It looks like the “sordid” is now (back) on the other underbelly.
Politico reports:
It might sound odd, but Michael Mann sympathizes with the Heartland Institute.
“I know how this feels,” the Penn State University climate scientist told POLITICO last week as the Chicago-based libertarian group dealt with the release of documents purported to be its internal fundraising, budget and strategy memos.
But Mann’s commiseration — born because his own personal messages were among the thousands of emails and files stolen from scientists back in 2009 as part of “Climategate” — ends right about there.
After all, the Heartland Institute has spent years trying to chisel away at his work as lead co-author of the “hockey stick” graph, which reconstructs temperature trends over the past 1,000 years.
The group also reveled in Climategate, declaring that the emails from Mann and his colleagues demonstrated a concerted effort to freeze out dissent and deceive the public into accepting a human role in changing the planet’s climate.
“If these documents are legitimate, then they reinforce what we’ve all known for some time, but in a much more public way,” Mann said of the materials, which include the group’s purported plan to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors like the Charles G. Koch Foundation and the creation of new school curriculum questioning climate change science.
“The curtain’s been lifted and the public’s been able to view into the sordid underbelly of climate change denial,” he added…
As far as I can tell, and I’m paying attention, both climategate and deniergate – in whole and in part – vindicate the skeptic community. Everyone of the fake memo smears is not borne out in the stolen documents.
I’m still puzzling on the attempted undermining of Revkin as a possible tool of Heartland as “neutral voice.” Apparently, Jones, et. al. had an understanding with Revkin that Gleick was uncomfortable with because he felt even the appearance of neutrality gave up too much of the alarmist’s urgent need to be accepted without reflection.
“Pay no attention to that little man behind the curtain!”