The Latest Embarrassment for Global Warming

Saving the Earth, One Fraud at a Time
The latest embarrassment for global warming activists
Steven Greenhut
March 2, 2012

If the theory of man-made global warming were such a self-obvious truth, the result of scientific consensus, then why do advocates for this idea keep committing frauds to advance it? Even more disturbing, why are some writers willing to defend this behavior?

The latest embarrassment for global-warming activists came on Feb. 20 after Peter Gleick, founder of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security in Oakland, admitted that he committed fraud to obtain documents he thought would embarrass a conservative think tank that has been a leading debunker of some of the overheated claims of the climate-change Chicken Littles.

The memos, which reveal the group’s political and fund-raising strategies, provided little to embarrass the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, but it has damaged the reputation of a man who was a respected intellectual in the environmental world. Gleick, a MacArthur Foundation “genius” fellow, doesn’t seem brilliant now, as he takes a leave of absence from the institute, faces public embarrassment and possible prosecution. (Heartland claims that one memo was fabricated, although Gleick denies that charge, but the scandal could get uglier.)

But even after Gleick admitted and apologized for his action, Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik defended him: “It’s a sign of the emotions wrapped up in the global warming debate that Gleick should be apologizing for his actions today while the Heartland Institute stakes out the moral high ground.”

“Peter Gleick lied, but was it justified by the wider good?” asked James Garvey of the British Guardian newspaper. He compared Gleick’s action to that of a man who lied to keep his friend from driving home drunk. “What Heartland is doing is harmful, because it gets in the way of public consensus and action,” he argued. “If his lie has good effects overall—if those who take Heartland’s money to push skepticism are dismissed as shills, if donors pull funding after being exposed in the press—then perhaps on balance he did the right thing. … It depends on how this plays out.”

In his view, anything that gets in the way of “consensus”—i.e., everyone agreeing with Garvey—is dangerous, so why not cheat, as long as it “has good effects”? Let’s reserve judgment based on how it plays out.

What would these people argue if a conservative who argues that, say, public-sector unions are bankrupting the state, pulled a similar fraud to get his hands on documents from union officials? Would they be defending that? Of course not. These writers are advancing a Machiavellian political agenda, not advancing a consistent ethical principle.

When it comes to global warming, the ends apparently justify the means. People from all political persuasions do stupid things to advance their cause, but what bothers me most are respectable people who justify behavior they would never tolerate from their foes. That type of ideological fanaticism is corrosive of our democratic society.

It’s easy to chide the hypocrisy of Gleick. He had been the chairman of an ethics committee for a scientific association. His column blasting dishonesty still sits on his institute’s Web site. It’s harder to explain away his deceit as a mere aberration in the climate-change drama.

In the “Climategate” scandal in 2009, “Hundreds of private email messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change,” according to a New York Times report from the time. The emails showed that the scientific community is so invested in this climate-change ideology for financial and ideological reasons that it rather cook the numbers than level with the public about the reality of the threat. A follow-up release of emails in 2011 provided even more evidence supporting skeptics’ claims.

In this scandal, Gleick created a bogus email account in which he pretended to be a Heartland board member. Then he contacted the organization and asked for documents from a recent board meeting. He released them on the Internet anonymously and to journalists while claiming to be a Heartland insider, according to the institute’s explanation.

Although he offered his regrets, Gleick’s mea culpa was laden with excuses: “I only note that the scientific understanding of the reality and risks of climate change is strong, compelling, and increasingly disturbing, and a rational public debate is desperately needed. My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts—often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated—to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved.”

How do you base a “rational public debate” on deceit?

It’s not as if the documents added anything to the debate. They didn’t show any enormous investment by big corporations. They proved, as one writer noted, that donors give money to organizations whose work they endorse. What a revelation. Isn’t that what happens on the environmental side, also?

Marc Gunther of The Energy Collective admitted that “the leaked Heartland documents didn’t prove very much.” He slammed allies in the global-warming movement for praising Gleick and comparing him to a whistleblower. Clearly, not all believers in man-made global warming defend the indefensible.

Continued at: http://reason.com/archives/2012/03/02/saving-the-earth-one-fraud-at-a-time

 

And I'll help him pay for legal council if needed. I say bravo to him. Sometimes civil disobedience is good. The Heartland Institute represents the corporocrats very well. It's time their agenda was exposed for what is.

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"In the 1990s, the group worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question the science linking secondhand smoke to health risks, and to lobby against government public health reforms.[7][8][9] More recently, the Institute has focused on questioning the science of climate change, has sponsored meetings of climate change skeptics,[10] and is now promoting public school curricula challenging the scientific consensus on climate change.[11]"

" The documents showed that the institute planned to provide climate skeptical materials to teachers in the USA to promote criticism of climate change theories in schools.[20][11] Some of the documents contain details of payments to climate skeptics and financial support to skeptics' research programs, namely the founder of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), physicist Fred Singer ($5,000 plus expenses per month), geologist Robert M. Carter ($1,667 per month) and a single pledge of $90,000 to meteorologist Anthony Watts. Payments or pledges to Carter and Watts have been confirmed by the recipients.[20]"

"Oil and gas companies have contributed to the Heartland Institute, including over $600,000 from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2005.[33] Greenpeace reported that the Heartland Institute received almost $800,000 from ExxonMobil.[17] In 2008, ExxonMobil said that they would stop funding to groups skeptical of climate warming, including Heartland.[33][34][35] Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institute, argued that ExxonMobil was simply distancing itself from Heartland out of concern for its public image.[33]

The Heartland Institute has also received funding and support from tobacco companies Philip Morris,[21] Altria and Reynolds American, and pharmaceutical industry firms GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Eli Lilly.[29] The Independent reported that Heartland's receipt of donations from Exxon and Philip Morris indicates a "direct link"..."between anti-global warming sceptics funded by the oil industry and the opponents of the scientific evidence showing that passive smoking can damage people's health."[8]"

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I hope this issue keeps being brought up. It's time people saw where the GW denial disinformation is coming from.

 

Geeez. Man made global warming scientists are the snake oil salesmen of our generation. The are doing much damage to credibility of the scientific community that could last for decades.

 

You don't even know what you're talking about do you? There was no "snake oil" here, nor was there any in the much publicized "climategate".

 

“Peter Gleick lied, but was it justified by the wider good?” asked James Garvey of the British Guardian newspaper. He compared Gleick’s action to that of a man who lied to keep his friend from driving home drunk. “What Heartland is doing is harmful, because it gets in the way of public consensus and action,” he argued. “If his lie has good effects overall—if those who take Heartland’s money to push skepticism are dismissed as shills, if donors pull funding after being exposed in the press—then perhaps on balance he did the right thing. … It depends on how this plays out.”

There's not much you can't rationalize with that thinking.

If I truly believe liberals are evil, am I justified in killing them? After all, its for the greater good.

 

and this is the extent of his terrible "lie".

"Gleick created a bogus email account in which he pretended to be a Heartland board member.".....OMG!!

but of course this brilliant piece of propaganda makes it seem to the casual reader that some essential global warming facts were lied about and it ignores the fact that the climategate scientists were totally exonerated by multiple reviews. I must say, the writers that are being paid by big business here, are pretty darn good.

 

Since they are mostly on the coasts maybe they can be driven into the sea like drowning rats. We just need a pied piper for them to follow. That shouldn't be too difficult since they are mostly just morons with their hands out.

 

And righties are mostly science -gnorant, religiously deluded, narrow- minded, racist, xenophobic and say stupid shit like the above and live where culture to them is the county fair and Nascar. It's already been proven that lower IQ people tend toward conservatism.