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Documents illegally leaked from the Heartland Institute, one of the most active groups engaged in attacking the science of climate change, provide an unprecedented look into how these groups operate. The story was broken Tuesday by DeSmogBlog, a website dedicated to exposing false claims about climate change science. The documents reveal that donors to Heartland included oil billionaire Charles Koch, and Heartland has spent several million dollars over the past five years to undermine climate science. Tens of thousands of dollars are slated to go this year to well-known climate contrarians S.Fred Singer, Craig Idso, and Anthony Watts of the Watts Up With That? website. Naturally, the leaked documents have lit up the blogosphere, but none of the revelations are particularly surprising. The U.S. has a very successful and well-funded climate change denial industry, primarily funded by fossil fuel companies, that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the past few decades on a PR campaign against climate change science. I made a lengthy post on the subject in 2009 called, The Manufactured Doubt industry and the hacked email controversy. I won't say more here, but getenergysmartnow.com has compiled a long list of blogs that have interesting posts on the Heartland Institute affair for those interested in following this story.
Heartland Institute documents reveal strategy of attacks against climate science
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- Public Discussion (8)
Four points, that bear repeating, from a link in your article, CO Bob:
1. Unlike the illegal breaking into East Anglia’s computers, the Valentine’s Day material does not look to have come from an outside theft but from an insider who has chosen, for whatever reason, to ‘leak’ the material (almost certainly without authorization) and be a(n anonymous) whistleblower.
2. Unlike the selective leaking of the stolen East Anglia’s email correspondance, the Valentine’s Day material has been, from the get go, put into public in its entirety — with any ‘cherry-picking’ of material that leads to misrepresentation easily discovered.
3. Unlike the stolen East Anglia’s email correspondance, the Valentine’s Day material are completed (formal) documents. This isn’t back and forth draft material between colleagues, engaged in what they saw as interactions with colleagues as they sought to figure out how to move forward, but the formalized results of drafts/etc … There is something quite different between one’s informal (midnight …) email and an institution’s formalized planning documents.
4. Unlike with the distorted coverage the stolen East Anglia correspondence with the RWSM machine (from bloggers to Hannity/Beck to Faux “News” to the RNC …) backing, we cannot expect that the nation’s “journalists” will give front page attention to this effort advocating “dissuading teachers from teaching science”.
The last point, IMO, is the most important of all. Good seed.
- 7 votes
#1 - Fri Feb 17, 2012 3:47 PM ESTI don't believe in climate change.
I don't believe in Swine sex marriage. :)
- 1 vote
PR -
It's like Meade finding Lee's invasion plans wrapped around some cigars.
- 4 votes
Come on, 2 out of 100 scientists can't be wrong about anti-climate climate change. :). Finally lets go to crazy land. There are no poor and rich. Ah nooo. Its just some people are more inter connected then others ;)
" Mad as hell"
- 2 votes
#3 - Fri Feb 17, 2012 10:28 PM ESTMost people are quite ignorant of Science. Furthermore millions consider Science anti-Religion. Is it any wonder way it is so easy to spread disinformation and doubt. Should we be surprised alleged conspiracy theory abound, especially among the extreme right.
Furthermore, climate change in inconvenient making it a appealing profitable science to ignore.
When do you ever see organization not heavily indebted to industry questioning all the science behind this theory.
- 3 votes
#4 - Sat Feb 18, 2012 1:34 PM ESTIt is all in the Holy Scriptures. Only God can do any thing and man can do nothing. Only God can tell man to do stupid things like burn down forest lands to grow food for his over population planet the forest that turns CO2 too carbon will be gone and then so will man.
You can tell a stupid person that the sign in the middle of the pond says "Thin Ice" but being a Christian he will walk out to read it. (Read?) When he falls thru the ice it will be "The Will of God" but he will call for you to help him. I will not! What will you do?
- 2 votes
#5 - Sat Feb 18, 2012 4:32 PM ESTIt's interesting that Anthony Watts is still receiving funds for his Weather Station Project though it has been completely discredited by research at the American Geophysical Union. As in
“ J. Weather Stations Project
Every few months, weathermen report that a temperature record – either high or low – has been
broken somewhere in the U.S. This is not surprising, since weather is highly variable and reliable
instrument records date back less than 100 years old. Regrettably, news of these broken records
is often used by environmental extremists as evidence that human emissions are causing either
global warming or the more ambiguous “climate change.” …
“Heartland has agreed to help Anthony raise $88,000 for the project in 2011. The Anonymous
Donor has already pledged $44,000. We’ll seek to raise the balance.”
Does anybody know the Anonymous Donor is? I didn't see Exxon Mobil listed anywhere - but the Koch brothers were.
- 4 votes
#6 - Sat Feb 18, 2012 7:36 PM ESTYou're in Easy Mode. If you prefer, you can use XHTML Mode instead. |
