O'Brien said so in his Tuesday story about the Chicago-based group's March 2-4 international global warming conference held in New York.
    
    The trouble is, no one from the Heartland Institute said anything about a conspiracy.  Without the power of telepathy, O'Brien would have no way of knowing what Heartland Institute wants.
    
    So why did O'Brien have conspiracy on his mind?
    
    Perhaps  because O'Brien was busy distorting the global warming debate at the very time he was mocking this straw man of his own creation.
    
    For example, O'Brien cited a Yale University poll showing that an overwhelming number of Americans - 83% - are concerned about global warming.
    
    To find the poll, O'Brien had to be pretty creative.
    
    For one thing, he had to track down a poll more than a year old while skipping over other more recent ones, including another Yale poll just last September, showing less concern over global warming Yale's September poll found 62% of respondents believe urgent action on global warming is needed and only 48% believe that most scientists agree that global warming is occurring.
    
    O'Brien also had to be creative in finding a global warming poll that wasn't weighted to reflect the actual composition of the population.  Respondents were screened for age to ensure they were 18 years of age, but nothing else.
    
    O'Brien didn't mention that 71% of those polled also indicated that they are "often interested in theories," that 67% "like to lead others," that 26% have already purchased a vehicles getting 35 mpg or more (yet the average fleet mpg is miraculously still 20.2 mpg); and that 66% had a negative view of the overall state of the environment.

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