By Brad Johnson, campaign manager for Forecast the Facts

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) is scheduled to be the keynote speaker for the Heartland Institute’s benefit dinner in August, 2012. Heartland has lost more than $1 million in expected corporate funding in the wake of public outrage over its climate denial, reducing president Joe Bast to beg for more financial support. Walker is a perfect fit for the anti-science extremists at Heartland — like them, he’s Koch-funded global warming conspiracy theorist. Walker has attacked investment in high-speed rail, wind power, and even recycling.

by Brad Johnson, campaign manager of Forecast the Facts

LKQ, an auto-parts company that had been a major contributor to the Heartland Institute, has decided to end their association with climate denial. According to calculations by Forecast the Facts, their decision means that the Heartland Institute has now lost over $1 million in expected corporate support for 2012 from 19 different corporations. According to leaked documents, Heartland expected LKQ to contribute $150,000 in 2012.

LKQ announced last week on its Facebook page that it decided to “immediately sever all ties to the group”:

LKQ has never engaged with The Heartland Institute on any issues related to climate change. In fact, LKQ Corporation is an inherently green company whose widespread, large-scale recycling efforts conserve energy and preserve valuable natural resources.

LKQ informed The Heartland Institute on May 8 of its decision to immediately sever all ties to the group. We believe that this is an appropriate step that serves our company and its shareholders.

LKQ’s Facebook announcement was overshadowed by the Heartland Institute’s climate-denial conference in Chicago, which garnered the public support of the Illinois Coal Association. As Climate Progress reported, the conference featured birther jokes and conspiracy theories, but not a single climate scientist.

Blue-chip corporations General Motors, PepsiCo, State Farm, and Eli Lilly have now responded to public outcry over Heartland’s outrageous behavior, which includes classroom climate denial, Unabomber billboards, and its embarrassing parody of a scientific conference. Corporations that continue to support the Heartland Institute include Pfizer, Comcast, and Microsoft. Greenpeace has begun a petition to challenge Nucor, a major steel company that directly funds Heartland’s climate-denial work, to drop its support.

A protester outside Heartland's climate denier conference. Photo: Kelly Mitchell

“I don’t appreciate being called a terrorist,” the woman said firmly.

I was standing outside the Hilton Chicago hotel talking to Jim Lakely, the director of communications for the Heartland Institute, when an elderly woman approached us on the street. Dressed in a business suit, she was loading her luggage into a taxi when she noticed Lakely’s Heartland name badge and interrupted our conversation.

“We can have a civil discussion. But I really don’t like being labeled a terrorist,” she said, referencing a billboard posted by Heartland equating people who believe in global warming to the Unibomber. “That’s all I wanted to say.”

“Well, I appreciate you telling me that,” said Lakely, who was taking a break from managing Heartland’s conference to watch the 60 or so people protesting the event outside the hotel.

The woman, who was wearing a badge for a different conference, got into her taxi and drove away. There was a brief moment of awkward silence between me and Lakely.

The exchange perfectly encapsulated the public relations disaster the Heartland Institute has created for itself over the last few weeks. The downfall started with an offensive billboard campaign on May 3rd and ended with 11 companies pulling support for the organization — stripping 35% of corporate funds overnight and leaving its financial future uncertain.

The dramatic drop in support was facilitated by the advocacy organization Forecast the Facts, which collected more than 150,000 signatures from people calling on corporate donors to end their relationship with Heartland.

This series of events built on an earlier incident in which Peter Gleick, a scientist with the Pacific Institute, faked his identity to acquire internal documents from the Heartland Institute. Those documents showed that the organization planned to secretly develop school curriculum to spread doubt about the causes of climate change. It also opened up a window to the organization’s donors, which were forced to make a decision about whether or not they wanted to be associated with Heartland’s tactics.

And then yesterday, the other shoe dropped. In his closing speech, Heartland President Joseph Bast announced that the organization does not have the money to continue putting on its hallmark climate conference — an event that had become a rallying point for an insulated group of climate disinformers.

“I hope to see you at a future conference, but at this point we have no plans to do another ICCC,” said Bast, explaining that Heartland was struggling to meet expenses.

The cancellation marks the end of an era — albeit a short era — for the oddball world of organized climate change denial.

The event, called the International Conference on Climate Change, was started in 2008 as a way to organize libertarians  — many of whom believe that taking action on climate change would create a one-world government dominated by the United Nations.

Heartland tried hard to label the event a “science” conference. But the presentations were almost always political, peppered with anti-government rhetoric and conspiracy theories.

“We’re in a war. We’re in a war against our standard of living,” said Walt Cunningham, a former NASA astronaut, speaking in a morning session on Tuesday.

“There’s not a lot of science here,” said Scott Denning, an atmospheric scientist from Colorado State University who attended the event last year to present the so-called “warmist” case. Neither Denning nor any of the other 97% of climate scientists who say human activity is warming the planet presented at this year’s conference.

In fact, none of this year’s top speakers had any background in climate science. Instead, they spoke about the issues in highly conspiratorial terms.

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Monckton watches the protesters outside Heartland's conference.

With the Heartland Institute suffering from a public relations disaster that caused 11 donors to abandon financial support, one might think the organization would attempt to moderate messaging tactics at its climate denial conference this week.

Or maybe even find an expert who doesn’t freely admit that he “has no scientific qualification” to challenge the science of climate change.

Not quite.

After comparing people who understand global warming with serial killers in a billboard campaign, the organization featured a presentation yesterday that called into question the legitimacy of President Obama’s citizenship.

Enter Lord Christopher Monckton, Heartland’s “mystery guest” who popped in to the conference Tuesday to perform a quirky stand-up comedy routine for a couple hundred eager attendees.

His presentation peeled back yet another layer on the conspiratorial beliefs of many within the climate disinformation community.

Monckton, a man frequently held up as an expert among deniers, started his speech off by boldly admitting his lack of scientific qualifications. He thanked the attendees for having the “courage” to challenge climate scientists, explaining: “It is particularly hard, if like me, you have no scientific qualification to do so.”

Monckton then joked about what he needed to do in order to build his credibility in America.

“I have concluded what one needs to have is a freshly minted Hawaiian birth certificate,” he said, referencing the belief among “birthers” that President Obama’s birth certificate is forged. He displayed a picture of a Hawaiian birth certificate with his personal information filled in. The crowded erupted in laughter.

“I was born at a military hospital. What is marvelous is that this [birth certificate] is just as genuine of that of the President of the United States,” said Monckton.

Even with the release of official documents and the repeated confirmation from Hawaiian officials, Monckton is an outspoken believer that President Obama’s birth certificate is forged. The conspiracy has gotten so ludicrous in the face of documentary evidence, the Washington Post labeled remaining birthers “crackpots” who “live for their pet conspiracy theory.”

Explaining that his forged birth certificate prepared him to run for President of the United States, Monckton presented Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast with a freshly minted campaign button. Bast shook Monckton’s hand, jokingly saying he would endorse the candidacy.

The opening skit raised resounding laughter and applause throughout the room.

Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher, has become a form of comic relief for the climate disinformation community. Australian satirists did a hilarious interview with him in which they “mistook” him for an act by Sacha Baron Cohen. But Monckton has also said those who embrace climate science are “Hitler youth” and fascists. He travels around the world making grossly inaccurate presentations filled with peculiar jokes poking fun at climate scientists, who he labels “bullies” and “liars.”

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Speaking at the Heartland Institute’s climate denial conference in Chicago this afternoon, Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) said that labeling heat-trapping carbon dioxide a pollutant is “propaganda.”

Sensenbrenner is a long-time climate disinformer who says that the science of man-made global warming is an “international conspiracy.” He also happens to be Vice Chair of the House Committee on Space, Science and Technology.

Blatantly ignoring the “science” part of his committee responsibilities, the Congressman today attempted to argue against the basic physics of CO2 in the atmosphere:

“CO2 is a natural gas. Does this mean that all of us need to put catalytic converters on all our noses? The fact that people think CO2 is a pollutant … basically goes into propaganda.”

The so-called “radiative forcing” of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels has contributed enough heat in the atmosphere over the last century to equal roughly half a billion Hiroshima nuclear bombs each year. As one researcher explained: “When there’s more energy radiating down on the planet than there is radiating back out to space, something’s going to have to heat up.”

Rep. Sensenbrenner took his unscientific personal conclusions one step further, saying he believed CO2 would help “crop yields go up” and make it “easier to feed 7 billion people.”

“I’m not one of the people going around saying CO2 is bad for you,” he concluded.

In fact, scientists around the world are calling man-made global warming one of the biggest threats to agricultural production. In Texas, a brutal warming-driven drought cost farmers $7.5 billion last year; In Thailand, “weather whiplash” in 2010 devastated rice crops, causing $40 billion in lost economic productivity; and in Mexico, severe drought reduced agricultural output by 40% already this year.

These incidents came as world food prices hit record highs in 2011 due to a combination of extreme weather events and rising oil prices. In the lead-up to these global price spikes, 2010 was the warmest year on record globally — with 19 nations setting all-time heat records.

Sensenbrenner delivered his speech to a crowd of roughly 200 people at the Heartland Institute’s 7th annual international climate conference — a yearly gathering for the nation’s most active climate change disinformers. The Heartland Institute has come under fire in recent weeks for a disastrous billboard campaign linking people who understand human-caused global warming to mass murderers. Since the billboard was put up, 12 companies have pulled their support for Heartland in the lead-up to the conference.

Sensenbrenner ended his speech with an appropriate anecodote. He referenced New York Times Columnist Paul Krugman, who wrote in a 2009 column that climate deniers were practicing “treason against the planet.”

“Mr. Krugman, I plead guilty as charged,” boasted Sensenbrenner — a politician who helps oversee one of the most important scientific committees in Congress.

The crowd burst into gleeful laughter.

Sensenbrenner also assured the crowd that Mitt Romney would not take action on global warming. When asked by an attendee who said he was “scared to death” that Romney would change his stance on man-made global warming and support renewable energy, Sensenbrenner replied, ” I don’t think that’s true. I talked to Romney before the Wisconsin primary.”

Peter Gleick cleared of forging documents in Heartland expose

Heartland Institute hosts its annual denial-a-palooza conference in Chicago this week, during an uncertain time for the libertarian think tank. Exposed for its secret agenda to teach climate denialism in classrooms and its outlandish billboard campaign, Heartland has shed sponsors and more than $800,000 exactly because of its extremist position on the climate.

Meanwhile, the UK Guardian breaks the news today that an external investigation conducted for the Pacific Institute cleared climate scientist Peter Gleick of the charge of faking material in his elaborate effort to obtain internal Heartland strategy and finance documents.

In a matter of months, Heartland has alienated its own senior staff and lost 11 corporate sponsors including AT&T to General Motors. Now, its claims to legitimacy “lie in shreds and its financial future remains uncertain,” the Guardian wrote in a separate story Sunday:

Over the last few weeks, Heartland has lost at least $825,000 in expected funds for 2012, or more than 35% of the funds its planned to raise from corporate donors, according to the campaign group Forecast the Facts, which is pushing companies to boycott the organisation.

The organisation has been forced to make up those funds by taking its first publicly acknowledged donations from the coal industry. The main Illinois coal lobby is a last-minute sponsor of this week’s conference, undermining Heartland’s claims to operate independently of fossil fuel interests.
Its entire Washington DC office, barring one staffer, decamped, taking Heartland’s biggest project, involving the insurance industry, with them.

Board directors quit, conference speakers cancelled at short-notice, and associates of long standing demanded Heartland remove their names from its website. The list of conference sponsors shrank by nearly half from 2010, and many of those listed sponsors are just websites operating on the rightwing fringe.

It’s become increasingly clear that the more Heartland’s agenda has been exposed, fewer corporations want to remain publicly connected to the efforts undermining climate science. But what’s the most revealing is who remains among Heartland’s funders: a coal lobby group has stepped in as one of its “gold” sponsors. The Illinois coal chief praises Heartland for its work and “so we thought we would finally make a contribution to the organisation.” He added, “In general, the message of the Heartland Institute is something the Illinois Coal Association supports.”

In addition to the Illinois Coal Association, , Heritage Foundation has also joined to sponsor the conference.

Here’s more from today’s story on Gleick:

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Since I lost many relatives in the Holocaust, I understand all too well the unique nature of that catastrophe. The Holocaust is not an analogue to global warming, which is an utterly different kind of catastrophe, and, obviously, one whose worst impacts are yet to come.

I have explained this many times, including a 2008 post (“PLEASE stop calling them skeptics“) and in my 2009 post, “Anti-science conservatives are stuck in denial but for climate science activists, the reverse is true,” which I’ll excerpt in this post.

Over the years, I have explained why “denier” is not my preferred term. I tried to coin the terms “delayer” and “disinformer” for those who make a living spreading disinformation about climate science — and I still use the term ‘disinformer.’  But coining terms is nearly impossible, and the fact is that almost everybody has embraced the term “deniers” – including many, many disinformers.

As the National Center for Science Education explains in their 2012 post, “Why Is It Called Denial?”

“Denial” is the term preferred even by many deniers. “I actually like ‘denier.’ That’s closer than skeptic,” says MIT’s Richard Lindzen, one of the most prominent deniers. Minnesotans for Global Warming and other major denier groups go so far as to sing, “I’m a Denier!”.

Heck, even disinformers associated with the hard-core extremists at the Heartland Institute like the term:

So clearly, using the term ‘denier’ doesn’t inherently mean you are equating a disinformer with a Holocaust denier. So if for no reason than for clarity’s sake — as well as for people doing web searches — we seem to be stuck with ‘denier’ for general usage.

But undefined labels are always subject to criticism and out-of-context attacks, especially by people who spread disinformation for a living, so I’m a big fan of defining one’s terms, as NCSE does in its post. As I have written many times in the past:

I understand that some of the deniers take offense at the apparent implication that they are like Holocaust deniers.  I am not trying to make that connection — since climate science deniers are nothing like Holocaust deniers.  Holocaust deniers are denying an established fact from the past.  If the media or politicians or the public took them at all seriously, I suppose it might increase the chances of a future Holocaust. But, in fact, they are very marginalized, and are inevitably attacked and criticized widely whenever they try to spread their disinformation, so they have no significant impact on society.

The climate science deniers, however, are very different and far more worrisome. They are not marginalized, but rather very well-funded and treated quite seriously by the status quo media.  They are trying to persuade people not to take action on a problem that has not yet become catastrophic, but which will certainly do so if we listen to them and delay acting much longer.

This doesn’t stop the disinformers from misrepresenting what one was trying to say, of course, since that is what they do for a living.

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The Heartland Institute is doubling down on its widely-condemned effort to label leading proponents of climate science as “murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”

CEO Joe Bast has sent a letter to one of the scholars who “have expressed trepidation about continuing their long-time associations with us.” Not to worry, says Bast, we’re still into wacky hate speech, same as ever, we just will use our website — and not billboards — to smear folks. He explains:

Of course, what’s fake here is, well, pretty much every single word in this letter. Heartland lecturing folks on accuracy? If you look up chutzpah in the dictionary….

Heartland posted a statement saying “We do not apologize for running the ad.” And they kept online their original defense of the billboard, which made absurd statements like, “the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.” Some mistake.

Obviously, Bast stands by this nonsense. The uber-vindicated Michael Mann, one of the most highly regarded climatologists in the country, had this to say in reply to Bast:

Being called a “mad man” by Joe Bast & Heartland is like being called overexposed by Kim Kardashian.

Michael Mann and Bill McKibben?

UPDATE: The too-sane-for-this-world Bill McKibben sends me this response:

Was preparing to feel insulted, but then I thought … Don Draper! and fired up some Johnny Mathis on my spotify.

How out of touch are Bast and Heartland?

They post their beyond-the-pale extremism in a blog named “Somewhat Reasonable”:

In the Bizarro World of Htrae that Heartland inhabits, I guess Somewhat Reasonable = Most Unreasonable.

Finally, Bast just can’t stop defending the billboard with nonsensical arguments:

Our billboard was factual: The Unabomber was motivated by concern over man-made global warming to do the terrible crimes he committed. He still believes in global warming. We simply put his picture on a billboard, pointed out the “inconvenient truth,” and asked, “do you?”

But wait, I thought Bast just said the billboard was a mistake? In any case, as Greenwire reported on the Unabomber’s manifesto (which you can confirm online):

The words “climate change” don’t appear in the manifesto, nor are there references to “global warming” or “carbon.”

Asked about this discrepancy, Heartland spokesman Jim Lakely pointed to a passage from Kaczynski’s manifesto that says the Industrial Revolution has “inflicted severe damage on the natural world.”

#FAIL