Charles Manson or Osama bin Laden? Nothing at all, suggests the (tobacco, oil and motor industry funded) denialist Heartland Institute in a new set of billboard ads in the Chicago area. No, seriously.
The resident denialist nutter at The UK’s leading newspaper for old paleoconservative duffers and young neocon crazies, The Dully Torygraph, complains that “greens” (when not capitalized and thus referring to the political party, always intended by the Torygraph as a euphemism for “Dirty Fucking Hippies”) did it first and asks:
judging by today’s fracas, where it is okay to compare climate-change sceptics to mass murderers, it is not okay to compare greens to mass murderers. Is that right?
Yes, it is. Because denialism will actually cause the deaths of millions.
Update GOP Rep. Sensenbrenner is the first to pull out of Heartland’s up-coming climate denial conference over the billboards.
so low that Koch et al won’t sink to it – and try to drag the world down with them.
It is worth remembering that the Founding Fathers were all traitors.
Global warming is over sold in order to sell it. It’s effects are exaggerated.
But clearly pumping so much CO2 into the air does have it’s effects and we should try to do something mitigate that.
The solution put forth by our leaders who are paid greatly by Wall Street banking interests, will not work. Unless the solution is global, it will not work. The solution will not be global until there is global governance and global inspection, and that will not work.
When a policy is based on honesty rather than necessity, there will always be cheaters, and this is a global issue with a solution that must be corrected globally, otherwise manufacturing (and jobs) will migrate to the cheapest power outlet.
The US making a stink about countries developing a nuclear power industry doesn’t help the argument at all.
I hope there is no “solution” that is not global, or it will merely be a political kickback and not a solution.
Got any proof of that which doesn’t come from denialist, oil-funded hacks?
Someone upthread beat me to it, but there really is no depth these right-wing reptiles will sink to, is there?
nasty piece of work:
Do You Still Believe in Global Warming?’ Billboards Hit Chicago
May 03, 2012 Jim Lakely
May 3, 2012 – Billboards in Chicago paid for by The Heartland Institute point out that some of the world’s most notorious criminals say they “still believe in global warming†– and ask viewers if they do, too.
Heartland’s first digital billboard – along the inbound Eisenhower Expressway (I-290) in Maywood – is the latest effort by the free-market think tank to inform the public about what it views as the collapsing scientific, political, and public support for the theory of man-made global warming. It is also reminding viewers of the questionable ethics of global warming’s most prominent proponents.
“The most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists,†said Heartland’s president, Joseph Bast. “They are Charles Manson, a mass murderer; Fidel Castro, a tyrant; and Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Global warming alarmists include Osama bin Laden and James J. Lee (who took hostages inside the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in 2010).
Bast added, “The leaders of the global warming movement have one thing in common: They are willing to use force and fraud to advance their fringe theory.†For more about the billboards and why Heartland says people should not still believe in global warming, click here.
Background
The Heartland Institute is widely recognized as a leading source of science and economics questioning claims that man-made global warming is a crisis. It has published two extensive volumes citing thousands of peer-reviewed studies: Climate Change Reconsidered 2009 (880 pages) and Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report (416 pages). Both reports are available online at http://www.nipccreport.org and http://www.globalwarmingheartland.org.
The Heartland Institute will host its Seventh International Conference on Climate Change from Monday, May 21 through Wednesday, May 23, 2012 at the Hilton Chicago Hotel, starting on the final day of the historic NATO Summit. The conference will feature more than 50 scientists and economists lecturing on their latest findings, as well as political leaders and dignitaries from around the world.
Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, will deliver the first dinner address on May 21. More information about the conference — including registration information for the public and the media – can be found at climateconference.heartland.org. Videos from past conferences and describing the upcoming conference are also available on that site.
For more information, contact Director of Communications Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org or 312/377-4000.
Always keep an open mind and a compassionate heart. ~ Phil Jackson
backpedaling
By Miguel Llanos, msnbc.com
A group skeptical of mainstream climate science on Friday pulled down its billboard campaign comparing climate experts to “madmen” after complaints not only by scientists but the group’s own supporters.
“We know that our billboard angered and disappointed many of Heartland’s friends and supporters, but we hope they understand what we were trying to do with this experiment,” Heartland Institute Joseph Bast said in a statement. “We do not apologize for running the ad, and we will continue to experiment with ways to communicate the ‘realist’ message on the climate.”
The Heartland Institute, a conservative-libertarian public policy think tank, on Thursday had said it would be following its first Chicago-area billboard on Friday — showing Unabomber Ted Kaczynski — with others showing Fidel Castro and Charles Manson.
“These rogues and villains were chosen because they made public statements about how man-made global warming is a crisis and how mankind must take immediate and drastic actions to stop it,” the group said in launching the short-lived campaign.
Heartland stated it chose those subjects “because what these murderers and madmen have said differs very little from what spokespersons for the United Nations, journalists for the ‘mainstream’ media, and liberal politicians say about global warming.”
On Friday, Bast said the billboard was always intended to be an experiment.
“And after just 24 hours the results are in: It got people’s attention,” he said. This billboard was deliberately provocative, an attempt to turn the tables on the climate alarmists by using their own tactics but with the opposite message.”
“studied economics as an undergraduate” at the University of Chicago but did not complete the degree. Bast is the “coauthor of 12 books, including Rebuilding America’s Schools (1990), Why We Spend Too Much on Health Care (1992), Eco-Sanity: A Common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism (1994), and Education & Capitalism (2003),” according to his Heartland profile. Heartland paid Bast $96,292 in 2007, according to the organization’s financial report for that year. His wife, Diane Carol Bast, is the think tank’s Vice President of Internal Affairs. She was paid $76,337 in 2007.
(SourceWatch)
So, a drop-out who think’s he’s an expert on everything and using nepotism to milk every cent he can out of his corporate conservative benefactors.
The IPCC and other major climate studies always put forth a spread of scenarios based on varying levels of continued CO2-level rise. There’s low ball scenarios based on the unlikelihood that our CO2 output suddenly starts dropping very quickly, moderate scenarios based on steady levels or small rise in CO2, and scenarios of greater impact up to the “do nothing” or “worst case” scenario.
Unfortunately, we are actually, at least as of 2010 (final stats aren’t in for 2011 yet) outpacing the “worst case scenarios” in terms of how much additional CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere each
year.
Greenhouse emissions exceed worst case scenario
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/greenhouse-emissions-exceed-worst-case-scenario-20111104-1mzzh.html
The world pumped about 512 million tonnes more of carbon into the air last year than it did in 2009, an increase of 6 per cent. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries – China, the US and India, the world’s top producers of greenhouse gases.
Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University who has helped calculate Department of Energy figures in the past, said the ”monster” increase was unheard of.
This could change (we certainly hope it does!) but continuing our current trajectory will indeed create worst case scenarios by 2050 and 2100.
…our statements and expansive in their implications that my inner Kuhnian is getting nervous.
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
I disagree with him fundamentally on this, but he has something of a point. I agree with the basic tenets of the argument, and even most of its most dire predictions. However, it is too often sold with a messianic flair. And when you add in the hypocrisy of a guy like Gore’s political track record on the environment with his global warming stump speech, it can be nauseating.
By messianic flair i mean the whole “we’re killing the Earth!” No, assholes, we’re killing ourselves and the majority of the life forms we’ve come to know. We can’t kill the Earth, nor can we end Life. It’s too much like the opposite end of the spectrum on this issue and arises from the same philosophical foundation.
Rich is also unfortunately right that it’s a global issue and we’re unlikely to find a global solution. Nations like China and India can make an argument that the US and EU are using the issue to keep them down and being grossly hypocritical. Should the emissions from China that result from making shit for US consumers count towards China’s part of the problem or the US’s?
And if the US only addresses its emissions, that makes not much difference to the global issue. For every coal-fired power plant the US shuts down, China will probably build 10 more that have fewer controls. Not to mention that there’s no political will in the US to address long term issues.
Remember the 80′s when environmentalists wanted to stop overgrazing on Western lands? Many (if not most) supported Confined Animal Feed Operations and switching from grass to corn and soy because that would leave more “wild” land. Now many of the same are telling us that this way of raising beef is a major contributor to global warming both on the hoofed end and the feed farming end. They’re right, of course, but what should lead me to believe that the proposed solutions today don’t come with the same sort of very bad unintended consequences of yesterday’s solutions?
Fact check any news story that is blamed on global warming from disappearing Bangladeshi sandbars to grizzly issues in Yosemite. If a person has global warming blinders on, a person won’t doubt anything citing GW as a cause. Instead, one will likely internalize it as bias confirmation.
News story says terrible thing is caused by X. X can be global warming, but not confined to that.
Reader or listener pre-conditioned to do so will think, “I knew it! X is bad”
I go fishing every Sunday in the gulf of Mexico in Spring and Fall. I’ve been doing so off and on for 20 years. The sea level has not risen perceptibly. In the past 100 years it has risen only 8″, not several feet as some would have you believe.
Every campaign is a sales job, and I think we can agree that most sales jobs involve the insertion of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt).
The proposed solution is a tax to wall street that will make business harder to do here. You will look out the bisqueen window of your shack and not see any more smoke-stacks in this country. You also won’t have a job. Your job will go overseas where the politicians only pretend to care about global warming and the populations don’t have an inclination to destroy their ever-increasing standards of living based on a theory that it is unsustainable.
We all understand that it isn’t sustainable.
Your evidence is anecdotal.
See here.
I’m not going to become your gratis researcher on anti-global warming news. I believe global warming is true. I suspect its effects are exaggerated, and I think it is not fixable.
When science clashes with homo-economicus, I’m wagering that greed will win.
Oil and coal are energy. Energy is work. Work produces money. Otherwise, why work? Why walk 12 miles to work in shoes made in Vietnam when you can drive in a car made in Detroit, fueled by gasoline from Canada?
Global warming is a large negative externality that will end up being worked around.
…on consumption – no matter what kind? I have a bit of a challenge with that. My view, it’s reasonably foreseeable that folks are going to end up kicking themselves wondering why they consumed so much of a finite resource profligately moving packages of one person and a box of kleenex back and forth across the landscape. Pretty expensive convenience if you ask me. Given the choice between an economy that makes intelligent investments in the future via conservation at the expense of lower gross activity and one that seeks to maximize gross activity at the expense of sustainability, I pick the former.
As an aside, why are your choices walking or driving? Seriously. Ride a bike. In most metropolitan areas – particularly at high volume traffic times – the simple reality is that for a trip of that distance your time spent in the journey is more comparable than you might realize. And you get to fit a solid workout into the day – largely for free, time wise.
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
http://agonist.org/michael_collins/20120507/connecting_the_dots_on_may_5_climate_change_and_extreme_weather
Look at the Aruba pic.
Big donors ditch rightwing Heartland Institute over Unabomber billboard.
Extremist US thinktank compared those who believe in man-made climate change to serial killer Ted Kaczynski
The Guardian, By Suzanne Goldberg, May 9
An ultra-conservative thinktank has suffered a mass exodus of corporate donors after running an ad campaign comparing climate change believers to a serial killer.
The Heartland Institute has seen a core group of big-money supporters back out as a result of the provocative billboard. Insurance companies led the corporate world in donations to Heartland.
The firms who have decided to stop funding between them gave the thinktank $1m (£620,000) in 2010 and 2011, according to documents leaked this year.
But about two dozen insurance companies, including US giant State Farm, announced an end to support for Heartland because of the billboard. The ad, which ran for just a day on a Chicago expressway, featured an image of the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, and the caption: “I still believe in global warming. Do you?”
The drop-off in funds could wreck Heartland’s ambitious plans of increasing its fundraising by 67% in 2012, from $4.6m to $7.7m.