Climate Propaganda, Climate Science Process

Who Wrote the Fake Heartland Strategy Memo?

162 Comments

Certainly Peter Gleick is still in the running.

But as I wrote in Forbes last week, the memo does not have the feel of having been written by a “player” like Gleick.  It feels like someone younger, someone more likely to take the cynical political knife-fighting statements of someone like Glieck (e.g. skeptics are anti-science) and convert them literally (and blindly) to supposed Heartland agenda items like trying to discourage science teaching.  Someone like an intern or student, who might not realize how outrageous their stilted document might look to real adults in the real world, who understand that leaders of even non-profits they dislike don’t generally speak like James Bond villains.   Even Megan McArdle joked “Basically, it reads like it was written from the secret villain lair in a Batman comic.  By an intern.”

Now combine that with a second idea.  Gleick is about the only strong global warming believer mentioned by the fake strategy document.   I don’t think many folks who have observed Heartland from afar would say that Heartland has any special focus on or animus towards Gleick (more than they might have for any other strong advocate of catastrophic man-made global warming theory).   I would not have inferred any such focus by Heartland, and seriously, who would possibly think to single out Peter Gleick of all candidates (vs. Romm or Hansen or Mann et al) in a skeptic attack strategy?

The only person who might have inferred such a rivalry would have been someone close to Gleick, who heard about Heartland mainly from Gleick.  Certainly Gleick seems to have had a particular focus, almost obsession, with Heartland, and so someone who viewed Heartland only through the prism of Gleick’s rants might have inferred that Heartland had something special in for him.  And thus might have featured him prominently in a hypothesized attack in their strategy document.

So this is what I infer from all this:  My bet is on a fairly young Gleick sycophant — maybe a worker at the Pacific Institute, maybe an intern, maybe a student.  Which would mean in turn that Gleick very likely knows who wrote the document, but might feel some responsibility to protect that person’s identity.

162 thoughts on “Who Wrote the Fake Heartland Strategy Memo?”

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  2. This is your “authority,” Paul?!

    This is your nuanced authority!?

    Yeah, this is a great place to get a balanced opinion on an important topic.

    Did you post “it is appropriate to offer evidence that other people THOUGHTFUL PEOPLE whose biases would tend to influence them in the other direction have reached the same conclusion on the same evidence. The evidence is offerred to rebut the allegation of bias”?

    Sorry, I’m going to do it again:

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

    Oh man, that’s rich.

    Well, I better get home to meet the Obama Death Panel in my neighborhood—I’ve got some crabby old Republican neighbors I’d like to get rid of.

    Good job there, Paul, you really made your point.

    Note to self: Paul may be right, I may have to give up on him.

  4. If you recall a few comments back I suggested moving any discussion of large scale solar or wind back to the previous thread so we would not repeat the discussions and links. You said you were not interested in such a discussion.

    I came across the above article, that was consistent with the detailed engineering study I previously cited, confirms the points Ted made on the previous thread.

    If you want to go back to the previous thread and make a comment that is worth responding to, let me know.

  5. The thing is, Paul, that if Andy Breitbart tazered a baby then bit its throat out and drank the blood, “American Spectator” would blame the baby for being a bleeding heart liberal who had it coming.

    Conversely, if Jesus descended on a golden chariot and sainted Obama on the spot, “American Spectator” would accuse God of collusion with liberal big government.

    This is the perfect send-off for the entire thread.

    I appreciate you wanting to make Ted feel better, but come on man! (I suspect you realize how embarrassing the link is and that’s why you are defending your “detailed engineering study”—kind of like saying, “My other car is a Camaro.”)

    If you looked hard enough, you’d probably find a detailed engineering report on all sorts of wind and solar power energy technology, but you filter past them until you find one that details the problems and that’s where you’d stop. That will be the final report in your book. You are an intelligent, articulate, informed, and accomplished man, but, as I’ve said, your caboose only goes to one station.

    At this point you’ve rationalized and displayed your “authorities” not so terribly well, so you really should stop using the “appeal to authority” tactic, if only for the sake of your own avatar.

    And now, sadly, I must depart. Sometimes I have a little extra time between projects and that’s when I wonder how my old friends at CS are doing.

    Now you and Ted and Warren can have this big empty room all to yourself and reassure each other about the mendacity of scientists and the sanctity of entities such as the Heartland Institute .

    Until we meet again,

    USS Waldo, signing off.

  8. Pauld & netdr:

    Come on, guys. Be more charitable. Although Waldo is oblivious to engineering (and virtually all other) principles, he is monumentally entertaining. He can hop around from one absurd argument to another like a frog on a hot rock. I hate to see him go.

  9. What did I tell ya. Rectal-cranium inversion. (Notice I spotted the problem after just two sample comments.)

  10. Most of the commentators have raised very good points. Two other items emerge from the Gleick-Gate.

    First – Are we to believe those that lack the capacity of recognize a fraudulent memo have the superior intellectual capacity of understand the science of global warming.
    Second – The rabid defense of the bogus memo as authentic even after the memo has been pretty much established as bogus shows the AGW proponents are willing to defend something they have been fooled by solely on blind faith.

  12. Waldo says, “And it hasn’t been proven, Joe”

    Waldo, with his eyes closed tightly, is stating that he cannot see a thing.

    The interesting article Waldo cites shows that Heartland is using for fund raising the public-relations bonanza given to them by Gleick. Interesting how non-profits engage in fund raising.

    Joe Dallas: Yes, you have nailed it.

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