Year 3, Month 2, Day 29: Let’s Play “Let’s Pretend!”

The Toronto Star addresses the Heartland scandal:

Is Peter Gleick a heroic whistleblower or a climate scientist in disgrace?

Gleick, president of the California-based Pacific Institute, placed himself in the middle of controversy this week after admitting he had assumed a false identity to verify the authenticity of documents he says he received anonymously through the mail.

The documents in question reportedly came from within the Heartland Institute, a right-wing, libertarian U.S. think tank that disputes the consensus scientific view of climate change: that the planet is warming and human activity is the primary cause.

Critics say Heartland, under the guise of serious debate, has put great effort into planting doubt and sewing confusion around climate science, with the intention of delaying or halting government action aimed at reining in greenhouse-gas emissions.

The package of documents Gleick obtained backed up such criticisms. “It contained information about their funders and the Institute’s apparent efforts to muddy public understanding about climate science and policy,” he wrote this week in a Huffington Post commentary.

Here we go again. Notice the absence of Thomas Jefferson! Sent February 24:

To save time, let’s all agree that in a perfect world, Dr. Peter Gleick would not have misrepresented himself to the Heartland Institute’s office staff as a way of obtaining their proprietary documents. Shame, shame! But in a perfect world, the Heartland Institute would not be misrepresenting climate science to the public. Shame, shame, shame, shame!

On the one hand, a single scientist of impeccable reputation; on the other, a secretive right-wing think tank with a multi-million-dollar budget. On the one hand, the scientific facts of the greenhouse effect and its catastrophic consequences; on the other, a program of climate-change denialism masquerading as a neutral “teach the controversy” curriculum. On the one hand, an overwhelming scientific consensus; on the other, David Wojik, an epistemologist who is being well paid to foster confusion and uncertainty.

Has Dr. Gleick’s fib helped the truth emerge? He has nothing to be ashamed of.

Warren Senders