Update 5:25PM CT Feb 15, 2012: I contacted Jim Lakely, the communications director for the Heartland Institute, to follow up on the leak. Lakely reiterated a statement that appeared on the Heartland Institute website earlier this afternoon, stating that the "strategy document" identified in the below article is a fake. Here is what Lakely told me later this afternoon:
The "strategy" memo is a complete fabrication. No one who works for The Heartland Institute or is associated with our organization produced that document. It is a fake produced, presumably, by the person who stole the identity of one of our board members.
The Heartland Institute has not said this about the other documents in the leak. This lends credibility to the belief that the other documents are real, as does Heartland's characterization of them as not "fake" but "stolen."
It is important to note that although Lakely made the above statement, he did not respond to a separate, repeated inquiry about whether Heartland has spoken to David Wojick about preparing a K-12 global warming curriculum. Wojick didn't return an email inquiry either as of this writing. But a $75,000 expenditure for a "K-12 Climate Education Project" to be developed by Wojick appears on page 19 of the leaked budget document, which is among the documents Heartland says were "stolen," with quarterly payments of $25,000 slated for June, September, and December. The group's Fundraising Plan says that:
Dr. Wojick has conducted extensive research on environmental and science education for the Department of Energy. In the course of this research, he has identified what subjects and concepts teachers must teach, and in what order (year by year), in order to harmonize with national test requirements. He has contacts at virtually all the national organizations involved in producing, certifying, and promoting science curricula.
Dr. Wojick proposes to begin work on "modules" for grades 10-12 on climate change ("whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy"), climate models ("models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial"), and air pollution ("whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions").Wojick would produce modules for Grades 7-9 on environmental impact ("environmental impact is often difficult to determine. For example there is a major controversy over whether or not humans are changing the weather"), for Grade 6 on water resources and weather systems, and so on.
We tentatively plan to pay Dr. Wojick $5,000 per module, about $25,000 a quarter, starting in the second quarter of 2012, for this work. The Anonymous Donor has pledged the first $100,000 for this project, and we will circulate a proposal to match and then expand upon that investment.
But Jen Stuntsman, a DOE spokesperson, gave me the following statement about Wojick, who the Heartland Institute lists as one of their experts:
David Wojick has been a part-time support contractor for the Office of Scientific and Technical Information since 2003, working to help the office manage and organize its electronic databases. He has never advised or conducted research for the Department on climate change or any other scientific topic, and the office he works for is not a research organization. As would be the case for any of the Department's roughly 100,000 contractors, his collaboration with the Heartland Institute is outside of any consulting work he has done with the Department, and any comments he makes on the subject matter of climate change are made as a public citizen and are not reflective of any Energy Department policies or research.
Also notable among the other documents is the Fundraising Plan (PDF), which notes current contributions from major U.S. corporations, including Microsoft, State Farm and GM, as well as the Charles G. Koch Foundation, which Heartland expects to increase its contribution by 800 percent in this election year.
The Fundraising Plan also details Heartland's intent on using its pro-fracking communications efforts to raise funds in 2012:
We have not, however, yet attempted to raise funds from businesses with a financial interest in fracking. In 2012 we intend to correct that oversight and approach dozens of companies and trade associations that are actively seeking allies in this battle.
Once again, this approach is not based on science, but on doing the dirty work of vested interests to make rhetorical arguments to protect those interests regardless of what the science may say.
Thus while Heartland has expressly denied the authenticity of the Strategy document, it does nevertheless seem to be essentially in line with the strategy as actually put forth in their undisputed budget and fundraising documents.
A major event in the U.S. political battle over climate change happened this week with the unauthorized release of secret internal documents that reveal the finances and truly Machiavellian strategy of the Heartland Institute, a leading oil-industry-funded disinformation machine designed to spread propaganda and cast doubt on the settled science of anthropogenic global warming.
Tuesday morning, an anonymous person set up a Gmail account and used it to send incriminating internal strategy and budget documents to the email inboxes of bloggers who write about science denialism and climate change, then immediately cancelled the gmail account. The documents appear to be genuine and have been checked against other sources, which confirm their authenticity. If true, they show a pattern of breathtaking mendacity.
Take, for instance, the Heartland Institute's strategy of promoting climate science disinformation and propaganda in America's K-12 science classes, among the children who will be most impacted by it. The group is "pursuing a proposal from Dr. David Wojick to produce a global warming curriculum for K-12 schools." According to the Heartland Institute, Wojick is a consultant with the Office of Scientific and Technical Information at the U.S. Department of Energy in the area of information and communication science. Fair enough, except when you read on.
His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain -- two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.
There, in black and white in the group's strategy document, is the truly nefarious, unAmerican, bald-faced goal: to dissuade American science teachers from teaching science. The group plans to pay Wojick $100,000 do develop a 20-module curriculum of obfuscation.
In an American science education crisis, where American students are ranking far down in international science rankings, this strategy should be inviting calls from congress for an investigation. Who is this Heartland Institute, who are their funders, what schools are adopting this curricula, and who is the mysterious "Anonymous donor" who is funding much of the miseducation of America's students? What other misinformation for political ends is being pushed into American science classrooms?
But the disinformation being played on the American people doesn't stop there. Heartland brags about how it has worked
"to undermine the official United Nation's IPCC reports and paid a team of writers $388,000 in 2011 to work on a series of editions of Climate Change Reconsidered."This statement alone is enough to cast withering scientific doubt on anything and everything the Heartland Institute has ever produced. At the time, the Heartland Institute said of its Reconsidered report, "This isn't 'denial,' it's just common sense."
Any organization whose stated goal is not the discovery or communication of knowledge, but the political goal to "undermine" official reports is by definition not doing anything remotely like either science or common sense, but is instead using the language of science to work toward a predetermined ideological objective.
In other words, rhetoric. Any reporter who now quotes or sources from a Heartland Institute report should realize that they are, by the Heartland Institute's own admission, printing ideologically-driven propaganda, not measurement-driven knowledge.
If you thought that was bad enough, consider the Heartland Institute's true objective, as evidenced by their "increased climate project fundraising" goals.
Other contributions will be pursued for this work, especially from corporations whose interests are threatened by climate policies.
And this is where it is laid bare. In my book Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America, I show why science is never partisan, but science is always political. That is because whenever it creates new knowledge, that knowledge either confirms or challenges somebody's vested interests -- and those vested interests fight back.
In 1633, the seat of world political and economic power was the Vatican, and the Roman Catholic Church went to absurd lengths to indict the scientist Galileo and cast doubt on his simple observations:
1. The proposition that the sun is in the center of the world and
immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and
formally heretical; because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures.
2. The proposition that the earth is not the center of the world, nor
immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal action, is also
absurd, philosophically false, and, theologically considered, at least
erroneous in faith.
Today, the seat of world political and economic power is the U.S. energy industry. Koch Industries, for example, is the second largest private held company in America, and a major donor to the Heartland Institute. With a market cap of $407 billion, Exxon-Mobil is the world's most valuable company, period.
It's no wonder energy companies find the simple, repeatable measurements of climate scientists threatening. But now we see just how nefarious are the lengths of disinformation to which some of them will go.
Anyone who is on the fence about whether climate change is really happening should consider the breathtaking, unAmerican manipulation of their minds and the minds of their children that makes up the core strategy of one of America's leading voices putting out supposedly "scientific" reports that question climate change.
The Heartland Institute has shown it has no credibility -- but worse, it has no heart.
Get Shawn Lawrence Otto's new book: Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America, Starred Kirkus Review; Starred Publishers Weekly review. Visit him at http://www.shawnotto.com. Like him on Facebook. Join ScienceDebate.org to get the presidential candidates to debate science.
Other stories on the Heartland documents
Deep Climate
Greg Laden
Brad Johnson
Richard Littlemore
John Mashey
Joe Romm
Peter Sinclair
Michael Tobis
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Well, as the Heartland institute might say, “Perfect! We don’t want you to know what is going on! If you did know what was going on you might join the sane, rational people who are trying to conserve energy and move to non-polluting sources, the people who are trying to change our culture before we irreparably damage our living space! Because people who advocate such things hurt our short term profits, our golden calf, our reason for existing!”
The Fakegate scandal is simply one of the last gasps of the alarmist crowd as all their science falls apart.
Nobody denies that there has been warming. The question is about the full cause, how much of it is due to CO2 and fossil fuels, and what to do about it, if anything. Alarmists like you like to pretend the debate is about something else, such as the direct effect of CO2.
Well, that's certainly not true. There are plenty of so-called skeptics who deny that. There was one guy here just a day or so ago who insisted that CO2 is a NEGATIVE feedback. That's an extreme case, to be sure, but the supply of people who deny CO2-induced warming is endless.
"Nobody denies that there has been warming. "
There's plenty of denial about that, too. There is a constant drumbeat of "Warming has stopped!!" or even "The Earth is cooling!!" What are you reading that gives you these false impressions?
"But no evidence for this positive feedback has been found"
Also untrue. There's plenty of evidence. For example, "The water-vapor feedback implied by these observations is strongly positive, with an average magnitude of λ q = 2.04 W/m2/K, similar to that simulated by climate models." (Dessler et al 2008). And there's plenty more where that came from.
There is no question about whether or not CO2 causes warming ( Oh. So the science is settled on that? Finely! :>)
You will find no skeptic who will deny that. (Oh? I thought that George Will and James Inhofe said the climate is actually cooling. :>)
“The question is about feedbacks. CO2 warming alone will not cause the catastrophic climate change….”…. Stop right there! You need to define catastrophic climate change or this discussion will go south in a hand-basket faster than you can say “No comprendo!” . Unless we define and agree on the terminology that we are using, the whole exercise will quickly devolve into name calling, with you call my side “warmists”… Oops! Too late. :>)
Here is my definition of catastrophic. Any change which reduces the amount of food that is being produced below that which is necessary to support the world population. And we are already there in places like Sudan! And it is going to get worse. I am not alarmed. I am actually just interested. I am fascinated by the lengths to which right wing authoritarians will go to protect their belief system! As for my belief system, show me some actual world class science that refutes global warming and I will switch sides faster than you can say “reality!”
Cheers.
Please, please, please...stop labeling "denial" to anyone who challenges a scientific theory. That is supposed to be the cornerstone to the scientific process and without it all we are left with is a belief system that is politically or ideologically driven. And to those just attacking AGW through guilt by association arguments...please, please, please stop! There is enough data out there to make strong arguments both ways. The historical geologic data throws the current data in to question, of course. And it has to be considered. But we should always be concerned with how we impact our environment so that we have one to live in.
Unfortunately the "climate change"/"global warming" debate is a huge distraction from the pollution we are exposing ourselves to that we know to be 100% true. Lets get re-focused and pressure the power structure to take care of what they really can fix instead of throwing dollars at this tit for tat group of frauds on both sides.
Scientific theories aren't like legal theories where one interprets the facts in self-serving ways. A scientific theory is an hypothesis that has been tested for a long period of time and is broadly accepted as fact that no longer needs to be tested. Without some sort of new evidence, disagreement with that long-established fact is merely denial.
"There is enough data out there to make strong arguments both ways."
What data support climate change deniers?
How so?
Known natural forcing agents of historical global warming - including changes in orbital cycles and increases in solar radiative output - cannot explain the bulk of global warming over recent decades. Neither has any scientific theory or hypothesis to explain the bulk of said recent warming other than anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory survived scientific scrutiny.
Libertys Ghost: "frauds on both sides."
Gotta love false equivalence. Or not.
How, exactly, have climate scientists who are supporters of AGW theory -- and the overwhelming majority of climate scientists support AGW theory -- committed "fraud"?
The equivalence is not false because fraud has been found to have been committed on both sides. The story leading to this debate is just one example showing both. The term "Climate Change Denial" is ad hominem (tied to Holocaust denial in mass psychology and expected to elicit the same response hence its careful, if not fraudulent, selection. It's name calling. I haven't seen a scientist testing AGW theory yet that claims climates don't change or that the earth doesn't warm. It's the dominant cause that they question. And using a claim of "majority" to prove an argument is again a logical fallacy. That one is called "bandwagon" or "appeal to popularity", or in this case probably and "appeal to authority" as well.
This might be of interest to you as it at least is an even portrayal of the current state of debate on the AGW theory and was a Sunday Times piece originally (now you would have to sign up to see it:-): http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/met-office-in-the-media-the-sunday-times-so-do-we-freeze-or-fry/
http://deepclimate.org/2012/02/20/heartlands-anonymous-donor/
The author reports that the New York Times is preparing a piece that also identifies Seid as the man behind the curtain.
Cheating ... lying ... and corrupting.
Pay no attention to the fact that the people who stole the documents in the first place found nothing damning, so they had to forge some?
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/heartland-memo-looking-faker-by-the-minute/253276/
Time to buy some popcorn.
--How about if we focus on the content of the leaked documents instead? They do reveal a deep truth: that the Heartland Institute is a propaganda organization with great support from right-wing political organizations and individuals, and that their mission is to parcel out money to disinformation agents like Anthony Watts and Fred Singer, who sow unfounded doubt and confusion about real science. And they plan to poison American education.--
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/02/no_sympathy_for_the_devil.php
I'm sure all your hand-waving couldn't have anything to do with trying to distract people from that.
If you think there was some finagling of the science, why aren't you poring through the research to find it? I think you already know your question is merely a false allegation.
Also I'm surprised American science rankings are still in the middle-ground, looks like teachers are fighting to still teach them some good stuff despite this corruption!
Besides Cascade Policy and Heartland there's more such "Institutes" like:
Hoover
Cato
Marshall
Competitive Enterprise
American Enterprise
Cascade Policy
Manhattan
American Petroleum
Frontiers of Freedom
Fraser
And "coalitions" like:
Cooler Heads
Advancement of Sound Science
Global Climate
And "foundations" like:
Frontiers of Freedom
Atlantic Legal
Heritage
And "centers" like:
National Center for Policy Analysis
Study of CO2 and Global Change
Annapolis
Weidenbaum
New Europe
And "councils" like:
American Legislative
American Council on Science and Health
Also, the
Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy
Science and Environmental Policy Project
and many others
Lotsa places where you can apply, should your current employment disappear over this brouHAHA.
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/maps.php
http://www.desmogblog.com/climategate-victims-chide-heartland-double-standard
http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/fake.pdf
He says he didn't. He says that he received the fake document and then obtained the others in an attempt to confirm it.
That, of course, doesn't stop you from simply asserting something you don't know as being fact, because that's what you "skeptics" do.
Why are you defending Heartland, R2?
Our responsibility, now that it's done, is to be sure that the information we have is represented accurately. The deniers failed to do that, and I hope we can avoid stooping to their level.
I can't help but fear that this will not receive one tenth the attention of the emails stolen from climate scientists...
Human activities are influencing climate. As discussed in the following chapters, scientific evidence that the Earth is warming is now overwhelming. There is also a multitude of evidence that this warming results primarily from human activities, especially burning fossil fuels and other activities that release heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere. Projections of future climate change indicate that Earth will continue to warm unless significant and sustained actions are taken to limit emissions of GHGs.
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12782
average 2010 full professor's salary at private universities - $151,000.
Harvard topped out at $192,000.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/13/aaup
Otoh, from the conservative Heritage Institute:
http://heritageinstitute.com/governance/compensation.htm
Exxon Mobil CEO Lee Raymond's 2006 retirement package was ~$400 million.
And Raymond's successor, Rex Tillerson, received total compensation worth $21,476,296 in 2010.
http://www.equilar.com/ceo-compensation/2011/exxon_mobil_rex_w._tillerson.php
So, Raymond's 2006 parachute was 2,650 times a full professor's salary; Tillerson's 2010 'only' 140x.
And compare Forbes' (and other sources) list of CEO yearly total compensation:
2010
$millions
4.2 Steven Leer, Arch Coal
6.0 Tony Hayward, British Petroleum
13.5 Peter Voser, Royal Dutch Shell
5.5 John S. Watson, Chevron
7.2 Jack B. Moore, Cameron International
8.1 William R. Klesse, Alero Energy
8.5 John Richels, Devon Energy
9.7 Rex W. Tillerson, Exxon Mobil
10.1 John B. Hess, Hess Oil
11.3 James J. Mulva, Conoco-Phillips
13.7 David J. Lesar, Halliburton
14.2 Merrill A. Miller, National Oil Well/Varco
16.6 Aubrey K McClendon, Chesapeake Energy
17.4 G. Steven Farris, Apache Oil
20.1 Steven I. Chazen, Occidental Petroleum
30.0 Michael D. Watford, Ultra Petroleum
30.5 F. H. Merelli, Cimarex Energy
30.7 Gregory Boyce, Peabody Energy (coal)
33.4 Charles D. Davidson, Noble Energy
38.9 James T. Hackett, Anadarko Petroleum
http://www.forbes.com/profile/david-koch/
http://www.forbes.com/profile/charles-koch/
http://www.bizjournals.com/wichita/stories/2010/09/20/daily36.html
http://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/koch-brothers-net-worth/
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=218816&ticker=ACI:US
http://www.politicolnews.com/bp-oil-ceo-compensation/
http://royaldutchshellplc.com/2012/02/06/shell-ceo-peter-voser-e6-75-million-salary-plus-e3-5-million-bonus/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/mar/15/shell-pay-deals
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-compensation-11_John-S-Watson_8OOM.html
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-compensation-11_Jack-B-Moore_WT0H.html
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-compensation-11_William-R-Klesse_ZJO9.html
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-compensation-11_John-Richels_DBM5.html
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-compensation-11_Rex-W-Tillerson_FZOC.html
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-compensation-11_John-B-Hess_7YAE.html
"follow the money" and
"who has more to lose"
the take home ratio from this little exercise in financial scrutiny is that
for the past two years, Charles and David Koch have each been making about 50,000 times as much as an average full professor's after tax earnings.
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-compensation-11_James-J-Mulva_CR0R.html
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-compensation-11_David-J-Lesar_EBC3.html
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-compensation-11_Merrill-A-Miller-Jr_LC2G.html
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-compensation-11_Aubrey-K-McClendon_MSFH.html
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-compensation-11_G-Steven-Farris_EHO2.html
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-compensation-11_Stephen-I-Chazen_H3NB.html
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-compensation-11_Michael-D-Watford_QGNG.html
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-compensation-11_F-H-Merelli_ASVC.html
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-compensation-11_Gregory-H-Boyce_MFW8.html
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-compensation-11_Charles-D-Davidson_6Q8J.html
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-compensation-11_James-T-Hackett_AAX5.html
No one seems interested in talking about it.