Joe Bast — evil genius?
Richard Komorowski wriotes at the Cornwall Free News:
… The so-called fake document does not contain any information that cannot be found in the documents that Heartland has grudgingly admitted are true, which would be the case if Heartland only meant the document to have a very limited distribution. On the other hand, however, as Megan McArdle points out, the fact that the document says nothing not found elsewhere in the leaked documents is an indication that the strategy document might have been written after the fact by a Heartland outsider.
Heartland may have written the document with the express intention of “leaking” it to Gleick as a form of entrapment – it even mentions him by name. It would have been merely a printout, composed and printed elsewhere so it would not appear in any Heartland computer or server. Then it would have been easy to mail it to a Heartland agent on the West Coast. This would also explain the Pacific time zone stamp and the different format of the PDF compared to other Heartland documents. Had Gleick immediately published it, Heartland could then have convincingly denied it as a fraud, thus legitimising the climate science denial industry. As it happened, Gleick outsmarted them with one of the oldest tricks in the book, and got hold of the truth Heartland needed to protect… [Emphasis added]
Maybe they’re on to something. Why, I bet Heartland wrote all those Climategate 1&2 emails themselves then sent them to Mann and the rest of the “team” then slipped one of those critters from “The Wrath of Khan” into their ears via their cell phones then crept into their respective rooms at night and told them to admit that the emails were genuine! Why, Heartland probably drew the Hockey Stick themselves and used the same method to get Mann to say it was his idea!
(Do I need to mark this as sarcasm?)
Such “entrapment” would have to be based on an assumption that Peter Gleick was ethically challenged enough to fall for it. His lack of ethics surprised me. How someone at Heartland Institute have known in advance that Peter Gleick would be willing to commit what appears to be several felonies for “the cause.”
BTW, the normal reaction when someone does something like that would be disapproval. I have to wonder about the ethical standards of those people who are seeking to defend what he did or blame someone other than Peter Gleick for what he did.
“……. a Heartland agent on the West Coast…”
I wonder if those guys wear dark glasses and a trenchcoat, or Hawaiian shirts and carry a surf board.
Yes, this is classic modus operandi for the Heartland Institute. Select some no account, alarmist scientist and bait a trap that nobody with half a brain would fall for. “Mail it to a Heartland agent”. We have now seen the Heartland budget thanks Gleick and there does not appear to be much funding for secret agents in every theatre of conflict. Does Komorowski fantasize Heartland as a Bondian super villain organization: Ernest Stavro Bast and Spectre, code name Heartland. As Ben said, Occam’s razor.
That’s quite a Xanatos gambit there. Generally, when suggesting that someone committed a federal crime, it is preferrable to have something other than insane troll logic to back it up.
I call Occam’s razor.