Creationists Team Up With Climate Deniers To Take Down Science Education.

The Heartland Institute, a prominent, Chicago-based organization opposing climate science, has teamed up with the creationist Discovery Institute to launch a smear campaign against a group promoting the nationwide adoption of updated science education guidelines.

The guidelines in question are the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), adopted so far by 11 states and the District of Columbia. The National Research Council, the National Science Teachers Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science—working with 26 state governments—developed the NGSS to update K-12 science education in schools for the first time since 1998.

Source: ​The Two Organizations Trying to Destroy U.S. Science Education

It's the perfect marriage really - two pseudo-scientific lobby groups, whose version of "skepticism" is defined by cherry-picking, willful ignorance, and magical beliefs, are now ramping up the rhetoric together to take down the elite scientific establishment trying to keep them down.

The issue at hand is the brainwashing of our precious youth. The Heartland and Discovery Institutes are both very concerned that if schools adopt new (supposedly biased and politically driven) curriculum standards - children might conduct science experiments like this -



...which will then prevent them from growing up to be useful blabbering sock puppets, who question authority by reading blog science instead, and log in every day to repeat false memes about "the missing link", or how there's absolutely zero proof that humans can cause global warming.

The Discovery Institute has been famously at this type of thing for a while now - with their "Teach the Controversy" campaign.

But for those of you not familiar with The Heartland Institute - let me give a little primer:

The first thing you should know is that they have also been concerned about our children's rights for a very long time, only in slightly different ways. In the 90's they were protecting our kids from nanny state governments trying to take away their freedom to enjoy smoking cartoon camels:



See, there was this theory back then that Joe Camel was a carefully constructed marketing ploy designed to deliberately target young smokers. Apparently there was some science behind it or something (again, all politically motivated of course):

One group of researchers said their study showed that since the start of the Old Joe campaign three years ago, the brand had become the choice of one-quarter to one-third of smokers under the age of 18. Before the campaign began, they said, less than 1 percent of those under 18 smoked Camels.

Source: Smoking Among Children Is Linked To Cartoon Camel in Advertisements

But The Heartland Institute would have none of that. They lobbied vigorously against tobacco regulation, denounced the "unproven" health risks of second hand smoke, and even published articles chastising those wacky environmental extremists who had the audacity to imply smoking cartoon camels might have ulterior motives.

See this article written by their President, Joe Bast in 1996:

Joe Camel Is Innocent!

I should probably also mention that over those years The Heartland Institute received a suspicious amount of funding from the tobacco industry. Court-released memorandum reveals they even gave out special kickbacks for these donations, like having tobacco executives sit on their Board of Directors:



More info on Heartland tobacco funding

Later on however The Heartland Institute began receiving more and more donations from another source - the fossil fuel industry. Coincidentally that's when they also became outspoken champions of climate change skepticism. One of Heartland's most notorious claims to fame is this belligerent billboard campaign they ran comparing believers of global warming to the Unabomber and other terrorists:



There are many sources of information on Heartland's big oil funding, see for example this investigative report from Greenpeace:

The Heartland Institute: a clearing house of climate denial campaign tactics

But I want to focus on one that ties right back to the beginning of this post. In 2012 an impostor tricked Heartland into sending him some of their internal documents that revealed among other things, their "climate strategy" that year:

Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy

This document uncovered some of their silent sponsors, including the Koch brothers, and a network of secret funding through a proxy called Donor's Trust, which is reported to have dispersed $118 million to climate denial groups around the world.

The document also showed how Heartland in turn funneled some of that money to other disinformation cells - donating $90,000 to notorious skeptic blogger Anthony Watts of WattsUpWithThat.com for example.

Needless to say, when this document was exposed Heartland flipped out and began deflecting and doing damage control. This was further compounded when the anonymous source revealed himself to be climate scientist Peter Gleick. Heartland accused the document of being a forgery, began a relentless character assassination of Gleick, played the whole incident up as a ridiculous scandal they dubbed "Fakegate", and even set up a hilariously tacky website promoting it: fakegate.org

And that was that. 2 more years of incessant internet bickering between climate skeptics and proponents followed (and continues forever).

But what I want to bring it back to is this: Heartland still claims the document is a fake. So do skeptic apologists across the internet. Based on their notoriously sketchy track record there is absolutely no reason to believe Heartland in the first place, but what I find particularly intriguing about their newest endeavor to fight the modern K-12 science curriculum - is this strategy was completely outlined in their 2012 Memo:



(cont'd below)

And now they're doing it!

So how much more obvious can it get??


This paragraph from the original article above really sums it all up -

But, because the NGSS includes material on evolution and how humans are causing climate change, it has faced opposition in some states. Most recently, the Wyoming legislature became the first in the U.S. to reject the NGSS. Lessons on climate change, lawmakers said, would brainwash kids against the state's coal and oil industries.

lol

Brainwashing kids against coal and oil - how dare they! Funny how according to these people things like science can "brainwash" kids against fossil fuels, but a cool customer like Joe Camel can't possibly have any effect on young minds and smoking, that's just absurd.



But what's more absurd is the amount of fully grown adults who continue to be brainwashed for coal and oil by crap like this.

So many people - so many self-described "skeptics" - continue to fail to see the very obvious agenda lurking behind the scenes here. It's pretty depressing being a conspiracy theorist myself, to come to a place like ATS and constantly witness all the conspiracy babble that champions this nonsense time and time again.

The amount of times I've seen someone post a skeptical global warming article, that's actually just some phony hit-piece written by James Taylor, Senior Fellow at The Heartland Institute for example...yikes.

So for those who are inevitably going to respond to this climate thread with the same old pre-programmed climate talking points - let The Heartland Institute just get you started:

God made man, ergo God made global warming....not man... lol

That's just a response to the title, don't think I can be bothered to read the rest knowing your stance.

Hey there are different ways of looking at anything . Fear doesn't help someone to think very clear and more then likely is only created to shift a population of people .

I would like to believe that I would have a right to express my opinions without being insulted. No matter what my opinions are. That is what is supposed to be great about our 'free countries'.

You have really insulted both these groups in your op.

Wether I agree with your views or not I dont believe insulting others worldviews and opinions just because you dont understand why people have them, is a good thing at all.

Im sure you hold some beliefs the 'mainstream' would disagree with.

a reply to: pennydrops

Sorry that you feel that way - but you know what insults me: corporate croney lobbyist groups that deliberately LIE to people to get children to smoke, destroy the environment, and shun critical thinking altogether.

It also insults me more that people just willingly eat this blatant propaganda up, because it makes them feel better about the rest of their beliefs.

If that's what really matters to you - then I'm sorry, but I just couldn't care less about bruised egos or whatever.

This is a closed minded OP. It is everyone's job to constantly question the status quo. Even if I don't agree with the opposition, it is important to have people with alternative beliefs. The climate is changing, but the question of WHY is still not closed to debate in my opinion.

a reply to: mc_squared

All religion impedes human advancement.
/

a reply to: mc_squared

Its kind of like I have said before:

It doen't matter if we pollute the enviornment and waste all the natural resources of the planet. So long as our childern have another place to live.

I'm not so worried about some people disputing science. After all just what has any scientific recearch given them? You know, except their TV- cellphone - automobile- most of their clothes - well you get my drift.
No the ones I will really worry about are the ones who will, and they will sooner or later, begin to deny mathmatics. You know when
1+1 no longer equal 2.

originally posted by: rigel4
a reply to: mc_squared

All religion impedes human advancement.
/

Including atheism.

originally posted by: Metallicus

originally posted by: rigel4
a reply to: mc_squared

All religion impedes human advancement.
/

Including atheism.

No.. atheism is squared with science....
Science advances human understanding of their surroundings.

Unlike religion, which of course holds human beings in a 2000 year old fairy tale grip of nonsense.

carry on

a reply to: mc_squared

Excellent OP! Very well-written and interesting!

I have noticed the "creep" of science deniers having their agenda pushed in schools (usually coupled with the idea of religion taught on equal footing as science) and it makes me happier than ever that I did not have children who will have to find their way in this crazy world.

a reply to: teamcommander

So sod everything we share the earth with?
Oam happy we don't have people like these guys in the uk...we do but they have no power and we all just laugh at them.

Nicely done op.

One of the more recognizable Heartland employees is James M. Taylor, denier extraordinaire. He's a lawyer from Florida who is managing editor of Heartland's Environment & Climate News (because who better than a lawyer?), he's got a weekly propaganda column in Forbes (owned by Steve Forbes, prominent denier), and the icing on the cake is that he's been a featured presenter at American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) "conferences." ALEC is of course a sort of club that helps the money people and the politicians get together and agree on their game plan.

I'm all for science but lately, I have big doubts that much of that science is swayed by corporatism.
Suppressed cures and the health risk denials of cell phones are things that comes to mind.

Children should still learn about the existence of religions and other philosophies for giving them the tools to really understand where they fit in during adolescence.

originally posted by: Metallicus
This is a closed minded OP. It is everyone's job to constantly question the status quo. Even if I don't agree with the opposition, it is important to have people with alternative beliefs. The climate is changing, but the question of WHY is still not closed to debate in my opinion.

The majority of opposition is being manufactured by privately funded propaganda machines like the Heartland Institute. Companies pay them to create doubt in peoples' minds. Things like attacking the claim that there's a 97% consensus among climatologists by attacking the methodology of a single study but not doing their own. So if it's not 97%, what is it? 90%? 80%?

They don't have to prove anything, they just have to create doubt.

Or how about misreporting the results of a poll of TV meteorologists (not even climatologists mind you) to cast doubt on scientific consensus?

From a James M. Taylor piece on Heartland.org:

Only one in four American Meteorological Society broadcast meteorologists agrees with United Nations’ claims that humans are primarily responsible for recent global warming, a survey published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society reports.

And here's what the authors of the study said:

Statement by Neil Stenhouse, Edward Maibach, Sara Cobb, Ray Ban, Paul Croft, Keith Seitter, and Anthony Leiserowitz:

James Taylor’s interpretation of our study is wrong. We found high levels of expert consensus on human-caused climate change.

We found that more than 9 out of 10 climate science experts (93%) who publish mostly on climate change, and the same proportion (93%) of climate experts who publish mostly on other topics, were convinced that humans have contributed to global warming. We also found that about 8 out of 10 meteorologists and atmospheric scientists who publish on climate (79%) or other topics (78%) were convinced that humans have contributed to global warming. Lastly, we found that the group least likely to be convinced that humans have contributed to global warming was AMS members who do not publish research in the peer-reviewed scientific literature; only six out of 10 AMS members in this group (62%) were convinced.

Of course, James M. Taylor is published on Forbes.

As a hypothetical, let's suppose that right vs left media sources were split pretty evenly. The majority opinion of the right seems to be something along the lines that global warming is a scam created by Al Gore, there is no consensus among most experts in the field and that anyone who says differently is a shill looking for grant money. The further right the source, the more likely that the only opinion expressed will be by deniers. Thus giving a hugely disproportionate voice to a cadre of people like Heartland's James M. Taylor and another Forbes columnist, Larry Bell, an architecture professor (and speaker at Heartland conventions).

edit on 2014-7-26 by theantediluvian because: (no reason given)

a reply to: Metallicus

It's one thing to have alternative beliefs, it is another to have beliefs that reject the mast majority of science, facts, and scientist out there, and then claim their bogus theory is right based on no evidence. It is not being open minded, it is flat out ignorance.

The creationists and climate deniers have not teamed up. They have been on the same team all along. They also strongly oppose equal marriage rights. Go figure!

I have big doubts that much of that science is swayed by corporatism.

No, but corporate funded deniers who deny things strictly to save corporate profits are.

originally posted by: Metallicus
This is a closed minded OP. It is everyone's job to constantly question the status quo. Even if I don't agree with the opposition, it is important to have people with alternative beliefs. The climate is changing, but the question of WHY is still not closed to debate in my opinion.

The "status quo" in this case is "everything is fine" or "natural cycle" or "man can't possibly have that impact" and the like.

AGW is a radical position. It is the open mind stance.

Nope. You have the right to voice your opinions and I have the right to ridicule stupid voices - thats what "right to free speech" does mean.

What you said is an example of the pampered "a medal for everyone, because everyone is a precious snowflake". Which is very, very wrong.

a reply to: pennydrops