Bast, J
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neglected, see heartland
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https://climatecrocks.com/2012/02/21/dear-phillip-morris-heartlands-love-letter-to-big-tobacco/
no lnx doc vid
Climate Denial Crock of the Week
with Peter Sinclair
“Dear Phillip Morris” – Heartland’s Love Letter to Big Tobacco
February 21, 2012
Ace researcher John Mashey, whose indispensable investigation into the anti science movement’s leading players and finances has now been posted online, concurrent with release of internal documents from the anti-science “think” tank, Heartland Institute.
Among the gems John has rediscovered, a 1999 love letter (and boot licking appeal for funding) from Heartland chairman Joe Bast to the Phillip Morris Tobacco company. This document is among the trove of materials released thru the tobacco lawsuits of the 90s, and is available in the Tobacco Legacy Library online – so there’s no way for Heartland to run from this further evidence of their dark history. It’s another key bit of evidence showing the tobacco funded roots of the climate denial industry.
The letter is from Bast to Roy Marden, a Phillip Morris executive, and member of the Heartland board. Marden had apparently invited Bast to solicit further funds from the tobacco giant.
Dear Roy:
Thank you for inviting me to request renewed general operating support for The Heartland Institute for 1999.1 note that Philip Morris contributed $5,000 last August (for a Gold Table at our annual benefit) and $25,000 in October (general operating support). It also has allowed you to serve on our Board of Directors, which has produced many positive results for the entire organization.
:{
}:
The letter goes on to extoll Heartland’s tireless efforts to assist the tobacco industry in their sale of death dealing, addictive substances to children and adults around the planet.
Because Heartland does many things that benefit Philip Morris’ bottom line, things that no other organization does, I hope you will consider boosting your general operating support this year to $30,000 and once again reserve a Gold Table for an additional $5,000.
We genuinely need your financial support. Maybe by the end of this letter you’ll agree that we merit even greater support; I certainly hope so!
Bast continues, enumerating various components of their disinformation campaign on behalf of tobacco.
Heartland has devoted considerable attention to defending tobacco (and other industries) from what I view as being an unjust campaign of public demonization and legal harassment. We’re an important voice defending smokers and their freedom to use a still-legal product.
The Heartlander, our monthly newsletter for members, has called attention to the dangerous legal precedents and discriminatory taxes that are part of the campaign against tobacco in cover essays appearing in the October, November, and June issues.
Recent and past Heartland publications on tobacco, including a Heartland Policy Study and several Perspectives, and the 21 documents on the subject available from PoIicyFax, are all available on Heartland’s Web site. Particularly popular are two of my essays, titled “Five Lies About Tobacco” and “Joe Camel is Innocent.”
Finishing up, Bast waxes on about plans for an online “Smoker’s Lounge”, as a clearinghouse for anti-science disinformation promoting tobacco.
We are also revamping our Web site to bring together into one place all the material on tobacco — the policy study, op-eds, PoIicyFax documents, and Heartlander essays — and identify it as the “Smoker’s Lounge” on the homepage. And we have discussed producing an Instant Expert Guide to Tobacco Litigation and reproducing an analysis done of the effect of a federal lawsuit against the tobacco industry on the level of payments states can expect to receive. Both of these projects are likely to come about in the coming months (though the latter only if it is still timely).
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mashey 2012 tons on heartland
Z.2006.08-16 Joseph Bast:Gore Movie Is Gorgeous Propaganda,
Misrepresentation747 ‘At one point he compares scientists who disagree with him with apologists for the tobacco industry. So what are we to make of (in alphabetical order) Dr. Tim Ball at the University of Winnipeg, Dr. Robert Balling at Arizona State University, Dr. Sallie Baliunas at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Dr. Bob Carter at James Cook University in Australia, Dr. Randall Cerveny at Arizona State University, Dr. John Christy at the University of Alabama, Dr. Robert Davis at the University of Virginia, Dr. Christopher Essex at the University of Western Ontario, Dr. Oliver Frauenfeld at the University of Colorado, Dr. Wibjörn Karlèn at Stockholm University, and Dr. Christopher Landsea at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)? And what about Dr. David Legates at the University of Delaware, Dr. Henry Linden at IIT, Dr. Richard Lindzen at MIT, Dr. Ross McKitrick at the University of Guelph, Dr. Patrick Michaels at the University of Virginia, Dr. Dick Morgan at the University of Exeter, Dr. Tim Peterson at Carleton University, Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. at the University of Colorado, Dr. Eric Posmentier at Dartmouth College, Dr. Willie Soon at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Dr. Roy Spencer at the University of Alabama, and Dr. Boris Winterhalter at the University of Helsinki? All are respected authorities on climatology, working at respected universities, who appear regularly in peer-reviewed science journals. Do we want to put the incredible powers of the presidency of the United States in the hands of what Eric Hoffer called a “true believer,” someone who ignores evidence and opinions that contradict his faith?’ 748
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/10/17/60-minutes-trump-says-not-denying-climate-change
Davies, Climate Investigations Center. Originally posted on Climate Investigations Center.
Climate change is coming at Trump even as he tries like hell to avoid the subject. Record-setting hurricanes, Florence and Michael, have caused devastation across the southeast United States. Meanwhile, the grim UN IPCC “1.5 degree” report pushed climate scientists into the headlines last week while Trump was out and about, apparently unleashed, talking to media.
LStahl of 60 Minutes, got the first big sit down interview and went at climate change right off the bat.Pivoting off Hurricane Michael and the IPCC report, Stahl pressed Trump to answer straight questions about climate change.
This is the most Trump has been forced to say on the subject of global warming since his Rose Garden celebration announcing that the U.S. would exit the Paris climate agreement, where he managed to barely mention climate change.
Overall, Trump responds to Stahl’s questions with the typical denier tropes, which he likely learned from Rush Limbaugh, Myron Ebell, Marc Morano, and the Heartland Institute:
“Somethings changing and it’ll change back again.”
“And you don’t know whether or not that would have happened with or without man. You don’t know.”
“We have scientists that disagree with that [anthropogenic climate change].”
“But it [climate change] could very well go back.”
“But I don’t know that it’s [climate change] manmade.”
“They say that we had hurricanes that were far worse than what we just had with Michael.”
“You’d have to show me the scientists because they have a very big political agenda, Lesley.”
Trump also deployed a empty economic argument against taking action, one commonly used by deniers:
“I will say this. I don’t wanna give trillions and trillions of dollars. I don’t wanna lose millions and millions of jobs. I don’t wanna be put at a disadvantage.”
Read the full 60 Minutes interview transcript.
Deniers Would Rather Trump Said Nothing
Trump said a couple of things the deniers don’t really want him to say, including:
“I don’t think it’s a hoax” and “I’m not denying climate change.”
Joe Bast, former CEO of the Heartland Institute, and his climate denier kin are happiest when the President doesn’t talk about it at all.A year ago, Bast provided his reason for applauding the President’s silence, quoted and memorialized in the video below:
“The President has done a great job by not talking about global warming. The less the President talks about it, the less often it appears in news stories and on TV, the less often its going to be an issue. So, this is how big issues disappear.' Trump Questioned on Climate by Reporters in Georgia While Touring Hurricane Damage
Predictions for Hurricane Michael went from a predicted Category 1 on October 7 to making landfall at just below Category 5 three days later, surprising meteorologists and foiling predictive computer models.
While touring areas damaged by the massive storm in Georgia on Monday,reporters continued to press Trump on climate change and he continued trying to change the subject and inform us that he has “the cleanest air on the planet.”
...
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NOLA 818 huffpo
...Craig Richardson, executive director of E&E Legal, a conservative legal group that repeatedly sued the Obama administration's regulatory agencies, said he now sees his group as "trying to be a supportive arm of this new administration." But he lamented what he and others called "virtue signaling" by corporations "jumping on climate change."
Richardson complained about ExxonMobil leaving the conservative advocacy group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), over a clash on climate policy. (Last year, Heartland wanted ALEC to approve a resolution calling on the EPA to withdraw the endangerment finding. Exxon was among several corporations and utilities that convinced ALEC to shelve a vote on the resolution.)
Heartland co-founder Joseph Bast provoked laughter by recounting carmaker GM's response to the Trump administration proposal unveiled last week to freeze fuel economy standards. Quoting the vision statement of GM CEO Mary Barra—that the company is working toward a future of "zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion"—Bast said: "That is impossible, and it's absolutely ludicrous. Zero of each of those things mean zero cars. It means zero respect for people's personal choices of transportation. It would mean a devastating impact on the economy."
"Big companies," Bast said, "are willing to throw their customers under the bus when it comes to appearing to be green or when it comes to appeasing an administration," a reference to carmakers' deal with the Obama administration that led to the fuel economy standards. The auto companies now want the rules weakened, though not as aggressively as Trump has proposed.
Heartland has received funding in the past from Exxon and other fossil fuel interests. The group is not required to disclose its funders. Conservative hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, who helped bankroll Trump's campaign, is known to be a donor, according to Mercer Family Foundation tax returns.
Peter Ferrara, Heartland's senior fellow for legal affairs, told the conference that his group opted not to intervene in the climate lawsuit that San Francisco and Oakland filed against Exxon and other oil companies because of the risk that it would be forced to disclose its donors. Instead, Heartland laid out its arguments against mainstream climate science on its website and in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. The oil companies' victory in that case would be a "valuable precedent," he said. Others in attendance criticized the oil giants for not opposing, in their legal arguments, the science that global warming is human-caused.
'Hearts and Minds of Americans'
The highest Trump administration official to appear at the conclave was Brooke Rollins, the former CEO and president of the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation. Rollins serves in the White House as assistant to the president in the Office of American Innovation. Heartland President Tim Huelskamp, a former Kansas Congress member who chaired the Tea Party caucus, asked her if Trump would take on the endangerment finding and other "golden calves of the left." Rollins offered no answer, but urged the group to keep pushing.
"We know the research of CO2 being a pollutant is just not valid," Rollins said. "And yet it's time to really continue research, and continue making that argument, and continue changing the hearts and minds of Americans."
Jay Lehr, the Heartland Institute's science director, noted the "major role" that Heartland played in urging Trump to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.
Lehr asked Rollins if Trump would stay the course. "People keep thinking he could still back down," he said.
"All of my experience has proven out that when this president says he believes in something, then there is no one more bold or courageous or fearless," Rollins said. "Does that mean I can say today he will never change his mind? No. But it does go to the question of how important organizations like Heartland and Texas Public Policy Foundation are."
PUBLISHED UNDER:
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https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-climate-denial-groups-2573273596.html
cf AP
Emails Show EPA's Cozy Alliance With Major Climate Denial Group
Newly released emails show that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Scott Pruitt has routinely been in contact with one of the most prominent climate denier groups, the AP reported this weekend.
The emails, obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Southern Environmental Law Center, show that John Konkus, a deputy public affairs official, routinely reached out to senior staffers at the Heartland Institute to collaborate on denier invitee lists for a proposed public hearing on climate science last May.
Konkus and EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman also regularly commiserated with Heartland officials on negative press coverage of the agency, and collaborated on ways to amplify positive messages.Then-Heartland president Joseph Bast celebrated the retirement of New York Times climate reporter Justin Gillisin an email shared with EPA staffers last fall, writing that he is "still waiting for Chris Mooney and Juliet Eilperin at the WaPo and Seth Borenstein at AP to flame out."
As reported by the Associated Press:
"The emails underscore how Pruitt and senior agency officials have sought to surround themselves with people who share their vision of curbing environmental regulation and enforcement, leading to complaints from environmentalists that he is ignoring the conclusions of the majority of scientists in and out of his agency especially when it comes to climate-changing carbon emissions."
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bast bs book list:
HEARTLAND REPLIES TO NAOMI ORESKES
MARCH 31, 2017
By Joseph Bast
We oppose climate alarmism because we know it is a fraud, a disinformation campaign used by the left to advance the same anti-human agenda they were pushing in the 1960s and 1970s.
Naomi Oreskes, the socialist historian who has done so much to politicize and discredit climate science in recent years, was recently interviewed in a fawning piece by Alvin Powell in the Harvard Gazette. Near the end of the article, Powell writes:
Denial, she said, isn’t about science but about individualism, skepticism of government power, the self-interest of those in affected industries, and conceptions of freedom. For those moved by those concerns, climate change is just the latest in a series of scientific problems leading to greater government intrusion. Disputing climate facts has roots in fear, Oreskes said — not of climate, but of higher taxes, bigger government, and lost freedoms. That’s why fighting on the facts is not enough, she said. Deploying a value-based argument — such as the values of fairness, of responsibility, of protecting health — is crucial.
As is typical of Oreskes and other leftists, she’s mixing truth with lies.
I and other spokespersons for The Heartland Institute have made the argument frequently that the climate debate isn’t about science, but about “higher taxes, bigger government, and lost freedoms.” We entered the debate as libertarians, not as scientists, but with a commitment to learn the science in order to find the truth behind a campaign waged against freedom by the left. This is why we published some 9.9 million words about climate science between 1998 and 2013 (according to an article in Global Environmental Change), more, I would guess, than all but a handful of other think tanks in the world.
We don’t criticize the warmists’ science out of fear that climate change somehow demonstrates that capitalism can’t work. That’s silly. Capitalism can survive and has survived natural climate changes much greater than the amounts likely to occur in coming centuries. Capitalism is why people value protecting the planet today and have both the will and the means to do so.Capitalism thrives on solving problems like those created by climate change. It’s easy. It’s called “adaptation” and “insurance.”
We entered the climate debate because of copious evidence that progressives, communistsincluded, had infiltrated the scientific debate and were misrepresenting and “weaponizing” the science in order to advance their agenda. The names, dates, and important episodes of the left’s take-over of the environmental movement, and then of EPA, were reported in many books, none of them published by The Heartland Institute:
Ron Arnold, Freezing in the Dark: Money, Power, Politics and the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, 2007.
Wilfred Beckerman, Through Green-Colored Glasses: Environmentalism Reconsidered, 1996.
Larry Bell, Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax, 2011.
James T. Bennett and Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Cancer Scam: Diversion of Federal Cancer Funds to Politics, 1998.
Alex B. Berezow andHank Campbell, Science Left Behind: Feel-Good Fallacies and the Rise of the Anti-Scientific Left, 2012.
Rupert Darwall, The Age of Global Warming: A History, 2013.
Jeff Gillman and Eric Heberlig, How the Government Got In Your Backyard, 2011.
Indur M. Goklany, The Precautionary Principle: A Critical Appraisal of Environmental Risk Assessment, 2001.
Geoffrey C. Kabat, Hyping Health Risks: Environmental Hazards in Daily Life and the Science of Epidemiology, 2008.
Wallace Kaufman, No Turning Back: Dismantling the Fantasies of Environmental Thinking, 1994.
Aynsley Kellow, Science and Public Policy: The Virtuous Corruption of Virtual Environmental Science, 2007.
S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman, Environmental Cancer – A Political Disease? 1999.
Christopher Manes, Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization, 1990.
Patrick J. Michaels and Paul C. Knappenberger, Lukewarming: The New Climate Science that Changes Everything, 2016.
Steven J. Milloy, Junk Science Judo: Self-Defense Against Health Scares and Scams, 2001.
A.W. Montford, The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science, 2010.
Daniel T. Oliver, Animal Rights: The Inhumane Crusade, 1999.
James M. Sheehan, Global Greens: Inside the International Environmental Establishment, 1998.
Julian Simon, Hoodwinking the Nation, 1999.
Zubrin, Robert, Merchants of Despair, 2012.
These books – and I could list many more like them -- were our reason for “looking under the hood” at the underlying science behind the global warming scare. Leftists have no reason to look at the science, since it supports their agenda. We do.
What we found were leftists flooding university science departments, science societies, and organizations such as EPA and the IPCC. We saw liberal foundationsturning small environmental groups such as Ozone Action into mammoth direct mail machines and reliable allies of the Democratic Party such as Greenpeace USA. And we saw computer models, postulates, and circumstantial evidence parading as real science… in short, a fraud.
We oppose climate alarmism because we know it is a fraud, a disinformation campaign used by the left to advance the same anti-human agenda they were pushing in the 1960s and 1970s, when (as Robert Zubrin carefully documents in Merchants of Despair), eugenics and population control were their “science,” long before “global warming” took their place.
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remember bast starts with premise that if agw is real, tool to destroy all
uh-oh ~ mod:
Of course most right-wing Republicans and Tea Party supporters don’t engage in acts of violence. But their political views often reflect the Paranoid Style described by Hofstadter in which they see their very way of life as under attack by liberal elites and in which their political opponents are not only wrong but illegitimate and must be destroyed. As Ed Kilgore writes,
“To put it bluntly, it has become common on the Right to treat conservative policy prescriptions as exempt from the normal procedures of democracy because they reflect the preferences of God, the Founding Fathers, or Real Americans. Indeed, the essence of the Tea Party Movement, which dominates the GOP from top to bottom, is the belief that by advancing such quotidian centrist policies as a managed-competition health care system or amarket-based cap-and-trade device,Democrats are not simply wrong, but are violating permanent and never-to-be-amended guarantees of low taxes, small government, and laissez-faire capitalism. That point of view helps explain the spluttering rage of people like Glenn Beck and his most devoted fans, who really do seem to believe their ‘fundamental liberties’ include the right to enrich themselves limitlessly and to be exempt from any collective responsibilities, and that mildly redistributive and exceptionally traditional practices like progressive taxation or unemployment insurance represent a totalitarianism that must resisted by any means necessary.”
The Paranoid Style in American politics tends to become most virulent during periods of rapid social change and economic crisis when significant portions of the population feel their way of life threatened and do not see any way in which conventional politics will protect them. That’s certainly true of the present post-Wall Street bust era. In coming years, we’re likely to see a new normal of low economic growth, high unemployment, lower incomes for much of the middle and working class, greater economic inequality, more political gridlock, and even greater control of the political system by corporations.
Under these circumstances, in the absence of a significant progressive populist movement to channel legitimate popular anger towards meaningful solutions to our nation’s problems as a viable alternative to the timid corporatism of the Obama administration and many Democratic office-holders, right-wing movements which reflect the Paranoid style in American politics are likely to grow and flourish in coming years.
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/06/13/epa-chief-scott-pruitt-red-team-climate-science-eight-year-old-talking-point-heartland-institute
Like many of his Trump administration colleagues, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt has never really been down with the whole climate science thing.
Pruitt has denied that carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning is the key driver of climate change, instead hedging his bets with an assortment of ifs, buts, and maybes.
Now, Pruitt is suggesting that what the American public really needs is more debate, more false equivalence, and more delay on policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
In an interview on a Breitbart online radio segment, Pruitt has backed the idea of pitting climate science deniers up against actual climate scientists in what he called a “Red Team, Blue Team” debate.
Citing an idea from a column in the Wall Street Journal, Pruitt suggested “those scientists get into a room and ask, ‘What do we know? What don’t we know? What risk does it pose to health in the United States and the world, with respect to this issue of CO2?’”
According to Pruitt, this would be a “true, legitimate, peer reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about CO2” — a discussion “the American people deserve.”
On the face of it, the suggestion might seem reasonable. What’s wrong with a good old debate, right?
Before we look at the people who have been pushing this “red team” idea, it’s worth clarifying something.
The Real Red Team
A version of this “red team” process already exists, and it’s called scientific peer review.
Scientists do research, write-up their findings, and submit them to a journal. The journal sends the paper to other qualified scientists who critique the work, sometimes mercilessly. That work may get published; at which point other scientists can build on the findings or find ways to reject them.
This is partly why, after the publication of tens of thousands of research papers going back a century or more, science academies and institutions around the world agree that global warming is real, is caused by humans, and is a serious problem.
So in the blue corner, you have all the credible and reasonable science, and in the red corner, you have something else.
In reality, the climate science denial industry has been touting itself as a viable “red team” for more than a decade.
Media Matters for America (MMFA), a think tank that monitors media outlets for “conservative misinformation,” has traced some of the history of the “red team” talking point back to a 2014 submission to the EPA from Professor John Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
After the submission, Christy continued to promote the idea in congressional testimony and to receptive media, says MMFA.
Heartland Institute as the Red Team
But before all this, one of America’s most notorious groups pushing climate science denial — the Heartland Institute — was touting the “red team” concept.
Since 2009, Heartland has been paying contrarian scientists to produce a report that specifically aims to undermine the scientific assessments produced by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Heartland calls its reports the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). Others call them cherry-picked, selective pseudo-science.
In Heartland’s first NIPCC report in 2009, the group framed their critique as an innocent and disinterested “Team B.”
“It is a time-honored tradition in science to set up a ‘Team B’ which examines the same original evidence but may reach a different conclusion,” the preface mused.
In a follow-up 2011 “interim report,” Heartland again touted its credentials as a “Team B,” explaining its formative roots at a meeting in Milan in 2003 organized by Fred Singer and his Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP).
But in the following 2013 report — Climate Change Reconsidered II — the language had been tweaked. What was “Team B” was now a “Red Team.”
Heartland's 2013 NIPCC report used the term “red team.”
Long-serving Heartland scientist and NIPCC coordinator, the late Australian Dr. Bob Carter, wrote about the “red team” in a September 2013 column for the Rupert Murdoch–owned tabloid, the Daily Telegraph, based in Sydney.
Carter wrote: “In classic Green Team: Red Team tactical management style, the NIPCC has the role of providing an alternative Red Team view of the science of global warming, acting as a sort of 'defense counsel' to verify and counter the arguments mounted for climate alarm by the IPCC's Green Team prosecution.”
China Crisis
Later that year, Carter was in California to present the NIPCC report to the Ayn Rand Institute, alongside Singer and Heartland president Joe Bast.
Bast
as “the mother of all environmental scare stories” but then suggested the science was actually a sinister cover for something else entirely.
“Groups on the left understand if we can control energy, you can control human beings, and that’s what it was all about,” claimed Bast.
Environmentalists were trying to “shut down the engines of the world,” Bast said, without saying why they might want to do any of those things.
“This was a search for a scientific justification for a political agenda,” Bast added. “The whole idea is to control energy.” (As a group that tirelessly defends the use of fossil fuels while attacking renewable energy, you have to wonder if it’s actually Heartland that wants to “control energy.”)
“We concluded we have to go after the science,” he said, adding Heartland’s “products and programs” would look to reach “all the way down to elementary school classrooms.” In recent weeks, Heartland has been mailing a condensed version of its NIPCC report to tens of thousands of school teachers across the country.
Bast told the room that two NIPCC reports had been “peer reviewed by the authors themselves,” which, by the way, is not how peer review works.
Bast said the NIPCC report had been “translated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences” while his communications director, Jim Lakely, held the Chinese version aloft.
After a round of applause, Bast said he hoped “other academies of science,” including Australia, would follow suit, implying the Chinese Academy of Sciences had somehow endorsed the report.
At the time of the Chinese version being released, Bast had issued a press release claiming a “historic moment” for global warming science. He sent Heartland staff, including Carter, to Beijing for a press opportunity.
But as DeSmog reported, the CAS issued a statement saying: “The claim of the Heartland Institute about CAS’ endorsement of its report is completely false.”
Bast was forced to apologize and had to pull the publication from his website and withdraw the original press release. But once Carter was out of China, Bast re-issued the press release and rejected the criticisms of the CAS.
Oddly, none of this detail made its way into Bast’s opening remarks.
Fake Discussion
==
United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the principal international body for the assessment of climate research, just published its Fifth Assessment Report concluding unequivocally that climate change is real and requires meaningful action — but the anti-science fringe is now running to the media to spread misinformation and discredit the report.
In one example on Monday, the president of the Koch-funded Heartland Institute published an op-ed in Forbes arguing that climate change would have “net benefits” – and there's many more like him being printed in newspapers across the country.
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on bd ACU
http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Joseph_Bast
Joseph Bast is president of the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based industry-funded think tank. Bast opened the International Conference on Climate Change (2009), organized by Heartland. [1] He "studied economics as an undergraduate" at the University of Chicago[2] but did not complete the degree.[3]
Contents[hide] |
Background
Bast is the "coauthor of 12 books, including Rebuilding America's Schools (1990), Why We Spend Too Much on Health Care (1992), Eco-Sanity: A Common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism (1994), and Education & Capitalism (2003)," according to his Heartland profile.[2]
Heartland paid Bast $96,292 in 2007, according to the organization's financial report for that year. His wife, Diane Carol Bast, is the think tank's Vice President of Internal Affairs. She was paid $76,337 in 2007.[4] Joseph Bast was paid $80,797 in 2005, according to Heartland's financial report that year.[5]
Bast currently sits on the board of directors for the American Conservative Union, after being elected in 2007.[6]
Affiliations
A biographical note lists Bast's current and former affiliations as being:[6]
- Board of Directors of Nomos Press Inc., 1983 - 1988;
- Board of Directors of The Heartland Institute, 1990 - current.
- Founding Director, officer, and member of the executive committee, State Policy Network, 1991-1997;
- Board of Advisors, Advocates for Self-Government, 2003 - current;
- Board of Advisors, Illinois Policy Institute, 2004 - current;
- Board of Advisors, Center fo:{r Medicine:(style="background-color:#ff0000;"):}: in the Public Interest, 2005 - current;
- Board of Directors, American Conservative Union, 2007 - current.
Articles and resources
Related SourceWatch articles
References
- ↑ "Speakers," Heartland Institute website, accessed March 2009.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Joseph L. Bast bio," Heartland Institute website, accessed March 2009.
- ↑ Joseph Bast, email to SourceWatch editor Bob Burton, September 2009.
- ↑ "Heartland Institute IRS 990 from 2007 (pdf)," via GuideStar.org, accessed March 2009.
- ↑ "Heartland Institute IRS 990 from 2005 (pdf)," via GuideStar.org.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 ""Joseph L. Bast - 2008 Resumé"," Heartland Institute website, accessed March 2009.
External resources
External articles
Articles by Bast
- Joseph Bast, "Opening Remarks: 2008 International Conference on Climate Change", March 8, 2009. (A copy of his Powerpoint presentation is available here.)
| This article is a stub. You can help by expanding it. |
Categories: Climate change | Think tanks/personnel | United States | Global warming skeptics | People | Speaker at the Heartland Institute's Third International Conference on Climate Change | Stubs
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Presiding over the conference was Heartland Institute president Joseph Bast. A former socialist turned conservative-libertarian, Bast once wrote a piece for the American Conservative Union Foundation titled “Why I am a Conservative,” in which he described being hired in 1984 at the age of 26 by David Padden, owner of an investment securities firm in Chicago, to start Heartland.
David Padden, a Chicago bond trader, is listed as a founding director in Heartland’s Articles of Incorporation. He has also been a director of libertarian think tank the Cato Institute, the anti-regulation Citizens for a Sound Economy (now known as FreedomWorks), and the Acton Institute, which “integrates Judeo-Christian truths with free market principles.”
Bast’s article on conservatism went on to reminisce about his time as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, where he majored in economics and joined the libertarian movement.
Numerous news articles about Bast have described him as a graduate in economics from the University of Chicago. But in actuality, Bast did not receive a degree from the school. According to degree auditors The Student Clearinghouse, Bast enrolled in the school from 1976 to 1984 but never obtained his bachelor’s degree. Reached by e-mail, Bast said that he left the University of Chicago in 1984, 11 weeks before graduating, to start Heartland.
..
http://www.iwatchnews.org/2008/09/30/3047/global-warming-heated-denials
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desmog
- MBA, Harvard. [1]
Background
David H. Padden was the founder of the Heartland Institute, a founding director of the Cato Institute, and played a prominent role in a number of other libertarian think tanks. Padden also started the small municipal bond firm Padden and Co. in the early 1960s.
David H. Paddenpassed way in October, 2011,at the age of 84. [2]
Stance on Climate Change
The Heartland Institute, which Padden helped found, has said that global warming is not a crisis.
Key Quotes
With reference to Charles Koch, Padden has said:
"I would never attempt to second-guess whatever he's doing in the interest of making this a free country. He has a strategy that probably we are unaware of. He's so smart and so successful that I’m just going to await the outcome." [3]
Key Deeds
According to his profile at the Heartland Institute, David H. Padden has provided financial assistance as well as his leadership to numerous libertarian organizations, many of which have been involved in disputing the existence of man-made climate change.
These organizations include the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute, the Acton Institute, Bionomics Institute, Center for Libertarian Studies, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Council for a Competitive Economy,FreedomWorks, Free To Choose Media, Foundation for Economic Education, the Libertarian Party, and Loop Libertarian League.
1984 - 1994
Helped found the Heartland Institute and Served as Chairman of the Board from 1984 to 1994, at which time he became director and chairman emeritus.
1977
Padden helped found the Cato Institute, and served as one of the Original Board Members. He was still listed as a Board Member in 2002.
Ed Crane, Cato's co-founder and president, described Padden as "the conscience of the Cato Institute." [1]
Affiliations
- Padden and Co.— Past President. He merged his firm with UIP Corporation in 1969. [4]
- **Heartland Institute**— Founder and Chairman Emeritus. [5]
- **Cato Institute** — Co-Founder, President, and Emeritus Director. [1]
- **Citizens for a Sound Economy**— Past Director. David Koch was a director of the CSE Foundation at the same time. CSE merged with Empower America to createFreedomWorks in July, 2004. [6]
- **Acton Institute**— Past Director. [1]
- **Bionomics Institute** — Past Director. [1]
- **Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)** — Past Director. [1]
- **Center for Libertarian Studies**— Former Director. [1]
- Council for a Competitive Economy[5]
- **FreedomWorks**— Past Board Member. [7]
- Free To Choose Media [5]
- **The Libertarian Party** [5]
- Loop Libertarian League — Founder. [2]
Publications
According to Google Scholar, David H. Padden has not published any articles in peer-reviewed journals on any subject.
Resources
- David Boaz. "David H. Padden, R.I.P.," CATO @ Liberty, October 4, 2011.
- "David H. Padden, 1927-2011," Chicago Tribune, October 6, 2011.
- *Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement*. Brian Doherty, February 12, 2007. P. 603.
- "Policy Documents: Padden, Mr. David H.", The Heartland Institute, August 28, 2002.
- "Heartland Experts: David H. Padden," The Heartland Institute. Accessed April, 2012.
- "Board of Directors," Citizens for a Sound Economy. Archived January 11, 2002.
- Form 990 for Freedomworks, Inc. for 2004 (PDF). Retreived from the Foundation Center.
- "David H. Padden," SourceWatch profile.
- ExxonSecrets Factsheet: David H. Padden.
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Center for Libertarian Studies
Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty
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pspsci
But playing the activist can be a slippery slope. In February, climate analyst and MacArthur “genius” grant recipient Peter Gleick admitted using a false identity to obtain and distribute files that provided a detailed picture of the finances and plans of the Heartland Institute, an anti-regulatory think tank that calls climate research “junk science.” The incident was a bizarre mirror of the 2009 “Climate Gate” scandal, in which hackers gained access to the e-mails of prominent climate scientists and distributed excerpts out of context. Although eight independent investigations later found that the scientists did nothing unethical, Climate Gate has become a rallying point for climate-change skeptics. Gleick was almost certainly aiming to incite a similar reaction among climate-science advocates. Instead many in the scientific community quickly condemned his tactics. Schmidt deemed them “completely irresponsible” and predicted that “public discussion on this issue will be much the poorer for this.”
Seated at a conference table in Heartland’s new downtown Chicago headquarters, Joe Bast, the organization’s president, is a bit more forceful. “Peter Gleick was so desperate and delusional that he was willing to break the law repeatedly and lie and deceive people.Once again, the most alarmist voices in the debate have been found to be behaving very badly.” Bast is compact and intense, with a well-trimmed beard and a raspy voice “from years of smoking,” he tells me. He says the documents, one of which appears to have been forged, don’t show a smoking gun. “Our enemies are calling it ‘Denial Gate,’ ” he says, leaning forward over the table. “We’re calling it ‘Fake Gate.’ Try to find anything in there that suggests we are anything other than sincere and above the table, and doing exactly what we say we’re doing.”
“We cannot allow those looking to discredit scientists to be successful. They’ve awakened a sleeping bear. We will counterpunch.”Probably the most surprising revelation is that Heartland’s climate work is funded primarily by one individual, referred to in the institute’s fundraising plan as the Anonymous Donor, who has contributed $12.7 million over the past five years. The organization’s climate programs include the school curriculum questioning widely accepted climate science and its annual International Conference on Climate Change, an event many scientists lampoon as “Denialpalooza.” Despite those programs, Bast says Heartland does not reject all of mainstream climate science. “Virtually everybody agrees,” he tells me, that “there has been warming in the second half of the 20th century [and] that there is probably a human role in that warming, that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and that the increase in atmospheric concentrations can be attributed to human activity.” The organization, he says, argues primarily for “cost-effective solutions” to climate change. As our meeting is wrapping up, Bast says genuinely, “Don’t call us deniers. Skeptics is fine. Moderates, realists. But not deniers.”
But a few weeks later, Heartland would launch a new advertising campaign. As drivers crawled along Chicago’s busy Eisenhower Expressway, they were confronted with a large billboard that compared believers in global warming with Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. The text on the billboard read, “I still believe in global warming. Do you?” The advertisement was meant to be the first in a series. Others would liken climate-science advocates to mass murderers, including Charles Manson and Osama bin Laden. Bast did not respond for comment following the launch of the campaign, but Heartland issued a press release: “The people who believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”