On Wednesday, I attended a keynote lecture at the annual American Geophysical Union convention in San Francisco, held in Moscone Center. The panel, according to the AGU website note, made no inkling of who the moderator would be.
Governor Jerry Brown in Conversation with AGU Scientists: Protecting Earth’s climate for the next 100 years
Wednesday, 11 December, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Moscone North, Hall E, LLFormer California Governor Jerry Brown (and 2016 AGU keynote speaker) helped California become an international leader in climate change policy, establishing the most comprehensive and integrated climate action program in the Western Hemisphere. Governor Brown will join a panel of scientists led by AGU President and glaciologist Robin Bell, to discuss the science and politics of climate change and what needs to be done to protect Earth’s climate for the future.
To my shock and surprise, the moderator turned out to be Dr. Peter Gleick, disgraced former president and founder of the Pacific Institute. Gleick, who was forcibly removed from the AGU as chair of their Scientific ethics task force in 2012 for admittedly stealing internal documents from The Heartland Institute, was back.
The debacle became known as Fakegate. It was the day in February 2012 that Pacific Institute President Peter Gleick sent to liberal activists and reporters documents he stole from The Heartland Institute and claimed to have obtained from a “Heartland insider” and later from an “anonymous source.” The documents included Heartland’s annual budget, fundraising plan, and other confidential documents. Media outlets in the U.S. and around the world reported on the “leak” of supposed “secret plans” by an anonymous “insider” at the world’s most prominent think tank promoting skepticism about man-made global warming.
Gleick eventually confessed to being the “insider” and explained that he had stolen the identity of another person – a member of Heartland’s board of directors, it soon became known – in order to steal the confidential documents. There was no “leak.” Gleick also admitted to lying about the nature of one document he originally claimed had come from Heartland, a “strategy memo” that purported to describe Heartland’s plans to address climate change in the coming year. That document was quickly shown to be a fake, written to misrepresent and defame The Heartland Institute. Gleick denied he was the author of the fake memo.
It was clear then why AGU had to remove him from the Ethics Task Force position – he did a very unethical thing and the entire world knew about it. But they did the deed behind closed doors, and made no announcements nor admonitions at the time. In retrospect, I think they privately applauded what he did, but had no choice in the firestorm over the issue.
It became clear to me at AGU 2019, seven years later, that AGU simply doesn’t care. In the keynote session that included Dr. Michael Mann, former California Gov. Jerry Brown, and others, the words “climate denier” were used in abundance, along with phrases like “We have to be more imaginative and more aggressive [on the climate issue].”
And, this year, for the first time ever, AGU changed its position statement to reflect that the leadership there believes the world is in a “climate crisis.” From their press release:
“In a revised climate position statement released today, based on the overwhelming research and scientific evidence, AGU is declaring the world to be in a climate crisis.”
Yet, as many observe, the crisis level climate predictions of the past 30 years have not happened. Even so, predictions continue to worsen and voices calling for action have gotten even more shrill than ever before.
During the same meeting, the AGU also invited politics into the fray, by inviting presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg to speak. This is unprecedented, and I believe due only to the fact that Bloomberg has said he’ll make climate change action a big part of his platform.
It is a sad state of affairs. AGU has clearly relinquished their scientific organization and membership to political winds of change that is connected to the funding cash cow out of Washington.
At the end of the keynote address, no questions were taken from the audience or the press (which I represented there along with others). Immediately, a security guard was posted at the stage to prevent people from approaching the speakers to ask questions.
Apparently, they don’t like inconvenient questions.
In my opinion, this entire event represented the most shameful and shocking lapse of ethics I’ve ever seen in a scientific organization. With this one meeting, AGU has crossed the threshold from being a science organization, to one of “anything goes” advocacy.
Postscript:
Since “big oil” checks never seem to arrive, WUWT readers funded my trip, and I’m very grateful. But after what I witnessed yesterday, I’m rethinking whether I should retain my membership in the AGU, or attend any of their meetings ever again – Anthony
What is going on at AGU may not be surprising. The chairman of the climate panel, Donald Boesch, is a marine biologist who had a distinguished career from his education through research to administration. He was involved to some degree in a group which ended up, along with the National Academy of Science, taking the corn farmers to task over nitrogen. I have heard on good authority that it was contentious and controversial. This resulted from a fear over ‘The Dead Zone,” not much of a zone, more of a mosaic, and certainly not dead as the press keeps pushing. While there are effects, even mortality, it is a large septic system where most of the water column is still aerobic and still producing in abundance the same critters that were supposedly being killed off.
Predictions about its size are still being made based on spring concentrations of river nitrogen, predicted to be one reason for the demise of fisheries. As late as 2014 a Louisiana paper laments as to how they don’t understand how fisheries have not collapsed. While there has been an effect, it turned out to be more complex, as was known by many for decades. Like carbon dioxide a single factor was too simplistic, and a now deceased long time student of the problem (still was studying) of the process called in print (2003) that nitrogen had become “demonized.”
There is nothing wrong with going into another discipline, even necessary for some innovation, if you do your homework and realize it is also necessary to be disciplined by what is actually known in that field, not easy. Such members on the climate panel should run for office if they want to make policy as do some medical doctors. The latter face life or death problems sooner.
There is a lot more to this, but my wife calls it the “Ph.D syndrome,” to which I would add the level above. I have been on such committees, always someone wanting to make policy instead of problem solving. Decades ago Gordon Gunter who had an oceanographic ship named after him more or less told me this sort of thing would happen.
Renewable ethics.
Tragic.
Not surprising.
We have known since the CRU emails that these are low creatures.
The only surprise is how low they choose to go.
Our progressive comrades know,with no shadow of doubt, that they are the superior ones,here to help the rest of us lowbrow creatures through life.
Ethics play no part in the bubble they inhabit.
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming,in all its names, is proof of that.
Scare the children,to control the world!
Possibly the only reality that will reach them,is physical.
Anthony ==> Better to fight from the inside than the outside.
Until they throw him out on his ear.
Here is a video of Gleick explaining how his unethical behavior was noble.
Watch how he describes it.
Starting at about 58:50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGs0jPRygAo
Hey Steve,
Thanks for the link. That’s a quintessential fauxpology, if I can be allowed to make my own portmanteau.
Glick offers a dry “apology” (essentially saying he isn’t thoroughly proud of some of the tactics he used), but then goes right on to say that he essentially IS thoroughly proud of himself for standing up for Climate Science and against Climate Denial funded by Dark Money, yadayadayada. He makes claims about the certainty of Climate Science that are unfounded and then goes on about his concerns for his children and so on. Basically, he’s a classic self-appointed hero for the cause. Anyone disagreeing is disgusting.
Also, the interviewer had to pry out anything like a readmission from Glick; nobody highlighted on the fact that he stole the identity of a Heartland Board Member and then most likely personally forged a nefarious-sounding summary document with rather comic-book like wording. He really believes he is David fighting the Climate Denier Goliath.
The problem with the “dark money” argument is that the ‘Mainstream Climate Science’ (doomsayers) get orders of magnitude more funding than do any skeptics, who have to put up with being called Deniers.
Glick lost his ethical credentials with that act. He’ll never get them back. Yet he doesn’t even seem aware.
This being about Gleick, shouldn’t the obligatory “Mosher Drive-by” happen any minute?
In my opinion, this entire event represented the most shameful and shocking lapse of ethics I’ve ever seen in a scientific organization.
Your first mistake was thinking that the AGU is a scientific organization.
What relevance do the outdated concepts of ethics or truth or honour have in a world based on moral ambiguity, dedicated to achieving the desired objectives by the most effective means possible? The old black and white certainties were too restrictive. The ‘truth’ of what actually is must be subsumed by the more pragmatic truth of what should be. Those who can be used are there for the benefit of the visionaries unfettered by the restraints of ethics and moral scruples. Therein lies true freedom, at least for the few elite willing to forgo the shackles of obeisance to the useless concept of right and wrong.