Heartland Institute Reveals Its True Character

If you are at all familiar with the Heartland Institute you have probably formed a strong opinion of them and their character. But, there's nothing like examining their own actions to see just who they are. As they say, actions speak louder than words.

There's this report that when Heartland submitted its list of names for the proposed EPA red team/blue team debates, they included a man convicted of attempting to sodomize his own 11-year old daughter. While the attempted sodomy charge is the only one he was convicted of, he was arrested in 2006 on two counts of rape, four counts of sodomy and one count of attempted sodomy as a result of sex abuse accusations by his children dating back decades. The other charges were dropped. 

As they say, you can tell a lot about someone by the company they keep. And, Heartland keeps company with a man convicted of trying to sodomize his own underage daughter and was arrested on multiple charges of sexually assaulting his own children. Quite a resume.

But, it continues. Here's a partial list of some of the 'climate experts' Heartland is recommending to the EPA:

[Anthony]Watts was also on list the Heartland Institute gave to the EPA. Other names included Edwin Berry, the self-funded researcher who spews Islamophobic vitriol online and compares belief in climate change to Aztec human sacrifices; Alan Carlin, the so-called “whistleblower” who challenged the EPA’s finding that rising greenhouse gases warm the planet; and Joe Bastardi, a meteorologist who made repeated appearances on disgraced former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s show to yell about why global warming isn’t a problem.

          Source: Huffington Post

Notice that not a single person listed in that paragraph has any background as a climate scientist. I guess you can also tell a lot about someone by the company they don't keep. You can see the entire list of names they submitted here.

And, there is this list of strategy points from a Joseph Bast email:

ast listed assorted “thoughts” and “highlights” in the leaked email, including:

• “be briefing news reporters and news readers at Fox News.”
• “reach the President by tweeting on the issue.”
• “hold more congressional hearings.”
• “simplify the issue by focusing on one or only a few arguments and images.”
• “identify a few good spokespersons and focus on promoting them.”
• “stop chasing the other side’s latest argument and focus instead on the benefits of CO2.”
• “focus on the 'tuning scandal' that discredits the models.”
• “turn debate from referring to median temperatures to high temperatures, which show no trend.”
• “find independent funding for Roy Spencer, David Schnare, Willie Soon, Craig Idso, David Legates, etc.”
• “push Pruitt to start a proceeding for reconsideration of the Endangerment Finding… he won’t do it without pressure”
• “we need to be able to say 'EPA is reconsidering whether CO2 is a pollutant.'”
• “emphasize that we are pro-science and pro-environment… and the other side is not”
• “fundamentally challenge, reform, or replace the National Academy of Sciences, the source of much pseudoscience.”
• “conduct a new survey of scientists to refute the 97% consensus claims.”
• “sue a company for not increasing CO2 emissions, force a court to consider the evidence on CO2 benefits.”

                Source: DeSmogBlog

Really? They plan on suing a company because it didn't emit enough CO2? I wonder what they'll use for legal standing. Maybe they can claim there are too many healthy people using up resources and it's the responsibility of industry to kill off as many people as possible with its pollution. I also love the one about finding independent funding for the list of anti-science people. That is essentially an admission that they only place these individuals can get funding is Heartland, and Heartland is funding anti-science false research.

Also, notice the reference to Fox News. It's true, you can tell a lot about people by the company they keep. Except in this case, is it Heartland or Fox News that is getting dirty?

For fun, you can review this leaked 2012 fund-raising plan from Heartland. It's telling. In it, it talks about receiving funds from the Kochs - do I need to say more?

The facts were already in - Heartland Institute is one of the scuzziest organizations out there, as are the people associated with it. All this did was to illustrate it once again.

If you want to know more about how despicable this group is, you can read about it at these references:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/01/what-if-you-held-a-conference-and-no-real-scientists-came/

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/climate-cover-up-a-brief-review/

https://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-institute

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/15/leak-exposes-heartland-institute-climate