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" There&amp;#039;s a major brawl going on about some documents that Desmogblog got its mitts on, allegedly out of the Heartland Institute, an industry-backed talking-points mill dedicated to spreading manure about global climate change widely enough so that a thousand doubters will bloom and the people who finance the Heartland Institute will continue to get rich. One of the docs seems to be a fake. Others, though, many of them concerning how the Institute plans to raise and spend the money in order to spread the ordure around the national dialogue are not in dispute. As Ezra At The Multiplex points out, the targets include America&amp;#039;s classrooms: One of Heartland&amp;#039;s fund-raising documents lays out the group&amp;#039;s plans to spend $100,000 per year to develop a curriculum for schools that would call basic climate science into question. (&amp;quot;Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective,&amp;quot; one Heartland document laments.&amp;quot;) A senior fellow at Heartland confirmed these general details to Brad Johnson of ThinkProgress. We&amp;#039;ve already seen battles over the teaching of evolution in public schools around the country. It wouldn&amp;#039;t be surprising to see local fights over climate science next. This is a particularly resonant passage for me, and not merely because I spent a little time last week with the folks who believe that all green initiatives are part of a One Worlder plot to depopulate the planet that goes back (at least) to Alger Hiss and the founding of the UN. (The manure is having its desired effect in many quarters). It also hearkens back to what happened in Dover, Pennsylvania, when an anti-evolutionist faction took over the school board when nobody was looking, and tried to force the pseudo-science of &amp;quot;intelligent design&amp;quot; into the local science curriculum. This prompted a lawsuit that the school board eventually lost, costing the school district more than a million dollars, and embroiling a little town in an angry and pointless political dispute that did nobody any good. As Gordy Slack illustrates in his excellent The Battle Over The Meaning Of Everything, Dover was manipulated by money and power far beyond its control \u2014 specifically, by the Discovery Institute, a longtime creationist think-tank based in Seattle. In 1998, a document called &amp;quot;The Wedge Document&amp;quot; leaked from the DI. In it, the DI outlined a strategy to sell the old wine of creationism in the new bottle of Intelligent Design, ostensibly stripping it of its religious content, and conducting their campaign in scientific masquerade. In it, among other recommendations, the DI suggested: Once our research and writing have had time to mature, and the public prepared for the reception of design theory, we will move toward direct confrontation with the advocates of materialist science through challenge conferences in significant academic settings. We will also pursue possible legal assistance in response to resistance to the integration of design theory into public school science curricula. The attention, publicity, and influence of design theory should draw scientific materialists into open debate with design theorists, and we will be ready. With an added emphasis to the social sciences and humanities, we will begin to address the specific social consequences of materialism and the Darwinist theory that supports it in the sciences.  (It should be noted that the Discovery Institute was notably reluctant to pursue the Dover case in federal court, believing the case to be a loser. However, the case eventually got hijacked by some conservative legal groups, most notably the Thomas More Law Center, who took it and their clients over the cliff. However, the DI did rouse itself to condemn the decision opf the court, in which Judge John Jones memorably described the school board&amp;#039;s case as &amp;quot;breathtaking inanity.&amp;quot;) It is plain that the Heartland is up to roughly the same thing here with climate science that the the intelligent-design crew were up to in their project. This will guarantee some ugly school board meetings around the country, more pains in the ass for America&amp;#039;s science teachers, and a vastly more ignorant populace on one of the crucial issues of our time. Shame there isn&amp;#039;t more civility out there. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a12865/heartland-institute-climate-change-6766489/>