Out of the blue … Gleick on the road to Rio?

[Pls. see Update at end of this post -hro]

I’m not a frequent tweeter … but I came across an interesting tweet a few minutes ago (although it was posted 6 hours before I saw it!):

Climate Resistance is the blog of the U.K.’s Ben Pile, someone whose links I have confidence in following. Sure enough, Pile’s link took me to a site called Rio+20 Dialogues Vote for the Future you Want. On this site, in rather foggy fine-print, I found:

10,000+ Participants
First, experts, stakeholders, and academics from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds brainstormed ideas for improving the planet.

100 Recommendations
Then, a set of concrete recommendations were crafted and refined.

Your Vote
Now, it is up to YOU to suggest which ones are most needed.

Rio+20
In June, the recommendations will be discussed in the Sustainable Development Dialogues and 30 will be chosen to be conveyed directly to world leaders and decision makers at the Rio+20 Conference.

10,000+ Participants? Wow that’s an awful lot, even if they “participated” virtually … as it appears they did. But alas, I wasn’t “invited”, were you?! No, didn’t think so!

So I was curious to know why this exercise in participatory “democracy” had been going on so quietly that no one seems to have mentioned it before. Google, as usual was my friend. One of the top listings was a site called “Circle of Blue” … Never heard of this one either … But off I went into the wild blue yonder.

I landed on Circle of Blue where I learned:

Countdown To Rio
TUESDAY, 12 JUNE 2012 18:30
Check back with Circle of Blue for the latest news and reports in the lead-up to the Rio+20 conference. Make sure to stay tuned during the conference, as well, as we will be continuing our coverage through June 26.

By Lydia Belanger
Circle of Blue

Tuesday, June 12, 2002 (sic): Voting On 100 Recommendations
There are less than four days left to vote for Rio+20 priorities in water, food, energy, and sustainable development.

More than 20,000 government, organization, and business leaders from across the globe will descend on Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this week for Rio+20, what is billed as the world’s most important gathering to date on global environmental issues.

[...]

The conference is a follow-up to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, which also took place in Rio and resulted in Agenda21, a comprehensive document detailing sustainable development goals for members of the United Nations, as well as the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, which served to reaffirm the goals that had been laid out in Agenda21.

I thought they were expecting 50,000, but what’s 30,000 between friends, eh?! Very conveniently, this page reiterates “Vote for the Future You Want” — Ballot Topics and Recommendations”. All 100 of them. As I scrolled through the page, I noticed a rather familiar face smiling out from the sidebar: that of the notorious – and recently rehabilitated – Peter Gleick.

So I decided to check the About page for “Circle of Blue”. And you’ll never guess what I found!

Pacific Institute? hmmmm …Small world, eh?!

If you are having a mouse-malfunction moment and cannot embiggen the image I captured, here’s all you need to know:

Circle of Blue is the international network of leading journalists, scientists and communications design experts that reports and presents the information necessary to respond to the global freshwater crisis. It is a nonprofit independent affiliate of the internationally recognized water, climate and policy think tank, the Pacific Institute. The Institute has fiduciary responsibilities for our grants and other income. Circle of Blue’s projects and journalism are independently overseen by our senior staff and advisory board.

Fancy that … an “international network of leading journalists”. And not one of them seems to have told us about this “Rio+20 Dialogue” in which we could have participated – if we’d been invited, of course!

But isn’t it good to know that we now have a “global freshwater crisis” on our hands! And it’s also good to know that “Circle of Blue” is a “non-profit independent affiliate” of Gleick’s personal fiefdom, the Pacific Institute.

Speaking of which, I believe that Anthony Watts is still waiting to hear from the principals at Independent Employment Counsel who allegedly conducted the highly questionable “independent investigation” on the Board’s behalf.

Amazing. Simply amazing.

UPDATE: 06/12/2012 11:12 PM PDT Found a few, well, circles I can’t quite square … From the About page:

Circle of Blue practices non-advocacy journalism and science, striving to report issues to the highest standards of journalistic and scientific ethics. [...] (emphasis mine -hro]

Yet in the “General Support Section” of their “Sponsorship Policy” on their “Ethics and Sponsorship” page, one finds:

Contributions may in no way limit or put unspoken expectations on actions Circle of Blue or the Pacific Institute may take, research we may publish, or positions we may advocate.

How can an organization (or “project” as it is described on the Pacific Institute site) claim to “practice non-advocacy” whatever, when they refer to “positions [they] may advocate”?! Curious, eh?!

And speaking of “ethics” – as Circle of Blue so proudly and repeatedly does – how can an organization with such “high” standards tolerate the presence on its Advisory Board of one who is so profoundly ethically-challenged as Peter Gleick has proven himself to be?

And speaking of Gleick and Pacific Institute … If Circle of Blue, as noted on their About page, is an

independent affiliate of … Pacific Institute [which] has fiduciary responsibilities for our grants and other income

why is it that this is not disclosed on Pacific Institute’s financial statement?

YMMV, but this fuzziness reminds me of the “relationship” between the non-entity known as “Forest Ethics Canada” and Tides Canada.

I suppose it’s possible that in “non-advocacy” advocate circles of environmentalism and eco-activism, such “ethics” are acceptable. But there’s something about such arrangements that strikes me as being, well, somewhat less than strictly kosher!

Of Goldenberg and Gleick: What did she know when … and how does she know it?

As I had noted yesterday, the notorious Peter Gleick has been granted absolution by the Board of Directors of the Pacific Institute (PI).

PI stonewalled on releasing the name of the firm that did the “investigation” on which they evidently relied, while Gleick’s primary media cheerleader – the U.K. Guardian‘s Suzanne Goldenberg, along with her colleagues in the MSM Gleick cheerleading section – was most uncharacteristically silent until Thursday 7 June 2012 17.03 BST when she posted [backup link]:

Captured from http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jun/07/peter-gleick-reinstated-heartland-expose

For the record, the “Article History” on this page indicates: “It was last modified at 20.43 BST on Thursday 7 June 2012″. But in true Goldenberg foggy fashion, her text gives no indication of what she might have modified. Her article recycles the myths and memes of Gleick’s mysteriously acquired – but obviously fake – memo, as though they were established “fact”. No comments are allowed.

As Anthony Watts has noted:

UPDATE4: Apparently feeling the blowback from the lack of transparency, Pacific Institute Communications Director Nancy Ross sent me an email this morning stating:

The investigator is Independent Employment Counsel, LLP.

I am waiting for confirmation that they performed the review from one of the two partners at the firm. http://www.iecounsel.com/ If I get credible confirmation, I’ll edit the headline to fit the facts as they are known.

The Independent Employment Counsel (IEC)’s website indicates that this is a two-person shop whose principals’ expertise is limited to the field of employment and labour law.

Now, I might consider contracting with such a firm if my employees were about to unionize, or if some of my employees had expressed some ethical concerns about the conduct of the CEO – and/or if I were desperately seeking an excuse not to fire this CEO as a consequence of his admitted disgraceful behaviours.

But I cannot imagine why any organization would even dream of contracting with such a firm if they wanted to investigate his involvement in the acquisition and/or production of an obviously faked “memo” – which he subsequently forwarded to 15 unnamed but friendly “fences” along with a number of documents he had acquired illegally over an extended period.

It is curious – if not amazingly coincidental – that The Guardian and/or Goldenberg should have been privy to the “findings” of IEC as early as May 21 when she published [backup link] her first recycling of this fake memo’s myths and memes while announcing that Gleick had been “cleared”:

Captured from http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/21/peter-gleick-cleared-heartland?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

For the record, according to the article history (which does not record its now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t, now-you-do trail), this post of Monday 21 May 2012 16.01 BST was “last modified at 16.19 BST on Monday 21 May 2012″. Again, the article gives no indication of which part of the text might have been modified – and no comments were allowed.

One has to ask: Who prematurely disclosed IEC’s “findings” to Goldenberg? Was it Gleick (he likes to leap ‘n leak)? Was it someone else aboard the sinking Pacific Institute ship? Surely it would have been highly unethical for IEC – and very damaging their “reputation” (whatever it might be) – to have made such a premature disclosure to a member of the media.

In light of all the known facts to date – in particular, IEC’s conspicuous lack of the expertise required for such an “investigation” – surely it is not beyond the realm of possibility that IEC might have sub-contracted with an “investigative” journalist of Goldenberg’s “calibre”, and known lack of …ethics. Conflict of interest has never seemed to concern her, so I can well imagine that she would have no qualms about publishing a story – well over two weeks before its time – which she could readily do if she was the source!

Stay tuned, folks! Who knows what twists and turns might be revealed in the days ahead :-) At this point, as far as I know, IEC have not responded to Watts’ request for confirmation that they conducted this so-called “investigation”.

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn – if/when they do respond – that they have done so with something along the lines of “For confidentiality reasons, we do not disclose, confirm or deny the names of any of our clients and/or sub-contractors and/or the specific service(s) IEC might have provided directly or via sub-contract”.

Gleick and the green factor$

Well, I’m still waiting, as are others, for the MSM luminaries – who were so quick to publish what has now been unequivocally established as the contents of an obvious forgery – to apologize for their ethical failure in not verifying the provenance of the document purported to have originated from The Heartland Institute (HI).

So, I thought it might be interesting to stroll down some avenues that others do not yet appear to have explored.

I wonder if these journolites™ happened to see Dr. Judith Curry’s Feb. 24 post, in which she had posed the question: Why target Heartland?. This post resulted in an E-mail from HI’s Joe Bast, which Dr. Curry subsequently appended to her post with the observation that:

With virtually no effort on my part (beyond reading an email, cutting and pasting into the blog post), I have uncovered “juicier stuff” about Heartland than anything Gleick uncovered. Okay, maybe the HI are actually the baddest guys in town from the perspective of the alarmists. The irony of Gleick committing professional seppuku over getting information about stuff that is either generally known or suspected or regarded as no big deal. When all he had to do was ask Joseph Bast some questions, and he would have told him all sorts of things (just not the names of the donors, which aren’t all that interesting anyways.) [emphasis added -hro]

So why did Gleick do it?

That he had a rather longstanding dislike of the very fact of the perfectly legal activities and existence of “think tanks” is not in dispute. What has reinforced this particular conclusion, apart from his venom towards HI – or indeed any who do not share his view of the world – is the very high praise he had uttered via twitter for the contents of a blog called “Climate Ethics“.

His tell-tale tweet:

Sun 1/22 10:46 – Tweets “Fantastic analysis and essay on climate ethics here: http://rockblogs.psu.edu/climate/ – http://twitter.com/#!/petergleick

This page might best be characterized as the extension of the “Protocols of the Elders of Climate”. You would not believe the extent to which the author stretches in his mission to demonize “think tanks”. No wonder Gleick thought it was a “fantastic analysis and essay”. Here’s an example:

This is the fourth and last entry in a series that has examined the climate change disinformation campaign as an ethical matter. The purpose of this series has been to distinguish between responsible scientific skepticism, an approach to climate change science that should be encouraged, and the tactics of the climate change disinformation campaign, strategies deployed to undermine mainstream climate change science that are often deeply ethically offensive.

Gleick’s Feb. 20 “confession”, as I had mentioned previously was very carefully crafted and wrapped in a fog of creative ambiguity.

Needless to say, since the 20th, those in the skeptic blogosphere have been amazingly productive in sweeping the virtual scene for more “fingerprints” – and much has been discovered, with plausible narratives emerging. I did my own chronology a few days ago, after Steve McIntyre had posted the chain of correspondence between HI’s Jim Lakely and Gleick.

Gleick and HI’s James Taylor both write blog columns at Forbes (although I doubt that Gleick is still writing for Forbes). On Jan. 12, in a comment on Taylor’s post, Gleick had challenged Taylor to provide HI’s list of donors – a list which, IMHO, should have been none of his business; but, as Steve had noted:

On Jan 13, Jim Lakely of Heartland invited Gleick to participate in their forthcoming 28th Anniversary Dinner, a dinner that would be attended by Heartland’s supporters and donors. It would presumably have been an opportunity for Gleick to persuade his opponents. Heartland offered Gleick a charitable contribution of $5,000 to the charity of his choice

Gleick replied on Jan 16th; he neither accepted nor declined the invitation, but he thought he’d make another attempt to get HI’s list of funders. His response included:

In order for me to consider this invitation, please let me know if the Heartland Institute publishes its financial records and donors for the public and where to find this information. Such transparency is important to me when I am offered a speaking fee (or in this case, a comparable donation to a charity). My own institution puts this information on our website.

Lakely replied on the 17th – reminding Gleick that:

I’m sure you’ve seen James M. Taylor’s response to the funding questions at Forbes.com – a question he has answered publicly many times. In short: We used to publicly list our donors by name, but stopped a few years ago, in part, because people who disagree with The Heartland Institute decided to harass our donors in person and via email.

[and]

as you know, we are under no legal obligation to release a detailed list of our donors – nor is any other non-profit organization. Our 990 forms are in full compliance with the IRS. [emphasis added -hro]

Gleick took a full 10 days to “give serious consideration” to Lakely’s invite before declining.

He chose to completely ignore Lakely’s reasonable explanation of why HI does not disclose the names of its donors.

Here’s Gleick’s primary “reason” for his Jan. 27 … uh … decline:

Perhaps more importantly, the lack of transparency about the financial support for the Heartland Institute is at odds with my belief in transparency, especially when your institute and its donors benefit from major tax breaks at the expense of the public.

No doubt in the “ethical” world according to Gleick, it’s OK for his non-profit organization’s donors to “benefit from major tax breaks” but not for HI’s. But that aside, I certainly do wonder what might have been going on behind closed screens during Gleick’s ten days of “serious consideration”.

Jan. 27 appears to have been a somewhat busy day for Gleick. He turned down an invitation to debate; a “debate” which on Feb. 20 he declared needed to happen. In so doing, he also declined a perfect opportunity to meet and greet the funders whose names had become so important to him.

That same day, Gleick published a whine on his Forbes blog. Evidently, he wasn’t very happy that the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) had chosen to publish a letter from Dr. Richard Lindzen and 15 other scientists. And – no doubt adding insult to injury – according to Gleick, the WSJ had dared to decline to publish a missive from Gleick and 254 friends.

But what Gleick conveniently neglected to mention is that this allegedly declined missive from the gang of 255 pertained to an article published in Science on May 7, 2010. Funny that he doesn’t mention this date during the course of his whine, eh?

Nor did he give any reason on Jan 27/2012 why the WSJ should have been obliged to publish the piece from the gang of 255 on May 7/2010. If you read the 2010 article, it’s merely an attempt to bolster the – by then – rapidly declining credibility of the IPCC. It began with a recitation of the big scare:

For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet

and continued with a repetition of the mantra that salvation of the planet depends on action now, along with the frequently repeated unsubstantiated allegations of “harassment” etc. of these poor beleaguered “climate scientists”.

This was also the day he embarked on his phishing expedition during which he cast his net several times: first on Jan. 27 and finally on Feb. 6. Hmmm …. another 10 day time lapse. Feb. 8 Hmmm … a twelve day time lapse.

UPDATE: It’s worse than I thought! Above edit 02/29/2012 07:58 PM PDT [h/t Paul Matthews' "Copner's Gleick Timeline"]

At any time along the way, he could have checked his moral compass (assuming he has one) and seen that he was sailing in the wrong direction. Had he done so, he would have headed back to port, contacted HI and turned himself in! But this was not the choice Gleick made.

Yet on Feb. 17 – a mere 3 days after the botched virtual Valentines Day massacre – out of the blue, the U.K. Guardian very obligingly made available* the undated “An Open Letter to the Heartland Institute” purportedly written and signed by 7 noble climate scientists (with Gleick’s name being as conspicuously absent as those of the CRU crew on the 2009 Statement in the immediate aftermath of Climategate).

This “open letter” not only echoed the claims in the forged “strategy” doc, but also laid out the false equivalence to Climategate, interspersed with what some might consider to be a restatement of the May 7/10 article allegedly rejected by the WSJ – incorporating the “principles” and buzzwords offered by what Gleick might well have gleaned from the “fantastic analysis and essay” he had spotted on Jan. 22.

* http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2012/02/17/heartland.pdf

There’s something else that’s rather odd about this very speedily written “Open Letter”. In his analysis of the forged document, Joe Bast notes:

I always capitalize the “T” in “The Heartland Institute,” the author of this [forged] memo did not.

The undated “Open Letter …” at the Guardian contains no actual signatures, just a list of 7 names and their academic affiliations. Yet there are 9 instances throughout this document of “the Heartland Institute”. Hmmm … Must be coincidence.

Some have postulated that Gleick was driven by “anger” or “fear”. Indeed his own “confession” suggested such a rationale for his behaviours. But I think it may be something completely different.

Consider the following from their respective Form 990 “Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax”

The Heartland Institute, founded 1984. 2010 Revenue $6,074,947 [Source]

Pacific Institute, founded 1987. 2010 Revenue $2,288,518 [Source]

Until his recent self-aggrandizing escapades which probably began circa August 2011 with his active involvement in l’affaire Wagner (as noted in my earlier post) Gleick was a relatively unknown little pisher in the Big Green Pond.

His claim to “international expert” fame was as a “water” man, not a “climate” guy. And his organization‘s “mission” gives the impression of being far more dedicated to “sustainable development” than to pushing the putative perils of “dangerous” climate change.

Considering the extended timelines I noted above, I fail to see how a credible case can be made that Gleick had reached a “tipping point” and that his behaviours can legitimately be construed – as he and his army of apologists lamely attempt to portray them – as the consequence of a mere temporary lapse of judgment.

Could it be that – notwithstanding his MacArthur “genius” status (which makes him “too smart to get caught”) and his apparent lack of a functional moral compass – Gleick is afflicted, if not driven, by chronic green envy?

From pisher to phisher in less than a year. What a legacy, eh?!

A Gleickgate “teleconnection” or coincidence?

In my recent post on Gleickgate (also known as Fakegate), I had written:

He certainly succeeded in generating enough blog and MSM coverage that at the AAAS Annual Meeting held in Vancouver – which just happened to end Feb. 20 – the AAAS president was sufficiently “alarmed” to echo and amplify Gleick’s “concerns”.

[Excerpt from the Guardian]

Was AAAS president Federoff one of [Gleick's] 15 “fences” – or perhaps one of the 15 had “teleconnections” to Federoff?!

In January of this year, Jeff Condon at The Air Vent had made a valiant attempt to warn the National Center for Science Education (NSCE) that appointing Gleick to their board was not a wise move – and that they would come to regret this decision.

NSCE had decided to expand its mandate and jump into the climate wars, in order to combat the forces of darkness etc. in the schools of the nation.

Included in his Feb. 23 post, is a press release from NSCE in which one finds inter alia:

The scientific community is applauding NCSE’s new initiative. Said Alan I. Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

“Teleconnection” or coincidence?! You be the judge!

No, I am not suggesting that either Leshner or Federoff was one of the 15 “fences”. However, YMMV, but I do consider the AAAS “amplification” of the new, improved warm-side mantra to be somewhat, well, alarming!

In the meantime … while I have seen no sign that Revkin, Goldenberg, Hickman or Black have apologized for their role in promulgating the contents of Gleick’s forgery, the Chicago Tribune has an editorial worth reading:

Climate madness

Skulduggery undermines the case for global warming

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 documents and then leaked them. That sounded plausible: Heartland had said last week that someone got the documents by calling its Chicago headquarters and posing as a Heartland board member seeking information, the Tribune reported.

[...]

[Climategate], too, was an embarrassment to serious scientists who warn about the dangers of climate change. RIP, any chance for global climate action.

Now this fresh climate madness, with Mr. Ethics stalking his Chicago-based foes from afar.

Gleick may have thought he could undercut Heartland and thereby advance the case for global warming. Instead, he fueled doubts about which side is right in this long-running debate.

That’s a shame. Science relies on multiple layers of honesty. They include the honorably conducted gathering and analysis of facts, a perpetual quest for irrefutable evidence supporting conclusions — and trust that everyone is acting with integrity.

When scientific truth becomes sufficiently compelling, it matters little what the critics or skeptics say. It doesn’t matter if everyone doesn’t believe. Doubters cannot make the Earth flat.

But stunts such as Gleick’s — this effort to sully opponents with dishonest tactics — undercuts scientists around the world as they marshal evidence to convince an increasingly skeptical public about the dangers of global warming.