Climate & Climate Politics
- Climate change models underestimate future temperature variability; food security at risk
- Henry Waxman’s plan to cut the deficit and stop global warming — at the same time – The Washington Post
- Daily Kos: Trouble in the Heartland
The Heartland Institute is a right-wing organization originally created in the oh-so appropriate year of 1984 in part to downplay the danger of smoking. When that gig started drying up in the 90s they had to find new donors and a new cause, fast. One of the biggest clients they landed was the fossil fuel industry, interested in using similar tactics to combat pollution regulations and especially the growing body of data on climate change.
This month internal documents reportedly from Heartland came to light showing the disturbing lengths to which the institute would go to further their sponsors’ interests. Via theWiki:
The documents showed that the institute planned to provide climate sceptical materials to teachers in the USA to promote their ideas to school children. Furthermore, it can also be read, that climate sceptics were being paid by The Heartland Institute, namely the founder of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), physicist Fred Singer ($5,000 plus expenses per month), geologist Robert Carter ($1,667 per month) and a single pledge of $90,000 to meteorologist Anthony Watts.
Prof. Naomi Oreskes, coauthor of The Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, added via email, “The recently released documents confirm what many scholars had suspected: that the Heartland institute continues the disinformation techniques originated by the tobacco industry. Moreover, the documents suggest that, if anything, their tactics have become even more reprehensible, moving from targeting adults who might chose to smoke, to children, in their classrooms, trying to learn.”DeSmogBlog has been doing a bang up job on the many angles of this developing story. [continue reading…]
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Politics
- Conservative George Will Rips GOP’s Politicization Of Gas Prices As ‘Economic Nonsense’ | ThinkProgress
- Daily Kos: Defeating Mitt Romney is about more than 2012
- Gibbs Zings Gingrich: We’ll Call Him for Lunar Colony Advice | Video Cafe