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Heartland Institute Document Leaker Comes Forward, Maintains Documents Are Real
The Bad Astronomer writes "Last week, an anonymous source leaked several internal documents from the Heartland Institute, a non-profit think tank known for anti-global-warming rhetoric. The leaker has come forward: Peter Gleick, scientist and journalist. In his admission, he cites his own breach of ethics, but also maintains that all the documents are real. This includes the potentially embarrassing '2012 Climate Strategy' document stating that Heartland wants to 'dissuade teachers from teaching science.' Heartland still claims this document is a forgery, but there is no solid evidence either way."
Oh yeah, these are the guys that told you cigarettes were healthy, and that there was no reliable evidence that they harmed people. The world is full of shills and whores who will lie to your face if the price is right. Why should this be a surprise. These guys have a track record. The only thing controversial here is that these reprobates are telling a significant amount of the population exactly what they want to hear. I know its hard, double rough for some, when the lies they tell sound so sweet (consistent with your belief systems...), get over it. These people are not your friends and if China should hire them tomorrow, they'll give you 20 good reasons why eating lead is great for you.
Wake up, that smell is your ass on fire, and these clowns are holding the matches.
Have to applaud the whistleblower for having the courage to do this. Heartland is clearly a tool, not just for deniers, but for industry which would profit from a (further) dumbed-down populace. Where is the outrage, probably due to the present level of dumbing-down, there isn't very much. Bread and circuses.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Why should he be fired if as you say possibly no crimes were committed, and what did he do that was unethical?
The primary problem seems to be:
"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."
If he was a tech journalist reporting some babble about apple or samsung or the mighty GOOG or whoever, he'd have run the story without even bothering to verify and that would be considered "just show business as usual".
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Oh for.... TGS itself said "he cites his own breach of ethics". Sounds to me like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.
I think he did the right thing. It would be even more unethical to let the bastards keep lying.
Free Martian Whores!
Climiate science is SCIENCE. In science, belief is irrelevant. Only evidence matters.
The denialists don't have evidence. They have good PR, online polls, debates, and other slick propaganda tools, but they will never win the scientific debate, because the evidence for AGW is overwhelming.
This is a political and ideological issue, not a scientific one.
Exactly, the truth needs to be made public. If these assholes are lying, then using false pretenses to get information out of them is perfectly fine. You think investigative reporters go around telling the targets of their investigation honestly who they are and what their profession is? Of course not, they'd never get any damning information if they did.
The fossil fuel industry and many of the issues that the Right in this country are harping on have an interesting pattern.
They take an issue that could be potentially dangerous to their profits and turn it into an emotional issue - in this case Global Warming - and when it becomes an emotional issue, all reason is thrown out the door and rational discourse becomes impossible.
Global Warming was discovered decades ago. The fossil fuel companies started to become threatened by it. So we go from scientists have data about global warming and what we could possibly do about it to scientists have a Liberal Agenda to destroy capitalism and our Way of Life.
I have a neighbor and in-laws who live on a steady diet of Fox News and Talk Radio; such as Hannity, and if Global Warming comes up, they say words like "hoax", "socialist", "cause higher taxes", "destroying America", "predictions based upon inaccurate computer models", etc .... in very angry tones.
They're thinking emotionally. The anti-global warming crowd did a very good in turning this into a personal emotional issue.
They do this with other issues. Turn an issue from a purely academic one into dumbed down emotional rhetoric, and you got the other guys by the balls.
That's where the climate scientists got screwed. The fossil fuel industry got their PR people on it and then the right wing talking heads grabbed onto it, and now we have this mess of an issue that I for one have given up complete hope that anything can be done now.
tl;dr: industry is great at turning a scientific issue into an emotional one - an "us" vs. "them" issue and neutering the opposition.
See, here's another moron sticking up for this shitty president.
There are people who just hate one side or another. And they predictably come up with the most shockingly shallow bullshit. And when someone points out /anything/ that might question deeply held prejudices, the ideologues call them stupid.
/greatly/ if people like you suddenly moved to pluto, where you could scream at each other all day, and the rest of society could actually get on with addressing the ISSUES.
The truth is not always on one side or the other, and it is not always neatly in between -- and society as a whole would benefit
I say this, already expecting a big woooossshhh before I even hit the Submit button. Part of me thinks you are a charity case.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Heartland claims Earlier this evening, Peter Gleick, a prominent figure in the global warming movement, confessed to stealing electronic documents from The Heartland Institute in an attempt to discredit and embarrass a group that disagrees with his views.
In fact, he made no such confession. What he said is: 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.
Then, he went to the effort of attempting to verify the authenticity and accuracy of the documents by pretending to be someone else and asking for information directly from Heartland: The materials the Heartland Institute sent to me confirmed many of the facts in the original document, including especially their 2012 fundraising strategy and budget.
So, he did pretend to be someone else, but he stole nothing. If the original documents were stolen (which is pure speculation), it was by someone other than Gleick. Impersonating someone else is certainly nothing to be taken lightly, but it's a well established technique used by reporter and investigators when using your real name may impede or alter your access to the information. Whether a crime was committed requires more details than given. But there is no evidence that he stole anything, and as such, he may have a slander or libel claim against Heartland for their statement. IANAL.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false