From YouTube’s description:
A wide-ranging interview with Pacific Institute president and hydroclimatologist Peter Gleick. Gleick talks about global warming, the challenges climate change poses, the nature of climate change denial, why climate change education is important, and NCSE’s new role in defending climate change education. When: 12/19/2011. Where: Oakland, CA.
Steve Goddard on his blog points out that Gleick says “People have a fundamental trust of scientists”. That was then.
Peter Gleick: Climate change is happening
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I was reading the Examiner link and how Gleick’s lawyer is threatening to use discovery to “determine once and for all who is truly behind Heartland and why.” It strikes me as questionable a judge would tolerate this under Fed. R. of Civ. Pro. 26(c)(1). The purpose of the crime/tortious act was to expose Heartland’s donors. The implication—if the discovery is not barred or sealed—is that someone like Gleick could use discovery to further/achieve the goal of his admittedly illegal act.
Quite frankly, if I was Gleick, I’d be terrified of discovery. The guy has already shown a stunning lack of judgment and these climate scientists don’t strike me as a discreet bunch. It seems possible, even likely, that he consulted with other individuals before doing this and that there might be some damning information in his email account and computer.
I loved the “Gleik Tragedy” comment. We must not miss out on the humor of this situation. On that note, personally, not being familar with Peter Gleik, when I first hear about this entire affair I was under the impression it was a venereal disease being discussed.
Someone has to be down before you can pile on. I am not convinced Gleick is down. His defense team and his supporters seem to believe he is doing very well indeed.
I do find it odd he made this video by himself. It is as if he feels it is a way he can say what he thinks without being interrupted or challenged. Does he not have any friend who would pose as an interviewer? Or can he not tolerate to work as a team player with other warmists? Poor bloke, whatever is going on in his head is a mess.
Gary D. says:
February 24, 2012 at 9:31 am
“Someone has to be down before you can pile on. I am not convinced Gleick is down. His defense team and his supporters seem to believe he is doing very well indeed.”
Never said or assumed he was “down”. Does not change the fact that the guy and his warmist movement are a joke or the humor one can find in the situation.
Had already seen it and thought that he epitomised insincere.
My impression is this joker is unstable and as his AGW fraud and criminal intent of the HI intrusion becomes more proven we may be looking at a suicide.
@DP – My gut level reaction is much the same as yours. Unfortunately, I’m not at all confident that my gut is in fact correct in this case. We are civilized men; we do not comfortably or naturally think in terms of utterly destroying an adversary because it is foreign to how we handle conflicts in our civilized lives. It smacks of absolute convictions regarding one’s ‘rightness’, and gives one an uneasy feeling of potential unwitting fanaticism. As a result, I personally have no taste for it.
Speaking metaphorically though, it is probable that there really are monsters in the world; opponents who do NOT fight honorably, who do NOT think of a tomorrow when differences are settled, but think instead only of grinding us into oblivion today. I have no stomach for it, but I can’t say that I rationally believe it’s always the best course to let a defeated adversary up. They can surprise you.
Still, I try to remember that these CAGW scientists and citizens are people, even though they often appear to forget that skeptics are as well. Eventually, the CAGW matter will be decisively settled, and the people from both sides of the debate aren’t going to disappear just because the controversy is gone. Seeing as how they will still be there, we should hope to minimize hatred, hard feelings, and vendettas and plan for the day we can move on. At least that’s how I see it.
For what it’s worth, and no hard feelings to the moderators if they snip this; I know we’re off topic here.
Gleick says in the video (from about 2:25-3:14):
I actually think that a large part of the current denial about climate change, political scepticism about climate change, is actually not truly about the science.
Now, the scientific community is almost unanimous about this. There are very few credible scientists that really say that climate change isn’t happening or that it isn’t due to human activities.
But, if it is happening, and if it is due to human activities, policy makers have to do something. There’s going to have to be a policy response to deal with, for example, the fundamental ways we produce and use energy. And that’s a very difficult question.
I actually believe that a large part of the climate denial is actually fear about dealing with the policy components of climate change.
=====
If you replace the words “denial” and “scepticism” with “debate”, I wouldn’t particularly argue with those first two statements. I don’t think many round here would.
I do have a problem with the “something must be done to maintain the status quo at any cost” attitude. This policy and politics–not the science–seems to be the area where AGW supporters particularly want to avoid debate, yet it is exactly this that should be debated.
They seem to respond to any attempt to get a feel for the scale of any potential danger with suggestions that those questioning the results of their science are deniers and somehow anti-science. It is also, apparently, not possible for any change to have benefits.
I am not anti-science, a climate denier, or a climate sceptic. These seem to me to be emotive phrases to use in an ad-hominem fashion against the class of people who don’t have exactly the same world view as their own class. They can call me that if they like, but it really only reflects their own attitudes. I will happily say that I am quite sceptical about most things, so I don’t always automatically assume that everything I’m told is cast iron 100% correct. Also, just because I question something now doesn’t necessarily mean that I can’t believe or act on it at some point in the future.
The fear about dealing with policy (which should require debate) seems to be their fear.
It’s almost like climate science has Asperger’s syndrome.
If the piling on bothers you, avert your gaze when the actual pile driving starts.
The subconscious head shaking subliminal “no” is done every time he says somethings he wants you to believe, that he does not himself feel is valid. The blinking for longer than normal shows he is sorting thoughts to come up with what he thinks you need to hear form him to be believable.
The false starts and stuttering, is him sorting thoughts that he doesn’t have fully formed in his own mind to peel off rapidly and fluidly. The whole production is a projection of poorly thought out ideas that he has not practiced presenting to others, outside of the group think party he normally converses with.
The interruptions and disjointed thoughts are a sign he is not well organized in his subjects, due to lack of knowledge of the facts and needed quotes to cite references to make a coherent statement that conveys fluid comprehension of the subject matter on his part.
I would give him low scores for honesty, integrity, and basic fund of real data based knowledge of the subject he is discussing, grade D+ barely passing.
He even linked the questioning of climate change and evolution. Sooo predictable. And now the tobacco analogy and the well-funded campaign… merchants of doubt… He sounds like the standard IPCC parrot.
Yawn… must… sign… off.
Why did Gleick do it? Putting two and two together he did it because he was about to assume the position of chairperson of the new Taskforce On Ethics And Integrity of the American Geophysical Union. WHAT A BULLY PULPIT! He intended to hit the ground running with a major issue to exploint.
Gleick was a man with a plan. Under the fancy title of “Taskforce On Ethics And Integrity” he intended to set up a “kangaroo court” (or if you prefer create “show trials”) that would be used to ruin the reputations of those who opposed the global warming movement. Heartland was to be his first victum. Heartland fit the bill perfectly. It had become a “hot topic” on the internet — a name known to liberals of many ilks (Heartland has fingers in many pots) and one already inspiring paranoid fantasies among those groups. Attacking Heartland was sure to generate immense publicity and with the help of the main stream media it could go national — with Gleick and his taskforce playing the role of “THE CONSCIOUS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA!
Only one probelm — no smoking gun. Gleick was trying to create the smoking gun.
If you think what i am saying is an example of overwrought paranoric thinking — you don’t know much about how politicians operate. Joseph McCarthy made a speech in which he claimed to have in his pocket a list of the names of communists working in the state department. Never produced the list — didn’t need to. The rest, so to speak, is history. How many careers and lives did he ruin?
Politicians want an issue — any issue — and Gleick was trying to create one. But it all blew up in his face. When you lose your moral compass it is amazing how stupid highly intelligent people can be.
Anyway, committing wire fraud was really just a small first step in implementing Gleick’s much larger, utterly malicious plan.
Oh, and to end somewhat off topic — I think it could truly be said about the MacArthur Foundation that they give their genius awards to two distinct groups of people — people who should have been given the award twenty or thirty years earlier — and people who should never have been given the award at all.
Eugene WR GAllun
Is that an epson printer in the background?
dp
So now you’re trying to conjure up guilt. You have nothing to say, right? Global warming is built on lies. Seeing some of the lying and hypocrisy exposed makes most people feel relief and indignation. But not you. Nope. In you it makes you defensive and want to make the people who are finding relief feel guilty.
What you are doing is called the losers limp.
Amino – I don’t have any such affliction. Some days into this unraveling I noted the tone of the blog had swung hard over to a Romm/Tamino tone. I’d contributed my own snark, in fact. Then I got to thinking about all the work Anthony has done here and how much at risk his work is if this site develops along the lines of the two mentioned bloggers. Reading this very thread, if you ignore the specifics and focus only on the tone, you might just as well be on Tamino’s site. It is beginning to not look like the kind of place a well-lettered scientist might want to hang his hat.
Someone suggested if I am bothered to look the other way. There’s little chance given my life experiences I’m going to be bothered by what I read on a weatherman’s blog. But – this particular weatherman is THE weatherman that has done so much for the skeptic position, using his own time, life energy, and personal capital to make this the premier go to blog for the unborged. Nothing I say is in any way sympathetic to the team or their tactics, but I am raising the alarm of caution in too much end zone celebration. The Internet gives, the Internet takes, and if it becomes well-perceived that this is a den of pack dogs spoiling for new blood Anthony’s work will be shot down in flames.
I’m not even suggesting anyone let up on the pressure – but the subject of my caution that has ushered your embroglio was the unrelated videos of Gleick’s interview. Let there be no doubt, for a genius he is bat s**t crazy. But he’s done – finished. He is going to be taken apart in court and it is anyone’s guess what happens then. The continued roasting of him is only going to make this blog appear “bitter” as I said at the top, and Anthony risks, and you all are putting at risk, his self-investment and any clout he’s acquired while shepherding this blog to the top.
I’d hate to see that happen and I won’t be a part of it again. It is time to take and hold the high ground and move on to the next battle. The outcome of this one is settled.
Regarding the subdebate here on sicoal equity . From the context of the whole sentence: The Pacific Institute will continue in its vital mission to advance environmental protection, economic development, and sicoal equity. it obviously refers to the well established notion of three pillars of sustanability . Sustainability concerns precicely that: environmental protection, economic development, and sicoal equity. Social equity in this context has precisely NOTHING to do with the notion of left political governance.Sustainability Its just a way of encompassing all relevant effects of any human activity such as running a buisness, building a brige, driving your kid to school, or whatever. Relevant in the sense that they do matter in some way, but they do not necessarily have a clear pricetag or liability label on them. To assess the sustainability performance of an activity lets take the example of driving your kid to school:In the economic sense you achieve a desired function: transporting kid from point A to B. You also suffer economically, e.g. you pay for the gas and incremental value-loss of your car due to the driving. There are also more indirect economic effects but these are easy enough to consider as they directly affect your wallet. Now, your drive also produce effects in the environment and often indirectly on sicoal equity issues. Such effects are often called externalities .In the environmental sense you emit some gases and rubber tire particles to the environment that have (small, but still) unwanted effects such as toxic effect on organisms (including humans), global warming counted as kg CO2-equivalents is typically added here as an undesired environmental effect. But no one is held accountable in terms of paying for these external environmental effects. By using your car you also take advantage of all emissions and resource extracted from nature in order to build the car, the roads, produce the gas, the motoroil, etc.The sicoal equity aspect just means expanding the effects from not only covering traditional environmental effects but also effects on you guessed it: sicoal equity, i.e. human sicoal phenomena that are considerered worthy of protection or establishment such as human rights, gender equity, ethnological equity, religouos equity, the right of kids to be kids, etc.If parts of your car was produced by child labour on a next to nothing salary, your kid-to-school drive can be considered have a bad impact on sicoal equity, given of course that you think underpaid child labor is a bad thing.Now comes the most difficult part: how to compare all these effects? For example, how big is the cost of 3 hour of child labour compared to the cost of toxic effects due to air emission of 0.05 kg benzene-equivalent? It is ONLY in this sense of how things should be valued that any discussion of political values such as left-right policies has any bearing on sustainability. The effects will occur regardless of opinion. But people value the effects differently and it is a matter of preference and subjective choice. It is not inherent in the idea of sustainability that anyone must have adhere to a certain preset idea of what is good or bad. Sustainability assessment only acknowledges that in order to know if it is sustainable or not you must include some idea of what is a desired state of things including sicoal equity issues. So, assessing the sustainability of a given activity only means looking at ALL these effects: economic, environmental, and sicoal good and bad paid for or not.Now, please do not confuse my post of taking a stance for or against the concept of sustainability or any specific value on externalities, sustainability is only a perspective on things. Clearly the concept attracts environmentalists as they put a high value on environmental and socal equity impacts and it is a tool to assess responsibility for these effects.