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Leaked Heartland Institute Documents Reveal Opposition To Science
New submitter bheerssen writes with an excerpt from an article by The Bad Astronomer: "The Heartland Institute — a self-described 'think tank' that actually serves in part as a way for climate change denialism to get funded — has a potentially embarrassing situation on their hands. Someone going by the handle 'Heartland Insider' has anonymously released quite a few of what are claimed to be internal documents from Heartland, revealing the Institute's strategies, funds, and much more."
At least one site has the documents in question.
The big argument about this being a "smoking gun" is one sentence, where someone typed "dissuading teachers from teaching science" instead of "dissuading teachers from teaching this lousy excuse for a science?"
Pretty weak stuff, overall.
On the other hand, the entire Heartland anti-AGW fund is smaller than the one bribe, er, "grant" paid to one NASA administrator, and a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the various government pro-AGW propaganda expenditures.
...people spending 6.5 million to defend science, while a handful of warmist organizations have budgets of nearly 500 million?
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2012/02/with-tiny-budgets-like-310-million-100.html
C'mon, guys, if you're going to say that money is a corrupting influence here, *follow the money*.
You better have some damn FUCKING GOOD PROOF of the bad outcomes to justify taking away ANY of anyones freedoms.
What happens when you get all the freedom constraining policies you want and it either
a. Doesn't fix the problem.
or
b. Has no affect.
The government will just say "oops, sorry" right.
We already have dire predictions from over 20 years ago that HAVE NOT HAPPENED.
All I am saying is that I think technology has the potential to save us from global warming and I think government regulation does not.
In fact I think new technology is the only solution to the global warming problem.
With all due respect, you are a tool.
You're right, I didn't notice that. Unfortunately, climate science has a good deal of lobbying tied up with it, across the spectrum. This is the first time I've seen an alleged attempt at silencing opposition from the non-AGW side, but unsurprising. If the documents are legitimate, then both sides are attempting to silence the other. This has no bearing on the science question. Science can be good or bad science, e.g. Mendelian genetics vs. Lysenkoism. This is my own speculation, but assuming the internal documents are legitimate, the reference to "teaching science" may have been internally understood as referring to bad science or pseudo-science. Being meant for internal use, this seems plausible. I'm not stating what the documents meant, only stating an alternative interpretation that requires actual research and analysis. Neither of the two articles attempt to verify the legitimacy of the documents and their interpretation of the material is entirely self-serving, failing to consider alternative possibilities. Serious-minded people should not draw any conclusions until an independent and non-ideological analysis of the documents has been conducted; multiple such analyses may reach different conclusions, but at least there would be a factual basis supported by evidence for doing so. Posting the story on /. before this had been done was premature, and only served as flamebait for people of differing views to shadowbox over shadowy and unverified charges. The issues are whether the documents are legitimate and untampered with or some form of hoax, and if legitimate the meaning of the word "science" in the sentence. Everything else, especially the scientific basis of AGW, is off-topic unproductive trolling.
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