MinnPost.com’s Don Shelby Needs to Issue an Immediate Correction (at Minimum)

Don Shelby (Pic: MinnPost.com)

Don Shelby at MinnPost.com ripped Republican Minnesota state Sen. Michael Jungbauer in a piece today for supposedly not having his facts straight about global warming. (Shelby believes it’s happening at an alarming rate and is a threat to the planet and humanity; Jungbauer disagrees.) Shelby should think about getting his facts straight before mocking anyone. It is riddled with errors.

Jungbauer is a a frequent guest at The Heartland Institute’s climate conferences, the next coming up on June 30 and July 1 in Washington, DC. Shelby has never attended one of these conferences. Perhaps if he did, he wouldn’t have printed these falsehoods about Heartland:

Heartland is a fossil-fuel funded, conservative think-tank designed to protect the interests of oil and coal from government regulation.

Jungbauer told me he gets no contributions from Heartland, but he has been paid to speak at conferences and on Heartland sponsored radio programs. Heartland gets a lot of the money it pays to Jungbauer from Exxon-Mobil, Koch Brothers and the Scaife Foundation.

The Heartland Institute was not “designed to protect” anything but our liberties. Heartland was founded 27 years ago, before “global warming” was even an issue — and even that issue is but one of a dozen we address. Heartland has not received money from Koch or Scaife in more than a decade, and none from ExxonMobil since 2006 — all of which predates any association with Sen. Jungbauer we’ve enjoyed.

Another error from Shelby — who, remember, is mocking Sen. Jungbauer for his level of education and for not having his facts straight:

Sen. Jungbauer is fond of making pronouncements from on high regarding the scientific weakness of the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

IPCC stands for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, not “International.” A minor and common mistake. But it is so easily checked, one must wonder if Shelby knows how Google works.

There are other errors to point out and rebuttals to make of Shelby’s over-arching theme. We’ll get to those in later posts. But this error about Heartland Senior Fellow S. Fred Singer must be addressed now.

… S. Fred Singer not only thinks global warming a fraud, but that he also testified that smoking didn’t cause cancer…

This is a lie. And Shelby had better address it pronto. Singer has never stated that smoking doesn’t cause cancer. He has stated that current epidemiological research does not prove that exposure to secondhand cigarette smoke increases cancer risks.  Big difference.

Most research finds the risk of secondhand cigarette smoke to be too low to separate increased cancer cases from random chance. Exposure to second-hand smoke might be a risk factor for cancer. And it’s entirely likely that extended exposure to high levels would have some positive impact on the rates of cancer. But current evidence shows the risk of exposure at levels that prevailed in the past, and more recently are extremely unlikely to pose a measurable risk to health.

Don Shelby, over to you. Let’s see if you or MinnPost.com have the integrity to correct and apologize for these false statements that do damage to the reputations of The Heartland Institute and our friends.

Tagged as: Dennis Avery, Don Shelby, exxonmobil, Fred Singer, global warming, Heartland Institute, Koch, libel, lies, Michael Jungbauer, MinnPost.com, Roy Spencer, Scaife

by Jim Lakely

Jim is the the director of communications at The Heartland Institute. Prior to joining Heartland, he was an ink-stained newspaperman for 16 years with many stops in "old media." Jim covered Congress and The White House during the George W. Bush administration for The Washington Times, and worked as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist for newspapers in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and California. He has appeared on the Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, and many local and national talk radio shows to talk politics and policy.

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  • Russell C

    Shelby’s mistake about Fred Singer’s “smoking testimony” is not only spectacularly wrong, it would appear to back up what I suggested in two separate articles about Shelby. Please see “Warmist Mantra Wearing Out” – http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/05/warmist_mantra_wearing_out.html   and  “Will MSM Look into the Global Warming Abyss and Find Their Character?”  http://bigjournalism.com/rcook/2011/06/07/will-msm-look-into-the-global-warming-abyss-and-find-their-character/

    In both articles, I point out how Shelby’s recent claim – that his own ‘unneeded media bias toward skeptic scientists’ misinformed his TV audience -  was not a discovery of his own making, but rather looked more like old talking points gleaned from anti-skeptic book author Ross Gelbspan.

    Hate to point this out, but accusations of Singer sharing ties with the tobacco industry is another talking point often repeated by Gelbspan, although more specifically as one where skeptic scientist criticism is no different that the old campaign by so-called tobacco experts to confuse the public over the science of cigarette smoking. Gelbspan’s partner at DeSmogBlog, Jim Hoggan, is the one who directly made such an accusation about cigarette smoking, but cited a Singer draft paper which contradicted the accusation. It clearly said, “The health risk from smoking is not the focus of this paper. Instead, this paper explores the EPA’s analysis of ETS or second hand smoke….” Hoggan had obviously not read his own ‘smoking gun’ evidence.

  • http://somewhatreasonable.com/ Jim_Lakely

    It’s been 16 hours or so since I sent Mr. Shelby an email pointing out these and other egregious mistakes. Just sent him another email this morning. The hourglass of integrity for a guy who calls himself a serious journalist is running out.

  • Anonymous

    While these details do not reflect well on Mr. Shelby, your admitted association with State Senator Jungbauer does not reflect well on the Heartland Institute. The man is a buffoon, and the video clip Shelby points to is mind boggling, especially given that it appears to come from Jungbauer’s Youtube account. Here is a man claiming no experiment has shown CO2 to be a greenhouse gas, when a simple experiment showing exactly that is a common freshman class demonstration. 

    • http://somewhatreasonable.com/author/jlakely/ Jim Lakely

      This post is not about Jungbauer. It’s about Shelby. The First Amendment allows Shelby to say as he wishes about Jungbauer, as you have.

      You may post publicly that you think Jungbauer is “a buffon.” I may post publicly that Shelby is a “hack” and a phony “journalist” who is mistaken if he thinks his decades-long and award-winning history in Minneapolis journalism gives his libelous missives the pretense of truth.

      Yes “these details do not reflect well on Mr. Shelby.” That’s the point, “anonymous.”

  • J. Montgomery

    I don’t think this Peabody and Emmy award winning journalist feels particularly threatened by a pittance of a journalist-turned-blogger pointing out his one mistake (that little typo).

    Your first point is moot. Shelby’s first statement is true, and has nothing to do with global warming, as you seem to think it does. You admit in your post that a) Heartland is fossil-fuel sponsored and that b) you are designed to protect our liberties… Those of your sponsors. Big coal and oil.

    Your second point is a typo. How many journalists have lost their integrity over one of those? None? Oh.

    Your third point, as stated by the bottom post, is also inflated.

    Basically, you’re completely unreasonable.

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