Always Use Protection

2012 was a bad for the Heartland Institute.  Greg Laden listed their troubles as one of the most important climate stories but only about 12% of the bunnies agreed it was top (melting of the Arctic is in first place with 55%).  Among other things it's role as a conduit in the League of Wingnut Welfare was exposed and it lost sponsorship in several of its "service" areas, retaining pretty much only tobacco and denial.  Eli Lehrer took his insurance practice and fled early, pharma checked out, with the last one to close the door being Pfizer.  Forecast the Facts has been running a successful campaign to encourage the remaining others. To Eli, the tell was how Bast described two of his fund raisers

Heartland added Sam Schulman to the department in March 2011 as an independent contractor and fundraising senior advisor. Sam is highly connected in conservative social circles and made many contacts on our behalf, but succeeded in raising only one gift for
$10,000. We allowed our agreement to expire in 2011, but are paying him a small amount in early 2011 to follow-up and close on some prospects.

Bruno Behrend, hired in January 2010 to fundraise on school reform, was unsuccessful in doing so in 2011. He was moved to part-time and then to volunteer status by the end of the year. He continues to speak at public events and talk to donors, but we do not expect him to be sufficiently successful to return to paid status in 2012.

It is very bottom line.  As Rick Perlstein puts it

And yet this stuff is as important to understanding the conservative ascendancy as are the internecine organizational and ideological struggles that make up its official history—if not, indeed, more so. The strategic alliance of snake-oil vendors and conservative true believers points up evidence of another successful long march, of tactics designed to corral fleeceable multitudes all in one place—and the formation of a cast of mind that makes it hard for either them or us to discern where the ideological con ended and the money con began.

 For Heartland the annus horribilis started with Peter Gleick publishing a bunch of Heartland documents that he had obtained by social engineering, e.g. calling the receptionist and asking, while misrepresenting himself.  The ensuing storm drove the Heartland management to an act of seppeku, putting up the billboard of shame, and painting a target on their own backs.

Doubling down is always a possible defense, and Joe Bast, the Institute President can parse an argument with the best of them and the Heartland Institute, noticing the success of the US National Rifle Association has come out bleating.  For a lesson in how to deal with such,  Brian Angliss took Bast's argument apart at Scholars and Rogues, however, Heartland has also decided that social engineering makes for fine farce, setting Alyssa Carducci on Mike Mann's booking agent Jodi Solomon.  According to Solomon

Alyssa Carducci was the person who called the office and spoke with me directly. She said she was from the Association of Air Conditioning Distributors in the state of Florida and she was helping to plan their upcoming event for 300-500 people. She gave me this email to be in touch with her: ad.carducci@gmail.com.

According to Carducci she was told that Mann's fee for that event was 10K$.  Carducci denies she represented herself as the being from the Association of Air Conditioning Distributors

On January 2, I called Mann’s agent Jodi Solomon about booking Mann to speak at a meeting for my family’s air conditioning business. Environmental issues are a strong concern of ours, and global warming-related regulations are an important concern of air conditioning specialists in general.  

For those into more detail, Brian Angliss has it.

So Carducci and Daughter must be a pretty big company, like say with 500 people who will pay $20 each to hear about the Hockey Stick Wars.  To get an idea where this fee falls in the food chain  Sean Hannity gets 100K$, Mark Spitz 20K$, and, of course fees are negotiable.  His fee schedule (5-10K$) puts Mike in the range of an average author, not a best seller (20K$).  Eli must polish his pitch.

Still the beast is stirring, with fewer funds, increasingly climate weirdness,  the coming of the USGCRP and the AR5 drafts, and more, our buddies, and not just Heartland, are looking for distractions. FOIAs have become a cottage industry with lots of dry wells, and spitting indignation, but the rent seekers are still looking to use the uses "the coercive power of the state to force other people to give them gratis, the fruits of their labor."

But wait, there may be more.

Eli hears that there is a sizable spike in the last month of phishing and breaking attempts against climate scientists and climate blogs (nononono, not our friends at Tony and Judy's places, well there might be but they have to speak for themselves) from the same general direction as purloined the UEA emails.  With AR5 being baked and visions of a second UEA grab dancing in their heads, our friends at Heartland and Mrs. Calabash wherever she is, might have some interesting tales to tell? 

Perhaps?? Perhaps not??  As Tony would say this needs to be confirmed by others in the science community before it can be taken seriously.

But the best advice comes from Doctor Ruth: "Always use protection"