Blue Crab Boulevard

Well, Well, Well

Thanks to alert reader Cedric, we now have a confession form David Thorpe that he was , indeed, the person who intentionally put up the fraudulent GEOCLIMATICSTUDIES.INFO website, that he did so with the intent of trying to discredit people he disagrees with and one other very, very important thing for the media to remember.

He lies to reporters. Intentionally and directly to their faces.

It's been a busy time. I published a spoof website in an effort to smoke out some climate change sceptics – not genuine ones, but ones who are highly vocal and yet do not understand the science.

It consisted of a fake scientific journal, the Journal of Geoclimatic Studies, and a fake editorial and paper, aiming to 'prove' that global warming was caused by bacteria, not humans.

It launched Wed. night and achieved notoriety within hours. I was beseiged with calls from Science magazine, Nature and Reuters.

Several people were fooled but not for long as it was pretty easy to spot the spoof nature of it – all the names were made up.

From yesterday's Reuters story:

“We’re just the website design company,” said David Thorpe at Cyberium in Wales, listed as the administrator of the site. “I don’t know anything about the content. We were just asked to put the website up.”

He says someone else wrote the copy – but his brag on the linked post proves that he knew precisely what he was publishing and why. The one thing that (at least used to be) unforgivable by a reporter was to be intentionally lied to. Alister Doyle, the Reuters reporter should be furious right now.

The fraudulent website has been taken down by the hosting company (TOS violation?). James Lewis was precisely right in calling it a black ops job.

UPDATE: Many thanks for the kind words from Thomas Lifson over at American Thinker. And again, many thanks to alert reader Cedric who brought this to my attention. Visitors who followed the link over, thanks for stopping by. Please look around the site a little. (I knew I should have dusted….)

Blogosphere | Gaius November 9, 2007

By Mwalimu Daudi, November 9, 2007 @ 7:18 pm

Thorpe says:

I published a spoof website in an effort to smoke out some climate change sceptics – not genuine ones, but ones who are highly vocal and yet do not understand the science.

And:

I was beseiged with calls from Science magazine, Nature and Reuters.

What is Thorpe implying here – Science, Nature, and Reuters are not genuine climate change “sceptics”? Perhaps that is why they “beseiged” him. Wow – who knew the MSM was a bunch of GW deniers?

BTW: Didn’t it used to be called “global warming” instead of “climate change”? I wonder if GW cultists like Thorpe aren’t hedging their bets a little in case we get a cold snap. The narrative must be preserved, even if the facts are wrong!
By feeblemind, November 9, 2007 @ 7:37 pm

Maybe it is just me, but I would think this spoof website would damage the credibility of anything Mr. Thorpe says in the future. A frivolous way to damage one’s integrity.
By Quilly Mammoth, November 10, 2007 @ 9:30 am

You ought to look at the question I asked Thorpe here:

In answer he refers me to the LowCarbonKid blog. Where we find that David has been promoted from the occasional column to Official Guardian UK Freelance Enviro-Journalist(tm)!! Now, if it’s true that he accepted this status on November 4th then he may have just found himself in a trick-bag. It explains much of his denial. Even the Guardian is going to wary of hoaxers after the last several years of journalists being caught “making” news. I don;t think he is afraid of losing his job, rather he is afraid of losing his new higher visibility soapbox. Look what the Guardian has doe for George ~~Moonbat~~ Monbiot.

One thing that reading Thorpe’s blog is that he tells you the _real_ agenda behind much of the Green movement.

“Basically economic growth and sustainability are incompatible. It’s like trying to get cats and mice to get on with each other.”
By Joseph Hertzlinger, November 10, 2007 @ 8:16 pm

Hmmmm… I suppose it wouldn’t be that difficult to produce a bullbleep report that appealed to left-wing prejudices.

Wait a moment…
By Gaius, November 10, 2007 @ 8:24 pm

Yep. That about sums it up, Joseph.
By Joe Papp, November 13, 2007 @ 12:55 pm

Three engineering degrees, 20 years in nuclear power. Plenty of papers written and reviewed.

The website had ABSOLUTELY BOGUS AND TRANSPARENTLY SILLY notation.

I expected something more convincing.

This is something SO SOPHMORIC as to rate for a 14 to 16 year old, but not an adult.

Do you think the hoaxter could perhaps NEXT TIME try ACTUAL NOTATION with some hint

of meaning? (Stephan Boltzman constants, black body heat transfer formulation,

Monte-Carlo Modeling coding flow, ANYTHING connected with reality. Even application

of Z-transforms to population modeling would have been impressive.)

Again, CHILDISH…I wish in some respects that I HAD recieved a pointer from some

of my fellow “skeptics” superficially thinking the work had merit. (I did not.) Then I could

have “evaluated myself” on credulity. Alas, I was “tipped off”…but again, my reaction

was: “Childish gibberish..”
By Joe Papp, November 13, 2007 @ 12:58 pm

Sorry about the clarity of my writing, the degrees and experience refer to myself.

I know the problem with blowing one’s own horn…but then I merely want to note that

I do have the experience to recognize a variety of common uses of mathematical

notation in a variety of fields. (Calculus, Differential Calculus, Statistics – Distribution

functions, Statistical Mechanics, Finite Element analysis and “stiffness matrix”

derivation, heat transfer notation, multi component chemical reactivity, population

modeling, need I go on?)