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”.)
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Crash and burn for DeSmog.
Meanwhile, over at The American Spectator, Ross Kaminsky has this:
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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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Like Pat Frank, I will be very surprised if it’s Gleick.
I read Megan’s column everyday (along with the many posts on WUWT). Megan is not a liberal, though she needs education about the warmistas and their evil deeds.
Brian,
That is exactly where I was going with that. I mean, HI will be able to prove where the documents were sent and WHAT was sent. Then it get’s fun because we will know shortly who they were sent to and then we get to take their computer and search their harddive……Tall Bloke must be salivating…..
Dittos on what Kevin Cave said. Until it is known who did it, we don’t know who did it, and we shouldn’t be blaming individuals who might very well be innocent. That goes even for those who decline to issue denials they know very well might not be believed anyway.
Well let this be a lesson to them. Maybe from here on in they will be more critical, and dare I say it….. Skeptical.
Maybe this was the lesson they needed in order to understand how easy it is to be decieved when slavishly attached to unquestioning idealism and how rotten apples can ruin a whole barrel.
You know it’s coming. There will be a Fakegate II. Possibly a “Beneath the Planet of Fakegate, the Sequel”. Science is the big loser in this, and the parade of Fan Boy posts on both sides is a grand disappointment. I’d hate to see the climate debate dominated by hissyfit cross posts between adversarial blogs but that seems to be where it’s going. This tit for tat flapping is worse than reading Joshua’s blog hosted by Judy Curry at Climate Etc.
This cliche says it all: “Somebody is wrong on the internet!” That seems to bring out the worst.
If you are not looking for that evidence the chances of this statement being and remaining true approaches 100%. The claim is pathological. To paraphrase Churchill, “I shall waste no time rushing to desmogblog to read the rest of this story”.
In the “Confidential 2012” document, a key sentence sentence reads:
“This influential audience has usually been reliably anti-climate and it is important to keep opposing voices out. ”
(referring to the Forbes blogs and keeping warmist scientist writers out)
No one in the sceptic community believes they are anti-climate. So why would Heartland write that about themselves? It is a very bizarre and distinct turn of phrase.
Now that it has been exposed as a fraud, it makes sense that someone from the warmist camp would write this way. It is especially revealing that they see sceptics as very twisted people who are against science.
FWIW, Peter Gleick uses the term “anti-science” or “anti-climate” over 20 times on his Forbes.com BLOG. Of course there is no connection, but the term “anti-climate” is not common.
Unlike FOIA, I suspect we will soon learn the identity of whomever was behind the creation of the fake document.
LOL… at the AGE cartoon of PM Gillard roasting our resident flim flam man and head of Australia’s Climate Change Commission, Tim Flannery. That guy has not got a single prediction right. He was the guy that said that Perth would be the first “Ghost City” as its water supply dried up. He also predicted that Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide would all run out of water because the dams would dry up and even the rain if it did fall, wouldn’t reach the dams because the soil would be so dry……. Since then we’ve had floods of biblical proportions and mate!…. that damn soil sure ain’t dry anymore.
I feel so bad for the site funded by a convicted money launderer,
The Truth about DeSmogBlog
“DeSmogBlog is a smear site founded by a scientifically unqualified public relations man, James Hoggan and [b]funded by a convicted money launderer, John Lefebvre.[/b] The irony here is their favorite tactic is to attempt to smear those they disagree with as funded by “dirty money”. Since it’s creation in 2006 the site has done nothing but post poorly researched propaganda with a clear intent to smear respected scientists, policy analysts or groups who dare oppose an alarmist position on global warming. Their articles frequently reference unreliable sources such as Wikipedia and Sourcewatch since they are unable to find any fact based criticisms of those they criticize in respected news sources.”
http://www.populartechnology.net/2011/04/truth-about-desmogblog.html
Copner says:
February 17, 2012 at 8:15 pm
And with DeSmog blog’s drooping numbers, is it a wonder they were the first (of 15 recipients) to run with the red meat through the junk yard? Perhaps not.
Copner says:
February 17, 2012 at 8:15 pm
“So it really does seem Desmog was just the quickest to react to the anonymous source.”
====================
Given, that the speed of retort supersedes known accuracy.
Solutions obtained should be used with caution.
Amy Ridenour says:
February 17, 2012 at 8:54 pm
Nobody HAS been blamed. But SOMEONE did this thing — and SPECULATION is free, LEGAL, and could be quite useful.
I’ve always had, er, a problem with unilateral disarmament.
My only hope is that this goes to the courts for the publicity, and just maybe the public will get a good educational show about whats going on. That is if the Green mafia do not get in the way.
Since everybody’s already weighed in, better than I could, on the matter at hand, I feel free to turn to something as small as a matter of taste. Anthony, I love your blog and read it almost daily, and have urged my fellow skeptics to check it out on frequent occasions. That said, I’m a bit squeamish about the use of the image of the Hindenburg accident for something like this post. I forget how many people died in that horrible accident—seems like two or three dozen souls—but it seems to me a photo of an event in which even one person died isn’t the best choice for highlighting the “crash and burn” of something as ultimately superficial as this. A Vanguard test crashing on the pad or something like that seems just as illustrative without cheapening an event in which people died. I assume I’ll catch flak for being oversensitive when it comes to a fight against people who want to relegate humans to second-class citizens on the planet Earth. I appreciate the argument, but it’s one of those instances where I feel like if I we can get talked past that basic level of sensitivity, then we’ve already lost something worth saving. As you were.
For those interested in examining circumstantial evidence that may point in the direction of the forger of the fraudulent memo, wander on over to Lucia’s and check the comments, particularly for Mosher. It’s Mosh who gets the credit for putting the pieces together on this speculation. I’ll admit I find the ‘consilience’ of evidence to be pretty compelling, though certainly not yet conclusive. The big evidence is the usage in the document of rather rare terms and some quite odd punctuation that are mirrored in the writings of a certain individual. There are also many little pieces of circumstantial evidence all pointing in one direction and, so far, none countering the thesis Mosh has put forward.
Some have pointed out that this odd punctuation isn’t “unicorn” rare and also that searches reveal the unusual terms have occasionally been used by a few others prior to the document’s release. However, let’s consider each bit of evidence as if they were overlapping circles on a Venn diagram each containing potential suspects. The circles may be large enough to remain only circumstantial when considered individually but the area where they all overlap starts getting quite small.
Circle 1: Those with a certain set of odd punctuation habits.
Circle 2: Those who use a couple of quite rare pro-CAGW terms.
Circle 3: Those who don’t like Judith Curry.
Circle 4: Those who also don’t like Andy Revkin (most CAGW proponents generally view Revkin as a supporter).
Circle 5: Those who think that Forbes’ blogs would be an area of focus or concern to Heartland. (In reality, Forbes blogs are a peripheral backwater in the debate at best).
Circle 6: Those who believe that Peter Gleick is a high profile climate scientist. (In reality, this is not a widely held belief in either camp).
Circle 7: Those who believe that Heartland sees Forbes and Gleick as significant enough to prominently call out by name in such a memo, bypassing a huge number of far more notable and effective pro-CAGW media outlets and warmists.
Circle 8: Those previously aware of, and in possession of, Heartland’s Form 990 (seems like a pretty big circle because it’s available publicly on the web if you go looking and know where to look. However, I don’t have it and had never heard of it. How about you?).
Circle 9: Those who previously studied Heartland’s Form 990 and believe it contains information that could be damaging to Heartland (it doesn’t but apparently a small handful of activists previously focused on it kind of obsessively).
Circle 10: Those who find the idea of Heartland supporting the teaching of balanced climate science in schools to be very, very bad (this was the area of farthest ‘reach’ in the document IMHO, so it appears to be a hot button with our fraudulent forger).
Circle 11: Those who live in the Pacific time zone (based on metadata in the file).
Circle 12: Those who is a deeply committed pro-CAGW activist.
Circle 13: Those who have a particular axe to grind with the Heartland Institute. Perhaps with a special focus one or more senior staffers at Heartland (the memo appears to be written from the perspective of such a staffer, thus is an attack on both Heartland and such staffer(s)).
Circle 14: Those so entrenched in the pro-CAGW echo chamber that they believe Heartland staffers might write a memo with such ludricous ‘villianous cackling’ (to quote The Atlantic). They even think others will believe it and, I suspect, they believe that Heartland staffers actually talk in private to each other in ways that imply Heartland’s actions are underhanded. This person doesn’t just think Heartland is wrong, they think Heartland is actually EVIL and that Heartland senior staffers must know it. This is someone with their head way, way down the rabbit hole.
Circle 15: Those who believe in the CAGW cause so ferverently they are willing to lie to support their cause. This may not be the first time this person has decieved the public to sway opinion against those opposing the CAGW cause.
Circle 16: Those who began laying low immediately after the release of the forgery.
Any one of those 16 circles is pretty big but the overlap of all of them is quite tiny. Tiny enough to hold just a single fraudelent forger? I don’t know. There is at least one person who some believe appears to stand right in the exact spot where every one of those circles overlap. However this is all just speculation at this point. It may well be one of those unlikely coincidences that can happen on occasion. This is all circumstantial and there is no definitive proof. No one should come to any conclusions or make unfounded accusations until the ongoing investigations uncover conclusive evidence. For now, it is nothing more than a very curious coincidence.
New advertisement lingo for warmers
Climate Change It’s Fake But Accurate!
Kozlowski said @ur momisugly February 17, 2012 at 9:31 pm
Except for The Git. He is not only anti-climate, he has actively engaged in opposing the climate where he lives (Southern Tasmania) by building a greenhouse to grow his tomatoes, eggplants, capsicums, cucumbers and chillies. Now if you guys in the Northern Hemisphere could see your way to sending some of this “global” warming down south, The Git promises to become a proper sceptic and as pro-climate as anyone could ever wish.
Dude: “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.”
Absolutely the case. Assuming Heartland is telling the truth, yes.
“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.”
Yup. So if there’s fraud here as described it appears quite poorly done. This is not the sort of information that it makes sense to steal in this way, for exactly the reasons Dude describes.
Unless, of course, Heartland made up their version of events from whole cloth. If Heartland has sent everybody chasing down a scenario that didn’t happen, then it’s possible there was no theft or fraud involved. If there is no apprehension of the perpetrator, then many will continue to suspect that nothing was perpetrated, and that an insider really did have the documents legitimately, possibly even including the hard copy of the strategy document.
The argument regarding the scanned document becomes much weaker if the story of how the information got out is false. Then we don’t know the provenance of anything, and we are back to considering the possibility that someone at HI, probably Bast, was foolish enough to at least draft a document that looked as cynical and obsessive and clueless as that one.
Since Heartland is happy to pay people to say things about science that just aren’t true, it’s hard to muster too much confidence in their (perhaps coincidentally self-serving) version of events. If they track down the perpetrator of exactly the fraud they describe, that will be another story. I am not holding my breath, though.
In short, there are still lots of doubts, but they would be resolved in the event of an arrest and conviction consistent with the story Heartland tells.
The suggestion that someone as socially adept and successful as Peter Gleick is involved in this proposed clumsy heist and forgery is ludicrous and not worth considering either way.
Have HI filed a police report, I wonder?
There are disturbing similarities between the writing of Peter Gleick and those of the “Heartland Insider.”
As noted by others, the over use of commas and run on sentences. Let me add to the list:
– Uses parenthesis (to insert additional ideas) in sentences.
– Hyphenates words that many would normally not.
– Frequently uses double hyphens (or is it called a double dash)?
(this character: “—” or “–” as Gleick does on his Amazon posts.)
In the fraudulent “2012 Confidential” document, we see the following oddly hyphenated words:
“well-known”, “in-house”, “high-profile”, “anti-climate”
From Peter Gleick’s BLOG we have the following oddly hyphenated words:
“human-caused”, “well-endowed”, “carbon-fuel”, “cherry-pick”, “no-no”, “long-term”, “time-series”, “higher-than-average”, “heat-trapping”, “Year-to-year”, “ups-and-downs”, ‘modern-day”, “less-ideological”, etc etc etc, and of course, the all time winner, “anti-climate.”
Not being a grammar-nazi ;), stuff like this really stands out. Most of us would not bother to over-hyphenate our writing.
But wait, there is more…
From his Amazon.com reviews:
“cost-effective”, “self-apply”, “often-paid”, “cherry-picked”, “out-of-context”, “pseudo-science”, “anti-climate” – WHOOPS, there is that “anti-climate” again!
Looking at his BLOG at Forbes, I see a very similar writing style. What do you all think??
http://blogs.forbes.com/petergleick/
All of the same writing elements – long sentences, over use of commas and the double hyphen “—” or is it a dash? It too appears in Confidential 2012.
In summary, let me propose a new “Gate” for this drama. Let’s call it “Hyphen-Gate.” Which sounds better than “Fake-Gate.” This will be especially true if and when the culprit is found, and we find their love of hyphens appears in all of their writing.
Cheers!
Mark,
Do we really need to look for the overlap of your 16 circles when one of them, Circle 6, couldn’t possibly have more than one person in it?
Circle 6: Those who believe that Peter Gleick is a high profile climate scientist.
interesting. There are a couple more things I came up with.
hat tips to the folks at Lucia’s who helped flesh this thing out.
Megan should have given us a bit more credit since she lifts the entire argument.
Now, back to berkeley earth programming.
Meanwhile, in the offices of lawyers Bastard, Bastard & Smith, a Heartland representative is saying “Actually Mr. Smith, I was hoping to speak with one of the others…”
The center of circle 6 would not be a good place to be right now. Only room for one…
Has Heartland had a chance to examine the “apparently authenticated documents” and check for possible alterations yet?
I noticed in Ms. McArdle’s piece that she referenced her previous piece about the Koch Foundation donation. She had included a screenshot from the “fundraising document”. What I don’t understand is that there is an entry for “$200,000” in that screenshot, but Koch’s press release says they only donated $25,000 in 2011. The “fake document” also refers to “$200,000” in 2011. So how did the larger figure get into the chart? Does it possibly represent an alteration and/or manipulation of information in the “fundraising document”?
After all, if perhaps you’re going to the trouble to fake one entire document, why not do a bit of extra jiggering with the others, just to jazz up the story a bit?
That was a great article!
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.
Absolutely!