The Heartland Institute To Pope Francis: Don't Believe the Science of Global Warming

I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of embarrassment when I read about this. Apparently the Heartland Institute, possibly the most rabid of the conservative “think tanks” when it comes to denying the existence of global warming, is sending a contingent of its folks to Rome to, in their eyes, set the pope straight about climate change.

            The American organization sponsors an annual bizarro world version of the UN’s IPCC, in which they bloviate as best they can about conspiracies, money-grubbing climate scientists falsifying data, and imaginary cooling trends. They even call their get together the International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC) in the hope, I image, that the initials are close enough to fool people into thinking that they are the same as the UN’s IPCC.

The Heartland folks are on their way to Rome as they anticipate the Pontiff’s upcoming encyclical. The pope is expected to say that, given our present situation, reducing greenhouse gasses has become a moral imperative.

The pope is called upon to be gracious to those who seek his audience, so Pope Francis will meet with the representatives from the Heartland Institute. But they should already know that the pope receives some of the best council when it comes to science. OK, the Church really blew it with Bruno and Galileo, but that was over 300 years ago. Things have changed since then.

            Years ago, when scientists were uncertain if other factors besides CO2 might mitigate the warming effects of our release of greenhouse gasses, the Heartland Institute could gain some traction in the news and opinion pieces. But since that time they have painted themselves into an intellectual corner, and now they are quite stuck.

Pope Francis is expected to say that reducing greenhouse gasses is a moral imperative.

And they are now desperate. Until now global warming has been something scientists studied; it has been an issue for which governments and politicians have made laws and created policies. It has been something that most people ignored, too.

But with this his encyclical, Pope Francis takes global warming into our spiritual realm, a place where the Heartland Institute does not go. The “think tank” can have success with some folks as they sow doubt, and they can have even more success as they lobby Congress and make their large campaign contributions. But the pope, particularly this pope, holds great influence over his Catholic Church, as well as a great deal of the rest of the Christian world. With his upcoming encyclical, climate change becomes part of our spiritual lives, the subject of homilies from the pulpit, and a concern of our prayers. It goes from an abstract thing to something quite human.

In their campaign to keep us from addressing climate change, with this latest development with the pope, the Heartland Institute should know that they no longer have a prayer.

Global Temperatures Increase, Concern Wanes

A recent worldwide survey by GlobeScan Radar, a public opinion research consultant company, found that concern about global warming and other environmental issues has hit a 20-year low. The survey covered 22 countries, including the United States

            Despite even more conclusive evidence of a warming world, only 49 percent of respondents considered global warming a serious problem. Fewer people also considered polluted waters, species going extinct, and other environmental concerns as being “very serious.” This is probably good news to coal companies, oil companies and other polluters, but it is probably bad news for the rest of us, whether we are among the concerned or unconcerned crowd.

            What has happened? It could be several things. Journalism is undergoing a grand transformation, and perhaps this affects the public’s ability to follow environmental stories that usually have a long narrative arcs and can contain concepts that can be difficult to understand. Industry propagandists, such as the Heartland Institute and Heritage Foundation, may have become more successful with their messages.

            People also tire and “tune out” longstanding news stories, and we may be at a point when hearing about increased droughts and melting icecaps has fatigued us to where we are no longer listening. The chairman of GlobeScan, Doug Miller, says, “Evidence of environmental damage is stronger than ever, but our data shows that economic crisis and lack of political leadership means that the public are starting to tune out.”

Watch Out For Those Madmen, Tyrants, and Others Who Might Be Informed About Global Warming

That’s right. This is for real. This is a real billboard put up by the Heartland Institute in Chicago. Where to begin with this? As the Guardian said about the billboard that it is “quite possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns.”

            On their website Heartland Institute announces that, Besides Kaczynsky, they plan to put up other billboards with the likenesses of Fidel Castro, Osama bin Laden, and Charles Manson and say that “The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”

            Who thought this campaign up? An unschooled eight-year-old? The folks at the Heartland Institute now realize possibly that there is no intellectual underpinning to their attacks on climate scientists. So they have reduced themselves to this almost surreal swipe. My desire for this blog is to write about how we think about the environment. I almost hate to include this billboard. I don’t think much thought went into putting it up.


Update 5/5/12: Apparently you can only push stupid so far. After criticism that even came from their supporters, the Heartland Institute pulled down this stupid billboard. The billboard was only up for a matter of hours. One of the heartland Institute's allies, Anthony Watts, attributed the ill-conceived ad campaign to battle fatigue. I think that it's more basic than that: when you believe stupid things, you do stupid things.

Those Who Disparage Climate Scientists Can Take a Vacation

I sometimes wonder why there is an industry that disparages the scientists who investigate climate change and the work that they do. If the Heartland Institute, Forbes Magazine, Fox News, and other organizations like them stopped their attacks on climate scientists, would it make any difference? Would there be serious discussion and action to reduce our carbon emissions?
             One of the latest opinion pieces from the Forbes is tediously silly. Because R.A. Pielke, a meteorologist with a skeptical yet nuanced view of the current understanding of climate change, criticized on his blog what appears to be a stupid statement in a scientific paper on climate, the Heartland Institute’s James Taylor insists that this is proof that the whole endeavor to understand how our use of fossil fuels is warming our planet is nothing but a house of cards. By his way of thinking, one corrupt judge is proof that the entire judiciary is morally bankrupt, and one bad teacher demonstrates the hollowness of our educational system.
             Obviously this cramped and weak reasoning is enough for the true believers who still disbelieve that the world was warming, even when they are presented with the most convincing evidence. And manufacturing doubt sways a few additional folks as well.
             But if the Heartland Institute stopped its attacks, if Forbes magazine stopped publishing dubious op-eds on climate scientists, if Fox News started reporting facts instead of opinion, would it make any difference?
            Mitt Romney, who only two years ago acknowledged the human thumbprint of global warming in his book, No Apology, has adopted a line acceptable to the GOP to become their nominee. Speaking at a recent closed-door fundraiser, he said, “My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO₂ emissions is not the right course for us.” This line rings with doppelganger-like similarity to George W. Bush’s climate change mantra that more research needed to be done before we took any action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

But with Barack Obama, who, like Romney, has also acknowledged that humans are causing climate change, we have a president who is running for reelection and is in the meanwhile saying nothing about global warming. On his recent energy tour—in which he talked about his “all of the above” energy strategy, which includes a reliance on fossil fuels—not once did he mention climate change, greenhouse gasses, or global warming.

             So there you have the two candidates’ stances on global warming: a policy of glib doubt or silence. The Heartland Institute could probably lay off its staff that attacks climate scientists, and Forbes could probably take the space in its magazine devoted to global warming and use it for something else, because right now, no matter who you vote for, it looks like Heartland, Forbes, Fox, and all the big business that they speak for will get their way: Nothing is going to change except the climate.

Hypocrisy Spreads

My last couple of blogs have been about the Heartland Institute’s own Climategate scandal, how they were phished for internal documents that, among other things, revealed their plans to develop K-12 curricula that casts doubt on the phenomena and science of global warming. I also blogged about their subsequent hypocrisy in the aftermath of the scandal as well.

            The latest development in this story is that Peter Gleick, a noted scientist and president of the Pacific Institute, an organization that performs research and advocates for sustainability, has admitted to being the Heartland Institute’s phisher. Gleick has apologized for his actions and says that his judgment in the matter was clouded by “frustration with the ongoing efforts—often anonymous, well-funded and coordinated—to attack climate science and scientists … and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved.”[i]

            In this age of Julian Assange and Wikileaks, when all companies, organizations, and governments experience efforts to have their computers hacked or their personnel phished, as well as a time when everyone who uses a computer has his every internet click recorded and sold to advertisers and every person who walks down the street has his whereabouts and actions recorded on video, the relative merits of breaking a company’s security or invading a person’s privacy is an issue that I am still thinking about, so I don’t want to comment on Gleick, his actions, or his apology. A few have hailed him as a hero, while some excoriate him.

            I do want to point out the apparent hypocrisy that has spread beyond the Heartland Institute, particularly that of Megan McArdle. McArdle is a senior editor at The Atlantic and has excoriated Gleick.[ii] And yet while she wrote about the release of emails hacked from climate scientists at East Anglia back in 2009 and 2010, she expressed no such outrage.

            It might be added that the writing on the East Anglia brouhaha, she said that she thought the scientists had “massaged” the data[iii] and that the scientists’ work was otherwise compromised.[iv] (It might also be added that McArdle is a business and economics writer, with no background in science. So judge for yourself her ability to assess the science of climate change.)

            McArdle can be outraged over a breach of security, that Gleick so easily phished an organization that wants to infect our schools with anti-science poppycock. When that outrage is selective, however, that outrage is a bunch of poppycock as well.

---

[i] Scientist Peter Gleick admits he lied to get climate documents Los Angeles Times 2/21/12 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-climate-documents-20120222,0,7220518.story

[ii] McArdle, Megan Peter Gleick Confesses to Obtaining Heartland Documents Under False Pretenses The Atlantic 2/21/12 http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/peter-gleick-confesses-to-obtaining-heartland-documents-under-false-pretenses/253395/

[iii] McArdle, Megan Climategate: Was Data Faked? The Atlantic 12/9/09 http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/12/climategate-was-data-faked/31540/

[iv] McArdle, Megan Climategate III: The Mystery of the Missing Data The Atlantic 12/1/09 http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/12/climategate-iii-the-mystery-of-the-missing-data/31110/

Heartland Hypocrites

Well, no one likes being caught with his pants down. So I have to confess that, although I think that the climate denialism that the Heartland Institute engages in is practically criminal, I do have at least a small amount of sympathy for the embarrassment they are going through right now. Looking through their website, much of what they say lacks credibility, at least in my eyes. I suppose that an incident like this will also affect the credibility they may have with some individuals who subscribe to their pro business stance.

            That’s gotta hurt.

            There is a very chagrined page on their website that attempts to do a little damage control. They are correct when they say that a ruse was used to gain access to their documents. So they have a right to be angry, as well as embarrassed. But they also go on and try to put themselves in the position of the moral high ground when they call for fairness. Toward the end of the page they say, “[H]onest disagreement should never be used to justify the criminal acts and fraud that occurred in the past 24 hours. As a matter of common decency and journalistic ethics, we ask everyone in the climate change debate to sit back and think about what just happened.”[i]

A call for fairness and giving someone the benefit of the doubt, however, has not been the Heartland Institute’s modus operandi. Toward the end of last year the institute had a “reaction” to the hacked emails of prominent climate change scientists (what they call the Climategate) saying that the scientists had “conspired to hide and manipulate data calling into question the theory of man-caused global warming.”[ii] Around the same time their tone was downright gleeful when they found that they had been mentioned a few of the hacked emails. They say they say that they “couldn’t be prouder” of the situation.[iii]

The institute never showed the slightest indignation that the scientists’ emails had been hacked, that they had been got at through cyber sleuth, nor did they call for, as they ask for themselves, “common decency and journalistic ethics.”

What makes this particularly odious is that these postings are from late last year, long after independent investigations, including one by the EPA, found that no data was manipulated or scientific shenanigans had occurred as they examined the hacked emails of the scientists and the circumstances surrounding them.

There is much to take note of here, chief among them being the Heartland Institute’s plans to create an anti-science curriculum to fit the political needs of their sponsors. And as they try to defend themselves, the Heartland Institute is only showing itself to be an organization of blatant hypocrites. 

---

[i] Lakely, Jim Heartland Institute Responds to Stolen and Fake Documents 2/15/12 http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/15/heartland-institute-responds-stolen-and-fake-documents

[ii] Singer, S. Fred et al Heartland Institute Reacts to ‘Climategate 2’ Emails 11/22/11 http://heartland.org/press-releases/2011/11/22/heartland-institute-reacts-climategate-2-emails

[iii] Lakely, Jim Heartland Institute Mentioned in Climategate Emails, Round 1 and 2(Part1) 11/28/11 http://blog.heartland.org/2011/11/heartland-institute-mentioned-in-climategate-emails-rounds-1-and-2-part-1/

The Real Climategate

Last month I blogged about the difficulty science teachers are having teaching the science of climate change. About 25 to 30 percent of teacher reported that parents, teachers, and members of their communities had in some way questioned whether climate change was happening or whether it was a phenomenon caused by humans.[i]

            As if this endemic resistance to their science curriculum weren’t enough, there has been a leak of documents from the Heartland Institute, an organization that promotes and serves business interests. A portion of the leaked documents outlines a plan to create curricula for public schools that cast doubt on the science of global warming. For example, one of the claims of the proposed school lessons would be that “whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy.”[ii]

Depicting itself as libertarian in orientation, with interests in a wide range of public-policy issues, the Heartland Institute has worked in the past with Philip Morris, producing policy studies, op-eds, and radio interviews that tried to cast doubt on the scientific link between health problems, such as lung cancer, and secondhand smoke. They also support vouchers for schools, and the term “free-market solution” occurs a lot on their website.

In my pervious blog, I asked if there were organizations that were behind the resistance that science teachers were experiencing concerning climate science. I guess that there are not any right now, but that the Heartland Institute is stepping up to the plate to take on the science and the scientists that tell us that we are making a warmer world for ourselves.

Teachers have it bad enough with the resistance they are already experiencing to teaching climate science. If Heartland is successful and they produce this anti-science indoctrination for schoolchildren, it will only compound this problem.

I think this leak of documents, one that the Heartland Institute doesn’t deny—although they dispute the credibility of a couple pages of the leak—is the real scandal that should be called the Climategate.

           

---

[i] http://environmentcontext.blogspot.com/2012/01/next-climate-change-battle.html

[ii] Leak Offers Glimpse of Campaign Against Climate Science New York Times 2/15/2012