Al Gore hosted his annual “24 Hours of Reality” program this week. You might have missed it since Gore no longer has a cable network to show his Jerry Lewis-style telethon for the climate-alarmist set, but instead had to broadcast the whole thing online. Come to think of it, you probably also missed all the other “24 Hours of Reality” programs on his old, low-rated, bore of a network, Current TV.
In the middle of his latest presentation, Gore mentioned The Heartland Institute and how our research ended up in a draft of some K-12 textbooks the Texas School Board is reviewing. Gore managed to pack in no fewer than 11 errors/lies/falsehoods aboutHeartland and the Texas School Board’s review of text books in just 35 seconds. Watch it for yourself in the player above.
… the state of Texas has just ordered all of their children to read science text books partly written by a climate denier organization, The Heartland Institute …
(1) Texas has “ordered” nothing. The Texas School Board is merely in the process of reviewing proposed text books, which (2) would not be for all children, but kids in grades 5 and 6 in public schools.
(3) The few passages in these proposed text books that depart from alarmist ideology were not “partially written” by Heartland. We only found out Heartland was mentioned in the text books after the left-wing activist group the National Center for Science Education(NCSE) raised a stink about it. (Come to think of it, that should be even more troubling to Al Gore and his fellow fear mongers. Heartland didn’t lobby to get a mention in these text books, but was cited organically. Uh oh.)
(4) The text books that caused this “controversy” are social studies text books, not science text books.
(5) Heartland is not a “denier” organization. We have hosted nine International Conferences on Climate Change, at which no one has ever denied the climate is changing. Many scientists, however, question the extent of man’s influence on global temperatures — and, lately, if we are now about to enter a cooling trend after 18 consecutive years of no atmospheric global warming.
… so that they will get instruction about falsehoods — being told what this carbon-polluter-funded denier organization says and it’s just a propaganda exercise.
(6) It is not a “falsehood” to present the idea that the science is not settled on the causes and effects of climate change. See thousands of citations from the peer-reviewed literature in theNIPCC reports at the Climate Change Reconsidered website.
(7) Heartland is not funded by “carbon polluters.” We get such a tiny percentage of our overall $6 million annual budget from energy companies it’s hardly worth mentioning … except to thank them for their support, of course.
(8) The CO2 emissions from power plants and automobiles is not “pollution,” let alone “carbon pollution,” whatever that is.
(9) Heartland is not a “denier organization.” See #4.
(10) Informing school-aged children in social studies class that many esteemed scientists disagree with global warming alarmism — Richard Lindzen, Judith Curry, Alan Carlin, Patrick Michaels, Roy Sencer, and many more — is not “propaganda.”
It’s so terrible that school children are exposed to that. But here’s the good news that I started to get at …
(11) It is actually excellent that school children might be exposed to the truth about the scientific climate debate — these books have not yet been approved — which is vigorous among real scientists who are interested in getting to the truth, not advancing an agenda.
That’s an impressive streak of misinformation, ignorance, and lies — even for an ex-politician.
NOTE: Read more about Al Gore and other “Merchants of Smear” in this new HeartlandPolicy Brief by Russell Cook.
Jim Lakely is the Vice President and Director of Communications of The Heartland Institute.
