FollowUp 8: Republican Denial of Climate Change

A lot is being learned about the Heartland Institute, a significant source of climate change denial, thanks to an insider releasing a lot of documents.  The documents can be found at DeSmogBlog and are in the process of being analyzed.  Funding for climate change denial is largely from energy and tobacco companies, from De Smog Blog,

It is clear from the documents that Heartland advocates against responsible climate mitigation and then 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.

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.

The Koch brothers have been famous in the past year for funding Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin and a prank phone call where Governor Walker sounded like their lap dog.

As a teacher the most disturbing part of the information is a curriculum project.  From their 2012 Climate Strategy,

Development of our "Global Warming Curriculum for K-12 Classrooms" project.

Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective. To counter this we are considering launching an effort to develop alternative materials for K-12 classrooms. We are pursuing a proposal from Dr. David Wojick to produce a global warming curriculum for K-12 schools. Dr. 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. 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. We tentatively plan to pay Dr. Wojick $100,000 for 20 modules in 2012, with funding pledged by the Anonymous Donor.

Despite their claims, principals and teachers are heavily biased toward truth.  We do our best to counter lies, even those put forth by large institutions with heavy funding.

It should not be a surprise that the Heartland Institute denies much of what is being learned.

One document, titled “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy,” is a total fake apparently intended to defame and discredit The Heartland Institute. It was not written by anyone associated with The Heartland Institute. It does not express Heartland’s goals, plans, or tactics. It contains several obvious and gross misstatements of fact.

We respectfully ask all activists, bloggers, and other journalists to immediately remove all of these documents and any quotations taken from them, especially the fake “climate strategy” memo and any quotations from the same, from their blogs, Web sites, and publications, and to publish retractions.

Okay, so what does the Heartland Institute really stand for?  From their Ideas list:  Hydraulic fracturing, removal of CAFE standards (let's waste more petroleum), and proving that climate change is not a crisis.  Sorry, I do not believe the Heartland Institute.

1 October 2011, Original Pedantic Political Ponderings post.
10 October 2011, FollowUp 1.
11 October 2011, FollowUp 2.
17 October 2011, FollowUp 3.
21 October 2011, FollowUp 4.
27 October 2011, FollowUp 5.
30 November 2011, FollowUp 6.
29 January 2012, FollowUp 7.

18 February 2012, FollowUp 9.
2 March 2012, FollowUp 10.
11 March 2012, FollowUp 11.
4 June 2012, FollowUp 12.