AP Verifies Denialgate Docs, Oily Scam to Teach Lies about Climate Science in Schools: Updated

The Associated Press has verified the authenticity of leaked documents that show a leading conservative organization, the Heartland Institute, schemed to propagandize school children into becoming climate skeptics on behalf of major corporate sponsors. One anonymous sponsor contributed 14 million dollars. At first Heartland attempted to deny the authenticity of the documents, but now Joe Bast, the director of Heartland has admitted one of his employees e-mailed them to a stranger.

Now, we have a case where Bast admits that some dope on his staff emailed Heartland's whole board package to a stranger. Yet rather than praising the opportunity that this provides for independent observers to judge the performance of a taxpayer-subsidized body (Heartland is a registered charity), as Bast did when someone stole the so-called ClimateGate emails from leading scientists such as Mike Mann, the Heartland boss has attacked the veracity of the Climate Strategy and used that to attempt to dismiss the legitimacy of the other material (Heartland Institute Responds to Stolen and Fake Documents).

This is rich. Bast & Co. smeared climate scientists for months after stealing their private e-mails. One of his employees voluntarily sent these e-mails to a blogger at DeSmogBlog and he is crying like a toddler that dropped his sippy cup. Pass the popcorn.

How did this happen? The stolen documents were obtained by an unknown person who fraudulently assumed the identity of a Heartland board member and persuaded a staff member here to “re-send” board materials to a new email address. Identity theft and computer fraud are criminal offenses subject to imprisonment. We intend to find this person and see him or her put in prison for these crimes.

Apologies: The Heartland Institute apologizes to the donors whose identities were revealed by this theft. We promise anonymity to many of our donors, and we realize that the major reason these documents were stolen and faked was to make it more difficult for donors to support our work. We also apologize to Heartland staff, directors, and our allies in the fight to bring sound science to the global warming debate, who have had their privacy violated and their integrity impugned.

Hey, Joe, go right ahead and sue. Expose your fraud to the world. See how your anonymous sponsors respond to the publicity when their names are attached to schemes to deceive children and average Americans on climate change.
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Update: The LA Times notes Heartland's Karma.

That’s not quite how Heartland saw things in November 2009, when someone hacked the correspondence of some of the world’s leading climate scientists working with the University of East Anglia in Britain and released thousands of emails, with the intention of suggesting that researchers had massaged data to show that the planet was warming.

“The release of these documents creates an opportunity for reporters, academics, politicians, and others who relied on the IPCC to form their opinions about global warming to stop and reconsider their position,” wrote Joseph Bast, Heartland’s president. “The experts they trusted and quoted in the past have been caught red-handed plotting to conceal data, hide temperature trends that contradict their predictions, and keep critics from appearing in peer-reviewed journals. This is new and real evidence that they should examine and then comment on publicly.”

Every independent panel that has looked into the East Anglia emails has cleared the scientists of wrongdoing. British law enforcement, with the help of the U.S. Justice Department, continues to investigate the hacking case.

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Heartland is trying to claim that one of the documents is a fake, and create doubt about the others,  but AP isn't buying it. AP reconfirmed the attempt to propagandize school children with lies. AP also confirmed that Anthony Watts is a hack paid to create uncertainty and doubt on climate science, just like Heartland's hacks previously tried to created uncertainty and doubt about the deadly effects of cigarette smoke. Heartland continues to take tobacco company money and promote their interests. Some of the scientists, such as Fred Singer, that promoted uncertainty on smoking have moved on the promoting uncertainty on climate change.

As detailed in the papers, Heartland's plans for this year included paying an Energy Department consultant $100,000 to design a curriculum to teach school children that mainstream global warming science is in dispute, even though it's a fact accepted by the federal government and nearly every scientific professional organization. It also pays prominent global warming skeptics more than $300,000 a year and plans to raise $88,000 to help a former television weatherman set up a new temperature records website.
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David Wojick, a Virginia-based federal database contractor, said in an email that the document was accurate about his project to put curriculum materials in schools that promote climate skepticism.

"My goal is to help them teach one of the greatest scientific debates in history," Wojick said. "This means teaching both sides of the science, more science, not less."

There is no controversy. There is no debate. The basic science of the greenhouse effect was worked out at the end of the 19th century by Svante Arrhenius. The basic science has been settled for over 100 years. Arrhenius' work has been reconfirmed by study after study. A recent report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that 97% of the 1300 most published climate scientists agreed that today's climate change is man-made.

A number of Heartland's donors are none too happy about being tied to Heartland's climate change deception.(Original source, NY Times)

   “We absolutely do not endorse or support their views on the environment or climate change,” said Sarah Alspach, a spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline, a multinational drug company shown in the documents as contributing $50,000 in the past two years to support a medical newsletter.

    A spokesman for Microsoft, another listed donor, said that the company believes that “climate change is a serious issue that demands immediate worldwide action.” The company is shown in the documents as having contributed $59,908 last year to a Heartland technology newsletter. But the Microsoft spokesman, Mark Murray, said the gift was not a cash contribution but rather the value of free software, which Microsoft gives to thousands of nonprofit groups.

dKos LINKS

ASiegal's report on Denialgate with many links to sources.

Loblolly's post discussing Heartland's attempted K1-12 curriculum manipulation.

MeteorBlades front page post on Denialgate.

11:14 AM PT: Update from the comments

Heartland has violated its non-profit status by lobbying the federal government and posing as an educational institution while it engages in political activities. That is tax fraud. Here's a model form to complain of fraud to the IRS. (PDF) http://profmandia.files.wordpress.com/...