Climate Fake Continues

A few days I ago, I gave a run down on the strange case of the purloined letters and fake memo that gave rise to the new climate scandal that I am calling "Climate Fake".

Very briefly, letters to board members of the Heartland Institute, a well known organization that publicizes against Global Warming Alarmism were released to the lefty and Global Warming Alarmist blogs.  It turned out the letters were real, but a dubious memo associated with them appears to be a false construct.  It transpired that Dr. Peter Glieck, founder and President of the Pacific Institute, received the letters by fraudulently pretending to be a board member of Heartland Institute, and released the letters.  He claims the memo was provided to him earlier by an anonymous source, but that seems dubious, as it appears to summarize and mischaracterize the letters.  Glieck resigned from number of prestigious scientific positions, including Chair of the American Geophysical Union's Ethics Panel.

Since that post, some significant developments in the scandal have occurred:

The day after the my first pose (Wednesday), the EPA began scrubbing it's website of evidence of  grants that it had given to the Pacific Institute over the years.  Evidence for the grants is still buried in the online data base, however, and probably cannot be removed by law.

The Heartland Institute has been in contact with the FBI regarding the purloined letter.  In response, Gleick has hired the lawyer for former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow, to represent him:

Said Gleick’s lawyer John Keker, “Heartland no doubt will seek to exploit Dr. Gleick’s admitted lapse in judgement in order to further its agenda in the ongoing debate about climate change, but if it wants to pursue this matter legally, it will learn that our legal system provides for a level playing field.” Keker added, “Dr. Gleick looks forward to using discovery to understand more about the veracity of the documents, lay bare the implications of Heartland’s propaganda plans and, in particular, determine once and for all who is truly behind Heartland and why.”

The emails Gleick sent to Heartland to fraudulently obtain the letters have been released in screen capture format. I love the one where he says not to delete the email on file for the board member but to continue using the new one as a duplicate.  Sounds like he wanted to be on the inside forever..

Rep. Markey (D-Mass) demands that Heartland release more internal documents and budget documents:

"These documents appear to indicate that the Heartland Institute is receiving large donations from corporations for the direct purpose of discrediting the mainstream science of climate change and has planned to engage in a campaign to undermine the teaching of well-established science at our public schools,” Markey, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, said in the letter.

Actually, the documents show that Heartland is rather poorly funded by the standards of non-profits engaged the in media, and it's no business of Markey's, so they should tell him to bugger off.

Yesterday, Gleick "requested" a "short-term" leave of absence from the Pacific Institute.

"Given the events of the past week, I would like, with the permission of the Board, to take a temporary, short-term leave of absence from the Institute," said Gleick in a letter released Friday. "I believe such a leave would allow the Institute staff to continue to refocus on its work, while permitting the Board to conduct a full and fair review and determine an appropriate course of action."

Is this the rat leaving the sinking ship, or just going into the walls until the lights go dim again?