The Gleick Tragedy

I just remember a fragmentary line from a childhood favourite of mine, music with the sung lines, when the baddie is finally brought to justice:
“Hooray the bad old glockenspiel is dead! Boom-diddly-ai-dee boom diddly-ai-dee boom diddly-ai-dee boom”… or some such words. Anyone remember?
Of course, now it’s the “bad old gleickenspiel”.

The authorities should be all over the email Gleick alleges to have anonymously sent to 15 people on or about Feb 14 which he also alleges contained only HI sourced docs. Let me explain why.
To me Gleick appears to be an extremely active and zealously enthusiastic member of the small group of ‘cause’ activists who are well known from CG1/CG2 and well know from other advocating activities for anti-skeptic PR campaigns. He appears to me by nature to be intrinsically a group player in the ’cause’ over an extended period of time (since AR4).
Gleick alleges to have sent an anonymous email (?on Feb 14, at 9:13 a.m. Pacific?) to ‘15’ ‘friends’ that were ‘ journalists and experts working on climate issues’. The alleged ‘15’ have not been identified. That email, Gleick also alleges, contained what he said at that time were all docs from HI. Gleick, contrary to his past active close collaborative behavior for ‘cause’ advocacy, subtly and without actually saying so in his confession on Feb 20 leaves the reader feeling that he was the sole perpetrator of the fraud. Read his confession. That is a subtle piece of lawyer handiwork. He does not say he was alone in the perpetration.
My impression of ‘cause’ behavior, based on my observations of public dialog during several years before the start of the Gleick affair in early Jan 2012, is of an extraordinarily tight nexus centered on the small group of activist ‘cause’ centric climate scientists; see, among other things, the CG1/CG2 docs. That was all before the beginning of Jan 2012.
NOTE: I leave aside for the time being another interesting emphasis which is whether PI staff and clerical members could have known of Gleick’s perpetration while it was in progress.
John

By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent. Telegraph.
16 Jan 2012
“Michael Mann vows to keep up the “street fight” against climate change deniers”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8282028/Michael-Mann-vows-to-keep-up-the-street-fight-against-climate-change-deniers.html
Even though the climate change debate is calmer today, with even Republican candidates in the US taking the issue seriously, Professor Mann insisted scientists have to keep up the pressure to prove man made climate change is a threat that needs to be tackled.
“Scientists have to recognise they are in a street fight,” he warned.
—-
By Bryan Walsh . Time Science.
Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012
Mann realizes that as long as he keeps conducting climate research, he’ll be a target for tough personal attacks. “I fully recognize that this is going to continue for the rest of my life,” he says. “And probably beyond.” He’s all right with that now, even though he knows that his side will always be fighting the climate war at least partially — and voluntarily — disarmed. “We can’t maintain the moral high ground if we adopt street fighting tactics ourselves,” says Mann. “We feel that we can and will win an honest debate.” As much as Mann wants to be a climate warrior, that’s really the only way he knows how to fight.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2107747,00.html?xid=tweetbut
—
Silly bugger, in January he wanted to get into a street fight. Well, we all know how that went. Six weeks later, he wants it to stop.
Please, Please Anthony, can we have another post about Michael Mann, the last one was hilarious, the next one will be even better.

“Tragedy” implies some kind of nobility or innocence. Gleick’s actions contain neither.

I think Steve M’s take is sound
“Whether Gleick, a member of the U.S. intellectual elite and a former student and coauthor of John Holdren, Obama’s Science Adviser, is ever charged is a different issue than whether his acts meet the elements of 18 USC 1343.”
That pretty much sums up where this is going. Heartland is in Chicago (hint: Rahm Emanuel), Gleick is in CA (hint: Jerry Brown)…and well, you know the rest

Anthony,
I don’t see this anecdote highlighted anywhere on this blog, but I think it should be. It’s a good reminder there are sane people on both sides of the debate. Over at All Models Are Wrong near the end of January there was a pretty intense debate over ethics, you may have read it (http://allmodelsarewrong.com/all-blog-names-are-wrong/). Mr. Gleick, who we now know was engaging in a little climatic espionage, was pushing some rather shady tactics. Some of his fellow scientists, to their credit, told him to sod off in so many words, including this rather prescient quote: “@nmrqip: @richardabetts Yep. Lying ‘to avoid being misunderstood’ never ends well @PeterGleick @flimsin”. Talk about foreshadowing. Doesn’t that just about sum up this entire fiasco?

May be some “management” going on at the BBC Richard Black blog. I would be classified as a ‘denier’ on previous posts. I get a message now that tells me I need to update my profile.When I click the link I get blown off and it tells me comments are not being accepted at this time.
And strangely the votes are very high for the AGW proponents whereas ‘deniers’ are usually well in majority
Just thought to mention in case others find the same problem.

@MattN
MattN says:
February 28, 2012 at 6:58 pm
“Appearance of hypocrisy”? Seriously, Andrew? “Appearance”?!?
Huh? Was that to me?
If so, hypocrisy?

Mike says:
February 28, 2012 at 6:45 pm
“Please, let’s get back to the science. I have been a skeptic for years and have followed Anthony’s blog for years, including “Climategate”. But really…this is getting too much for me.”
Mike, you don’t have to read the Gleick threads, there have been plenty of others over the past days, but you seem to have missed them. But of course you didn’t miss them.
So why is it that you don’t like other people analyzing the organized fanaticism of the raving lunatic CO2AGW scientists, Mike?

Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me
I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed
They made me look sorta dumb with their fingers
And their thumbs in the shape of an “L” on their foreheads
Well deniers start coming, and they don’t stop coming
Fed up with rules and I hit Heartland running
Didn’t make sense not to smack them some
My brain’s so smart but my head’s so dumb
So little for you, so much for me
So what’s wrong with taking the baksheesh?
You’ll never know what I did there
I’ll always whine ’cause it’s not fair
Hey now, I’m an all star got my fame on, okay?
Hey now, don’t you squawk loud, leave me ‘lone now, go ‘way
All climate “science” has gone cold
Only an ethics’ star can break the mold

Ben Shapiro at Breitbart about the NYT and its coverage of the Gleick affair.
http://bigjournalism.com/bshapiro/2012/02/28/new-york-times-uses-false-data-to-smear-koch-brothers/

DirkH says:
February 28, 2012 at 8:53 pm
—
Thanks for the heads up, DirkH.

Jeremy says:
February 28, 2012 at 9:05 pm
For those seeking to investigate Peter Gleick further, Amazon.com is a gold mine for Peters closest connections!!!
William K. Reilly has a foreward in Peter’s latest book:

A foreword, even?
Heh.
All these groups are thick as thieves, since that’s what they are. Money and connections form a tangled web of historic proportions.

When the cold wind blows it will turn your head around.
James Taylor

I’m not a concern troll but I would like to be able to tell if I’m reading Romm’s blog or WUWT without looking at the banner. Lately the two sites have little distinguishing differences. I was actually concerned with all the trash talk as the Bloggies were winding down but WUWT fared well.
I quit reading Stephen Goddard’s site because of the anger and I can drop this site for a while until this blows over. It turns out most recent posts are from other sites anyway, and the comments are not worth mousing through. Including this one. JMO

heh: found about = found out

Interesting new climate blog just spotted:
http://allmodelsarewrong.com/
The title of the blog is from a quote by the statistician George E. P. Box which is a mantra of modellers everywhere:
“essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful”
The blog is the creation of a climate modeller at the University of Bristol.
Interestingly, it runs an ‘illuminating’ dialogue with one Peter Gleick, prior to his Seppuku moment, and Prof Richard Betts of the Met Office Hadley Centre chips in:
Gleick: Not all models are wrong
Betts: Which model is right? Please can I have it?
No new post since the Gleick affair, but it may be worth keeping an eye on.

The new “satirical logo” has the wrong finger pointing up.
Just sayin’…………. 😉

From RC:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/07/how-soon-is-now/

Peter Gleick says:
7 Jul 2011 at 9:44 AM
Thank you for pointing out that the source of the funding, while of interest and relevant for understanding possible conflicts of interest, is far less critical than the quality of the science itself. Good research can, and is, done with funding from dubious sources. But bad research is bad research, no matter WHO funds it.

So why did he become so obsessed with Heartland’s funding?
Why didn’t he just expose the more critical quality (or lack thereof) of the science Heartland publishes?
I suggest there’s nothing substantially wrong with “Heartland’s science”, therefore in frustration he resorted to attacking the source for “far less critical” attributes. The same frustration level Mann must have felt trying to get the MWP and LIA out of his hockey stick handle and keeping the tree ring is a thermometer meme alive.
Hide the decline!
Fabricate the anti-science conspiracy!

Trashmouth, those lyrics were the first thing I thought of when I saw that graphic! LOL!
great work on the graphic AND the posts! And CTM, you and Anthorny are EXACTLY right – Gleick has NEVER confessed and is still trying to salvage a win. Likewise, warmist blogs are STILL proclaiming the essential truth of the fake memo, which someone has named “the Protocols of the Elders of Heartland.” Until they are forced to admit the fraud behind ALL of their charges, the war goes on!!!

Smokey,
Did you check again? Someone called Mann a p*ssy… Maybe yours got through?

53 comments and STILL nothing from Connolley, Gates, physicist, Exp, and others from the AGW Control Freaks crowd. Not surprising–they’ve been severely disappointed by one of their “standard bearers” so they’re avoiding this telling episode at all costs; they have nothing to defend.
But projecting this little affair to the bigger issue–that of fudging, impugning, infilling, projecting, hiding, threatening, lawbreaking, and a dozen other highly questionable and unethical practices commonly used by those in the AGWCF–they are now finding their positions highly indefensible also. Maybe the world’s highly critical reaction to Gleick’s antics will make them reconsider their own.
Meanwhile, Mann says he’s out in the streets “fighting”. But what a joke. Most of the others are hiding while some of their disciples are posting strange tributes on other sites attempting to shore up Gleick’s “honorable” reputation and a severely damaged cause. But such tributes are really eulogies for a Gleick that no longer exists and is professionally and ethically dead and burried.
This could actually be the turning point in the big war on AGWCF, for many people don’t really understand the science or the UN’s intentions, and many people get their “news” from the “drive-by” media so they’re unable to formulate an informed opinion. But what they can easily understand is that Gleick is a criminal, one of the top leaders in AGWCF, and a veritable “expert” in ethics, to boot!. It won’t matter about the science, the IPCC, or fanciful excuses from the media anymore.
And it won’t matter how much “street fighting” Mann does. His biggest “weapon” has been shown to be as questionable as Gleick’s forged document. Mann has to be “mental” if he still doesn’t understand that.

Jeremy,
You may find this interesting how Reilly thinks with respect to CO2 as a pollutant, national energy policy, and cap and trade as a control measure. I was doing research at the EPA Atmospheric Sciences Research Laboratory when he was the politically appointed head of EPA. During that time, objective research was being replaced by subjective research to support the administrations policies.http://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/history/topics/risk/02.html.

I have backed scanned all the messages and I have not been able to find anything referencing the ” Climate Lord on High Kevin T’s. ” take on the state of his buddy Peter. Did I miss it, or is he just being smart and not saying a dam thing? Maybe he just has his hand up Mann’s backside and using him as a puppet again for all the street fighting? Sorry for the visual but then again it would make for a nice cartoon by Josh 🙂

“Gleick has NEVER confessed and is still trying to salvage a win. Likewise, warmist blogs are STILL proclaiming the essential truth of the fake memo, which someone has named ‘the Protocols of the Elders of Heartland.’ ”
As liberals / progressives have stated in the past… “The nature of the evidence is irrelevant; it’s the seriousness of the charge that matters.”

reason said on February 29, 2012 at 7:46 am:
The Gleick logo is RESPLENDENT.
But is it a theft of INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY?
While Googling I found this, see the graphic. Decide for yourself!
(I’d go with the explanation of artists that it was “subconsciously inspired” and label it an “homage.”) 😉

The biggest irony of this tragic comedy seem to be that for all that the crazed communist hippies with their self-proclaimed righteous cause are nought but a corporatist wannabes, PR hacks, and puny lobbyist, working for Big Funds, Big Greens, Big Coal, Big Oil, Big Steel, Big Nuclear,… Big Everything Monopolized Oligopol, that is.
And their only so called grass roots supporters are the extremists and fundamentalists of socialists and environmentalists, that ever so love to hate the very same corporatists they root for.
These extremists and fundamentlists are also the only ones that seem to support the new versions of the NGO complex, such as Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and WWF, called Big NGO–the industrilized edition–run by the very same BIg Corporatist Monopolized Oligopolists they so riot and rage against.
Talk about being stuck on stupid. :-()
I wonder what’ll happen when the real grass root hippies trully see that they’ve been had, used and abused seven days to sunday by the very Big NGOs they have given their time, energy, and money too. And when they understand that their lovely Big NGOs are nothing but coroporatists personal ponzi schemes to have the cake and eat it too–playing both sides of the field as it were. :p

Found a very balanced Chicago Tribune editorial. Dated 2/25, not sure if it was mentioned before.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-climate-20120225,0,3701177.story

…
Gleick said his judgment was “blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts — often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated — to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate. …”
Two points here. First: Yes, a rational public debate is desperately needed. But Gleick’s skulduggery in obtaining documents and leaking them to bloggers doesn’t advance that goal.
Second: You get a rational debate when both sides are able to fully air their evidence and interpretations. Scientists shouldn’t — can’t — be in the business of trying to discredit opponents with sneaky Internet ruses, even if some of their opponents sometimes stoop to such dishonest tactics. Note that we’re not dropping any sly hints here about Heartland, which in this drama is the victim of chicanery.
…
Gleick may have thought he could undercut Heartland and thereby advance the case for global warming. Instead, he fueled doubts about which side is right in this long-running debate.
That’s a shame. Science relies on multiple layers of honesty. They include the honorably conducted gathering and analysis of facts, a perpetual quest for irrefutable evidence supporting conclusions — and trust that everyone is acting with integrity.
When scientific truth becomes sufficiently compelling, it matters little what the critics or skeptics say. It doesn’t matter if everyone doesn’t believe. Doubters cannot make the Earth flat.
…

Refreshing read. And great views on real science, especially this: “…a perpetual quest for irrefutable evidence supporting conclusions…” This science sure ain’t settled.

Scottish Sceptic says:
February 29, 2012 at 12:27 am
I hope that no one has forgotten to send a copy of this to the FBI, together with original documentation and/or references to source material so that it is ready to go to court.

I log in every day hoping there’s an update regarding law enforcement formally taking up this matter. To date I’ve been disappointed, and I worry that, in the end, Gleick will avoid criminal sanctions.

Re LA Times: You should reconsider that medical Marijuana thing, Californians.

1DandyTroll says:
February 29, 2012 at 8:39 am

I wonder what’ll happen when the real grass root hippies trully see that they’ve been had, used and abused seven days to sunday by the very Big NGOs they have given their time, energy, and money too. And when they understand that their lovely Big NGOs are nothing but coroporatists personal ponzi schemes to have the cake and eat it too–playing both sides of the field as it were. :p

That will never happen. It won’t because true belief requires them to shut off the possibility of alternate, valid realities. They need an antagonist. It is human nature to root for something, uncertainty is uncomfortable. Ultimately, they need a side to be on and Big NGO is the only side. That is why, through the ages, people have been so easily exploited by those they believe have their best interests in mind. I know … I used to be an environmentalist. I still share some of their sentiments, however, now with an open mind knowing that the corporate/environmental complex works both sides. Now, I walk carefully through the halls of academia, witnessing first hand how otherwise very intelligent people accept BS unquestionably. I learned quickly not to openly contest CAGW lest I be pummeled by raised eyebrows of incredulity and risk being labeled and marginalized. Anyway, environmentalism as I once knew it is extinct.

Update 74: The LA times piece.
Wholey crap, that piece was awful, obnoxious, packed full of lies, and worse.

Is Gleick pronounced to rhyme with geek or prick?

Anthony and team, thanks for your incredible efforts! The La Times piece is not really unusual, just more in-yer-face than the usual incredibly silly MSM stuff. The comments following the article in the LA Times were mostly better examples of writing than the article itself and were generally condemnatory of it, which may be an indication that even in California good sense is not in short supply.
Here in New Zealand, our major daily papers have not uttered a syllable about l’affaire Peter Gleick that I have been able to find, but minor celebrities of stage and screen are given massive and totally unearned credence in environmental matters. A Kiwi actress has been part of a greenpeas occupation and protest, which involved unfurling a banner and attaching it to the highest part of an oil exploration ship; this was featured in most of the nation’s press, but the fact that these idiots broke a raft of important environmental safety regulations designed to protect local wildlife before they were arrested, charged and trundled off by the local constabulary has not been mentioned.

Speaking of the strange “logic” of the current LAT editors and posing as someone else, the same Update 73 Michael Hiltzek of the LAT was busted for sock-puppeting on his own official LAT blog in a pretty big dustup with Patterico a while back and was apparently ‘demoted’ to his current status – resulting from a debate involving the city of Costa Mesa’s attempt to check the immigration status of the people it arrested. But Hiltzek had also directly lied about ~”what the Social Security Administrators say” in a Table he’d linked to in his argument – which apparently no on but me went to, because who in their right mind wants to look at some freaking SS tables – claiming the Table[s] and the SS Administrators said that illegal immigration would cure SS’s future financial woes. But if you went to the SSA’s Tables, the SS Administrators thankfully explained right above them that they were saying a direct opposite of what Hiltzek was claiming they were saying: the SS Administrators instead specifically said they weren’t saying anything at all about how the scenarios in their tables might affect SS’s future financial well-being. There was also almost no way the Tables could be interpreted as indicating much hope for SS.
Hiltzek had also been advertised as a financial/business writer for the LAT!
I posted Hiltzek’s non-sockpuppet “logic” at Patterico’s at the time and at Hiltzek’s LAT blog site after Hiltzek’s demotion, when Matt Welch took over temporarily during the removal of Hiltzek transition to respond to criticisms. But Hiltzek stayed at the LAT and Welch wisely left.

JPeden,
I had forgotten about Hiltzik’s sock-puppetry. It was fairly trivial compared to Gleick’s impersonation, but a shared penchant for assuming a false identity goes some way to explain Hiltzik’s indulgent attitude to the breach of ethics.
Here’s the link to a post from “Patterico’s Pontifications” in 2006 for anyone who is interested.

@Sky – It has all the hallmarks of a classic tragedy, the high position, the fatal character flaw and the public fall from grace. I think it would make a fabulous opera. I said so in comments a few days ago, there’s such wonderful scenes like the first Ethics committee meeting with Gleik as the new chair, clearly he has a solo with supporting chorus (committee members), the public duette between Laker and Gleik about the invitation where Laker has no idea what it bubbling around inside Gleik’s personal madness. No, the script could be have been written by Sophocles and would sit happily next to Ajax.

“admitted earlier this month to borrowing a page directly from the denialists’ playbook. Posing as someone else…” Playbook? OK geniuses, name ONE INCIDENT where a skeptic posed as somebody else to steal documents and commit wire fraud.”
Don’t worry Anthony, I’m sure that Dr Gleick can produce a copy of the ‘Denialist Handbook’ if you ask nicely.

“playbook” — receiving factual, authentic information from actual 3rd parties (likely an actual insider) is being compared to a fake insider, with forged documents committing wirefraud… right….

Another Peter Gleick and William Reilly (head of WWF) connection:
http://grist.org/article/roberts5/
(Reilly also wrote a foreward for Peter Gleick’s new book, which comes out in May)

From my other favorite website, RealClearPolitics.com :
“Fake But Accurate” Science
By Robert Tracinski
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/02/29/fake_but_accurate_science_113294.html
A serious rebuke to those who excuse and/or defend Gleick.

re Brookings poll, more proof it’s a religion:
28 Feb: MSNBC: AP: Seth Bortenstein: Poll: US belief in warming rises with thermometer
Americans’ belief in global warming is on the rise, along with temperatures and surprising weather changes, according to a new university poll.
The survey by the University of Michigan and Muhlenberg College says 62 percent of those asked last December think the Earth is getting warmer…
Nearly half the people who say they believe in global warming base that on personal observations of the weather. Climate researchers say that’s reaching the correct conclusion for reasons that aren’t quite right.
When asked an open-ended question about why they thought the Earth was warming, one-quarter of those surveyed pointed to temperatures they experience and another quarter cited other weather changes. One in 7 mentioned melting glaciers and polar sea ice, and 1 in 8 noted media coverage. Only 8 percent mentioned scientific research.
“It seems to be driven by an increased connection that the public is making between what they see in terms of weather conditions and climate change,” said Chris Borick, the director Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion.
The poll was conducted from Dec. 4 to Dec. 21, after the U.S. experienced a record 14 billion-dollar weather disasters in 2011, including killer tornadoes, an unusual northeastern hurricane, a devastating southwestern drought and floods along major rivers…
“I’m pleased that Americans believe in thermometers,” said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver. “People feel confident about what they personally experience. They mix up the difference between weather and climate. It’s not unexpected. It’s human nature.”…
NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt called strange daily weather “the visceral experience of climate” for people…
The survey of 887 people has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
The findings are similar to other recent polls, including a 2010 AP-Stanford University Poll showing 3 out of 4 Americans thought global temperatures were going up, said Stanford poll chief Jon Krosnick.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46562357/ns/us_news-environment/
2007: Barry Rabe: Can Congress govern the Climate?
http://www.nyu.edu/brademas/pdf/Rabe_Formatted-_FINAL.pdf

Greg Laden does not do a lot of moderating it has to be said.
Just read this comment: http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2012/02/heartland-1_ncse-0.php#comment-6235931
Don’t sugar it up Markus, tell it straight!

Here’s a very weird apologist who speculates that Gleick’s actions will actually lead to acceptance of 5 trillion USD’s worth of “market-base solutions” battling climate change.
http://gigaom.com/cleantech/why-peter-gleik-is-the-milken-moment-for-climate-change/
“Jigar Shah is the CEO of the Carbon War Room, a nonprofit that harnesses the power of entrepreneurs to implement market-driven solutions to climate change and create a post-carbon economy.”
Don’t know if that is the same carbon war room inhabited by archwarmist and super CO2 emitter Richard Branson. Or the same carbon war room of which the brother of the Figueres IPCC / UNEP / UNFCCC woman is the chairman of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Mar%C3%ADa_Figueres
Talk about Nomenklatura…

People keep floating the idea that Heartland “set this up,” by feeding the fake memo to Gleick. Shall we say I find this implausible, to say the least.
This would depend on Gleick magically knowing what specific documents to get that would reinforce his fake memo, and that he would magically choose to specifically commit wire fraud by impersonating a board member (since he hasn’t alleged that a *strategy* was given to him by the person who sent him the fake document).
This is unbelievable on par with a conspiracy theory that a bank is trying to commit insurance fraud by way of inducing arson by giving out matchbooks (I know, anachronistic example)..
It would be laughable as a movie plot, impossible in real life. You would have to deliver a detailed plot to carry out such a plan by inducement, and Gleick would be certifiable to *not* release that inducement as his first defense, if only as a “post-fail revenge move.”

Update 77: The only part of the true story SciBlogs resident Froot Loop Greg Laden missed, was the part where a Mossad agent acting on the orders of the CIA met Elvis Presley in a 7/11 store to pass on the fake document.

I just read Shawn Otto’s blog post and came away shaking my head.
Shawn is a world-class writer. He wrote the screenplay for the award winning film House of Sand and Fog. You would think he would know something about writing.
Can I ask the obvious question here?
Wouldn’t a writing analysis reveal high scores for both the writer and the person they are trying to imitate? In other words, if Gleick was trying to write like Bast, would an analysis reveal that the document sounds both like Gleick and Bast?

Heartland attorneys take note, here is a look at what can happen in an intellectual property case:
http://www.techspot.com/news/47614-western-digital-to-swap-certain-hdd-assets-with-toshiba-moves-closer-to-hitachi-gst-merger.html

“The news comes amid a busy last few months for hard drive manufacturers recovering from a series of floods that struck Thailand last year. It also follows an arbitration award in November ordering WD [Western Digital] to pay Seagate a hefty $525 million in damages for allegedly coaxing “confidential information and trade secrets” from a former Seagate employee. Western Digital has denied those allegations and it plans to contest the ruling.”

Peter ‘Principle’ Gleick confessed because he knows just how serious this can become. The wire fraud and libel issues are one thing, but the devious appropriation of Heartland’s protected private property could be in itself huge.
While these are not the exact same things (after all, no two things are ever the same), it is really not that large a stretch.

UPDATE77: 6:50PM SciBlogs resident crank Greg Laden has a wild conspiracy theory according to Mr. Worthing who writes: Meanwhile, on another planet…Greg Laden suffers from a shortage of oxygen to the brain… (worth a read, wow, just wow – A)
All he is missing is the saucer people and reverse vampires.

RockyRoad says:
February 29, 2012 at 7:14 am
“53 comments and STILL nothing from Connolley, Gates, physicist, Exp, and others from the AGW Control Freaks crowd.”
In fairness to RGates, he disagrees with us and loses it occasionally but he’s never indicated support for the kind of practises of which Gleick has been found to be involved in.
OK. He is more trusting in Climate Models than I am, but that’s just a disagreement about the science.
Let’s not lump everyone in together. We have the moral high ground and are confident in our interpretation of the scientific evidence. So please beware of stereotyping or even the appearance of stereotyping.
And please forgive my arrogance in requesting this sanctimonious injunction from someone you’ve never met.

I know a very good computer forensics expert, and I asked him some questions about ‘stylometry’. It had some validity, but you need a lot of text, because it requires decent statistics. A page-and-a-half of partly cut-and-pasted text won’t cut it.
As a RealScientist (TM) i’m also incredibly skeptical about a noobie downloading a program off the web and using it, without understanding the first principles of what he’s doing. This is the sort of thing we warn graduate students against.
If Mr. Otto thinks this is science, no wonder he’s so confused about climate.

Laden’s new theory only lacks facts AND logic, so it’s perfect for the AGW crowd:
For example:
Why would Heartland sue anyone? Once you sue there is something called ” discovery.” And a conspiracy this extensive really wouldn’t be that hard to figure out. It also would depend on your target going crazy. Who plans for that?

Joe says:
March 1, 2012 at 7:09 am
Does a reverse vampire suck on your ankle instead of your neck?

Hu McCulloch says:
March 1, 2012 at 8:13 am
“After directly accusing Bast and Mosher of composing and planting the fake memo, Laden adds way down at the end of his post,
It is a conspiracy theory, produced for your amusement and, admittedly, as troll bait.”
He must have added that after receiving multiple comments of medical advice. I didn’t see it when I commented.

>>Kevin Trenberth excuses Gleick’s criminal behavior as “advocacy”
>>”I don’t see this as the end of the road for Peter by any means.”
True.
1. Dr. Gleick will probably find a place among his supporting scientist friends.
2. He will still find ways to get government (our) money (assuming he avoids jail).
3. He will still spout off at the mouth.
4. It will be trivially easy to show it would be very dangerous to believe or follow a single thing any of these people say about anything.
Ever.

“I think this pushes Peter in the direction of getting even more involved on the side of being an advocate,” Trenberth
Yes, he’ll have to work at jobs where people expect him to be lying: advocate, PR man, spin-meister …… but never a publishing research scientist ever again, and no ethics speeches either. [Unless he gets a whitewash special pass from the team’s connections.]

I’m still a little bothered by the confession itself. A sudden fit of conscience seems unlikely, and larger crimes have been covered up by political movements historically and recently.
There’s more to that part of the story.

ahh Dr. Trenberth.
The Little Bo Peep of Climate Scientology. First he lost all the missing heat.
Now he has lost his moral compass.
Becoming ever more desperate and petty as his life long career derails in front of his eyes.
And he could have been a contender.

“Peter Gleick’s career isn’t over despite the big scar linked to his duping the Heartland Institute, says Kevin Trenberth, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.”
Great. Not only do we still have to find Trenberth’s “missing heat”, now we also have to find his missing ethics. Fill in the blank: “CAGW alarmists couldn’t find their [blank] with a [blank].”

“I think this pushes Peter in the direction of getting even more involved on the side of being an advocate,” Trenberth told ME on Friday.
This affair has really been a treasure trove for CAGW advocates to identify themselves as such and to tell you what they really believe! It’s not about science, it’s about activism, or as I prefer to call it – religion. There is no line that can’t be crossed because anything is okay if it’s for “The Cause.” Since they draw no line, I would hope that the justice system will draw one, but history has not been very encouraging so far. As long as no line is drawn for these people, you can expect their (illegal) activities to escalate.

“CAGW alarmists couldn’t find their [blank] with a [blank].”
honor
troop of Boy Scouts

Markus Fitzhenry says:
March 1, 2012 at 3:15 pm
================
Have to admit, I do like this part of your comment at JoNova:
“If the likes of Greg Laden are in their camp, people need to be wary while these crocodiles attempt a death roll.”

“I think this pushes Peter in the direction of getting even more involved on the side of being an advocate,” Trenberth told ME on Friday.
At least now we know what differentiates a mainstream Climate Scientist from a Climate Advocate – getting caught, eh, Kevin? Thanks for fingering yourself.

Defence of Gleick follows the standard pattern of the CRU people and associates outlined in the leaked emails and usually carried out by members of Realclimate. Why would they defend Gleick so vehemently? He is not a climate person. However, he is very much a part of and critical to the group pursuing Agenda 21. Here are the details of his importance to the larger objective.
http://drtimball.com/2012/peter-gleicks-actions-exposes-end-justifies-means-mentality-poses-problem-for-un-agenda-21/

What else is acceptable? Old fashioned burglary? Arson? Car bombs?

Well, since the ELF does just that, and their members feed regularly at the Greenpeace/WWF/Sierra Club/PETA trough, I’d say, “Duh.”

Greg Laden is an ass, he has now added the following to his post:
(It has come to my attention that even some serious sciency type people who understand climate change, and climate change politics, are taking this conspiracy theory seriously. It is a conspiracy theory, produced for your amusement and, admittedly, as troll bait. If it turns out to be true, of course, I will delete this parenthetical remark! That is all, please carry on.)

D. Patterson blurted:

It can well be imagined what other people may think about your efforts to dictate what you believe …

Romm – is that you? So, don’t you think you should wait a bit for me to actually dictate something before you call for my beheading? So far I’m only discussing my personal opinion and actions I’m willing to take. If introducing an opinion becomes equivalent to efforts to dictate then we’re all headed for the chopping block. See you there.

“UPDATE78: 11AM 3/1 A new documentary about water by the makers of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ features none other than Peter Gleick. h/t to the Daily Bayonet Weekly Roundup.”
Folks just love drama. This new water film sure looks dramatic.
Maybe the Hollywood version of drama is just not satisfying for folks any more.
Today folks want drama that appears to be real (backed up by science).
It looks like scientists are the new Hollywood, and they seem to have taken a liking to their new dramitic role.
Unfortunately, scientists like Peter Gleick cross the line, leaving the science far behind.
…….or maybe it’s fortunate that our children have such obvious examples as Gleick to teach them the value of skepticism.
Wonderful revalations lately.

Is this all “too much”? If Anthony had perpetrated a comparable fraud against one of the AGW fanatics the entire skeptic side would be buried under a kiloton of tar by now. In addition this is NOT an anomaly. The average citizen needs a huge amount of feedback to counter the decades of misinformation the Warmist Alarmist community has spread world wide. The hubris Gleick has displayed here is also in evidence in all of the “Climategate” malfactors. This has been made possible because the mainsteam media has been able to ignore every action by these charlatans as not being newsworthy. We absolutely must bring this to the attention of the average voter by whatever means we can. We have played by the civil rules for years while the other side has had its way with the truth.

In the same Politico’s Morning Energy:
An FBI spokesman says that the bureau’s discussions with the Heartland Institute over the theft of stolen climate documents remain in a very early stage, but the spokesman stressed it cannot be called an investigation. “We cannot conduct a criminal investigation unless there is a clear allegation that a federal criminal statute has been violated,” Ross Rice, an FBI agent and spokesman from the Chicago field office, said via email. “Based on what we know so far, there is no evidence that has occurred.”
The FBI is either playing its cards close to the chest, or they need a clue-by-four.

Thank you Katherine for “clue-by-four”, an elegant turn of phrase.
Lest we forget, the White House is the Chicago Machine and all that it implies.
That includes DOJ ergo FBI.

Consider this just published in GSA Today:
A human-induced hothouse climate?
David L. Kidder, Thomas R. Worsley
Dept. of Geological Sciences, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701, USA
ABSTRACT
Hothouse climate has been approached or achieved more than a dozen times in Phanerozoic history. Geologically rapid onset of hothouses in 10^4–10^5 yr occurs as HEATT (haline euxinic acidic thermal transgression) episodes, which generally persist for less than 1 million years. Greenhouse climate preconditions conducive to hothouse development allowed large igneous provinces (LIPs), combined with positive feedback amplifiers, to force the Earth to the hothouse climate state. The two most significant Cenozoic LIPs (Columbia River Basalts and much larger Early Oligocene Ethiopian Highlands) failed to trigger a hothouse climate from icehouse preconditions, suggesting that such preconditions can limit the impact of CO2 emissions at the levels and rates of those LIPs.
Human burning of fossil fuels can release as much CO2 in centuries as do LIPs over 10^4–10^5 yr or longer. Although burning fossil fuels to exhaustion over the next several centuries may not suffice to trigger hothouse conditions, such combustion will probably stimulate enough polar ice melting to tip Earth into a greenhouse climate. Long atmospheric CO2 residence times will maintain that state for tens of thousands of years.
http://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/22/2/article/i1052-5173-22-2-4.htm

I have one question for Mr Gleick. “Would you commit perjury in a Congressional hearing?”

WOW WOW WOW. Peter Gleick connections – connected to John Holdren the Science Advisor for President Obama. As well as former California Governor Jerry Brown. Data for Peter’s PHD thesis was provided by James Hanson.
I suggest someone screen captures this page before it gets deleted.
See
https://gustavus.edu/events/nobelconference/2009/gleick-profile.php
Peter, in the fall of 1974, took up studies at Yale. It was a time of transition and change in America. The prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s had given way to the first energy crisis and a strengthening national movement to protect the quality of our water and air. Peter caught the wave of environmental awareness just as it was beginning to build.
In 1978, after receiving his B.S., cum laude, with distinction in engineering and applied science, Gleick headed west to the University of California, Berkeley, to further his education and research at the Energy and Resources Group.
While pursuing his M.S., Gleick also worked as a research and teaching associate with Professor John Holdren, who became his mentor (and fly-fishing instructor). “It was clear to me even then that water was an underappreciated and understudied resource, and a source of real future problems,” Gleick says. Holdren is now the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and President Barack Obama’s science adviser.
After receiving his master’s degree, Gleick was offered a job working as the deputy assistant for energy and environment to California Governor Jerry Brown in Sacramento. In this position, he learned the value and importance of science for informing and influencing policy, as well as the political limitations on using science in the public arena. In 1983, he returned to Berkeley to get his Ph.D. At a time when most people hadn’t even heard the term “global warming,” he was researching likely impacts of climate change on water resources for his doctoral degree, which he received in 1986.
Gleick’s dissertation turned out to be the first detailed analysis of how climate change would affect water resources in the western U.S. And, not too surprisingly, one of the world’s leading climatologists, Jim Hansen, the scientist dubbed “the grandfather of climate change” and a presenter at Nobel 43, Heating Up: The Energy Debate, in 2007, provided data integral to his dissertation. “That work really taught me how vulnerable our water resources are and how interconnected they are with our society, our economy, and our ecosystems,” Gleick says. It also made him want to continue his water research.
That same year, Gleick was awarded a post-doc fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation to investigate the connections between climate change and international security. During this time, he realized that what he really wanted was the opportunity to conduct research and write on interdisciplinary topics related to the environment. The only problem was that very few places in the mid-1980s supported truly interdisciplinary research. So, out of frustration and a youthful belief in pushing the envelope, Gleick and two friends from grad school began talking about establishing an independent research institute. “Our concept was rooted in this fundamental idea: that environmental issues are not purely technical or purely economic or purely political, but all of those things, requiring an interdisciplinary approach,” he explains. “That’s the way we were trained in graduate school.”
Of course, creating an interdisciplinary institute would be an ideal way to research and think and write about a broader vision for a sustainable world. But the notion of creating a new organization and securing the necessary funding to survive was heady, a little far-reaching in the eyes of some of their friends, and risky. But Berkeley prepared them well. “We talked about it for a year,” Gleick recalls. “We designed plans and looked at budgets and basically just thought about the idea.”
In 1987, the Ploughshares Fund, a small San Francisco foundation interested in new thinking about global security, took a chance. They offered Gleick and his partners a small, $37,000 grant. “It allowed us to put together a board of directors, get non-profit status, and start work, and that’s about it,” he says. But it was a beginning and they started by looking at climate change, environmental resources, and the risks of conflict, working out of a two-room cinderblock office near the Berkeley campus.
Sustained by his postdoc grant, Gleick burned the midnight oil. At the water’s edge, he and his friends decided to dive full on into the Institute. “Very quickly we got another research grant to do a climate change study for the Office of Technology Assessment, the agency that used to provide independent science advice to Congress. (Newt Gingrich led the campaign to close that office in 1995.)
Those first two grants helped launch the Pacific Institute. While his two co-founders returned to academia, Gleick stayed the course and hasn’t looked back. He continues to serve as the institute’s president and director of its water program. Throughout the years, his work has led him to the top of the environmental science field and in 2006 Gleick was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. The Pacific Institute, meanwhile, has grown to 20 employees and is now recognized around the world for producing some of the most authoritative and valued research and policy work on a very broad range of water issues, from the local to the global levels.
Today, Gleick is heralded as a one of the world’s experts on water, “arguably the world’s leading expert on water,” as the San Francisco Chronicle put it. Beyond the impacts of climate change on water resources and security, he has studied conflicts over water resources, the human right to water, and the problems of the billions of people globally who do not have access to safe, affordable, reliable water and sanitary conditions. In 2003, he was awarded one of the no-strings-attached MacArthur Foundation “genius” grants for his work on water resources.
The author of The World’s Water (Island Press), the biennial series on the state of the world’s precious resource, Peter Gleick has published more than 100 journal articles, studies, and book chapters on water. He regularly testifies before the U.S. Congress and state legislatures, informing them of his findings and policy recommendations. He also serves as a major source of information on water issues for the media and has been featured in various documentary films, including Earth2100, Running Dry, and Flow: For Love of Water, which screened at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

Latest Forbes article:
The Obnoxious Fabrication of Global warming
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/03/01/fakegate-the-obnoxious-fabrication-of-global-warming/

I have has a response from the BBC to my complaint about bias in the coverage of Fakegate by Richard Black.
It read “Thank you for contacting the BBC.
Unfortunately, we can find no record of your original contact being received by us. Therefore, we would ask you to re-submit your complaint via one of the below methods…”
As I had repeated my original complaint in my follow up request that reply that requires me to re-submit seems a little superfluous. But I guess they need to keep me jumping through hoops until the complaint is out of date or something.
I’ve re-submitted as they asked. This is the third time I’ve submitted thes complaint. The next step will be to complain about the complaints procedure, if they don’t actually consider my complaint.
Which was,
“The article was biased by way of selective reporting.
Richard Black refused to report on Climategate until the story was cold as he was unsure of the providence of the leaked emails. This was quite justifiable.
However, in this story the documents were stolen and at least one was fabricated. Again his established procedure would be proven to be justified. Yet he abandoned that practise.
To avoid bias (and fulfil his duty as a journalist) he should have checked his sources and consulted with DeSmog Blog, Heartland Institute and Watts Up With That. He did not do those things.
Instead he misled his readership in order to disparage a competitor’s website (Watts Up With That). This is a clear bias against the winner of the Science Blog of the Year. As a less lauded science and environment blogger himself the motivation is suspect.”

Very interesting article, which indicates links between Gleick, Ross Gelbspan, and the original “fossil fuel funding” diatribe
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/fakegate_opens_a_door.html
“The name of Ross Gelbspan indirectly figures in the WSJ editorial. A 1995 Harper’s article cited in the editorial was written by Ross Gelbspan. The stolen Heartland Institute documents first appeared on the internet at the enviro-activist blog site Desmogblog. Its star blogger is Ross Gelbspan.
The door opens wider with the revelation that Pacific Institute scientist Peter Gleick confessed to inappropriately acquiring the documents. A little digging reveals a still-current Pacific Institute web page dating to April 2004 titled “Science, Climate Change, and Censorship” (backup link here), where Gleick says this about skeptic climate scientist Pat Michaels: “He is one of a very small minority of nay-sayers who continue to dispute the facts and science about climate change in the face of compelling, overwhelming, and growing evidence.” Farther down that page is a prominent reference to Ross Gelbspan.
Compare Gleick’s quote to a 10/29/99 Yes magazine article by Gelbspan, titled “The Global Warming Crisis,” where Gelbspan describes fossil fuel industry education efforts:
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/fakegate_opens_a_door.html#ixzz1nxIn8i1T

Quote: “While pursuing his M.S., Gleick also worked as a research and teaching associate with Professor John Holdren, who became his mentor (and fly-fishing instructor). ”
reference: https://gustavus.edu/events/nobelconference/2009/gleick-profile.php
And who is John Holdren mentoring today on important “scientific” issues affecting Americans?
As “science” adviser to President Obama, the answer to the above question should be self evident.
reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Holdren
Scary.

According to John Horgan:
‘Kant said that when judging the morality of an act, we must weigh the intentions of the actor. Was he acting selfishly, to benefit himself, or selflessly, to help others? By this criterion, Gleick’s lie was clearly moral, because he was defending a cause that he passionately views as righteous.’
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2012/02/24/should-global-warming-activists-lie-to-defend-their-cause/
Precisely the same argument could be advanced in defence of Adolf Hitler’s crusade to make the world safe for humanity as defined by himself,
On the other hand, using the weapons of the Enemy means that the Defender of the Light will inevitably become the Enemy himself.
It was for this reason that Gandalf and Galadriel refused the ring of power when Frodo offered it to them.
I suspect Messers Gleick and Horgan would have happily taken the opprtunity to save the world as they feel it should be rather than as it actually is.

The harm of fakegate is it distracts all attention from the hundreds of billions funding the green fantasy groups.There really is a small group of far-left climate maniacs who now control hundreds of billions of federal funding.Over a thousand groups that the Tides Foundation helped start are now receiving federal funding.

Columbia Journalism Review makes what was expected, defended the people like them: Gleick.

Gleik’s wrote this with John Holdren (Holden is currently Obama’s Science Adviser.)
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.71.9.1046

Proper science must justify CAGW before the politics can afford a martyr.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/02/fakegate-the-sound-of-a-meme-collapsing/#comment-986241

If course if you want to create a brain dead sycophant, be a dirty trick sore loser.
dwright

Re Press Coverage:
Next week in our new Journal, ‘BS Bias Guardian BBC Times’, (with sincere apologies to similar named titles without the BS), headlines include;……….. ‘Genocide! Can we justify it to reduce CO2 emissions?’…………’Sleazegate! How The Tooth Fairy Took One For Us and Reveals Heartland Institute Has Money’ …………..’Justified! Skeptics Burnt At The Stake For Calling Us Religious Zealots’………….’How Debating Global Warming Causes Global Warming, a Peer Reviewed Special! …………..’Weather! How We Can Blame any Weather Event On CO2 Emissions’……….’Insane But True, Run From The Hills! A New book shows how all hills will collapse when the ice holding the hills together melts due to global warming’…….
(Other titles are available).

Re update 85. At the end of the Chicago Tribune article is a mischaracterization of science. Do its practitioners “marshall evidence” as the rhetoricians do, as if support to an argument? Not really, unless you think “science” = political advocacy. And I think the writer of the article does!

I think Gleick and his apologists did skeptics a huge favor:
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/18155
They are now the conventional wisdom that will be replaced by better, more thought out scientific investigation into Global Climate. They rang the alarm bells, and the scientists and engineers answered. The problem for C-AGW proponents – the answer was the IPCC got it wrong.

A poster @ JoNova:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/03/monbiot-steal-things-and-be-a-democratic-hero/#more-20636

memoryvault
March 4, 2012 at 3:32 pm • Reply
As far as I can tell, according to the Moonbat’s logic and reasoning, the members of The White Rose Movement got exactly what they deserved, and Eugene Grimminger, who financed them, got off lightly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose

Why did a regime that controlled the media consider The White Rose Movement passing out pamphlets a threat?
Why does Peter Gleick and those that support him consider Heartland a threat?
BTW: Eugene Grimminger’s decision to finance The White Rose Movement cost him his wife’s life.
Yes, Heartland has every reason to protect its donors from fanatics.