Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Recently, the Wall Street Journal refused to publish a letter on the subject of climate change that was signed by 255 scientists—all of whom are members of the United States National Academy of Sciences. The WSJ chose instead to publish an opinion piece titled No Need to Panic about Global Warming that was written by 16 “other scientists.” It has been reported that the 16 “other scientists” include engineers, a physician, a retired airplane designer, a retired electrical engineer, and astrophysicists. Also included among the “No Need to Panic” authors are two men—one who questions whether smoking causes cancer (Richard Lindzen) and another who does not believe that asbestos is a health hazard (Claude Allegre).
According to Media Matters, most of the scientists who signed the WSJ op-ed do not publish peer-reviewed papers on climate research. In addition, more than a third of them have links to fossil fuel interests.
Peter Gleick, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a MacArthur Fellow, wrote an article for Forbes descrying the WSJ’s actions.
Gleick wrote:
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has long been understood to be not only antagonistic to the facts of climate science, but hostile. But in a remarkable example of their unabashed bias, on Friday they published an opinion piece that not only repeats many of the flawed and misleading arguments about climate science, but purports to be of special significance because it was signed by 16 “scientists.”
Serious doubt has been cast on the actual expertise on climate science of the signers and on the accuracy of the content, here and elsewhere, and the strawman arguments and technical flaws of their opinion piece are evident to anyone actually versed in the scientific debate. For example, their op-ed has fundamental errors about recent actual temperatures, they use false/strawman arguments that climate scientists are saying climate change “will destroy civilization,” they launch ad hominem attack on particular climate scientists using out-of-context quotes, and so on. Formal responses are in the works, and will be available from a variety of groups in the next day or so. [Just as an example, as pointed out here previously, and at the Union of Concerned Scientists: the authors claim there has been a “lack of warming” for 10 years. The reality? 2011 was the 35th year in a row in which global temperatures were above the historical average and 2010 and 2005 were the warmest years on record.]
But the most amazing and telling evidence of the bias of the Wall Street Journal in this field is the fact that 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences wrote a comparable (but scientifically accurate) essay on the realities of climate change and on the need for improved and serious public debate around the issue, offered it to the Wall Street Journal, and were turned down. The National Academy of Sciences is the nation’s pre-eminent independent scientific organizations. Its members are among the most respected in the world in their fields. Yet the Journal wouldn’t publish this letter, from more than 15 times as many top scientists. Instead they chose to publish an error-filled and misleading piece on climate because some so-called experts aligned with their bias signed it. This may be good politics for them, but it is bad science and it is bad for the nation.
Climate Change and the Integrity of Science, the letter that was signed by the 255 scientists, spoke of their concern about the recent escalation in assaults on scientists—especially climate scientists. They said that the assaults on both climate science and scientists came from climate change deniers who “are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence.” The scientists called “for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them.”
Not long ago, I was disheartened to learn that climate scientists in the United States and in other countries have become victims of cyber-bullying. In 2010, Douglas Fisher wrote an article for Scientific American titled Cyber Bullying Intensifies as Climate Data Questioned. Fisher spoke of how climate researchers have to purge crude and crass emails that they find in their inboxes every day. Some consider purging such correspondence as a task they must deal with as part of the job of being a climate scientist. Others, however, “see the messages as threats and intimidation—cyber-bullying meant to shut down debate and cow scientists into limiting their participation in the public discourse.”
Clive Hamilton, an Australian author and academic said, “The purpose of this new form of cyber-bullying seems clear; it is to upset and intimidate the targets, making them reluctant to participate further in the climate change debate.” Gavin Schmidt, a scientist who works for NASA, said that “organized, ‘McCarthyite’ tactics aimed at specific scientists by various groups can be stressful.” He added “‘Frivolous’ Freedom of Information Act requests can tie up considerable quantities of researchers’ time.” Schmidt claims that the worst things of all are the “‘intimidating letters’ from congressional members threatening dire consequences to scientists working on climate change.”
Last month, MIT scientist Kerry Emanuel, a Republican and the director of MIT’s Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate program, received a “frenzy of hate male” after a video that featured an interview with him was published by Climate Desk.
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VIDEO LINK: Not all Republicans are climate deniers (In the run-up to the New Hampshire primary, former Rep. Bob Inglis, MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel, and other Republicans talk about why climate action is a conservative value)
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Mother Jones reported that the emails contained “veiled threats’ against Emanuel’s wife—as well as other “tangible threats.” Emanuel said, “They were vile, these emails. They were the kind of emails nobody would like to receive.” He added, “What was a little bit new about it was dragging family members into it and feeling that my family might be under threat, so naturally I didn’t feel very good about that at all. I thought it was low to drag somebody’s spouse into arguments like this.”
The Guardian reported last June that Australian climate scientists had been receiving death threats. As a response to the large number of threatening emails and telephone calls, the Australia National University (ANU) in Canberra moved some of its “leading climate scientists to a secure facility…”
Ian Young, ANU’s vice-chancellor, said, “Obviously climate research is an emotive issue at the present time. These are issues where we should have a logical public debate and it’s completely intolerable that people be subjected to this sort of abuse and to threats like this.” Young added that “scientists had been threatened with assault if they were identified in the street.”
Canberra Times reported last year that more than 30 researchers in Australia—including ecologists, environmental policy experts, meteorologists, and atmospheric physicists—told the paper that they had been receiving a “stream of abusive emails threatening violence, sexual assault, public smear campaigns and attacks on family members.” Some of the scientists installed upgraded home security systems and switched to unlisted phone numbers because they were fearful that their homes and cars might be damaged.
One researcher even spoke of “receiving threats of sexual assault and violence against her children after her photograph appeared in a newspaper article promoting a community tree-planting day as a local action to mitigate climate change.”
One climate scientist, who did not want to be identified, told ABC News that a dead animal was once left on his doorstep. He said he now travels with bodyguards at times. David Koroly, a professor at the University of Melbourne’s School of Earth Science, told ABC that he receives threats whenever he is interviewed by the media. He said, “It is clear that there is a campaign in terms of either organised or disorganised threats to discourage scientists from presenting the best available climate science on television or radio.”
Addendum: An Excerpt from Cowards in Our Democracy: Part 1, Written by James Hansen, Climatologist and Head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Today most media, even publicly-supported media, are pressured to balance every climate story with opinions of contrarians, climate change deniers, as if they had equal scientific credibility. Media are dependent on advertising revenue of the fossil fuel industry, and in some cases are owned by people with an interest in continuing business as usual. Fossil fuel profiteers can readily find a few percent of the scientific community to serve as mouthpieces — all scientists practice skepticism, and it is not hard to find some who are out of their area of expertise, who may enjoy being in the public eye, and who are limited in scientific insight and analytic ability.
Distinguished scientific bodies such as national science academies, using the scientific method, can readily separate charlatans and false interpretations from well-reasoned science. Yet it seems that our governments and the public are not making much use of their authoritative scientific bodies. Why is that?
I believe that the answer, and the difficulty in communicating science to the public, is related to the corrosive influence of money in politics and to increased corporate influence on the media.
SOURCES
Climate Change and the Integrity of Science (Science Magazine)
WSJ Publishes Op-Ed From 16 Climate Deniers, Refused Letter From 255 Top Scientists (ThinkProgress)
Climate Scientists Rebuke Rupert Murdoch: WSJ Denier Op-Ed Like ‘Dentists Practicing Cardiology’ (ThinkProgress)
The rise of anti-science cyber bullying (ThinkProgress)
MIT Climate Scientist’s Wife Threatened in a “Frenzy of Hate” and Cyberbullying Fomented by Deniers (ThinkProgress)
Price Of Truth: Limbaugh Operatives Encourage Abusive Hate Mail At Female, Evangelical Climate Scientist (ThinkProgress)
Climatologist James Hansen on “Cowards in Our Democracies” (ThinkProgress)
Cowards in Our Democracies: Part 1 (Columbia)
The Journal Hires Dentists To Do Heart Surgery (Media Matters)
Remarkable Editorial Bias on Climate Science at the Wall Street Journal (Forbes)
Cyber Bullying Intensifies as Climate Data Questioned: Researchers must purge e-mail in-boxes daily of threatening correspondence, simply part of the job of being a climate scientist (Scientific American)
While temperatures rise, denialists reach lower (Discover Magazine)
WSJ War on Climate Science continues with 16 prominent (but not in climate science) Scientists (Firedoglake)
Australian climate scientists targeted by death threats (Climate Science Watch)
ABC World News: Climate Scientists Claim ‘McCarthy-Like Threats’ (Climate Science Watch)
Think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund climate deniers: ExxonMobil cash supported concerted campaign to undermine case for man-made warming (The Independent)
Gene, I had not thought of it that way. The deniers really have found ways to circumvent the First Law.
OS,
Everyone knows Bdaman disobeys the laws of thermodynamics. His utility as a fuel would be limited.
raff, if we could just harness the hot air coming from the deniers, the speculators and their enablers, we could solve much of our energy problem.
Bdaman,
That Investors article is full of crap. Tell me how the keystone plan heaps gas prices now? Tell me how any of this article is true when the demand is way down? The big oil companies don’t want to drill more. They can make more money thru speculation raising the price of oil.
I don’t know much about Glieck. I will follow the story and see how it plays out.
And what was Glieck’s
Dan Rather’s mistake was running with the story before checking it out. Funny thing happened amidst all the outcry. No one disproved the truth of those letters. The original record of Dubya’s going AWOL and and associated problems with his flight physical and flight training “disappeared.”
Whistleblowing and publishing records of wrongdoing may sometimes be the noble thing to do. When one sees a crime or immoral act being committed……..
Yeah ask Dan Rather and now Peter Glieck
Anyone who has even a smidgen of understanding of how futures work, will understand speculators and futures traders have far more influence on the price of oil than unrest in some country halfway around the world.
I remember when I was just beginning to shave. The price of a pack of razor blades was ten cents. Then it suddenly jumped to fifteen cents a pack. According to what I read in the newspapers, it was because the price of steel had gone up almost twenty cents a ton. We did not have calculators or computers in those days, so according to my trusty legal pad and a #2 Ticonderoga pencil, that pack of razor blades should have weighed approximately 500 pounds. Free enterprise at work.
One thing for sure it’s not Obama’s fault
http://news.investors.com/article/601827/201202211837/obama-shifting-talk-on-high-gas-prices.htm
When gas prices hit $4 a gallon in 2008, candidate Barack Obama said it was due to previous failed energy policies. Now that prices are heading still higher, President Obama calls it progress.
Already, pump prices are higher than they’ve been in previous years, suggesting they will top $4 soon and possibly reach an unprecedented $5 this summer.
President Obama is starting to notice the political implications. So he sent Robert Gibbs — now a top campaign adviser — out to tell the public not to worry.
“Just on Friday, the Department of the Interior issued permits that will expand our exploration in the Arctic,” Gibbs said Sunday. “Our domestic oil production is at an eight-year high, and our use of foreign oil is at a 16-year low. So we’re making progress.”
“Progress” isn’t exactly how Obama described the country’s energy picture in 2008, when gas prices were closing in on $4 a gallon. Then, it was a clear sign of “Washington’s failure to lead on energy,” which was “turning the middle-class squeeze into a devastating vise-grip for millions of Americans.”
“For the well-off in this country,” Obama said in May 2008, “high gas prices are mostly an annoyance, but to most Americans they’re a huge problem, bordering on a crisis.”
In August that year, he declared rising energy costs to be “one of the most dangerous and urgent threats this nation has ever faced” and that gas prices “are wiping out paychecks and straining businesses.”
While Gibbs is right that domestic production has climbed in the past three years, Obama’s policies had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Subscribe to the IBD Editorials Podcast Oil coming from offshore wells was in the pipeline, so to speak, during the Clinton and Bush years, when those permits were issued. And the oil pouring out of North Dakota is the result of drilling on private lands.
Obama, in fact, has made it clear for years that he has no real interest in boosting domestic production.
When President Bush announced plans in 2008 to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling, Obama dismissed it, saying “it would merely prolong the failed energy policies we have seen from Washington for 30 years.”
“Offshore drilling,” he said, “would not lower gas prices today, it would not lower gas prices next year and it would not lower gas prices five years from now.”
In a big energy speech he gave in August 2008, Obama argued that “if we opened up and drilled on every single square inch of our land and our shores, we would still find only 3% of the world’s oil reserves.”
And while in office, Obama’s done everything he can to limit production — slow-walking offshore permits, killing the Keystone XL pipeline, making it even harder to get oil out of federal lands.
Instead of aggressively expanding oil production, he offered a set of ridiculous alternatives — hugely wasteful “green” energy subsidies, a call for a million electric cars by 2014 and costly fuel economy mandates that won’t make a dent in consumption for decades.
With gas prices up 93% since Obama took office, we’re seeing just how well this approach works.
Raff nothing about Wallstreet and speculators here.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney denied that President Obama bears responsibility for high gas prices, and mocked Newt Gingrich for his criticism of Obama on that issue, as he defended Obama’s “comprehensive energy policy.”
“The rise in gas prices is clearly the effect of a variety of factors on the global price of oil,” Carney said during the press briefing today. “They include unrest in certain regions of the world. They include growth in areas like China and India.” He was responding CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, who asked if the unseasonably high gas prices are “the president’s fault.”
Grijalva cites a letter from Greenpeace to DOI that notes potential conflicts with Department of Interior ethical guidelines, which warn employees not to take payment from outside organizations that seek to influence the federal government.
It seems esteemed NASA astronomer turned climatologist turned paid activist Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has not been reporting some income that he is required by law to do. How long will NASA continue to look the other way?
NASA records released to resolve litigation filed by the American Tradition Institute reveal that Dr. James E. Hansen, an astronomer, received approximately $1.6 million in outside, direct cash income in the past five years for work related to — and, according to his benefactors, often expressly for — his public service as a global warming activist within NASA.
This does not include six-figure income over that period in travel expenses to fly around the world to receive money from outside interests. As specifically detailed below, Hansen failed to report tens of thousands of dollars in global travel provided to him by outside parties — including to London, Paris, Rome, Oslo, Tokyo, the Austrian Alps, Bilbao, California, Australia and elsewhere, often business or first-class and also often paying for his wife as well — to receive honoraria to speak about the topic of his taxpayer-funded employment, or get cash awards for his activism and even for his past testimony and other work for NASA.
Ethics laws require that such payments or gifts be reported on an SF278 public financial disclosure form. As detailed, below, Hansen nonetheless regularly refused to report this income.
Also, he seems to have inappropriately taken between $10,000 and $26,000 for speeches unlawfully promoting him as a NASA employee. This is despite NASA ordering him to return at least some of the money, with the rest apparently unnoticed by NASA. This raises troubling issues about Hansen’s, and NASA’s, compliance with ethics rules, the general prohibition on not privately benefitting from public service, and even the criminal code prohibition on not having one’s public employment income supplemented. All of this lucrative activity followed Hansen ratcheting up his global warming alarmism and activism to be more political which, now to his possible detriment, he has insisted is part of his job. As he cannot receive outside income for doing his job, he has placed himself in peril, assuming the Department of Justice can find a way to be interested in these revelations.
The following summarizes records produced by the Department of Justice to resolve litigation against the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for refusing to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request regarding the required financial disclosures Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
These records are his applications for outside employment or other activity (form 17-60), approvals and accompanying documents, and public financial disclosure (form SF 278).
As detailed in the American Tradition Institute’s lawsuit which yielded these records, Hansen suddenly became the recipient of many, often lucrative offers of outside employment and awards after he escalated his political activism — using his NASA position as a platform, and springboard. This began with a strident “60 Minutes” interview in early 2006, alleging political interference by the Bush administration in climate science.
Hansen acknowledged this timing on his website, noting that first he was offered an award of “a moderate amount of cash– $10,000″ by an outside activist group. He claims to have turned this down because of the nominating process (without elaborating what that meant), and because of the impropriety of appearing to be financially rewarded for his outspokenness (“I was concerned that it may create the appearance that I had spoken out about government censorship [sic] for the sake of the $”).
Given that Hansen makes no bones about his (often outrageous) outspokenness and activism being, in his view, part of his job, this surely is also another way of saying it would look as if he were having his NASA salary supplemented by appreciative activists and others. That would violate the criminal code, 18 U.S.C. 209.
Yet, as the offers soon became larger, Hansen changed his mind.
The records reveal that NASA initially was very direct in warning Hansen of his responsibilities and prohibitions relating to these activities, which covered the subject of his public employment. Later, after Hansen gained much media attention and condemnation of his NASA superiors for (falsely) claiming he had been “muzzled” (the second president named Bush he claimed had muzzled him), certain clear restatements of the law were dropped from the approval letters responding to his applications for outside employment.
NASA oversight of Hansen’s compliance with ethics-related reporting requirements similarly waned. At no point did they seek reconciliation of his serially conflicting attestations detailed here.
Improper Receipt of Outside Income Without Obtaining Advance Permission
Hansen’s 2009 speech at Dartmouth University for a $5,000 honorarium and up to $1,000 in expenses came in violation of the clear rule against promoting his appearances as, or emphasizing his job with, NASA. It also had not been approved. NASA’s Deputy Chief Counsel Laura Giza, after admonishing these violations, demanded he return the improperly obtained money:
“[Y]ou may not accept the offered honorarium and travel expenses. If you’ve already received this money, you need to return it to Dartmouth.
“Also, in the future, if you have not received word that one of your outside activity requests has been approved, or at least that the legal office has concurred in the request, you should contact the Goddard legal office about the request before engaging in that activity. NASA regulations require that you obtain approval for certain outside activities…prior to engaging in that activity. 5 CFR 6901.103(d).”
If there were further correspondence about this demand it would be in NASA’s document production, but there are no such records. The only lawful scenario, therefore, is that Hansen quietly agreed to the demand, but did not inform NASA whether he complied. Otherwise, NASA, Hansen, or both have violated the ethics and/or transparency statutes and regulation.
Yet subsequent financial disclosure forms show Hansen attesting to accepting even more money, between $5,001 and $15,000, for a 2008 speech at Illinois Wesleyan University for which his file, according to NASA, contains no request for permission to engage in this outside employment, or approval to do so (each a condition precedent to lawfully engage in the activity, and to accepting the money).
There is no correspondence about these two glaring discrepancies in his filings reflecting more apparently improperly accepted outside income than most federal employees will ever see in their careers.
In order to continue his employment Hansen would therefore be required to bring himself back in compliance with the ethics rules by returning the money, between somewhere more than $10,000, and $26,000.
Although Hansen reported the income from both honoraria, he did not report receipt of travel expenses for him to get there. This omission is a pattern in his filings, to the tune of surely tens of thousands of dollars for airfare, meals and lodging to locations all around the country and Europe, all required by ethics laws to be reported.
For example, consider these failures to report often elegant air and hotel/resort accommodations received on his SF278 as required by law (the amount of direct cash income received from the party providing him travel, as well, is in parentheses):
■Blue Planet Prize ($500,000), travel for Hansen and his wife to Tokyo, Japan, 2010
■Dan David Prize ($500,000), travel to Paris, 2007
■Sophie Prize ($100,000), Oslo Norway, travel for Hansen and his wife, 2010
■WWF Duke of Edinburgh Award, Travel for Hansen and his wife, London, 2006
■Alpbach, Austria (alpine resort)(“business class”, with wife), 2007
■Shell Oil UK ($10,000), London, 2009
■FORO Cluster de Energia, travel for Hansen and wife (“business class”), Bilbao, Spain, 2008
■ACT Coalition, travel for Hansen and wife to London, 2007
■Progressive Forum ($10,000)(“first class”), to Houston, 2006
■Progressive Forum ($10,000), to Houston, 2009
■UCSB ($10,000), to Santa Barbara, CA
■Nierenberg Prize ($25,000), to San Diego, 2008
■Nevada Medal ($20,000), to Las Vegas, Reno, 2008
■EarthWorks Expos, to Denver, 2006
■California Academy of Science ($1,500), to San Francisco, 2009
■CalTech ($2,000), travel to Pasadena, CA for Hansen and his wife, 2007
The following is an incomplete list of other travel apparently accepted to make paid speeches and/or receive cash awards but not reported on SF278 financial disclosures:
Boston, Washington, DC (twice); Columbus, OH; Omaha, NE; Wilmington, DE; Ithaca, NY (business class); Chapel Hill, NC; Deerfield, IL (Sierra Club “No Coal” campaign); Dartmouth, NH; Alberta, Canada (as consultant to a law firm helping run an anti-oil sands campaign), Stanford; Minneapolis; Missoula, MT
Other travel apparently accepted but not reported, to provide expert testimony including on cases involving federal policy:
California (Central Valley Chrysler-Jeep v. Witherspoon), Vermont (Green Mountain Chrysler Plymouth etc v. Torti)
Failing to Report Gifts
World Wildlife Fund gave Hansen an engraved Montres Rolex watch, which typically run $8,000 and up (2006), but which was not reported by Hansen on his SF 278 under “gifts”, which must be reported if valued at more than $260.
Failure to Report Receipt of Free Legal Services
On his website Hansen said he began accepting free legal services in 2006. These are not reported on his financial disclosures, as they should be.
Also, NASA’s document production shows him attesting to receiving more, separate free legal services in the form of an amicus brief drafted for he and a few others to intervene before the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA. This was not reported on his SF278, as required.
These lapses on both Hansen’s part and NASA demand scrutiny to determine how laws designed to protect the taxpayer are, or are not, being respected.
Heartland’s Classroom Climate Science Polluter: ‘CO2 Is The Global Food Supply’
By Brad Johnson on Feb 22, 2012
http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/02/22/429593/heartlands-classroom-climate-science-polluter-co2-is-the-global-food-supply/
Excerpt:
As ThinkProgress Green first revealed last week, the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank funded by the Koch brothers, Microsoft, and other top corporations, is planning to develop a “global warming curriculum” for elementary schoolchildren that presents climate science as “a major scientific controversy.” This effort, at a cost of $100,000 a year, will be developed by Dr. David E. Wojick, a coal-industry consultant who sees CO2 as “the global food supply“:
CO2 is not pollution, it is the global food supply. Watching a child grow is watching atmospheric CO2 being reprocessed.
Wojick has now spoken out, defending his intention to teach children the conspiracy theory that man-made climate change is “one of the great scientific debates of history,” instead of a scientific fact built upon decades of research. In a Huffington Post comment, Wojick described his work as a taxpayer-funded consultant for the Department of Energy on science education, and his desire to fight “the company line about dangerous human induced warming“:
It is true that DOE has not funded me to do climate research, but they have funded me to do science education research. Under a DOE SBIR grant my team of teachers developed a model of the concept structure of K-16 science education. The result for DOE was a search algorithm that sees the grade level of science education writing. The prototype is running on http://www.scienceeducation.gov. They also fund me to study the cognitive structure of science itself, in order to improve their science communication database systems.
My expertise in the climate science debate comes from 20 years of study. My Ph.D. is in the philosophy of science, especially the logic of complex issues. My funding comes from free lance writing and policy analysis. While climate scientists study climate, I study their reasoning.
These two research thrusts came together when I noticed that almost all of the Web-based educational resources on climate change merely parrot the company line about dangerous human induced warming. There is very little on the scientific debate, which I see as one of the great scientific debates in history. So I have set out to fill this void. The debate is now so widespread that any science teacher who cannot demonstrate knowledge of it will quickly lose credibility. But the grand challenge is that scientific controversy is not typically taught in K-12, even though it is the heart of the scientific frontier. This is the fun part.
Previous comments on Huffington Post expose Wojick as an ideological conspiracy theorist, who seems to earnestly believe that the global scientific consensus on climate change is the “global warming scare,” a “catastrophe theory with an agenda,” a “political and ideological struggle,” and perhaps even “Eco-Marxism.” He makes the baseless claim that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an “advocacy organization,” rather than the neutral scientific body it actually is.
Wojick repeats some of the most absurd canards of climate deniers, claiming that “CO2 is not pollution, it is the global food supply,” that increased CO2 “might even be beneficial,” that there has only been warming “for one 20 year period,” and that the role of CO2 in global warming is “unknown.”
This is the ideology that the Heartland Institute hopes to bring to classrooms across America. As yet, none of the corporations supporting the think tank, including GM, Pfizer, and PepsiCo, have committed to ending their support for this anti-science group.
Doh!
DENIERGATE: GRIJALVA CALLS FOR INVESTIGATION OF DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR SCIENTIST ON HEARTLAND PAYROLL | Congress has begun investigating the Heartland Institute after details of its strategy of climate denial were revealed in leaked documents. In a letter to the chair and ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) has called for an investigation into the “conduct of Indur Goklany, the Assistant Director of Programs, Science and Technology Policy at the Department of the Interior.” As a budget document leaked by the Heartland Institute appears to reveal, the group intended to pay Goklany $1,000 a month to write for a Heartland-funded publication on climate science. Grijalva cites a letter from Greenpeace to DOI that notes potential conflicts with Department of Interior ethical guidelines, which warn employees not to take payment from outside organizations that seek to influence the federal government.
http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/02/22/430457/deniergate-grijalva-calls-for-investigation-of-department-of-interior-scientist-on-heartland-payroll/
“that was a priceless Steinway”, Not anymore! Sellers was fantastic.
Gene,
You are right about Dr. Strangelove. One of the classic comedys of all time. Way ahead of its time.
Gene,
Even though I’m younger, I’m going to have to agree about Sellers. He was a brilliant comic. From what I’ve read, he wasn’t such a great guy in real life, but it’s hard to argue with his work product. Did you know he was originally supposed to play four characters in “Dr. Strangelove” and that the movie got the green light predicated on Sellers taking multiple roles? In addition to playing Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake, President Merkin Muffley, and Dr. Strangelove, he was supposed to have played Maj. ‘King’ Kong. However, a leg injury just before shooting prevented Sellers from being able to climb in and out of the tiny bomber set, so the role went to Slim Pickens instead.
Elaine, you are not the only one that thinks that about Peter Sellers.
P.S. When you get to my age, you still think Peter Sellers is one of the funniest comedic actors who ever lived.