Well, the DeSmog Blog “coup” is going down, oh the humanity.
There’s a scathing second writeup at The Atlantic by Megan McArdle (as if the first wasn’t enough) that takes the DeSmoggers to task. Note to Hoggan and crew – when you can’t even get a left leaning news outlet to back you up, even in the slightest, you’ve lost the battle.
This is a must read: Heartland Memo Looking Faker By the Minute
I appreciate this quote from her article:
The high probability that the memo is fake makes this response from Desmogblog, one of the first places to post the memos, all the more disappointing:
The DeSmogBlog has no evidence supporting Heartland’s claim that the Strategic document is fake. A close review of the content shows that it is overwhelmingly accurate (“almost too accurate” for one analyst), and while critics have said that it is “too short” or is distinguished by “an overuse of commas,” even the skeptics at weatherguy Anthony Watts’s WUWT say that a technical analysis of the metadata on the documents in question does not offer sufficient information to come to a firm conclusion either way.But in the tradition of the famous, and famously controversial “hockey stick graph,” the challenge to the single document has afforded the DeSmogBlog’s critics – and Heartland’s supporters – something comfortable to obsess about while they avoid answering questions raised by the other documents.
The first two links are to my post, and they are an egregious misrepresentation of what I said.
She adds:
Dismissing the possibility of fakery–and the obvious questions about who might have perpetrated it–does not help us focus on the “real issues”. I’m afraid “Fake but accurate” just won’t do. Nor will trying to shift the burden of proof to the people who are pointing out solid reasons for concern. Instead, the stubborn willingness to ignore obvious problems becomes the story–something that Dan Rather learned to his dismay in 2004.
Moreover, the fact is that this document does not merely confirm facts found in other sources. It substantially recasts those facts, in the case of the Koch donation. And in the selection of facts it presents, and the spin it puts on them, it alters the reporting.
…
The climate blogs presumably relied so heavily on the memo because the quotes were punchier, and suggested far darker motivations than the blandly professional language of the authenticated documents–and because it edited the facts into a neat, almost narrative story.
In the first 24 hours, I saw a lot of comments along the line of “See! They’re really just as amoral and dangerous as we thought they were!” based on a memo which I now believe to have been written by someone who, well, thinks that AGW skeptics are amoral and dangerous. (And judging from his update to the original document dump, Littlemore’s fellow blogger, Brandon Demelle, is also unsure of the memo’s “facts”.)
=============================================================
Crash and burn for DeSmog.
Meanwhile, over at The American Spectator, Ross Kaminsky has this:
=============================================================
Theft and Apparent Forgery of Heartland Institute Documents
The Heartland Institute is in contact with law enforcement officials, which may have the perpetrator feeling a little nervous.
One obvious suspect in the Heartland document theft — and this is just my speculation — is Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security and a true enemy of the Heartland Institute. Gleick is a committed alarmist rent-seeker who seems quite bitter that he shares Forbes magazine’s pages with Heartland’s James Taylor.
The document which the alarmists have been trying to make the most of is called “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy.” It appears to be of a similar nature to the forged “Rathergate” documents which ended Dan Rather’s long career promoting leftist views disguised as news.
First, the Heartland document is written in a way which makes it appear unlikely to be genuine. As a commenter on a Forbes.com article about this mini-scandal notes, “It uses the term ‘anti-climate’ to refer to Heartland’s own position — a derogatory term which climate skeptic outfits never use to describe their positions (and…) it is written in the first person, yet there’s no indication of who wrote it. (Have you ever seen a memo like that?)”
…
Interestingly, Gleick, who would normally be preening and prancing in glee at this sort of attention to the Heartland Institute has so far been utterly silent at his Forbes blog and on his Twitter feed.
Full story here.
================================================================
(Added)There are two other discussions of interest in the “whodunnit” category. Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. has a spirited discussion going on (love his movie graphic), as does Lucia’s Blackboard. Pielke Jr. has flat out asked Dr. Gleick in an email if he was involved, and so have I. I have received no response since my email this morning, and to my knowledge neither has Pielke Jr. For once, not a sound out of WaterWorld by the bay.
In Australia, The Age has this political cartoon about Dr. Bob Carter, also named in the emails along with me:
We live in interesting times. Popcorn futures are off the charts.
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I feel a great disturbance in the farce!
Larry
From the DeSmog response:
“a supposed statistical flaw in Michael Mann’s excellent and prescient work”
That’s so disturbing I’m speachless.
Mr Gleick is hiding under his desk behind a double-locked door with a chair propped under the knob. His scanner is in a dumpster half-way across town. His shredder is burned out because he tried to put his laptop through it.
So. The other documents, and their contents are accurate?
Is the argument here actually that because you think this one is fake, therefore the other information is inadmissable?
Are you actually all now arguing that your arguments in favour of leaking emails don’t apply if it’s done to people you support?
Interesting to see Ross Kaminsky bring up Rathergate in his article. Charles Johnson at Littlegreenfootballs (who helped expose the Rathergate memos) posted commentary on his website recently titled: “Denialgate: Heartland Institute Mistakenly Emailed Internal Documents”. Haven’t seen him follow up with a correction.
Anthony, you should start a grassroots fund to sue DeSh*tBlog and TheGurdian(of lies) and the Biased Brodcast Channel (BBC) under libel laws just like Dr. Tim Balls defence fund.
Here is an excellent list of “clues” from Megan McArdle’s The Atlantic story:
“For me, this leaves the most fascinating question of all: who wrote it? We have a few clues:
1) They are on the west coast
2) They own or have access to an Epson scanner–though God knows, this could be at a Kinkos.
3) They probably themselves have a somewhat run-on writing style
4) I’m guessing they use the word “high-profile” a fair amount.
5) They are bizarrely obsessed with global warming coverage at Forbes, which suggests to me that there is a good chance that they write or comment on the website, or that they have tangled with writers at Forbes (probably Taylor) either in public or private.
6) The last paragraph is the biggest departure from the source documents, and is therefore likely to be closest to the author’s own style.
7) I have a strong suspicion that they refrained from commenting on the document dump. That’s what I’d do, anyway. A commenter or email correspondent who suddenly disappeared when they normally would have been reveling in this sort of story is a good candidate.
8) They seem to have it in for Andy Revkin at the New York Times. There’s nothing in the other documents to indicate that Heartland thinks Revkin is amenable to being . . . turned? I’m not sure what the right word is, but the implication in the strategy memo that Heartland believes it could somehow develop a relationship with Revkin seems aimed at discrediting Revkin’s work.”
What other clues can be obtained from the evidence at hand???
Marcus McSpartacus,
You need to get up to speed, boy. The other documents were already publicly available. The sole issue is the single fabricated document.
“Gleick-n-spiel”
I think it is in for a bit of a beating now the world wide web orchestra of the people has warmed up.
“Marcus McSpartacus says:
February 17, 2012 at 7:00 pm
So. The other documents, and their contents are accurate?
Is the argument here actually that because you think this one is fake, therefore the other information is inadmissable?”
For the moment we should not assume any of the docs are completely legit. They could have easily “adjusted” some data on the other docs as well.
“Are you actually all now arguing that your arguments in favour of leaking emails don’t apply if it’s done to people you support?”
This is a completely retarded argument…. let me count the ways.
1. The heartland group is a private group.
The CRU/etc ILLEGALLY… let me type that again for you ILLEGALLY withheld public information they where legally required to give out to people when asked.
2. The heartland group had they’re info stolen from them via fraud.
The CRU/etc hand they’re info exposed by a whistler blower.
3. The info is the heartland doc drop outside of the fake doc contain NOTHING that is criminal in nature or even interesting.
The CRU/etc doc drop CLEARLY has CRIMINAL activity displayed in it among other things.
However delicious it would be if a Certain Person did in fact turn out to be the perpetrator, I suggest that names and accusations be curtailed for now. At least until after any investigation discovers the miscreant for definite.
Remember people, innocent until proven guilty – not the other way around.
Regards.
Marcus McSpartacus says:
February 17, 2012 at 7:00 pm
Rather put another way, we could invent a few really juicy, embarrassing emails and add them to the Climategate I and II sets, except for one little problem:
The originals were so bad nothing more damning could have been added.
The bizarre sourcewatch site has added a references to the “leaked” documents on their Heartland page – http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Institute – the info was added on Feb 16th
Interestingly they choose to quote from the strategy document,- Desmog is their reference, see footnote 18 – despite them knowing Heartland stated the strategy document was faked. They say this about our host:
funding climate change deniers Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), Fred Singer ($5,000 a month), James Taylor who has written a lot about Climategate through his Forbes blog, and Anthony Watts ($90,000 for 2012) to challenge “warmist science essays that counter our own,” including funding “external networks (such as WUWT [Watts Up With That?] and other groups capable of rapidly mobilizing responses to new scientific findings, news stories, or unfavorable blog posts).”[18]
The Protocols of the Elders of the Heartland Institute, lol!
Sourcewatch also said this (I think on Feb 15th) about Mr Watts – http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Anthony_Watts#cite_note-0 – note the last sentence, the History said they added a reference to “paid denialism” on the page on Feb 15th:-
Willard Anthony Watts (Anthony Watts) is a blogger, weathercaster and non-scientist, paid AGW denier who runs the website wattsupwiththat.com. He does not have a university qualification and has no climate credentials other than being a radio weather announcer. His website is parodied and debunked at the website wottsupwiththat.com Watts is on the payroll of the Heartland Institute, which itself is funded by polluting industries.[1]
I just had a thought. Even though the person deleted the email account…if the documents were emailed from an HI computer then it would be nothing to find who they sent them to..( sent items folder in case some warmers are reading this) And..they could produce a copy of the email and the attachments.
It should also be noted that if the receiving party deletes the email account a record of it being created will be in the domain archives and should be nothing to find the destination IP. Even if it’s gmail or hotmail whatever computer accessed that account via the web will be known.
So as Desmog and others get huffy and try to redirect the topic they will soon feel the pressure. I can’t believe this person would do it this way. IT’S SOOOO STUPID.
The angle Desmog is using is that the information was GIVEN out by an insider. So again they would have a log of the information coming from the inside and the destination and the attachments.
So whoever did this is playing a game of chicken right now. While we have been disecting the author and the timeline and metadata the warmers have been trying to get everyone to focus on the content and play ” how does it feel” games and hope they bide time till the lawyers come kocking.
Several have noted the rapidity which which DeSmog published the “reports” once they obtained them . . . .within an hour.
Now why do you think that was? Do you think some person they didn’t know from Adam — like perhaps Lucy Ramirez from Texas — would have been able to slip them the documents and DeSmog put it on their website as fast as their hot little fingers could enter the documents — essentially not even taking the time to read them?
Or do you suppose that they were put on their site — because the person that provided it to them was quite well known to them and trusted?
Ooops!! I get feeling that Amazons most diligent reviewer may have just overplayed his hand.
On a side note,
“Popcorn futures are off the charts.”
I love the way our language throws up these little gems which only a few years ago would have been impossibly cryptic.
I find the political discussion to be surreal. The extreme AGW paradigm supporters propose that we waste trillions of dollars on boondoggle proposals that will have no significant impact on atmospheric CO2 increases (This is another aspect of skepticism. Boondoggle proposals are boondoggle proposals, even when one truly believes in the fairy tale. i.e. Stupid ideas that waste tax payer funds are not the correct approach even if the extreme AGW paradigm was scientifically correct.
The biosphere has expanded and will expand due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from 280 ppm to 560 ppm over the next 100 years. The small increase in planetary temperature as a result of this increase, most of which will be at high latitudes, will increase the growing season and extent of the biosphere into the tundra and Arctic regions. The CO2 increase and resulting warming (less than 1C in response to a doubling from 0.028% t0 0.054%) will be unequivocally beneficial to the biosphere and to humans. The reason the that there will be a small increase in planetary temperature due a doubling of atmospheric CO2 is that planetary cloud cover in the tropics increases or decreases to resist forcing changes, thereby reflecting more or less solar short wave radiation off into space.
The skeptics are scientifically correct. Doubling of atmospheric CO2 is beneficial, not an environmental crisis.
The irony is it appears there is currently an abrupt solar change underway. (The sun was at its highest and longest high solar activity period in 10,000 years, prior to the current abrupt solar magnetic cycle change (see the link to Livingston and Penn’s paper attached below) that is now underway. In the past, when this specific solar cycle change occurred, high cycle and long period at high cycle, followed by an abrupt stoppage of the solar magnetic cycle, there was a Dansgaard-Oeschger event (23 Dansgaard-Oeschger events have been tracked all following a cycle of roughly 1470 years), or a Heinrich event (the Heinrich events occur at the predicted time of the Dansgaard-Oescheger events and hence appear to be large and amplified Dansgaard_Oescherger events), or the termination of the interglacial periods.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://www.climate4you.com/images/VostokTemp0-420000%20BP.gif
In the paleoclimatic record there are is a cyclic series of significant climate changes that have a roughly 1470 year pattern, “Dansgaard-Oeschger events”. Roughly ever 10,000 years to 8000 years the significant climate changes are very, very, rapid, very large climatic changes.
The lesson of the past, in terms of what is in the climate record is there is a tremendously strong cyclic climate change forcing mechanism that is capable of initiating and terminating interglacial periods. That is an observational fact. There has been 23 interglacial/glacial cycles. The interglacial periods are now roughly 10,000 years long. The glacial periods are now 100,000 years long. The past interglacial periods have ended abruptly and have ended abruptly when there is a orbital configuration that matches the current orbital configuration and when there has been an abrupt change to sun. (There are cosmogenic isotope changes at the 1470 year events and there are cosmogenic isotope changes at the Heinrich abrupt interglacial terminating type of climate change events.)
That is the observational evidence. The analysis has discarded, disproved, Milankovitch’s theory that somehow insolation changes which result in colder or warmer summers at 60N (we are in the insolation period now where interglacial periods terminate) can explain the glacial/interglacial cycle. The forcing change due to insolation is roughly 1/200 of what is required to explain the observed abrupt change.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.0784v1
Long-term Evolution of Sunspot Magnetic Fields
Independent of the normal solar cycle, a decrease in the sunspot magnetic field strength has been observed using the Zeeman-split 1564.8nm Fe I spectral line at the NSO Kitt Peak McMath-Pierce telescope. Corresponding changes in sunspot brightness and the strength of molecular absorption lines were also seen. This trend was seen to continue in observations of the first sunspots of the new solar Cycle 24, and extrapolating a linear fit to this trend would lead to only half the number of spots in Cycle 24 compared to Cycle 23, and imply virtually no sunspots in Cycle 25.
The following is a list of five paradoxes associated with Milankovitch’s theory. (Typically one or two paradoxes will result in a theory being discharged or a major revision.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
100,000-year problem
Main article: 100,000-year problem
The 100,000-year problem is that the eccentricity variations have a significantly smaller impact on solar forcing than precession or obliquity and hence might be expected to produce the weakest effects. The greatest observed response is at the 100,000-year timescale, while the theoretical forcing is smaller at this scale, in regard to the ice ages.[10] However, observations show that during the last 1 million years, the strongest climate signal is the 100,000-year cycle. In addition, despite the relatively great 100,000-year cycle, some have argued that the length of the climate record is insufficient to establish a statistically significant relationship between climate and eccentricity variations.[11] Various explanations for this discrepancy have been proposed, including frequency modulation[12] or various feedbacks (from carbon dioxide, cosmic rays, or from ice sheet dynamics). Some models can reproduce the 100,000 year cycles as a result of non-linear interactions between small changes in the Earth’s orbit and internal oscillations of the climate system.[13][14]
400,000-year problem
The 400,000-year problem is that the eccentricity variations have a strong 400,000-year cycle. That cycle is only clearly present in climate records older than the last million years. If the 100ka variations are having such a strong effect, the 400ka variations might also be expected to be apparent. This is also known as the stage 11 problem, after the interglacial in marine isotopic stage 11 which would be unexpected if the 400,000-year cycle has an impact on climate. The relative absence of this periodicity in the marine isotopic record may be due, at least in part, to the response times of the climate system components involved—in particular, the carbon cycle.
Stage 5 problem
The stage 5 problem refers to the timing of the penultimate interglacial (in marine isotopic stage 5) which appears to have begun ten thousand years in advance of the solar forcing hypothesized to have caused it (the causality problem).
[edit] Effect exceeds cause
See also: Climate change feedback
420,000 years of ice core data from Vostok, Antarctica research station.
The effects of these variations are primarily believed to be due to variations in the intensity of solar radiation upon various parts of the globe. Observations show climate behavior is much more intense than the calculated variations. Various internal characteristics of climate systems are believed to be sensitive to the insolation changes, causing amplification (positive feedback) and damping responses (negative feedback).
The unsplit peak problem
The unsplit peak problem refers to the fact that eccentricity has cleanly resolved variations at both the 95 and 125ka periods. A sufficiently long, well-dated record of climate change should be able to resolve both frequencies,[15] but some researchers interpret climate records of the last million years as showing only a single spectral peak at 100ka periodicity. It is debatable whether the quality of existing data ought to be sufficient to resolve both frequencies over the last million years.
The transition problem
Variations of Cycle Times, curves determined from ocean sediments
The transition problem refers to the switch in the frequency of climate variations 1 million years ago. From 1–3 million years, climate had a dominant mode matching the 41ka cycle in obliquity. After 1 million years ago, this switched to a 100ka variation matching eccentricity, for which no reason has been established.
[edit] Identifying dominant factor
Milankovitch believed that decreased summer insolation in northern high latitudes was the dominant factor leading to glaciation, which led him to (incorrectly) deduce an approximate 41ka period for ice ages.[16] Subsequent research has shown that the 100ka eccentricity cycle is more important, resulting in 100,000-year ice age cycles of the Quaternary glaciation over the last few million years.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2000PA000571.shtml
On the 1470-year pacing of Dansgaard-Oeschger warm events
The oxygen isotope record from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) ice core was reanalyzed in the frequency and time domains. The prominent 1470-year spectral peak, which has been associated with the occurrence of Dansgaard-Oeschger interstadial events, is solely caused by Dansgaard-Oeschger events 5, 6, and 7. This result emphasizes the nonstationary character of the oxygen isotope time series. Nevertheless, a fundamental pacing period of ∼1470 years seems to control the timing of the onset of the Dansgaard-Oeschger events. A trapezoidal time series model is introduced which provides a template for the pacing of the Dansgaard-Oeschger events. Statistical analysis indicates only a ≤3% probability that the number of matches between observed and template-derived onsets of Dansgaard-Oeschger events between 13 and 46 kyr B.P. resulted by chance. During this interval the spacing of the Dansgaard-Oeschger onsets varied by ±20% around the fundamental 1470-year period and multiples thereof. The pacing seems unaffected by variations in the strength of North Atlantic Deep Water formation, suggesting that the thermohaline circulation was not the primary controlling factor of the pacing period.
http://nsidc.org/news/press/day_after/NRCabruptcc.pdf
Until the 1990s, the dominant view of climate change was that Earth’s climate system has changed gradually in response to both natural and human-induced processes. Evidence pieced together over the last few decades, however, shows that climate has changed much more rapidly—sometimes abruptly— in the past and therefore could do so again in the future.
http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/transit.html
According to the marine records, the Eemian interglacial ended with a rapid cooling event about 110,000 years ago (e.g., Imbrie et al., 1984; Martinson et al., 1987), which also shows up in ice cores and pollen records from across Eurasia. From a relatively high resolution core in the North Atlantic. Adkins et al. (1997) suggested that the final cooling event took less than 400 years, and it might have been much more rapid.
The event at 8200 ka is the most striking sudden cooling event during the Holocene, giving widespread cool, dry conditions lasting perhaps 200 years before a rapid return to climates warmer and generally moister than the present. This event is clearly detectable in the Greenland ice cores, where the cooling seems to have been about half-way as severe as the Younger Dryas-to-Holocene difference (Alley et al., 1997; Mayewski et al., 1997). No detailed assessment of the speed of change involved seems to have been made within the literature (though it should be possible to make such assessments from the ice core record), but the short duration of these events at least suggests changes that took only a few decades or less to occur.
The Younger Dryas cold event at about 12,900-11,500 years ago seems to have had the general features of a Heinrich Event, and may in fact be regarded as the most recent of these (Severinghaus et al. 1998). The sudden onset and ending of the Younger Dryas has been studied in particular detail in the ice core and sediment records on land and in the sea (e.g., Bjoerck et al., 1996), and it might be representative of other Heinrich events.
No one could have mistaken the Smog Blog for a reputable source of information before all this, but they have now disgraced themselves beyond all recognition.
Good thing they are “PR experts” because they are going to be spending a lot of time trying to delude people that anything they ever say should be noticed.
Smokey says:
February 17, 2012 at 7:08 pm
Marcus McSpartacus,
You need to get up to speed, boy. The other documents were already publicly available. The sole issue is the single fabricated document.
Somehow I missed that. Thanks, Smokey.
It occurs to me that an auditable copy of the email sent out could probably be recovered … and found to be missing the faked document! Similarly, there’s probably a copy on the receiver’s ISP servers. IOW, it should be possible to show the fake was never sent out.
Since this has backfired so badly, could it be that the infamous Anonymous Donor and the much-hunted Heartland Criminal are in fact one and the same? This publicity for Heartland would more than make up for his decreasing donations.
The twist in the last scene of the detective movie. Cue music, roll credits.
>Or do you suppose that they were put on their site — because the person that provided it to them was quite well known to them and trusted?
That’s pretty funny…. They either put stuff up because they knew the source – or because they didn’t check an anonymous source. Neither looks good.
But…
They actually said in an interview they got it from an anonymous source and published within 1 hour — they’re actually proud of that! See their comments to politico – http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=5826D160-4705-4D72-A0BB-44C8C2EDA7DC
Also the message anonymous email was sent to about 15 different parties, including desmog, all at the same time – see http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2012/02/header-from-leakers-email.html .
So it really does seem Desmog was just the quickest to react to the anonymous source.
“Marcus McSpartacus says:
February 17, 2012 at 7:00 pm
So. The other documents, and their contents are accurate?
Is the argument here actually that because you think this one is fake, therefore the other information is inadmissable? ”
Nope that isn’t the argument. It is the argument being made by the warmista’s but not by the skeptics.
Basically the other documents don’t have anything juicy or exciting in them. Nothing appalling or terrible or shocking. Just an private group funding things privately. Not exactly shocking stuff.
That appears to have been the problem there was nothing sexy in the Heartland document dump so someone sexed it up by creating the fake memo. Much of the stuff in the fake comes from the other documents more or less though even there the faker couldn’t leave reality alone and tried to sex things up by rounding numbers up.
No the real problem with the whole thing is that the Fake document is the only source for the gotcha money quotes. It editorializes but kind of like a bad bond villain would editorialize not like anything you would see a skeptic publish.
That is the point.