Guest Post by Joe Bast
In a December 28 post, blogger Greg Laden, a self-described “biological anthropologist and science communicator,” ranked The Heartland Institute’s efforts to expose global warming alarmism as one of the “top climate stories of 2012”. I suppose we should be flattered, but his error-filled explanation for including us in the list requires some corrections:
- Heartland isn’t a “climate denial ‘think’ tank.” Last time I checked, no Heartland spokesperson ever denied the existence of the climate, or even climate change.
- Heartland didn’t “implode” or “suffer major damage” in 2012. In fact, we increased receipts by about 15% from 2011, increased the number of donors nearly four-fold, more than doubled the number of policy advisors (to 237), and set records for press attention and online traffic for our sites. 2012 was a breakthrough year for us, thanks in no small part to the attention generated by our work on global warming/cooling.
- We have never tried to “prove that cigarette smoking was not bad for you.” We do argue that taxes on smokers are too high and second-hand smoke is not the public health threat that anti-smoking zealots claim.
- We were not “caught red handed trying to fund an effort explicitly (but secretly) designed to damage science education in public schools.” That description is based on a fake memo circulated by disgraced water scientist Peter Gleick. We announced the curriculum project in our members newsletter and explained there that our intent is to help de-politicize the issue. How is that a bad thing?
- We did run a billboard about global warming, but it did not “equat[e] people who thought the climate science on global warming is based on facts and is not a fraud with well-known serial killers.” The billboard simply pointed out that Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, still believes in global warming, and asked viewers if they do, too. We know why lefties went nuts over it – Kaczynski, after all, is one of their own – but it wasn’t inaccurate or offensive.
- We lost a few corporate donors who couldn’t stand the heat when liberal advocacy groups, using a donor list stolen by the aforementioned Peter Gleick, circulated online petitions demanding that they stop funding us. But as already mentioned, we gained many more donors than we lost and had an exceptionally good fundraising year.
- Laden ends by saying The Heartland Institute, “which never was really that big, is now no longer a factor in the climate change.” He’s right that we aren’t very big – about $6 million a year – but he’s wrong about the role we continue to play in the international debate. Our Eighth International Conference on Climate Change, held in Munich on November 31-December 1, 2012, was a huge success. We’ve got projects on climate already lined up for 2013 that make 2012 look like a dress rehearsal.
In short, Heartland played a major role in shaping the debate over global warming in 2012, and we expect to play an even larger role in 2013. Sometimes it takes a little controversy to break through media bias and public indifference. Heartland achieved this in 2012.
Joe Bast is the president of the Heartland Institute
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Note to get a window into the strange and hateful mind of Greg Laden, all you need to do is read his about page here and scroll down. Pity the soul that lives in Texas or West Virginia.
– Anthony
You forgot to mention, too, davidmhoffer, that such 4-terabyte hard drives can be purchased from multiple, highly reliable companies in the $300 to $400 range–so an impossible platform at an astonishingly low price to boot (no pun intended)!
trafamadore says: December 30, 2012 at 4:59 pm
[snip. Invalid email address. — mod.]
trafamadore says: December 30, 2012 at 6:52 pm
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seems like tramadore is having difficulty remembering which one he is
wrong finger…
Pokerguy, Roger Knights, davidmhoffer — I’m confident Joe Bast has heard your point of view expressed by several others besides yourselves. I’m also confident that he has heard expression of the opinion that the Ted Kaczynski poster was well done! Your argument against the billboard is not persuasive in the least to me. I say, well done!
[Snip. Invalid email address. — mod.]
Happy New Year, Heartland Institute!
And thanks for all the good work.
The Mayo Clinic lists tobacco smoking as a MAJOR RISK FACTOR for lung cancer with strong association. No link of causation has been found. Another MAJOR RISK FACTOR is radon gas from living in houses. No campaign of house demolition or enforced homelessness has been put in place. There are also hundreds of other risk factors. I think the whole issue is off topic here but that is up to Anthony.
The big Kock/ big oil/ fossil funding talk is equally tiresome. Any Feminist can tell you that all men are heavily funded by the big fossil patriarchy so that they can subjugate and enslave women. I get several million per month myself. Big deal.
sarc/off
I really enjoy it when a troll like Trafamadore comes on WUWT…it’s like dropping a grain of sand into a super saturated solution and watching the crystals forming in array around the seed.
Must be pretty depressing for T though, hope he/she/it is being well paid for their efforts.
Laden proves, yet again, that some people are educated beyond their capacity to understand.
That link to the “Earth First Journal” reads like an “Onion” parady. Are you sure it’s not a hoax”?
[snip . . OT . . mod]
Wasn’t Laden the one that defamed/libeled Roger TallBloke when the police took his computers away? As I remember it, he had to do some pretty fast backtracking.
[snip . . OT as you say, so why not post it into Tips & Notes? . . mod]
People who keep insisting things like “The disastrous billboard ad…” HUH? “…pretty much turned the table and vindicated Peter Gleick” – neither explain how the later happened nor why the former was disastrous.
The solution is utterly simple: “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen” of public policy debates!
In which case you either lack the intellectual honesty to be on these pages opining, or else the moral courage to stand up for conveying honest information to your opponents. And you are not a practicing, scientific skeptic – just a poser who pretends to be something else.
Balazs says:
December 30, 2012 at 4:46 pm
You do realize that Gleick is still by his own admission responsible for serious criminal acts and it goes without saying, an idiot and possibly a leader in his class of idiots. Greg Laden is a nobody who has wasted his 15 minutes of fame on a serial lie. He will never recover what ever integrity he may have possessed. The deniers of “The World Climate is OK” meme have fired their last best shot and it was a squib. They are being nutted by no less than the IPCC who is admitting pretty much everything they’ve said to date is rubbish.
In normally peaceful Australia we are seeing a surge in violent street crime, with innocent bystanders getting shot, glassed, king hit, killed. In many cases a group of a half dozen or so people suddely attacks a person for no discoverable reason and does great harm.
The Heartland Unabomber episode comes to mind when I hear of yet another senseless attack. My fairly simple reaction is that such people need to be publicised so that law makers and keepers do more to identify in advance, to capture and to punish such people.
I see no damage done by emphasis by billboard that evil people are evil and should be weeded out.
Political correctness has softened too far and there is ground to be recovered.
Balazs says:
December 30, 2012 at 4:46 pm
The disastrous billboard ad pretty much turned the table and vindicated Peter Gleick.
Balazs, that’s pretty funny! While the billboard ad was a bit over the top taste-wise, nothing, and I mean NOTHING will vindicate Peter Gleick, who let his emotions and his twisted sense of world-saving duty send him into a fit of misrepresentation and outright fabrication to shove his agenda. If he was “vindicated” in your mind, then clearly you think he did something that required vindication. One small problem….his cornball ‘science’ failed him.
Huxley? (see ‘about’ link)
Oh Brave New World, oh irony free zone.
Miranda:
O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in’t!
Prospero:
‘Tis new to thee.
…
Caliban:
Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
Why promote the obviously attention seeking Laden and give his blog link? The best thing to do with self promoting pompous ill-informed ignoramuses is to give them a wide berth. As for the Kaczynski billboard promotion – I too think this was not the best advised plan, it would obviously offend many people regardless of the actual message that was being made. Keep plugging away with the truth and proper science and the message will get there – eventually. There is no need for side-shows.
I think Heartland did make a mistake with regards to the billboard, but the mistake was to over-estimate the fortitude of their allies, who surrendered on their behalf almost instantly.
Which is, frankly, how the “other side” makes far too much of its progress.
I mean, this article does highlight about how hard it is to get one of *them* under the bus, fraud won’t even do it. On our side, impoliteness does it.
I don’t suggest that we move as far on that scale as they have, but maybe we’re also in the wrong place.
Really? There are people here who still think Heartland was wrong about the unabomber campaign? Death threats, advocacy to killing skeptics, re-education camps……. sure, in the PR world it didn’t play as well as people would have wanted, but the fact is there isn’t much difference between alarmists and Kaczynski . …… forced sterilizations in India to combat global warming….. for God’s sake!!!! they’ve burned houses down with people in it!!! They’ve forcibly removed people from their lands and killed the ones that didn’t go.
Thousands die every winter in Europe because their insistence for expensive energy and fuels. Their policies have been economically crippling to many places, all of this taking resources away, thwarting our ability to help people. How many more have perished needlessly because resources were withheld or spent on useless ventures like those obscene windmills? Does anyone honestly believe the increased cost of food because of the idiotic ethanol didn’t starve some people?
People, myself included, have been screaming this for years! Does anyone honestly believe these Malthusian monsters don’t knowingly allow this and even encourage this to happen? THIS IS THEIR ADVOCACY!!!
And somehow, in your minds Heartland lost the high ground? What sort of delusional batshit crazy reasoning is that? Heartland can’t lose moral high ground until they advocate and fund force sterilization programs which leave people dead. Heartland can’t lose moral high ground until they advocate and fund forced removal of people from their homes under threat of death. Heartland can’t lose moral high ground until they violate laws, both of governments and laws of decency which separate us from animals, as the alarmists have repeatedly done throughout this entire insane period of history.
I just clicked on the link to Greg Laden’s blog and endured a few minutes of looking at what can only be described as the most rotten, steaming crock of BS I’ve read in a very long time. It is absolutely disgusting tripe!
Heartland!
Please follow up and prosecute Gleick for his criminal deceit and sue him for damages for your lost revenue and the harm he did to some of your donors
curly says: December 30, 2012 at 6:30 pm
Also found a Greg Laden who’s a blogger (independent and for Nat Geo) and also a “Travel and Research Coordinator with Bushrock”, and an assistant professor at U Minnesota.
Is this the same Greg Laden? If it is, I’m glad that he and trafamadore reminded me that I still have time to make a tax-deductible contribution to Heartland for 2012.
Yes, it must be, see ‘about’ link but you’ll need a strong stomach.
Is everyone in the Laden family an enemy of the USA?