As I follow
FakeGate’s trajectory, on its way to being another instructive
crash-n-burn for the global warming industry’s zealots, I see a
pretense in certain quarters that Peter Gleick — who I suspect is
preparing another shoe for dropping, involving the provenance of
the fake memo he touted as real — was operating somehow outside of
what is deemed acceptable for his movement. Which is facially
absurd upon even a moment’s scrutiny of those other quarters, in
which he is being lionized.
But I also was reminded of my own experience with the
reality that Greenpeace long made a practice of taking
peoples’ trash, on a regular (in my case, and the case of
then-White House aide Phil Cooney, weekly) basis.
I first learned of it when they were shopping my garbage
around the Washington press corps, had it affirmed and began to
have some fun with them. Washington Post, National
Journal, and Roll Call, to my knowledge, passed on
the non-story, so Greenpeace got creative, and enlisted the help of
David Adam, then with the Guardian. In Gleick-like style
he mocked up a story around my trash, without calling me, cobbling
together snippets from unrelated emails to tell a story they wanted
to tell. Without quite telling the whole story, of
course.
It’s who they are and what they do.
And so with this experience I opened
Red Hot Lies, whose full title surely resonates:
“How
Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep
You Misinformed”:
Greenpeace Steals My Trash
It was spring. Young men’s hearts turned to fancy. And
Greenpeace started stealing my trash.
I noticed that my garbage was getting collected much more
efficiently than normal — and at about midnight. I also noticed
that soon, private memos of mine were showing up in the media,
revealing a secret cabal I orchestrated from my basement. At least,
that’s how London’s left-wing Guardian wrote the story,
cobbled together from unrelated, offal-smeared notes plucked from
my refuse and promptly handed over to them. If I ever questioned
the hippies’ dedication to their cause, no more: in those summer
months of mystery trash disappearance I had rededicated myself to
strict obeisance of local requirements to collect the weekly out-
put of my two large breed dogs.
“You too!?” howled the amused wife of a White House aide
when we realized we were experiencing the same, selectively
hyper-efficient, midnight garbage service. Apparently Greenpeace
was just certain that her husband, who in fact hardly spoke to me,
was part of my cabal.
Soon, European Greenpeace franchises were issuing press
releases in German about who had lunch with me in Brussels, and
spinning phony tales to Spanish newspapers of secret meetings I
supposedly had with pretty much anyone they found
problematic.
I had arrived. If they would spend so much energy to beat
me up, I must be important, right?
But I soon learned from others that this is standard
operating procedure for the global warming industry — and they
often do much worse things. They have ruined careers, blacklisted
scientists, knowingly spread lies about dissenters, called for the
imprisonment of skeptics, and used government pressure to cut off
rivals’ funding. One associate has had the lug nuts on his tires
secretly loosened when his rejection of climate orthodoxy became
public.
Which got me thinking: shouldn’t the public know about
this? Are these tactics consistent with the environmentalists’
image as philanthropic, self-sacrificing, earth-lovers? Doesn’t
their desperation reflect a fundamental weakness in the truth of
their arguments and the soundness of their proposals? Wouldn’t the
media expose such tactics by the other side?
Isn’t it relevant to the debate about global warming —
what to do about global warming — that the alarmist side engages
in this systematic campaign consisting of intimidation and threats,
wheels falling off cars, abuses being inflicted on schoolchildren,
demands of censorship, revising history, and telling flat-out
lies?
Well, yes. People should know. And now they
will.
