More Lies From The Heartland Institute

The other day I noted the dishonest attempt of the Heartland Institute to bamboozle folks into believing that there was a significant scientific disagreement over global warming and the causes thereof. This came about after desmogblog busted the liars for misrepresenting the work and opinions of some of the 500 scientists they claimed supported their distortions.

desmogblog has kept on the story as yet more scientists respond to being falsely cited by Heartland.

Prof. Kalnay, with dozens of her colleagues, is outraged that Heartland Senior Fellow Dennis T. Avery included their names as contributors to a climate-change denial paper without their permission and in direct contradiction to their scientific work.

"I think it is very offensive and wrong to include my name in this list of ‘coauthors’ of a paper with which I disagree profoundly without even checking with me first,” Prof. Kalnay said in an interview today.

“I am not a climate change skeptic. To the contrary, I believe that, in addition to the undeniable greenhouse warming, we also have to consider the effects of deforestation and urbanization, which will make the warming even worse.

“I am sure the good scientists that I personally know who are in that list, are in a similar situation, and their names have been used without permission, and their ideas about climate change distorted."

Prof. Kalnay is not a frequent or willing participant in the tawdry public relations war over climate change. She is a Distinguished Professor, a former Director of the Environmental Modeling Center for the National Weather Service and the lead author of the most cited paper in all geosciences

In fact scientists from around the world are condemning the shoddy behaviour and abysmal misuse of science as practiced by Heartland. Again, desmogblog has it covered with a collection of quotes from scientists requesting removal from the list. Some excerpts:

I ask you to please remove my name from the list of 500 supposed authors of this article. The article is, in my view, an example of very bad science as it is eclectic, and further twists evidence, ultimately citing published work in the opposite sense. The ethics of it all are also problematic, as the article is quite obviously construed to serve the interests of a narrow group. That is not what science should be about. - Jan Kramers

I am loath to give Heartland any publicity, but I am prepared to state for the record that I, personally, do not believe that my published work supports the idea that current greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are not the main driver behind the observed 20th century warming trend. - Matt McGlone

I have read that report and the list of conclusions reached and I find that I disagree most strongly with these conclusions.
Quite apart from my disagreement about the conclusions reached, however, it is QUITE UNACCEPTABLE to have one's name associated with such a report as a "co-author" without one's explicit prior agreement.
I ask, therefore, that my name be removed from that list FORTHWITH. - Prof. Brian Huntley

Please remove my name from the list of "coauthors" on your website. I do not agree with the conclusions attributed to my name, and in no sense did I "coauthor" anything on your website. - Jeff Severinghaus

My work in no way casts doubt on the reality of human-caused global warming. The true state of the science is that we know of no natural process or cycle that could explain the bulk of the current global warming and many associated changes. The recent IPCC report is clear on this issue. It is not appropriate for my name to be listed in support of the assertion being made by the Heartland Institute. - Jonathan T. Overpeck

Of course a group as shoddy and unethical as the Heartland Institute won't have just one fucking atrocity on the go at a time. Lawd no. They have petrodollars to spend. And petrodollars will buy a lot of bovine feces and a lot of envelopes to mail it out in. The Vancouver Sun reports that our good pals down at the Heartland Institute are trying to inflict their retarded agenda on Canadian kids.

An American think tank has sent out more than 11,000 brochures and DVDs to Canadian schools urging them to teach their students that scientists are exaggerating how human activity is the driving force behind global warming.
The Chicago-based group, the Heartland Institute, said its goal is to ensure that students are provided with a "balanced" education about "an important and controversial issue," but critics, including a leading climate scientist, described it as a campaign of misinformation.
The mail out, sent in February, included results from international surveys of climate scientists conducted in 1996 and 2003 along with a 10-minute DVD called Unstoppable Solar Cycles, The Real Story of Greenland.

Gosh, I wonder of the "surveys of climate scientists" are the same ones that generated the debunked, discredited and dishonest list of 500.

The Sierra Club of Canada said that the Heartland Institute's information was far from being balanced.
"It's alarming that an American think tank is distributing misinformation on the most important issue of our time in Canadian schools, to actually create an illusion that there is a scientific debate," said Emilie Moorhouse, a spokeswoman for the environmental group.

Well Heartland is a well funded herd of serial prevaricators and like mold, they want to propagate their damage, one dishonest spore at a time.

The Heartland Institute, which has received $791,000 in funding from Exxon-Mobil since 1998 according to a recent analysis by Greenpeace USA, also mailed out its package to 200 influential Canadian decision-makers, including Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.
Moorhouse from the Sierra Club suggested that this might explain why the government has adopted climate change policies that were criticized for being soft on the oil and gas industry.
"It looks like they're listening to the Heartland Institute and other oil-industry-sponsored think tanks and they're following their curriculum rather than listening to the vast majority of what the scientific community is saying around the world," she said.

Or it could just be that the Stephen Harper Party of God serves the same masters as the Heartland Institute and shares similar ethical standards.