22 February 2012

Did Gleick make the faked Heartland Document?

Environmental activist Peter Gleick enticed a staffer at Heartland Institute -- a libertarian think tank and sceptical science funder based in Chicago -- to email him some internal Heartland documents.  You can get them from DeSmog blog here including the allegedly faked one here:

2012 Climate Strategy (3).pdf

Gleick has thus far admitted to being the receiver of the emails which show some fairly run-of-the-mill financial workings of Heartland.  But Gleick has stopped short of admitting to being the author of the one document that stands out from the pack.

For an excellent write-up of what's wrong with the faked document that didn't appear in what Gleick received but did appear in what was sent out by him see (from The Atlantic):

Leaked Docs From Heartland Institute Cause a Stir—but Is One a Fake?

Interesting highlights include that the faked document was the only one scanned in.

What's really interesting is the reaction to it all and how it's drawn along the usual ideological lines.  For a primer on this please read the article, also from The Atlantic:

Peter Gleick Confesses to Obtaining Heartland Documents Under False Pretenses

The author who apparently has some warmist leanings tries to parallel climategate to Heartlandgate rather unconvincingly.

In climategate there appears to be an internal leaker of publically funded information that should have been in the public domain but instead was shielded from freedom of information requests.

In Heartlandgate there were some ho-hum internal financial documents saying what we pretty much know anyway -- it receives and funds skeptical-related interests on a scale dwarfed by the Climate Establishment -- that were not publically funded and that few cared about.  Except perhaps for use as a prop in a hoax.

It's another moment where warmists must decide whether to condemn a stupid and unproductive move from Gleick as the author of the above Atlantic articles suggests.  Or to circle the wagons once again and say: hey if it's for a good cause we can forgive these ethical transgressions.

Whoever the forger was, why do this?  It was unlikely to work.   It was destined to either fail in the best case or badly backfire in the worst case, and it's definitely been the latter.  One theory is from tearec in the comments section of the second Atlantic article linked to  above:
I'm guessing he was drunk.  Sometimes when I get drunk I call or text women I know, and sometimes I regret doing so the next morning.  When Peter Gleick gets drunk he commits wire fraud and forges documents.

To each their own, don't judge him.

Further coverage:



Fakegate: The climate scandal that wasn't

Peter Gleick – the Johann Hari of climate 'science'

added here 23/2/2012: 

Global Warming Alarmists Resort to Hoax

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