The rest of it is politics.
It is fine for people (and scientists) have political ideologies. The problem comes in when you use politics to defend your science, and you use science to demand policies.
Gleick’s unethical action with respect to integrity has been to push fealty to the UNFCCC/IPCC ideology under the guise of promoting integrity and ethics in science.
The Artless Climate Wars
If Gleick et al. view this whole endeavour as fighting a war, they would be well advised to read Sun Tsu’s Art of War; see also my previous discussion of the Artless Climate Wars:
Apart from the “why” of the climate wars, the “how” needs to be looked at also. It seems that those fighting to defend the IPCC consensus never read the Art of War. Translated to the climate war, Sun Tzu’s principles might look something like this:
- Outsmart your opponent so that battles aren’t necessary
- Pick your battles carefully.
- In the course of your battle, don’t lose the moral high ground.
- Divide and conquer; don’t give your enemy cause to rally together and combine forces
- Overconfidence can be fatal to your strategy
- If the campaign is prolonged, the resources will not be equal to the strain
- If you know your enemy, you can win battles without a single loss
Gleick’s strategy has failed on all counts. I don’t think this is from the Art of War, but I read it somewhere and it seems apt: When fighting a war, don’t waste a bullet on yourself (ouch).
The end result of Gleick’s actions are to cede the high ground to Heartland, especially in light of the fact that Heartland had invited Gleick to a debate shortly before the theft of the documents occurred.
The dangers to scientists in taking up arms in the climate war are elucidated by Matt Nisbet:
Urgent calls to escalate the war against climate skeptics may lead scientists and their organizations into a dangerous trap, fueling further political disagreement while risking public trust in science. A major transformation is needed in how scientists and their organizations engage the public and policymakers. The new direction is not to become more political and confrontational on the national stage, but to seek opportunities for greater public interaction, dialogue, and partnerships in communities across the country.
Scientists are also susceptible to the biases of their own political ideology, which surveys show leans heavily liberal. Ideology shapes how scientists evaluate policy options as well as their interpretations of who or what is to blame for policy failures. Given a liberal outlook and strong environmental values, it must be difficult for scientists to understand why so many Americans have reservations about complex policies that impose costs on consumers without offering clearly defined benefits. Compounding matters, scientists, like the rest of us, tend to gravitate toward like-minded sources in the media. Given their background, they focus on screeds from liberal commentators which reinforce a false sense of a “war” against the scientific community.
The scientists seem to believe they can prevail by explaining the basis of climate change in clearer terms, while asserting the partisan motives of “climate deniers.” This has been the strategy since the early days of the Bush administration, yet for many members of the public, a decade of claims about the “war on science” are likely ignored as just more elite rancor, reflecting an endless cycle of technical disputes and tit-for-tat name calling. What are needed are strategies that transcend the ideological divide, rather than strengthen it. Most importantly, snarling, finger-in-the-eye responses to the skeptics risk alienating the more than one-third of Americans (PDF) who remain ambivalent about climate change.
To be sure, there is a need for better, clearer explanations of the science, but it’s wrongheaded to imagine that researchers and their organizations could ever compete effectively, in the long term, in a political debate with climate skeptics and their allies at the Chamber of Commerce and Fox News. Instead of exaggerating the problem of an allegedly hostile American public, scientists need to wake up to the fact that they continue to enjoy almost unrivaled trust and communication capital.
Loss of trust
When ‘Heartlandgate’ first broke, I saw no parallels with Climategate. Now, with the involvement of Gleick, there most certainly are parallels. There is the common theme of climate scientists compromising personal and professional ethics, integrity, and responsibility, all in the interests of a ’cause’.
On the one hand, Climategate involved a large number of people that were involved in the IPCC. Apart from the FOI avoidance that was arguably criminal, everyone seems to have been ‘cleared’ by the various investigations. On the other hand, Gleick is only one person, but his actions are far more serious, particularly if they involve fabrication of a document.
If the scientific and environmental communities were to react like Andy Revkin, then the damage from this potentially can be contained (one bad egg):
The broader tragedy is that his 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.
Joe Romm, at least so far, has ignored the whole issue. Which strategically is not a bad move.
Unfortunately, already we are seeing signs of exactly the opposite strategy. Over at DeSmog Blog:
Whistleblowers – and that’s the role Gleick has played in this instance – deserve respect for having the courage to make important truths known to the public at large. Without condoning or promoting an act of dishonesty, it’s fair to say that Gleick took a significant personal risk – and by standing and taking responsibility for his actions, he has shown himself willing to pay the price. For his courage, his honor, and for performing a selfless act of public service, he deserves our gratitude and applause.
Scott Mandia, a leader of the Climate Rapid Response Team, is quoted:
…”Heartland has been subverting well-understood science for years,” wrote Scott Mandia, co-founder of the climate science rapid response team. “They also subvert the education of our school children by trying to ;’teach the controversy’ where none exists.”He went on: “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.”
The climate insanity factor has just jumped upwards a big notch.
That a blatant fraudster heads up an environmental/climate science ethics initiative says it all really.
Let us listen now for the same deafening silence from the hoi polloi that followed Climategate.
The newspapers print the material they get.
Do you think the Heartland institute is going to have time at the moment to be putting out press releases?
Does WUWT issue press releases?
Who does issue press releases for the sceptics? So why on earth would the media pick up on this story?
So journalists do not investigate anymore? They only repeat press-releases?
Nonsense! Richard Black from the BBC sat on the “climategate” leaked emails for weeks, then used the possible illegality of their acquirement as a reason to not publish, then when forced by events to comment, defended those who were the “victims” of the leak and attacked the leaker.
On this HI leak, he immediately knee-jerked into publication, attacking the victims of the leak and defending the leaker as a whistle-blower.
The BIG differences between the two leaks being that the Climategate leaks were 100% genuine, unfaked material comprising data that was publicly funded should have been made public according to the law of FOIA request, and were leaked in the public interest, and the HI data comprised of one blatantly faked document, other documents which may, or may not, have been edited, and were leaked in a misleading and fraudulent way (obtained through deception) in order to cause harm to the reputation of the HI.
What has Richard Black had to say since this admission by Gleick? Not a damn thing!
Journalists and scientists in the West promote information to gain favor with “Big Brother.” That happens when governments become tyrannical.
Many members of society realize that we have a serious problem. Dr. Peter Gleick probably did not and believed his actions were justified.
He is another pawn in a plan, formulated in ~1971, to gain total control over society and thus prevent the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/20110722_Climategate_Roots.pdf
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/apples-china-comes-home-t_b_1281031.html
George Orwell saw the danger when he wrote a novel in 1948, a novel that became a prediction of the future entitled “1984.”
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/
The novel is still available here today.
Former President Eisenhower warned of this danger to our society if the large federal research establishment that he built came under the control of a “scientific-technological elite.”
Thanks to the actions of Dr. Peter Gleick, we are now able to trace the timeline for political abuse of science back to 1946 when almost the entire community of astronomers and astrophysicists unanimously changed the internal composition of the Sun from iron (Fe) to hydrogen (H)!
In 1946 the ’cause’ was to hide the source of energy that ignites ‘nuclear fires’.
The rest of that strange tale is here: http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/ and here: http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-31
We are all flawed – “we are all sinners” – cursed with an uncanny ability to see flaws in others better than flaws in ourselves. Life is the battle to get out of this “ego cage” of self-deception.
Why? Psychology accepts that the actions of humans are largely controlled by “cause and effect,” just like Earth’s changing climate.
As the rest of the Climategate story unfolds, it would be in the best interest of our whole society to recall ancient advise:
“Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time.
Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law.”
http://sourcesofinsight.com/buddha-quotes/
I can have love for Dr Gleick in the sense of not wishing retribution on him and praying that he truly recognizes the wrong he has done and becomes a better person as a result.
What I am much less certain of is if I could ever place any trust in what he says, particularly with regard to climate and science.
My dad was a fighter pilot in WW2. He hated the Nazis, and managed to make at least a subset of them permanently stop hating him.
Hypocrisy, the only sin. The root of “evil”.
Try “Pride”.
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_uGeuv7vYTQE/Su40fxDrITI/AAAAAAAAAZk/Tx7ouZAABY0/s800/WalkerSE_lower.JPG
You might have to diddle with it to read it and then, it is in Latin. :-)
I may have recommended this before, but this is a good time to do it again. You might like to read:
“Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind” by Rob Kurzban.
From the dustjacket:
“We’re all hypocrites. Why? Hypocrisy is the natural state of the human mind. Robert Kurzban shows us that the key to understanding our behavioral inconsistencies lies in understanding the mind’s design. The human mind consists of many specialized units designed by the process of evolution by natural selection. While these modules sometimes work together seamlessly, they don’t always, resulting in impossibly contradictory beliefs…”
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9271.html
The “collection of kludges” view of the mind isn’t new, but Rob’s take on it is pretty entertaining.
Dr. Curry,
“The climate insanity factor has just jumped upwards a big notch.”
Perhaps you should generate something akin to the “clock” used by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. That way, us non-scientists could at-a-glance see where your current interpretation of the climate landscape stands.
These days we just need to read our phone. We have had enough of the drama.
I’m not a scientist. Will Gleick’s admission adversely affect his career? If so, will he come to realize that his actions were wrong?
I hope his family doesn’t suffer for this lapse of judgement.
I sincerely hope it does affect his career. He should not be rewarded for his behaviour. IMHO he deceived the Heartland Institute into giving him access to internal docs containing sundry private items about identities and earnings, none of which strike me as meeting as any public interest test, and he then went on to deceive 15 journos/activitists into believing that even the fake doc was real and he’d verified it and they could rely on it. If I was Revkin, Hickman, Goldenberg, Readfearn, Lynas I’d be furious with Gleick (and furious with myself for believing fakery so easily). Gleick is a nutbag made crazy by his zealous adherence to the warmist narrative. Well done Prof Curry for pointing out Gleick’s obvious hypocrisy. This whole episode and how the warmy folks have reacted is just awful. I knew, for example, that DeSmog was a pit of idiots but now I know it is objectively correct to describe them as such. And the rest.
“Will Gleick’s admission adversely affect his career? ”
Perhaps there will be an “Independent inquiry” that will conclude he did nothing wrong.
+1
At least we can switch to Gleickoism which should be less offensive to Joshua.
MosheBot and kimbot can argue eternally over who has precedence for ‘Piltdown Mann’; both came up with it independently after an earlier unknown machine.
========
Kimbot has priority. moshbot was second albeit in
dependent
I’m working on a gleickbot
it can’t tell the truth
‘lapse of judgment’?
You are suggesting that this is just a one off, as opposed to a character trait; evidence?
I am not suggesting a one-off. I believe Gleick used that term in his admission. But I should have made that clearer. Sorry.
I believe this ethical lapse is serious enough to end Gleick’s career and end his influence on scientific issues going forward. The AGU has already scrubbed his name from their integrity initiative web site. I believe the NCSE (which he had recently been named to chair) is sufficiently responsive (politically) to understand his future participation on their behalf will be completely unpalatable.
Posted elsewhere, someone gave a list of the other bodies he needs to resign/be dismissed from:
Corey S. says:
February 21, 2012 at 8:06 am
There are some more committees, boards, and groups in which he needs to resign from:
PUBLIC AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
Current
• World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Water Security, 2008-present
• Committee on Ecological Impacts of Climate Change, National Academy of Sciences, 2008-present
• Expert Group on Policy Relevance of the World Water Assessment Program, United Nations, 2008-present
• Human Impacts of Climate Change Advisory Committee, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2007-present
• Climate Advisory Group, California Academy of Sciences, 2007-present
• Climate Change Technical Advisory Group, State of California, 2007-present
• Advisory Board, Environmental Research Letters, 2006-present
• Editorial Board, Water Policy, 1997-present
• Editorial Board, Climatic Change, 1990-present
• Board of Directors, Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, 1988-present
Also, of course, Pacific Institute where he has his “day job”.
This appears to have been 4 days in the works to give time to elect a new chair:
“Chair of AGU’s Task Force on Scientific Integrity”
A year or 18 months ago Gleick was pretty much invisible. He had pretty much no profile in the CAGW community, so far as I can tell.
His rise to prominence can be summarized as “fools rush in where angels fear to tread” – he’s been willing to say what others would not, to wrap his Ph.D. around the role of agitprop bomb-thrower. It’d paid off for him quite handsomely.
We will now see how energetically those who were more than happy to associate themselves with his words as long as their name wasn’t at the top can feign ignorance of the man and his work.
@ IPMeng | February 21, 2012 at 8:58 am
“I hope his family doesn’t suffer for this lapse of judgement.”
To drive home Judith’s point, from an ethical point of view (among others), Gleick should have thought of that before his “lapse of judgement”(?!?).
Unfortunately, it appears, Gleick’s family wasn’t even remotely a consideration. And that reflects more heavily on Gleick’s lack of ethics than his dastardly deed.
Judith
the problem, as I see it, is that Gleik is activist/idealogue first and scientist second. And it seems he is not the only one. This is bad for science and bad for real scientists. Will the real scientists make a stand against the activists? History to date suggests not.
Dolphinhead,
No the problem is Gleick is a thief and fraud first, and a scientist in distant second.
Is this surprising? Why do you go and study an environmental science at University? You’ve already been `captured’ by the cause long before you even start your undergraduate course. Some people will fall off the wagon of course, but most will not,particularly those who go on to post-graduate study and to make a career out of it.
Hell, I was a fan of Konrad Lorenz and the Green movement when I was at University and I was studying Artificial Intelligence, not ES!
You really should try to avoid tarring whole groups of people with your brush of preconceived notions. Universities still harbor independent minds and students are still capable of critical thought. are Universities perfect? of course not. The same can be said of the peer-review process. Should we throw all of these infrastructures out? no, but we can try to make them better. Your absolutist discourse only entrenches ideas further and makes a mockery of those constantly making the necessary efforts to apply the scientific method.
It could also be argued that Universities teach conformity, by rewarding those that follow accepted doctrine with degrees than those that do not with failure. While there are exceptional professors that do not follow this formula, they are the exception not the rule.
As a result, Universities tend to generate graduates that think alike.
stay tuned for my next post on teaching (?) the controversy
Ouch. That is going to hurt.
That there are defenders of Gleick out there in Climate Science is becoming extremely unsettling.
Hank Roberts at RealClimate
Attempts to promote an exemption, a singular exemption in all the known universe, for Climate Science from FOI laws are very bad, but this is far far worst.
What exactly is Climate Science? Is actual science involved in any way?
RC, in defending Gleick and dismissing the significance of his actions, only demonstrates the low standards they have towards truth.
You mean like Gavin’s response?
[Response: Schadenfreude is a cheap thrill: fun but ephemeral. Gleick’s actions were completely irresponsible and while the information uncovered was interesting (if unsurprising), it in no way justified his actions. There is an integrity required to do science (and talk about it credibly), and he has unfortunately failed this test. The public discussion on this issue will be much the poorer for this – both directly because this event is (yet) another reason not to have a serious discussion, but also indirectly because his voice as an advocate of science, once powerful, has now been diminished. – gavin]
Don’t get in the habit of ascribing the views of commenters to the blog proprietors.
Good comment from Gavin
I doubt Gavin wrote it. I suspect it was some crisis manager George Soros paid for.
The warm climate blogs are pretty silent. Only thing I’ve spotted is at Planet 3.0
http://planet3.org/2012/02/20/here-come-the-lawyers/
Revkin isn’t allowing comments
Back channel strategizing?
“because his voice as an advocate of science, once powerful, has now been diminished.”
Like his trashing review of a book he hadn’t read? Is that the kind “advocate of science” Gavin’s ghost writer is praising?
Gavin isn’t defending him. I don’t expect the reflexive defense of his actions to last long.
I’m going to start collecting some of these comments. You know, as evidence of the moral superiority of “skeptics” as a group, as well as an example of “skeptical” cold, objective reasoning that carefully quantifies certainty.
I agree –
Honest and on the button from Gavin.
The only defence of Gleick is that he is still doesn’t come close to the Mann.
IRT Andy Revkin,
Check out the three comments he allowed before he hit the mattresses.
Two of them are by a certificable kook who literally waxes poetically about what a great hero Peter Gleick is.
Zeke,
That is a thoughtful and proper response by gavin. I hope he sticks to that position longer than he did during climategate.
You are right: The hosts do not need to be smeared by the posters, as a general rule. Do you think that RC, with strict censorship should be qualify for a complete pass?
IMO, Gavin and the entire RealClimate community is as guilty as Gleick of refusing to have an honest conversation with people who don’t automatically look at them as gods distributing stone tablets.
Gavin’s response was quite appropriate. The rest of the responses leave something to be desired. Some are actually calling The Heartland Institute evil and professional liars, and therefore his actions are justified. One even went so far as to say he acted in self defense (because AGW could eventually kill him or his decendents).
Joshua: “I’m going to start collecting some of these comments. You know, as evidence of the moral superiority of “skeptics” as a group, as well as an example of “skeptical” cold, objective reasoning that carefully quantifies certainty.”
And that would be irrational behavior on your part, unless the only real purpose was to fight the propaganda war that Judith alludes to with respect to UNFCCC/IPCC ideology.
Good comment from Gavin? Always look to the punch line: “because his voice as an advocate of science, once powerful, has now been diminished”. Gavin equates advocacy for CAGW with advocacy of science. If and only if one, then the other, his thinking goes.
Devious rationalization, typical Gavin-style.
Gavin i not a fool, and realizes how damning this is. He couldn’t really have written anything else. But I would never take one word at face value from him. Every word, every phrase is carefully chosen to purvey and deliver a crafted message, a certain picture, to conceal or distract from what muddlies that picture, and to leave an impression different than what the actual words, arguments and statements indeed mean or support.
Every single time!
I should have made it more clear that I was referring to an individual: Hank Roberts in this case. I had already run across a few and simply decided to take this one as an example.
Professor Curry has made it very clear that she is not responsible for the views of her readers. The same goes for RealClimate.
Yes, Hank has a rather bad habit of denigrating those with which he disagrees and uplifting those with whom he agrees.
“his voice as an advocate of science, once powerful, has now been diminished”
Somebody get me a hanky….(sniff, sob)
Andrew
See my comment above. He’s equating science and CAGW. That’s the real point of his apologia.
What I find interesting is that the comments at Real Climate had to be made on a thread entitled “Free speech and academic freedom,” (about the alleged, self-reported, “numerous death threats” that progressive hero/activists serially claim they are receiving, but rarely prove to have been made.)
Integrity is so important to the guardians of science that it didn’t even warrant a post on its own.
Judith. Please!! Leave the Dark Side of the Force, and come on over to the Light Side of the Force.
No, I would prefer that she stay right where she is since I can always count on her voice of reason and objectivity. Judith serves a very useful purpose in saving a little sanity during these remarkably insane times.
I agree dennis — great comment!
Sanity is always defined by the group mind as agreement with its consensual reality. So pick your group to be “sane” in.
JC’s positions are valuable, but often fudge the issues with excessive abstraction. This post less than most.
Jim,
She can stay on the warming side. I only wish she would debate honestly and discuss the political underpinning of the AGW which is obvious to most skeptics. She maintains a politically correct protocal, that others are much worse isn’t ethically relavent.
By the way, Revkin has allowed apologist comments, only skeptics are banned at the moment. The “no gloat” sign has been lit in the AGW blog cabin. What to talk about pride and arrogance?
cwon,
What is wrong with Dr Curry sticking to the science and letting the political components be debated by others? Isn’t scientists either inserting themselves into the political debate or allowing their names to be used in it one of the issues many of us here have with “climate science”?
Is this the sort of thing the AAAS had in mind when they had a recent broadcast (Feb 18th) on how to “influence public perceptions and debate when the science supporting a position is not enough to carry the argument.”?
It may not be what AAAS had in mind, but there is no reason that they should be surprised either. Such enmeshing of policy and science will end up with only one winner, and it won’t be the integrity of science.
http://www.malariaworld.org/blog/%E2%80%9Ctruth-not-enough%E2%80%9D-part-ii-aaas-agrees
Perhaps there is a difference between integrity in science and how one might deal with a political advocacy group?
The latter is personal, not scientific, integrity.
And this is from one of the linked articles;
“Do real scientists sometimes make mistakes? Sure. But it is precisely their willingness to identify, acknowledge, and correct mistakes…….”
Gleick has issued his public mea culpa.
Can’t recall anything of the kind from the ‘climate skeptics’, no matter how egregious their errros.
Michael,
Yes do take this tactic and broadcast it all over the blogosphere. Let people know that normal ethics do not apply to scientists. That they have a sciencey ethics that allows them to steal papers and forge documents and lie, but they are still good scientists.
It will be one of the best things you could do to increase the number of skeptics. I thank you in advance.
Sincerely,
hunter
Just through rI’d point out the glaringly obvious flaw in Judtihs contention;
“How can we reconcile Gleick’s possibly criminal behavior with his essays and testimony on scientific integrity?”
We can’t – because they are completely different things.
Unless you, and Judith, are suggesting that scientific integrity, is realted to anything that a scientist does as a person. An affair, cheating on you tax- all issues of “scientific integrity”????
I’m so stunned that none of the ‘skeptics’ noticed this highly flawed reasoning. /sarcasm off.
But nevermind me……not-IPCC ditto-heads please resume normal service.
Michael,
Yes, it is easy to reconcile:
Gleick is a thief and deceiver and hypocrite.
You just do not like the reconciliation.
Oh, and your attempt to pretend that this was not,since his job is as science communicator and head of the AGW ethics committee, related to his being a scientist is laughable and transparently shallow.
Actually this explains a lot…….Gleick does some dodgy advocacy, activist wannabe-investigative-hack stuff and you all think it’s about ‘scientific integrity’.
But that’s how you think of it – persuing political /economic ideologies is your ‘science’ in climate science.
Michael – YES, it DOES explain a lot!
Gleik=Mann=Jones=Hanson=Romm=Schmitt=many others
They are all pursuing their “political/economic ideologies” via “dodgy activist” “hack-stuff”, all the while loudly proclaiming themselves to be scientists following the science. This is unfortunately how may “climate scientists” operate, as we have almost daily proof.
Michael:
I suggest you actually read some of Gleick’s commentary of scientific integrity (I particularly like his congressional testimony). Our gracious hostess has provided some links at the top of the page to get you started. When Gleick writes:
“Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers, are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence.”
people like me wonder how this is twisted to justify a dishonest assault driven by dogma (per Gleick’s own admission) against the Heartland Institute. If the science promoted by HI is bad, then an honest attack on the science is justified, but a dishonest attack on the source?
max,
I’d suggest that you pay more attention – then you’d see that I’ve quoted Gleick from the links.
“actually read” as opposed to “skim for quotes”. I did note the quote, but the argument about distinguishing between personal and scientific ethics is directly contrary to Glieck’s stated position.
Gleick has equated dishonest attacks on the purveyors of science instead of honest attacks on the science itself with violations of scientific norms. His “bad science” awards equate bad politics (in his view) with bad science, read some his bad science awards pieces. I could go on with many examples, but I leave you with this thought:
Warmists won’t go away, though a measure of their diminished influence can be seen in their increasingly desperate ad hominem attacks on scientists rather than attacks on the science (see, for example, Gleick’s attack on The Heartland Institute). But it is time for policymakers and the media to stop taking warmists seriously until they do what real scientists do: provide testable scientific theories, observations, or evidence that hasn’t already been decisively debunked.
Michael: “Do real scientists sometimes make mistakes? Sure. But it is precisely their willingness to identify, acknowledge, and correct mistakes…….”
Accepting for the time being your characteriziation that this was a “mistake” and not a “crime”, has it been corrected? I am not sure from my readings to date that most pro-AGW political advocates even acknowledge it as a mistake.
Can’t recall anything of the kind from the ‘climate skeptics’, no matter how egregious their errros.
Can you name a “climate skeptic” who assumed a false identity for the purpose of stealing private information? Or who (this is still hypothetical, and will probably be adjudicated) forged a document and claimed that it was authentic?
Michael
Re: “Can’t recall anything of the kind from the ‘climate skeptics'”
Then it might help to read what they write.
I make and admit errors. Dr. Roy Spencer often acknowledges errors, makes corrections, and continually works to refine the UHT satellite temperature data. etc.
I’m curious Michael where you learned about the concept of ethics and integrity.
I do not infer from Gleick’s recebt action anything about his ability as a scientist. Nor, for that matter, am I going to judge him on his actions. As yet, God hasn’t tapped me on the shoulder and asked that I fill in for him while he takes a break.
My take away from this is that Dr Gleick’s action has compromised his ethics and integrity and as such he has forfeited any claim to be taken at his word.
tim –
I just posted a comment over at Pielke Jr.’s cyberhome in response to a dude named “deanbrock” on the “Reality is Not Good Enough” thread. It hasn’t made its way through moderation yet – but when it does, if you might do me the courtesy of reading my comment and responding, I’d appreciate it. I’d like to know if you think what I said is BS or not (you’ve given me that kind of feedback in the past). Leave a comment either there or here if you’re so inclined.
The head post is talking about Gleick’ actions in relation to “scientific integrity”.
Clearly it has nothing to do with it. Personal integrity and ethics – yes. Scientific? – nope.
This is a gem:
“Clearly it has nothing to do with it. Personal integrity and ethics – yes. Scientific? – nope”
Since Peter Gleick wasn’t doing science, while he was being a criminal, while perpetrating crimes against those furthering different scientific views (or just the debate of, and information about those) than Gleick’s own ..
… therefor his scientific integrity is untarnished.
That’s what we are told to accept!
Or sitting at his desk:
‘While I was making criminal phone calls, and fabricating and/or forwarding forged evidence …
… I was obviously not performing my official job and job description.
Therefore, no shadow falls on my professional conduct!
I still get baffled over the sheer gall, that some of the warmists present as arguments for their case. (If it indeed is bold nerve, and not something else)
Jonas,
That is a fascinating contention that the HI has an interest in science.
History has demonstrated that they have none, only ideological interests which science ocassionally threatens, resulting in their attacks agianst that branch of science.
Michael, the issue was Peter Gleick’s (lack of) integrity. You (seemed to) maintain he has any left …
But: “That is a fascinating contention that the HI has an interest in science.” and ” .. their attacks agianst that branch of science”
This sounds like the old meme (that maybe worked a decade ago), that only the IPCC-approved science is the science. But it isn’t, and it never was. Heartland is (mostly) interested in the science that the IPCC, and its inner circles, activists etc) are trying to ignore, keep out, silence, dismiss, discredit etc ..
Heartland supports open debate, and that is indeed threatening to al those who support (what they cal/believe is) science that cannot tolerate debate and scrutiny ..
Anyhow, it is fascinating that such a minor (insignificant) group as Heartland, whom nobody refers to as primary source of anything, can attract so much hatred and attack from the gatekeepers. With the most infantile ‘arguments’ ..
My contention is that many there really must be very afraid of debate, information and dissenting voices. And I begin to understand why …
@ Michael | February 21, 2012 at 9:11 am
“Can’t recall anything of the kind from the ‘climate skeptics’, no matter how egregious their errros.”
Errros – thanks for the belly laugh.
Maybe you could change this C(atastrophic)AGW heretics mind. Do tell what your definition of a ‘climate skeptic’ is (someone that doubts climate exists?) and provide an example of one of these mythical creatures egregious errors that this elusive critter has refused to own up to.
Caution — any faked documents provided as a source will hamper my conversion to the faith.
typo – you got me good there. ;)
‘climate skeptic’ – someone who purports to follow the great scientific principle of scepticism, but who insteads displays all the traits of credulous contrarianism, ie, immediately believes any report/paper/blog post that in any way suggests it disproves AGW, talks in political/ideological terms about climate science annd is obsessed with the personalities of climate science more than the science itself.
Ignoring the insane amount of logical fallacies in your post, let alone how false and ignorant some of the statements like your one about “errrors” [sic]…
Does what Gleick did affect the integrety of his science? No.
Does it affect the trustworthiness of his interpretations of his science, and any extrapolations of opinions he’s stated? Yes.
If his position is so extreme as to push him to theft like this, of many documents that have nothing to do with climate science or the debate, then his position is too extreme to be trusted as rational, reasonable, or sensible.
Science speaks for itself; but whatever Gleick spoke for is now tarnished by his behavior. And that’s the great tragedy of what he has done.
“Ignoring the insane amount of logical fallacies in your post”
Your inability to specify one makes a response difficult.
Your inability to face anything else in my post (let alone the example I did specify), is a response in and of itself from you. And probably one of the most truthful I’ve seen you make as of late.
You’ve really gone off the deep end these past few weeks. Yet you have the potential to be a strong, rational individual; if you would use logos instead of pathos.
Maybe you could give an example of the difference between ‘his science’ and ‘his interpretation of his science’ that would allow me to understand what you are trying to say and respond.
An even greater irony than the perversion of climate science is that of the perversion of public communication and education.
===================
I agree fully with your blog post, Dr Curry.
However, amongst the claims for Gleick as ‘hero’ and the outstanding detective work done by various people, Steve Mosher first and foremost, one aspect seems to be overlooked, which is a bit curious.
Regardless of Gleick having or not having written the fake HI document, the fact remains that he obtained the authentic HI documents by wire fraud.
No wonder he, his lawyers and the usual blogsters are trying to work so hard to get everybody to look at the ‘fake but accurate’ thing. That means we overlook the fact that he has actually confessed to wire fraud in his confession.
It looks to me like there is a lot more going on here.
I read The Origin of the Heartland Documents by Peter H. Gleick on HuffPost and noted the statement “I received an anonymous document in the mail…” and it does appear to be confirmed that he wrote the article HuffPost article.
One can infer from what we know:
– it was the “strategy” document or it was a different document Gleick received in the “mail”
– “mail” may be a typo — intended to mean email in the HuffPost article
– the “strategy” document was scanned using an Epson scanner that uses OCR prior to being circulated (contains selectable text)
– XMP metadata, though absent from the scanned document, may have been a scanner setting — maybe not
– the scanner was connected to a PC — the scanned documents header information doesn’t contain mac related addressing
– the “strategy” document contains many scan artifacts indicating the condition of the document yet doesn’t reflect any #10 horizontal fold marks
– if the “strategy” document had been received by post, its highly likely it would have been folded
– the “strategy” document contains numerous references to the other documents circulated yet gets the facts wrong
– the “strategy” document is poorly written and unlikely an internal business document headed to the Board of Directors
Is Gleick taking the fall for someone else? He may be a lot of things but illiterate isn’t one of them.
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?
Copner,
It is not unusual for a criminal to make his or her confession in stages.
Gleick appears to be doing just that.
‘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.’
Greg Laden was thrown under the bus a long time ago.
Great exposition Judith.
I believe this will have bigger impact on this “science” than Climategate had…
Ecotretas
It is their arrogance that they must be right and the way they all “consensized” together behind the law breaker, when it was clear to everyone that it was fraud an theft with no public interest in its disclosure.
or should I say:
“The overwhelming scientific consensus is that law breaking is acceptable?”
A lot like ” the ends justify the means “…. I’ve heard that somewhere before….
we were all just following orders…
Judith writes:
“Scientists are also susceptible to the biases of their own political ideology, which surveys show leans heavily liberal.”
That putative conclusion comes from Pew, which is itself a liberal polling organization. However, their conclusion is contrary to my personal experience. In my 30-year carreer working with hundreds of other scientists, I found that most tended to be politically conservative.
Gallup also reports it differently. In its long-running polling question, self-described conservatives consistently outnumber self-described liberals by about two to one among the general population. I doubt that scientists are much different.
[I came to this site because of Judith’s invitation posted on http://wattsupwiththat.com , which currently has an excellent series on the Peter Gleick scandal.]
“In my 30-year carreer working with hundreds of other scientists, I found that most tended to be politically conservative.”
What field are you in? Within environmental science, my experience is that this field is far more liberal than the population as a whole. Throughout my career, I have been considered “the token conservative” in the office, whereas I’m very middle road compared to the community. I know conservative scientists, but not from within this field. I attribute this to a fairly strong self-selection bias.
JJ,
I have a graduate degree in Environmental Science & Engineering and failed to note any liberal bias from faculty. In fact I’d probably be hard pressed to tell what the political leanings or opinions of most of my professors were.
I tend to feel that the concept of liberal bias in education is fueled more by the exceptions and not the majority. Perhaps administrators have this bias – I don’t know – but not the educators I’ve come in contact with.
As an aside – as an undergraduate I was looking for courses to sign up for one semester to reach 15 credit hours. I had all of my requirements taken care of and none of the courses available in the fields I was normally interested in seemed worthwhile. Then I found a course titles Nuclear and Catasthropic Warfare. My eyes lite up. As a someone with experience with nuclear weapons and with a few years in the commercial nuclear industry to boot, I figured the odds were the Professor was anti-nuclear and for sure the class would attract “anti’s” who most likely couldn’t differentiate between nuclear weapons & nuclear power plants. I was going to have a field day.
Boy was I wrong. To this day Dr Canjar is one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met. The first assignment stunned me. Each question could have been the basis of a term paper, if not a thesis. Many were technical in nature and almost half of them I barely had a clue about. One of the best courses I’ve ever taken and to this day I wonder if I should have followed her suggestion to be one of her graduate students.
tim,
Engineering is a different beast. My experience with engineers, even within the field of environmental work, is that they are pretty middle of the road as a group. If anything a bit more conservative than average.
Environmental scientists – biologists, botanists, ecologists, crimatologists, etc – that I have worked with, for, over, amongst and around? They skew stongly left.
JJ,
Sorry it took so long to reply, but I’m not signed up for email notifications.
To answer your question, before I retired I worked for thirty years in a large Metrology lab in a Fortune 500 company, designing, testing, calibrating and repairing weather related instruments of all types. There were more than 160 engineers in our lab.
Some of the calibration instrument manufacturers sent us all the current literature, gratis. We watched the entire global freezing thru runaway global warming narrative unfold. There were discussions about it, but by the time the warming scare came along, everyone was pretty jaded.
It was obvious that the alarmism was growing in lockstep with the enormous ramp-up of federal grants. $Billions every year is a very strong motivation to gin up scare stories. Who is going to hand out grants to someone who tells the truth?: Nothing unusual is happening. The planet has seen it all before, and with far greater extremes; tens of degree changes, vs the current extremely mild 0.8ºC rise over a century and a half. We really are in a Goldilocks climate.
I don’t recall any engineers who were not extremely skeptical of the entire runaway global warming story. We could see that none of the parameters of the Holocene have been exceeded, therefore the null hypothesis has never been falsified.
The planet has been much warmer, and much colder over the past ten millennia, regardless of CO2 levels. And it is apparent that temperature rises precede CO2 rises, but somehow that got inverted. Federal grants will do that.
If you reply I probably won’t see it. It was quite accidental that I happened across this old thread today. Anyway, I hope I’ve answered your question. Engineers tend to be very skeptical of things that can’t be measured. The AGW conjecture is one of those things. As for CAGW, the planet is making it clear that there is no such animal outside of computer climate models.
I questioned the liberal bias too Smokey. Spent twenty years in IC manufacturing, met very few liberal engineers. First thing that came to mind was perhaps a difference between applied science and theoretical as to the distribution?
Steve Keohane
Good observation on engineers – they have to compete in the market place and satisfy customers to survive.
Global warming” advocates appear to seek to impose uncalled for trillion dollar “fees” (debts) on us.
First off, “Judith” didn’t write this;
“Scientists are also susceptible to the biases of their own political ideology, which surveys show leans heavily liberal.”
Reread the article, Nisbit says this. Hell would freeze over before Dr. Curry made such a simple observation.
As to the cultural bias of a large group such as “scientist” it’s important to break it down by funding and location. Academia, debt driven or direct funded from government remains very liberal. Increasing liberal in fact over the rise of AGW’s common period. This was the root of the AGW movement.
Then you have direct funded researchers that graduate from academia and earn the “big bucks”. Same culture and bias. Lots of cross over.
The leftist bias declines in private industry and engineering. The irony here is often when consensus building every effort is given to the following disinformation line of debate;
“Scientists support AGW overwhelmingly because they are better informed”
The matching polls are careful to use AAAS stats since that association largely is heavy in teachers, government funded parties etc. This is the “consensus smart vs. stupid skeptic” meme with cooked data. This is a cousin of the JFK was an intellectual genius and Eisenhower was a dolt. It’s a 100 year old+ progressive media meme in fact. Bill Clinton, super genius, doesn’t quite square with……well you know the story.
The core of the Team is uber leftist elite academia. Sierra Club, WWF, IPCC, Al Gore, most academia and media. I’ve been drawing a picture for Dr. Curry, Obama supporter and donator for about a year. She can’t concede the point directly either.
You should also be aware of a social phenomenon. Political liberals can be very condradictory in person apart from how they vote or view the world in abstract. It’s why they might whine about world poverty but give so much less to private charity which has been revealed instudies. They might seem very conservative to you without you understanding what they really might support in a abstract political choice debate. This also explains ruthless, pityless capitalist like Warren Buffet who would squeeze a dime from a minimum wage worker at Dairy Queen while railing on after leftist cause after cause. Pro-Socialized medicine but cuts the medical benefits to his own workers time and again. I don’t buy your summary on the science political culture you are stating.
It may surprise you, but I agree with everything you wrote. Apologies to Dr Curry, but as I recall I was aware she was only posting a cut ‘n’ paste. Sorry for any confusion.
Take a screen shot of this web page before it changes:
http://www.agu.org/about/governance/committees_boards/scientific_ethics.shtml
Can the Chair initiate a self-reference to the Committee?
Apparently he did.
A Physical Realization of an Oxymoron: Scientific Ethics Committee Chair refers self to Committee.
The Mother of All Own Goals
Done.
I bet it will be changed before end of day.
If you think that his dealings with Heartland constitute ‘science’, you might be onto something.
Alas…….
I think his actions constitute “anti-science”. A lot of that going around lately. “Lets see… I don’t have sound scientific evidence so I’ll lie, cheat, steal and make stuff up so my opponents look bad”… oops! Not exactly the “We are the experts and climate is complicated. Trust us.” We were looking for. How high can this steer manure pile go?
Michael,
Gleick’s job in science was communications and ethics.
Ge is the chair of the AGU committee on ethics.
Let’s see what his fellow AGU members think of your defense, that sciencey ethics are different from what normal ethics are.
You are making yourself look very silly. Please continue.
hunter, if it was found that Gleick was a member of the KKK, The Aryan Brotherhood and the Westboro church he would be defended by progressives, as long as he was on the ‘right’ side.
hunter,
I think his scientific work areas are climate and hydrology.
Perahps you can point me to his published papers in the relevant peer-reviewed ethics journal?
I put the screenshot and Firefox archive – called scientific_ethics.shtml – in the same folder as god-and-the-arrogant-species.pdf (just as my WordPress alert put God and the Arrogant Species just below, as if foundation for, Breaking News: Gleick Confesses).
They say you couldn’t make this stuff up and you’d be right. But this conjunction didn’t, as some feared, involve dear old Dr K having a hotline to the Almighty – it was clearly the other way round :)
Gone as of 10:15AM (Eastern)
It’s changed..the document no longer contains the following :
Google still has the old cached version.
Chair no more.
Ironically, Gleick actions will improve scientific ethics by exposing the current state of science. Things have to get worse before they get better.
Don’t worry, the committee have just found him innocent. I’m sure he’ll be reinstated.
/sarc
Just kidding!
A point I made in early 2010 to the UK parliamentary committee looking into Climategate, in answer to one of their stock questions:
We’ve been finding since just how low a base. As you say, things had to get worse before they got better.
That’s at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/climatedata/uc3702.htm
Edim,
“Ironically, Gleick actions will improve scientific ethics by exposing the current state of science.”
There’s nothing wrong with scientific ethics, it’s just Gleick’s lack of ethics. And if you think this imbroglio will improve the ethics of the CAGW activists, why are so many of them defending Gleick, trying to shift the focus, engage in moral equivalence, and other dodges.
“The end justifies the means” is an accepted first principle of progressivism. So long as the end is progressive. Anyone expecting a change in tone in the debate just because one activist got caught, hasn’t been paying attention.
Too late, but see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/21/gleick-removed-from-agu-task-force-on-scientific-ethics/
So DeSmog and others haven’t learned that the “fake, but accurate” excuse doesn’t cut it with rational people. Dishonesty can’t be spun with the fair minded.
And perhaps there is a streak of insanity among the highly partisan. They seem to be so addicted to alarm that they fantasize and alarm themselves to the point of criminality about the power and malevolence of their enemies.
On the margin, do they ever learn?
It should be really be looked at that AGW was the mother of all potential rewards to the global left. Marxism wrapped in seemingly “complex” science rationalizations. A massive transfer to state authority from private concerns.
Joshua spends his nights dreaming of it. So does most of the Green left. So does Dr. Curry for all we know but isn’t stated directly.
I hope that AGU and NCSE are regretting getting in bed with this faux “scientist”. AGU is a long-standing and (until now) well respected institution. NCSE’s defense of the teaching of evolution has been admirable. Both are having their reputations smudged by association with Dr. Gleick. How can this thief remain as the chair of AGU’s task force? How can NCSE continue their move into climate science education with this liar on their board? He, along with other activists masquerading as scientists (Michael Oppenheimer, Michael Mann, Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren and the late Steve Schneider), should receive no more attention as authorities. They deserve to be shunned by the community of scientists. Noble cause corruption and blind faith are not components of the scientific method. They are antithetical to science. Skepticism is at the root of scientific investigation and science is never settled. Dr. Gelick is not a scientist and certainly does not merit membership in the National Academy of Sciences.
http://ncse.com/climate-change/leading-climate-change-expert-joins-ncse-board
http://www.agu.org/about/governance/committees_boards/scientific_ethics.shtml
Don’t forget Gleick’s pal, Chris Mooney.
Done and done. Good riddance. Yes. Mooney too (although he doesn’t even rate as “faux”).
there’s something really wierd about the mentality of ‘Progressives’: they really do believe huge well funded capitalist conspiracies are trying to crush them (reality – a few individuals who can smell bs, a bit of organisation here & there, certainly not anyhing orchestrated in the boardrooms of Exxon et al); they really do believe if they improved their manner & method of communication, the strengths of their argument would sweep all before it (reality – most people don’t care/don’t believe what they’re hearing/can sense the tax rise in the distance); they really do believe semi-criminal acts are OK if its in a cause they ‘believe’ in (reality – judges might think differently).
Lenin and Stalin were driven by the same paranoia, even after they were in almost total control.
Gleik, I see, has a beard. So did Lenin, very neatly trimmed. And Stalin had an absurdist moustache. Carefully tended facial hair is one indicator of extreme narcissism, from which its a short leap to…….
Oh Bill that’s utterly absurd! Men grow beards because it’s natural. If you argued that taking care of your appearence is one indicator of extreme narcisism, you might have a case. But specifically facial hair?! Absurd.
Good analysis. Although saying “arguably” they broke FOI law is a massive understatement. The UK information commissioner said that FOI law had been broken … and they didn’t take him to court, so his is the final judgement on the issue: they broke the law. But couldn’t be prosecuted because of the time that had elapsed.
The key, is that they have lost the moral high ground. Not only by one individual acting illegally, not just by the way all the team condoned his actions, but the way this “bed of evil”, was shown to be a pretty upright and ordinary lobbyist, without BIG-OIL backing them.
And the UK media have done discredit to our country. The Guardian I think was the first main stream paper, the BBC appears to have been instrumental in trying to create this “denier-gate” (that’s illegal for the BBC due to their charter … they have to be impartial/fair)
Judity wrote, “On the other hand, Gleick is only one person … ”
Is it reasonable to believe that Gleick did this entirely on his own, that he spoke to no one, confided in no one, consulted no one? Is it reasonable to believe that the forged memo was sent only to Gleick?
It is not clear that the memo sent to Gleick (assuming Gleick is telling the truth about that), was the forged document. it may have been one of the documents which he confirmed to be accurate by duping the secretary, and he wrote the forged document.
Judith –
A great post – I think you sum it up really well.
Something this whole tawdry saga has made plain to me is the extent to which many of the CAGW persuasion believe – quite profoundly – that the divisions are between science and anti-science. The extent to which this is prevalent has always quite baffled me.
It has been bugging me since Tamsin Edwards started her new blog and on her ‘sceptical compass’ describes one axis as scientist/sceptic. How can this be? Have you yourself become less of a scientist as you have become more sceptical of the IPCC orthodoxy? It is a ludicrous idea..
However, Peter Gleick’s actions become much more explicable if his beliefs are that [with science being another name for truth and light] the people ranged against him are just anti-science. This is so close to them being seen as agents of the devil that religious analogies really do start to make sense. And also, those who are saying he is a courageous hero reveal their mentality too.
It seems to me that “noble cause corruption” is a euphemism for much of what is going on.
It makes me think there are more than two or three way to think that “It’s not about the science“
Anteros – I don’t see this scientist/skeptic distinction on Tamsin’s Sceptical Compass post. I’m sure you’ve discussed it on her blog, but I see the two axes are Approach and Conclusion. Both “convinced” and “unconvinced” take a “skeptical” approach, with differing conclusions. Maybe in the ensuing discussion there is clarification of what you just said here?
billc –
I agree that the two axes are labelled as Approach and Conclusion which seems quite reasonable. However, in her description of the axis Tamsin says this –
I left a long comment on this at the bottom of the thread but it is a while since the article was posted.
I might be wrong, but I think even for Tamsin, there is the sense that the science by and large says one thing and sceptics have their doubts about it. Obviously I think that completely misses the whole landscape of the climate debate.
As usual I mostly disagree with the strength of your gut reaction, or I just have a different gut. Note her change to having started using convinced/unconvinced (and having put that in the diagram instead of scientist/skeptic) hopefully from a motivation to be more objective. I agree that “scientist/skeptic” as an either-or proposition is both inaccurate and dated in this debate.
“there is the sense that the science by and large says one thing and sceptics have their doubts about it” – is a viewpoint focused on one corner of the debate, but it’s historically been a big corner.
billc –
You may well be right. I suppose I have quite a bit of history of reading Tamsin’s use of scientist v sceptic, and I have to say it rankles a little bit.
I agree that its welcome that she is starting to use alternatives, but scientist/ sceptic is still current [she says she ‘uses’ it]
I agree that it has been a big corner – which is why I think there’s a problem. I don’t think science has said anything like what the CAGW advocates would like to imagine. Partly because they are asking it to do work for which it is not suited – to talk about danger and risk and impacts and catastrophe. It is really convenient to try to portray sceptics as exclusively against science but it is a nonsense.
Hence my quite strong reaction to Tamsin Edwards characterising scepticism as something that can be “versus” science.
Do they really believe that this is a battle between science and anti-science?
Certainly, it is a major part of their strategy to portray it that way to politicians, media, and the public.
Well, maybe they have started believing their own propaganda.
There seems to be many layers that need to be dismantled before we can get everybody on the same page discussing the same thing.
One of these is the idea this is a battle between good/evil, truth/lies or whatever. It would be much better if this could be realized through rational discussion rather than example.
On the subject of the strategy memo:
1. It builds up Gleick as a good climate scientist and an important Forbes commentator to be reckoned with.
2. It’s claim that Heartland want to discourage teaching of science [i.e. AGW] in schools, is in stark contrast to Gleick’s new position with NCSE encouraging teaching science [i.e. AGW] in schools.
I’m not saying he wrote the memo, but that’s 2 personal motives (as well as more nebulous political motives) that Gleick would have had to fake it.
I’m not saying he wrote it either, but you’re absolutely right ;)
Not to mention the creation date stamp on that memo’s file is Feb 13 instead of Jan 27 (or was it 29th?) for -all- of the other documents; the Adobe core is different; and the time stamp is PST unlike the other docs. And, there’s no fold or crinkle marks what so ever on it, if it was really scanned, which is impossible for any sheet of computer paper that’s sat around for a length of time, let alone was “supposedly mailed”. Add to that the complete lack of memo headers or formatting…
There is not a single sherd of evidence that it’s real or corroborates Gleick’s account of things–but every ounce of evidence pointing to it’s fake and potentially faked by Gleick in particular.
Climate High Command to Joshua:
Get a grip will you saying you are so far behind your comrades at desmogwhatever is like saying the climate has always changed – bleeding obvious!
You have now gone at least 2 hours without challenging that heritic Judith (still can’t bring ourselves to say her name but resembles an electrical retailer in the UK ughhhhhhh) We suspect without any evidence (as usual) that she is being paid as part of Exxon/Shell/BP/Conoco Black Ops Dept, doesnt matter we have no evidence just say it the clueless will believe it! (Chris Colose you there?)
We have the distinct feeling that the business about HI being a Private Institution and CRU, NASA etc being taxpayer funded is not getting the spin we expected! Us liberal save the planet types never expected FOI to apply to us … why should it was brought in to defeat the forces of conservatism… what was it Tony Blair said? something along the lines of was one of his biggest regrets… of course it was!!!
Now listen here chap unless you step up to the plate pretty sharpish there will be consequences at the least you will be forever banished to denierland a place so horrible it doesn’t even pay state benefits ffs and nobody is entitled to anything they haven’t honestly worked for. Horrible we say just Horrible.
By the way…
where is Joshua?
Judith
Re: “How can we reconcile Gleick’s possibly criminal behavior with his essays and testimony on scientific integrity?”
Francis Bacon:
How Science Works p 39.
Allowing environmentalism to supercede the scientific method appear to contribute to Gleick’s actions.
We need to objectively look at ALL the evidence, especially the uncertainties and search for what is missing to cause the global climate models to deviate so strongly from reality.
Furthermore:
– Sir Francis Bacon
Sadly Bacon “slowly pushed his way upward to a place of great power and distinction, only to fall at last through his lack of moral integrity.” Introduction to “The essays: or, Counsels civil and moral of Francis Bacon” p xxii
I see these events as reflecting our society’s failure to train in and forgetting our foundational transcendental ethical standards and the Rule of Law and replacing it by the Darwinian morality of “might makes right” with the consequent moral morass shown. I believe we need to:
Return the the “laws of nature and of nature’s God”, and act in all things so we can “appeal to the Supreme Judge over all the world for the rectitude of our intentions”. See USC Declaration of Independence-1776
George Washington’s Farewell Address 1796
We need to recognize that:
“The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?” Jeremiah 17:9 ESV
Thus we need to rebuild the foundations of science to include “religion and morality”:
“‘Do not steal.
“‘Do not lie.
“‘Do not deceive one another.” Leviticus 19:11 NIV
That is a challenge that I equally need to take to heart, as in the proverb my mother oft repeated:
Rather than Gleick proving the existence of a vast industry-funded anti-climate conspiracy, he has shown how powerful the sceptic blogosphere is. Would he have confessed had he not already been picked out as the prime suspect?
http://progcontra.blogspot.com/2012/02/sceptic-blogosphere-devours-gleick.html
PC, thanks very much for the link, excellent article.
The foundation of science as proposed and explained by Bacon (as I understand it) is that our inquiry must avoid (at *all* costs) the path of the noble cause but instead one must follow the data to where it leads. The climate alarmists utterly discredit themselves as “scientists” because they have become wholly consumed by the cause – without themselves knowing it (which is what is most dangerous to science). That is why the scientific method was created in the first place. To replace religion and its false conclusions (dogma) with conclusions reached via a path devoid of all of the myriad biases and fallacies that follow from religion.
patrioticduo –
There are certainly “noble cause” elements of what Lindzen, Spencer, and other “skeptical” scientists have had to say about the climate debate.
Joshua,
Who has actually used the words “the cause” or any variation of? I know a few names, one of which is Michael Mann. So, what point do you wish to make?
The only thing I personally see, is the entire field has become mired in activism and counteractivism–both of which are poisons to science.
That was a very sound link and article. I hope it’s picked up on here.
Thanks.
Judith, I posted this in response to hunter on the earlier thread, but it seems relevant to the integrity thing. I think Gleick is a borderline messianic psycho, who is so far up himself he genuinely believes his own, er, beard. He seriously thinks the ethics he preaches to others are suspended for his personal benefit. Holding him to account for his hypocrisy as you do is laudable, but it misses the point – the man’s not fit to plead!
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/20/breaking-news/#comment-173003
TomFP,
You make a good and disturbing point about Gleick.
I remember Gleick was worried about children being taught the wrong way about climate science and AGW.
What’s the lesson here, kids?
It’s ok to use fraud to further your cause.
It’s not ok to get caught.
Memo to Gleick: please leave this kind of unethical stuff to the deniers and ‘skeptics’…they are much better at it.
Michael,
The record shows otherwise.
But keep on defending and trying to pretend this is the skeptic’s fault.
And even now you stick with your bigotry in using ‘denier’.
You are a gift that keeps on giving.
The “much better at it” aspect is interesting. If i was going to do something like this, I certainly wouldn’t do it myself, but find out who could pull this off (the CRU hacker was obviously a pro) and would establish a chain of personal deniability
Judith
Are you advertising for someone? Can I suggest the Offices of our beloved DECC in the UK? :)
tonyb
Exactly……just like the CRU hack.
Gleick is obviously a first-time amatuer.
Dr. Curry,
Did I over looked the part where the CRU was shown to have been in fact hacked?
As to the comparison between the two, I would point out that each e-mail was shown to be authentic, and that no personal data was released. Also, the e-mails were on publicly funded servers, done by publicly funded employees, and were subject to FOIA laws.
In fact, the fakegate seems to be a rather desperate attempt by Gleick (and pals?) to create a false equivalency between HI and the CRU.
I think their effort is a complete failure.
What hacker? Why not a whistleblower which is infact statistically more likely?
Go ask a data administrator.
Yes, the point that hurts AGW activists the most here is that FOIA of CG fame is so much SMARTER than Gleick – ooh, that hurts :)
BTW, the Muir Russell inquiry into Climategate concluded amongst other things that FOIA was highly likely a UEA insider/whistleblower. This conclusion was censored from the public release of Muir Russell’s report and came to light, ironically, through FOI action to extract the full report (see Climate Audit for the facts here)
The Muir Russel report makes *no* such conclusion:
“The word ̳hacked‘ as contained in the Review‘s terms of reference
has been challenged in submissions to the Review, on the basis that the means
by which the unauthorized disclosure of the e-mails was made has not been
established. This matter is subject to police enquiries and the Review has
made no judgment on the question.”
The CRU hack involved a hack of the RC website, so a hacker was involved.
The emails released lots of personal info including details of the medical issues of one of the parties, and the death and funeral of a family member.
None of that information would be liable to FOIA laws even if it was written on public computers.
I am personally disappointed with the actions of Scott Mandia, having exchanged a number of amicable private emails with him when debating AGW after he withdrew from engagement with the masses at WUWT.
Sometimes people in his position need to take a deep breath and stand aside for a few days in the hope they can more objectively look at the situation. Scott you need a time out for a few days. Gleick is not a hero anymore than Heartland is a villain. Get a sense of perspective and then get back to debating the science. (Ps No more silly capes please)
tonyb
tonyb,
You are half right:
Heartland is not a villain.
Why don’t you tell Gleick, Hansen, etc. etc. etc. to actually accept some of the invitations to debate sometime? It would be a nice change.
Well they won’t because actually they don’t want any debate, they just want to vilify anyone who might undermine their position. By ‘debate’ they mean, as per the Congresses of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, you can dicker over whether Marxism-Leninism is really great or truly really great, but what you certainly can’t do is criticise the concept or more importantly, the leadership.
Hunter: A debate would imply an equal status. They will never, ever agree to those terms.
Jim
Dr. Curry,
When wounded in the heart and mind, it is best to be silent, at least for a while. Being stunned, gives way to pain and then anger. It is the latter that moves us to utter our sense of insanity of all this revelations. It is true you lost a source. It is also true you have lost trust, hence the deeper wound. Take some time for yourself as you rethink, maybe on a lot of issues. A time for a pause, hiatus, a time to re-energize. Regards
“There does seem to be an IPCC/UNFCCC ideology, let me try to lay it out here.”
What you have listed are the pretences they use. The true ideology is
1.) We need a global tax for the UN.
2.) CO2 can be used in a threat scenario to enact such taxes.
3.) The public doesn’t trust politicians so let’s use scientists to convince the people.
4.) The public doesn’t understand computer models so let’s use lots of them. Worked for Limits To Growth, didn’t it.
Integrity of the news media also needs to be addressed!
I found the Revkin article just minutes after it was posted and alerted readers here and at other blogs. I also posted to Dot Earth in those first few minutes, but as in the past on Dot Earth, my post (now 14 hours later) does not appear. Thus the following cross post to Dot Earth-
How ironic that a NYT blogger states, “The broader tragedy is that his 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.” The NYT itself has prevented rational public debate. How quick the NYT was to print the Glleik slander after refusing to print the so-called climategate emails they claimed (with still no evidence) were stolen. Andrew Revkin presents as fair a picture of the debate as he probaly can with the NYT connection. I am a conservationist, environmental educator and was a life-long reader of the NYT. The Sunday Times was a highlight of our week, especially the crossward puzzle for some- we often bought two Sunday NYTs!- and the Review of Books for me. No longer. The NYT is part of the reason we don’t have a rational debate. Because of the Gore-Hansen-Gliek extremeism and NYT unbalanced reporting we have done far more damage to conservation, to science, to social justice- areas that Revkin and I care about- than global warming seems ever likely to do. With the food for fuel program we have increased basic food prices worldwide resulting in untold starvation and suffering; the clear cutting of tropical forests for palm oil has been a conservation disaster. How many have died and suffered because of global warming? The NYT seems to censure my posts, so I’m cross posting elsewhere to show the NYT’s duplicity.
By the way…
where is Joshua?….. think maybe he is frantically checking that the “posts” he had from “Climate High Command” are genuine fair play to him I say at least he checks the veracity of things before he responds LOL
I think he is just over at Dr Pielke’s blog.
And I highly doubt Josh takes orders from High Command.
“How can we reconcile Gleick’s possibly criminal behavior with his essays and testimony on scientific integrity?”
Post normal ethics?
Situational ethics. The crown jewel of progressivism.
Hunter writes: “Why don’t you tell Gleick, Hansen, etc. etc. etc. to actually accept some of the invitations to debate sometime? It would be a nice change”
It sure would. This is a bottom line issue, and of course the source of much frustration and anger among skeptics. The alarmist position on public debate (never, ever do it), is inherently cowardly and deeply suspicious. When Gleick makes his rational sounding plea for “much needed debate,” it’s beyond laughable. It’s a small thing compared to theft and potential fraud, but I’ll never forget Gleick’s arrogant “review” of the recent book critical of the IPCC, a book he clearly had not read. To me the really scary thing is that most of these guys are just not very bright. If he did forge that document…and to me the evidence looks pretty strong…then how pathetically embarrassing is that?
How sad that Gary M and so many others use this event, not as a learning experience, but just to promote their ideology.
Of all the scenes in Henry V, this is probably my favorite
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK4K7CV_PGY
Why, so didst thou: seem they grave and learned?
Why, so didst thou: come they of noble family?
Why, so didst thou: seem they religious?
Why, so didst thou: or are they spare in diet,
Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger,
Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,
Garnish’d and deck’d in modest complement,
Not working with the eye without the ear,
And but in purged judgment trusting neither?
Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem:
And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot,
To mark the full-fraught man and best indued
With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;
For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like
Another fall of man.
Their faults are open:
Arrest them to the answer of the law;
And God acquit them of their practises!
Nothing to see here folks, move along please, just a slight Gleickch.
Climate High Command to Joshua:
Where are you good grief mann (sic) has no one told you we’re under attack from the denialist machine? Things not looking good, nobody has any respect or believes a thing the Gruniard, BBC or NYT are saying!! Have you any idea how serious this is? There are grants depending on this “good old Al” needs a new Corporate Jet, he’s even considering fractional ownership for gods sake imagine our saviour having something to do with fracking!!! Frankly this just isn’t on either step up or er…. go away or strong liberal words to that effect!
Here’s my take on Dr. Curry’s unattributed quote:
“When fighting a losing battle, save a bullet for yourself.”
Jonathan Gilligan at Collide-a-Scape:
http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2012/02/21/climate-wars-reach-new-lows/#comment-99931
“Pure Aristotelian tragedy: A good man commits hubris (attempting to shame those he opposes) and makes a tragic mistake (hamartia), which produces catastrophe and pathos.
There’s no defending what Gleick did. And worse, his actions will hurt all of us on his political side who have always tried to conduct ourselves honorably.
I’ve stayed out of the debates over the Heartland documents because I believe they’re as utterly irrelevant as the UEA emails. But everyone who tried to use those documents to shame Heartland and its fellow travelers shares in Gleick’s hubris and should take this, as Aristotle advised all of us to take tragedy, as a cautionary tale.”
UEA emails irrelevant? Au contraire.
As Edim notes – UEA emails irrelevant ??
This would imply sabotaging of the science process is irrelevant.
Grist has the best title: Peter Gleick: Hero or Moral Moron?
http://grist.org/list/peter-gleick-hero-or-moral-moron/
Re the title: If deception is heroic and ‘moral’ is synonymous with ‘desperate’ then the correct answer is probably ‘both’.
Re the article: When will you beg forgiveness for having “engaged with deniers?”
Re the comments: HI is an “evil institution” comprised of “crooks” and “their immoral mostly Republican backers.” Gleick performed a “moral act to stop the most monstrous act of genocide, Gaiacide and vandalism in history.”
Depressing.
Doug Allen | February 21, 2012 at 10:31 am | Reply
How sad that Gary M and so many others use this event, not as a learning experience, but just to promote their ideology.
Doug… see your point but as someone who is as far away from the ideology of the US right have to say it’s pretty funny when these guys are forever going on about how anyone on the skepitcal side is a Tea partier , Creationist believer in ID whatever.. Believe it or not but in the UK and certainly in China where i now live none of this “ideology” comes into it. Surely this is about honesty and integrity which in my view doesn’t have a preference to either side of the “debate” Either your honest and have integrity or not! PG is obviously not on both counts irrespective of his political leanings. BTW has he resigned or been sacked from his job which i understand is taxpayer funded?
This should be a learning experience? Seriously? Maybe you still need to learn that it is wrong to forge documents and attack the character of others using lies and deceit. But I already knew that, thanks.
“Surely this is about honesty and integrity which in my view doesn’t have a preference to either side of the ‘debate.’”
Did you just learn moral equivalence too? I am sure Joshua will be posting a comment any second accusing you of saying “Mommy, mommy, they do it tooouuu.”
But seriously, please give us a list of forged documents and flagrant violations of FOIA by skeptics. I’m all ears.
Military adage No.1, “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy”
Military adage No. 2, “Do not reinforce failure”
Military adage No. 3, “When all else fails beat the retreat”
In these Climate Wars the ‘Battle of Fakegate’ started with enemy taking careful aim and shooting themselves in the collective foot. They have been trying to hobble back to the trenches ever since before the opposition send over explosive indictments.
Think this one may be appropriate as well:
“Don’t draw fire; it irritates the people around you.” – Your Buddies
I met a traveler from an ancient land
Who said:Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Scott Mandia, scientist of scientists:
Look on my works, society, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Go to Dot Earth and read the five comments the NYT has allowed to be posted. I didn’t make a copy of my original post 15 hours ago that they have refused to post, but that post did state that there already is a rational debate on blogs such as Weather, Etc. I have posted to Dot Earth again- twice this morning- see the cross post above. The NYT, like Gliek himself, has no integrity. I’ll bet there are dozens of (so-far) rejected posts at Dot Earth. I suggest we all post to Dot Earth about the NYT duplicity and refusal to report the rational debate that already exists. I will cross post this to Dot Earth- ha ha.
Curry — “Apart from the FOI avoidance that was arguably criminal, everyone seems to have been ‘cleared’ by the various investigations.”
Judy, have you not paid any attention?
Nisbet — “it’s wrongheaded to imagine that researchers and their organizations could ever compete effectively, in the long term, in a political debate with climate skeptics and their allies at the Chamber of Commerce and Fox News.”
With billions of dollars backing them, official government support from dozens of countries and the UN, the political support from national science academies, NGO shock troops like Greenpeace, WWF, and countless enviro groups around the world, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Newsweek, Time, The Economist, The BBC, and news media around the world, it’s just impossible to imagine how these poor alarmist scientists could ever compete with the Chamber of Commerce and Fox News (and all that money from Heartland). Beware the skeptic juggernaut.
What a fool.
theendisnighnot
I end my emails with this-
“If you have an ideology, you have the answer to the question before you look at the facts.”
I’m so tired of the ideological wars in politics, in economics, and in climate.
What’s interesting about the following excerpt, is that the reaction to it would completely contingent upon knowing who wrote it:
“When we convince ourselves that those who disagree with us are not people of goodwill who simply reach different conclusions from the data, but are instead driven by evil intentions and nefarious sources of funding, then it becomes easier to convince oneself that the ends justify the means.
And so here we have some of the rest of the comment, and the link:
Lysenko? Eugenics? Lenin?
Further down in the article:
Now I would add cries of Lysenko, Eugenicst, Lenin, “coward” and the like to my list of name-calls to be left at the door, “denier” should go as should many other demonizing names issued by the “realist” side. I wouldn’t be so categorical about dismissing the relevance of funding (on either side), I would add that claims of “the science is settled” is more a straw man than a reality – but I agree with the overall theme of the article if not each of the details.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer/2012/02/21/peter-gleick-admits-to-stealing-heartland-documents/
Joshua,
Losers always call for a tie.
Sorry, but the AGW promoters are shown to be liars, cheats and thieves.
You guys don’t like Heartland because they want to teach that there is a dispute.
You, in your mealy mouthed monomania think it can dismissed by calling it ‘political’.
Look at the AGw movement: it is political as heck. Believers just don’t want any competition.
hunter –
Again – you mischaracterze my view. I’m not saying that this is a “tie.” I don’t see it as “loss” or a “victory” either – although depending on which side you look at, it will alternately be declared by some as a “victory” for their side and a loss for the other. We’ve seen that already.
It will primarily add to what we’ve seen already: tribalism.
There is some hope that it will diminish tribalism (marginally?) on the “realist” side of the debate – and perhaps even on the “skeptic” side (http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer/2012/02/21/peter-gleick-admits-to-stealing-heartland-documents/) but in the end that will be a small degree of improvement when seen from a larger context (from beyond the context of the climate or other political blogospheric windows).
Joshua –
Of course. And more.
But if you want to leave the tribal blindness at the door, you’ll have to a) let go of claiming that ‘realist’ goes along with having fear for the future and b) that “skeptic” isn’t an insult. Isn’t the fact that you relentlessly attempt to contrast “Skeptics” with true skeptics a little bit of a give away? Hitting home the implication of Fake every time you use it?
I think what you’ll find is that if you want people to ‘give up’ using particular terms, the truly important ones are those that people see as not needing to give up. They are the ones that count.
Enough opinions on the morality of Gleick’s actions have been registered to eliminate an obligation for me to engage in further moralizing, but I’ll venture (tentatively) a prediction on consequences (excluding any legal ones). First, Gleick will lose credibility as a spokesperson for mainstream climate science conclusions. Second, the harm done to Heartland will be greater because of the light shone on their plan to pay $100,000 to David Wojick for classroom teaching modules. Interested parties will mine the Web (including this blog) for David’s comments on climate science, both scientific and political, and the results will be offered to the public as an illustration of Heartland’s perspective on what they considerable acceptable climate science in terms of both scientific competence and objectivity.
Without this latest episode, the information would eventually have become available anyway, but not in a way that would command public attention. It will be the spotlight that I think Heartland is likely to regret.
Fred, how were they going to distribute the modules in secrecy?
Steven – Did you read the last paragraph of my comment? Without this episode, news about the modules would be buried in back pages, but now, that news, plus relevant information on David Wojick, is likely to get much more attention.
You mean to tell me there woud have been skeptical modules distributed to schools, I can only imagine against their will and without any sort of public discussion, and nobody would have noticed? You may be right I suppose. You are invited to schools and I trust your interpretation even less than I trust theirs. OK, I cede the point altogether.
Fred –
I think that view is unrealistic. David has expressed, explicitly, that a primary focus of his in the climate debate is political.
I have yet to see one “skeptic” do anything other than rationalize (or ignore) that Heartland would hire someone with such interest to design science curriculum.
Not one.
There will be no harm done to Heartland (at least in that regard – their legal classification might be another story). Most “realists” already had an opinion of Heartland that can’t get any lower. Most “skeptics” have not had their view of Heartland diminished to any degree. Even someone like Judith (a “lukewarmer” not a “skeptic”?) won’t focus on the implications of Heartland’s initiative with any degree of seriousness.
Same as it ever was.
Rationalize? Hell, I celebrate it! Thank goodness we have people with the integrity and public spiritedness of the folks at Heartland who are willing to take on the entrenched interests of corruption who have foisted this alarmist garbage on the world.
About damn time we start trying to counter the lies, slanders and propaganda of Algore and his minions with billions that have been force fed to kids in our schools.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with what Heartland and Wojick are doing. Not a damn thing. We can only hope that they serve a Johnny Appleseed function and help plant orchards of scientific integrity and genuine skepticism throughout the land.
“Heartland can’t get any lower” — well, I certainly agree that it would be impossible for them to get as low as Algore, Greenpeace, Gleick or the Hockey Team.
Joshua, if you want a genuine example of inappropriate politicization of public education by zealots, look at what Obama and Ayers did to Chicago schoolchildren with 150 million from the Annenberg Foundation.
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.
Joshua 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. To condemn without veiwing the proposed teaching materials means that if not a tribal member of some sort, he has prejudgec and is not acceptable as a critic. Joshua is the same as those he condemns, but in his desert of thought, he appears to se himself as the prophet preparing the way for the Truth. His errors are his own, I am sure, bt they are notable.
“I have yet to see one “skeptic” do anything other than rationalize (or ignore) that Heartland would hire someone with such interest to design science curriculum.”
Speaking of rationalizing and ignoring – Who did the warmists hire to design science curriculae?
hint: his initials are Peter Gleick.
Hmmm…
At this point, I think I can just abbreviate: “MMTDIF”
Never seen that before.
It’s a legitimate question, Joshua. You act as if making modules for teaching is a sin. Is it? Is it morally wrong to draft up teaching curriculum modules to show to school boards who then have to decide if they care and if it’s acceptability, and if they want to incorporate them?
Tell me, Joshua, is it a crime to make teaching modules?
Fred,
You are half right: Gleick will lose credibility, but only if mainstream climate science actually condemns him, which is notably not the case so far.
If most climate scientists continue to rationalize away his behavior as some sort of honorable martyrdom for the cause, then not only will Gleck lose credibility, but mainstream cliamte science will as well.
As to your assertion that Heartland stands to lose credibility for working to offer lesson plans that show the there are significant issues in dispute in climate science, I think you will find yourelf 100% wrong on that one.
The arrogance implied in your reaction is rather breath taking, even if expressed os mildly and nicely.
+1
Hunter, I think I have good reasons to disagree, but I don’t think it makes sense to try to prove what the future will bring, so we’ll just have to wait.
Forget the forgery and lying. The REAL story is that someone, somewhere, is reacting to the political movement that is CAGW, and its political strategy, with a countervailing political strategy.
Let’s get back to the “truth” of the faked document and keep the focus on Heartland and David Wojick.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Say what you will about the CAGWers, but you can’t accuse them of having any class.
Fred, I think you miss the point entirely as to how the general public will perceive the idea of Heartland providing some modules for kids to learn about the debate and uncertainty in climate change. You will of course be right in the short term that the alarmist side and the skeptic side of the public will be upset. One side, that you can’t have “deniers” infiltrating the supple, malleable and immature minds of 12 year old’s. The other side, for the alarmists have once again stopped a small outfit from providing 12 year old kids with some additional tools to broaden their thinking and enlarge their debating skills. But in the longer term, and with the majority of the public being reasonable and even handed about such things; and since they are for the most part open to the classical idea that children can and should be taught both sides of any topic, this episode looks to the larger majority like a) a crook tried to unfairly smear an organization using at least one faked document and all of the doc’s obtained under false pretenses. And b) why can’t this outfit be permitted to provide some kids with some extra material for their classes? If the course material is OK, then why not? Heartland will get enough opportunity to demonstrate that their materials are OK. But warming extremists (who just can’t help themselves) will get to look extreme and shrill all over again and again.
“Second, the harm done to Heartland will be greater because of the light shone on their plan to pay $100,000 to David Wojick for classroom teaching modules.”
Why do you use “light shone”, as if Heartlands climate science education initiative was somehow nefarious?
How about NCEA’s warmist climate science education initiative? What scientist with unimpeachable integrity and unbiased commitment to truth was leading that again? Oh, yeah. Peter Gleick.
Fred
The converse is that may be some of the best free advertising David Wojick could possibly get for his classroom teaching modules. I look forward to reading them. His comments are usually far more astute that many commentators here.
The same thing occured to me too, David.
The NCSE connection makes this particularly interesting to me. Some of us knew all along that climate science is a game piece in the culture wars. NCSE’s involvement makes it official.
One might wonder how big a handicap NCSE has insofar as the opposition can’t be muzzled on first amendment grounds, eh?
David Hagen – I agree that there will be free public attention (“advertising” in your terminology). I don’t know what the modules will reveal, but I do know what David Wojick’s past comments will reveal, and that was a reason for the conclusions I’ve drawn.
Perhaps David might let us have a preview of one of the modules? For K-12, I doubt he would be very subversive, probably just highlight some of the uncertainty missing in the IPCC literature.
Fred Moolten: Second, the harm done to Heartland will be greater because of the light shone on their plan to pay $100,000 to David Wojick for classroom teaching modules.
I think it will work the other way around. When most people read of the paltry funding of Heartland compared to the much larger sums on the pro-AGW political side, they will be impressed by the effectiveness of Heartland. I think on the whole this will contribute to a continuing shift of the polity away from support of the policies recommended by Hansen, IPCC, and others calling for urgent action.
Your opinion is registered. Let’s see what happens.
Kinda sad. Off in a corner, muttering imprecations at the wall.
========
Fred –
I wonder. Do you equate the harm/benefit to Heartland with their funding over the coming year, or something more nebulous?
I’m not certain of it, but I’d expect their funding to be increased compared to last year.
Matt –
In contrast to evidence that we have do date (that how people will react will be correlated with their starting biases), and to a wide body of literature that examines how people reason, Matt weighs in to tell us how “most” people will react.
And his view is just, coincidentally of course, congruent with his own partisan orientation in the debate.
Why do smart people drop their solid reasoning skills to confirm their biases? Fascinating.
Anteros –
Maybe. Which could mean that it attracts more funds from those who are aligned politically, or more funds from those who previously were not aligned previously.
If you had to guess, which do you think would be a likely explanation for any increase in funding?
Joshua –
In this case I don’t think it has very much to do with bias. Certainly in my case I couldn’t give a hoot what funding Heartland get. Yet my experience tells me there this will act as more of a fund-raiser than the opposite. Like I said to Fred – I’m not certain of it, it’s just a hunch.
Joshua –
Do you have any doubts about the answer to your question? Of course, nobody is going to have their prejudices disconfirmed by any of this. It’s just that publicity is one thing and partisan sympathy is another. In this case, both heading in the same direction.
Anteros –
I agree. I think that it will increase their funding. But I would argue that such would only be a reflection of the already existing tribalism in the debate.
I don’t agree. I think it would have everything to do with bias – in the sense that people are biased in one direction or the other (as opposed to saying that one side is more biased than the other side).
Can you explain why you don’t think it has very much to do with bias?
Anteros –
Sure. Some. After all, I am a skeptic – or if you’d prefer a “skeptic.”
But not very much. This debate is not altogether unlike other politically relevant debates in other domains. Take, for example, the union debate in Wisconsin, or the increase in campaign contributions to the Republican politician who called Obama a “liar.” When these types of issues crop up, it increases funding on both sides of the aisle. In this case, there isn’t a clear and directly related “other side,” so I don’t think it will provoke a related increase in partisan funding to another source – but I think that there is strong evidence to speculate that any increase in funding would come from those who are already aligned.
Do you really disagree?
Joshua –
The statement was to a different question. It was to the question of whether one thinks that Heartlands funding might increase. You seemed to be chastising Matt for coming to the conclusion that he did (that there would be sympathy) because he was biased.
Maybe he is. My point was that in this case it is reasonable to think that Heartland’s funding might increase and that thought not to have anything to do with bias – which I think is true in my case as I don’t have any leanings re Heartland one way or another.
Joshua –
I don’t disagree. Far from it.
I think virtually all the extra funding – if it materialises – will come from people who were already Heartland type extreme conservatives. I don’t see any position-changing going on around here. Unless the Universe has gone all topsy-turvey..
Anteros –
Not at all. I agree that this will raise Heartland’s profile, and maybe as a result, increase their funding. The statement I thought was reflective of his bias was the following:
The antecedent to “they” was “most people.” From what I’ve seen in this debate, and from what I’ve read about how people reason, “most people” would apply only if “most people” had a partisan interest. Those who are likely to be positively impressed are along one side of the debate. Those on the other debate will be negatively impressed that Heartland (as a fundamentally political organization) is systematically politicizing the science.
And while that balance will apply to the relatively small number of people who are following this closely, “most people” will be indifferent.
Anteros –
Fine – we are in agreement then. I assume you do see how my point was different.
And allow me to clarify. I think that Matt is a smart guy. He understands things that I couldn’t possibly hope to understand. I think it is instructive when very smart people make statements that overtly reflect a weakness in controlling for obvious biases.
Everyone does it. “Realists” do it. That’s what this whole situation is about (although, honestly, I’m not sure how “smart” Gleick is). My point is, rather simply, that the bias is inherent to the nature of the debate and the human reasoning processes, and therefore, IMO, some belief in a “vast asymmetry” is in itself a reflection of bias.
Joshua –
Had I read Matt’s comment a little more closely, I’d have agreed with you. Although mostly because it doesn’t make much sense!!
The second sentence might even be true – that most people will be impressed by the effectiveness [not necessarily positive] of Heartland given the relatively paltry sums they spend. But the third sentence doesn’t follow from the second….
He also doesn’t specifically mention funding – I think that was my own thing with Fred M..
Joshua –
On this topic, and this area of the debate, I very much agree. No vast asymmetry – no noticeable asymmetry at all.
Joshua: Matt weighs in to tell us how “most” people will react.
“it is interesting”, as Joshua might have written, but didn’t, that Joshua offers up an indirect “critique” (as he might deny it to be), of one opinion (Matt’s), but not the other equally valid opinion (Fred’s.)
I prefer Fred’s comment: Let’s see what happens. Then we can adjust our opinions of the polity based on events. One or the other of us will be wrong, or perhaps both if there is no effect at all.
MattStat –
My thinking is that this is going to be such a tiny event in the climate debate that it will be impossible to detect any shift in the overall debate.
That was the reasoning for my suggesting to Fred that the funding of Heartland might be a good barometer. It might not be easy to assess [without impersonation] but I think, unlike Fred, that it will increase.
Anteros –
I commented on this over at Collide – but one of the amusing outcomes that I think is entirely predictable is that both sides will claim that the only reason that their “victory” won’t turn out to be more decisive is the “bias” of the mainstream media.
One of the funniest aspects of political debates (the climate debate included), in my view, is that both sides are completely convinced of a completely opposite bias in the “mainstream media” – and also, of course, that they are “victims” of that bias and other manifestations of how the “elites” are aligned against them.
It all speaks to the symmetry in the alarmism, in my view.
Matt –
Indirect? I offered a critique of your opinion very directly. If Fred regularly weighed in with insults to my intelligence and character as you do on a regular basis, I might be more inclined to critique his reasoning also.
In fact, ironically, if you read above in this very thread, I offered a critique of some of Fred’s reasoning:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/21/gleicks-integrity/#comment-173168
You never let me know if Wednesday will work out OK for you to have the cable installers arrive.
Anteros: My thinking is that this is going to be such a tiny event in the climate debate that it will be impossible to detect any shift in the overall debate.
I would not be surprised if that proves to be correct. I do think that these little things accumulate, but it’s hard to tell.
Joshua: Indirect? I offered a critique of your opinion very directly.
No you did not. Reread what you wrote, and you’ll see that it is at most an indirect comment on how I arrived at the opinion — it was neither direct nor an critique of the opinion.
This should be a learning experience? Seriously? Maybe you still need to learn that it is wrong to forge documents and attack the character of others using lies and deceit. But I already knew that, thanks.
“Surely this is about honesty and integrity which in my view doesn’t have a preference to either side of the ‘debate.’” I think you are confusing my comment herewith Doug’s do you not agree with what I said??
Did you just learn moral equivalence too? I am sure Joshua will be posting a comment any second accusing you of saying “Mommy, mommy, they do it tooouuu.” Gary the point I have been trying to make all night nis there is NO moral equivalence!!!
But seriously, please give us a list of forged documents and flagrant violations of FOIA by skeptics. I’m all ears. Exactly my point nobody can because they don’t exist!!!
theendisnighnot,
Sorry, didn’t make out from the formatting of your comment what was yours and what was Doug’s. So I stand corrected.
Pick your battles carefully.
If you know your enemy, you can win battles without a single loss
Goodbye Mr Gleick because you should have known full well your ‘enemy’ was privately financed at a fraction of that of ‘yourselves’ and as such why on earth would you want to pick a battle on that ground? You were after all supposed to be fighting a battle on your advantageous scientific turf and perhaps could be forgiven for not accepting a kind invitation by HI to do so on theirs. Perhaps, but then you go and compound your fatal error and lose any high moral ground by fakery. Game set and match. RIP dishonourable knight.
Fred with respect I normally read your posts quite thoroughly as you appear to have a good scientific knowledge (certainly compared to mine) but this last one are you really saying that the information released by PG’s lying duplicity etc wasn’t already known????? Aside from AW’s application for a grant of a whole $88K what wasn’t known? Please explain what these “documents” highlight that firstly wasn’t already known and secondly Heartland will come to regret?? Please I expect someone of your proven integrity to deal in something more than rumours,smears and insinuations.
Theendisnighnot – I thought I explained my reasoning, but perhaps not well enough. My point focused on the $100,000 to be paid (apparently) to David Wojick for classroom teaching materials. Without a public spotlight, that information would probably receive little attention even though it wouldn’t be secret. Now, however, in the glare of some publicity, attention will be focused on David Wojick’s scientific competence and objectivity. If examples are unearthed to throw doubt on those (and I believe the examples are numerous), the public perceptions of the integrity of the Heartland Institute as well as its motivation regarding science education may suffer grievously.
I don’t know how far this is going to go, and perhaps nothing much will come of it, but I have a hard seeing how the impact for Heartland wouldn’t be negative.
Fred,
You seem to have judged david rather harshly. It would seem at the end of the day that the assesment of many about you, that you are just a more polite than most extremist, is valid.
Hunter – The public will now likely get a chance to judge for themselves David’s competence and objectivity, independent of anything you or I say, so we’ll see how it plays out.
Fred,
And we are getting to see how the comeptency and integrity of major climate scientists and AGW promoters plays out in public as well.
Until last night, I had no relationship with HI. I am now a donor out of solidarity with a group that was viciously attacked simply for expressing ideas different from those of people like you.
Get a grip Fred.
The number of ‘ideologically driven’ organizations that produce ‘class room teaching material’ must be in the 1,000’s.
the public perceptions of the integrity of the Heartland Institute
The public’s perception of the Heartland Institute is that it is an ideologically driven organization.
Nobody expects anything they do to be ‘fair and balanced’. Just like nobody expects anything Green Peace puts out to be ‘fair and balanced’.
The public’s perceptions of most ‘scientific’ organizations is that they are ‘not’ ideologically driven.
The Chairman of the American Geophysical Unions Task Force on Ethics just confessed to the fact that he allowed his ‘ideological beliefs’ to cloud his judgement to the point of committing a criminal act.
If I were Heartland, I would make public the entire course material. If they choose not to, then being the skeptical type, I will question what they have to hide. If they make it public and the material turns out to be far more controversial (anti AGW) than they make it sound, then they will receive plenty of scorn from me and probably many others. Let’s see how they play it.
Harry – I don’t completely disagree with you, but I would say that currently, the public perception of the Heartland Institute is that they have never heard of it. Now, they likely will in a way that diminishes the value of their $100,000 investment and reminds the public of the ideological nature of their climate change position and that of similar institutions. It’s not that perceptions will change radically, but rather that they will be reinforced to the detriment of institutions perceived to be strongly biased.
Without a public spotlight, that information would probably receive little attention even though it wouldn’t be secret. Now, however, in the glare of some publicity, attention will be focused on David Wojick’s scientific competence and objectivity.
As usual you are utterly tone deaf. The *enviro* crowd you belong to will cry wolf about Dr Wojick just as they cry wolf about everything else and will be lost in the (never ending screech) noise. If anything the non-enviro-zealot take will be highly favourable — that responsible educated people who are NOT zealots are working diligently to set the record straight and **prevent** brainwashing.
The reason you are tone deaf is because you are a leftist, and 50% of the US population regards the Dept of Education as an abomination and sees degradation in education as the direct result of creeping leftism of which enviro zealotry is simply “exhibit B.” In a society in which the rate of graduating high school is dropping like a rock, it’s difficult to defend the educational status quo.
In short, your POV is antipodal to reality and reflects merely your innermost desires.
Fred,
Visit the HI website. I did, last night for the first time. I disagree with their views on some topics. But they are not the secretive, ominous conspiracy that AGW extremists paints them to be. And they make their product freely available at reasonable prices.
Climate issues, by the way, are not a large part of what they work on.
In fact, if you are someone who values freedom of speech and tolerance of diverse opinions, you should set an example here and donate a token amount to HI. We all either stand in solidarity with those being attacked for their ideas or we will stand alone when some opponent seeks to silence us.
Fred, also by the way, since you in fact do teach your version of climate science in school, and you seem very excercised about David’s work, perhaps you can set an example and show us your presentation, just so we know what a quality climate science presentation looks like.
RE –
Fred
Are you suggesting that NCSU’s appointment of Gleick to the board with responsibility for Climate Change wont reflect badly on them. I don’t know about you but, as a parent, I don’t think I’d be happy that my children’s education was being influenced by a self confess liar, thief and fraudster!
Joshua,
The DoEd is a minor source of local funding for schools. If the DoEd was shut down completely and the same monies were distrubuted to states via block grants, the money to education would actually increase due to the reduction of overhead expenses assocaited with the DoEd. And if the increasingly odiioius micromanagement of local schools by the feds went away, the resulting reduction in ocmpliance costs would also have the impact of increasing money available for education.
Certainly no one who is following education is going to claim that the status quo in place since the creation of the DoEd in the late 1970’s has been a good thing for actually education children.
Joshua
The poll confirms what I said. The right wants to see the same funding but under local control, not federal, and flexibility for teacher merit pay (competition) as well as vouchers.
For the record I happen to think the right is incorrect, that by definition half of the population is below average IQ, and vouchers and merit pay etc can’t fix IQ.
You conflate funding concern with support of Dept Education status quo.
RE –
I specifically noted that they aren’t the same thing when I said that the poll data aren’t precisely on point. How is that “conflating?”
What I said was that it is difficult (well, for me at least) to reconcile your statement with the poll data.
What evidence do you have for your statement that 50% of the public view the D of E as an “abomination?” Do you have any?
Joshua
The mainstream republican view is that education (among other issues) is supposed to be a state or local matter, not federal.
RE –
I’ll ask again if you have evidence to support your statement.
I’ve looked, and I haven’t found any.
Fred Moolten: My point focused on the $100,000 to be paid (apparently) to David Wojick for classroom teaching materials. Without a public spotlight, that information would probably receive little attention even though it wouldn’t be secret.
About 75% of Americans who have jobs are employed in the private sector, and they understand that people who do valuable work are paid for it. Other people who are paid for valuable work are judges, prosecuting attorneys, expert witnesses, teachers, climate scientists, textbook writers, and textbook publishers. That David Wojick was a contractor paid by Heartland will go in with the facts that climate scientists are paid contractors or employees of the federal and state governments, and that teachers are employees of state governments, and that textbook writers and textbook publishers are paid according to sales.
Probably the 25% of Americans who work for the government understand that stuff as well.
So “most people” will not be swayed one way or another by David Wojick’s contract with Heartland. Perhaps you could elaborate on why details of the contract would lead to decreased respect for the materials, for Heartland, or for David Wojick, among the general polity.
Matt –
Perhaps you might want to add a little nuance to your generalization?:
–snip–
Equal pay was the top workplace concern. Ninety-three percent (93%) of African American women, 91% of Latinas, 90% of Asian American women and 87% of white women said equal pay and benefits for women should be one of the top policy priorities in the United States.
–snip–
http://www.pay-equity.org/info-polls.html
Do you have some data to back up your statement about what “they” (75% of Americans) “understand?” Do you not think that many Americans think that rates of remuneration are not always merit-based? Of course, even if they did, that doesn’t mean that they’d rejection the notion that the U.S. is, on the whole meritocratic – but what is the evidence on which you are basing your broad generalizations?
Joshua: but what is the evidence on which you are basing your broad generalizations?
Are you saying that most people don’t understand that most actors in this debate get paid, that is to say, teachers, researchers, textbook writers and publishers?
Again, Fred thinks most people (or the net change in opinion) will be against Heartland because they contracted with David Wojick, whereas I assert that most people (or the net change in opinion) will not be bothered by that when they learn how much the teachers and federally-funded climate scientists, textbook writers and publishers get paid. Fred’s words were : … I have a hard seeing how the impact for Heartland wouldn’t be negative. I can see how the impact wouldn’t be negative. How about you? You frequently “see”; what do you see here?
MattStat – I’ve probably commented too much already on this topic, considering what i believe to be its relative unimportance. However, I should clarify what I meant earlier by a detriment to Heartland. I wasn’t referring to the fact that the public would be made more aware of their advocacy role. Rather, I meant that if and when David Wojick’s past comments are brought out as evidence regarding his scientific competence, as well as his objectivity, Heartland’s judgment in agreeing to pay him $100,000 will be called into question, and the implication will be that the payment was based on his political views rather than his qualifications. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t spend time on someone else’s qualifications as opposed to discussions of scientific content, but the qualifications are clear evidence in this particular case, and I think David has made them so in applying for the money..
Undoubtedly, others will disagree, and it would be interesting to see a large compendium of his past comments put on display for the public to judge.
Matt –
I clearly focused on a less important part of your post, and as a result missed the main point you were making:
I agree with you that “most people” will not be swayed one way or the other by David’s contract.
To break that down: in my opinion
“Most people” by any stretch of the imagination, will have no idea of anything about David’s contract.
Of the people heavily focused on the climate debate – those who are “realists” and learn about David’s contract will likely be strengthened in their preexisting view by virtue of learning about it. Those who are “skeptics” and learn about David’s contract, will likely be strengthened in their preexisting view by virtue of learning about it.
So yes – “most people” meaning the vast majority outside of the climate fanatic subset, will not be swayed by David’s contract.
Within the relatively tiny subset of the public, those who are climate fanatics, If “swayed” means pushed farther in a direction they were already leaning towards – then they will be “swayed” If it means moved decisively in one direction as opposed to the other (which is how I interpret the term), then no, they won’t be swayed.
I don’t see any reason to believe that the net impact will be negative.
Fred Moolten: Rather, I meant that if and when David Wojick’s past comments are brought out as evidence regarding his scientific competence, as well as his objectivity, Heartland’s judgment in agreeing to pay him $100,000 will be called into question, and the implication will be that the payment was based on his political views rather than his qualifications.
Could be. I don’t think that will be worse than the public commentary of the people who provide the regular curricular elements.
Joshua: I don’t see any reason to believe that the net impact will be negative.
On that we agree, and on our claim that most people will not be swayed one way or another.
Personally I like your posts better when you provide an actual point (opinion or claim of a fact) with at least a sketch of some supporting reasoning (it’s next to impossible to be complete in this setting), instead of your relentless [It’s interesting that so-and-so is asymmetric … ].
I’m surprised to see the phrase ‘climate war’ used without quotation marks in this post. A phrase like that is shrill rhetoric at best, but more commonly it’s worse than that. People who declare themselves ‘at war’ with someone else usually do so in order to justify their abandonment of polite and fair discourse – ‘right or wrong, my country’. The ‘climate warriors’ certainly seem to be suffer from that syndrome.
Yes, the rhetoric always ramps up after “the other side” commits an atrocity. But, we shall all calm down again because even skeptics know that we can be wrong, make mistakes and say or do things we wished we had not. It’s such a pity that I don’t see more of it from other side of the firing line. :-)
Gary M no problem as we speak the Dow Jones is about to hit 13,000 and still CNN spin it as bad news!!! this is the world we live in everything has to be doom and gloom why I haven’t got a *uck**g clue other than it’s in the interests of the “elite” to keep us fearful because without their benevolance we poor surfs can’t cope. How did it ever come to this? We spend billion/trillions on something that hasn’t even advanced to a “theory” and get called “deniers” etc for pointing this out. I really don’t believe in conspiracies it’s not that i think it’s Groupthink and a religeous believe coupled with a desire to make money
Something wrong with this thread. Where are the other fifty comments from the resident little putz hijacker? And some of his buddies are MIA. It seems they are capable of being embarrassed.
So now we know … Gleick won his 2003 MacArthur “Genius” Award for … inventiveness!
Fred it appears that you think that David Wojicks idea to provide a balance to what I assume is taught in schools in the USA is a problem? I don’t understand do US schools just accept anything from anyone? If not what is your problem? Presumably there are all sorts of weird ideas of what should/should not be taught in a country as big as the US do you really honestly believe the spin that David intended to not let teachers teach science??? really??
do you really honestly believe the spin that David intended to not let teachers teach science??? really??
If you have a few dozen hours to waste, you might go back through the Climate Etc archives with David Wojick as a search term to get your own perspective on what David’s teaching would look like. My expectation is that if that information is shown to the public, Heartland’s reputation will suffer, but I’m prepared to be shown wrong on that.
Why don’t you shut up freddie. I am no big fan of David Wojick, but do you think he would do what that idiot Gleick did? Your side are bumbling dishonest idiots. That is why you are losing against a few hundred thousand dollars in funding from the big mean Heritage, whatever they are. You are a joke freddie. Your cause is a joke.
Welcome back, Don. You’ve been missed.
You are very subdued on this one joshy. But your few comments still reveal your congenital hypocrisy. I really have to wonder who spawned and raised some of you people.
Excellent, Don.
Really, I’ve missed your participation. No one can sling the insults with quite your level of intensity and flair for creativity. mike comes close, but his insults are too over the top – which diminishes from the overall flavor of tribalism.
I am not insulting you, joshy. I am correctly describing the content of your character. Don’t you ever wonder why nobody likes you?
Fred
it occurs to me that your disdain for Wojick may be due to something rather more obvious than his science, politics or educational competence…
don’t you like competition? :-)
Gras Albert – Accurate or not, my perception of David Wojick’s scientific competence and objectivity is based on what I’ve read in this blog. It never occurred to me that there was something competitive about it, but more importantly, my perceptions will be irrelevant to judgments made by the larger public, and my tentative expectation is that the result will not be favorable to Heartland. That’s a testable proposition, so it may be worth waiting for the outcome.
Fred Moolten: My expectation is that if that information is shown to the public, Heartland’s reputation will suffer, but I’m prepared to be shown wrong on that.
My expectation is that Heartland’s reputation will be enhanced in a majority of Americans because David Wojick will focus on the scientific research that global warming advocates prefer to ignore or dismiss superficially. However, there is a minority of AGW advocates among whom Heartland’s reputation will suffer — or at least a minority who dislike Heartland already and who will feel vindicated..
MattStat – There’s limited value in debating what’s going to happen when the debate won’t influence it. I’ll move on.
Don Monfort | February 21, 2012 at 12:12 pm |
“Your side are bumbling dishonest idiots.”
That seems a touch harsh, an over generalization, and not over-represented on “their” side.
The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. ~Harlan Ellison
There’s a sucker born every minute. ~P.T. Barnum
Pass the popcorn. ~me
Fred Moolten: you might go back through the Climate Etc archives with David Wojick as a search term to get your own perspective on what David’s teaching would look like.
He would fill out the curriculum with many scientific details that the AGW policy promoters prefer to ignore. It wouldn’t be his first draft that went into schools.
Fred Moolten: There’s limited value in debating what’s going to happen when the debate won’t influence it.
You like to express your judgments without criticisms or justifications.
The “limited value” of which you wrote is in clarifying our expressions of how we think things work. We made contrasting predictions because we have contrasting beliefs or expectations. When we know what has happened, we’ll adjust our beliefs. The writing of predictions is the sincerest form of expression of belief. In science it is sine qua non. Outside of science people like to avoid writing precise predictions, so that they can later say that what happened was what they expected.
As you wrote above, our contrasting predictions have been registered. Eventually we’ll know who, if either of us, was closer to the mark.
Dr. Curry asks:
“How can we reconcile Gleick’s possibly criminal behavior with his essays and testimony on scientific integrity?”
Boys will be boys is pretty much how I do it. He didn’t exactly kill anyone fercrisakes. He made a phone call and told a white lie to a non-governmental organization which then failed to exercise due diligence before sending sensitive information to an unknown email address.
I mean, is it really any more than that?
There’s some body of evidence – circumstantial, but it’s early days yet – that Gleick actually authored the ‘strategy’ memo.
Read it. It’s comedic. It’s a paranoiac CAGW-zealot’s view of how climate skeptics think.
There’s one of three possibilities, really:
a) Gleick wrote it
b) Someone (not Heartland) wrote it and slipped it to Gleick whose ideological blinders prevented him from recognizing it as a fake
c) Heartland realized they’d been phished to get the other documents, and they wrote this one up as a plant, and once again Gleick didn’t realize he was being played.
David Springer: He made a phone call and told a white lie to a non-governmental organization which then failed to exercise due diligence before sending sensitive information to an unknown email address.
You have with that judged Gleick guilty of a federal crime.
My view is that this is a personal tragedy, in the classic sense of an otherwise good man brought low by a flaw that overwhelms his goodness. A non-violent Othello, so to speak. In time, the scientific and political debates will be little affected, but I expect Gleick to be indicted and tried, unless he cops a plea; but in the short-term, AGW political advocates will be tarnished until they have clearly disavowed this unethical act and punished him (for example, revoking his chairmanship of important committees.)
David Springer
Re: “is it really any more than that?”
Yes
See above
Springer,
You are an idiot. He didn’t get the fake document with a little white lie. He made it up for use as a defamation tool. These are old Soviet tactics. The ends justify the means. It set off hysterical condemnation of HI, all over the greenie alarmist world. And you think it is trivial.
Seriously Monfort, you think the “greenie movement” held HI in some kind of esteem before this incident? Get real. Nothing changed in their opinion of HI. Just the latest little thing that has all the hens cackling. Mountain meet molehole…
David, what makes you think the intention was to discredit the HI to the ‘greenie movement’?
Don, Joshua is deperately trying to check in with HQ to confirm or deny whether the posts from Climate High Command are real!!! At least he checks things unlike others!
David Springer “Boys will be Boys” I hereby award you the M Mann honourary Doctorate in disenengious behavior. Well done fellah, good work!
I humbly accept this great honor but, like Wayne and Garth, I must insist I’M NOT WORTHY!
The more I think about Gleick’s statement, the less sense it makes from his perspective. But he published the admission after consulting with a major Dem strategist, and a good criminal attorney.
This only makes sense as a sort of progressive/activist seppuku. The longer this issue is being talked about, the worse for the movement. I suspect someone got a promise of full funding of his defense, civil and criminal, by those who were funding his activities. The great fear being liability of the funders for his behavior.
Forget the peanuts David Wojick was going to be paid. Gleick isn’t even the real issue I bet. Who made the most hay out of this? Who promulgated the faked document in particular as the heart of the story?
At risk here are discovery of the funding sources, internal documents and communications of Desmogblog and Thinkprogress. This could make the recent revelations of coordination between Media Matters and Dem politicians and strategists, seem like a minor blip.
In that context, Gleick throwing himself under the bus makes some sense.
Gleick didn’t falsify scientific data. He falsified his identity in order to acquire good data. I’m not sure that bit of deception falls inside the definition of scientific integrity. Animated things, when you want to study them, won’t cooperate if they recognize you. If you want to study penguins up close you need to look like a penguin. If you want to study Heartland up close you need to look a board member. Same logic, really. Very scientific. Dave gives it two thumbs up in that regard. ;-)
David,
>sigh< Gleick's *job* is to be an ethics guru to scientists.
He is the charman of the AGU ethics committee.
Do you think he carried out his job well with this or not?
No I don’t think he carried out his job well but that’s neither a crime nor anything unusual. The Peter Principle is doubly apt in this case. I still wouldn’t call what he did particularly unethical and I certainly wouldn’t equate it to scientific integrity. Possibly personal integrity but even that’s a stretch. It was ballsy. Gleick’s stock might have gone up a notch in my book. Maybe that’s because I’m from the industrial world and this is fair play. The moral of story is don’t hire imbeciles and then give them access to confidential materials. Heartland left their guard down. Gleick waltzed in and got the information he wanted. Welcome to the real world. Well played, Gleick.
I think it’s refreshing to see the CAGW activists openly embracing dishonesty like this.
David,
The way he decided to not carry out his job very likely was a crime.
That you don’t find theft and forgery and slander/libel to be very troubling is really a reflection of some deep issues with your moral compass. As to what he did being acceptable in industry, you are much less than honest. Any corporation caught doing what Gleick did to a competitor would face dramatic civil problems, and if the company was public, very likely Sarbanes-Oxley issues as well. if they had employees caught engaging in that sort fo fraud, and did not take responsibilty for the employee, there would be severe repercussions.
You believers are disintegrating before our very eyes into something indistinguishable from low-lifes and crooks.
Yes yes, CAGW alarmists openly embracing “anti-science” acts by Gleick. Refreshing indeed. And very telling.
David Springer: He falsified his identity in order to acquire good data.
Again you have judged him guilty of wire fraud. If he uses your analogy of Heartland Institute to penguins, I doubt it will work well with the jury.
I’m not sure that bit of deception falls inside the definition of scientific integrity.
Read up on the Helsinki Declaration, federal laws protecting human subjects in research, and Institutional Review Boards. You have here accused him of violating standard research ethics that the IRBs attempt to maintain. For that, had this been federally funded research, the money would be suspended pending an investigation; if your finding is correct, the money would be cut off and there would be further punishments.
This isn’t wire fraud. Wire fraud is deprivation of money, property, services, or something else with tangible value. What Gleick obtained was none of those. This doesn’t even rate an appearance before Judge Judy.
David,
IRT to wire fraud, you are woefully ignorant of the facts.
I am certain Peter Gleick could bring you up to speed based on what he has undoubtedly learned in the last day or so.
You might want to check this out before you implode further
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_and_wire_fraud
I like this part bestest:
There are three elements to mail and wire fraud:
1.Intent;
2.A “scheme or artifice to defraud” or the obtaining of property by fraud; and,
3.A mail or wire communication.[5]
To be fraudulent, a misrepresentation must be material.[6]
Mail fraud does not require that the mailing cross state lines; however, wire fraud does require that the wire communication cross state lines
You are showing up for a gun fight with a butter knife.
David: something else with tangible value.
You are not the one who decides tangible value. I think that both the Grand Jury and Petit Jury would agree that “tangible value” was stolen. It’s why voters have insisted that Congress write laws protecting individual privacy.
And the charge of violating the Helsinki declaration and federal laws protecting research subjects still stands, if there is a serious claim that this was some kind of research.
The same argument applies to the CRU leaker/hacker. I expect that he or she will be indicted. How it will play out after that I couldn’t guess based on information available now.
Springer
Re libel and defamation. See discussion at The Blackboard: How might the fake-memo presented as real defame Heartland?
Heartland to Blogger/Leakers.
And the definitions of Defamation and Libel
Fred I really don’t understand what you are saying I’m not from the US but surely someone with all due respect to David as inconsequential in the large scheme of things is such a threat????? From what i understand in your country there are people who want to teach the world is 6,000 years old and some such nonsence, there also weirdos (IMHO) who believe we are decendants of aliens but come on man for goodness sake all David does as far as i can see is maybe suggest in some part of a huge country some children should be taught the scientific method i.e. be skeptical of any consensus! What is so frightening about that ? and what will make people judge the huge $100K awarded to him makes HI an eveil organisation?
theendisnighnot –
Dave believes that Intelligent Design is a valid “scientific theory.” He has expressed an over-arching interest in the political aspect of the climate science debate.
His educational materials deserve to be evaluated on their own merit, but keep those facts in mind if you decide to evaluate his materials.
And David Wojick is going to undermine the US educational system with a hundred grand. You people are buffoons. No wonder you are getting your hind ends kicked up between your ears by a few Creationists. Too GD funny.
Don – a serious question:
When you win an argument with a straw man, does it feel satisfying to you?
You are an idiot, joshy. Who cares about David Wojick’s educational materials? You haven’t seen them and probably never will. You are simply trying to steer the conversation away from the criminal hijinks of one of you prominent team members. you people just keep shooting yourselves in the foot. You need to get rid of the sandals and get some Kevlar boots. Your cause is lost, you dumb clown.
Don –
BIngo. Obviously you don’t. That would be exactly my point. You are only selectively concerned about the politicization of the science.
This is exactly why I missed you so much, Don. You consistently illustrate my points in such stark relief.
Correct, I do not care about David Wojick’s educational materials. That is a nit, you nitwit. You are just using that as a distraction from the discussion/righteous condemnation of the incredibly stoopid criminal behavior of one of your own massive hypocrites. Is your mom proud of you? Now I have enough of you for a while. You are a sickening little creep. Why a grown man would degrade himself like you do here is a mystery to those of us who were raised by people with morals.
Joshua
From Sherlock Holmes to CSI/NCIS, the theme of detective fiction/crime movies is how to detect and distinguish between human agents and natural stochastic causes. ID focuses on the scientific methodology of those intelligent agent vs stochastic nature differences.
For the professional level ID analyses see the publications at:
The Evolutionary Informatics Lab.
Joshua aside from the fact the Climate High Command are displeased with you, are you really saying that a grant of a whole … wait for it…..$100K is REALLY going to cause the change of what is taught in a nation of what 350million??? Why not just ignore it as I assume you would ignore some numpty that suggests the planet is 6,000 years old??? I’ll tell you why you thought you had your “Climategate” moment but you didn’t did you, your hero turned out to be a liar and a thief and now you NEED so badly to spin all of this! Did you notice in the Climategate e-mails two things? (1) nobody has ever contested their veracity and (2) all personal details were redacted compare that to your hero who inter alia has revealed personal details of employees who have nothing whatsoever to do with this? I thought you wer ok but this is PATHETIC you must no you can do better….. just remember do the same things you’ll get the same results… think about it Joshua
Johsua is too busy as a great decontructionist of tribalism and mommyism to bother with anything else.
Joshua how is the $100K a “strawman” I would suggestb it’s a fact!!!
Little joshy the consensus robot is really struggling on this one. He needs to return to the RealClimate cave for a little repair and re-indoctrination.
theendisnighnot –
Here is what is a straw man:
That isn’t what I’ve said.
Joshua what “isn’t what I’ve said” and what about what i said is a strawman whatever the f**k that is???? Presumably people can choose or not choose to read DW’s yet to be published schools materials as I recall they did’t have a choice about the “Incontinent Truth” but tht’s ok because it fits with your viewpoint right? Despite the fact that a British Court found something like 12 complete er… inaccuracies or to be blunt lies!
I wouldn’t mind so much but my son was brainwashed with this shite… how do you people live with yourselves?
Scottish Sceptic said @ February 21, 2012 at 9:22 am
“The key, is that they have lost the moral high ground. . . . ”
– – – – – –
Scottish Sceptic,
That is what I think is the key point that the Gleick affair brings out about the fading paradigm of ‘climate change’ science. The IPCC centric CAGW by CO2 ‘cause’ has lost the high moral ground. The followers that remain in that ideological cult will be those not persuaded by rational thought. Meaning they are not scientists even though they may have scientific credentials.
John
My last comment to Joshua appears not to have got though for whatever reason… ah well it’s late here in the Middle Kingdom I guess my take away from today’s events is that lying cheating and fraud are ok in the eyes of some as long as the ends justify the means. I’ll sleep easier knowing our planet is in the hands of these people, who seem to assume mankind cannot adapt, and the answer to everything imagined and real is taxation . How i wish I had their ability to change something like our climate with in essence the stroke of a pen… wonderous they are I am truelly in awe (sarc)
As I said
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
It’s fascinating that the pretense of scientific objectivity is suddenly and almost violently being stripped from the climate debate and perhaps from science in general. The greatest value in this is found in the revelation that even the most strident protestations of scientific objectivity are without value. However, this revelation does not devalue science in the least. Rather, I would argue it increases science’s value as academia is forced to embrace that their work exists in a human, societal context that will always color both the framing of argument and experiment as well as interpretation of result. It is truly a pushing of the reset button.
This is new for this generation but not for science. I don’t believe there is a prehominid fossil that I was exposed to in school that hasn’t been the subject of controversy or outright fraud in the intervening years. The only thing I find uniquely troubling about this episode is the strident appeals of both sides claiming both proof and truth when neither command deterministic matters of fact supporting their respective positions. In fact, even degrees of probability are the proper subject of debate in the area of climate. Unlike previous escapades in archeology or anthropology, there don’t even seem to be good props to hide behind or argue over. That last might represent a bit of ethical decay from previous controversies.
Ran across this in another context – it’s interesting (to me) and somewhat on topic!
“When school children start paying union dues, that ‘s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.”
Albert Shanker, former President of the Teachers Union (United Federation of Teachers).
Fred Moolten said @ February 21, 2012 at 11:19 am
“Without this latest episode, the information would eventually have become available anyway, but not in a way that would command public attention. It will be the spotlight that I think Heartland is likely to regret.”
– – – – – – – –
Fred Moolten,
Your thought stream differs from mine. My thought is that HI’s promoting of skeptical thinking in our primary education was served well by the publicity from the Gleick affair. The public (outside of climate science ideological circles) benefit. Consensus thinking vs. skeptical thinking is a proper distinction to make at the primary education level. It benefits a free society, n’est ce pas?
John
Judith,
The actions by Peter Gleick were immoral, irresponsible, and possibly illegal. They should not be condoned or serve as a template for future “debate tactics,” which really should move to the scientific literature and not to personal attacks at all, but that is a utopian dream.
However, your blinded parallels to climategate and the spurious connection to climate science are at the very least irresponsible.
There is no connection whatsoever to the IPCC or to your made-up “ideology.” It was the actions of one man, not even one that some would call a “climate scientist.” There will certainly be people that label him a ‘hero,’ and indeed some of what was in the (authentic) documents are interesting (though not very surprising), and surprising little discussion has generated about Heartland intent to interfere with science in the classroom. However, many people who accept the mainstream science have publicly expressed disapproval of Gleick’s methods. You should not give the impression that “DeSmogBlog” is representative of everyone’s ideas, or even represent the early stages of how people will inevitably feel.
Even more indefensible was the countless posts you spent on climategate, which turned out to be an equally irresponsible and unethical hack into the personal lives of many scientists. This got to the point where people received death threats, and their families received countless personal attacks. Heartland was a leading effort in spreading this disinformation. Your double standards for ‘ethics’ and proper scientific protocol speaks to your objectivity on the issue, as well as confirmation of your hatred toward climate science and sympathy for irrational skepticism.
Chris Colose –
You sound like you’re three quarters of the way to becoming a Gleickian delusionist. Do you genuinely believe Judith Curry has a hatred towards climate science?
Seriously?
Anteros,
All I have seen on this blog is a growing distortion of what climate scientists/IPCC actually do, and a willingness to discuss anything “interesting” (which is almost always some half-baked idea that goes against mainstream science). The posts and the comments read more like WUWT as the months go on. This should be expected of non-scientists, but not someone like Judith Curry with actual credentials in the field. She is very aware of what she is doing (other scientists have put this in not-so-mild language, but I’ll be nice about it). Yet Judith shows no indication that she is capable of making judgment calls as to what is or is not bad science, outside of the very obvious wingnut theories of people like the “greenhouse dragon slayers.” She also has very poor judgment as to what constitutes appropriate scientific skepticism.
So yes, I stand by what I say.
Chris Colose
By associating yourself with Peter Gleick you are digging yourself into a deep hole.
And by accusing Judith of being anti-science you are making a fool of yourself.
Max
Chris
Perhaps you’d better tell us more about Judith’s hatred for climate science. She seems to like the subject and has been in the business rather longer than you, so perhaps she knows the nuances of the ins and outs, the flaws and strengths rather better. Please cite some examples of climate science hatred, which you will appreciate is different to an objectivity that seems to be lacking in her peers.
Tonyb
Chris Colose | February 21, 2012 at 1:34 pm :
It is to bad you cannot control what other people think or say – although it is pretty clear that you would like to.
The problem with the IPCC is that it has been shown to not be an objective summary of climate science.
Rather, it is a subjective view of some climate science, viewed through the lens of a few lead authors, which then shield themselves with an appeal to authority.
The reports are a giant case of confirmation bias.
It will be very valuable to look back from 2100 and actually observe climate sensitivity by comparing the global average temperature in 2100 to the CO2 in the air at that time, and actually observe what a doubling of CO2 to 560 ppm did to the temperature.
It will also be very easy to look at the sea level rise in 2100 and see if it is less than 59 cm for this entire century (the largest estimate from the IPCC).
My guess, based on the trends so far being less than projected, is CS will be a lot less than 2C and sea level rise will be around 25 cm or less.
But that is the great thing about science – we can actually wait and make measurements – which will then have to inform theory.
Chris,
IRT to the unmitigated gall of your accusing Dr. Curry of being anti-science:
Perhaps you would like to rethink that and tell us what you think when you are not so upset?
Surely you are not going to cross the line you seem to be crossing?
No RickA,
The IPCC has not been shown to lack an objective review of the science. That is what people like Judith Curry want you to think. To be blunt, very few people here have the ability to tell for themselves and it is clear to me that very few commenters here have even read a substantial fraction of the IPCC report. Nor can they really indicate what views have been ‘kept out’ of the documents. My guess is these same people will not be submitting reviews for the AR5 report, but will whine about it upon its release. It would be interesting to see some actual evidence that it is an unfair assessment given the thousands of references the WG1 reports, but people are quite content on making things up.
Chris
It is interesting that you defend the IPCC’s conclusions here, but when I ask you the basic scientific questions you duck the questions by writing that this is not the appropriate thread. The questions I asked you are at the heart of the debate, and I beleiev you know that the foundation of your position is deeply flawed.
We do not know the rate of warming that can be tied to CO2 unless a very wide margin of error is used.
We do not have reliable models that can forecast future conditions as a function of CO2 or temperature
There is very little basis for the descriptions of future harms as described by the IPCC unless one wishes to also consider VERY large margins of error
Chris colose,
The IPCC ahs been shown to not be objective in theiir science. Wishing it was otherwise does not make it so.
And since you believers have ignored the evidence, you are not in a position to even defend the IPCC: you can only, ironically, deny the evidence exists.
Or perhaps this way:
The IPCC has not been shown to be non-objective in their science. Wishing it was otherwise does not make it so.
Chris Colose
You obviously believe that the sceptics on this blog are a scientifically illiterate, knuckle dragging rabble, and are consequently cultivating a thick veneer of arrogance towards those you disagree with. It ill becomes you, and I hope you will learn to show a little more humility to those who, like you, are seeking the truth but, unlike you, don’t think it solely resides in the IPCC or its contributors.
Personally I have read AR4 many times from cover to cover, and researched and written articles about it. I go to the Met office archives tomorrow to collect some of Phil Jones’ research papers in order to delve further into historic temperature records and intend to visit the Scott Polar research institute in Cambridge shortly to continue m research on Arctic ice as a follow up to my arctic warming in the 19th Century article.
Last summer I could be seen rowing round the sea here taking SST readings as part of my research into that subject, and wrote an article on it which resulted in an interesting interchange with one of the excellent Met office scientists on its findings. I have also written on Sea levels, which required a great deal of practical research.
I have just finished reading the draft of AR5 and made comments on their assertions about abyssal warming.
All of this is in my time and at my considerable expense because I am uncomfortable with the version of history the IPCC comes up with. Did you see my article looking at the reconstructions of Dr Mann and Hubert Lamb? What did you make of it? Have you any constructive comments to make on my conclusions?
It would be my observation that there are very many fine brains that post here and at WUWT and if you could suspend your disdain you might actually learn something that will usefully broaden your scientific education. Also I think it ill mannered for you to continually belittle our host who, I would suggest, knows her subject thoroughly and seems increasingly uncomfortable with the science that, until recently, she probably thought more settled than it is turning out to be.
tonyb
Rob, it is my impression from past discussions that you are not actually interested in a real scientific discussion.
There are multiple lines of evidence that climate sensitivity is in the range of the IPCC, and no evidence otherwise. Your statements about models are too vague to receive a simple and acceptable answer. What models? What timeframe? What statistic? What variable? What would you accept as a useful model? For that matter, what would be acceptable evidence that humans are the predominant cause of the 20th century warming trend, and that sensitivity is above ~2 C/per doubling. Th evidence has been provided by a number of documents yet you continue to assert it doesn’t exist. Skeptics don’t like to answer those questions in more than broad-brush detail because it forces them into a situation where they can’t move the goal posts. Until they can do so, they don’t really deserve a more specific answer.
tonyb,
//”…a little more humility to those who, like you, are seeking the truth but, unlike you, don’t think it solely resides in the IPCC or its contributors.”//
People familiar with the IPCC process would recognize that it is not a research organization, but merely an assessment of the current literature. People could claim all they want that it is a biased assessment, which is theoretically possible. But this begs the question as to what sources you think are the basis for “the truth” (whatever these vague statements mean, since the IPCC makes hundreds of claims spanning a wide variety of sub-disciplines). Further, why has this “truth” not gathered acceptance from the mainstream scientific community?
There are a couple of obvious choices that stem from this. One can be that “the truth” can only be found on a few select blogs like Climate Etc, WUWT, ClimateAudit, and so forth. You can try to rationalize why these people don’t publish in meaningful journals like Science or Nature where “paradigm shifts” on such a big topic would certainly be published. You could reinforce the notion that somehow a dozen or so researchers are acting as ‘gatekeepers’ amidst thousands of scientists at independent research groups/universities all over the world.
The more obvious choice to me, is simply that these minority groups don’t have much of a scientific argument to begin with. In the rare event they publish, the arguments are generally refuted within a year or so.
Anteros,
From reading young Chris’s attempts at defending his position, I would say he is much closer to 100% than 75% of the way to being Gleick v 2.0.
This is called ‘locked in’, and the prognosis is poor.
===================
Chris Colose
You are doing it again. Don’t you think most of us aware of the IPCC process and how it operates?
I read six hundred research papers last year and examined some 200 historic books, and consequently, like most of those on this blog my knowledge is not restricted to what I read on this Blog or on WUWT.
I am not a fan of Heartland but I was astonished by their tiny funding stream. Sceptics are not competing on a level playing field with mainstream science, or do you really believe all us sceptics are funded by Big Oil? That lack of funding is a prime reason for the absence of too many sceptical papers.
Oh for access to 10% of the funding ladled out to climate research instead I have to pay for the privilege of reading what often turn out to be less than interesting papers.
Anyway, I thank you for being a little more temperate in your tone. Perhaps that might become a pleasant habit in the future when you visit here? It helps if you don’t automatically assume that all sceptics are complete idiots.
tonyb
Chris Colose | February 21, 2012 at 2:07 pm:
The climategate emails show lead authors attempting (unsuccessfully) to keep citations out of AR4 so they wouldn’t have to even discuss opposing views.
This attempt, even though unsuccessful, clearly shows bias and therefore is subjective and not objective.
The objective way to handle it would be to embrace all relevant articles and discuss their findings scientifically – not attempt to keep relevant articles out or hurry up rebuttal articles submitted past the deadline, to help them in an attempt to massage the report to conform to their subjective biases.
You are entitled to your opinion – but it is my opinion that the IPCC AR4 report has been shown to be subjective.
That makes it a political document and not a scientific document (in my opinion).
Hopefully, AR5 will accept submissions from opposing points of view – but I have my doubts.
We will see.
RickA,
You have not answered my question about where we should be getting information from related to these opposing views?
For the record, I think that some articles discussed (such as Soon and Baliunas) had every reason to be kept out of any scientific document.
tonyb,
You might have a point if you understood how funding works in science. Look up some NSF proposals. Hint, people don’t get funded to produce a study that is “mainstream” or “skeptical.” Actually, from your perspective, it’s unclear why you think studies are done at all.
Chris
Hint, check the criteria for eu funding of climate research projects. Also suggest you approach the uk govt depts for research funding on climate topics that do not meet their stated criteria, which is promoting an agw agenda, see climate change act passed into law a couple of years ago. Funding is not on a level playing field
Sorry , i don’t understand your point concerning my perspective of why studies are done
Tonyb
Chris Colose | February 21, 2012 at 3:35 pm:
Journal articles would be the primary source. Yes, even journals you might not personally like.
It is not being aware of the articles that was the problem – it was not wanting to discuss their findings – or discuss their findings with a “spin” so they could present preconceived notions in the best light possible. Hence the need to “rush” articles into print so they could be cited and therefore included in the discussion, to allow discounting a view which was opposed to a preconceived notion.
As to Soon and Baliunas – rather than try to avoid discussing it in AR4, why not put forward the case for it being garbage in AR4 (if you think it is).
Again – the way some of the issues of inclusion and exclusion, and the manner in which some issues were discussed, was done to create a message and “spin”, which is subjective and not objective (in my opinion).
“As to Soon and Baliunas – rather than try to avoid discussing it in AR4, why not put forward the case for it being garbage in AR4”
Not enough space.
Chris Colose and Anteros
For one of the best critiques of the many exaggerations, distortions, fabrications and omissions in AR4 (primarily WG1) see:
http://sites.google.com/site/globalwarmingquestions/ipcc
This data was put together by Paul Matthews on a now defunct thread at Climate Audit a couple of years ago and remains, IMO, one of the best critiques of AR4..
Max
Anteros, Chris Colose and TonyB
There are two separate but linked topics here:
The “IPCC consensus process”: this is a flawed (or corrupt) process, which ignores or downplays papers or views that conflict with the IPCC CAGW premise – Judith has written about this on other threads.
The “product” of this process: the most recent AR4 report. This has been shown to contain errors, exaggerations, etc. – I posted a link to one of the best critiques of AR4 separately.
Max
The IPCC is fine. If someone wants to understand the current science on the world’s climate and climate change I recommend reading the latest IPCC report. It’s the best overview of the subject on Earth.
Nothing is perfect so if you are looking for something without errors you will never find of it.
Some of those criticisms you link to might be valid, but I would expect even more errors in such a large document, especially when the errors being considered include typos (http://sites.google.com/site/globalwarmingquestions/ar4spm0)
More worryingly I can find errors in that list of errors. For example:
“Dubious claims about Greenland ice sheet and sea level rise
http://sites.google.com/site/globalwarmingquestions/ar4green
Claims: “The AR4 WG1 SPM claims (table SPM.1, page 7) that sea level is rising at 0.21 mm/yr over the period 1993-2003, due to melting of the Greenland ice sheet. But several published papers have found that in fact the Greenland ice is increasing or static: ”
Cites include: “O. M. Johannessen, K. Khvorostovsky, M. W. Miles, and L. P. Bobylev, Recent Ice-Sheet Growth in the Interior of Greenland. Science 310, 1013-1016 (2005) – They used satellite altimetry over the period 1992-2003, and found the “spatially averaged increase is 5.4 cm per year over the study area”.”
See the problem? “Growth in the ***Interior*** of Greenland”
And another: “C. H. Davis, C. A. Kluever, and B. J. Haines, Elevation Change of the Southern Greenland Ice Sheet. Science 279, 2086-2088 (1998). They found a small increase (1.5 cm/year) over the period 1978-1988.”
See the problem? **1978-1988**?
And another: “H.J. Zwally et al, Growth of the Southern Greenland Ice Sheet, Science 281, 1251 (1998). They found an ice sheet thickening rate of about 5 cm/year.”
See the problems? **(1998)** and **Southern** Greenland
I agree with Chris that double standards regarding the individuals who make private matters public are a worrisome feature of these revelations. Here is quote from Dr. Curry on leaked emails relevant to her views on uncertainty – The Uncertainty Monster Rests Its Case (thank you hacker/whistleblower). I would hope people will step back, take a deep breath and a bit of introspection to examine their own prejudices, and then place the latest episode into a proper perspective, which is one of minor import.
Fred, you miss the point.
The Climategate leaker did not fabricate anything.
Gleick apparently did.
There is a major difference between “whistle blowing” and fabricating fake evidence.
Max
Max – Gleick is being castigated for what he confessed to doing, which didn’t include any fabrication. That is the point I’m addressing. Whether he fabricated a document is still being debated, and maybe he did (which would be inexcusable), but that simply isn’t relevant to double standards about spying on people and revealing their private communications.
Fred,
Speaking of double standards: Since you have decided David’s HI curriculum is evil, perhaps you can post a link to your undoubtedly good curriculum, so we can have a good example of acceptable curriculum?
Hunter – I haven’t drawn any conclusions about David Wojick’s “curriculum”, since it doesn’t exist yet. My conclusions relate to comments he has made in this blog on scientific topics as well as political ones. Not to belabor the point, but the issue isn’t what I think of them, but how the public will view his competence and objectivity if his comments receive a great deal of public attention. In any case, the future will answer that question, so there isn’t much pointing in arguing about it.
Fred,
Since you keep bringing the point up, you obviously have some opinions on it.
but to use the non-existant curriculum as justification for Gleick’s fakegate scam in any way is reprehensible.
Fred, Gleick has confessed to obtaining the information. Personally, I see no difference there than climategate, other than the climategate phantom was smart enough to not get caught. Gleick has just proven he is not the sharpest tack in the box, which is a big reason there are so many skeptics, there are dull tacks in the climate science box :)
Dallas – I agree. Spying is a noble profession, but only if performed competently for a good cause. Also, the spy’s behavior if caught colors our appreciation of his cause. Nathan Hale, before being hanged by the British, said, “I regret that I have but only one life to give for my country”. Peter Gleick said he had “a lapse in judgment”. If you’re going to be a martyr, you might as well get some good public relations out of it.
Fred, exactly!
“I agree with Chris that double standards regarding the individuals who make private matters public are a worrisome feature of these revelations. Here is quote from Dr. Curry on leaked emails relevant to her views on uncertainty – The Uncertainty Monster Rests Its Case (thank you hacker/whistleblower). I would hope people will step back, take a deep breath and a bit of introspection to examine their own prejudices, and then place the latest episode into a proper perspective, which is one of minor import.
Here is the problem with the Climate E-mails vs HI comparison…. In the former, we still don’t know if those e-mails were illegally obtained or not. We still don’t know if they were on a sub file that was left unsecured. If that’s the case, then TTBOMK there wouldn’t be much in the way of lawbreaking.
Chrissy, the little puppy wannabe climate scientist is yapping at the heals of the big dog again. You are pathetic. Don’t you have your own little blog?
Chris
What is your self described “scientifically competent” position on the rate of warming associated with a doubling of CO2? What is your “scientifically competent” position on the use of GCMs to forecast future conditions as a function of CO2/and or temperature change? What is your scientifically competent position on using the outputs of GCMs to describe harmful conditions at a very detailed level?
No I am not a “climate scientist”, I am just an engineer and I do not believe that the data supports the IPCC’s conclusions. You appear to believe that it does, so the answers to the questions should be easy to respond to and defend.
Let’s try to be specific
Rob
I’d be glad to discuss such questions in a relevant thread.
Chris,
You are becoming an annoying child. You are notthe judge of science curriculum and you are not a censor.
Your implications that HI was doing something wronog indevelopling a curriculum to discuss the ocntroversy of what is an obviously controversial issue is, to be diplomatic, inapproriate.
even if they are entirely wrong, they are not evil for expressing their opinion. You and those who agree with you, however are acting very badly by impugning Hi for doing so.
Chris
Where there is smoke there is fire.
You failed to recognize the underlying destruction of the integrity of science as exposed by ClimateGate. Gleick is another example.
Chris:
You are mistaken, I am actually very interested in a real scientific discussion.
Regarding climate sensitivity, given that temperature has not risen at the rate forecasted that it would in recent years as CO2 levels have continued to rise do you not believe there is justifiable disagreement on the rate of rise and that the IPCC’s conclusions on the rate of rise are over stated? Why is the recent rate of rise less than expected in your opinion?
Regarding modeling used by the IPCC, I have several concerns. One is the model(s) used by the IPCC to predict the 1 meter sea level rise by 2100. We are clearly not on a trend to anywhere near that figure. Can you reference any model that has accurately forecasted the current rate of sea level change? Do you believe there is no controversy over how much sea level will rise as a function of temperature change?
Regarding general circulation models, please pick any one you like best. CCSM4 is one I have looked at and found to be inaccurate. I assume you are familiar with complex model development. Does it make sense not to state what the specific criteria each model has been demonstrated to accurately predict, with what margin of error, over what timeframes? In what world does it make technical sense to average the results of multiple models, all of unknown quality? Are you going to claim that this practice is considered technically valid?
Chris isn’t here so you’ll have to do with me.
“Regarding climate sensitivity, given that temperature has not risen at the rate forecasted that it would in recent years as CO2 levels have continued to rise do you not believe there is justifiable disagreement on the rate of rise and that the IPCC’s conclusions on the rate of rise are over stated?”
The rate of rise over a short time period is uncertain due to short term variation. This doesn’t bear on the expected longterm rise in temperature if CO2 emissions continue.
“Why is the recent rate of rise less than expected in your opinion?”
Short term noise. I can even pin it on two specific things: solar minimum and La Ninas. I bet most, if not all, of the rate reduction is due to those two things, and the games up now. Solar is going up and after two La Ninas there’s naught trend but up.
“Regarding modeling used by the IPCC, I have several concerns. One is the model(s) used by the IPCC to predict the 1 meter sea level rise by 2100. We are clearly not on a trend to anywhere near that figure.”
1 meter by 2100? I can’t remember the IPCC saying that. 1 meter would require an acceleration, likely from an acceleration in decline in ice sheets.
“Do you believe there is no controversy over how much sea level will rise as a function of temperature change?”
Of course there’s controversy. No-one knows how much it will rise.
And if we can’t trust the models at all who is to say 2 meters by 2100 isn’t possible? Without the models all we have is historical data and the knowledge that CO2, a potent greenhouse gas, is rising faster than any of that historical data ever show it rising in the past.
Rob,
I for one have little confidence on the observational record to constrain climate sensitivity. You’ll get different opinions on this depending on who you ask, but it isn’t a strong constraint owing to the strong uncertainty in total aerosol forcing. You especially cannot use timeframes of a decade or so where the internal variability is competitive with anthropogenic forcing (in addition to other forcings like slight changes in stratospheric water vapor, or progression toward solar minimum). Really, this has been stated hundreds of times before (you can’t use short time frames, you need to account for all forcings and variability, the models aren’t actually underestimating the trend, etc). Perhaps if people would find new talking points to jump to, I’d be less skeptical of their intentions in discussing the matter.
Your view on sea level rise is actually completely reversed. I don’t doubt there are uncertainties but the IPCC AR4 has been challenged substantially since 2007, only that most future estimates (based on a couple different methods) indicate much larger change in the future than the AR4 (which maxed projections at something like 60 cm with the caveat that internal ice sheet dynamics were poorly understood, so in contrast to the “alarmist” accusations, they were quite conservative). There’s been subsequent work that makes this outdated and made for more material for the AR5, e.g., estimates of 0.5–1.4m (Rahmstorf, 2007), 0.75–1.90 m (Vermeer and Rahmstorf, 2010), 0.8–2.0 m (Pfeffer et al., 2008) and 0.8–1.3 m (Grinsted et al., 2010) by 2100, to name but a few. There’s been growing contribution from both Antarctica and Greenland, in addition to large changes in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (there was a seminar on this last contribution a few weeks ago in my department); since start of the altimeter record in 1993, global average sea level rose near the upper end of the sea level projections of the AR4.
It is also stuff like this that makes me acknowledge that ‘uncertainty’ does not work one way, in contrast to the impressions many people have here.
Chris,
Re the term “interfer with science in the classroom.
Isn’t that a jump? Development of educational modules is hardly “interferring with”. In addition to being involved with science education, I also volunteer as a Junior Achievement instructor. JA is a non-profit which has created education modules for grades 1 thru 12. Do you consider that to be interferring with education in the classroom? The teachers seem to think otherwise.
Chris Colose,
“and surprising little discussion has generated about Heartland intent to interfere with science in the classroom.”
Here you go completely missing the point again. And some have said you are a relatively bright guy. Allow me to clarify: Heartland is simply a think tank with an agenda and has ZERO influence or authority over what materials get into classrooms in the US. It doesn’t work that way. Please emerge from this fantasyland as you are embarrassing yourself and many scientists around you by mere credential association.
ivpo,
You’ve tripped up on one little word – “intent”.
Chris wasn’t talking about they could practically achieve, but what their intentions are.
And they are in no way honourable.
Michael,
It’s a free country. People can “propose” all kinds of crazy ideas but will it ever really interfere with science in the classroom? Only a paranoid schizophrenic would honestly believe that. Never gonna happen. Strawman Jubilee!
ivpo,
The AGW believers are still blaming the victim, Heartland Institute.
It is as if the AGW community has gone in the real estate business and started by giving away all of the high ground.
Chris calls offering ideas ‘interfering’. How disgusting.
Hunter writes: “Dolphinhead,
No the problem is Gleick is a thief and fraud first, and a scientist in distant second.”
You’re closer Hunter, but even that’s too much credit. I’d say first and foremost he’s a nut bag. ONly an unstable person would do something so pathetic.
Well said Jeff! I also wish we would all try to shame the print media that claims to be balanced- FOX and NYT are examples- to actually report all sides of important contoversial issues. Right now, I expect there is an urgent meeting at the NYT on how to cover their behind. Dot Earth has only printed 9 of, I suspect, hundreds of postings. Nothing posted by Andrew Revkin now in 17 hours. Although I disagree with Revkin on many issues, he has integrity and is the one window the NYT has to climate reality. I hope eveyone who agrees aith me will flood Dot Earth with his praises. The NYT’s higher ups may get the message about integrity in both science and journalism.
I think that climate science and some climate scientists have moved way beyond the realm of science into something that I am not able to define well… they seem to have a sense of a messianic mission (the cause) to save the planet and fight a “war” against those who doubt it or somehow question it. Basically, it is a fight between good and evil where the scientists are the champions.
Things certainly have gotten out of hand. Climate scientists playing spies and activists…. when do we get a reality TV Show on this?
Jarmo,
I agree with what you write. They see the world in Manichean, black and white, good and evil terms that is in its essence fundamentalist in nature. It’s always a dangerous mindset that can lead to all sort of bad actions in the name of “the cause.”
Bear in mine, these guys are increasingly desperate. They know they’re losing the PR war and they know they’re losing on the scientific front as well. Gleick committed a desperate act, and it reveals plenty..
Judith Curry
We are beginning to read various rationalizations in tepid defense of Peter Gleick, but these ring pretty hollow.
You have brought up the dichotomy of political activism and scientific objectivity in previous threads.
Whether it is the late Stephen Schneider, Michael Mann, James E. Hansen or Peter Gleick, it is clear to me that the two do not mix any better than oil and water.
The climate debate is both science-related and intensely political. As a result, if one is a scientist in the climate field, one is either is an objective scientist adhering to the scientific method or one is a biased activist advocating political goals.
In Gleick’s case, we have not only political activism but downright unethical (or even illegal) behavior at play. The line between advocacy and unethical behavior is difficult to draw and almost impossible not to cross.
I personally believe that any climate scientist who is also a CAGW advocate has lost his scientific objectivity and is therefore no longer a true scientist.
Gleick crossed this line a long time ago, despite his pompous dissertations on ethics and his arrogant chastising of you and others for not “toeing the mainstream consensus line”
He has done more to harm his cause than he could ever have imagined when he started the ridiculous Heartland story.
Schadenfreude? Or simply disgust?
Personally, I say it served him right.
Max
Max,
I hear what you are saying. We can try to get beyond Schadenfreude for a moment?
What about about Dr. Curry’s political obfuscation policy of not identifying the political leanings of the core of AGW consensus directly?
Still think it doesn’t matter? I’m the bad guy for pointing it out?
By towing the Dr. Curry line this is how the story might be reported in the MSM;
“A Climate activist recently confessed to illegally obtaining a Heartland document. Motivations for this are based on a long standing science dispute”.
Does that come anywhere near the truth Max??? Well, you’re subsidizing it as well by attacking me for questioning Dr. Curry as an example.
Curry has a fine line to walk here. I know of many academics black-balled because they refuse to tow the party line. Careers dismantled. In at least one case tenure taken away along with emeritus status. The tribe she is pissing off pretty much have no ethics in that regard. They will use any means at their disposal to enforce compliance among what they consider their own. In this case they believe they own academia. So you should cut her a little slack.
cwon14
Your fictional MSM “blurb” probably hits close to home.
I can hear the sound of the wagons being circled.
What Gleick did is obviously unethical and most likely illegal. But this will not stop the MSM from trying to paint him as the “principled victim” of an anti-science smear campaign.
I simply pointed out that the line between political activism and unethical behavior is very hard to define and extremely difficult not to cross.
Neither has any place in science.
Now as to my “attacking you for questioning Dr. Curry”, I’m not sure to what you are referring.
I personally believe that she has been able to maintain the objectivity required to be a true scientist, based both on her statements here, her testimony before US Congress and her open scientific challenge to the mainstream IPCC position regarding the “most of warming since 1950..very likely caused by human GHG” claim.
She has openly stated (to Willis Eschenbach on this blog) that she is opposed to falsified or rigged science, but that she does not see it as her role to personally attack fellow scientists
So that’s her stated position.
I’d say she’s sticking to it pretty closely.
I may not agree with her position on this or on some other points, but I can respect her for being open and honest about her position and sticking to it.
Max
Max and David,
In the end we are revisiting and earlier discussion regarding the Hollywood Ten vs. Elia Kazan and how are both viewed within particular and similar tribal groups. Our society certainly has it wrong in general and the particular interest groups especially wrong.
I’m sick of false “lines to cross” in the face of great stakes, Dr. Curry should be honest regardless of the “flak”. Especially since she is quick to point out what has already been thrown at her. Think of the price paid by skeptics? She is reinforcing totalitarian customs in he field, she owes more back regardless of how pathetic her peer culture may be.
Chris Colose said @ February 21, 2012 at 1:17 pm
“However, your blinded parallels to climategate and the spurious connection to climate science are at the very least irresponsible. [. . .]”
“There is no connection whatsoever to the IPCC or to your made-up ‘ideology.’ [. . .]”
“Even more indefensible was the countless posts you spent on climategate, which turned out to be an equally irresponsible and unethical hack into the personal lives of many scientists. [. . .]
– – – – – – – –
Chris Colose,
The discourse is appropriately shifted from isolated instances of ‘consensus’ climate science behavior to cognitive integration toward new conceptions of the integrity and scientific objectivity of the ‘IPCC centric CAGW by CO2 ideology’.
Are you suggesting that free individual use of our cognitive process for conceptual integration of the instances is fundamentally wrong epistemologically? Wrong strategy Chris. That strategy hasn’t worked for the ‘consensus’ climate science in the last 20 years and it will not work now.
May I suggest a new strategy for you? Help create the new conceptions with the aid of the skeptics. Then we will not have ‘climate war’ any longer; just good old competitive science.
John
As a likely “inventor” of the memo his denial has added extra miles to his fall in discgrace. The pressure must be (literally) mindblowing, having lost the respect and friendship from those who matters most to him. He appears out of balance, how much I disapprove of his actions (and opinions, but he’s entitled to those), i hope he doesn’t break down or worse. Disregarding the high profile it is a petty crime for the amount of scorn heaped on him. He get’s suport from the AGW fringe but from Trenberth and up it’s silence. No more dinners with Al…… Now that i have the story i feel more pity than anger.
Regarding whether this will be bigger than Climategate or not, I think not. Gleick is not nearly as important a researcher as Phil Jones who had violated the standards of science for decades by refusing to archive or share his data. What Gleick did is embarrassing to him personally and may cause him legal problems but is unlikely to be the reason the IPCC is disbanded – which many called for after Climategate.
Agreed. Gleick pulled a juvenile stunt. That’s about the worst characterization I can make and not feel like I’m blowing it out of proportion. Phil Jones was IMO guilty of criminal conspiracy to avoid disclosures required by law. That’s a different matter altogether. Jones avoid prosecution not by being found innocent but rather by statute of limitations.
Well done, Judith, but for one detail. You say:
Far from being ‘cleared’, they weren’t even investigated. Far from the questions being answered, they weren’t even asked.
The idea that the Climategate un-indicted co-conspirators were ‘cleared’ of anything is nothing but propagand, and repeating it on a supposedly scientific site is totally unacceptable.
Other than that, a good read.
w.
PS—How does one get ‘cleared’ apart from what was “arguably criminal”??
If you haven’t either been shown to be guilty of or been cleared of that, the investigation hasn’t even begun.
Willis
I agree with you.
The “investigations” following Climategate were meaningless whitewashes.
There has been no real investigation (and probably will not be any until there is enough public outrage that it will be impossible to avoid).
I would also take issue with the various nuanced definitions of “integrity” in Judith’s lead article – I think it’s pretty clear what the word really means.
Rasmussen tells us the 69% of US respondents have concluded that climate scientists falsify data.
So the public no longer has trust in climate scientists to give them a straight story (and Climategate certainly played a role).
But simple “loss of trust” is not the same as “outrage”.
Idiotic and unethical behavior, such as Gleick’s faked Heartland report, just moves everyone closer to “outrage”.
[I predict that IPCC’s AR5 report will do even more in this direction, maybe providing the much-needed death blow to the CAGW bubble in the eyes of the public – but, then again, I’m an optimist, and who knows what will happen when the MSM spinmeisters get hold of it]
Max
max wrote:
“Personally, I say it served him right.”
Me two. I’ve had a strong antipathy to the guy ever since his sham book review, and his arrogant, lying defense of same. And yet tonally and stylistically, he fits right in with the climate establishment mainstream. As I said above, these people see things in starkly Manichean terms, and that kind of world view is literally crazy making. Gleick’s actions were not those of a stable mind. I don’t see much difference at all between climate fundamentailsm and that of the religious variety in which “the cause” is all, and in which evil acts are quite justified…as long as they are in service of some “greater good.”
stan | February 21, 2012 at 11:57 am |
“Rationalize? Hell, I celebrate it! Thank goodness we have people with the integrity and public spiritedness of the folks at Heartland who are willing to take on the entrenched interests of corruption who have foisted this alarmist garbage on the world.”
Yeah. And even better than can get 401C tax exempt status and still pay themselves a salary out of the not-profits. It’s the American way.
“The evil that men do lives after them the good is oft interred with their bones”
Hubris got the better of him and maybe if he apologises unreservedley then that shoud be enough. A qualified apology is meaningless.
Climate scientist admits duping skeptic group to obtain documents Washington Post
I can’t agree with this. The actions of Peter Gleick speaks volumes to the public about the integrity (lack of) and (dis) honesty of the global warming alarmists tactics and methods.
And the actions of the CRU-hacker thus presumably speaks volumes to the public about the integrity (lack of) and (dis) honesty of the global warming skeptics tactics and methods?
You can’t denounce one without denouncing the other. (For the record, I couldn’t help feeling a bit of schadenfreuede at the release of the HI documents, though I’m sure most skeptics felt the same way at the Climategate email release. In both cases the actions have to be condemned.)
joe,
Yes. The difference between climategate and fakegate does speak volumes. Climate skeptics wnat the truth to get out. AGW believers want to lie and cheat.
joe
Like a few others here, you are missing the key element here.
Climategate did NOT involve unethically fabricating a fake story.
Gleick’s Heartland fiasco did.
Vive la difference!
Max
Joe, you can attempt to make the comparison but doing so requires that you take several leaps to try to conflate the nature of the two events as somehow equivalent. First, you would have to equate private institutions with public institutions. Second, you would have equate Heartland as drawing a great deal of attention to itself by trying to avoid FOI requests. Third, you would have to equate an anonymous party with unknown methods to the admitted “stealing” of information under false pretenses.
joe | February 21, 2012 at 2:52 pm |
Condemned or condoned. I’m going with condoning. The more daylight the better and what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Heartland by virtue of 401C status is enjoying taxpayer support as far as I’m concerned and should be transparent in their records and operation in return for the privilege. I don’t see them as any kind of victim here.
@Joe, and I said it speaks volumes to the “public” and public opinion is not built around cogent, well articulated rational individual thought. It is the combined attitude of the masses as measured through the opinion poll, through voting results, through donations to organizations etc. What Mr Gleick has done will reflect in some small measure in public opinion. On balance, I don’t think it will move public opinion toward supporting the global warming agenda. On the contrary, it would more likely detract from it.
Pat, careful with the parentheses, Gleick still hasn’t spilled his guts about faking the document…. yet :) He still has a shot at being to full fledged dumba$$
David,
They are as transparent as the law demands. Now if you would like to discuss changing the law, that is great. But if you think the Gleick approach is defensible, then you are not really about legal concerns, but rather about silencing your critics.
“Climategate did NOT involve unethically fabricating a fake story.”
Uh yes it did.
The fake story was accomplished through large doses of embellishment.
Such as the one that Phil Jones was filtering every single paper ever published to prevent skeptic papers being published.
lolwot commented on Gleick’s ‘integrity’.
in response to patrioticduo:
I can’t agree with this. The actions of Peter Gleick speaks volumes to the public about the integrity (lack of) and (dis) honesty of the global warming alarmists tactics and methods.
“Climategate did NOT involve unethically fabricating a fake story.” Uh yes it did. The fake story was accomplished through large doses of embellishment. Such as the one that Phil Jones was filtering every single paper ever published to prevent skeptic papers being published.
—————————————————————————————–
Not it did not. Semantically I beg to suggest, you are incorrect. Climategate UNCOVERED the unethical fabrication of a story (“fake” is tautological). It did not, therefore, directly INVOLVE said fabrication. Sorry if I sound pedantic, but these are very different things, it seems to me
lolwot
You claim that Climategate and the current fiasco are similar.
I would agree that they have both exposed how overeager CAGW activists, who are supposedly scientists, have shown dishonesty and a lack of integrity in defending their political position on CAGW.
But I would argue that Climategate was a much more serious revelation of impropriety and malfeasance by a larger group of individuals than this one.
This was simply a (too stupid to be true) botched hatchet attempt by one overeager activist using faked data that backfired.
Max
“You claim that Climategate and the current fiasco are similar.”
if I claimed that I was wrong
Why are people down on Wojick or Heartland for allegedly hiring him or planning on it in the first place? Is there some sort of book burning cult that’s part of climate alarmism?
Wojick has every right in the world to write textbooks and he has every right in the world to try selling them to any entity willing to buy them. You don’t like it then don’t buy it. I’m pretty sure that’s the American way.
I’m as mystified as you are. I also genuinely do not get the outrage that Heartland gets private donations. How else are they suppose to operate as a non-profit? But even assuming for a second it’s evil incarnate to take such funding, why is it never mentioned on warmists blogs or MSM outlets that the amount of funding Heartland gets is orders of magnitude smaller than what the government, the U.N., the WWF, Greenpeace et al give to support the climate change agenda?
I guess I’m even dumber that I’d suspected. No snark in this. I simply don’t get it. Josh?
This is a serious response although seemingly looking like a jab at the left. There really is a difference on how the left responds to those who dont agree with them on any number of issues. Maybe they are carrying the political correctness to its extreme or they are just being the thought police. I find this happening in every discussion where the left is involved and I think social psychologists ought to take a look at this kind of behavior since it is endemic and not limited to climate issues
Dennis,
I’ve often thought that someday when the history of this thing is being written, social psychologists will have a field day. In many ways, climate alarmism has become the new conservatism in that the warmists seem to have incorporated traits traditionally associated (rightly or wrongly) with conservatives….
There’s been much talk of the unholy nexus of science and politics, and of science and religion, less of the damned ground where politics and religion meet. When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?
=============================
Dennis Adams: “I think social psychologists ought to take a look at this kind of behavior since it is endemic and not limited to climate issues”
Eric Hoffer did just that years ago in “The True Believer”. A good read by “the longshoreman philosopher”.
Orwell described it a bit more entertainingly in “1984”
I object to the profligate use of the term ‘scientist’ in this post.
E.g. ‘The scientists seem to believe they can prevail…’
Scientists are not trying to win an argument or a war. (Possibly climatologists are – but they are not scientists). Scientists are simply trying to understand and explain nature – nothing more nothing less. There is no winning side, army, or political cause for scientists.
He was dishonest, science should not be built upon lies and theft, that is the domain of politicians. There would appear to be too many politicians in science today………
This episodic event and the climate change dialogue reminds me of Kant vs Hegel nonsense — neither are fully correct but we’re stuck with them:
excerpts:
We can compare Hegel’s hierarchy of categories in Science of Logic to Kant’s pure concepts of understanding (categories) and pure forms of intuition. The similarity between those is that both of them are supposed to be a “diamond-net into which we bring everything in order to make it intelligible”.
One difference is that while Hegel’s categories form a hierarchy, with richer categories not being reducible to simpler ones, but yet containing them as moments (e.g. “change” is not reducible to “being” and “not being”, but in a change from X to not X, both being X and not being X are present), Kant’s categories and pure forms of intuition are nonhierarchic, and you get more complex concepts by “putting in those” the content which comes from the senses.
source for the nonsense: http://broodsphilosophy.wordpress.com/2007/11/16/little-more-on-hegel-vs-kant-the-antinomies/
My only sense at this point is refractory but it really smells : (
David L. Hagen | February 21, 2012 at 1:52 pm | Reply
Libel and defamation are civil not criminal offenses. The ultimate defense against a charge of libel or defamation is the truth. Given the documents Gleick admitted to obtaining by deceit are true accounts there’s nothing actionable there. Gleick didn’t publish anything in any case. Someone else did that. As far as I can determine neither did Gleick misrepresent the documents to the person or persons who actually published it. Presumably that’s DesmogBlog or whatever their goofy name is. They are the target of the libel/defamation suit if there’s going to be one.
The lie that Gleick made is comparable to a guy telling a girl he’s a movie producer in order to obtain sexual favors. No crime there and I doubt it would stand up as a civil case either but you can sue anyone for anything and the law is not always logical so that doesn’t mean there won’t be a civil case or that Gleick will prevail. Wire fraud is just outright ridiculous. No district attorney is going to sign off on that charge IMO.
I’m not going to judge the morality of Gleick’s lie about his identity. No scientific fraud was committed. No data was falsified. I really don’t care if he lied about who he was so long as he wasn’t impersonating a public official or trying to withdraw money from the real board member’s bank account and things of that nature. What Gleick did is covered under caveat emptor as far as I’m concerned. Heartland got suckered into telling their secrets. They should be more cautious about who they voluntarily email confidential documents to in the future.
I don’t blame you. I blame the people who didn’t instill in you the fundamental integrity necessary to function in a civil society.
David,
Try those ethics at a company that works with other people’s money, and if you are lucky you will only get fired.
“I really don’t care if he lied”
This is why people like you are one side and people like me are on the other.
Andrew
Yes, but Mr Gleick confirms for many in the public what we long term skeptics have been saying for years about the wizard behind the screen. Forget about the “science” for a moment and think about the public perception when a senior academic, who is on several committees (one of which he chairs on science ethics, no less), turns up using false pretenses to obtain documents from a perfectly legitimate libertarian think tank – that he just happens to dislike that much? The prosecutor of this case is first and foremost going to be the court of public opinion.
David, I tend to agree, the leak did not reflect well on the Heartland security, but really, there was nothing other than the names of the donors that seems to concern them, other than the fake document.
Gleick caved on the faked identity, but he created a cover story about the fake document worthy of a five year old, When he caves on that, then we will have a big story :) I will bet he caves like a 5 year old too, tears and the works, how igNobel.
The lie that Gleick made is comparable to a guy telling a girl he’s a movie producer in order to obtain sexual favors.
He didn’t pose as an ‘anonymous’ movie producer…he used the name of an actual HI board member. It’s called ‘criminal impersonation’. The penalties vary by state.
What’s the difference between –
Hi…I’m John Smith…one of your board members…I’ve lost my email password…could you send the documents to my private email account.
Or
Hi…I’m John Smith a social security recipient…I’ve moved…could you send my Social Security check to my new address.
Both are attempts to get something someone else is entitled to by ‘pretending’ to be that person.
Reblogged this on Tallbloke's Talkshop and commented:
I’m reposting this item from Judith Curry’s blog, ‘Climate etc’ here to open debate not only on Peter Gleick’s actions, but on the way the issue is being handled by mainstream media articles in the Guardian and elsewhere.
If you want to see why there is a koolaid shortage in the believer part of the blogosphere, go visit Dot Earth. Over there Gleick is a hero, HI is an evil organization that has no rights, cliamte is the most important thing in the world except maybe for population, and denialist scum are deliberately wicked 1%’s who deserve al that is coming to them.
And Revkin is being attacked for daring to point out that Gleick is less than a wonderful, honorable hard working man of science.
What a strange world Revkin’s fans have created for themselves. I hope they like koolaid.
Mr Gleick and his hero status over yonder provides a precautionary tale for all of us. It is too easy for humans to lose all touch with ethical virtue and therein lies the path to the depravity of the noble cause. We all must be cautious of our own built in ability to self hypnotize and leave scientific method dead and decomposing beside ourselves.
patrioticduo,
You are of course correct.
Rome, when it was a strong republic, would give a general a triumph (parade). On the chariot with the general would be a slave to whisper “Look behind you, remember you are only a man” in his ear as the crowds cheered.
Climate scientists would have benefited greatly from this before they became AGW promoters.
Hunter, I liked George C. Scott’s translation (as George Patton) in “Patton”: ‘All glory is fleeting” :-)
No.
What we “deniers” say is that the observed data does not support IPCC’s claims:
IPCC projection Graph => http://bit.ly/zA0a2j
IPCC projection Text => http://bit.ly/caEC9b
Comparison of IPCC projection with observation => http://bit.ly/z7cOHe
Bringing the above discrepancy between observation and AGW theory does not mean that we “deniers” are attacking scientists.
Actually, the true deniers are those who deny the observations.
Girma
Is it you that posts graphs and asserts that temperatures always keep with a degree or so of a central spine?. If so I might have something interesting for you
tonyb
Tonyb
Yes!
But only with 0.25 deg “or so of a central spine” => http://bit.ly/Aei4Nd
IPCC projected for a GMT of about 0.65 deg C for 2011, but the observation was only about 0.35 deg C.
This difference in GMT between IPCC’s projection and observation for 2011 of 0.3 deg C is greater than the GMT difference of 0.24 deg C between 1944 and 2011 => http://bit.ly/yWnViq
Most important of all, the globe is cooling => http://bit.ly/nz6PFx
Er, using your own dubious methodology, it can be demonstrated that the world is warming.
Why is your interpretation correct and mine wrong? And why doesn’t your answer apply to your interpretation vs the consensus one?
If Joe Romm is ignoring this, it is so out of character as to make one suspicious about his involvement.
Put it this way: when have any of you who know Joe Romm EVER seen him fail to seize upon any possible opportunity to repeatedly trash anyone doubting “the scientific consensus” in any possible “aha, gotcha” moment, particularly as it relates to a non-profit like Heartland?
Me thinks he doth protest too little!
How rich would it be if we find out Joe Romm wrote the fake “climate strategy” memo?!?!?!?!?
Much as I dislike his writings (the first time I encountered his site, I genuinely thought it was a parody), I give the man some credit.
I suspect he thought it smelled suspicious (even if he didn’t know exactly why) especially the too good to be true (from the warmist side) strategy memo, the moment he saw it. In that situation, the logical thing to do is to wait and see – because he could always cover it later,
It could be that he’s smart enough to stay out of it.
His original post did not make use of the fake document – though at first I was under the impression it did – and therefore he’s in the position of being able to steer clear from further involvement.
Just because you don’t agree with someone, don’t think they are stupid or driven by crass motive. Isn’t that part of what led to Peter Gleick’s current situation?
Dr Curry,
The short answer to the question you pose is – We can’t. There is a reason one should never give cause to be called a liar, thief or cheat – because once you have, your integrity and trustworthiness can rarely – if ever – be reclaimed.
NCSE says:
“On the same day as he posted his statement, however, he apologized to NCSE for his behavior with regard to the Heartland Institute documents and offered to withdraw from the board, on which he was scheduled to begin serving as of February 25, 2012. His offer was accepted.”
– – – – – – –
In their search for a replacement board member due to Gleick’s dismissal on ethical grounds, the NCSE should rule out climate scientists who have been publically shown wanting in ethical judgment. How about ruling out James Hansen with his protest related activities causing his arrest and Phil Jones with the Information Commissioner’s finding that UEA-CRU did violate FOIA laws but could not be prosecuted due to statute of limitations? Or how ruling out Michael Mann who is prominent in several UVa centered legal actions involving FOIA and activities related to grant fund use? Or how about ruling out scientists who were shown in CG1 & CG2 docs to subvert with premeditation the intent of the IPCC WG1 processes?
Perhaps the CSRRT can comment on what appears potentially to be a new strategy for those ideology centric climate scientists? Those scientists appear to be part of a ‘de facto’ martyr generating scenario. Planned?
John
“Translated to the climate war, Sun Tzu’s principles might look something like this:”
And not to be missed
“If your enemy is choleric – irritate him”
Thank you for an excellent analysis and write up of the Gleick fiasco. At least we now know that this is pure ideology, and as in all such, the ends justifies the means. They are the extremists.
Some now view Glieck as a hero whistleblower, apparently people who haven’t read Steve McIntyre’s and Megan McArdle’s detailed analyses of the many ways that the fake document does NOT echo facts in the real ones, but rather included “made up” facts. These “made up” facts, and the juicy quotes in which they are placed, made up most of the quotes used by the MSM.
Consider this: you can’t be a hero whistleblower if you blow the whistle on facts that you already know aren’t facts.
You could at least claim that you were trying to do the right thing, however, if you genuinely didn’t know that the fake memo was fake.
But suppose that you actually made up the fake memo yourself, and know that if this were known, you couldn’t claim whistleblower or hero status? You’d be scum on all sides of the issue. In such a case, your “confession” would attempt to make it look as if you hadn’t made up the fake memo.
Now, in the comments to Andy Rivkin’s coverage, comes this analysis, which comports with McIntyre’s and McArdle’s, which suggests that Glieck is lying about the provenance of the fake memo:
————————
Mr Glieck’s blatlanticog posting seems to inconsistent with the time line posted in the Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/leaked-docs-from-hea… (this is McArdle’s analysis)
He said he received the document in early 2012, but it was created on Feb 13, 3:41 PDT. The Atlantic say that it references the documents that Mr. Glieck had in his possession in many places and those documents weren’t created until January 16th.
John,
As we see here and on a sad number of other sites in abundance, critical thinking skills are not the strong point of the average AGW true believer.
“He said he received the document in early 2012, but it was created on Feb 13, 3:41 PDT”
It was scanned in on Feb 13 3:41 PDT? or created?
“On the one hand, Climategate involved a large number of people that were involved in the IPCC. Apart from the FOI avoidance that was arguably criminal, everyone seems to have been ‘cleared’ by the various investigations.”
Do you know anything about those investigations? I think you should have another look.
It occurs to me that maybe he was emotionally caught up in the structure of a scientific revolution paradigm in progress and the competing ethics and facts of the matter was just incommensurable? Perhaps in his possible future criminal proceedings he can argue diminished capacity?
Judith writes Gleick’s ‘integrity’ seems to have nothing to do with scientific integrity, but rather loyalty to and consistency with what I have called the UNFCCC/IPCC ideology….Gleick’s unethical action with respect to integrity has been to push fealty to the UNFCCC/IPCC ideology under the guise of promoting integrity and ethics in science.
No, it is more and worse than that.
On understanding ideology, I prefer and recommend my old mentor’s articulation, Kenneth Minogue, whose specialty is ideology (author of the classic “Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology”), because it is more powerful and pervasive rationalization than you have put it.
Minogue, prof emeritus at the London School of Economics and Political Science, in his briefest book’s chapter on ideology – “Politics: a Very Short Introduction” (Oxford) – explains that ideology has a tri-partite structure that replicates Christian salvation ethics.
If heaven is the solution, and sin is the obstacle, then the path to salvation is confession, etc. All political ideologies, most famously Marxism, reiterate this structure and the necessity of indirect action to defeat the enemy to achieve Heaven or utopia or whatever.
In classical Marxist ideology, communist utopia is blocked by the evil Capitalist, and the solution is worker (or proletarian) solidarity to depose the Capitalist.
Thus, this is the way in which to view Gleick’s downfall through ideology, as necessary path to defeat the Devil (Big Oil, capitalism, the evil rich, etc).
So–how has ideology infected Glieck’s mind and actions? (Mind you, pathological narcissism is clearly part of the picture of a man who falsified sea level data to the California Coastal Commission in order to bring “observation” in line with alarmist models.)
There is more to discover about him. I’ll let other build on my lead before taking my stab at puzzling out this human mystery because the above from Minogue is pregnant enough to get there.
Interesting. Actually, for Marx, only the new bourgeoisie and residual retrograde social formations of the time was doing ideology (eg., religion is the opiate of the masses) Marx was doing science, that is to say, Marx was beyond ideology ( a term coined by Napoleon as I recall). Subsequently the Marxists were unmasked for doing ideology also, and so ideology has come to mean any system of ideas regardless of its truth value or empirical status as science. In other words, as I understand the current situation, quantum mechanics and astrology are equally ideology, but that is not to say they’re equally valuable. They is what they is, and one cannot deduce which ideology one ought to use from what is. Apparently Hume is still relevant.
Such fake concern about ethics from Curry.
While the people who were justifying the marketing of cigarettes to children are caught buying people like Bob Carter to deliberately misrepresent science and little Ms Curry is only interested in repremanding those who exposed them.
Ms Curry seems rather determined to defend the right of wealthy people to buy off ‘scientists’ anonomously and for those ‘scientists like Carter to lie about funding.
Perhaps Ms Curry is hoping for some of the money to come her way.
dorlomin
What a totally inappropriate and stupid comment.
1st you do not know what David was planning to teach so you have inappropriately jumped to a prejudiced conclusion that it would not accurately represent the issues that are in dispute.
2nd the issue of what was done regarding some prior issue (smoking) has nothing to do with what Heartland was considering having developed, or Curry’s belief that Glick’s illegal actions were damaging to the reputation of all scientists in the eyes of much of the public.
3rd- nothing was actually exposed that damages Heartland or David. What was exposed was that a climate scientist will go to any lengths to continue to try to advance the views that they are unable to convince people are correct via an open and honest discussion. The public will in all likelihood believe that those fearing cAGW are more likely to be untruthful about facts and data than they would have otherwise been if the incident had not happened.
Oh my. The believers are a wee bit touchy. Now if a person who has an opinion that differs fromthe AGW consensus and gets paid, they are being paid to lie? Do you actually think Bob Carter fabricated his opinion on AGW out of whole cloth at the behest of the wicked Heartland Institute?
And this persistent idea that cigarettes cause global warming is an odd but small delusion.
How about welathy people like al gore seeking to profit massively off of AGW fear? Or how about the companies that received federal monies to develop solar power and simply spent the money and shutdown? Or warren Buffet supporting lies about the Keystone pipeline so he could get railroad transport contracts for the oil?
And I bet you find Peter Gleick a great hero of science, don’t you?
dorlomin
just when I think people cant get any smaller, they do. You take the cake.
Who do you think you are dorlomin to go around slandering a good man like Bob Carter. What a grubby lot you warmists are.
Bob Carter has respect tenfold compared to the previous chair of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Task Force on Scientific Integrity.AGU.
Bob Carter seeks truth, not money. He is your typical, previously respected scientific type, who walks around with holes in the bum of his trousers, for lack of a care for money.
I fell that its time for us all to move on. The subject has been given a good airing in previous threads and everyone appreciates just how deep a hole Peter Gleick has dug for himself. The element of hypocracy that has been demonstrated is immeasureable.
It can’t move on, until the strategy memo is exposed as fake and its author revealed. The story’s not even half over yet.
Joe Romm has spoken
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/02/21/428884/crossing-the-line-heartland-institute-peter-gleick-and-andrew-revkin/
Agrees that Gleick was wrong, but spends most of his time trashing Revkin
Dr. Curry,
Thanks. What a hoot. Blame the victim: How dare that strumpet dress like that? it is all her fault she was assaulted. and having Romm wailing away on Revkin: Poor Andy.
I’m sure Gleick under the bus may well have saved Revkin his job. An unfortunate result if that is the case but it’s how it goes in real life.
Here’s another guy who should lose his spot at forbes;
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevezwick/2012/02/21/heroes-and-zeroes-in-the-heartland-gleick-says-he-leaked-docs/
For those who were so easily led down the primrose path by the UN, the EU and Al Gore’s CO2 fire and brimstone poliscience just stop to think of for moment: idiots with the right to vote are causing the fall of Western civilization; we have seen Greece fall in our lifetime.
Joshua,
In response to you asking me to opine on your comment 76 over at Pielke Jr:
I generally agree with you, at least to a point. I don’t know Peter Gleick personally and he may have many redeeming qualities.
Most certainly his integrity with regard to climate science and perhaps any field of science may be permenantly compromised. Which in one sense is a shame, as the little I’ve read from him on his area of expertise – water issues – seems rather good.
I agree that we are human and subject to error. As a Christian (well Catholic specifically) I was taught in the power of forgiveness. In this instance I’m not the one needing to forgive. No harm was done to me. I also believe that to be forgiven, one should have true remorse. Not remorse for what one’s actions have brought down on you, but remorse for the harm you’ve done others.
PS – I stopped reading once I hit the sentence on tribalism. I know that’s dear to your heart, but it just doesn’t raise any spark for me.
Gotta go. Docter’s appointment and then my son’s birthday. Plus it’s a short week. Thursday I’ll be out with HS students working on a urban tree inventory as part of their science project.
Apparently Romm and his acolytes seem to think it is OK to defraud and steal in the name of the ’cause’!
“When ‘Heartlandgate’ first broke, I saw no parallels with Climategate.”
thank you, hacker/whistleblower
Integrity seems to just depend on whose “cause”.
Something you want to confess to, Nick?
Indeed, Nick :-)
Obviously any skeptic/organization gets a free pass for saying or doing anything. Just watch out if scientists make a mistake. You’ll hear about it for (literally) a decade.
Chris, I see you have a relatively honest post at RC on this. But some of your statements in this thread are less honest. One thing that you seem to believe and that keeps getting repeated is the moral equivalence between Gleick and FOIA. See my comment lower in this thread. Basically, the difference is one of relevance to important issues. The emails shed a lot of light on scientific issues such as the correctness of the Hockey stick graph. FOIA I note redacted personal information from his releases, presumably to protect scientists from personal consequences. Gleick’s dump has no scientific significance and is just his attempt to even old scores. He didn’t redact personal information I presume because he wanted to do maximum personal damage to his enemies.
“Basically, the difference is one of relevance to important issues. The emails shed a lot of light on scientific issues such as the correctness of the Hockey stick graph.”
This is just an argument that it’s OK because it’s supporting the cause.
Nick (also Chris Colose), precisely.
Dr Curry seems quite happy to make moralising judgements about Gleick with one hand as the other draws a veil over Heartland’s (at best) dubious activities. At the same time a third hand tries to cook up some vague, airy-fairy connection between Gleick’s angle on integrity and her bete noir, the IPCC, and yet a fourth ignores the moral (if not legal) implications of the hacking of the UEA server and her own part in disseminating and promulgating the misinformation that followed.
Given Dr Curry is one of the most consistent (if not the loudest) voices in the “climategate!!!1!1” choir, her attitude to Gleick’s misdemeanours is no surprise. What does grate is her espousal of principles of ethical behaviour and their rigid application to other parties while simultaneously side-stepping the need to apply the same principled scrutiny to her own actions.
Heartland’s (at best) dubious activities.
Essentially, their exposing of deep dishonesty and incompetance at the heart of alarmist climate science. Dubious indeed.
.. cook up some vague, airy-fairy connection between Gleick’s angle on integrity and her bete noir, the IPCC,
So Glieck is in no way connected with them ?
ignores the moral (if not legal) implicatios of the hacking of the UEA server and her own part in disseminating and promulgating the misinformation that followed.
UEA is public property, there are no/few moral implications. Especially given the widespread sabotaging of publicly funded climate science it revealed.
SteveC2
You’ve packed so many screwy statements into one post, it’s really hard to comment, but let me try.
Heartland is a privately funded organization that can do whatever it wants to do, provided it does not break any laws. It’s activities are pretty straightforward. In the ongoing scientific and political debate surrounding global warming, Heartland has critiqued the IPCC AR4 report, which is its full right. There is nothing that Judith needs to “draw a veil over”.
What “third hand”? There is no doubt that Gleick has supported the “mainstream consensus” CAGW position being promoted by IPCC. Was he acting directly on behalf of IPCC when he did the utterly stupid Heartland thing? Most likely not. Was he trying to act in IPCC’s interest by discrediting a serious critic of IPCC and its report? (I’ll let you guess an answer to that question.)
Climategate has nothing to do with this screw-up. First, Climategate addressed work that was publicly funded (i.e. in the public domain) and demonstrated that FOI requests for such info had been systematically denied and stonewalled. (Heartland is a private organization; there are no FOI stipulations for their work, as it is not in the public domain.)
Second, there were no faked documents involved in Climategate, as there were in the Heartland fiasco.
“Judith’s part” in Climategate was strictly secondary, i.e. commenting on how it tarnished the image of climate science in general and the “mainstream insider” group in particular.
Look around you. Our host is certainly NOT the “most consistent (if not the loudest) voices in the “climategate!!!1!1″ choir”. And she has pretty well expressed the reasons for her dismay at “Gleick’s misdemeanors”: i.e. that he was chair of an AGU ethics committee at the time (of all things!) and that he had berated her for her behavior earlier.
This statement is pure, unsubstantiated vitriol. Her own actions have been “squeaky clean” and you have presented no evidence to the contrary
Your whole post was about as close to pure childish polemic BS as anything I’ve seen posted here, Steve.
But I will agree with you on one thing: Climategate and the Heartland fiasco have one major thing in common: they have hurt the IPCC cause by exposing its rotten underbelly..
Max
.
Compare the ethics of this young fellow compared to our wounded subject.
Compare the ethics of this young fellow compared to our wounded subject.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/22/omitted-variable-fraud-vast-evidence-for-solar-climate-driver-rates-one-oblique-sentence-in-ar5/
This is getting better by the minute, I don’t even think we are going to get time to replenish the popcorn.
Steve,
The speck in the other person’s eye, and all that…….
For supposedly grownups, some of you behave like a bunch of spoiled little children.
Kim @ 3.o4
+1
That damned ground!
Dr, Curry:
You are a real scientist. Thank you.
Marlo Lewis takes on DeSmog and the Gang of Mann:
http://www.globalwarming.org/2012/02/21/stolen-heartland-documents-desmog-blog-keeps-blowing-smoke/
Judith Curry
So far there has been a semblance of sanity in this whole sorry Heartland episode:
– Over eager activist (Gleick) fakes data in order to smear opponent (Heartland).
– Over eager activist gets caught – fake is exposed.
– Over eager activist admits he made mistakes and apologizes (sort of), while still bashing opponent.
– Over eager activist is disgraced and forced to resign from some honorary posts.
But now Joe Romm enters the equation and things become more like “looney tunes”.
Romm’s analysis already starts off poorly with a bit of (rather ineffective) fear mongering:
But it gets worse.
Huh? Unethical? I though the topic here was the unethical and arguably illegal conduct of Peter Gleick a CAGW activist posing as a scientist.
But the diversionary diatribe continues:
Romm then gently moves to the issue at hand:
What? I can’t believe what I’m reading here.
Romm then actually mentions the topic, but with a warm-up, rather than naming the guilty party:
“Ruin their future?” Hmmm…
And then to the revelation of fraud (without calling it such):
So Gleick is now the “good guy”, who “apologized for his mistakes”, which in turn makes him a more honest person than his opponent (Heartland).
Romm then quotes Gleick’s statement (or defense brief), in which he rationalizes his unethical behavior, ending with:
Note that Gleick does not directly admit that he created the fake document which he leaked, nor does Romm mention it.
Romm then attacks NYT columnist James Revkin for his scathing criticism of Gleick, in which he specifically mentions the document faked by Gleick. Romm states that “an act of this nature [Revkin’s article] could ruin a reputation or destroy his [Gleick’s] credibility”.
Ouch! Gleick has already done that, all by himself, without any help from Revkin.
The rest of Romm’s write-up is all about the hypocrisy and dishonesty – not of Gleick – but, instead of Revkin! In a classical “shoot the messenger” ploy he concludes:
Romm then speculates on who faked the Heartland document (a Heartland insider?), in an obvious attempt to fog up the issue and move suspicion away from Gleick.
This whole writeup is a sorry piece of rationalizations, attempted cover-ups, obfuscations, false accusations and side tracks to get the attention off of what really happened.
But, hey, it’s typical Joe Romm stuff. Whadja expect?
Max
It seems a few people learned something from Climategate, AGU stands out here
Romm is, to put it diplomatically, disturbed.
Maybe, but I think he truly believes that the world is headed towards disaster.
I tend to view ideology as the enemy of pragmatism. When an ideologue meets facts that disagree with his ideology, usually it is ideology that wins.
Consequently, I consider ideologues in general to be very dangerous people. Fortunately they rarely succeed in politics.
You do know that the Heartland Institute is an ideological institution?
You do know that the IPCC, NOAA, UEA, CRU, NAS, et al. are all ideological institutions?
They are scientific organizations tasked with doing climate research.
Heartland is not. It’s the odd one out.
Heartland’s mission is to “discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.”
It isn’t to discover how climate works or to perform an unbiased literature review.
There is a reason why Heartland is involved in publishing a literature review on climate, but not say geology or astronomy.
The IPCC was a political organization from its inception. The rest are ostensibly scientific organizations, but long since abdicated that role with respect to “climate science.” Anyone who believes that Hansen, Schmidt, Jones and company are not ideological is…well…an ideologue himself.
The IPCC is tasked with reviewing the science. Contrary to what certain people claim it does a good job of that.
Contrast that with the Heartland Institute’s NIPCC report which we now know is funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Here’s the list for the cryosphere section:
4.1 The Cryosphere
4.1.1 Antarctica
4.1.2 Greenland and Eurasian Ice Caps
4.1.3 Montane Glaciers
4.1.4 Sea and Lake Ice
The only quick mention of arctic sea ice is in the introduction:
“Evidence shows that much of the reported thinning of Arctic sea ice that occurred in the 1990s was a natural consequences of changes in ice dynamics caused by an atmospheric regime shift, of which there have been several in decades past and will likely be several in the decades to come, totally irrespective of past or future changes in the air‘s CO2 content. The Arctic appears to have recovered from its 2007 decline (Idso and Singer 2009, p. 4).”
Utter rubbish. And these people have the gal to criticize the IPCC.
Why is a political think tank playing science anyway? Do they do detailed literature reviews like this for string theory and astronomy?
Why climate? Come on the answer is obvious and it has nothing to do with science and all to do with politics.
A report where everything must be the opposite of what the IPCC report says.
let’s let Heartland speak for itself:
“The mission of The Heartland Institute is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. Such solutions include parental choice in education, choice and personal responsibility in health care, market-based approaches to environmental protection, privatization of public services, and deregulation in areas where property rights and markets do a better job than government bureaucracies.
The Heartland Institute is a national nonprofit research and education organization with offices in Chicago and Washington DC. Founded in 1984, it is tax exempt under Section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code. It is not affiliated with any political party, business, or foundation.
Heartland has gained the endorsement of some of the top scholars, thinkers and politicians in the world – including Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman, former Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus, Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist, radio talk show host and constitutional scholar Mark R. Levin, and conservative Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). See all the heavyweights who praise Heartland here.”
http://heartland.org/mission
they are very open about what they do. Nothing that was stolen by Gleick about them shows anything different.
The reactionary hatred many AGW believers have towards Heartland tells more about them than HI
Dopey says;
‘Utter rubbish. And these people have the gal to criticize the IPCC.”
About cover at either pole, they are wrong and should be not just criticized, but condemned for the fear they have propitiated, over their dud predictions for whatever arctic pole.
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL050713.pdf
Why is a political think tank playing science anyway, you ask. Tell me please why do warmists play with science?
“They are scientific organizations tasked with doing climate research.
Heartland is not. It’s the odd one out.”
Does anyone see this as scary & crazy point that lolwot is making?
‘gbaikie’
I think most of Lolwot says is scary & crazy. He engages in crackpottery. Whereas, with Joshua, I just think he is crazy.
“You do know that the Heartland Institute is an ideological institution?”
Of course I do. Similarly, I know that the IPCC has a big dose of ideology in its genesis and its makeup. I also recognize that many of the more outspoken climate scientists, such as Hansen, Mann and Gleick are ideologues first, scientists second. Although they might not have started out that way.
The truth is out there, and nobody has an exclusive on it. It almost certainly lies somewhere in the middle, between the more extreme views.
That is why I have been so concerned that politicians, who can generally be relied on to be more pragmatic and not listen overly much to the ravings of ideologues, fell so badly for the CAGW propaganda.
GaryM;
“Anyone who believes that Hansen, Schmidt, Jones and company are not ideological is…well…an ideologue himself.”
Clearly, I agree. How do you explain Dr. Curry’s nebulus posture on this specific question?
Actually the IPCC, for one, is an overtly political and ideological institution, with its founding charter calling for the “protection of global climate for present and future generations.” Sounds like a governmental action to me.
Four of its five directing actions are overtly political and cannot remotely be called “scientific.”
http://www.ipcc.ch/docs/UNGA43-53.pdf
lolwot,
If you continue to ignore or deny the fact of the IPCC being a political organization then you pretty much are tatooing the word ideologue on your forehead.
tim,
You don’t seem to understand what ‘political’ means in this sense. HI has overtly political goals and is ‘political’ in precisely the sense you mean.
What the IPCC is, is very clearly denoted by the ‘I’ in IPCC.
Some quotes from the Feynman cargo cult lecture (Caltech commencement address given in 1974) that captures what has happened here in regards to “scientific integrity” and some of the AGW proponents:
“It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty–a kind of leaning over backwards. ”
“In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.”
“We’ve learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature’s phenomena will agree or they’ll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it’s this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the
research in cargo cult science.”
Some of these AGW people are proponents – aka “cargo cult scientists” – the truth is coming out and some are apparently willing to trash their career and reputation for “the cause”.
You have all likely heard or read this by now but it is too delicious not to etch on this page:
“After you have convinced people that you fervently believe your cause to be more important than telling the truth, you’ve lost the power to convince them of anything else.”
Megan McArdle on “Peter Gleick Confesses…”. The Atlantic.
Lets put it into context. He babbled on about integrity, wrote articles, testified to Congress, established a foundation. Apparently he did not understand why his group’s superior global warming science, or just “science” as they call it, was under attack, so demonizing the opposition with the lack of integrity charge seemed like a good idea. Another idea for keeping out the opposition was to take control of scientific media and make sure that any articles opposing their science could not be published. But darn it, some editors would not toe the line and had to be deposed of. And then there was the press which, with the exception of a few mavericks, now reports their science and buries opposing views in the back pages. Plus, they have an active political arm that successfully lobbied governments to fund them. The Federal budget for 2012, for example, includes 2.6 billion dollars for climate research. All of it goes to support work tilted to proving that global warming is real. Of the avalanche of global warming papers that their billions in funding have unleashed there are piles that are totally worthless and there are none that I know of which could be called important new scientific advances. And of course it is all done in a good cause – to save us from Armageddon that is sure to come if we do not bow down to the integrity of his science. But hey, wait, what’s this about “noble cause corruption” your opponents keep shouting? Oh, I see. End justifies the means. Lysenko would understand.
+1. But do watchout for Josh. He gets the vapors around the word “Lysenko”. It is not at all clear he knows what the term refers to, but he knows it is berry berry bad.
Joe Romm has spoken :-)
First the image of a burning world, then the softening up diatribe, before, well yes, Gleik did maybe, well… BUT ‘in this sewer of unethical and immoral actions we all have tough choices, most especially climate scientists.’
So I guess that’s alright then.
don@5.28pm
LOL Yes, incommensurable. Every Kuhnsian knows you can’t compare apples with oranges.
Recent popularity contest winners and also rans – current standings:
836 – Heartland document leak
644 – What if CO2 warming is a colossal mistake?
446 – Gleick-2
315 – Gleick-1
290 – Fast Climate Emission Reduction
241 – Ergodicity
241 – BEST temperature dataset
158 – Hurst-Kolmogorov climate phenomena
76 – Autocorrelation
It is amazing how the non-technical threads attract more comments. People are naturally interested in the personalities and the human drama.
Fred – so what? I read the technical threads, but I rarely contribute to them because – they’re technical. I’m not competent in most cases to say anything. My guess is that many here would say the same thing. I suggest you get off your high horse and stop making arrogant insinuations.
How many times did you use the word ‘forcing’?
Cross posted from Climate audit.
WSJ video interview with Joe Bast.
http://online.wsj.com/video/opinion-the-purloined-climate-papers/F3DAA9D5-4213-4DC0-AE0D-5A3D171EB260.html
I hope the link works. Some of their stuff is subscriber only.
“Romm is, to put it diplomatically, disturbed.”
So many of them are, it seems. Would anyone call Michael Mann normal? Phil Jones? How about Gleick? Were those the actions of a stable personality? Romm of course is a full on, baying at the moon lunatic.
There’s something deeply disturbing about how angry and desperate these guys are. The whole damn team. Of course this makes sense considering how invested they are, and how badly things are going for them. But to a great extent we all create our own tsoris… to use the Yiddish word for suffering and trouble. These are not men I would trust to walk my dog, much less decide how we should live our lives..
If anyone, who opposes the TEAM, stole the identity of one the TEAM members and distributed illegally obtained ‘private’ information, they would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of law because the TEAM would scream injustice and the media would simply go nuts.
I do not know who or what the ‘Heartland Institute’ really is. It doesn’t matter. It is a privately funded organization. Unless taxpayer money is being used, it is their information alone. PERIOD. NO FURTHER DISCUSSION.
The real issue being hidden in this scandal is taxpayer funded organizations with no accountability, no transparency, and clandestine objectives.
It’s kind of amazing that this point has zero value in leftist circles and few mention it at all. In the AGW culture employee rights of government funded science are greater than private rights. Kinda crazy but that sums it up. The “cause” is more important than private property rights, expect the point to be ignored or worse. Note also, Dr. Curry hardly covers this point directly. It’s on the tenth burner, of little importance.
All the Climategate comparisons are nonsense, 100% nonsense on this point alone. Thanks for posting it.
I haven’t read the 455 comments, but will go to a traditional source to define “integrity:” my 1956 version of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, which says:
Integrity 1450. 1. The condition of having no part or element wanting; unbroken state; material wholeness, completeness, entirety. 2. Unimpaired or uncorrupted state; original perfect condition; soundness 1450; 3. a. Innocence, sinlessness – 1678. b. Soundness of moral principle; the character of uncorrupted virtue; uprightness, honesty, sincerity 1548.
Clearly, 1 and 2 relate to material things, although concepts such as “uncorrupted state” and “soundness” can be applied to conduct. In terms of human conduct, and in the Gleick context, we are looking at 3a and 3b. I’ve always linked honesty and integrity in my mind, and this definition – innocence, soundness of moral principle, uprightness etc, is what we are talking about here and in the AGU ethics context. So we can not “reconcile Gleick’s possibly criminal behavior with his essays and testimony on scientific integrity.” He has presented himself one way, indeed as an authority in the field, then acted in direct contradiction to it. He is a hypocrite who can be given no credence or respect on matters of ethics and integrity.
This episode does seem to me to be significant for how it highlights the hypocracy of the climate science establishment. It might be different if Gleick was your run of the mill biased commenter at Real Climate. Instead he has presented himself as a paragon of ethics and virtue and concern for the planet.
Schmidt did condemn Gleick’s actions but I do think Real Climate harbors a very prejudiced attitude toward HI. They do imagine them to be the most vile sort of liars, not honest believers in libertarian principles trying to focus on important issues. This sort of hatred and prejudice was probably the basis of Gleick’s lapse. If you underestimate your opponent, you “save the last bullet for yourself.” There is a further element having to do with leftist ideology which I think Real Climate types are not self reflective enough to realize. Leftist ideology always imagines that corporations and conservatives are morally bankrupt instead of just wrong. The first rule of morality is to give people the benefit of the doubt in terms of their “thoughts and motivations.” Judge people by their actions., HI’s actions are far less grevious than those of Greenpeace which also regularly promotes misrepresentations of science or many other activist groups. At least HI hires actual scientists who occasionally make contributions, no matter how much they are hated by RC. This hatred is a symptom of ideological over reach and arrogance.
I think it would be hard to be more passive aggressive than Schmidt in his anal fixation for having the last word on every issue and being very sarcastic and arrogant about it. On his site, he gets his way. In a more open public forum, you lose with this strategy. Every time I go there, and its very infrequent, I am turned off. Judith’s more relaxed attitude speaks of self confidence and a desire to allow the truth to work itself out in the blog process. A confident leader is not afraid of diverse opinions and can be confident that the truth will out.
And I’m tired of the line that there is a moral equivalence between Gleick and the Cllimategate hacker/whistleblower. FOIA did redact personal information from his downloads. Gleick by contrast wants to inflict maximum damage on HI’s people and their doners and so redacts nothing. There is real malfeasance revealed in the emails and its important for showing just how wrong the Hockey stick surely is. That’s an important scientific question. The dump by Gleick has no implications whatsoever for any important issue. It’s just his attempt to destroy his enemies that will end up destroying him.
Your point is specious. It is the responsibility of the publishing entity to redact as they see fit. Gleick, as the distributor of the material, did not reveal publicly anyone’s identity or details.
Dr. Curry’s point 6, that the ‘fossil fuel industry’ is funding wicked denialist scum like the Heartland Institute to prevent mitigatory policies from happening is an effective summary of one of the many big lies the AGW community pushes.
The fact is that big oil funds big enviro in a big way:
From No Frakking Consensus:
“In May 2010, during the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Washington Post reported that the owner of the affected oil rig, British Petroleum, had donated nearly $10 million to the Nature Conservancy in recent years. For a time, BP’s chief executive, John Browne, sat on the board of another green group, Conservation International – which received $2 million from the oil giant (backup link here). Among the additional tidbits in the same news article:
The Environmental Defense Fund, which has a policy of not accepting corporate donations [nevertheless] joined with BP, Shell International and other major corporations [in 2007] to form the Partnership for Climate Action…And about 20 energy and environmental groups…joined with BP Wind Energy [in 2008] to form the American Wind and Wildlife Institute…
Lots of green groups, therefore, have relationships with fossil fuel companies. That climate skeptics alone are condemned for going near them is bizarre.
Two weeks ago Time magazine revealed that,
between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from…Chesapeake Energy – one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S… [backup link here]”
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2012/02/17/big-oil-money-for-me-but-not-for-thee/
It would seem the list of things claimed by the AGW community that turns out to be true is short indeed.
Megan McArdle at the Atlantic, who is neither a skeptic nor a denier, has an excellent new column about Glieck’s resignation:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/peter-gleick-confesses-to-obtaining-heartland-documents-under-false-pretenses/253395/
In it, toward the bottom, she raises journalistic questions which strongly imply that Peter Glieck has yet to come clean, and implies he likely is the author of the fake document. Here is what she says:
“….The other thing one must note is that his story is a little puzzling. We know two things about the memo:
1. It must have been written by someone who had access to the information in the leaked documents, because it uses precise figures and frequent paraphrases.
2. It was probably not written by anyone who had intimate familiarity with Heartland’s operations, because it made clear errors about the Koch donations–the amount, and the implied purpose. It also hashed the figures for a sizable program, and may have made other errors that I haven’t identified.
Did someone else gain access to the documents, write up a fake memo, and then snail mail that memo to Dr. Gleick? Why didn’t they just send him everything?
If an insider was the source of the memo, as some have speculated, why did it get basic facts wrong? (I have heard a few suggestions that this was an incredibly elaborate sting by Heartland. If so, they deserve a prominent place in the supervillain Hall of Fame.)
Why did the initial email to the climate bloggers claim that Heartland was the source of all the documents, when he couldn’t possibly have known for sure that this was where the climate strategy memo came from?
Why was this mailed only to Gleick? Others were mentioned in the memo, but none of them seem to have been contacted–I assume that after a week of feeding frenzy, anyone else who was mailed a copy would have said something by now.
How did his anonymous correspondent know that Gleick would go to heroic lengths to obtain confidential material which confirmed the contents, and then distribute the entire package to the climate blogs?
How did the anonymous correspondent get hold of the information in the memo?
I’m sure crazier things have happened, and as someone who has had an unbelievable encounter or two in her life, I always err on the side of believing people. But I would like more details on this story. When did Gleick receive the memo? Was there a cover letter? From where was it postmarked? Presumably he has saved the envelope and the original letter, so will he turn them over to a neutral party for investigation? I’m sure Heartland can come up donors for some forensics.”
If you want to review the power of blogs in this matter here is an interesting timeline summary of events;
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/peter-gleick-confesses-to-obtaining-heartland-documents-under-false-pretenses/253395/
It will be of interest to see how this flows into more mainstream media in the coming weeks and who will stonewall the story completely. The problem for the NY Times during a full propaganda cycle (Team Obama reelection effort) is especially interesting. Dotearth is a wounded duck, if they don’t print quickly and the story has legs it will be worse for the election “cause” which right now is the priority “cause” in question.
I can see more Greens under a bus quickly in this dynamic.
What are the odds that scientists involved in corrupt practices, motivated by a consuming and obsessive ideology, and dependent on rivers of money for subsistence are going to get the science right?
Joe Bast video interview for the WSJ in which he says:
“Gleick “impersonated a board member of the Heartland Institute, stole his identity by creating a fake email address, and proceeded to use that fake email address to steal documents that were prepared for a board meeting. He read those documents, concluded that there was no smoking gun in them, and then forged a two-page memo” (from WUWT update).
http://online.wsj.com/video/opinion-the-purloined-climate-papers/F3DAA9D5-4213-4DC0-AE0D-5A3D171EB260.html
I’m wondering why Bast said this. Either it’s a tactic – wanting Bast to deny it – or he has evidence to prove it. Or both.
He’s probably quite confident that Gleick won’t be suing HI for defamation of character.
If I thought Bast was smarter than the average bear I’d wonder if HE sent the alleged forgery to Gleick just to bait Gleick into doing something that would ruin his influence in the climate controversy. If he did it worked admirably well. Gleick is persona non grata at NSCE, AGU, and any other legitimate concern with a reputation to protect. The NAS has yet to disown him however, at least that I know of, but I bet they’d like to. Gleick has been effectively neutered and as an NAS member that’s a rather big deal as membership in that club generally commands a lot of respect.
Sorry – I should have said “wanting Gleick to deny it”.
Dr Curry wrote:
What evidence do you have that supports your statement that Peter Gleick stole any property of Heartland Institute?
What evidence do you have that supports your statement that Peter Gleick stole any property of Heartland Institute?
Merely his confession I assume.
Do you have the authority to speak on behalf of Dr Curry?
Does HI not have physical possession of the documents? You act as if it was the only known copy of a book or something that was taken from HI. It isn’t. There is nothing physical missing from HI’s possession. HI divulged confidential information and they weren’t dreprived of anything even as trivial as a piece of paper, an envelope, or a postage stamp. The moral of the story here is to exercise more caution in whom you give up your secrets to and this failure on HI’s part to guard their donor’s and employee’s confidential information in a competent manner won’t go unnoticed by future donors or employees. In all the faux outrage over Gleick’s lying the point that HI fell for Gleick’s amateur deceit like a bunch of bumbling idiots seems to have been lost.
In Court David we look for the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
You have insensitivity smeared a receptionist, as was explained by HI.
I will accept his confession to theft even over the production of his telephone call records in discovery.
David,
phishing happens all the time, even with companies who take steps to make employees aware of the tactic and guard against it. I’m not sure why you keep beating this particular drum.
SteveC2,
Has your extremism blinded you to the basic English language?
Steve,
I bet your dad was faced with the constant choice of how to address you – either dumbass or numbnuts.
Gleick admitted to stealing the documents. What further proof are you looking for?
As others have linked, Megan McArdle has summed up this regrettable episode in a single sentence
It has been mentioned by some that Gleick must have consulted an attorney.
If he did this raises some serious questions like “What attorney would ever advise a client to confess to a crime where there had yet to even be any charge filed?”
The answer is that no competent attorney would ever offer that advice. Now if Gleick DID consult an attorney and the attorney advised him that no criminal statutes had been violated and that there were no actionable civil causes over the documents that HI emailed to Gleick because they verified them as true and correct THEN Gleick’s confession is simply a moral/ethical decision for Gleick with no criminal/civil liabilities to consider.
The key in this is that Gleick DID NOT admit to forging anything except a name on an email account which, given that he obtained no money, services, or other qualifying property under wire fraud statutes, nor did he seek such property, there’s no civil or criminal cause of action that I can determine. A confidential document has no intrinsic worth and the fact remains that HI willingly emailed it to an unknown address. It isn’t theft when you gift wrap it and hand it out and it isn’t theft when the property is not copyrighted, patented, or otherwise designated as intellectual property. Trade secrets, which is essentially what this is, enjoy no legal protection as real property. Many if not most of you here have no real comprehension of what kinds of things are protected by property rights and what are not.
Of course these are things for a judge and jury to decide if it can rise above the bar where a barrister will begin an action and a judge will accept it and that isn’t going to happen precisely because there is no cause of action.
It’s legal to lie most of the time and you can’t sue people for it most of the time unless the lie was used to obtain money, goods, or services. Lying to et someone to tell you a secret isn’t illegal. It might be unethical or even immoral but it isn’t illegal. Imagine how many lies are told by men to wwomen in the pursuit of sexual congress. If he does it by telephone or email you think it becomes wire fraud? Think again.
I agree that Peter Gleick did nothing illegal. Unethical yes; lying yes; and cheating maybe. This is no more than what has been shown by Climategates I and II and my bet is that no charges will be laid.
Peter, you write “I agree that Peter Gleick did nothing illegal. Unethical yes; lying yes; and cheating maybe. This is no more than what has been shown by Climategates I and II and my bet is that no charges will be laid.”
I have 5 quatloos that say that the Peter Gleick did do something illiegal, and that he will be charged. And you make a complete mistake about Climategate. There is zero evidence that anything illegal happened there. The police have been looking for 2 years or more, and dont seem to have got very far. To me, by far the most likely explanation, is that Joens el al, made a file of the most incriminating documents, to hide somewhwere in their computers, and delete from the main places. Then any FOI investigation would not find the messages, but they would not have committed a crime, because these messages had not actually been deleted. They would then be put back when the smoke cleared. They then left this file, unguarded, on the computer, and someone found it. A much more likely explanation that anything else I have seen.
I wouldn’t bet on it:
http://law.onecle.com/california/penal/529.html
Jim I never said that any illegality was uncovered by Climategate. In fact it is this point that makes me conclude that Peter Gleick did not do anything more than what the climategate crew did.
David, Your misreading of the wire fraud law is amazing.
The mental gymnastics you display in rationalizing what Gleick did are worthy of a gold medal.
Oh, and David, by the way: You and your fellow Gleick defenders should never work in a regulated financial business. You would end up in jail.
Irony isn’t quite the right word is it? Those making excuses and rationalizations for Gleick are the same sort of people who support OWS rallies and complain about greedy “bankers” without understanding the financial system is largely screwed up by massive top-down government authority. That the worst cronies are those empowered by large government which they always support more of.
Ironic and stupid all at once. It’s like they slept through the 20th century missing everything that could be observed. Could they come up with a policy idea like cap and trade/carbon tax that isn’t just likely to cheat the poor and working classes they pretend to champion it guarantees it. Really, it’s always this way. Just consider the leadership of these people.
It’s hard to describe how many ways this comment is wrong.
“…given that he obtained no money, services, or other qualifying property under wire fraud statutes, nor did he seek such property, there’s no civil or criminal cause of action that I can determine.”
Lying can give rise to both civil liability and criminal culpability even without the acquisition of “money, services, etc.” Defamation is one example that comes readily to mind. It would only be the faked strategy memo that would give rise to such liability. And all the proof David Wojick or Heartland would need to show is the comments throughout the blogoshpere attacking their integrity and their “plan” to prevent teachers from teaching science to children. Then there’s section 529 of the California penal Code which I’ve posted before that seems to be directly on point. Intent to harm the person the faked document is used against makes it criminal.
“A confidential document has no intrinsic worth….”
Wrong, and dumb.
“It isn’t theft when you gift wrap it and hand it out and it isn’t theft when the property is not copyrighted, patented, or otherwise designated as intellectual property.”
Bzzzzttt, Wrong again. It isn’t robbery when you use deceit instead of force, it is still theft. It is questionable whether the electronic transmission of documents would constitute a theft here, and it is irrelevant (except as to the amount of damages) whether the documents were “copywrited” etc.
“Trade secrets, which is essentially what this is, enjoy no legal protection as real property.”
Given that “real property” means land and improvements thereon, this is technically true, but still…bzzzttt…way wrong. Trade secrets are indeed treated as personal property. Although it is probably also wrong to say that these documents are “essentially” trade secrets. They likely are not.
“Many if not most of you here have no real comprehension of what kinds of things are protected by property rights and what are not.”
Change the “Many if not most of you” to a “I” and this one is spot on. The writer has about as much knowledge of the law with respect to property as he does about the likely global average temperature in 2100.
“It’s legal to lie most of the time and you can’t sue people for it most of the time unless the lie was used to obtain money, goods, or services. Lying to [g]et someone to tell you a secret isn’t illegal.”
This is the same mistake as above. In fact, lying to obtain “sexual congress” has been charged as rape in the past. Not the generic “I love you” type of lie, but in cases of “false impersonation” which are more analagous to this instance,
It is illegal to falsely impersonate a law enforcement officer, to falsely hold yourself out as a lawyer (even where money is not involved), a member of the judiciary, and in some instances a decorated war veteran, etc. etc.
It all depends on the context and the substance of the lie. But it is just ridiculous to say that lying is only illegal when it is done to “obtain money, goods, or services.”
So no, you are not smarter than a fifth grader, but thank you for playing “Progressives Think Lying Is Peachy.”.
David,
Have you taken up the practice of law?
Judith looks like your quickly on your way to becoming a global warming skeptic LOL (maybe soon a blatant denier) just joking BTW not to be taken seriously…I wonder if Lucia is as well hahahaha
‘Dr. Donald A. Brown, associate professor of environmental ethics, science, and law at Penn State University will present a lecture, “Turning Up the Volume on the Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change,” at the Erie Art Museum, Thursday, Feb. 23, at 7 p.m., with an audience Q&A to follow.’
Anyone in the area please ask him what ethical position he takes on all this. In the past he has called AGW skepticism a ‘new crime against humanity’, so I can probably guess his position is similar to DeSmorgasBoard: Gleick deserves canonising; anyone who doubts this is a heretic.
‘Environmental ethics’. Hahahahahaha…
And for those defending what Gleick did on the basis that it was what a good journalist would do, here is what Andy Revkin, journalist for the NYT says:
” Andrew Revkin
Dot Earth blogger
Impersonation involving lying (as opposed to dressing a certain way, or the like) is forbidden by the rules of most reputable journalism outfits, as noted by Bryan Walsh of Time Magazine today.
In reply to Phil
Feb. 21, 2012 at 8:57 p.m.”
And, by the way, what is the Pacific Institute?
Why, it is an advocacy think tank!
His group develops policy ideas and advocates them in the public square.
Funded by anonymous donors. And pushes these ideas into public policy (politics) wherever possible.
http://www.pacinst.org/
Here is a list of their publications:
http://www.pacinst.org/publications/
They are all policy analysis.
Peter Gleick is not only a fraudster, a thief and a forger.
He is a hypocrite of the worst order.
He attacked HI because he could not stand competition.
As one who worked in publishing for a decade with professional journalists, the idea that what Gleick did is “normal” is beyond bizarre. In fact any journalist who might engage in impersonation and would then use a false email account to distribute material obtained from that act would be fired almost instantly.
It is a monumental insult to identify Gleick as a “journalist” or to assert that anything he did from top to bottom was “normal investigative journalism.”
Garry,
I know a mainstream journalist, he is an AGW believer, and he is appalled at what Gleick did. Sadly, at his blog the true believers are also seeking hero status for Gleick.
In today’s world you must say: Post Normal Investigative Journalism (PNIJ). Where half-truth & half of the story, are more than adaquite.
Things have come to a pretty pass when you compare someone with journalists, and it’s the journalists who come off better!
The Atlantic has an excellent article by Megan McArdle
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/peter-gleick-confesses-to-obtaining-heartland-documents-under-false-pretenses/253395/
Somebody tell Megan that moshe’s a bot.
==================
Somebody? Or somebot?
Somebotty?
Here’s a random thought that I haven’t seen expressed before – concerning the idea that the faked memo was indeed sent to Gleick as a sort of ‘sting’.
Mcardle suggets this is implausible because how would they know that Gleick would lie to get confirmation of its contents? Gleick wasn’t necessarily expected to do anything apart from embarrass himself in using (somehow) the fake document. Simple and quite believable – what Gleick actually did was unexpected and like manna from Heaven.
However, this falls into the trap of asking “who sent Gleick the fake document” which is clearly a false question. It’s only worth asking if there is some reason to believe Gleick didn’t [with his idiosycratic writing, self-glorification etc etc] write it himself.
What was Mosher’s first, obvious, convincing suspicion? Not that Gleick had lied to obtain private information, but that he had written the forged document!
What else is there to ask? He’s confessed to wire fraud to obtain the documents – which themselves are absolutely necessary to be able to forge the strategy document.
If Mr. Gleick, did this after seven in the evening he cannot be held responsible according to Slick Willy. His mom told him too.
Besides, who else in the world would write something that includes the phrase “highprofile climate scientists (such as Gleick)” :-)
Cui bono –
That indeed is unbelievable. Delusions? :)
My long-term niche is personal and organizational ethics –> study of, personal counseling regarding, etc.
The pattern which Dr. Curry points out is common, almost definitional, in fringe religious cults. They set high standards of personal behavior but when it comes to organizational behavior, they not only accept, but often demand, behaviors that are not only in conflict with their belief system, but in violation of the law. These types of organization aberrant behaviors are most often applied ‘in defense of’ the organization and aimed at its ‘enemies’.
Thanks Kip, insightful comment
Interesting.
I had some experience of this a long time ago. I was in a position where I found reason to vehemently condemn a certain kind of behaviour while simultaneously indulging in it myself. Simple hypocrisy you might think, but the interesting thing on reflection was that the view of the behaviour in other people and the view of it in myself were as if they were completely separate things – not comparable in any way.
For other reasons, many years later, I went through the process of understanding the dissonance and how I avoided it. A painful process to be sure, but fascinating nonetheless.
I can readily empathise with Gleick. His belief and passion are so strong that consistency is always going to be a vulnerable commodity, especially consistency of ethics.
This does pertain to what is for me the most striking aspect of the climate debate, which is how loosely and arbitrarily the word ‘science’ is bandied about. It is used in so many different ways, and asked to carry the burden of so many disparate meanings that, it may as well be replaced by a random noise.
Kip,
Your post summarizes why I started calling AGW extremists “true believers” a few years ago. Their behavior and attitudes were more in line with cult-like belief systems than rational healthy organizations.
I would point out that at many sites dominated by true believers, the ethical problems of Gleick are not only over looked, but Gleick is being told he is a hero.
AGW belief has in effect eaten the morals and ethics of its extremists, and there are apparently a lot of extremists.
Yes, fringe religious cults:
> [D]on’t suggest that the “high road” somehow involves not defending yourself. Heartland owes a duty to its members and donors and employees to defend its reputation and operations. Taking the “high road” in this case involves pursuing every remedy available under the law, both to make their organization whole again and to provide a deterrent to future would-be Gleicks, for the benefit of their potential victims.
http://climateaudit.org/2012/02/20/peter-gleick-confesses/#comment-325264
Or is it…inciteful?
Michael,
Yes, the wicked denialists made the AGW believers act like cult members.
Yes, IMHO, every single person on planet earth should read the definitive work on thought reform and mind control – Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of Brainwashing in China – Robert Jay Lifton. http://www.amazon.com/Thought-Reform-Psychology-Totalism-Brainwashing/dp/0807842532/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329922948&sr=8-1 This book (and others like it such as Combating Cult Mind Control – Steve Hassan) provides the reader with an understanding and a new vocabulary utility to match the techniques and intentions that Orwell spelled out in practice in 1984.
Michael, it is merely observational from my years of professional experience in the field. If you wish to know more about this specific subject, indicate that here and I will find a way to contact you directly by email.
I am interested.
Willard, you can email me at my first name at i4.net.
Kip,
If it is OK, I will email you as well. Your toic is one I have been interested in for many years, and have read a fair amount on, as well as observed just whaat you described.
Don’t be shy, just tell us something. Post a link.
Or is it a secret??
Michael –> ‘Don’t be shy, just tell us something. Post a link. Or is it a secret??’
Further discussion of the ethics of cults — personal and organizational – are simply way off topic here. Thus, I offered to discuss them personally, but offline, with any who might be interested.
Um…it’s the whole point of this post.
Go for it.
I believe that Judith Curry is only catching half of the problem which is also the less important half part.
In fact, in a complex society as ours it is not “extraordinary” to find people like Peter Gleick around. It is evident that on any issue, form climate to football, it is possible to find some person with extreme views who might be so passionate about and blinded by her/his own belief that s/he may commit acts that s/he may regret later.
The real problem is not that.
The real problem is who has appointed a person such as Peter Gleick as the chair of the AGU Task Force on Scientific Ethics. This is the issue on which Judith Curry should focus.
In fact, such committees may have any utility only if they are supposed to defend the right of a minority against the possible abuses of a majority. In the case of scientific ethics, such a committee should mostly assure that people who advocate different scientific views from a so-called “consensus” are given proper fair hearing and treatments, and not unfairly discriminated against by the so-called “mainstream”.
In particular, such committees should mostly prevent and correct biases in the peer review process, biases in the editorial boards, biases in the speaker invitations, and biases in everything else. When these biases are properly prevented, then the scientific method itself improves the science and gives the proper merit to those scientists who truly merit it.
Now the issue is that the chair as well as the member of such a committee need to clearly understand what they are supposed to do. This implies that they need to be open minded people ready to listen novel issues and ideas and people whose major concern is to allow proper scientific debate.
So, the true issue is who has thought that a person such as Peter Gleick could fit the role of “grand inquisitor” who could judge with impartiality on the ethics of other scientists.
Gleick’s opinions and behavior and opinions are not a mystery. It is enough to read the opinion article of Gleick on Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/01/05/the-2011-climate-b-s-of-the-year-awards/
to realize that Gleick does not hesitate to personally and strongly attack scientists who disagree with his views. Moreover, it is evident from the response given to him on Forbes by James Taylor of Heartland Institute’s
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/01/12/please-global-warming-alarmists-stop-denying-climate-change-and-science/
that Gleick does not even have the scientific facts right and his analysis of the scientific literature, in a particular of that that opposes the AGW theory, is extremely superficial and unfair.
So, it is evident that while Gleick is perfectly entitled to have his own ideas and opinions, he and everybody like him, would not fit the position of chair of the AGU Task Force on Scientific Ethics.
The appointment of a person like Gleick to such a position cannot but question the ethical integrity of the leadership of AGU that has appointed him to such a position. So the real issue is:
Does the AGU leadership understand that they MUST allow and protect scientific debate on the issue of climate change? Does the AGU leadership understand that AGU is supposed to be a “scientific society” and not a “sect cult” that appoints its own “Torquemada” as its “Grand inquisitor”?
This is the real issue that Judith Curry needs to address and, please, leave Gleick alone with his fantacies.
In fact, Gleick himself has declared that he acted as he did because the “devil” made him to act in such a way. So, dear Judith, focus on the “devil” and on his corruptions and temptations. See here for some information:
http://www.therealpresence.org/archives/Angelology/Angelology_013.htm
Nicola, you raise an important point. It is really the institutions that are the problem. there will always be bad egg individuals, the challenge for institutions is to weed them out quickly.
With regards to Gleick, my impression of him changed substantially over the past 18 months, when he went activist with blog posts and op-eds. Before that, I thought he was an honest broker for the scientific integrity issue.
Judith said;
‘Before that, I thought he (gleick)was an honest broker for the scientific integrity issue.’
Oh Judith Judith JudithJudith. Did you also believe in Mann et al 1998?
tonyb
Judith, you write “It is really the institutions that are the problem.”
Many of us have been saying this for years. But nothing happens. As I have remarked before, it is the silence of the majority of proper scientists that allows institutions, such as the Royal Society, and the American Physical Society, to take unscientifc positions on CAGW, and no-one says “Boo”. The AGU is one of dozens of scientific intstitutions who, contrary to the scientific facts, supports CAGW.
We need a campaign against thes institutions which act in a way that is the complete opposite of scientific.
“It is really the institutions that are the problem. there will always be bad egg individuals, the challenge for institutions is to weed them out quickly.”
Can’t say I agree with this statement. It is the individuals in organizations who engage in bad conduct. It is other individuals who choose not to weed them out.
The problem with the IPCC is not its organizational structure or some other implicit fault in its structure. The problem with the IPCC, like the problem with the UN, is that it is full of anti-democratic progressives who believe the end justifies the means.
This is why reforming such an organization is a non-starter. The majority of UN member states are autocracies. The vast majority of the funding for the UN, and IPCC, is from progressive governments seeking additional power over the world economy, freed from the restraint of those annoying, stupid voters. Staff the IPCC with genuine, objective scientists (if there are any in the field of “climate science”), and its governmental sponsors would shut it down in a heartbeat.
It ain’t the organization, it’s the people.
Remarkable – I feel just the same way…….about Judith!!
From the ethics point of view, it is when the moral individuals in an organization no longer have the power to directly influence the leadership *without endangering their standing* that organizations go astray in the way being discussed.
is the inevitable path in cult organizations – when members may not speak out for what is right without risking expulsion (and all that implies) then the organization is lost to amoral behavior in false defense of itself.
Thus, in climate science, instead of organization reform and correction, we see resignations of the dissenters who no longer feel they can support the leadership which they feel is acting contrary to the standards and mores of the group..
The irony of the chair on integrity demonstrating a lack of integrity is nothing new. It is a new twist on the preachers against sin having their way with the ladies in the congregation. The priests having their way with the choir boys. Do as I say, not as I do.
Are we now legally entitled to write “The Pacific Institute, headed and co-founded by thief and liar Peter Gleick…” ?
yes. Pacific Institue is led by confessed thief and fraudster Peter Gleick…at least for now.
I found the 501 3c from the Pacific institute far more disturbing than anything in the legitimate (non-faked) Heartland documents. Talk about a rabid advocacy group… here is a little taste from their mission statement:
“Our organization remains focused on our mission of creating a healthier planet via wealth reduction and redistribution, global environmental regulation, and drastically reduced economic activity. Only these can lighten the terrible and immoral burden humanity places on Earth’s ecosystems. We will continue to pursue our mission by any and all means possible, because that is the only morally defensible path. The planet is depending on us, and nothing else matters.”
Yikes! Gleick gave himself permission to lie, cheat, steal, and make stuff up at will. All in the name of the cause. This is the definition of “Anti-Science”.
ivpo,
You are right. They give themselves permission to do exactly what Gleick does; like cheat, decieve, defraud and steal.
ivp0: Great find!
People who come up with crap like the PI’s mission statement, or believe in it are what scare me. Their end goal is to eliminate half to two-thirds of the worlds population. Personally I think it is hypocracy to call for reducing the burden caused by humanity, it you don’t immediately kill yourself, thus doing your part to reeduce that burden.
Sorry, my bad. The prior mission statement was just a Glieckover of the original which appears below. It is obviously fake but accurate ;) My apologies to anyone who might have been misled.
The genuine mission statement for The Pacific Institute reads:
“The Pacific Institute works to create a healthier planet and sustainable communities. We conduct interdisciplinary research and partner with stakeholders to produce solutions that advance environmental protection, economic development, and social equity—in California, nationally, and internationally.”
So sorry for any inconvenience.
lol.
I should have recheccked.
Guess I look pretty foolish.
Well, it ain’t the first time. I do stand by the statement that people who place the “planet” over human lives are scary and that if they believe there are too many people in the world they should demonstrate their conviction by checking out of it.
Link?
There are three lessons relating to Heartland and Gleick the past week, while I’m not 100% surprised or shocked, I’m still taken back by the veracity of each;
A. Just how fanatical AGW believers are. Go look at the HP and Revkin boards;
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/peter-gleick-admits-to-deception-in-obtaining-heartland-climate-files/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/heartland-institute-documents_b_1289669.html?ref=climate-change
Now Revkin and Gleick control the comment flow, clearly they make their situation worse by censoring those who are critical of IDENTITY THEFT and FRAUD but really they aren’t inventing their supporters buying “it was done for a noble purpose” rationalization. Just how much kool-aid have these people absorbed along the way??? AGW is cultish but these people all can’t be living on Green Communes in a jungle somewhere listening to dogma on a loud speaker 24/7 ala Jim Jones are they? Some of these people are walking around my neighborhood? It’s a scary thought that ID theft and fraud has the equivalence of a traffic violation to so many of these people.
B. Only a small portion of the Greens understand PRIVATE vs. PUBLIC property rights. The endless and inane comparison to Climategate emails are proof positive. I’ve yet to see any member of the warming elite explain this reality to their minions. What is that about?
C. The importance of controlling educational propaganda dressed as “science” in public school is as important as regulatory goals in the eco-left. This isn’t a subset event at all. It’s how Marxism is being sanitized for mass consumption to children, it’s washed Green first. “Science” and “anti-science” are words that the eco-left is seeking to copywrite for it’s own purpose. AGW is only the beginning and defining example. Science = Soviet, in application circa 1930’s political correctness in Russia. All they need is the authority they seek and they void any other right you hold given a tenth of a chance.
The MSM is sure to minimize, whitewash or ignore all three points. That there is no self-policing from the leadership of the climate science community is very clear also. They’ve cultivated and angry ignorant mob
regarding climate change but they take no ownership of the results. There is almost no introspection from Fakegate just as there was almost none regarding Climategate from the AGW nucleus. More proof that the broader debate has little to do with real science or communication at this point. They simply have to be defeated and socially/politically marginalized, there is no common ground with the AGW nucleus in a civil society.
Attorney-blogger John Hinderaker of Powerline invites a lawsuit from Peter Gleick:
Let me be perfectly clear: I think it is obvious that Peter Gleick fabricated this document–-the only one he posted that makes the Heartland Institute look bad–-because the real ones he stole from Heartland didn’t serve his partisan purpose. Or, if he didn’t make it up himself, he got it from an ally who fabricated it. No knowledgeable person could mistake Gleick’s hoax for a legitimate top-secret Heartland memo.
So, Peter Gleick: if I am wrong, sue me. If I am right, apologize for fabricating a document and attempting to perpetrate a hoax, and retire from public life.
Gleick is taking a “limited hang-out” route as Nixon attempted during the Watergate scandal. This is classic stuff.
From wiki: A limited hangout, or partial hangout, is a public relations or propaganda technique that involves the release of previously hidden information in order to prevent a greater exposure of more important details.
As Judith notes, we’re not done yet.
Some other double standards discussed;
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/51854
Gleick’s confession is a black eye and a setback for the climate change movement. There is no getting around this. But it is obviously not the end of the climate debate.
However, the response from many of the orthodox to justify Gleick by minimizing what he did or making lawyerly distinctions or, even worse, hailing him as a hero do not help the climate cause.
The goal, presumably, is to regain trust, not to argue that the climate orthodox are no worse than the worst of the climate skeptics (who, so far as I know, have not yet resorted to fabricating documents to make their opponents look bad).
Peter Gleick is a prominent scientist speaking on behalf of the climate movement, its scientists, and as an advocate for scientific integrity. If he cannot be trusted, who in the climate change movement can be?
Don’t you think it odd he retains many of his current memberships and media spots at this very moment?
Judith,
As shown by Gleick’s action and the supporting of it by his fellow activists, there is an insignificant threshold between their cause’s righteousness and its willingness to condone illegal/unethical behavior in support of it. We saw this with UEA/CRU (Jones and all) wrt FOIA. We see this with Mann/UVa wrt FOIA and the investigation into misuse of grant funds. We saw this from CG1 & CG2 docs showing prominent climate scientists purposely subverting the IPCC process for their activist purposes. We see Hansen’s leading by example in protest illegalities. Etc.
In that context, the immediate and eager use of a ‘scorched earth’ approach by IPCC-centric-CAGWists in their confrontation with independent thinkers (aka skeptics) is important to understand.
It is not war. It is misleading to cast the climate science dispute in terms of military analogy/terminology. Instead, I suggest it is more productive to say there is a conflict of the most fundamental premises and consequent intellectual approaches which gives many climate scientists deeply conflicting concepts of the scientific process, professional integrity and objectivity.
As the climate science dispute evolves, if (as is currently happening) there is a progressive significant erosion of the CAGWist credibility in our culture, then our culture must be prepared to handle a ‘scorched earth’ response from them.
Preparation by discussion is sufficient. Open venues like this are necessary vehicles.
John
PS – this comment also posted at WUWT and Lucia’s place.
The distinction between authoritative and authoritarian is confused all the
time by these people who puff themselves up as authoritarian on science and the ethics of science. Yet they are not authoritative in either.
The more that the authoritarians defeat the authoritative by pushing out discussion of such facts, the more real science dies. And this field is on life support despite the rivers of money going into it.
These authoritarians have done enormous harm over the past two decades by their relentless ad hominem dodges from discussing the actual content of the field and their tiresome public indignation and tantrums. It is always about who is a crank, and who is not; who has impure motives, and who does not; who is a good scientist and who is not; who has been paid off and who was not; who is an interloper in the field and who is not. Really? Is that a sensible response to observing that their forecasts have failed spectacularly? It is one thing to indulge in ad hominem arguments from time to time. They seem sadly to emerge in hot arguments, but that is all these signatories ever seem to do.
Real science does not care whether the verified or verifiable facts come from interlopers, outsiders, swindlers, liars, crooks, frauds, incompetents or credential-less cretans —just the facts ma’am. So I think this lot needs to be called on their SOP rather than parsing their logic.
“Chris Colose | February 21, 2012 at 8:27 pm |
Rob,
I for one have little confidence on the observational record to constrain climate sensitivity. ”
It’s appalling anti-science statements like this from a mainstream climate scientists makes the Gleick/HI episode look to be the meaningless sideshow it is. Deep down, everyone paying attention knows that Gleick-Romm and HI-WUWT are shills for their “side”. Therefore, whatever they do or say can and should be ignored.
Mr. Colose, in admitting that actual data of a real physical phenomena cannot be found, can only logically believe that climate sensitivity can only exist in someone’s mind. When you conclude that you don’t need to backup models with data, you give up the right to be considered a scientist.
Gleick forgot about the Dan Rather rule for biased leftist hit pieces. Bias is OK, but at least make sure that if you present a document that is damaging to your conservative adversary, at least make sure the document is not a provable forgery.
Looks like Revkin is on to a mea culpa of the mea culpa regarding Gleick of the other day;
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/more-on-peter-gleick-and-the-heartland-files/
It must have been confirmed he gets to keep his day job at the Times, something that discredits both of them. Pathetic, “ruined reputation” just too strong a term for Gleick? Back tracking in less than a week from a lurid and spineless condemnation (sort of) of Gleick?
Revkin is a worm. He should be fired already. All the false flaming from fringe quarters like Joe Romm are just cynical acts of maintaining him and give him cover.
Can somebody please explain the big revelation here?
Is it that Heartland exists? That it has a policy goal? That it expends a budget in pursuit of that goal? Okay, that describes nearly every organization ever greated.
This is shocking? It’s wrong?
If that’s all ya got, it’s pretty flaccid.
This, however: ; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
…is pretty revealing.
John,
You’ve just entered the Twilight Zone of double standards of hypocrisy beyond the rational understanding of mankind. Aside from being able to outspend Heartland 30 or 40 to one (this understates the advantages considering the “free press” is largely in the same tank) they keep losing!
What really ticks me off though is how either Revkin or Gleick are going to be hanging onto their paid positions. If the shoe was on the other foot the fringe left would have a petition demanding resignations in the many thousands already. Conservatives and Libertarians just don’t think this way. This is why Greens and leftists can maintain higher levels of corruption longer and are in fact the dominating force on climate issues.
Gleick blows himself up, along with Revkin. Somehow they will squirm and survive in some form or another. We recently saw sports writers brought to their knees defending Joe Paterno even hinting at a defense of the man. Forget opinions or free speech, they faced getting fired. Forget complex facts about his involvement. Meanwhile a guy commits and admits Identity Theft, a NY Times writer jumps on the wagon without so much as a call to Heartland to confirm the most slanderous details. Both are largely intact with their core paying jobs. Both mouthing off their rationalizations about their “cause”. Close to zero contrition start to finish.
Where is a thread called; “should they be fired”. This is the importance of controlling the narrative. Skeptics just don’t get it often enough. Thousands of warmers are screaming insults and crying victim because one of their own commits IDENTITY THEFT trying to slander skeptic interests. How do you like this Twilight Zone episode?
“How can we reconcile Gleick’s possibly criminal behavior with his essays and testimony on scientific integrity?”
The more he spoke of his scientific integrity the more we counted our spoons.
‘Strong men believe in cause and effect.’…
RWE
It’s still at work today, just look at our country now & sea change.
Go Tide
Most members of the TEAM are civil servants. Their salaries are paid by the taxpayers. As part of their employment contracts, every aspect of their work is owned by the people. This work should be freely available to the people for scrutiny and determine the value of their work. Additionally, all work outside their employment contract may be scrutinized for conflicts of interests. If these civil servants do not like this situation, get another job.
Like any other private organization, the Heartland Institute controls all aspects of their labors and information. I do not know what the Heartland Institute does; but, it does not matter. It is their decision and descretion. I do not care if they support or defend ‘global warming’. I do not care if they think the Earth is round or flat. It is their concern. Peter Gleick has no right to any of their labors or information. Peter Gleick’s actions are clearly identity theft – you cannot spin this fact away.
Here is the reversal of thinking that is troublesome to me.
The taxpayers are servants to the civil servants. The taxpayers are denied access to the civil servant’s labors and information. Yet, the TEAM has the right to access any and all information regardless of privacy and ownership.
The CAUSE is more important to LIBERTY.
A lot of people on this blog seem to have the fantasy that if they get a phone call from someone claiming to be a member of the board of a company asking them for some important confidential information, and they send it, and then the caller contacts them afterwards, giving their real name and thanking them for the very useful information, they can then walk down to their local police station and lodge a complaint against the caller that the police will take seriously.
If you seriously believe this, you have a screw loose.
Had the caller claimed to be a policeman, you would have a case. Impersonating a police officer is illegal in practically every country in the world.
Had the caller claimed to be Oprah Winfrey you would not. It is legal to impersonate Oprah, whether she likes it or not. The same goes for board members of corporations. There is no law against impersonating them either.
Is it ethical?
Maybe not, but is it any more or less ethical than what Heartland is doing?
Seems to me that whether a lie is black or white has less to do with the lie itself than the belief system of the person judging the lie.
What is Heartland doing that is unethical? Disagreeing with you?
How ’bout promoting known falsehoods and conducting PR under the guise of science in an effort to falsely lay claim to a credibilty that PR lacks?
Just sayin’.
What known falsehoods would those be? I assume anything they say you disagree with. Be specific. What do they say that you can prove beyond a doubt is false? I disagree with a lot of people but that doesn’t mean they are unethical. Being wrong isn’t unethical.
Those ‘known falsehoods’ Heartland is promoting.
Unless you can name them, Michael, your own claim is a known falsehood. Shame on you.
Try the NIPCC ‘report’.
It’s one big falsehood. The fantasy about plankton being a previously unknown source of aerosols to try and fill the logic gap in their wild assertion about feebacks was especially dumb.
Or try this typical piece of deception from their website, promoting one of their diatribes…err… reports.
“The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), already under severe criticism for violating the requirements of academic peer review and relying on secondary sources…..”
Clueless.
And hey, I’ve got nothing against activist groups. Don’t care what their political stripes might be. They have a valid role.
But I object mightly to the excreable types like Heartland that try to cloak their political advocacy in the gowns of science.
Is your argument that plankton doesn’t release aerosols or that it was previously known? It might be helpful if you copied the statement you would call a falsehood directly and clearly state what is false about it.
They were under severe criticism. You can argue if it was justifiable or not but you certainly can’t claim the statement as false.
steven,
they went from some limited evidence about the role of plankton in some locations, to giving it a significant global role – with ZERO evidence.
Desperate. Divorced from science.
And the deception of the ‘severe criticism’ – deliberately so. Yes, there was citicism, so technically true, but anyone with a clue knew it was very ill-informed.
Repeating it with the inference that it is a true critique, is the deception.
And the deception of the ‘severe criticism’ – deliberately so. Yes, there was citicism, so technically true, but anyone with a clue knew it was very ill-informed. Repeating it with the inference that it is a true critique, is the deception.
Merely more deception from yourself Michael. Of course it is true – anyone with a clue knows the IPCC is mired in malfeasance.
So you state they have some evidence for their opinion but you disagree with their opinion. I’m sorry but that doesn’t make them unethical. It doesn’t even make them wrong. It is just another poorly supported conclusion in a field where this is not a rare event regardless of what part of the sensitivity spectrum you decide to rest your feet.
As far as the statement goes, it was factually true. Factually true statements are not false. As far as the event they are discussing which I assume was the glacier melting date, the very best that could be said for it is that it was incredibly sloppy work.
steven,
no, they take a very small claim backed by some evidence, and blow it up to a very very large claim, without any additional evidence.
But that’s just one.
Then there’s the perennial claim that warming is due to the sun, which has to be balanced against the simultaneous claim that we don’t know if it’s really warming because the temp record is unreliable, or that the increase in CO2 is natural (do you agree with that one????)
And on and on and on it goes…………
Political advocacy being dressed up as science. This is the big overarching falsehood can contains all the smaller ones within it – misrepresention…….you know, like what Peter Gleick did to get those documents.
Michael, it doesn’t matter if I agree with what they say or not. We are discussing ethics not opinions.
Let me state this in a clear manner. In ethics it doesn’t matter if you believe what they say. It doesn’t matter if I believe what they say. What matters in ethics is if they believe what they say. Gleick obviously didn’t believe he was one of their board members.
steven,
They are trying to pass off opinion and wishful thinking as science.
They know they aren’t doing science, it’s in their mission statement.
This is unethical.
I’m not asking for much, only evidence there is unethical behavior and not just a difference of opinion. You have failed to come up with a convincing argument so far. It seems we are making no progress here. When you can specifically point to something with enough conviction that the same standard could be applied to anyone regardless of how you feel about their opinion let me know.
What utter tripe Michael. The past masters of cloaking their political advocacy in the gowns of science is the excerable IPCC. Bunch of dishonest lowlifes. “Redefining the peer-review process” etc etc.
Mostly on public money too.
So your claim of “a typical piece of deception”, is itself just a typical piece of deception.
“What Are Identity Theft and Identity Fraud?”
“The short answer is that identity theft is a crime. Identity theft and identity fraud are terms used to refer to all types of crime in which someone wrongfully obtains and uses another person’s personal data in some way that involves fraud or deception”
http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/websites/idtheft.html
“Had the caller claimed to be Oprah Winfrey you would not. It is legal to impersonate Oprah, whether she likes it or not. The same goes for board members of corporations. There is no law against impersonating them either.”
You are confusing entertainment with fraud.
When a comedian or actor “impersonates” a character, there is no expectation that they actually are the person they are impersonating, but if an actor were to convince someone that they actually were Oprah to obtain information, they have committed a crime.
“Had the caller claimed to be Oprah Winfrey you would not. It is legal to impersonate Oprah, whether she likes it or not. The same goes for board members of corporations. There is no law against impersonating them either.”
In entertainment it’s usually “emulation”, not impersonation.
Y’all trying to sweep Gleckgate under the rug and pretend what Gleick did is no big deal are only making yourselves look very creepy.
I can’t wait to ask Joshua about how the sun rose now, and will set later.
H/t moshchops.
==============
The many replies to my previous comment clearly show two belief systems: Heartland as a bastion of truth defending ordinary people from evil scientists, vs. Heartland on the other side of truth. From the intensity of the comments it would seem both sides of these obviously inconsistent belief systems are very strongly held. Which only goes to bear out my point that “whether a lie is black or white has less to do with the lie itself than the belief system of the person judging the lie.” For that matter so is even the question of whether it’s a lie.
If an actor were to convince someone that they actually were Oprah to obtain information, they have committed a crime.
Is anyone here disputing that Gleick committed deception? Certainly the AGU considers Gleick’s deception sufficient grounds for criticism.
But is deception a crime? Not to my knowledge, at least not in the US. (The UK has laws against it though.)
Fraud is a crime. Is that what you’re claiming Gleick committed?
For Heartland to prove Gleick committed fraud, besides deception it must show justifiable reliance on the deception, damages, and (judging by case law at least) personal gain by the fraudster.
1. What was the Heartland employee’s justification for believing Gleick’s claim he was a director? If you hand out valuable stuff to some stranger who casually tells you they’re a director, and you don’t know them from Adam, my (very limited) understanding is that this doesn’t meet the law’s idea of fraud. Now if the employee could show they had Alzheimer’s and that Gleick had intentionally exploited their handicap it might then go against Gleick. The law protects the mentally disabled better than the merely negligent, in fact it seems to prefer to punish negligence.
2. Besides exposure of practices that Heartland evidently prefers to keep secret, what damages have they suffered? If Heartland is a non-profit organization fighting dishonest science by honest means, what injury have they suffered by having those means exposed? One would imagine they would be proud to have their means for such a noble cause publicized.
3. What was Gleick’s personal gain in this affair? His motive was clear: to expose Heartland’s modus operandi by making Heartland documents available to the world. His action gained him nothing personal while losing much in the eyes of his colleagues.
What actions for fraud have been prosecuted successfully with one or more of these elements absent?
Dr. Pratt,
Google “wire fraud” and get back top us with what you think.
It is a very broadly worded law.
Dr. Pratt: Neither you nor I nor most commenters here are lawyers. A case can be made for fraud against Gleick — certainly Gleick himself fears so since he has obtained legal counsel — but whether it would stick is not something that’s not going to be hashed out in a Climate Etc. comment thread.
You also gloss over Gleick’s complicity in passing a fabricated document and the strong likelihood that he was involved in the production of that document.
Leaving both those issues aside, however, I note that Gleick was a prominent scientist in the climate change movement speaking out for scientific integrity. What message does this send?
Is scientific integrity among the climate orthodox, including celebrated scientists with international reputations who lecture on integrity, simply a matter of whatever one can get away with without being legally convicted?
That’s the message I get from Gleick’s action and the defense you and others offer.
I am an IP lawyer – not a criminal lawyer.
Still, I believe Gleick has already confessed to a crime, by admitting to impersonating someone to steal confidential business documents.
If Gleick forged the confidential memo (which I believe is quite likely to be the case), Gleick is in even deeper trouble with many more criminal and civil issues being implicated.
The only question as to criminal charges is will Heartland press charges, and what sort of plea bargain will Gleick be able to arrange with whoever prosecutes (that is out of Heartland’s control).
As to civil liability – Heartland has had confidential donor information revealed, and therefore has been damaged, per se. It may be difficult to put a dollar figure on the damage (speculative loss of future donations, damage to business reputation, etc.), but liability is a cinch.
I doubt any civil suit would be about money anyway – but rather for discovery to prove that Gleick forged the memo, find out who he sent it to and so on.
“… two belief systems: Heartland as a bastion of truth defending ordinary people from evil scientists, vs. Heartland on the other side of truth.”
I would quibble with your framing of the skeptics’ position: we don’t believe the promoters of CAGW are scientists but priests practicing a religion under the pretense of science.
That the greenhouse effect was observed in greenhouses and that a quite plausible theory that those same effects could happen on a global scale were both, respectively, scientifically sound observation and hypothesis.
The problem is that, despite the evidence not supporting the theory on a global scale, the Warmists have responded not by updating the theory but by attacking the skeptics and engaging in willful fraud, deception, exaggeration, data manipulation, and even censorship in order to defend their increasingly implausible beliefs. The predictions of catastrophe have been going strong for about 30 years, despite the wreckage of roughly 20 years’ worth of failed predictions that would give a real scientist pause. (10 years seems to be the preferred time horizon for impending doom. The ruin of global warming is forever 10 years away it would seem.)
The skeptics, then, don’t see their opponents as scientists but themselves. They believe themselves to be on the side of science and the many real scientists, mostly physicists and meteorologists, who question the wild claims of impending doom of the “Climate Scientist” priesthood as rightfully skeptical scientists should.
Your original quote, fixed:
“Two belief systems: Heartland is a bastion of truth defending real science against junk science vs. Heartland on the other side of truth.”
Vaughan
I agree that some (including myself) postulated that Glick may have committed a crime without knowing enough of the details to reach that conclusion. I still do not know enough of the details to state whether or not a crime was committed.
You asked “Besides exposure of practices that Heartland evidently prefers to keep secret, what damages have they suffered?”
Heartland may claim that they were damaged by the release of the fraudulent document by people believing the document’s authenticity and potentially reducing donations to Heartland or acceptance of their teaching materials (which would have made their investment in those materials less valuable).
FYI- I am not supporting Heartland generally as being unbiased, not do I think David would necessarily put together put together coursework that appropriately describe the state of the controversies. I do think it is inappropriate to attack what he is putting together before anyone reads it and know it is biased.
I distrust the AGW consensus side so much that I don’t believe any thing they say on the radio unless I checked the data myself.
They have completely lost trust.
How sad.
How very sad.
“But is deception a crime? Not to my knowledge, at least not in the US. (The UK has laws against it though.)”
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual.
In this case the “personal gain” was obtaining private information that would not have been released but for the deception.
The element of “damage another individual” is clearly met by the release of private “personal” information on several Heartland employees that was contained in the documents.
This information SHOULD have been redacted.
Ah! EPA “integrity” under the Obama administration;
http://junkscience.com/2012/02/23/breaking-epa-scrubs-web-site-of-gleick-grants/
Let’s send the details of $468000 of public money given to Gleick via EPA grants into the memoryhole at once!
Animals are trained to pursue varmints into holes.
==============
Gleick is obviously confusing scientific integrity (meaning actions and processes that are based upon a well-thought out framework of rules and principles) with unconditionnal and unfailing faith into IPCC / AGW dogma.
I’m just wondering when all those who have written that Gleick has been unethical in using a false name are going to start using their own real names on this blog?
(even if in anagram form!)
Tempterrain
Hypocrisy, thy name is P**** *a****
Tonyb
Actually, it’s Peter Martin.
I’d rather Gleick post real science under a false name than junk science under his real name.
Alas all we’re ever likely to get is junk science either way.
Reblogged this on Klimatilsynet and commented:
Jeg videreblogger Judith Curry’s kloke bemerkninger om klimaforsker Peter Gleick’s gradiose utgreiinger om “vitenskapelig integritet” og hans smålige og stakkarslige tyveri av dokumenter fra The Heartland Institute.
BrianH
fill in the missing letters denoted by the asterisks
tonyb
The alarmists continue to repeatedly hoist themselves by their own petard. These are presumably smart people. Why don’t they “get it?”
I think that ‘they’ now understand that we all can clearly see the letters denoted by the asterisks… it is by it’s very nature uncomfortable to admit too.
Happy birthday Judith. You’re doing a great job of being fair-minded and even-handed. Please keep reporting according to your conscience.
I believe everything said was actually very logical. However,
what about this? what if you typed a catchier title?
I mean, I don’t wish to tell you how to
run your blog, but suppose you added a title that grabbed people’s attention?
I mean Gleicks integrity | Climate Etc. is a little plain.
You should look at Yahoo’s home page and
see how they create article headlines to grab people to open the links.
You might try adding a video or a related picture or two to grab people excited about everything’ve written.
In my opinion, it might make your posts a little bit more interesting.