A fresh scandal over climate change has erupted in the US after leaked documents appeared to show a right-wing funded campaign to influence how climate science is taught in schools.
The internal budget and strategy documents from a Chicago-based nonprofit group called the Heartland Institute were made public last week, and showed US$200,000 was to be spent on a “global warming curriculum project.”
The project would teach that “whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy” and that climate models’ “reliability is controversial,” according to some of the leaked documents.
Others showed hundreds of thousands of US dollars in donations from fossil fuel industries and interests, an anonymous donor’s pledge of US$1.25 million, and US$300,000 to be paid to a team of scientists to rebut UN findings on climate change.
The Heartland Institute has said that one of the leaked strategy memos, a two-page document, was fabricated, but has not commented on the others and did not respond to requests for an interview.
The scandal appeared to take on larger dimensions yesterday when a lawmaker called for a hearing into whether one of the scientists named in the documents, a government employee, had improperly accepted payments from Heartland to spread the anti-climate-change message.
Indur Goklany, assistant director of programs, science and technology policy at the Department of the Interior, was named as being allocated US$1,000 per month to write a chapter on economics and policy for the Heartland Institute.
The chapter was to appear in a book produced by the group’s “Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change [NIPCC], an international group of scientists that produces critiques of the reports of the United Nations’ IPCC.”
A Democratic congressman from Arizona, Raul Grijalva, requested a full hearing of the Natural Resources Committee, noting that it is unclear whether Goklany received payments — which is illegal for federal employees — or if other government scientists were involved.
“Our Committee has a unique responsibility to find those answers,” Grijalva wrote.
His appeal is awaiting a decision by senior lawmakers.
Another government contractor, David Wojick at the Department of Energy (DOE), has drawn scrutiny for his alleged links to the group after documents showed he would be paid US$25,000 quarterly for his work in drafting the school curriculum.
Wojick is listed as a “senior consultant for innovation” at the DOE’s Office of Science and Technological Information.
Greenpeace USA sent a series of letters to the government urging an official inquiry into whether the documents reveal illegal payments to government scientists and a conflict of interest.
The documents show Heartland, which was founded in 1984, has “a coordinated multimillion dollar, multi-year campaign to sow confusion about climate change and climate change science,” Greenpeace USA research director Kert Davies said.
Another wrinkle emerged in the story on Monday when a prominent climate scientist admitted he had posed as a Heartland board member to fraudulently obtain copies of the confidential internal documents and distribute them to colleagues and the media.
Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, said his involvement began early this year when he “received an anonymous document in the mail describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland Institute’s climate program strategy.”
Gleick said he then “solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else’s name,” which “confirmed many of the facts in the original document.”
Gleick apologized late on Monday, adding: “My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts — often anonymous, well-funded and coordinated — to attack climate science and scientists.”
The blogosphere has been jammed with commentaries on his actions, alternately blasting Gleick for poor ethics or hailing him as a hero.
Heartland Institute president Joseph Bast said the group was seeking legal counsel, accused Gleick of a “crime” and added: “A mere apology is not enough to undo the damage.”
Greenpeace’s Davies said the revelation “has sort of made everything uglier,” but should pass.
“Yesterday ... it was: ‘Oh my goodness, a scientist stole some documents.’ But you know, we will get over that because the truth is — what really happened was that he verified that the documents were real and they were from Heartland,” Davies said.
BEYOND WASHINGTON: Although historically the US has been the partner of choice for military exercises, Jakarta has been trying to diversify its partners, an analyst said Indonesia’s first joint military drills with Russia this week signal that new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto would seek a bigger role for Jakarta on the world stage as part of a significant foreign policy shift, analysts said. Indonesia has long maintained a neutral foreign policy and refuses to take sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict or US-China rivalry, but Prabowo has called for stronger ties with Moscow despite Western pressure on Jakarta. “It is part of a broader agenda to elevate ties with whomever it may be, regardless of their geopolitical bloc, as long as there is a benefit for Indonesia,” said Pieter
US ELECTION: Polls show that the result is likely to be historically tight. However, a recent Iowa poll showed Harris winning the state that Trump won in 2016 and 2020 US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris courted voters angered by the Gaza war while former US President and Republican candidate Donald Trump doubled down on violent rhetoric with a comment about journalists being shot as the tense US election campaign entered its final hours. The Democratic vice president and the Republican former president frantically blitzed several swing states as they tried to win over the last holdouts with less than 36 hours left until polls open on election day today. Trump predicted a “landslide,” while Harris told a raucous rally in must-win Michigan that “we have momentum — it’s
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
RSS