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.
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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.
“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.