Heartland: headbangers flogging a dead horse

The headbangers and Heartland

It’s little short of hilarious to watch the headbangers desperately trying to keep the Heartland leak alive, when it’s falling about their ears (and, in all probability one of their own will be exposed as the faker of the key document, given sufficient time).

MeDog’sGob is hanging on for all it’s worth (not much) spruiking an open letter in The [Lefty] Guardian from some of the big names in “The Cause” (including Australia’s very own über-headbanger, David Karoly) and chastising Heartland for alleged double standards (a la Revkin):

As scientists who have had their emails stolen, posted online and grossly misrepresented, we can appreciate the difficulties the Heartland Institute is currently experiencing following the online posting of the organization’s internal documents earlier this week. However, we are greatly disappointed by their content, which indicates the organization is continuing its campaign to discredit mainstream climate science and to undermine the teaching of well-established climate science in the classroom.

“Well-established propaganda”, you mean, surely? Hang on, that was in the fake document wasn’t it? The reality is that Heartland wanted to remove the politics and provide a balanced educational perspective for children, but that’s not good enough. Nothing short of total indoctrination is acceptable, right?

Unfortunately, the Climategate emails were all genuine, and showed that consensus scientists (let’s repeat it again, because no amount of repetition of these examples of disgraceful scientific malfeasance will ever be enough):

• fudged and massaged inconvenient data;
• threatened journals that dared publish sceptical papers;
• suppressed dissent at every turn;
• minimised uncertainty in order to keep a consistent political message;
• deleted emails and avoided FOI requests in breach of national legislation;
• smeared anyone who dared disagree.

In the present case, on the other hand, the main Heartland document was FAKED by one of their own, and the rest showed how much Heartland really managed to achieve on a relatively meagre budget compared to the massive warmist swill trough. So you can take your patronising faux sympathy, guys, and shove it. Er, sorry about that.

Un-Skeptical Pseudo-Science is, pitifully, still banging on about it, trying in vain to make a few million at Heartland over several years look somehow substantial when stood next to the hundreds of millions swallowed up by Greenpeace and WWF each year, and, bless their little henna socks, they’ve helpfully illustrated the whole thing with a laughably crap “infographic” (no really, that’s what they call it), lumping together several years of donations to make them look bigger – yep, they are that desperate – whilst at the same time remaining silent on the billions spent on the consensus. Hypocrisy much?

Whereas those with a brain capable of rational thought, on the other hand, are starting to dig into where that fake document came from (thanks to WUWT for the link):

The climate blogs presumably relied so heavily on the memo because the quotes were punchier, and suggested far darker motivations than the blandly professional language of the authenticated documents–and because it edited the facts into a neat, almost narrative story.  

In the first 24 hours, I saw a lot of comments along the line of “See!  They’re really just as amoral and dangerous as we thought they were!” based on a memo which I now believe to have been written by someone who, well, thinks that AGW skeptics are amoral and dangerous.  (And judging from his update to the original document dump, Littlemore’s fellow blogger, Brandon Demelle, is also unsure of the memo’s “facts”.)

For me, this leaves the most fascinating question of all: who wrote it?  We have a few clues:

1)  They are on the west coast

2)  They own or have access to an Epson scanner–though God knows, this could be at a Kinkos.

3)  They probably themselves have a somewhat run-on writing style

4)  I’m guessing they use the word “high-profile” a fair amount.  

5)  They are bizarrely obsessed with global warming coverage at Forbes, which suggests to me that there is a good chance that they write or comment on the website, or that they have tangled with writers at Forbes (probably Taylor) either in public or private.

6)  The last paragraph is the biggest departure from the source documents, and is therefore likely to be closest to the author’s own style.

7)  I have a strong suspicion that they refrained from commenting on the document dump.  That’s what I’d do, anyway.  A commenter or email correspondent who suddenly disappeared when they normally would have been reveling in this sort of story is a good candidate.

8)  They seem to have it in for Andy Revkin at the New York Times.  There’s nothing in the other documents to indicate that Heartland thinks Revkin is amenable to being . . . turned?  I’m not sure what the right word is, but the implication in the strategy memo that Heartland believes it could somehow develop a relationship with Revkin seems aimed at discrediting Revkin’s work.

Unfortunately, I’d imagine that this is still a sizeable set of people, and it will be hard to identify the author.  I suspect that it will be easier to do if the climate-bloggers–who may well know this person as a commenter or correspondent–get involved in trying to find out who muddied the story by perpetrating a fraud on their sites. (source)

Who in the realist camp would refer to themselves as “anti-climate”? It’s as meaningless as saying someone is “anti-weather” or “anti-seasons”, and just as ridiculous. And who would say they would “discourage teachers from teaching science”? Only a dimwitted headbanger would include something so blatantly false in a faked document.

Interesting times!