heartland

I'm currently reading Paul Offit's Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong, in preparation for an interview with him that I'll be recording later this week. I'll let you know about the interview, but at this time I can say that I'm very much enjoying the book. The publisher's description: What happens when ideas presented as science lead us in the wrong direction? History is filled with brilliant ideas that gave rise to disaster, and this book explores the most fascinating—and significant—missteps: from opium's heyday as the pain reliever of choice to recognition of opioids as a…

There is a book called "The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania" produced by the Heartland Institute. The Heartland Institute is famous for doing all that work to prove that smoking is not bad for you, and more recently, that climate change is not real or is not important or is not human-caused etc. etc. Heartland is a libertarian "think" tank that receives money form big corporate interests like Tobacco and Petroleum and then uses that money to advance the interests of those corporate entities, regardless of the actual truth of the situation. They also use…

Peter Gleick has been reinstated in his position as president of the Pacific Institute. The Pacific Institute is pleased to welcome Dr. Peter Gleick back to his position as president of the Institute. An independent review conducted by outside counsel on behalf of the Institute has supported what Dr. Gleick has stated publicly regarding his interaction with the Heartland Institute. This independent investigation has further confirmed and the Pacific Institute is satisfied that none of its staff knew of or was involved in any way. Dr. Gleick has apologized publicly for his actions, which are…

Peter Gleick has been cleared of faking a key memo. Who is Peter Gleick, and what is this memo of which we speak? Here is a refresher of events over the last 3 1/2 months: You will recall that last February 14th, we were all given an interesting Valentine's Day present: A cache of documents had been acquired from the Heartland Institute, and these documents revealed important details about Heartland's effort to interfere with science education and otherwise agitate and lobby to promote climate science denialism. The documents were released to the public by an as then unknown activist, and…

From BigCityLib comes this gem from Bast: Joe Bast's Response to Scholars Feeling Pressure After Attacks on Heartland. Since this is denial-world, everything is appropriately topsy-turvey. The "attacks" he is talking about are not plural but singular, and is the disastrous billboard campaign, which even Heartland has admitted was a mistake - though not very sincerely, and Bast clearly doesn't agree; he is still defending them here. Bast is writing to his pet scholars, and begins For 28 years, The Heartland Institute has tried to stay "above the fray," producing high-quality research and…

Here it is on film in case you wanted to see it:

So, it turns out that Heartland was behind the Heartland leak after all. The evidence seems to suggest that Heartland's Joe Bast wrote a memo, then he and/or Heartland-symp blogger Steven Mosher sent it secretly to Peter Gleick. Peter Gleick then obtained additional material from Heartland, which came to him at his request but all to easily to be explained as a mere oversight on the part of some administrative or secretarial staff. The only thing missing here is evidence that Bast or Mosher or someone suggested to Peter that he verify the memo by asking for related documents from…

Watch the whole thing: Brilliant. Click here for the background on this nice video.

As you know, there is much discussion about whether or not a "strategy memo" leaked from the Heartland Institute is a fake. We are told by a trustworthy source that this policy memo was leaked to him, and that he then tricked the Heartland Institute to supply him with additional documents, which he then used to verify the "strategy memo" based on cross reference of factual information. Only after the apparent veracity of the memo was determined did that individual, Peter Gleick, release all of the documents to the public. Subsequently, a number of untrustworthy sources, such as Heartland…

The Heartland Institute, a smallish Libertarian "Think" Tank recently made famous by the leak of a rather embarrassing set of incriminating documents, is now slated for investigation by the Congress of the United States. The chair and ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, Raul Grijavla, has initiated an investigation of Indur Goklany, an administrator at the Science and Technology Policy of the US Department of the Interior. It appears that Goklany was being paid by Heartland which raises a significant potential for conflict of interest. The story broke at Think Progress.

The blogosphere is all ablaze, but I did a Scientific Test: I asked my fellow workers at lunch (including one who regularly picks up septic titbits plucked off the wub). Only one had even heard of the affair, and even he wasn't really sure what was going on.

The best available evidence now suggests that the most damning of the "Heartland Documents" -- the strategy memo which explicitly states that Heartland's strategy is to interfere with good science education in order to advance their political agenda -- is legitimate. The legitimacy of the document was being questioned because it was physically and stylistically different from the other documents with which it was released. We now know that the strategy memo was sent to climate scientist Peter Gleick and that Peter then took steps to acquire corraborating documents from Heartland (see "The…

Not to spoil the surprise, the answer is: I dunno, but the Arbiter is [was] bored. This is a follow-up to the Heartland Leak stuff, which ended up posted in various places but (apparently most notably) DeSmogBlog. Heartland have (I think; perhaps only implicitly) admitted to all of them, except the Climate Strategy which they declare to be faked. Various people have done various bits of textual analysis, which may or may not have been convincing to them, but I can't see anything that convinces one way or another. Heartland still says its fake, DeSmog says "The DeSmogBlog has no evidence…

From the Heartland Institute: Subject: Announcing ClimateWiki.org: The Definitive Climate Change Encyclopedia To: <no-one@cares>Date: Wednesday, June 8, 2011, 4:40 PMAnnouncing ClimateWiki.org: The Definitive Climate Change Encyclopedia CHICAGO - Backed by more than two decades of institutional knowledge and the work of some of the world's most esteemed climate scientists, The Heartland Institute <http://www.heartland.org/&gt; is proud to announce the launch of a new Web site called ClimateWiki.org . It is the definitive climate change encyclopedia. It is doomed, obviously.…

Don Easterbrook has produced a response to my post on his hiding of the incline. Rather than correct his misuse of a graph of Holocene temperatures from Global Warming Art, Easterbrook has the cheek to call Gareth Renowden's correct identificiation of his source "an outright, contemptible lie". Renowden busts him again by showing an earlier version of the graph that Easterbrook claims did not come from Global Warming Art. Look at Easterbrook's and the original version side by side: Easterbrook's graph Original graph at global warming art You'll notice that Easterbrook's version does not…

Still back at Keith Kloor's place, Judith Curry seems determined to dig in to her position that governments and the IPCC and consensus minded science bloggers need to take the climate skeptics more seriously. Personally I think she completely misses the boat, because most of these folks have in fact been soundly debunked, or at the very least thouroughly addressed in purely scientific manners. We are talking about Climate Audit and Watts Up With That, these are her candidates. As well as having had their more serious contentions seriously looked at, these sites bury any potentially…

Fox News reports on James M. Taylor's presentation at Heartland's Conference: James M. Taylor, an environmental policy expert and a fellow at the Heartland Institute, said that global cooling is already happening. Based on figures provided by the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab, he noted that snow records from the last 10 years exceeded the records set in the 1960s and 1970s. A sign of global cooling? This past "decade set a record for largest average global snow extent," Taylor said. I've redrawn the the figure from the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab with a trend line so that you can…

Fox News touts Don Easterbrook's talk at Heartland's Conference: "Rather than global warming at a rate of 1 F per decade, records of past natural cycles indicate there may be global cooling for the first few decades of the 21st century to about 2030," said Easterbrook, speaking on a scientific panel discussion with other climatologists. But Gareth Renowden has been looking at Easterbrook's slides and finds evidence of fraud Looking through Easterbrook's slides, it seems he has taken a graph of Holocene temperature variations prepared by Global Warming Art (used at Wikipedia), and altered it…

Allow me to shorten Heartland's 2009 International Conference on Climate Change for you. Joseph L. Bast: Bray's survey shows that there is no consensus. Vaclav Klaus: Environmentalists have a secret plan to "return mankind centuries back". Richard Lindzen: It is an error to say "It's the sun!" Tom McClintock: Al Gore is fat. And, it's the sun! Lawrence Solomon: Environmental organizations are pawns of the foundations that fund them. Tom Segalstad: Total human emissions of CO2 are twice the alleged increase in atmospheric CO2, therefore human emissions cannot be the cause of the increase. Syun…

Heartland's International Conference on Climate Change is on again. I can't help but be impressed by the number of Australian organizations co-sponsoring the conference. Sponsors don't pay any money -- instead they get free admission to all meals and sessions for up to 20 people. And with 58 sponsors and 800 people registered to attend, that means they are giving away more admissions than people registered to attend. It's likely that almost everyone attending got free admission. There are seven Australian organizations signed up as sponsors. As well as the obvious ones like Lavoisier and…