A lot of fuss is being made about the provenance of the Heartland Institute's climate strategy memo. Heartland says it's a fake, although as I showed several days ago, it is, if anything, a milder version of the information contained in much greater detail the apparently authentic Fundraising Plan (PDF).
So why claim it's a fake? One explanation is because the document was not intended for the entire board, but for a select few, as it itself says. This could prove internally embarrassing for Heartland's senior staff and could possibly damage relationships with board members of the second class.
Another is that there is something as-yet undiscovered about the document that is incriminating or embarrassing in some other way.
But the most obvious reason would be, as Heartland's communications director Jim Lakely told me, because it really is a fake. Gleick says it was anonymously mailed to him. Perhaps this was by a whistleblower, or perhaps it was by an disgruntled insider. Or perhaps it was a honeypot - a sweet trap designed to compromise or discredit Gleick by getting him to write about it, while Heartland could trumpet how it is not authentic - in which case it would seem Gleick turned the tables by posing as a board member and requesting - and receiving - a cache of authentic Heartland documents.
At this point this is all conjecture. There is simply not enough data.
Anthony Watts, one of the climate deniers the Heartland documents show is slated to receive tens of thousands of dollars in support from Heartland this year, has suggested that the document was forged by Gleick after he got the other documents. This seems improbable, considering that the other documents are far more inflammatory.
But Watts makes another suggestion which, being a science writer, I found intriguing: perform stylometry and textometry to see if Gleick really did write the climate strategy doc. Watts even helpfully suggests an open source java app called JGAAP that purports to do this.
I decided to try it out.
Methodology
The program works by entering a document by an unknown author and then it compares it, using various user-selected analyses, to document by known authors. Here's what I used:
Unknown Author Document:
1. The disputed Heartland Institute climate strategy memo. (docx)
Known Author Documents:
1. Peter Gleick's mea culpa from HuffPo (docx)
2. Peter Gleick's previous HuffPo piece on climate and water. (docx)
3. Joe Bast's responses to Gleick's mea culpa (Bast is the president of the Heartland Institute) (docx)
4. Joe Bast's piece criticizing Sara Reardon's piece in Science. (docx)
5. Heartland Staff's Section 6 of the Fundraising Plan. (docx)
6. The disputed Heartland Institute climate strategy memo - as a control.
I supplied links to the above documents so you can verify my methodology and attempt to replicate my results. As you can see, I copied the above six documents into word documents for uniformity but did not alter the language in any way.
The program analyzes according to several possible methods, which you can choose. It lists results by low score to high, low being the most probable author of the unknown document.
The program and my methodology may be subject to flaws. I may have typographical errors in my documents that could influence the results. I may not have chosen the best methods of analysis. The documents I selected may not be a large enough representative sample of the respective writings of the various authors. I may not have chosen a broad enough selection of authors. The program may contain logical or mathematical errors. I would encourage others to attempt to replicate, critique, and perform other analyses.
Results
Of the six author choices of: The Memo Itself, Peter Gleick 1 & 2, Joe Bast 1 & 2, and Heartland Staff, based on the above criteria, here are the scores JGAAP assigned for most likely authorship of the climate strategy memo under just a few of the many analyses the app can perform:
Heartland Strategy Memo.docx
Canonicizers: none
Analyzed by Nearest Neighbor Driver with metric Camberra Distance using Character 2Grams as events
1. Strategy Memo 0.0
2. Joe Bast 3.2756019350109358
3. Heartland Staff 5.861152017670673
4. Peter Gleick 7.631295386657848
5. Joe Bast 10.572152376359865
6. Peter Gleick 11.883756639524362
Analyzed by Nearest Neighbor Driver with metric Camberra Distance using Word 2Grams as events
1. Strategy Memo 0.0
2. Joe Bast 2.599109316906122
3. Heartland Staff 6.170704701235744
4. Joe Bast 9.570177815725275
5. Peter Gleick 13.307560177813828
6. Peter Gleick 13.695029284565496
Analyzed by Nearest Neighbor Driver with metric Camberra Distance using Word stems as events
1. Strategy Memo 0.0
2. Joe Bast 3.8820363096787065
3. Heartland Staff 7.695783407036921
4. Joe Bast 12.653793919968829
5. Peter Gleick 14.734167804512905
6. Peter Gleick 16.420190717794636
One possible flaw not considered in the above methodology is that the program could be attributing too close of an authorship match to Joe Bast and Heartland Staff because the strategy memo contains a sentence that also appears in the authentic Fundraising Plan: "Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective."
I next crontrolled for this possibility by deleting the sentence in question from the climate strategy document, which I resaved as Climate Strategy Memo 2 (docx) and reran the same three analyses, using the original, full strategy document as one of the possible known authors, and got the following results:
Heartland Strategy Memo 2.docx
Canonicizers: none
Analyzed by Nearest Neighbor Driver with metric Camberra Distance using Character 2Grams as events
1. Strategy Memo 1.938705726184192
2. Joe Bast 2.9968217577188563
3. Heartland Staff 5.5472178990613275
4. Peter Gleick 8.156321472803725
5. Joe Bast 9.863690024204885
6. Peter Gleick 11.241849893833598
Analyzed by Nearest Neighbor Driver with metric Camberra Distance using Word 2Grams as events
1. Strategy Memo 4.183330096592706
2. Joe Bast 5.2640798702672384
3. Heartland Staff 7.577255315445771
4. Joe Bast 8.593442340043726
5. Peter Gleick 12.32193237311855
6. Peter Gleick 16.31481171381239
Analyzed by Nearest Neighbor Driver with metric Camberra Distance using Word stems as events
1. Strategy Memo 3.188360519110196
2. Joe Bast 4.783646657279247
3. Heartland Staff 9.110105530159261
4. Joe Bast 12.56463219477823
5. Peter Gleick 14.959700479974499
6. Peter Gleick 16.735394841607917
Conclusion
According to the above six analyses, which as I caution above may contain unknown errors, the most likely author of the climate strategy memo is Heartland Institute president Joe Bast.
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Some experts feel the sample is too small to distinguish from noise, which I tend to agree with. This was my criticism of the WHO report last May, that claimed that cell phones may cause brain cancer, but then the footnote said the blip they saw was statistically indistinguishable from chance.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shawn-lawrence-otto/cell-phone-use-cancer-link_b_914005.html
By that view, some might argue it was irresponsible of Anthony Watts to suggest readers use JGAAP, and it highlights the flaws his new "study". In my view this has equally limited credibility:
A) JGAAP showed different answers with different tests;
B) the study was commissioned by an interested party (big surprise he got the hoped for results)
C) experts noted the sample size was indistinguishable from noise, ie chance. Maciej Eder: "It becomes quite obvious that samples shorter than 5000 words provide a poor "guessing", because they can be immensely affected by random noise. Below the size of 3000 words, the obtained results are simply disastrous."
See http://dh2010.cch.kcl.ac.uk/academic-programme/abstracts/papers/html/ab-744.html
Anyone experienced in statistical analysis like Anthony Watts claims to be should surely recognize the merits of that observation.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/14/professional-forensic-stylometric-analysis-of-the-fake-heartland-climate-strategy-memo-concludes-peter-gleick-is-the-likely-forger/
The circumstantial and expert evidence looks pretty damning. The question we now need answering, is why so many people rushed to support Gleick.
This was not one rogue individual. This was not one rogue person whose behaviour was soundly rejected. Instead it was a mad group consensus that still refuses to acknowledge their own immoral behaviour whilst claiming that others are at fault.
You cannot condone criminal behaviour: theft and forgery and then not be tarred with the same brush.
By continuing this game of covering up all you will achieve is that the stench will attach to you.
By your hero you know the person.
How can people have backed Gleick? What does this say about their personal judgement? What does this say about the general standards of honesty and integrity in this area?
Hoover
Cato
Marshall
Competitive Enterprise
American Enterprise
Cascade Policy
Manhattan
American Petroleum
Frontiers of Freedom
Fraser
"coalitions" like:
Cooler Heads
Advancement of Sound Science
Global Climate
"foundations" like:
Frontiers of Freedom
Atlantic Legal
Heritage
"centers" like:
National Center for Policy Analysis
Study of CO2 and Global Change
Annapolis
Weidenbaum
New Europe
"councils" like:
American Legislative
American Council on Science and Health
Also, the
Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy
Science and Environmental Policy Project
and dozens more roaches:
Heartland's just the tip of a TITANIC iceberg
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/maps.php
If a fraction of that money went to the sceptics you would be over the moon having found some huge scam. But when 1000x as much money goes to the warmists as sceptic, you still have the gall to suggest that we are BIG-OIL stooges.
Warmists at the big-oil stooges. You are the stooges of all the money-grabbing capitalists trying to make a killing for taking money from the old and poor.
Warmists are the most morally corrupt bunch of denialists the world have ever seen.
Well, there's also:
Action Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty
U.S. Russia Business Council
Air Quality Standards Coaliltion
American Conservative Union Foundation
American Recreation Coalition
Aspen Institute
Atlas Economic Research Foundation
Blue Ribbon Coalition
Capital Legal Foundation
Capital Research Center
Public Interest Watch
American Spectator Foundation
Center for Strategic and International Studies
CFACT
Chemical Education Foundation
CSE
CFE
Clean Water Industry Coalition
Consumer Alert
Council for Solid Waste Solutions
Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment
and DOZENS more
http://climatecrocks.com/2012/02/24/the-heartland-department-of-education/
A very truthy reply.
Funny how you didn't answer the question though.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/gleick-curioser-and-curiouser/
There's no doubt who wrote the fake memo.
Correction: there's no doubt amongst those who have jumped to conclusions about a memo that may not even be fake.
But Heartland, with the helpful assistance of most of the media, has managed to deflect the whole thing onto Gleick and his actions, burying all talk of what it is they're actually up to.
They're very good at what they do.
Part of the reason that the fake memo continues to be the story is that people continue trying to defend its authenticity and/or Professor Gleick's deception. Neither is defensible. Arguing that the memo is real, or that someone sent it to Gleick to trick him, only keeps that issue in play. Such strained arguments can't achieve anything good, and risk damaging the credibility of those who make them. Defending an obvious fraud and/or its fraudster won't get the debate back to the merits of the science of global warming.
This issue is a lot like the Bush National Guard memos. The controversy over those obviously-fake memos ultimately diverted attention from the good reasons for people to vote against Bush. That controversy helped Bush more than it hurt him, especially since people like Dan Rather continued to defend them after they were proven fake. Shawn Otto is making the same kind of mistake here.
But you're right, there is and will be a lot of attention paid to the 'scandal' and little to the heart of the issue. Which works out favorably for Heartland et al. But that actually works for us as well. Shouting "Gleick stole information" is not only a banner cry, it is also an ace in the hole, ready to be whipped out when the going gets tough. But we can trump that ace by citing the, as described by Heartland, 'stolen' documents. In this way we can replace truthiness with truth.
"So, fake but accurate? A good example of 'truthiness'?"
Statements in a memo can be accurate regardless of whether said memo is a forgery.
Here are good examples of "truthiness":
1) HuffPo posters (several of which are brand new HuffPo accounts) repeatedly asserting that the 'strategy' memo is "fake" without proof.
What is the proof that the 'strategy' memo is a forgery, Lablah?
2) Stating or implying that all of the information in the 'strategy' memo is not accurate.
Other Denialgate documents corroborate, for example, that prominent "skeptics" Craig Idso, Fred Seitz, Bob Carter, and Anthony Watts are recipiens of Heartland money.
Do you agree that in the wake of the release of the Denialgate documents there is compelling evidence indicating that Craig Idso, Fred Seitz, Bob Carter, and Anthony Watts are are recipiens of Heartland money, Lablah? And if not, why not?
Well alrighty then - if "independent expert" Anthony Watts says the memo in question is almost certainly a forgery then as Heartland insists the memo is a forgery - right?
Oh, wait, isn't Anthony Watts a recipient of Heartland money as disclosed by Denialgate documents including the 'strategy' document in question, and as subsequently admitted by Watts himself?
Yes, he is.
Well kids there you have it:
According to Heartland Anthony Watts is an "independent expert" with respect to the authenticity of a document that indicates -- and as Watts himself subsequently admitted -- that he is receiving money from Heartland.
With "independent" investigators like Anthony Watts who needs co-conspirators?
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* http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/20/heartland-institute-comments-fakegate
Which is all this climate hysteria is about: money.