A famous and influential climate-change activist named Peter Gleick has admitted to a stunning breach of ethics (and maybe the law) in getting a hold of documents from an advocacy group of free-market, climate-change skeptics.

What he hasn't admitted to (yet) is forging a document meant to make the Heartland Institute even more nefarious than he and his fellow activists believe it is.

His friends and colleagues are beside themselves and trying to downplay the awfulness of what he has already admitted to doing.

The Atlantic's Megan McArdle has a good, even-handed, recounting of it here.

More here.