See the link: "Heartland is soliciting contributors for a “global warming curriculum” developed by a part-time Department of Energy consultant, David Wojick, which in Heartland’s estimation “appears to have great potential for success.”

ExxonMobil used to fund Heartland and several other supporters of science distortion but may have stopped (I got involved in this in a small way a couple of years ago, but a long article by Union of Conecerned Scientists and pressure from Greenpeace and many other of course was what did it).

I just downloaded ExxonMobil's 2010 list of public policy donations and need to go through some of those groups.

A recent editorial in EOS transactions American Geophysical Union was very harsh on Peter Gleick, who used deception to get the documents and was part of an AGU ethics group (oops).

What is perhaps more damaging is the climate statement on the web site of a large organization of earth scientists working in the petroleum industry: AAPG:
http://dpa.aapg.org/gac/statements/climatechange.cfm

Their position is just sad. You may have to be involved in this to read their statement and understand why it is so bad.

I use the data and techniques that are used in the oil industry and might normally belong to this group and publish in their journal AAPG Bulletin. I am a co-author on a presentation at AAPG annual meeting in a month or 2 by a woman I trained who works for a petroleum company. The funding for that reseach was from the USA National Science Foundation and was driven by the spectacular high resolution record of past climates preserved in Santa Barbara basin, offshore of the UCSB campus (where I work). Just before the abstract deadline it crossed my mind to also present some of this work, but checked the AAPG position and decided I could not do that and cannot join that group unless I was doing it to send pressure to change their official statement. I don't have time, but I should send a letter to their monthly magazine AAPG Explorer.

Full disclosure: I have long been a member of the Pacific Section AAPG. A couple of years ago the past president of that group in their newsletter had what seemed to me reasonable statements on climate change (although vague and ambiguous). The current president, in a recent newsletter, wondered why many (students) who are members of Pacific Section were not members of national. I answered to him in an email why I could not be a member of national AAPG, and said they could publish my email (which they did not...or maybe I have not read the latest ones).

Ethics are important in science.

Christopher "Heartland Chris" Sorlien

• Global warming curriculum