sowing climate change doubt in schools

remember the heartland institute? they're the 'free market think tank' that helped the tobacco companies sow doubt about whether or not cigarettes cause cancer. now they've turned their attention to climate science with exactly the same goal. only this time, they're writing denier curricula for schools.

heartland, you may remember, accuses climate scientists of fabricating climate change. they created a list of scientists whom they said disagreed with the principles of climate change... without checking with those scientists. the scientists basically said, "hey, we didn't say that!" and sued them. (heartland got a bit testy about that.)

the fellow writing the curricula (for $100k - not a bad gig), which heartland hopes to distribute nationally, isn't even a climatologist - he's a 'coal consultant' and cummunications guy at the department of energy. (hmm... wonder if his contract at the doe prohibits side work like this?) the next question we should probably ask is who funds heartland, because following the money is always a good idea when nonsense like this pops up. according to wikipedia, at least $800k from exxon, the koch brothers (coal, timber, etc.), the walton family (founders of wal-mart), phillip morris...

starting to see a pattern form? here's our favorite part - heartland's message to teachers: "the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain - two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science."

anyway, you can read heartland's proposal regarding the denier curricula and see what you think. there's an interesting leak about funding, too.

something which has always struck us as funny about the denier stance is that it's so obviously a well-constructed con. like all cons, it takes a new stance each time a leg of the con is kicked out from under it:

• there is no such thing as climate change.
• if there is such a thing as climate change, it's not caused by human beings.
• if climate change is caused by human beings, it's definitely not caused by fossil fuel companies.
• if climate change is caused by fossil fuel companies, it will cost too many jobs for us to do anything about it.
• if it won't cost too many jobs for us to do anything about climate change, we don't want to try and stop it because it's actually good for the planet.
• if climate change isn't good for the planet, it's too late to do anything about it, so we might as well not do anything.