Warmist James Annan on Gleick and the fake memo: "It's the equivalent of someone being found holding a knife, spattered with blood and standing over a fresh corpse saying "someone else did it, then gave me the knife and ran away""

James' Empty Blog: His transgression cannot be condoned, regardless of his motives.

The "Gleick did it" theory is simple and straightforward. We know he was already in contact with HI, and pressing them on funders. This is, of course, a widespread meme (unhealthily so, IMO, but that's another discussion) among a particular clique of the most vocal scientists. Frustrated by their stonewalling, he has a cunning plan, gets the docs through email, then belatedly realises that HI will easily identify him as he hasn't covered his tracks well enough (and would be circumstantially under suspicion due to the previous discussion), and has to rapidly invent a cover story. He puts his own name into the doc as a plausible reason as to why it was sent to him. Under pressure of time and under great stress, he wasn't thinking that clearly at this point, and is still deeply enmeshed in the good vs evil mindset (witness his interest in "ethics"), hence the rather implausible language. He actually thinks that HI thinks like this! In short, he has the obvious means, motive, and opportunity, and absolutely no alibi - though if he was innocent, he would at least be able to produce the original "fake", and maybe even demonstrate that it is incompatible with his printer(s).

It's the equivalent of someone being found holding a knife, spattered with blood and standing over a fresh corpse saying "someone else did it, then gave me the knife and ran away". I wouldn't be surprised if such an event has indeed occurred at least once in the past, but on any given occasion it's a lot more than just "likely" that the knife-holder did it.

Perhaps the saddest aspect of this - which I'm actually pretty annoyed about - is that his (probable) continued dishonesty has allowed/goaded various supporters into defending and backing him up - which will make them all look pretty gullible and stupid when the truth does come out. For even if you can try to defend the email phishing, especially under the provocation that he alleges, you certainly can't excuse directly forging a document and pretending it came from HI.