A PROMINENT scientist and author has admitted duping conservative US think tank The Heartland Institute into releasing sensitive documents about its budget and its payments to climate-change sceptics.
Peter Gleick, a widely published US scientist and water researcher, said he emailed a staff member at the institute pretending to be someone else and was sent a set of eight documents that included the names of hundreds of companies that had donated to the institute, details of the group's strategies and a list of payments to bloggers and scientists, including an Australian, James Cook University adjunct professor Bob Carter.
Dr Gleick published a statement on the internet yesterday apologising for obtaining the documents by deceptive means. He claimed to have been sent an anonymous memo apparently outlining the institute's strategy. Heartland has subsequently claimed the memo was fake.
After receiving the memo, Dr Gleick says he tried to verify it. ''In an effort to do so, and in a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from The Heartland Institute under someone else's name,'' he said in his statement.
''The materials The Heartland Institute sent me confirmed many of the facts in the original document, including, especially, their 2012 fund-raising strategy and budget … I made no changes or alterations of any kind to any of the Heartland Institute documents or to the original anonymous communication.''
Dr Gleick's statement was issued after the institute had already described him as ''a true enemy'' and ''a committed alarmist rent seeker'' who was a prime suspect in their investigation.
The disclosure of the confidential information, which first appeared online last Wednesday and was reported in the following day's Herald, proved acutely embarrassing for the institute, which publicly apologised to the donors, to whom it had promised anonymity. Several donor companies, including Microsoft, issued apologies of their own.
The strategy documents obtained by Dr Gleick showed millions of dollars being spent on a range of projects designed to create uncertainty about climate science in schools, newspapers, on television and the internet.
A senior Australian scientist, David Karoly of the University of Melbourne, wrote to the institute with other leading climate researchers on Friday asking it to stop attacking climate scientists.
''Whether Peter Gleick's actions were justified … I cannot say,'' Professor Karoly told the Herald. ''My view is that the information about the funding used by The Heartland Institute should be out and available to the public.''
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