Some excerpts from her most recent article in The Atlantic, which you can read in full here.
It is important to note that Ms. McArdle is not a climate skeptic, quite the contrary. But, she was and remains very skeptical of the claims made surrounding Peter Gleick and those who are defending his actions.
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McArdle writes:
I hardly know what to say about the latest developments in the Heartland document dump. Profanity seems too weak, and incredulity too tame.
…
By late last week, Steven Mosher was in the comments of multiple blogs, including mine, not-so-subtly pointing a finger in the direction of Peter Gleick, head of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security in Oakland, California and apparently until very recently, the chair of the American Geophysical Union’s Task Force on Scientific Ethics. Here’s what Mosher wrote in my comments.
If you want to look for the author of the fake memo, then look for somebody who tweets the word “anti-climate”. you’ll find it. Look for somebody on the west coast ( the time zone the document was scanned in)
You’ll find somebody who doesnt know how to use parenthesis or commas, both in this memo and in other things he has written.
you’ll find he mentions himself in the memo
that’s all the clues for now. of course its all just speculation. Note, he’s not tweeted for a couple days. very rare for him.
The case he made was not implausible. Gleick’s name had always seemed somewhat anomalous in the climate memo–I’ve never heard the climate skeptics mention him, though they do have a lot of very nasty stuff to say about folks like Michael Mann. And Gleick has done some writing for the Forbes site, which would explain the frankly lunatic paragraph which portrayed Forbes as something close to the site of a primordial battle between good and evil for the soul and conscience of America. Plus there were some similarities in the writing styles.
Nonetheless, the case was not strong enough for me to blog about it; in the second post I wrote, I listed my own criteria for figuring out who had written the memos, but they were pretty general, and I was not confident that they’d lead anywhere. Others were not quite so circumspect. Roger Pielke Jr, a climate political scientist enviropolicy wonk who is probably less interventionist than the average of his peers, but less so than the average of the American public, tweeted,
Whodunnit? Is Gleick the Heartland faker? This guy thinks so http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/tell-me-whats-horrible-about-this/#comment-89957 uses my blog as evidence.
and then
I emailed @PeterGleick to ask if he faked the Heartland document, no reply yet. I offered to publish his confirmation or denial on my blog.
And Ross Kaminsky, a senior fellow at Heartland, virtually came right out and accused him at the American Spectator. However, given Heartland’s scorched earth tactics, which have involved not-really-veiled threats of civil and criminal actions against anyone who reacted critically to the document dump, I was inclined to reserve judgement.
…
You receive an anonymous memo in the mail purporting to be the secret climate strategy of the Heartland Institute. It is not printed on Heartland Institute letterhead, has no information identifying the supposed author or audience, contains weird locutions more typical of Heartland’s opponents than of climate skeptics, and appears to have been written in a somewhat slapdash fashion. Do you:
A. Throw it in the trash
B. Reach out to like-minded friends to see how you might go about confirming its provenance
C. Tell no one, but risk a wire-fraud conviction, the destruction of your career, and a serious PR blow to your movement by impersonating a Heartland board member in order to obtain confidential documents.
As a journalist, I am in fact the semi-frequent recipient of documents promising amazing scoops, and depending on the circumstances, my answer is always “A” or “B”, never “C”.
…
After you have convinced people that you fervently believe your cause to be more important than telling the truth, you’ve lost the power to convince them of anything else.
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Read her article in full here.
Steve Mosher deserves major props, give it up in comments.
“And if one rogue member of the community does something crazy that provides such proof, I’d say it is crucial that the other members of the community say …” M. McArdle
But he’s not one rogue member. Gleick reflects the same thinking by others that created the hockey stick and the 10:10 snuff video, backed the erroneous 2035 glacier melt date, wrote the Climategate emails, suppressed publication of dissenting views, and hid the decline. All that is lacking now is a series of “investigations” that exonerate Gleick by totally ignoring the evidence. I could go on listing countless examples of the prevarication, exaggeration, heedlessness, and dishonesty that are epidemic in AGW “science.” McArdle needs to sit down with Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion, Mosher & Fuller’s Climategate: The CRUtape Letters, and Donna LaFramboise’s The Delinquent Teenager etc., and see for herself what has been happening.
fwiw, which is probably nothing, there is a fourth option to Ross Kaminsky’s question: “You receive an anonymous memo in the mail purporting to be the secret climate strategy of the Heartland Institute. ”
I worked for Boeing for awhile, and after they cleaned up their act in the wake of the first and second tanker fiascos, there were very sensitive to the question, what do you do if you find or are sent a competitor’s intellectual property? And even on their last bid, their winning bid, exactly this thing happened, the Air Force accidentally gave Boeing, Northrop information and the Boeing response was straight from the training.
Don’t look beyond the first page, or however long it takes for you to realize it’s a competitors IP, place the rest in a sealed envelope. Give it back to the competitor promptly.
As a result of that action on Boeing’s last contract, the Air Force gave both sides equivalent information, and Boeing saved the taxpayer millions of dollars from having to restart the bidding process.
Gleick, who teaches ethics, may wish to consider that instead of allowing himself to be used, he act ethically instead and just return the information to Heartland.
Kudos to Steve Mosher.
What a story this is!
Smokey says:
February 21, 2012 at 8:07 pm
Forbes has a pro-Gleick blog post. It wouldn’t hurt for a few skeptical commentators to point out that Gleick confessed, and then had to apologize
Ha! Check out Suzuki’s pro-Gleick article. Could use a lot of skeptical commentators.
http://www.straight.com/print/612156
Yes, props to Steve Mosher. If only we all on all occasions could see so clearly.
Megan and other supposedly open-minded folk who lean warm ought to get a clue that this is just the tip of the AGW debacle and that the reason they go to such lengths to obfuscate is because the SCIENCE IS JUST NOT THERE. No matter how often they say that it is and that the evidence is incontrovertible and the debate is over, THE SCIENCE IS NOT THERE.
And nice job putting the pieces together, Mosher and everyone else who had it figured out. I really do think posting that hypothesis to hell and gone had a lot to do with the confession, so good on you.
jorgekafkazar says:
February 21, 2012 at 9:28 pm
Agree on that!
Kudos to Steven Mosher for his Sherlock moment.
I think many policy makers now will read the “The Delinquent Teenager” and say, hey, there is something familiar here?
I was surprised to do a search at WUWT and found no mention of Gleick. Having done lots of research, when I suggested that Gleick had used similar words as in the fake document I was moderated for the first time ever at WUWT. I do understand the reasoning for the moderation, however Gleick now turns out to be exceedingly involved. I believe he will be found to be even more involved.
Nice one, Mosher!
A few days ago I suggested it was probably a good idea not to name names and accuse people by name before it was proven they did it – however delicious that would be if who was being accused actually did it. “Innocent until proven guilty” and all that.
Now that that person – Gleick – has astonishingly enough owned up, I say, “game on!”.
As others have said – popcorn shares have probably gone through the roof.
Once again, Mosher, nicely done, sir.
Kudos to Steven “Sherlock” Mosher
Orville: Are you Mister S., for Sigerson, Holmes?
Sigerson Holmes: Perhaps.
Orville: Do you have a brother whose first name is Sherlock?
Sigerson Holmes: I do not.
Orville: You do have a brother?
Sigerson Holmes: I do.
Orville: Might I inquire as to his first name?
Sigerson Holmes: “Sheer luck.”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072608/quotes
“anti-climate”
About 430,000 results (0.51 seconds)
+”anti-climate” +”peter gleick”
About 191,000 results (0.12 seconds)
I love the way Mosher cornered him by his ‘bizarre use of commas’.I, find, that, to be hilarious!
Sent this to the Pacific Institute:
Mr. Watson, [he’s the mailto guy at pac inst]
I have never donated to the Pacific Institute. However, in light of the latest scandal involving your company, I feel like I’m owed a refund. Please donate it to poor people somewhere to partially assuage the harm done by Gleik. Thanks in advance.
Kevin
Fake memo: “anti-climate” Gleick review: “anti-climate change”. Those are not the same. Wasting more time with Google:
“anti-climate” -“anti-climate change” Gleick 1,380
“anti-climate” Gleick 9,180
“anti-climate change” Gleick 29,300
“anti-climate” -Gleick 426,000
Not a convincing argument, and in any case the search results are now polluted by all the recent Gleick news stories.
Sonicfrog says:
February 21, 2012 at 8:15 pm
AND
Erik says:
February 22, 2012 at 1:04 am
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I have read little on this affair.
In my opinion, the use of the word ‘influential’ says next to nothing about the identity of the author. In one context it is used to describe the weight attached to the IPCC reports (something that one would be hard pressed to dispute given that politicians have accepted these as gospel) and in the other it is used to describe the audience that reads magazines such as Forbes (presumably because these readers are generally higher up the monetary/social scale).
The use of anti-claimate is an even more duboius connection, since in one article it stands alone (ie., anti-climate) and in the other article more properly reads “anti-climate change,” I would agree that the expression ‘anti-claimate’ may be unusual and of some significance, but the expression ‘anti-cliamate change’ is altogether more common place.
Global Warmmongers constitute a little village, but “Marple” Mosher is too fly for them.
> And the reason why he partly confessed is because…?
“Given the need for reliance on facts in the public climate debate, I am issuing the following statement.” – Peter Gleick
He did it to encourage and open and factual debate on climate change don’t you know?
Note 1: There are 7 billion people on the planet.
S Mosher identified Glieck as the faker from his writing style and the text.
Yet, Glieck says he didn’t fake the document.
Coincidentally, and therefore completely independently, he did steal the rest of the documents.
Who needs Heartland funding when lottery wins like that come up so often?
Note 2: Glieck didn’t say the stratgy document was the one he received in the post from the shadowy source. He said “a document”. And we know he had the 2009 tax form. And the supporting documents he stole were finance related. Is it possible that the tax form was the one he started with?
Note 3: That leaves the origin of the fake document as unaddressed in the legally advised statements of the thief who just happens to write like the forger.
re: M Courtney
Most likely after Heartland threaten legal action, Gleick consulted with a criminal defense attorney, and the attorney advice that he publicly plead to things that have electronic trail (the leak stolen heartland document) which can be readily trace back to him, and feint ignorance on the fake memo (which is on a whole different order of criminal offense).
re BigFire
Your scenario of just duck and cover does sound simpler. I concede you’re probably right.
I’ve spent too long reading the Grauniad website; I’m getting paranoid and fanciful.
Reading “CRUTape Letters” after Climategate 1.0 changed me forever. I wasn’t even entirely sure what a “blog” really was until after Climategate now I am on them hours a day; but when Steven Mosher nailed Gleick, I had my doubts. Now that Steve was proven 100% right…that is just borderline scary. Great call Mr. Mosher.
If we get to the next international climate conference you can bet your bottom dollar that the `e`crime security teams across the UK and USA will be glued to their twitching boxes and those pesky little wires listening and watching for signs of a “climategate 3” dump, they will be wired in 24/7, leave will be cancelled, special powers will be enacted, tallbloke will be under surveilance, world press site will be mirrored, etc etc
So that should leave the regular mail system wide wide open !
just a double bluff 🙂
As I said on Dr. Curry’s blog:
“Steven Mosher, You Magnificent B**tard, You read Peter’s book! (apologies to General Patton)”
Steve Zwick’s op-ed at Forbes makes this astonishing claim:
“Bottom line: Someone broke into computers, stole e-mails, and then distorted them to discredit an entire branch of science, in the process delaying action on one of the biggest threats to global security and the global economy.”
No one knows whether Climategate began with break-in by an outside hacker, or whistle-blowing by a CRU insider. If the latter, it was not theft, but an action protected by law. None of the Climategate material was distorted, altered or cherry-picked – the document dump included all contextual material.
Great job, Mosher. That’s some keen detective work.
Lew Skannen says:
February 21, 2012 at 7:59 pm BWAHAhahahah. That’s hilarious. Seriously, it seems this man Gleick had a brain fart. This thing, as described by Mosh, is completely barmy (I just watched a Harry Potter movie last night).
Steve Goddard’s comment is rather funny;
http://www.real-science.com/consult-local-felon-legal-advice