Peter Gleick vs. The Heartland Institute

Wow. Just... Wow.

Prominent climate scientist Peter Gleick admitted that he used "someone else's name" to obtain "additional materials" directly from the Heartland Institute (HI) to corroborate internal documents that were sent to him anonymously. These documents, and their corroborating confirmations, conclusively establish that HI is designing education programs whose clear intent is to undo science by casting aspersions on decades of climate research across dozens of interrelated fields in an attempt to sow doubt on the science surrounding climate change and its potential impacts on our planet.

Let's watch the Right avoid all appearance of being morally relativistic, while being trapped in a morally relative situation.

Without having all the facts about how, specifically, Dr. Gleick used someone else's name to obtain those confirmations--from HI itself, I remind you--it is clear that there was at least an ethical problem here. Whether it amounts to actual malfeasance (did Dr. Gleick commit identity theft when he used "someone else's name"?) will undoubtedly come to light.

We do, however, seem to have all the relevant facts about HI's role here. Do not forget that. They are there for the reading. This is not Julian Assange getting classified documents from an "eyes only" or a "top secret" military source and then releasing them by the thousands to the Internet as a whole, potentially endangering deep-cover operatives in hostile environments. This is a private entity which confirmed their veracity directly, regardless of what prompted them to do so.

Courts frequently go back and forth about expectations of privacy. In general, it is understood that an individual in a public space has no reasonable expectation of privacy from, say, having their picture taken, or even being filmed extensively. If the person involved was asked beforehand, and gave their consent to the photos or the filming, they are being pretty silly if they complain that the photographer introduced himself or herself as a "reporter from AP" instead of "paparazzi from Us Weekly."

As such, HI deserves no sympathy whatsoever, and would appear to have no case to make against Dr. Gleick. Presumably they have looked through their electronic records and tried to figure out who "someone else" was in the aftermath of having their reckless, irresponsible, anti-science strategies exposed for all to see. Regardless, they themselves provided the confirmations. One could argue that this was a rather interesting application of the scientific method: when in doubt, seek more data... preferably from a primary source.

Just as the Right didn't give a damn about who leaked Media Matters' internal white papers regarding their Fox News strategy, they shouldn't really be yelling all that loudly about the HI incident merely because the culprit outed himself.

However, as with jobs and economic data, if there is any way they can twist evident facts and trends to make it look like they were right (har har) and Obama was wrong, we will see them do everything they can to turn the focus away from a multi-million dollar group that explicitly intends to misinform science students for political reasons, to questions about Dr. Gleick's self-admitted ethical (and possibly legal) misadventures.

Their abject and embarrassing failure with the whole "climate gate" emails is a great example of the scientific illiteracy they so proudly wear as a badge of honor. I don't see why this will be any different, except for the fact that there isn't currently a worldwide climate change conference to undermine like there was back in the Copenhagen days.

Ain't moral relativism a grand thing in politics?

UPDATE (02-22-2012): To make a hollow laughing sound... It appears that there is a concerted effort to deflect attention from HI's strategy by assaulting some of the documents themselves as forgeries. There are various people out there who are clumsily analyzing one particular memo as "looking like" it was written by a climate change supporter who was trying to act like a denier.

Excellent. Really top-notch there. Since that memo came from HI, according to Dr. Gleick, and since he is the sole source on it, this angle of attack is an attempt to focus the attention not just away from HI but onto Dr. Gleick as both an unethical guy AND a fraudster. Our right-wing friends sure do know their Orwell.

I'd just like to remind everyone of the "climate gate" dynamics: several stolen emails from a cache of tens of thousands, taken out of context, hyped into the troposphere and repeatedly misinterpreted were used to undermine a global climate meeting. The problem for the Alex Jones of the blogosphere was that the underlying interdisciplinary science did not change, and even since Copenhagen has been further buttressed with new data. The planet is warming. The vast majority of scientists believe human activities are increasing the rate of warming, if not mostly to blame for it. The ramifications are known. Sea levels are rising. Weather is becoming more volatile. Ice sheets and glaciers are melting. Arctic sea ice is thinner than ever before. We are in a feedback loop.

The HI incident demonstrates the counter strategy: kill the messenger, distract from the main issue, and whatever you do, don't talk about the actual science.