Berkeley Earth confirmed the global temperature data showing a warming trend, much to the chagrin of the Koch funders and denier cheerleaders who hoped in for the opposite conclusion. Koch foundations also fund most of these groups heavily. Heartland declares War on the climate The climate deniers of course feel vindicated by the Trump election.

The question is…Who is paying for this? We can update those numbers here with a new Mercer from , recently acquired. In , the Mercer grant to Heartland more than doubled. In other words, a decade ago,the Heartland Institute position on climate was too extreme for even Exxon and then CEO Rex Tillerson to stomach… Koch foundations also fund most of these groups heavily. For the time being, then, we blurnalists must blunder bravely forward on our own.

I write, in part, in the hope that somebody out there is looking at the missing piece of the puzzle without realizing it. I want to correct the misunderstanding that arose, here and elsewhere , that based on what I'd posted, Barre Seid must be a billionaire.

I'm not aware of any reason to assume that his net worth is that large. His known behavior seems equally compatible with wealth in the nine-figures range: big enough to be able to make occasional eight-figure donations without undue pain, but still small enough that he has to think long and hard about how to make those donations as effective and long-lasting as possible.

Or to put it another way, he's no Sheldon Adelson. I stated in the previous diary that this was the only known photo of Seid as an adult. That is not quite accurate. I should have said it was the only known recent photo of him; there is at least one other photo of him, viewable here ; it dates from when Seid was still working actively in opera.

So far, those are the only factual issues that have come to my attention. If you're aware of any others, please mention them in the comments. A few people have observed that if Seid is the anonymous donor, it seems odd that he would make such a big deal about being anonymous when he was already a known and major supporter of the Heartland Institute.

This is certainly odd, but it fits Seid's known pattern of behavior in other cases. To illustrate that, let's take a quick look at three cases -- the two that were discussed in the previous diary, and one more that I hadn't paid close attention to until today.

In this case , Seid's anonymous donation was completely out of the blue; there are no previous donations from the Seid Foundation to Clarion, nor any other obvious association between Clarion and Seid. If the Clarion Fund staff hadn't erred in including their disclosure of "Barry" Seid's donation in a public filing , there would be very little reason to even suspect Seid was behind the Obsession video. But the expenditure dovetailed far too neatly with Seid's known MO, interests and wealth for the attribution to have been erroneous.

Even if such an error were plausible. So this is one case where there was just one anonymous contribution, and no prior donation history. Admittedly, that doesn't fit especially well with the Heartland donation pattern. Before I go into this one, I want to be extremely clear: there is absolutely nothing wrong with Seid's donations to the Foundation for Jewish Camp, anonymous or otherwise.

FJC is a good cause, and Barre Seid is a good man for supporting it, particularly in the way that he probably did. Anyone who says otherwise had better have a hell of an argument on their side.

Now then Nothing unusual there, apart from generosity. Beginning with a pilot program in Chicago in , FJC rolled out a nationwide program of subsidies for children attending Jewish camp for the first time. FJC identified this donor as a " highly successful " " Chicago businessman. The channel used for the first two donations is unknown -- perhaps the donor simply wrote a check -- but the donation was made via Seid's favored vehicle, Donors Trust.

This donation had already been linked to Seid based purely the size, channel and receiving organization; that the donor was a "highly successful Chicago businessman" provides additional corroboration. In , Seid was awarded an honorary doctorate by Israel's Bar-Ilan University, in part for "playing an instrumental role with the Foundation for Jewish Camp in initiating and expanding a novel program for subsidized summer camp. The case for Seid having been the anonymous donor to FJC seems pretty solid.

Clearly, he didn't take nearly the pains to conceal his identity in the case of FJC that he took in the cases of Clarion or Shimer. But why would he? He was doing an uncontroversially good thing. Ordinarily there would be no reason for anyone to want to expose him, and no shame even if he were exposed. Try something thought out;. Some short answers, paragraph by paragraph.

Christy and Spencer have made some valid scientofic contributions. And the attacks on science are highly evident. But you are just too blinded by ideology to see that.

Revkin or Pearce. And then we have right-wing propganda on the editorial pages of ideologically committed right-wing outlets like the Wall Street Journal and the National Post. They are a disgrace to an honourable profession. And then you end by linking to SPPI, yet another ideologically driven purveyor of claptrap, associated with the lauaghable and throughly discredited Lord Monckton.

The scariest part of all this is that the next President of the U. My conspiracy theory is that the Illuminati are using chemtrails sprayed from commercial airliners owned by the Koch brothers to control the minds of Republicans and make them think climate science is a conspiracy. This will result in a disintegration of the political discussion in the US, with a concomitant rise in power of The Catholic League in concert with the election of President Santorum with support from the Heartland Institute, eventually leading to the Pope becoming the United Nations Dictator and abolishing all our precious freedoms and polluting our precious bodily fluids through forced Communion with adulterated crackers.

Ever notice how close the words communion and communism are to each other. That was my first clue. Their main devices for controlling minds are tinfoil hat. You put one on and you become a robot. Ironic, eh? Regarding part 3. There are 3 in Highland Park including a school choir booster club. Now they love Santorum. Ironic eh? The Pontifical Academy of sciences has some of the most famous scientists in the world, such as Ramanathan and Crutzen.

These two scientists also work on the IPCC. What on earth is so hard to understand about that? But apparently many people find it hard to understand. Heartland has released emails received from Peter Gleick impersonating a board member, apparently starting on January So it will be possible to see if there is any info there that could have only come from previous knowledge.

But besides that, there are still enough oddities in the fakegate. I may write about them once I get around to it. We are extinguishing primarily global warming projects in pace with declines in his giving , and we were careful not to hire staff based on his past generosity.

It gets better. First, as an excuse for his fishing expedition, if he got caught. Second, self aggrandisement by painting himself as the nemesis of the Heartland Institute, and to smear Andy Revkin and Judith Curry by associating them with it.

If he did indeed fake it and of course we must remember that he has not yet been charged, let alone convicted it is inescapable that the second motive above was present, but the others seem probable too. Why would he want an excuse?

He would probably have known that many in the green blogosphere would consider him a hero, after all. But shortly prior to his obtaining the documents by deception, he had — in the course of an email exchange with Jim Lakely of the Heartland Institute who had invited him to a debate — asked for and been refused a list of Heartland donors. After obtaining the documents, it might have occurred to him that if he were caught, his actions in obtaining and publicising them might be construed as being carried out with the precise intention of causing Heartland donors to be harassed in various ways.

He might have reasoned that if he could claim to have been sent — before his conversation with Lakely — an anonymous document mentioning him by name, it would provide plausible deniability for such a charge. More likely Heartland traced his emails. The claim that Mosher, Kaminsky or anyone else figured out the memo was faked by Gleick solely from the writing style is not believable.

The claim some have made that the memo was a pastiche does not necessarily mean it was faked, since it is quite plausible that a Heartland employee might draft such a memo using previous writings by Heartland, including Bast. OT for this thread perhaps but I was wondering whether DC has looked at all into these robocall allegations and the links between the conservatives and various companies and forms of electoral fraud involved there?

Numerous bloggers are working on that, including these bloggers who each have several blogposts on the topic, and lots of links:. A mysterious phone campaign exhorted NDP supporters to vote for the NDP candidate who had withdrawn but was still on the ballot. I have waded into Climate Audit and numerous people are claiming that some sort of timeline and other details point almost exclusively at Gleick being the author of the memo.

Does anyone know whether their reasoning is valid? So much for scepticism. The Board of Directors of the Pacific Institute is deeply concerned regarding recent events involving its president, Dr.

Peter Gleick, and has hired an independent firm to review the allegations. The Board has agreed to Dr. Following a distinguished career in energy and environmental policy, Elena Schmid has been appointed as the Acting Executive Director.

The Pacific Institute will continue in its vital mission to advance environmental protection, economic development, and social equity. Since Gleick has already admitted to other allegations using deception to obtain Heartland documents , presumably this review will cover the allegation of forgery of the Climate Strategy document.

Deep Climate. Exploring climate science, and climate science misinformation, in Canada and beyond. Skip to content. Posted on February 20, 95 Comments. The really big donor would most likely be Barre Seid from Chicago. Share this: Twitter. Like this: Like Loading Bookmark the permalink. J Bowers February 20, at pm. Rob February 20, at pm. Bill Hartree February 20, at pm. Thomas Lee Elifritz February 20, at pm.

Deep Climate February 20, at pm. Bill Walker February 20, at pm. Thomas Lee Elifritz February 21, at am. Ben February 20, at pm. Snapple February 20, at pm. Deech56 February 21, at am.

Tom Servo February 20, at pm. Steve Bloom February 21, at am. Gavin's Pussycat February 21, at am. SteveC February 21, at am. Take what amusement you can, while you can…. Frank Spencer February 20, at pm. Henry February 21, at am. J Bowers February 21, at am. You mean when the enemy were doing that which was in the strategy document? MartinM February 21, at am. See you in jail Pete. Wow, wow, wow! It is so great being a climate denier. This is fun!

Gleick has nothing whatsoever to do with Climate Crock of the Week.