RUTHFULLY YOURS

Earlier this month, the Internet lit up with a tantalizing whodunit. Someone had leaked to bloggers confidential internal fundraising and strategic documents from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think-tank that questions global warming orthodoxy.

The apparent goal: to discredit and embarrass those who raise doubts about the science behind climate change.

Heartland officials cried foul, asserting that at least one of the documents was forged. They vowed to track down the leaker and pursue charges.

This week, Peter Gleick saved them the trouble of a search. He confessed that he had assumed a false identity to obtain some of the documents and then leaked them. That sounded plausible: Heartland had said last week that someone got the documents by calling its Chicago headquarters and posing as a Heartland board member seeking information, the Tribune reported.

So who is Gleick? Some anonymous cyberhacker with a grudge against climate skeptics? Not quite. Gleick is a prominent environmental activist, head of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security in Oakland, Calif. He’s also a former MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” recipient, and … chair of the American Geophysical Union’s Task Force on Scientific Ethics.

Yes, ethics.

In his Huffington Post blog confession, Gleick apologized for using dishonest tactics, but said “the scientific understanding of the reality and risks of climate change is strong, compelling, and increasingly disturbing, and a rational public debate is desperately needed.”

Gleick said his judgment was “blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts — often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated — to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate. …”

Two points here. First: Yes, a rational public debate is desperately needed. But Gleick’s skulduggery in obtaining documents and leaking them to bloggers doesn’t advance that goal.

Second: You get a rational debate when both sides are able to fully air their evidence and interpretations. Scientists shouldn’t — can’t — be in the business of trying to discredit opponents with sneaky Internet ruses, even if some of their opponents sometimes stoop to such dishonest tactics. Note that we’re not dropping any sly hints here about Heartland, which in this drama is the victim of chicanery.

Instead, remember Climategate in 2009? Just when it seemed the world was about to get serious about battling global warming, hackers released a trove of stolen emails. Those emails showed how a cadre of the world’s top climate scientists attempted to muzzle skeptics, freeze out independent researchers who disagreed with their theories, and fuzz over evidence that cast doubt on their own work.

That episode, too, was an embarrassment to serious scientists who warn about the dangers of climate change. RIP, any chance for global climate action.

Now this fresh climate madness, with Mr. Ethics stalking his Chicago-based foes from afar.

Gleick may have thought he could undercut Heartland and thereby advance the case for global warming. Instead, he fueled doubts about which side is right in this long-running debate.

That’s a shame. Science relies on multiple layers of honesty. They include the honorably conducted gathering and analysis of facts, a perpetual quest for irrefutable evidence supporting conclusions — and trust that everyone is acting with integrity.

When scientific truth becomes sufficiently compelling, it matters little what the critics or skeptics say. It doesn’t matter if everyone doesn’t believe. Doubters cannot make the Earth flat.

But stunts such as Gleick’s — this effort to sully opponents with dishonest tactics — undercuts scientists around the world as they marshal evidence to convince an increasingly skeptical public about the dangers of global warming.