The leak of the Heartland memos had been correctly identified and has now confessed (emphasis added).
Given the potential impact however, I attempted to confirm the accuracy of the information in this document. In an effort to do so, and in a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else’s name. The materials the Heartland Institute sent to me confirmed many of the facts in the original document, including especially their 2012 fundraising strategy and budget.
Here he is lecturing the US Congress on integrity – just love this bit.
Scientific Misconduct
The violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in
professional scientific research, including:
Fabrication (the fabrication of research data and observations)
Falsification (manipulation of research data and processes or omitting critical data or
results)
To be fair, he has not confessed to writing the fake memo. Quite the opposite, he claims to have received it and then sought confirmatory evidence from the Heartland Institute. Not sure, however, how that argument is going to work out.
Here is his excuse.
My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts — often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated — to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved. Nevertheless I deeply regret my own actions in this case. I offer my personal apologies to all those affected.
Yes – well. Here is Anthony Watts’ reply
For the record Dr. Gleick, I am not “anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated” as you suggest. And you have damaged me and my business. I suspect I’ll be seeing you in court to protect my rights, along with many others, sir.
Here is Heartland’s response.
Gleick’s crime was a serious one. The documents he admits stealing contained personal information about Heartland staff members, donors, and allies, the release of which has violated their privacy and endangered their personal safety.
Looks like they will be pressing charges while Watts will sue.
Update I: Steven Goddard is reporting that Peter Gleick coined the phrase, “The debate is over”.
Update II: Anthony Watts reports
Gleick is represented by John Keker, a prominent San Francisco-based white collar criminal defense attorney.
James Taranto calls this kind of apology the Forrest Gump hippie:
Gleik to science:
“Things got a little out of hand. It’s just this war and that lying son of a bitch, Monckton! I would never hurt you. You know that.”
C.L.
21 Feb 12 at 5:17 pm
This is the ‘problem’ in a nutshell; Gleik is:
So, that’s as good as it gets professionally in terms of climate credentials; yet for all that the guy is a low-life; people forget or ignore this; that the academics and the PhD’s running AGW are by and large, as the emails showed, a pack of sanctimonious bastards who loathe and resent the hoi polloi, or indeed anyone who questions them and their vanity project, AGW.
This goes beyond the ‘ivory-tower’ syndrone; this is hubris that despises any manifestation of a lack of respect or genuflection towards their superiority.
AGW is nothing more than a concerted attempt to set up a scientific priest-hood; the irony is, of course, that any priest-hood can’t be scientific. Which is another reason to hate these pricks; they have no sense of fucking irony.
cohenite
21 Feb 12 at 5:35 pm
They really seem to be a bad bunch of DNA, Cohenite. Every single one of the top rungs of this science is a total scumbag of the worst order.
JC
21 Feb 12 at 5:45 pm
Trust but verify.
And if it’s a leftist don’t trust.
JamesK
21 Feb 12 at 5:54 pm
Doomlord
Nitpicking here, but leak’s come from ‘inside’. Like the mysterious FOIA who seems to have had access to the questionable contents of a folder in the CRU and – well – the rest is internet history.
Converesely, Dr Gleick got hold of the board papers by mis-representing himself.
Says one poster at WUWT:
“Obtaining documents electronically by fraud is, in the US, termed “wire fraud”.
Wire fraud is a Federal crime, and like most Federal crimes carries a sentence of 10 years.
Federal crime, unlike state sentences, allows for very little reduction–Federal time is REAL time. A 10-year sentence almost certainly means 9+ years served.”
Hmmm – wonder if he had any helpers he would like to enmesh in this – it might make it a RICO prosecution then ?
Myrrdin Seren
21 Feb 12 at 6:01 pm
…Fairfax is going to publish Ben Cubby’s apology & retraction just
….about
…..n
…..
[I'll get back to you, I hear he's going to do it when Wrongathan Holmes does]
Token
21 Feb 12 at 6:04 pm
And – snarking right along, courtesy of the www:
Dr Gleick and ethics:
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.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I can’t wait to see the recommendations of the ethics taskforce.
Myrrdin Seren
21 Feb 12 at 6:05 pm
Good point; maybe HL should just pass over the details to the Feds.
cohenite
21 Feb 12 at 6:07 pm
Bolta has a note from a recruiter that may break the heart of thousands of deluded green cultist.
Its enough to drive a Warmanista to half bake the truth…
Token
21 Feb 12 at 6:09 pm
Myrrdin Seren – yep, fair point. Everyone is using the ‘leaker’ terminology so let’s be consistent.
Sinclair Davidson
21 Feb 12 at 6:17 pm
cohenite
There is huge confidence that Eric Holder’s Justice Dept will be right on the Gleick-gate case,
as soon as they have cleared up Gunwalker,
registration of dead and phantom voters,
intimdation by radical political groups at polling booths, and
purged the justice system of anyone who might incorrectly contemplate a connection between acts of terrorism and certain theolgical viewpoints.
Prabably about the time BHO’s profile is added to Mount Rushmore.
Myrrdin Seren
21 Feb 12 at 6:22 pm
Most climatologists, as opposed to climate scientists, aren’t so rapid. I guess there is always a black sheep in the family.
Entropy
21 Feb 12 at 6:31 pm
This is the same monkey that panned the Donna Laframboise book in a review on Amazon,without reading it.
JB Goode
21 Feb 12 at 6:37 pm
Any other ordinary academic would be booted for such reprehensible behaviour.
.
21 Feb 12 at 6:38 pm
Thanks for that Myrradin; I get spasms of optimism every now and then; normal cynicism has resumed.
cohenite
21 Feb 12 at 6:49 pm
You kidding me. He’s up for a promotion.
JC
21 Feb 12 at 6:51 pm
He’s been quoted as saying that the sceptics are well-organised and well-funded. The imbalance of funding towards the alarmists is well known.
Are a bunch of scientists who the MSM refuses to give space to unless they are setting them up for a gotcha “well organised”?
This scam has been called out by so many perceptive commentators that I have to add here what I said elsewhere – it’s easy to spot a scam, particularly when it has been caught with its pants down so often. The lesson (once more!) is that politicians are for the most part babes in the woods when it comes to anything technical. This time the public has been led even further down the garden path leading to fairyland than usual.
But this time the grotto down there is pure grot. Stop it before it is terminally damaging.
blogstrop
21 Feb 12 at 7:54 pm
OT – take it to the open forum. Sinc
Bob
21 Feb 12 at 7:58 pm
Um, it hasn’t you filthy reprobate.
.
21 Feb 12 at 7:59 pm
There has been a concerted “activist” and media campaign against coal seam gas exploration and extraction. If you’re into patterns, it follows the usual pattern of anti-nuclear, anti-coal, anti any fossil fuel, anti humans doing anything except manning the boomgate at the one large National Park that is the ultimate aim of the watermelon Greens.
Until there is a more transparent explanation of exactly how this industry works, rather then the obviously “inflammatory” approach so far, we should reserve judgement.
blogstrop
21 Feb 12 at 8:05 pm
OK, looks like the deus ex machina (aka Sinc) has edited the Bob comment I responded to. I’ll leave it to him to move or ignore what now looks like me doing a non sequitur rave on coal seam gas.
blogstrop
21 Feb 12 at 8:26 pm
It’s a good comment, blogstrop.
Gab
21 Feb 12 at 8:28 pm
It is a good comment that I didn’t want to remove – but the original ‘Bob’ comment is an attempt to derail the thread.
Sinclair Davidson
21 Feb 12 at 8:30 pm
Thanks to you both.
blogstrop
21 Feb 12 at 8:33 pm
Does anyone understand this:
The fraud, Peter Gleick says
So he pretended he was someone else? And the Institute game him the documents? Why?
JC
21 Feb 12 at 9:09 pm
‘And the Institute game him the documents? Why?’
Who knows JC – it’ll probably come out in any litigation.
He apparently claimed to be one of the directors and asked for the board papers to be re-directed. I have a recollection from a blog thread somewhere that he may have rung more than once to hassle for the documents. Probably caught some poor little office clerk minding the phones while everyone else was at lunch and pompoused his way past any objections.
Some poor kid has probably had a year’s growth scared out of them over this.
Myrddin Seren
21 Feb 12 at 9:26 pm
Maybe they think (correctly) that they have nothing to hide.
Maybe these guys are so accustomed to telling lies and covering things up that they think everyone else is the same as them, with a whole lot of guilty secrets.
Rafe
21 Feb 12 at 9:28 pm
oops gave…
Yea, MS, I guess that sounds about right.
MS, I have a hunch all this stuff is not going to end well in the West. This ‘vironmental/green movement is a child of former totalitarian groups. It’s going to continue pushing for all it can get, however the pushback could be really severe and nasty.
JC
21 Feb 12 at 9:34 pm
“I have a hunch all this stuff is not going to end well in the West. ”
Hope you are wrong, but the natural pessimist in me keeps thinking it’s all got to go a lot lower before the vast armies of spongers and rent-seekers are forced off to stop bloodsucking the rest.
Myrddin Seren
21 Feb 12 at 9:39 pm
There’s no political will anywhere other than the house of reps of the US Congress that want to take them on.
I think the way to do it is to get the bureaucracies set against them in the same way the bureaucracies on their side.
Bureaucrats need to be made personally liable for any of their fuck ups and and few of them need to be bankrupted and thrown into the street before they take notice they are at risk. That’s one of the things I’ve thought about.
JC
21 Feb 12 at 9:44 pm
It was a classic phishing attack. It is used by cyber criminals every day – think Nigerian scam, reset your password, go to this link immediately etc..
It is also identity theft, which is a crime. Why do you think he has come on all apologetic? He could do stir for this.
Lazlo
21 Feb 12 at 10:30 pm
To be more precise, this was highly targeted identity theft (unlike the scattergun Nigerian stuff) otherwise known as spear phishing. The cyber crims go after the likes of CFOs in this way. This sort of personalised phishing has much greater conversion (ie success) rates than the blunt instrument stuff and has become more prevalent in the last year or so.
Lazlo
21 Feb 12 at 10:37 pm
Actually Gleick hasn’t denied faking the strategy document. His whole statement is a carefully crafted bit of legalese, and denies nothing. You need to parse it carefully.
I notice that his strategy is clear, he’s retained a high price criminal lawyer and a high profile “down and dirty” PR expert who specializes in digging dirt on the opposition. Cue massive disinformation campaign coming up…
Ed Snack
22 Feb 12 at 10:27 am