AGU Encourages Integrity in all Aspects of Climate Change Discourse
Scholarly Society Rejects Deception Regarding Heartland Institute Documents
February 21, 2012
AGU Release No. 12-11
For Immediate Release
In response to a blog post late yesterday, 20 February 2012, by Dr. Peter Gleick regarding documents purportedly from the Heartland Institute which he disseminated, AGU President Michael McPhaden issued the following statement:
“AGU is disappointed that Dr. Gleick acted in a way that is inconsistent with our organization’s values. AGU expects its members to adhere to the highest standards of scientific integrity in their research and in their interactions with colleagues and the public. Among the core values articulated in AGU’s Strategic Plan are ‘excellence and integrity in everything we do.’ The vast majority of scientists share and live by these values.
“AGU will continue to uphold these values and encourage scientists to embrace them in order to remain deserving of the public trust. While this incident is regrettable, it should not obscure the fact that climate change is occurring or interfere with substantive scientific discourse regarding climate change.”
On Thursday, 16 February, prior to his blog post, Dr. Gleick resigned as chair of AGU’s Task Force on Scientific Ethics, which first convened in November 2011. In his resignation, he cited “personal, private reasons” and expressed concern that he would not be able to fulfill his responsibilities as chair. His resignation was accepted.
Following Dr. Gleick’s resignation, a search began immediately for a replacement. Effective today, 21 February, the new chair of AGU’s Task Force on Scientific Integrity is Linda Gundersen, Director, Office of Science Quality and Integrity, USGS (U.S. Geological Survey).
The American Geophysical Union is a not-for-profit society of Earth and space scientists with more than 61,000 members in 146 countries. Established in 1919 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., AGU advances the Earth and space sciences through its scholarly publications, meetings, and outreach programs. For more information, visit www.agu.org.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“Mark W says:
February 21, 2012 at 4:27 pm
So is Gleick chairing an ethics committee like Iran chairing a human rights committee?”
Good comparison, I think the answer is yes.
“Dr. Gleick resigned as chair of AGU’s Task Force on Scientific Ethics, which first convened in November 2011.”
That he was appointed to that panel in the first place tells us everything about the current “ethics” of the AGU. I trust their honest members will overthrow the activists who have taken over that organization. If they don’t they deserve the same contempt as Gleick. Enough of the ‘good German’ act and passive cowardly groupthink. Nobody can pretend they don’t know what is going on anymore.
“While this incident is regrettable, it should not obscure the fact that climate change is occurring or interfere with substantive scientific discourse regarding climate change.”
Completely irrelevant to the statement, and to the crimes committed. When you cover your dirty rear, brown stains appear.
What I find perplexing in all this, is the comparison being made to Climategate 1 & 2
True, somone purloined CRU emails etc in true “whistleblower” style – and we all (IMHO rightly) commend them for making public such scurilous documents
To the best of my knowledge, none of Climategate has been proven to be forgery
Here however, if we are to belive the reports, Heartland Institute not ony had documents purloined (and some AGW would likely say well-done) – but to stoop to forgery is taking a step much, much further – and herein lies the Crux of the Matter
Obtaining documents by deception (ie faking someone elses email address) is bad enough and criminal in its own right, but to then embelish what little evidence was there is outright malice and requires the harshest treatment – warmists and skeptics alike should be baying for blood
sarc – Bring back hanging I say !!! – /sarc
please can the AGW gooses come over to sydney and warm us up and stop it raining ?
I don’t think “ethics” is really the damaging aspect of it. The truly damaging aspect, as with Climategate, is that these guys are acting as political hacks who happen to have scientific credentials.
The only thing that can really be proven in a controlled experiment is IR absorption by CO2. The only calculation that I believe is “All other things being equal, a doubling of CO2 will result in 1ºC of warming”, with “all other things being equal” being a HUGE assumption. Everything else about CAGW relies on correlation, statistics, computer models, etc. that rely to various degrees on human subjectivity, e.g. What’s in the model?, what natural variability factors are you subtracting out to determine the signal of anthropogenic CO2? Tree rings depend ONLY on hemispheric temperature?
What this relevation, Climategate, the refusal to acknowledge the tree ring divergence problem, the unsubstantiated claim that the heat must be in the deep ocean (otherwise our models don’t work), etc. keep driving home the point that these guys are NOT doing objective science. Why should any of us believe that we’re being presented with *ALL* of the facts, when they’ve shown more interested in winning the fight than doing objective science?
Gleick is a ruined man. Even though he did it to himself, such a thing should be an occasion for sadness; a certain sober satisfaction at justice done maybe, but certainly not glee. Careful that tribal warfare doesn’t turn us all into mean-spirited snipers. History will eventually record who was right and who was wrong in this epic battle over climate forcing. History will also record the behavior of the participants and it will not be kind to visceral participants, even those on the winning side.
From the new and so-appropriately grave response from the AGU, we can suppose that the previous slanderous attack against John Christy and Roy Spencer, in which Peter Gleick participated last year, was not enough to disqualify him then from heading up the AGU Ethics committee, nor, by the evidence of their silence, enough to cause the AGU leadership any particular concern.
The AGU’s message: don’t get lawyers involved.
“it should not obscure the fact that climate change is occurring”
Irrefutable evidence that the author is a politicised idiot rather than a scientist. Utterly irrelevant to the subject as well as fatuously unscientific. It is a disgrace to any organisation pretending to represent science.
Good point Mark W, in fact Syria was elected to UNESCO human rights committees.
It’s a strange world.
This is a statement I am happy to agree with. In fact it was my belief (based on anecdotal historical evidence) that the climate was always changing that made me doubt the hockey stick when it first appeared.
Had they said that any current climate changes where due primarily to anthropogenic causes I would have some disagreement with the statement.
It is time the word ‘shill’ was applied to these party aparatchiks.
Well, we all get disappointed occasionally.
What strikes me in all this, is that as a sceptic, I never even heard of HI till this week.
And if I had heard of them, it certainly didn’t register.
I became sceptical of CAGW because of what the warmists said, didn’t say, wouldn’t say or couldn’t say. I became sceptical because I am naturally cautious, not because someone told me to doubt what the warmists were saying.
The way they have gone looking for a ‘bad guy’ , identified one, tried to set him up (and failed) is indicative of a juvenile mindset in my opinion. If I were on my way to market, and someone offered me some magic beans for my cow, I would not need to refer to the HI in order to formulate my response.
“On Thursday, 16 February, prior to his blog post, Dr. Gleick resigned as chair of AGU’s Task Force on Scientific Ethics, which first convened in November 2011.”
And we are supposed to believe that? Based on your word?
How about some more doctored documents to support that statement?
A great little movie of an interview with ‘Heartland Institute President Joe Bast on why global warming activist Peter Gleick stole and forged documents from his organization’:
http://online.wsj.com/video/opinion-the-purloined-climate-papers/F3DAA9D5-4213-4DC0-AE0D-5A3D171EB260.html
Why is it so blindingly difficult for alarmist to use the correct term for their obsession in their propaganda? Answer; It’s not. It’s the straw elephant in the parlor.
Why would a bona fide scientist call his or her obsession ‘Climate Change’ and his or her detractors ‘Climate Change Deniers’ when it is their own tribe that denies climate has changed?
I was always under the impression that scientist where, by virtue of their meticulous training, very accurate in their statements, but using Climate Change in lieu of Anthropogenic Climate Change tells me all I need to know about their integrity. It’s propaganda.
Frederick Michael says:
“We don’t know if he’s so stupid that he actually wrote that phrase, but we do know that he’s not smart enough to laugh at it. My God, he can’t really believe those words, can he?” & “Gleick’s cluelessness should win some kind of prize.”
Excellent points. Maybe a dumbed-down version of the Darwin Award would suffice.
Here are a couple of definitions the learned men of he climate science community should look up.
Discussion – an exchange of views on some topic.
Debate – discussion in which reasons are advanced for and against some proposition or proposal.
“The American Geophysical Union is a not-for-profit society of Earth and space scientists with more than 61,000 members in 146 countries”
There are 61,000 Earth and space scientists? Are they doing anything useful, and who pays them? The salary bill must be billions of dollars.
It is troubling that we hear over and over that there is not an integrity issue with the IPCC and with climate change research in general, when there are re-occuring blantly obvious examples of integrity issues.
The following is an example of a lead IPCC section author, using the media to push a message that is not supported by the science.
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/LandseaResignationLetterFromIPCC.htm
After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns.
Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4’s Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity” along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today.
Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media.
Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).
It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming. Given Dr. Trenberth’s role as the IPCC’s Lead Author responsible for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside of current scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity.
“personal, private reasons” Personal, certainly, private, I don’t think so.
“Among the core values articulated in AGU’s Strategic Plan are ‘excellence and integrity in everything we do.’ The vast majority of scientists share and live by these values.”
Good stuff–see Enron’s Values here: http://www.agsm.edu.au/bobm/teaching/BE/Cases_pdf/enron-code.pdf
I know this isn’t the AGU – it’s NOAA [even worse] – but here’s how they spend our tax dollars:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/02/senator-scott-brown-exposes-noaas-illicit-300000-party-boat-video
And William Astley, I wouldn’t resign if I were you. You can be more effective going on record as opposing the IPCC agenda, as nicely phrased by WG3 Co-Chair Ottmar Edenhofer:
“One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”
Insist on the IPCC using the scientific method, the null hypothesis, and full transparency. They ignore all three. You could use your position to send copious emails to IPCC colleagues, and compile their responses into a useful article here.
Is it time for the scientists who support these institutions resign en masse?
I think so. If the AGU is anything like my professional society, an alternative publication, staff and focus could be designed to replace the AGU for a quarter the cost. I gather the AGU was once an august and respected scientific institution?
That a journalism student was made your spokesman gives me pause. The message is now more important that science? Is that what this community activist brings to your union, a message?
This is absurd. What is the advantage of being a member of the AGU any longer?