Over the past couple weeks the global warming alarmist community, both locally and nationally, on their blogs and Twitter pages, have been quite excited about some documents that have been fraudulently obtained from the Heartland Institute, a well known libertarian think tank in Illinois. For many years Heartland has been on the vanguard of providing sound data and analysis of the global warming issue. Clearly the alarmists saw this as their “climategate” despite the fact that most of the information in the documents had little to do with global warming and much to do with internal information for board members relating to who their donors are and have been and future fund raising strategies.

But now the truth is coming out and the alarmists  are ending up with egg on their face. First, the main set of documents, which were not particularly damning, were obtained under false and possibly illegal pretenses by a well known alarmist scientists and President of the Pacific Institute in California, Peter Gleik. The Pacific Institute is an important advocate for the alarmist position and a  major nemesis of the Heartland Institute. Gleik contacted the Heartland Institute, lied to the staffer that answered the phone by claiming he was a board member and told the staffer that his email address had been changed. He then told the staffer that documents for an upcoming board meeting should be emailed to him at this phony address.   In terms that those reading this blog could relate to, this incident would be the equivalent to finding out that John Hood, President of the Locke Foundation, called the NC Justice Center and lied about who he was in order to obtain confidential documents meant for a Justice Center board meeting.  Of course this would never happen given John’s integrity and our integrity as an organization, but if it did there would be tremendous embarrassment throughout the conservative/libertarian community both in North Carolina and nationally. But so far no similar embarrassment seems to be coming forth from the progressive alarmist community that ran with the story initially or the eco-advocacy movement more generally.  But here’s the kicker, these fraudulently obtained documents didn’t contain the smoking gun that Gleik was looking for. Realizing this, someone, Gleik cliams it wasn’t him but most evidence suggests it was, went out and pulled a Dan Rather. They fabricated a second document which the fabricator titled “2012 Heartland Climate Strategy” that included the damning stuff that they hoped would be in the real documents. So “if at first you don’t succeed, make it up” seems to be the motto of alarmist investigative journalism.

Much of this story is being told in a series of blog posts at the Atlantic Monthly by editor Megan McArdle, who describes her personal views on the global warming issue as follows:

I disagree pretty strenuously with Heartland’s position on global warming.  I not only believe that anthropogenic global warming is happening, but also support stiff carbon or source fuels taxes in order to combat it.  While I’ve expressed some dismay at the behavior revealed in the leaked Climategate memos, they haven’t changed my mind about the reality, or the danger, of global warming.

Her posts are full of information on the controversy and can be found here, here, and here