The real volunteers are the researchers who joined Anthony Watts’s Surface Stations Project (http://surfacestations.org/) to survey 1007 out of 1221 stations in the U.S. Historical Climate Network. Up to now, Anthony has paid for the project out of his own pocket. From his Web site (http://surfacestations.org/faqs.htm):

“The project has minimal costs, mostly for this website and computer hosting/bandwidth and that is paid for by the designer of the project, Anthony Watts, out of pocket. No other funding has been needed, sought, or accepted from any entity, corporation, or group. Monetary donations from interested individuals is accepted, but not from any organizations. Donations of time and expertise are however welcome at all levels, especially welcome are volunteers that can conduct site surveys.”

So why does Heartland propose to raise $88,000 for Anthony Watts? So that Watts can perform a public service — create a Web site with new, reliable, easy-to-access surface station data. Quality data that would not exist but for reforms spurred by Watts’s Surface Stations Project. U.S. Government data that citizens today cannot easily access or understand. From Heartland’s 2012 Fund Raising Plan:

“Because of Watts’ past work exposing flaws in the current network of temperature stations (work that The Heartland Institute supported and promoted), the National Aeronautics and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government agency responsible for maintaining temperature stations in the U.S., has designated a new network of higher-quality temperature stations that meet its citing specifications. Unfortunately, NOAA doesn’t widely publicize data from this new network, and puts raw data in spreadsheets buried on one of its Web sites.”

“Anthony Watts proposes to create a new Web site devoted to accessing the new temperature data from NOAA’s web site and converting them into easy-to-understand graphs that can be easily found and understood by weathermen and the general interested public. Watts has deep expertise in Web site design generally and is well-known and highly regarded by weathermen and meteorologists everywhere. The new site will be promoted heavily at WattsUpwithThat.com.”

In short, what Gleick “exposed” is Heartland’s generous effort to raise funds for another organization so that the latter can make U.S. Government climate information more accessible to the public.

In the mean time, Heartland pays people to continue doubting AGW. Anthony Watts to the tune of 88,000 this in both the supposed fake memo, but also matches up with the files emailed to Gleick. Gleick broke the rules, and may face consequences for it, but at the same time, I am quite pleased with the end result of Heartland being exposed like this.

The idea is painted with environment but the rest of it is just simple old fashion socialism. Envirosocialism.

All , critics, that come in their way to “make the World better” are treated very bad. I first understood that when they attacked Bjorn Lomborg and his book the skeptical environmentalist. Strange that they can do so much bad to make the World better?

Rotten?