The Heartland Institute Responds to U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse Demand for Information on Its Climate Work and Influence. They write on their website:
Democratic Senator from Rhode Island demands all correspondence from Heartland with Trump administration concerning recission of the Endangerment Finding by EPA.
Heartland President James Taylor responds by demanding Sheldon Whitehouse acknowledge energy and climate positions he has promoted that benefit his many corporate political donors.
Heartland also demands to know of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: “Have you ever chosen to be a long-term member of any social club that was NOT Whites Only?”
Sen. Whitehouse in 2023 led the opposition to an amendment that would have denounced a statement calling Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas a “house slave” on the House Senate Judiciary Committee.
SCHAUMBURG, IL (September 18, 2015) — The Heartland Institute received a letter on September 16, 2025 from U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). He wrote Heartland “to better understand [The Heartland Institute’s] role in the proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rescission of the 2009 endangerment finding.” Sen. Whitehouse is not a stranger to Heartland with these kinds of letters from Democratic members of Congress.
The Heartland Institute is known globally as the leading think tank pushing back on climate alarmism, has hosted 15 International Conferences on Climate Change, and has presented The Climate Realism Show on YouTube, Rumble, Facebook, and X for many years.
Read the letter from Whitehouse here.
Sen. Whitehouse’s party is in the minority, so he has so subpoena power. Heartland Institute President James Taylor pointed that out in his reply to the senator.
“I am not surprised to receive such a letter from you, though I am surprised that it took you so long to send one. Your track record is to verbally flex about and threaten The Heartland Institute when you are in the minority party and have no power to back up your bullying tactics. Then, when your party is in the majority and you have the authority to schedule hearings, issue subpoenas, etc., you become quiet as a church mouse.”
Sen. Whitehouse has featured The Heartland Institute in many of his speeches to an empty chamber on the Senate Floor. (Here is one, in which Sen. Whitehouse lied about Heartland’s funding and work on smoker’s rights and Environment & Climate News with the protection from slander on the public’s Senate floor. And here is one of Heartland’s reactions.)
Taylor said he will happily testify in the Senate before Sen. Whitehouse whenever he is called by him to do so.
“Even though you have no power to back up your public chest-pounding, I will graciously look favorably upon answering all your silly questions and provide all the information you desire if you first truthfully answer my questions for you.”
Taylor’s questions to purported climate expert Whitehouse include the following, with many citing reports from the from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):
Were temperatures warmer or colder than today when human civilization first arose 6,000 years ago?
- Are you familiar with the objective data showing a substantial overall decline in severe weather events and resulting human deaths as our planet modestly warms?
- Were temperatures warmer or colder than today as civilization and human health and welfare flourished during the Medieval Warm Period 1,000 years ago?
- Were temperatures warmer or colder than today during the extreme weather events, plagues, famines, and human catastrophe of the Dark Ages 500 years ago?
- Are you familiar with Affordable, Reliable, and Clean: An Objective Scorecard to Assess Competing Energy Sources, documenting how wind and solar power are uniquely destructive to land conservation, animal species, clean water, clean soil, and the overall environment?
- Are you familiar with the human misery and environmental devastation caused by the mining and refining of rare earth minerals and other necessary materials for wind and solar equipment?
In light of the cheap shots and lies Whitehouse has told about The Heartland Institute, Taylor also asked these questions in his official response sent to his office:
- How have the energy and climate positions you have promoted benefited your many corporate political donors?
- How have the energy and climate positions you have promoted benefited your spouse’s employer, your spouse’s finances, and your spouse’s professional interests?
- Have you ever chosen to be a long-term member of any social club that was NOT Whites Only?
Sheldon Whitehouse belongs to a beach club that is reportedly “all white”, meaning they have no members that are people of color in an age where that is extremely rare. Democrats in Congress and around the country consider that problematic and proof you are racist. In 2023, Sheldon Whitehouse took the lead in opposing an amendment that would have denounced a statement calling Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas a “house slave” in a hearing on Supreme Court ethics.
Read the full letter from James Taylor to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse here.
Sweet! Mr. Taylor’s response.
There should have been a sunset clause for tiny northeastern states.
I vote for everything north of NY being combined into a single state.
Including Canadia.
Canada can be its own state, we can call it North Montana.
This is the image I see whenever Whitehouse is in the news. He is wearing a dunce hat and sitting on a stool in the corner of the classroom.
Stupid and proud of it.
First – let me state quite clearly – Whitehouse is an idiot.
That being said, I do have an issue with the phrasing of the question in article –
“Were temperatures warmer or colder than today when human civilization first arose 6,000 years ago?”
While you can quibble on the start and/or definition of “human civilization “, claiming human civilization first arose 6,000 years ago is wrong. Humans first evolved on this planet around 200k-300k years ago. The great flood (noah’s flood) is documented (via lore) in several societies history which occurred around 12k-15k years ago as the earth came out of an ice age.
6k years ago may be considered a period of a huge advance in human civilization, but definitely not the start of human civilization.
Usually such statements refer to documented civilization, ie, recorded history. It’s perfectly cromulent.
‘Cromulent’ – a new word to use in my conversations (also ’embiggen’) – thanks
bingo though I never saw the word cromulent before 🙂
There is no evidence that a global flood ever occurred. All the “lore” documentation is very localized, and often borrowed from each other.
Human civilization is considered as the time when laws, agriculture, written languages, organized government, etc, came into being. And that time is around 6k years ago, give or take a few centuries.
Pretty much every place with water has occasional floods. From that, it’s not hard for a myth to form about a great flood to form in which everything is destroyed.
Agreed.
Sputs is at it again. Time to call in Judy to put him back in his cage!
If you know this is the game Whitehouse is playing turn the tables on him. Approach a sympathetic Republican on the proper committee and have him arrange a committee meeting that Whitehouse must attend. Answer his questions, ask him your questions and have your questions entered into the record. If Whitehouse refuses to attend use it against him but all the information you want to share is still on record.
w00f!
Term limits.
In a battle of wits Whitehouse is mostly unarmed.
“Sen. Whitehouse’s party is in the minority, so he has so subpoena power.”
I hate it when a sneaky ‘s’ infiltrates and replaces a calm and collected ‘n’.
Sheldon Whitehouse’s “best-by-date” was October 19, 1955.
Maybe someone should mention to the good Senator that there’s a bridge over the Seine for sale in Paris.
The reference to the dark ages 500 years ago seems slightly off.
The Dark Ages were roughly 1500 years ago.
The period of plagues roughly 500 years ago might be better called the Little Ice Age.
Also ask Whitehouse if he can name all the difference chemical compounds required for the manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels..
And where all these chemicals and waste products go once used. (hint: Baotou sludge lakes for one)
What chemical compounds are used to manufacture coal, or gas ?
I don’t know much about this guy but, from this article alone, he sounds like a real dumbo. Surely though, he can’t be more of a “political buffoon”, to quote the Director of the FBI, than Senator Adam Schiff.
What a highlight that was this week when Kash Patel said it right to Schiff’s face on national TV.
The Senator is ripe for plenty more questions.
Global warming is a theory, it was even more so back in the 70’s when that quote originated.
That phrase did not originate in the 1970s. It was part of a 1991 unsolicited memo package sent to a PR campaign effort and was rejected outright by the people receiving it. I detail that at considerable length in my GelbspanFiles blog, including in this Backgrounder post on that memo phrase. Ever since 1991, that specific phrase has been promulgated as ‘smoking gun evidence’ that skeptic scientists were bribed to spread disinformation. That accusation promoted by a core clique of enviro-activists is utterly false. Global warming, meanwhile, is what it is, just like global cooling was during ice ages, ‘theory’ has nothing to do with what happens in nature.
Seems the Senator like so many Dems is in desperate need of a Your Party-
I had hope for Your Party – but I’ve already given up
“Were temperatures warmer or colder than today when human civilization first arose 6,000 years ago?”
“Were temperatures warmer or colder than today during the extreme weather events, plagues, famines, and human catastrophe of the Dark Ages 500 years ago?”
There’s a bit of confusion in the above two questions proposed in the article.
One of the first signs of civilization and agriculture are at a settlement in Turkey known as Göbekli Tepe. The following is from an internet search:
“Recent findings suggest a settlement at Göbekli Tepe, with domestic structures, extensive cereal processing, a water supply, and tools associated with daily life.
The settlement was inhabited from around 9500 BCE to at least 8000 BCE.” (In other words, about 11,500 to 10,000 years ago.)”
This period is at the beginning of the Holocene Climate Optimum when average global temperatures are estimated to have been at least 1 to 2 degrees C warmer than today during its peak around 8,000 years ago.
The term ‘Dark Ages’ usually refers to a cold period between the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period. However, an internet search reveals the term can sometimes be used to include the MWP.
“The Dark Ages is a term for the Early Middle Ages ( c. 5th–10th centuries), or occasionally the entire Middle Ages ( c. 5th–15th centuries), in Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, which characterises it as marked by economic, intellectual, and cultural decline.”
Actually according to most recent estimates the current temperature is higher than at any
point during the last 12000 years. See
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03155-x
which states that
“our reconstructions demonstrate that the modern global temperature has exceeded annual levels over the past 12,000 years and probably approaches the warmth of the last interglacial period (128,000 to 115,000 years ago).”
Ridiculous!
It was just as warm in the Early Twentieth Century as it is today according to the written, historic temperature records. No reconstructions required.
Utterly ridiculous claim that today’s temperature is higher than anything in the last 12 thousand years. Biology is the best indicator. Dozens of studies show that present tree line is well below the Climatic Optimum all over the world. In most cases by hundreds of meters. An example among many:
Holocene treeline changes on the south slope of the Pyrenees: a pedoanthracological analysis
“The spatial precision provided by this proxy allows us to show that the maximum extension of the upper forest line was 400 m above the current line.”
So, according to a study which ignores vast amounts of physical evidence (treelines, glacial extents etc) as well as historical records, it was warmer than it is today 125Kyears ago, I.e. practically yesterday in Geological terms.
Do you realise how stupid you sound?
Funny how climate science has completely over thrown all science from the past few hundred years.
Everything that stands between the fraudsters and the next pot of money has been torn down.
Glaciers today are larger than they were doing the Holocene maximum and sea levels were lower. But don’t let actual science get in your way.
It is very easy to create fake reconstructions if you are paid to fake it. !
Unfortunately for her, real geological data, animal remains, and many other lines of evidence, point to the Holocene Optimum being significantly warmer than now..
Even up to several degrees warmer in higher latitudes.
Here’s one from Central Europe showing up to 5C warmer.. I have lots more available.
From ChatGPT:
Göbekli Tepe, located in southeastern Turkey and dating back to around 9600 BCE, is one of the earliest known monumental structures built by humans. Whether it is considered “civilization” depends on how the term is defined.
Contextual Answer:
Göbekli Tepe is often described as a pre-civilizational site because:
Scholarly Consensus:
Most archaeologists consider Göbekli Tepe a precursor to civilization—a site that demonstrates advanced social, religious, and creative behaviors among people who had not yet developed cities, writing, or state-level societies.
Summary:
Göbekli Tepe is not considered “civilization” in the classical sense (urban living, agriculture, writing, state organization), but it represents a major evolutionary step toward those developments. It is best described as a monumental site of complex hunter-gatherers, foreshadowing the rise of civilization.
Oops. I think he meant 500 AD, not 550y ago. Actually it’s 500-1000AD.
You really need to proof read your stuff when attacking an opponent like that.
Is Rhode Island an actual state of the Union? I thought it was a Greek holiday resort !
I think Fetterman could help him with a lot of therapy.
The questions are fabulous. Note: far more reside on the equator than Antarctica! The warming crowd never considers the negative consequences of cold and the positive consequences of warm.