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.
A beauty queen who pulled out of the Miss South Africa competition when her nationality was questioned has said she wants to relocate to Nigeria, after coming second in the Miss Universe pageant while representing the West African country. Chidimma Adetshina, whose father is Nigerian, was crowned Miss Universe Africa and Oceania and was runner-up to Denmark’s Victoria Kjar Theilvig in Mexico on Saturday night. The 23-year-old law student withdrew from the Miss South Africa competition in August, saying that she needed to protect herself and her family after the government alleged that her mother had stolen the identity of a South
BELT-TIGHTENING: Chinese investments in Cambodia are projected to drop to US$35 million in 2026 from more than US$420 million in 2021 At a ceremony in August, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet knelt to receive blessings from saffron-robed monks as fireworks and balloons heralded the breaking of ground for a canal he hoped would transform his country’s economic fortunes. Addressing hundreds of people waving the Cambodian flag, Hun Manet said China would contribute 49 percent to the funding of the Funan Techo Canal that would link the Mekong River to the Gulf of Thailand and reduce Cambodia’s shipping reliance on Vietnam. Cambodia’s government estimates the strategic, if contentious, infrastructure project would cost US$1.7 billion, nearly 4 percent of the nation’s annual GDP. However, months later,
HOPEFUL FOR PEACE: Zelenskiy said that the war would ‘end sooner’ with Trump and that Ukraine must do all it can to ensure the fighting ends next year Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom early yesterday suspended gas deliveries via Ukraine, Vienna-based utility OMV said, in a development that signals a fast-approaching end of Moscow’s last gas flows to Europe. Russia’s oldest gas-export route to Europe, a pipeline dating back to Soviet days via Ukraine, is set to shut at the end of this year. Ukraine has said it would not extend the transit agreement with Russian state-owned Gazprom to deprive Russia of profits that Kyiv says help to finance the war against it. Moscow’s suspension of gas for Austria, the main receiver of gas via Ukraine, means Russia now only
‘HARD-HEADED’: Some people did not evacuate to protect their property or because they were skeptical of the warnings, a disaster agency official said Typhoon Man-yi yesterday slammed into the Philippines’ most populous island, with the national weather service warning of flooding, landslides and huge waves as the storm sweeps across the archipelago nation. Man-yi was still packing maximum sustained winds of 185kph after making its first landfall late on Saturday on lightly populated Catanduanes island. More than 1.2 million people fled their homes ahead of Man-yi as the weather forecaster warned of a “life-threatening” effect from the powerful storm, which follows an unusual streak of violent weather. Man-yi uprooted trees, brought down power lines and smashed flimsy houses to pieces after hitting Catanduanes in the typhoon-prone