climate denier curriculum | Heartland Department of Education

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message from students re climate denier curriculum

Heartland Department of Education

The Heartland Institute's President and CEO just admitted that Heartland is writing a "global warming curriculum" that would say climate science isn't settled. Heartland would like to create the appearance of a scientific debate where there is none by having our teachers claim we just don't know if humans are changing our climate.

Dear Mr. Bast,

I'm Corey Husic, and I'm a high school student in Pennsylvania. It's come to my attention that you are prepared to spend a significant amount of money on a "global warming curriculum" to teach kids that climate change isn't real.

That's right. According to your own budget documents, you want to hand teachers a curriculum that says global warming is "a major scientific controversy" and that carbon dioxide might not even be a pollutant.

Please be advised: Your entire premise is false. The reality is that our climate is changing now and human activities are a primary cause. I’m just a high school student, so please don’t take my word for it. Just ask any National Academy of Science in the world or just about any actual climate scientist.

Given who pays your bills, your plan doesn’t come as a surprise. According to your own documents, your organization is funded by coal and oil companies with a financial stake in denying climate science — not to mention tobacco companies that tried to convince us smoking doesn't cause cancer.

My generation is already experiencing a very different climate from our parents and grandparents. We will be the ones responsible for making sure coastal cities are able to withstand rising sea levels. We are the ones who will have to protect ourselves from weather extremes like stronger hurricanes, longer droughts and hotter heat waves. Instead of trying to undermine the science that shows humans are causing climate change, we should be learning how those changes are going to affect us and what we can do about it. In other words, teach us something useful.

We respectfully demand that you cease and desist your effort to bring climate change denial into our schools.

Corey Husic
Age 17
Climate Presenter

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Heartland Institute

Heartland considers global warming to be "not the first case of a widespread fear based on incomplete knowledge turned out to be false or at least greatly exaggerated." wow. they say this under "Scares and Hoaxes" on their "climate wiki" - just one of the ways that they promote climate denial, working against what they call "an ideological campaign called 'global warming.'" why do they do this? - to protect and generate more profits for their contributors, of course - if changes are made to address climate change (which is, in reality, scientifically accepted as a true and present danger to the entire ecosphere), corporations would be on the hot seat and their profits would be dented dramatically by them having to actually act responsibly.

The Heartland Institute is a conservative[2][3] and libertarian[4][5][6] public policy think tank based in Chicago, Illinois which advocates free market policies. The Institute is designated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit by the Internal Revenue Service and advised by a 15 member board of directors, which meets quarterly. As of 2011, it has a full-time staff of 40, including editors and senior fellows.[5] The Institute was founded in 1984 and conducts research and advocacy work on issues including government spending, taxation, healthcare, tobacco policy, global warming, information technology and free-market environmentalism.
In the 1990s, the group worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question the science linking secondhand smoke to health risks, and to lobby against government public health reforms.[7][8][9] More recently, the Institute has focused on questioning the science of climate change, has sponsored meetings of climate change skeptics,[10] and is now promoting public school curricula challenging the scientific consensus on climate change.[11]

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The Heartland Institute - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

stated mission: "to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems."

"Global warming is not the first case of a widespread fear based on incomplete knowledge turned out to be false or at least greatly exaggerated. Global warming has many of the characteristics of a popular delusion, an irrational fear or cause that is embraced by millions of people because, well, it is believed by millions of people!"

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Scares and Hoaxes | Introduction to Global Warming - ClimateWiki

funded by contributors including AT&T, General Motors Foundation, Microsoft Corporation, Nucor Corporation (largest contributor, steel manufacturer), Pfizer, Reynolds American Inc., etc.

(see EXPOSED: 19 Corporations Funding Heartland Institute | ThinkProgress)

their response to critics -

The Heartland Institute often is the target of misinformation and even outright lies about its mission, funding and donors, and members and staff. These attacks come overwhelming from left-wing advocates who object to our principled stand in defense of individual liberty and limited government.

"Anonymity allows bloggers and other participants to post vicious, libelous statements without fear of recrimination. There is no pretext of objectivity in the blogosphere and no journalistic morality. Instead, it has evolved into a platform for hateful, offensive attacks on institutions and individuals from all corners of society."
-- 39th Trend/Forecasting Report, The Dilenschneider Group, September 2009

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Reply to Our Critics | Heartland Institute

The Fakegate Gang | FakeGate: 'Here they are, a rogue’s gallery of organizations that are willing to invade people’s privacy in pursuit of an ideological campaign called “global warming.”'

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Forecast the Facts | Tell General Motors: Stop Funding Climate Change Denial

General Motors, and all other corporations, should immediately pull their funding from the Heartland Institute in light of Heartland's ongoing and persistent support of climate change denial.

General Motors has been kept afloat by American taxpayers through a massive bailout. In the years since, GM has pursued a different path on global warming, using heavy investment in the Chevy Volt to power their comeback. So it's outrageous to learn that some of our tax dollars are literally ending up in the hands of the climate-denying Heartland Institute. - Leaked documents recently revealed that the Heartland Institute, a leading climate change denial "think tank," receives funding from General Motors and other major corporations. Denier weathercasters often cite Heartland's studies.

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TAKE ACTION > Click here to tell GM: using taxpayer dollars to fund climate denial is wrong!

forecastthefacts.org

We began by focusing on stopping climate change denial among TV meteorologists. But when we found out that corporations like GM are backing the Heartland Institute, we knew we had to get involved, especially because many of the meteorologists who deny climate change use information directly from Heartland.

According to a recent national survey, more than half of TV weather reporters don’t believe in human-induced climate change. Meanwhile, their viewers are facing unprecedented, climate-change induced heat waves, droughts, and flooding.

Together, we can make sure that Americans hear the truth about climate change, the critical first step to addressing the climate crisis. Thanks again for taking action and being part of this effort.

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see also

what next: climate deniers get my goat

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Japanese American internment - 70 years ago | haiku

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rounded up

"Tagged for evacuation, Salinas, California," May 1942 | Russell Lee
This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons

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February 20, 2012 marked the 70th anniversary of #EO9066, the executive order signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt that authorized the deportation and eventual detainment of Japanese Americans from the west coast during World War II. Here is a great rundown of some of the essential facts related to internment, a particularly dark spot on our nation’s history and one glossed over by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Of the 120,000 Japanese-Americans imprisoned, 2/3 were American citizens making the number of Japanese-Americans interned without cause greater then the population of Wichita, Kansas. Americans with as little as 1/8 Japanese ancestry were interned, including orphan infants and Americans of Taiwanese and Korean descent.

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70 Years Ago Japanese-American Removal and Internments Began | Care2 Causes

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Poetry in History

...In an era of liberal personhood, when most — but certainly not all, recent legislation in Arizona being a case in point — citizens of the United States enjoy relative protection under the law, how are we to respond to the egregious moment in 1942 when crowds of Japanese immigrants and their American-born children were herded onto fairgrounds, relegated to horse stalls and racetracks, and “relocated” to barbed-wire compounds and hastily constructed prison barracks throughout the nation? And all this, in response to sentiment like that expressed by columnist Henry McLemore: “I am for the immediate removal of every Japanese on the West Coast to a point deep in the interior. I don’t mean a nice part of the interior either. Herd ‘em up, pack ‘em off and give ‘em the inside room in the badlands… Personally, I hate the Japanese. And that goes for all of them.”

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Autumn foliage
California has now become
a far country

–Yajin Nakao

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Frosty night
listening to rumbling train
we have come a long way

–Senbinshi Takaoka

The Delta Ginsha [a free-verse poetry club] was founded in 1918 by Neiji Qzawa… Its members met monthly and submitted their haiku to the master of the month, who was usually the host or hostess for the evening. They submitted for consideration as many poems as they desired. The poems were then read and discussed and a vote was taken to determine the best haiku… It was an evening anticipated by the members—grape growers, onion farmers, teachers, housewives, bankers, pharmacists, and others—who had assembled for an enlightening cultural and social event.

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Poetry in History: Japanese American Internment | Lantern Review Blog

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Executive Order 9066

Japanese-American internment was the relocation and internment by the United States government in 1942 of approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese who lived along the Pacific coast of the United States to camps called "War Relocation Camps," in the wake of Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.[1][2] The internment of Japanese Americans was applied unequally throughout the United States. Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast of the United States were all interned, while in Hawaii, where more than 150,000 Japanese Americans composed over one-third of the territory's population, 1,200[3] to 1,800 Japanese Americans were interned.[4] Of those interned, 62% were American citizens.[5][6]

President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment with Executive Order 9066, issued February 19, 1942, which allowed local military commanders to designate "military areas" as "exclusion zones," from which "any or all persons may be excluded." This power was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire Pacific coast, including all of California and much of Oregon, Washington and Arizona, except for those in internment camps.[7] In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the exclusion orders,[8] while noting that the provisions that singled out people of Japanese ancestry were a separate issue outside the scope of the proceedings.[9] The United States Census Bureau assisted the internment efforts by providing confidential neighborhood information on Japanese Americans. The Bureau's role was denied for decades, but was finally proven in 2007.[10][11]
In 1988, Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed legislation which apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation said that government actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership".[12] The U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6 billion in reparations to Japanese Americans who had been interned and their heirs.[13]

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Japanese American internment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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The Amache Japanese Internment Camp at Granada, Colorado

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whales - PBS | US Navy | whale story

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Ocean Giants | PBS - Nature

Watch Ocean Giants - Preview on PBS. See more from Nature.

i just learned that blue whales live for 2 centuries - the few remaining old ones remember the really bad days, even have old harpoons still in them. bigger than dinosaurs... living here and now on earth with us today... - problem is global warming is likely to disrupt their food supply so badly that something that huge won't be able to survive.

Whales and dolphins conjure a deep sense of wonder in us that’s hard to explain. From the Arctic to the Amazon, this groundbreaking three-part series goes on a global expedition with world-renowned underwater cameramen, Doug Allen (Planet Earth) and Didier Noirot (Jacques Cousteau’s cameraman), as they capture spellbinding footage of these marine mammals. Ocean Giants looks at how cetaceans hunt, mate, and communicate, and follows scientists as they strive to uncover new insights about these animals.

Watch Songs of the Humpbacks on PBS. See more from Nature.

The first hour, Giant Lives, enters the world of the great whales. In the Arctic, giant bowhead whales survive the freezing cold wrapped in fifty tons of insulating blubber two-feet thick, making them the fattest animals on the planet. But the biggest animal on the planet is the blue whale. Measuring a hundred feet long, and weighing in at 200 tons, it is double the size of the largest dinosaur.

The second hour, Deep Thinkers, explores the cognitive and emotional lives of dolphins and whales. Like us, cetaceans have special brain cells, spindle cells, that are associated with communication, emotion, and heightened social sensitivity. These cells were once thought to be unique to us, but research is now showing that whales and dolphins may have up to three times more spindle cells than humans.

Marine mammals’ extrasensory perceptions and communication skills are the focus of Voices of the Sea, the final hour of the series. Whales and dolphins depend on sound to function in their ocean home. They use ultrasound to see inside other creatures, clicks and whistles to speak, and echolocation to navigate and hunt in the pitch-black depths.

Join PBS Nature, as it dives into the world of whales and dolphins, and reveals the secrets of their intimate lives like never before. Ocean Giants premieres on Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 8/7 c (check local listings).

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whale song spectogram

Spectrogram of Humpback Whale vocalizations. Detail is shown for the first 24 seconds of the 37 second recording Humpback Whale "Song". The ethereal whale "songs" and echolocation "clicks" are visible as horizontal striations and vertical sweeps respectively. Spectrogram generated with Fatpigdog's PC based Real Time FFT Spectrum Analyzer.

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Whale sounds - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Navy Sonar & Whales

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Low Frequency Active Sonar spectogram

The U.S. Navy is experimenting with a long range underwater sonar system which is to be used to detect the presence and position of submarines deep in the oceans of the world. It uses a low frequency signal that can travel great distances and presumeably bounce off targets that are hundreds of meters below the ocean surface.

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DolphinEAR Hydrophones

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Navy Sonar & Whales | EARTHJUSTICE

Navy Sonar & Whales

Navy sonar harms whales and dolphins. Check out this video and hear what it sounds like, and see what it does to these marine mammals. Earthjustice is working to get the Navy to use their sonar in places where it won't harm whales and dolphins.

The incident recorded in this video occurred in Puget Sound in May 2003. It was investigated by the National Marine Fisheries Service, Office of Protected Resources, who filed a report.

Video: Orca and Navy Sonar | Earthjustice

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
A whale's keen sense of hearing is vital in every aspect of its life history, including foraging for food, finding mates, bonding with offspring, communicating with other members of their species, navigating through lightless waters and avoiding predators.
Experts agree that exposure to sonar blasts can cause serious injury or death from hemorrhages or other tissue trauma. Whales can also suffer from temporary and permanent hearing loss, displacement from preferred habitat, and disruption of feeding, breeding, communication and other behaviors essential to survival.
The use of military sonar has been associated with whale strandings in Greece (1996), the Bahamas (2000), Madeira (2000), Vieques (1998, 2002), the Canary Islands (2002, 2004), the northwest coast of the U.S. (2003), Kaua'i (2004) and Spain (2006).

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RELATED EARTHJUSTICE LITIGATION

Earthjustice Attorney Steve Mashuda discusses this case in an interview with San Francisco Bay Area NBC News affiliate KNTV.

Navy Sonar and Marine Mammals: On January 26, 2012, a coalition of conservation and American Indian groups sued the National Marine Fisheries Service for failing to protect thousands of whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, and sea lions from U.S. Navy warfare training exercises along the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington. In late 2010, NMFS gave the Navy a permit for five years of expanded naval activity that will harm or "take" marine mammals and other sealife. The permit allows the Navy to conduct increased training exercises that can harm marine mammals and disrupt their migration, nursing, breeding, or feeding, primarily as a result of harassment through exposure to the use of sonar.

North Atlantic Right Whales: In 2010, conservation groups challenged the U.S. Navy's decision to build a $100 million Undersea Warfare Training Range 50 miles east of Jacksonville, FL, next to the only known calving ground for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. The warfare training grounds would include a system of approximately 300 underwater "sonar nodes" connected by cable to a landside facility some 50 nautical miles away. Scientists believe that the loss of even one right whale from non-natural causes could jeopardize the future of the species.

Navy Sonar and Hawaiian Humpback Whales: In 2008, Hawai'i federal district Judge David A. Ezra found that the Navy violated federal law and enjoined it from carrying out its undersea warfare exercises in Hawai'i's waters without adhering to additional mitigation measures to protect marine mammals. Earthjustice had filed suit on behalf of the Ocean Mammal Institute, the Animal Welfare Institute, KAHEA: The Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Surfrider Foundation's Kaua'i Chapter.

Endangered Species Protections for Southern Residents: In 2005, Earthjustice successfully argued that the Southern Resident orcas in Washington State's Puget Sound deserve protection under the Endangered Species Act, resulting in new safeguards for the orcas, including the creation of a binding recovery plan, protection for the whales' critical habitat, and assurances that all federal projects will protect the whales before the projects can proceed.
Listen to an audio interview with VP For Litigation Patti Goldman.

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Video: Orca and Navy Sonar | Earthjustice

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Navy Training Blasts Marine Mammals with Harmful Sonar | Earthjustice

January 26, 2012
San Francisco, CA - A coalition of conservation and American Indian groups today sued the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for failing to protect thousands of whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, and sea lions from U.S. Navy warfare training exercises along the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington.

Earthjustice, representing InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Friends of the San Juans, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and People For Puget Sound, today filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Northern California challenging NMFS’s approval of the Navy’s training activities in its Northwest Training Range Complex. The lawsuit calls on NMFS to mitigate anticipated harm to marine mammals and biologically critical areas within the training range that stretches from Northern California to the Canadian border.
“These training exercises will harm dozens of protected species of marine mammals—Southern Resident killer whales, blue whales, humpback whales, dolphins, and porpoises—through the use of high-intensity mid-frequency sonar,” said Steve Mashuda, an Earthjustice attorney representing the groups. “The Fisheries Service fell down on the job and failed to require the Navy to take reasonable and effective actions to protect them.”
The Navy uses a vast area of the West Coast for training activities including anti-submarine warfare exercises involving tracking aircraft and sonar; surface-to-air gunnery and missile exercises; air-to-surface bombing exercises; sink exercises; and extensive testing for several new weapons systems... > more

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> Read the fact sheet: "West Coast Marine Life and the Navy’s NW Training Range"

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Canadian sonar in U.S. waters

The frigate HMCS Ottawa

"First there were 4 detections of explosive sounds"

A growing coalition of scientists, educators, and citizens are working together to expand a regional hydrophone network in the Salish Sea. This site is part of the SeaSound Project of The Whale Museum and is an experiment in sharing real-time underwater sound. The goals are to monitor the critical habitat of endangered southern resident killer whales to detect orca sounds and measure ambient noise levels.

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Orcasound.net Hydrophone Network

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see also

LFAS.net Low Frequency Active Sonar Network

Beaked Whales Respond to Simulated and Actual Navy Sonar | NOAA Fisheries Service’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center (SWFSC)

SURTASS LFA: "The Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS) Low Frequency Active (LFA) is a long range surveillance sonar the U.S. Navy needs for national security."

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whats more: whale story

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AMAZON WATCH - Talisman: Keep Your Promise, Leave the Achuar in Peace!

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"John Manzoni must come here and speak to the elders who have lived where Talisman is drilling for oil. He must understand that there are real problems and the company must recognize and respect our people" – Peas Peas Ayui, FENAP leader

The Achuar of the northern Peruvian Amazon are fighting to keep Canadian oil company Talisman Energy out of their ancestral territory, but the company continues to ignore the Achuar's demands and expand operations. Talisman's "divide and conquer" strategy is heightening tensions and the risk of conflict.

Achuar leaders and elders have responded to this urgent situation, in a last ditch effort to seek peaceful resolution by Achuar elders have invited Talisman CEO John Manzoni to visit their territory and speak directly with Achuar leaders.

Sign the global petition asking Talisman to leave the Achuar in peace and withdraw from their territory, and send a letter to John Manzoni asking him to keep his promise and meet with the Achuar.

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TAKE ACTION > AMAZON WATCH - Talisman: Keep Your Promise, Leave the Achuar in Peace!

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hurdy gurdy wheel, crank & shaft assembly

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wheel, crank & shaft assembly by Graeme McCormack

"I have just finished Drawing up the Henri 111 Renaissance Hurdy Gurdy. I have modelled it on an existing instrument from Paris circa 1750. The main deviation from the original is that it can play over 2 octaves and has adjustable bridges and string lifting mechanisms. I have also changed the internal frame to use smaller wood stock. The original has solid end blocks that needed large wood stock to cut them from. There are 9 x A1 size sheets to this plan. I will add more written information as I make this gurdy." - Henri 111 hurdy gurdy

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AntiQuated Strings - Graeme McCormack

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new top view, 2/20/12

- an idea that i've been working on for awhile
- there is now a page on it at whats more

whats more: barrel gurdy

"it uses a hand-cranked wheel to bow playing strings and drones like a hurdy gurdy, but is played with a slide like a Vichitra Veena (as in video) - no gurdy keybox..."

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