Yesterday, the Heritage Foundation hosted The Heartland Institute’s CEO Joseph Bast, along with two of Heartland’s contracted climate denial scientists (Willie SoonandBob Carter), to present their new report that denies the seriousness of global warming. Greenpeace was there to ask Heartland about the report’s funders, including billionaireBarre Seid, and to challenge Heartland’s assertion that their work has any scientific validity (it doesn’t).See thevideofor yourself.
From left: Heartland Institute president Joseph Bast, lawyer James Taylor and contracted pseudo-scientist Craig Idso.
Heartland’s “Climate Change Reconsidered,” written by the usual climate denier suspects under the guise of the “Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change” (NIPCC) is intended to undermine new scientific findings from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).Despite what Joe Bast and Heartland communications director Jim Lakely claim, their false report isnotpeer-reviewed, aformal processconducted by editors at actual scientific journals have other qualified scientists rigorously review and critique submitted work if it is to be approved for publication.
You’ll notice that Heartland’s climate denial report isn’t being published in any scientific journals, but rather from Heartland itself.This is because the document is a public relations tool intended to keep politicians and the public doubting that global warming is worth addressing.
While Heartland continues politicizing science, demonizing credible scientists and using tobacco industry tactics to forge doubt over global warming, Americans are feeling the real toll climate change is already taking on society, by increasing the severity of storms like hurricane Sandy or pushing droughts, wildfires and heatwaves to new extremes.
Heartland doesn’t care, or even recognize, thatglobal warming is already costingthe global economy $1.2 trillion dollars and contributing to 400,000 deaths each year. They don’t care thatbillion-dollar weathers disasters, intensified by climate change, are on the rise and impacting the U.S. economy andour infrastructure. Nor do they accept repeated research indicating theoverwhelming consensusamong credential climate scientists that human fossil fuel use is the primary driver of unnatural global warming–in factHeartland’s staff have repeatedly liedto cast doubt upon that research.
