From JunkScience.com LATimes cites ‘Mein Kampf’ to attack Heartland
The Los Angeles Times invokes der Führer to attack Heartland.
The Los Angeles Times editorializes:
Leaked documents from the Heartland Institute in Chicago, one of many nonprofits that spread disinformation about climate science in hopes of stalling government action to combat global warming, reveal that the organization is working on a curriculum for public schools that casts doubt on the work of climatologists worldwide. Heartland officials say one of the documents was a fake, but the curriculum plans were reportedly discussed in more than one. According to the New York Times, the curriculum would claim, among other things, that “whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy.”
That is a lie so big that, to quote from “Mein Kampf,” it would be hard for most people to believe that anyone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”…
Here’s the story link:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-climate-20120220,0,3564279.story
Now is the time for all good men (and women) to cancel their subscriptions and fire off scathing letters to the editor about this ugly and uncalled for comparision. Most textbooks are written by private companies, and I can tell you that as a former school board member they don’t give you a lot of options since the state now issues “approved” textbook lists that you are only allowed to choose from. Local teachers and school boards can easily reject any materials they don’t want. Approving materials they do want is an uphill battle.
Here’s the feedback page:
http://www.latimes.com/about/mediagroup/la-mediagroup-contactus,0,7698150.htmlstory
h/t to Steve Milloy
This is the same newspaper that obtained and then refused to release the video of Obama attending and speaking at the farewell dinner for Rashid Khalidi.
They have zero journalistic integrity.
Compare and contrast Heartland’s rather limited influence and finances to those described in this Daily Caller story this morning:
http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/20/campaign-against-canadian-keystone-xl-pipeline-driven-by-us-foundation-millions/
To compare in any way Hitler and National Socialism to Heartland Institute simply beggars belief. If that is not libel I don’t know what is.
Cancel our subscriptions???
Since when are WUWT readers such idiots as to get their news from the L.A. “Grimes” (as L. Ron Hubbard called them in “Battlefield Earth) or similar newsrags?
We don’t have subscriptions to cancel!
@ur momisugly Urederra:
“Godwin’s law” might exist in the imagination of the people living in the fantasy world of computer games (such as Wikipedia editors) but not in real life. Get over it.
This article claims that Mann’s hockey stick has been “repeatedly validated” and backs this with a reference to a recent Gardian publication of an interview with Michael Mann! Mann on Mann; must be gospel!!
spread disinformation……
I supposed just stating that the science is not settled….would fall into that category
Sad truth is…as less and less people believe…..it will leave only the true nut jobs
From what I posted on their website:
I am a native of California and currently live in South Carolina where I am employed as an Environmental Science educator in the public school system. I also have 23 years of experience in environmental consulting.
Without getting into the science that was mentioned in this article, the research put into writing it seems minimal and merely a parroting of alarmist ideology that was used in the faked document. The “Mein Kampf” reference is disturbing and uncalled for.
The curriculum being developed is very different from the language you used. It merely strives to ensure that both sides are presented. If you are going to get upset about what the Heartland Institute is developing, then you should divert your energies to what already exists in our textbooks. From our textbook (Environmental Science published by Holt Rinehart & Winston) and used nationwide:
“However, not all scientists agree that the observed global warming is due to greenhouse gases. Some scientists believe that the warming is part of natural climatic variability. They point out that widespread fluctuations in temperature have occurred throughout geologic time.”
And, from the College Board AP Environmental Science Workshop Materials:
“In contrast, global warming is a much more controversial and speculative phenomenon that possibly could result from increasing atmospheric concentrations of certain radiatively active trace gases. Moreover, some of the dire environmental consequencesof global warming—such as rising ocean levels, coastal flooding, ecosystem shifts, crop failures, increased severe weather, floods, and droughts—are even more uncertain and depend on the accuracy of complex computer models to predict future weather and climate. Whereas implications of the greenhouse effect can be determined directly from fundamental scientific principles, environmental scenarios predicted for global warming are subject to the limitations of stochastic models which, as critics point out, cannot be relied upon to predict the weather a week in advance, let alone several decades in the future. This is not to say that the predictions of such models are incorrect, only that one should recognize that the conclusions carry with them much more scientific uncertainty than those of global warming itself. Understanding this difference in predictability is of interest to everyone but especially important for the environmental science student.”
Joe Ryan says:
February 20, 2012 at 8:40 am
What an incredibly bizarre quote. That Hitler quote was issued to support their claim, not impugn yours. So the LA Times likened themselves to Hitler.
If memory serves, & I have not actually read Mine Kamf, that great philanthorpist, Adolf Hitler, said “The mass of the people are more likely to believe a big lie rather than a small one!” Primarily ths was because of Hilter’s contempt for the intelligence of Mr & Mrs Average in Germany. Not particularly flattering either way! Whatever way you look at it, they’ve stepped in the brown smelly stuff & have nowhere to wipe it off! Making comparisons such as this is the lowest of the low.
So they want kids to be taught that there are no views other than the infamously ‘settled science’?
I’d suggest the flag of the New EcoFriendly Sustainable World Order should be 4 black hockeysticks pointing outwards from a common centre to the points of the compass and curving the same way, within a white circle within a red background.
But that would be stooping to their level, and there goes Godwin again….
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and even heard great Argument
About it and About; but evermore
came out by the same Door as in I went.
(The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam)
I include the quote above because, in a world where everything is being recorded, 50 years from now these people will look intensely stupid.
I’m a little rusty with the Mein Kampf quotes and don’t have a copy handy. Could someone please enlighten me as to the context of the quote? I assume Hitler wrote it and to quote Hitler in a sentence containing “truth” and “infamously” seems…well…intensely stupid.
A physicist says:
The LA Times and the Heartland Institute alike have a duty to “Be First with the Truth“.
Nonsense. According to the premise upon which your screwy attempt at distraction is based, HI has no such duty. They are an advocacy organization, and are thus must closely analagous to lawyers, whom you declare have no such duty.
In your screwy scenario, that leaves only the LA Times that has a duty to “Be First with the Truth“. Given that their OpEd above is rife with half truths, misleading statements and outright lies, if you truly gave a crap about “Be First with the Truth”, you would be beating them into submission with that principle. Instead you ignore them completely, and attack HI – currently the victim of scurrilous lies.
You thus establish that you do not find yourself to have any duty to “Be First with the Truth“, and with it your irrelevance to discussions of that (or any other) moral principle.
I wish people would calm down. In the future, this editorial will be used again and again against the LA Times for its extraordinary hubris in promoting AGW.
The hyperbole only makes the LA Times look hysterical and ridiculous. Quoting “Mein Kampf”? Future generations will yuck this up.
I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that for the LA Times to quote a document that Heartland has already claimed to be fake would put the LA Times outside of First Amendment protection unless the LA Times can prove the key document to be true.
Any takers?
I just sent this to the editor:
It is widely known that the articles you cite from the Heartland Institute, particularly the ones related to science education were fraudulently created by a third party.
It is disturbing that the faked documents, were known to be faked within 24 hours of them being disseminated on the internet, yet you still referenced them. Furthermore, the Heartland institute itself made a press release that the document in question was faked.
Why is a news service (you) knowingly reproducing libelous content based on faked documents.
It seems you got your journalist standards from Mary Mapes and Dan Rather.
I suppose if you can’t find news… you can always make some up.
The AAAS needed to do a panel on how to “influence public perceptions and debate when the science supporting a position is not enough to carry the argument” because the science is so strong that there is no “scientific” controversy?
Shark-jumping contest in warmist quarters.
Schitzree says:
February 20, 2012 at 9:14 am
OH, I see what they did there. It’s a Reverse Godwin. If the first person to accuse their opponent of being a Nazi looses the argument, Then the first to accuse THEMSELVES of being Nazis (by quoting ‘Mein Kampf’, for instance) makes their opponent loose.
Beware of lose cannons (just as meaningless as what you have just written!)
Frankly unbelievable.
The vicious tone and vitriolic content of that editorial would have fit perfectly in “Der Sturmer” or the “Volkischer Beobachter,” yet they have the nerve to compare those of us with scientific reservations about AGW with the Nazis?
Mann’s work repeatedly confirmed? Where do you start with people who are capable of outright denial of reality?
Shame on the Los Angeles Times for allowing such garbage into print. Shame.
Latitude says:
February 20, 2012 at 9:24 am
spread disinformation……
I supposed just stating that the science is not settled….would fall into that category
Sad truth is…as less and less people believe…..it will leave only the true nut jobs
Are you saying that stating “the science is not settled” is spreading disinformation?
Like every bully, they’re not used to people fighting back. It’s going to get a lot uglier but if the HI press on steadfastly, they’ll humble a lot of arrogant jackasses as well bagging enough dosh to keep them going for a decade or so.
Thr alarmists simply don’t know when to stop digging.
Pointman
Not really surprised at all. After all we are “deniers” as well
Well what can one say its from California. The newspaper is to lazy to check out some of the facts. If the earth was warming they would check w3ith the US navy about the Arctic and Antarctic ice. They would check the Satellite data and balloon data regarding temps over the last 10 -12 years. But this would go against the “Media Principal” of checking to make sure the facts are correct.
Yet another blatant own goal from the Warmist camp. These guys don’t need any help from sceptics to lose the battle; we only need sit by and watch them self destruct. Popcorn, anyone?
Well, the duty to be “Be First with the Truth” — or the lack of that same duty — is the heart of the debate, eh?
Here opinions may reasonably differ, and I have posted elsewhere on WUWT on how our family has come to conceive that duty.
The Heartland Institute has followed a different path, to an opposite conclusion … and I am grateful to America’s founders that the Heartland Institute’s lawyers have zero power over my opinions, or my free expression of them.