Heartland Institute Reaches Into U.S. Department of Interior to Spread Misinformation on Climate Change

March 7, 2020 – Donald Trump is facilitating a breakdown in the information being fed to the public through Department of Interior reports. The New York Times revealed this week that one of the Department’s employees has financial ties to the Heartland Institute, the climate change denial organization funded by the Koch’s, Exxon Mobil, and other fossil fuel interests. At least nine federal reports, stated the Times, are being modified to mislead the public about climate science.

Indur M. Goklany is a senior advisor for the Department of Interior’s Office of Policy Analysis. His academic credentials accredit him with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering. Yet had publishes and speaks on climate change and has worked closely with the Cato and Heartland Institutes. The former is a think tank founded and funded by the fossil-fuel branch of the Koch family. The latter is heavily invested in promoting the fossil fuel industry and questioning the science of climate change.

Goklany in 2008 wrote an opinion piece for a libertarian group, The Reason Foundation, entitled “Climate Change: No Harm, No Claim,” in which he stated that there was no proven harm” to global warming. In fact he argued that higher carbon dioxide was contributing to improved crop yields in the Developing World and that “the death toll from climate-sensitive diseases and extreme weather events” had “shrunk dramatically in the past century.”  He further pointed out that the evidence of sea-level rise associated with global warming was highly uncertain suggesting that what was being observed was the melting from the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago.

In 2009 Goklany appeared in a film that questioned global warming policies as being more dangerous than the warming itself. In 2011 he published a paper entitled “Misled on Climate Change: How the UN IPCC (and others) Exaggerate the Impact of Global Warming.” In it, he paints a picture that suggests global warming will create “positive impacts” citing much higher GDP per capita because of the benefits the warming will provide particularly to Developing World countries. He further argues that “economic development should be given priority over reducing greenhouse gas emissions” which would allow Developing World countries to  better cope “with any negative impacts of climate change.”

And while being an employee of the Department of the Interior, in 2012, was listed on the personnel budget of the Heartland Institute, receiving a monthly retainer from them of $1,000.

You can view him as a Heartland Institute panelist at a 2017 sponsored climate conference discussing fossil fuels and human prosperity where he and his fellow panelists question climate science, and IPCC reports and conclusions.

It appears to be no coincidence that Goklany caught the eye of the Trump administration shortly after the President took office. In 2017, he was promoted to Deputy Secretary of the Department with responsibilities for reviewing climate policies and the science being done to study land and water issues across the country. In every report, Goklany has cast doubt on the conclusions of the science inserting language claiming a lack of consensus among scientists about global warming, or claiming that the warming was being exaggerated.

According to the Times writer who was given access to key memos sent to Department research scientists from Goklany, he instructed them to add language to their reports that said things like increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) was beneficial to agriculture both in improving plant water uptake and extending the growing season.

Remember that all of the papers published by Goklany about climate change have been written by an electrical engineer, not a qualified climate scientist, and not even a qualified economist, a perfect fit for the Trump administration’s assault on the truth.