A rather chilling read, when you consider the amount of money their sponsors are pouring into this effort.
The depth of the Climate Denier Conspiracy will continue to be big news as more and more of its internal operations are exposed and as the climate continues to grow warmer.
The IPCC to their credit wen back and did a thorough reevaluation of all of their work, removed incorrect statements and added new evidence. The result as far as global warming is concerned is that yes the planet is heating as a result of carbon dioxide pollution regardless of our previous errors, which as it turns out were relatively minor as borne out by subsequent independent investigations by scientists throughout the world.
I very much doubt that the Heartland Institute will do well by attempting to equate their methods with those of the IPCC, which are entirely open to the public.
The fact that the document in question was faxed and does not bear the same PDF metadata as do other files means nothing with respect to whether or not the contents of the document are fake. Any Heartland employee could easily have prepared the document at an other location and printed it out before hand to fax it from a different location is hardly proof it is fake. If it were fake, why would a Heartland secretary have access to the document and bundled it with the others?
The McArdle articles are a very shoddy effort on the part of Heartland to try to make people believe the controversial document was a fake. This same "journalist" has a history of laundering up excuses and providing cover in other pro-corporate efforts to provide alternative PR.
The most troublesome aspect of the entire affair is that Koch Industries then gets a tax deduction for contributing to the non-profit Heartland Institute to do their PR for them.
The entire thesis of the Megan McArdle's two pieces rests on the assumption that the metadata associated with the pdf is several time zones away from the Heartland institute and hence, is a forgery. The problem with this line of reasoning is obvious, since any Heartland employee producing the memo could have been elsewhere when they created the PDF and then emailed it. The fact that the time posted on the metadata are not the same is hardly proof of anything in regard to the authenticity of the document's contents, although I can understand why someone might be willing to argue so if enough money exchanged hands.
Heartland Institute like many of these corporate sponsored non-profits are PR front groups. In Heartlands case they are a front group for Koch Industries, so that they can get a tax deduction for donations for funding their own PR. Its as simple as that.
It can happen if the smaller parties start focusing on local, county, and state elections and ignore the federal scene until they are well represented at the local, county and state level. At that point, they will be too powerful to be ignored. The problem is that few want to do the hard work necessary to make it happen. They just want the other guy to do things their way.
With weeds like Andrew Brietbart and Matt Druge growing everywhere, its doubtful that any case could be made for monoculture in journalism. Then again, it sounds more desperate if you claim that the only right wing hacks are being persecuted and have no axes of their own. Nice ploy, even if its not true.
Just goes to show that if an entity is a non-profit organization and consequently avoids US taxation, then all their emails and other documents need to be readily available to the public and subject to Freedom of Information Requests. If they don't want to do this, they need to shed themselves of their Tax Exempt status as a Non-Profit organization.
The Heartland Institute is a non-profit organization not a private entity. According to them their mission is "to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.", which no doubt is true if those free-market solutions are owned lock, stock and barrel by Koch Industries, their primary financial backers.
They are a political lobbying organization, which given the corporate mindset of US laws means that they can be used to launder lobbying expenses on behalf of Koch Industries.
As far as mindsets go, you have clearly demonstrated yours, but like Heartland you have to do it as an Anonymous Coward.
That's obviously for the way for whoever intercepted these documents to play it. Post copies to foreign news outlets in countries like the UK, France, Australia and Japan with far healthier respect for the environment and then let the US news media pick up on the chatter via foreign websites and blogs. Nothing Heartland and its army of lawyers will be able to do about it, except perhaps if they want to transfer the entire Koch family fortune to their lawyers.
To ask what number should be used to establish the ROI of basic science is a fool's errand. Until the research is done, there is no way of telling what the ROI will be. That's the fundamental purpose of basic science, to provide new scientific paradigms that may have benefits that no one could otherwise expect. The most important thing is steady funding that at least keeps up with inflation.
When are republicans finally going to start admitting that taxes are essential to civilization? Conservatives, not being a creative crowd, I suspect it will be a very long time.
Essentially, your argument is that a budget of 0 is the perfect Utopian budget. The notion that you are going to improve the deficit problem by cutting the budget will only lead to contraction of the economy and more deficit cutting until you reach your 0 perfect Utopian budget. You are advocating for a vicious downward economic spiral.
If you want balanced budgets you need to take the money out of the hands of those who have it and pay down the deficits that have been created by allowing them to accumulate it. Otherwise, you are merely advocating that the perfect system is the one in which eventually one person owns everything.
"Personally, I'm wondering why we should be increasing research spending at all."
Perhaps so that leadership in technology and the sciences don't migrate to our foreign competitors. China, for example is increasing their spending on science by about 15% per year. Obama is arguing for 1% and the GOP is already insisting he won't even get that. Should anyone be surprised that in less than 15 years China's GDP will exceed that of the US.
"But if taxes were lower people may donate to a private non-profit that serves the same function as government in funding basic research."
Right and if we just lowered the taxes for the "job creators" [euphemism for already wealthy and corporations] again and again and again as we have over the past 20 years and just let all that new wealth trickle down, we would be awash in jobs and money.
Wake up. Republicans are cutting jobs in the sciences left and right and there are very few republicans standing in line to donate at rates that even begin to approach the amounts lost, whether counted in jobs or in dollars. You only have to look at jobs in wildlife and fisheries management, public health, and at universities, where tens of thousands of science jobs are being lost at the state as well as the federal level to begin to appreciate the magnitude of the GOP's willingness to slash and burn the scientific infrastructure upon which our future depends.
All the world's green industries combined couldn't generate anywhere near enough sucking action to actually amount to the size of the oil depletion allowance or that the huge tax deductions for rolling stock (ie rail cars that carry coal) the coal industry gets. So enough of the false notion that the conventional fuels industry isn't sucking on quite a few more, very much larger government teats.
I really don't see how you fit Senator Santorum's rhetoric regarding either climate change science or the teaching of evolution into your effort to equivocate and say that everyone supports science.
Exactly, how do Senator Santorum's position regarding most environmental science actually promote science, particular when he explicitly and unequivocally states he plans to eliminate virtually all such science.
Slashdot Mirror
The authenticity of the documents seems not to have deterred British Newspapers, who are all over this see for example:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/feb/15/leaked-heartland-institute-documents-climate-scepticism
Which has republished the original document in question:
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/heartland_k-12_curriculum.jpg
A rather chilling read, when you consider the amount of money their sponsors are pouring into this effort.
The depth of the Climate Denier Conspiracy will continue to be big news as more and more of its internal operations are exposed and as the climate continues to grow warmer.
No, by "free-market solutions" they are referring to Koch Industries bottom line.
They can't hire a PR firm, because they are a PR firm for Koch Industries.
And of course you can point us to your peer reviewed rebuttals of their work, which we all eagerly await.
The IPCC to their credit wen back and did a thorough reevaluation of all of their work, removed incorrect statements and added new evidence. The result as far as global warming is concerned is that yes the planet is heating as a result of carbon dioxide pollution regardless of our previous errors, which as it turns out were relatively minor as borne out by subsequent independent investigations by scientists throughout the world.
I very much doubt that the Heartland Institute will do well by attempting to equate their methods with those of the IPCC, which are entirely open to the public.
The fact that the document in question was faxed and does not bear the same PDF metadata as do other files means nothing with respect to whether or not the contents of the document are fake. Any Heartland employee could easily have prepared the document at an other location and printed it out before hand to fax it from a different location is hardly proof it is fake. If it were fake, why would a Heartland secretary have access to the document and bundled it with the others?
The McArdle articles are a very shoddy effort on the part of Heartland to try to make people believe the controversial document was a fake. This same "journalist" has a history of laundering up excuses and providing cover in other pro-corporate efforts to provide alternative PR.
The most troublesome aspect of the entire affair is that Koch Industries then gets a tax deduction for contributing to the non-profit Heartland Institute to do their PR for them.
The entire thesis of the Megan McArdle's two pieces rests on the assumption that the metadata associated with the pdf is several time zones away from the Heartland institute and hence, is a forgery. The problem with this line of reasoning is obvious, since any Heartland employee producing the memo could have been elsewhere when they created the PDF and then emailed it. The fact that the time posted on the metadata are not the same is hardly proof of anything in regard to the authenticity of the document's contents, although I can understand why someone might be willing to argue so if enough money exchanged hands.
Heartland Institute like many of these corporate sponsored non-profits are PR front groups. In Heartlands case they are a front group for Koch Industries, so that they can get a tax deduction for donations for funding their own PR. Its as simple as that.
It can happen if the smaller parties start focusing on local, county, and state elections and ignore the federal scene until they are well represented at the local, county and state level. At that point, they will be too powerful to be ignored. The problem is that few want to do the hard work necessary to make it happen. They just want the other guy to do things their way.
Clearly, the only solution is to vote republican and make you illegal.
With weeds like Andrew Brietbart and Matt Druge growing everywhere, its doubtful that any case could be made for monoculture in journalism. Then again, it sounds more desperate if you claim that the only right wing hacks are being persecuted and have no axes of their own. Nice ploy, even if its not true.
Just goes to show that if an entity is a non-profit organization and consequently avoids US taxation, then all their emails and other documents need to be readily available to the public and subject to Freedom of Information Requests. If they don't want to do this, they need to shed themselves of their Tax Exempt status as a Non-Profit organization.
The Heartland Institute is a non-profit organization not a private entity. According to them their mission is "to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.", which no doubt is true if those free-market solutions are owned lock, stock and barrel by Koch Industries, their primary financial backers.
They are a political lobbying organization, which given the corporate mindset of US laws means that they can be used to launder lobbying expenses on behalf of Koch Industries.
As far as mindsets go, you have clearly demonstrated yours, but like Heartland you have to do it as an Anonymous Coward.
That's obviously for the way for whoever intercepted these documents to play it. Post copies to foreign news outlets in countries like the UK, France, Australia and Japan with far healthier respect for the environment and then let the US news media pick up on the chatter via foreign websites and blogs. Nothing Heartland and its army of lawyers will be able to do about it, except perhaps if they want to transfer the entire Koch family fortune to their lawyers.
Bingo.
Unfortunately, the thief was apparently smart enough to photocopy the documents and then pass them through a filter. Poof, no yellow dots.
The problem for Heartland is these guys got caught with their pants down and revealed they have quite a few less inches than they were claiming.
To ask what number should be used to establish the ROI of basic science is a fool's errand. Until the research is done, there is no way of telling what the ROI will be. That's the fundamental purpose of basic science, to provide new scientific paradigms that may have benefits that no one could otherwise expect. The most important thing is steady funding that at least keeps up with inflation.
When are republicans finally going to start admitting that taxes are essential to civilization? Conservatives, not being a creative crowd, I suspect it will be a very long time.
Essentially, your argument is that a budget of 0 is the perfect Utopian budget. The notion that you are going to improve the deficit problem by cutting the budget will only lead to contraction of the economy and more deficit cutting until you reach your 0 perfect Utopian budget. You are advocating for a vicious downward economic spiral.
If you want balanced budgets you need to take the money out of the hands of those who have it and pay down the deficits that have been created by allowing them to accumulate it. Otherwise, you are merely advocating that the perfect system is the one in which eventually one person owns everything.
Yes of course, defense spending is only about 40% of the entire budget, whereas science programs don't even account for 2%.
"Personally, I'm wondering why we should be increasing research spending at all."
Perhaps so that leadership in technology and the sciences don't migrate to our foreign competitors. China, for example is increasing their spending on science by about 15% per year. Obama is arguing for 1% and the GOP is already insisting he won't even get that. Should anyone be surprised that in less than 15 years China's GDP will exceed that of the US.
"But if taxes were lower people may donate to a private non-profit that serves the same function as government in funding basic research."
Right and if we just lowered the taxes for the "job creators" [euphemism for already wealthy and corporations] again and again and again as we have over the past 20 years and just let all that new wealth trickle down, we would be awash in jobs and money.
Wake up. Republicans are cutting jobs in the sciences left and right and there are very few republicans standing in line to donate at rates that even begin to approach the amounts lost, whether counted in jobs or in dollars. You only have to look at jobs in wildlife and fisheries management, public health, and at universities, where tens of thousands of science jobs are being lost at the state as well as the federal level to begin to appreciate the magnitude of the GOP's willingness to slash and burn the scientific infrastructure upon which our future depends.
All the world's green industries combined couldn't generate anywhere near enough sucking action to actually amount to the size of the oil depletion allowance or that the huge tax deductions for rolling stock (ie rail cars that carry coal) the coal industry gets. So enough of the false notion that the conventional fuels industry isn't sucking on quite a few more, very much larger government teats.
I really don't see how you fit Senator Santorum's rhetoric regarding either climate change science or the teaching of evolution into your effort to equivocate and say that everyone supports science.
Exactly, how do Senator Santorum's position regarding most environmental science actually promote science, particular when he explicitly and unequivocally states he plans to eliminate virtually all such science.