Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Correcting Your Essay on the Heartland Documents

To: Steven Hayward, AEI
Cc: editor@weeklystandard.com

Mr. Hayward,

There is a particularly misleading statement in your 3/5/12 essay "Why the Climate Skeptics Are Winning."
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/why-climate-skeptics-are-winning_631915.html

In it you credit Ross Kaminsky with detecting the odd digital fingerprint of the so-called "strategy memo" in the Peter Gleick/Heartland Institute affair. Presumably you mean his 2/17 blog post
http://rossputin.com/blog/index.php/theft-and-forgery-of-heartland

and in earlier paragraphs in your essay you imply that those who accept the consensus view of manmade global warming weren't interested in looking closely at the episode.

But you're wrong. In fact, two days earlier I noted the strange digital information on that document:
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-is-desmog-blogs-document-scanned.html

and there were others already sensing the same thing. There was almost immediately a large interest from all across the blogosphere. One wonders if Kaminsky learned of it from that -- or, if not, how he missed it.

I don't expect everyone to know every little thing that happens in the blogosphere. But this was a fairly notable event, crucial to your thesis, and you didn't check your facts. It's not so much a matter of who gets credit as that you didn't care to examine your preconceived notion that those who understand and accept the strong scientific case for anthropogenic warming weren't interested in noting or unraveling the facts of this case. They were, and they still are.

Sincerely,
David

--
David Appell, PhD, independent science writer
e: david.appell@gmail.com
w: http://www.davidappell.com
m: St. Helens, OR USA

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Cry for attention?