Interesting leaked docs fro the Heartland folk: see DeSmogBlog.
[Update: in all fairness, I should point out that Heartland are currently claiming that some of the documents are fake. The truth or otherwise of this is yet to be determined. See follow-up.]
From their highlights,
funding goes primarily to Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), Fred Singer ($5,000 per month, plus expenses), Robert Carter ($1,667 per month), and a number of other individuals… We have also pledged to help raise around $90,000 in 2012 for Anthony Watts to help him create a new website to track temperature station data.
Should be fun. I haven’t read the things yet. There is also John Mashey’s work trying to tease apart SEPP’s finances.
Ah, now from Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy this bit is horrible:
effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science
which I think really shows the Heartland folk in their true light: their aim is to prevent people being taught science.
WTD has an interesting admission:
At present we sponsor the NIPCC to undermine the official United Nation’s IPCC reports
That isn’t quite what they say about themselves; they think they are an international panel of nongovernment scientists and scholars who have come together to understand the causes and consequences of climate change. But I think their Heartland paymasters are rather more honest.
Update: this is now quite widely covered, and made slashdot and El Rego. Over at slashdot, someone makes a point that I’d wondered about myself Just to point out that the real incriminating evidence comes from the “2012 Climate Strategy” document that could be falsified. The other documents, like the budget, look pretty legit but the document you are citing is a page and a half. Wouldn’t take much for me, someone who is ultra opposed to the Heartland Institute, to dream that up in a short afternoon with a six pack. I’m poking through the rest of them and am not finding the same sort of evidence. So it’s possible that someone could have gotten their hands on a few legit documents (like the budget) and created this one and added it to the group.
Incidentally, looking through the fundraising doc throws up some humour:
Bruno Behrend, hired in January 2010 to fundraise on school reform, was unsuccessful in doing so in 2011. He was moved to part-time and then to volunteer status by the end of the year. He continues to speak at public events and talk to donors, but we do not expect him to be sufficiently successful to return to paid status in 2012.
A reader writes:
I also like how carefully crafted Bast’s (rather empty) statement about funding was: “no more than 5% of total budget from a single corporate entity”. No mention that 20% came from a single individual with as-yet-unknown ties, and no mention of the foundation+companies within sectors…
Refs
* DeepClimate
* The dead are allowed to vote – on the Board of Directors of a denialist, tax-supported charity – John Mashey, via RR.
wmconnolley: scienceblogs.com/stoat archive 
It would be interesting to see a comparison between the sort of money these guys are pulling down and the sort of money actual scientists pull down…
[Hard to tell, without knowing how much they are supposed to be doing. Some of these people are supposed to have full-time jobs, after all -W]
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> their aim is to prevent people being taught science.
Surely so, but still I wouldn’t take this passage as evidence for that. I mean, come on, nobody can be this candid even in “internal” communications — almost everywhere else they stick to liturgy.
Could be freudian of course.
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Money: it is not a question of relative amounts.
These guys get paid to confuse and deceive the public.
Over half of the 200-pager I wrote has examples from 86 issues of Heartland’s Environment and Climate News (which also had frequent pro-tobacco articles an advertisements) .
Real scientists get paid for trying to find truth, which is hard work.
Heartland pays N-th raters who act as fakexperts.
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There must be some furious deniers about today. What colour did Watts turn when he found out Idso get $11k twelve times a year. In Canada, the balls must be in an uproar. Moncton got zip; and he’s a peer!
[Oddly enough, there is nothing about this on WUWT. My one minor posting there hasn’t appeared, how odd. I must tease them some more… -W]
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Craig Idso must be raking it in. Six figures annually from Heartland, six figures annually from CSCDGC. That’s some potential gravy train. And, I don’t see how Heartland will be able to hold onto its nonprofit status. It just seems like another lobbying firm.
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What I’m waiting for is the “coordination with external networks” such as “WUWT and other groups capable of
rapidly mobilizing” to respond to these “unfavorable blog posts”. Not sure they are getting their money’s worth today…
[:-). Another post just up… but not on topic. I imagine that, behind the scenes, they are trying to work out whether they can get away with either ignoring it, or denying that the docs are genuine -W]
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Dunc,
When the Climate Science Coalition of America (US affiliate for the ICSC) advertised for an Executive Director in ’09 they offered between 70 and 90 k per year.
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From the funding document, 2010, 2011, 2012E
Altria (i.e., Philip Morris): $40K, $50K, $50K
Reynolds American (i.e. Rj Reynolds): $0K, $110K, $110K.
They must still remember Bast’s defense of Joe Camel.
[I’d guessed that tobacco funding had continued at least until 2008 … but still at it.$160K total in 2011 is still noticeable.]
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I also like how carefully crafted Bast’s (rather empty) statement about funding was: “no more than 5% of total budget from a single corporate entity”. No mention that 20% came from a single individual with as-yet-unknown ties, and no mention of the foundation+companies within sectors…
[Good catch. You’ve clearly been reading this more carefully than me -W]
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Or multiple corporate entities under the same ownership, or funneled through charitable fronts (which note are also corporate entities). So taken literally it’s a nearly content-free claim.
[It is proudly on their wikipedia page. I might make note… -W]
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What does Idso do for that much money? Is co2science that influential amongst the denialists?
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Watts has a post and it only took 24 hours for someone to tell him what to say.
He says he’s not on salary and not regularly funded by Heartless. This does not preclude massive funding by the stink tanks, Heartland and others. Pretty weak.
Watts also fulminates about how rich Greenpeace and the Sierra Club are. Thousands of non corporate individuals do cntribute but Tony forgets that Green peace operates worldwide ( yes I understand that for Republicans the rest of the world doesn”t exist) and the Sierra Club is concerned with many issues not just climate.
If this is the best he can do after a full day , he’s got nothing.
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Again, one need not speculate about the big anonymous donor who cuts the checks: that is DONORS CAPITAL plus DONORS TRUST, as laid out in pp 57-59 of the Fakery report.
Whitney Ball runs those and signs the form 990s
There may well be 1 finder behind the mask, or several, with some evidence hinting at the latter.
But when she writes checks as DC, they get aggregated as 1 donor for legal purposes.
Read about “donor advised trusts.”
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Looks like Heartland is indeed claiming that the 2012 Climate Strategy Document is false: http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/15/heartland-institute-responds-stolen-and-fake-documents
Interestingly, they seem VERY VERY UPSET that someone could have stolen and distributed some of their internal documents, and want to find and jail said person – one might be curious if this attitude is consistent with their position on the climategate emails?
“The individuals who have commented so far on these documents did not wait for Heartland to confirm or deny the authenticity of the documents. We believe their actions constitute civil and possibly criminal offenses for which we plan to pursue charges and collect payment for damages, including damages to our reputation. We ask them in particular to immediately remove these documents and all statements about them from the blogs, Web sites, and publications, and to publish retractions.
How did this happen? The stolen documents were obtained by an unknown person who fraudulently assumed the identity of a Heartland board member and persuaded a staff member here to âre-sendâ board materials to a new email address. Identity theft and computer fraud are criminal offenses subject to imprisonment. We intend to find this person and see him or her put in prison for these crimes.”
[Thanks for that. They’re playing hardball, then. If the documents are genuine, that will only add to the eventual damage. I’ve added a note to the post ref’ing their denial -W]
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Am I the only one that finds this ho-hum. Modest amounts of money given to people that no one had any respect for before this.
Except the “dissuading teachers from teaching science” bit which it is very hard to believe they’d put in writing
[I too find the money less interesting, except as a tracer. More interesting, to me, are the teachers bit, and the NIPCC bit. I now realise I’ve chosen to highlight the money for my first quote; ah well -W]
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> “no more than 5% of total budget
> from a single corporate entity”
Hmmm.
They’re getting funding from _discorporate_ entities?
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It does seem Bob Carter has been caught out though. One of his web pages:
“Bob’s research has been supported by grants from competitive public research agencies, especially the Australian Research Council (ARC). He receives no research funding from special interest organisations such as environmental groups, energy companies or government departments. Bob strives to provide critical and dispassionate analysis based upon scientific principles, demonstrated facts and a knowledge of the scientific literature.”
Bob in the SMH this morning:
Professor Carter did not deny he was being paid by The Heartland Institute, but would not confirm the amount, or if the think tank expected anything in return for its money.
”That suggestion is silly and offensive – a kindergarten level argument,” Professor Carter told the Herald.
”Institutions or organisations simply pay for services rendered – in the same way that an architect is paid for their work, so are scientists,” he said. ”What they may make any payment to me for, I’m not discussing with anybody outside of my family.”
[Ah, but could he not argue – with indeed a fair degree of veracity – that He receives no research funding from special interest organisations is quite true: they aren’t funding him to do research, they are funding him to make up fairy stories -W]
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Why is everyone tutt tutting about S. Fred getting a $5K retainer. He got $143K for writing the original NIPCC report and a dollar was worth a lot more in real money then
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I commented at Watts but was censored ( no free speech for Canadians). I pointed out the weasel words ( appologies to stoats)he used to deny Heartland funding. Not every month, not on the payroll; yada , yada, yada. He did not deny Heartland funding, nor did he mention other stink tank funding.
He seems rather sore arsed after being badger ( again apologies to stoats)
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So the Heartland institute spending chump change advocating it’s view of the science is “…to confuse and deceive the public” while GreenPeace, The Sierra Club, Pew Trusts etc. spending hundreds of times more is of course in the service of “the truth”.
Yeah, right.
Sadly for you chaps the public isn’t responding to the relative amounts of dough.
[I’ve disagreed with Greenpeace in the past; and if they were being deliberately deceptive, as Heartland is, I’d be even more critical -W]
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As it’s $5K per month plus expenses, it sounds like this is Fred’s financing to fly all over giving his little talks. Plus of course now there’s another NIPCC gestating.
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The strategy document:
A) Has no actual information beyond the Budget and Funding docs.
B) Was an image, not a generated PDF.
C) Is certainly written in Bast’s style, and from other things, easily could have been written by Bast. It’s certainly consistent.
D) But, given the Board docs and familiarity with Bvast, it easily could have been written by somebody else.
E) All that’s irrelevant,as the important info is in the other docs, and it mostly fills in a few holes, few new conclusions. Murray Energy (coal) showed up, and even more tobacco money.
The numbers are relatively small, but very efficient. Donors keep thinktanks scrambling for grants, every year. It is far cooler to fund 48 thinktanks, mostly smaller than 2-3 big ones … sound like more support.
Still, people *really* need to understand 501(c)(3) rules to understand how far outside Heartland an others are operating.
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11 Davey – “What does Idso do for that much money?”
Pays Bob Ferguson of SPPI between $240,000 and $300,000 a year in salary and bonuses. Just saying.
So, a stranger makes a phonecall and persuades a staffer to send all of this highly confidential material to an unknown email address by impersonating a board member. How did this stranger know what documents to specifically ask for, or could they get them by just being vague? Were they trained by Mike Yarwood?
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Not to mention the minor detail that Greenpeace is a charity, not a think tank. A good deal of that money goes on…well, doing things.
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Heartland is now threatening to sue not only those who obtained the documents, but also journalists and bloggers who have commented on them. That’s mind boggling even by the warped standards of Heartland.
http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0215-heartland_to_sue_journalists.html
[So I hear. I find it hard to believe they will follow through, though. And unless they can lean on DeSmoggie, there is little point -W]
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> unless they can lean on DeSmoggie
Uh, remember John LeFebre?
They’ve leaned damn hard already.
And look up Heartland’s spin on that, which changed dramatically from ‘ibertarian support of online gambling to calling it ‘money laundering’.
Click to access OP_v1n3.pdf
“… in an amendment to a port security bill, Congress added a measure entitled the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforce- ment Act, which updates the Wire Act to include the internet and orders financial institutions to stop any transactions to online gambling sites (Weisman 2006). After passage of the law, the Canadian co- founders of e-wallet Neteller were arrested by US officials and accused of money launder- ing for transferring $2.9 billion from US gamblers to off-shore sites (Blitz 2007, 19).”
http://lawvibe.com/neteller-founders-arrested-on-conspiracy-charges/
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Before: April 2004 IT Update | Heartland Institute
heartland.org/newspaper/april-2004-it-update
âWhy Prohibitions on Internet Gambling Won’t Work,â by Koleman Strumpf of the Cato Institute; … Get the latest policy news from The Heartland Institute!
After: Blog Funder Guilty of Money-Laundering … – Heartland Institute
heartland.org/newspaper…/blog-funder-guilty-money-laundering
Feb 1, 2008 â John Lefebvre, the top financial benefactor of the DeSmog Blog, … prison time after pleading guilty to federal money-laundering charges.
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[I’ve disagreed with Greenpeace in the past; and if they were being deliberately deceptive, as Heartland is, I’d be even more critical -W]
I don’t think that Heartland is being “deliberately deceptive”. I have no reason to doubt that they sincerely see things differently than you do.
But so what?
I am often struck by the fact that many of the people on both sides of the issue are so quick to claim some sort of evil conspiracy.
People that think we face serious danger from human induced CO2 see the people on the other side as “evil right wing corporate shills” and people that think the evidence for serious “climate disruption” (the nom de jour for human induced global warming) is weak often see the folks on the other side as dastardly Marxists hellbent on installing a UN controlled one world government.
Since we are all human it is inevitable that political and philosophical bias will come into play. Advocacy groups will be formed on both sides to sway public opinion and influence government policy.
Nothing in this latest incident says to me that Heartland is doing anything nefarious.
[I think you’re being to generous to them; about this incident, and in general.
For example, from their proposed-curriculum stuff, they are trying to teach kids “whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissionsâ. That is simply dishonest (yes, human *emissions* are smaller than natural, but that isn’t relevant; what is relevant is the net flux: the balance between emission and sinks. For that, the natural sources and sinks nearly balance, so the *net* human emission is far larger than the natural *net* emission).
This is the kind of thing you can confuse people with, if they are unfamiliar with the science. It is the sort of mistake I see being made commonly at sites like WUWT by ill-informed and over-enthusiastic commentators. Those people are probably genuinely mistaken. But it isn’t the sort of mistake you can possibly make if you’re informed; in that case (and the Heartland folk are in that category) you can only say that if you’re deliberately trying to deceive people -W]
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People gave free speech .. But tax-exempt 501(c)(3) public charity status in US us a revocable privilege. People unfamiliar with the rules may want to read the short tutorial in section 0.4 of fakery.
People can totally believe the moon is made of cheese. (Wallace said so, I saw it myself.)
But they dont get to be tax-exempt for spending money to spread that message.
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First let me say that I think you are a fairly decent guy as far as honesty goes. I wouldn’t bother commenting here if that were not the case.
Well, let’s have a look.
First, to this particular incident.
Assuming the disputed “Strategy” document is fake, and it looks to me that it is, what about the “leaked” information points to illicit activity?
[We can lay aside the Strategy document, but I think your “illicit” is a strawman; I haven’t accused them of anything illicit, only immoral -W]
As to your example of net CO2 vs flux, it doesn’t make what they have said false. To call CO2 a “pollutant” one must assume that the flux imbalance is, on whole, a dangerous thing. Also you have to define, with error bars and probability, a danger to what?
[You haven’t understood what I’m saying. Their “natural fluxes are greater and human fluxes” is a deliberately misleading statement designed to confuse people. It is dishonest. If you don’t understand this point we need to pause the conversation until you do (you are not obliged to agree with me but its meaningless to go on unless you understand what I’m saying).
Heartland are saying, that they want to say to school children, that we shouldn’t worry about human CO2 because natural fluxes are so much bigger. They are clinging to the technical point that human *emissions* are smaller than natural emissions – but deliberately evading the point that *net* human fluxes are greater than net natural fluxes. Do you understand this point? Do you understand that they are being deliberately dishonest? There is no question of interpretation here, no question of scientific disagreement – they are being deliberately dishonest -W]
There is ample evidence (from my point of view) that there is no imminent “danger” from “business as usual” emissions of CO2. Your assessment of the evidence is no doubt somewhat different.
That we see things differently doesn’t make me a “liar” or my motives “evil”. I may very well be evaluating the evidence incorrectly. Or it may be you that has made a similar mistake.
[We Heartland only to be arguing no-imminent-danger I wouldn’t be being harsh on them. But that isn’t what they are doing – they are deliberately feeding uncertainty, doubt and misinformation -W]
That is why we have advocacy groups on both sides. When either side makes demonstrably false claims it should corrected.
[Heartland *are* making demonstrably false claims. Which the “skeptics” are lapping up – because they aren’t actually “skeptics” at all – they never look at the Heartland’s position skeptically -W]
But highlighting some information and minimizing other information is the nature of “advocacy”.
The science will out in the end.
[Yes. But possibly in the manner of the man who jumped from the skyscraper calling “its all fine so far” as he passed each floor -W]
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One thing I find curious is the statement that they’re giving ~$11k/mo to Idso & yet I noticed no mention of this on HI’s 990 for 2010 (on Guidestar), at least; and (if – big if – he was also getting this $$ in 2010) there’d need to be. (I’d thought maybe a decimal point was misplaced, but Revkin’s got a subsequent post up, with an exchange with Idso, that would have mentioned this.)
Also – who would resort to pretexting, to get this info? Did the end justify the means? (I think this would be a bad precedent to set.)
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> B) Was an image, not a generated PDF.
John #21, not that simple. It contains the text strings and must have been created by OCR-capable scanning software.
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William, once you’re in rubbing-it-in mode, why not point at the numbers we have for these things:
1) how much CO2 humans are putting into the atmosphere follows directly from how much fossil fuels we are digging or pumping up, and (except for the little bit converted to plastics) burning. Most all of the producing nations keep accurate statistics, and these are available. Not much wiggle room. Then there’s the deforestation contribution: not quite as certain, but definitely positive.
2) The amount of CO2 that appears in the atmosphere can also be precisely tracked, thanks to the good folks at Mauna Loa and a number of other locations. It’s simple: take the ppmv from the Keeling Curve, multiply by 44/29 (molecular weights ratio), and then by air column mass density times total Earth surface area.
3) Compare 1 and 2.
Hint: 1 is quite a bit larger than 2, and the balance is going somewhere: into the ocean, the biosphere, the soil, AKA “nature”.
Really really simple.
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Money: it is not a question of relative amounts.
These guys get paid to confuse and deceive the public.
THANK YOU. Yes, that is the entire point. When your whole purpose has been exposed to be bribery and lies, it doesn’t matter if you’re not the biggest guy in the room – it only matters if you’re the biggest bribery / lying con artist conspiracy in the room. Everybody else has to work for a living.
Al Qaeda had fewer members and less money than the companies that operated in the WTC.
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John Mashey?
You mean this guy�
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/reply-to-john-mashey/
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Joe Bast has sent out an e-mail to his donors requesting more money so he can set up a “legal defense fund”.
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/02/heartland-institute-documents-climate
However, shouldn’t he be calling it a “legal offense fund” since HI will be doing the suing (or so they say)
Perhaps Bast is looking a few weeks down the road when the IRS comes after him for abusing Charity laws.
[The best defence is a good offence 🙂 -W]
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MartinM:
Yes, doing things. Running a private navy is expensive, just to name one thing they do.
[Navys, on the whole, tend to be armed -W]
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The “2012 Climate Strategy.pdf” document (which Heartland Institute says is a forgery) is the one that the shocking quotes come from. I noticed several suspicious things about it:
1. It uses the term “anti-climate” to refer to Heartland’s own position — a derogatory term which neither Heartland nor any other climate skeptic outfit ever uses to describe their position.
2. It is written in the first person, yet there’s no indication of who wrote it. (Have you ever seen a memo like that?)
3. The PDF is time-stamped with a Pacific Standard Time timestamp: 2012-02-13T12:41:52-08:00 (“-8:00” means PST) But Heartland is in Chicago (two timezones away), and none of its directors are in the Pacific time zone. Most are in Illinois, and none are in or even near the Pacific time zone.
So it appears likely that, as Heartland claims, the document really is a (clumsy) forgery. Is anyone really surprised?
[As to whether it is forged or not, I think is unclear at the moment. I don’t think anyone has managed a good argument either way; the points you make aren;t convincing (any more that Watts, who claimed that calling his funding “about 90k” was a clear arithmetic error because it was really 88k). I expect to write a follow up in a day or two addressing the authenticity or otherwise -W]
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BTAIM, the budget documents pretty much follow the strategy document and no one is questioning those.
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Tom Moriarity offers a self-link to his own old blog post.
Oh, look, over there, something unrelated. Mhmm.
[I was wondering why he posted it -W]
The topical link given in the main post here is
relevant: John Mashey‘s current work.
The devil is in the details.
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I’d like to point out that ‘Dave Burton’ has been all over the web tonight with exactly the same post. Mother Jones, DeSmogblog, Deep Climate, the Guardian, etc. He’s either very keen, or someone is pushing an agenda.
As Eli has just commented (and John Mashey has pointed out elsewhere), there is nothing in the memo that isn’t out of place when you look at the other documents and info from elsewhere.
Its strange that so many posts on these websites are coming up with the same angle – its a fake, stuff has beeen stolen – ‘they’ are out to get us. Perhaps they are just following Watts lead….
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One more time: I urge people to not spend more time on the strategy document until they’ve gone over the Budget and Funding documents with fine tooth combs…
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I happen to know how much Greenpeace spent on the initial purchase and refitting of the Esperanza. That one-off event was in the same ballpark as the Heartland budget figures revealed by these documents.
Sure, guns and stuff make running a navy even *more* expensive. The lack doesn’t make the running of a private Navy inexpensive, however.
Heck, ask anyone who owns a 50 ft sailboat and keeps it year round in salt water what costs are like.
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> claiming that some of the documents are fake.
Some? Or just that one?
The timestamp could be a received time rather than a sent or created time; I don’t see it. I see “created by Epson scan” with a stamp but not in GMT-8 format.
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Oh, he’s posting the same thing all over the place 🙂
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I noticed last night that ‘Dave Burton’ (#36) has posted exactly the same comments on at least four other websites, including the BBC, Leo Hickmans blog at the Guardian, DeSmogblog and Deep Climate. I don’t know whats going on, but someone is very eager to push the ‘its all a forgery’ line.
As Eli pointed out, most of the documents have not been denied and the meat of the ‘Strategy memo’ is found in those other documents and elsewhere – so if it is a forgery, its one that reflects reality.
Anyway, I think we’ve seen the line of attack. The documents are stolen, therefore are tainted (‘Gentlemen do not read each others mail’), the documents are all forged anyway, and everything is above board, and this is a very small amount of money.
This might be effective, since the mainstream media is being pretty careful because of the ‘forgery/stolen’ aspect and it has yet to break into the mainstream. I wish they had been so careful over the East Anglia hack.
I do hope that a journalist actually asks the question we all have in our minds; if the document is forged, why not show us the proper document, so we can judge for ourselves? It will be interesting to see how they and their sock puppets react. In the meantime, we can watch their corporate donors and they people they paid off look very embarrassed.
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Does anyone find it ironic that a bunch of people help fund Heartland for healthcasre issues, given:
1) Bast’s passionate defense of Joe Camel?
2) Heartland having a Philip Morris guy on its Board, 1996-2008, at least.
3) Heartland running smoking-supportive material in E&CN?
See Fake … Apps. F & G.
Relatively little surprised me in the budget/funding documents, except perhaps that Heartland was getting even *more* tobacco money than when my tobacco archives data stopped, i.e., in 2011 they got $50K from ALtria and $110K from Reynolds American.
I take it back, there was one major surprise:
See the Heartland budget document, p.25.
They spend about $50K Printing & mailing E&CN.
However, one item says:
âRoosters of the Apocalypse polybag? Decided against this.â
Roosters of the apocalypse?
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“claiming that some of the documents are fake.”
Some? Only one claimed fake, and the others admitted correct, innit?
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A number of things jump out at me. The person who phoned and got the package emailed knew what to ask for, who to ask and how to phrase the request.
A phone prank is not regarded as equivalent to identity theft.
The email package was sent willingly. Whoever sent the emails apparently didn’t need a supervisor’s permission.
I now ( presumably) have a copy somewhere on my harddrive. Will Heartland sue me.
If the document is a fake, no original exists. Proof may prove elusive.
John McManus
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Hank Roberts says
You are wondering why I posted it? The reason is simple, it is to impugn his reasoning abilities and highlight his penchant for shooting from the hip, which he has done multiple times in this very blog post.
Take a look…
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/reply-to-john-mashey/
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When Heartland says something is fake, it is fake, there cannot be any doubt about that. Have they ever said something that wasn’t 100% right?
In the mean time at http://rankexploits.com/musings/ a Mosher is accusing Peter Gleick for producing that ‘fake document’. No one less then Pielke Jr. is jumping on the bandwagon, using recently detected Twitter; not to ‘accuse’ Gleick, but just ‘asking’ Gleick if he can confirm/deny.
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John Mashey: ‘I take it back, there was one major surprise: … Roosters of the apocalypse?’
Didn’t one of the documents say that HI planned to take out advertisements in local newspapers at $6k a pop? $6k! That’s a major surprise.
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re the Bush letters, one guy’s blog on forensic scrutiny:
http://www.flounder.com/bush4.htm
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Tom, rather than claim Mashey is “shooting from the hip” in a poorly written and mixed up reply on your own blog (read it again with a true skeptical hat on, and within seconds you’ll see yourself make some confused claims), why don’t you show any of his current comments wrong?
Maybe that’s where the problem is…you can’t. And thus you need to create doubt. Now, where did I see that behaviour before. Hmmm…
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Heartland itself has also jumped on the bandwagon and accuses Peter Gleick:
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/02/17/theft-and-apparent-forgery-of
As J Bowers points out at the Rabett, their vehement denial of the content of that one memo is starting to become a self-fulfilling prophecy: they indeed have started to attack Peter Gleick. Ironic, isn’t it?
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By funny coincidence, American Spectator is found in “Fakery”, p.12, 39, 41.
IT also got mentioned a few times in Weird Anti-Science.
[Speaking vaguely of which, over at WUWT they are trying to tell us that “The Atlantic” is left wing, and therefore we should take Megan Mcardle seriosuly. Comments? -W]
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Found here: http://injustice4yall.blogspot.com/
cited as: From the huffington post
Shawn Lawrence Otto
Author, ‘Fool Me Twice’
—–begin quote—-
Jen Stuntsman, a DOE spokesperson, gave me the following statement about Wojick, who the Heartland Institute lists as one of their experts:
David Wojick has been a part-time support contractor for the Office of Scientific and Technical Information since 2003, working to help the office manage and organize its electronic databases. He has never advised or conducted research for the Department on climate change or any other scientific topic, and the office he works for is not a research organization…..
—– end quote—-
See the source for the full quote
[I’m sort-of sure I heard the name before, though. Probably one of the Heartland rent-a-septic folk -W]
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“Fakery” listed one article of his in E&CN.
He has 12 hits in the 155MB file that is the combination of 86 issues.
He is variously described in the articles as:
journalist and policy analyst
independent science journalist
an expert in climate science
energy consultant
However, he didn’t make either the NIPCC nor Legislator’s Guide to GW Experts.
[Thanks! A wannabe expert, perhaps -W]
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William, according to her wikipedia page she writes from a libertarian/classic liberal viewpoint.
Considering some of the points she has written about in the past, one can hardly call her “left wing”. Unless you are left wing if you are against the US auto industry bailout and national health care. Or if you are non-committal about same-sex marriage. The one thing that would make her “left wing” to Watts is that she is “fairly convinced” that humans are warming the planet and that something may need to be done.
[Ah, that sort of leftie -W]
Funny factoid: she is apparently a lecturer at George Mason University.
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The Rabett made a good find at Suddeutsche Zeitung.
See comments.
Jo Nova’s Skeptic’s Handbook has been translated into many languages, of which German was the first. Heartland likely paid for some of the writing, and maybe some translations.
See: translations. It’s in many European languages…
[For future reference -W]
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Its everywhere. For example someone phoned BBC Radio 4’s Any Answers to-day about nuclear power, and as far as I can remember, managed to slip in those two points, in the same order, followed by an announcement that the ‘greatest living climatologist’, Lindzen was visiting London. If the topic had concerned money instead of CO2, and half the financial transactions had been concealed, then Jonathan Dimbleby might not have remained silent. I wonder what Lindzen will say if this type of argument is raised during his visit?
Ref.
The ‘theorem’ that the atmospheric greenhouse gas theory violates the second law of thermodynamics is a variation of the theme.
What makes this disclosure new is that it appears to expose a source for this kind of bogus accounting.
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42 Mike B “I wish they had been so careful over the East Anglia hack.”
IIRC it took a week or two for the MSM to start reporting on Climategate at full blast. The plastering of the emails all over the internet was why a British judge ruled that the emails were now clearly in the public domain and the press were free to quote from them. A number of forums, though, would initially only allow links to pre-existing quoted texts elsewhere (which turned out to be quote mined to the point that Arthur Scargill could have started a sceptic miners union).
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Chasing down why my credit union’s national association has been funding Heartland for years, it turns out Heartland has long been pushing “risk-based regulation” AKA “Probabilistic Risk Assessment.
This is the “hey, what could go wrong? You decide!” approach — letting the regulated industry decide for each individual site or program what risks to address and which to discount as unlikely enough not to be worth preparing for.
Heartland is big into pushing this PRA approach for the financial and insurance regulators, these days.
There’s some evidence how it works out in practice:
“… Under probabilistic risk assessment, the goal is to reduce the odds of something going wrong to one-in-a-million. Achieving those odds, however, requires complex strings of assumptions that are reliable only if everything performs as planned.
âCombining the probability of an accident with its consequences gives us a measure of risk,â the NRC explains in documents outlining the approach. âFor instance, the consequences of a large meteor striking your house would be devastating, but the risk is low because the probability of such an accident is very small.â
In other documents, the NRC acknowledges that life sometimes doesnât go as planned. âThe uncertainty in the result is partly because reality is more complex than any computer model, partly because modelers do not know everything, and partly because of chance.”
—- end excerpt —-
http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/09/13/6359/nuclear-miscalculation-why-regulators-miss-power-plant-threats-quakes-and-storms
Yep, them dang modelers do not know everything.
So don’t listen to them. Worrywarts, all of ’em.
Why, modelers would have the finance and insurance industries assume that sea level is going to keep rising, temperature’s going to keep increasing — and spend valuable money on addressing what some modeler claims might happen.
You can tell where this is going.
Heartland’s guy (named Greenwood) moved to the Huffington Post last fall to pursue this anti-regulatory agenda in a DC office. Yeah, that Huffington Post, the one with the anti-vaccine “science” department. I mentioned in the ‘unforced variations’ RC thread too. See http://outofthestormnews.com/2011/08/19/and-goodbye/
Follow the money.
[Odd. I think the insurance people – like Munich Re – aren’t even interested in this stuff. They can’t afford to be; it is too broken, it won’t work for them. You can only be that careless if its someone else’s money -W]
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> someone else’s money
Well, yeah. You can’t buy your own insurance against problems in at least two industries:
financial and fission.
Because — hey, what could go wrong that any private insurance company could handle, in either industry?
They’re regulated by governments. Who decides how?
“Capture the regulator” is the name of the game here.
There’s an excellent discussion of how that works here:
http://metaclimate.org/2012/02/11/laws-are-like/#more-1979
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RE: “Roosters of the Apocalypse” â this apparently refers to a 2011 book:
Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience
by Richard Landes
Oxford University Press, USA , 2011
â http://www.religiondispatches.org/books/atheologies/5023/secular_end_times_%26_apocalyptic_%E2%80%98roosters%E2%80%99/
[Gurk. I think I prefer Ping, the duck -W]
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re: 61, Chris
Great find! Life has been crazy, I should have just Googled: roosters of the apocalypse.
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Marco (comment 50),
My response to Mashey was not confused all. I suggest that interested readers check it out
[Spamlink deleted; you’ve posted it often enough; anyone who cares will doubtless find it -W]
You will notice Masheys lack of detail – he simply mentions several papers. It lookes like he did a quick search and got the titles, but it seems he never got past the abstracts.
I responded with detailed comments on all the papers he mentioned, and showed that they did not support his thesis of alarming sea level rise.
Let me be blunt: my goal here is to discredit Mashey.
[Err yes, I think we’ve noticed that -W]
Why? Because he deserves to be discredited.
Think about what is happening right here in these comments. Mashey (and others) are blathering on about some supposed nefarious documents from the Heartland Institute. But it turns out all the documents, but one, are rather tame. And that one is almost certainly a forgery.
[I don’t think you’ve actually bothered read any of Mashey’s stuff. Try it sometime; you might find it interesting -W]
Here is an interesting tidbit for you…
the XMP toolkit used to generate the fake pdf was:
“Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/09/27-13:37:26.”
The XMP toolkit used to create one of the elements of desmog-fracking-the-future.pdf was:
âAdobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/09/27-13:37:26.”
How many different types or brands of scanners, drivers, and toolkits are there in the world?
How many versions does each have?
How many builds does each version have?
It took me about 1 minute to find 10 versions of âAdobe XMP Coreâ
4.2.1-c041, 52.342996, 2008/05/07-20:48:00
4.2.2-c063, 53.351735, 2008/07/22-18:11:12
4.0-c321
4.1-c036, 46.276720, Mon Feb 19 2007 22:40:08
4.2.1-c043, 52.372728, 2009/01/18-15:08:04
4.0-c320
3.1-702
4.2.2-c063, 53.352624, 2008/07/30-18:12:18
4.0-c316
5.2-c001 ( 32 bit ) 5.2.1.10630
There are likely thousands of PDF documents made with each of these tools, and millions more made by thousands of other drivers, versions, and builds in the world.
But the odds are very small (but admittedly not zero) that two randomly chosen PDFs from different sources were created by the same code, same version, and same build.
Maybe not a smoking gun, but certainly smoldering.
[More of a damp squib I think; but Heartland are rumoured to be suing DeSmog, so we may get to find out -W]
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And if a user upgrades their Adobe software regularly, as Adobe recommends, which of these versions do you think a user would most most likely to have?
1. a lower-numbered one
2. the highest-numbered one
Now if the two documents in question were created by version 3.1 you might be on to something, evidence that both documents were created by someone who’s very, very lax about upgrading their software.
But when two documents are created by the highest-numbered version of a piece of software, it just tells you both were created by someone who’s kept their software up-to-date. Given the tendency of commercial software to continuously nag people about new updates, this is no real suprise.
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Everyone’s a forensic scientist. I blame CSI.
[Yes. Its very easy, especially when you already know the answer you want -W]
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Heartland Institute threatens 71-year-old veteran.
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Hmmm, one wonders how close to libel that sails…
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Thinking might be useful here before you open your mouth.
Consider what proportion of users update to the latest version when it comes out – often automatically – and the fact that the version used is the latest one in the list of versions you found.
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Tom, your response WAS confused, as you failed to see the difference between *steric* and “melt*-related sea level rise.
And you STILL have not provided any evidence that Mashey’s investigation into the funding is wrong. Interestingly, even without the supposed fake memo (which, I repeat, Heartland tries hard to fulfill anyway by attacking Peter Gleick), there is still a lot of interesting information. Such as lobbying activities, an anonymous donor who provides most of the income (which, I have been told, would not fit with the charity regulations), and the spread of quite substantial amounts of money to selected pseudo-skeptics to write a report that has been shown time after time to contain disinformation.
But I’m not surprised you defend these people…
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I read through the whole /. article and despite it being a huge nerd nest noone pointed out that the email provider keeps an emergency backup copy of emails and should be able resend the whole original document which was sent from the Heartland offices. That should clear up whether or not the Strategy section was faked.
[Yes. Or more simply (though less rigourous) most systems have a sent-mail log.
I think the issue there is that Heartland still wish to leave themselves the option of declaring the whole lot fake: after all, they haven’t admitted they are all genuine. That is obviously very silly of them, but I think is the only explanation that fits their facts. The other possibility is that the strategy thing is indeed genuine -W]
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Let’s not forget that this is 100% about playing the media. (DA is a great example of how this works.) HI knows that liberal journalists will keep themselves at slightly greater distance from the story so long as HI maintains the fiction that the veracity of all of the docs is in question. Re the “fake,” I would submit that it does HI less damage to deny now even if they’re caught out later. Even then, they could claim that the doc was a draft written by a staffer but not approved by Bast or HI. I’ll be parsing their statements to see if there’s room being left for such a fall-back.
OTOH if it really was just a strategy doc circulated among a very few reliable people, they might think they can tough it out permanently. In the meantime, they try to get the media to focus on the faux-outrage and legal bluster. All vewy, vewy twanspawent, as Elmer would say.
Q for the ether: This is Chicago. What history does Seid, the presumed AD, have with Obama or his current/former minions (e.g. Emanuel or Daley)?
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> [… Wojick … heard the name before …]
site:judithcurry.com wojick
Hat tip to http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/17768592992
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“I noticed several suspicious things about it:…”
Copied and pasted so many times on the internet it’s being tweeted about. An AR5 expert reviewer, too. We’re truly doomed.
[IPCC is the gold-standard of quality -W]
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Nice try Marco (comment 69),
First: you mentioned “Interestingly, even without the supposed fake memo (which, I repeat, Heartland tries hard to fulfill anyway by attacking Peter Gleick)”
Are you still using the phrase “supposed fake?” Even Revkin now says
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/peter-gleick-admits-to-deception-in-obtaining-heartland-climate-files/
Second: The best you can do is imply that I do not know the difference between steric and “melt” related sea level rise? Where do you get that from? Go back to the link in comment 33 and read it again – maybe you will learn something. (I would supply the link again here – but Stoat won’t allow it).
The paper in question is “How Much More Global Warming and Sea Level Rise?” (Meehl, et. al.). As I pointed out “Here is what they found for 21st century steric sea level rise…” Do the math Marco – the additional steric 30 cm (in the absolutely most extreme IPCC scenario according to Meehl) doesn’t get the total (steric plus melt) anywhere close to the alarming values being defended by Mashey.
It seems pretty clear that Mashey had not actually read the paper – just quoted the abstract.
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Nice try Marco (comment 69),
First: you mentioned “Interestingly, even without the supposed fake memo (which, I repeat, Heartland tries hard to fulfill anyway by attacking Peter Gleick)”
Are you still using the phrase “supposed fake?” Even Revkin now says
Gleick has admitted to an act that leaves his reputation in ruins.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/peter-gleick-admits-to-deception-in-obtaining-heartland-climate-files/
Second: The best you can do is imply that I do not know the difference between steric and “melt” related sea level rise? Where do you get that from? Go back to the link in comment 33 and read it again – maybe you will learn something. (I would supply the link again here – but Stoat won’t allow it).
The paper in question is “How Much More Global Warming and Sea Level Rise?” (Meehl, et. al.). As I pointed out “Here is what they found for 21st century steric sea level rise…” Do the math Marco – the additional steric 30 cm (in the absolutely most extreme IPCC scenario according to Meehl) doesn’t get the total (steric plus melt) anywhere close to the alarming values being defended by Mashey.
It seems pretty clear that Mashey had not actually read the paper – just quoted the abstract.
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dhogaza (comment 64) writes…
“But when two documents are created by the highest-numbered version of a piece of software, it just tells you both were created by someone who’s kept their software up-to-date. Given the tendency of commercial software to continuously nag people about new updates, this is no real suprise.”
I guess the two different people who wrote the fake memo and the desmog fracking memo both stopped updating their software at exactly the same version.
They each used
“Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/09/27-13:37:26.”
Neither one of them bothered to upgrade to
“Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/10/12-08:45:30”
or to
“Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c003 61.141987, 2011/02/22-12:03:51”
Just another whacky coincidence.
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[PA redacted]
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