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Payments for Climate-Change Denials Are Revealed

February 16, 2012, 2:22 pm

More than two years after activists alleged that stolen e-mails from the University of East Anglia suggested a conspiracy to exaggerate the dangers of climate change, a new set of unauthorized disclosures shows that strategists at the Heartland Institute, in Chicago, have been seeking experts to promote a grade-school curriculum and make other public presentations that would cast doubt on those dangers. Those assisting the Heartland Institute include Robert M. Carter, an adjunct professorial research fellow in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at James Cook University, in Australia. The documents show that he was getting $1,667 per month for his work in “regularly and publicly” countering warnings about climate change. Mr. Carter told The Age, a newspaper in Australia, that he wouldn’t discuss his work with Heartland “with anybody outside of my family.”

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  • bronwyns

    Currently, on the Heartland Institute front page, they say “left wing” groups are fraudulent in accusing them. Too bad their actions show otherwise. This group certainly does not seem to be on the up and up.

  • badger74

    If they are actual documents. And most of the pro warming groups have proven to be FAR from on the up and up..

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/

  • ulyssesmsu

    It’s wrong to pay someone to promote your POV? Aren’t the global-warming promoters all paid?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Antsy-Kuhnwisse/100002159499682 Antsy Kuhnwisse

    What’s a “pro warming” group?  I didn’t think either side could be described that way.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Antsy-Kuhnwisse/100002159499682 Antsy Kuhnwisse

    I don’t know if there are any “global-warming promoters” who are paid to support one side of this, or any other, argument.  (If there are, I’d call them lobbyists, not scientists.)  Scientists in academia are paid, in part, to do research, and publish and present that research — but without any conditions on what conclusions are supported by their research.

  • sages

    I believe the Heartland strategy document is genuine, even though they are trying to disclaim it. It sounds genuine and we have seen the same arguments from them in the news before. Now they are trying to introduce them into the classrooms. It is the same strategy that was used before to sow confusion about the health effects of smoking. These people are despicable sleazebags.

  • baatap

    First, I believe that global warming is real.  There.  But this article seems a little fishy.  Is the Heartland Institute paying Carter to “find” evidence against global warming?  In other words, is this article–as the headline suggests (“Payments for Climate-Change Denials Are Revealed”)–telling us that he was paid to deny climate change irrespective of the truth, whatever it is?  Or is this article–as its content suggests (“strategists have been seeking experts to promote a curriculum and make presentations”)–telling us that the Institute is paying experts who believe as it does to spread the word?  There is quite a difference, is there not?  If I went to English departments across the country to find holed-up Marxists and then paid them to revive The Revolution, would I be paying them to believe, or would I be paying them to spread their beliefs?

  • bizdean

    The statement in the document’s penultimate paragraph, “…it is important to keep opposing voices out,” pretty much eliminates the possibility that Heartland is doing this in order to uncover scientific truth.

  • goodeyes

    I’m all for reducing harmful pollution and reducing wasted energy use.  If we do these two things, we never have to even discuss whether global warming is real or not.  We know that pollution is real and we know that wasting energy is real. 

  • old nassau’67

     Another Creation Research Institute and Tobacco Institute.

  • zagros

    Having read the document on which this is based, it looks as if the payments highlighted in the Chronicle article were not for paid research but rather payments to individuals who already agreed with the Institute. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why they highlighted the least paid member of the troika described in that section of the document (especially since the most paid member was receiving six times as much!). It does not look like quid pro quo.

    On the other hand, the payment of $100,000 to Dr. David Wojick does seem troubling. That payment was for the development of a grade school curriculum, “that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuaidng teachers from teaching science – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.” (emphasis added)

    THIS should have been the smoking gun and the ONLY thing discussed in the article since the emphasized point clearly states that the climate change denying of the Heartland Institute is not based on science.

  • benchgroup

    will virginia attorney general cuccinelli, one of the nutcase republicans now in charge of that state, investigate this fraud?

  • bigghostdini_tha_don

    Hmmm, I’m drawing a secondary conclusion here: adjuncts should be paid more

  • climate_change

    I am a climate scientist (no surprise, given my nom-de-plume).  Science is a self-policing enterprise that wanders its way, thanks to the human frailities of its practitioners, toward the truth.  It can take decades understand natural systems, and decades more to obtain anything approaching scientific consensus.  Given all that, the sheer fact that scientific consensus has been achieved on the most complex scientific problem of them all, climate change, should deserve contemplation by the public and by decision-makers.  The true question is why it has not.  These leaks provide an insight to the answer.

    I don’t “believe” in anthropogenic climate change, my beliefs have no relevance to the discussion.  The evidence is obvious to anyone with an open mind.

    The consequence of our inaction are so severe, and compounding daily, that I anticipate a day when climate deniers (hucksters accepting bribes to deceive the public) will actually face serious legal and moral consequences for their actions.  Fraud is actionable.

  • ulyssesmsu

    Wrong. They’re receiving millions of dollars in grants, and they are expected to promote global warming in their findings. If they don’t, they lose their grants.

  • 22067030

    Paid?  By whom?

    GLMcColm

  • dank48

    Neither side of the controversy seems overly burdened with scruples.

    Hmm. Almost sounds like politics, not science.

  • katisumas

    We know that glaciers melting are real.  You can go and measure them year after year, they are receding…  We do know that global warming is real, just as we know that the earth is a sphere (albeit a slightly lopsided one) and that it rotates around the sun. The sun gives us life but it can just as easy take it.  You know, after eons some life arose from the depths of oceans and slowly, very slowly life built up an ozone layer that protects us from too much sun — so we could live above ground.   

    We do know that Galileo was almost burned at stake for claiming the ridiculous notion that the earth is a sphere that actually rotates around the sun.  He ended up in house arrest and disgraced for the rest of his life….

    And then you get Newton with this really really weird idea that an apple doesn’t fall off a tree but is pulled to the ground.  If the climate deniers have their way, they would burn Newton at stake for the obviously ridiculous notion of gravity (and the even crazier one that gravity come with a force that does the opposite:  repels the apple even as it is pulling it towards the ground so that the apple “falls” more slowly).  And don’t even mention the likes of Einstein and all present day astrophysicists, oh, and did I forget ALL climatologists, and all those subversive people who have stations in Antartica and in the Artic and who measure glaciers’ retreat year after year? 

    And how about oil corporations that are already fighting to be the first to claim whatever resources have lied beneath the ice?  Do they know something the climate deniers they are paying to deny don’t know (or rather don’t care because obviously they don’t have any children).

    The glaciers are melting and they are causing floods and there are already climate warming refugees whose islands have been wiped out.  And if the climate change deniers think that they are wealthy enough to always be able to take over higher ground while the plebs are drowning, what about the bacteria and viruses so far unknown to humankind (and thus we don’t have any immunity to them) that are now thawing out? These little creatures (yes they do exists even though you can’t see them) are soooooo very democratic.  They can’t tell the difference between the 1% and the 99%….. 

    We do need to study global warming just as we needed to figure out that you can make fire, that you can make a contraption called a wheel, that the earth was not flat and that there are such things as bacteria and viruses both beneficial living in each of us by the billions and also some that are killing us. 

    And what with a Gingrich wanting to go to the moon and denying basic science at the same time?  Perhaps  in the very short term mass insanity among the human species is more worrisome than the glaciers melting? 

  • katisumas

    No they are not paid.  There is no money to be made in studying global warming.  In contrast there is much money to be made in denying it because it lets polluters pollute their hearts content.  And we do know that oil and coal corporations have plenty of money to spend both for stifling science and lobbying politicians. 

    And even while these corporations are working to persuade gullible people that there is no global warming (and thus disuade them to look up stats that are readily available in addition to yearly photos of retreating glaciers) they know what’s going on because they are already fighting for the privilege to exploit the resources that the melting glaciers are bringing to light.

    Oh and then there are those pesky unknown bacteria and viruses that are now thawing out after being frozen into the glaciers for eons and for which our human immune system hadn’t got a chance to figure out how to fight (yes, even though you can’t see them, there are such things as bacteria and viruses).

    Global warming is not only changing our climate, it is destroying our ozone layer which protects us against too much sun.  It is the thining of this ozone layer that is causing the seas and oceans to rise and the temperature to warm up.

    You can check out on line simple stats about about the weather over the past 100 years.  In spite of this so many of us swallow the propaganda of the oil and coal companies hook sink and line…..

  • katisumas

    Ulysses (pseudo), you’re spewing lies.  How much are the oil and coal corporations paying you?

  • jamesebryan

    The worst of them won’t even regret having contributed to the problem, or to looking like fools after the truth of the matter is evident to almost everyone.  Many of them will be long dead, and the others will be such doctrinaire true believers no amount of evidence will convince them.  The comedian Dennis Miller denies the facts of global warming because he argues the data from 100 years ago are unreliable, and so we cannot be sure the planet really is on average hotter than it used to be – as if the same generation that discovered radiation, explained the theory of relativity, and invented wireless telecommunication and heavier than air flight couldn’t make working thermometers and record their findings accurately.  Even if at some future time the deniers are tried in a court of law and found liable for damages to the commonweal, they will convince themselves that they are once again the victims of a liberal conspiracy, rather than having been in the wrong on this question.

  • badger74
  • sages

    Are you serious with this link? The guy who wrote this is foaming so much about the mouth that he should be under observation for mental illness.

  • badger74

    Total BS. There are huge amounts made by global warming advocates from lucrative  research grants to speaking tours, books and films.
    And how long have those glaciers been melting? Aren’t they essentially remnants of the last Ice Age??

  • badger74

    Those making a living off the advancement of warming theory and alarmist viewpoints. Al Gore on down.

  • chuckkle

    How much would you pay those English department Marxists?

  • dank48

     First, I believe that climate change is real. However,

    “Global warming is not only changing our climate, it is destroying our
    ozone layer which protects us against too much sun.  It is the thining
    of this ozone layer that is causing the seas and oceans to rise and the
    temperature to warm up.”

    So GW is destroying the ozone layer, which is causing GW. . . .

    And, btw, you do no cause any good by implying that no one could disagree with you unless they’re corrupt, stupid, or insane. There are sound arguments to be made; calling an opponent a whore is not one of them.

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