Caught Red-Handed on Climate Change

Peter Gleick (Photo credit: World Economic Forum)

A prominent global warming scientist, Peter Gleick, who was chairman of the ethics committee at the American Geophysical Union, admitted last year that he stole some documents- and he may have forged others- from the conservative think-tank the Heartland Institute. But that’s all in a day’s work for a work-a-day climate warrior. The important thing isn’t the quest for the truth in global climate research, but, as Charlie Sheen would say, winning. With winning comes cash.   

Because for some time it’s been clear, that in the climate debate, instead of actually accomplishing something worthwhile, all the attention will be on the winners and losers. And some losers in the debate are much bigger than others.

For example:   

“In the field of climate science, when someone — especially skeptics — did something ethically questionable or misrepresented facts,” writes MSNBC, “scientist Peter Gleick was usually among the first and loudest to cry foul. He chaired a prominent scientific society's ethics committee. He created an award for what he considered lies about global warming.”

No word yet whether Gleick will create an award for forgery. I hear the pool of candidates isn’t deep this year since all of the forged data from Climategate has already gone pro.    

The authentic documents stolen from Heartland were released by Gleick, along with some documents the Heartland folks say are forgeries.

The real documents were prepared by the think-tank to counter the global warming bunk that is being taught in US schools.

I know about the global warming hysteria that is taught at the elementary and secondary level, because my kids come home everyday and instead of telling me about how they’ve learned to read and write and how great George Washington was, they instead tell me that “transfer calculations indicate that strong gradients in both ozone and water vapor near the tropopause contribute to the inversion.” Ah, huh. I think neither they, nor their teachers, nor the authors, nor myself, knows what that means.

…snip…

When conservatives question global warming, we are lying, apparently. When liberals steal in the name of global warming, it can't be a sign of desperation, poor science or character. No; they must be crazy, with due respect to Ms. McArdle, who I believe is sincere .

I guess since liberals haven't yet embraced retroactive abortions, the next, best thing they can do is label someone crazy when they want to cut them from the herd, as they did recently with Media Matter's David Brock.    

Skeptics- or rather, deniers, as we’d much rather be called- will point out that increasingly the public is distrustful of global warming science.

Despite a little bounce in the polls, 60 percent of US respondents to a Rasmussen survey don’t think that global warming is man made. “In a January survey of the top 22 policy priorities for the US,” writes Our World 2.0 “the public ranked climate change dead last, according to the Pew Research Center.”

“When government muzzles scientists for political reasons, it cuts at the fundamental principals of good science,” Stephen Hwang, professor of general internal medicine at the University of Toronto told Our World.

But when the doctors and scientists seek to muzzle the rest of us it’s all A.O.K.

And for some weird reason the public just doesn’t trust those scientists who are fully sponsored and funded by the UN, US, UK and other government grants, which in turn were funded by you.

By talking about it, you troglodytes just emit more carbon. Good going.

Your proper role is to just shut your big, fat mouth and fork over a carbon credit or cash equivalent so the truth-seeking can continue unimpeded.  

Editor's note: Peter Gleick, after spending time in liberal purgatory, was reinstated in his job as president of the Pacific Institute not withstanding the theft. The New York Times approves:

After an internal investigation, Peter Gleick has been reinstated as president of the Pacific Institute, the environmental group largely focused on water and climate that he founded in 1987. The career of this seasoned and lauded scientist and policy analyst ran off the rails when Gleick masqueraded as a member of the board of the anti-regulatory Heartland Institute to obtain internal documents on budgets and strategies. (He undertook this deception even as he was heading a task force on scientific ethics for the American Geophysical Union.)

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