My last couple of blogs have been about the Heartland Institute’s own Climategate scandal, how they were phished for internal documents that, among other things, revealed their plans to develop K-12 curricula that casts doubt on the phenomena and science of global warming. I also blogged about their subsequent hypocrisy in the aftermath of the scandal as well.
The latest development in this story is that Peter Gleick, a noted scientist and president of the Pacific Institute, an organization that performs research and advocates for sustainability, has admitted to being the Heartland Institute’s phisher. Gleick has apologized for his actions and says that his judgment in the matter was clouded by “frustration with the ongoing efforts—often anonymous, well-funded and coordinated—to attack climate science and scientists … and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved.”[i]
In this age of Julian Assange and Wikileaks, when all companies, organizations, and governments experience efforts to have their computers hacked or their personnel phished, as well as a time when everyone who uses a computer has his every internet click recorded and sold to advertisers and every person who walks down the street has his whereabouts and actions recorded on video, the relative merits of breaking a company’s security or invading a person’s privacy is an issue that I am still thinking about, so I don’t want to comment on Gleick, his actions, or his apology. A few have hailed him as a hero, while some excoriate him.
I do want to point out the apparent hypocrisy that has spread beyond the Heartland Institute, particularly that of Megan McArdle. McArdle is a senior editor at The Atlantic and has excoriated Gleick.[ii] And yet while she wrote about the release of emails hacked from climate scientists at East Anglia back in 2009 and 2010, she expressed no such outrage.
It might be added that the writing on the East Anglia brouhaha, she said that she thought the scientists had “massaged” the data[iii] and that the scientists’ work was otherwise compromised.[iv] (It might also be added that McArdle is a business and economics writer, with no background in science. So judge for yourself her ability to assess the science of climate change.)
McArdle can be outraged over a breach of security, that Gleick so easily phished an organization that wants to infect our schools with anti-science poppycock. When that outrage is selective, however, that outrage is a bunch of poppycock as well.
[i] Scientist Peter Gleick admits he lied to get climate documents Los Angeles Times 2/21/12 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-climate-documents-20120222,0,7220518.story
[ii] McArdle, Megan Peter Gleick Confesses to Obtaining Heartland Documents Under False Pretenses The Atlantic 2/21/12 http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/peter-gleick-confesses-to-obtaining-heartland-documents-under-false-pretenses/253395/
[iii] McArdle, Megan Climategate: Was Data Faked? The Atlantic 12/9/09 http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/12/climategate-was-data-faked/31540/
[iv] McArdle, Megan Climategate III: The Mystery of the Missing Data The Atlantic 12/1/09 http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/12/climategate-iii-the-mystery-of-the-missing-data/31110/
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