I rather badly want to have been the person who first came up with that phrase, in fact. I feel that I need to get this on the record.

Anyway, if you were looking for a recap on the entire didn’t-turn-out-as-intended climate alarmist attack on the Heartland Institute by – well, I suppose that it has not been proven in a court of law that Peter Gleick was responsible for the forged memo, so we’ll go with “person or persons unknown who could conceivably have the initials ‘P.G.'” and be done with it. Anyway, this is a pretty good recap: it describes the initial ‘data’ dump, identifies the central trouble with it (essentially, the central document is a farrago of nonsense and lies, and absent it the ‘supporting’ documents are thoroughly innocuous), notes the ghoulish zeal with which alarmist blogs treated the original ‘revelation’… and ruthlessly spotlights the petulant refusal of most of said alarmists to admit that the whole thing exploded in their face.

Relatively speaking, of course: the media was happy to memory-hole this one. Which, by the way, is one reason why support for this particular branch of for radical green theology has declined over the years: contrary to progressives’ fond hopes and dreams, rigid control over message dissemination only works up to a point. And after that point has been passed, said control only acts as a data point in the opposition’s favor.

Yeah, I know that it’s considered bad form to write out things like that; after all, the situation is ultimately rebounding in my side’s favor, so why risk spoiling things? …Which is an argument with some heft to it, but if I thought that my readers truly deserved the mushroom treatment then I would have stayed in the Democratic party.

(Via Via Meadia)

Moe Lane (crosspost)