Heartland Institute, the Chicago-based free market think tank behind efforts to discredit climate change, is on the back foot after the climate change monitoring blog, Desmogblog, posted its confidential documents, which included details of where the institute gets its funds from.
One plan involved spending US $100,000 on spreading the message in schools that “the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain”. The documents revealed that Microsoft and GlaxoSmithKlein were among its current donors. The firms told New York Times that their contributions were unrelated to climate change.
The most interesting revelation is of an anonymous donor who gave the institute $4.6 million in 2008, $1.6 million in 2010 and nearly $1 million in 2011. This contribution questions Heartland’s purported “diverse” funding base, says Greenpeace.