Deconstruction of the Doubtful news post - I first heard of the story through the DoubtfulNews Blog. She cut & pasted from a Guardian article & then added her own additional commentary example of green blog first post - The first glance tells me a lot. Look at the way alarmist language has been used throughout when neutral language would have done just fine. - Then her comments emotion, asking her readers to jump to certainty conclusion; that's bad science. - It comes from Environment section from the Guardian - the story is all over the activist media, but not in mainstream media outside the usual environmental activist sections (of BBC, The Independent et.). That's another alarm bell; If the facts were so certain it would be in the serious journalism parts. - The central message "Heartland is going to take over the world with anti-science"... credible ? Not at so many levels. Heartland's education plan is supposed to have a phrase "program ...effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science." -Ask is that Too bad/good to be true" ? Yes (so it's probably not true) - Someone who wants to believe this will believe straight away ... Anyone else would need to see a lot of evidence. - The pages contains a range of thinking fallacies e.g. perspective ..it doesn't mention Heartland budget compared to eco-charities. - balance : Does it have a comment from the other side ? seems No (but a trick that activist reporters use is to leave an answer machine message 30 minutes before publishing) - I thought - OK story doesn't justify any attention so far. Strip away all the emotional rhetoric & what do you have ? - Heartland have comparatively tiny budget, almost none of it from big oil & they are developing their own educational material just like the green lobby groups like WWF & Greenpeace have done for years. They argue Heartland aims to dissuade teachers from teaching science, but that claim is so incredible. (standard rule : Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence) & since they haven't really started there is no extra evidence to support this. - I just added a quick comment in the Doubtfulnews blog setting Heartland's funding in perspective. Who's got Massive Funding from Big Oil ? - The PR release accompanying the documents Gleick sent out tried to smear Heartland with the "deniers are funded by big oil", but what does truth matter green activist bloggers & journalists ? - Yes paradoxically the green equivalents of Heartland receive 50+ times more each. With oil donations being scattered around e.g. The $26m once given to the Sierra Club by Chesapeake Gas. Jo Nova did a deconstruction showing the main multinational eco-charities have published annual budgets magnitudes higher : Greenpeace $300m, WWF $700m, Pew Charitable Trust $360m - There are no anti-IPCC universities but BP has a $500m 10 year program with UCLA, and Exxon oil company has a $225 program with Stanford university - The Climate Works Foundation was awarded $460m in 2008 from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a grant-making organisation with assets of $7.2 billion, which disbursed $353m in grants in 2011. Last week 1 day after anger at Heartland's 'huge' annual budget of $4.4 million it has made another grant to Climate Works of $100 million – bringing the total grants to this organisation to just short of $600 million. - Oil to Green donation $1bn last 10 years - Then her reaction of name calling, anger & bullying threats to commenters questioning it, halves the credibility of her argument

PART II - Heartland Response is "Crucial document is fake" - If a story seems complicated or not true there is no need to jump to conclusions. My experience is that if you just wait often new facts will arrive which explain the story. - Heartland began to contradict the story. They said some of the documents had been obtained fraudulently & that one the Strategy Document was a fake. They pointed out a number of errors with it. Like that it said Koch brothers had made a $200,000 donation, when in fact Koch donations were to be $25,000 for health projects not Global Warming. It turned out that almost all the damming quotes highlighted in news articles & blogs came from this Strategy Document. So people started to analyse it. Within a day or so some smart people analysing the texts had picked up signs of Peter Gleick being the source of them. The document had been scanned on the Pacific coast a few days previously, yet Heartland is in Chicago. ...He is on the Pacific coast, he named as important in the document & he often uses the words “anti-climate”, whereas skeptics like Heartland are very unlikely to use them. PART III - After 6 days Peter Gleick confessed & a new story emerged .... And after 6 days Peter Gleick confessed & a new story emerged NCSE (Nat Centre of Science Education) announce they have just fired Gleick & what was Gleick doing with NCSE ? ... Go on take a wild guess ! - A campaign which seems to expose one SIG trying to get their own material into schools was run by a worker for an SIG .... which was in the process of .... ? what do you reckon ? - 6 weeks ago NCSE got it's new experts on board & have started on its new Climate Change program & products - On January 13, 2012, issued this : NCSE Tackles Climate Change Denial “The cavalry has arrived. NCSE, with its passion and experience defending science in our schools, will ensure that teachers can educate students about climate change without fear of reprisal.” - "Dr. Peter Gleick, president and co-founder of The Pacific Institute, has joined NCSE’s board of directors. Gleick, a world-renowned water expert, will advise NCSE on its new climate change education initiative." - There's more info about the new program & the new faces here : ncse.com/climate-change/ncse-tackles-climate-change-denial .. note the loaded words in the title & the extremely loaded language they use throughout. - e.g. “without fear of reprisal”, perhaps really means : “only our dogma” - so perhaps their thoughts could be : "if someone else does something similar they will be competing with us ...so lets eliminate them from the market... lets smear them" - no wonder NCSE has now distanced itself from PG. Summary of The Back-story - One maker of science programs for schools NCSE announces that they are making a new climate change program - 5 weeks later a story pops up over multiple green websites using a loaded title “Anti-science” which reveals another conservative organisation has a secret agenda to flood US schools with “climate denier” material. The post goes on to “expose & thoroughly discredit” this organisation with some “leaked material” - Then it turns out that the leaked material is half fabricated & originates from Peter Gleick the top expert for the first organisation. Truly it's an upside down world !