Racing around the internet are some internal documents that appear to be from the Heartland Institute, a relatively obscure hard-core anti-science think tank. As DeSmogBlog explains, “An anonymous donor calling him (or her)self ‘Heartland Insider’ has released the Heartland Institute’s budget, fundraising plan… and sundry other documents (all attached) that prove all of the worst allegations that have been levelled against the organization.”  See update below.

Personally, I was skeptical of these docs, at least until I read the 2012 Fundraising Plan, which attacks the temperature station data of the “the National Aeronautics and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).” That kind of error is classic Heartland.

And here’s another apparent blunder: “The Charles G. Koch Foundation returned as a Heartland donor in 2011. We expect to ramp up their level of support in 2012 and gain access to the network of philanthropists they work with.”

Those Heartland folks are such satirists.  Philanthropy “etymologically means the love of humanity,” whereas funding climate denial and inaction, as the Kochs do, is perhaps the cruelest thing you could possibly do to humanity.

My colleague Brad Johnson has just blogged on Heartland’s “Secret, Corporate-Funded Plan To Teach Children That Climate Change Is A Hoax,” which I’ll excerpt at the end. It’s funny in the way that The Shining was funny.

These documents just make no sense, kind of like climate science denial itself.  Perhaps this is a spoof put out by The Onion.

Certainly the page on Heartland’s secret plans to dupe children supports the latter theory:

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Energy Investments Would Create Jobs, Help Middle Class

by Daniel J. Weiss

President Obama’s proposed 2013 budget invests in clean energy to help power the engine of economic growth. The budget would direct funds to efficiency and renewable electricity technologies to create jobs and boost domestic manufacturing, and would also make manufacturing more efficient. The cleaner energy that will result from these investments will reduce pollution and protect public health. In addition, the budget would make taxes fairer by eliminating $40 billion in unnecessary breaks for Big Oil companies, which made record profits in 2011.

This clean energy vision would benefit middle-class Americans and the rest of the 99 percent. It is a stark contrast to the “drill, baby, drill” policies promoted by the American Petroleum Institute and other Big Oil allies.

Here are 11 important clean energy provisions in the president’s proposed 2013 budget:

1. Extends the production tax credit for wind energy. Wind projects currently receive a tax credit of 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity. Thanks to this production tax credit, enough new wind energy was built in 2011 to power more than 2 million homes. The credit is set to expire, however, at the end of this year. Without an extension, 37,000 jobs could be lost. The budget would extend the production tax credit through 2013.

2. Extends the Treasury Cash Grant Program (Section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) to assist small renewable companies. This program provided grants in lieu of tax credits to small renewable companies that were unable to utilize the credits, but it expired at the end of 2011. Extending it for one year would create 37,000 jobs in the solar industry alone. The budget would extend the credit for one year and then convert the program into a refundable tax credit through 2016.

3. Increases R&D funding for advanced energy technologies. The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, would receive $350 million for investments in potentially game-changing energy technologies. The Department of Energy reports that “11 projects that received $40 million from ARPA-E over the last two years have attracted more than $200 million in private capital following successful research breakthroughs.”

This funding would also boost domestic manufacturing, as investments in innovative R&D would lead to the development of clean-tech products that can be made in the United States.

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Americans have a strange love affair with the light bulb. While we’re perfectly comfortable setting performance standards for appliances, engines, and building materials, we resort to fear tactics and hollow threats when doing the same for incandescent light bulbs.

Okay, so not all Americans. It’s mostly anti-science politicians who ludicrously see new light bulb efficiency standards as a form of government control — when, in fact, they’re a way to provide consistency for businesses, give consumers more choice, and ultimately strengthen our national relationship with the light bulb.

But pro-pollution advocates fearful of change are now acting like the crazed lovers who can’t let go — turning a once-affectionate relationship into one filled with bitter resentment, desperation, and obsession.

It’s time to break up. The letter below is dedicated to all the incandescent light bulb lovers who are fearful of change. (Click on the image to read the whole text.)

“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. You see, I’ve become so accustomed to the shape of you. The way you light up a room — it was so hot! In the beginning it was a turn on. But over the years, you haven’t changed and now you’re only hurting our relationship….  I can’t go on like this … it keeps wasting my energy.”

The first in a series of posts about the Heartland Institute’s inner workings, from internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green. Heartland has issued a press release claiming that some of these documents were sent to an outsider under false pretenses and that one document in the set is a fake.

Heartland Institute's secret plans for a K-12 climate-denier curriculum.

“Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective,” Heartland’s confidential 2012 fundraising document bemoans. The group believes that Wojick’s project has “potential for great success,” because he has “contacts at virtually all the national organizations involved in producing, certifying, and promoting scientific curricula.” The document explains that Wojick will produce “modules” that promote the conspiratorial claim that climate change is “controversial”:

Dr. Wojick proposes to begin work on “modules” for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy“), climate models (“models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial”), and air pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”).

Wojick would produce modules for Grades 7-9 on environmental impact (“environmental impact is often difficult to determine. For example there is a major controversy over whether or not humans are changing the weather“), for Grade 6 on water resources and weather systems, and so on.

Wojick will receive $5,000 per module, with twenty modules produced a year. Wojick, who manages the Climate Change Debate listserv, is not a climate scientist. His doctorate is in epistomology.

The Heartland Institute also runs the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, a conspiracy-theorist parody of the Nobel-prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Heartland’s NIPCC project “pays a team of scientists approximately $300,000 a year to work on a series of editions of Climate Change Reconsidered.” Their climate-denial work is funded anonymously.

James M. Taylor, a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute, told ThinkProgress Green in an e-mail why the group is developing its denier curriculum:

We are concerned that schools are teaching climate change issues in a manner that is not consistent with sound science and that is designed to lead students to the erroneous belief that humans are causing a global warming crisis. We hope that our efforts will restore sound science to climate change education and discourage the political propaganda that too often passes as “education”.

Right-wing ideologues, fueled by the fossil fuel industry, have been increasing their efforts to pollute science education in elementary schools. These attempts to hijack children’s education piggyback on the religious right’s war on biology education and the science of evolution. The National Center for Science Education, which has long led the defense of evolution education in elementary schools, has begun a new program to fight global warming denial in textbooks and classrooms.

Subscribe to ThinkProgress Green.

Native Americans in the Las Vegas valley are paying the environmental and health costs of coal without getting any of the economic benefit

by Zachary Rybarczyk

For almost 50 years, the Moapa Piaute Band has been living near one of the dirtiest coal plants in the nation, getting exposed to dangerous levels of noxious gases, coal ash, and water pollution. However, they haven’t seen the economic benefits they were promised – or any of the electricity.

In the 60’s, when the project developer needed support from the local Piautes to build the Reid Gardner power plant, a contract was drafted promising to hire members of the tribe. But today, no Piautes are employed at the plant, even while asthma rates, thyroid problems and cancer rates increase, according to the tribe.

A local television station, KLAS recently investigated the dispute:

The agreement only obligates the company to “try” to find spots for Paiutes. Some have worked at the plant over the years, yet today, no one from the reservation is employed by NV Energy.

“We apply for a lot of jobs down there but they deny us, and all that. Too high class to hire a bunch of Indians, you know,” said Paiute elder Elliot Bushead. “They don’t hire no Indians.”

Now, the plant owner NV Energy wants to extend the life of the aging facility. And the Moapa Piutes are partnering with environmental organizations to prevent the company from continuing operation, saying that the tribe is a victim of “environmental racism.”

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More than 1.1 million people have jobs in Europe’s renewable energy sector, according to new figures released from EurObserv’ER, a renewable energy tracking project supported by the European Commission.

The numbers, which don’t even account for the massive boom in renewables development in 2011, show a 25% increase in employment between 2009 and 2010, bringing documented jobs in the renewable energy sector throughout Europe to 1,144,000.

The boost in activity in 2010 represented about €127 billion ($166 Billion) in economic value, a 15% increase over 2009.

Unlike some reports documenting green jobs in the United States, these figures only include renewable fuels, heat and electricity. They do not include jobs in mass transportation, recycling, and green building design.

They show a very healthy diversity in Europe’s renewable energy sector. According to the 2010 figures, the top three sectors for employment were biomass (273,000), solar PV (268,110), and wind (253,145). The next largest were biogas (52,810) and solar thermal (49,845). Behind those sectors were ground source heat pumps, waste-to-energy, small hydro, and geothermal.

The increase in jobs corresponded with an increase in consumption of renewable energy. In 2010, renewables accounted for 12.4% of final energy consumption in Europe — up from 11.5% in 2009 and 10.5% in 2008.

And last year saw even stronger growth, particularly in the renewable electricity sector, where 68% of new capacity in Europe came from wind and solar.

Meanwhile in the U.S., the wind industry faces an expiration of short-term tax credits that threatens up to 37,000 manufacturing, installation and maintenance jobs. Will American politicians work to create one million jobs in renewable energy for people like Nathan Crawford documented in the video below?

Or will we allow other regions create millions more while we look backward?

Another holiday, another ‘news hook’ for global warming impacts.  ClimateNexus has put together a nice graphic on how global warming impacts some Valentine’s Day favorites [Click for version with active links].

Of course, Climate Progress never needs a news hook to report on global warming impacts. We’ve been reporting on most of these impacts for a while:

• Record Heat Causes Peanut Butter Prices to Skyrocket: “I Don’t Remember A Year” We Had “So Little Moisture”
• Great Video of New Hampshire Farmer Trying to Save Maple Syrup from Climate Change

And the biggest impact of all, “Too Hot for Chocolate? Climate Change Could Decimate the $9 Billion Cocoa Industry, Study Finds,” which had this powerful graphic:

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By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The House of Representatives is considering a behemoth surface transportation bill this week, designed to fund the roads, highways, and bridges that connect our country.  It has nothing to do with the public lands that belong to all of us, but that didn’t stop three Republicans from Arizona from filing an amendment to the bill that would override Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s January decision to protect 1 million acres around Grand Canyon National Park from new uranium mining requests.

Reps. Trent Franks (R-AZ), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) penned the amendment:

SEC. __ . TERMINATION OF PUBLIC LAND ORDER 7787.

Public Land Order 7787 (77 Fed. Reg. 2563) and the withdrawal of lands by that Public Land Order shall have no force or effect, and the provisions of the land use plans applicable to such lands immediately before the issuance of such Public Land Order shall remain in effect.

If this sounds familiar, it is because this trio of lawmakers has tried three times in the last two years to undo new protections for one of our nation’s great places.  Here is a list of their other attempts to do the National Mining Association’s bidding:

– They added roll back language in the text of last year’s budget bill (which did not pass) where it was dubbed “the Flake earmark for the mining industry.”

– In October, Franks introduced the Northern Arizona Mining Continuity Act of 2011, an attempt to halt the mineral withdrawal.

– Franks introduced legislation in the last Congress to stop the mineral withdrawal.

As ThinkProgress has outlined before, the Grand Canyon is incredibly important to the economy of Arizona.  Tourists spending money in and around the Grand Canyon create jobs. Headwaters Economics found that Grand Canyon National Park supported over 6,000 jobs in 2009 and those tourists spent more than $400 million.

In addition, mining for uranium around the canyon poses risks to drinking water for 25 million people reliant on the Colorado River, as seen in the legacy of old, abandoned, and hazardous mines.     

It remains to be seen whether Congressional rules will allow the amendment to be considered.  But House Republicans have made their position clear—despite the fact that the battle over the Grand Canyon has been fought, and these three Congressmen lost, they will keep fighting another day.  Franks recently stated to E&E News that “anything that we can do to promote the legislation we will.”

Environmental Activist and 350.org Founder Bill McKibben had a lot to be excited about when he walked onto the Colbert Report last night. After wondering publicly whether the environmental movement could accumulate 500,000 messages in 24-hours from citizens opposed to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, by last night he announced that they’d done it in less than seven.

But the battle over Keystone XL is not even close to finished. The Senate introduced an amendment in a transportation bill yesterday that would allow Congress to approve the project. Meanwhile, activist groups are hoping to raise over one million signatures against the tar sands pipeline by noon today — shattering any previous petitions from environmental organizations.

So it was fitting that faux-pundit Stephen Colbert invited McKibben “the troublemaker” onto his show just before the next Congressional showdown. Will the rally against the Keystone XL experience the infamous “Colbert Bump” after last night’s appearance? We can only hope.

“The Colbert Bump is the curious phenomenon whereby anyone who appears on The Colbert Report gets a huge boost in popularity, causing them to win elections, receive massive increases in money (making Colbert the greatest fundraiser ever), receive major awards and even get laid (The Colbert Bumpin’ Uglies).

Watch McKibben’s segment on last night’s show:

China's Vice President Xi Jinping. Source: AP

We can’t solve the climate crisis without China’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions and deploying more clean energy. But the geopolitical stakes are so high and so complicated, building enough trust to get swift, meaningful action from an emerging powerhouse like China isn’t easy.

As China undergoes another major political transition this year, it’s important for us to understand how national security, energy and economic issues all influence the American-Chinese relationship — and how that may impact action on climate change.

Below, a few China experts at the Center for American Progress flesh out how those issues may evolve. While the piece does not explicitly deal with climate negotiations, one can see how changes to the country’s manufacturing sector, military standing, and information flow could impact how China chooses to address climate. — S Lacey

by Rudy deLeon, Melanie Hart, Ali Fisher

This week, President Barack Obama is meeting the man who will steer China forward over the next decade. Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping is clearly a man that Americans need to get to know.

Vice President Xi will almost certainly become the next General Secretary of the Communist Party of China—China’s top leadership position—in November 2012. His visit will offer a taste of how the United States will interact with the next generation of Communist party leaders.

Xi Jinping will hold China’s highest political position, but he will not rule the country alone. Back in Beijing China’s current leaders are negotiating furiously among themselves to select a crop of seven to nine cadres that will serve as the country’s next “board of directors” on the Politburo Standing Committee. The candidates for those positions are a fascinating group. They include a well-known finance guru, an apparent reformist who recently made press for his delicate handling of land protests in Guangdong, and a red-flag-waving nationalist who is making a movie about his mafia-busting campaigns in the Chinese west even as his chief lieutenant disappears under a cloud of controversy.

As this intriguing group is preparing to take the helm in Beijing, the United States is realizing that the China we are dealing with today is not the China we have grown accustomed to over the past few decades. U.S. policymakers are waking up from a long post-September 11 war in the Middle East and realizing that, while our attentions were focused elsewhere, China has grown and changed dramatically. To keep up, our foreign and economic policy approaches to China will have to change as well.

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Other stories below: Ocean Warming might hit microbe’s carbon storage capacity; Why Don’t Americans Elect Scientists?

With climate change, today’s ’100-year floods’ may happen every three to 20 years: research

Last August, Hurricane Irene spun through the Caribbean and parts of the eastern United States, leaving widespread wreckage in its wake. The Category 3 storm whipped up water levels, generating storm surges that swept over seawalls and flooded seaside and inland communities. Many hurricane analysts suggested, based on the wide extent of flooding, that Irene was a “100-year event”: a storm that only comes around once in a century.

However, researchers from MIT and Princeton University have found that with climate change, such storms could make landfall far more frequently, causing powerful, devastating storm surges every three to 20 years. The group simulated tens of thousands of storms under different climate conditions, finding that today’s “500-year floods” could, with climate change, occur once every 25 to 240 years. The researchers published their results in the current issue of Nature Climate Change.

MIT postdoc Ning Lin, lead author of the study, says knowing the frequency of storm surges may help urban and coastal planners design seawalls and other protective structures.

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