Confessions of a climate gate-opener
www.bbc.co.uk
22 Feb 2012
(UK) I don't normally do requests, as they say-but I've a lot of messages via emails, blog comments and Twitter asking for a follow-up post on the Heartland Institute, and am happy to oblige. Many thanks for all your messages-nice to know one's thoughts are in such demand!
So what's happened since last week's post, flagging up and analysing the contents of documents obtained through subterfuge from the leading US climate sceptic lobby group? First, we saw a request from the institute that all media organisations who'd covered the story should take their articles down and issue retractions, with a vague threat of legal action.
As far as I can see, few complied-and why would they?
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Behind the controversy, an effort to rewrite curriculum on climate change
green.blogs.nytimes.com
23 Feb 2012
Focus on the contents of the internal documents leaked last week from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit known for attacking climate science, has been largely lost in the wake of the revelation of the leaker's identity: Peter Gleick, a scientist. But beyond the controversy and the confession is the fact that Heartland does not deny what the two authentic documents obtained by Dr. Gleick reveal: that the institute is working to influence climate education in the schools.
In its 2012 fund-raising plan, Heartland said that an "anonymous donor" had pledged the first $100,000 toward this end and that it hoped to use that gift to develop matching funds. Heartland is soliciting contributors for a "global warming curriculum" developed by a part-time Department of Energy consultant, David Wojick, which in Heartland's estimation "appears to have great potential for success."
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John Moore: A peek into the climate denier industry
fullcomment.nationalpost.com
23 Feb 2012
The curtain has been drawn back on the professional denier industry, and its media enablers are frantically crying "there is nothing to see here". Leaked documents from the Chicago-based Heartland Institute expose the efforts of the conservative "research organization" to sow doubt about climate change. The documents also reveal information about donors--including a mysterious unnamed individual who provided more than $14-million dollars to Heartland. The information was obtained by an environmentalist posing as someone else online, which has prompted laughable squawks about ethics from the very denier crowd that fed like zombies on the hacked "Climategate" emails of 2009.
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And closer to home,
The shadowy world of IPA finances
www.abc.net.au
24 Feb 2012
Last week's revelations about the Heartland Institute, probably the most important climate science denying organisation in the United States, raise some questions about the murky influence of think tanks on the climate debate in this country. Confidential documents from the Heartland Institute reveal how wealthy individuals have actively promoted the campaign to attack the credibility of the world's top climate scientists and create the impression that there is a controversy about the main propositions of global warming science. In fact the bulk of Heartland's climate science denial campaign-which includes plans to promote anti-science in schools-has been funded by one donor, whose name did not appear in the purloined documents.
There is a direct Australian link in the Heartland Institute files. Bob Carter, an adjunct research professor at James Cook University, has a long-standing record of denying climate science. Now it is revealed that he is on the payroll of the Heartland Institute, to the tune of $1,667 per month for unspecified work. On his personal webpage, Carter declares that "he receives no research funding from special interest organisations such as environmental groups, energy companies or government departments", a claim that on the scale of truth matches his reporting of climate science.
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