This short post by Bolt really says it all:
If the sceptics’ conspiracy was real, why fake the evidence?
The problem with the great international conspiracy of climate sceptics is that it’s so small and innocent that a disappointed warmist who steals documents from the Heartland Institute finds they must fake the main one to get media attention.
Sounds a bit like their tree-ring research.
Yes, says JoNova, let’s please look at who’s funding who in the climate zoo.
==============================================================
From my perspective, it looks like an act of desperation on the part of DeSmog blog:
Source: Alexa analysis
Meet the man, assistant DeSmogger Brendan De Melle, who took a whole hour to get the documents online from the time received. Speed is more important than fact checking in journo-lism I suppose.
An entire hour. No rush to judgement by this guy.
yup if I was in charge of the investigation as to who did what to get that email I know where I would start.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/tell-me-whats-horrible-about-this/#comments
Maybe DeSmog should try adding porn to their site to drive up traffic–their brand of “climate science” certainly isn’t working.
LOL
I do really appreciate the photograph of Mr. De Melle.
With a suitable degree of enlargement, I can’t think of anything better to line the floor of a birdcage, [snip OK a bit over the top]
That blue curve – That’s from a Livingston & Penn paper, I think. Showing there will be a disappearing act about the middle of 2013.
These guys can’t do anything right. They are up to their necks and going down fast.
It’s just pure desperation. They are flailing, they are losing, the numbers aren’t going their way, they have to do something, there are BILLIONS at stake and, besides, they still want to go to those fancy cocktail parties where people fawn all over them.
De Melle’s head is too.full of hair for him to be a proper climate scientist or journalist, although the goatee is on the right path.
I repeat:
You can save yourselves a lot of time, and generally be correct, by simply assuming that EVERY SCARY PREDICTION the global warming alarmists express is FALSE.
The warming alarmists have a near-perfect negative predictive track record – every one of their scary predictions has failed to materialize.
I wrote the following some weeks ago, not for the first time, and am doing pretty well so far.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/01/briggs-schools-the-bad-astronomer-on-statistics/#more-55764
Finally Kevin+37, you have demonstrated a near-perfect track record of negative predictive skill – not one of your scary predictions has materialized! Should we then, statistically, disbelieve everything you predict? It appears we should.
At 10:26 PM on 16 Feburary, Allan MacRae had recapitulated:
While it’s not an absolutely reliable surmise, I have to agree that it’s a generally useful basis upon which to approach the catastrophist caterwaulings of las warmistas.
As Reagan’s speechwriter quoted the old Russian proverb (“doveryai, no proveryai”) when the subject of strategic arms talks was before the public, with these charlatans’ perpetual duplicity and error, their persistently untrustworthy character is a phenomenon which should most assuredly be considered a default property, but their statements must always be subjected to verification instead of being dismissed out of hand.
They’re skilled liars, remember. Any such critter learns that one of the best ways to tell a lie is to retail just enough of the truth in precisely the right way to lead the listener to a blatantly false conclusion.
Allan MacRae says:
February 16, 2012 at 10:26 pm
“I repeat:
You can save yourselves a lot of time, and generally be correct, by simply assuming that EVERY SCARY PREDICTION the global warming alarmists express is FALSE.”
But it’s amusing to track their shenanigans. Every time I think Climate Politics is becoming boring something outrageous happens, as in, I couldn’t have imagined something that stupid (again).
Go to the Smoggers and you find comments like these right now… well, a few.
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/jokes/bljoke-iraqinfominister.htm
http://progcontra.blogspot.com/2012/02/heartland-non-story.html
In a 27 September 2007 email leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) Richard Littlemore, a senior propagandist for Desmogblog, is looking for material to fend off challenges about global temperatures not increasing. He writes; “I am out of my depth (as I am sure you have noticed: we’re all about PR here, not much about science.”)
With this latest debacle it appears they are not much about PR either.
Desmogblog was set up by James Hoggan who is also Chair of the David Suzuki Foundation
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/
and owner of a large PR company. http://www.hoggan.com/
Journalists, and I am including Brendan De Melle in this, have a duty to protect their sources. This protection should only extend to a source who does not deliberately lie and forge documents. The moment Brendan’s source provided him with fake documents (s)he lost the right to have their identity protected. Brenden De Melle should now release all information he has regarding his source.
Why is it that tree huggers always look like they’ve just been molested by a hardy oak?
Tim;
“we’re all about PR, not about science” is the crux. But in this case, I’d suggest the ‘R’ stands for “Robbery”, not “Relations”!
Interesting point raised by one of Lucia’s commentators.
“TerryS (Comment #89910)
February 16th, 2012 at 9:21 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”
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/tell-me-whats-horrible-about-this/#comment-89910
If the Heartland Institute do not initiate legal action against the BBC and Guardian in the UK, then … well they have to. It was such a blatant smearing using patently false evidence.
Junk sources = junk journalism = junk propaganda.
There will always be idiots who will dream up the next junk source, so the week link in the chain is the junk journalists who print from these junk sources.
Doesn’t WWF stand for
“Waiting for the Wheels to Fall off”?
Brendan…another smoking the dijereedooooo type hippy who thinks the world runs on disaster movie physics
http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg42/scaled.php?server=42&filename=statsvt.jpg
It seems to have worked out well for DeSmog
With the Leveson Inquiry into UK Press Standards currently in full swing, could someone get them to consider this shoddy “journalism”? Haven’t been following it too closely myself.
As the Grauniad are trying to set themselves up as being whiter than white in terms of their own standards, the words “petard”, “own”, and “hoist” come to mind….
“DirkH says:
February 16, 2012 at 11:18 pm
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/jokes/bljoke-iraqinfominister.htm‘”
There is, among the hilarious lies, one nugget of truth:-
“I think the British nation has never been faced with a tragedy like this fellow [Blair].” – Baghdad Bob
“Tim Ball says:
February 16, 2012 at 11:54 pm
In a 27 September 2007 email leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) Richard Littlemore, a senior propagandist for Desmogblog, is looking for material to fend off challenges about global temperatures not increasing. He writes; “I am out of my depth (as I am sure you have noticed: we’re all about PR here, not much about science.”)”
They. Have. NO. Shame……………
Less like Fakegate, more like Failgate.
This turned into one of those moments where, when the robber open the case with the million dollars, he’s covered with exploding red dye. Gotcha!
Or even better, where the good ordinary citizens arrange for the same thing and help out:
Covered with red dye this time round:
Bloggers who were so entranced by the prospect of dirt on the sceptics that they didn’t check a single thing: DeSmogBlog, Romm, etc.
MSM journos who parroted it without checking a single thing: NYT, Guardian, BBC, etc.
I lodged an official complaint with the BBC re Black. Meh, knowing the BBC.
Next time they try anything like this, it’ll be more like the terrorist who threw the grenade, only to have it hit something, bounce back, and blow his legs off. 🙂
“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”
It doesn’t mean anything much, that is a release date, not an installation date.Only that DeSmogBlog probably uses the same scanner driver routine as the faker.
“Waiting for the Wheels to Fall off”?
That’s WW F Off, surely?
This reminds me of the fake documents used by Dan Rather to “prove” that George Bush faked his military service. The NYT headline on that story,[url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A00E1DE1E30F936A2575AC0A9629C8B63&pagewanted=all]”Fake but Accurate”[/url], seems to be what the warmists are trying to push with this fake spin on innocuous business expenses.
The story has vanished from the main BBC science/enviro page and even Mr Black has buried it with an unusual flurry of ‘other’ news on his BBC blog.
Beesaman –
Gone but not forgotten:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17048991?postId=111738335#comment_111738335
“why fake the evidence?”
The unknown ProtaGonist (‘PG’, henceforth) has been reading Mitnick as he flies around the country. Eureka! He will do a Kevin on the crazies at Heartland. He notifies DeSmog that he will soon have the ultimate scoop, one that will destroy denial forever. DeSmog, in turn, alerts Blackshirt, Hackman and others about the existence of amazing stuff that will shortly be delivered to them. PG does his Kevin (successfully! how did that happen?) and begins to read. There’s nothing there. It’s all as dull as ditchwater. What to do? PG’s reputation and even that of DeSmog itself is at risk. Then PG has another eureka moment. He recalls that Democrat operatives had searched long and hard for the Vietnam era military records that they knew would discredit Bush. But they couldn’t be found in time. So necessity became the mother of invention. It wouldn’t be ‘fakery’ or ‘forgery’ — it would merely be ‘reconstruction’. They had even used a fax machine to enhance authenticity!
You know. old Gandhi really nailed it…“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Only one phase to go now 😉
Andrew Montford at Bishop hill has done a great job showing where the BBC have broken their editorial guidelines.
All that is missing is a comparison between the way the BBC dealt with the Heartland Docs which show nothing more than lobbyists being paid by commercial companies (NOT OIL) to lobby, whereas climategate shows publicly paid people hiding information breaching FOI law and generally requiring detailed investigation by numerous people.
One was repressed by the BBC, the other was rushed out without verification.
“If the sceptics’ conspiracy was real, why fake the evidence?”
Well, it’s the same folks who are using false information, manipulated and misleading data, and distorted science.
Like the scorpion – it is what they do.
Just as with skeptics: we question and analyze = it is what we do.
The warmists may claim that the documents were genuine…. genuine fakes.
There are lies, damned lies, and global warmists !
For information this is the response I got to my complaint to the BBC:
Dear Mike,
Thanks for your email. I’m afraid you are bang off the mark… I have
never said I have a “God-given right”, or any such thing. Can you find a
single example of me writing this to you?
You have no way of knowing what attempts I made to establish the
veracity of the Heartland documents before publication. The one
Heartland claims to be a fake has its contents duplicated in the other
seven. I have given them an opportunity to deny explicitly that some of
the contents are real, and they have not done so – ergo, they are real.
Bias, Mike, is very much in the eye of the beholder. I’m afraid in your
case, it may be blinding you to one unfortunate reality of the “climate
sceptic” movement – that some of it is co-ordinated to protect vested
interests. As independent, objective journalists, it is our job to
report on this as much as on any other aspect of the issue.
Best regards,
Richard Black
Richard Black BBC dismisses claims he rushed to keyboard before checking.
See latest post on Bishop Hill.
This is such a clear cut breach of the BBC guidelines, that we must do all we can to bring this to the attention of anyone and everyone who can do something.
I have already written to the Home Secretary (whose department I believe it is), the head of the BBC and my MP.
And (as usual) I made a complaint to the BBC and (as usual) got a dismissive reply:
Dear Mike,
Thanks for your email. I’m afraid you are bang off the mark… I have
never said I have a “God-given right”, or any such thing. Can you find a
single example of me writing this to you?
You have no way of knowing what attempts I made to establish the
veracity of the Heartland documents before publication. The one
Heartland claims to be a fake has its contents duplicated in the other
seven. I have given them an opportunity to deny explicitly that some of
the contents are real, and they have not done so – ergo, they are real.
Bias, Mike, is very much in the eye of the beholder. I’m afraid in your
case, it may be blinding you to one unfortunate reality of the “climate
sceptic” movement – that some of it is co-ordinated to protect vested
interests. As independent, objective journalists, it is our job to
report on this as much as on any other aspect of the issue.
Best regards,
Richard Black
Feb 17, 2012 at 1:46 PM | Unregistered CommenterMike Haseler
Of course the warmists are not desperate to protect ‘vested interests’ or even indeed political interests. Interests that have nothing to do with the environment and rather more to do with social and eonomic power. Black is a hypocrite as he has never investigated Warmist funding and probably never will.
BBC = Basically Braindead on Climate
here’s a hypothesis: [SNIP: That is not a hypothesis, it is very close to being an accusation with nothing in the way of evidence. Please don’t do that. -REP].
Why use legal stonewalls to hide emails, data and relevant documents if Mann and the other warmers are right?
Scottish Sceptic says (February 17, 2012 at 6:13 am)
—————————
Mr. Black is at least consistent in his replies:
Thanks for your email. I am afraid your capacity to read my actions from
a distance is not as great as you think – you have no way of knowing
what attempts I made to establish the veracity of the Heartland
documents before publication. Furthermore, however Anthony Watts might
interpret my comment about him, it’s not a slur – it’s just not. I’ve
said what the project was going to do, and why in the big picture it’s
meaningless given the science we have.
You should have a good think about who the lobbyists in this story
really are – it ain’t me.
Best regards,
Richard Black
Is it just me or are the scale numbers on the left side of the traffic chart upside down?
[REPLY: No, that’s rank, not hits. The bigger the number, the lower the rank. Desmog has a much lower ranking than WUWT. -REP]
or
If the sceptics were a well funded denialist machine, why would Anthony request funding from the relatively poorly funded Heartland Institute. Why not call Exxon or BP, just like the the crew at CRU and Stanford ($100,000,000)?
Richard Black of the BBC has been a bad boy. It’s a pitty he wasn’t so quick off the mark with Climategate. He is an utter embarrassment to the journalistic profession – and he got a right kicking over at the comments section of his very bias nonsense.
Jimbo says:
——-
Never mind Exxon! Reuters, today: “Italian police seize $6 trillion of fake U.S. T-bonds”.
Mmmm. Six…trillion..dollars. 🙂 That could have put sceptic funding on a par with the alarmists!
I wonder how they hoped to spend it? Not in the same shop, presumably….
I just checked the smogblog, or whatever it is they call themselves. They’ve decided to double down, and offer up lots of name calling, and moral equivalence by way of argument. They do extend an olive branch though, in that they’re willing to admit the one doc was fake as soon as someone proves it wasn’t written by Heartland. Heh.
A search of SmogBlog’s offices and email accounts to pick up the trail of the identity fraudster should be the first step in proving the claim by Heartland that the document is a fake.
These liberal types all speak for the future generations of people and paramecium. Their self-righteousness dictates that it is their DUTY to mis-represent. Didn’t ALGore say that “they” needed to hype-up the bad news concerning CAGW in order to get “The Word” out?
cui bono says: February 17, 2012 at 7:07 am
Well done for making the complaint, and very interesting to read the reply.
Desmog = BC Power (un)Smart…
LOL
I just typed this in the desmogblog contact box:
“Our lawyers will feast upon your carcasses.”
Catchy, eh?
I suspect this is why they have now changed their tactics and predict everything. Faster, slower, warmer, colder, wetter drier, etc. This is also why they change their propaganda slogan from Catastrophic Anthropogenic (Runaway) Global Warming.
Long live warmcold.
Forgot to add:
propaganda slogan from Catastrophic Anthropogenic (Runaway) Global Warming to Climate Change.
John Silver says:
February 17, 2012 at 8:29 am
“I just typed this in the desmogblog contact box:
“Our lawyers will feast upon your carcasses.”
Catchy, eh?”
Oh come on. Now they’ll write another whiny post about death threats.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21486-leaked-files-expose-heartland-institutes-secrets.html
Beesaman says:
February 17, 2012 at 4:20 am
“The story has vanished from the main BBC science/enviro page and even Mr Black has buried it with an unusual flurry of ‘other’ news on his BBC blog.”
Ah yeah. I wondered what’s going on. He’s normally much slower.
They were true before they were false. So as a part of their Propaganda Op., the Warmista will still refer to the debunked “smears” down the road as though they are true. Hey, it’s Climate Science!
TTY says
How many different types or brands of scanners, drivers, and toolkits are there in the world?
How many versions does each have?
How many builds does each version have?
It took about 1 minute to find 10 versions of “Adobe XMP Core”
4.2.1-c041, 52.342996, 2008/05/07-20:48:00
4.2.2-c063, 53.351735, 2008/07/22-18:11:12
4.0-c321
4.1-c036, 46.276720, Mon Feb 19 2007 22:40:08
4.2.1-c043, 52.372728, 2009/01/18-15:08:04
4.0-c320
3.1-702
4.2.2-c063, 53.352624, 2008/07/30-18:12:18
4.0-c316
5.2-c001 ( 32 bit ) 5.2.1.10630
When you consider the number of vendors, versions, updates, etc., there must be thousands of possibilities.
This may not be a smoking gun, but it is surely smoldering.
Astonishing things happen. One of the tweets of Richard Black he uses to guide the audience away from his own blunder links to Mother Jones
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/02/heartland-institute-documents-climate
and that is the most astonishing thing I ever saw on MJ – after shortly dissing Heartland an entire fundraising e-mail by Heartland is reproduced verbatimm – they practically give Heartland a platform!
Mindmelt on the left.
As Dan Rather once said, “the document may be fake, but what it says must be true”
Richard Black should take care that he doesn’t share Rather’s fate.
The comment about fitting with the worldview of journalists is quite true. I worked as a news camaeraman and whenever I said that global warming was a hoax I was shouted down.
Interestingly I wrote to the BBC about a Roger Harrabin article, and he replied:
From: NewsOnline [mailto:newsonline@bbc.co.uk]
Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2007 11:42 AM
To:geoftw@gmail.com
Subject: RE: Complaint Reply Required
The phrase here is major…
If the US adminstration declares unequivocally that mankind is driving the majority of recent change and the IPCC says it’s 90% certain, then the major debate is over the anthropogenic nature of recent warming, athough a few still beg to differ.
Roger Harrabin
—–Original Message—–
From: geoftw@gmail.com [mailto:geoftw@gmail.com]
Sent: 06 July 2007 12:22
To: NewsOnline Complaints
Subject: Complaint Reply Required
{Date:} 06/07/2007
{Feedback Type:} Complaint
{Title:} Mr
{First Name:} Geof
{Last Name:} Thorpe-Willett
{Email:} geoftw@gmail.com
{Phone:}
{Postcode:}
{Country:} England
{About:} General
{Network:}
{Programme Name:}
{Transmission Date:}
{Comments:}
Dear sir, the following paragraph from the story is incorrect:
In the UK, people are saturated by climate change messages, but still (according to Mori research this week) wrongly think that scientists are locked in major debate about its causes.
The scientific community is still debating this issue, so for your correspondent to say otherwise comes across as partisan. Please report, don’t decide for us.
{Reply:} yes
{Under13:} no
There were several comments in the related WUWT posts that pointed out the need to focus on more important issues and to resist the temptation to mire WUWT and the Science in banal muse. Yet, from the FakeGate episode, several interesting issues and one important concern emerged.
The take-away, for me, relates to the information that IS finding its way into K-12 classrooms and the concern it may not be factually correct. If Federal and State educational funding is being diverted to deliver a slanted view, we’re in for a much bigger problem down the road which is likely to kill inspiration in problemistic forecasting.
Anthony’s data visualization tool proposal is conceptually beyond reproach. I hope it will be 3D and insightful.
The other funding proposal isn’t logical from my perspective. It would be far more logical to first determine and evaluate the integrity of K-12 educational material related to Climate before launching a Skeptic vs “fill in the blank” view of climate change.
In my opinion, the educational proposal before Heartland should be rejected in favor of analysis. If NASA, one of the principal educational vehicles to K-12, is doing a fantastic job related to the subject matter, its far more beneficial to support their effort. If not, isn’t it far more beneficial to the student to help NASA correct the errors?
I’m a little unclear on the ethics involved here. Should we as skeptics be proud of the fact that “our” data thief is more ethical than *their* data thief? All those thousands of emails in CGI & II, and never a suggestion by anyone that even one of them were a fake or altered. The alarmists can’t steal a handful of documents without putting a cuckoo in the nest.
Cue an environmental blitz by the BBC, all aimed at nefarious conservative governments or groups hell bent on destroying the Earth.
Of course none of this has anything to do do with the BBC trying to bury an embarrassing story about Warmist loonies faking documents and the BBC taking it hook, line and sinker!
With regard to the Canadian scientists, maybe, just maybe the government is trying to stop yet more job destroying scare stories by scientists who are often immune from the ravages of their ill thought out press releases. But then some scientists aren’t publicity seeking self publicists are they? No, of course not!
I think I now have a much clearer idea as to what is considered “sound science” by Mann, Hansen, Trenberth, Karl and Santer. And Phil Jones.
geo says:
February 17, 2012 at 9:46 am
“All those thousands of emails in CGI & II, and never a suggestion by anyone that even one of them were a fake or altered.”
You haven’t been keeping up. In fact, Anthony bent over backwards to maintain that the CG e-mails had to be vetted, and admonished us repeatedly not to make any conclusions until time had shown that they held up.
The situation is not symmetric at all.
Of course, let us not forget the Grantham Institute funding for Lord Stern et al. at the LSE. He may be a good money manager, but science is not his long suit.
Oh, the one about dissuading the teaching of science in school. Great catch! Considering the modules they were developing was about science in schools.
A suggestion for anyone with more free time than I have right now: the SmogBlog (ok, deSmogBlog) and others who flogged this fake story deserve much more critical scrutiny.
People who are so manifestly incompetent will likely have some other howlers in their web propaganda history!
If Roger Black is as pure as the driven snow, then why did he not contact Watts before hitting the publish button? THIS is what he’s supposed to do as a journalist.
Getting caught is a bitch especially if they have to explain themselves in court under oath.
Olen says: “especially if they have to explain themselves in court under oath.”
I can’t see how this is not going to end up in court.
John from CA says:
February 17, 2012 at 9:41 am
“In my opinion, the educational proposal before Heartland should be rejected in favor of analysis. If NASA, one of the principal educational vehicles to K-12, is doing a fantastic job related to the subject matter, its far more beneficial to support their effort. If not, isn’t it far more beneficial to the student to help NASA correct the errors?”
John,
You are entitled to your opinion. In response to your question ” If not, isn’t it far more beneficial to the student to help NASA correct the errors?”, the answer is emphatically ‘NO’. In my experience, when governmental agencies or private companies have demonstrated a propensity to ‘shade the truth’ (or the analyses), the most effective solution is to stick a 2-pronged fork into them!
The first prong is creating a competitive source for the goods or services being provided by the ne’er do wells. Anthony’s proposal serves that mission admirably!
The second prong is investigation of the ne’er do wells, to expose their malfeasance and cut off further funding of the deceits and deceivers! It is high time for NASA to be investigated and purged of all and any of the environmental politicized dreck that is not directly associated with aerospace or astrospace exploration.
MtK
The guy looks like a trust fund hippie to me. What about all the “soft funding” the warmistas get from the media? I guess that don’t count. How about all those grants for research that are destroying the objectivity of science in order to sell a false proposition? How about a rule that grants must be equally devided between pro and con research to determine which side of an issue can produce the most creative scientific liars? Although I think that is kind of what’s going on right now only the pro AGW crowd is getting more $$$ and are bigger liars to boot.
terry a says(February 17, 2012 at 9:03 am)
Non Scientist magazine is, of course, fanatically pro-AGW, which is the reason I cancelled my subscription despite having read it weekly since my schooldays.
And Bob Ward, a PR hack once described by James Delingpole as an “angry baldie attack dog”, was instrumental in getting the Royal Society to issue ever more and extreme statements on AGW, in defiance of its prescript from 1753 “never to give their opinion as a Body upon any subject either of Nature or Art, that comes before them.” (See Nullius in Verba at Dr. Curry’s blog). Truly a wrecker of science, and not surprising to see him glorying in what he still calls ‘deniergate’ in his oh-so objective article.
Would that be genuinely fake, but true?
As of late friday, Heartland has stated that only the two-page strategy memo is a fake. The remaining 100+ pages (including the IRS 990 form) are, according to Heartland,either authentic or have been tampered with. They haven’t stated anything else is fake.
I am just wondering how Richard Black at the BBC would feel if we created an entirely false document … say a letter from a mistress and published it on a website.
Obviously we would say lots of “it may not be genuine … but then add … he hasn’t denied it”.
The catastrophic AGW by CO2 cult led by the uninspiring guru/activist James Hansen is now a self-castrated pseudo-scientific fringe movement. They appear to only have one argument left to push back against the independent thinker (aka skeptic) led tide of CAGW rejection. Their last ditch argument against independent thinkers is just the old silly one about us being ‘big fossil fuel’ agents for an evil anti-scientific conspiracy against Mother Gaia. It was always bad strategy.
So, dear Hansen and associated cult acolytes, I recommend you get on a path to discuss the concept of independent thinker as an objective epistemological source of climate science dialog/evaluation.
John
Phil C says:
February 17, 2012 at 1:23 pm
As of late friday, Heartland has stated that only the two-page strategy memo is a fake. The remaining 100+ pages (including the IRS 990 form) are, according to Heartland,either authentic or have been tampered with. They haven’t stated anything else is fake.
————————————————————————-
Ok Phil, now please enlighten us to what you condsider to be nefarious of mendacious in ANY of the other 100 plus pages.
finds they must fake the main one to get media attention.
———
Thats amusing coming from Andrew Bolt. He recently got slapped on the wrist by the legal system for fake journalism. Apparently he made up a bunch of stuff. Then when caught tried to cover it up by pretending it was his freedom of speech right to make stuff up.
Hmm let me see, wildly pointing at some other thing to distract people from the thing you don’t want them to look at. Seems to be a standard tactic for Andrew.
Phil C,
If you had bothered to keep up with events, you would know that all the other information was publicly available [with the exception of the upcoming meetings calendar, which was routine business, and only a space filler for the hacker]. The 990 is public record, as has been repeatedly pointed out.
The only fabricated document is the faked one, which was deliberately designed to make a perfectly innocent, legitimate and lawful organization look like mendacious and underhanded schemers against the pure-as-the-driven-snow climate alarmist cult. <—[That's sarcasm. Folks like Phil might take it literally.☺]
geo says:
February 17, 2012 at 9:46 am
I’m a little unclear on the ethics involved here…
————————————————–
The climateggate one and two release of e-mails were likely (not certainly) an inside whistle blower release of information that was being stonewalled from several legal FOIA requeests of publicly funded research. The result of this release of information to the public was strong evidence of mendacious efforts to grossly exagerate the CAGW message, hide private, but publicly unarticulted doubts by the “scientist” involved concerning the CAGE meme, and control the peer review process by blackballing and career ending attempts to defund and isolate any scientist or scientific journal which presented legiatamate doubts as to the veracity of the CAGW message.
The attack on the private conservative think tank Heartland Institute, was likely an illegal outside theft of “private” information, which illuminated NOTHING any any way nefarious, illegal, or mendacious, and demonstrated a meager stream of funding to benefit the public with ZERO tax dollars. Furthermore, this illegal theft was accompanied by what appears to be a forged document, the intent of which was to cast a devious anti science context, to what in reality was an honest effort to better inform the public and improve our biased educational system.
Steve S says:
February 17, 2012 at 7:41 am
“They do extend an olive branch though, in that they’re willing to admit the one doc was fake as soon as someone proves it wasn’t written by Heartland. Heh.”
If you happen to be the happy owner of some expensive forensics suits or have the help of Adobe you can, apparently, extract all information that was used to, and went into, to create the pdf including serial numbers and what not. In an original pdf file one can actually follow every edit and change and addition and deletion ever done the file so it stand to reason that going pdf probably include more data than most people are aware of like serial numbers from scanners or hidden digital watermarks with the serial number of the scanner included.
It’s not so weird though, because what you can do in the physical world you can do in the digital as well.
So an investigator would do well to employ the help of Adobe or federal or private forensics folks to disassemble the pdf file for all the information Adobe “hides” in the files.
Lazy Teen says:
“Seems to be a standard tactic for Andrew.”
Credibility check: identify other times when Andrew Bolt has been convicted of anything similar… since you claim this is his “standard tactic”.
Check out the link, then report back, Lazy. It’s your credibility at stake here, not Bolt’s.
never ever trust anyone with one of those stupid round the mouth beards – they INVARIABLY are dishonest
Actually that’s a Van Dyke. A Goatee, traditionally, doesn’t include a mustache.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatee
No /sarc? I guess you just meant to be incredibly bigoted then.
The CAGW theory is supported only by falsified data and the attacks by its proponents upon skeptics are supported only by falsified emails.
Is anyone surprised that people who support false claims in one situation and falsify data to support their claims should refrain from doing the same in another situation?
Lies are the chosen mechanism of the warmists for furthering their own personal agenda. This will be reflected in every aspect of their lives and everything they do.
“I just checked the smogblog, or whatever it is they call themselves. They’ve decided to double down, and offer up lots of name calling, and moral equivalence by way of argument. They do extend an olive branch though, in that they’re willing to admit the one doc was fake as soon as someone proves it wasn’t written by Heartland. Heh.”
I think a fun exercise would be for each of us to submit a smogblog “document”, all which must be assumed true until someone proves they weren’t written by smogblog.
Scottish Skeptic @ 1:24pm
You suggest the following:
“I am just wondering how Richard Black at the BBC would feel if we created an entirely false document … say a letter from a mistress and published it on a website.”
That won’t work. Look at his picture. No one would believe he has a mistress.
jtom, I like where your mind’s at. I had exactly the same thought. No doubt there would be loud screams of protest, “that’s not what we meant”, or some similar rubbish excusing their double-standards, hypocrisy and blatant dishonesty.
You cannot use “who” receives money for some cause or belief to base reality on. The reality is humans are greedy and most will sell out their best friend if it makes them “rich” so both sides will grab as much as they can over ANY issue or any side right or wrong. Put money on one side and the other side will miraculously change their mind and “come over” more times than not and believe their own “facts” true or not. I can only look at my own land till is taken away from me for taxes after the Klickitat Sheriffs proved what I just said in assisting in a theft to stop John F Hendry vs. MCR HOA et al. and tell you from the historic record that the Snowden Area in Klickitat WA has warmed up in recent decades and all the local folks and the generations that grew up in the WA Snowden area have noticed it and talk about it outside of the science side of it as these are folks that still practice incest and live in the past proving evolution is real but works faster in areas outside of Klickitat. These types of people don’t have the intellect to make valid decisions so Nature will do for them one way or the other, but they are smart enough to notice the change in weather and snow levels. The fact that 911 was so well received sends up a red flag that humans cannot change fast enough to keep up with science and what it gives them to do what must be done to get off the planet and survive and stop an invasion from another group of humans wanting to rule using tools our civilization gave them. I know that’s harsh, but Nature is harsh and unforgiving of error. The Klickitat Sheriffs like most people willing to put on a uniform and give up their feel will instinctively know to do what they are told to do. We can only make sure they get the right orders and act as humanly as possible without putting mankind at risk. Humans have been acting violently and using deception on each other since they learned to stand and that will not suddenly stop happening because we want it to and would not act like that ourselves…..without the same temptation of the opportunity to easily get “rich” that is.
Regardless of manmade warming or no warming we have gone through 200 million years of stored carbon and must slow down to conserve the last half of it for future generations. We must conserve our resources for what matters most and that’s not some crackhead driving a car to deliver drugs that says the Moon landing was a hoax too. Finding balance and learning to tune rather than change scales is what needs to be done. We have a violent past that shows us the future if we do not change our ways and the unfortunate fact is that takes time and many people will remain stuck in the past habits. The new religion is physics and because it wears a strait jacket and reveals only truth the arguments over it will be resolved. We are making progress and should help with the tuning established, not try to change the age old song that made it though. You can accomplish a lot with tuning if you do it right, but you must accept the strings as they are as cutting them will get you nowhere except involved in endless arguments.
John Hendry^^
Jimbo says:
February 17, 2012 at 8:49 am
Allan MacRae says:
February 16, 2012 at 10:26 pm
I repeat:
You can save yourselves a lot of time, and generally be correct, by simply assuming that EVERY SCARY PREDICTION the global warming alarmists express is FALSE.
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Jimbo says:
I suspect this is why they have now changed their tactics and predict everything. Faster, slower, warmer, colder, wetter drier, etc. This is also why they change their propaganda slogan from Catastrophic Anthropogenic (Runaway) Global Warming.
Long live warmcold.
_______________________
Allan says:
Good point Jimbo – the warmists are now married to “The Non-Falsifiable Hypothesis”, where EVERYTHING, EVEN GLOBAL COOLING, IS EVIDENCE OF DANGEROUS MANMADE GLOBAL WARMING.
So I herewith restate my (falsifiable) hypothesis:
“You can save yourselves a lot of time, and generally be correct, by simply assuming that EVERY SCARY PREDICTION the global warming alarmists express is FALSE.”
Perhaps, with time and continued nonsense from the warmists, this Hypothesis will become a Theory, or even a Law (“The Law of Warmist BS”).
Wiki:
Falsifiability or refutability of an assertion, hypothesis or theory is the logical possibility that it can be contradicted by an observation or the outcome of a physical experiment. That something is “falsifiable” does not mean it is false; rather, that if it is false, then some observation or experiment will produce a reproducible result that is in conflict with it.
Jimbo says: February 17, 2012 at 8:50 am
“Forgot to add: … propaganda slogan from Catastrophic Anthropogenic (Runaway) Global Warming to Climate Change.”
It is merely an intentional use of the Fallacy of Ambiguity.
IPCC, R. Alley, and J. Arblaster. A Report of Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (SPM). Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis: Summary for Policymakers. IPCC, 2007
Of course, that “human activity” must be producing energy, 70% of which yields CO2. Source: U.S. Input-Output tables. So, those calling for regulations to limit CO2 are actually intent upon seizing control of 70% of our means of production.
I have a new idea for a TV detective show – Matlock meets Macguyver in the online world , it’s called ‘Mosher’