Jim Lakely of Heartland had said on twitter that Heartland had invited Gleick to speak and that Gleick had refused. I asked Lakely if they would provide me with copies of this correspondence (both to confirm their story and to pin down details of the chronology). Lakely has just provided me with this correspondence together with permission to publish.
I am examining further details of this chronology and plan a post summarizing my present interpretation of events, either later today or tomorrow.
On Jan 12, James Taylor of Heartland published a Forbes article, responding to and criticizing Gleick’s Jan 5 article, with an important exchange between Gleick and Taylor taking place in the comments. In his comment, Gleick asked for Heartland’s donor list, with Taylor refusing. In his refusal, Taylor observed that most opposing 501c3’s did not publish their donors.
On Jan 13, Jim Lakely of Heartland invited Gleick to participate in their forthcoming 28th Anniversary Dinner, a dinner that would be attended by Heartland’s supporters and donors. It would presumably have been an opportunity for Gleick to persuade his opponents. Heartland offered Gleick a charitable contribution of $5,000 to the charity of his choice:
>Dr. Gleick,
>
>I’ve enjoyed the lively discussion via dueling
>Forbes.com columns and replies between you and James Taylor.
>
>The Heartland Institute is in the early planning
>stages for our 28th Anniversary Benefit Dinner
>later this year. We usually have a keynote
>speaker or debate for the “entertainment”
>portion of the event, and I was wondering if
>you’d be willing to come to Chicago to debate
>James Taylor. We’d donate $5,000 to the charity
>of your choice in lieu of an honoraria.
>
>I think such a debate would be enlightening, and
>a lot of fun. Folks at Heartland don’t bite, and
>treat those with whom we disagree with respect.
>(You can ask Scott Denning at Colorado State
>University about how he was treated at our last
>two climate conferences, or
>go
>here to view his words of thanks at our 4th conference.)
>
>Let me know if this offer is appealing to you,
>and if it might fit your schedule. (Our dinner
>is tentatively scheduled for the second week of August.)
>
>Regards,
>
>Jim Lakely
>Communications Director
>The Heartland Institute
A few days later (Jan 16), Gleick made a temporizing response, again asking for the donor list. Gleick said that transparency about donors was important to him in accepting speaking engagements.
>From: Peter H. Gleick [mailto:pgleick@pipeline.com]
>Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 1:39 PM
>To: Jim Lakely; pgleick@pacinst.org; James Taylor
>Subject: Re: Debate Invitation
>
>
>Dear Mr. Lakely,
>
>Thank you for your email of January 13th, 2012,
>inviting me to participate in the Heartland
>Institute’s 28th Anniversary Benefit Dinner.
>
>In order for me to consider this invitation,
>please let me know if the Heartland Institute
>publishes its financial records and donors for
>the public and where to find this information.
>Such transparency is important to me when I am
>offered a speaking fee (or in this case, a
>comparable donation to a charity). My own
>institution puts this information on our website.
>
>Also, I would like a little more information
>about the date, venue, and expected audience and
>format. In addition, I assume your offer
>includes all travel and hotel expenses, economy
>class, but can you please confirm this?
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Dr. Peter Gleick
>
The next day, Lakely responded, confirming that his expenses would be covered as well as the proposed honorarium to a charity. Lakely re-iterated Heartland’s reasons for not disclosing their donor list.
At 03:25 PM 1/17/2012, Jim Lakely wrote:
>Peter,
>
>Thanks for your reply. Travel and lodging
>expenses would be covered by Heartland. Our
>annual dinner is tentatively set for August.
>This would be a moderated debate, though details
>about the question on the table, the time for
>each side, etc., is yet to be determined.
>
>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.
>
>More donor information from our Web site:
>
>Diverse funding base: Heartland has grown slowly
>over the years by cultivating a diverse base of
>donors who share its mission. Today it has
>approximately 2,000 supporters. In 2010 it
>received 48 percent of its income from
>foundations, 34 percent from corporations, and
>14 percent from individuals. No corporate donor
>gave more than 5 percent of its annual budget.
>
>Also from our Web site:
>
>Policies regarding donors: The Heartland
>Institute enforces
>policies
>that limit the role donors may play in the
>selection of research topics, peer review, and
>publication plans of the organization. Heartland
>does not conduct contract research. These
>policies ensure that no Heartland researcher or
>spokesperson is subject to undue pressure from a donor.
>
>And more donor policy/information from our Web site:
>
>Q: Why doesn’t Heartland reveal the identities of its donors?
>
>A: For many years, we provided a complete list
>of Heartland’s corporate and foundation donors
>on this Web site and challenged other think
>tanks and advocacy groups to do the same. To our
>knowledge, not a single group followed our lead.
>
>After much deliberation and with some regret, we
>now keep confidential the identities of all our
>donors for the following reasons:
>
>• People who disagree with our views
>have taken to selectively disclosing names of
>donors who they think are unpopular in order to
>avoid addressing the merits of our positions.
>Listing our donors makes this unfair and
>misleading tactic possible. By not disclosing
>our donors, we keep the focus on the issue.
>• We have procedures in place that
>protect our writers and editors from undue
>influence by donors. This makes the identities of our donors irrelevant.
>• We frequently take positions at odds
>with those of the individuals and companies who
>fund us, so it is unfair to them as well as to
>us to mention their funding when expressing our point of view.
>• No corporate donor gives more than 5
>percent of our budget, and most give far less
>than that. We have a diverse funding base that
>is too large to accurately summarize each time we issue a statement.
>And, as you know, we are under no legal
>obligation to release a detailed list of our
>donors – nor is any other non-profit
>organization. Our 990 forms are in full compliance with the IRS.
>
>More here:
>http://heartland.org/reply-to-critics
>
>Regards,
>
>Jim Lakely
>Communications Director
>The Heartland Institute
On January 27, Gleick declined Heartland’s invitation.
From: Peter H. Gleick
Sent: Fri 1/27/2012 9:33 AM
To: Jim Lakely
Subject: RE: Debate InvitationDear Mr. Lakely,
After reviewing your email and after serious
consideration, I must decline your invitation to
participate in the August fundraising event for the Heartland Institute.I think the seriousness of the threat of climate
change is too important to be considered the
“entertainment portion of the event” as you
describe it, for the amusement of your donors.
Perhaps more importantly, the lack of
transparency about the financial support for the
Heartland Institute is at odds with my belief in
transparency, especially when your Institute and
its donors benefit from major tax breaks at the expense of the public.Thank you for considering me.
Dr. Peter Gleick
Shortly after
Unaware of Gleick’s deception, on January 28, Lakely sent Gleick a cordial acknowledgement.
From: Jim Lakely
Sent: Saturday, January 28, 2012 8:06 PM
To: Peter H. Gleick
Subject: RE: Debate InvitationDr. Gleick,
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve declined our invitation, but I am thankful that you gave it serious consideration. If you’d ever like to engage in a public debate with a Heartland scholar on the topic of climate change, our door is always open.
As for the “entertainment” bit … I think you misunderstand. That word was not intended to make frivolous what Heartland does — in general, or certainly at our annual benefit dinner. We’re a think tank. We love debate, and thrive on intellectual back-and-forth. To me, and our supporters, such a stimulating discussion IS ALSO entertaining. Learning should ever be so.
Regardless, the invitation to our benefit dinner is open. We’ll happily comp you two tickets if you’d like to come to one of the world’s greatest cities for a day of leisure and an evening with Heartland’s scholars, staffers and supporters.
Warm regards,
Jim Lakely
Communications Director
The Heartland Institute
Climate Audit 
120 Comments
Certainly no apparent wish to “engage with skeptics” then?
Gleick also thinks ‘… the seriousness of the threat of climate change is too important to be considered the “entertainment portion of the event”.’
This guy has got big issues which I hope he will be given time and space to resolve.
He’s likely to be given time alright, but relatively little space !
LMAO!
Oops, should have read the next comment before I posted.
Interesting that shortly before committing wire fraud to obtain and release the donor list, Gleick received a very clear and well-reasoned explanation of the reason that the donors were kept secret. These included:
Given that this had just been explained to him, and the cogency of the reasons adduced, I find Gleick’s release of the donor list even more despicable and disturbing. Is there nothing these folks won’t do for “The Cause”?
w.
You’re looking at it all wrong, Willis. Given that this had just been explained to him, and the cogency of the reasons adduced, how could poor Peter have been expected to resist that temptation? He’s only human.
Lakely should be prosecuted for contributing to the delinquency of a minor climate scientist.
🙂
Love the double entendre!
I also particularly like:
“And, as you know, we are under no legal
>obligation to release a detailed list of our
>donors – nor is any other non-profit
>organization. Our 990 forms are in full compliance with the IRS.”
Add to this that the other non-profit groups HI contends with don’t release their donor lists either, and this whole issue casts Gleick in an even worst light, if that were possible.
I’m just waiting for his confession about the fake memo.
Also, makes me kinda sick with the DeSmogBlog and their crying about “HI lied!”. Lied about what? The only things that sound nefarious in motive are in the faked climate strategy doc. Once all that’s wrapped up, the story will be complete.
Where is that issue up to, I wonder. Seems to have disappeared from the radar. What will cause it to develop ? If HI choose not to press charges, I suspect we may never know
At the moment it’s getting crowd sourced analysis using advanced software to match writing styles and the like. The FBI will likely be looking into it with much better equipment, or so I’ve heard. It isn’t under the radar by any means, but it isn’t as much in the forefront as it should be–it is the biggest issue at hand, I feel. I suppose that’s because Gleick has never claimed it wasn’t fake, and his confession was very well crafted to make people look at other things to scrutinize about his conduct first.
Maybe Gleick should retained OJ to look for the “real” author.
Sorry, I’m going to have to snip you for piling on.
Dammit! I can’t! Oh the humanity!
Of course it disappeared off the radar once it potentially became embarrassing to the global warming proponents and their friends and allies in the media. If past tactics hold true, they will let it lie fallow for a few months until the public forgets that the document appears to have been faked then you’ll see stories before the presidential election talking about the “Heartland anti-science strategy document” or some such BS (of course, without any mention of the felonious and fallacious origin of said document).
Whoever wrote the fake memo failed the Ideological Turing Test.
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/the_ideological.html
I can confirm they did use to publish their donors list. It’s in archive.org
I don’t think Gleick had obtained the documents at the time of the last reply. The board minutes word doc has a create date of 1/29 and modified date of 1/31. Lakely also stated in the linked tweet that “Email fraud to Heartland began 2/3”.
dearieme –
Yes, that clunker also surprised me. I hope you noticed that Steve’s commentary subtly corrected him. Lakely made another error in “details about the question on the table, the time for each side, etc., is [sic] yet to be determined.” But at least he doesn’t abuse commas and parentheses as some do!
Didn’t follow the story that close: i thought 50% of the budget came from the anonymous donor ?
No corporate donor.
The Anonymous Donor should be an individual.
Lakely states only 14% of the bidget comes from individuals. If i understand correctly, the AD donated much more than 14% ?
Logic simply says that the AD is a foundation, which makes up 48% of the HI budget. That would also explain why AD is left as AD and not named in their documents.
Either that, or the AD is actually anonymous to them too, and they have no idea who or what it is that’s donating such large sums. If that’s the case, in what category can you place him? I’d also wrap that into “Foundations” or some sort of other category.
You have to be careful here. Mr. Lakely was referencing funding for the year 2010. I believe the stolen documents refer to 2011 funding.
I believe that single donor high amount was for the Climate strategy only, not to Heartland in general.
I’ve been told so many times that this is a battle between good, honest scientists and evil deniers. In this interaction there’s really no science to speak of so one has to fall back on intangibles like honesty, generosity and courtesy. On that basis it’s not hard to identify which side is which. But I have this nagging sense of contradiction between the conclusion any child could draw and what I’ve read somewhere. Can anyone help out?
Richard Drake (Posted Feb 23, 2012 at 2:56 PM) asked,
… Can anyone help out?
(Richard certainly has a droll sense of humor.)
Check with the hokey team. They can help you out.
In the FOIA emails Peter Gleick used an email address at what appeared to be his brother’s company. I was curious as why he chose to do that.
You are casting your net too wide. Are you a younger brother or an older brother?
I am both.
My posts on Peters big brother keep getting deleted. 😦
Steve:
A question on the implied timeline. You note that “shortly after” the email exchange Gleick embarked on his efforts to obtain information out of Heartland.
The next paragraph starts: “Unaware of Gleick’s deception…”, and the corresponding email is dated 28 January.
Does this indicate that Gleick made the first attempts to obtain information in January? (Or am I reading too much into the opening phrase?). Indeed, do we have a timeline yet that definitively sets out when Gleick made his attempts?
Cheers,
I note MT’s comments above re: Lakey’s tweet (that the “email fraud” started on Feb 2).
In his column in Forbes on 21 Feb. 2012, James Taylor – a Heartland insider – wrote:
“Yet Gleick declined to participate in such a fair and open debate, and then on the very next day committed his acts of fraud and theft against the Heartland Institute.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/02/22/fakegate-illustrates-global-warming-alarmists-deceit-and-desperation/
Based on the exchange printed above, that suggests a 28 Jan start date for the first contact – probably PG initiating the ruse regarding the fake email address acting in his guise as the board member. Kaminsky, in his Friday piece in American Spectator, noted that there had been more than one contact from Gleick. I wonder how many times Gleick contacted Heartland(and whether he tried to get more than just the Board materials)?
Steve: the precise synchronization of events has been reviewed subsequently. My information is that Gleick’s trap to divert email commenced on the 27th.
Nice: so right after rather stiffly declining the invite, he immediately or concurrently launches the cyber-attack.
Anthony Watts linked to a Bertrand Russell “Decalogue” for liberalism (as an an antidote to fanaticism). It’s worthy list and should be adopted by all in this debate. That, mixed with a sense of humour would go a long way to defusing (or preventing) some of this nonsense and all of the related hyperventilating that goes on.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/24/friday-funny-an-inconvenient-lesson-from-60-years-ago/
I look forward to the coming analysis.
Cheers.
Note that this chronology blows an even bigger hole in Gleick’s claim to have received the documents, including the forgery, from an anonymous source first. Instead, this ‘paper trail’ shows with perfect clarity how he found himself presented with the opportunity to commit the deed, and succumbed to the temptation immediately. It would be a coincidence extraordinary enough to defy belief had somebody unconnected with him or this correspondence independently acquired the same set of papers at the same moment, added the forgery, and then sent them all to him.
Indeed. Not only does this e-mail thread prove motive for Gleick, it also gives opportunity; as now he has information about this dinner, and the private correspondence to himself, to use as leverage to pass off as a board member. I wonder which member it was he impersonated.
Does anybody know if Peter Gleick accepted invitations from any other organisations who did not reveal their donor list for public inspection?
That’s a great question. If he’s done that, though maybe he really does stick by that principle, it would really shoot a few more holes in this whole issue. No idea where he’s been a speaker, but good idea to look now before more places start sanitizing him off their lists than have already.
This question is not too significant.
If he’s invited to a discussion where he may consider the reception to be hostile, it’s natural to try to find out who the ‘enemy’ are, beforehand.
Who received the email cover leter.. (15 alleged people that are very quiet)
Do we even know if the (15 of you) exist?
Why not ask Peter who he sent this to and when, etc, etc
Am I correct in thinking thatonly part of the content of the covering email, has been published (by Keith Kloor)
I am curious in what the rest of that email said (if there is more)
This is the first time I have seen an approximate time stamp placed on the wire fraud. Did this information come from Lakely, like the assurance he has given about his acknowledgement? Just asking. But…wow… that is a lot earlier than I had thought.
There’s an implication that’s showing
Different from what I thought we were knowing:
If in Feb and in Jan
The “board member scam” ran
Was the email of board docs ongoing?
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Keith, I appreciate the limerick form. In fact, one of the most well-thumbed books near my desk is the Wordsworth Book of Limericks, but IMHO the climate debates require the inscrutable form of Haiku a la Kim.
There’s enough conjecture in 17 syllables to equal the appropriate error bars in any temperature reconstruction. Whereas, the limerick drives home a fairly specific conclusion whether phrased as a question or not. 🙂
It can be obscure
And is not my preferred style
Haiku: not a-verse
I often write in more iambic prose
Pentameter is easy to compose
But questions can be helpful to the wary
Did Gleick begin his scam in January?
I’ve seen a later date by several days
But our host’s comment makes me change my ways
And yet a February date is needed
So please don’t let the question go unheeded!
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Steve,
I think that you have revealed one of the major differences between those who believe in CAGW and those who are “skeptical” (for want of a better word).
In general, the skeptics are numerate with some sort of scientific or technical background who are comfortable with numbers and want to see for themselves if they can get the same answer you do. In general the motivation here is that it is fun or entertaining for us. Why else would someone like you bother with this?
In general skeptics like to debate these numbers using more formal debating methods: stating a proposition, presenting detailed proofs and summing up (sometimes ponderously). Skeptics will even debate skeptics if nothing else is happening. Again the motivation here is fun or entertainment. Skeptics do not like it when people break the rules by reverting to ad hominens, changing the subject in mid stream, running away or making sh*t up. This detracts from the fun.
It is very telling that Peter Gleick objects to the use of the word entertainment in this context. To a skeptic entertainment involves a measure of intellectual stimulation. Sometimes a great measure.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, thanks for Climate Audit, it has been and continues to be great fun. You know exactly what I mean, otherwise you wouldn’t be doing it.
I will leave it to others to describe the other side of the coin.
Steve: many “skeptics” are ideological in precisely the same way as the people they criticize.
For sure, yes but they are not IMHO representative of the general population of skeptics and would not really have a hook to hang their hat on if the entertained skeptic wasn’t there to offer an argument. How many skeptics cringe inside when an ideolog shows up to support their side of a discussion. These ideologs are not skeptics they are ideologs.
I agree. I cannot help but cringe sometimes when I feel that a valid point that I can recognize, and is not too subtle for the ordinary observer, is overstated and made, ultimately, to look ridiculous. I feel that if I sympathize with the message, but detest the delivery, no one who could derive benefit from the message will accept it and it will alienate the thoughtful onlooker.
“Skeptics” “ideologs” – aren’t these rather general terms to be throwing about with such assurance? Aren’t there shades and/or degrees of both? And why can’t someone be both? And what is to gained by using such terms as if they are mutually exclusive?
An ideologue can just be someone who has a coherent set of ideas about something. Using the term has come to be some kind of putdown, as if there is something inherently wrong with having principles and ideas that guide your thinking and your life. Calling someone an ideologue is a way of attacking a person for having certain ideas without actually having to address those ideas, and is itself often just a manifestation of the ideology of the attacking person.
I have an ideology – a coherent set of beliefs and ideas, and I think that’s ok. I’m somewhat skeptical about AGW, and I think that’s ok too.
I’ve got plenty of good reasons behind both my ideology and my skepticism, and I’m plenty prepared to supply them. Please, no shots at “ideologues” or “ideology.”
When people speak disparagingly of ideology, they actually mean “rigid” ideology, e.g. as personified by Peter Gleick.
There are rigid ideologues on both sides of the climate debate, but I haven’t seen any illegal or unethical behavior from the skeptic side, although release of the Climategate emails could be construed as such. On the CAGW side, I’ve seen quite a bit.
I think the rigid ideologues on the CAGW side who’ve been engaging in unprofessional or illegal behavior are following the dictates of their conscience as shaped by their ideology. When they cross the line, they tend to view it as a form of civil disobedience. At the same time, if they witness the skeptic side behaving similarly, they view it as criminal behavior that warrants prosecution.
I wonder if Jim Lakely cc’ed the admin at Heartland, giving PG the email of the person he tricked into mailing him things. Does this person show up in the headers of the correspondence between PG and Lakely?
I feel bad for the admin.
This should be marked up.
Chapter 2 of Kevin Mitnick’s book (Art of Deception) talks about people accidentally disclosing info which they don’t realise exposes them to attack.
I find the differences in diction and style between Jim Lakely’s e-mail and the fake strategy document to be striking and telling. Lakely’s e-mail consists of elegant prose and very nice, economical devices such as “…IS ALSO entertaining. Learning should ever be so.” Very compact. Very effective. Very different from the fake strategy document. Also there is a palpable difference in the personality that is communicated. Jim Lakely sounds like someone I would like to know, someone I would enjoy having dinner with. The author of the fake strategy document sounds like someone I, well, could have sympathy for. But probably not the kind of sympathy most people crave.
I stumbled across this. Somebody with balls bigger than mine might want to inquire about fees 🙂
http://www.allamericanspeakers.com/celebritytalentbios/Peter-Gleick
The “Check Availability” box is still showing.
Note the top line of the “word relevance box” or whatever it is called, Below the biography and just above the DISCLAIMER: paragraph.
Is that first word (in red in the original) a coincidence?
” entertainment contact elected appearance fees washington “
But Gleick said that he didn’t do entertainment!
http://www.allamericanspeakers.com/celebritytalentbios/Peter-Gleick
“Please Note that All American Speakers Bureau acts only as an entertainment broker/producer for corporate functions, private engagements and special events.”
From: Peter H. Gleick
Sent: Fri 1/27/2012 9:33 AM
“I think the seriousness of the threat of climate change is too important to be considered the “entertainment portion of the event” as you describe it, for the amusement of your donors.”
Send him an invite to give a speech entitled ‘ Ethics in a changing world’
Should be “Changing ethics in the world of inhospitable climate”
If you surf around the All American Speakers Bureau website you can come across this (emphasis mine):
“Please Note: All American Speakers Bureau acts only as an ENTERTAINMENT broker/producer for corporate functions, private engagements and special events. All American Speakers Bureau does not claim or represent itself as the exclusive booking agent or agency, business manager, publicist, speakers bureau, pr agency or management for Peter Gleick or any artists or celebrities on this website.”
So much for his objection to being the evening’s entertainment.
His fees aren’t published, but other speakers for whom fees are available are in the $10K to $50K range. Perhaps the puny $5K Heartland offered was beneath him.
OMG
All American Speakers Bureau is a celebrity booking agency and talent buyer which supplies celebrity talent worldwide.
I find Gleick’s behavior more difficult to understand in light of these exchanges.
He obviously wanted to damage the HI and hurt the people who had written to him in such nice, decent and reasonable terms. They wanted him to come and explain his position.
Instead of treating it like an evangelical being invited to preach to humanists, instead he looked down on them in contempt and appears to have feared he would be contaminated by by their right-wing memes.
Moral vanity, noble cause, does that to people who convince themselves of it. Degrees of paranoia …
I had a shrewd General Manager who once said: “Avoid s#@t fights, it sticks to everyone”. I believed him
his motive is anger. Like many who set fires. Anger and revenge. The humiliation he suffered at Judith’s and WUWT.
Taylor’s refusal to listen to the macarthur genius.
The crime is not about the science. not about the cause. The motive, the governing emotion, is anger and revenge. Brought on by humiliation, fanned by pride.
It’s personal. It’s always personal. People tend to look for political motivations or the cause as a motivation.
Those are the rationalizations, NOT the motive.
Yup. And the personal is the political is the scientific is the ideological.
Lakely’s graciousness didn’t even make a dent in his anger.
On the contrary, I think that it just might have pushed him over the edge.
@Mosher
That is exactly what the term moral vanity describes – anger at being disagreed with, humiliated by being ignored, when you know you are in the “moral” right. This spills into varying degrees of paranoia, almost uncontrollable for those affected. Vanity is the Achilles Heel of homo sapiens;
It’s fascinated me for a very long time because of the consequences – it seems most prevalent on the left side of politics, but not at all exclusively, of course. The current political dustup inside the Aus Govt (the sitting Govt is left of centre) is fuelled by it, with protagonists all declaring that only they have the good of the country at heart … it’s a familiar pattern
Thank you Stephen Mosher.
I’ve been watching this unfold in fascinated horror, but I have nothing to offer because politics is opaque to me. I’m the ultimate backroom boy: doing science but unable to deal with politics. You have given me a real insight here.
Gleick has a massive, but glass ego. I’ve met (and tried to avoid) plenty of the former. Having slid up the greasy pole without trace, Gleick being called by his equals has caused an implosion. It’s a first-time thing.
Call it a learning experience. He should have had a Catholic education. The Sisters of Mercy taught me all I needed to know about beatings.
So now that Heartland’s funding has been made public, Gleick can accept the invitation 🙂
excellent!
Re: Paul Matthews (Feb 23 18:04), presumably representatives of donors would have been at the dinner. A more ethical approach would have been to accept the invitation, then mingle and attempt to identify who you were talking to.
If he would have received the list he would have declined before the event.
We’re getting close to Groucho Marx territory here: I would never attend a dinner that would have me as a keynote speaker. Let alone endure the terrors of a public debate. Innuendo at a distance if all these guys can manage – with that pressure from the extreme green mob passed on to every donor they can, which I don’t doubt can be very nasty for some private citizens (I completely accept this part of the Heartland story). Full frontal discussion of the real issues, that’s not their bag. Everything about this is deceptive. Gleick has now performed the considerable public service of making that crystal clear to the man in the street.
I think these emails show Gleick displaying an alienation from ordinary polite social discourse and society, and I suppose it is due to his immersion in a left-wing culture which requires its adherents to view such as the Heartland Institute not as a group of human beings trying to make sense of things from their perspective, but rather as some evil cabal, representing some ‘badness’ against which all good socialists must struggle night and day (unless of course objective conditions require the contrary). It is not easy to have debates with people who see others as symbols or totems and not as fellow mortals of good faith. The somewhat inhumane contempt in such a view of others, who are by no means extremists beyond some Pale, on the ‘other side’ is quite a barrier to overcome if thorough public or indeed more private scientific debate is ever to take place about the climate system and what we might reasonably claim to know about it.
That’s not fair. Gleick’s emails are perfectly civil and straightforward in this exchange, with his refusal of the invitation in line with his first (and main) question. The oddity is the crossing-the-line actions we now know about, not this correspondence.
His view that funding should be disclosed by any organisation involve in public lobbying is not particularly extreme.
Absolutely. His position is consistent with his position of sanctimonious superhero.
True its not particularly extreme.
But it shows a clear double standard as PG has never required Greenpeace to publish their donor lists.
They are a significant lobby group.
🙂
I, like you, do not regard that view of funding disclosure as ‘extreme’ in any pejorative sense. I think it is misguided. We agree on your third sentence.
On your second sentence, we do not. I do not have a high opinion of those who should and could know better pushing alarm about our climate system – I regard them as irresponsible and un-principled. Therefore, I do not regard this behaviour with the theft and the forgery and the publishing of them as an ‘oddity’, but merely another sign of the moral turpitude of activists for an inhumane and ill-founded cause.
For your first sentence, I have some sympathy, but not completely. I agree his emails are civil, albeit a little cold. But I do not see them as ‘straightforward’. ‘Straightforward’ would be, for example, ‘No thank you. I do not approve of your organisation.’ The ingenuous asking of a question to which he already knew the answer was pretty much around the same time as he was scheming and plotting to, as he must have seen it, expose his correspondent and his organisation to great shame and embarassment.
I’m curious about the assertion that Gleick’s deceptive obtaining of the board materials from Heartland happened during the window of time between the January 27 and January 28 emails. Was that information provided by Heartland? Have they published it somewhere? Or is it based on private communication?
Thanks for filling in more detail.
Steve: I didn’t say that he obtained the board materials between the Jan 27 and Jan 28 emails. Only that he’d set up the email diversion prior to the Jan 28 email. Check the links and references.
California’s Online Impersonation Law:
http://sfappeal.com/news/2010/12/online-impersonation-law-goes-into-effect-jan-1.php
Conveniently went into effect in January of 2011.
Gleick’s concern about “transparency” and funding is somewhat ironic considering his apparent support of efforts to withhold data and code from the scrutiny of peer-review. See: Phil Jones keeps peer-review process humming … by using “intuition”
Earlier today I performed a search of the Climategate e-mails for “Gleick” and came upon #2486 which I thought was quite interesting. I was considering calling attention to it on this blog, but I see that you already have thoroughly dissected it in your post that you linked. Well done! Worth a read by all.
Gleick is so concerned about donors/funders that his institute hasn’t updated their list since 2009.
http://www.pacinst.org/about_us/financial_information/financial_info.html
The 2010 information is there now: http://www.pacinst.org/about_us/financial_information/Pacific_Institute_990_tax_10.pdf
ZT,
Yeah, but Heartland’s funder list is part of what Gleick was crabbing about and Gleick’s list is still two years out of date.
I just read Jim Taylor’s article linked in the post. I now understand Gleick’s actions. The article must have driven him crazy. It is very funny. ‘I feel his pain’.
matthu,
“This guy has got big issues which I hope he will be given time and space to resolve.”
And hopefully, lots of time in a small space. 🙂
I’m not really concerned about their invitation. Why are you? This discussion is irrelevant and provides very little context.
I’m intrigued, Robert S, by your statements here
And positions that you seem to take:
“I’m not really concerned” — but that’s far from clear
As you showed up with comment to make.
Your complaint, it would seem, is that this background
Is “irrelevant” to the discourse
But two weeks ago, you put the science down
And said “peer-reviewed only” of course
So if it isn’t science, or background bits
That you think that a blogger should do —
Then please tell me, if for nothing but grins and … giggles
Just what kinds of blogging suit you?
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Just a few personal observations from the email exchange:
1- It appears Lakely was reaching out.
2- Gleik comes off as suspicious (paranoid might/might not be too strong).
3- Lakely suggests contacting Scott Denning with evidently similar views Gleik shares as an example of how Gleik would be treated at HI (we don’t bite…show respect, etc).
4- Gleik is not moved to break bread unless he gets something in return – the donor list.
5 – Gleik – “I think the seriousness of the threat of climate change is too important to be considered the “entertainment portion of the event” as you
describe it, for the amusement of your donors.” Gleik asserts his orthodox believer status and is apparently quite full of himself as well as attaching a bit too much importance on the mission of saving the planet the divine has assigned him. I wonder if Gleik whipped himself with tiny CO2 canisters attached to the end of a platic flagellum after the email exchange?
Summary – The email exchange makes it fairly clear Lakely wants to build a personal relationship while demonstrating in a casual setting that CAGW skeptics aren’t the boogeyman Gleik has many times portrayed them to be. It appears that is the last thing Gleik is interested in doing without some reward (the donor list). And then there is the whole dealing with the devil point of view Gleik clearly maintains.
Lakely wants to build bridges. Based on the intent of Gleik’s recent fraudulent activity it is apparent Gleik wants to destroy every perceived obstacles in fullfilling his divine mission. Quite the contrast.
Thank you for posting this exchange – it really does speak for itself but I just couldn’t resist….
Surely some mistake:
Shortly after Gleick refused Heartland’s invitation, he sent an email to an administrator at Heartland, in which Gleick impersonated a Heartland board member and changed the email destination of the Heartland board member, subsequently obtaining board documents.
Unaware of Gleick’s deception, on January 28, Lakely sent Gleick a cordial acknowledgement.
============
All the documents refer to a 17th Jan 2012 meeting
Why would Bast & co be duped into sending out these documents 10 days after the meeting.
Looking at the dates in the docs and ignoring time zones I get this:
modify create
Binder 16/01/2012 11:06 16/01/2012 11:06
2012 climate strategy 13/02/2012 12:41 13/02/2012 12:41
2012 fundraising plan 14/02/2012 09:59 16/01/2012 14:55
Agenda for January 17 meeting 14/02/2012 12:36 16/01/2012 10:46
Heartland budget 2012 14/02/2012 12:37 16/01/2012 10:00
Board Meeting Package 14/02/2012 12:55 16/01/2012 10:48
meeting called for 17/01/2012 14:00
response to request was sent between 16/01/2012 11:06 17/01/2012 14:00
This corresponds to a couple of hours before Gleick’s first response to the offer and an hour before Lakely’s next response
The thinking is they weren’t. That it was a low level staffer that got duped into thinking he/she was helping a board member.
Exactly. And what could be more natural if someone Low on the Totem Pole at Heartland received a call from someone claiming to be the new assistant for one of the Board of Director Big Wigs. Says the B.W. lost his hard copies of the agenda and data sheets from the meeting, and could LotTP send him copies by email. The assistant says they just got promoted to this post, so their email is different than the one Heartland has on file for B.W. So, the LotTP, being a nice person with no reason to doubt the caller, says sure and pulls the files together to send.
Very plausible scenario, and says better things about Heartland’s staff and overall nature than it does about the person who would commit such fraud.
Steve
Gleick states that his organization’s donors are public but I was unable to find that information.
However, if you do some sleuthing you can find their contracts/grants from the EPA as well as a contract from the U.S. State Department.
It seems that in their State Department related disclosures they rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars per year from the government.
This is the State Department site and Gleick’s organization
http://pvo.usaid.gov/usaid/pvo.asp?i=10359&INCVOLAG=YES&INCSUM=YES&VolagText=
Said Gleick’s lawyer John Keker, “Heartland no doubt will seek to exploit Dr. Gleick’s admitted lapse in judgement in order to further its agenda in the ongoing debate about climate change, but if it wants to pursue this matter legally, it will learn that our legal system provides for a level playing field.” Keker added, “Dr. Gleick looks forward to using discovery to understand more about the veracity of the documents, lay bare the implications of Heartland’s propaganda plans and, in particular, determine once and for all who is truly behind Heartland and why.”
http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/washington-secrets/2012/02/fbi-called-over-climate-change-mole/305161
I’m far from a US legal observer – this is just deterrent posturing by the lawyer? The pretexting is not at issue, presumably for HI (I’m going on UK practice here) to claim damages for reputational loss there would be a serious argument as to what extent the fake doc, for example, did in fact defame?
“Dr. Gleick looks forward to using discovery to understand more about the veracity of the documents, lay bare the implications of Heartland’s propaganda plans and, in particular, determine once and for all who is truly behind Heartland and why.”
BRING IT ON !!!
His lawyer is posturing in public.
What he stated has noting to do with the FRAUD that Gleick committed.
Does anyone have any updates as to if any charges have been or are going to be filed??
What a novel idea: break the law and then use discovery to get what you wanted all along. If anyone is ever prosecuted for the Climategate “leaks” that might be a good thing to remember.
It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. Politics are involved and where the trial is heard and the Judge who controls it will determine if this lawyer even gets to ask that question. I have serious doubts that a California DA is going to go after Gleick because it would be highly unpopular given the political climate there. The only other option will be for HI to go after him.
After just settling a lawsuit started by a state appointed guardian over some jointly owned property, and also watching how a Judge appointed an adult guardian over someone else in a secret hearing that went “off the record” after throwing us out of the courtroom so we couldn’t hear the witness, I can say that there are some battles you want to be very careful how you fight. In my case we knew we were right but settled because the system was corrupt.
The HI will be going against a very politically connected and well supported Gleick and they better have their ducks in a row if they plan on doing it.
The interesting thing about Gleick’s email exchange with Lakely is that it proves Gleick’s intent to damage Heartland by releasing the identity of donors.
Lakely told Gleick that Heartland’s donors would not be disclosed because they would be harassed if known, implying that this would discourage prospective donors. Gleick responded by resorting to the crime of wire fraud in an attempt to identify the donors, and then published the stolen materials anonymously, thereby evincing a guilty mind and a clear intent to harm Heartland.
If Heartland can prove that Gleick was the one that faked the only interesting memo, the evidence noted above could also be used to satisfy the malice element of libel required by New York Times v. Sullivan.
Was it the dust up over the Wall Street Journal publishing the 16 contrarian’s letter, but not publishing the letter by 255 warmist climate scientists that pushed Gleick over the edge into pretexting?
He appears to have had a strong personal stake in this (as I will show), and perhaps took the non-publication of the 255’s letter as a personal attack?
1. From
https://climateaudit.org/2012/02/23/heartlands-invitation-to-gleick-details/#more-15663
“On January 27, Gleick declined Heartland’s invitation.”…”Shortly after Gleick refused Heartland’s invitation, he sent an email to an administrator at Heartland, in which Gleick impersonated a Heartland board member”
2. So what else happened on January 27?
Answer: Gleick seems to have got really upset about the WSJ publishing the 16 contrarian’s letter, but not publishing the 255 warmist climate scientists letter.
He wrote an article on Forbes complaining about it – published at 6.54pm
http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/01/27/remarkable-editorial-bias-on-climate-science-at-the-wall-street-journal/
He also made 4 consecutive tweets complaining about it:
Remarkable Editorial Bias on Climate Science at the Wall Street Journal – Forbes onforb.es/wYcJbK
11:59 PM – 27 Jan 12 via Tweet Button · Details
Deep Bias on Climate Science at the Wall Street Journal. http://onforb.es/wYcJbK. Ignore 255 National Academy Scientists; favor 16 contrarians?
1:29 AM – 28 Jan 12 via Tweet Button · Details
#WSJ rejects climate essay from 255 National Academy of Science scientists; accepts anti-climate essay from 16 others. onforb.es/wv5rHU
5:45 AM – 28 Jan 12 via web · Details
#WSJ rejects climate essay from 255 National Academy of Science scientists; then accepts anti-climate essay from 16. onforb.es/wv5rHU
6:24 PM – 28 Jan 12 via web · Details
3. Now why would he take the non-publication by WSJ as a personal affront?
Read the letter for yourself, and you might find a clue:
Click to access 689.full.pdf
Go to page 2
There is a list of 255 signatories. In alphabetic order by surname – except for one who is out of order, first, with an asterix by his name. Can you guess the name? It’s:
P. H. GLEICK,*
And what does the asterix mean? At the very end of the letter it says:
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
peter gleick @ pac inst . org
(spaces added to email address by me to avoid spambots)
Which suggests that he wrote the letter, or at least organized it.
4. I don’t know why Gleick would turn on Heartland if annoyed about the non-publication of his letter, but he does seem to have been upset that the WSJ chose not to publish his letter, and to publish the opposite view instead.
I’ve obtained more information on the precise timing of the 27th. Gleick set the email diversion prior to the Wall St Journal article.
I assume you also already know that Gleick was at UCLA on the afternoon of 27th of January.
Steve: no. the diversion was done in the morning. But all these details are accumulating and relevant.
The James Taylor interaction triggered by Taylor’s Forbes article on 12th Jan no doubt may have been wounding and infuriating. But we now know, thanks to Steve, Gleick started this incredibly foolish and apparently illegal action against Heartland in the morning of 27th Jan, through medium unknown. Indeed this addendum above is worth quoting verbatim:
It could have involved alien technology, PG having been abducted overnight, who knows. All we know is that it was the morning of 27th that Gleick flipped.
He wanted to get at Heartland and (I argued earlier) he wanted the win big prize for creating an anti-Climategate for the Team and its admirers. (Heartland being the best choice they could come up as the target for some creative leaking – I would have thought there was consensus on that. But the problem with the climate dissenters is we’re so incredibly diverse, with Steve at pains to distance himself from the libertarian aspects of HI. This is completely different from UEA CRU and its very close ties to the IPCC. Monolithic or what?)
He may have thought he had the opportunity (of a sort) because of things he’d learned about Heartland through the email exchange above. That seems a fair assumption of his state of mind – though not of reality (it wasn’t a very good opportunity, was it Peter?)
But why did he flip and actually do it? I return to my earlier thesis and Gleick’s humiliating climbdown on Twitter at 7:34 PM – 26 Jan (don’t know the timezone rules for tweets but someone here surely does.) That wasn’t very gracious – he owed Barry Woods a bigger apology than that minutely small non-apology. But that’s not really the key point any more.
There is no way Dr Peter Gleick, MacArthur Genius, fellow of this, ethical supremo of that, would ever have climbed down over something damaging he’d said about a puny climate sceptic in the UK. The only reason he did is that Tamsin Edwards and Richard Betts had backed Barry, as we could all read by 2nd February.
My hunch is that Gleick knew that this email interaction was going to be published, showing very junior climate scientists in the UK not giving a fig what he was telling them to do and to think about Barry. What an example to all the others. Stephen Schneider he was clearly proving he ain’t – and those that had raised him to such a level made clear their deep displeasure (we can see how fast such bad news travels from the Schneider missives in CG1&2.)
So he went for the big one. What he didn’t count on was the intelligence of the climate blogosphere and one Sherlock Mosher.
Gleick also made this comment on his own article on the 27th of January – go to page 13 of the comments on this page
http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/01/27/remarkable-editorial-bias-on-climate-science-at-the-wall-street-journal/
First, the stakes are too high for any geophysicist or climate scientists to even consider doing bad science for money — the stakes to their reputations and to the planet. Alas, this isn’t true for the organizations paid to deny the science.
Second, none of my funding or my Institute’s funding is used to support our conclusions. In fact our guidelines prohibit it.
Steve: can you figure out the date of the commment?
Finally, all of our funding information is completely transparent and publicly available, which you would know if you had bothered spending 2 minutes on the web before making unfounded insinuations. But try asking the Heartland Institute for a list of THEIR funders. They refuse to provide it.
The earliest comments on that article of 27th Jan are shown as “three weeks ago”. The comment in question is a reply to one of “two weeks ago” and is itself marked as “two weeks ago”. It’s followed by just two more, one of “one week ago” and one of “one hour ago”:
Hardly surprising to find that one added! That’s all asof the time of this post.
He also made these two tweets on Jan 27th – in addition to the other tweets I have already posted.
About to speak at UCLA water symposium on “peak water,” need for new thinking, and California water success stories. See you there.
3:13 PM – 27 Jan 12 via web · Details
New climate zones, new official map showing northward warming.[ But shhhhh! Don’t mention climate change….] http://usat.ly/xhihGJ
3:11 PM – 27 Jan 12 via web · Details
Apologies for being potentially off-topic, but for those of you with an interest in the legal aspects of climate change and regulatory policy, a number of organizations are offering a 8:30 am – 12 noon program on March 1 here in Washington DC entitled “Debrief of the DC Circuit’s Oral Arguments on EPA’s GHG Rulemakings March 1, 2012” (http://www.facebook.com/events/370847879593650/).
[Full Disclosure: I have nothing to do with this event or the co-sponsoring organizations, nor do I have any details except for the information in this post.]
“The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear two days of oral argument to review four of EPA’s greenhouse gas emissions rules: the “timing” rule, the “tailoring” rule, the “endangerment” rule, and the “tailpipe” rule. These four rules are EPA’s response to Massachusetts v. EPA and represent the bedrock of EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act (CAA).
The court’s rulings on these four rules have the potential to halt, delay, modify, or greatly increase the scope of greenhouse gas regulation under the CAA. The stakes are among the highest in recent environmental litigation.”
Details of the program are below and at the Facebook weblink. Attendance is free either in-person or by teleconference, but you must register in advance. Particularly of interest to lawyers and public policy specialists – Please RSVP by February 27, 2012 to mcmurrin@eli.org with name, affiliation, and whether in-house or teleconference attendance.
The event is con-sponsored by the Environmental Law Institute, Jones Day, International Emissions Trading Association, Georgetown Climate Center and the DC Bar Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources Section. Details below.
Subject: REMINDER: Debrief of the DC Circuit’s Oral Arguments on EPA’s GHG Rulemakings March 1, 2012
Thursday, March 1, 2012
8:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Jones Day Washington
Reception Entrance
300 New Jersey Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20001
Teleconference Available
Co-sponsored by the Environmental Law Institute, Jones Day, International Emissions Trading Association, Georgetown Climate Center, and the DC Bar Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources Section
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear two days of oral argument to review four of EPA’s greenhouse gas emissions rules: the “timing” rule, the “tailoring” rule, the “endangerment” rule, and the “tailpipe” rule. These four rules are EPA’s response to Massachusetts v. EPA and represent the bedrock of EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act (CAA).
The court’s rulings on these four rules have the potential to halt, delay, modify, or greatly increase the scope of greenhouse gas regulation under the CAA. The stakes are among the highest in recent environmental litigation.
Join our distinguished panelists, many of whom participated in the arguments, as they describe and dissect the previous days’ oral arguments and discuss the implications of the potential outcomes.
8:00 a.m. Breakfast Served
8:30 a.m. Welcome & Overview of Oral Arguments
Kevin Holewinski, Partner, Jones Day
Gabriel Pacyniak, Institute Associate, Georgetown University Climate Center
9:00am Panel I: Discussion of the oral arguments’ main sticking points and highlights
John Cruden, President, Environmental Law Institute (moderator)
Tim Webster , Partner, Sidley Austin LLP
Earle Duncan Getchell, Commonwealth of VA (invited)
Meleah Geertsma, Attorney, NRDC
Tracy Triplett, Assistant Attorney General, Massachusetts (invited)
10:15 a.m. Coffee Break
10:30 a.m. Panel II: Scenarios and implications: the impact of potential outcomes
David Hunter, US Director, International Emissions Trading Association (moderator)
Rob Brenner, Senior Fellow, Nicholas Institute, Duke University; Former EPA Director of the Office of Policy Analysis and Review at the Office of Air and Radiation (invited)
William Brownell, Partner, Hunton and Williams
Megan Ceronsky, Attorney, Environmental Defense Fund
Kyle Danish, Member, Van Ness Feldman
11:45 a.m. Closing Remarks
Henry Derwent, President and CEO, International Emissions Trading Association
12:00 p.m. Concludes
Please RSVP by February 27, 2012 to mcmurrin@eli.org with name, affiliation, and whether in-house or teleconference attendance.
Here is my take on what caused Gleik to lose all perspective.
James Taylor and Gleick tangled in dueling articles early in January at Forbes. Here are both of the articles.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/01/05/the-2011-climate-b-s-of-the-year-awards/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/01/12/please-global-warming-alarmists-stop-denying-climate-change-and-science/
Gleick felt he got slapped down and responded in comments on Taylor’s article and Taylor did it again in his response.
Gleick’s inherent hubris couldn’t stand the idea of someone having the audacity to challenge his version of reality. I have little doubt he was obsessively stewing about it for a considerable length of time just hoping for a way to damage Taylor.
When Jim Lakely emailed an invitation to debate Taylor and started out by saying “I’ve enjoyed the lively discussion via dueling Forbes.com columns and replies between you and James Taylor.” followed by the statement about entertainment, his obsessive mindset took it as being mocked. It then became an I’m going to show those bastards a thing or two situation to him.
It may have started even earlier than those two columns for all I know. Simply having to compete with someone writing from a different perspective in the same publication may have already had him wound up tight.
I’m no psychologist, but that is the way I see it. YMMV
Always seems to me that there is a lot of ‘groupthink’ on ClimateAudit (Steve himself being the usual exception). As a corrective consider that, notwithstanding the legality of how the Heartland emails was obtained or the legality of how the UEA Climategate emails were obtained (neither being definitively established at this time), there is a clear moral difference between them. All that the emails from UEA showed were, at the most, some misinterpreted terms and data, and sniping comments and remarks about opponents. This blog is testament to how difficult it has been to establish actual malice rather than unprofessionalism at UEA. On the other hand the Heartland documents show that there are many previously unknown payments to HI and the makings of some kind of anti-AGW propaganda effort aimed at school children i.e. it looks like the kind of organistation that many pro-AGW people say are behind much of the anti-AGW efforts. Many of the regular contibutors/commenters on ClimateAudit say there is a case to be answered by the ‘team’, do they not think there is any case to be answered by the HI?
[My own position is that there is nothing definite in this world, except death and taxes, but that there is a high probability that there is GW and a better than even probability that its AGW. The enthusiasm of the leading proponents on both pro-AGW and anti-AGW sides suggests to me that both mercenary and ideological (belief) reasons are the motivating factors for both sides rather than the science.]
Steve: I disagree with your characterizations of the Climategate emails. They are replete with malice and unprofessionalism. Heartland is very right-wing; I don’t agree with their politics (and I really do try to keep politics off the blog most of the time.) To the extent that there were issues about Heartland in the actual documents, Gleick has totally and maliciously confused matters by (apparently) forging a far more inflammatory document.
Phaaz – I think the Heartland documents show very little about Heartland that wasn’t already known? Have you been through their website?
They’d have ‘a case to answer’ if the docs showed they were doing something wrong, ie illegal, or substantially different to their mission statements, or there were clear implications that the funders controlled the output (which I believe is illegal).
The educational material question always flares up ‘they’re indoctrinating the kids’ stuff, but my understanding from Lucia’s Blackboard is that it’s normal – NCSE were doing the same thing, preparing educational materials and then trying to get schools and boards to accept them. You might not like the content of one side or the other, but free country etc.
(btw most sceptics accept AGW, but differ from IPCC on speed, quantum, impacts, and policy response. What unites them all is being told what to do by someone like Gleick. 🙂 )
theduke – Proof would be tricky! And your question includes the undefined word ‘significant’, which makes it trickier again. But I’ve never heard Jeff Id of tAV, Anthony Watts of WUWT, or Steve McIntyre of CA, three prominent ‘sceptic’ blogs, ever give the slightest impression that they reject the idea that GHG’s warm, and we emit GHG’s. I have seen McIntyre in passing comment that it’s feedbacks, largely water vapour, that is key to understanding sensitivity, hardly a controversial statement.
If I turn it around, it’s completely consistent to accept AGW and be sceptical about a whole lot of things connected to it and following from it. The whole of WGII and III for a start.
The CRU emails went far beyond “misinterpreted terms and data” — it is willful blindness to characterize them that way.
All the initial media/blog hyperventilating over the Heartland docs focused on quotes from the faked memo. That is a good indication that the genuine documents had little of interest in them, unless you didn’t previously know that Heartland is privately funded, runs conferences to promote its position and publishes skeptic authors.
As for being shocked at the idea of an Institute preparing information for school children, at least they weren’t fantasizing about blowing up the ones who disagreed with them. And be careful about blanket condemnations: you never know who you might hit.
Re: Phaaz Buucke (Feb 24 12:10),
Phaaz,
There is no comparison between the leak of the UEA emails and the HI affair. HI is a ‘not for profit’ organisation, and as far as I know not subject to US FOI. The UEA is a public authority subject to European Law on environmental information which it deliberately and repeatedly ignored for almost three years before someone blew the whistle on it. No one has suggested that a single one of the thousands of emails was altered or fabricated.
The recently released 2526.txt ‘Palutikof email’ shows that at the most senior levels of both the UEA’s Climatic Research Unit and in the British Met Office it was known that at least Briffa and Osborn had moved all the information that, I had requested, from their PC’s onto a memory stick. We also learnt after the Russell Review Report was published that Russell himself was told within a month of the leak that Briffa had taken home emails that were subject to FOIA requests “for safekeeping”.
At that time in 2009, my requests was the only one that involved Briffa. This means that before the so called Independent Climate Change Email Review got underway, and £300,000 was spent on it, the UEA knew all the important facts about Jones’ request to Mann to delete any emails he had with Briffa re AR4.
Moreover, the Review had in its possession all the emails of Jones Briffa and Osborn, that had not been released in Climategate, 54 days before the ICCER Report was published, but claim not to have looked at them. In time this will be accepted as a low point in British science and academic integrity.
Thanks all for replying. In my view it seems that the fact that the UEA tried to evade FOI is not disputed, and that the HI 2012 Strategy document is a fake is generally accepted. The point I made was that if one puts aside the way in which the information from UEA and HI was obtained then the information contained in the non-fake HI data suggests that serious money is being provided by an unknown donor to promote anti-AGW science, and that HI want to promote anti-AGW science in the classroom via the ‘teach-the-controversy’ method – its the implication that an anonymous financial backer is trying to get a viewpoint across using cash that is disquieting. As for the UEA, there doesn’t seem to be an anonymous financial backer wishing to promote pro-AGW findings, and while Steve says that there was malice in the actions of the team I don’t agree that this is the case as regards their actual scientific findings (although I’d agree that it could be argued that malice was shown in how they dealt with data/information requests that they saw as a form of harrassment, and from your own and Steve’s POV that’s understandable). So, as I see it, UEA made mistakes in their data interpretation and behaved unprofessionally in their attempts to prevent a rigourous external analysis of it, on the other hand HI are accepting money from an anonymous backer to try to change what children are being taught per that anonymous backer. I’d have thought that both HI and UEA had not necessarily behaved very well in all this yet there seems to be little criticism of HI here (and quite a lot of criticism of UEA).
“HI data suggests that serious money” – $88,000 is “serious money”?
“As for the UEA, there doesn’t seem to be an anonymous financial backer wishing to promote pro-AGW findings,…” – Why have a paltry anonymous donor when world governments contribute the most.
And why shouldn’t children be taught to be skeptical of what they hear? The way science and other subjects are taught in the lower grades is “as a fact” and students who disagree are treated as terrorists. It wasn’t until I went to university that I found out how much I didn’t know and just how smart some people can be! I also found that much of what I was taught in high school was a bunch of BS as far as the science goes which led me to also question a lot of other things.
I found out how messed up things get in the lower classes first hand. Having an interest in history, I read a liberal book that covered Chief Seattle’s 1854 environmental speech. Due to a lapse in critical thinking I didn’t question it. I gave a copy to a teacher friend and soon found that it was being taught in all the cities classes. Only later did I find out that it was mostly BS (google it if you want the facts).
During university, I worked with some top notch physics researchers and was exposed to all types of crazy ideas (like cryogenically cooling coal plant exhaust stacks to remove the pollutants – Bechtel even studied that one and thought it should be researched more). I not only found that real science is very hard but also that there is a lot we don’t know. The view presented in the lower grades is that we do know everything and this is just wrong! Much of what is taught is so dumbed down by the time it gets into a politically correct textbook that one can’t make any sense of it. I’m all for teaching skepticism, not only concerning science but also for political and historical subjects too.
Phaaz you say- ‘Always seems to me that there is a lot of ‘groupthink’ on ClimateAudit (Steve himself being the usual exception).’
to which I’ll readily confess to groupthink here if you can entertain the thought of some much larger form of it abroad. For want of a better term let me label it ‘commissariat-think’ at the risk of getting too political and making mein host a little nervous because as you point out he takes exception to that. Perhaps ‘massthink’ may be more to his taste but let none other than Peter Gleick describe for this ‘groupthinker’ how it really began. Here he is as President of the Pacific Institute in 2007 on the occasion of the PIs 20th anniversary (in full flight anticipating a binding global CO2 agreement at Copenhagen no doubt)- http://www.pacinst.org/publications/20th_anniversary/page2.html
In particular-
“In 1987, the Cold War was starting to warm up, but so was the Earth. The Berlin Wall was starting to come down, but nascent political and ideological threats were emerging. Traditional academic disciplines were searching for new language, tools, and answers to interdisciplinary problems. The concept of sustainability was just being introduced, but there was a growing appreciation that problems of the environment, economy, and society were intricately linked.
This idea drove us to create the Pacific Institute. We believed that global problems and effective solutions in the 21st century would require innovative ways of thinking, seeing, and doing. “
Ask yourself what “nascent political and ideological threats were emerging” and why indeed “Traditional academic disciplines were searching for new language, tools, and answers to interdisciplinary problems.” Just what were these “ new languages, tools and answers” and I’ll suggest most strongly to you they were all the beginnings of post-normal science and its challenge to “traditional academic disciplines.” I’ll leave you to ponder why that was and just who that speaker is now shall I?
Suffice to say such a new paradigm and its meteoric rise to wealth, power and the commanding heights needed to press some raw mass nerve out there to take root and grow exponentially as it did. I’d suggest to you that lay in an Apollo Moon mission in 1969 when the concept of Spaceship Earth was born but it would defy Club of Rome, the Ehrlichs, 70s Ice Ages and the like, until readily accessible satellite visuals began to etch it indelibly into the mass consciousness. Fertile soil indeed for a new kid on the block theory of global catastrophe. That commissariat-think or massthink of today eh Phaaz? Drummed into kids from knee high to a grasshopper here in Australia too nowadays. Where exactly did you get that CAGW belief of yours from ‘on balance’ Phaaz?
Mr. McIntyre
Gleick is now thoroughly discredited. His behaviour has seriously damaged his credibility as a scientist, perhaps even a little unfairly because no one will now be able to distinguish his science from his propaganda. But are you not devoting too much time to him? Is it distracting you from the statistical and other investigative work for which you are so admired.
For example on 6 February you wrote “Don, this post primarily addressed the “obiter” question of Acton’s untruthful evidence to the Parliamentary Committee. I plan to address the ICO’s attempt to distinguish my request from the Tribunal’s ruling in Keiller.”
I, for one, would love to see that address.
Thanks to many keen insights, in particular from Steve Mosher and Richard Drake.
As I read all the details, I’m reminded of Borderline Personality Disorder (from which Princess Diana is said to have suffered). I agree with suggestions that Gleick, pushed by humiliation from Richard Betts, Tamsin Edwards, and Barry Woods, was primed to misunderstand Heartland’s truly friendly invitation, and react with a knife in the back.
Then I get the feeling that PG takes breath… I’m reminded here of Macbeth, where the guilty parties are observed closely descending further and further into the nightmare aftermath of committed crime, trying to wash their hands of blood. For a fortnight, PG looks at his hands, disconnecting further and further… decides he’s going down the plughole, but might as well try to bring down Heartland with him anyway… hence the hurried, stressed quality of the memo.
Hi Lucy, I only just saw this comment, four days later, because of Hilary’s below it. Likewise you probably won’t see this response. I guess once a topic goes ‘nuclear’ and there are many related threads on it that’s inevitable – a weakness in an otherwise brilliant use of WordPress by Steve. Your Macbeth analogy remains very poweful.
Unfortunately, we live in a world of obfuscation and hyperbole, where personal agendas appear to outweigh factual analysis! One who possesses the factual truth should never have any trepidations when taking on the opposition. The truth shall set you free.
With the benefit of hindsight … Something else I find quite curious about this series of correspondence, in light of contemporaneous and subsequent events.
Gleick took a full 10 days to “give serious consideration” to Lakely’s invite before declining.
He chose to completely ignore Lakely’s reasonable explanation of why HI does not disclose the names of its donors.
Here’s Gleick’s primary “reason” for the … uh … decline:
Although it’s not indicated in his Jan 27/12 Forbes whine, the WSJ’s alleged decline of a missive from the NAS gang of 255 (headed by Gleick) pertained to an article published in Science on May 7, 2010. Funny that he doesn’t mention this date during the course of his whine.
Nor does he give any reason on Jan 27/12 why the WSJ should have been obliged to publish the piece from the gang of 255 on May 7/10. If you read the article, it’s merely an attempt to bolster the – by then – rapidly declining credibility of the IPCC. It began with a recitation of the big scare:
and continued with a repetition of the mantra that salvation of the planet depends on action now, along with the frequently repeated unsubstantiated allegations of “harassment” etc. of these poor beleaguered “climate scientists”.
So, I certainly do wonder what might have been going on behind closed screens between Jan. 10/12 when Gleick was reminded by Lakely that:
and Jan. 27/12 while Gleick was supposedly giving “serious consideration” to participating in a “debate” that on Feb. 20/12 he professed to think should take place. In the meantime, he embarked on his phishing expedition during which he cast his net several times: first on Jan. 27 and finally on Feb. 6. Hmmm …. another 10 day time lapse.
At any time along the way, he could have checked his moral compass and seen that he was sailing in the wrong direction. Had he done so, he would have headed back to port, contacted HI and turned himself in! But this was not the choice Gleick made.
Yet on Feb. 17 – a mere 3 days after the botched virtual Valentines Day massacre – out of the blue, the U.K. Guardian very obligingly made available* the undated “An Open Letter to the Heartland Institute” purportedly written and signed by 7 noble climate scientists (with Gleick’s name being conspicuously absent). This “open letter” not only echoed the claims in the forged “strategy” doc, but also laid out the false equivalence to Climategate, interspersed with what some might consider to be the SPN of the May 7/10 article allegedly rejected by the WSJ.
* http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2012/02/17/heartland.pdf
Coincidences?! Perhaps. But certainly no evidence that I can see of “anger” or “fear” as some have postulated.
“Perhaps more importantly, the lack of transparency about the financial support for the Heartland Institute is at odds with my belief in transparency, especially when your Institute and its donors benefit from major tax breaks at the expense of the public.
Thank you for considering me.
Dr. Peter Gleick”
His belief in transparency went out the window with his fake identity.
Steve: it would also be worthwhile crosschecking whether Gleick had presented to environmentalist organizations that don’t show donors. Many fall in that category – a point that Heartland made .
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