The Guardian: Gleick apology over Heartland leak stirs ethics debate among climate scientists
Whoops. Suzanne Goldenberg unwittingly exposes how empty the Ethics Vault is in establishment climate science. Peter Gleick used a false identity to steal documents, and released them without permission and without an effort to redact private irrelevant details. So let’s ask climate scientists if stealing, deception and breaching privacy is OK. It’s a yes or no choice, is it a/ heroic, or b/ misguided? We’d hope a ten year old could get this one, but Goldenberg tells us that its thrown “the scientific community into tumult, with fierce debates…”. Oh.
The correct answer was not even on offer in the Guardian: c/probably criminal.
So when is stealing OK?
Other (scientists and activists) acknowledged Gleick’s wrongdoing, but said it should be viewed in the context of the work of Heartland and other entities devoted to spreading disinformation about science.
Here’s a face-meet-palm-moment: if Heartland is spreading misinformation on science then why not try explaining where their science is wrong, rather than just repeat this mindless, unsubstantiated claim?
As it happens, if Heartland wanted to spread “disinformation” it sure seems an odd strategy to go out of their way to invite establishment climate scientists, and even Gleick himself, to speak at their conferences?
In this upside down world, Heartland are the ones trying to start a science debate on a shoestring budget, while the establishment scientists, with 10,000 times the funding, debate whether they should steal things instead.
The so-called “hero” scientists hurl names and unscientific ad-homs in lieu of evidence and reason.
Goldenberg didn’t do enough research to understand that she is acting as an unwitting tool of activists, quoting preposterous falsehoods that are known to anyone who can enter “climate science, controversial, skeptic” into a search engine (see ClimateDepot, and btw Bing is better). Dear Suzanne, there are lots of polite scientists who can help you, you just need to ask.
“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 schoolchildren by trying to ‘teach the controversy’ where none exists.”
No controversy eh? What’s the definition of “controversial”? It’s when 30,000 scientists (including 9,000 PhDs, 2 Nobel Prize winners, former IPCC lead authors, and 4 NASA astronauts) disagree with the IPCC and quote 900 papers to back up their case.
Mandia 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.”
I seem to remember the News-of-the-world team using “tricks” like that, and no one seems to think they were too heroic. Does “investigative reporter” Goldenberg use these kinds of “tricks” too? I would think not, but why repeat an activist’s claim that these are legitimate activities when they are not — how does that misinformation help the public?
At least to Goldenberg’s credit, she did manage to find two climate scientists who get it right:
Richard Klein, a climate researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute, said he was astounded at Gleick’s actions. “All I can say is: what was he thinking?” he said. “It’s an own goal. It’s not just his own credibility, his own integrity on the line. It’s a whole community of climate scientists who, with the odd exception, want to do good science and make sure science is recognised.”
He went on: “It doesn’t just blur the line between climate science and science policy. It blurs the line between what are acceptable and what are not acceptable methods. He is not perceived by the outside world as acting in his personal capacity. He acted also by responding as Peter Gleick the scientist and of course that hurts other scientists as well.”
John Nolt, a professor of environmental ethics at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville…(said)… The revelations in the Heartland document – many already familiar to the environmental community – were not worth that cost.
“Nothing serves climate change deniers better than the loss of perspective that ensues when debate turns from urgent matters of science and policy to largely inconsequential disputes about personal behavior,” said Nolt.
The debate in our media is advancing at a crawl because the journalists keep repeating propaganda points for the establishment science team, rather than asking independent scientists for another view.
And the excuses are weak:
However, scientists almost invariably noted that Gleick had come clean, unlike those who carried out the East Anglia hack.
Goldenberg flat out assumes that it was a hack, but two years after ClimateGate and with a police investigation, there is no evidence that it was. No one, apart from FOIA, knows if it was an illegal hack or a legal leak by a genuine whistleblower.
If there was no hacker we can hardly expect that non-existent hacker to come clean. Real investigative reporters ought to investigate, not provide a cover for poor reasoning and bad behaviour.
And what about intent?
1) Gleick intended to name-and-shame the funders of the H.I. Unless Gleick is a moron, which he is not, then he was undoubtedly aware that revealing the sources of the H.I.’s funding would negatively affect them. Sure they may get a short term boost now, but people who want to remain anonymous will think twice in the future: mission accomplished.
2) The intent of the forged .PDF was malicious: it was certain that the fact of the forgery would come out, but the MSM has never been big on retraction, now have they. The hippies could be trusted to trumpet the ‘corruption’ of the H.I. far and wide. Again, mission accomplished.
No, no, no. Gleick was (and is, and will be, unless he finds God in prison 😉 a first grade rat-bastard.
A whistleblower like FOIA was bringing to light fraud, large scale fraud, fraud which was, is, and will be impacting all the economies of the whole world. A whistleblower is someone who breaks the law, make no mistake about that – a law-breaker, BUT who is then justified for doing so IN A COURT OF LAW.
Does anyone think, really, that Gleick is going to get away with trying to label himself as such, IN A COURT OF LAW? Really? Methinks he in for a big surprise – not even the worst hippie-judge is going to fall for the argument that, essentially, Gleick’s aura was in like conflict with the H.I., so he like had to break the law to heal the heart of Gaia. Or somesuch.
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As far as I am aware, being a whistleblower, in the sense that they are bringing to light illegal activities within the company they work for, is not illegal under UK law. Of course, whistle-blowing is a career limiting move, which is why anonymity is accepted.
The police were called to investigate a Hack at CRU, which they did. But apparently could find no evidence of illegal penetration of computer systems and networks. They then (after some considerable time) “interviewed” Tallbloke to see if he could “help them with their inquiries” regarding how the information could have been transferred out of CRU to the Russian servers. Having drawn a blank at both ends, the Police will eventually accept that it was not a hack and close the case. They may already be at that point now.
There is no parallel between a whistleblower and what Gleick has done. Fraud is fraud in any jurisdiction.
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> Gleick intended to name-and-shame the funders of the H.I. Unless Gleick is a moron, which he is not, then he was undoubtedly aware that revealing the sources of the H.I.’s funding would negatively affect them.
He was undoubtedly aware because Jim Lakely of Heartland told Gleick that in his email of 3:25 PM 1/17/2012
See http://climateaudit.org/2012/02/23/heartlands-invitation-to-gleick-details/#comments
The relevant part of the email read:
>I will get back to you on your other questions.
>But I’m sure you’ve seen James M. Taylor’s
>response to the funding questions at Forbes.com
>- a question he has answered publicly many
>times. In short: We used to publicly list our
>donors by name, but stopped a few years ago, in
>part, because people who disagree with The
>Heartland Institute decided to harass our donors in person and via email.
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Acyually a whistleblower is NOT a lawbreaker IF the information is provided to appropriate law enforcement authorities – this legislative protection exists in major western democracies.
In FOIA’s case there was no appropriate law enforcement authority. By releasing this informatiob FOIA has committed an offence – thankfully whoever it was was courageous and intelligent.
In Gleik’s case he has committed criminal offences as well as moral ones – it is a cornerstone of democratic principles that people can choose what they believe in without vilification for their beliefs – being exposed for their bad actions is a different story. Thankfully he is revealed as dumb -it didn’t take long to expose him so that he had to out himself.
This was amother classic blunder by the AGW and merely highlights how they are and will lose this debate simply because it is becoming ever more obvious their theory is absurd – creating energy out of nothing – wish it were true.
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I think what has kept the ‘scare the little bejesus out of children’ movement going so long is that so many climate ‘scientists’ honestly believe there are in a “double ethical bind”.
=========
On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.
-Stephen Schneider
==========
Abstract from Rasool and Schneider 1971
Effects on the global temperature of large increases in carbon dioxide and aerosol densities in the atmosphere of Earth have been computed. It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For aerosols, however, the net effect of increase in density is to reduce the surface temperature of Earth. Because of the exponential dependence of the backscattering, the rate of temperature decrease is augmented with increasing aerosol content. An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5°K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.
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Athlete, I’d like to quote that bit from Stephen Schneider elsewhere. Could you give me a full reference for it, please?
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RoHa,
clicking on the “Rasool and Schneider 1971” link will take you to a NASA page where there is a link to the original Science Magazine page [abstract only]. The entire paper may be behind a paywall.
Regards,
W^3
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Obviously regarding Schneider’s “double ethical bind”, Gleick has chosen the effectiveness option, because in his world view the end justifies the means. The only defence remaining to the Heartland is attack in a court of law. And that should be the end of the matter.
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Post match interview with Gleick. Gleick has wrestled himself in a Pretzel Grip, ” … and there I was, caught in the Pretzel Grip, I could do nothing … all I could do was move my eyes and my mouth. I opened my eyes, and there in front of me dangled his ‘nuts’. “Right”, I thought, “just need to clamp my teeth on those !” I opened my mouth and clamped down with my teeth as hard as I could [welling tears in his eyes]… you have no idea the strength a man has when he bites his own balls ! “
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Freeman Dyson, a better man than Schneider, also faced the “double ethical bind”, but responded differently:
Dyson decided that honesty must prevail.
(Quoted from “Infinite in all Directions” in this Wikipedia article.)
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RoHa
John L Daly has some more on Schneider at:-
http://www.john-daly.com/schneidr.htm
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Schneider was known for pushing the limits on honesty (to put it gently) long before he admitted it to Discover magazine in 1989. When my wife was a programmer at NCAR in the 1970’s she chided Dr. Schneider on this and predicted that one day it would come back to haunt him. She went so far as to remind him of Aesop’s fable, “The boy who cried Wolf”.
Let’s just say that Dr. Schneider didn’t take criticism well, especially from lowly programmers (what do they know, anyway?).
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In Australia we never heard much of the Doctor, but just before he died I remember seeing a youtube post or something where he spoke at length.
For someone in his position as a “leading” figure in science the comments made were tragic and appalling and a sad reflection on American academic integrity.
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“Climate scientist” Gleick uses these kinds of “statistical methods” all the time, no doubt.
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The Pacific Institute came out after Gleick admitted to the serious crime of wire fraud to say Gleick “has been and continues to be an integral part of our team.” It would seem this kind of crime is rampant in the alarmist camp and they consider his “skills” will come in handy again. Gleick confessed to only half the crime, but it was the internet at large that outed him first, as the likely writer of the other half of the crime, the faked memo.
This man should [snip, face a court, with due process. OK? – Jo ]
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Regarding this:
Do they EVER? This entire mess is the result of a group of “scientists” who fail at research as they only “research” as far as proving their assumptions. Once they have been able to do that they then devote all of their energy not into further research but into making certain that no one looks at their research very closely.
No surprise that their media supporters are equally as deficient in their methods.
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This might make you smile –
I once attended a fund raising party, to provide a piped water supply to several Nepalese villages. The guest speaker was a climate scientist who was there to stick to the script on the Arctic icecap retreating, etc.
After the speeches had been delivered, and the snacks served, I ambled over to this scientist and opened a conversation about the project, and the Artic, and other matters. In the course of this conversation, I asked him how much time he and his colleagues spent in trying to prove the Null Hypothesis. His response was surprising: “Why on earth would anybody waste time and money and other valuable resources in trying to prove themselves wrong?”
That was the instant I became a committed sceptic.
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CAGW = No ethics, Lies, propaganda supported by activists purpotrading as journalists and scientists. Its that simpel! That youve got this people in power is a pure tradgedy. You have to start a new satellite TV channel otherwise ABC will transfer the Australian people thru lies and demoralizing deception into thier dictatorship. ABC has yo be defunded in the interest of democracy.You have all the possabilities to start it up. Just Do IT!!!!
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So Mr. Nolt (a professor of ethics?) says “… when debate turns from urgent matters of science and policy to largely inconsequential disputes about personal behavior.” Really?
We can hope that the question of “inconsequential … behavior” will be settled in both criminal and civil courts here in the US, but I for one am not holding my breath.
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This IMO is the main problem.
On one hand we have a lot of so called scientists who follow their religious belief in CAGW to support an organisation (IPCC) based on the same misleading principle who are backed up by arrogant academics who without quantifying any of the facts prattle out the same BS.
On the other hand we have a contingent of people who believe that there should be open debate about the causes and effects of global warming and proper mitigation if at all required. But this religion and blind obedience to the path is totally wrong because they haven’t engaged people in the process. Just arrogantly said this is what we have found, we are right, “the science is settled” and this is what we must do and do it urgently.
If Gleick had acted ethically he would have engaged HI in a debate and put forward his ideas so we could all judge. But now he will be judged by a court of his peers and I hope they throw the book at him simply for his arrogant belief that he and his ilk are the only ones who can save the planet from its ultimate doom.
Philosophy and Science gone mad !!
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Leads one to believe that Gleick’s CAGW belief is incapable of being supported with observations and facts. It is incapable of withstanding debate.
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The only reason for the confession would have been because the email address he used would have been easily traceable back to him.
Of course seeing his plan backfire badly probably helped him to come out as well.
He is as much of an amateur hacker as he is an amateur at basic logic and reasoning, as far as I can tell.
Remember that the heartland Institute is a private think tank. UEA is a publicly funded university.
This AGW thing is easy. We don’t need massive funding, we just wait for the catastrafarians to kick another own goal. Th largest own goals are occurring about once every six months.
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Just a quick question that might shed light on why climate alarmists are struggling with answering the Guardian’s question;
Why haven’t DOJ agents served a warrant for Gleik’s and/or DeSmog’s servers to date as was done in the quest for the climategate leaker(s)?
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It seems that, to wear the badge of ‘environmental reporter’ for organs such as the Guardian and the New York Times, one must be utterly ignorant of ethics or morality. It seems that people such as Goldenberg know how to construct sentences and paragraphs in reasonably correct English that are also stunning in their vacuity. Self-interest seems to be the only rule that is applied.
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“However, scientists almost invariably noted that Gleick had come clean, unlike those who carried out the East Anglia hack.”
Actually that person who leaked from the inside did confess, all very publicly like, he just refrained from giving his name, as is his right under the fundamental rights laws of EU governing anonymous speech, also according to the US constitution, and most liekley in Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, New Zeeland and then some.
“Is stealing OK? Alarmist climate scientists don’t know”
If they think it’s ok, then it would be ok to hack them as well, right?
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Athlete:
..and Al Gore apparently learned from Schneider that it’s ok to lie. At least Gleick made some form of apology, indicating that he knew it was wrong, albeit going down swinging as he apologised.
Madjak:
It’s amazing how humans can lose their logic and reasoning when their paychecks are on the line, despite any qualification and/or experience. Those who have nothing to lose tend to reason much better.
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Pardon me? Just which group has been peddling junk science for the last few decades?
Rereke Whakaaro at #5.1 sums it up beautifully:
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Yep the man Rereke met was not a Scientist he was a Politician !!
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I like to refer to the type of individual that tried to represent Himself as a scientist to Rereke as a “practioner of the art of post-normal science”
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The very English word for it is “Pillock” – n. A stupid person; a fool.
You really needed to be there. He emphasised the words “earth”, and “wrong”.
As Byron says, he was definitely a “practitioner of the art of post-normal science”. He talked a lot about the Arctic in his presentation, but then admitted that he had never actually been there.
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keep in mind these two pieces are ONLINE ONLY:
22 Feb: NYT DotEarth: Andrew C. Revkin: More on Peter Gleick and the Heartland Files
I’ve known Gleick as a source and acquaintance since I first quoted him in 1988, which made it very hard to write the piece on Monday. I will acknowledge that certain phrases, written in haste, were overstated. Gleick’s reputation and credibility are seriously damaged, not necessarily in ruins or destroyed…
The varied ethical stances on the incident were laid out nicely by Suzanne Golenberg in The Guardian yesterday…
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/more-on-peter-gleick-and-the-heartland-files/
Black’s piece is so LATE and so utterly deceptive, BBC needs to remove him from CAGW reporting NOW. he takes another half dozen paras from these excerpts to even bring up Gleick:
22 Feb: BBC: Richard Black: Confessions of a climate gate-opener
I don’t normally do requests, as they say – but I’ve a lot of messages via emails, blog comments and Twitter asking for a follow-up post on the Heartland Institute, and am happy to oblige.
Many thanks for all your messages – nice to know one’s thoughts are in such demand!…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17126699
what chance Black, Revkin, Goldenberg are among the 15 to receive Gleick’s poisoned emails? time for those who received them to confess!
can anyone find an MSM piece with a HEADLINE that mentions possible FORGERY?
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[ In this upside down world, Heartland are the ones trying to start a science debate on a shoestring budget, while the establishment scientists, with 10,000 times the funding, debate whether they should steal things instead.]
Wrong
Its 16 000 X.
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Last night, I watched a 30-minute YouTube video of Gleick speaking at a “sustainability conference” last year. Some points emerged:
1. He is not evil; he comes across as quite pleasant, if a bit intense and dull. Nor is he stupid, in the academic sense.
2. He is instinctively anti-development and anti-capitalist.
3. He believes that in 100 years’ time we will look back at environmentalism in the same way we now look back on the anti-slavery movement, or the suffragette movement, as inevitable progressions in society.
4. He suffers from white middle-class guilt about having clean water to drink, while the Third World does not.
5. He hates the advertising industry for its role in creating and maintaining the consumer society.
6. He favours top-down regulation, where the citizenry are told what to do by a self-appointed elite, rather than having their own free choice.
7. He sees “business” as the main blocking agent to achieving his sustainability goals.
In other words, he is a typical environmental zealot, and I can easily see him stooping to lies and deception to try to “win” for his side.
My question is, with that attitude, what other underhand steps might he have taken, in his scientific endeavours, to try and ensure that his side wins?
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Interesting. He and I agree on number 5. I hate the advertising industry as well – it is a breeding ground for propagandists.
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Well, we all remember how he wrote an extremely disparaging Amazon review of Donna Laframboise’s “Delinquent Teenager” last autumn, without having the decency to read the book first.
Since the book wasn’t concerned with the actual science, but rather with the shenanigans within the IPCC, all meticulously referenced, I guess you could say he’d turn his (under)hand to anything for the cause.
Incidentally, I checked on Amazon yesterday and it seems his fake Review has been deleted.
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These mob are wankers. It seems that in their eyes, it’s only criminal when Murdock journalists steal private information…… But when AGW activists or socialist journalists do it, it’s a great and noble deed.
But not only that, they then try and say that stealing private information is no different than a whistle blower releasing publicly owned information.
These people’s hypocricy and lack of ethics makes me utterly sick.
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Nooooo!!!!!! The stupid kids are at it again!!!
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/02/lying-is-the-wrong-way-to-raise-awareness-about-climate-change/#comment-247599
This stupid reporter still twists the story to spread her bias and tries to justify Gleiks actions.
The comments are even worse!
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RPS highlighted the antics of Gleick and his ilk last year. These people are bottom feeders.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/a-climate-science-post-on-september-4-2011-involving-peter-gleick/
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It is very weird that no one “has been able to” determine the source of the Climategate e-mails. We can track down so much, we are told, about terrorists and pornographers and their ilk, but after two years we can’t figure out who released the UEA e-mails.
I don’t believe it. I think they know very well who did it, but don’t want to name him/her, as by doing so he/she will be on the cover of Time magazine explaining what he/she experienced that caused him/her to do it.
So Gleick has a fraudulent document that he can’t figure owns. Sure. And he got it, what, by Pixie-express? Such an important document he didn’t keep track of its origins?
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Seems to me something important has been missed here.
Gleick committed identity theft.
That’s kind of bad, and whether he of an investigative reporter do it, its still theft, its still fraud and its still illegal.
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I’ve been following all her articles since the affair began and, sorry, but she’s a fair dinkum Dill.
Suzanne Goldberg’s Greatest
HitsMissesWhat do these mean?
discredit climate change
discredit the teaching of science to school children
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/21/gleick-apology-heartland-leak-ethics-debate
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/21/peter-gleick-admits-leaked-heartland-institute-documents
“discredit ” + [something] = [bad thing bad people do]
climate science attack machine’s [Heartland]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/17/heartland-institute-fresh-scrutiny-tax
And she calls John Mashey a Heartland “whistleblower”.
She STILL has the following quote up which originates from the FAKE document:
The scheme includes spending $100,000 for spreading the message in K-12 schools that “the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science”, the documents said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/15/leak-exposes-heartland-institute-climate
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In California there is no “probably” about it. The action of mispresenting oneself as someone else, and using a computer to do so, is subject to a $1,000 fine and/or up to a year in the jug. By confessing I suspect Gleick and his lawyers might well have decided to limit the exposure he had to a jury’s whims.
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As I understand it, it’s a crime under US Federal Law : “Wire Fraud”. 10 years. No slap on the wrist.
So it looks like he may have lots of time to actually read “The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert”
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My initial thoughts were “How friggin’ stupid can the guy be?” And then I thought it seemd a bit over the top for the Heartland Institute to be pressing legal action. But then today I read where Greenpeace has acted on the names provided in the HI documents and causing all sorts of embarrassing situations for the named people concerned including the termination of careers. So long Peter Gliek. I hope HI sues him for every penny he has now and will make over the rest of his life. Then I hope the HI goes after every blog, website and newspaper that ignored its directive to cease and desist.
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It was never “over the top”. Look at the fake document ask yourself what mentality was required to create that? They/he has resorted to deception to defame Heartland, it is they who took the gloves off.
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If you notice all the dippy hippies lauding this and trying to compare it to ClimateGate overlook (among the many other things) that FOIA redacted personal information.
The dippy hippies are more than happy to spread your personal info all over the web so Greenpeace can pull this kind of crap, but you know damn well they would be squealing like a stuck pig if it was their personal info be thrown all over the web.
Most of these morons we have here in the US don’t understand the Constitution at all. They want to hide behind the freedoms it offers as they distort things like the first amendment in order to curtail the freedoms of anyone they don’t like.
What can we do, we let them have kids now we’re stuck with them…
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22 Feb: UK Daily Mail: Melanie Phillips: ‘Fakegate’ – the new nadir of the climate change swindle
This convoluted whodunnit – dubbed ‘Fakegate’ and charted in detail on the invaluable Watts Up With That? site – started when warmist stooges in the media started smearing AGW sceptics based on an apparent leak of incriminating documents from Heartland. It quickly became apparent that someone had used false pretences to obtain confidential Heartland electronic records, which were posted onto the web along with a purported strategic plan by Heartland to ‘muddy public understanding about climate science and policy’. But this strategic plan was in fact a fabricated document, the suspicion of which arose almost immediately.
The usual suspects in the media nevertheless swallowed all this uncritically – indeed leapt with slavering joy upon this apparent proof of sceptic perfidy…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2104908/Fakegate–new-nadir-climate-change-swindle.html
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Another potentially inappropriate method of gathering information: drones. Pravda Australia had a good article on UAVs for journalism and surveillance.
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But great for target practice 🙂
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so the churches believe humans control the climate?
22 Feb: UK Telegraph: Matthew Holehouse: Pollution goes against God’s will, say church leaders in Ash Wednesday message
Leaders of churches in Britain including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the head of Scotland’s Roman Catholics have made a Lenten call for repentance and a “change of direction” to combat the dangers of climate change
Rowan Williams has joined Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, among other church leaders, in signing a declaration which says reducing dependence on fossil fuels is “essential” to Christian discipleship…
The declaration was released by Operation Noah, the Christian environmental charity. Other signatories include Bishop of London the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, Archbishop of Wales Barry Morgan and leaders of the Methodist, Baptist and United Reformed churches.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, has also signed the declaration.
The Rt Rev David Atkinson, of Operation Noah, said: “We believe that this is a time of urgency for the church.
“The threat of runaway climate change is the most significant moral question facing us today.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9098421/Pollution-goes-against-Gods-will-say-church-leaders-in-Ash-Wednesday-message.html
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The ignorant lead the blind.
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the charity org who wrote the church leaders’ statement:
Operation Noah
http://www.operationnoah.org/
wow, beyond wow…in the Independent no less:
22 Feb: UK Independent: Simon Carr: Is catastrophic global warming, like the Millenium Bug, a mistake?
At a public meeting in the Commons, the climate scientist Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT made a number of declarations that unsettle the claim that global warming is backed by “settled science”. They’re not new, but some of them were new to me…
Lindzen says: “Claims that the earth has been warming, that there is a Greenhouse Effect, and that man’s activity have contributed to warming are trivially true but essentially meaningless.”
He said our natural body temperature varies by eight tenths of a degree.
He showed a Boston newspaper weather graphic for a day – it had the actual temperature against a background of the highest and lowest recorded temperature for that day. The difference was as much as 60 degrees F.
When you double CO2 there’s a two per cent change in the “radiation budget”. Yet two billion years ago, the sun was 20 to 30 per cent dimmer – and the planet’s temperature was about the same.
The Al Gore graph showing CO2 and temperature rising and falling in tandem showed that the release of CO2 from the oceans was prompted by warming, not vice versa.
He gave us a slide with a series of familiar alarms – melting ice caps, disappearing icebergs, receding glaciers, rising sea levels. It was published by the US Weather Bureau in 1922.
And one further element of the consensus: there’s been no increase in temperature for 15 years.
He concluded with an exposition of science that, frankly, I didn’t follow. However, the reliability and explanatory power of climate models was satirised convincingly. And I found myself believing – or accepting the possibility – that warming would reduce rather than increase tropical storms.
He also said that the IPCC needs “positive feedback mechanisms” to justify anything above a one degree C increase in their predictions. But: “Observation points to small negative feedbacks.”
How to explain the procession of eminent opinion leaders – some even in our own Royal Society – who advance the tenets of catastrophic global warming? “It is science in the service of politics,” he said.
*****If Lindzen is right, we will never be able to calculate the trillions that have been spent on the advice of “scientists in the service of politics”.
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/02/22/is-catastrophic-global-warming-like-the-millenium-bug-a-mistake/
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A pretty good ‘rule of thumb’ when reading any environment column in the Guardian is to scroll straight to the foot to see if readers are invited to comment.
If they’re not, it’s fair to assume the content is leftist/warmist propaganda rather than fact: Leo Hickman is another who is particularly fond of this technique.
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Stealing is bad, identity theft is down right criminal. Who else had their identity faked by this creton?
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Better question, who had their privacy violated and are now being targeted and harassed by Greenpeace and other activist groups?
You know activists seem to love to do to others the very thing they whine and cry about happening to them, thought the actual evidence never supports their claims. If someone were to do a study I suspect the findings would conclude that it is the activists who are more likely to issue death threats and engage in behavior that is in fact harmful to society. Unfortunately, more often than not, the studies are being done by these loons and the truth is the last thing they are looking for.
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I just viewed desmogblogs latest post stating that, “A line-by-line evaluation of the Climate Strategy memo, which the Heartland Institute has repeatedly denounced as a “fake” shows no “obvious and gross misstatements of fact,” as Heartland has alleged. On the contrary, the Climate Strategy document is corroborated by Heartland’s own material and/or by its allies and employees.”
Do these guys ever learn!
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“Do these guys ever learn!”
Why should they? the smog blog is a fake blog, it’s run by a PR firm, and, after all, like all PR firms, they’d start a blog denouncing CAGW hypothesis calling it all lies if they got paid for it.
Why, all rehtorical like, do think they hardly have any readers, except, apparently, mostly, for the traffic sent to them from blogs like this one. It’s like most of the traffic to their site consist of people wanting a good LMAO. :p
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I suspect they probably have a few paid bloggers who comment there as well to keep up appearances. Be interesting to see of the various people commenting there in support of the blog how many of them are in reality the same person, how many of them work for the blog, and how many of them don’t work for the blog but are in some manner paid to post there.
Somewhere I saw the numbers between them and WUWT and can fully understand why they hate Anthony’s site so. His traffic swamps what they get and his visitors in general are more mature. That’s what you get when you run a hate site, and that is all deSmog will ever be.
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Shock! Joy!
Research offers glimmer of hope for threatened coral.
Better than first thought?? That’s not staying on-message Auntie.
Slowly the cracks in the alarm spread wider.
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So when Bob carter said that corals were quite capable of handling Climate variations and was bagged by such statements, He was actually right. Who’d have thunk …. grrrr !!
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Rule 7,401.92: Never expect honesty from the dishonest. That way you’re never disappointed (loss of points if disappointed).
Oh! If you do get it (honesty) you’ll be pleasantly surprised (added bonus points).
Rule 1: Never hold your breath while waiting (lose the game). 🙂
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It cries out to be asked: Where were these miscreant’s parents when they were growing up? Mine never tolerated dishonesty. What happened to theirs?
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Stealing is AOK for a crimatologist.
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was just reading stuff at bishophill and realise the simon carr piece in The Independent is ONLY in a blog online. also someone mentioned how Carr is a political journalist, but that is precisely what CAGW is and what Lindzen himself says.
in fact as someone at the bish’s wrote, a search at The Independent brings up NOT A SINGLE ARTICLE ON PETER GLEICK AND FAKEGATE. incredible MSM.
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stolen? nah. faked? nah. let’s go for bob carter and gina rinehart instead:
24 Feb: ABC Unleashed: Clive Hamilton: The shadowy world of IPA finances
In fact the bulk of Heartland’s climate science denial campaign – which includes plans to promote anti-science in schools – has been funded by one donor, whose name did not appear in the purloined documents…
The IPA’s coyness is all the more hypocritical because a few years ago it launched a sustained attack on NGOs by claiming they were unaccountable, unrepresentative and not worthy of charitable status. The demand for transparency applies to everyone but itself.
Despite its refusal to divulge, we can make a good guess at where a large part of its recent funding has come from – right-wing mining billionaire Gina Rinehart…
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3849006.html
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23 Feb: TheEnergyCollective: Robert Rapier: How the Gleick Crisis Is Killing The Global Warming Cause
First There Was Climategate, Now There’s Gleickgate
But here is where McArdle really nails it:
“Gleick has done enormous damage to his cause and his own reputation, and it’s no good to say that people shouldn’t be focusing on it. If his judgement is this bad, how is his judgement on matters of science? For that matter, what about the judgement of all the others in the movement who apparently see nothing worth dwelling on in his actions?
When skeptics complain that global warming activists are apparently willing to go to any lengths–including lying–to advance their worldview, I’d say one of the movement’s top priorities should be not proving them right…
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.”
That is the issue in a nutshell, and something Gleick’s defenders don’t seem to get. They have grossly underestimated the damage this does, but they are compounding it by making excuses for him.
Conclusion: Scientists Should Know Better
Here is how I think the rest of this plays out. Gleick’s defenders will continue to defend him, albeit in diminishing numbers. Those who defend him to the end simply reinforce the views of climate skeptics that — as McArdle stated — the cause is more important than the truth…
Further, if Gleick confesses to the forgery as I believe he ultimately will, the defenders are going to have even more egg on their faces. And yet some will continue to defend, suggesting that HI’s tactics are so horrible that the end justifies the means. Except in this case, your chances of achieving “the end” have been made much more difficult by Gleick’s actions….
Both sides view the other side with contempt, and throw derogatory labels around. But what always bothered me the most about the whole debate was that as someone who was trained as a scientist, you never say that the science is settled. The science may be compelling, but contrary views should not be shouted down…
So the moral of this story is that the science is never settled, and agendas should not be allowed to get in the way of science. Scientists, of all people, should know this
http://theenergycollective.com/robertrapier/77433/how-kill-global-warming-cause
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I recently had reason to employ an Australian consultant, an expert in a certain complex field of geology.
I am a geologist and we talked over a number of subjects and I found he was an even greater sceptic than I – why? For those who don’t know it, geologists (those employed by government excepted for obvious reasons) are consistently the most sceptical group of people on the planet – hey, what do these guys know about the Earth’s history?!?
He had for a couple of years been a systems designer/computer programmer for a well known Australian institute, which amongst other things is involved in climate research. He claimed to have been incredibly well paid to create complex computer programs which could always be relied upon to produce pre-determined results. He told me he eventually left in disgust.
I am trying to persuade him “to come out”, but he seems genuinely concerned about the consequences of doing that. In any event, I found out I was a complete amateur in my ability to shred warmista arguments and theories.
I suppose the point I am making is how many more whistle blowers are out there unwilling/too concerned/scared “to come out” and expose the inside machinations of the dirty, ugly, cosy little world of CAGW fanatics. The person who leaked the Climategate emails (still lots more of these pending)is one, but how many more might there be?
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“He claimed to have been incredibly well paid to create complex computer programs which could always be relied upon to produce pre-determined results. He told me he eventually left in disgust. ”
Peter, it probably works like this:
a) A climate model must maintain conservation of energy. So in each time step energy may move from one cell to adjacent cells but may not increase or decrease. This is logical.
b) They can easily manipulate how much energy leaves the system. The only direction is space, and by tuning the aerosol properties, they can predetermine how the total energy content develops over time. Just assume a little bit more thermalization due to black carbon if it doesn’t get warm enough.
Et Voila, temperature hockey stick. Any shape you like.
All the fluctuations between the cells mean nothing for the energy balance, that’s only decoration to make it look complicated.
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From Guardian: “researcher who exposed the Heartland Institute’s efforts to discredit climate change ”
Where does this sentence come from? Who tried to discredit climate change? What is this for a nonsense?
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The Grauniad’s and other warmist media’s efforts to redefine words to their liking backfires on their thinking skills. Semantic backlash.
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I have been collecting many links from around the web for the purpose of building a resource for further reading of HeartlandGate mess.It is a thread I started at my climate forum under the forum heading Climategate.
There are over 50 links and growing.
Heartlandgate aka FAKEGATE
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Re Gleick and whistleblowing:
If, as a consequence of the ensuing pressure campaign, Bob Carter or some other recipient of Heartland stipends loses
a) the stipend
or
b) his job,
he can sue Gleick for damages in my opinion. Gleick did knowingly expose them and it even was his declared intent. Instead of passing the information to authorities (who would have ignored it as nothing illegal happened) or publishing only redacted versions without the names.
The same goes for the donors; if one of them loses his job or other income due to the attempts by journalists to harm them, he can also sue Gleick.
There might be some interesting lawsuits upcoming.
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[snip needs substantiation — Jo]
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