Notes on the faked Heartland document

Shall we start a fund to send Leo Hickman to some proper journalism classes?

Maurizio Morabito (omnologos) said @ February 15, 2012 at 11:47 pm

Shall we start a fund to send Leo Hickman to some proper journalism classes?

The Git commenced Journalism at UTas back in 2004 and lasted all of two lectures and one tutorial. It was, being kind, useless. The only classes where critical thinking was taught and practiced were Philosophy, History and Geology.

I really, really would like to see the Guardian humbled.

Also:

His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.

Anyone who knows David Wojick’s writing would immediately know that there is no way he’d be involved in anything as silly as this.

Duke C. over at Lucia’s seems to have found a time stamp on the strategy memo showing a Pacific coast creation time for the scan. Comments 89887-89888.
Isn’t Heartland only located in D. C. and Chicago?

In recent news – – –
A bungling Iranian bomber blew off his own legs when he hurled a grenade at Thai police outside a Bangkok school – which bounced off a tree and then exploded at his feet.
A bungling climate alarmist tried to spice up boring stolen documents from the Heartland Institute, but had their amateurish fake exposed, blowing off the story’s legs.
– – –
I don’t think the fools involved in this sordid affair are going to get a big thank you from their former friends at the Biased Broadcasting Cabal or the Leftardian.

This from Heartland:
How did this happen? The stolen documents were obtained by an unknown person who fraudulently assumed the identity of a Heartland board member and persuaded a staff member here to “re-send” board materials to a new email address. Identity theft and computer fraud are criminal offenses subject to imprisonment. We intend to find this person and see him or her put in prison for these crimes
Indicates that they know exactly when the theft occured. The time stamp on the email from the duped staffer to the theif would establish that. If that time is prior to 12:41PM on Feb 13, then the Strategy document clearly didn’t originate at Heartland.
Also, check the PDF modified dates. They are all Feb 14, 2012. Span 3 hours from 11 am to 2 pm. What was changed vs. the originals as recieved?

It’s as authentic as the document purporting to show G. W. Bush shirked his Vietnam obligations,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bush-papers-were-faked-admits-cbs-6161169.html
and 0bama’s birth certificate (yeah, whatever, the one produced was a hastily re-issued copy).
and 0bama’s Nobel. Wait, that was authentic. But… as useless as (insert simile here)
Pretty much anyone can see the obvious things pointed out here (ie. different fonts, different style, different everything), and the “smoking gun” of “dissuading teachers from teaching science” is something that only exists in the warmists wettest of wet dreams.
“WE” (ie. skeptics) actually WANT teachers to teach Science. Science is something completely different from anything to do with AGW doctrine, so fittingly championed by a divinity school dropout and his favorite hockey team.
Science teaches us to question things, to adjust a hypothesis when observation no longer matches, that correlation is NOT causation, that an average is supposed to include current data, not just ideal data from some arbitrarily defined past dataset, that messing with real-world data to create a predetermined result is wrong, that adjusting historical data to match a hypothesis is criminal, and on and on.

Question: are there any facts in the faked memo which could not have been extracted from the other documents or otherwise publicly known?

“The ”2012 Climate Strategy” is the purported “smoking gun” that provides commentary and context missing from the other factual documents.” – just like the “45 minutes” dossier issued by the Labour government here in the UK. They never learn. The poor writing also suggests a younger person, a result of the drop in educational standards in recent years.

I agree that this is a fake. Leaving aside the technical stuff, it just doesn’t have the ‘look and feel’ that such a real document on such a topic would have, The other exhibits show that Heartland’s internal workings are pretty professional, that they have a house style, that they are used to being exact in their work and run their office in an organised way.
It is (to me at least) inonceivable that a senior staff member would write such an important document (for if real it would be the strategic plan) for internal consumption in a style so far removed from the norm.
But we must assume that the faker believed that their rather inept attempt at a forgery would be taken at face value. What can this tell us about his/her identity?
1. They are not at all familiar with the ways, habits and mindset of senior staff in any institution. The ‘ambience’ is wrong, the phrasing is wrong, the general tone of the document is wrong for the way those guys work. Compare and contrast the fake with the thoroughly researched and argued real ‘Fundraising Plan’ to see the difference.
2. We can rule out any of the established pro-AGW groups like Greenpeace or WWF or those sort of guys. They may be very misguided, but they are not naive. They would do a professional job that would last more than 24 hours of scrutiny.
3. There is (I think) no factual detail in the fake that cannot be gleaned from the other released documents. No further supporting detail, no ‘mood music’. It is, in essence, just a rehash of the other documents with a supposedly disobliging commentary added to it. We can conclude that this is unlikely to come from a Heartland insider or disgruntled employee – unless at a very junior level like security staff, cleaner or janitor.
4. The faker is familiar with the ‘Climate Wars’. And some of the phrasing betrays their own position ‘We pay to undermine the official UN IPCC reports’ is a tell. As is ‘other contributions….from corporations whose interests are threatened by climate policies’. And of course ‘two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science’.
I’d guess (no surprises here) that the faker is to the far side of the pro green, anti corporation side of the debate.
5. The wording and phrasing seems to be (though wrong for the supposed purpose) consistent throughout. This is not a document that has had multiple editors, or at least had had one overriding editor to impose the uniform style. But my feeling is that it was done by one individual
6. The faker must have assumed that he would get away with it – that his fake would be accepted. He has a high regard for his own abilities, and probably little regard for those of others.
7. This was an opportunistic fake, not a planned scam. Once he/she had obtained the real Heartland documents and found them to be thoroughly dull, they needed something to spice their adventure up a bit. And this is the result. I doubt that they spent more than a few hours constructing it, and the timeline shows that they were keen to get rid of the evidence asap. Not for them the patience of a two-year wait for Climategate 2.
My best guess is that this was done by a bright individual working alone, with no actual experience in large institutions. A ‘greenie’ with a computer and a scanner. Not an insider. One with a high regard for himself, but not a mastermind planning their every move ten years ahead.
I’ll leave others to consider what ‘profile’ this may fit, but my personal view is tending to the spotty youth working away alone in his bedroom. Or a disgruntled middle-aged loner.
Time will tell.

Hi Anthony,
Since the Heartland Institute emailed the documents to the false email-account, please try the HI to forward that email to you so you can compare the original documents with the published ones. The truth will come out very quickly!

“Prepare for a shock, he’s endorsing Obama instead :”
Seen why?
We changed nothing with a ‘Conservative’ government, different faces at the trough is all.

The alternative explanation, Latimer, is that the fake is a quick and dirty job put together (eg within an hour) by somebody who knew that warmists would believe the thing anyways, and the scandal would occupy hundreds of web sites before being shown as a fake. Also, the net being the net, the fake news will never go away really.

btw…the Forbes article was called “The Real Climategate” but, if u google it now – u will find a number of links about it. similarly, click on the link in Nelson’s blog below, and u will get the article i posted above instead:
15 Feb: Tom Nelson: Forbes warmist Steve Zwick “sees” what he desperately wants to see: Heartland “spreading dangerous disinformation”; ClimateGate scientists “obsessing over getting things right ”
(LINK) The REAL Climategate: Blog Busts Anti-Science Warchest – Forbes
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/forbes-warmist-steve-zwick-what-he.html
don’t know if anyone has a screen capture of the original “real climategate” article.

Anthony, several of your points are transparently false as can be determined by comparing the “strategy” document with the 990 form. The later is clearly an authentic document, containing, as it does, the signature of Bast. Equally clearly it is a scanned document, containing as it does hand written notation. Inspecting its properties shows that it lacks entries if the fields for Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, and Application, and PDF producer. As it is last modified in August 2011, it was not scanned by the releaser of the documents at the time of their release, and consequently there is no reason to think the missing fields were “sanitized”.
The simplest assumption is that the scanner used simply did not enter the data in those fields when the document was made.
Applying the same assumption to the strategy document, there is no reason to believe metadata was sanitized from that document either. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that it was a paper document that was scanned on the day before it was released by desmog blog. That, by itself, provides no reason to think the document inauthentic. It does give reason to think its authenticity is inconsistent with the Heartland Institutes account of events. Specifically, had the document been received as an email, or email attachment from a phishing scam, then there would have been no reason to first print it out and then scan it. On the other hand, if the document is authentic, then some person had a paper copy of an authentic document which is inconsistent with the Heartland Institutes account of events.
The Heartland Institute can clarify this point by the simple expedient of releasing the email from the person fraudulently pretending to be a board member, and the covering email sent to that purported board member. Simple checking of the times of creation will then show that these documents predate the release, and that their story is accurate, thereby confirming the fraudulent nature of the strategy document. Public release of the (already released) attachments would aid this process.
As it stands, one piece of evidence strongly suggests that the leak was performed by an insider, not by an outsider conducting a phishing attack as suggested by the Heartland Institute. Specifically, the date of last modification of the 990 form differs between that released by the leaker, and that released by the Heartland Institute. Had the 990 document been obtained by a phishing attack, then the last modified date on the 990 document would have been the same as, or post dated that released by Heartland. Clearly the leaker already possessed a copy of the 990 form prior to its modification on December 6, 2011. It may be that the leaker already had the 990 form in their possession, and then phished for the other documents, but absent clear evidence to the contrary (ie, the release of the emails), the presumption must be that the leak was from a member of the Heartland Institute, and therefore that the “strategy” document is, as it purports to be, and internal document of restricted circulation rather than an official document.
(Note, for the respective dates of the 990 modifications, I am relying or your quote of Dukes, and have not confirmed it for myself.

Heartland has stated the “Strategy” document was forged. It is this document that contains the prejudicial comments – including the part about discouraging teachers from teaching science:

His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.

This document as has been noted was a scan, created Monday of this week, by an Epson scanner. Scanning the document strips originating information from document properties as Anthony and others have showed.
What is also revealed however, is that the writing style, both what and how it is phrased, and key punctuation, is different.
Below is the section on the Climate Education initiative from the detailed 29 page “Fundraising Plan” document. That PDF has NOT been stripped of document properties, and shows it was created by Joseph Bast on 1/16/2012 at 10am.
This commentary greatly expands on the alleged “Strategy” document, and the description of the education program shows they have engaged a professional, well connected and credentialed individual, to create a teaching program that meets the requirements and explores both sides – noting these items are controversial. There is nothing remotely similar to or whatsoever related to the alleged comment that the goal was to dissuade teachers from teaching this topic.
Several other notes …
First, the alleged “Strategy” doc author states “the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain”. However, a read of the lengthier and more detailed education comments in the “Fundraising” document shows no mention of the term “uncertain” – only the word “controversial” was used … its use is an inflammatory embellishment.
Second, I would note the author in the alleged “Strategy” document makes the comment about dissuading teachers from teaching after use of a dash. Here too the comment is an inflammatory embellishment, with no similar mention made in the longer and more detailed education section in the validated “Fundraising” document.
Third – the author in the “Fundraising” document in all of its 29 pages – used the “dash” in a sentence a total of 3 times. Each of these times he used them in a pair – as I did in prior and this sentence – in place of comma’s. The “Strategy” author used dashes a like 3 times – in just two pages. And each time as a single dash, used in place of a comma or semi-colon – to add a modifier or extension to the sentence.
Last – no other document in the group at desmog contains wording remotely similar to the inflammatory statements in the alleged “Strategy” document. Similarly none of the writings anywhere from Heartland – not even their “Response to Critics” page (which shows deSmog as a long time attacker) is anything other than straightforward.
For example: the “Fundraising”, “Binder1” and “Budget” PDF files (all validated as created by J. Bast) all have writing style that is similar in each and every one. Straightforward – free of inflammatory embellishments – exactly as one would expect from a professional organization. The “Strategy” document on the other hand has several inflammatory embellishments – both uncharacteristic of the writings of J. Bast – and not found in any of the other documents.
Draw your own conclusions.
It is sad that these people have so much hatred that they would attack Heartland, and those associated, in the first place – especially when it exposes their hypocrisy – exposes the huge, orders of magnitude, difference in funding for the AGW brigade vs the skeptical science side.
Worse though, that they would be so desperate they would forge a document to make it seem worse.

H. Global Warming Curriculum for K-12 Schools
Many people lament the absence of educational material suitable for K-12 students on global warming that isn’t alarmist or overtly political. Heartland has tried to make material available to teachers, but has had only limited success. Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective. Moreover, material for classroom use must be carefully written to meet curriculum guidelines, and the amount of time teachers have for supplemental material is steadily shrinking due to the spread of standardized tests in K-12 education.
Dr. David Wojick has presented Heartland a proposal to produce a global warming curriculum for K-12 schools that appears to have great potential for success. Dr. Wojick is a consultant with the Office of Scientific and Technical Information at the U.S. Department of Energy in the area of information and communication science. He has a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science and mathematical logic from the University of Pittsburgh and a B.S. in civil engineering from Carnegie Tech. He has been on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon and the staffs of the U.S. Office
of Naval Research and the Naval Research Lab.
Dr. Wojick has conducted extensive research on environmental and science education for the Department of Energy. In the course of this research, he has identified what subjects and
concepts teachers must teach, and in what order (year by year), in order to harmonize with national test requirements. He has contacts at virtually all the national organizations involved in
producing, certifying, and promoting science curricula.
Dr. Wojick proposes to begin work on “modules” for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy”), climate models (“models
are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial”), and air pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global
food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”).
Wojick would produce modules for Grades 7-9 on environmental impact (“environmental impact is often difficult to determine. For example there is a major controversy over whether or not
humans are changing the weather”), for Grade 6 on water resources and weather systems, and so on.
We tentatively plan to pay Dr. Wojick $5,000 per module, about $25,000 a quarter, starting in the second quarter of 2012, for this work. The Anonymous Donor has pledged the first $100,000 for this project, and we will circulate a proposal to match and then expand upon that investment.

A rational person would endorse someone only after they knew who the opponent was. Very strange, coming ftom Delingpole.
==================
Did you read the article? Very tongue in cheek. If you can call being compared with a tarantula in the bath an endorsement then, yes, he endorsed Obama. What he’s really saying is that, sadly, Mitt Romney is a clone of David Cameron. I can sympathise because, here in Australia, we have had the same experience with Kevin Rudd. As for our present PM, Julia Gillard, words can’t express how loathed she is.

Just realised that I wrote a whole piece without commenting as to whether the paper was a fake.
Let’s put it this way … I’ve got kids, if they had produced these documents … I would be quite proud of their ingenuity. But if these are produced by anyone old enough to vote.
As for people like the BBC and Guardian thinking it was true. Come on!
As my kid said (quoting the Beano) “Look, there’s gullible written on the ceiling”.
p.s. …. and yes I did look …. but I claim I didn’t hear properly. Which my wife also did and also claimed. Which I suppose means we both like to see the evidence ourselves …. even if its evidence that we are gullible!

Are the cops involved yet? Presumably they are a bit more competent over there than our own blessed Norfolk constabulary, and can track the document source fairly quickly.
Mmm, actually I base this only on US police TV series (CSI Heartland?). US citizens may have a different perspective?

Alan Wilkinson says:
February 16, 2012 at 12:33 am

Question: are there any facts in the faked memo which could not have been extracted from the other documents or otherwise publicly known?

It seems to be spiced with a few facts but that doesn’t change much. Anyone with any experience knows that the best way to sell a lie is to mix a few bits of the truth in with it. It grants authenticity and creates a situation where one can then claim that people who point out the fake parts are attempting to deny The Facts, as exemplified by the little bits of truth and ignoring the mess of forgery in which they’re embedded.

I’ve just read the document at DeSmugBlog. The thing that leaped out at me was the description of certain potential Heartland sympathisers as anti-climate. Huh ! People who are against the climate !!?? I have only ever come across this sort of sloppy caricature in pro-CAGW propaganda.

Anthony
With regard to the BBC (Black) and Guardian (Hickman and others) is it worth you sending an advisory memo to the Leveson inquiry.
http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/
We’re interested in hearing from professionals and the public with
information and examples in response to the specific questions below.
Your answers may be considered as potential evidence to the inquiry.
The issue of stories that attract a high degree of press attention but
subsequently turn out to be false was raised at the seminars. The
Inquiry would be interested in submissions from editors, reporters and
subjects of such stories – why they occur (what are the pressures that
drive press interest), and how they occur (what checks and balances
are or should be in place to stop this happening and why do they
sometimes not operate)?

The package was worth far more to news agencies with the forged letter. Maybe the bad fake was added just to make a quick buck for the seller? If the seller was guananteed anonymity and the content was accepted on face value with no possibiity for repatation, the culprit may be smarter than we thought.

Stephen says:
February 16, 2012 at 1:57 am
Anthony, the key point in these emails is you are being paid a substantial amount of money to write a skeptic blog from an institution that receives a considerable amount of oil money. Is this true or not?

You forgot to put SARC at the end? If not then not $44,000 is not a lot of money compared to M. Manns $1.9 million single grant. The money to Watts was not to write a skeptic blog but intended to scientific purposes.

I’ve worked in a number of large organisations, in middle-senior management positions.
The fact is, any manager would be mortified to have this memo sent to Board members.
This, quite simply is NOT how you address the Board of your employer.
The technical stuff just seals the deal. :p

Here is full meta info for file “2012 Climate Strategy.pdf” as given by *N*X utility pdfinfo, version 0.12.4. The only major difference compared to Anthony’s analysis is it says PDF version was 1.4 (instead of 1.5). I reckon a plaintext command line utility is more reliable in this respect, than any fancy GUI thingy.
However, we also have some more shards of info there. First we may notice time zone of “EPSON Scan” was “-08:00”, which is PST (Pacific Standard Time). From this we can guess the jurisdiction. We also know, that “Monday, February 13, 2012, 12:41:52 PM” is actually 2012-02-13 04:41:52 UTC (unixtime 1329108112). The file was posted on desmogblog at 2012-02-14 05:14:22 UTC.
The other thing is uuid‘s (universally unique identifiers) found in meta info, which are supposed to be universally unique after all. I am talking about these codes:
DocumentID: 0d826409-6a19-411c-ae09-b5f400186c52
InstanceID: 692440ef-d85e-4cec-afef-742d339ece7b
A don’t really know if they had any forensic value or not. A PDF guy out there perhaps?

Aynsley Kellow said @ February 16, 2012 at 12:54 am

Pompous Git: There are a few of us at UTas who celebrate scepticism. 🙂

Yes, I know. Sad isn’t it? The “just a few” qualifier I mean. From a very selfish POV, I thought getting rid of Phil Dow was an act of complete insanity.

The 2012 climate strategy is a clear fake… to all the points above add that the one scanned document which is the IRS form wasn’t scanned by an Epson scanner.
Desperate attempt to make a story where there isn’t one…
The headline “Lobbying organisation raises money to lobby” is not so interesting

Rich Muller’s BEST project was partly funded by the Koch brothers. Where is the condemnation?????
Does anyone know how much BEST got from Koch.

Apologies, had to open Firefox in order to place a comment, and put it on the wrong thread. But the sentiment is still valid!

Nick Stokes says:
February 16, 2012 at 2:09 am
Heartland say all sorts of crimes have been committed, so presumably they’ll call in the police. Maybe that will get the answer.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
Nick, get over yourself. Your side obviously created the false “strategy” memo. They did so crudely and stupidly. Do you think the Biased Broadcasting Cabal or the Leftardian like being made to look stupider than they can reasonably avoid? The late Hunter S had a rule about misbehaviour in Vegas “Don’t burn the locals”. Your side just burnt the locals…..

Sierra Club $26,000,000 (from natural gas interests alone)

The Sierra Club disclosed Thursday that it received over $26 million from natural-gas giant Chesapeake Energy Corp. between 2007 and 2010 to help the group’s campaign against coal-fired power plants.

This is indeed a well funded fossil fuel lobbying industry.
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/208477-sierra-club-took-26m-from-gas-industry-to-fight-coal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126135534799299475.html
What the Heartland story has revealed to many is the unequal funding. Warmists will wish they never promoted the story so hard.

Along the lines of Lucy Skywalker, I give the faked document a two star review. For starters nobody starts with “Confidential Memo”. They would say Strategic Thrusts for 2012 (Confidential), or they would add “not for release” or “controlled release” if it is only sent to certain donors. The middle of the document is an uninspiring cribbing from the legit documents; poorly written and with obvious intent to blur the facts a little to make this document sound strategeric. The end of the document is a giveaway: name dropping like Curry who is hardly known or popular with anybody outside of the rabid geeks (on both sides) who post at her site. And Watts? With all due respect, nobody has any clue who Watts is. That ending just reeks of a hater who spends way too much time on the alarmist blogs.

A physicist, I agree. Climategate should be for amusements purposes only.

Konrad says:
… misbehaviour in Vegas “Don’t burn the locals”. Your side just burnt the locals…..
Surely, if we are to be properly sceptical, we should consider the possibility that this was a put up job by the heartland institute? … Which would presuppose that they intended it to be shown to be a forgery … but with the intention of getting the rest of the information to be published by the gullibles.
That tends to make me think there would be some smoking gun like a UK timezone inserted so as to ensure that no one could mistake it for a legitimate document …. but then that is what you would expect, so perhaps they might be cleaverer and just make it so blindingly obvious that its forged that anyone with an open mind would recognise it for such.
Cock-up or conspiracy … looks to me that even when there are conspiracies, cock up seems to be the dominant force!

Is this what CBS news and Dan Rather have been up to recently?

The fact that the forged document was scanned by an Epson scanner configured for Pacific Standard Time, and was, by time stamp analysis, in the possession of the smoggers for only one hour is powerful circumstantial evidence that somebody among the smoggers hastily forged the document to provide spin and the cachet of a leaked “Confidential Memo” for the otherwise bland pilfered files.
If there was justification for the way Tallbloke’s computers were treated, there is may times the justification for promptly treating all of DeSmog’s computers that way. I will go so far as to predict that the document forger will be caught. Noble cause corruption never covers its tracks, because they believe they have divine protection.
The race is now on to see who will be the first alarmist to admit that the document in question is forged, but it nonetheless expresses an essential truthiness about the wickedness of climate skeptics.

Stephen says:
February 16, 2012 at 1:57 am
Technically true, but misleading as heck.
1) $88K is not a lot of money for what Anthony is doing.
2) The work that Anthony is doing is neither sceptical or non-sceptical. He is taking existing data, and making it more user friendly. It never ceases to amaze me the reaction warmists have to real data. Reminds me of vampires and sunlight.
3) Heartland institute has received some money from oil companies, but it is only a few percent of their budget. Why do you believe that funding from oil companies is somehow disqualifying? Do you believe that warmists who receive money from people who are making money off the AGW scam is also disqualifying?

and p.s. Anthony, these people are truly despicable, be strong.

Stephen says:
February 16, 2012 at 1:57 am
Technically accurate, but very misleading.
1) The amount of money Anthony recieved is not a lot for building a web site of the type he is talking about.
2) THe work in question is not sceptical. He is taking real data and making it more user friendly. It never ceases to amaze me the way warmists react to any data that doesn’t support their fantasy world. Sort of like vampires and sunlight.
3) While Heartland has received money from oil companies over the years, it is a very small part of their budget. Regardless, why do you believe that receiving money from oil companies to be disqualifying? Is the fact that the CRU receives substantially more money from oil companies also disqualifying? Is the fact that warmists receive money from people and groups who are profiting from the AGW scam also disqualifying?
Or do you just grasp at any straw you can find in order to ignore those saying what you don’t wan to hear?

I sense an infamous Dan Rather “Fake but true” defense. Don’t blame the defamer?

Only an alarmist would write:
“…dissuading teachers from teaching science.”
It’s laughable, they are the only ones who label their little warmist cult as “science” or “the science”. To the non-believers of AGW (for lack of a better term), the term science would apply to legitimate areas of study not specifically global warming. FAKE

Revkin implies all the core points in the fake strategy are supported in the real documents. I’d be willing to bet this is his way to keep alive the propaganda line about dissuading teachers from teaching science.
All the believers need is Revkin’s “authority” to allow them to accept this as a valid takeaway reinforcing this important mainstay from the high level CAGW propaganda plan and mitigating any potential weakening of it.

Perhaps analysis of the rejected first draft might help? http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22815239/RejectedDraftHIMemo.pdf

I suggest everyone who has concerns submit a complaint to the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/
Here is my submission
What is your complaint about:
Other BBC Online Website
URL:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17048991
Complaint category:
Factual error or inaccuracy
Contacted us before:
No
Complaint title:
Breach of Editorial Guidelines
Complaint description:
Richard Black’s reporting “Openness: A Heartland-warming tale” has failed to comply with the BBC editorial guidelines as below because he was not be rigorous in establishing the truth of the story. He had the contact details of Mr. Anthony Watts but failed to contact him to establish the truth of the story before publishing. This may well have left us license/taxpayers liable to a libel action. This story contrasts with Mr. Black’s reporting of the “climategate” emails and suggests Mr. Black has also breached the guidelines on bias.
. “1.2.6 Serving the Public Interest We seek to report stories of significance to our audiences. We will be rigorous in establishing the truth of the story and well informed when explaining it. Our specialist expertise will bring authority and analysis to the complex world in which we live. We will ask searching questions of those who hold public office and others who are accountable, and provide a comprehensive forum for public debate. “
Your Details
Receive a reply:
Yes

As a Brit I just submitted a complaint to the BBC about Richard Black’s article. It looks to me that there is another, less remarked upon, flaw in Black’s behaviour. He is a competitor of Antony Watts and therefore appears biased by way of personal interest.. I wrote,
“The article was biased by way of selective reporting.
Richard Black refused to report on Climategate until the story was cold as he was unsure of the providence of the leaked emails. This was quite justifiable.
However, in this story the documents were stolen and at least one was fabricated. Again his established procedure would be proven to be justified. Yet he abandoned that practise.
To avoid bias (and fulfil his duty as a journalist) he should have checked his sources and consulted with DeSmog Blog, Heartland Institute and Watts Up With That. He did not do those things.
Instead he misled his readership in order to disparage a competitor’s website (Watts Up With That). This is a clear bias against the winner of the Science Blog of the Year. As a less lauded science and environment blogger himself the motivation is suspect.
”
Of course the BBC will wave it away but one has to try.

Curiously, the XMP toolkit used to generate the fake pdf was:
“Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/09/27-13:37:26 ”
The XMP toolkit used to create one of the elements of desmog-fracking-the-future.pdf was:
“Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/09/27-13:37:26 ”
I am not drawing any conclusions about this, just pointing out the coincidence.

The smoking gun: “I propose that at this point it be kept confidential and only be distributed to a subset of Institute Board and senior staff.”
Now, I am not a climate scientist, but I have been general counsel and secretary for a number of public companies. This single sentence is so poorly crafted and badly thought out that it is virtually impossible for the “Confidential Memo” to be genuine. To the contrary, it was almost certainly crafted by someone who has never served or interacted with a Board of Directors.
1. No executive would ever put in writing that he was going to limit distribution to only a “subset” of directors. Any excluded director would instantly become an enemy. Board members are notoriously jealous of their position and authority. Moreover, selectively disseminating information only to certain Board members is a recipie for personal liability (for both the executive and the Board member who receives the selective distribution). It is not to say that selective distribution does not occur, it simply means that any person who had risen to a policy making level would know better than to put it in writing.
2. Any person comfortable writing memos to a Board would have said either: “a subset of THE Institute Board” or “a subset of Institute Board MEMBERS.” Board members are not “staff,” and every Board with which I have been associated had at least one member who would take offense at terminology (and remember the person who made the error). Of course, it could be a typo, but it is as obvious to anyone versed in these sorts of memos as a wrong note is to a professional musician.
3. “Senior staff” is an ill defined term and any person who wanted to keep something confidential, even if he were stupid enough to put the directive in writing, would carefully circumscribe the permissible recipients. The author might as well have said distribute only to you know who.
4. No executive “proposes” to keep something confidential in the very document that he intends to keep confidential. It suggests an amateurishness so pronounced as to refute any claim that the author is an executive employee with experience communicting in writing with a Board. Kind of like your nerd friend who asks if it’s half time at a Bruins game.
5. No executive “proposes” to keep a “Confidential Memo” confidential. It’s just silly, like proposing to keep water wet.
I have written hundreds of Board memos and read hundreds more. I have seen and made many, many errors. But the number of errors in this one sentence (not to mention the numerous other errors in the memo documented at length in this thread) prove to me beyond any reasonable doubt that the Confidential Memo is a fake. If I am wrong, then the idiot who wrote it deserves everything he gets. But I’m not wrong.

Myrrh says:
February 16, 2012 at 5:09 am
and p.s. Anthony, these people are truly despicable, be strong.
Yes, get up from that hysterical laughter on the floor … it’s not that funny … OK, it is! But be strong, calm down, take deep breaths … the laughing will stop!

You’d think Desmog would be smarter than that…
I wonder if “2010/09/27-13:37:26” is the install date, or the origination date, i.e., release date of the program itself? If the latter, doesn’t mean much. If the former, damning.
Mark

Dear Private eye,
I am writing to inform you of a particularly nasty episode where the BBC (Black) and Guardian went out of their way to hastily print information from what is now clearly a fraudulent document. Details of the scandal are on the WUWT site where the blog-owner was referred to in the fraudulent document. (See: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/15/notes-on-the-fake-heartland-document)
However, those familiar with your coverage of climategate will be aware, despite your reputation to be: “a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency, corruption, pomposity or self-importance and it has become a self-styled “thorn in the side” of the British establishment” (Wikipedia), we all know that private eye is totally hypocritical when it comes to the catastrophic global warming scam.
As the chances of you following this story are about as high as getting Richard Black to admit that he is ” guilty of all the sins of incompetence, inefficiency, corruption, pomposity or self-importance”, I will be posting this to WUWT for their amusement.
regards,
the true thorn in the establishment’s side,
Scottish Sceptic.

Maurizio Morabito (omnologos) says on February 15, 2012 at 11:47 pm

Shall we start a fund to send Leo Hickman to some proper journalism classes?

Don’t bother. It is a waste of money.
Better to simply donate some money to the Heartland Institute …
(By their actions you will know them.)

Tom Curtis says:
Anthony, several of your points are transparently false as can be determined by comparing the “strategy” document with the 990 form.
Nope.
The later is clearly an authentic document, containing, as it does, the signature of Bast.
Yeah, because signatures can’t be faked. The 990 form likely is genuine (remains to be seen if it has been altered) but your “logic” is assinine.
Equally clearly it is a scanned document, containing as it does hand written notation.
You are missing the point. The Form 990 is a scan. Of course it is – it is a FORM. Forms come preprinted, and are filled out. And they are signed by hand. Then they are scanned as submitted for records. That is what one expects of a form.
All of the rest of the documents are not forms. They are original creations. They were all made using word processing software (Word Perfect, suprisingly) and then converted directly to PDF for distribution. That is what one expects of an original document.
The “Claimate Strategy” is not a form. It is an original creation. Yet instead of simply creating the that coPDF directly from the word processing software, whoever made that document printed it to paper, scanned the paper back to an image, and converted the image to PDF. That is not what one expects of an original document.
Applying the same assumption to the strategy document, there is no reason to believe metadata was sanitized from that document either.
Yes there is – the fact that it was printed then scanned in the first place. Why would someone do that? One reason is that the act of printing then scanning eliminates the metadata that a direct software conversion would maintain.
On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that it was a paper document that was scanned on the day before it was released by desmog blog.
Yep, and that needs an explanation.
As it stands, one piece of evidence strongly suggests that the leak was performed by an insider, not by an outsider conducting a phishing attack as suggested by the Heartland Institute. Specifically, the date of last modification of the 990 form differs between that released by the leaker, and that released by the Heartland Institute.
The PDF modified date for the file on DeSmogblog is Feb 14, 2012.

If I was Heartland I’d get onto my lawyers quick and get people like Suzanne Goldenberg to stop using terms that cannot be associated to them. Sorry Heartland if you do not jump on the mis-infomation quick it will hang around like a bad smell.
“dissuade teachers from teaching science”,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/15/heartland-institute-fraud-leak-climate

They give themselves away by buying too heavily into their own cartoon image of monstrous ‘deniers’. Someone in the comments recently described these CAGW activists (DeSmog, SS etc.) as pathological narcissists. This seems a fairly apt description to me. They are so convinced at their own manipulatory skill (fostered by a lazy, equally narcissistic press) that they cannot concieve of how it could possibly backfire. And it does. Every time. Spectacularly. It’s brilliant to watch..

A physicker: “It is mighty dismaying (to me) …”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever.
Have the Japanese followed your advice and nuked themselves yet?

Thanks to Michael Lowe above for quoting DeSmogBlog’s mission statement: “clear the PR pollution that is clouding the science on climate change.”
I took a look at their front page. It’s nothing *but* PR pollution.
Mike.

As to how this is different from ClimateGate: private organization vs. tax-payer funded organization.

One other thing about the core’s
The Form 990 was also scanned, and has I am told (I didn’t check) the same core as the fake document. Now Form 990s are available without leaking or social engineering hacks or whatever you want to call it
Also a form 990 would also be an odd thing to include with board stuff like budgets.
So I’m wondering if the process the documents was:
– Hacker/leaker/social-engineer persuades HI to email them some documents
– Hacker/leaker/social-engineer adds form 990, which they already have from another source
– Hacker/leaker/social-engineers adds the fake document
– This then gets forwarded as a package.
The only way to know for sure would be to ask HI,if the 990 was included with the email bundle they were tricked into sending out. I’m betting it wasn’t.
And if the 990 was obtained separately and added to the bundle, that could be start of the trail…
If you’re looking for a suspect – my suggestion would be begin with: So who do we know in the Pacific time zone who likes checking 990s of climate skeptics?

I’m reminded of an experiment on another blog where a Turing test was set up: atheists and Christians were asked to write two pieces, one honest and one fake, explaining their viewpoint. Readers were asked to guess which pieces were true/fake atheists/Christians. The most interesting ones were the failures, where someone just wasn’t able to understand the opposing side’s viewpoint.
This little episode here looks like a failed Turing test: a warmist writing a piece pretending to be a skeptic, clearly exposing his skewed view of how skeptics think.

Bill says:
February 16, 2012 at 6:31 am
a physicist
—————————————
Bill, all f this and more has been presented to “A phycist” before. He does not engage, instead, troll like, he just repeats this tired false analogy equivacating the two as if they were the same, hoping to misinform some reader who does not read all the posts.

Curiously, the XMP toolkit used to generate the fake pdf was:
“Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/09/27-13:37:26 ”
The XMP toolkit used to create one of the elements of desmog-fracking-the-future.pdf was:
“Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/09/27-13:37:26 ”
============================================================
Those don’t match. The fake Heartland scan was created with EPSON scan using that version of AdobeXMP DLL but the desmogblog document was created with Adobe InDesign CS5 (7.0.3) using that version of AdobeXMP DLL. Two different products.

A good guess would be that this document was composed by an activist nitwit on advice by his nagging vegan girlfriend and between sessions with the bong. No one who’s been connected in any way to a board of any kind, or has ever held a job in an office (or a job, period) would write such a silly memo.
And, hey, where’re our visiting warmista-propagandista muppets, the strident meisters of pseudoscience, the Green cartel apologistas? Time for some comedic interludes. Connolley? YO, CONNOLLEY!!!

It’s telling that the warmists had to forge documents and FOIA did not.
Gives some perspective on the seriousness of this wholly manufactured “scandal.”

TerryS says:
February 16, 2012 at 6:07 am
Curiously, the XMP toolkit used to generate the fake pdf was:
“Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/09/27-13:37:26 ”
The XMP toolkit used to create one of the elements of desmog-fracking-the-future.pdf was:
“Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/09/27-13:37:26 ”
I am not drawing any conclusions about this, just pointing out the coincidence.

Nothing to see here move along. ;>)

O.k. now Delingpole has an article related to this :
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100137840/fakegate/

The irony hear is that when the dust has settled, and the court cases are all done, the folks who posted these documents in such great haste, and without confirming with the source, will end up being the biggest financial contributors to the Heartland Institute in 2012.
Some of the perpetrators will disappear (see ya desmogblog) because they can’t afford the penalties, but others have deep pockets.

If the strategy document is a fake, rather than something a Heartland staffer scanned to give to whoever appears to have impersonated a board member, it’s a clumsy mistake on the leakers’ part. The rest of the documents are more than enough to bring the Heartland Institute’s non-profit charitable organization status into question, and adding a fake to the mix has the potential of hugely diluting the impact.
If Heartland were to release the email they sent to the phisher, they could (a) clearly demonstrate whether this particular document is a fake, and (b) show whether any of the other documents are modified – although the numbers in the various docs appear to match up with other sources and external confirmation, such as from Anthony, Carter, Wojicks, etc. They could also show it to the police, as part of any legal investigation into the leak.
I’m a bit surprised they haven’t done so already.

Eric wrote: “Those don’t match. The fake Heartland scan was created with EPSON scan using that version of AdobeXMP DLL but the desmogblog document was created with Adobe InDesign CS5 (7.0.3) using that version of AdobeXMP DLL. Two different products.”
The DLLs are a match. It could be a coincidence, but it needs to be investigated.

Mike Bromley the Canucklehead says:
February 16, 2012 at 5:15 am

R. Gates? Your analysis? Don’t have one? My, My.

Exactly! I was expecting half a dozen posts from R. screaming this was a “theft” but all I got was complete and total silence.
How fitting.

Steve S says:
February 16, 2012 at 5:43 am
“Once upon a time, old What’s His Name over at Littlegreenfootballs would have been all over an obvious fake like this. Sadly, he’s gone full CO2, and is quoting the forgery as if it were gospel. There will never be another ‘throbbing’ memo from that guy.”
_______________________________
At this time, here’s Charles Johnson’s most recent take on the matter:
_______________________________________
28 Charles Johnson Wed, Feb 15, 2012 2:32:16pm
…”However, don’t assume that Heartland is telling the truth about how this happened, apart from it being emailed. I don’t see any reason to trust their “impersonation” story. They’re almost certainly lying when they claim that one of the docs is a fake.”
________________________________
While Johnson’s blog initially attracted a large following of truth- seekers and libertarian types, it is now perhaps, more famous for censorship, both subtle and overt, of those not adhering to the screed.
——————————————————
“Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
Keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
Don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’
from: Bob Dylan-The Times They Are A-Changin’

More Soylent Green! said, “This is payback for the Climate Gate leaks. Since they didn’t have real documents like in Climate Gate, they had to fake it.”
Clearly. What a bunch of sorry numpties. I’m embarrassed that DeSmog and the law and PR firm that supports it are in my city, but it’ll fun watching them wriggle as our superb National Post daily drills them all a new one in the coming days and weeks.
I’d add too that this is also a flopping fraudulent attepmt to reinforce the warmistas’ latest PR brainwave, namely the lame charge that skeptics are “anti-science.” Bet ya that when Connoley and the usual suspects appear here, they’ll be plugging and repeating that meme until someone gets around to issue a new set of orders for them. How do these people mess up time and time again with all that money behind them is one of the mysteries of our age.

Page 2 of Black’s ‘highest rated’ comments page is the same as page 1. Damning of Richard Black’s hypocrisy, double standards and peddling fake stories to the public.

Eric (skeptic) says:
February 16, 2012 at 7:43 am
Curiously, the XMP toolkit used to generate the fake pdf was:
“Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/09/27-13:37:26 ”
The XMP toolkit used to create one of the elements of desmog-fracking-the-future.pdf was:
“Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/09/27-13:37:26 ”
============================================================
Those don’t match. The fake Heartland scan was created with EPSON scan using that version of AdobeXMP DLL but the desmogblog document was created with Adobe InDesign CS5 (7.0.3) using that version of AdobeXMP DLL. Two different products.

It depends on which application assembled the PDF. CS5 Design Premium ships with InDesign and Acrobat X Pro among other products. If they are shipped together, they would use the same core version/patch level of the XMP engine. If the document was scanned on a scanner that was attached directly to a PC and then opened and saved using Acrobat Pro on the PC, then the metadata would would show the XMP core version of the application that saved the file (Acrobat Pro, in this case). If, on the other hand, the PDF is created by the scanner (newer scanners will do this) and then saved as a PDF to a flash drive on the local scanner, then the document would show the embedded XMP core version of the scanner.
So its quite possible that these two documents were created using the same copy of CS5. Its not conclusive — I imagine thousands of copies of CS5 were shipped with that patch level. But it is certainly curious and a major clue.

KR says:
The rest of the documents are more than enough to bring the Heartland Institute’s non-profit charitable organization status into question, …
On what grounds?
I see this accusation bandied about quite a lot, but have yet to see anyone indicate what they think Heartland has done which violates the provisions of section 501(c)(3). I get the distinct impression that the people saying such things generally don’t have a clue as to what activities are covered under 501(c)(3) …

Google “Yellow Dots of Mystery”. I am speculating that a scanned hard-copy document PDF contains forensic tracking features that law enforcement agencies mandated be automatically ‘printed’ on each scanned page of a document. You might be able to ‘see’ those features in the PDF. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a bunch of webpages describing this for printers. There are also YouTube videos out there describing how you can find these features printed on printer hard-copy output

A jury of their peers might not convict these folks, but I think there might be a few heading for the door.
————————–
Several mentions have been made of the use of commas. There are instances where a few too many can be better than one too few. So to brighten your day:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ximkWr7vTPc/TiZEkyqJWBI/AAAAAAAAITs/thIseXD4Es8/s1600/The%2BOxford%2BComma%2B%2BExplained.jpg

This isn’t forgery if you are a Warmist, it is mere homogenization.
Actually this again shows the length that Warmists will go push their POLITICAL agenda.

Some of the perpetrators will disappear (see ya desmogblog)
Desmog is backed by John Lefebvre who, even after pleading out with the US Attorney, is believed to have retained hundreds of millions of dollars from his NETeller days.

Its possible that additional information like an IP address can be found in the documents header using an EXIF Data Viewer.
Also, is one of the Board of Directors located on the west coast and does he or she have any children. Huff Post commenters have brain washed most of the kids out here.

Forget the MSM and blogospheres role in perpetuating the fraud and misinformation, Yahoo, in their fine tradition as uncritical megaphone for alarmist press release, are mangling the facts in this fiasco with Anthony’s name upfront and center.
People may not realize that Yahoo is only surpassed in traffic by Facebook and Google.

mpaul said “If they are shipped together, they would use the same core version/patch level of the XMP engine.” Possible. I don’t know about those particular products, but in general products ship with their own DLLs in that product’s own directory. But if it is as you say, I agree it is a decent clue.

> charge that skeptics are “anti-science.”
Heartland certainly are; they are trying to mislead people into thinking that net natural fluxes of CO2 are greater than human fluxes.

Eric (skeptic) says:
February 16, 2012 at 10:02 am
===========
I think your original assessment was dead on target. The software installed for the Epson Printer simply uses the XMP engine version and millions of copies are in circulation. XMP is a very small part of the data that exists in the documents header. It would be interesting to see if a path to the host computer is also listed.

Hey Anthony – Check This Out.
Something is very peculiar about the “Climate Strategy” PDF file.
It very much looks like a scan. The text is pixelated and lossy, and there are “scan artifacts” all over it, as if it were an image resulting from a scan of a printed page. And it is. But it isnt just an image. The text is selectable.
Someone scanned a page, and then added invisible text on top of it. Hard to imagine why Heartland would have done such a goofy thing – type up a document, print it out, scan it back in, then retype the text over top. Easy to figure out why the miscreant forgers would: to make it easier for the useful idots to be able to copy and paste the “juicy parts” into their blogs.

I think this quote from Desmog is telling.
“The DeSmogBlog has received no direct communications from the Heartland Institute identifying any misstatement of fact in the “Climate Strategy” document and is therefore leaving the material available to those who may judge their content and veracity based on these and other sources.”
Desmog isn’t denying that the document isn’t a forgery, they are claiming that it is “Factually correct.” Where have we heard this before?
The document is clearly a forgery.

JJ says:
February 16, 2012 at 10:35 am
Hey Anthony – Check This Out.
==========
Great catch, that’s very revealing. If the type aligns perfectly to the scanned image, then the same font and application would need to be used to achieve the effect. They must have constructed a document, scanned it, placed the scan in background, changed the text to no color, and then made a PDF. I suppose they could have added the text using Acrobat Pro but it would take a lot of effort.
A bitmapped image doesn’t render selectable text in PDF so the document header information should be full of interesting information.

JJ Wrote: “Someone scanned a page, and then added invisible text on top of it. Hard to imagine why Heartland would have done such a goofy thing – type up a document, print it out, scan it back in, then retype the text over top.”
JJ, are you able to determine what part of the document has been altered?

Megan McArdle has what appears to be a smoking gun. See “Update” near the bottom:

Unless there’s an explanation I’m missing, that seems to clinch it–why would health care donations show up in their climate strategy report? Unless of course, it was written by someone who doesn’t know anything about facts of the donation, but does know that the Kochs make great copy.

JamesD says:
February 16, 2012 at 11:03 am
JJ Wrote: “Someone scanned a page, and then added invisible text on top of it. Hard to imagine why Heartland would have done such a goofy thing – type up a document, print it out, scan it back in, then retype the text over top.”
JJ, are you able to determine what part of the document has been altered?
========
JJ is right, the text is selectable online but it looks like the version posted is a 3rd version of the original — note the (3) in the filename. Did desmog add the selectable text?
http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/2012%20Climate%20Strategy%20(3).pdf
One would need the original to look at the original document header information. A save as PDF would introduce changes. Can we get a copy of the unaltered original?

JonasM says:
Many PDF scanners will also OCR the scanned images, and embed the text into the PDF along with the image. Nothing to get worked up about.
I was not aware that OCR had been integrated like that. Seems like a reasonable explanation.

link to atlantic not working or article has been removed
REPLY: try now -A

Jimbo says:
February 16, 2012 at 11:23 am
William M. Connolley says:
February 16, 2012 at 10:04 am
“Heartland certainly are; they are trying to mislead people into thinking that net natural fluxes of CO2 are greater than human fluxes.”
It depends on the meaning of the word “net”. Net incoming flux from nature is assuredly much greater than anthropogenic fluxes, to the tune of at least 32:1.
This is a lower bound. Nobody really knows net incoming and outgoing natural fluxes to a high degree of accuracy. From rock weathering to microbes in the soil, we seem to find new sources and sinks everyday.

For posterity. All IDs are Version 4 (pseudo random) UUIDs and therefore do not contain MAC address information. But it may be worth Hartland checking the instance IDs of the files Emailed out.
2012 Climate Strategy.pdf
Document ID: 0d826409-6a19-411c-ae09-b5f400186c5
Instance ID: 692440ef-d85e-4cec-afef-742d339ece7
Board Meeting Package January 17_0.pdf
Document ID: 85ce398a-a426-4d5b-8fa3-350fd6cd49d
Instance ID: 8e6d740c-c071-43b1-b410-f5ca7251b23
Board Directory 01-18-12_0.pdf
Document ID: 00a238ed-cb00-4ad1-bea9-ede3bc09308
Instance ID: 3f30da0e-f56d-47b6-afb6-c50547f3c31
2 Agenda for January 17 Meeting_0.pdf
Document ID: 2b221201-69f5-41a5-9998-004d5825e9a
Instance ID: 5b269c0f-0331-451d-a8ea-d0c4b44bb91
Binder 1.pdf
Document ID: e80b437b-df32-4841-ac42-509347e32c4
Instance ID: e8a33bac-3fab-4030-9d39-77c32f97b4e
(1-15-2012) 2012 Heartland Budget.pdf
Document ID: b206664b-abab-4e2e-a2b8-368e729112c
Instance ID: 849f5ab3-0b54-453c-8f11-8d879653a02
(1-15-2012) 2012 Fundraising Plan_0.pdf
Document ID: 7f023130-ee81-4f05-aa90-fc2e64d15b6
Instance ID: 09e87271-6ce7-47bd-be0d-ae42594ecaf
2010_IRS_Form_990.pdf
Document ID: bce2a27a-1d5a-4c6b-87e0-45f8938c95e
Instance ID: 44003c4d-21b2-4cac-921b-715592a5a55

William M. Connolley says:
February 16, 2012 at 10:04 am
> charge that skeptics are “anti-science.”
Heartland certainly are; they are trying to mislead people into thinking that net natural fluxes of CO2 are greater than human fluxes.
——————————————
You shouldnt venture here willy ma boy, the truth isnt something youll like the taste of.
Hows the wiki project going btw…..

Tried to post a comment at Joe Joltin’ Romm’s blog warning them that the document is probably a fake and others might have been altered. I also attempted to demonstrate the massive disparity between pro-AGW funding and Heartland funding.
Needless to say, my comment was deleted by the mods.
So, having traded emails with Joe in the past, I decided to email the following to Joe directly. I hope he replies:
“Hey Joe,
It’s been a while since we exchanged emails. I wanted to get in touch again as I’m finding it nigh on impossible to post a comment on your site without it being moderated out.
For instance, I tried to post the following on your article about the Heartland documents. Perhaps you’d like to read it yourself and pass comment:
“I think you should be rather careful. Joe is right to be skeptical of at least some of these documents, as it turns out that one of the documents is a fake, and others may have been altered.
One thing you have to admit about Climategate is that none of it was faked or altered.
What some of the (allegedly) true documents show is how little funding is given to skeptics/deniers/call them what you want, when you compare it to how much money is piled into the AGW side of the debate (I hope the links work okay):
Carbon Trading: In 2009 the global market for carbon credits was $144B (I kid you not) http://www.carbonflow.com/en/careers/senior-java-grails-engineers
Exxon: paid more than 20 times as much for a single renewables research project than it did to skeptics http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/07/14/14greenwire-exxon-sinks-600m-into-algae-based-biofuels-in-33562.html
Since 1990, Dr Jones and CRU have endowments of at least 22.6 million. This includes money from organisations attempting to make money from ‘renewables’, such as the Carbon Trust, the Northern Energy Initiative, and the Energy Saving Trust http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/cru_files_betray_climate_alarm.html
Greenpeace: total income of 58 million euros in 2010 http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/publications/greenpeace/2011/GPI_Annual_Report_2010.pdf
The US govt is spending millions of dollars a day on global warming ‘research’. http://dailybail.com/home/4-billion-for-global-warming-research-in-2011-budget.html “
As you can see, I haven’t been rude and I’ve just tried to provide what I believe are reasonably solid facts.
Why won’t you let my comments through? Surely you should allow at least a few comments through from the skeptic side of the debate, because if you don’t your blog will just turn into an echo-chamber of AGWers telling each other how wonderful they are.
Are you afraid of debate?
Regards,
Andy Wilkins”