Entries in Climate: fakegate (26)
Josh Shrove Tuesday - Josh 150
Feb 21, 2012 Climate: fakegate Crime Josh 
There seems to be some confusion in some minds as to what is heroic and what is plain illegal. Let's hope the spirit of Shrove Tuesday leads to clearer light being shed on current sins.
Bishop Hill Gleick confesses
Feb 21, 2012 Climate: fakegate Extraordinarily, Peter Gleick has confessed to being the person who blagged emails from the Heartland Institute.
In the latest revelation, Peter Gleick, a water scientist and president of the Pacific Institute who has been active in the climate wars, apologised on Monday for using a false name to obtain materials from Heartland, a Chicago-based think tank with a core mission of dismissing climate change.
Crucially, he seems to be denying the faking, although he doesn't appear to be letting on who did.
Bishop Hill Heartland issues legal notices
Feb 19, 2012 Climate: fakegate The Heartland Institute has issued legal notices to at least two of those who have been engaging in dubious tactics after the faking of the strategy memo became clear.
Firstly there is DeSmog and secondly there is Greg Laden, the blogger who was the subject of considerable interest among Tallbloke's legal team a few weeks back.
...we respectfully demand: (1) that you remove both the Fake Memo and the Alleged Heartland Documents from your web site; (2) that you remove from your web site all posts that refer or relate in any manner to the Fake Memo and the Alleged Heartland Documents; (3) that you remove from your web site any and all quotations from the Fake Memo and the Alleged Heartland Documents; (4) that you publish retractions on your web site of prior postings; and (5) that you remove all such documents from your server.
Bishop Hill Team letter writing
Feb 18, 2012 Climate: Mann Climate: fakegate The Hockey Team have also been writing to the Heartland Institute - their contribution can be seen here.
We hope the Heartland Institute will heed its own advice to “think about what has happened” and recognize how its attacks on science and scientists have helped poison the debate over climate change policy. The Heartland Institute has chosen to undermine public understanding of basic scientific facts and personally attack climate researchers rather than engage in a civil debate about climate change policy options.
These are the facts: Climate change is occurring. Human activity is the primary cause of recent climate change. Climate change is already disrupting many human and natural systems. The more heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions that go into the atmosphere, the more severe those disruptions will become. Major scientific assessments from the Royal Society, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, United States Global Change Research Program and other authoritative sources agree on these points.
Bishop Hill Doctors' letter
Feb 18, 2012 Climate: fakegate Commenters have been drawing attention to a public letter written by healthcare professionals and climate scientists, which called on the Heartland Institute to reveal all its funding. This was cited in a Guardian article, which was later amended to show that the letter had been removed.
This appears to be it, here. In fact it looks as if the document just moved to a different URL, although I've sent it to Webcite just in case.
What motivates the Heartland Institute? As climate scientists and health professionals, we view the systematic sowing of unjustified doubt about climate science as confusing at best, and inhumane at worst.
...
Given the disproportionate influence given to climate sceptics by the media, it is in the public, national, and global interest for all funding behind their activities to be revealed. This will help people to make up their own minds about the truth of the climate change threat, so that action can be planned on the basis of evidence rather than confusion.
Signatories include many familiar names including:
- Chris Rapley, who was also on the disappearing Science Media Centre press release
- Jim Hansen
- Professor Sir Andy Haines (he of the completely doolally "carbon costs $1000 per tonne" claim).
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.
Bishop Hill RP Jr on Fakegate
Feb 17, 2012 Climate: fakegate Roger Pielke Jr has posted reflections the continuing rumpus over the Heartland emails. As ever, his thoughts are well worth a read:
If the faked document happened to be produced by a climate activist or scientist (as some are already suggesting), then the leaked Heartland documents will go down in history as one of the more spectacular own goals in the history of the climate debate (with the consequences proportional to the stature of the faker). The faking is likely to overshadow whatever legitimate questions may have been raised by the release of the documents. Imagine what would have happened if the UEA hacker/leaker had made up a few emails to spice up the dossier.
This also struck me as wise:
This sort of thing feeds into the worst imaginings of skeptics and blinds them to the fact that there are real issues here despite the frequent over-egging of the pudding.
Meanwhile, Roger has also asked Gleick direct if he was the faker:
I emailed @PeterGleick to ask if he faked the Heartland document, no reply yet. I offered to publish his confirmation or denial on my blog.
Bishop Hill Whodunnit?
Feb 17, 2012 Climate: fakegate Climate: other Megan McArdle at the Atlantic has done an excellent analysis of the Heartland documents and comes to the conclusion that the strategy document was indeed a fake.
Overall, like the fake documents and quotes of earlier posts, [the strategy document] just feels too convenient. It's a super-handy roadmap to all the most incendiary portions of the other documents, and it contains absolutely nothing that does not serve that purpose--no formulaic self-puffery, no mentions of problems that you would think a legitimate memo would have covered, like the precipitous cuts in their global warming programs that they were forced to undertake when their anonymous donor delivered less cash than expected in 2011. It reads like it was written for climate activists. And I don't get the feeling that the folks at Heartland are much interested in helping out their friends at ClimateProgress and Grist.
There's also some very interesting speculation about the identify of the culprit going on in the comments at Lucia's at the moment. Steven Mosher has noted the west-coast time stamp in the strategy document metadata and also some of the stylistic quirks of the author - poor punctuation, excessive use of parenthesis, and also the use of the strange term "anti-climate". Comparisons are being made with the literary style and twitterings of none other than Peter Gleick, the very green head of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California.
Bishop Hill Watts' analysis
Feb 16, 2012 Climate: Sceptics Climate: fakegate Media Anthony Watts has published an analysis of the fake Heartland strategy document, looking at the text and document metadata, both of which seem to confirm that it is not what it purports to be.
Perhaps more interestingly, some of the details of how the document came to light have appeared, and it seems that DeSmog had the documents for only an hour before posting them online. As several people have commented, the contrast with Anthony's conduct when the Climategate emails fell into his lap could not be starker. The WUWT team held onto the UEA disclosures for several days while they tried to authenticate them rather than assuming the worst and rushing to publish.
Bishop Hill Heartland says key memo was fake
Feb 15, 2012 Climate: Sceptics Climate: fakegate Climate: other This just has just been posted (link).
The stolen documents appear to have been written by Heartland’s president for a board meeting that took place on January 17. He was traveling at the time this story broke yesterday afternoon and still has not had the opportunity to read them all to see if they were altered. Therefore, the authenticity of those documents has not been confirmed.
Since then, the documents have been widely reposted on the Internet, again with no effort to confirm their authenticity.
One document, titled “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy,” is a total fake apparently intended to defame and discredit The Heartland Institute. It was not written by anyone associated with The Heartland Institute. It does not express Heartland’s goals, plans, or tactics. It contains several obvious and gross misstatements of fact.
Bishop Hill
In related news, Revkin reports that they are genuine. You have to laugh.
Bishop Hill
On the ball as ever, Richard Black appears to have posted his story on the Heartland docs after they were declared fake. BBCScience has just tweeted a leak to his story. The declaration of inauthenticity is recent enough to rule out malfeasance, but I think a smile is warranted.
