Climate Hacking Hypocrisy
by David Atkins
The laughably named Heartland Institute is shocked, shocked that anyone would use surreptitiously acquired documents to expose their lying climate denier activities:
The free-market Heartland Institute has moved to contain the damage from explosive revelations about its efforts to discredit climate change and alter the teaching of science in schools, claiming on Wednesday it was the victim of theft and forgery.
In its first detailed response to Tuesday's leak of documents purporting to show a well-organised campaign to cast doubt on climate change, the institute warned in a statement posted on its website: "Some of these documents were stolen from Heartland, at least one is a fake, and some may have been altered."
However, the statement from Heartland communications director, Jim Lakely, identifies only one of the eight documents posted online on Tuesday night by the DeSmogBlog website as a "total fake". That document, two pages headlined "Confidential Memo: Heartland Climate Strategy", largely duplicates information contained in the other documents.
Those documents – containing details on future projects such as a $100,000 campaign to "dissuade teachers from teaching science", as well as fundraising efforts – have been confirmed, in part, by Heartland itself, corporate donors such as Microsoft, and climate sceptic blogger Anthony Watts, who hoped to benefit from Heartland fundraising this year.
Ummmm...wasn't this the same organization that eagerly promoted the so-called "Climategate" non-story based on misleading, selectively quoted, stolen emails?
Why, yes it was.
Karma is a glorious thing. The Heartland Institute is one of the most pernicious organizations in the country, crafting meticulously detailed booklets of ready-made policies and talking points made available for free to candidates of both parties for races as minor as State Assembly.
If you're a free-market Objectivist Republican, there's no need whatsoever to have any independent thoughts about even the smallest matter of public policy. The Heartland Institute will do it all for you, all while spending millions to influence school curricula toward more corporate-friendly rewriting of science and history.
And despite doing their best to ensure a hellish future and possible extinction for the human and millions of other species on this planet just to further enrich a few fat cats, Heartland is threatening to sue anyone who quotes their internal memos. Yeah, good luck with that, buckos. I suspect this is just the beginning.
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