It’s More About Principle Than Money

Published March 5, 2010

Tony Noerpel’s reference (“SCOTUS,” March 2) to The Heartland Institute as a “tobacco lobbyist” is typical of the global warming alarmists who won’t face the fact that the science is far from settled on this issue. They’d prefer to challenge the “skeptics'” funding rather than honestly engage the science.

But the attack on funding works better against the alarmists. The Climategate scientists, for example, falsified temperature data to keep the warming scare alive … and their research grants coming in. If money were driving The Heartland Institute’s work on global warming, surely we and other “skeptics” would be raving alarmists by now. As Alexander Cockburn has noted, “Billions in funding and research grants sluice into the big climate-modeling enterprises and a vast archipelago of research departments and ‘institutes of climate change’ across academia. It’s where the money is.”

It’s not always about the money, Mr. Noerpel. Some of us have principles—common sense, sound science, individual liberty—for which we toil even when it would be more profitable to go over to the dark side.

Diane Carol Bast, Executive Editor
The Heartland Institute
Chicago, IL