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Received via email:
Dr. Curry,
Thanks for reproducing in your recent post my account of the left’s attacks on our scientists and donors. It’s a story that isn’t getting nearly enough attention in the blogosphere. I’m disappointed, though, that you also reproduced, at length and even endorsed, the lies and distortions written about us by Suzanne Goldenberg. A simple call or email to me or Jim Lakely would have given us a chance to correct her many misstatements.
I won’t ask for a correction or apology, but please understand that …
(a) Concerning ICCC-7, we set a record for the number of cosponsors (60), 12 speakers asked to speak after only 2 withdrew, and the mood was decidedly upbeat. Opponents (including “Forecast the Facts” and Occupy Wall Street) promised to disrupt the conference and failed utterly – fewer than 50 people showed up for their rallies. Those who did show up wore boots on their heads and refused Christopher Monckton’s invitation to debate.
(b) You didn’t see many new faces on the program because 50 warmists invited to speak refused to show up, and we had set aside space on the program for them. I’ve said after nearly every conference since the 3rd one that “this is probably our last conference,” and I’ve made a fundraising pitch, because the ICCCs are expensive and I suspect they are subject to the law of diminishing returns, but we keep doing them due to popular demand. Stay tuned for news about ICCC-8.
(c) Concerning Heartland’s financial health, we’ve raised more money since the Fakegate incident than in the previous 11 months, and are on track to double our income this year. We’ve doubled the number of current donors since February. With only one exception so far, the donors we’ve lost either didn’t give in 2011 (or even in 2010) or have agreed to fund spin-off organizations we are creating, such as the R Street Institute, so the result is no net loss of our effectiveness, and actually an increase.
(d) The campaign against our directors and donors being conducted by “Forecast the Facts,” 350.org, and Greenpeace – not by “anonymous individuals” as you strangely suggest – in fact is unprecedented because it could not have occurred had not Peter Gleick stolen and revealed our donor list. But we are obviously well on our way to building a new and much larger donor base that is “Greenpeace proof.”
(e) Our PR response to Fakegate has been called “brilliant” even by the folks at DesmogBlog. History will record it as another major scandal that helped bring down the man-made global warming movement. But the MSM and environmental groups doubled down on their strategic mistake, understanding that the only way to prevent Fakegate from “becoming another Climategate” is to take down Heartland and its network of scientists and donors. Their tactics compelled us to match their intensity.
(f) I am not surprised or disappointed that you and other bloggers disapprove of our tactics. It is simply not your role in the controversy to be aggressive or controversial. But it is ours.
(g) The billboard, which cost $200, generated more than $5 million in earned media so far, and that figure doesn’t include television, radio, and tens of millions of page visits and online commentaries. Was the MSM coverage overwhelmingly negative? Of course. How could it be otherwise? There has been no positive coverage of skeptics since Fakegate broke, none at all, and reporters have made it clear that they will not report the debate fairly, so there is no longer any point in trying to appeal to their ethics or honesty. Thanks to the billboard, 37 million Americans now know that the debate over climate change continues.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me or Jim Lakely if you have questions or suggestions.
Joe
Joseph Bast
President
The Heartland Institute
One South Wacker Drive #2740
Chicago, IL 60606
Web site http://www.heartland.org
Support The Heartland Institute today!
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FYI, I can back up point (b) from personal experience, he said the same thing last year. Also I’ve seen the list of people invited who declined to join the debate. You’d think that if we were as wrong and as stupid as they claim, it would be easy to just show up and slaughter us intellectually, but for some reason they don’t want to even try. – Anthony
They’d already signed up, and the ones who attended were convinced skeptics. Borderline cases will be less likely to identify with Heartland in the future.
Fair enough.
rogerknights writes, “HI needed to be spotless and respectable and high-minded to get mainstreamers to come aboard”.
I think that at this point, this set of tactical decisions by Heartland is really mostly about the upcoming election. It is a well-known fact that Romney and certain other high-ranking Republicans are and have been highly suspect on the issue of AGW. That being the case, Heartland, I would think, would naturally want to participate in the process of holding their (and especially Romney’s) feet to the fire. And to do that, they would need to get the TEA party fired up about it. And if possible, they would want to keep turning up the heat steadily on Romney et al as the election approached, so that Romney et al could really get a good, strong, ROBUST taste of exactly how much their voters care about this issue.
FYI in case any readers didn’t know, the TEA party is the mainstream now, within the Republican Party. In most states right now, if you get them, you’ve got the Republican Party. So, a bit of friendly advice to all you Heartland detractors who might still be plodding along in the mental landscape of yesteryear:
Time to Wakey Wakey, smell the coffee.
RTF
Glenn says:
May 25, 2012 at 8:52 pm
@ur momisugly James Sexton, May 25, 2012 at 7:34 pm: “There have been numerous documented atrocities committed in the name of AGW. Murder, rape, forced sterilizations, land confiscation…… you name it, it’s been done in the name of AGW advocacy. This really isn’t a surprise. They told us they would do such atrocities and their feelings toward their fellow mankind. ”
I don’t know who you mean by “they”, but substitute AGW for X:
“There have been numerous documented atrocities committed in the name of X. Murder, rape, forced sterilizations, land confiscation…… you name it, it’s been done in the name of X advocacy.” Replace X with most any ideology or belief and you get the same result.
That doesn’t nullify his statement. Nor does saying, “So what? Everybody else has done that” justify atrocities committed under the Green Banner.
By the way, what are you basing your claims on? Specifically, who has “murdered”, “raped”, and “sterilized” in the “name of AGW”??? Or are you taking liberties with the meanings of those words?
The big push for biofuels to replace petroleum began roughly 10 years ago. Palm oil growers saw the dollar signs on the horizon and began expanding their tropical plantations on whatever land they could buy. Sometimes, the owners — subsistence farmers, mostly — wouldn’t sell.
In Colombia, several companies hired local thugs to force the farmers off their land: “More than 100 villagers were slain, and as many as 3,000 farmers were forced to abandon 247,000 acres, a swath about a third the size of Rhode Island….The palm companies then built roads through the forest and planted nearly 15,000 acres with African palm, which is used as a biofuel…”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/22/AR2009032202029.html
The same thing happened in the Philippines and in Indonesia, but the palm oil growers greased governmental palms, and national troops performed the evictions and the shootings.
http://www.panap.net/en/fs/post/food-sovereignty-resistance-land-grabbing/1068
http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2112
Ditto in Uganda. Villagers who objected to being thrown off their land were shot; villagers who protested the shootings were also shot:
http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/material/Palm2.pdf
So, James Sexton was correct in that land confiscation occurred and murders were committed in furtherance of one of the items on the AGW agenda — pushing for biofuels to replace petrolem. I’ll let someone else address the rapes and forced sterilizations — it’s late here, and the server has been hiccuping.
To all those who decry the Heartland Billboard I give you Australia’s Al Gore – Tim Flannery:
“Climate change campaigner Tim Flannery says mercury tooth fillings should be removed from corpses before they are cremated …
Prof Flannery said undertakers should be required to remove the fillings and families also could request it.
“You just need a pair of pliers,” he said.
“It is a $2 solution.””
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/cheaper_than_his_usual_solutions/
HI should do a billiboard in Australia. Tim Flannery defiling the dead with pliers.
The AGW cult is bat**** crazy.
Bill Tuttle says:
May 26, 2012 at 2:07 pm
“The big push for biofuels to replace petroleum began roughly 10 years ago. Palm oil growers saw the dollar signs on the horizon and began expanding their tropical plantations on whatever land they could buy.”
What you don’t realize is that “dollar signs” is not “in the name of AGW advocacy”. People have died as a result of others seeing dollar signs in all endeavors. Do you own gold? Diamonds? Use gasoline? Those that “push” for biofuels can not be held accountable for the actions of the unscrupulous anymore than you can because you use gasoline or advocate for the use of gas rather than biofuels. The methods you reference are not advocated by AGW believers. If you can understand any of this, you will understand that I wasn’t and am not saying “So what? Everybody else has done that”.
rogerknights: “Borderline cases will be less likely to identify with Heartland in the future.”
Borderline mentally ill cases like David Suzuki and Tim Flannery are not wanted.
roger, you seem to want HI to try and appease the deranged.
Rod Everson says: @ur momisugly May 26, 2012 at 11:17 am
……What the billboard accomplished, beyond achieving tremendous publicity, was to link the proponents of AGW with the likes of the Unabomber, and when you look at the morals of some of the strongest proponents (Gore, Hanson, Gleick, etc.,) the linkage is not all that misleading….
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What you are saying is the only difference between the UNabomber and the ones using CAGW to feather their nest is either degree or they have not gotten caught.
Bill Tuttle @ur momisugly May 26, 2012 at 2:07 pm shows exactly how close these people are to the UNabomber. In some cases the only difference is they are too rich to get their hands dirty and the damage is much greater. I will add Goldman Sachs, Cargill (privately held by a family) ADM and Monsanto to the list. Those companies reported record earnings in 2008 all because of the high price of grain that caused food riots in thirty seven countries. According to the UN about 10 million people die of hunger and hunger-related diseases in an average year. However in 2008 the ranks of the world’s hungry increased by 250 million.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-goldman-gambled-on-starvation-2016088.html
Should Heartland have put up that Billboard? I do not really know but I can certainly understand the anger behind it. Perhaps Friday Mukamperezida would be a better poster child for Heartland. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/25/they-had-to-burn-the-village-to-save-it-from-global-warming/
Friday Mukamperezida the first person killed by anthropogenic global warming burned to death while ill in his bed so you can have biofuel to drive your car.
Brian H says: May 26, 2012 at 7:39 am
Oops, you also forgot – electronic billboards can do more words, scrolling, etc..
You also forgot that many of the messages are short, for example:
“Humans are maggots.” – David Suzuki
From the ClimateGate emails:
“Mike’s Nature Trick”
“Hide the Decline”
“It’s the Divergence Problem”
“Where’s the $%^&* Warming?”
More at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/22/bishop-hills-compendium-of-cru-email-issues/
A big hand to Mr. Bast who responded eloquently and truthfully.
I normally like the good Doctor Curry, but she should have checked her sources when it came to the article. The Guardian and Forecast the Facts are NOT reliable and are biased.
Allan;
It’s not a question of billboard capacity, but of driver attention and time: how many words can be read at 30 mph, 45 mph, 60 mph, 75 mph? If drivers are stuck in a traffic jam, they may have time to read through long messages, but only a few will be in that situation at a time–by definition of “jam”. 😉
Note that the HI b-b was ~8 words. That’s about as far as you want to go.
As I suggested, look at real-world examples. They’re short and punchy for a reason.
Glenn says:
May 26, 2012 at 3:03 pm
@ur momisugly me, May 26, 2012 at 2:07 pm: “The big push for biofuels to replace petroleum began roughly 10 years ago. Palm oil growers saw the dollar signs on the horizon and began expanding their tropical plantations on whatever land they could buy.”
What you don’t realize is that “dollar signs” is not “in the name of AGW advocacy”.
The palm oil growers wouldn’t have made the land-grabs and committed the murders if there weren’t huge sums of cash to be grabbed from the subsidies politicians created based on the noisy push to stop for biofuels. It’s the Law of Unintended Consequences at work.
People have died as a result of others seeing dollar signs in all endeavors.
Again, just because “everybody did it” doesn’t excuse it.
Do you own gold?
Nope.
Diamonds?
Nope.
Use gasoline?
Yup. And probably 75% of the things I either own or wear are derived from petroleum or its byproducts. That’s probably a good guess at the percentage for the things you own and wear, too.
Those that “push” for biofuels can not be held accountable for the actions of the unscrupulous anymore than you can because you use gasoline or advocate for the use of gas rather than biofuels. The methods you reference are not advocated by AGW believers.
The only ones *culpable* are the culprits themselves. However, take a good look at the Malthusians waving the green banner and listen to what they’re actually saying — they believe that what the palm oil growers did was justifiable.
If you can understand any of this, you will understand that I wasn’t and am not saying “So what? Everybody else has done that”.
Then why did you say, “There have been numerous documented atrocities committed in the name of X. Murder, rape, forced sterilizations, land confiscation…… you name it, it’s been done in the name of X advocacy”… ?
Okay, that was a cheap shot. You didn’t say, “So what?”, although that was the tone that came across.
Bill Tuttle says: @ur momisugly May 26, 2012 at 2:07 pm
“The big push for biofuels to replace petroleum began roughly 10 years ago. Palm oil growers saw the dollar signs on the horizon and began expanding their tropical plantations on whatever land they could buy.”
________________________________
Glenn says: @ur momisugly May 26, 2012 at 3:03 pm
What you don’t realize is that “dollar signs” is not “in the name of AGW advocacy”. People have died as a result of others seeing dollar signs in all endeavors….. The methods you reference are not advocated by AGW believers. If you can understand any of this, you will understand that I wasn’t and am not saying “So what? Everybody else has done that”.
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, NO YOU DON”T, You can not wiggle out of the blame that easily.This is the typical projection of YOUR attributes onto the “Enemy” we see so often.
CAGW (and PETA) would be nothing but fringe cults like the Flat Earthers if it was not for the Big Money that was pushing the crap in the first place. All it takes is a quick look on the internet to see that H. L. Mencken was correct.
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
I have talked to those advocating Communism/Socialism or what ever they want to call it while living in Massachusetts, home of the foremost scholars of Marxism as one told me proudly. As far as they are concerned wiping out a major portion of humanity is very acceptable.
This attitude is expressed by Obama’s Science Czar John Holdren in chapter 8, page 235 in the book ‘Human Ecology’
So YOUR side does not even consider the rest of us Human because we have not had “The essential early SOCIALIZING experiences” – read brain washing by the state.
Read the discussion of what John Holdern wrote at: http://zombietime.com/john_holdren/
Here are some other quotes from just one website: http://seeker401.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/quotes-the-club-of-rome-green-cultists-and-eugenics-freaks/
“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.” — Alexander King Co-Founder of the Club of Rome, (premier environmental think-tank and consultants to the United Nations) from his 1991 book The First Global Revolution
“We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” — Prof. Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Biology and Global Change. Professor Schneider was among the earliest and most vocal proponents of man-made global warming and a lead author of many IPCC reports. He is a member of the Club of Rome.
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.” –Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation and member of the Club of Rome.
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
“The Earth Summit will play an important role in] reforming and strengthening the United Nations as the centerpiece of the emerging system of democratic global governance.”
“The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation. It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation states, however powerful. The global community must be assured of environmental security.” — Maurice Strong, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Al Gore’s mentor and executive member of the Club of Rome.
Sorry dude hiding behind your false front does not work here.
thojak says:
May 25, 2012 at 10:21 am
“If the billboard’s ‘message’ would have been headlined [i.e.] with:
”We don’t do ads like this:…”, ”
thojak – you are perfectly right. It would have been the best way to shut down the name calling and would have opened an bigger adds area where each warmist add or name calling could have been countered. That would be fun.
Billboard idea for HI.
: )
John
I think that’s right. The billboard was an effective weapon, but should have been deployed by someone independent, so as not to sully HI’s reputation as sponsor of serious academic conferences—CFACT for example, as they are more of an activist group.
/Mr Lynn
We have to “think globally.” 😉 If our side countenances a Unabomber analogy, we could no longer act offended if 10:10 (say) posted a Norwegian shooter billboard with the caption, “He still denies global warming; do you?” We could claim that that would be unfair, because we’re right and they’re wrong, but that would be special pleading–or at least perceived as such.
If Steve McIntyre were to respond to his citics by getting down in the mud with them, he would give them a stick to beat him with and lose effectiveness. Ditto here.
and HI chose an objectionable analogy. If it wanted to do so in an unobjectionable way, Chavez and Mugabe, who both spoke lengthily at Copenhagen, to loud applause, would have been better targets.