In a hilarious claim, Gleick proves once again his genius label is eclipsed by his own dogma.
A couple of days ago I got pulled into the Twitter feed of Dr. Peter Gleick, we’ll get to that shortly. You know him, he’s the guy from the Pacific Institute who posed as a board member for Heartland so he could steal documents. The plan was so badly conceived that it quickly unraveled, partly because of a ridiculous fake document that many say Gleick authored to get the media interested in the story of what he found. But, it was laughably transparent, and Gleick’s tendentious forgery was characterized by Megan McArdle of the Atlantic as reading “like it was written from the secret villain lair in a Batman comic. By an intern.”
One of the things I dislike about Dr. Peter Gleick (besides the fact that he’s a thief) is his condescending attitude towards others that he considers intellectually inferior. Part of this has to do with him being labeled a ‘genius’ with a MacArthur Fellow “Genius Award” in 2003. One of the problems of being labeled a genius is the ego boost that it conveys, and that ego boost tends to set the stage for epic cartoon like failures much like we used to see in the classic Warner Brothers cartoon where Wile. E. Coyote presents his card:
![Wile-E-Coyotes-card1[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/wile-e-coyotes-card11.jpg?quality=83)
This week, we had another episode where Peter H. Gleick, GENIUS was on display in full public view. This is what got it started:
The picture linked in his tweet is from this Mother Nature News article:
I took one look at that photo and the 110°F temperature, and my bullshit detector alarm went off. My next thought was “how could Gleick be so dumb as to fall for this?”. I mean GMAFB, if it was air temperature doing it, all parts of the stoplight would show a nearly equal melting effect, and not be lopsided. Surely geniuses like Gleick understand the basic of thermodynamics enough to get this? Apparently not.
I immediately replied to Gleick and explained how this just wasn’t possible:
And after waiting, I got no reply from Gleick…
I suppose that’s normal, after all, we can’t have a ‘stupid denier’ schooling a ‘genius’ on how the physical world works, can we?
This isn’t the first time a global warming activist has fallen for a photo of something melting in the street, and immediately pouncing on “global warming” as the cause. Last year it was Al Gore and Bill McKibben:
Note the street lamps are only melted on one side. Why? Because it was a dumpster fire that did the work, not the natural air temperature.
From: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/02/alarmist-fact-checking-street-lights-dont-melt-at-115f/
Picture provided by KFOR-TV via Inhofe’s Press Office you can see the street lamp next to the burning dumpster:
Senator Inhofe had a field day with this witless assertion by Gore and McKibben, and you can read it about it here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/02/inhofe-exposes-another-epic-fail-by-global-warming-alarmists-thursday/
So when I saw Gleick was pushing a similar photo from Kuwait, it was deja vu all over again.
I noted in my tweets back to Gleick that either solar reflection or fire might be at work due to the lopsidedness of the melting. That explanation apparently flew right over Gleck’s head, and I wasn’t going to waste any more time with him waiting for him to acknowledge me.
Sure enough, later I learned it was just as I posited. Barry Woods found a news article on the incident and left a comment on the MNN story, the only comment, and a comment that apparently they have not heeded since the ridiculous story is still there.
Barry Woods wrote:
Here’s the story from 248AM.com
Jo Nova found this photo:
Yep, just like last year with Gore and McKibben, a fire, not global warming, melted a street fixture. We can forgive Al and Bill, because they’ve demonstrated time and again that they are dumber than lampposts when it comes to understanding how the physical world actually works.
But a McArthur “genius” like Gleick should know better. He should have been able to pick up on the same physical clues us “stupid deniers” did.
But alas, just like our Wile E. Coyote, Genius, his intellect is eclipsed by his dogma, and he gets run over by physical reality.
Gary Hladik says:
July 4, 2013 at 12:21 am
Giving the guy his due, Peter Gleick is something of a comedic genius…
You beat me to the punch(line)
Just to continue with RichardLH’s observation of the use od ‘proxies’ to prove whatever they wish, I suspect the poll mentioned above will receive a lot of proxy voting just before it is closed and reported. Ethics and honesty have not been shown to be hallmarks of those pushing manmade climate disruption, or whatever it is being called this year.
He’s a Lying Liar who Lies…
@Bob – As the holder of a Ph.D. myself who scrupulously and proudly dealt in facts, it’s disgusting and infuriating to see the degree cheapened by the likes of Gleick. But then I left academia (taught history at U of Utah and U of Wisconsin-Parkside) after encountering much the same disconnect from reality among my historian colleagues.
@Gary Young – No, they ain’t what they used to was.
@AllanJ – How much you wanna bet all of us who post here are in the NSA database and on the IRS BOLO list – and maybe even der Fuehrer’s enemies list? (A pox upon their houses!)
@Janice Moore – Beautifully and simply said. Today I am playing music by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Charles Ives and Scott Joplin – great American composers all – on my CD player, to celebrate this extraordinary day.
a lot of people misread things – like genius when it might be genus – as in genus stupidicus – in the case of glick
I can’t help but think Shea Gunther is a failed eco entrepreneur.
But we all know global warming means an increase in car and dumpster fires. It’s worse than we thought!!
/snark
I think he could take a lesson from an axiom in the movie “Forest Gump”
‘Stupid is as stupid does’
It sounds like Peter Gleick has been spending too much time in the sun, if not the spotlight. Much more and he could expire from sunstroke.
In private correspondence with several of the more moderate “action required” warmists, I’ve asked many times, “why do you believe the science these guys are telling you, when the stuff you can actually check (melting lights, hurricane incidence, etc.) is never correct”.
I don’t know why any of these guys have any credibility with anybody.
Ryan says:
July 4, 2013 at 6:16 am
““Isn’t this article a little dishonest. As Gleick immediately followed up the tweet with “No doubt from some fire…But you get the idea” before anyone else responded.”
It’s only dishonest if Anthony actually knows about the other tweet. As we’ve seen multiple times, he doesn’t really have a handle on how twitter works.”
You did realize that Gleick tweeted his handwaving only after someone pointed him to the burning car photo? fine. Everybody else did as well. So what do you hope to achieve? Hey I got an idea. Spread your lies on Daily Kos, that’s where the gullible live.
REPLY: Until this thread, I hadn’t seen any other Tweet from Gleick on the issue. I was watching the conversation thread and saw no replies to mine. The “just kidding” came well after mine as pointed out below. I don’t believe Gleick was kidding in his original Tweet, because he’d have to know that he’d look stupid doing it. all he had to add was “JK” in his original if that was his intent. But that didn’t come until much later. It suggests he was finally persuaded that he’d pushed a story that was preposterous. – Anthony
@Chad Wozniak
Thanks for the comment, but as retired Marine, a libertarian and Constitutionalist, A life member of the NRA and of two gun collector organizations, and a 30 year veteran of the Intelligence world I am very confident of my position on a lot of lists.
But of what use is liberty if you don’t use it?
The great scientist Alexander Von Humboldt laid out what the lineaments of scientific genius ,not in an explicit way,but hinting at its tendencies when looking at the terrestrial and celestial arena.By definition, a scientific genius cannot manufacture a conclusion and collate information to support that conclusion but rather expand the field of view thereby raising the standard for everyone else.
“This assemblage of imperfect dogmas bequeathed by one age to another— this physical philosophy, which is composed of popular prejudices,—is not only injurious because it perpetuates error with the obstinacy engendered by the evidence of ill observed facts, but also because it hinders the mind from attaining to higher views of nature. Instead of seeking to discover the mean or medium point, around which oscillate, in apparent independence of forces, all the phenomena of the external world, this system delights in multiplying exceptions to the law, and seeks, amid phenomena and in organic forms, for something beyond the marvel of a regular succession, and an internal and progressive development. Ever inclined to believe that the order of nature is disturbed, it refuses to recognise in the present any analogy with the past, and guided by its own varying hypotheses, seeks at hazard, either in the interior of the globe or in the regions of space, for the cause of these pretended perturbations. It is the special object of the present work to combat those errors which derive their source from a vicious empiricism and from imperfect inductions.” Von Homboldt ,Cosmos
He could be referring to climate but he is not,he refers to a vicious strain of empiricism that nobody wants to know about because it is so dominant in this era.
So can anyone be awarded and pronounced a genius if they like you? I thought it was based on intellect.
As for this;
Needs your vote – bottom right of page.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/8878320/Last-decade-the-warmest
The last answer has ~3 percent … (100 – 3) = that magic number. So 97 percent of everyone in the world disagrees with answer 3 meaning that we are all going to die again.
Obama got a Nobel peace prize before he came to office and before he did anything. Turns out he has committed acts of war, not peace. But hey, he is a man of peace, because he got the Nobel peace prize.
My point is that we are now living in a world where up is down – and if you disagree then you are a “denier”, a “racist” and every other off-topic ad hominem they can think of. These are dark, dark, times. But the people seem to want it. They seem to really, really want it to be like this.
Man Bearpig,
I voted. Took about 5 seconds.
Skeptics are winning.
Dear Allan J., U. S. Marine (ALWAYS a Marine, they never retire and you know that!) #[:)],
Re: “… thank you for your patriotic comment (11:14PM). I hope it does not get you on the Homeland Security watch list.”
I have made several WUWT comments specifically aimed at getting me on “the list.” LOL. AND I HOPE THAT I AM ON YOUR LIST, D’OH!BAMA, YOU L-I-A-R!
And, you’re welcome and HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY from one N.R.A., concealed-carry permit, U.S. Constitutional originalist to another.
THANK YOU, SO MUCH, FOR YOUR SERVICE (in the U.S. Marine Corps … NOT “corpse”, lol — now THERE’s a “genius” for you).
Janice
Hi, Chad,
Good for you. Being a history professor, no WONDER you picked such perfectly-tailored-to-the-day music. LOL, if I had a stereo and 4 powerful speakers hooked up right now, I would be much more conventional. “Stars and Stripes Forever” (and lots of Sousa) and (more Sousa) and Tchaikovsky’s “William Tell Overture” and….. you guessed it — MORE SOUSA! #[:)]
No stereo, just the piano. You’ve inspired me (felt kind of blue today) to go sit down and sing a few melodies…. Here I go………….
“My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From every mountainside,
LET —– FREEDOM ———- RING!”
Enjoy your day.
Janice
Hmm, think I’ll go find a more appropriate thread (NOT on one about a stote like Gleick) to post a patriotic music video!
Most plastics are made from Hydrocarbons.
If Man didn’t use Hydrocarbons then the streetlight wouldn’t have been made from plastic.
If it wasn’t made from plastic it wouldn’t have melted.
Therefore, Man using Hydrocarbons is the reason it melted.
It is Man’s fault!
Peter H. Gleick, Forger, Thief, Liar and Genius, will be very disappointed by this “metaphorical” experiment by the BBC. You see it is unfortunate that even with all the hot air from catastrophic global warming alarmism, the “hot enough to fry an egg” metaphor doesn’t actually work – even in one of the hotest places in the world (Death Valley)!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23174535
Alarmists – Watch the video and weep.
Sorry Forger,Thief, Liar and Genius but the climate really isn’t materially any hotter or unprecedented than before and metaphorically speaking, extremist eco-alarmists are drowning in the sea of their own lies.
Two brothers with real genius? Try Click and Clack, the auto mechanics.
Instead of just admitting that he was wrong about the pic and it wasn’t due to climate change (or just a really hot day in Kuwait) he’s crowing about how he mentioned the fire in a second tweet before Anthony responded. As if that makes it okay that it stupidly assumed the melting was due to the 110 degree heat.
It’s obvious that Gleick is not one to just man up and admit he was wrong.
If it came to a vote… OK. I’d have to go with Wile E. Coyote. Gleick is a distant second.
I live in Phoenix and I’ve seen signs melt. I saw a freeway sign made of 1 foot diameter metal pipe melt in about 1984. Of course a GASOLINE tanker had overturned and was burning underneath it.