This is the fourth installment of Dunlap, Jacques' (2013) study of the history of our dysfunctional public climate science education dialogue. They focused on the influence of "conservative think tanks (CTTs) on the output of "skeptical" book publications and this section deals with Book Ties With Conservative Think Tanks.
Here are facts about why out and out lying has been allowed to became the mainstay of the Republican climate science contrarian PR strategy Facts that it would be good for younger activists to be aware of. Given that the study has a CCA License I've decided to Repost the complete text in a few installments. I thank Riley Dunlap and Peter Jacques for the opportunity to Repost their impressive work.
I follow with excerpts and related links to a number of eye-opening articles
Oil Industry Astroturf Campaign Exposed
Andy Rowell, August 14, 2009
Leaked Memo: Oil Lobby Launches Fake "Grassroots" Campaign
By Kevin Grandia • August 13, 2009
Ethics and Climate.org | Donald Brown
Freedom to Bully: How Laws Intended to Free Information Are Used to Harass Researchers
Michael Halpern | February 2015
Lee Fang | Aug. 25 2015
Exposed: Shameless climate denial, brought to you by Big Coal
Lindsay Abrams | August 26, 2015
Alpha Natural Discloses Payments to Climate Change Skeptic Chris Horner
By Patrick Fitzgerald | October 15, 2015
Shattered Consensus Review
Reviewed 7/10/2014
Avery and Singer: Unstoppable Hot Air
David Archer | November 20, 2006
Professor of physical sciences - Scott Mandia's Collection
What Are Climate Change Skeptics Still Skeptical About?
By Natalie Wolchover | November 22, 2011
Hudson Institute Funding
Dennis T. Avery (of the Hudson Institute)
Global warming denier Dennis Avery doesn’t know the difference between growth and growth rate
ThinkProgress | March 30, 2009
Right-Wing Authors Claim to be Swindled by Right-Wing Publisher
November 7, 2007
Cooking the Books: How the Conservative Best Seller Scam is a Free Market Hypocrisy
November 16, 2014
From The Merchants of Doubt - a documented history
Chapter 6 - Denial of Global Warming
Denialists are dead wrong about the science. But they understand something the left still doesn’t get about the revolutionary meaning of climate change.
By Naomi Klein | November 9, 2011
Climate Denial Goes Vegas
July 7, 2014
Why do libertarians deny climate change?
#4 Book Ties With Conservative Think Tanks
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The American Behavioral Scientist
Climate Change Denial Books and
Conservative Think Tanks
Exploring the Connection
Copyright © 2013 SAGE PublicationsThis is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Am Behav Sci. 2013 Jun; 57(6): 699–731.
Conservative Think Tanks (CTTs)
Book Ties With Conservative Think Tanks
Our examination of the links between the denial books and CTTs follows the procedure we used in our prior study of environmental skepticism (Jacques et al., 2008). Specifically, links were established in one of two ways: The author or editor was affiliated with a CTT or the book was published (or copublished) by a CTT press (often both).
Author or editor affiliations with CTTs had to be empirically verifiable (typically from the CTT websites, where they were listed as board members, advisors, experts, etc.) and were not inferred. In choosing to err on the side of caution, we have possibly missed a few affiliations.
Table 1 shows the number of denial books linked to CTTs by decade (2000–2010 covers 11 years), as well by whether or not they were issued by a publisher or were self-published.
To begin with, in the bottom of the third column we see that across all years 78 of the total 108 volumes, or 72%, have a verifiable link with a CTT. Although reflecting a strong link between CTTs and the denial volumes, this is noticeably lower than the 92% of books espousing environmental skepticism (which, again, includes some of the same books) published through 2005 found to have such a link in our prior study.
However, the primary reasons for the lower percentage of climate change denial books being linked to CTTs are suggested by the trends over time as well as a comparison of the links for self-published books versus those issued by publishing houses.
First, in the third column we can see that 100% of the denial books published in the 1980s and 95% published in the 1990s are linked to CTTs, whereas this is true of “only” 65% of those published since 2000. Second, the large decline in the percentage of CTT links since 2000 is primarily the result of the preponderance of self-published books appearing over the 11 years, as only one third of the 30 self-published books coming out since 2000 are linked to a CTT. In contrast, 83% of the books from publishing houses since 2000 have links to CTTs. More generally, in the bottom row we see that of the 75 denial books issued by a publishing house, 87% are linked to a CTT, whereas of the 33 self-published denial books, only 39% have such a link.
Conservative Think Tank Connections of Climate Change Denial Books
— With Publishers, Self-Published, and Total — by Decade.
In recent years production of climate change denial books has “diffused” from CTTs to a broader segment of the conservative movement, just as endorsement of climate change denial has spread throughout most of the conservative sector of the public (McCright & Dunlap, 2011).
Although the link between denial books issued by publishing houses and CTT presses (87%) is nearly as strong as the overall link found in our prior study of books espousing environmental skepticism, the link is much weaker for self-published denial books. This reflects the fact that many of the self-published books are written by laypeople, often without any scientific background whatsoever, who are clearly quite conservative and have presumably adopted climate change denial because it has become a core tenet of conservatism and is promoted by conservative media and elites.
Furthermore, it should be noted that nearly all of the authors or editors of the 108 books endorse a conservative ideology, confirming the strong link between conservatism and promotion of climate change denial emphasized by analysts of the denial campaign (Dunlap & McCright, 2011; Oreskes & Conway, 2010). Also, 17 of the 75 books issued by a publishing house, including the numerous CTT presses, are published by overtly conservative presses or conservative religious presses (as noted in the appendix), additional evidence of the strong link between conservatism and climate change denial.
Social movement organizations attempt to diffuse their views, both within the movement as well as throughout the larger society (Strang & Soule, 1998). As the core organizations of the conservative movement, CTTs have obviously been effective in spreading climate change denial throughout the movement, helped of course by conservative media and politicians, various Astroturf campaigns (that they helped establish), the Tea Party, and other elements of what has been termed the climate change “denial machine” (Dunlap & McCright, 2011). As noted above, one manifestation is the increasing number of self-published books by conservative individuals not directly linked to a CTT. The fact that these authors typically cite (and often rely heavily on) prior books with links to CTTs illustrates this successful diffusion.
There should be no doubt as to which set of books is most influential. At major bookstores you are likely to find titles like Red Hot Lies by Christopher Horner of the CEI, Shattered Consensus by Patrick Michaels of the CATO Institute, or Unstoppable Global Warming by Fred Singer of the Science and Environmental Policy Project and Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute, titles also likely to be carried by the Conservative Book Club.
On average, the books affiliated with CTTs receive far more publicity (including media appearances for their authors), sell much better, and thus reach larger audiences than do those that are self-published. In addition, individuals affiliated with CTTs are especially likely to produce multiple denial volumes—most notably Fred Singer with six and Patrick Michaels with five. In fact, of the 15 individuals who have published two or more books, 14 are affiliated with CTTs.
It is therefore clear that CTTs have played a central role in the explosion of books promoting climate change denial. Indeed, the CTTs that have played particularly prominent roles in attacking climate science in various ways are especially likely to publish (or copublish) the denial books, with the Cato Institute publishing five, the Heartland Institute publishing four, and the CEI, the Marshall Institute, the Hoover Institution, and the U.K. Institute for Economic Affairs each publishing three. These same CTTs are of course linked to far more of the titles via author or editor affiliations.
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Oil Industry Astroturf Campaign Exposed
Andy Rowell, August 14, 2009
You really didn’t think that the oil industry would just roll over and give up without a fight on the US Waxman-Markey Climate Bill did you? …
What about the other dark arts of public relations? The oil industry has a history of playing dirty and using a whole array of perverse persuasion tactics.
For years, it has secretly funded scientists and think tanks that deny climate change. For years it has funded green-sounding front corporate groups – known as astroturf campaigning.
So the Global Climate Coalition was not a coalition of concerned citizens on climate, but an oil company front organisation set up to fight global warming. The Citizens for the Environment was in fact no such thing, but a bunch of businessmen fighting clean air legislation.
Central to any dirty oil campaigning is the American Petroleum Institute (API), the trade Association …
In fact if you see a public campaign group headed by the word “Citizen” all your alarm bells should go off. And yesterday Greenpeace released an internal memo from the old die- hards at the API, detailing plans to launch a nationwide astroturf campaign: and the name of the campaign is called “Energy Citizen”. …
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Leaked Memo: Oil Lobby Launches Fake "Grassroots" Campaign
By Kevin Grandia • August 13, 2009
An internal memo obtained by Greenpeace USA details polluters’ plans to launch a nationwide Astroturf campaign, staging fake “grassroots” events to attack climate legislation during the final weeks of recess before the Senate returns to debate the issue in September.
The email memo (download a PDF copy), which appears to come from the desk of American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard, asks API’s member companies to recruit employees, retirees, vendors and contractors to attend “Energy Citizen” rallies in key Congressional districts nationwide. API is focusing on 21 states that have “a significant industry presence” or “assets on the ground.”
Taking a page from the playbook of Astroturf campaigners currently crashing health care town hall events across the country, API hopes to similarly sully productive communications between Congress members and their actual constituents. Gerard states that API is ready to bus in company members and provide logistical support, and reveals that API has retained “a highly experienced events management company that has produced successful rallies for presidential campaigns, corporations and interest groups.”
Gerard’s email states that API is partnering on the rally campaign with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, confirming that the groups are staging a coordinated effort to attack climate legislation regardless that several prominent members of these groups have stated support for strong Congressional action to combat climate change.
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Ethics and Climate.org | Donald Brown
Ethical Analysis of Disinformation Campaign’s Tactics:
- Think Tanks,
- PR Campaigns,
- Astroturf Groups,
- Cyber-Bullying Attacks.
(2) Conducted ethical analyses of the following climate disinformation tactics:
a. Reckless disregard for the truth.
b. Focusing on unknowns and ignoring knowns.
c. Specious claims of “bad” science.
d. Front Groups.
This entry examines the following additional tactics:
a. Think Tanks
b. PR campaigns.
c. Astroturf groups.
d. Cyber bullying attacks.
- Introduction.
This is the third post in a series that examines the tactics of the climate change disinformation campaign through an ethical lens. As we have seen, the purpose of this series is to distinguish between reasonable scientific skepticism, an approach to climate change science that should be encouraged, and the tactics of the climate change disinformation campaign, strategies deployed to undermine mainstream climate change science that are often ethically offensive.
This series is not a criticism of skeptical approaches to mainstream climate change science provided skeptics comply with the rules of science including publishing in peer-reviewed scientific journals, don’t make claims unsupported by the relevant scientific evidence, and don’t participate in the tactics discussed in this series. ...
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Freedom to Bully: How Laws Intended to Free Information Are Used to Harass Researchers
Michael Halpern | February 2015
“The 1966 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a landmark law familiar to many, enables ordinary citizens to le requests with the federal government for public records. “I signed this measure with a deep sense of pride that the United States is an open society in which the people’s right to know is cherished and guarded,” President Johnson wrote at the time, despite having some reservations about transparency (Bridis 2006; Johnson 1966). …”
“… That said, individuals and well-heeled special interests across the political spectrum are increasingly using broad open records requests to attack and harass scientists and other researchers and shut down conversation at public universities. These companies, organizations, and activists may disagree with researchers’ findings or even dislike an entire field of study. They request all materials on a topic in a university’s possession, including researchers’ draft papers, emails, and even handwritten notes. This strategy can curb the ability of researchers to pursue their work, chill their speech, and discourage them from tackling contentious topics. …
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“Red Hot Lies” by Christopher Horner of the CEI:
Lee Fang | Aug. 25 2015
Christopher Horner, an attorney who claims that the earth is cooling, is known within the scientific community for hounding climate change researchers with relentless investigations and public ridicule, often deriding scientists as “communists” and frauds.
Horner is a regular guest on Fox News and CNN, and has been affiliated with a number of think tanks and legal organizations over the last decade. He has called for investigations of climate scientists affiliated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and NASA, and inundated climate researchers at major universities across the country with records requests that critics say are designed to distract them from their work.
New court documents reveal one source of Horner’s funding: big coal. …
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Exposed: Shameless climate denial, brought to you by Big Coal
A coal giant's bankruptcy report sheds light on its secretive spending practices
Lindsay Abrams | August 26, 2015
The Koch-affiliated groups Americans for Prosperity and the Institute for Energy Research, known for spreading lies about climate change in order to influence policy. The American Legislative Exchange Council and the Heartland Institute, also known as America’s preeminent climate deniers. A secretive, Karl Rove-linked operation that spent millions on ads supporting Mitch McConnell in his Kentucky Senate race against Alison Grimes and President Obama’s purported “War on Coal.” And an attorney known for making life hell for the scientists conducting important research on climate change.
What they all — and many others — have in common, according to a searing investigative report from the Intercept: they all received funding from Alpha Natural Resources, the country’s second-largest coal company.
This information shouldn’t be surprising. But until the company filed for bankruptcy earlier this month, it was nonetheless withheld from the public. That’s because, as the Intercept explains, many of these nonprofits, despite the outsized role they play in politics, are not required to reporting information about their donors. …
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Alpha Natural Discloses Payments to Climate Change Skeptic Chris Horner
By Patrick Fitzgerald | October 15, 2015
Bankrupt coal company Alpha Natural Resources Inc. paid lawyer Chris Horner $18,600 before it filed for chapter 11 this summer.
Virginia-based Alpha made three $6,200 payments to Mr. Horner, an author and global warming skeptic who has been accused of harassing climate scientists, between May and July of this year, according to documents filed earlier this month in the company’s bankruptcy case.
The relationship between Alpha and Mr. Horner, whose books include “Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed” and “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism,” previously was reported by the Intercept in an article on how the coal industry was funding think tanks that deny climate change. …
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Shattered Consensus by Patrick Michaels of the CATO Institute:
Shattered Consensus Review
Reviewed 7/10/2014
… who would lament the loss of a climate phenomenon that portends extremely bad times for human civilization in decades to come?
“… who would lament the loss of a climate phenomenon that portends extremely bad times for human civilization in decades to come?
There's one sticking point, though. The mainstream view of climate science is not some religion carried down to us through the centuries in holy scriptures. It is not the opinion of some tribe, widely adopted because it serves the tribe's interests. It is a scientific consensus. That means it is based on evidence obtained by observing and measuring and recording and analyzing natural phenomena. The only way to destroy a scientific consensus is to come up with evidence more solid than the evidence it was founded on, evidence that better explains the observations.
Now I gladly acknowledge that this volume is, in the main, a well-intentioned and respectable effort. But it does have its defects. I discuss them here, beginning by examining the Foreword to the book paragraph by paragraph, offering my comments after each. Quotations are in the boxes with brown borders; my comments are in the blue. …”
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A look at this Patrick Michaels:
Michaels is Editor of the World Climate Report, a blog published by the "advocacy science consulting firm" New Hope Environmental Services[2], which he founded and runs.
Mission
In an affidavit in a Vermont court case, Michaels described his firm's "mission" as being to "publicize findings on climate change and scientific and social perspectives that may not otherwise appear in the popular literature or media. This entails both response research and public commentary."[3] In effect, New Hope Environmental Services is a PR firm.
Clientele
Michaels' firm does not disclose who its clients are, but leaked documents have revealed that several were power utilities which operate coal power stations. On a 2007 academic CV, Michaels disclosed that prior to creating his firm he had received funding from the Edison Electric Institute and the Western Fuels Association. He has also been a frequent speaker with leading coal and energy companies as well as coal and other industry lobby groups.[4]
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Unstoppable Global Warming by Fred Singer of the Science and Environmental Policy Project:
Fred Singer (with six books)
Dr. Singer the God-Father of Science by Slander
For a list of links to articles about this despicable villain visit:
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Avery and Singer: Unstoppable Hot Air
David Archer | November 20, 2006
Last week I attended a talk by Dennis Avery, author with Fred Singer of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years (there is a summary here). The talk (and tasty lunch) was sponsored by the Heartland Institute, and was apparently enthusiastically received by its audience.
Still whoozy from a bit of contention during the question period, a perplexed member of the audience told me privately that he thought a Point/CounterPoint discussion might be useful (he didn’t know I wrote for realclimate; it was just a hypothetical thought). But here’s my attempt to accommodate.
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Professor of physical sciences - Scott Mandia's Collection
S. Fred Singer:
DeSmog Blog: http://www.desmogblog.com/people/fred-singer
• According to the January 2007 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists called Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air, Singer is affiliated with no less than 11 think tanks and associations that have received funding from ExxonMobil.
• Singer's own Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) has received $20,000 from ExxonMobil.
• Singer recently co-authored a global warming denial book called Unstoppable Global Warming, with Dennis Avery, a "Senior Fellow" at an organization called the Hudson Institute, a US think-tank that has received funding from ExxonMobil.
• The 1995 "Leipzig Declaration," was a project of Fred Singer's Science and Environmental Policy Project and a group called the European Academy of Environmental Affairs. The declaration stated: "there does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide." According to Sourcewatch, when a Danish journalist attempted to contact the 33 European scientists listed on the petition, 12 denied signing the petition and some had not even heard of the Leipzig Declaration. Of those that did admit to signing the letter, one was a doctor and another was an expert on flying insects. The declaration was then revised and many names were removed.
• The "Oregon Petition" was organized by Art Robinson and Fred Seitz. Seitz was the Chair of Fred Singer's SEPP project.
• The National Academy of Sciences declared: "The petition project was a deliberate attempt to mislead scientists and to rally them in an attempt to undermine support for the Kyoto Protocol. The petition was not based on a review of the science of global climate change, nor were its signers experts in the field of climate science.”
• In his May 10, 2005 Guardian column, George Monbiot uncovered a story implicating Fred Singer in the spread of misinformation on the state of the world's glaciers. An expanded version of this story made it's way into Monbiot's best selling book, Heat. To summarize what Monbiot discovered:
• Monbiot was researching climate change a couple of years ago and when he became nervous about what he thought was the manipulative nature of the "scientific debate." Then he found a letter by the UK climate change denier David Bellamy in New Scientist magazine. Bellamy reported that "555 of all the 625 glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich have been growing since 1980." This was an interesting - and significant - piece of information. But when Monbiot phoned the World Glacier Monitoring Service, he also found that it was, in their indelicate words, "complete bullshit."
Glaciers are retreating around the world. Monbiot chased all over in search of a source for this information. The claim appeared dozens of times in many different locations - but all trails seemed to lead back to the website of the Science and Environmental Policy Project. That's basically Dr. S. Fred Singer's home page. When people challenged Singer, he first lashed out, saying Monbiot "has been smoking something or other." But Singer finally conceded, in March 2005, that the information had originated on his site - posted there by "former SEPP associate Candace Crandall." Singer acknowledged that the information "appears to be incorrect and has been updated." "Updated," however, is different than "corrected." You could still find the claim on his website 18 months later. Singer also failed to mention that the bumbling former associate, Candace Crandall, is his wife.
• In the summer of 2009, Singer also organized a petition to get the American Physical Society to change its position on human causes of global warming. The petition failed. Read more about this story at DeSmog Blog.
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For a detailed look at this supposed 1500 cycle of Singer and Avery
Dansgaard Oeschger Events
The (estimated) 1470 Year Climate Cycle - Often quoted as the 1500 year cycle is a popular red herring used by S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery. It is also a real climate cycle known as Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) events. It is of unknown origin.
Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) Events
According to S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, our current warming is natural and caused by natural cycles in the earth system. They attribute current warming to what are known as Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) events and wrote a book about it called 'Unstoppable Global Warming’.
S. Fred Singer is also well known for taking a stand contrary to medical evidence that second hand smoke from cigarettes is bad not for you. Funding for his work has been linked to special interests both in the tobacco industry and more recently the fossil fuel industry. Dennis Avery, is an economist.
In their book, by Singer and Avery purport that there is a regular global warming that occurs. Unfortunately they forgot to check the facts, the context, and the relevance
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What Are Climate Change Skeptics Still Skeptical About?
By Natalie Wolchover | November 22, 2011
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The Hudson Institute
Background
The Hudson Institute (HI) was founded in 1961 by strategist Herman Kahn and his colleagues at the Rand Corporation. Founded at the height of the Cold War, the Institute started with a focus on defense, nuclear power, and strategy. Since 9/11, the institute has changed focus to the terrorism and has strongly advocated for the Iraq War. [1] …
The Guardian names the Hudson Institute in their 2015 report, “Secretive donors gave US climate denial groups $125m over three years,” as one of the top recipients of funding from two secretive organizations — Donors Trust, and Donors Capital Fund — having taken in $7.9 million over three years. [8]
According to The Guardian, this money helped to “build a network of thinktanks and activist groups. These worked to defeat climate bills in Congress and are mobilizing against Environmental Protection Agency rules to reduce carbon pollution from power plants which are due to be finalized this summer. ” [8]
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Hudson Institute Funding
The following is from funding data compiled by the Conservative Transparency Project. Note that not all funding values have been verified by DeSmogBlog for accuracy. [1]
View the attached spreadsheet for additional information on Hudson Institute funding by year (.xlsx).
View the attached spreadsheet for additional information on Hudson Institute funding by year (.xlsx).
$13,801,560
$10,955,000
$6,709,860
$4,173,000
$3,034,840
$1,192,500
$1,125,250
$875,000
$530,000
Abstraction Fund
$476,325
$399,500
$390,000
$365,000
Sweetfeet Foundation
$360,000
$304,000
F.M. Kirby Foundation
$302,500
Newton D. & Rochelle F. Becker Foundation
$285,000
$245,000
$221,000
$190,000
Joyce and Donald Rumsfeld Foundation
$180,000
Stuart Family Foundation
$175,000
$156,783
$150,000
$145,000
$86,000
JM Foundation
$75,000
Charlotte and Walter Kohler Charitable Trust
$70,000
$65,000
$62,650
Diana Davis Spencer Foundation
$50,000
$40,000
$35,000
$25,000
$20,000
Armstrong Foundation
$15,000
$10,000
$10,000
$10,000
$5,000
$2,000
Neal and Jane Freeman Foundation
$1,000
Grand Total
$47,323,768
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Hudson Institute
last updated: November 2, 2015
The Washington, D.C.-based Hudson Institute is part of a closely-knit group of neoconservative policy institutes that champion aggressive, Israel-centric U.S. foreign policies. Founded in 1961 by several dyed-in-the-wool Cold Warriors, including Herman Kahn—a one-time RAND nuclear war theorist notorious for his efforts to develop "winnable" nuclear war strategies—Hudson describes itself as “a nonpartisan policy research organization dedicated to innovative research and analysis that promotes global security, prosperity, and freedom.”
__________________________________
The Hudson Institute is a non-profit think tank headquartered in Washington D.C.
Its 2008 IRS form 990 listed $11.8 million in advocacy expenditures.
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Dennis T. Avery (of the Hudson Institute)
Background
Dennis Avery is the director of the Center for Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute, where he edits Global Food Quarterly.
According to his biography at the Center for Global Food Issues, Avery is a supporter of biotechnology, pesticides, irradiation, factory farming and free trade. He also considers himself an expert on “agriculture, environment, world hunger issues, biotechnology and pesticides, trade, and water issues.”
In addition to his self-professed areas of expertise, Avery frequently comments on global warming science and policy. [2]
Stance on Climate Change
According to the summary of a study conducted by Avery and Fred Singer: “Considered collectively, there is clear and convincing evidence of a 1,500-year climate cycle. And if the current warming trend is part of an entirely natural cycle, as Singer and Avery conclude, then actions to prevent further warming would be futile, could impose substantial costs upon the global economy and lessen the ability of the world's peoples to adapt to the impacts of climate change.” [3]
Avery has also said that the next twenty to thirty years will bring us cooler temperatures: “The earth's temperatures have dropped an average of .6 Celsius in the last two years. The Pacific Ocean is telling us, as it has told us 10 times in the past 400 years, you're going to get cooler.” [4]
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Global warming denier Dennis Avery doesn’t know the difference between growth and growth rate
ThinkProgress | March 30, 2009
The American Daily has just published this laughably wrong piece of disinformation by long-term global warming denier Dennis Avery, “Now CO2 is Declining as well as Temperatures.” Before AD and Avery take it down, let’s look at what passes for analysis among the deniers. The piece opens:
The atmospheric CO2 levels at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa observatory have declined since 2004. How can this be when humans keep emitting more greenhouse gases? Could declining atmospheric CO2 levels mean that the whole Greenhouse Warming theory is collapsing?
Now let’s look at the Mauna Loa data, something Avery didn’t bother to do …
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Conservative Book Club
Right-Wing Authors Claim to be Swindled by Right-Wing Publisher
November 7, 2007
The New York Times reports that several right-wing authors are suing their publisher, Regnery, over royalties supposedly lost to the company’s shell-game-like marketing strategy: …
Regnery’s strategy for boosting the sales of its books—often helping to land them on the best-seller list—is no secret: Anyone whose e-mail address is on a conservative list has likely received dozens of “special offers” from the Conservative Book Club, Human Events, or the Evans-Novak Political Report—all part of Eagle Publishing, the parent company of Regnery. …
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Cooking the Books: How the Conservative Best Seller Scam is a Free Market Hypocrisy
November 16, 2014
When is a bestseller not a bestseller? A lot of bestselling conservative authors have found a way to turn horse manure into gold. It's a testament to their actual commitment to the free market system. …
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From The Merchants of Doubt - a documented history
Chapter 6 - Denial of Global Warming
The doubts and confusion of the American people are particularly peculiar when put into historical perspective, for scientific research on carbon dioxide and climate has been going on for 150 years. In the mid-nineteenth century, Irish experimentalist John Tyndall first established that CO2 is a greenhouse gas—meaning that it traps heat and keeps it from escaping to outer space. He understood this as a fact about our planet, with no particular social or political implications.
This changed in the early twentieth century, when Swedish geochemist Svante Arrhenius realized that CO2 released to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels could alter the Earth’s climate, and British engineer Guy Callendar compiled the first empirical evidence that the “greenhouse effect” might already be detectable. In the 1960s, American scientists started to warn our political leaders that this could be a real problem, and at least some of them—including Lyndon Johnson—heard the message. Yet they failed to act on it.
There are many reasons why the United States has failed to act on global warming, but at least one is the confusion raised by Bill Nierenberg, Fred Seitz, and Fred Singer.
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Patrick Michaels (with five climate science denying books published
Patrick J. Michaels (±1942- ), also known as Pat Michaels, is a largely oil-funded global warming skeptic who argues that global warming models are fatally flawed and, in any event, we should take no action because new technologies will soon replace those that emit greenhouse gases.
Michaels is Editor of the World Climate Report, a blog published by the "advocacy science consulting firm" New Hope Environmental Services[2], which he founded and runs.
Mission
In an affidavit in a Vermont court case, Michaels described his firm's "mission" as being to "publicize findings on climate change and scientific and social perspectives that may not otherwise appear in the popular literature or media. This entails both response research and public commentary."[3] In effect, New Hope Environmental Services is a PR firm.
Clientele
Michaels' firm does not disclose who its clients are, but leaked documents have revealed that several were power utilities which operate coal power stations. On a 2007 academic CV, Michaels disclosed that prior to creating his firm he had received funding from the Edison Electric Institute and the Western Fuels Association. He has also been a frequent speaker with leading coal and energy companies as well as coal and other industry lobby groups. …
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Capitalism vs. the Climate
Denialists are dead wrong about the science. But they understand something the left still doesn’t get about the revolutionary meaning of climate change.
By Naomi Klein | November 9, 2011
Claiming that climate change is a plot to steal American freedom is rather tame by Heartland standards. Over the course of this two-day conference, I will learn that Obama’s campaign promise to support locally owned biofuels refineries was really about “green communitarianism,” akin to the “Maoist” scheme to put “a pig iron furnace in everybody’s backyard” (the Cato Institute’s Patrick Michaels). That climate change is “a stalking horse for National Socialism” (former Republican senator and retired astronaut Harrison Schmitt). And that environmentalists are like Aztec priests, sacrificing countless people to appease the gods and change the weather (Marc Morano, editor of the denialists’ go-to website, ClimateDepot.com).
Most of all, however, I will hear versions of the opinion expressed by the county commissioner in the fourth row: that climate change is a Trojan horse designed to abolish capitalism and replace it with some kind of eco-socialism. As conference speaker Larry Bell succinctly puts it in his new book Climate of Corruption, climate change “has little to do with the state of the environment and much to do with shackling capitalism and transforming the American way of life in the interests of global wealth redistribution.”
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Climate Denial Goes Vegas | July 7, 2014
The Heartland Institute hits the Strip with some much-needed comedic relief
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Why do libertarians deny climate change?
by Massimo Pigliucci | May 27, 2010
… I suspect the answer lies along two parallel lines. In the case of major libertarian outlets, like the CATO Institute think tank, the rather unglamorous answer may simply be that they are in the pockets of the oil industry. A large amount of the funding for CATO comes from private corporations with obvious political agendas including, you guessed it, Exxon-Mobil (remember the Valdez?). No wonder CATO people trump the party line on this one.
The second reason, however, is more personal and widespread: libertarianism is committed to the high moral value of private enterprise, just read pretty much anything that Ayn Rand wrote if you have any doubt. Given that, it follows naturally (if irrationally) that libertarians cannot admit to themselves, and even less to the world at large, that the much vaunted private sector may be responsible — out of both greed and downright incompetence — for a major environmental catastrophe of planetary proportions. The industry is the good guy in their movie, how then could they possibly have done something so horrible?
That’s the problem with ideology in general (be it left, right, or libertarian), it provides us with thick blinders that very effectively shield us from reality. Of course, no one is actually free of bias, yours truly included. But a core principle of skepticism and critical thinking is that we do our best to be aware (and minimize) our own biases, and that we ought to open ourselves to honest criticism from different parties, in pursuit of the best approximation to the truth that we can muster. How about it, my libertarian friends?
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