This email from Heartland communications director Jim Lakely is published unedited except for some email address and some telephone number redactions to prevent unwanted spam and calls –Anthony
UPDATE: I’ve run the email through this tool (Thanks Tom Nelson) to make it a bit easier to read, and added [BREAK]s to separate the messages, fixed broken links, plus cleaned up the flow. Oldest is at the bottom, read from bottom up. – Anthony
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From: Jim Lakely
Date: Thursday, February 23, 2012 10:41 AM
To: Anthony Watts
Subject: Peter Gleick Debate Invitation email thread
Anthony,
Below my signature is the email thread between me and Peter Gleick from last month when The Heartland Institute invited him to debate James M. Taylor at our anniversary benefit dinner this August.
I think you’d find the correspondence interesting in light of Gleick’s recent confession in Fakegate – especially the timeline. Feel free to share and publish any and all of this correspondence, quote me directly, and inform your readers that I sent it to you.
Let me know if you have any questions.
We’ve also posted proof that we’re open to debate on Fakegate.org: Two videos of Scott Denning (one thanking us for inviting him to ICCC4, and one of a cordial luncheon debate at ICCC6).
http://fakegate.org/climate-debate-videos/
Best,
Jim Lakely
Director of Communications
The Heartland Institute
One South Wacker Drive #2740
Chicago, IL 60606
office: 312.377.4000
See who endorses The Heartland Institute!
CONFIDENTIALITY: This e-mail (including any attachments) may contain confidential, proprietary and privileged information, and unauthorized disclosure or use is prohibited. If you received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender and delete this e-mail from your system.
[BREAK]
—–Original Message—– From: Jim Lakely Sent: Saturday, January 28, 2012 8:06 PM To: Peter H. Gleick Subject: RE: Debate Invitation
Dr. Gleick,
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve declined our invitation, but I am thankful that you gave it serious consideration. If you’d ever like to engage in a public debate with a Heartland scholar on the topic of climate change, our door is always open.
As for the “entertainment” bit … I think you misunderstand. That word was not intended to make frivolous what Heartland does — in general, or certainly at our annual benefit dinner. We’re a think tank. We love debate, and thrive on intellectual back-and-forth. To me, and our supporters, such a stimulating discussion IS ALSO entertaining. Learning should ever be so.
Regardless, the invitation to our benefit dinner is open. We’ll happily comp you two tickets if you’d like to come to one of the world’s greatest cities for a day of leisure and an evening with Heartland’s scholars, staffers and supporters.
Warm regards,
Jim Lakely
Communications Director
The Heartland Institute
19 S. LaSalle St., Suite 903
Chicago, IL 60603
office: 312.377.4000
[BREAK]
—–Original Message—–
From: Peter H. Gleick [mailto:pgleick@xxxxx.com]
Sent: Fri 1/27/2012 9:33 AM
To: Jim Lakely
Subject: RE: Debate Invitation
Dear Mr. Lakely,
After reviewing your email and after serious consideration, I must decline your invitation to participate in the August fundraising event for the Heartland Institute.
I think the seriousness of the threat of climate change is too important to be considered the “entertainment portion of the event” as you describe it, for the amusement of your donors.
Perhaps more importantly, the lack of transparency about the financial support for the
Heartland Institute is at odds with my belief in transparency, especially when your Institute and its donors benefit from major tax breaks at the expense of the public.
Thank you for considering me.
Dr. Peter Gleick
[BREAK]
At 03:25 PM 1/17/2012, Jim Lakely wrote:
Peter,
Thanks for your reply. Travel and lodging expenses would be covered by Heartland. Our annual dinner is tentatively set for August. This would be a moderated debate, though details about the question on the table, the time for each side, etc., is yet to be determined.
I will get back to you on your other questions.
But I’m sure you’ve seen James M. Taylor’s response to the funding questions at Forbes.com – a question he has answered publicly many times. In short: We used to publicly list our donors by name, but stopped a few years ago, in part, because people who disagree with The Heartland Institute decided to harass our donors in person and via email.
More donor information from our Web site:
Diverse funding base: Heartland has grown slowly over the years by cultivating a diverse base of donors who share its mission. Today it has approximately 2,000 supporters. In 2010 it received 48 percent of its income from foundations, 34 percent from corporations, and 14 percent from individuals. No corporate donor gave more than 5 percent of its annual budget.
Also from our Web site:
Policies regarding donors: The Heartland
Institute enforces <http://heartland.org/PDFs/DonorPolicies.pdf policies >
that limit the role donors may play in the selection of research topics, peer review, and
publication plans of the organization. Heartland does not conduct contract research. These
policies ensure that no Heartland researcher or spokesperson is subject to undue pressure from a donor.
And more donor policy/information from our Web site:
Q: Why doesn’t Heartland reveal the identities of its donors?
A: For many years, we provided a complete list of Heartland’s corporate and foundation donors on this Web site and challenged other think tanks and advocacy groups to do the same. To our knowledge, not a single group followed our lead.
After much deliberation and with some regret, we now keep confidential the identities of all our donors for the following reasons:
· People who disagree with our views have taken to selectively disclosing names of donors who they think are unpopular in order to avoid addressing the merits of our positions. Listing our donors makes this unfair and misleading tactic possible. By not disclosing our donors, we keep the focus on the issue.
· We have procedures in place that protect our writers and editors from undue
influence by donors. This makes the identities of our donors irrelevant.
· We frequently take positions at odds with those of the individuals and companies who fund us, so it is unfair to them as well as to us to mention their funding when expressing our point of view.
· No corporate donor gives more than 5 percent of our budget, and most give far less
than that. We have a diverse funding base that is too large to accurately summarize each time we issue a statement.
And, as you know, we are under no legal obligation to release a detailed list of our donors – nor is any other non-profit organization. Our 990 forms are in full compliance with the IRS.
More here:
http://heartland.org/reply-to-critics>http://heartland.org/reply-to-critics
Regards,
Jim Lakely
Communications Director
The Heartland Institute
19 S. LaSalle St., Suite 903
Chicago, IL 60603
office: 312.377.4000
<http://heartland.org/media-library/pdfs/Endorsements.pdf>See
who endorses The Heartland Institute!
[BREAK]
From: Peter H. Gleick [mailto:pgleick@xxxxx.com]
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 1:39 PM
To: Jim Lakely; pgleick@xxxxx.org; James Taylor
Subject: Re: Debate Invitation
Dear Mr. Lakely,
Thank you for your email of January 13th, 2012, inviting me to participate in the Heartland Institute’s 28th Anniversary Benefit Dinner.
In order for me to consider this invitation, please let me know if the Heartland Institute
publishes its financial records and donors for the public and where to find this information.
Such transparency is important to me when I am offered a speaking fee (or in this case, a
comparable donation to a charity). My own institution puts this information on our website.
Also, I would like a little more information about the date, venue, and expected audience and format. In addition, I assume your offer includes all travel and hotel expenses, economy class, but can you please confirm this?
Sincerely,
Dr. Peter Gleick
[BREAK]
At 11:12 AM 1/13/2012, Jim Lakely wrote:
Dr. Gleick,
I’ve enjoyed the lively discussion via dueling Forbes.com columns and replies between you and James Taylor.
The Heartland Institute is in the early planning stages for our 28th Anniversary Benefit Dinner later this year. We usually have a keynote speaker or debate for the “entertainment” portion of the event, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to come to Chicago to debate James Taylor. We’d donate $5,000 to the charity of your choice in lieu of an honoraria.
I think such a debate would be enlightening, and a lot of fun. Folks at Heartland don’t bite, and treat those with whom we disagree with respect.
(You can ask Scott Denning at Colorado State University about how he was treated at our last two climate conferences, or <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkL6TDIaCVw>go here to view his words of thanks at our 4th conference.)
Let me know if this offer is appealing to you, and if it might fit your schedule. (Our dinner
is tentatively scheduled for the second week of August.)
Regards,
Jim Lakely
Communications Director
The Heartland Institute
19 S. LaSalle St., Suite 903
Chicago, IL 60603
office: 312.377.4000
<http://heartland.org/media-library/pdfs/Endorsements.pdf>See
who endorses The Heartland Institute!
Dr. Peter H. Gleick
President, Pacific Institute
Phone: +1-510-251-xxxx
Assistant: Terry Asbury (tasbury@xxxxxx.org)
<http://www.pacinst.org/>www.pacinst.org
Dr. Peter H. Gleick
President, Pacific Institute
Member, US National Academy of Sciences
MacArthur Fellow
Phone: +1-510-251-xxxxx
Assistant: Terry Asbury (tasbury@xxxxx.org)
www.pacinst.org
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If silently, quietly he took Heartland money while the Lefties and Ecofascists were not looking, because they were “in Bali” and he wasn’t then this is only the same as the fierce grab onto the IPCC government checks??
Let me please offer another explanation for this whole debacle. Those who still blindly support Man-Made Global Warming (AGW) and the “Green” agenda/cult have become so used to lying, that it has become a very useful tool for them and almost second nature…
If you’re going to lie about manipulated data, deny natural cycles and promote false science, then what’s a little fake document ?
Gleick did what he has always been doing in the AGW circles – he lied.
@Smokey
>>Come to think of it, there aren’t any debates any more, are there? The entire alarmist contingent has chickened out en masse.
Were there ever any debates of any noteworthiness? I’ve been watching this thing for a long time and I don’t recall ever seeing any real debates between real climate scientists. That, in itself, has told me quite a bit about the CAGW proponents’ position, i.e., they don’t have one.
Speaking of alarmists, I haven’t seen William Connolley and his acolytes hanging out here. I wonder why.
The Pompous Git says:
February 23, 2012 at 4:05 pm
philincalifornia said @ur momisugly February 23, 2012 at 3:57 pm
===========================
I didn’t see you’d posted that. Must have been in moderation while I was taking forever typing my post. Great minds think alike, and all that !!!
Eric Simpson says:
Can we leave the “vegetarian” out of it please? I am a vegetarian for ethical reasons. I am also a staunch opponent of the climate change hoax because it harms the planet, harms people, and harms wildlife. Vegetarians who care about animals are your natural allies because you support the truth, which will ultimately help animals, but any visiting vegetarian who isn’t familiar with the issues will quickly come to see you as his opponent, and since most people don’t think logically, will also come to view your cause as wrong and even evil.
Only a complete fool continues year after year, as happens on this site with numerous commenters and with one prominent poster, to insult your natural friends and allies. I support this site, I support its goals. I have supported Anthony in a number of the absurd and grubby attacks that have been made against him. This can be verified by looking at my record of comments here and at my own site, for example here. On other threads on WUWT I read about accusations of hate speech against skeptics. So you attack people for being vegetarian? You don’t defend against unjust accusations of hate by being really hateful and thereby proving your critics right. Vegetarians are a minority who have been misunderstood and ridiculed for the entirety of my life. Climate realists are a minority who are also ridiculed for their ethical views (believing in finding the truth). Please help make this place a friendly spot for all people of good will.
Jay Curtis, Connolley was in earlier on at the crowdsourcing thread, taunting us about being slow with the text analysis, but he dropped off after about two or three “drive-bys.” None of the other usual suspects around, though. I guess this isn’t happy time for them.
An addendum to my comment above in response to this comment:
From Peter Gleick at http://blog.sfgate.com/gleick/2009/05/05/the-water-to-grow-beef :
I’m not a vegetarian
Ron House, I agree. Looks aren’t important. Actions are.
. . .
Jay Curtis, here are a few debates:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/24/lord-monckton-wins-global-warming-debate-at-oxford-union
http://www.ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20070316_notcrisis.pdf
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/20/monckton-wins-national-press-club-debate-on-climate
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/05/agw-proponents-lose-yet-another-debate-down-under
Skeptics won them all. Gleick knows that, and so he chickened out. IMHO Gleick never intended to let himself be put into a formal debate venue. Instead, he showed the world his M.O.
philincalifornia said @ur momisugly February 23, 2012 at 4:49 pm
There ya go! I always thought it was “great minds like a think” 😉
Ron House, Eric’s broadside caught those of us who have shaggy beards, longish hair and sometimes dress like Peter Gleick as well. I let it slide, because I can’t get exercised about a guy commenting about another guy’s look, but I see your point about being sensitive regarding vegetarianism. Mea culpa, I too like to poke at fodder munchers, I mean vegetarians, especially since many of my friends are thus deprived. I’d like to know that I’m among friends here, though, and that if I inadvertantently offend someone, he or she will tell me that I’m being a jerk, whereupon I’ll offer my sincere apypolylogies.
Ron House said @ur momisugly February 23, 2012 at 5:15 pm
Don’t be so thin-skinned Ron. I’m “insulted” regularly here and other sceptic blogs as a historian, philosopher, and organic farmer & gardener. However, I don’t take offense at the remarks because they are not aimed at me personally.
Smokey said @ur momisugly February 23, 2012 at 5:27 pm
Jay Curtis, here are a few debates:
And never to forget Mark Seal’s post on Green Advocates Failing in Climate Debate
Smokey says:
Dead right Smokey. It’s an MO repeated ad nauseum by the alarmist camp. And made all the worse by their sanctimonious calling for a “debate”. Where’s that going to happen exactly, if they refuse all invitations and ban realists from their meetings too?
“a stern chase after a lie is a long one.” – unknown
mpaul says February 23, 2012 at 1:17 pm: “The recent behavior of Dr. Gleick along with many of his online apologists would seem to meet nearly all of these criteria.”
Yeah, that’s why we call them CAGW zealots. Yet when they extend from blogs and columns to the real world with real acts and real consequences that looks like some kind of mental illness. I’d add Jones and Hansen to that category, with Mann close on their heels due to his ongoing paranoia.
Peter Kovachev says:
The Pompous Git says:
Hi Guys, I wasn’t personally insulted or offended, I was posting some (hopefully good) advice on making friends and influencing people. Admittedly though, it came with the context of 50 years of being interrupted by rude meat eaters demanding to know how I “justified” my personal choices, when all I was trying to do was eat my dinner in peace. Yes, they are only a very tiny percentage, but there are so many carnivores and so few vegetarians that we run into obnoxious carnivores with much greater frequency than you run into obnoxious holier-than-thou vegetarians. So discount my accompanied baggage by about 90%, but please don’t ignore the message. I can tell you how climate realist sites often look to casual green, vegetarian, leftist, you name it, visitors, and at times it can be a big turn-off. And it’s entirely avoidable.
Gobsmackingly stupid man. This brain explosion by Gleick has really exposed him as being profoundly stupid. How does someone like that get a McArthur? Just amazing, the whole sordid tale, including the brusque and dismissive emails and tweets in the Realclimategate saga. I think this brain explosion comes from the internal conflict generated by the empassioned advocate (belief, noble cause and all that) arguing internally with the scientist as the science seems to come apart before his eyes and being sociopathic the internal conflict causes him to seek an external agent so it is not his science that is wrong, it is the unbelievers trying to attack his noble goal via inherently invalid attacks on his unimpeachable “science” that are wrong and evil.
There’s a minimalist tragedy opera waiting to be written about this classic affair, complete with a Glass minimalist score and wacky characters like SuperMandia in costume! I can see scenes like the first meeting of the Ethics committee after he becomes Chairman, a solo number with chorus where he lays out how he is going to lead them into a new promised land of ethicality, the feverish few days of activity when he commits the crimes and the furtive browbeating before confessing online! Complete with live tweets from the cast to back projection screen and Lucinda Child’s correography! There’s a ready-made duette to be sung – him and Laker’s too-ing and fro-ing with the invite and his childish attempt at “high ground” by demanding “to see the accounts”. Classic tragedy, almost Sophoclean!
I’m not at all surprised over Gleick’s lack of ethical behavior despite chairing an ethics committee. This is still the same buffoon who submitted a “review” of Donna Laframboise’s book “The Delinquent Teenager…” without actually reading it. He can use whatever excuse he wants but his behavior speaks for itself. I hope you enjoy the unemployment line.
Ron House, if you think being vegetarian’s hard, you’d be amused at how I have to juggle some of the bigger Sabbath dinners we have. With kosher food you have three categories; meat, dairy and a neutral category (called parve), which is sort of vegetarian. but includes fish and eggs, but no milk of course. The meat eaters have to have meat, brecause otherwise it’s not a true sabbath meal and they’ll go hungry even if they devour their way through half the table. The vegetarians will sometimes not eat vegetarian items cooked in meat utensils, especially if they are planning on having a dairy desert when they get home and can’t wait the six hours between meat (which includes vegeraian items cooked in a meat utensil) and dairy. Some will have fish, but others won’t touch it. Can’t include dairy at the sitting, of course, because you don’t put meat and dairy on the same table in the same meal. Are you still following this? Then, you have your gluten-free folk, and those who’ll eat only “organic” (and don’t get me going on that one, Pompous Git), and of course the occasional type who’ll die if they even look at a nut. Kosher food is expensive. Imagine kosher, organic, gluten and nut-free kind, with the table split into virtual food ghettos with omnivores like me poaching from everyone, hoping we won’t have a hand bitten off in the process. Not too many have philosophical issues with or dietary sensitivities to my good single malts, of course.
PS, and , Ron, kind of you to correct what you thought was a typo or spelling mistake of mine, but I did actually intentionally write, apypolylogies for apologies. That’s from A Clockwork Orange with Malcolm McDowel in the charater of Alex. Arguably the best film of the 20th century. Still “contemporaneous” and shocking, even for our times. Snuck in a Viennese theatre to see it when I was thirteen, where it was called Uhrwerk Orange. Check it out, and viddy it well, mydroog; I promise you you’ll be blown away, especially if you like Beethoven, the lovely, lovely Ludwik Van.
Surfer Dave says:
February 23, 2012 at 6:43 pm
Gobsmackingly stupid man.
I think this qualifies as “another nail in the coffin”. Hard-hitting cogent stuff Surfer Dave!
Surfer Dave says:
February 23, 2012 at 6:43 pm
“…..I think this brain explosion comes from the internal conflict generated by the empassioned advocate (belief, noble cause and all that) arguing internally with the scientist as the science seems to come apart before his eyes….”
I think you hit the nail on the head, with that.
These must be hard times for many who “drank the Koolaid.” It must be especially hard in Europe. They swallowed the Global-Warming-Bull hook, line and sinker, and now are awaking to the fact they have invested billions in a fraud.
WW 1 was so awful that to many the idea of WW 2 was unthinkable. They scoffed at Churchhill’s warnings, and belittled him as a “war monger.” Think how horrible it was for them to realize that their hope and idealism wasn’t going to keep WW 2 from happening, and in some ways caused it to happen. Some completely cracked up, for a while at least. Fortunately most got over it, and buckled down to facing the problem at hand.
History does repeat itself. Gleick is cracking up. I have my doubts as to whether he will be one of the people who can get over it, and buckle down to facing the problem at hand.
Lots of political comments in this thread which I could comment on but won’t. I think this video, “The American Form of Government” pretty much says it all. It’s quite clear where we’re headed and why.
Whatever has happened to R Gates? I do hope all this hasn’t… er… left him unhinged.
Peter Kovachev said @ur momisugly February 23, 2012 at 6:59 pm
ROFL! I’m so glad my father was raised as a Catholic rather than as a Jew 🙂