story for 80 years. And it was certainly dropped out during the Great War and instead they talked about, look at Scott dying’ and there were a lot of comparisons made then to the many Brits who were shot in no-man's land and left to die in between the lines. And they would use Scott as an example: Think how heroically Scott died those last eight days in that blizzard. And that became the story, and so when the futility of World War I set in, that this was a meaningless war and meaningless carnage; when that finally set in—which really didn't fully set in until the 1950s or '60s but began setting in earlier—Scott, since he was so tied with that, he was seen, well his wasdesire to expand its media outreach by cultivating more neutral voices with big audiences. The memo cited New York Times science blogger Andrew C. Revkin as one possibility.

Heartland has previously slammed Revkin. The institute posted a 2009 Accuracy in Media story on him on their Web site in which he was accused of spinning the news while reporting on the ClimateGate e-mail scandal of 2009.

His body of work on the story further solidifies Revkin's reputation as a journalist with an agenda who can't be trusted to fairly report the facts about the environmental community, the 2009 article stated.

Revkin addressed the Heartland memo on his Twitter feed: Trying to figure out how @heartlandinst could call me 'noted ally of the alarmist camp' and want to cultivate me.