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Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Peter Gleick Lost in the Heartless Wasteland

I guess I may as well wade in because the honest truth is, I've always hated it when I don't get invited to the party.  I saw that everybody who has posted the documents released last week has received cease and desist orders from the Heartless Wasteland Institute, and I feel left out, neglected and insignificant!  Hopefully, I can rectify that now.
Heart Healthy Breakfast at the Heartland Denialpalooza Conference
Andy Revkin published a loathsome post this morning excoriating Peter Gleick for being the source of the documents.  Actually what happened is that initially Gleick was the hapless recipient of them from an anonymous source, wanted to check their veracity, and obtained verification before releasing them...but that chronology is being distorted and misrepresented.
Naomi Klein, incognito at the Heartland Conference July, 2011
I left the following comment at Dot Earth, which I stopped reading long ago because Andy Revkin is a self-absorbed prima donna who does more harm than good.  I doubt it will ever see the light of day on his blog, so here it is on mine:

Shame?  Reputation in tatters?  HOGWASH the man has now achieved the stature of Daniel Ellsberg.

Sometimes, there is an evil so monstrous that a piddly deception to obtain information about it is a virtuous and noble act.  There can be no greater evil than promulgating the vicious lie that climate change is not an existential threat to most species on earth including ours, emanating from the combustion of fuel.

Andy I don't normally comment on this vain enterprise, the dot earth climate science ghetto of the disgraced NYTimes (the one who lied about weapons of mass destruction, remember?).

But your analysis of Peter Gleick's courageous act is too egregious to allow it to pass unchallenged.

SHAME ON YOU, AGAIN.
Moi, in a failed attempt to lighten the proceedings of the SICCC
Further reading can be found on Fire Dog Lake, which has a scathing analysis of Revkin's diatribe, where can be found this intriguing comment:

The way this has played out so far:
Whistleblower: Here are documents showing how the evil dirty-energy-industry-funded pricks at Heartland are funding lies and smears directed against climate scientists and intended to poison public opinion.
Heartland and Its Stooges: At least one of the documents is bogus! But we won’t tell you how we know that!
Whistleblower: You’re lying, and here’s how I know: I infiltrated your group to get copies of these documents, all of which are created by your group.
Heartland and Its Stooges: EEEEK! Dirty pool! Why didn’t you play nice and hack our servers like our stooges did to that British university?!

Was Gleick set up in a targeted attempt remove him the pages of Forbes, where possibly some conservatives that aren't completely brain-dead might stray over to one of his columns and rethink their ideological reflex to reject science?
Watts Up With That? checks into the Marriott and winks at me
An early and refreshingly outspoken critic of the Heartland Institute as this controversy unfolded was Col. Gary Wamsley.  He has been posting about their ongoing attempts to intimidate him with endearing indignation here.

And if you missed the story about the Heartland's conference in Washington last July, which I infiltrated in the deceptively inconspicuous and, I thought, non-threatening guise of a cupcake...which, nevertheless resulted in making me - I do believe - the one and only blogger to be evicted and then assigned my very own security detail for the duration, click here.
Okay here they come, drum roll, the links to the leaked documents....


I can haz legal threats now too plzzzzzzz???

9 comments:

  1. If we take a step back from the issues, climate change polarizes science by denying our real problems and allowing market solutions to serve for narrow, focused problems within the problem frame? The problem is that the market machine has co-opted all of our market sectors, including science. But especially the "environmentalists" and even supposed systems thinkers like Peter Gleick, whose first allegiance is to business and markets. Here's what the boys at Princeton have come up with for solutions to our "most important problem of climate change:"

    Double fuel efficiency of 2 billion cars from 30 to 60 mpg.
    Decrease the number of car miles traveled by half.
    Use best efficiency practices in all residential and commercial buildings.
    Produce current coal-based electricity with twice todays efficiency.
    Increase wind electricity capacity by 10 times relative to today, total = 2 million large windmills.
    Replace 1400 coal electric plants with natural gas-powered facilities.
    Install 100 times the current capacity of solar electricity.
    Use 40,000 square kilometers of solar panels (or 4 million windmills) to produce hydrogen cells
    Capture AND store emissions from 800 coal electric plants.
    Produce hydrogen from coal at six times today's rate AND store the captured CO2.
    Capture carbon from 180 coal-to-synfuels plants AND store the CO2
    Increase ethanol production 12 times by creating biomass plantations = 1/6th world cropland
    Add double the current global nuclear capacity to replace coal-based electricity.
    Eliminate tropical deforestation.
    Adopt conservation tillage in all agricultural soils worldwide . . . http://cmi.princeton.edu/

    We can’t have our planet and capitalize on it too. These proposals are just ludicrous. We need to Occupy Science.

    Wendell Berry said that "A man with a machine and no culture is a pestilence." I concur.

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  2. You are so correct, Mary Logan. I don't know if you looked at the flier I brought to the HI conference which is reproduced at the end of that post, but it revolves around the point you make. The solutions posed by virtually all climate scientists and activists just won't be sufficient, not even close, to save us from catastrophe - and the deniers know that. We would need drastic, massive, universal and global cutbacks in lifestyles and population both, and a completely new system not based on profit and private property but cooperation and sacrifice. Not likely to happen but hey, if the doctor tells you that you've got a cancer that's most likely lethal, do you lay down and wait to die?

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  3. "We would need drastic, massive, universal and global cutbacks in lifestyles and population both, and a completely new system not based on profit and private property but cooperation and sacrifice. Not likely to happen but hey, if the doctor tells you that you've got a cancer that's most likely lethal, do you lay down and wait to die?"

    Yes, that's the problem with cancer. You battle it using the tools you've got, in the system you've got, and you die anyway, because poorly regulated systems don't last.

    Universal cutbacks in lifestyle and population and a completely new system will happen, it is just a matter of time, and I would prefer that it be on our terms instead of Nature's. I guess it will have to be over our dead bodies.

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  4. Excellent one Gail !

    It is as if we are all drunk-driving our civilization on carbon fuel.

    We slow down, we tighten our seat belts ... and the insane fellow travelers at the Heartland are encouraging us to have another drink and speed up.

    They are drug dealer thugs - pushers of a corrupt view of life.

    Pity.

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  5. This comment over at Col. Wamsley's post is perfectly illustrative of the point. The guy is a denier, and he pinpoints it exactly - in fact, he gets it more than the vast majority of climate change believers! We would need FIVE EARTHS:

    "You are a traitor to your own country. I did not spend 30 years in the military to protect the likes of you."

    Why?

    Because foreign developing nations are licking their chops at the thought of the US signing onto a global climate treaty because they’ll get enriched from the vast transfer of our wealth to their countries (via schemes like REDD, cap-and-trade, CDM, etc.), and our economy will then be controlled by natural resource management via the UN or some other global supra-national agency.

    The end goal here is to lower the standard of living of the US and to force us (and other developed Western style nations) to use less natural resources so that the rest of the world can use those resources to build up their economies so that at some point in the future, all nations have roughly the same standard of living and per-capita GDP. Unfortunately, in this future scenario should it occur, the US isn’t going to have anywhere as near high as GDP as we do today because it would take the natural resources of over 5 Earth’s to provide everybody on the Earth today with the resources needed to have the same standard of living as we have in the US. Our future US economy will be one of very little resource use and hence, a very basic and simple lifestyle.

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  6. Gail,
    Perhaps you missed it, but The Heartland Institute has issued the following statement regarding their confidential information & documents that were stolen from them by wire fraud:
    "We are consulting with legal counsel to determine our next steps and plan to release a more complete statement about the situation tomorrow. In the meantime, we ask again that publishers, bloggers, and Web site hosts take the stolen and fraudulent documents off their sites, remove defamatory commentary based on them, and issue retractions."

    Their entire statement can be found on their website here: http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/20/statement-heartland-institute-peter-gleick-confession

    I find the comments in this blog post to be highly defamatory to The Heartland Institute. As such I would recommend that you remove them and issue a retraction. Since I don't think you want to get into legal trouble, I expect that you will follow their advice.

    I will contact Mr. Lakely of The Heartland Institute with a copy of this post to notify him that I have communicated their message to you.

    Sincerely,
    Your friend,
    Sherlock

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  7. Gail,
    Regarding the criminal activities that Peter Gleick has confessed to, if you have only read comments from those supporting Gleick, you may be unaware of the entire story.

    This blog post (http://climateaudit.org/2012/02/28/18-u-s-c-1343/)shows that Gleick almost certainly violated 18 USC 1343 (Crimes, Chap.63, Mail Fraud & other Fraud Offenses:http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1343)

    A more complete analysis of the Gleick fraud can be found at: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/20/breaking-gleick-confesses/

    Some of documents you have posted on your website are confidential property of The Heartland Institute and at least one, The 2012 Climate Strategy, has been declared to be fake by Heartland. I hope you take them down & issue a retraction, because you could get in deep legal trouble if you don't. But of course it's your call if you want to take that risk.

    You seem to be making fun of Gleick's criminal activities as you say: "I can haz legal threats now too plzzzzzzz???", but I'd be careful if I were you, because you just may get what you are asking for.

    FYI, I did send the following email to jlakely@heartland.org:

    *********
    Mr. Lakely,
    I just became aware that the illegally obtained Heartland documents as well as the fake strategy document are posted along with what I consider defamatory to Heartland comments are posted at Wit's End blog. Here is the URL: http://www.witsendnj.blogspot.com/2012/02/peter-gleick-lost-in-heartless.html

    I left the following comment there notifying them that you have asked that the documents and defamatory comments be taken down:

    ************

    Gail,

    Perhaps you missed it, but The Heartland Institute has issued the following statement regarding their confidential information & documents that were stolen from them by wire fraud:

    "We are consulting with legal counsel to determine our next steps and plan to release a more complete statement about the situation tomorrow. In the meantime, we ask again that publishers, bloggers, and Web site hosts take the stolen and fraudulent documents off their sites, remove defamatory commentary based on them, and issue retractions."

    Their entire statement can be found on their website here: http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/20/statement-heartland-institute-peter-gleick-confession

    I find the comments in this blog post to be highly defamatory to The Heartland Institute. As such I would recommend that you remove them and issue a retraction. Since I don't think you want to get into legal trouble, I expect that you will follow their advice.

    I will contact Mr. Lakely of The Heartland Institute with a copy of this post to notify him that I have communicated their message to you.
    Sincerely,
    Your friend,
    Sherlock
    ******

    Since I tipped them off to your seemingly defamatory comments, I wonder if I will get 10% of Wit's End if you don't follow the cease & desist order and are found guilty of being an accessory after the fact? Since in your opening paragraph, you admit knowing of the cease & desist order, I would think you are on pretty shaky ground.

    Of course these are just my opinions. I would suggest seeking some legal advise & lawyering up.

    Your friend,
    Sherlock

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  8. Well, I already emailed this post to Joe Bast and never got my FedEx cease and desist. I was really disappointed. I guess either Heartland considers my blog to be too trivial to waste money on or else, my mockery of their fatuous stupidity really stings so bad they don't want more people to know about it.

    Maybe you'll have more luck than I did.

    Thanks, Sherlock!

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  9. Just read your second comment. Since 10% of 0 = 0, consider it yours, my friend!

    ReplyDelete