From the category archives:

Media

Bill McKibben Doesn’t Know Who Funds His Own Organization, 350.org?

Dave Appell at the Quark Soup blog has uncovered a year-old episode of “Climate Challenge” featuring Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, one of the world’s leading climate alarmist organizations.  350.org created a group called Forecast the Facts in January 2012 to attack TV meteorologists who refuse to toe the alarmist line and scare viewers about catastrophic man-made global warming.

Lately, however, the Forecast the Facts project has focused exclusively on attacking The Heartland Institute — pounding on us with fake indignation and harassing donors exposed by Peter Gleick’s admitted theft of our internal budget and fundraising documents. The irony here, of course, is that McKibben would never dream of revealing his donors because that might open his groups up to the same underhanded tactics. But as this video shows, McKibben says  he has no idea who funds his organization, beyond a start-up gift from the Rockefeller Brothers years ago. Even the simpatico interviewer finds that hard to believe.

As Appell writes:

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Joe Bast’s Response to Scholars Feeling Pressure After Attacks on Heartland

Several friends of Heartland have expressed trepidation about continuing their long-time associations with us. This is my reply to one of those scholars, which shines a little more light about what’s going on around here since Peter Gleick confessed to creating the “Fakegate” scandal:

Dear John,

Sorry you feel this way.

For 28 years, The Heartland Institute has tried to stay “above the fray,” producing high-quality research and commentary and staying focused on the issues, even as the political dialogue became more and more polarized and corrosive. Almost alone among think tanks, we focus on communicating with people who do not already agree with us. We rely on research and reason, not rhetoric and emotion, and still do.

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MSM Condemns Heartland’s Experimental Billboard, Ignores What Climate Alarmists Do Everyday

Marc Morano of Climate Depot — a proud cosponsor of our Seventh International Conference on Climate Change in Chicago May 21- 23 — shared with us today his observations on the mainstream media’s double standard for tolerating provocative communication strategies when it comes to the climate.

Marc’s views are his own — and, as always with him, an invigorating read. Those who are subject to easily getting the vapors over such things should probably not heed the advice “click to continue” below. For the rest, here is the full-and-raw Marc Morano, who called out — and answered — some egregious examples of global warming alarmists using “provocative communications” about skeptics that the MSM seems to have missed:

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List of Media-Tolerated Attacks on Skepticism of Man-Made Global Warming

This is a brief list of attacks on skeptics of man-made global warming, which despite their vulgarity saw preferential tolerance from the mainstream media.

Know of any others? Email me at tsmith@heartland.org

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Heartland’s ‘Unabomber’ Billboard and the Global Warming Alarmists’ One-Trick Pony

Russell Cook notes over at The American Thinker how The Heartland Institute’s one-day Unabomber billboard along a highway near Chicago “was a gift to alarmists on a silver platter.”

Noted. It was a mistake on our part. Sorry about that.

Cook gives us our lumps in his American Thinker post. But he also makes some other key points that put what some call the “Climate Wars” into perspective.

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Heartland’s James M. Taylor Talking Climate on PBS Newshour

Heartland Senior Fellow for Environment Policy James M. Taylor was interviewed for part of a story on PBS Newshour last night about the teaching of climate change in Americas’s public schools. It was biased heavily toward the views of climate alarmists, which was hardly a surprise. But since The Heartland Institute has been gaining attention for our plans to craft climate curriculum, the PBS producers reached out to us for “balance.”

Below are James’ quick thoughts on the piece, and the video of the story. These folks really need to attend Heartland’s Seventh International Conference on Climate Change (and so should you!). The idea that sound climate science backs up the alarmist narrative is a stubborn myth.

Skepticism is essential to science itself. It is deeply disturbing that many public school teachers bemoan such skepticism in their students rather than celebrate such intuitive adherence to scientific principles.

The heart of the alleged global warming crisis is predictions of future warming from computer models that have consistently predicted too much warming in the past. Importantly, scientific data have shown that the two most important assumptions of such computer models – that modest warming due to carbon dioxide will be substantially exacerbated by changes in cloud formation and atmospheric humidity – are not occurring in the real world.

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Heartland’s Seventh International Conference on Climate Change, May 21 – 23 in Chicago

We’re doing it again … because it’s necessary to “think globally and act locally” about the climate — but with the truth, not propaganda and politicized reports passed off as rigorous science.

The Heartland Institute is hosting a conference aimed at having a real debate about the causes, consequences, and policy implications of climate change. And this year’s conference in Chicago May 21 – 23 dovetails nicely with the NATO summit in the Windy City (which ends as ours begins, on May 21). Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, will be our dinner speaker the first night.

Heartland has invited dozens of scientists who believe man is chiefly responsible for the fluctuations of the climate to debate those who disagree … again. We will be joined by dozens of think tank cosponsors and hundreds of scientists who understand the need to educate the public, and fellow scientists and educators, about what’s really happing to the planet’s climate. The world’s media will be there — and, we hope you will join us. Registration information can be found here.

Get Twitter updates of the conference by following @HeartlandInst and the hashtag #ICCC7.

This year’s conference theme is:

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More MSM Misinformation on Fracking

According to reports from the media, a new study from the U.S. Geological Survey have scientifically linked hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” to the recent rise in Midwest earthquakes. But the lead author of the study, Bill Ellsworth, went on live TV last week and announced the study does not support that claim, and that the media is misinforming the public about the study.

If you don’t have time to watch the interview, Ellsworth states that the only established link with earthquake activity is with the disposal of the leftover waste water after the natural gas is released, which is likely where the misunderstanding could have occurred. However, this link has been known for decades, and in most cases is not a problem, and in the few that are, are easily accommodated with straightforward solutions.

Ellsworth’s effort to clarify the epidemic spread of misinformation is heartening, although likely not to be too effective with a liberally-biased media. But if nothing else, reveals which of our political leaders are susceptible to being misled.

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Pot, Watch Who You Call ‘Kettle’

It is shameful that the intellectually lazy practice of killing the messenger instead of debunking his message has become the norm in politics today. And there is no clearer example of that than yesterday’s frenzied Sunshine State News (SSN) hit piece against the organization I am proud to represent in Florida.

The Heartland Institute is a 28 year-old national public policy research organization with offices around the country and dozens of respected policy analysts and experts. A quick Google search reveals the contributions Heartland has made to promote economic liberty and free market policies over the years through its research, publications, partnerships, conferences, and education outreach none of which, to my knowledge, has ever been successfully discredited.

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Fakegate versus Climategate

Peter Gleick, disgraced by Fakegate

Peter Gleick, disgraced by his own actions in Fakegate

On February 14, environmental groups and sympathetic journalists reported that confidential documents were stolen from The Heartland Institute. It soon became apparent that one of the documents, a supposed memo describing Heartland’s communication strategy on climate change, was a fake document, leading British journalist James Delingpole to label the affair “Fakegate.”

On February 20, Peter Gleick made a partial confession, saying he stole the documents but claiming he received the fraudulent emo “in the mail” from an anonymous source. An international search is underway to identify the true author of the fraudulent memo.

Surprisingly, Gleick has defenders. Those willing to use their real names on blogs and in comments to articles include James Garvey, Tyler Hamilton, Mark Alan Hewitt, John Horgan, Greg Laden, Stephan Lewandowsky, Patrick Lockerby, and Michael Tobis. For a summary of their comments, see Donna Laframboise’s excellent post.

Several of Gleick’s apologists say Heartland has no right to cry foul, since Climate Change Weekly, Environment & Climate News, and other Heartland publications have reported extensively on the two Climategate scandals.

“I still can’t get over how hypocritical Heartland Institute is being about this, given how it delighted in seeing climate scientists’ e-mails hacked in the 2009 ‘Climategate’ non-scandal,” wrote one Gleick partisan, Tyler Hamilton, at theenergycollective.

While Fakegate and Climategate have some things in common – most obviously, both expose the moral and intellectual corruption of the global warming movement – there are also important differences that clear Heartland of any claims of hypocrisy. Those differences include:

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