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Heartland Institute Leak

February 15, 2012 By Zachary Shahan 5 Comments

Since this is very related to clean energy, here’s a repost of a hot story I’m covering over on Planetsave:

Heartland Institute Documents Leaked (via Planetsave)

Filed Under: Climate Change, Energy Policy & Politics Tagged With: heartland institute, quickies, The Heartland Institute

About Zachary Shahan

If you couldn't guess, I spend most of my time on CleanTechnica and Planetsave. I'm the director/editor of both sites and am a little obsessed with them and the topics they cover. I'm also Publishing Services Manager at Important Media, which means that I do everything I can to support other Important Media writers, editors, and directors (as well as the network as a whole) in the good work they are engaged in. You can also find my work on Scientific American, Reuters, Change.org, most of the sites in the Important Media network, & many other places. For more, or to connect, go to: zacharyshahan.com

http://ncdave4life.myopenid.com/ Dave Burton

The “2012 Climate Strategy” document (which Heartland says is a forgery) is the one that the shocking quotes come from. I noticed several suspicious things about it:

1. It uses the term “anti-climate” to refer to Heartland’s own position — a derogatory term which neither Heartland nor any other climate skeptic outfit ever uses to describe their position.

2. It is written in the first person, yet there’s no indication of who wrote it. (Have you ever seen a memo like that?)

3. The PDF is time-stamped with a Pacific Standard Time timestamp: 2012-02-13T12:41:52-08:00 But Heartland is in Chicago (two timezones away), and none of its directors are in the Pacific time zone. Most are in Illinois, and none are in or even near the Pacific time zone.

So it appears likely that, as Heartland claims, the document really is a forgery, and a clumsy one, at that.
Bill_Woods

Megan McArdle explains why the “Climate Strategy” document is probably fake: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/leaked-docs-from-heartland-institute-cause-a-stir-but-is-one-a-fake/253165/

I can believe that someone at Heartland is going around clipping the content of other documents into some sort of a strategy memo. I find it harder to believe that they are rewriting those activities to make themselves sound more evil. Have you ever heard anyone describe themselves as “undermining” something? It’s a word that implies sneaking and underhanded behavior, which is why only bad movie villains usually apply it to their own activities.

Note also that whoever wrote the memo has hashed the math–they added in the $88,000 for internal resources twice. And they changed “scientists” to “writers”, which is not consistent with how these same people are described in the authenticated documents. It is, on the other hand, consistent with how climate activists view the kind of people who work for Heartland. Which makes it feel as if the paragraph had been written by someone who couldn’t quite bring themselves to deploy Heartland’s self-approving language.
Mary_Hall_1990

…My best friend’s mother-in-law makes $63/hr on the computer. She has been laid off for 8 months but last month her paycheck was $4607 just working on the computer for a few hours. Read more on this web site…._C_a_s_h_M_a_n_y_._c_o_m_
Eric

ObfusGate
or
Heartland ObfusGate