Heartland Institute Learning To Troll On Billboards

Fluffeh writes "The Heartland Institute is a lovely group of folks who take issue with mainstream climate science. They organize an annual get-together of like minded folk and talk trash about environmental change. 'The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society.' (That's from a press release!). Recently, when they were tricked by a researcher into sending him a lot of internal documents, they decided to go on the offensive and also get some more media attention. After all, any story is a good story, right? Launching a billboard with the Unabomber on it with the slogan 'I still believe in Global Warming. Do You?' was just the start, with the institute planning Fidel Castro, Charles Manson and possibly even Osama Bin Laden. That's when even their stout backers threatened to walk away, backing started to dry up — and it seems that common sense started to prevail — but only so far as to stop them from making their message too public."

Comments

They Never Even Said Those Things

[eldavojohn]

Fidel Castro, Charles Manson and possibly even Osama Bin Laden

Wow, I never knew that Ted Kaczynski and the above crew were quoted on Global Warming. So, upon reading the article I found that:

How did Heartland justify the comparison between murderers and tyrants and anyone who believed in global warming? "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," according to the press release that announced the ads. It went on to claim that "[t]he people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society."

Wait, so you're telling me that you're putting pictures of some of recent history's most hated and feared men next to quotes about believing in Global Warming?

Congratulations, Heartland Institute, your argument is now so depraved that you've reduced yourselves to holding up pictures of Hitler in a public forum while pantomiming your opponents. Is that reductio ad ridiculum or is this so childish that people didn't even bother coming up with a Latin phrase for it?

So they won't mind if I put up a billboard that reads

"... and when this Earth is fucked
the free market will build us a better one."
(read more at www.heartland.org)

Re:They Never Even Said Those Things

[Gadget_Guy]

Every one of the people that do not buy all (or part of) the whole AGW religion have been labelled "deniers" for 10 years now.

It is interesting that you mention this in relation to a story about Heartland Institute. It was this exact argument that made it apparent to me that there was a hand on the tiller of the anti-global warming movement. I wish I could remember the /. story when this happened, but there was one particular discussion about climate change when I noticed that out of the blue lots of different people had suddenly found themselves being offended by the term "denier". It seemed so unlikely that so many people would simultaneously become offended that at the time I thought that they must have been parroting a recent show of one of the conservative radio commentators.

But it made me pay attention to how the debate progressed in the ranks of the anti-AGW supporters. I began to wonder whether there was some checklist in the boardroom of a think tank (like Heartland) where they had listed what the next bit of FUD they were going to print in their next newsletter for their eager followers to claim as their own.

The funny thing about the "don't call me a denier" argument is that it is often used by right wing pundits who make a living denigrating their opposing side using labels like lefties, greenies, pinkos, communists, intelligentsia, ivory-tower academics, latte-sippers, chatting classes, liberals, alarmists and (apparently the next new term) "green-shirts". Actually, the last one is not really new; a quick google search on "climate green shirts" shows that it has been used for a few years now.

Still, good luck with your denialist gambit. Now it is true that the literal definition of the term is a very apt fit to what you are (more so than skeptic), and nobody using it was doing so to affiliate you with any other denialists. In fact the only people that bring up the holocaust are people like you.

But now you mention it, the holocaust deniers do share some traits with the anti-AGW supports like being against the weight of overwhelming expert opinion and the uncanny ability to be looking elsewhere when being shown evidence that they don't like.

Non sequitur

[mwvdlee]

I dare bet the unabomber, Castro, Manson and Bin Laden all believe(d) in breathing air as well.
Does that make breathing air wrong all of a sudden?

Re:crazy

[squiggleslash]

Curious to know what well funded entities are paying money to people to have them make up stuff that would encourage people to want "Big Government".

One thing I'd like to know is this: for the last few decades there's been a concerted campaign to make conservatives distrustful of science. I don't mean conservatives are (although the fact most of the ones I know insist that AGW is a hoax is a problem), I mean that there are hundreds of millions of dollars being funneled into groups like The Heartland Institute and Cato specifically because however non-partisan they claim to be, they do, ultimately, aim their messages at the Republican party and conservatives in general.

We've seen this on AGW, on tobacco's links to cancer, on asbestos, to a certain extent on evolution (though that's explainable from the conservative church groups), and I'm beginning to wonder if the minor flare up we've seen recently about vaccines isn't going to grow into another example, though there's no evidence they're targeting any political group yet.

So here's what I want to know:

1. Why? Why target conservatives specifically with anti-science propaganda? Why aren't liberals being targeted too? (Arguments like "Conservatives are more gullible" will be ignored for obvious reasons.)

2. Why is there no backlash from conservatives themselves? How many conservatives actually want to (a) be subject to anti-science propaganda that will, inevitably, result - thanks to the wonder of echo chambers - in believing something that's wrong and (b) want to be in a group that will inevitably be considered anti-science?

What gives?

Re:crazy

[goldstein]

It might also be noted that some influential fundamentalist Christian churches believe that the world is coming to an end within a few decades and that there is also a belief that God will provide everything that man needs. It follows that long term thinking/planning is pointless and that any concern whatever about the environment betrays a mistrust in God. Just the perfect recipe for completely irresponsible behavior.

Re:crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are interesting questions. I'll try to answer with a link and with a joke.

Link: I strongly recommend downloading and reading Bob Altemeyer's book "The Authoritarians". In this book (75% scientific footnotes you can skip, 25% mindblowing clearly written sociology research) he makes a clear distinction between "right-wing authoritarian followers" (the main topic of the book) on the one hand (because you can't have a right-wing movement, dictatorship etc. without all those people who just neatly obey what TPTB instruct them to do), and "right-wing authoritarian leaders", who are a rare breed of people who have no scruples at all and happen to have found they are really good at gaining power over the backs of the "right-wing authoritarian followers" which they manipulate and enthuse.


Joke: This is a lame joke, I'm not exactly sure why I'm telling it here on Slashdot, but it felt appropriate somehow so indulge me.

It is a stormy night. Two men are driving on a motorway through the storm, looking stressed-out, tired and wary of the road. The autoradio is on softly but suddenly it gets interrupted by a blaring emergency traffic report:
"Attention! A wrong-way driver(*) has been detected on the E0 road driving northward! Keep to the right and try to signal the driver with your lights!"
Says the driver to his passenger: "ONE wrong-way driver?!?! Hah! I've had to dodge at least TWENTY of those idiots already!"

(*) the joke is marginally more funny in Dutch where the word is "spookrijder" -- "ghost rider".

Re:crazy

[azalin]

Ether theory, Newtons Models (still working in most but not all scales), electrons are particles, origin of the species, miasma ...
There are probably a couple more, but these are the ones that came to mind first. Science is and has always been evolving.
I totally agree that we are f*cking up earth big time and that it would really be a good idea to conserve energy, and stop burning up resources like there is no tomorrow. The data shows that we changed the atmosphere and it shows things are changing, but acting would be inconvenient and expensive (somewhat) so we ignore the problem.
On the other hand , dismissing outright proof because it doesn't fit your world view isn't such a new idea either.