2. Every single verifiable fact that’s in the memo is found in another one of the documents, or available in a public source; in fact, many of the sentences are cut and paste jobs from the fundraising document, the binder insert, or the budget.
Substantial overlap is to be expected. But perfect overlap is surprising—there was nothing they wanted to elaborate on about their Climate Strategy that wasn’t found in their fundraising or budget documents? There’s actually much less information about their climate efforts than can be found in the budget and fundraising packets. The only new material is a bit of editorializing, and suspiciously, it is editorializing that makes Heartland sound much worse than the authenticated documents do.
So the facts stand…
http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-confirms-it-mistakenly-emailed-internal-documents
The DeSmogBlog has received no direct communications from the Heartland Institute identifying any misstatement of fact in the “Climate Strategy” document and is therefore leaving the material available to those who may judge their content and veracity based on these and other sources.
Under comments the Oil Man made an excellent point:
They (Heartland Institute) should open all of their documents for public perusal. We should read all their home email, and office emails, and schedule books. Everything. Because they might be lying.
A forensic scan of all of their PCs should suffice.
Skeptics are fond of saying we need to open up scientist computers…
The individuals who have commented so far on these documents did not wait for Heartland to confirm or deny the authenticity of the documents. We believe their actions constitute civil and possibly criminal offenses for which we plan to pursue charges and collect payment for damages, including damages to our reputation. We ask them in particular to immediately remove these documents and all statements about them from the blogs, Web sites, and publications, and to publish retractions.
Yeah, that’ll turn out well. I can see the execs at Heartland saying, “And we’d have gotten away with it, too! If it hadn’t been for that pesky First Amendment.”
Yeah, that’ll turn out well. I can see the execs at Heartland saying, “And we’d have gotten away with it, too! If it hadn’t been for that pesky First Amendment.”
Heartland goes on
But honest disagreement should never be used to justify the criminal acts and fraud that occurred in the past 24 hours. As a matter of common decency and journalistic ethics, we ask everyone in the climate change debate to sit back and think about what just happened.
Those persons who posted these documents and wrote about them before we had a chance to comment on their authenticity should be ashamed of their deeds, and their bad behavior should be taken into account when judging their credibility now and in the future.
Guess one of the things these papers reveal is how absolutely dishonest Heartland’s advocacy is!
They don’t give a damn about learning about our climate or trying to understand what climatologist know.
They are all about advocating DO NOTHING ~ WILLFUL IGNORANCE at what ever price is their stock and trade,
So poop right on those crocodile tears and the head they spring from.
Yeah, that’ll turn out well. I can see the execs at Heartland saying, “And we’d have gotten away with it, too! If it hadn’t been for that pesky First Amendment.”
Heartland goes on
But honest disagreement should never be used to justify the criminal acts and fraud that occurred in the past 24 hours. As a matter of common decency and journalistic ethics, we ask everyone in the climate change debate to sit back and think about what just happened.
Those persons who posted these documents and wrote about them before we had a chance to comment on their authenticity should be ashamed of their deeds, and their bad behavior should be taken into account when judging their credibility now and in the future.
Guess one of the things these papers reveal is how absolutely dishonest Heartland’s advocacy is!
They don’t give a damn about learning about our climate or trying to understand what climatologist know.
They are all about advocating DO NOTHING ~ WILLFUL IGNORANCE at what ever price is their stock and trade,
So poop right on those crocodile tears and the head they spring from.
Yes Heartland is the victim of criminal action here. Clever shift away from the issues.
Forbes.com contributor Steve Zwick ~ Green Tech ~ 2/21/2012
{...}
“In so doing, he delivered a massive body blow to the denialsphere and moved the world closer to finding a solution to the climate-change challenge. That’s because his find exposes yet another piece of the denial machine that has been assembled over the past two decades to discredit legitimate climate science. It renders their utterances irrelevant, and provides yet more evidence that Heartland’s activities aren’t those of a charity, but of a PR agency acting on behalf of a few deep-pocketed paymasters who stand to lose if the world acts to mitigate climate change.
“Heartland responded first with holier-than-though threats against the media . . .
{...}
“Bottom line: A good man, frustrated by years of obfuscation and distortion, tricked a secretive organization into sending him documents that were circulating widely within the group, showing beyond a shadow of a doubt that Heartland is part of a global PR campaign to discredit climate science and delay action that could help 99.9% of the people on the planet, albeit at the expense of Heartland’s paymasters.
{...}
“Denialist “Science”
There is no denialist science – only disproven ideas blended with obfuscation and distortion.
“They use the same methods to sow doubt over climate change as the tobacco industry to make us believe that smoking was good for us. They pluck irrelevant and/or outright false bits of data out of hundreds of thousands of pages of material and use it to discredit an entire branch of science. It works because they keep it simple, and because science has been slow to respond in kind.
“Climate Science More than 150 years of theorizing, testing, modeling, and refining have led to a global consensus among climate scientists that the earth is warming, that man is the cause, and that it will cost us trillions if we don’t act to solve it.
“This is science – real science of the sort that put a man on the moon, doubled our life expectancy, and gave us Rogaine (too late for some of us).
{...}
Posted on 18 February 2012 by dana1981, jg
at SkepticalScience.com
These numbers come from the Heartland 2012 Budget and Fundraising Plan documents (in US dollars). Note that while some of the figures in this graphic have been confirmed, Heartland has not yet confirmed that all the numbers are correct. There is also no reason to doubt their veracity to this point. If any of the numbers are found to be in error, we will revise this graphic accordingly.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Also for what it’s worth I’ve been collecting particularly good articles or portions thereof regarding DenialGate over at my http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com
such as
It’s Time That Climate-Change Deniers Were Exposed, David Suzuki…
Scientists can also wear their citizen hats, Scott Mandia…
Climate Denial In The Classroom ~ portions of LATimes Editorial…
Heroes and Zeroes In The Heartland, by Steve Zwick…
I’m thinking it might turn into an interesting time line.
Keep Climate Denial Out of Our Schools, Corey Husic VIDEO WORTH WATCHING. . . THEN CONSIDER SIGNING HER LETTER TO HEARTLAND INSTITUTE
I’m sharing the following because people need to stand up to the willful manipulation and lying that is
Heartland Institute’s stock’n trade.
Corey Husic and high school friends put together this video and open-letter to Heartland Institute
as a response to Heartland Institute’s plans for flooding schools with contrarian fiction/science
focused on creating confusion rather than supporting a serious learning process.
It was kind of hard not to notice while reading this thread that while the apparently fake document was essentially stamped with the fake but accurate label, about the only quotation appearing in this thread that seems the least bit damaging or controversial came from the apparently faked document.
I have yet to detect any remorse or correction from the person who quoted the faked document.
If the document really is fake but accurate then you can find an equivalent quotation from one of the documents not identified as fake and use that instead.
Failing that, perhaps it’s better to view the document as fake and inaccurate.
Nice job trying to deflect blame here Bryan, but the body of documents shows Heartland is engaging in an ongoing campaign to spread misinformation about climate change. The institute is not interested in truth, its sole interest is making money and the people within Heartland will willingly spread lies to keep the contributions coming.
Nice job trying to deflect blame here Bryan, but the body of documents shows Heartland is engaging in an ongoing campaign to spread misinformation about climate change. The institute is not interested in truth, its sole interest is making money and the people within Heartland will willingly spread lies to keep the contributions coming.
Oh, sorry. If it’s all about blame then by all means let’s keep the fake quotation posted as though it isn’t fake. It’s the right thing to do. Carry on.
