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.
We’re winning with facts, not politically inspired bulls**t. Besides, we believe in a degree or so of global warming coming out of the Little Ice Age. Just not in a politician’s ability to do anything about it.
Not helpful, guys at Heartland. You’d be better served pursuing criminal charges against Peter Gleik.
Anthony;
As my first post (above) explains, I think this PR campaign by the Heartland Institute (HI) is a serious mistake. I now write to say I think I know why the HI has made that mistake.
To begin I relate an anecdote.
I was talking with a representative of HI as the first HI climate conference (at which I was a speaker) was ending. He said (I think I quote him verbatim);
“This is great. All these journalists who’ve now heard all these top scientists speaking out. At last the public will hear about the ‘other side’ of this debate.”
I smiled and replied saying;
“I hope you’re right, but I don’t think so. I and others have been telling the truth about ‘global warming’ for decades to no effect. Journalists only publish news, and ‘Nothing to worry about’ is not news.”
The expression on his face told me he thought my reply was not good, so the conversation discontinued.
But I was proved right by subsequent events.
Since then, five more similar excellent HI climate conferences have been held, and all have had similar effect on journalists’ reporting of ‘climate skepticism’ (i.e. none). In fact things got worse:
when a BBC TV team attended an HI climate conference the result was a TV program which grossly distorted ‘climate skeptic’ views and used selective editing to misrepresent people the BBC had interviewed at the conference
and
the only significant response to the HI climate conferences has been Gleickgate (which also obtained little proper reportage in the media).
Being nice has not worked for HI and (understandably) the HI has got frustrated.
The HI has not reached the destination the HI hoped to obtain with its first climate conference. In these circumstances, a HI ‘change of direction’ is understandable. The PR campaign is such a change but, unfortunately, it steers straight at an iceberg. The campaign requires a course change or the next HI climate conference could imitate the Titanic.
Richard
Yea its a mistep from Heartland. Its cheap. Time to take it down and try another approach.
I don’t know. Yes I understand this is PERCEIVED to be over the top/nasty etc; but WHY ?
Consider : Anthony is taken to task because he posted a link to an utterance from a left wing organisation demonised as being NAZI (the BNP; if you dare read its manifesto is a socialist organisation; that is why it was called the National SOCIALIST Party).
No one thinks twice about those supporting Communists.
Yet Communism and Socialism make the National SOCIALIST tyrant Hitler look like a rank amateur in the crimes against humanity/mass murder stakes.
We are called deniers in an outright bid to make us look like Nazi sympathisers; meanwhile those doing so deny the following :
Scientific Method
Communism’s death toll
African Socialism’s death toll
That there was anything wrong with the 10:10 video
That there is anything wrong in lying
That there are moral absolutes (apart from the absolute that they are always without question right; even when they are wrong).
These people have infected our entire civilisations to the extent it is morally OK to support some of the biggest mass murderers in history (MaoZseDung; Stalin; Pohl Pot). But heaven help you if you dare question them; their motives or their right to order hoi poli around.
I can only assume some people in the Heartland Institute just got so sick of the sanctimonious preaching from the morally corrupt; that they cracked and decided it really was time to call a spade a spade.
A picture of Pachauri would have been far better.
FWIW….as a ‘pro-AGW’ scientist (whatever that is) it’s good to see the majority of posters here criticizing this. On either side, things like this are a mistake.
Almost unbelievably foolish but ultimately, no matter what the Warmists would have people believe, the Heartland Institute are NOT “the sceptical case”.
Even a PR blunder of this size won’t alter the facts of Natural Climate Change, whereas ever time the other side do something similarly stupid with their propaganda they’re chipping away at the only “truth” they’ve got.
This is hilarious – the blanket condemnation of Heartland and not one word on the AGW outrages printed on this same page.
Send ’em an e-mail. Here’s mine:
Your current billboards associating climate alarmists with notorious criminals is, as they say, “Worse than a crime, it is a blunder.”
I needed a great big laugh on a Friday afternoon.
Thanks for posting this hilarity.
Pull the billboards!
The science does not support the extreme AGW paradigm. Carbon dioxide is not a poison. Billions of dollars has been wasted and will be wasted on ‘green’ scams which do not significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions such as the conversion of food to biofuel. The billboards do not communicate that message.
Silly, rude irrelevant billboards will not convince anyone and provide the media with an opportunity to attempt to marginalize the so called ‘skeptics’. (i.e. To discuss the billboards rather than to discuss the lack of warming, economics of wind farms and solar farms, and so on.)
I don’t have any problem with hitting hard, but this is a mis-aimed hit.
If you’re going to do shocking visuals, birds chopped by a wind-turbine would be more to the point. Or the grave of a Malaysian farmer starved by biofuel speculators, or an elderly British woman frozen in her flat because she couldn’t pay the electric bill.
I’d like to know what they were thinking. Can we now expect a contest to see who has the most crazies on their team? Kind of pointless and counterproductive, don’t you think?
I think it’s pretty funny , although stooping to Romm et al’s level is probably a mistake . That said , to take it down now would likely be seen as a victory for the “cause” .
damn heartland for telling the truth…the only difference between al gore and ted K is a few bombs
This criminal/terrorist connection is somewhat over the top indeed. However, Enron’s Global Climate Change Statement could be publicized widely, with no comment whatsoever.
To counter all the warmista talk about Big Evil Business, just saying.
The annual Heartland climate change conference is coming up later this month in Chicago. Maybe it was done to create some controversy and thereby get more media attention (which would likely have to be provided through local media sources since national sources are unlikely to send crews etc.).
Has this story been confirmed,this has got to be a fakegate 2
While the billboard campaign most likely seems very logical to the Heartland leadership, I had to read their rationale to see what point they were trying to make. The message is not billboard material unless it is immediately obvious to the people you want to reach. I could be wrong. Maybe I am the only one puzzled by what I saw.
Heartland had the high ground but will give it up with this billboard campaign. Quick, cover them up with something else or just paint them over for now and reply to the negative MSM publicity with a retraction, saying you simply made a mistake.
“…had they asked me I would have told them that it is a bad idea that will backfire on them.”
When your enemy is busy making a mistake, don’t be distracting him!
Sadly, the poor choice by Heartland will for many catastrophic AGW believers merely cause them to reconsider supporting the unibomber as a hero.
Comments on this issue are a stunning example of hypocrisy and cowardice in itself.
[snip – that’s over the top, sorry ~mod]
gerrydorrian66:
As a member of the English Defence League I know what it’s like to be smeared with the same brush as Anders Breivick because of a tenuous connection.
peter_dtm:
“Anthony is taken to task because he posted a link to an utterance from a left wing organisation demonised as being NAZI (the BNP; if you dare read its manifesto is a socialist organisation; that is why it was called the National SOCIALIST Party).”
This place is starting to worry me.
/me not sanguine my comment will get posted, but i liked it so ima copy it from romm’s puddle:
gnomish says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
May 4, 2012 at 3:18 pm
i think it would be a nice idea if each of you, when you go home today, thinks of something he can do to reduce global hypocrisy.
NO PRESSURE!
peter_dtm:
Your post at May 4, 2012 at 11:57 am is daft.
Fascists are right-wing and socialists are left-wing.
Fascists claim to be National Socialists because (everywhere except the US) socialism is liked and fascists know few people would vote for them if they said what they really are.
And the BNP is to the right of Genghis Khan.
Richard