This weekly newsletter, focused on environmental issues, highlights relevant analysis done by the John Locke Foundation and other think tanks, as well as items in the news.

Global warming alarmists pull a "Dan Rather" on the Heartland Institute

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 fundraising strategies.

But now the truth is coming out, and the alarmists are ending up with egg on their face. First, the main and only real set of documents, which were not particularly damning, were obtained under false and possibly illegal pretenses by a noted alarmist scientist and president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, the Environment, and Security 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, then lied to the staffer who answered the phone by claiming he was a board member. He then told the staffer that his email address had been changed and that documents for an upcoming board meeting should be emailed to him at the phony address. In terms that those reading this newsletter 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 that would never happen given John's integrity and our integrity as an organization, but if it did there would be tremendous outrage and embarrassment throughout the conservative/libertarian community both in North Carolina and nationally. All of these organizations would be distancing themselves from the Locke Foundation, with calls for Hood to step down (that is, if he weren't immediately fired). But so far nothing of the sort is happening in the progressive or the eco-advocacy movement. Gleik is still the president of the Pacific institute, and there is no mention of the incident and certainly not an apology on the Institute's web site. In this case I think that silence should be interpreted as approval.

But the story doesn't end here. The fraudulently obtained documents didn't contain the smoking gun Gleik was looking for. Realizing that, someone -- Gleik claims it wasn't him but most evidence suggests it was -- went out and pulled a Dan Rather. They fabricated a second document, which the author titled "2012 Heartland Climate Strategy." This document is what included the damning material that Gleik and no doubt others in the alarmist community hoped would be in the real documents. It appears that the motto of alarmist investigative journalism is "if at first you don't succeed, make it up."

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.

McArdle is clearly not one of those rascally "deniers."

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

Click here for the Environmental Update archive.