Heartland Exposed: Inside the Climate Denial Machine

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Re: Heartland Exposed: Inside the Climate Denial Machine

Postby Allegro » Tue Jul 24, 2012 2:02 am



It could be assumed that if the Koch brothers fund one National Review writer, for instance, Larry Kudlow who’s noted in this CounterPunch Report, Sep 12, 2011, the brothers might fund editors at National Review, too.

This time I’m guessing Koch brothers involvement through another loathsome comparison, because National Review quotes an OpenMarket.org article in which a blogger equates Michael Mann, the professional climate scientist with Jerry Sandusky, the convicted pedophile. I’m reminded of Heartland’s billboard gambit earlier this year.

Numerous highlights and links in the original.

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Deniers, disgust, and defamation
— Bad Astronomy | July 23rd, 2012 10:20 AM

    Whenever I post about the reality of climate change, I get the usual chorus of denialist outrage. This includes the odd ad hominem or two, like the sneering “What does an astronomer know about the climate?”, because apparently not having an advanced degree in science makes someone a better judge of the data.

    But the slings and arrows I get here are nothing, nothing, compared to what professional climate scientist Michael Mann gets. He is, after all, the researcher who first published the hockey stick diagram which shows beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth has warmed up. To the deniers, he is Enemy Number 1. They have attacked his diagram and his research many times, always coming up short. The data and methods are solid, and it’s clear the Earth really is warming up.

    So what’s a denier to do when all the evidence is against them? They attack Dr. Mann himself, of course.

    These onslaughts have been documented endlessly, and they include Congressional shenanigans, witch hunts by the Virginia Attorney General, and even death threats.

    All that is, sadly, to be expected. But now, ramping up the rhetoric to full-on disgusting, comes The National Review. A far-right paper (to say the least), they are not exactly supportive of the reality of global warming. But a few days ago they published a blog article by Mark Steyn that calls Mann a scientific fraud. This may be expected from deniers, but doesn’t change the fact that when you say that the research done by a scientist is deliberately fraudulent, you are stepping into defamation territory.

    Needless to say, Mann isn’t sitting back and taking this. He contacted his lawyer, who has sent a letter to The National Review saying they knowingly defamed him by accusing him of scientific fraud, and demanding an apology and that the defamatory article be taken down. Mann put up a copy of this letter on his Facebook page. As he points out, Mann has been cleared of all wrongdoing multiple times by multiple independent agencies (like here, and here, and here, and here, and of course here), despite the efforts of the global warming deniers to do whatever they can to take him down. I certainly hope The National Review complies, and issues an apology.

    Oh, but we’re not done just yet. Amazingly, it gets worse.

    The National Review article quotes another article, written by Rand Simberg of OpenMarket.org. I hope you’re sitting down, and haven’t eaten anything recently, because in that article, Simberg compares Dr. Mann to Jerry Sandusky. Seriously, this guy compares a climate scientist who is promoting the reality and danger of global warming to a convicted child molester.

    Yeah.

    In his awful National Review piece, Steyn quotes this truly disgusting thing and then with faint damning says, “Not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr Simberg does, but he has a point.”

    Wow. Stay classy, Mr. Steyn.

    I think Mann is correct to have his lawyer contact The National Review, since the defamatory nature of the article and the attack on his scientific credibility is clear. But I think the slimy analogy is what makes me angrier. Sadder, too. As we’ve seen, this is what discourse has become in politicized science. Ironically, too, deniers accuse scientists (including me) of politicizing science, but neither I nor any scientist has politicized it. The attacks on global warming science originated clearly and obviously from the far right, and it was those attacks that politicized the science. What scientists have done since then is a reaction to those partisan and political attacks. As usual, deniers accuse scientists of precisely the sort of tactics they themselves are using. It’s 1984 come alive.

    For more on this I recommend reading the excellent Climate Crocks site, as well as the American Geophysical Union blog. [NOTE: Mann has also written about these extensive attacks on him, his research, and his character in his book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.] And if you are a scientist, pay attention. It doesn’t matter if you are a climatologist, a biologist, or an astronomer. In this political climate, all of science is vulnerable to ideological attack when reality disagrees with political beliefs.

    It’s disgusting, and it’s dangerous, but it’s also the new political reality. We must be ever vigilant against such attacks, because that is the true price of defending reality.
Art will be the last bastion when all else fades away.
~ Timothy White (b 1952), American rock music journalist
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Re: Heartland Exposed: Inside the Climate Denial Machine

Postby Allegro » Thu Aug 09, 2012 1:26 am



After reading the following article, I found other articles that included a link between DCI Group, a public relations and lobbying outfit, and Koch brothers, who funnel through DCI millions of dollars into front groups, such as ExxonMobil, Center to Protect Patients’ Rights, American Future Fund. Let’s not forget the source possibilities of Romney’s global warming proclamations.
Highlights mine.

on August 8, 2012, GreenPeace wrote:Romney Spokesperson Andrea Saul Linked to Climate Science Smear Campaign
Greenpeace releases briefing exposing details of Saul’s connections to DCI Group, ExxonMobil

    WASHINGTON - August 8 - Today, Greenpeace released a briefing detailing Romney campaign operative and Press Secretary Andrea Saul’s involvement with DCI Group, a firm that was on contract to ExxonMobil at the height of the oil company’s campaign to attack global warming science and climate change policy.

    “It’s clear that Saul was part of campaigns that spread anti-science misinformation that has had far-reaching effects on public understanding of climate change. Voters deserve to know if Saul’s views on climate and science are shaping Romney’s policies,” said Greenpeace Research Director Kert Davies.

    Between 2004 and 2007, Saul helped orchestrate a major multifaceted campaign to undermine climate science, including a campaign to undermine Senator McCain’s climate change legislation. Some of Saul’s work included:

    • Advanced the opinions of contrarian scientists and corporate-funded pundits on the Exxon-funded Tech Central Station, a purported news web site;
    • Sought to promote contrarian voices into the debate over hurricanes and climate change in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina;
    • Promoted the views of a scientist who had no training in climate change to undermine a study on climate change effects on the Antarctic ice sheet;
    • Led a public relations campaign to undermine scientific consensus on the science of climate change;
    • And pushed out press releases for a front group linked to lobbyist Grover Norquist designed to undermine pending climate change legislation.

    Climate scientist Michael Mann was a target of DCI smear campaigns during this period and writes about the events in his new book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.

    Dr. Mann said, “Andrea Saul and the others at DCI Group who carried out this attack on climate scientists and their work helped to delay any serious actions to combat climate change and its impacts, at great cost to society.”

    DCI Group is a top lobbying and public relations firm that has represented a range of clients including the Burmese junta and has orchestrated front group campaigns for Microsoft, Verizon and Exxon-Mobil. Two of the DCI Group founders, Tim Hyde and Thomas J. Synhorst, began their careers with the tobacco industry where they worked to undermine the science on the dangers of smoking. Mr. Synhorst oversaw field operations with the “smokers rights” groups, a phony movement designed to shift the discussion away from the dangers of smoking to the protection of smoking rights.

    Andrea Saul has been Romney’s press secretary since 2011, and is frequently the public face and voice of the campaign, including articulating Romney’s contradictory positions on climate change.

These excerpts link DCI to Koch.
excerpts from The Right Wing Smear Machine just got a little less Opaque, May 19, 2012, Daily Kos wrote:Charles and David Koch, the billionaire owners of of Koch Industries, are known as big spenders when it comes to lobbying and influencing public policy. Now, a new document filed with the IRS reveals how the Koch political machine funneled over $54.5 million in previously undisclosed funds to a litany of front groups designed to smear Democrats.
[...]

Yesterday afternoon, OpenSecrets.org bloggers Viveca Novak and Robert Maguire were the first to flag a tax form filed by an obscure Arizona-based foundation called the Center to Protect Patients’ Rights [...] The Center acted as a pass-through to distribute $44,599,946 in grants in 2010, and $10,783,500 the year before. Novak and Maguire also reported that the Center’s tax forms were prepared by at least one employee of the DCI Group, a lobbying business.[...]
Art will be the last bastion when all else fades away.
~ Timothy White (b 1952), American rock music journalist
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Re: Heartland Exposed: Inside the Climate Denial Machine

Postby wintler2 » Sat Nov 17, 2012 6:30 pm

Naomi Klein re US Senator Inhofe ..
..last year I covered the Heartland Conference, which is the annual confab for all the climate deniers. And James Inhofe was supposed to be the keynote speaker. And the first morning of the conference, there was lots of buzz. He’s the rock star among the climate deniers. Inhofe is coming, he's opening up this conference, right? And the first morning the main conference organizer stands up at breakfast and lets loose the bad news that James Inhofe has called in sick and he can't make it.

And it turns out that he had gone swimming in a lake filled with blue-green algae, which is actually a climate-related issue. When lakes get too warm, this blue-green algae spreads. And he had gone swimming. And he had gotten sick from the blue-green algae. So he actually arguably had a climate-related illness and couldn't come to the climate change [denial] conference. But even though he was sick, he wrote a letter from his sickbed just telling them what a great job he was doing. So the powers of denial are amazingly strong..
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Re: Heartland Exposed: Inside the Climate Denial Machine

Postby Allegro » Sat Nov 17, 2012 9:45 pm

wintler2 wrote:Naomi Klein re US Senator Inhofe ..
..last year I covered the Heartland Conference, which is the annual confab for all the climate deniers. And James Inhofe was supposed to be the keynote speaker.…
Remembering James Inhofe, a climate denier? As a member of The Family? With The Family’s ties to Invisible Children? With The Family’s ties to Uganda? Yep, denying climate change is only one of many conversations spoken by Pentecostals, Fundamentalists, Dominionists or Reconstructionists, and blends thereof, to change other people’s minds “in the name and power of Jesus Christ.”

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