“Some embraced Gleick as a democratic hero.” We shun him as an alarmist zero.
The Guardian reports:
Peter Gleick, the scientist behind the sting on the Heartland Institute, announced on Friday he was stepping down – at least temporarily – from the institute he has led for more than 20 years.
In a brief letter on Friday evening, Gleick asked the board of directors of the Pacific Institute to grant him a “temporary short-term leave of absence”, while it investigated his use of deception to obtain sensitive documents from Heartland, which he then leaked to the press.
It was the longest public statement from Gleick since he admitted to posing as a Heartland board member to obtain confidential documents. But on his twitter feed on 21 February, he thanked his defenders: “To all those sending kind words and thoughts, I deeply appreciate them,” he tweeted.
Gleick makes his exit after days of ferocious debate about his tactics in exposing Heartland, a rightwing think tank with a core mission of spreading disinformation about climate change.
There is parallel pressure being put on Heartland to come clean about its mission and its funding – specifically the influence exerted by the single anonymous donor who has given the think tank $14m…