UPDATE5: 5/5/10:30AM Donna Laframboise pulls out of the conference.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2012/05/05/why-i-wont-be-speaking-at-the-heartland-conference/
Instead, those of us who had accepted Heartland’s invitation to take part in its conference found ourselves blindsided – a mere two weeks before the conference is set to begin – by a torrent of negative press. Suddenly, we were all publicly linked to an organization that thinks it’s OK to equate people concerned about climate change with psychopaths.
Blindsided is right. AFAIK, not one attendee was given the courtesy of weighing in on the billboard campaign beforehand, and if I had been given that courtesy my answer would have been a resounding NO. Instead, I believe we all got the notice after the fact.
UPDATE4: 7PM PST Heartland issues a press release ending the billboard
May 4, 2012 – The Heartland Institute has pulled its global warming billboard starring Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber whose manifesto expressed his belief in catastrophic man-caused global warming. The digital billboard ran for exactly 24 hours along the Eisenhower Expressway near Chicago in the suburb of Maywood, Illinois.
The following statement by Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast may be used for attribution. For more information, please contact Director of Communications Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org or 312-377-4000.
“This provocative billboard was always intended to be an experiment. And after just 24 hours the results are in: It got people’s attention.
“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. We found it interesting that the ad seemed to evoke reactions more passionate than when leading alarmists compare climate realists to Nazis or declare they are imposing on our children a mass death sentence. We leave it to others to determine why that is so.
“The Heartland Institute doesn’t often do ‘provocative’ communication. In fact, we’ve spent 15 years presenting the economic and scientific arguments that counter global warming alarmism. No one has worked harder, or better, on that task than Heartland. We will continue to do that – especially at our next International Conference on Climate Change in Chicago from May 21 – 23.
“Heartland has spent millions of dollars contributing to the real debate over climate change, and $200 for a one-day digital billboard. In return, we’ve been subjected to the most uncivil name-calling and disparagement you can possibly imagine from climate alarmists. The other side of the climate debate seems to be playing by different rules. This experiment produced further proof of that.
“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. We do not apologize for running the ad, and we will continue to experiment with ways to communicate the ‘realist’ message on the climate.”
========================================================
UPDATE3: 3:15PM PST I saw this private letter to Joe Bast earlier from Ross McKitrick, and I agreed with Ross in a reply. He has posted it on Climate Audit so I’ll share an excerpt here:
He wrote: “This kind of fallacious, juvenile and inflammatory rhetoric does nothing to enhance your reputation…”
“…hands your opponents a huge stick to beat you with, and sullies the reputation of the speakers you had recruited. Any public sympathy you had built up as a result of the Gleick fiasco will be lost–and more besides–as a result of such a campaign. I urge you to withdraw it at once.”.
UPDATE2: 1PM PST
From Joe Bast via email:
We will stop running it at 4:00 p.m. CST today. (It’s a digital billboard, so a simple phone call is all it takes.)
UPDATE: I’ve added a simple poll at the bottom to gauge opinion on this issue. – Anthony
There’s a disturbance in the farce. Tom Nelson captures these:
Do you believe global warming is real, poses risks to the environment, and needs to be addressed? The Heartland Institute, a think-tank based in Chicago which has promoted climate skepticism, wants you to know you’re in some sinister company.
Twitter / @eilperin: In new ads, the Heartland …
In new ads, the Heartland Institute suggests only terrorists believe in the link b/w human activity and global warming: wapo.st/IOUuEI
Predictably, ThinkProgress/Climate Progress is all bent out of shape.
But Joe Romm and Brad Johnson (who now also runs “Forecast the Facts” to hassle TV weatherpeople) think nothing of making a similar comparison about “deniers”.
Speaking of “mass murderers and madmen”….
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/07/25/277564/norway-terrorist-is-a-global-warming-denier/
Romm of course will be unable to embrace his own hypocrisy, because he’s reportedly paid a six figure sum by the Center for American Progress to write the hateful detritus he produces daily.
That said, I’ll be blunt; I think Heartland’s billboard campaign is a huge misstep, and does nothing but piss people off and divide the debate further. IMHO it isn’t going to win any converts, and had they asked me I would have told them that it is a bad idea that will backfire on them.
Here’s what they have issued in a press release about it:
May 03, 2012May 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.
Ugh. Ugly.
There’s more than enough climate ugliness to go around. Though, it seems harder and harder to find this ultimate warmist embarrassment.
Anybody that can help with Donna’s suggestion?
And there’s many more examples of climate ugliness from the left that we’ve seen.
On another note, the serially mendacious commenter known as “Dorlomin” left this comment over at the Romm shop:
dorlomin says:
I thought I should clear this up. First, “dorlomin” of course is all about smear, that’s his MO, and the MO of the many anonymous cowards who purvey such things without having any integrity or courage themselves.
Second, the simple fact is that I didn’t know about the association of the person making the claim that “Climate skepticism could soon be a criminal offence in UK
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/19/climate-skepticism-could-soon-be-a-criminal-offence-in-uk/
Third, when I learned who was behind the story, I immediately took it down because it was an inappropriate source, just like I don’t post videos from LaRouche and other fringe organizations.
Of course “dorlomin” and left foot forward would have you believe that I consort with these folks and have them over for drinks and dinner, rather than the fact that once I learned more, I found them offensive and immediately deleted the story. It was my mistake for not checking sources further.
“dorlomin” is of course playing the very hate game he rants about, and is hypocritically blind just like Romm. The only difference is that one is paid to produce propoganda and the other is a coward.
But will Climate Progress delete their offensive story about climate deniers and terrorists? Not likely, it would hurt their sales figures image.
POLL:
Note: multiple anti vote stuffing features are enabled in this poll. I’ve made the questions simple so that editorial bias in the questions is minimal.
Jan P. Perlwitz says:
May 4, 2012 at 9:59 pm
Skeptic wrote:
I do hope Heartland, despite their frustrations, will get back to sound science.
First I would have to see the “sound science” they ever have produced. Heartland Institute is a political think tank with a political and ideological agenda. They are not a scientific institution.
===========================================================
Yes, and they’ve produced better science than our govermental ideological institutions such as GISS and NOAA and the gang. That’s why paultry sums kick the crap out of the huge amount of wasted taxpayers money.
It was a stupid experiment and unfortunately may cost the Heartland dearly in terms of the very hard won credibility over the last few years. A shame as it would have been easy to check by just asking a few diverse folks what they thought BEFORE putting the ad up.
Jan P. Perlwitz says:
May 4, 2012 at 10:11 pm
————————————————–
Jan P. Perlwitz, I think poster “Just The Facts” made it clear upthread that he is primarily interested in the scientific evidence, not in taking a poll of the public (see excerpt of his post below). The links to Gallup polling came in a specific CONTEXT: that of discussing whether what JTF and others here believe is the best scientific understanding of the evidence (however disputable it must be) is coming to be recognized or believed by the public. That is the context for the phrase “we are winning” and a link to a public poll. It was not a blanket statement of, as you put it in a critical question,
“The majority opinion of the public is the deciding criterion for the validity of scientific theories? Politics and ideology determine what the scientific truth is?”
That is not the view of JTF (or any posters here that I’m aware of), it is a “straw man” of your own creation. Perhaps you had not read the thread, or perhaps you need to pay closer attention to the words and thoughts of others before you mis-characterize them in careless straw-man argumentation??
———————————————————————————————–
Just The Facts says:
May 4, 2012 at 8:26 pm
…. I disagree, I think we are fighting and winning a battle based on scientific and empirical evidence, e.g.:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/15/a-big-picture-look-at-earths-temperature-quarterly-update/
The Heartland billboard is a question of tactics, and in this case, I think Heartland is mistaken. We should stick to the facts and leave the hand-waving to the Warmists.
Philip Bradley says:
May 4, 2012 at 9:16 pm
You do not convince people to buy your product through insulting them by association.
That’s not the point. The point is to persuade people not to buy the competing product (CAGW).
———————————————————————————
Philip, you are not going to convince Apple fanatics to buy Microsoft by insulting them, ever. If you are aiming at agnostics, then a campaign which depicts your opponent’s users as greasy haired, nose-picking adolescents living on junk food in their mother’s basement will certainly attract a lot of publicity. But people who are not strongly invested are more likely to be turned off by this sort of advertising, because it is patently dishonest, just like the Heartland ads. What they want to see is people using your product whom they admire, or aspire to be like.
I am not saying that all negative advertising is ineffective, or unethical. I think a series of ads featuring Al Gore’s rhetoric against a backdrop of his mansions and jet-setting could be very effective, and perfectly ethical.
The trouble with the HI ad is that it is neither.
Mr./Ms. anonymous moderator. Why is it relevant whether I’m this person? Also, just recently it was claimed by some commenter here everyone here already knew who I was. Are you a new one? It is noticable how eager some people here are, especially the moderators, to disclose my professional affiliation to the audience, when I write comments, although everything I write here expresses my personal view, and in no way any official position of any institution with which I’m affiliated in my work.
If you want to say something, just say it, don’t use innuendo by the mean of a rhetorical question.
REPLY: So you are with GISS then, thanks. Just curious.
I Notice a just a couple people echo this, but the thought that the high ground is going to eventually win against these nut-cases is going to lose it for us.
Case in point is McCain in the last election. He decided to run a high ground kind of election where instead of confronting every issue he could on Obama and letting Palin talk as much as possible to diffuse the arguments and show what she really was instead of what Obama portrayed her as, he decided to run a “clean campaign” and in the process the much better media related Obama team was able to convince America that their image of Palin and McCain was correct. He was too old, Palin was too stupid and to this day most of America knows no better because frankly he was allowed to write the tempo of the election.
That is politics folks. If you think this is about science or about anything like that, you obviously haven’t been paying attention since the climate-gate emails were released and investigation after investigation has come out showing that there will be no justice from within, just white-washes and slaps on the wrist for those on the alarmist side who can do no evil. Its politics pure and simple.
There are ways to win in politics and ways to lose. Sure, the argument here that “the higher ground is always right” is the loser argument here. People just don’t want to hear about global warming anymore, so like a bunch of media savy politicians these people have changed the terminology and tricked people into going along with the same politicies and the same science as before.
The same scientists are getting funding for the same global warming research under different names with the same pal review in place as before climate-gate. Nothing changed and we sceptics despite dismantling the science completely have done nothing to stop this train.
Obviously, the high ground has not worked, will not work and never will. The common person out there has no clue and is being hood-winked daily, and so any kind of billboard like this might make them think twice. Is this the right billboard to use? That is the question to ask, not whether its right to “Stoop to this level.” This is a game for keeps, its a game for the future of our respective countries and the freedom to be able to use energy for everyone.
Perhaps better arguments will be showing people freezing to death under wind turbines frozen during winter. Or similar pictures to cement the images into the common man. The battle is to show that the EPA in the US is out of control and is battling global warming.
Don’t let them change the terminology. Keep the global warming name, and make them eat that every step of the way. Force them to deal with the truth on your terms not theirs. Politics is about thinking ahead too. Remember, that whatever HI’s motivations are here, they might have a game-plan that we can not see, and I hope they do, because this poster is not one I would choose for an experiment myself.
If you want to beat this crowd, the best place to start is to hoist them from their own petards and start from the top. Make the world see the EPA for what it is and start with Obama and his lies about energy security and green jobs. Go on the offensive against him and high gas prices.
Everytime you cut at him against Keystone and everything else he has done that has killed American jobs, forced the future price of gas to rise and otherwise made the economy worse, Americans will pay attention and even the worst educated Americans will pay attention. That is how you get through to normal Americans, and don’t back down.
If someone is going to argue with you, stick to your guns and don’t back down. If they come at you with something you haven’t heard of as obfuscation tactics, stick to your main argument. Tell them flat out its irrelevant to your main point and stick to it. Rub their faces in what they are doing to everyone else by insisting on not understanding the science themselves, and by all means, make it so bad that Obama is forced to say something about global warming in speaches. The second you do that, the EPA and Obama secret agreement is over and the charade is over.
That is how you defeat a political machine that is so tenously based on deceit and fraud ….. you have to get the word out and in politics taking the high road at all times will get you defeated like McCain. I for one am not willing to lose a political battle because I think its wrong to tell the truth in an ugly fashion. Why shouldn’t we as sceptics tell the unvarnished truth about 10/10 and other green nonsense in huge billboards?
And why shouldn’t we remind people that mass-murderers and terrorists also believe in global warming and support this stuff? We are still being morally correct and not breaking any laws by telling the truth there. These people do believe it, and its true, so as long as we don’t lie, stick to the truth and tell the ugly truth for all its worth, why in the world should we say HI is wrong here?
What is wrong is Peter Gleick and others who lied, committed fraud and should be in jail but are not.
I like it.I read why they did it,and it makes sense.Now that we’ve got your attention…let’s discuss facts,I don’t see much wrong with it. I see a lot of people claiming the moral high ground in these comments.I thought a scientific debate is supposed to be about data and facts,do you believe you are morally superior because you question?I must be a virtual saint then,I’m sceptical of everything I read.
It would have been interesting to see people’s reaction to the billboard,my reaction was I knew Manson was big on the environment(one of his tools to brainwash his followers)I didn’t know the Unabomber was.It would never have crossed my mind to compare climate scientists to the Unabomber.Give the public some credit.
James Sexton says: May 4, 2012 at 9:52 pm
winning the CAGW discussion is just one battle, and we’ve seen where many have already jumped to other issues.
No doubt, but Heartland has chosen to focus resources and a conference (which I attended last year) on CAGW.
In fact, I just did a post which now seems very relevant to this topic. Food is one area where they are going to attempt to assert themselves….. they will combine this issue with an attempt to control our water….. and this is where it gets relevant. As we all know HI recently was embroiled in and won a battle. They disgraced Peter Gleick. But, they didn’t finish him off. He’s out of the CAGW game, right? But, he’s not out of the totalitarian Marxist misanthropy game….. he’s still running strong. http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/05/03/thats-just-what-we-need-completely-incompetent-and-delusional-greens-to-tell-us-how-to-feed-people/ (towards the end of the post)
More power to you to fight the fights you want to fight, but Heartland has to be more careful. Heartland publishes scientific reports and hosts a science conference, if they want to help us win the scientific arguments around CAGW they need to focus on the facts.
If you confine your arguments to science, you’re playing “whack-a-mole”.
But why not at least try to argue the science, i.e. its not getting hotter;
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.C.gif
global sea ice area is above average;
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
sea level rise appears to have slowed or stopped;
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2011_rel4/sl_ns_global.png
I guarantee that Josh can come up with much better billboards.
Jan P. Perlwitz says: May 4, 2012 at 10:11 pm
So what are you saying?
That I’ve looked at the facts;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/
and do not see any signs of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.
The majority opinion of the public is the deciding criterion for the validity of scientific theories? Politics and ideology determine what the scientific truth is?
I do not agree with either of these statements, nor did I say either of them.
No, NOT a blunder.
In hindsight I think this might have been a huge winner for the skeptic case. I think that with time it will count big time. Associating warmists with crazies and criminals with facts to prove it…. its brilliant! It only needed one day exposure. Maybe that was what was intended. There is probably much more to this than meets the eye. When arguing with a warmists you can now always bring up this fact. I for one, did not realize that these crazies all believed in AGW did you?
Skiphil at May 4, 2012 at 10:41 pm wrote:
So, I misunderstood when I interpreted the comment that “Just The Facts” used the opinion polls as evidence for the claim that he/she and like minded were winning the scientific argument?
Actually, the add’ did exactly what was needed. It catapulted the subject into the headlines. Perhaps now people will look at the science. Most people are ‘asleep’ most of the time. Perhaps a second advert could show hunters culling polar bears … the truth ain’t necesarilly pretty.
Actually, it looks like its getting huge coverage on mainstream press which I think was the intended point by HI. Now everybody will know that those crazies believe in AGW. Brilliant!
https://news.google.com/news/section? I don’t think it will backfire https://news.google.com/news/section?
https://news.google.com.au/news/section?pz=1&cf=all&q=topic:global_warming&ict=ln
Jan P. Perlwitz says May 4, 2012 at 11:33 pm
So, I misunderstood when I interpreted the comment that “Just The Facts” used the opinion polls as evidence for the claim that he/she and like minded were winning the scientific argument?
I can’t address your understandings and interpretations, but it is my opinion that scientific evidence educates the public and positions them to challenge the alarmist claims. From one of the Gallup articles I cited, “In response to one key question, 48% of Americans now believe that the seriousness of global warming is generally exaggerated, up from 41% in 2009 and 31% in 1997, when Gallup first asked the question.”
http://www.gallup.com/poll/126560/americans-global-warming-concerns-continue-drop.aspx
James Sexton wrote:
I haven’t seen any valid science produced by the Heartland Institute so far. Which one would that be? And the claim that NASA GISS or NOAA were ideological institutions is just baseless nonsense. The work of the scientists at GISS isn’t based on any political or ideological agenda by which they were driven. They are scientists, it’s a bunch of nerds like at any other scientific/academic institution who is mostly driven by scientific curiosity. Whatever you think sinister is going on there, it’s just in your head, it’s just something you imagine in your conspiracy fantasy world. On the other hand, Heartland Institute are the ones who are driven by a political and ideological agenda. I just need to read their official public statements to recognize this.
James Sexton at May 4, 2012 at 10:25 pm wrote:
I’m not sure what you are talking about here. Please could you be specific to what statements you refer here made when and in what scientific publications?
I’m can’t help but look at all the handwringing above and think, that’s why level-headed skeptics are routing the the wild-eyed, slavering alarminsts on the science, but making only slow progress in the court of public opinion. More than half of the alarmists’ support is from people who couldn’t buy a clue, but think if someone claims they speak for “Science”, then they must know what they are talking about. Derision and mockery is absolutely the appropriate tactic at this time.
The skeptics have knocked their opponents to the mat. Time to kick them in the ribs. This isn’t some gentlemanly boxing match. This is a street fight. The reason the contest has gone on as long as it has is that the alarmists have known that from day one, but the rational folks didn’t and, judging by the above posts, still don’t.
They don’t pull their punches. Neither should we. They ARE crazy. They ARE loons. They think they can imagine how they want reality to behave, find a few points of fact which are not inconsistent with their fantasies, and voila, they’re Scientists! They’re not. They are craven, bullying, supercillious, venal, delusional, parasitical vermin. And, those are their good qualities!
As the good General Patton would admonish: The Enviro-Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them… I don’t want to get any messages saying that we are holding our position. We’re not holding anything, we’ll let the Greens do that. We are advancing constantly, and we’re not interested in holding onto anything except the enemy. We’re going to expose his pose, and we’re going to kick him in the CO2 gas. We’re going to mock the hell out of him all the time, and we’re going to go through him like polar bears through moose.
snert says: May 4, 2012 at 11:36 pm
Actually, the add’ did exactly what was needed. It catapulted the subject into the headlines. Perhaps now people will look at the science.
Roger says: May 4, 2012 at 11:42 pm
Actually, it looks like its getting huge coverage on mainstream press which I think was the intended point by HI. …
https://news.google.com.au/news/section?pz=1&cf=all&q=topic:global_warming&ict=ln
“Group pulls plug on billboard linking global warming believers to terrorists” Washington Post headline:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/group-pulls-plug-on-billboard-linking-global-warming-believers-to-terrorists/2012/05/04/gIQAU2q51T_story.html?tid=pm_national_pop
“Heartland Institute compares belief in global warming to mass murder” Guardian headline:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/may/04/heartland-institute-global-warming-murder?newsfeed=true
“The Short Hot Life of Heartland’s Hateful Climate Billboard” Dot Earth headline
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/the-short-hot-life-of-heartlands-hateful-climate-billboard/
I struggle to see how this helps us…
$200 for a one day billboard on the highway? That’s pretty good. I like the idea of a billboard experiment, but I can think of some much better things to put up there. How about a picture of a spotless cool-toned sun with the heading and caption:
Philip, you are not going to convince Apple fanatics to buy Microsoft by insulting them, ever. If you are aiming at agnostics, then a campaign which depicts your opponent’s users as greasy haired, nose-picking adolescents living on junk food in their mother’s basement will certainly attract a lot of publicity.
Its interesting you would bring up Apple. 15 years ago, many people in the industry, myself included, were predicting the imminent demise of Apple. Apple had inferior and over priced products. What Apple did was make buying an Apple product a fashion statement. Apple advertisements at the time portrayed Microsoft buyers as uncool, if not unwashed.
CAGW is for many a fashion statement. These people have no understanding of the science and CAGW beliefs are comparable with buying an Apple product.
The point of the ad is that by believing in CAGW, you are on the same side as dangerous lunatics. Not very cool.
I would have used Joseph Kony, rather than the Unabomber, as many young people wouldn’t know who the latter is.
It was supposed to be an experiment? What was the question: Could we be as stupid as our opponents? How fast can we burn up any goodwill we had built up recently with the Gleick idiocy? Are there any PR thinkers at this think tank? How much foot damage can we inflict on ourselves? Can we give tons of ammunition to our opponents? Can we nullify our credibility by appearing as a nut group? Can we take our friends and supporters down in 24 hours? Who should resign if we do such a stupid and shortsighted idiotic escapade?
Just The Facts at May 4, 2012 at 11:04 pm wrote:
And what exactly is the supposed scientific argument here? You are showing a temperature time series confined to 15 years of data, where the natural variability is so high that is not possible to draw any conclusion about the presence or absence of a long-term temperature trend only by looking at it.
Are you talking about the upward wobble in the sea ice this year? What is the supposed scientifically valid conclusion from this with respect to the multi-decadal trend?
Really? Like in 1994 to 1996? Or in 1998? And this makes the multi-decadal trend go away?
Interpreting some wobbles due to short-term variability, which overlay a long-term trend and are directed at the opposite direction of the trend, as evidence, which allegedly refutes the long-term trend, isn’t a valid scientific argument. It just points to a wishful interpretation of data.
Just The Facts at May 4, 2012 at 11:53 pm:
I suppose you mean with “alarmist claims” what mainstream climate science says about anthropogenic climate change? So what does these opinion polls prove to you? That the “scientific evidence” has educated the public? But mainstream climate science just hasn’t got the memo yet how the “scientific evidence” has disproven what mainstream climate science says? Because what I see is the view that anthropogenically caused climate change and global warming are real with possibly serious negative effects on the human civilization is less disputed among climate scientists today than in 1997.
Jan P. Perlwitz says:
May 4, 2012 at 11:33 pm
“So, I misunderstood when I interpreted the comment that “Just The Facts” used the opinion polls as evidence for the claim that he/she and like minded were winning the scientific argument?”
=====================================================================
Yes, it’s a clear conceptual distinction even if often muddied in the public debates. Try to distinguish (1) the scientific arguments about facts and evidence and climate projections etc. from (2) what citizens in the vast voting public “believe” at any given time about the state of the science. It is not invoking opinion polls to settle a scientific debate but to indicate that a growing proportion of the public believes the science has been distorted in the public arena. That does not “settle” any scientific issue but it may increasingly affect the public policy issues wrt whether any Gore-Hansen style bombastic exaggerations continue to be taken seriously as a basis for governmental action.
Yes, you jumped to attribute an easily ridiculed straw man position in order to knock it down. I hope that’s not how you proceed in your scientific work, because it is not intellectually respectable.