Climate Control

Global warming alarmists in academia who seek to extend their influence beyond the controlled environs of their own classrooms are getting help from admiring moviemakers.

With thermometer readings showing their predictions of warmer climes elusive, these environmentalists, academic and cinematic, remain insistent in promoting a phenomenon that few temperature gauges validate. From a paper trail that a documentary film crew inadvertently left behind at an Oregon debate, we know that Lewis and Clark College economics professor Eban Goodstein got the planned-for star treatment at a state legislative committee’s hearing recently.

“Eban rocks,” read one student’s evaluation on ratemyprofessor.com but the only other entry on the economist that ratemyprofessor.com had to offer was not so flattering.

“Environmental econ made me want to kill myself,” another of Goodstein’s students wrote. “Every day I wished I hadn’t taken it.”

“Eban seems confused by his *own* book [Economics and the Environment, now in its fourth edition],” the reviewer observed. “He is also unclear and disorganized.”

“Very little information was conveyed in the course so he made up for it by creating very complicated tests.” The film crew that Manhattan-based Toxic Comedy Pictures dispatched to cover Goodstein’s appearance at a State House of Representatives committee meeting agreed with the “rocking” review.

“PLEASE DON’T TREAT HIM IN ANY WAY THAT WOULD MAKE IT APPEAR THAT WE ARE ‘WITH’ HIM [All capitals from original note],” producer Dan Gold instructed his “proxy” in an e-mail.

Gold’s New York partner, Judith Helfand, gave their Oregon proxy further instructions. Their e-mails make it clear that the filmmakers planned on sandbagging policy analyst Christopher Horner [pictured], who serves as counsel to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Helfand also teaches undergraduate film courses at New York University.

“I encouraged Eban to start up a conversation with Horner,” Helfand wrote, “To ask him some questions…perhaps to engage with him—or—in the event he does not get a chance to give testimony—to take the pts he was gonna make in his testimony and talk to/challenge Horner with them.”

“This kind of incident/right wing naysayer came to Portland in 1988 and is exactly what pushed Eban to start the Greenhouse Network/Kyoto now (then),” Helfand offers their Oregon proxy by way of background. She then cryptically advises, “He knows—he does not know you..”

“…And you don’t know him.” The group that Horner works for, CEI, has been skeptical of global warming claims. Unfortunately, someone on Gold’s crew forgot his most urgent instruction: “PLEASE DON’T LEAVE THIS NOTE SITTING AROUND.”

Somebody did just that. To put it mildly, members of the state legislative committee who called for the hearing were not amused by the Michael Mooreing of their public meeting.

“After the hearing adjourned, I discovered that a film crew covering the hearing had left behind an e-mail that suggested that the testimony [of] Mr. Goodstein had been scripted and coordinated ahead of time, and that they also had been instructed to keep this entire plan a secret from the committee,” State Representative Gordon Anderson wrote. “The camera crew and Mr. Goodstein were, according to the e-mail, working together to ‘script’ what appeared to be independent testimony, but which in actuality appears to have been staged.”

Rep. Anderson chairs the State House of Representatives Committee on the Environment. The Committee was seeking testimony from across the political spectrum on climate change and emissions controls.

“Certainly, we welcome all who seek to testify before our committee,” Rep. Anderson wrote in a letter to the president of Lewis and Clark. “But the public also has a right to expect that integrity of the legislative process is upheld.”

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.