Resources for a sustainable future

21/2/2012 Guardian Climate scientist Peter Gleick admits he leaked Heartland Institute documents.Peter Gleick, a water and climate analyst, says he was blinded by his frustrations with ongoing attacks on climate science.- by Suzanne Goldenberg US environment correspondent.
A leading defender of climate change admitted tricking the libertarian Heartland
Institute into turning over confidential documents detailing its plans to
discredit the teaching of science to school children in last week’s sensational
expose.

In the latest revelation, Peter Gleick, a water scientist and president of the
Pacific Institute who has been active in the climate wars, apologised on Monday
for using a false name to obtain materials from Heartland, a Chicago-based think
tank with a core mission of dismissing climate change.

“My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts – often
anonymous, well-funded and co-ordinated – to attack climate science,” Gleick
wrote in a piece for Huffington Post.

The admission – nearly a week after Heartland’s financial plans and donors’ list
was put online – looked set to further inflame the climate wars, in which a
network of fossil fuel interests, rightwing think tanks and politicians have
been working to block action on climate change.

In a sign of combat to come, Gleick has taken on a top Democratic operative and
crisis manager, Chris Lehane. Lehane, who worked in the Clinton White House is
credited for exposing the rightwing forces arrayed against the Democratic
president. He was Al Gore’s press secretary during his 2000 run for the White
House.

As one environmental campaigner said: “Now it’s gone nuclear.”

Heartland’s president Joseph Bast said the unauthorised release of confidential
documents – and a two-page memo it has condemned as a fake – had caused
permanent damage to its reputation.

“A mere apology is not enough to undo the damage,” he said in a statement.

Bast also disputed Gleick’s account that he had received the first document –
the faked two-page memo – from an anonymous source.

He said Heartland was consulting legal experts.

In the piece, Gleick made the odd claim that he carried out the hoax on
Heartland as a means of verifying the authenticity of a document that appeared
to set out the think tank’s climate strategy. Heartland declared the two-page
memo a fake.

“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
programme 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,” Gleick wrote.

“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
materials the Heartland Institute sent to me confirmed many of the facts in the
original document, including especially their 2012 fundraising strategy and
budget. I forwarded, anonymously, the documents I had received to a set of
journalists and experts working on climate issues.”

Gleick’s admission was seen by some as crossing a new line in the increasingly
vitriolic debate between scientists, campaigners, businesses and politicians who
want action on climate change and a small but well-funded group of those who
deny the existence of man-made climate change.

Some were dismayed the revelations. Others suggested that Heartland had got what
it deserved – given its support for efforts to discredit science.

“Heartland has been subverting well-understood science for years,” wrote Scott
Mandia, co-founder of the climate science rapid response team. “They also
subvert the education of our school children by trying to ;’teach the
controversy’ where none exists.”

He went on: “Peter Gleick, a scientist who is also a journalist just used the
same tricks that any investigative reporter uses to uncover the truth. He is the
hero and Heartland remains the villain. He will have many people lining up to
support him.”

Gleick, a well regarded water scientist, has been an important figure in the
increasingly heated climate wars, and has sparred often in print against
Heartland and others who deny the existence of climate change, such as the
Republican Senator Jim Inhofe.

Last month, Gleick signed on with a new initiative to defend the teaching of
climate change.

He offered that bruising experience on Monday as an explanation for his actions.

But Gleick does not appear to have experienced immediate remorse. He did not
move to claim the ruse until there was already feverish online speculation about
his involvement. He responded to a request by The Guardian for comment last
Wednesday by saying he did not wish to comment.

Those actions may have undercut an entire career, the journalist Andrew Revkin
wrote.

“Gleick’s use of deception in pursuit of his cause after years of calling out
climate deception has destroyed his credibility and harmed others,” he wrote.

“The broader tragedy is that his decision to go to such extremes in his fight
with Heartland has greatly set back any prospects of the country having the
“rational public debate” that he wrote — correctly — is so desperately needed.”

Kert Davies, the research director of Greenpeace USA, said it would be
unfortunate if the row over Gleick and his methods to obtain the documents
distracted from Heartland’s work to block climate action.

“There are a lot of people involved with Heartland’s multimillion dollar climate
denial machine who want to change the subject to anything else.”
Go to: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/21/peter-gleick-admits-leaked-heartland-institute-documents?intcmp=122