Leaked Heartland Institute Documents Reveal Opposition To Science 615
New submitter bheerssen writes with an excerpt from an article by The Bad Astronomer: "The Heartland Institute — a self-described 'think tank' that actually serves in part as a way for climate change denialism to get funded — has a potentially embarrassing situation on their hands. Someone going by the handle 'Heartland Insider' has anonymously released quite a few of what are claimed to be internal documents from Heartland, revealing the Institute's strategies, funds, and much more."
At least one site has the documents in question.
An Ignorant Population Is More Easily Controlled (Score:4, Interesting)
I know one of these guys (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to butt heads with Jim Lakely [heartland.org] on a small, multi-author politically slanted blog [infinitemonkeysblog.com] he contributed to. I was friends with him briefly on FB, but I couldn't take his near constant right-wing/libertarian rantings. By all accounts he's an intelligent guy, but he has some of the craziest ideas. He's a really good fit for that organization. When he got that job, the action at the blog dried up, which was unfortunate. I had a lot of fun debating there, as one of only about 3 active left-leaners.
Re:Confirmation of what we already knew... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Still, like I said, it's nice to see what we've all already suspected confirmed in writing. These guys are in the same league as Big Tobacco with their bullshit."
Same league? They're on the same *team*!
"Heartland also continues to collect money from Philip Morris parent company Altria as well as from the tobacco giant Reynolds American, while maintaining ongoing advocacy against policies related to smoking and health."
http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-insider-exposes-institute-s-budget-and-strategy [desmogblog.com]
You call it denial, I call it data-driven science (Score:1, Interesting)
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2012/02/2011-global-sea-level-dropped-back-to-2008-levels/
2011 was an interesting year for the Earth’s oceans. The relative sea level (RSL) in 2011 was not only lower than 2010, it was also lower than 2009. All of the different satellite measurements agree with that, but perhaps even more interesting is that the European RSL measurement shows that the sea level in 2011 was even lower than it was back in 2005. That particular satellite shows that there has been almost no net change in the Earth’s sea level over the past 8 years.
All of the different measurements agree that the rate that the sea level is rising is not increasing. All of them show a steady decrease in the rate of sea level rise. This is the opposite of what the predictions were a decade ago for global warming. Of course such predictions are full of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) that is so typical of global warming articles, these include statements that 100 million people will be displaced soon because of sea level rise.
Re:I know one of these guys (Score:5, Interesting)
Regarding authenticity, I can confirm the information relating to Ben Boychuk in the budget document. He did indeed leave Heartland for Manhattan Institute. I had dinner with the guy once, but he de-friended me on FB because I kept challenging the crazy links he would post.
Re:Confirmation of what we already knew... (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft also gave $61k in 2011. I wonder how much they'll give in 2012 now that this is leaked.
Once again, the Koch Bros manning the funnel (Score:5, Interesting)
FTFA: "uses that advocacy to raise money from oil companies and other corporations whose interests are threatened by climate policies. Heartland particularly celebrates the funding that it receives from the fossil fuel fortune being the Charles G. Koch Foundation."
Once again it comes down to Oil and Money with one organization steering the whole ship. Lessee... so the shopping list must look a bit like this:
[x] legal system pwned by koch
[x] judicial system pwned by koch
[x] polictical system pwned by koch
[ ] education sytsem pwned by koch
Re:Relevant portion of one of the documents (Score:5, Interesting)
I grew up in the South and once had a science teacher flat out tell us that she wouldn't teach us anything that wasn't *directly* from the approved text, because she wasn't going to risk her job just so we could learn. No kidding, if you asked her a question, she would find a relevant passage from the book and just start reading. If an answer wasn't in the book, she would just ignore the question. This was back when evolution and anything else remotely controversial wasn't even mentioned in textbooks, not in the South anyway. And of course, there are no teachers unions or anything like that, so good luck if you say the wrong thing.
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a funding topic that seems relevant to slashdot. Microsoft are one of the contributors. Whilst Microsoft are a scummy company I can't see AGW denial is particularly in their interests. Is this perhaps some employee donation matching scheme, or some other mechanism where an employees personal views have resulted in a donation to Heartland?
Re:Relevant portion of one of the documents (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Relevant portion of one of the documents (Score:5, Interesting)
Born of an entire generation of parents who are too lazy to deal with their children fairly and/or take the time to explain complex situations to them so they just go with "Life isn't fair". Every time I hear a parent say that I think to myself "But it should be" and wonder if it's the parent in this case who is creating or allowing the unfairness.
Life will never be fair, teach your kids that. But also teach your kids that just because perfection is impossible doesn't mean it isn't something to work towards. Otherwise we end up with exactly what's above, people who don't just accept the worlds unfairness, they actually see nothing wrong with it. These are the people who will happily watch their government approved telescreen, drink their victory gin, and say they live in the finest nation the world has ever seen.
Re:Relevant portion of one of the documents (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
Cirby on the leaked Heartland Institute documents:
The big argument about this being a "smoking gun" is one sentence, where someone typed "dissuading teachers from teaching science" instead of "dissuading teachers from teaching this lousy excuse for a science?"
Pretty weak stuff, overall.
Cirby in 2009 about the leaked CRU documents:
It's even better - the source cited in the story above is the CRU (funny how "University of East Anglia" started being the source when everyone found out that CRU was more than a bit corrupt) - the same people who just got busted with all of that leaked data and incriminating emails just this week.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1453158&cid=30193346 [slashdot.org]
Hypocrite.
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
respect in peer reviewed literature has dropped to slightly lower than the asshole liars who used to publish "peer reviewed" studies backed by tobacco companies claiming that tobacco smoke isn't related to cancer...
The Heartland Institute used to do that too.
Except they weren't on the "tobacco smoke isn't related to cancer" bandwagon
They jumped in later, when the claim was "second hand smoke is perfectly safe"
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:dont try to fucking rationalize this. (Score:2, Interesting)
"I think they are wildly optimistic at how effective their regulations will be at changing the situation and are oblivious to the fact that regulations with enough impact to make a change will have severely adverse consequences of the economy and personal freedom."
You hear much about acid rain these days? The cap-and-trade market worked like a charm there, despite industry claims that it would not work and would kill jobs and raise prices.
Re:dont try to fucking rationalize this. (Score:5, Interesting)
You better have some damn FUCKING GOOD PROOF of the bad outcomes to justify taking away ANY of anyones freedoms.
You are alluding to a risk management analysis. Do you wait until your house burns down before you decide that insurance would be a good idea?
There is no point talking about *FUCKING GOOD PROOF* (your words) until you have framed the risk you are willing to accept, and how your risk assessment impinged on my FUCKING FREEDOM to have my own risk assessment, for me and my kids.
I bet if global warming screws up your grand-children's lives, you will still blame liberals.