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.