A self-confessed Greenie liar

Post below lifted from Blue Crab. See the original for links. Amusing that Science magazine, Nature and Reuters all thought the hoax was genuine, at least initially.

Thanks to alert reader Cedric, we now have a confession from 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.

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)