Science

"GOP scientists say their attempts to talk about climate dangers with their party's politicians and their aides have largely fallen on deaf ears."

"According to one of the documents that came out in last week's scandal, the Heartland Institute plans to pay a federal scientist for his contributions to an annual climate-denial report. The proposed 2012 budget for the institute is one of the more interesting things to come out of the Heartland documents that were passed around the internet, as it includes a $1,000-per-month payment to a Department of Interior employee."

"MOSCOW -- It was an Ice Age squirrel's treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for over 30,000 years. From the fruit tissues, a team of Russian scientists managed to resurrect an entire plant in a pioneering experiment that paves the way for the revival of other species.

The Silene stenophylla is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated, the researchers said, and it is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds.

"The climate sceptic thinktank chaired by former chancellor Lord Lawson, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), has been ruled not 'influential' enough to warrant making the Charity Commission disclose its seed funder, an information rights tribunal ruled on Tuesday."

"VANCOUVER -- Amid revelations of a well-funded U.S. organisation's plans to deliberately distort climate science, scientists and journalists at a major scientific conference called on the Canadian government to stop its muzzling of scientists. For the past four years, the Canadian government has been denying timely access to government scientists even when their findings are published in leading scientific journals, said scientists and journalists in a special session of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science meeting here in Vancouver, British Columbia."

"Climate scientist Peter Gleick has acknowledged that he was the person who convinced the Heartland Institute to hand over the contents of its January Board package, authenticating the documents beyond a doubt and further exposing the disinformation campaign Heartland has pursued in the last week, trying to discredit the information." [Gleick called his methods in obtaining the documents an ethical lapse, and the outpouring of criticism diverted media attention from the apparent deception campaign revealed in the Heartland documents themselves. The uproar raises important issues about what methods are legitimate for investigative journalists to use in obtaining information (Gleick was not a journalist), and where the solid ground of truthfulness may be found in today's escalating conflict between science and PR. -- Ed. note]

"Most scientists, on achieving high office, keep their public remarks to the bland and reassuring. Last week Nina Fedoroff, the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), broke ranks in a spectacular manner. She confessed that she was now 'scared to death' by the anti-science movement that was spreading, uncontrolled, across the US and the rest of the western world."

"Internal documents acquired by Think Progress Green reveal that the climate-denial think tank Heartland Institute received funding from at least 19 publicly traded corporations in 2010 and 2011. The companies’ combined contributions exceeded $1.3 million for an array of projects. As Think Progress Green reported on Tuesday, the Heartland Institute’s projects included a secret plan to teach children that climate change is a hoax."