Have you ever wanted to win a prize but didn’t have the talent, skills, or smarts to do so? Or, have you ever wished that your favourite pseudoscientist’s claim to fame wasn’t that he or she is paid to spread false information?
This past summer, the Heartland Institute gave out a number of awards. They did this because they realised that their stable of “climate contrarians” has very few real honours. At the time, most people didn’t care, but now it’s painfully clear why this was all a lie.
Part of Heartland’s current plan is to promote its “Featured Speakers Bureau,” which encourages people to ask one of Heartland’s “contrarians” to speak at their events. Thanks to the awards it gave out this summer, Heartland can now send email pitches to readers offering them the chance to “Book an Award-Winning Climate Expert” for their next event, without mentioning that it was Heartland that made the awards and then gave them out. Even though the pitch email (rehosted here) says the winners got their awards at the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change, it doesn’t say that the conference is a Heartland product.
The “Lifetime Achievement in Climate Science Award” was given to Dr. S. Fred Singer (which we feel grossly neglects his years of faithful service denying the risks of smoking for the tobacco industry). Dr. Willie Soon got the “Courage in Defense of Science Award,” which he deserved because most scientists wouldn’t have the guts to risk their professional reputation by taking more than a million dollars from oil and coal companies to spread the idea that climate change isn’t happening. The “Outstanding Evangelical Climate Scientist Award” went to Dr. Roy Spencer (since he is a creationist they were apparently willing to overlook decades of wrong analysis.)
In the spirit of awards, we are now giving this Denier Roundup post the “First Annual Denier Roundup Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.”
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s Denier Roundup, which won an award.