PrintMay 15, 2010
The Heartland Climate Conference Smear Campaign Begins
For the fourth time in the past three years scientists, economists and policymakers are gathering to explore both the causes and consequences of “climate change,” and the cost and effectiveness of currently proposed “remedies.” Also for the fourth time in the past three years, the Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change, which commences this Sunday, has been all but ignored by the mainstream media. And as reliable as the MSM have become in evading the event’s purpose, so have the alarmist media become in distorting it.
This year’s early entry appeared on Thursday, when former RFK Jr. Research Associate and onetime EPA “environmental justice advocate” Brendan DeMelle let the green games begin with this hysterically deluded posting at HuffPo.
According to DeMelle, the MSM’s “lack of interest” in what he brands a “non-event” stems not from liberal media bias, but rather “from the fact that this denial-a-palooza fest is dripping with oil money and represents a blatant industry effort to greenwash oil and coal while simultaneously attacking the credibility of climate scientists.”
How strikingly original – even the excruciatingly unclever “denial-a-palooza” was boosted from Greenpeace Research Director Kert Davies, who spread the term around like so much environment-friendly fertilizer during ICCC’s maiden voyage to NY City in 2008. And exactly which “climate scientists’” credibility is DeMelle so deeply concerned about? If perchance those paid to toe the green line for NASA, NOAA, CRU or the IPCC, then, as we’ve reported here, here, here, and here, respectively, there’s not much left of it standing on which to bear down upon. Needless to say, DeMelle’s lame attempt to defend the honor of those discredited entities by referencing last month’s laughable Lord Oxburgh Climategate whitewash falls dreadfully short of the mark.
If, on the other hand, he refers to those true experts who’ll be attending and presenting at next week’s ICCC IV, then I suspect he’d do well to join us in Chicago and learn firsthand that such intellectual ten-rounders are exactly what science is built upon, not blind adherence to single-minded “mainstream” opinion.
But DeMelle’s sparse scientific quiver quickly depleted, compelling him to continue his original thinking theme by reaching for an old familiar green arrow, tipped with the words: “For insight into the underlying aim of the Chicago denier conference, let us take a look at the funding sources for the sponsoring organizations.”
What followed was a lengthy litany of alleged contributions to various ICCC cosponsors from various organizations he coincidentally quotes the slogan-hijacked Kert Davies condemning as “hell-bent on keeping us addicted to dirty oil and coal.” The list was dominated by capitalist villains ExxonMobil, the Koch Foundations and the Scaife Foundations, and I have neither the time nor inclination to verify DeMelle’s figures for one simple reason: They’re irrelevant.
Even if accurate to the penny – so what?
For starters, contrary to DeMelle’s implications, ICCC cosponsors don’t contribute dime one to the event. As Heartland Executive Vice President and Publisher Dan Miller explained to me earlier today, theirs is more an honorary title (much like that of freshly ordained Doctor of ecology and evolutionary biology Albert Gore) bestowed in recognition of their promotion of the conference to their members. Accordingly -- whosoever does or does not contribute money to these fabulous organizations that in fact do not in turn contribute money to the ICCC can’t possibly have any bearing on the conference’s objectivity and is therefore a nonissue.
As to ICCC’s sole financial sponsor, Heartland Institute itself, the total amount of funding it receives from all energy companies combined is no more than 5% of its budget, and, according to Dan, “probably much less.” Responding to DeMelle’s bogus insinuations to the contrary, Dan asserts:
Exxon last donated in 2006, and the amount was pocket change. I think the company bought a table for a dinner. The Heartland Institute hasn't received funding from Koch or Scaife for more than a decade.
So Brendan, show me the dripping oil money that’s keeping the oh-so-conscientious MSM at bay. And while you’re at it, perhaps you might explain why it is that the research funding sources of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) contrarians influence MSM newsworthiness decision-making while those of AGW alarmists apparently aren’t worth an editor’s second thought. When was the last time the NY Times, MSNBC or ABC News took a pass on an “unprecedented manmade global warming” story simply because its underlying research came from Britain’s Climate Research Unit (CRU), as is so often the case?
The same CRU whose director, Phil Jones, was discovered through Climategate-related documents (read my report here) to have received 55 endowments since 1990 from agencies ranging from the U.S. Department of Energy to NATO, worth a total of £13,718,547, or approximately $22.6 million. The same CRU whose list of potential funding sources in those same documents included four renewable energy agencies. Three -- the Carbon Trust, the Northern Energy Initiative, and the Energy Saving Trust -- are U.K.-based consultancy and funding specialists promoting "new energy" technologies with the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The fourth -- Renewables North West -- is an American company promoting the expansion of solar, wind, and geothermal energy in the Pacific Northwest.
So while Heartland is as oil-free as acne wash, the CRU is dripping in green-fantasy-power-ooze money, which gives them an undeniably intrinsic financial interest in the promotion of AGW. And yet, MSM articles and reports (not to mention those of the hallowed IPCC) are awash with the manipulated data, charts, and projections generated by this blatantly biased organization. Is anyone really buying our HuffPo hero’s assertion that the “lack of press interest” in the Heartland conference is based primarily on the MSM’s scruples regarding funding conflicts?
Of course, contrary to alarmist-controlled media ranting, funding sources are hardly the measure of scientific theory eminence. Upon completing this entry, I pack for my fourth voyage to the land of climate sanity, from which I will again be reporting to you that which the MSM most certainly will not – climate considered as rational science rather than political instrumentation.
No doubt a few MSM types will ultimately acknowledge the goings on at the Chicago Marriott Magnificent Mile Hotel, if only to poke sophomoric fun at what they’ll ignorantly term the “denier’s conference.”
And while the effectively brainwashed “Carbon causes warming -- period” crowd chuckles in self-satisfied accord, AT readers will share in the brilliant yet refreshingly disparate opinions of these amazing luminaries to ponder and discuss. And learn.
Stay tuned.
