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This will be a top sticky post for a day or two – new stories appear below this one.In the over 7,000 published stories here on WUWT, I have never used the word “liar” in the headline to refer to CRU and the Yamal affair. That changes with this story.I’ve always thought that with CRU, simple incompetence is a more likely explanation than malice and/or deception. For example, Phil Jones can’t even plot trends in Excel. In this particular case, I don’t think incompetence is the plausible explanation anymore. As one commenter on CA (Andy) said “I suspect the cause...

It has finally happened: The Heartland Institute, an anti-science front group that used to focus on downplaying the dangers of smoking on behalf of Phillip Morris but now spends much of its time denying the scientific consensus on climate change, has decided to stop even trying to be credible in order to attract publicity. In the vernacular: It has gone all PETA on us. "I still believe in global warming. Do you?" reads a caption written in bright red on a billboard recently mounted in Chicago by the Heartland folks, next to a wild-eyed mugshot of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski....

Public confidence in scientific “consensus” regarding the theory of manmade climate change is threatening the believing scientists’ confidence. While polls show that taking action to fight climate change is off the radar of most Americans, the behavior of the theory’s advocates is even more telling. They are behaving like "cornered rats"—taking extreme actions to protect their turf.

Why would Dr. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, and chairman of an American Geophysical Union task force on "scientific ethics and integrity," break the law to engage in a smear campaign against a small think-tank called The Heartland Institute that resulted in "Fakegate"? As Alan Caruba related in the opening paragraph of his article published on Tuesday, April 3rd, titled "Fatetgate: The War on Science," "[g]enerations of Americans have been raised to venerate science and those who have enhanced and extended our lives through its application. The rise of environmentalism, however, has generated a...

The groups currently drafting new science standards for American classrooms have decided to include a section addressing the issue of climate change. The Congressionally chartered National Academies, including the National Research Council, plan to include a document drafted last year that says that human activities have at least a partial impact on climate.Although there’s a strong consensus in scientific literature on anthropogenic climate change, in America the issue is a source of significant controversy and debate. Just how strident the debate over climate change had become came as a surprise to one California middle school teacher: When Treena Joi, a...

After many years in which evolution was the most contentious issue in science education, climate change is now the battle du jour in school districts across the country. The fight could heat up further in April, when several national bodies are set to release a draft of new science standards that include detailed instruction on climate change. The groups preparing the standards include the National Research Council, which is part of the congressionally chartered National Academies. They are working from a document they drew up last year that says climate change is caused in part by manmade events, such as...

Peter Gleick, a global warming true believer and purported scientific ethics expert, has admitted soliciting, receiving then distributing confidential fundraising and budget documents from the Heartland Institute under false pretenses, all to discredit Heartland, a free-market think tank that disputes global warming alarmism. We await determinations of whether violations of state or federal laws on wire fraud and identity theft, and perhaps other offenses, occurred. Illinois-based Heartland has called in the FBI...

James Garvey, a philosopher and the author of The Ethics of Climate Change has written a defence of Peter Gleick at the Guardian:What Heartland is doing is harmful, because it gets in the way of public consensus and action. Was Gleick right to lie to expose Heartland and maybe stop it from causing further delay to action on climate change? If his lie has good effects overall – if those who take Heartland's money to push scepticism are dismissed as shills, if donors pull funding after being exposed in the press – then perhaps on balance he did the right...

From Amazon’s list of Gleick book reviews hereMust read — for the real history of the climate debate and the war by deniers,February 8, 2012 This review is from: The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines (Hardcover) Michael Mann — a world class scientist and communicator about the seriousness of climate change — has finally put all of the recent history (sordid, indeed) about climate denial, attacks on climate scientists, and serial and intentional efforts by climate “skeptics” and “deniers” (a word many of them self-apply) into a book. As the title suggests, there IS...

Richard North at the EU Referendum blog provides some interesting comment regarding funding. While the warmists are successfully focusing attention on the minor-league operations of the Heartland Institute, with a total budget for all its issues, which include health care, education, and technology policy, of around $4.4 million, their own funding arrangements, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, are largely evading scrutiny. .... The Climate Works Foundation, though, is of special interest as it was in 2008, awarded $460,800,000 from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a grant-making organisation with assets of $7.2 billion, which disbursed $353,400,000 in grants...

Dr Peter Gleick provides more evidence that the supporters of the Cause will stop at nothing. Magical thinking: a rainmaker in Kenya, whose credibility is being funded by British taxpayers Photo: DFID/International Development Research Centre/Thomas Omondi What a very odd situation we find ourselves in, due to the extraordinary transformation in recent years of the so-called debate over global warming. Last week, The Sunday Telegraph reported that, as part of Britain’s overseas aid budget, the Department for International Development is well on the way to spending £1.5 billion on a mass of climate-related projects across the world. These range from...

Earlier this month, the Internet lit up with a tantalizing whodunit. Someone had leaked to bloggers confidential internal fundraising and strategic documents from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think-tank that questions global warming orthodoxy. The apparent goal: to discredit and embarrass those who raise doubts about the science behind climate change. Heartland officials cried foul, asserting that at least one of the documents was forged. They vowed to track down the leaker and pursue charges. This week, Peter Gleick saved them the trouble of a search. He confessed that he had assumed a false identity to obtain some of the...

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe years ago declared man-made global warming a hoax and more recently declared victory over his opponents in that long-running debate. Still, the Oklahoma Republican believes his work is not done. Next week, the senator said his plans for the book's introduction include interviews with several broadcast personalities known for being on the other side of the debate. Published by WND Books, which described it as a coup de grace to the global-warming movement, the book is titled "The Greatest Hoax," with the subtitle "How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future." Next week, the senator said,...

I’d ask EPA’s Lisa Jackson about the legality of “disappearing” the over $468,000 dollars in grants to Peter Gleick’s Pacific Institute from the EPA grants database, then putting them back, all without any public notice. Since 2007, Gleick’s PI has received over 1 million in taxpayer’s money. In 2007 they got $647,000 dollars in two grants from the EPA, which also “disappeared” this week. When an FOIA request was made to the EPA, they mysteriously returned. Showdown at the EPA corralSource: Junk Science By Steve MilloyMarch 2 should be a date that lives in infamy for the Obama Environmental Protection...

“Copner” alerts us in comments to this public document:Testimony of Dr. Peter Gleick, February 7, 2007 Senate Commerce, Science, and TransportationTable 1 Categories of Deceitful Tactics and Abuse of the Scientific Process (source: P.H. Gleick, Pacific Institute, 2007)There are many tactics used to argue for or against scientific conclusions that are inappropriate, involve deceit, or directly abuse the scientific process.Personal (“Ad Hominem”) Attacks This approach uses attacks against the character, circumstances, or motives of a person in order to discredit their argument or claim, independent of the scientific evidence. Demonization Guilt by Association Challenge to Motive (such as greed or...

Too many of their opponents are intellectual thugs. Steven F. Hayward March 5, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 24 The forlorn and increasingly desperate climate campaign achieved a new level of ineptitude last week when what had looked like a minor embarrassment for one of its critics​—​the Chicago-based Heartland Institute​—​turned out to be a full-fledged catastrophe for itself. A moment’s reflection on the root of this episode points to why the climate campaign is out of (greenhouse) gas.In an obvious attempt to inflict a symmetrical Climategate-style scandal on the skeptic community, someone representing himself as a Heartland Institute insider “leaked” internal...

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...

Heartland have released both emails that Peter Gleick wrote under his name (below) as well as under a false name. The deceit is there for all to see. Heartland have at all times behaved impeccably. — Jo From James Taylor at Forbes.com 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...

Rep Edward Markey of Massachusetts has written to Heartland asking for them to document the inaccuracies in the Fakegate documents and asking for originals. In a letter to Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast, Markey asked the group for an explanation of any inaccuracies in the leaked documents as well as accurate versions of those documents. “These documents appear to indicate that the Heartland Institute is receiving large donations from corporations for the direct purpose of discrediting the mainstream science of climate change and has planned to engage in a campaign to undermine the teaching of well-established science at our public...

The Chicago-based free market Heartland Institute has called in the FBI and threatened other legal action against a global warming proponent who has admitted stealing emails from the institute in a bid to embarrass and discredit the group’s questioning of climate change. Heartland officials tell Washington Secrets that they have been in talks with the FBI over the case against prominent global warming proponent Peter Gleick, co-founder of the respected Pacific Institute. Heartland is getting ready to reveal their probe of the affair, which they hope the FBI will act on.