Well, no one likes being caught with his pants down. So I have to confess that, although I think that the climate denialism that the Heartland Institute engages in is practically criminal, I do have at least a small amount of sympathy for the embarrassment they are going through right now. Looking through their website, much of what they say lacks credibility, at least in my eyes. I suppose that an incident like this will also affect the credibility they may have with some individuals who subscribe to their pro business stance.
That’s gotta hurt.
There is a very chagrined page on their website that attempts to do a little damage control. They are correct when they say that a ruse was used to gain access to their documents. So they have a right to be angry, as well as embarrassed. But they also go on and try to put themselves in the position of the moral high ground when they call for fairness. Toward the end of the page they say, “[H]onest disagreement should never be used to justify the criminal acts and fraud that occurred in the past 24 hours. As a matter of common decency and journalistic ethics, we ask everyone in the climate change debate to sit back and think about what just happened.”[i]
A call for fairness and giving someone the benefit of the doubt, however, has not been the Heartland Institute’s modus operandi. Toward the end of last year the institute had a “reaction” to the hacked emails of prominent climate change scientists (what they call the Climategate) saying that the scientists had “conspired to hide and manipulate data calling into question the theory of man-caused global warming.”[ii] Around the same time their tone was downright gleeful when they found that they had been mentioned a few of the hacked emails. They say they say that they “couldn’t be prouder” of the situation.[iii]
The institute never showed the slightest indignation that the scientists’ emails had been hacked, that they had been got at through cyber sleuth, nor did they call for, as they ask for themselves, “common decency and journalistic ethics.”
What makes this particularly odious is that these postings are from late last year, long after independent investigations, including one by the EPA, found that no data was manipulated or scientific shenanigans had occurred as they examined the hacked emails of the scientists and the circumstances surrounding them.
There is much to take note of here, chief among them being the Heartland Institute’s plans to create an anti-science curriculum to fit the political needs of their sponsors. And as they try to defend themselves, the Heartland Institute is only showing itself to be an organization of blatant hypocrites.
[i] Lakely, Jim Heartland Institute Responds to Stolen and Fake Documents 2/15/12 http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/15/heartland-institute-responds-stolen-and-fake-documents
[ii] Singer, S. Fred et al Heartland Institute Reacts to ‘Climategate 2’ Emails 11/22/11 http://heartland.org/press-releases/2011/11/22/heartland-institute-reacts-climategate-2-emails
[iii] Lakely, Jim Heartland Institute Mentioned in Climategate Emails, Round 1 and 2(Part1) 11/28/11 http://blog.heartland.org/2011/11/heartland-institute-mentioned-in-climategate-emails-rounds-1-and-2-part-1/
Right arm, Paul!
ReplyDelete-Tim