Guest post by Dr. Nicola Scafetta
I am following this story about Gleick vs. Heartland Institute. I believe I found something that might be useful and/or interesting.
To understand what happened in the mind of Gleick you need to carefully read the exchange occurred on Forbes between Gleick and Taylor in January. Apparently, everything started from this post by Gleick
http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/01/05/the-2011-climate-b-s-of-the-year-awards/
where Gleick personally attacked known scientists who are critical of AGW and he also attacked you.Later James Taylor of Heartland Institute responded to Gleick here
First, you need to note the dates of Taylor reply (2012/01/12) and the date of the email sent by Gleick to Heartland which started a couple of weeks later on 2012/01/27. So the dates match.
Now you need to take into account that the article by Taylor is quite strong and solid, and very likely severely damaged the scientific credibility of Gleick who was proven not even having the scientific facts right and having his analysis of the scientific literature, in a particular of that that opposes the AGW theory, extremely superficial and unfair.
I would say that Taylor won the debate without doubts, and Gleick simply matured the idea of having a strong revenge.
Now you need to carefully read the comment by Gleick to Taylor’s article that you can read at the bottom on the Forbes’ article page. Gleick wrote
“I don’t normally respond to the posts by James Taylor — reading them makes my head explode. They are written as though from a completely different universe — some parallel universe where up is down, left is right, and global warming isn’t happening…. whew (though a careful reader of this post by Taylor will note that he accidentally acknowledges global warming is occurring). But since I’m the entire target of this rant, I thought I might offer a minor comment or two: He says I’m upset because so few people agree with me… Hmm, 97-98% of all climate scientists (of which I am one, and James Taylor is not) agree with me — climate change is happening, and it is happening because of human activities. Maybe no one at the Heartland Institute agrees (though they are paid not to), but I like the company I keep better. I will ignore the completely scientific nonsense that comprises the rest of his post, except to note the fine response by “cyruspinkerton” who sets Taylor straight about extreme events in 2011. Taylor must not read the news, or the science, either. I wonder, however, if Taylor would publish the list of who really DOES fund the Heartland Institute. It seems to be a secret — no information is listed on their website about actual contributors of that $7 million budget that they use to deny the reality of climate change (and previously, the health effects of tobacco — their other focus). And their 990 tax form doesn’t say either. [By the way, while my Forbes posts reflect my personal opinion and not the opinion of the Pacific Institute, all of the Pacific Institute’s financial records are public.] So, Mr. Taylor: let’s have the complete list of your funders.”
As you can see, instead of discussing the scientific facts that Taylor was addressing in his article strongly disproving Gleick, Gleick just wanted the names of the donors of Heartland Institute more than anything else, as if that was the most important issue.
Now you need to read the response from Taylor. At the end Taylor responded
“Finally, Gleick asks for the Heartland Institute to publicly reveal all the names of its donors. The Heartland Institute used to do so, while similarly appealing to other groups to do the same. However, environmental activists and other extremist groups used the information to launch a campaign of personal harassment against Heartland Institute donors while simultaneously refusing to release the names of their own donors. It is funny how Gleick rants against the alleged harassment of Katharine Hayhoe yet remains silent about the harassment of people who disagree with him. This further reveals Gleick’s appalling lack of objectivity, as does Gleick’s call for the Heartland Institute to release the names of its donors while ignoring the fact that the vast majority of global warming activist groups have been far less transparent than the Heartland Institute. Of course, Gleick’s attempts to make Heartland Institute funding an issue while ignoring the less transparent funding reports of global warming activist groups with 10, 20, or even 80 times the funding of the Heartland Institute is a tired and sad tactic used by global warming alarmists who try desperately to take attention away from scientific facts and objective scientific data. I can see why Gleick views these scientific facts and objective data as a “parallel universe” that makes his “head spin.”
Now you need to focus on the key sentence in Taylor’s response:
“However, environmental activists and other extremist groups used the information to launch a campaign of personal harassment against Heartland Institute donors”
At this point, Gleick knew what he could do to have his personal revenge against Taylor and the Heartland Institute . He simply needed to get the list of names of the donors of Heartland Institute and make it public in such a way that environmental activists and other extremist groups could use the information to launch a campaign of personal harassment against those persons and damage the finance of the Heartland Institute. And in two weeks Gleick prepared his “smart” plan that we know.
In my opinion Gleick was simply blinded by a strong feeling of personal hatred against Taylor and just wanted his personal revenge against the person that so efficiently rebutted him in public. The irony of this story is that it was Taylor himself to suggest Gleick what he could do to have his revenge and to efficiently damage the Heartland Institute. ButGleick’s plan was uncovered…
In conclusion, the real reason why people like Gleick do not want to publicly debate with the AGW and IPCC critics is simply because somehow they know that they will lose the debate. And they get mad of it.
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Addendum by Anthony
I would add that there is one other exacerbating factor that occurred on January 27th, 2012, and that is seen in this article on Forbes by Dr. Peter Gleick:
Remarkable Editorial Bias on Climate Science at the Wall Street Journal
Gleick writes:
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has long been understood to be not only antagonistic to the facts of climate science, but hostile. But in a remarkable example of their unabashed bias, on Friday they published an opinion piece that not only repeats many of the flawed and misleading arguments about climate science, but purports to be of special significance because it was signed by 16 “scientists.”
Then there’s this, Gleick was one of the signers:
But the most amazing and telling evidence of the bias of the Wall Street Journal in this field is the fact that 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences wrote a comparable (but scientifically accurate) essay on the realities of climate change and on the need for improved and serious public debate around the issue, offered it to the Wall Street Journal, and were turned down.
The NAS essay is here. The WSJ article is here
Seems to me that he was quite put out that WSJ would accept the 16, but not the 255. I see it as contributory to his anger that day, the day he decided to assume a new fake email identity and break the law.
It seems he also made his own bias very clear in an article where he asks readers:
Do you have an open mind?
It doesn’t matter what might be said or published, he claims we are wrong:
I’d say he’s now disqualified himself, and in spectacular fashion.
Others have touched on this above, but I would like to propose the adoption of a new verb into English and Americano lingua:
gleick: To profess the highest ethics whilst practicing the lowest.
To Bob FJ: The new English word :
: To gleick, we gleicked, gleicking …..
I am sure, there must be some mean guy in the Bible, who gleicked in ancient times before….
An extract from the comments on Gleick’s Forges post really got my goat. This was from a supposed “physicist””
He went from what seemed to be a fairly reasonable discussion of the science and physics involved to a totally unwarranted conclusion. Not A Scientist!
What triggered Dr. Peter Gleick to commit identity fraud on January 27th?
He knew my birthday was on Feb 20th and wanted to give me a present! My wife got me a Tee-shirt, I have to say his confession was a better gift.
>>
How ironic that a AGW proponent would crash and burn by flying too close to the sun – I guess they really DON’T believe the sun is hot 😉
>>
No, it’s Greek mythology that got it all wrong. The naive understanding of climate that they had at that time led them to think it was the sun that melted the wax. Now that we have a far more detailed understanding we realise that he must have flown into the tropical lower troposphere where all those “hot spots”
areshould be.Where’s this leave Waxman?
I think it says a great deal about the general credibility of our opponents that they virtually never accuse HI of defending second-hand smoke–it’s always “tobacco”–deliberately leaving readers to make the assumption that smoking was involved–and even a connection with smoking’s defenders in the 50s. In other words, they knowingly smear.
OK, now I’m starting to think about the top ten possible columnists for Forbes to replace Gleick.
10. Dr. Heidi Cullen
9. Dr. Scott Mandia
8. Dr. Joseph Romm
7. Dr. James Hansen
6. Dr. Raymond Orbach
5. Dr. Jean-Pascal van Ypersele
4. Dr. Rajendra Pachauri
3. Dr. Kevin Trenberth
2. Dr. Benjamin Santer
and the number one choice to replace Gleick is
1. Dr. Gavin Schmidt
YMMV
Maybe the first column could be titled “Climate Change and the Integrity of Science*”.
*updated
Talking of “anti-science”
This is just one of the reasons why the debate is not over, the science is not settled. Climate scientists seem to forget about how science is supposed to work and a stuck in a siege mentality.
It’s hard to believe there’s enough complexity to the issue to warrant such an avalanche of posts about Peter Gleick’s admission. He did wrong, He ‘fessed up. He will suffer for it. It appears to be an isolated incident. What else is there?
Has the climategate leaker/hacker come forward, or does this person remain an ‘anonymous coward’?
If Gleick was invited by HI to debate he would have received the invite from someone. he probably assumed that person’s identity.
Roger Knights,
passive smoking is not a health risk in the same way that HIV and AIDS are not linked, and evolution is a hoax because no one has seen it happen.
Heartland, like the CATO Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, are lobby groups, otherwise known as ‘think tanks’. CATO and Heartland both publish glossies downplaying the risks of tobacco, whether it be direct smoking, passive smoking or snuff or snus. You can find plenty of pdfs at Heartland seriously criticising the anti-smoking ‘propaganda – a couple I just looked at were not to do with passive smoking, they were about direct smoking.
Here is a document arguing that quit campaigns should be replaced by initiatives to move smokers on to ‘less harmful’ tobacco products.
Here is a Heartland document that quibbles about the number of smoking-related deaths per year in the US (direct smoking).
There are hundreds of ‘reports’ like this.
The tobacco companies and their shills know they can no longer spin the bull about direct smoking. So they spin with whatever is left. The risks of passive smoking is as solid science as the risks of direct smoking, but CATO and Heartland still publish on it – I think that’s because of their funding and also because of their political ideology.
Their best target is other libertarians, who divest themselves of any skepticism, objectivity and rational thought whenever the topic smacks of a nanny government. It wouldn’t matter if the science supporting a national scheme was ironclad and the policy implications unavoidable – libertarians (and many other kinds of conservatives) don’t like government bureaucracy and therefore will blindly accept whatever Junk Science* comes their way that supports their political position.
* (‘Junk Science’ is a blog written by Steve Milloy, which tries to delink passive smoking and health risk. It was discovered that Milloy was being paid by Philip Morris Tobacco – also while working for Fox News as their science guy. Fox retained his services and did not publicise his external funding)
The bottom line is that money talks, and big tobacco pays people to spin arns about tobacco. Heartland is one of a number of organizations that do it.
For Heartland, their political agenda informs their focus and argumentation in science. They are a lobby group. It’s not a secret or anything, it’s obvious.
Gleick received funding (public EPA grant records) to support his institute and pay himself a salary. The prospect that he could or interestingly, probably would loose a public debate organized by HI, left him with three options
1) Debate and loose = Salary and fawning AGW cultist admiration drys up. The “team” frowns upon him and he his cast out of the clique.
2) Decline to debate = You cannot support your position based on science and “salary” and fawning admiration dries up (stop here if ethical and honest) but you are still in with the team.
3) Decline to debate based on HI’s obviously agenda driven big fossil fuel funded donars. Steal donar list to attempt to publicly discredit HI and justify your reasons not to debate (especially after HI reps kicked sand in his face in the Forbes editorials). = Reputation intact with the team, the cause is defended and of course he still get to pay himself a nice salary derived in part from the taxpayers.
Option 3 seemed like a really smart idea until it all went pear shaped in a hurry. His actions can only evidence that there is a strange cult like undercurrent on that side of the things or simply, that he does not have any other marketable skills to sustain an income other than writing grants for taxpayer funds squeezed from the EPA udder .
– – – – – –
barry,
In one respect you are right. Since Gleick confessed (only partially) and made his non-apology I THINK YOU WOULD HAVE MANN AND JONES do the same. Please advise them accordingly.
In another respect you are wrong, Even if the Gleick affair and the CG1/CG2 affairs had similar contexts, which they do not, then Gleick is indeed one of America’s dumbest criminals. Whereas, ‘We’ of CG1/CG2 (aka as FOIA) appears much more intelligent than the ‘genius’ Gleick. Gleick’s heroism is actually just stupidity . . . if he was going to do a job at least he should have applied his publically acclaimed ‘genius’ to it.
John
I doubt it. While plenty of blogs are enjoying the access to Heartland’s papers, and one or two commenters are trying to excuse it, the general view is that Gleick’s action was indefensible. Eg, Gavin Schmidt’s inline response here.
Another good reason the FOIA leaker should release his zip password. It is time these fanatics were fully exposed and put to bed. GK
barry says:
February 26, 2012 at 4:26 am
“It’s hard to believe there’s enough complexity to the issue to warrant such an avalanche of posts about Peter Gleick’s admission. ”
Whatcha say? The debate is over?
re post by: Roger Knights says: February 26, 2012 at 1:18 am
Agreed. That was the exact assumptions I’d made, although as you saw, I’m unwilling to believe claims until I’ve at least looked into all major “sides” involved a bit myself. Particularly when the claim typically comes without any supporting links or data, as is almost always the case with the “heartland-tobacco” smear, at least that I’ve seen. I’d also have to say that I bet there are a lot of people who just repeat a smear they’ve heard without checking details… e.g., that subset are guilty of ‘ignorantly smearing,’ instead of ‘knowingly smearing.’ Difficult to say which category is worse, so I won’t even try. Both range from merely bad to pretty despicable, all depending on how vocal and adamant and extreme the particular individual happens to be about it.
From barry on February 26, 2012 at 5:47 am:
My, you’re a wonderful spinner of propaganda. Heartland has not argued against the proven link HIV -> AIDS. Nor have they argued that evolution is a hoax, and evolution has been observed repeatedly on the microbial level, and on the multicellular level as specific lifeforms successfully prosper in newly established niches.
“Passive smoking” is another critter. Remember the saying, “The solution to pollution is dilution.” Many people are exposed to smoke of many types, from wood and charcoal and burning oils, from grills and from cooking food, backyard trash burning, etc. Firefighters are exposed to lots of smoke with many known carcinogens. Yet there are studies that show firefighters do not have an increase in lung cancer (one, two). So what is so special about tobacco smoke that it warrants the ongoing propaganda war against the merest wisp of it anywhere someone else might perchance breathe in a fraction of it?
Yeah, so what? Smokers are nicotine addicts. Companies are doing great business now selling “nicotine replacement” products that deliver the nicotine to the addicts without the smoking. But those products tend to be expensive, more so than smoking itself. I’ve known people trying to quit who gave up trying to pay for the replacements and just went back to smoking. The tobacco companies are making affordable smokeless products that still give the addicts their nicotine hit. As mentioned here, they can be very discrete, no spitting needed. And the addicts are not getting all that smoke in their lungs thus not getting the lung cancer and other respiratory ailments.
Really, if you got a problem with “harm reduction” among addicts, you should be campaigning against supplying “free needles” to those who “shoot up” their drug of choice.
Like your previous link, this is not a Heartland document, merely archived on their server space. Likewise there are documents archived on WUWT (wordpress) space that are not “WUWT documents”. This is a 1998 Cato Institute piece, arguing about exact attribution.
Here’s a tip: Finding something in someone’s reference pile does not denote acceptance of all or anything in that reference. You haven’t shown that Heartland accepts anything in that 1998 piece. And portraying that they do by calling it a “Heartland document” is, well, less than honest.
re post by: barry says: February 26, 2012 at 5:47 am
Thanks, Barry, for further cementing the impression that Heartland is being unfairly demonized and smeared by fanatics who could give a whit about the actual science and facts involved. Start your rant with a few over the top an incorrect analogies, then make a reasonable sounding statement followed by links to…. did you even bother actually reading the documents at your own links???!!!?? You just shot yourself down entirely with your own links. Then you move on to name calling and demonizing, projecting eeeeeeee-vil beliefs and morals onto an organization that by your own links is producing hard facts and relevant data which debunks the poor if not fraudulent use of statistics.
The day I’m convinced that hard science and facts somehow prove the opposite of what that data actually shows is the day someone ought to institutionalize me. It’s mind blowing that people actually try to pull this — and somehow think it proves or helps their cause — rather than tanks it.
Anthony, Can we get back to actual science ( a nice article about Sun for instance) , all this talk about Peter Gleick, who is [snip], and Heartland ,who are arguably slightly unhinged on some matters, is getting terribly boring.
REPLY: See the latest post The Skeptics Case
http://pacinst.org/reports/
The reason Gleick is referred to as a water scientists is because that’s what he is – as the reports at above links show … he is not a climate scientist.
Just last year Gore put up $300 million in advertising for the Global Warming cause. And Gleick is worried about $7 million from Hartland?
Feel the pain.
G. Karst says:
February 26, 2012 at 10:19 am
“Another good reason the FOIA leaker should release his zip password. It is time these fanatics were fully exposed and put to bed. GK”
He/She is probably waiting for the right moment. I wonder what is considered to be “the right moment”….Copenhagen and then Durban….maybe just after the release of the next IPCC report?
kadaka and Rational Db8,
correct, Heartland didn’t author the documents. But why do you think they archive this stuff? Intellectual curiosity, do you reckon?
Both documents were written by other policy think tank members (Cato Institute and Capital Research Center). All three lobby groups have received tobacco funding, and all three do PR for tobacco companies, among other industry.
Heartland’s tobacco lobbying is mainly at government level and not so much in the public eye (they’ve removed their central policy document on tobacco from their website), but the internet is a big archive.
1999 Heartland funding request to Philip Morris – http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/documentStore/j/v/y/jvy82i00/Sjvy82i00.pdf
2009 policy overview – http://www.illinoissmokersrights.com/heartland_chgo_meeting_071105.html (the link to the full doc is the one that has been removed from the Heartland website)
Someone quibbled upthread about whether Heartland confines its lobbying to passive smoking. That’s what I’m responding to. It doesn’t. Heartland also lobbies for lowered taxes on cigarettes and downplays the risks of direct smoking. It’s perfectly legal for Heartland to lobby for big tobacco and any other legal entity. I don’t know why anyone would bother trying to downplay that Heartland does this, but it reeks of spin when they do.
Sorry – the second link was the wrong one. Here it is:
2009 policy overview – http://www.tobacco.org/news/279393.html
(the link to the missing Heartland doc is bottom right)