How Heartland-style Climate Sceptic Campaigns Play "Hide the Deniers" Using Secretive Fund

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A LOWPROFILE funding organisation acting as a middleman for wealthy conservative businesspeople has been quietly backing climate denial campaigns across the US.

The Virginia-based Donors Capital Fund and its partner organisation Donors Trust has been giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to groups blocking attempts to limit greenhouse gas pollution and undermining climateย science.

Yet the structure of the funds allows the identities of donors and the existence of any vested interests to remain hidden from publicย view.

Step aside the fakery of โ€œhide the declineโ€. Say hello to โ€œhide theย deniersโ€.

During the 2009 unlawful release of the private emails of climate scientists, the phrase โ€œhide the declineโ€ became a catch cry for the denial industry as it tried to convince the world that global warming was some kind ofย hoax.

Sceptics, fake climate experts, conservative politicians and right-wing commentators latched onto the phrase contained in an email from British climate scientist Phil Jones.
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Sceptics claimed it was evidence scientists were trying to manufacture global temperature records.ย In fact, Professor Jones’s email said nothing of the sort.ย 
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Jones, as he explained to many, including the BBC, was referring to data taken from tree rings that, up to the 1960s, had correlated well with global temperatures.
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But โ€œremoving the incorrect impression given by tree rings that temperaturesโ€ฆ were not risingโ€, as Jones explained, just didnโ€™t have the same ring to it as โ€œhide the declineโ€.
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The most high profile case involving climate sceptics since that non-scandal of โ€œClimategateโ€ is the ongoing unmasking (or for some, confirmation) of the methods the free-market Heartland Institute think-tank deploys to confuse the public about the dangers of fossil fuel emissions.
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But the case also gives an insight into how Heartland and other ideologically aligned groups gather their funding while preserving the identity of their wealthy backers.
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Heartland does not like the public to know who is funding its campaigns to deliberately undermine decades of research into the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on the climate and oceans.
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Like other groups, such as the UKโ€™s Global Warming Policy Foundation or Australiaโ€™s Institute for Public Affairs, these think-tanks promoting climate confusion say they keep their funders secret, in part, because of the public vilification they may attract if their identities are revealed.ย 
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Even so, previous investigations of Heartlandโ€™s funding have found their backers to include Exxon Mobil, the Scaife oil, aluminium and banking family and a suite of other libertarian foundations.
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Thanks to the work of DeSmogBlog contributor John Mashey and others, a key funder to Heartland has emerged in the form of the Virginia-based Donors Capital Fund, and its related Donors Trust.ย 
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A review of their grant giving, recorded in documents filed to the Internal Revenue Service, reveals DCFโ€™s penchant for other climate sceptic, anti-greenhouse regulation campaigns which pour scorn on climate science and climate scientists while claiming environmental regulations are attacks on freedom.
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DCF works by establishing what it calls โ€œdonor-advised fundsโ€ with a โ€œminimum initial giftโ€ of $1 million.ย 
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According to DCFโ€™s IRS 990 declarations, in 2010 it gave out $41.1 million in grants. In 2009 this was $59.7 million and in 2008, $70.8 million.
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The dollars given by donors are held by DCF in an account and invested, โ€œuntil the donor recommends grant disbursements to any number of liberty-minded public charitiesโ€.
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Donors can also appoint third parties or entire committees to dish out the cash on their behalf. DCF keeps spending the money at the donorโ€™s request as long as it falls within DCFโ€™s โ€œoverall mission and purposeโ€.
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That purpose is to always promote private initiatives, rather than government programs, as the best way to tackle societyโ€™s issues in areas including the environment, social welfare and health.
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As well as cutting down on paperwork, the DCF also allows the funders, and any vested interests, to remain hidden from public view.
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In 2009, Heartlandโ€™s revenue was $6,785,374. That same year, DCF gave Heartland $2,171,530, of which at least $770,000 went specifically to global warming-related projects.ย 
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In 2008, when Heartlandโ€™s revenue was $7.78million, the DCF gave the institute $4.6 million, of which $184,000 was specifically for โ€œglobal warming research projectsโ€ and $2million for โ€œgeneral operationsโ€.
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Also in 2009, DCF gave $115,000 to the Oregon-based Cascade Policy Institute for what the IRS 990 form described as โ€œa cap and trade/climate change transparency videoโ€.
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The documentary in question was most likely โ€œClimate Chainsโ€, which is part of the Cascade Policy Instituteโ€™s โ€œCarbon Cartel Education Projectโ€. DCF gave the Carbon Cartel Education Project $80,000 the previous year.
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During the film, the โ€œexpertsโ€ claimed human-caused climate change was a โ€œbandwagonโ€, a โ€œfadโ€ and that somehow, during what has since been declared as the hottest decade on the instrumental record, the world was cooling.
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Any attempts to introduce laws to mitigate climate change, were simply an โ€œattack on freedomโ€.ย 
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The experts featured in Climate Chains were exclusively staff members of other free-market think-tanks, such as Myron Ebell and Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Pat Michaels, of the Cato Institute.
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Heartlandโ€™s leaked 2012 Fundraising Plan highlighted a project to develop teaching modules for schools from kindergarten to grade 12 that would teach how climate science was โ€œcontroversialโ€.
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Heartland says that an โ€œAnonymous Donorโ€ has already pledged $100,000 to pay for the project.
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The Daily Kos blogย (which has also provided links to all the relevant IRS 990 forms) puts a compelling case that this โ€œAnonymous Donorโ€ is reclusive industrialist Barre Seid, who has been using the DCF to direct his funds.
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Also in 2010, DCF gave $35,000 to the โ€œFree-to-Choose Networkโ€ for โ€œunstoppable solar cycles DVDโ€ โ€“ presumably to either pay for them, or distribute them. The network has also received $393,607 cash from DCF the previous year.
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Unstoppable Solar Cycles is a short film aimed at school children (with one version narrated by an on-screen school-age presenter) that Heartland helped to distribute.
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There were four principal scientific voices in the video, which argued the sun could be to blame for climate change and argued CO2 was a minor element in the climate system.
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Dr David Legates and Dr Willie Soon are both well-known contrarian scientists with outlying
views on climate change.
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The IRS forms reveal that in 2010 Donors Trust gave $50,000 to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, โ€œfor research under Dr Willie Soonโ€.
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A Greenpeace spokesman has told DeSmogBlog it is now โ€œinvestigating the genesisโ€ of this $50,000 grant, which he said was not disclosed when Greenpeace requested documents from Smithsonianย under Freedom of Information laws last year.ย 
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As DeSmogBlog and others reported last year, the Greenpeace investigation found that every grant Dr. Soon has received since 2002 had originated with fossil fuel interests.
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Exxon Mobil, the American Petroleum Institute and Koch Industries were revealed as major supporters of Soonโ€™s research.
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One of the other two interviewees in the video, Rie Oldenburg, the curator of the Narsaq Musem in Southern Greenland, claimed the makers of the video had misled her.ย 
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She was under the impression she was being interviewed for a video on Norse history. ย Oldenburg also claimed that the remaining participant in the video, Ingibjorg Gilsladottir, had been told the film was for the Discovery Channel.
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The student presenter in the video, โ€œBethโ€, concluded, โ€œFrom what Iโ€™ve heard the cost to reduce CO2 will be enormous and, as the scientists said, this may not be the cause. We could create disaster for poor countries and hardship for all of us and not change the pattern of warming and cooling.โ€
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Other recent donations of note from DCF include $100,000 to the James Madison Institute for Public Policy โ€œfor climate change and Vaclav Klaus eventโ€. Klaus is the president of the Czech Republic who describes human-caused climate change as a โ€œmass delusionโ€.
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The International Policy Network, which has published papers focusing on the โ€œuncertaintiesโ€ in climate change science and lobbying against putting a price on greenhouse gases, received $185,000 from DCF in 2010.
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In 2010, Donors Trust gave several grants to one of the most overt of all climate science denying organisations, the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, which flew a delegation including Lord Christopher Monckton to Durban for last yearโ€™s UN climate conference.
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Some $535,500 went to CFACTโ€™s โ€œEnvironmental Education Fundโ€. A further $24,753 went towards the โ€œNot Evil, Just Wrong projectโ€.ย 
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Not Evil Just Wrongย is a film that claims regulating greenhouse gas emissions will cripple world economies and hurt the third-world.
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DCF has close ties to another, higher profile funding group, Philanthropy Roundtable.

Adam Meyerson is DCFโ€™s chairman and also the president of Philanthropy Roundtable. DCFโ€™s vice-chairman, Kimberly O. Dennis, is a Philanthropy Roundtable board member as well as being the chairman of Donorsย Trust.

DCF shares an address with Donors Trust and several board members and staff. Whitney Ball is the president of DCF and Donorsย Trust.

Steven Hayward, a DCF board member, is also a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. In 2006, it emerged that Hayward had written to an astrophysics professor offering $10,000 for a review of an IPCC report to โ€œexplore the limitations of climate modelย outputsโ€.

Earlier this week, Hayward wrote in detail about the Heartland issue, not mentioning his role on the board of DCF, which has given Heartland more than $6million in recentย years.

In Heartlandโ€™s most recent โ€œQuarterly Performance Reportโ€ the institute bragged it had logged โ€œ63,418 contacts with legislatorsโ€ on climate change and environmental policyย issuesโ€.

In the report, senior fellow James M. Taylor, a Forbes blogger, was still claiming the 2009 โ€œClimategateโ€ emails showed scientists committing โ€œfraud and misconductโ€ more than a year after numerous independent inquiries into the allegations found theย opposite.

Not so much a case of โ€œhide the declineโ€ as a case of โ€œhide the factsโ€, โ€œhide the scienceโ€ and โ€œhide theย deniersโ€.

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