Clipping of news on Brazilian Culture, Law and Citizenship
02/28/2012
This article was translated by an automatic translation system, and was therefore not reviewed by people.
Documents show in Chicago as the institute wanted to deny scientific studies on global warming
A new scandal on climate change began in the United States after documents surfaced showing that right-wing groups funded a campaign to influence the way the subject is taught in schools.
Documents on the strategy and the internal budget of the Heartland Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Chicago (Illinois, north-central), were revealed last week, showing that $ 200.000 would be spent on a "project on global warming."
The project would preach that "the fact that humans are changing the climate is a scientific controversy" and that is also "controversial trust" of climatological models, according to the documents.
Also mentioned are thousands of dollars in donations from industry and investments in fossil fuels, an anonymous donor who gave $ 1.25 million and a bonus of $ 300.000 for the group of scientists reject the findings of the UN on climate change.
The Heartland Institute said that one of the leaked documents was false, but did not comment on others and refused to respond to interview requests from AFP.
The scandal took on new dimensions on Wednesday, when a congressman asked that a hearing be held to determine whether one of the scientists mentioned in the documents - an official Department of the Interior United States - received remuneration from the Heartland Institute improper to deny climate change .
According to documents, Indur Goklany, assistant director in the section on political projects, Science and Technology Department of the Interior, received $ 1.000 a month to write articles on economics and politics for the Heartland Institute.
It is assumed that the texts appear in a book of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC, in its English acronym), an international group of scientists who criticized the United Nations reports on the subject.
A Democratic congressman from Arizona (south), Raul Grijalva, requested a hearing from the floor of the Natural Resources Committee, mentioning that it is unclear whether Goklany received payments - which is illegal for federal employees - and other government scientists are involved .
"Our Committee has an obligation to answer these questions," wrote Grijalva, whose proposal for a hearing must be approved by his colleagues.
David Wojick, another government contractor of the Department of Energy (DOE), could be investigated for their alleged links with the group, after the documents show that $ 25.000 would receive quarterly drafting new curricula.
In the documents, Wojick is referred to as "Senior Adviser on Innovation" section of Information Science and Technology of DOE.
The American branch of Greenpeace sent a series of letters to the government, requesting an urgent investigation to determine whether the documents reveal illegal payments to federal scientists and therefore a conflict of interest.
The documents showed that the Heartland Institute, founded in 1984, made "a multimillion-dollar campaign for several years, to sow confusion about climate change and the science" that studies this subject, told AFP Kert Davies, research director at Greenpeace U.S..
Peter Gleick, a leading climate change scientist, infiltrated the Heartland Institute to obtain the documents and is accused of having done so fraudulently.
Source: Ig News
Our news are taken in full of our partner sites. For this reason, we can not change the content of these up in case of typing errors.
This article was translated by an automatic translation system, and was therefore not reviewed by people.