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.
James Evans says:
May 4, 2012 at 12:20 pm
“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.”
A little history for you, James.Henry Ford was an internationalist and a progressive; interested in “The Third Way” as it was called back then. What was the Third Way? The term describes attempts at finding something other than communism and capitalism that works. All kinds of systems have been proposed over time but during Henry Ford’s time several candidates existed:
-Stalin’s Soviet Union.
-a rising new movement in Germany.
-FDR’s progressive government with its planned economy. (An overview of the planning process is given in The Century Of The Self, a documentary by Adam Curtis)
Well, Ford supported Stalin (who changed the doctrine of the Soviet Union from “world revolution” to “socialism in one country” and embarked on rapid industrialization) by having his chief architect Albert Kahn’s company design the first 5 year plan for Stalin and 630 factories which were subsequently built by American and German companies.
And Ford also was the biggest benefactor of that new rising movement in Germany…. he later got a medal for it – in July 1938, the Adlerschild des Deutschen Reiches.
This modern distinction of communism as extreme left and that other movement as extreme right was obviously not apparent to Henry.
What does Joe Romm have to do with this? Seriously, if you want, write two posts, but trying to drag Romm into something he has nothing to do with in the spirit of they also do it simply labels whoever does this sort of thing and not well. Remember what Mom Rabett said, just because Antony Watts does it is no reason for you to.
BTW what fraction of a Godwin is Ted Kaczynski?
Sadly the Heartland advertisement has only a weak element of truth. Belief in CAGW (and it is a belief as there is no evidence) is indeed very much anti-Western, anti-American and anti-human civilization religion. It is a terrible thing to desire energy poverty and to desire to go back to horse and cart and no electricity (a sustainable existance). However, Heartland are making a grave mistake, those extremists who espouse CAGW may be misguided or gravy train fraudsters but this is still very very far from a terrorist.
Shame on you Heartland!
I voted “no”. To date, “Warmists” have done great damage to the economies of the industrialized nations and caused incalculable human suffering throughout the world. And they continue to do so to this day, despite the growing, overwhelming evidence that they are WRONG! They are doing it for political power, personal gain and/or both. Some may really be trying to destroy the Western economies. So as far as I’m concerned, this puts them in the same category as Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. This should be publicized. There may be better ways of doing it, but it still must be done.
Jay Davis
Eli Rabett says:
“BTW what fraction of a Godwin is Ted Kaczynski?”
Truth hurts, doesn’t it, bunniboi?
And who are you, Joe Romm’s nanny? Does he need you for protection? Heh. Romm has a bunny to protect him.
THe Heartlands Institute say
“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.
2. Why did Heartland choose to feature these people on its billboards?
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.”
They use the arguement of fault by association, which is not scientific.This is deliberately provocative and possibly ironic. They also asks us to “do our own research” and read theirs
This is an ad for the Climate Change Conference.I hope it will encourage people to attend and the media to report the conference and possibly also the science.
This is a bad move for HI…. I’m not one to say you should always seek the very highest “moral high ground” when in this climate war street fight, but diving into the gutter with Joe Romm and people like the 10:10 campaign “splatter” video is not the way to go, either.
Heartland should fight hard and aggressively for sure, but I don’t see this kind of thing winning any support. It creates ‘notoriety’ not credibility. Sure, the more scurrilous C-AGWarmists ‘deserve’ this kind of treatment, no doubt. But in terms of the effectiveness of public discourse I can’t see this to be helpful to public understanding.
Also, what the ‘other’ side can get away with in rhetoric and and distortion is not an indicator of what ‘skeptics’ can get away with. To the extent this campaign should draw any media attention it will be used solely to portray HI as a fringe player wrestling with the likes of the Unabomber and Fidel Castro. That’s not where they want to be in the public debates!!
It’s like the saying “wrestle with a pig and you both get muddy, but the pig likes it” I’m sure that Ted Kazynski and Fidel Castro (if either is still sentient) might be glad for the notoriety and attention, but I can’t see why Heartland Institute wants to be mentioned in the same breath with the likes of them….
Is Heartland trying to lose ALL their funding/ credibility, or what ?
WOW.
I’m shocked by the ineptitude.
“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. ”
No it will not win any converts. It may stiffen some backbones and wake some of the dead.
After years of reading that CAGW may, might and possibly cause larger or smaller breast sizes and so much more; sometimes you have to call a spade a spade.
I don’t think they should take it down…..
….just change the picture to this
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/anarchist-labels-600×465.jpg
I read the link with their rational. Because some nut-jobs believe in AGW doesn’t say anything about CAGW itself, doesn’t show how thin the ice is it is resting on, doesn’t show the deceit that has gone into it’s promotion and doesn’t show how it’s being used as an excuse to justify poor (at best) political decisions. Did I forget to mention how it has made most everything cost more?
I think they should replace everyone of them as soon as possible.
Put up a picture of our Energy Secretary with his quote about needing to raise gas prices.
Put up a picture of Obama with the quote about his plan would cause energy prices to skyrocket.
Put up a picture of Phil Jones and Mann and others with quotes from the Climategate emails.
This reminds me, it’s time to make another donation to Heartland. Especially since Obama made Government Motors [GM] cut off funding to Heartland.
Who is dorlomin? Perhaps:
http://s39.photobucket.com/profile/dorlomin
A superb piece of advertising … a shocking bit of science.
Do I condemn the Heartland for the cynical stooping to the level of the warmists “scientists” propagandists or do I congratulate them on the kind of advertising that gets noticed?
Let’s see. Are they scientists or lobbyists?
Never have I had to stoop so low as to defend lobbyists …
– – – – – – –
Smokey,
I found HI’s write up on the billboards very well put.
Gutsy move by HI. They ain’t no walflowers and I do not think they are looking for support of the adoring fans of political correctness. No warm fuzziness from HI. : )
I would have done it differently, but individual style is to be expected in any PR campaign. They have my respect with this.
John
“The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society.”
Yes, this is true. It is the fringe leftist politicians and econuts that spawned and heavily promoted AGW and it’s push for deindustrialization, like O’s Science Czar John Holdren and his wish to de-develop the United States. So the gist of what they say is true, and those in the middle that subscribe to AGW have been duped by this leftist fringe and MSM.
Maybe the Unabomber thing is a publicity stunt, and it’s true that he as an avid luddite was also going to jump on board any de-industrialization schemes. But, that not the type of fringe we are interested in highlighting. Leftist politicians, not murderers! So, the ad campaign seems unwise, at least at first glance. People don’t like Obama and the radical left… so why not stick to highlighting the leftist connections to the abhorrent AGW theory?
wow, rapid response from Joe Bast…. now did they always conceive of it as just a momentary blast or is this a sudden change of course? I know that viral stuff on the web can be a huge multiplier, maybe this was meant as a brief guerilla move in the PR wars…. ha ha what fun the climate wars can be….
“That said, I’ll be blunt; I think Heartland’s billboard campaign is a huge misstep.”
Not very strong language, Anthony. I wonder if you’ve got a comparison of a scientific organization like AAAS, NAS, IPCC, Royal Society or AGU every doing anything remotely like this. Yet I’ve never know you to accept anything they’ve put on climate science out as accurate.
This billboard campaign is very timely. Because of it I am going to have many more topics for good discussions at ICCC-7 !!
Bravo! Can’t wait.
John
Sez Jason Samenow in his Washington Post whine:
Meaning that it’s true, it’s very effective, and he hates the hell out of it.
Don’tcha just love it when the target screams in agony to tell that you’ve got yourself a bull’s eye?
Without comment!
This so disappointing – if Heartland had money to throw about on billboards it’s clear it lacked the imagination to use its money wisely. I’m angry, because idiocy like this plays right into the hands of our warmist critics who will now enjoy sticking the knife in – and frankly they have every right to. The shame of it is that this is a self-inflicted wound, right ahead of the Heartland conference. What a disaster. I’m so angry, right now.
Every day I have to deal with the sneering disapproval of pro-CAGW peers who consider my sceptical climate views some sort of mental disease; thanks to these clowns at Heartland my opponents now have a big fat handful of ammunition to use against me.
Any confidence I had in the Heartland Institute to use it’s limited resources wisely in the fight against climate alarmists just suffered a potentially fatal blow. I just can’t believe these people would be so irresponsible…
How about this one.
Conspiracy #4
“Many believe that the government is actively denying the claims that the Earth is suffering climate change because it will affect profits of large corporations.”
http://www.conspire.com/top-10-conspiracy-theories/
You really can’t make this stuff up.
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.)
===========
It is 3:25 CST right now, just make the f’n call if it is so simple.
Why wait.
REPLY: from what I understand of billboard system scheduling (I do some digital signage myself) they only do updates once an hour…I got the note right at 1PM, so it was probably too late for the closest update to kick it. Bear in mind these signs run remotely via cell phone modems…not direct links where you can shut down right away. – Anthony
to richardscourtney
I married into a family of journalists – from the U.K., now in the States. They woudl concur with your assessment. You can sell bad nows again and again and again. But as soon as you publish “there’s nothing to worry about – it’s all over. that’s the last paper you sell becuase of that issue.
What the skeptical community must recognize is that newspapers and radio and television are not in the entertainment or news business. They are in the business of providing an audience for their advertisers. PERIOD. Otherwise they will be OUT of business.