Heartland Institute, Deception, And The Trib

The first paragraph of an editorial today's op-ed page at the Tribune-Review reads like this:

All the Heartland Institute ever asked for was an "honest debate" about climate change. And that's exactly what the commonsense libertarian think tank out of Chicago has offered for years, on climate change and myriad other important issues.

The piece itself is about Peter Gleick's admission posted at the Huffingtonpost:

At the beginning of 2012, I received an anonymous document in the mail describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland Institute's climate program strategy. It contained information about their funders and the Institute's apparent efforts to muddy public understanding about climate science and policy. I do not know the source of that original document but assumed it was sent to me because of my past exchanges with Heartland and because I was named in it.

Given the potential impact however, I attempted to confirm the accuracy of the information in this document. In an effort to do so, and in a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else's name. The materials the Heartland Institute sent to me confirmed many of the facts in the original document, including especially their 2012 fundraising strategy and budget. I forwarded, anonymously, the documents I had received to a set of journalists and experts working on climate issues. I can explicitly confirm, as can the Heartland Institute, that the documents they emailed to me are identical to the documents that have been made public. I made no changes or alterations of any kind to any of the Heartland Institute documents or to the original anonymous communication.

Let's get Scaife's braintrust's first deception out of the way.  If I am reading the chart at Media Matters correctly, Scaife Foundations gave hundreds of thousands of dollars of support in the early years of Heartland's existence.

Not only that, but take a look at this:

Our research into the listed “sponsors” for the Heartland Institute’s upcoming “International Conference on Climate Change” finds that these organizations have received over $47 million from energy companies and right-wing foundations, with 78% of that total coming from the Scaife Family of foundations.

What they did, it seems, is to count up all the foundation support for the sponsors of the conference and then track the money those sponsors received from Exxon, Scaife, and Koch. Low and behold they discover something we've known all along. Scaife's support is everywhere.

So let's not kid ourselves into thinking that Scaife's braintrust's interest in protecting Heartland is purely altruistic.

It's also interesting to point out a discrepancy here.  When someone hacks into a mail server in East Anglia and publishes stolen emails, the Trib has nothing negative to say about that deception.  And yet Gleick's deception (to them at least) undermines his credibility.

Interesting.

And still no mention by Scaife's braintrust of NOAA conclusion that climate change is undeniable.