The American Spectator

On Friday I posted a blog note containing my personal speculation that evidence in the theft of Heartland Institute documents suggested the crime (at least I believe it is a crime), including the creation of a fake document then attributed to Heartland, may have been perpetrated by Peter Gleick, a long-time leftist enemy of Heartland.

Comments I received include tidbits such as: “Perhaps this experience will give you pause before jumping into misrepresentations of scientists on the basis of out-of-context stolen emails.” And “Ross Kaminky’s [sic] politically-motivated diatribe against the defenders of sound science only illustrates how low Heartland Institute and it’s [sic] supporters will go to misrepresent science and facts inconvenient to them.” And “So basically there is no proof that it is a fake, just speculation.”

But my favorite, for obvious reasons: “I hope that Mr. Kaminsky will be prepared [to] fully retract and apologize to Dr. Gleick once he is ruled out as the possible culprit.”

If I may be allowed a brief moment of patting myself on the back, on Monday the New York Times noted my blog post… in an article reporting that Peter Gleick has admitted doing just what I speculated he had done.

Actually, the New York Times noted it twice, with Times blogger Andrew Revkin also linking to my note, no doubt feeling let down by an erstwhile hero of the alarmist movement.

On his Huffington Post blog (but notably not, or at least not yet, on his Forbes blog), Peter Gleick admitted to using another’s identity to steal Heartland Institute documents, although he still has not admitted to being the author of the forged document that has caused most of the controversy.

If those climate alarmists who went after me (for what I said explicitly in my note was “my speculation”) had any honor, they would not just apologize, but feel some guilt for being associated with the religion of climate change whose high priests could sink to identity theft because they feel “frustration” at not being able to get the rest of the country to join their rent-seeking, anti-human cult.

In the meantime, I take some satisfaction in believing, though I’ll never know for sure, that my article gave Mr. Gleick some incentive to confess, before the FBI agent came to his door. Or perhaps he just didn’t want to spend the money on a new (non-Epson) scanner.

Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has posted a wonderful note talking about the depth of Peter Gleick’s hypocrisy: “The irony of it all, this coming from a scientist that has made a particular point about integrity and written many essays and even testified to congress on the subject.”