[Al_U_Card]

Interesting development, Peter Gleick has confessed to fraudulently obtaining the real documents from the Heartland Inst. as well as having received the "fake" document separately and previously.

All in a good cause, no doubt...

[Al_U_Card]

Climate Audit has the skinny on the whole sordid affair.

Oh what a tangled web...


The Littlemore article at Desmog was observed by David Appell to have been published only one minute after Demelle’s article (see print version . It had a separate archive of the articles on the Desmog server – compare the names: Littlemore’s versions have later names. Littlemore’s article attributed the documents to an “anonymous donor” self-styled as “Heartland Insider”:


An anonymous donor calling him (or her)self “Heartland Insider” has released the Heartland Institute’s budget, fundraising plan, its Climate Strategy for 2012 and sundry other documents (all attached) that prove all of the worst allegations that have been levelled against the organization.

It is clear from the documents that Heartland advocates against responsible climate mitigation and then uses that advocacy to raise money from oil companies and “other corporations whose interests are threatened by climate policies.” Heartland particularly celebrates the funding that it receives from the fossil fuel fortune being the Charles G. Koch Foundation.

Oh those Crazy Climatologists...when will they ever learn???

[luke warm]

 PassedOut, on 2012-February-15, 11:54, said:

Thanks for the link. Not surprised though.

by those who falsify documents? me either

[Al_U_Card]

 luke warm, on 2012-February-21, 09:21, said:

by those who falsify documents? me either

Methinks a rethink is in order...


EOS, TRANSACTIONS AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION, VOL. 92, NO. 47, PAGE 433, 2011
doi:10.1029/2011EO470009

ABOUT AGU

AGU's new task force on scientific ethics and integrity begins work

Peter Gleick
Pacific Institute, Oakland, Calif., USA

Randy Townsend
American Geophysical Union, Washington, D. C., USA

In support of the new strategic plan, AGU has established a new task force to review, evaluate, and update the Union's policies on scientific misconduct and the process for investigating and responding to allegations of possible misconduct by AGU members. As noted by AGU president Michael McPhaden, “AGU can only realize its vision of ‘collaboratively advancing and communicating science and its power to ensure a sustainable future’ if we have the trust of the public and policy makers. That trust is earned by maintaining the highest standards of scientific integrity in all that we do. The work of the Task Force on Scientific Ethics is essential for defining norms of professional conduct that all our members can aspire to and that demonstrate AGU's unwavering commitment to excellence in Earth and space science.”

Published 22 November 2011.

Citation: Gleick, P. and R. Townsend (2011), AGU's new task force on scientific ethics and integrity begins work, Eos Trans. AGU, 92(47), 433, doi:10.1029/2011EO470009.

Unless, of course, they intend to pillory Dr. Gleick and use him as the poster-boy for what is wrong with climatological ethics...

and couldn't have anything to do with the repeated failures of the climate models to predict anything other than hyperbole and inaccuracy:

[Al_U_Card]

And, on a lighter note...

[PassedOut]

The creationists aren't the only people working to dumb down education in the US: Will your kid be taught that climate change is a hoax?

Quote

And so, according to internal documents from the Heartland Institute, the group is paying $100,000 for David Wojick, a coal-industry consultant, to develop “modules” for classroom discussion. (Wojick has confirmed this.) These modules would include material for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy”) and carbon pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial”). In fact, none of these issues are scientific controversies — the vast majority of climatologists believe, with a high degree of confidence, that man-made carbon-dioxide emissions are heating the planet.

But could Heartland actually spread its views? Rosenau says that Heartland could do what creationist groups like the Discovery Institute have been doing for years and simply mail out supplemental materials to educators far and wide. “There will be teachers who are sympathetic to the skeptic view or who think the material looks useful, and they’ll say to themselves, okay, I’ll bring this into the classroom,” he explains. It’s worth noting that the Heartland Institute had already developed a video along these lines — titled “Unstoppable Solar Cycles,” which laid out the long-debunked theory that the sun is driving recent warming — and shipped it off to teachers. (These earlier efforts, according to one Heartland document, met with “only limited success.”)

Even if these materials turn out to be wildly inaccurate or out of sync with a state’s science-education standards, keeping tabs on their use would be quite difficult. “In almost all cases,” Rosenau says, “there are no policies that would prevent a teacher from using such material.” Quite the opposite: A few states, such as Louisiana, have non-binding laws that urge teachers to embrace “supplemental” material on heated topics like evolution and climate change.

Perhaps cigarette companies could send teachers supplemental material explaining that it is "controversial" to say that smoking can cause cancer. That would make just as much sense.

[Al_U_Card]

Is that the best you can come up with?

Almost as sad as the moral bankruptcy of the catastrophists.

What a sorry, expensive and disturbing mess.

[Al_U_Card]

Readin', writin', 'rithmetic and REAL SCIENCE as opposed to the bogus, don't release data from key studies, ad hom attack opponents, rely on models that continue to miss the mark and, of course, apply under-handed, behind-the-back pressure to "lesser lights" that they better toe the line, climatologist/advocate/scammers that are the current example.

Hopefully, Gleick's malfeasance will raise a groundswell of outrage within the scientific community and force the hand of the warmists to release the data, so that real science can continue even in this mostly guesswork area.

[Al_U_Card]

 hrothgar, on 2012-February-15, 10:26, said:

I can't emphasize how amusing it is to see quotes like the following from Al_U_Tard's corporate masters

Sorry I missed this but I am still laughing, thanks for that.

btw, speaking of memorable quotes, Dr. Peter Gleick is the warmist credited with the first coining of the phrase: "The debate is over."

How prescient.

Especially considering the manner of his refusal to debate his Forbe's magazine nemesis, James M. Taylor at the Heartland Inst. annual climate conference, all expenses paid as well as providing for a donation in his name to the charity of his choice.

Easy to understand why they wanted the debate to be over...

[Al_U_Card]

This pretty much sums it up.

What you see is what you get...

There never was a “leaker” in the shameful Fakegate scandal. In the end, there was only a forger, a fraudster and a thief. Alarmist scientist Peter Gleick has admitted that the latter two were one and the same person – himself. I suspect we will soon learn the identity of the forger, as well.

With the weight of damning evidence closing in on him, Gleick has admitted in his Huffington Post blog that he was the alleged “Heartland Insider” who committed fraud and identity theft, lying and stealing his way into possession of Heartland Institute internal personnel documents and then sending those private documents to global warming activist groups and left-leaning media. Gleick sent to the press an additional document, a fake “2012 Climate Strategy,” that he claims he did not write.

In short, Gleick set up an email account designed to mimic the email account of a Heartland Institute board member. Gleick then sent an email from that account to a Heartland Institute staffer, in which Gleick explicitly claimed to be the Heartland Institute board member. Gleick asked the staffer to email him internal documents relating to a recent board meeting. Soon thereafter, Gleick, while claiming to be a “Heartland Insider,” sent those Heartland Institute documents plus the forged “2012 Climate Strategy” document to sympathetic media and global warming activists.

While the legitimate Heartland Institute documents revealed personal, confidential and private information about Heartland Institute personnel, donors and programs, there was nothing scandalous in the documents. The documents merely showed the inner workings of an influential public policy organization operating on a budget that was quite small compared to environmental activist groups such as Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense. Indeed, the internal documents refuted the false, yet often repeated assertions that the Heartland Institute’s powerful climate realism message is largely funded by Big Oil, Big Coal or Big Whatever.

The only thing that would seem to undermine the Heartland Institute’s credibility was the wording of the fake “2012 Climate Strategy” document. Computer forensics experts quickly discovered the climate strategy document was created by a different computer program and at a different time than the legitimate documents. The climate strategy document was also written in much different language, style, format and font than the legitimate documents. And long before Gleick confessed to being the fraudster and thief at the heart of the stolen documents, analysts noted a striking similarity between the language and style of the forged document and the language and style of Gleick’s public writings.

The real story in this Fakegate scandal is how the global warming movement is desperate, delusional and collapsing as global warming fails to live up to alarmist predictions. People with sound science on their side do not need to forge documents to validate their arguments or make the other side look bad. Also, people who are so desperate as to forge documents in an attempt to frame their rivals are clearly not above forging scientific data, studies and facts to similarly further their cause.

It is both striking and telling how global warming activists have failed to condemn the acts of forgery in the Fakegate scandal. For global warming activists, the ends justify the means – any means necessary to sell their alarmist message, even if they must sink to forgery and fakery.

It is also worth noting that Gleick repeatedly claims in his confession that his misconduct was motivated by a desire to create a rational public debate on global warming and that he was trying to fight back against the people he claims are seeking to prevent such a debate. Yet in January 2012 the Heartland Institute cordially invited Gleick to publicly debate me at our 2012 annual benefit dinner. All Gleick would had to have done is defeat me in that debate and he could have accomplished his twin goals of promoting public debate and embarrassing the Heartland Institute. Yet Gleick declined to participate in such a fair and open debate, and then on the very next day committed his acts of fraud and theft against the Heartland Institute.

Beyond our invitation to Gleick, the Heartland Institute has cordially invited dozens of scientists who believe humans are creating a global warming crisis to give presentations and to debate skeptics at our annual global warming conferences. Only one such scientist has ever accepted our offer.

If Gleick is indeed concerned about people preventing a public debate on global warming, he perhaps should have targeted his global warming activist colleagues rather than the Heartland Institute.

[Winstonm]

Quote

However, the statement from Heartland communications director, Jim Lakely, identifies only one of the eight documents posted online on Tuesday night by the DeSmogBlog website as a "total fake". That document, two pages headlined "Confidential Memo: Heartland Climate Strategy", largely duplicates information contained in the other documents.

Those documents – containing details on future projects such as a $100,000 campaign to "dissuade teachers from teaching science", as well as fundraising efforts – have been confirmed, in part, by Heartland itself, corporate donors such as Microsoft, and climate sceptic blogger Anthony Watts, who hoped to benefit from Heartland fundraising this year.

[Al_U_Card]

Yes indeed. The little engine that could.....except for the fake document that is.

Watts had a private donation of $44K steered to him to cover half of the cost of his project to make NASA climate information more accessible to non-academic users. He was hoping to find funding for the other half.

$88K, I wonder how much Greenpeace spends on toilet paper in a year....

As well as Gleick's Pacific institute getting about $100 MILLION from government sources! And their president is soon to be a convicted felon (we hope).

[PassedOut]

The effect of mankind's pouring billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year go beyond global warming and the resultant storms and flooding: Ocean Acidification Is Worse Than It’s Been for 300 Million Years

Quote

Human beings doing unprecedented things to the Earth, which is sort of impressive when you realize that the planet has existed for more than 4.5 billion years. But that’s what happens when 7 billion people produce and consume more and more stuff, emitting enormous amounts of gases like carbon dioxide and generally making of muck of things for everyone else.

Take the oceans. Researchers already know that the seas are becoming more acidic, thanks largely to the increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon. (Much of the carbon in the air is absorbed by the oceans—think of the fizz in a soda can—which over time makes them more acidic.)

No wonder the polluters don't want school children to learn the truth.

Reminds me of when the tobacco companies fought the truth about smoking. Some day the very polluters now denying that CO2 causes global warming will argue in court, as the cigarette companies did before them, "The harm we were doing was common knowledge for decades, so we are not responsible for what's happened."

[Al_U_Card]

Somehow, the journalist may have missed some of the other 1100 studies on ocean pH, magnitudes and effects...

Unless the fish are thinking about taking up smoking....I rather like smoked fish

Just some more info to debunk the alarmist rhetoric

0.1 pH as the next, greatest catastrophe


Many of the headlines forecasting “Death to Reefs” come from studies of ocean water at extreme pH’s that will never occur globally, and that are beyond even what the IPCC is forecasting. Some headlines come from studies of hydrothermal vents where CO2 bubbles up from the ocean floor. Not surprisingly they find changes to marine life near the vents, but then, the pH of these areas ranges right down to 2.8. They are an extreme environment, nothing like what we might expect to convert the worlds oceans too.

Marine life, quite happy about a bit more CO2?
Studies of growth, calcification, metabolism, fertility and survival show that, actually, if things were a little less alkaline, on average, marine life would benefit. There will be winners and losers, but on the whole, using those five measures of health, the reefs are more likely to have more life on and around them, than they are to shrink.



Figure 12. Percent change in the five measured life characteristics (calcification, metabolism, growth, fertility and survival) vs. decline of seawater pH from its present (control treatment) value to ending values extending up to the beginning pH value of "the warped world of the IPCC" for all individual data points falling within this pH decline range.

[neilkaz]

LOL a long thread on climate change .

All I can say is that I live well NW of Chicago where the temps are usually a couple degrees F colder. I am used to seeing day after day where sometimes it doesn't get above 10 F. Certainly a few nights every year get below 0F and sometimes worse than -10F.

Some years I have seen an entire month (ie Jan) NEVER get above freezing (almost to 32F but not above).

I've been here 20 years and this is by far the warmest winter I've ever seen. It has not been below zero F ever. Many days have had highs in the 40's and some 50's during the same period most years where we commonly get highs in the 20's F. We've had considerably less snow than other years as well.

I grew up in RI which is 6 or 7 degrees warmer in the winter than here on average and this Chicago area winter would be considered warm in RI.

This winter is more like what I'd expect if I lived well south like in Louisville. LOL the ground hardly ever even froze solid here this winter. From my observation this winter has been at least 10F warmer than average.

Climate change... well I shudder to think summer could bring and allready a tornado has destroyed a town about 300 miles south of here. Of course a warm winter doesn't have to mean a hot summer.

Coincidence..I dunno, but I've never seen a winter this warm. .. neilkaz ..

[hrothgar]

 neilkaz, on 2012-March-02, 14:35, said:

Coincidence..I dunno, but I've never seen a winter this warm. .. neilkaz ..

And last year was brutally cold and snowy across much of the US...

Individual data points really aren't good for anything more than anecdotes.
Real analysis is based on long term trend

[Al_U_Card]

 neilkaz, on 2012-March-02, 14:35, said:

LOL a long thread on climate change .

All I can say is that I live well NW of Chicago where the temps are usually a couple degrees F colder. I am used to seeing day after day where sometimes it doesn't get above 10 F. Certainly a few nights every year get below 0F and sometimes worse than -10F.

Some years I have seen an entire month (ie Jan) NEVER get above freezing (almost to 32F but not above).

I've been here 20 years and this is by far the warmest winter I've ever seen. It has not been below zero F ever. Many days have had highs in the 40's and some 50's during the same period most years where we commonly get highs in the 20's F. We've had considerably less snow than other years as well.

I grew up in RI which is 6 or 7 degrees warmer in the winter than here on average and this Chicago area winter would be considered warm in RI.

This winter is more like what I'd expect if I lived well south like in Louisville. LOL the ground hardly ever even froze solid here this winter. From my observation this winter has been at least 10F warmer than average.

Climate change... well I shudder to think summer could bring and allready a tornado has destroyed a town about 300 miles south of here. Of course a warm winter doesn't have to mean a hot summer.

Coincidence..I dunno, but I've never seen a winter this warm. .. neilkaz ..

And that is the nature of weather. Climate is longer term and if you google Arctic Oscillation and Blocking Highs you will get a clearer picture of why NA is warmer and Europe and Alaska are colder than usual this year, even though the "Global" temps have reached their most recent apex and are gradually cooling off as the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation)shifts to its cold phase and the AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) finishes its warm phase.

[neilkaz]

 hrothgar, on 2012-March-02, 15:36, said:

And last year was brutally cold and snowy across much of the US...

Individual data points really aren't good for anything more than anecdotes.
Real analysis is based on long term trend

Yes, of course and what matters is global average temperature, which unless, I'm missinformed or paying too much attention to those who think New York City will be under 30 ft of water in 100 years, is happening. Personally, I am not yet panicing about global warming and realize the big swings in temperature that we've had even over the past millennium.

.. neilkaz ..

[PassedOut]

Some recent news: Virginia Supreme Court Spanks Ken Cuccinelli

Quote

The state’s highest court wrote in an opinion that Cuccinelli lacked the authority to subpoena records — including e-mails, drafts and handwritten notes — from the University of Virginia involving well-known climate scientist Michael Mann’s research.

Mann, now a professor at Pennsylvania State University, accused the attorney general of engaging in a two-year “character assassination’’ against him. He just completed a book, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars,” about global-warming skeptics, including Cuccinelli, and what he calls their attacks on scientists.

Too bad about the waste of taxpayers' money by the Attorney General / Candidate for Governor, plus the $600,000 dollars the University of Virginia had to spend defending against a frivolous grab by a power-hungry politician.

[blackshoe]

In a reasonable world, Cuccinelli would have been required to repay the costs of his fishing expedition to both the State of Virginia and the University of Virginia.