Misrepresenting climate science: Cherry-picking data for political purposes
The Heartland Institute, as many readers will know, has been at the centre of efforts to cloud the issues and science surrounding climate change for years now. (Before that, they were at the centre of efforts to cloud and discredit the science linking cigarettes to cancer.) Indeed, this self-styled ‘think tank’ receives millions of dollars of donations from fossil-fuel industries who, it seems, would pay virtually anything for climate change concerns to melt away, even while the arctic ice cap does the same. Registered as a non-profit, the Heartland Institute is the funneling point for huge sums of money which go directly into efforts to create doubts about man’s impact on global climate.
Although the motives of the Heartland Institute have always been tremendously clear to most, a Heartland insider has just ripped away their pretentious veil to reveal the inner workings of this think tank corporate lobbying firm.
Just to ensure the documents received by the DeSmogBlog team are safely scattered over many servers, I will also list Heartland’s documents here.
They make an interesting, and disturbing, read:
- 2012 Fundraising Plan (90kb PDF)
- 2012 Heartland Budget (125kb PDF)
- Agenda for January 17 Meeting (8kb PDF)
- Board Meeting Package January 17 ( PDF)
- Board Directory (12kb PDF)
- 2010 IRS Form 990 (2.8mb PDF)
- Notice of Regular Meeting of Directors of Heartland Institute (56kb PDF)
There was an additional document that the Heartland Institute states is a fake:
- 2012 Climate Strategy (97kb PDF)
Although much of the strategy information in it is also found in the other documents, and have also been separately verified — it does indeed appear to be a fake. I leave the latter document in place just so you’re fully aware of the full situation around this recent Heartland PR disaster, but I must state that this latter document was quite likely not produced by the Heartland Institute.
In case Heartland’s public response gets edited, I thought I’d better paste this section as it stands today, where they admit to these documents being theirs:
How did this happen? The stolen documents were obtained by an unknown person who fraudulently assumed the identity of a Heartland board member and persuaded a staff member here to “re-send” board materials to a new email address. — Heartland Institute Responds to Stolen and Fake Documents
To date, the only document the ‘institute’ claims to be fake is the ‘Strategy’ document separated above.
Imagine a world where selfless objectivity ruled… It’s hard to visualise, but I dare to dream…. To get anywhere close to acheiving this dream we must take the money out of politics and science should be working for the public good, not merely for private profit.
URGENT: Craig, this story is based on fake docs, best you update pretty quickly or you might face legal action from HI
see https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/15/notes-on-the-fake-heartland-document/
Hi Pete – I had already included the Heartland’s statement about the ‘strategy’ document being fake. I’ve now included your link as well. If there’s evidence to show the other documents are fake, I’d be interested to see it, but at present the HI seem to have confirmed their legitimacy, as per the quote above.
Global warming or not, the forests (and permaculture practices) are beneficial anyway.
I’d say that the permaculture can and should be used to reclaim damaged land anywhere (both in arid or cold regions) and teach people how to be self sufficient.
For an alternate theory about who’s warming the planet you can read The Chilling Stars, by Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder.
Craig, point being there is only “fake” meat in this sandwich.
you say “They make an interesting, and disturbing, read:” well it makes boring reading without the fake meat, I can’t see what you find “disturbing” about it at all, maybe you can point to the specific document, page and paragraph you find “disturbing”?
One interesting bit was about Anthony Watts who proposes to create a new Web site devoted to accessing the new
temperature data from NOAA’s web site, and converting them into easy-to-understand graphs that can be easily found and understood by weathermen and the general interested public. HI helped source the funding. What is interesting it that this is work that NOAA should be doing themselves, but they wanted $100 million toi do it[4] while AW can do it for $88k! Why do they make it so hard to work with their data?
come on, HI have a budget around £6.5M, a paltry sum compared to the £billions poured into CAGW advocacy worldwide. The UK alone spends at least £234,567,102 [1] Not to mention Hansen’s growing financial “awards” scandal, now over a million dollars[2] I wonder how with tiny budgets like $310 million, $100 million, and $95 million respectively, can the lovable underdogs like Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and NRDC *ever* hope to compete with mighty Heartland’s $6.5 million?[3] Shall we include Al Gores $300M campaign (which was full on advocacy, it was also full of shi..errors)
I’m no fan of HI, but this seems a smear piece with zero meat in the sandwich. This type of piece does no service to Permaculture at all IMO.
Can you explain how this type of post will attract people to permaculture? I mean new people, those outside CAGW advocacy, the growing number of people who have looked at policy results of CAGW advocacy and reject it on that basis alone, yet still see the real environmental problems PC addresses. Permaculture addresses any issues with CAGW without the need to jump on this political bandwagon.
hell you might as well have posted that awful 10:10 video[5] to punctuate this rubbish.
/rant
[1]https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/uk-universities-receive-72-million-p-a-for-climate-research/
[2]https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/18/dr-james-hansens-growing-financial-scandal-now-over-a-million-dollars-of-outside-income/
[3]https://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2012/02/with-tiny-budgets-like-310-million-100.html
[4]https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/21/noaancdc-ushcn-is-broken-please-send-100-million-dollars/
[5]https://www.ecorazzi.com/2010/10/02/watch-1010-exploding-people-video-shocks-quickly-pulled/
Daniel – check out:
https://www.permaculturenews.org/2009/12/14/the-biology-of-global-warming/
Pete – take a look at the documents…. For example, page 5 of the budget document. Check out and research the projects. You’ll find the $100,000 ‘Global Warming Curriculum Project’ (using corporate dollars to combat global warming science in schools). You’ll also find the ‘Hydraulic Fracturing project’. See Heartland’s stance on fracking here:
https://heartland.org/ideas/hydraulic-fracturing
Consider that this is funding-with-an-agenda – and it’s not the health and well-being of the planet or its people.
I’m sure interesting info will surface by those in the know about other budget mentions, like ‘Operation Angry Badger’ in Wisconsin, and the ‘Center for Transforming Education’, etc.
Are you happy that corporations can fund such lobby groups to combat efforts to eliminate fracking, objective climate change science and research into the link between tobacco and disease?
Are you happy that despite calling themselves a ‘think tank’, they are (as evidenced by how they spend the money they rake in) actually just a corporate-biased lobby group?
Look at the various spreadsheets. It doesn’t take much imagination to realise how much wining and dining and monetary lubricating is going on so that corporate interests can win over independent science.
I’m fascinated in your rush to defend an organisation who is clearly not working in public interests, but only the private interests of a minority ‘elite’.
Firstly I am not defending HI, please quote my exact words where you think I am. I said “I’m no fan of HI” and I meant it. I am no fan of ANY lobby group, that includes all the ones you promote, EPI, WWF which btw is about as anti-permaculture as you can get, killing farmers, stealing their land to plant monocrop forests etc. etc. ad infinitum. You completely missed my point, which was solely about funding and the completely skewed playing field.
If you saw the “science” on global warming in the UK school curriculum I doubt you’d agree it is appalling, but from my POV it is straight up advocacy, appalling rubbish. £100k to combat that is a drip in the pond compared to the funding thrown at advocacy in schools, it runs into the £millions.
If you find that disturbing, it’s because you have an emotional attachment to the subject, hence you can not be subjective of the science, as your posts here clearly demonstrate. It is impossible to come to a conclusion on the science, which is primitive at this stage at best, there are literally hundreds of known unknowns and more unknown unknowns.
I have been a avid weather nerd for 35 yrs. I read the climate “science” every day, I have done for years, I have seen nothing to convince me Co2 is a major player, nothing, it may even be a negative forcing! The trend in the 30’s/40’s was higher than todays trends, this is before Co2 is said to have had an effect. I have followed the various “inquiries” into climategate, whitewashes all, read Montfords book it lays it all out bare, no science investigated, all 3 uk “enquiries” skilfully dodged it, UAE broke the FOI laws but a statute of limitation saved them from prosecution. The “team” are all bent as 9 bob notes, a cabal wrecking the reputation of science in favour of advocacy for a political position, i.e. “post normal science” look it up.
IMO climate is driven by the Sun, changes in energy levels entering the system at the equator likely lead to changes in climate, cloud cover at the equator has more influence on input energy than does anything else. Ocean cycles spread this energy around the globe, changes in those ocean cycles regulate where that energy ends up. When there is more el ninos over a say 60yr period than la ninas temps go up, the reverse is true when there are more la ninas, the effect is a step function, see Roy Spencers work. When the PDO went into -ive phase in the early 2000’s global temps effectively started to flat-line (depite rising Co2, despite Hansens fiddled data). When the AMO joins it in -ive phase in the next 10 yrs I think global trends will reverse, especially considering the quiet Sun – I’m not predicting maunder type temps because we are starting from a higher energy state, but I am predicting declining trends within 15 yrs. It seems to be a self regulating cyclic system. I hope we are both around in 15 yrs to gloat either way ;)
There is little point debating it, the IPCC has the definitive answer…
Paragraph 5 section 14.2.2.2 of the IPCC’s 2007 TAR report says:
“In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
My main environmental concerns regard #1 soil errosion, #2 deforestation/biodiversity loss, #3 pollution (including gmo etc. in that order) These are said to be the main concerns of Permculture, so I’ll stick to those and avoid political advocacy.
You have taken a position of advocacy, it fits your world view, I know I can’t change your mind as you have an emotional attachment to your position, so there is little point trying. I do however worry what the effect on environmentalism and any organisation which jumped on the bandwagon will be when this car crash science grows up and the truth will out, that is why I bang on about it, I know you disagree, ho hum.
If you spent as much time investigating the lobby groups you promote, especially the WWF, as you do advocating the CAGW meme you just might see where I’m coming from, though I doubt it, emotional attachment is based in cognitive dissonance.
I love you all the same man :)
Peace out.
Try Source Watch – https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Institute
FWIW, if permaculture starts to get political, it will never be the force for change that it could be. It will end up waste deep in the big muddy. Stick to your knitting.
I will concur with some commenters above that I get really disappointed when I see ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’ claptrap seeping into these sites, polluting the good work and solid principles of permaculture with conjecture and finger pointing. As DGG said – please stick to your knitting.
DeepGreenGreenie, wise words.
Although Sourcewatch seems to have dropped it’s knickers showing it’s bias in this affair somewhat.
Surprisingly the most even sided coverage I’ve seen of this story comes from Megan McArdle at the left leaning Atlantic, Magan Supports the AGW position.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/leaked-docs-from-heartland-institute-cause-a-stir-but-is-one-a-fake/253165/
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/heartland-memo-looking-faker-by-the-minute/253276/
I can’t wait to see what Dr. Peter H. Gleick, co-founder and president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security in Oakland, California, has to say on the matter. Since many fingers are pointing at him as the perpetrator given the circumstantial evidence.
https://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/02/reality-is-not-good-enough.html
The whole affair seems to be turning into a tragic comedy, an open letter to Heatland signed by members of “the team” was written by Aaron Huertas, press secretary at the Union of Concerned Scientists!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/18/joshs-open-letter/#more-56895
The letter stinks of hypocrisy, every one of the “scientists” involved were invited to every Heartland conference to debate. There’s always been a standing open invitation in addition to the direct personal ones offered. None of them did.
The question remains, if the documents were so damning, why did the perp have to include fake documents?
The phrase “gun meet foot” springs to mind.
Statement by The Heartland Institute on Gleick Confession
in part…
“In his statement, Gleick claims he committed this crime because he believed The Heartland Institute was preventing a “rational debate” from taking place over global warming. This is unbelievable. Heartland has repeatedly asked for real debate on this important topic. Gleick himself was specifically invited to attend a Heartland event to debate global warming just days before he stole the documents. He turned down the invitation.
Gleick also claims he did not write the forged memo, but only stole the documents to confirm the content of the memo he received from an anonymous source. This too is unbelievable. Many independent commentators already have concluded the memo was most likely written by Gleick.
We hope Gleick will make a more complete confession in the next few days.
We are consulting with legal counsel to determine our next steps and plan to release a more complete statement about the situation tomorrow. In the meantime, we ask again that publishers, bloggers, and Web site hosts take the stolen and fraudulent documents off their sites, remove defamatory commentary based on them, and issue retractions.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/20/statement-by-the-heartland-institute-on-gleick-confession/#more-57134
I can’t believe so much energy has been devoted to this topic especially the tirades. I too thought this was a permaculture site and whilst there may be different opinions about the rights and wrongs of the various players involved it really isn’t the best forum in which to discuss them.
It is particularly irksome when those same people who implore the site to stick to permaculture issues include over the top opinion pieces in their posts.