FakeGate: Peter Gleick Associated w/ Fake Memo?

In the ongoing climate wars, a memo dump from sceptical think tank Heartland Institute was performed by Desmogblog recently, in an attempt to discredit the climate sceptic group. Unfortunately, desmogblog's memo dump included one particularly inflammatory memo which turns out to be a total fake.

There has been a great deal of discussion online regarding the possible author of the fake memo, and at this time the consensus appears to be centered on outspoken alarmist Peter Gleick. Bishop Hill has more.

It is not clear whether Gleick was associated with the memo dump of the illegally obtained materials, whether or not he is the author of the fake memo.

It is interesting how quickly the speculation over the authorship of the fake memo has overshadowed the intended effect of the memo dump. The only controversial memo in the bunch was the faked one. The rest of the material is so humdrum, it probably drove the data thief to forgery! ;-)

Here is where Heartland stacks up against other groups who finance climate research and public relations (via JoNova):
…

Entity	USD
Greenpeace	$300m	2010 Annual Report
WWF	$700m	” ($524m Euro)
Pew Charitable Trust	$360m	2010 Annual Report
Sierra Club	$56m	2010 Annual Report
NSW climate change fund (just one random govt example)	$750m	NSW Gov (A$700m)
UK university climate fund (just another random govt example)	$360m	UK Gov (£234 m)
Heartland Institute	$7m	(actually $6.4m)
US government funding for climate science and technology	$7,000m	“Climate Money” 2009
US government funding for “climate related appropriations”	$1,300m	USAID 2010
Annual turnover in global carbon markets	$120,000m	2010 Point Carbon
Annual investment in renewable energy	$243,000m	2010 BNEF
US government funding for skeptical scientists	$ 0

These are annual turnovers or annual budgets

__Source: Jo Nova

Heartland's contribution to the climate debate is just a small drop in a large bucket, money-wise. But that small drop seems to be having an out-of-proportion effect, if the lengths to which opponents are willing to go to discredit the organsation are any judge.

All of this must be particularly frustrating to climate alarmists and carbon hysterics, in light of recent findings that the global climate has not significantly warmed over the past decade, glaciers in the Himalayas do not appear to be melting, and global sea levels appear to have actually dropped!

Carbon hysterics seem to have fewer and fewer solid supports in their righteous cause and crusade to overturn the world order. No wonder they are so frustrated!

As always, Tom Nelson and Anthony Watts are on the story.

BTW, the comment thread following this blog entry by Lucia is an excellent study in the power of the internet to ferret out the truth of a matter, when people really try. The entry begins at the start of the desmogblog memo dump, and comments proceed from there. Kudos to Steven Mosher for his detective work leading to Gleick as suspect #1 for authoring the fake document.