The Natural Resources Defense Council recently went after The Heritage Foundation after hosting an event with Dr. Gabriel Calzada, author of a study that concluded for every green job created in Spain, 2.2 were lost. Let’s run through the NRDC’s points:

1.) “If you scour the Web this week, you find Kreutzer and only a tiny handful of others touting the now totally discredited “findings” of a Spanish “study” that purports to expose the pernicious nature of green jobs.” And, “[I]t is worth bearing in mind that ExxonMobil and the flacks they fund have been part of the dirty energy cheerleading team that has been busy trying to keep us stuck with dirty 19th century technologies.”

Great use of scare quotes. NRDC links to the Dakota Voice as if it were the only source that picked up the study. We encourage you to do just what NRDC said. Scour the web. Google Gabriel Calzada’s name. Also try it in Google News. We’ll let the results speak for themselves.

2.) “The Heritage Foundation event got no meaningful media attention of any kind. However, it did provoke an immediate backlash against the Foundation, which has received funding from the likes of Exxon Mobil and Chevron Texaco.”

We’ve heard this time and time again. The Heritage Foundation and all libertarian and conservative think tanks are bought out by big oil. Yet, only 5 percent of The Heritage Foundation’s income came from corporations in 2008. The top five corporate givers provided The Heritage Foundation with only 1.8% of its 2008 income. Almost half of it comes from 400,000 Americans who believe in our mission.

3.) “However, José María Roig Aldasoro, the Regional Minister of Innovation, Enterprise and Employment for the Government of Navarre responds that green investment ‘has created wealth, employment and technological development’ in Spain: “An article was published recently which has placed a doubt in renewable energy’s ability to create employment; it states that it destroys employment , and therefore, is a factor in the social impoverishment of a country. As I will demonstrate ,this statement is completely untrue. In Navarre, the development of renewable energies, and above all wind energy, has created wealth, employment and technological development, and I can assert that this can be achieved in any other region or country.”

So data is debunked by a statement? Calzada’s study was “totally discredited” by a quote from a bureaucrat who gets to administer the subsidies. What kind of unbiased “evidence” is that? The evidence that is typical of green “research.”

Here’s a quote for you, from Heritage’s Senior Policy Analyst David Kreutzer:

When the people are attacked and the data are ignored, you can be sure it’s a smoke screen. And you only need a smoke screen when you don’t want people to see what’s really happening.”