Bishop Hill More Megan
Feb 18, 2012 Climate: fakegate Megan McArdle is still riffing on the Heartland documents and has come up with some interesting new bits and pieces. For a start it appears that the Koch Foundation were not actually funding Heartland's climate change activities but their work on healthcare. I don't suppose we will be reading about this on the pages of the Guardian.
She also has a useful summary of the evidence about who the faker might be.
For me, this leaves the most fascinating question of all: who wrote it? We have a few clues:
1) They are on the west coast
2) They own or have access to an Epson scanner--though God knows, this could be at a Kinkos.
3) They probably themselves have a somewhat run-on writing style
4) I'm guessing they use the word "high-profile" a fair amount.
5) They are bizarrely obsessed with global warming coverage at Forbes, which suggests to me that there is a good chance that they write or comment on the website, or that they have tangled with writers at Forbes (probably Taylor) either in public or private.
6) The last paragraph is the biggest departure from the source documents, and is therefore likely to be closest to the author's own style.
7) I have a strong suspicion that they refrained from commenting on the document dump. That's what I'd do, anyway. A commenter or email correspondent who suddenly disappeared when they normally would have been reveling in this sort of story is a good candidate.
8) They seem to have it in for Andy Revkin at the New York Times. There's nothing in the other documents to indicate that Heartland thinks Revkin is amenable to being . . . turned? I'm not sure what the right word is, but the implication in the strategy memo that Heartland believes it could somehow develop a relationship with Revkin seems aimed at discrediting Revkin's work.
Unfortunately, I'd imagine that this is still a sizeable set of people, and it will be hard to identify the author. I suspect that it will be easier to do if the climate-bloggers--who may well know this person as a commenter or correspondent--get involved in trying to find out who muddied the story by perpetrating a fraud on their sites.
I had to smile at the last bit. I wonder whether we climate bloggers can think of anyone who might fit the bill?
Reader Comments (57)
SayNoToFearmongers,
Something in the region of 86% of the BBC's spend on advertising is with the Guardian...so its no wonder the organisation is stacked full of leftist fools.
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/bbc-the-broadcast-arm-of-the-guardian/
Interesting article with an interesting comment from Jonathan Stuart-Brown around the vast sums of BBC money that is solely propping the Guardian up.
If I was Government Id force the BBC to use its massive, multi-million pound website to advertise their vacancies on. When you have such a massive web footprint in the form off bbc.co.uk it makes absolutely no sense what so ever to be spending tens of millions of pounds on advertising at the Guardian.
Mailman
Re: Eddy
It used to be.
On 24th September 2008 a company called "Scott Place 1001 Limited" was formed with a single share owned by Philip Edward Boardman.
On 1st October 2008 an agreement was entered into between Scott Place 1001 and The Scott Trust. As a result of the agreement the following happened:
a) 999 new shares were issued for "Scott Place 1001 Limited" and distributed to the 9 trustees of The Scott Trust.
b) The 900,000 issued shares in Guardian Media group were transferred to "Scott Place 1001".
c) The Scott Trust was dissolved.
d) "Scott Place 1001 Limited" was renamed to "The Scott Trust Limited"
My information about the shareholders wasn't up to date. On 24/9/2010 there were only 5 shareholders, each holding 200 shares. They are:
Alan Rusbridger
Jonathan Prestwich Scott
Lawrence Elliot
Anthony Michael Vaughan Salz
William Nicholas Hutton
@ Mike Jackson,
2I've been cold and I've been warm. Believe me, warm is better!"
Amen to that brother.
@ mydogsgotnonose, on Feb 18, 2012 at 3:20 PM
Absolutely agreed.
Jimmy H:
'Where are all of the apologists? ZBD,' ..... she's been spotted on the DM today posting as Maureen, Warwick.
Thanks TerryS. Interesting info.
@Mailman
Obscene BBC profligacy with taxpayer money - why spend anything to reach such a pathetically small readership, currently under 0.4% of the population and falling, unless of course you're intent on coraalling the few remaining dolts who are prepared to pay to be sold alarmist lies by implausible shysters into an bloated behemoth which is hell-bent on treading the same delusional path.
Thankfully at current readership collapse rate, this parasitical symbiosis is about as sustainable as recycling glass into... sand.
Hmmm, think I'm getting a bit Delingpolesque here - what was the Bish saying about his 'U'SP?
Since the documents were sent to a particular email address; how difficult would it be for the authorities to find the owner of said address?
If this person goes to court; I'd bet a significant sum that some science arguments make it into the court room.
This could ultimatly be as interesting as the initial FOI email release (once it plays out a bit more).