By way of Da Tech Guy, it turns out there is another ClimateGate in the offing. This one is called FakeGate, perpetrated by one Peter H. Gleick, who heads an organization known as the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security.
Gleick claimed that he received an anonymous tip, a strategy email from the Heartland Institute that reveals its diabolical conspiracy to undermine the good science of Global Warming. But then he went on to describe how he misrepresented himself to a Heartland Institute staffer in order to steal some internal documents that he expected would corroborate the anonymous memo.
At the beginning of 2012, I received an anonymous document in the mail describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland Institute's climate program strategy. It contained information about their funders and the Institute's apparent efforts to muddy public understanding about climate science and policy. I do not know the source of that original document but assumed it was sent to me because of my past exchanges with Heartland and because I was named in it.
Given the potential impact however, I attempted to confirm the accuracy of the information in this document. In an effort to do so, and in a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else's name.
The repercussions of Gleick's confession appear to be huge. All the more so because former Heartland board member Ross Kaminsky published an article in the American Spectator identifying Gleick as the likely thief, even before he made his confession.
One obvious suspect in the Heartland document theft -- and this is just my speculation -- is Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security and a true enemy of the Heartland Institute. Gleick is a committed alarmist rent-seeker who seems quite bitter that he shares Forbes magazine’s pages with Heartland’s James Taylor.
Mr. Kaminsky didn't leave it at that. He went on the describe the original anonymous memo comparing to Dan Rather's broadcast of the phony Texas Air National Guard memos that on the eve of the 2004 election falsely accused then President George W. Bush of being AWOL and insubordinate during his Air National Guard career.
The document which the alarmists have been trying to make the most of is called “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy.” It appears to be of a similar nature to the forged “Rathergate” documents which ended Dan Rather’s long career promoting leftist views disguised as news.
First, the Heartland document is written in a way which makes it appear unlikely to be genuine. As a commenter on a Forbes.com article about this mini-scandal notes, “It uses the term ‘anti-climate’ to refer to Heartland’s own position — a derogatory term which climate skeptic outfits never use to describe their positions (and…) it is written in the first person, yet there’s no indication of who wrote it. (Have you ever seen a memo like that?)”
Downloading the document, I find that the document properties list no author and say it was created on Monday by a scanner.
...
Furthermore, as others have noted on the web, the data shows that the file was created on a computer set to the Pacific time zone (signified by the -08:00 in the timestamps), where Gleick is based but where Heartland does not have an office. The stolen documents show their creation in the Central time zone.
In other words, all evidence so far supports Heartland’s emphatic assertion that the document is a forgery.
Interestingly, Gleick, who would normally be preening and prancing in glee at this sort of attention to the Heartland Institute has so far been utterly silent at his Forbes blog and on his Twitter feed.
It boggles the mind. Here is the "anti-climate" wording that Mr. Kaminsky mentioned in the excerpt above. My emphasis below.
Heartland plays an important role in climate communications, especially through our in-house experts (e.g., Taylor) through his Forbes blog and related high profile outlets, our conferences, and through coordination with external networks (such as WUWT and other groups capable of rapidly mobilizing responses to new scientific findings, news stories, or unfavorable blog posts). Efforts at places such as Forbes are especially important now that they have begun to allow high-profile climate scientists (such as Gleick) to post warmist science essays that counter our own. This influential audience has usually been reliably anti-climate and it is important to keep opposing voices out.
It's an odd phrase, "reliably anti-climate," for a think tank to use in describing an audience receptive to its ideas. And the part about how important it is to "keep opposing voices out." How characteristic of the Global Warmist crowd.
With the Gleicks of the world there is a higher truth, one not constrained by mundane facts. If they indulge in a bit of literary license to save the world, won't we all be the better for it? They'd like you to think so.
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