Prominent climate scientist Peter Gleick has become alienated from the scientific community after using a false identity to obtain confidential internal papers from a non-profit that questions the scientific consensus on climate change.
Gleick, co-founder and president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security in Oakland, California, has had to resign as chairman of the American Geophysical Union’s Task Force on Scientific Ethics. He has also withdrawn from the National Center for Science Education’s board of directors.
The drama began earlier this month when Gleick, a MacArthur Foundation fellow, used subterfuge to obtain and leak to the press sensitive internal documents belonging to the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that advocates free market policies and conducts research and advocacy work on issues including global warming.
Heartland claims that some of the documents in question are frauds, including a two-page “climate strategy” that showed the think tank got millions in contributions and aimed to develop plans to teach schoolchildren to question conventional climate science.
In a 20 February statement, the institute’s president, Joseph Bast, stated that Gleick has committed a “serious” crime. He said the documents swiped by Gleick contained personal information about Heartland staff members, donors, and allies, the release of which has violated their privacy and endangered their personal safety.
Bast referred to a “forged” memo purporting to set out the organisation’s strategies on global warming: “It has caused major and permanent damage to the reputations of The Heartland Institute and many of the scientists, policy experts, and organizations we work with,” Bast wrote. “A mere apology is not enough to undo the damage.”
In Gleick’s 20 February statement of guilt, published in The Huffington Post, he said his actions were motivated by a belief that institute was preventing a “rational debate” from taking place over global warming. But he admitted “a serious lapse” of professional judgment.
Heartland is consulting with legal counsel to determine its next steps. For now, it is asking publishers, bloggers, and website hosts to take the “stolen and fraudulent documents off their sites,” remove defamatory commentary based on them, and issue retractions.
One person coming to Gleick’s defence is Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. In a 21 February blog post, he argued that Gleick is one of many climate scientists who have been targeted by ideological groups attacking the messengers of scientific findings.
“It’s unfortunate that the bitter, personal attacks on his colleagues and their work contributed to what he called a lapse of his own personal judgment and ethics,” Knobloch wrote. He suggested that Heartland’s strategy of “spreading misinformation about climate science” still stands.