Please Turn Around, Dr. Gundersen, You’re Blowing Your One Chance!
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I was ruminating about Peter Gleick, and the AGU Task Force on Scientific Integrity, when I came across a very apropos quote. This is from another arena of life entirely, that of professional baseball. No one was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame this year. Voters seem to have been turned off by the steroid scandals, which involved some of the players eligible this year. The pitcher Curt Shilling was what you might term “collateral damage”—he had nothing to do with steroids, was always clean, and yet he didn’t get in to the Hall of Fame this year. Shilling has his supporters and detractors, but yesterday he made one of the most mature comments I could ever imagine. I can only hope that climate science holds players as honest and responsible about their own profession as is Curt Schilling. He said:
“If there was ever a ballot and a year to make a statement about what we didn’t do as players — which is we didn’t actively push to get the game clean — this is it.”
“Perception in our world is absolutely reality. Everybody is linked to it. You either are a suspected user or you’re somebody who didn’t actively do anything to stop it. You’re one or the other if you were a player in this generation.
“Unfortunately I fall into the category of one of the players that didn’t do anything to stop it. As a player rep and a member of the association, we had the ability to do it and we looked the other way, just like the media did, just like the ownership did, just like the fans did. And now this is part of the price that we’re paying.”
In the same way that selective blindness happened in baseball regarding steroid use, mainstream climate scientists and the AGW supporting blogosphere and the media and the journals and in the latest example, the American Geophysical Union (AGU), all of them have “looked the other way” regarding such things as the scientific malfeasance of the Climategate folks, and more recently the actions of Dr. Peter Gleick. Let me briefly review the bidding of the Gleick saga.
Dr. Peter Gleick was the Chair of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Task Force on Ethics and Integrity in AGU Scientific Activities. As he tells the tale, he received a document from an anonymous sender purporting to come originally from the Heartland Institute. He wanted to verify the accuracy of the document. So far, so good. At that point, it seems like a man with integrity would go to Joe Bast at Heartland and say “Hey, Joe, I got this crazy letter. Is any of this true?”. If Peter was rebuffed there, he could consider other options.
Not Peter. Instead of taking the straight path, he went corkscrew. He called up some poor hapless secretary at the Heartland Institute, and impersonated a Company Director in order to obtain confidential company Board of Directors briefing papers. There’s a technical name for that kind of action. It’s called “wire fraud”.
Now, if Peter’s tale were true, about wanting to verify the accuracy of the document he’d received, you’d think he’d look at the actual papers he obtained through wire fraud. Then he’d compare the authentic Board briefing papers to the document he’d received, and then throw the document he’d received in the trash.
Why? Because it was an obvious forgery. Both the style and the content, including critical details, differ radically from the other documents he had, documents he knew were authentic for a simple reason—because he had stolen them himself.
Once he saw that the document he’d received was fraudulent, you’d think Peter would have stopped there and destroyed everything. But not our Chair of Scientific Integrity. Corkscrew wins again. Instead of taking it all straight to the shredder, he took the document, mixed it in with the authentic documents, and secretly and anonymously emailed them all to various recipients without any mention that one of them was fraudulent.
Now, I don’t know if there’s a crime in the latter part. Stealing secret business documents is one crime. Is revealing them to the public a second crime, particularly when there is one known forgery added to the bunch? Distribution of a forged document? I don’t know about crime, but I do know … that’s slime.
Fast forward a few months. After being exposed and having no other way out, Peter confessed to all except forging the initial document, and he may be right. It doesn’t matter. None of it justifies wire fraud and an attempt at scurrilously damaging Heartland’s reputation by his circulation of a very deliberately deceptive package of documents including a known forgery.
So Dr. Gleick resigned from the Task Force. He’d demonstrated he didn’t have enough integrity to be Chair of the AGU group charged with considering and encouraging Scientific Integrity. He was replaced as Chair, presumably by the person among the other Task Force members with the next highest amount of integrity. This was a woman named Dr. Linda Gundersen.
In a post I wrote almost a year ago, called “An Open Letter to Dr. Linda Gundersen“, I congratulated Dr. Gunderson on what I saw as a difficult post to fill. I pointed out the very public nature of her promotion, due to the precipitous and most theatrical pratfall of her predecessor, Dr. Peter Gleick. I also noted that she had a huge opportunity, which was to start by having the task force consider the lack of scientific integrity of her predecessor.
You have the opportunity to actually take a principled stand here, Dr. Gundersen, and I cannot overemphasize the importance of you doing so. Dr. Gleick’s kind of unethical skullduggery in the name of science has ruined the reputation of the entire field of climate science. The rot of “noble cause corruption” is well advanced in the field, and it will not stop until people just like you quit looking the other way and pretending it doesn’t exist. I had hoped that some kind of repercussions for scientific malfeasance would be one of the outcomes of Climategate, but people just ignored that part. This one you can’t ignore.
Well, I suppose you can ignore it, humans are amazing, anyone can ignore even an elephant in the room … but if you do ignore it, in the future please don’t ever expect your opinions on scientific integrity to be given even the slightest weight. The world is already watching your actions, not your words, and you can be assured that those actions will be carefully examined. If you let this chance for meaningful action slip away, no one out here in the real world will ever again believe a word you say on the subject of integrity.
I cannot urge you in strong enough terms. Do not miss the boat on this one. The credibility of your panel is already irrevocably damaged by the witless choice of your first chair. The move is yours to make or not, the opportunity is there to take the scientific high ground. You will be judged on whether you and the Task Force have the scientific integrity to take action regarding Dr. Gleick, or whether you just take the UN route and issue a string of “strongly worded resolutions” bemoaning the general situation.
Now, lest you think that my claim that “the world is already watching” in the quote above is mere hyperbole, I suggest you google ‘Dr. Linda Gundersen’, no need for quotes. Note that the most highly ranked link, first on the Google list, is my post “An Open Letter to Dr. Linda Gundersen” here on WUWT.
I closed that post by saying:
I am hoping for action on this, but sadly, I have been in this game long enough to not expect scientific integrity, even from scientists who sit on scientific integrity task forces … and I would be delighted to be proven wrong.
In any case, my warmest and best wishes to you, Dr. Gundersen. I do not envy you, as you have a very difficult task ahead. I wish you every success in your work.
w.
In short, I did what I could to let her know that I wished her success, that her actions in this regard wouldn’t go unnoticed, and to encourage her to take the path of scientific integrity and at a minimum to perform and make public a non-adversarial inquiry into, and the lessons learned from, the downfall of her predecessor.
I thought that it was critical to deal with Glieck’s actions because they perfectly exemplify a huge problem in climate science, called “noble cause corruption. This occurs when someone is so convinced of the correctness and the importance and the nobility of their cause that they start shading the numbers, just a little at first, not much, just highlighting … and in the later stages of noble cause corruption they may well find themselves manufacturing the numbers wholesale, without any idea how they got to that point. It’s not your usual kind of corruption, the kind for money or fame. Instead, it’s corruption in the service of a “noble cause”, as they tell themselves. The problem, of course, is that noble cause corruption is still … well … corruption. Lethal and antithetical to science.
Climategate revealed that beyond fudging the numbers, some climate scientists were so convinced that they were saving the earth that they were willing to secretly commit a variety of highly unethical and even illegal acts in the furtherance of their noble cause. That’s the end result of noble cause corruption that starts with shading a few numbers, or as I sometimes call it as regards climate science, “Nobel cause corruption”.
Now, a year later, I find that my pessimism regarding Dr. Gundersen was wholly justified. Steve McIntyre went to the latest AGU meeting. He discusses some of what went on in a post worth reading, entitled “AGU Honors Gleick“. Dr. Gundersen, it seems, has done absolutely nothing regarding l’affaire Gleick. Well, not quite nothing. Sounds like she did a very credible impersonation of Pontius Pilate, wherein she washed her hands of the whole business, says it’s nothing to do with AGU in the slightest. No reprimand, no UN-style “strongly worded letter”, no commentary. No discussion of the issues exposed by the affair, no interview with the currently un-indicted Dr. Gleick to try to clear the waters, not what Steve McIntyre calls the scientific equivalent of a “one-game-suspension”, not even some vague, plain vanilla statement deploring the kind of actions without mentioning any names. Nothing.
Now that would be bad enough. But it gets worse. The AGU leadership honored Gleick by inviting him to make a presentation! That’s double-plus ungood, as the man said.
It’s bad enough that the AGU leadership did not censure him, or even discuss his actions in the abstract to see what lessons might be learned.
It is a whole other message, however, to invite him to speak. That is an honor. That sends that message that the AGU understands poor Dr. Peter. It says he took one for the team, and that wire fraud in the defense of a noble cause is no big thing … So much for the scientific integrity of the AGU, in this case at least they just showed they have none at all.
Finally, remember, this is not just some ordinary member of AGU that has done something totally lacking in integrity. It’s not even just an AGU official who stands self-condemned of a huge ethical lapse. Heck, it’s not even just a member of the AGU Task Force on Scientific Integrity being found with his hand in the cookie jar. This is the Chair of the AGU Task Force on Scientific Integrity, caught red-handed and self-confessed … and Dr. Gundersen says this has nothing to do with the AGU Task Force on Scientific Integrity or the AGU?
Really?
In any case, Dr. Linda Gunderson, in a move that I truly don’t understand, has now taken one for the team as well. She has stood as the steadfast bulwark against the malevolent creeping scourge of scientific integrity, by refusing to even consider the process whereby she got the job that she holds …
Ah, well. I suppose it must have earned her, if not the respect, at least the gratitude of her colleagues. They must have been afraid for a minute that she might do something. Glad that’s straight. Her name must serve as a beacon of hope among wire fraudsters everywhere, at least the ones with integrity. I just hope that keeps her warm at midnight, when she considers the cold wind of history whistling through the shredded remains of her own reputation …
Finally, it’s not too late, she could pull out of the nose dive. Dr. Linda could still do the right thing. She could still open a discussion about noble cause corruption, and what it has done to the field of climate science. She could still talk about the increase in scientific fraud, and what that means to science itself.
Heck, every good theoretical paper needs an example. So she could even talk about how noble cause corruption and blind fanaticism blighted first the Climategate unindicted co-conspirators, then Dr. Peter’s career, then Dr. Linda’s career, and eventually has cast a shadow over the AGU itself …
Alternatively, she could write up a piece and publish it here on WUWT, I’m certain Anthony would have no objections. She could tell us all just why she has done nothing regarding Dr. Gleick’s actions. That’s what I’d do in her shoes. Well, no, actually if I were in her shoes, I’d open a non-adversarial inquiry, to see what we could all learn from Dr. Peter’s fall. But my point is, the game’s not over yet, she could pull through, and I would be very happy to see her do so.
Or not. She could do nothing. But it’s not just her. The problem is the silence of all the rest of the lambs. As Curt Schilling said,
You either are a suspected user or you’re somebody who didn’t actively do anything to stop it. You’re one or the other if you were a player in this generation.
Dear friends, science is in trouble. Retracted papers and inadequate peer-review and horribly slanted papers and even forged papers are all on the rise. If the AGU is unwilling to stop honoring those who actively promote forged documents, then why should anyone place any credence any of them? People are becoming disillusioned, losing faith and trust in science because of the unethical, unscientific, immoral, and sometimes even illegal actions of people like Dr. Gleick and the Climategate crowd … and Dr. Linda Gundersen and the AGU leadership seem to have put themselves firmly in the camp that Curt Schilling called those who “didn’t actively do anything to stop it”.
I’m not made that way. Now I admit, I can’t do much, any more than many of us can … but I will not go gentle into that good night, and I encourage you not to either. This is me raging against the dying of the scientific light. We all need, in Curt’s words, to “actively push to get the game clean.”
w.
APPENDIX: The actual charge of the AGU Task Force, from here:
Task Force on Ethics and Integrity in AGU Scientific Activities
Charge
The Task force will:
• Review the current state of AGU’s scientific ethical standards in the geophysical sciences and those of other related professional/scholarly societies.
• Based on this knowledge update AGU’s protocols and procedures for addressing violations of its ethical principles
• As appropriate revise and augment AGU’s current ethical principles and code of conduct for AGU meetings, publications and for interactions between scientists with their professional colleagues and the public.
• Propose sanctions for those who violate AGU’s ethical principles.
• Consider whether AGU should adopt a statement of ethical principles as a condition of membership or for participation in certain activities of the Union. If so, develop a recommendation on how the principles would be applied to AGU members and or participants in AGU activities.
rogerknights said:
Heartland can claim damages if its directors, officers, and donors were harassed, and some donors withdrew. Offsetting benefits don’t count. I.e., suppose you were mugged and $25 stolen, and spent $1000 in medical bills. You could still sue for pain and suffering, plus the medical bills, even if, thanks to a sympathetic story in the media, $5000 in donations poured in from the public.
That is a poor comparison, equivocating some calling you names and lying about you vs, say rape. These are two very different things. What occurred here is very different than a mugging. There is no pain and suffering (which is harder to win with in court than you would expect). Of the donors that might have stopped giving, HL would have to prove that they stopped giving based on that one forged document.
Imagine going in front of a judge:
HL “You honor, we seek to collect damages because Mr. Gleick and his alleged forged document caused donors X Y and Z to stop giving us money”.
Judge: ” Can you show that the other documents, verified by your legal team to be authentic, could not have played a part in their decision?”
HL: “No you honor”.
Then wait until the defense team puts those donors on the stand, and they say they just were not aware of all the activities HL was involved in based on the info from the authentic documents. And then when they submit the ledger that shows HL ended up gaining more donors based on this entire incident.
And lawyers are expensive, and in the US, unlike in England, loser does not pay for the tort expenses of the winner. As will certainly be the case of Mann’s attempt to heal NRO and Mark Styne, your proposed case against Gleick, even if they were to succeed, at the very least would end up costing HL much more than they could ever get back.
trafamador, thanks for offering a portal to understanding the “consensus” mind. A decade ago I lost a friend to this CAGW madness and that was the inspiration for my own climate claims research. Amazing is the adherence to the Noble Cause principle. My friend is scrupulous in all his dealings but if you engage him on the climate issue, anything goes. Ironically I read most anything he recommends, never is the courtesy returned. We are indeed witnessing one of the greatest mass delusions in the history of man.
Jake Diamond says:
January 10, 2013 at 4:24 pm
…….”I’ve expressed no hostility towards Anthony Watts. I’ve suggested a reasonable standard of ethical behavior to which ALL writers and blogs should adhere–disclosure of conflict of interest. Frankly it’s astounding that you are so confused on this point.
[Reply: Not true. A hostile comment of yours personally attacking Anthony Watts was snipped. — mod.]
=================================
Either you have ethics or you don’t.
No amount of “professional development hours” will change that fact.
That said, Jake writes rather well of things he knows not.
“Retracted papers and inadequate peer-review and horribly slanted papers and even forged papers are all on the rise.”
More the latter in the list than the former.
A retracted paper would be practically amazing in climatology because it would mean either someone was actually honest enough to admit they made false claims, or shockingly they were actually forced to admit such, as in some actual borderline penalty. Dishonesty like Mann’s hockey stick is generally never, ever retracted. Thus like either around 99.99% (if I recall correctly) or some other about-100% figure of climatology papers are never retracted.
With extraordinarily rare fluke exceptions, one only sees retracted papers in more honest fields like medicine.
For instance, in 2010, there was a blatantly BS study claiming phytoplankton declined by 40% since 1950 (about as absurd as if claiming 99% of land plants died last week with nobody noticing, for such was in complete contradiction to how such was utterly not seen in fish catches, how other studies of phytoplankton and chlorophyll trends found net increase in contrast, how plankton did well during warmer times and during higher-CO2 periods of Earth’s history, etc). That was not retracted but applauded and highlighted by the environmentalist operators of the Nature journal in a special press release, then spread to media outlets dutifully reporting the false propaganda to the public.
A common claim of supporters of the CAGW movement is that deliberate falsehoods would be avoided by so-called scientists in order to prevent (mythical, vague, and imaginary) legal or academic penalties. But I’ve yet to see an example of anyone ever having been penalized for smoothly done dishonesty in support of their cause. I strongly suspect that, if one ever did, the media (with their average ideological and political biases) would be rushing to their support. Mann, Hansen, Gleick … none of them suffered any real net penalty, more like reward.
Data manipulation can be as blatant as the GISS example in http://s7.postimage.org/69qd0llcr/intermediate.gif (where a 0.3+ degree change is a huge deal in context when all of global warming is about tenths of a degree) and has no net negative consequences to those doing it whatsoever. I suppose they must discourage extreme sloppiness which would too obviously backfire on their cause (like fudging by 100 degrees instead), but that’s it.
A common naive assumption is assuming honesty by default, but, while I like to think that probably more than 50% of people in existence (as in random ordinary people) are honest a majority of the time in day to day life, there’s no basis whatsoever for assuming honesty on subsets of the population like those least bothered by prior CAGW movement dishonesty and hence happily joining the effort.
Part of led me to skepticism was interacting with groups of hardcore no-lifer activists on forums and wikipedia, realizing from experience that not a small minority but every last one I encountered were utterly dishonest (even when having no financial incentive to be so), then wondering why on Earth was I assuming their “professional” equivalents would be any more honest when financial incentives were added.
Some fields have better people drawn to them on average, a majority more pro-human and moral in outlook, and do tend towards honesty. Medical research, while having some cases of fraud, is utterly different from climatology in that such has actually been penalized many times. But I’ve never seen comparable examples in activist-dominated climatology, only the opposite where someone with inconvenient honesty gets penalized for revealing truth that the public is never supposed to know.
Have we missed the point of Jake Diamond’s vehement assertion that Peter Gleick did not forge the document that Gleick found which was written in Gleick’s style?
It is so absurd to think that anyone else forged it but Gleick we must assume that Jake Diamond has additional information in his possession about this forgery. Information that is not available to Bast and the rest of us who didn’t forge it.
Logically, I think we have a confession.
trafamadore says:
January 10, 2013 at 9:32 pm
I don’t understand that at all. I don’t get your point. I don’t see any parallel between Lance and Gleick. I don’t understand what “case” you are making. I don’t have a clue what Gleick has to do with “public activism”. Activism? We’re discussing crimes here, not “activism”.
Sorry, my friend, but you are making no sense. You started by saying my metaphor was wrong because of Lance. When I pointed out Lance was your metaphor, now I’m accused of not understanding your metaphor … and you know what?
You’re right. I don’t understand your metaphor in the slightest.
You asked me to point out examples of bad science. Now that I have done so, you tell me that you don’t like them because … well, because I pointed them out.
You sure you understand this “logic” deal?
No, thanks. I’ll leave that as an exercise for the student. I’m having enough trouble trying to explain 2+2=4 to you, I’ll leave algebra until after you grasp the simpler concepts.
Huh?
Yes, I can see you are unaware of any of the problems with the science. However, there’s no need for this kind of special effort to inform us of the lacunae in your education, they are exposed whenever you speak.
Yes, as is stealing from a private company. Your point?
Is your claim that Gleick’s actions were justified because of what he wanted to find out? Or because of what was learned? Really?
You are going to sit there with a straight face and tell us that a man is justified in using mail fraud, because he wants to know who is funding a private company?
Tralfie, I got really bad news for you. No matter how much you may want to know who funds a private company, it is illegal and immoral to use mail fraud and identity theft just to satisfy your prurient curiosity.
And I love the sentence “And I was under the impression that much was learned” … really? How about you give us say half a dozen examples of these crucial things that were learned, so we can tell if your “impression” is correct.
Oh, please. I have no “vendetta” against Gundersen. I have done everything I can to support her and encourage her to first preserve, and now to salvage, her reputation. The fact that she seems determined on self-immolation is nothing to do with me.
And now you are saying that Gundersen’s actions are justified because “Heartland is not viewed favorably by most scientists”? That’s a sick joke. Most scientists on this planet never heard of Heartland.
No, it doesn’t. That’s a pathetic attempt to assert equality. On my side I see nothing to be ashamed of.
Your side, on the other hand, has a nest of rot and corruption centered in UEA, as revealed in Climategate, as well as a mail fraudster who (in your side’s alternate reality) is the go-to guy for Scientific Integrity. Oh, and your side has you. Plus a bunch of lambs who can be counted on to be silent.
Since that’s already happened, it’s not really much of a prediction, tralfie …
I’m not at all clear what your point is here, trafalmadore. So far your argument seems to be “but the other side did it too” … but they didn’t, and even if they had done so, that’s just the “tu quoque” logical fallacy. Are you defending Gleick’s actions? You sure you want to do that? Your choice, but me, I’m not that into applauding someone who is sliming opponents by sending out forged documents …
w.
trafamadore:
In your post at January 10, 2013 at 5:43 pm you say
Don’t be ridiculous!
Anybody can read your posts on this and other threads which show you are as much of a “scientist” as a herring is a bird.
Richard
richardscourtney says: “Anybody can read your posts on this and other threads which show you are as much of a “scientist” as a herring is a bird.”
Whatever you say, it must true.
trafamadore says:
January 10, 2013 at 9:56 pm
mpainter says: “Gleick is manifestly guilty- he admitted it, but you won’t admit his admission. You lack any sense of the absurd, tramadore.”
And I admit his admission, really, and I dont agree with what he did……Whats the matter with “up hold”? easier to write than “hold on your shoulders”…
=======================================
Okay, fine, but you appeared to be excusing him.
and,
let’s try it one more time:
“when you guys hold up the E. Ang. robbers as heros.”
@Gail C
“The Bankers, CEOs, Academics, and Politicians know exactly what they are doing, and that is the complete gutting of western civilization for profit. The lament “it is for our future children” has to be the vilest lie they have ever told, since their actions sell those children into slavery.”
I really appreciated you comment above and have forwarded the whole of it to a couple of friends. I find myself in a similar position relative to powerful interests who for the most part, can’t cut off my supply of bread because I am willing to live cheap. Money can’t be all that important – look at the sort of fingers most of it sticks to.
I do have a comment on the issue of whether banks or governments have more power. Governments of the day usually have a very short term agenda and banks have a very long term one. It may surprise many that the only way to control global private enterprise is with global governance of global enterprise. The (failing) attempts at controlling global enterprise with national regulation are opposed heartily by…global enterprise – no surprise there. Who do you suppose funds media opposition to global governance? National governments? National private enterprise? Hardly. It is all about having two or three faces and using whatever is the bogeyman-of-the-hour to subvert international federation in any form – keep the pot boiling so to speak. What happens now? Whenever two people share a chocolate bar, shout “Socialism!” Whenever you see someone selling a homemade quilt shout. “Capitalist Pig!” There is a lot of noise designed to distract. Many powerful sectors think ‘they are so clevah’; that they are the tail wagging the dog, a dog with many tails!
Global enterprise is very real and has very real consequences for everyone. I doubt that genie can be put back in the lamp. International regulation requires a forum for it. The elected parliament is a pretty good approach to creating one. The only effective alternative is Empire and that is not a viable model though there are still those who aspire to it.
@David Ross 4:46 pm: quantum climatology…. same time a forger and a hero, so long as we don’t observe his actions -too closely.
+1 and LOL. Very good.
mpainter says: “Okay, fine, but you appeared to be excusing him.”
Well. I shouldnt say, I guess.
To be honest, given that the Gleick disaster happened, I am disappointed that it didnt take Heartland down more, as I have not really liked that place since its cigarette days. But you know that already, from a different thread.
trafamadore says:
January 11, 2013 at 10:30 am
I don’t understand this. What shouldn’t you say? Why shouldn’t you say it? Why is it just a guess?
No comment on Gleick’s mail fraud and identity theft, no comment on his forgery … you’re just disappointed that his illegal activities weren’t more hurtful to one of those on your personal enemies list.
Man, if that is not the AGW supporting crowd in a nutshell. No more morals than a snake has hips. You don’t seem bothered by the fact that Gleick was a crook while heading up the AGU Scientific Ethics and Integrity Task Force. Instead, you’re just disappointed that he wasn’t a successful crook, that he didn’t inflict more pain on those you disagree with.
AGW ethics, gotta love’m.
w.
Willis Eschenbach says: “No more morals than a snake has hips.”
Well, Willis, you should work on justifying why legislation against 2nd hand smoke is bad for us all, I’m sure you would be fine with doing that. And maybe when you talk about morals, you should realize that some people take them seriously and act. And Gleick was certainly one of those people.
trafamadore:
Your entire post at January 11, 2013 at 6:25 am says
Not so. I said “your posts…show”.
Others can have opinions on it. And you don’t dispute it or question it.
A scientist would ask for evidence of it.
A paid troll would demean it.
Quad Erat Demonstrandum
Richard
traffie (you don’t mind if I call you “traffie” I hope, as after all your posts I feel as though I know you well) – traffie, if what Gleick did was an expression of his morals, then you are admitting that lying, deceiving and misrepresenting are an integral part of his moral code. That works for me.
And, since I have an attention span longer than that of a baby, your attempts to divert the discussion (ooh, squirrel … ooh, shiny … ) won’t work with me, nor, I suspect, with the vast majority of readers – and certainly not with Willis.
You have contributed nothing to helping us understand why the AGU would not only refuse to address Gleick’s admitted malfeasances, but even elevated him to the podium – three times – instead.
OTOH, you’ve made a strong contribution to our understanding of the calibre of person who brought this sorry state of affairs about.
richardscourtney says: “A paid troll”
I like that idea, at least the paid part. Are there such things? Someone else said I could be a 15 year old. I liked that one too. But the best was when someone said I was Gleick. That was cool until Anthony said I was from Michigan. Spoil sport.
Anyway, I’m not really responsive to name calling, it’s quite fine. You dont think its demeans the name caller? I guess not…
Oh, and scientists dont generally ask for unpublished or unpublishable “evidence” on blog posts, that would be silly. But, I do like Gail Combs reference to a real article, that was very good, and one of the things that I have campaigned for here. She is my hero of the week. Plus she doesnt cheat on her taxes, you see that?
trafamadore says:
January 11, 2013 at 1:44 pm
Since I’ve never in my life taken a position on second-hand smoke, I don’t understand this at all. Heartland Foundation has taken a position. What does that have to do with me? I do think the dangers of ETS are wildly overblown, but so what? This is about Gleick.
In addition, who the hell are you to tell me what I “should work on”? I work on what I want, not what some random anonymous internet popup like you tells me I “should work on”.
Oh, my good gracious, tralfie, that’s hilarious. Glieck was acting out of an excess of serious morals? … that’s too funny, mon ami.
w.
Willis Eschenbach says: “that’s hilarious. Glieck was acting out of an excess of serious morals? … that’s too funny”……….Perhaps.
trafamadore says:
January 11, 2013 at 5:48 pm
trafalmadore, you seem to be infected with noble cause corruption just like your man Gleick. Gleick is not acting out of an excess of morals. He is committing the mundane, boring mistake of thinking that the ends justify the means. He thinks he is justified in breaking the law because he is “saving” the world from some imaginary Thermageddon that has him all hot and bothered.
I, on the other hand, think he is an ordinary crook and con man, who justifies his lawbreaking, con jobs, and ethical lapses any way that he can.
You seem to agree with Gleick, your only concern is that Peter didn’t reach his ends, he didn’t hurt the people you wanted to see hurt. If he had, you’d think his actions even more justified.
What you don’t seem to have grasped is that the ends very, very rarely justify the means in everyday life. Usually what happens is what happened here. Gleick has committed actual crimes, and seriously damaged his reputation, and to no end at all.
And even had he achieved his ends, he still has to live with the crimes and the ethical transgressions that he committed.
Finally, you haven’t acknowledged the damage he has done to your side, trafalmadore. Ethical honest scientists winced at his actions, but that’s not the problem. The problem was best enunciated by Megan McCardle, who said:
Gleick has done that already. You, by lauding his actions, have convinced me that you, like Gleick, think that your cause is more important than breaking the law, more important than telling the truth.
So now the Gleick saga has a new victim. First Gleick, then Gundersen, then the AGU, and now you.
Because truly, traramadore, at this point you’ve firmly convinced us you’d lie to achieve your goals … and as Megan said, now that you’ve convinced us of that, you’ve lost the power to ever convince us of anything else.
All the best, don’t be surprised if people don’t believe you in future, why should they? You’ve already convinced us you approve of lying for your cause, and there’s no way to tell if you are lying, so there’s nothing left to say.
w.
trafamadore says:
January 10, 2013 at 9:50 am
Willis Eschenbach says: “Retracted papers and inadequate peer-review and horribly slanted papers and even forged papers are all on the rise.”
The number of retractions right now is 100 papers per million papers published. That is, I haf to read 10,000 papers before I hit one that might be retracted. (If only business people and politicians were as honest.) Also, the majority of papers retracted are for mistakes, not some experimental malfeasance. If you are suggesting that, like athletes doping, scientists that are politically active might be cheats, then based on the number of papers retracted, it seems you are 99.99% incorrect.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Basing the honesty of people in retracting papers on the fact they don't retract them.
is the kind of non-thought that has you thinking Mannian Statistics is real mathematics.
And that it's been warming the past 15 years.
You haven't been able to have the news broken to you it hasn't warmed since 1998.
Since 1998.
That sums up modern AGW religion evangelism in perfect brackets:
whether research or applied, if it's science, it means nothing to you. Belief means the thermometers are all broken, the whole world just don't know it, as we calibrate them.
Everyone's working with laws regarding instrumentation that have been established hundreds, and thousands of years: but only those, who look into Mannian Statistics and see apocalypse for carbon sin are truly qualified to interpret.
The readings of thermometers.
trafamadore:
Please keep your posts coming.
They are complete evidence and example of the mindset which enabled the AGU to ignore Gleick’s behaviour and to honour him with a place on the podium of an AGU Meeting.
According to you in your posts
1. Truth is not important to what you call “scientists”.
2. Evidence is not important to what you call “scientists”.
3. Information is only acceptable when stolen, forged or published in a journal.
And you are so deluded that you think your assertions will be accepted by rational people.
Clearly, only an idiot or a paid troll would snow a thread with such nonsense as you do. And it seems unlikely that you are as stupid as you pretend to be.
Richard
trafamadore says: January 11, 2013 at 3:13 pm
That was cool until Anthony said I was from Michigan. Spoil sport.
======================================
but you yourself claimed origins in Buffalo, NY. , so you can’t be from both places,now can you? Such confusion is symtomatic of warming on the brain.
trafamadore says:
January 11, 2013 at 1:44 pm
I think what we have here is proof that parallel universes do exist.
trafamadore says:
January 11, 2013 at 3:13 pm
She is my hero of the week.
========================
More warming on the brain- tralamadore does not know a hero from a heroine.