Friday, February 17, 2012

Is Accusing People Fair?

Is it really fair to be accusing people of faking the HI memo without strong evidence? I don't think so, but that's started -- the target is Peter Gleick:

RogerPielkeJr: @mtobis @PeterGleick What fuel? I emailed him to ask, seemed like the best course of action, no? Still awaiting his reply.
Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/statuses/170564031998992385

This seems based on nothing except that he's in the Pacific time zone, and vague comparisons about what's written and about writing style.

--
By the way, my position going forward is that I'm going to assume this memo is fake until proven otherwise. It's just too fishy. 


7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Agree. Very surprised by RPJR doing this, pretty out of character imo. Just makes him look bad. What is Gleick going to say -- oh yeah you got me guys it was me?

Joshua said...

Well - over at "The Blackboard" I asked (well, with a smidgen of snark I likened to asking Gleick when he had stopped beating his wife) if this was fair to ask this question.

I think the evidence of "anti-climate" may point to Gleick - but to ask him via twiter and then to participate in a blog feeding frenzy waiting for Gleick to respond, I think, was over the top.

Roger Pielke Jr. first thought that questioning his decision was "bizarre." He later backed off a bit, but the other tribalists came at me full guns blazing.

Apparently they don't like questioning. Whodathunkit?

Anonymous said...

What do you think of Mike Mann speculating in his book that Steve McIntyre was connected to the CRU hack?

bigcitylib said...

David,

has HI sent you the headers to their emails yet? And how long will you wait for these before you start to suspect that HI is bullshitting you? I mean, how hard can that be? To resend some emails with headers?

David Appell said...

No, I have not received headers or any other information from HI. I've asked them several questions, and sometimes they reply (it seems to be when they think I might know something, as when I first posted, and asked them, about the funny metadata), but sometimes they do not. (Desmogblog never replies to email or phone calls.) They are keeping their cards close to the vest. I can't really blame them for that -- who wouldn't, in their situation?

bigcitylib said...

Such a simple means of strengthening their case. Yet they haven't done it. And this suggests nothing to you?

Steve Bloom said...

"who wouldn't, in their situation?"

Um, CRU?