My response to Markey’s nosy letter would have been far less wordy. Two words would probably have been sufficient. The Heartland media release from today is below.
The Heartland Institute Responds to Rep. Markey Letter on ‘Fakegate’
MARCH 15, 2012 – The Heartland Institute today sent a letter to Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), responding to Markey’s February 24 request for confirmation of the authenticity of stolen and forged documents distributed by Pacific Institute President Peter Gleick.
The scandal is known as “Fakegate” because one of the documents, supposedly describing Heartland’s “climate strategy,” was not written by anyone associated with The Heartland Institute and does not reflect Heartland’s work on environmental policy. Gleick has claimed he received the memo “in the mail” from an anonymous source.
In his reply to Rep. Markey, Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast writes, “Your letter repeats several false statements that appeared in the fake memo and have been circulated widely in the press. We thank you for this opportunity to set the record straight about our position on climate change.”
For more information on this scandal, visit Fakegate.org and Heartland.org. Media questions and requests for interviews may be directed to Tammy Nash at tnash@heartland.org and 312/377-4000 or Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org.
The Heartland Institute is a 28-year-old national nonprofit organization with offices in Chicago, Illinois and Washington, DC. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site or call 312/377-4000.
March 15, 2012
Hon. Edward J. Markey
Ranking Democratic Member
U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Natural Resources
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Rep. Markey:
In reply to the three questions posed in your letter to me of February 24, 2012:
(A) Documents 1-7 in the list you provided appear to be copies of confidential documents produced by The Heartland Institute and stolen by the Pacific Institute’s Peter Gleick. The eighth document in your list, titled “2012 Heartland Climate Strategy,” is not an authentic Heartland document or draft document. Peter Gleick claimed to have received this memo from an anonymous source, then falsely represented it as having come from The Heartland Institute.
(B) The inaccuracies of the eighth document are documented in the attached memo, titled “ An Analysis of the Forged ‘Heartland Climate Strategy’ Memo,” which was posted on The Heartland Institute’s Web site on February 27. I am not aware of any “different authentic” documents that match your description.
(C) Documents 1-7 in your list have not been revised by Heartland staff since they were stolen by Peter Gleick. Document 8, the fake memo, is not an authentic Heartland document or draft document, therefore I do not know whether or not it has been changed. I suggest you ask the Pacific Institute if they know.
Your letter repeats several false statements that appeared in the fake memo and have been circulated widely in the press. We thank you for this opportunity to set the record straight about our position on climate change.
The stolen documents show The Heartland Institute addresses a wide range of topics, including school reform, health care policy, tax and budget issues, telecommunications, and insurance. Nearly all the funds we receive from our corporate donors are earmarked for research and education on those subjects, and not climate change.
The fake memo erroneously claimed that we received $200,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation to support our work on climate policy. In fact, that foundation gave only $25,000 – less than 1/2 of 1 percent of our budget – and the gift was earmarked for health care reform. The Charles Koch Foundation has publicly stated the correct amount and the project for which it was earmarked.
Similarly, the fake memo erroneously states that Heartland intends to fund its climate policy work “especially from corporations whose interests are threatened by climate policies.” In fact, Heartland gets very little funding from fossil fuel companies for its climate policy activities and does not intend to focus its fund raising efforts on fossil fuel companies.
The fake memo also states that Heartland’s K-12 education project aims at “dissuading teachers from teaching science.” This is absolutely untrue. Our goal is for teachers to teach more science, not less. Our K-12 education project is accurately described in one of the Heartland documents (No. 2 on your list) as follows:
[begin excerpt]
H.Global Warming Curriculum for K-12 Schools
Many people lament the absence of educational material suitable for K-12 students on global warming that isn’t alarmist or overtly political. Heartland has tried to make material available to teachers, but has had only limited success. Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective. Moreover, material for classroom use must be carefully written to meet curriculum guidelines, and the amount of time teachers have for supplemental material is steadily shrinking due to the spread of standardized tests in K-12 education.
Dr. David Wojick has presented Heartland a proposal to produce a global warming curriculum for K-12 schools that appears to have great potential for success. Dr. Wojick is a consultant with the Office of Scientific and Technical Information at the U.S. Department of Energy in the area of information and communication science. He has a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science and mathematical logic from the University of Pittsburgh and a B.S. in civil engineering from Carnegie Tech. He has been on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon and the staffs of the U.S. Office of Naval Research and the Naval Research Lab.
Dr. Wojick has conducted extensive research on environmental and science education for the Department of Energy. In the course of this research, he has identified what subjects and concepts teachers must teach, and in what order (year by year), in order to harmonize with national test requirements. He has contacts at virtually all the national organizations involved in producing, certifying, and promoting science curricula.
Dr. Wojick proposes to begin work on “modules” for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy”), climate models (“models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial”), and air pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”).
Wojick would produce modules for Grades 7-9 on environmental impact (“environmental impact is often difficult to determine. For example there is a major controversy over whether or not humans are changing the weather”), for Grade 6 on water resources and weather systems, and so on.
[end excerpt]
As this description makes clear, we seek to improve rather than undermine the teaching of science in K-12 schools. Dr. Wojick is highly qualified to conduct this project. The fact that this project is not a secret or in any way covert is shown by the fact that it is described in our latest membership newsletter, which is posted prominently on our Web site.
Is an effort to create a curriculum that “isn’t alarmist or overtly political” the same thing as “denialism” or being “anti-climate”? I hope the answer is obvious to you. The magnitude of a human effect on climate is not settled science. Scientists who point this out are not “deniers,” they are in the mainstream of the scientific community.
The fake memo further states that Heartland thinks “it is important to keep opposing voices out” of publications such as Forbes.com. Once again, the truth is just the opposite. Heartland spokespersons debate other experts at fora all across the country and Heartland invites persons who disagree with it to speak at its own events.
Finally, your repeated claim that the documents were “leaked” is incorrect. As noted above, Peter Gleick has admitted to obtaining documents 1-7 under false pretenses. No one at Heartland “leaked” these documents to the press. We continue to ask that the stolen documents, along with the forged document and commentary based on it, be removed from Web sites and that retractions be issued.
In conclusion, we appreciate your interest in our work and the opportunity to clarify our programs and positions.
Sincerely,
Joseph L. Bast
President
A good opportunity for Heartland to ‘speak truth to power’! I should say they did well to take this opportunity!
p.s. I am sure you would have done the same, Anthony: your courteousness and reasonable attitude in the face of provocation are well known!
Personally, I’m glad the two-word approach, however tempting, was cast aside. With all the gutter and potty-mouth AdHom issuing from the AGW side, we need always to be recognizant of the self-immolation that goes hand in hand with all the nastiness. Can the shrill, folks. Let Mann and Markey, Hansen & the Gristoids, all of them, let them shoot themselves in the foot.
Gail Combs says:
March 15, 2012 at 3:41 pm
Mr. Bast ever so politely hand Markey his head after unwedging it for him. Too bad Markey will not appreciate it.
Several thumbs up for Mr. Bast.
_________________
I just hope he washed his hands, thoroughly, after handling said head.
Anthony, would those two words begin with BS, as in bottom sediment in a tank of sh@T?
Jenn Oates says:
March 15, 2012 at 3:25 pm
I’m having a lot of fun imagining exactly what those two words might be. 🙂
———————————-
An activity involving sex and travel
I’ll say it again…..because they keep proving that it’s true
As less and less people believe in global warming…..we will be left with the lowest common denominator
I wonder if Mr. Markey will now send tough guy Ben Santer to “beat the crap” out of Mr. Bast.
I look forward to the day when the all the clowns — Hansen, Mann, Trenberth, Santer, Jones, Karl, Schmidt and now Gleick are brought to justice.
This is all very interesting to those of us that are following but I fear that the story is already over and the alarmists have moved on without feeling the slightest dent in their credibility.
I can’t speak for Heartland’s intentions down the road ( despite asking twice ) but for me the battle is lost because it would appear that Peter Gleick has not had an official complaint of criminal activity laid against him with an official body. If he had you would have expected him to at the very least have been helping a police or federal department with their enquiries.
HI may feel that suing Gleick further down the line might gain them something ( though I expect by then any personal funds will be well squirrelled away behind the Pacific Institute’s doors. ) but for me without an arrest and quick action, the horse has already bolted.
As I said in a previous post I wanted to help with the legal fund if I could get some assurances that Gleick would be pursued to the full extent of the law. I could not get those assurances and for me, suing him civilly a couple of years down the line will do nothing to expose the lies of the alarmist camp and at worst just ruin Gleick academically. ( though that’s also unlikely )
btw. I’m having issues posting with the email I have always used here.
Now I am told ‘that email is associated with a wordpress account, please log in to use it )
I do have a wordpress account that i’ve never used so I eventually managed to track down and reset my password. I logged in ( another traumatic event not entirely obvious where to do that ) and when I try to post the comment it does nothing.
I’ve never had this issue before using my gmail address and have been forced to use an email address I use for more personal communication.
Alas Markey has as much sense as the dead fish served in his family seasonal fish restaurant.
Joe, a binder well played.
2 words: Fake off!
What is going to cause Heartlend headaches are the comments in their budget proposal about people who were fired and let go
“was retained in 2011 to help identify major potential donors. His efforts didn’t produce any receipts, so his agreement ended at the end of October, he was unpaid in November, we then agreed to a two-month agreement”
was reduced to part-time and then volunteer status as fundraising for the Center failed to reach expectations. He will be restored to part-time or full-time status only if funds are raised. He retains his title.
was let go in late 2011 due to chronic truancy.
Whatever
Geoff says:
March 15, 2012 at 3:22 pm
He will probably not even read it.
_______________
You are correct. Members of congress have a staff for all matters mundane. Markey is just the public face collecting a paycheck. Petty little tyrant antics are a prerogative of his position.
The ol’ boy seems to be piling up a record of signing off on dubious ill-informed documents. He should take care of that; it can have serious consequences!
Yeah, I was trying to determine if the second word was “you” or “off”.
This is a good response, and pretty much says what I’ve said: not LESS science, and that particular line immediately showed the document was fake. Only an alarmist believes that skeptics are “anti-science”. As we here know, it is the alarmists who are destroying the ideals and reputation of Science.
Star Trek, the old series, is more Science oriented than the cAGW alarmists could ever aspire to be.
Markey Mark and the Flunky Bunch
how impressive. by all means stop whatever good you might be able to accomplish in order to write reasonable letters to the unreasonable. futility has such a future.
so glad you’ve got funding for explaining yourselves to those who understand how they pull your strings and you jump – and while you do so, you are harmless and impotent in any effort against them.
call me when you’ve got some stuff from discovery proceedings, i.e., when you start pulling your own strings and stop being a puppet of a markey. how impressive
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the BLOOD of PATRIOTS, and TYRANTS.”
Thomas Jefferson
Great…So Heartland is not ““dissuading teachers from teaching science.” They are instead just promoting a curriculum put together by David Wojick that includes such gems as the statement that “Natural emissions [of CO2] are 20 times higher than human emissions”.
And, the Discovery Institute is not trying to dissuade teachers from teaching science either. They just want to explain how there is controversy regarding the origin of species and so on and so forth.
I think that hardly anybody in the scientific community will be convinced that teaching Wojick’s curriculum is significantly different from “dissuading teachers from teaching science”. In fact, it was a bit of an understatement in that it should have said “Persuading teachers to teach nonsense.”
Should it be “You fake” oor “Fake you.”
Zootcadillac I wouldn’t worry the legal system moves amazingly slow. This means round two will be anywhere from 2 – 9 months after the first action. This will be followed by additional rounds etc.
While I may not be entirely agreed with zootcadillac about the reasons, I am strongly of the belief that Gleick needs to face legal consequences for his actions. I realize that it’s not entirely in Heartland’s control if a criminal case is brought, but whether a civil case is brought is. He (and NCSE and Pacific Insitute if applicable) needs to be put on notice to preserve evidence in his/their possession, as soon as possible.
From my point of view, Gleick needs to be punished for his bad actions.
Looking at it from Heartland’s point of view, I would say that they need to protect their reputation.
At the moment however, neither of these things seem to be happening, and instead laudatory articles about Gleick, and articles stemming from the fake memo, seem to be spreading at an ever increasing rate.
The discussion on the blogs, while an amusing diversion, is becoming a dead-end – piling on more evidence of Gleick’s fault is preaching to the choir.
Mr Bast has done the correct and very gentlemanly thing. A great pity that Markey is probably not bright enough to smell the excrement that
foot[he] put his foot in with his silly demand of Mr Bast.Like many politicians anywhere in the world, but not all, Markey seems to open his mouth only to change feet.
I am embarrassed to admit that I live in the district that the execrable Ed Malarkey represents. This is but the latest in a long series of egregious nonsense promulgated by this miscreant, who has held onto his safe congressional seat for more than two decades now. Would that we could find a worthy opponent—even a Democrat with half a brain would be an improvement!
/Mr Lynn
Sorry mods – second line should read ‘put his foot in’
A touch too much sun at mid day!
[Fixed. But don’t make it an expectation… -ModE]