http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/gr...-proof-of-the-warmists-endless-credulity.html All this has left the debate over climate change in a depressingly fetid state, as supporters of the orthodoxy lash out with increasing desperation, forlornly trying to defend their crumbling faith. A further example of this was the strange little scandal that erupted last week, with the release on the internet of various documents from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think-tank long vilified by the warmists for organising conferences attended by hundreds of distinguished scientists from across the world who dare to be sceptical of the orthodoxy. The documents were entirely innocuous except for one, which stood out from the rest because it purported to be a secret “strategy paper” that outlined Heartland’s plans to get the teaching of the science of climate change outlawed in America’s schools. This seemingly damning revelation aroused much excitement among warmists on both sides of the Atlantic. The Guardian published no less than nine separate items about it. But the document’s peculiar phrasing, punctuation and other details soon led some observers to suggest that it looked suspiciously like the work of one Dr Peter Gleick, a prominent warmist and the head of a California-based institute which campaigns on climate change and on the need for “integrity in science”. Within hours, the story was unravelling. Gleick confessed that he had obtained genuine Heartland documents under false pretences, in an attempt, he said, to verify that the “anonymous” strategy paper had come from the institute – the document that he himself was already suspected of faking. Though his statement made no admission in that regard, it unleashed mayhem. Gleick was reprimanded by his own Pacific Institute, and then requested a leave of absence. Heartland is threatening legal action in all directions – not least against all those journalists who were so eager to believe his hoax that they hadn’t bothered to check their facts. When the history of the decline and fall of the world’s most damaging scare comes to be written, l’affaire Gleick will only be a brief footnote. But it does suggest how desperate those who wish to keep the scare alive have become. More importantly, however, it should focus our attention once again on the fact that we are still being presented with by far the biggest bill in history, to counter a threat that never actually existed.
Funny that politicians make careers of lies and deception and get wealthy for it. Some even receive Noble prizes. But this guy is getting stomped nearly to death for something that would be considered child's play in other arenas.
That westnob linked article doesn't mention or reference in any way the forgery accusations. All the author does is whine that hero is the one who resigns and can't understand why. Gee dumb ass ad busters, maybe if your hero got caught in a very lame forgery attempt, that would give him ample motivation to resign. Just a thought.
A few notes: pro-AGW emails unethically obtained by deniers = proof that "climate change isn't base on science" denier emails unethically obtained by pro-AGW = proof that "climate change isn't base on science" Double standard much? And deniers wonder why scientists refuse to debate those who use this kind of logic. I thought this ridiculous. How does Booker know that Gleick was doubting it's authenticity? The ambiguity of this is just confusing. Who are the "some observers"? Did these people read the emails and say "Watson, this writing style, syntax and diction is suspiciously similar to a California researcher who campaigns on climate change! To laboratory!"
why do you say "pro-AGW" and then "deniers"? Why not "pro-AGW" and "anti-AGW"? or, "true-believers" and then "deniers"?
There are people that don't think the climate is warming at all and there are people that think the world is warming but humans have nothing to do with it. "Deniers" is more inclusive.
AGW is NOT about warming or not warming. There are a lot of folks that are skeptical that man-made factors have significant impact on warming, but think it true or likely warming has occured. There are some that don't believe there is warming. By definition, they believe man-made factors have no impact on any possible warming - as they don't accept any warming has occured. Folks in the 1st group are not the same as folks in the 2nd group. By clumping them together you are trying to smear by association.
But both groups would disagree with the pro-AGW people. A person could "deny" that the climate is warming or a person could "deny" that man has anything to do with global warming. The label "denier" applies to both groups. What word should I have used to refer to the group that the Heartland Institute and Booker belong to?
I think the earth has been warming for at least 10,000 years. I do not in any way deny the earth is warming. Oddly, the AGW crowd has been caught doctoring their data, obstructing people trying to verify their data, and now doctoring documents by those who disagree with their findings.
Weren't the climates scientists exonerated by multiple review boards? I agree they dropped the ball by not giving access to the data but I've run into that myself in other situations in academia. Researchers are protective of their data. They should have known better. Climate scientists are much better about sharing data now. There are tons of resources for climate data available. I haven't seen any convincing evidence that the Heartland emails are fakes. Sure they deny it but they did the same thing when they denied being part of Phillip Morris' smoking push.
Foxes guarding the hen house. Awesome. And you know, if doctoring data, obstructing others who'd review the findings, etc., is "standard practice," then no wonder they were exonerated. Maybe those same multiple review boards will exonerate Gleick for his latest misdeed. Why on earth would you want to protect your data after you've published articles using that data? Isn't the idea for peers to be able to review the data and experiments, repeat them, and come up with the same results (hopefully)? The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle are quite left-leaning. They don't have a favorable view of Gleick. Maybe they have integrity, or maybe they're pissed their guy got caught. Chronicle article: http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120227/A_OPINION0619/202270302/-1/NEWSMAP NYTimes: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2...ception-in-obtaining-heartland-climate-files/
all the data is available online now so feel free to do your own investigation. The emails are up too. Will you be pissed off if they don't? Most of the issues I've run into are things that aren't published yet. Another issue is the owner of the data. Egos are also a factor. Access to information is power. It's all speculation at this point. There's a history of Heartland denying guilt when their hand was caught in the cookie jar, there isn't a history of this guy forging documents. Heartland is getting some great press on this. They've been successful in selling their message that scientists are bad, whether their emails are stolen or whether they steal other people’s emails. This is the best thing that could have happened to them. They know that their target audience will fail to perceive the irony of their playing the victim in one case, while accusing the victims in the hacking scandal. I'm tired. going to bed
Wow what the hell Heartland is a private org and is known for its bias and positions. Its internal emails are private and their theft is against the law. The climate gate episode were about emails that a public government agency was illegally withholding from release after years of stalling open records requests. How you treat two different things as the same is beyond me. What the leaked emails showed was that an advocacy group worked to advocate their position and that a govt supported science group that was supposed to be evenhanded was in actuality an advocate group for a single viewpoint to the exclusion of all others. That was the true scandal.
WOW You do know hacking is illegal, right? The emails didn't just float into cyberspace, someone had to hack a computer systems to gain access to the emails before they were leaked. Again echoing Heartland's message: scientists are bad, whether their emails are stolen or whether they steal other people’s emails. Can you back up your claim that open requests were not honored? What year did the open requests begin? I'm interested in how long scientists actually stalled.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/30/cru_foia_landmark/ A landmark FOIA ruling last week will have far-reaching consequences for how public servants interpret their Freedom of Information obligations. Specifically, public servants cannot delete local copies of a file on their PC and then use its absence as an excuse not to disclose the file - if a backup copy exists on the organisation's systems. In other words: backup servers must be searched for FOIA requests. The FOIA Tribunal heard the case last December and made its judgement last week. The case was brought by Dr Don Keiller, deputy head of Life Sciences at Ruskin University, Cambridge, against the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), the academics at the centre of the 'Climategate' scandals. CRU's director Phil Jones had earlier shared raw data freely, allowing other scientists to replicate their work, which includes the HADCRUT processed global temperature series. The data was gained by CRU from several sources, including national weather services (NMSs in the jargon). But after 2003, Jones began to find reasons not to share the data. "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" Jones wrote to climatologist Warwick Hughes in 2005 [ background ]. Some of the reasons Jones (and CRU) offered began to strike people as strange. It emerged that Jones had shared the raw data with a sympathetic source - Georgia Tech. Why couldn't he share it more widely? Jones first claimed there were clauses preventing disclosure to non-academics. Then it became clear that this was an argument of convenience: these agreements didn't exist. The excuse changed: CRU couldn't share the raw data because of confidentially agreements with the original NMSs. He would even attempt to argue that the raw data had been distributed in a a personal email, not in his professional capacity as a public servant. "If there ever were such confidentiality agreements, then CRU had breached them right from the start – by sending the 1991 version of the data to the US Department of Energy which published the station data online; by placing the 1996 version online at CRU as part of the ADVANCE/10K program; and by sending station data out on request (not just to Georgia Tech, but to others, including Mann and Rutherford in 2005 and even to me in 2002 before I was identified as a potential critic)," noted Steve McIntyre recently. This, and some more of the back story (including discussions between Jones and CRU's FOIA office on how to evade their obligations) became public in two releases of internal emails from CRU's servers; the tale is partially recounted here. Jones argued: We do concede that information was provided to Georgia Tech without securing consent of the institutions that provided it, and, upon reflection, this is an action we would not choose to take again. However, having made one error does not, in our eyes, justify making the same error again. In the first batch of Climategate emails, which cover a period to late 2009, we find Jones vowing to "hide behind" loopholes in FOIA legislation, advising colleagues to delete emails. In an email to the Met Office's Jean Palutikof, Jones explained, in discussing a FOIA request from David Holland that, "Keith and Tim have moved all their emails from all the named people off their PCs and they are all on a memory stick."
http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2009/11/chronology-foia-requests-and.html Chronology: FOIA Requests and the ClimateGate Emails THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2009 http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/willis-vs-the-cru-a-history-of-foi-evasion/ Willis vs. The CRU: A History of (FOI) Evasion 2009/11/24 People seem to be missing the real issue in the CRU emails. Gavin over at realclimate keeps distracting people by saying the issue is the scientists being nasty to each other, and what Trenberth said, and the Nature “trick”, and the like. Those are side trails. To me, the main issue is the frontal attack on the heart of science, which is transparency. Science works by one person making a claim, and backing it up with the data and methods that they used to make the claim. Other scientists attack the work by (among other things) trying to replicate the first scientist’s work. If they can’t replicate it, it doesn’t stand. So blocking the FOIA allowed Phil Jones to claim that his temperature record (HadCRUT3) was valid science. This is not just trivial gamesmanship, this is central to the very idea of scientific inquiry. This is an attack on the heart of science, by keeping people who disagree with you from ever checking your work and seeing if your math is correct. As far as I know, I am the person who made the original Freedom Of Information Act to CRU that started getting all this stirred up. I was trying to get access to the taxpayer funded raw data that they built the global temperature record out of. I was not representing anybody, or trying to prove a point. I am not funded by Mobil, I’m an amateur scientist with a lifelong interest in the weather. I’m not “directed” by anyone, I’m not a member of a right-wing conspiracy. I’m just a guy trying to move science forwards. The recent release of the hacked emails from CRU has provided me with an amazing insight into the attempt by Steve McIntyre, myself, and others from CA and elsewhere to obtain the raw station data from Phil Jones at the CRU. We wanted the data that was used to make the global temperature record that is used to claim “unprecedented” global warming. I want to give a chronological account of the interactions. I will reference the email numbers so that people can see the entire emails if they wish. While we don’t know if all of these emails are valid, the researchers involved such as Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann that clearly indicate that they think they are authentic. The story actually starts with Warwick Hughes, a climate researcher who had previously been in cordial contact with Phil Jones, the lead researcher of the CRU. I find only one email in the archive (0969308954) where Phil emails Warwick, from 2000. This is in response to some inconsistencies that Warwick had found in Phil’s work:
When you read the trail of emails going back and forth, and the scientists' clear obstruction of the information flow via FOIA, it's downright amazing that any "body" would exonerate these people.