Although Peter Gleick confessed almost 2 days ago to stealing and leaking documents designed to damage the Heartland Institute and others, one of Germany’s leading warmist climate blogs continues to ignore it and is still actively spreading rumors about them. About 12 hours after Anthony Watts’s story Breaking: Gleick confesses appeared, Klimaretter.de went ahead and published a new opinion piece to further smear Heartland and those involved.
First on February 16, Hanno Böck of Klimaretter wrote in piece titled The Financing Of Climate Change Doubt, where he gleefully broke the story about the acquired Heartland documents: He wrote:
Internal documents of the conservative Heartland-Institute of the USA show the strategies that the organization pursues in order to discredit climate sciences. The institute receives donations from industry and finances other blogs and alleged neutral organizations, who then spread doubt about climate change. Among others, donators include Bayer, Microsoft and General Motors.[…]
Canadian DeSmogBlog has revealed internal documents from conservative lobby organization Heartland Institute. […] From the documents it is clear that many seemingly independent voices in the debate are funded by donations from industry provided though Heartland Institute.”
Up to now, neither corrections nor omissions have been undertaken by Klimaretter, which is run by journalists and German Parliamentarians. To the contrary, as you will read below, they actively took steps to sustain the phony Heartland story by posting an opinion piece by Dr. Hermann Ott, who again using the fake document smears Heartland and the skeptics.
In its February 16 piece, Klimaretter listed the alleged funders of skeptic sites: Koch Industries, Microsoft, AT&T, Time Warner, Bayer – but did point out that the donations were mainly targeted for pharmaceutical lobbying.
Klimaretter then singled out blogger Anthony Watts, claiming he received donation checks from industry. Böck wrote:
One of these for example is the project of blogger Anthony Watts, who writes the widely read “Climate skeptical” blog Watts up with That, and the organization NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change) of American physicist Fred Singer, who views himself as a counter voice to the UN IPCC, but who is regarded as unscientific by climate scientists.
In the year 2012 the Institute plans to create educational material for schools.”
Klimaretter then wrote that Heartland had been funded by Big Tobacco to fight against the rights of non-smokers before it began to focus on climate change. Klimaretter claimed that much the pressure to attack scientists stemmed from the Tea Party movement.
Concerning the document “2012 Heartland Climate Strategy”, Klimaretter wrote that “the Heartland Institute claims the questionable document is a fake” and that “no further details concerning the authenticity of the other documents could be added, so says Heartland in a Press Release.”
Geick confesses, Ott quotes a faked document
Now, six days later, a full day after Gleick confessed he leaked the documents, you’d think Klimaretter would have taken down the story by now and added a correction. They haven’t. In fact, they’ve added an opinion by German Green party member Dr. Hermann Ott, who goes after Fred Singer and Heartland with renewed vigor. He posted his opinion (read it here) at Klimaretter 12 hours after Gleick’s confession.
Green Parliamentarian Dr. Hermann Ott, who is a regular contributor at Klimaretter and skeptic smearer, posted his piece yesterday (February 21, 3:01 pm CET) ) dubbed: How US Companies Undermine Climate Policy, which more or less reiterates everything Hanno Böck had written days earlier, and quotes the faked document:
And what does the Institute [Heartland] do with the money? Taking a first look at the figures, one sees that climate change denier Fred Singer alone, who unfortunately appeared in the Bundestag, is financed by the Heartland Institute with 5000 dollars per month (plus expenses). $100,000 is available for developing alternative educational curricula for schools for promoting doubt about climate change. In the description of this project for schools, there’s even the sentence that their goal includes: ‘dissuading teachers from teaching science’. Unbelievable and revealing.”
Ott later writes:
The entire ‘datacheck’ of the Heartland-Institute makes it perfectly clear what I was saying about the strategies of the climate change skeptics in my discussion in the Green Bundestag faction last year, namely that the funders stem mostly from the fossil fuel industry and that it is always about increasing doubt and nothing to do with scientific findings.”
Scientific findings? Does he mean the dubious sort that Gleick uses? Why Ott would continue to insist the Heartland story is real is baffling, and if done intentionally – it is malicious and slanderous. I can only speculate that he thinks nobody in Germany is going to notice, and so he thinks he can get away with it.
In light of the known fact that Gleick used fake documents (because the other docs simply weren’t going to produce the desired effect), Ott still has the temerity to conclude:
One can only hope that making the documents public will hamper the strategy of the fossil fuel industry and also lead to such books like the one by RWE-Manager Vahrenholt to disappear from the bestseller charts.”
And
Instead, they will be seen for what they really are: cold hearted egoists who put the future chances of humanity at stake for the sake of their profits.”
P.S.: If you wish to give Peter Gleick some kind words, you can do so at Twitter unter @PeterGleick.”
Recall that Hermann Ott posted this on February 21 at 3:01 p.m. CET, 12 hours AFTER Anthony Watts broke the story that Gleick had confessed. Obviously Ott is comfortable putting himslef in the same company as document fakers and mudrakers.
In case Heartland, WUWT, or the lawyers representaing them, would like to give Klimaretter some kind words, you can reach the editor in chief at:
nick.reimer@klimaretter.info
They undertand English very well.
‘a full day after Gleick confessed he had faked a document’: I am not sure whether this is true, Pierre. Perhaps he had faked it but not confessed that. Perhaps I’ve missed something. I have written a letter to the editor of my newspaper about misleading information, e.g. that the documents were leaked as if Gleick was a whistleblower, a popular construction in the left media to give him kind of hero status. He was an outsider who has stolen confidential information after committing identity fraud. I’m looking forward whether they publish it.
They don’t publish it.
I feel compelled to point out that Gleick did not confess to forging the 2012 HI strategy document. He said that an anonymous person mailed it to him. That misstatement appears several times in your post.
I rely solely upon you to provide information as to what is happening in Germany with respect to the global warming/climate change scam. You need to take extreme care when attributing statements to those on the “other side” or lose credibility as a consequence of failing to do so.
I suggest that you correct the misstatements.
You’re right – my mistake. Correction added. The point is that the story that Heartland is the scandal is false, but Klimaretter, continued to insist that it was.
No, Gleick has not yet admitted to faking the position paper – his laywer will have counseled him strongly against it – or he is simply convinced that typing on a keyboard leaves no electronic fingerprints or timestamps; he is in deep enough water legally as things stand; but every sign points to him being the culprit.
Does anyone else start to feel sorry for these guys? They thought they had a comeuppance for Climategate; having it blow up in their faces is … *embarrassing* …; failing to notice that is has blown up in their faces is, ah, less than competent. And THESE guys came close to setting the majority of the most technologically advanced and scientifically literate portion of humanity off on a suicidal dive over the cliff?
No, no pity here. Gleick was as smug as it gets in his numerous video appearances, a green know-it-all. Love to see him self-immolate.
Also, as an investor, I LOVE the other side to consist of stupid idiots. Makes it easier to tell where things are going.
It is abundently clear the document is a fake. Here is a frank assessment from American MSM (rare…and the author is an avowed warmista):
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/peter-gleick-confesses-to-obtaining-heartland-documents-under-false-pretenses/253395/
Heartland has made it clear the document is fake. The only real question now is who forged it. It is not at all irrational to name Peter Gleick as a prime suspect as many have who are familiar with the topic based on their familiarity with Gleick’s idiosyncratic writing style. I for one would like to see a proper (criminal) investigation conducted and am interested in finding out the truth as to who forged the fake document.
It is an interesting story and it is fascinating to hear how this is being “spun” in Germany. I wonder how this will develop in German media once the truth starts making a dent in the propaganda machine – do you think there is enough sustained interest in this story for the public to wait for the truth to sink in?
Such stories usually only reach Germany in their first iteration, when fairy tales like Gleicks “I got the memo in the mail” are still upheld in the liberal media of the US. Then, Spiegel and Sueddeutsche will bring translations of NYT articles.
Later, when the story blows up in the US, it gets too complicated to explain or translate for our journalists and they go into a kind of helicopter mode where they give inaccurate overviews as if watching a civil war raging on from 10,000 feet in dense fog. Which usually leaves the German populace with the impression that the Americans are all nuts and go at each other’s throats without reason.
In the end, they will think poor Peter Gleick, that nice and articulate fellow from the enlightened California, was lynched by a mob of pitchfork-wielding rednecks. Der Spiegel will them so; always works that way. Germans therefore still think Obama is the Messiah and Sarah Palin is the devil incarnate.
As I understand the situation, Heartland says one of several documents is fake. If they, or others, know the source — that information has not been made public. Peter Gleick confessed to obtaining real Heartland documents by e-mail by assuming the identity of a director of Heartland.
It is fake, trust me, never in my life have I seen a company memo like that – no letterhead, no author, no revision history, no structure. If someone send me such a paper and told me, trust me, this is a highly confidential memo from company X, I would tell him to go fool another person. Gleick says he scanned it but there are no traces of the paper ever being folded; obviously it came out of the printer and was immediately scanned. The only possible reason is that he wanted to obscure the document properties but the only thing he achieved is that the document properties now say EPSON scanner, Pacific Time zone…
But, Pierre,
“Now, six days later, a full day after Gleick confessed he had faked a document”
Please read Gleick’s confession again. It is very carefully worded; it neither confirms nor denies that he faked the faked document himself. It has with absolute certainty been penned by a lawyer. (also, it doesn’t contain odd parentheses or commas or hyphenations)
You’re right. But he still confessed that he stole identity and leaked the documents – and so the guy is dishonest now matter what. We’ll find out soon enough who faked it.
Even in Canada the eco-whackos are still quoting these lies:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/david-suzuki/documents-strike-at-heart_b_1292343.html?ref=canada
Actually Gleick’s attack on Hearland is just a continuation of the on-going propaganda assault:
http://nigguraths.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/fakegate-heartland-delegitimization/
It is quite amazing how long this has been going on; personally I only started getting wise late in 2009 after Climategate 1.0.
There is one clear take away from this train wreck.
The standards of professional ethics for so-called climate scientists are non existent or at best well below the standards demanded of used car salesmen.
Good. Post and comments now correctly convey what seems to have happened. Now we wait for additional facts.
Sadly, there are thousands of other climate idiots out there who think themselves above the law.
Which is why Gleick must be prosecuted for his wire fraud and associated offences.
The Heartland Institute must also pursue those who maliciously (i.e. deliberately to cause damage) publish defamatory articles and misrepresent “authentication” of obviously-fake documents by the reading of chicken entrails.
Without the rule of law, there’s the rule of thugs.