A secret fundrais­ing doc­u­ment from a shad­owy anti-sci­ence insti­tute was acci­den­tal­ly made pub­lic. The doc­u­ment can­did­ly lays out the anti-sci­ence agen­da of group, includ­ing efforts to under­mine sci­ence edu­ca­tion in pub­lic schools, but also plans to broad­ly rede­fine society.

The year was 1998, and the doc­u­ment was from the Dis­cov­ery Insti­tute. Nick­named “The Wedge Doc­u­ment” by oppo­nents of the Dis­co. ‘tute’s brand of cre­ation­ism, it details plans to use attacks on evo­lu­tion like the thin edge of a wedge, open­ing a crack which in time would break soci­ety free of “sci­en­tif­ic mate­ri­al­ism.” Ulti­mate­ly, the doc­u­ment explains, the Dis­cov­ery Insti­tute’s plans would “replace mate­ri­al­is­tic expla­na­tions with the the­is­tic under­stand­ing that nature and human beings are cre­at­ed by God.”

On Valen­tine’s Day of this year, the sto­ry repeat­ed, but instead of expos­ing the anti-sci­ence agen­da of cre­ation­ists, it reveals the equal­ly anti-sci­ence agen­da of cli­mate change deniers.

The Heart­land Insti­tute is a major play­er in the cli­mate change denial move­ment, and the release has pro­duced mass­es of dis­cus­sion. Their files – includ­ing pub­lic IRS forms, pri­vate details of a board meet­ing in Jan­u­ary, and fundrais­ing and bud­get doc­u­ments dis­trib­uted for that meet­ing – were acci­den­tal­ly emailed to an unknown third par­ty, who shared them with jour­nal­ists includ­ing Richard Lit­tle­more of DeSmog­Blog. The doc­u­ments answer many ques­tions about Heart­land, demon­strat­ing their ties to the ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive Koch fam­i­ly, con­tin­u­ing ties to the tobac­co indus­try (Philip Mor­ris fund­ed their work in the ’90s), fund­ing to sup­pos­ed­ly inde­pen­dent cli­mate change deniers like Antho­ny Watts, and plans to devel­op a $100,000 cli­mate change denial curriculum. 

Where the Wedge Doc­u­ment reflects the enthu­si­asm of a new orga­ni­za­tion, the Heart­land files reveal more mature plan­ning. The fundrais­ing doc­u­ment con­tains few of the grand claims for soci­etal trans­for­ma­tion that char­ac­ter­ize the Dis­co. ‘tute’s inau­gur­al fundrais­ing pitch. Instead, Heart­land lays out a long cam­paign against sci­ence, includ­ing plans for increased fund­ing from cli­mate change denial’s sug­ar­dad­dy Charles Koch, and a pro­gram to fund promi­nent cli­mate change denier Antho­ny Watts as he tries to find new ways to pre­tend weath­er records don’t tell us about cli­mate change.

Most intrigu­ing to sci­ence edu­ca­tion advo­cates is their plan to invest at least $100,000 over this year alone to pro­duce and dis­trib­ute a cur­ricu­lum lay­ing out their cli­mate change denial mes­sage. The thumb­nail at the right links to a full-sized ver­sion of the rel­e­vant page, which explains:

Many peo­ple lament the absence of edu­ca­tion­al mate­r­i­al suit­able for K‑12 stu­dents on glob­al warm­ing that isn’t alarmist or overt­ly polit­i­cal. Heart­land has tried to make mate­r­i­al avail­able to teach­ers, but has had only lim­it­ed suc­cess. â€¦

Dr. David Wojick has pre­sent­ed Heart­land a pro­pos­al to pro­duce a glob­al warm­ing cur­ricu­lum for K‑12 schools that appears to have great poten­tial for suc­cess. â€¦

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.

We ten­ta­tive­ly plan to pay Dr. Wojick $5,000 per mod­ule, about $25,000 a quar­ter, start­ing in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2012, for this work. The Anony­mous Donor has pledged the first $100,000 for this project, and we will cir­cu­late a pro­pos­al to match and then expand upon that investment.

The file also claims “Dr. Wojick has con­duct­ed exten­sive research on envi­ron­men­tal and sci­ence edu­ca­tion for the Depart­ment of Ener­gy,” but the Depart­ment clar­i­fied: “David Wojick has been a part-time sup­port con­trac­tor for the Office of Sci­en­tif­ic and Tech­ni­cal Infor­ma­tion since 2003, work­ing to help the office man­age and orga­nize its elec­tron­ic data­bas­es. He has nev­er advised or con­duct­ed research for the Depart­ment on cli­mate change or any oth­er sci­en­tif­ic top­ic, and the office he works for is not a research orga­ni­za­tion.” His back­ground in phi­los­o­phy and engi­neer­ing hard­ly qual­i­fy him to devise an edu­ca­tion­al cur­ricu­lum, either.

Aside from the sub­stan­tial dona­tion Heart­land has already received for the cur­ricu­lum from an unnamed donor, and the sig­nif­i­cant addi­tion­al funds they plan to solic­it, there are some impor­tant rev­e­la­tions here. Heart­land’s efforts to influ­ence edu­ca­tors are not news: they’ve bragged about mail­ing out cli­mate change deny­ing DVDs and hand­outs to teach­ers before. But because the edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem is so decen­tral­ized, it’s hard to know how effec­tive those mail­ings have been. This doc­u­ment sug­gests that those efforts have large­ly been a flop.
What’s also note­wor­thy is the lan­guage Wojick is quot­ed using. It is con­sis­tent­ly the lan­guage of doubt and con­tro­ver­sy, and he has returned to that well in his pub­lic defense of the pro­gram, telling AP reporter Seth Boren­stein: “My goal is to help them [teach­ers] teach one of the great­est sci­en­tif­ic debates in his­to­ry… This means teach­ing both sides of the sci­ence, more sci­ence, not less.” 

His goal is to sow con­fu­sion among teach­ers and stu­dents about what the sci­ence of cli­mate change actu­al­ly says. This is a strat­e­gy famil­iar to afi­ciona­dos of cre­ation­ist rhetoric (as is the idea of “both sides of the sci­ence”), but more impor­tant­ly to those famil­iar with the his­to­ry of tobac­co indus­try obfus­ca­tion. As a famous memo to the tobac­co indus­try argued in 1969: “Doubt is our prod­uct.” Few­er peo­ple know that that line con­tin­ues: “Doubt is our prod­uct since it is the best means of com­pet­ing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the gen­er­al pub­lic. It is also the best means of estab­lish­ing a con­tro­ver­sy.” (The link is more than rhetor­i­cal: Philip Mor­ris gave sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing to Heart­land in the ’90s, and the same doc­u­ment lists Philip Mor­ris par­ent com­pa­ny Altria as a major donor today.)

Estab­lish­ing a con­tro­ver­sy and under­min­ing pub­lic under­stand­ing of the body of fact on cli­mate change are cen­tral to Heart­land’s account of their new cli­mate change cur­ricu­lum, and long-stand­ing keys to Heart­land’s broad­er agenda.

For a sense of that agen­da, and Heart­land’s his­to­ry, it’s worth turn­ing to a pro­file in Nature last July. In that pro­file, Heart­land hon­cho Joe Bast explains his agen­da now that Con­gres­sion­al action on cli­mate pol­i­cy had been stalled:

“We’ve won the pub­lic opin­ion debate, and we’ve won the polit­i­cal debate as well,” Bast says. “But the sci­en­tif­ic debate is a source of enor­mous frus­tra­tion.” …

Bast’s assault on cli­mate research takes two forms: chal­leng­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the sci­ence, and dis­put­ing the claim that there is a sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus on cli­mate change.…

Heart­land plans to spend $1.8 mil­lion on its cli­mate pro­gramme this year. Of that, $413,000 will go to sup­port­ing the Non­govern­men­tal Inter­na­tion­al Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (NIPCC), a small group of scep­tics who have set them­selves up as a coun­ter­weight to the IPCC. … The NIPCC … ignores moun­tains of evi­dence about the adverse effects of glob­al warm­ing and instead strings togeth­er a con­fi­dent sto­ry that makes ris­ing car­bon diox­ide con­cen­tra­tions seem entire­ly ben­e­fi­cial. â€¦

Bast, Heart­land and the NIPCC all approach sci­en­tif­ic data as attor­neys, sim­ply try­ing to sow doubt and jus­ti­fy polit­i­cal inaction.…

Bast hap­pi­ly acknowl­edges hand-pick­ing data to sup­port his posi­tion, but argues that sci­en­tists on the oth­er side do the same thing when they are build­ing a case for glob­al warm­ing. He also says it is only nat­ur­al that a lib­er­tar­i­an like him would decide to ques­tion the sci­en­tif­ic foun­da­tion for cli­mate change.

The cli­mate change deny­ing cur­ricu­lum is a log­i­cal exten­sion of the Heart­land agen­da, and par­al­lels the rhetoric and strate­gies of cre­ation­ists as well. Just as Wojick calls for teach­ing “both sides” and to cov­er “more sci­ence, not less,” the Dis­cov­ery Insti­tute’s offi­cial pol­i­cy claims: “Dis­cov­ery Insti­tute seeks to increase the cov­er­age of evo­lu­tion in text­books … a cur­ricu­lum that aims to pro­vide stu­dents with an under­stand­ing of the strengths and weak­ness­es of neo-Dar­win­ian and chem­i­cal evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­ries … there is noth­ing uncon­sti­tu­tion­al about vol­un­tar­i­ly dis­cussing the sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry of design in the class­room.” (This wrong­ly assumes that there is such a sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry, that evo­lu­tion has such weak­ness­es, etc.)

The Heart­land mem­os also reveal an effort to cre­ate an echo cham­ber of sci­ence denial, much like the pseu­do­sci­en­tif­ic infra­struc­ture cre­at­ed by the cre­ation­ists since the 1960s. Heart­land spends hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars to fund NIPCC, a group meant to under­mine the con­clu­sions of the Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change, a body which pro­duces syn­the­sis reports on the state of cli­mate sci­ence for use by world gov­ern­ments. The extent of Heart­land’s fund­ing, and the degree to which they con­trolled that project, has nev­er been clear, and these mem­os show that Heart­land is call­ing the shots. Heart­land fund­ing goes direct­ly to pub­li­cize NIPC­C’s work, but also goes to indi­vid­u­als involved in NIPCC, includ­ing Fred Singer, the god­fa­ther of cli­mate change denial. Singer has nev­er acknowl­edged such fund­ing before, and indeed has denied any such funding.

In addi­tion, the fundrais­ing memo shows that Heart­land is coor­di­nat­ing an effort to raise funds for a new web­site rais­ing con­fu­sion about the caus­es of record tem­per­a­tures. In order to push back against media cov­er­age of the role cli­mate change plays in record-break­ing weath­er, they pro­pose to pay promi­nent cli­mate change denier Antho­ny Watts $88,000 to put up a web­site refor­mat­ting weath­er data from the Nation­al Weath­er Ser­vice. The mon­ey comes from the same unnamed donor fund­ing the cli­mate change cur­ricu­lum and many oth­er Heart­land initiatives.
It isn’t the first col­lab­o­ra­tion between Heart­land and Watts. As the memo observes, Watts has pro­mot­ed the claim that flaws in the US-gov­ern­ment oper­at­ed weath­er sta­tion net­work are so great as to inval­i­date the claim of glob­al cli­mate change. The memo says this was “work that The Heart­land Insti­tute sup­port­ed and pro­mot­ed.” That Heart­land pro­mot­ed the project is not news – they pub­lish a book­let Watts draft­ed on the top­ic – but how did they “sup­port” it?

The report only men­tions Heart­land as the pub­lish­er, not as a sup­port­er of the work (which I take to be finan­cial sup­port). Nor does the web­site Watts cre­at­ed for the project ever men­tion sup­port from Heart­land. He acknowl­edges vol­un­teers and tech­ni­cal assis­tance from indi­vid­u­als, but the only men­tion of Heart­land’s role is a note in the print­ed report explain­ing: “Opin­ions expressed are sole­ly those of the authors. Noth­ing in this report should be con­strued as reflect­ing the views of The Heart­land Insti­tute, or as an attempt to influ­ence pend­ing leg­is­la­tion.” Either Heart­land is inflat­ing their role in Watts’s ear­li­er work, or Watts failed to dis­close Heart­land’s support.

This tan­gled web of hid­den fund­ing and hid­den influ­ence is a tool for cre­at­ing an echo cham­ber. Heart­land qui­et­ly funds Watts, Watts pro­duces reports for Heart­land to pub­lish. Watts retains a sem­blance of inde­pen­dence. Heart­land can then point to his work and tout its inde­pen­dence, claim­ing that they are sim­ply report­ing what oth­ers dis­cov­ered. Then NIPCC can cite his work, with­out acknowl­edg­ing any coor­di­na­tion between their effort and Watts’s. And Watts can cite NIPCC with­out hav­ing to say any­thing about his shared fund­ing source. To out­siders, it seems like there are mul­ti­ple inde­pen­dent sources all arriv­ing at the same posi­tion, instead of a coor­di­nat­ed media cam­paign by Heartland.

We don’t know who dis­trib­uted the Heart­land mem­os, or exact­ly how they were obtained. But by doing so, the leak­er pro­vid­ed a pro­found pub­lic ser­vice, one that we can all be grate­ful for. These mem­os pro­vide an inside look at the cli­mate change denial machine, reveal­ing how they talk about their work behind closed doors, and reveal­ing their machi­na­tions to sow doubt about some of the most impor­tant sci­en­tif­ic issues of the day.

We also don’t know who the anony­mous donor is who fund­ed the denial­ist cur­ricu­lum and the weath­er sta­tion project. All we know for cer­tain is that he’s a man who has tak­en great inter­est in Heart­land’s work since at least 2007. As table 5 of the fundrais­ing memo shows, he gave over three and a quar­ter mil­lion dol­lars in 2007, anoth­er $4.6 mil­lion in 2008, and is expect­ed to give $1.25 mil­lion to Heart­land in 2012. Much of that dona­tion is unre­strict­ed, allow­ing Heart­land to spend it as they choose, while he’s giv­en between $3.3 mil­lion and $630,000 in pre­vi­ous years specif­i­cal­ly to sup­port Heart­land’s cli­mate change denial efforts. For con­text, pub­lic records show that the 2010 bud­get for the Nation­al Cen­ter for Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion was $1.1 mil­lion, only slight­ly more than the $964,150 that Heart­land’s anony­mous donor gave for cli­mate change denial in the same year (only a frac­tion of their total cli­mate change denial fund­ing). It’s also well less than the $2 mil­lion that the Dis­cov­ery Insti­tute spent on their cre­ation­ist efforts in 2010.
If that imbal­ance con­cerns you (and it should), I’d sug­gest donat­ing to NCSE (and I’m not say­ing that as an employee).