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15 Feb 2012: Documents Expose Campaign
By Think Tank To Undermine Climate Science

A series of leaked internal documents from the Heartland Institute, a conservative U.S. think tank, reveal an elaborate, multi-million dollar campaign to undermine the credibility of global warming science. The documents — which were sent anonymously to several bloggers and can be viewed online at DeSmogBlog.com — describe efforts to produce scientific studies that “discredit the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Heartland Institute also allocated $100,000 to create a global warming curriculum for school teachers emphasizing “that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain — two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.” According to the documents, a significant part of the campaign has been funded by a single anonymous donor, who spent more than $8.6 million on “climate change projects” from 2007 to 2011. That individual donated $3.6 million in 2008, the same year that the Heartland Institute began organizing annual climate change conferences. The documents reveal that the Heartland Institute is paying thousands of dollars a month to scientists who publicly question the mainstream view that human activity is causing the planet to warm.

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