hat tip to http://impolitical.blogspot.com/2009/11/conservative-anti-copenhagen-war-room.html a Liberal partisan blog, but it often has very good information.

1) Having lesson plans makes their Understanding Climate Change document appear to be more credible. I imagine that they are also pitching these lesson plans to political leaders.

2) What better place to confuse folks than in high school just before they get to college where they presumably would be exposed to the truth by experts? I even know of one FACULTY member here who has an M.S. of Geology that is a Heartland Institute disciple.

3) Maybe they can convince some teachers that there is no consensus or that the consensus is incorrect and then these teachers become unwitting accomplices. Recall that the State Climatologist of Vermont was fooled so it is easy to see how the lay person could be fooled.

4) Students will become voters soon enough so doubt might deliver votes down the road.

Scott

The various actors are likely to have different motives. I would say think tanks and PR firms are merely selling services or projects. If the proposed project doesn’t make money, it doesn’t get done.

That is something I noticed about the letter exchange between APCO Worldwide and Philip Morris in the case of the project / front-group “TASSC: The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition” and the campaign against the science of second-hand smoke. APCO was trying to show Philip Morris that they could be cost-effective, that they could solicit money from other companies and organizations in order to prove more cost effective. It was just business to them — and appeared decentralized rather than top-down. Looking simply at either Exxon or even the major foundations it is easy to fall into a view of the denialist movement as being almost strictly top-down and highly coordinated. But it would be a mistake to fall into that sort of view — although not quite on the same order as that of taking a given astroturf campaign at face value.

As for Chernoff, he may have grandchildren who he feels are asking uncomfortable questions, or are being affected by supposed “propaganda”.

I get the impression that he is less aware of the science and that for him it is more personal.

A contrarian education program could be considered to be aimed at parents as much as the children themselves.

I had considered that as well. Of course, if what the larger organizations are investing in isn’t indoctrination of a specific set of beliefs but more an ideology or worldview that makes people more susceptible to current and future propaganda efforts, then changing circumstances with respect to global warming may result in less of a hit to their long-term investment.

At this point Patrick Michaels himself is admitting before his own audiences that we have not entered a period of global cooling, preparing them for the fact that some time soon the world annual temperature record will be broken — but then of course they will have other arguments. He adapts to changing circumstances, keeps his audience and moves on.

At least with respect to the major foundations, there is a fair amount of overlap between those that support or have supported efforts against the climate science that recognizes global warming (in the guise of a libertarianism that has also been used to attack the scientific cases against second-hand smoke, CFCs and DDT) — and those that have pushed the religious right in the United States, and have therefore also been involved in creationist efforts against evolutionary biology. In any case, this is a bit of a mind-warp for me — coming as I have from what was essentially a libertarian background. Then again, perhaps John 8:32 might be relevant at this point.

As for Chernoff, he may have grandchildren who he feels are asking uncomfortable questions, or are being affected by supposed “propaganda”. A contrarian education program could be considered to be aimed at parents as much as the children themselves.

Certainly I agree with you that the motivation is not as straightforward as in the case of Friends of Science where money went from oil and gas companies to PR practitioners like Tom Harris (APCO Worldwide) and Morten Paulsen (Fleishman-Hillard) through various conduits. There the goal was clear: Create doubt about the science in order to forestall effective regulation of greenhouse gas emissions by the Canadian government.

At least with regard to “Of Pandas and People,” there was some sort of objective that made sense, sort of. They wanted to indoctrinate the next generation. Under the guise of defending objectivity in the form of “presenting both views,” they wanted to use intelligent design as a vehicle to argue against “secularism” and scientific objectivity. They wanted to introduce a sense of victimization among the religious in a world that is presumably hostile to its values. They wanted to prepare the way for some sort of theocracy.

But I don’t see that here. Sure, there is propaganda value in arguing that they are attempting to “present both sides fairly.” They can then claim that attempts to shut this project down are attacks upon free speech, or upon scientific objectivity, or upon good pedagogy. They might make the population somewhat more hostile towards genuine climate science and climate scientists, at least in the short-run.

But there wouldn’t seem to be any real long-term goal. Sure, they can indoctrinate children using the usual sets of fallacies, but surely the deep pockets behind this operation — those pulling the strings — must be aware of the fact that by the time the kids are old enough to vote things will have progressed to the point that it will be increasingly difficult to convince the local village idiot that climate change isn’t taking place or that it isn’t serious.

Are they only concerned with the short-term propaganda value behind this? Could they themselves be blithely unaware of the seriousness of climate change — and actually be buying into their own propaganda? At least with Howard Ahmanson in the case of intelligent design, he seems to represent just the sort of religious extremism he was trying to foment. Or is this an attempt on the part of the front organization itself or of some sort of parent organization to prove its value in order to attract deeper pockets?

Not sure that there is much point in asking these questions. Perhaps I am simply over-thinking this. After all, if a car is barreling down on you it is probably not the time to sit down at a table and engage in a discussion of what the words “car-barreling-down” mean. But it is something that I wonder about.

However, I hope you don’t mind, but I have a little announcement to make:

Their back…

Clicking on Google search result:

Grant detail (for the Fraser Institute)
http://www.mediatransparency.org/pdagrantdetail.php?grantID=4851

… brought me to:

http://mediamattersaction.org/transparency/

… and searching for the Fraser Institute then selecting funders gave me:

The Fraser Institute
http://mediamattersaction.org/transparency/organization/The_Fraser_Institute/funders

Drill down on…

Carthage Foundation
$50,000

Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation
$18,221

Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation
$30,000

John M. Olin Foundation
$10,000

Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
$95,080

Sarah Scaife Foundation
$225,000

Media Transparency 2.0 is right!

Good use of Ajax. Parts of the webpage are able to update asynchronously without the whole webpage having to be updated. Seems instantaneous.

Oh — and they have kept a version of the older Media Transparency website (there is a link to it on the new home page) — in case one gets nostalgic.

The new site is something that will no doubt make many of those at SourceWatch (and DeSmogBlog, no doubt) happy. Frankly I was beginning to get paranoid — that someone had found a way to keep Media Transparency shut down permanently. But no doubt they heard about the hoops I was going through to use the site even though it was no longer there and they put the steam on.

It never ceases to amaze me that these folks will sacrifice our children’s future to save a few bucks today. Shameless.

You should send this to DeSmogBlog and to ClimateProgress also. Perhaps RC, too.