INTERNAL DOCS: The Secret, CORPORATE-FUNDED Plan To Teach Children That Climate Change Is A HOAX

[Segami]

" Internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green reveal that the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank funded by the Koch brothers, Microsoft, and other top corporations, is planning to develop a “global warming curriculum” for elementary schoolchildren that presents climate science as “a major scientific controversy.” This effort, at a cost of $100,000 a year, will be developed by Dr. David E. Wojick, a coal-industry consultant.


“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”:






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 epistemology.


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.


cont'


http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/02/14/425354/internal-documents-climate-denier-heartland-institute-plans-global-warming-curriculum-for-k-12-schools/

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[spanone]

1. humans are one screwed up species....hiding/disregarding facts to profit and kill each other

[orpupilofnature57]

3. It's a wonder we got this far.

[orpupilofnature57]

2. Hey!!!! Corporations are people too!!!!

[saras]

6. Yep. Manson, Speck, Gein, Rader, Ridgeway. Corporations are people, all right.

[scarletwoman]

4. Oh, good grief! So how are they going to explain it when palm trees start growing in WI?

Oh, that's right - Fox News already has that covered...

[DCKit]

5. I see this as a positive development - they're going to have to teach the kids to read, first. nt

[Downwinder]

7. I wonder if they can be held liable for damages

incurred due to lack of preparation for global warming.

[Ron Obvious]

8. Microsoft?

I find it hard to believe that Microsoft would be involved in climate change denialism. For one thing, their business model isn't affected the way oil companies are, and secondly, I don't remember the folks at Microsoft being right-wingers either.

Granted that IT has attracted a lot Libertarian types, something I always consider to be a philosophy for 16 year-old boys and nerd hackers who live in their mother's basement and Libertarians tend to be ideologues who ignore inconvenient facts (c.f. Penn & Teller, Michael Shermer), but this just doesn't square with my recollection of the place from when I worked there.

Of course, that was well over a decade ago. Maybe things have changed.

[jsmirman]

9. I'm curious to know if that's accurate

$100,000 doesn't sound like a lot for this sort of thing, as well.

The whole denying climate change for political and financial gain, though, I can't begin to wrap my mind around. It's one of those things that seems so fucked up that I can't believe it's not only out there, but so widespread.

And if we keep pushing this ball back and forth as though it's some game, more and more horrific consequences are going to wreak havoc with countries and regions. People die. Species go extinct. Death by (un)natural disaster is not a death anyone would choose. People starve.

This shit is real and people are playing football with it. What the fuck.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. Their aim: "dissuading teachers from teaching science"

His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/02/14/425649/heartland-documents-denial-group-koch-money-dupe-children-cultivate-revkin/

They are so busted.

[JesterCS]

11. Eurasia is at war with East Asia today. n/t

[kemah]

12. I had an anthropogly teacher at Los Angeles City College teach from a textbook that was all wrong.

This teacher started out by saying that the whole book was full of stereotypes but he had to use the book because it was mandated by the program chair.
An example was that according to the book, pacific Islanders believed that women got pregnant by walking near the beach on a full moon. He pointed out that these same islanders were breeding hogs and chickens. And that the islanders were just being polite to the research team, just like European telling that storks bring babies down the chimneys at night.
So, maybe the teacher can use the materials to teach a real lesson and point out the denial and the history of ignorant people denying scientific principles. Remember Gallileo was imprisoned by the church and almost tortured by the church for his views.