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

crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Shills for the oil industry.

Re:crazy

[Miseph]

AGW proponents don't need to prove deniers are crazy to prove their point... that's what science is for.

One side sees this primarily as a scientific question to be resolved through inquiry and research... the other views it primarily as a political problem to be resolved through rhetoric and propaganda. To be sure, both sides are engaged in some degree of each, but at the end of the day it does make a difference whether the scientists seek out the politicians or the politicians seek out the scientists.

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

[I_am_Jack]

Really? So if I oppose the Heartland Institute for being primarily funded by the oil industry and its cohorts, then I must be supporting Big Government. Your new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.

Re:crazy

[drinkypoo]

Why aren't liberals being targeted too? (Arguments like "Conservatives are more gullible" will be ignored for obvious reasons.)

Denial is not a river in Egypt. So-called "conservatives" are more gullible. They're also not conservatives. They actually favor regulation of business, but they want it regulated how THEY want it regulated, not how the liberals want it. They ALSO want to tell you what you can do in your bedroom. They're fascists.

Why is there no backlash from conservatives themselves?

Because they're more gullible, and they think this shit is really clever.

A conservative is someone who wants government to regulate morality and to not regulate business. These people are vanishingly rare in the actual population. Most people are more centrist than they realize. But they are amazingly common in government. Moreover, they do not believe these regulations should apply to them. That means they're not really conservatives, either. They're what, oligarchists or something, I don't know what you'd really call it. But they don't believe what they're saying. The short form is "liars". Neither liberals nor conservatives are well-represented in government.

Re:crazy

[mcgrew]

If you are going to call someone a "shill" for the people paying the bills, then you have to be fair and apply the same standard for both side.

Yes, if both sides are shilling. A shill pretends to be an outside observer when he's actually being paid by the side he's representing. It's a traditional carnival/magic show trick where the magician reads the mind of a "stranger" from the audience.

If Bill Gates signs on to /. as an AC and says Windows is the best OS on earth, he's shilling. If he signs in as himself and says the same thing, he's not.

The oil companies have an agenda, and they pretend to not be behind the deniers. That makes them shills. If someone from the solar industry put up billboards warning about global warming without a "paid for by Solar Inc" they would also be shilling.

The climatologists who are warning about GW aren't shills. They're scientists.

Do you really believe that Climate Change is a hoax perpetrated by government to raise your taxes or something? You do realize that the AGW folks (Big Oil) benefit from big government, right?

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

[i kan reed]

How do you keep getting modded up? I really don't get it.

Not a thing you've said makes sense. Governments don't benefit from AGW or even belief in it. Here's a hint for you: governments rule by fiat, by and large, and if they have a thing they feel they need or want to control, they can. You simply allege a conspiracy and motives and move on. How, exactly does a government benefit from climate change research? Be specific. If you just say "it lets government get bigger" you're only buying further into your own delusions rather than actually answer the question. Tell me who benefits from "bigger government" as a completely abstract concept.

Should the underlying motive for proving AGW exist, you've still alleged a monstrous conspiracy including every scientist who's worked on the subject in any meaningful way. Does it not give you pause to say "Not one of these scientists has enough ethical principles to publish their actual findings instead of made-up ones"? Think about the scope and scale of what you're talking about. I honestly can't get into your head where it's easier for everyone disagreeing with you on every forum on the planet is part of a massive conspiracy being easier to accept than the possibility that atmospheric composition affects planetary cooling rates.

How do you come to the conclusion that the government is bribing scientists?
How do you arrive at the notion that scientists are complicit?
How do you decide people agreeing with them are shills?

Those are not easy conclusions to arrive at, but you jump straight to them without any of the in-between parts.

Re:crazy

[TapeCutter]

It's one thing to laugh at this group and their ineffective methods

Crazy yes, ineffective hardly! They've been selling the best anti-science propoganda money can buy for almost 2 decades and more than a few Americans have sucked it down like it was chicken gravy. Science cannot compete with cheap and nasty PR, especially when a large chunk of the population is scientifically illiterate.

Re:crazy

[guises]

One side sees this primarily as a scientific question to be resolved through inquiry and research... the other views it primarily as a political problem to be resolved through rhetoric and propaganda.

The problem is that this isn't true anymore. The science is pretty much settled, so it's all political now and scientists generally suck at that.

And yes, they do need to prove deniers crazy. Or at least convince the majority of people that this is the case. It's the only way to get anything done when there's this much money working in opposition.

Re:crazy

[MightyMartian]

None of your examples are in fact true. Does it bother you that you cannot even come up with counterexamples that ever happened?

I know of no one who said air vehicles were impossible. Certainly the Greeks pondered it and da Vinci designed air vehicles. As to the world being flat, well yes, in Bronze Age and pre-Bronze Age epochs, many cosmographical myths stated a flat earth, but we've known for something like 2500 not only the shape of the Earth, but its circumference with reasonable accuracy.

For you to in fact provide examples, you should, well, you know bring up some examples from the era of science, and the example has to be something that the general scientific consensus pointed in one direction when ultimately it was determined that it was the other way around. Good luck with that, there aren't a lot of scientific theories that had gained general consensus that have been outright falsified. Big ones like the Steady State model of the universe presented enormous problems that even when there was some general acceptance, Einstein was still forced to insert a Cosmological Constant because his own theory actually demonstrated the steady state model to be false.

But by picking at low lying fruit, like what some Ancient Babylonian believed to be true, you rather prove the point that the pseudo-skeptics aren't terribly interested in a scientific argument at all, but rather in rhetorical games. As to your air vehicle thing, more pure bollocks.

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.

Re:crazy

[Hillgiant]

That is pretty much right there is the essential essence of Conservatism.

To paraphrase Ghandi:
I like your Conservatism. Your Conservatives, on the other hand.

Since the mid-70's Conservatives have not been at all interested with efficiency in government programs. They have been focused on elimination of government programs. They do not want to do more with less, they want to do less with less (unless their district is involved, then they might be interested in doing less with more).

Re:crazy

[MightyMartian]

You will note that his expertise was not aeronautics. What you're doing is a sort of a reverse appeal to authority. This is no different than Fred Hoyle's anti-evolution claims. Just because someone is an expert in one field does not make them an expert in others.

Re:crazy

[i kan reed]

I don't mean to speak for the parent poster, but here's my 2 cents:

Never hurts to hear another perspective.

"Tell me who benefits from "bigger government" as a completely abstract concept." - Government employees, government funded researchers, politicians, and the businesses they write earmarks for, etc. Pretty simple really...

Except they don't. Politicians benefit from being reelected, employees benefit from raises and promotions. Those don't mesh at all with the concept of bigger government. Not even a little, so I'll move on to...

Businesses that get earmarks, while the most plausible, don't do better from more regulation, they do better from more spending, and those are not the same. None of that fits the concept I was referring to. Furthermore we're getting even further separated from the people who are presenting the so-called false information, creating an even vaster conspiracy. The chain would be: businesses that get paid by the government have an unclear investment in the concept of a bigger government, so they buy law-makers, who instruct(by what means? laws? comitees? very public record here) the grant givers, who give grants to complicit scientists, who publish false information. Look at that chain of responsibility, and tell me it's robust and able to engage in both secrecy and efficacy all the way down.

"possibility that atmospheric composition affects planetary cooling rates." - We can acknowledge this without accepting with 100% certainty that current models that statistically fit old data can accurately predict future temperatures. We can also disagree about the potential effects, and politically what to do about it.

"How do you come to the conclusion that the government is bribing scientists?" - They're funding most of them. Not bribes per se, but grants flow to those the government approves of.

Yes, but you're missing an important characteristic here. The money comes first, the results second. What prevents the researcher from, you know, publishing their actual results? Many of them have tenure, therefore a well paying job-for-life, with benefits. There's just no liability there to make them dependent on creating favorable results. Besides that, most climatology research grants aren't even for global warming. There's no compelling reason to "play ball". Moreover, how do the researchers know that they're getting grants on the basis of positive results? Who would let them know?

Again, the only explanation is a conspiracy in which every researcher is a part. Which is crazy. Like, very crazy.

I believe most of the scientists (and most of the believers or "shills") are not part of a conspiracy, or getting paid by the government to create propaganda. But they are "jumping straight to" the "easy conclusion" that because the Earth has warmed for a couple decades, "it's all humans fault, and we need to tax somebody right now to avoid Armageddon".

Except it's 1.5 centuries of directly measured warming, with a clear trend towards acceleration. Not a couple decades. And the availability of ancillary data(thousand year old glaciers disappearing) is quite large. I think you'll find that taxes are not the only proposed plans for dealing with the problem, and there's a wealth of proposed actions, only a small subset of which are needed to be implemented to halt the problem within 50 years.

I again see nothing but broad-stroke conspiracy allegations, with nothing in the way of supporting evidence. As for me "jumping to the easy conclusion", I've studied meteorology, a dash of climatology, and the relevant data. No alternative hypothesis(I've looked at "Natural cycles", "stellar output", "bad measurements", and "alternate carbon sources") for current temperature trends has even a lick of correlation, nor do they have any substantial theoretical backing that could be called scientific in nature. The problem isn't that it's the easy conclusion, it's that it's the remaining one, ruling out the impossible.

Re:crazy

[geekoid]

Because the Heartland institute is lying, and using lies to change policy. They are backed by people who want to be able to dump what they want where every they want regardless of the effect. SO yes, people need to be aware that these people are lying to change policy.

One side has mountains of facts and data, has research every available hypothesis, and has came to a consensus based on all the current data. The other side has no facts, not supporting evidence and has resorted to comparing people who know the actual science to a mass murders.

his isn't a discussion where two side have pretty much equal wait in evidence, that would have been the 70's and 80s'.

That's why one group is deniers, and the other groups is actual science and fact based.

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

[GameboyRMH]

"Denier" has no more association with "holocaust denier" than "consumer" has with "consumer of human flesh." But don't tell that to your raging persecution complex.

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.

Re:They Never Even Said Those Things

[MightyMartian]

When the overwhelming majority of researchers in a field of study say one thing, and you get at best a handful of researchers with anything like the credentials necessary to evaluate the evidence stating the opposite (the rest being a hodge-podge of scientists in unrelated fields, engineers and journalists), is your first assumption that the naysayers must be right? You do realize that in almost every field there is at least one or two people who make claims opposed to the accepted theories; biology (a few evolution deniers), Big Bang cosmology (probably one or two physicists who claim it's wrong), HIV causing AIDS (that's right, still one or two who claim it doesn't), and the list goes on.

Let's face it, the reason YOU accept the skeptics is because it feeds your ideological leanings. You have political motives to deny AGW, and basically are willing to claim that the overwhelming majority of climatologists are either fools or liars to keep believing it. It's anti-intellectualism at its worst, but it's all been seen before.

Here's a news flash. The Universe doesn't give a fuck about Libertarianism, Communism, Capitalism, Pol Pot or your political beliefs. Reality is not defined by politics.

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?

And here you are...

[Anonymous Coward]

...giving them free publicity, meaning their "crazy pill" strategy to garner attention worked.

Well done, Slashdot!

Re:Last I knew

[dbIII]

Last I knew, it was still heavily debated

The debate was over by the time a report on global warming landed on President Johnson's desk. I'm not exagerating. There was a report on that subject that was submitted to the President some years after climate scientists observed a trend, had a pile of conferences on the subject and agreed that it was a problem.
For the last decade there have just been self serving idiots like Monckton (call those Jewish kids Nazis) and Plimer (pretend climate science is a religeon and mock religeon - thus including climate science) pretending there is a debate. It's been almost entirely noise for hire. Compare the amount Monckton makes on his travelling roadshow to the most highly paid Nobel prize winner in any science on the planet and you'll see why.

Wrong Questions

[georgenh16]

They're going about it the wrong way.
You don't want people asking themselves why they care whether the Unabomber believed in AGW.

You want them asking the right questions:
1. Is the planet warming?
2. If yes, by a significant amount?
3. If yes, is it human caused?
4. If yes, by a significant amount? (say >=30%)
5. If yes, can we reverse it?
6. If yes, should we reverse it?
7. If yes, do the risks of not reversing it outweigh:

- taxing your breath
- crippling the world economy
- billions of people poorer, governments richer
- any and all other power grabs and loss of freedom that result

8. If yes, what are the chances we'll make it worse by trying to fix it?

There is a lot of doubt added for each of 1-6 (especially if you're a good scientist/engineer with healthy skepticism), enough that there's not good reason for any politician to even look at #7.
Only 1-5 are actually science/engineering. The rest are political questions.
Anti-AGW people like myself just like to point out that there is uncertainty in 1-6, and even if there wasn't, the answer to #7 is most certainly "NO".
And for #8, here I cite the Aral Sea, the tire reef, solyndra, and the recent article about wind turbines causing warming as examples of wonderful government environmental "successes".

P.S. If you're taking 1-6 as truth with zero doubt, you've got a religion.

Re:Wrong Questions

[vlm]

And you don't exhale fossil-sourced CO2. At least I don't.

I find that incredibly unlikely. You can argue the numbers but very roughly speaking a pound of "food" requires a pound of crude oil. The range of rational argument for the ratio is from 1/10 to 10 depending on the food, fertilizer, herbicide/insecticide, watering technique and source, shipment of all component parts, energy costs of refrigerated storage, capital investments in the transportation infrastructure (think of the giant blacktop parking lot full of SUVs in front of my local organic store).

You can play enron accountant that if you exhale 1 gram CO2, that gram did technically come from atmospheric sources so it doesn't matter than 10 grams of CO2 was emitted to make it possible for you to eat the food. But thats enron accounting... 11 grams output into the air is 11 grams into the air no matter how you split it up.

Re:Wrong Questions

[artor3]

1. & 2. are settled science. There's always some "doubt" in science, but not in the way you use the term. People like you, or more accurately the people who tell you what to think, profit from muddying the waters. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt... it's not just for software anymore!

3. & 4. are irrelevant. Who cares whose fault it is? If it's going to disrupt our lifestyles, we should try to stop it. This is just some religious fundie bullshit. "Oh, there's no way humans could affect God's plan!"

5. That's what we're trying to do, but deniers are fighting tooth and nail to keep us from even trying.

6. Yes, if you believe the science, the consequences would be severe. Not the end of the world, but a drastic reduction in quality of life for billions of people. But instead you've chosen to believe that all the scientists are in a big globe spanning conspiracy.

7. Taxing breath Strawman! Crippling the world economy FUD! Billions poorer, governments richer Bullshit! Do you think the governments are going to make a massive money pit filled with gold coins or something? They're not going to be richer, they're going to immediately turn around and spend that money. So your statement should have been "oil execs poorer, working class richer". And yeah, I'd be fine with that as a pleasant little side effect.

8. "Wind turbines causing warming." That story was revealed to be bullshit in the comments of Slashdot. It was only warming the area immediately around the windmill, not contributing to global warming. But of course, you wouldn't pay attention, because you want to believe all those stupid leftie ideas are back firing. You'll just gleefully go on spreading that lie 'til the end of time.

Keep Spreading Your Lies and Uncertainty

[eldavojohn]

Last I knew, it was still heavily debated exactly how much of an effect humans have had on global warming compared to natural causes (IE: volcanic eruptions).

Well, according to the USGS man made CO2 levels for 2010 were 35 billion metric tons while all volcanic activity was estimated at 0.26 billion metric tons. So keep spreading your lies and uncertainty about climate science. Your cheap rhetoric designed to protect your lifestyle is surprisingly effective against individuals who spend their lives studying this stuff and publishing in peer reviewed journals, NASA, etc.

Does it have an effect? Sure. Does it have a noticeable effect? Probably. Does it have a significant effect? Maybe. There's way too many variables to really be sure if humans are speeding up natural global warming by a significant amount (IE: accelerating it from millennia to centuries or centuries to decades).

All that bullshit peppered with weasel words like "probably" and "maybe" without a single citation. Well done. The concensus from the scientific community has been made, the burden of proof is now on you to refute their findings. Not vice versa. Not "probably" or "maybe."

Re:Keep Spreading Your Lies and Uncertainty

[PopeRatzo]

Yes, all that is true, but the fact is, it doesn't matter. There's no point in reducing CO2 levels. Even if we stopped emitting CO2 completely, NOW, down to 0%, no combustion of fuel AT ALL, it would still be thousands of years before CO2 levels reached pre-industrial levels. We've made our bed, now we have to sleep in it.

Do you understand the concept that when you find yourself at the bottom of a hole, first stop digging (unless you plan to be buried down there)?

Just because we find ourselves in a bad situation does not mean we should do nothing and just make the problem worse.

Fallacies are fun!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Incidentally, I've heard that the late Mr. Bin Laden was a big enthusiast of the right to keep and bear arms...

the beauty of free speech

[TheKnave]

is that it makes the lunatic fringe much easier to locate.

Re:Seriusly America

[AngryDeuce]

It seems that way because unlike the extreme left, the extreme right does not own the mass media.

I love how skewed the right has become that they actually still spout that bullshit about the "extreme left" owning the media.

If anything, the media is centrist (which explains why the idiocy of the tea party isn't immediately laughed off the air every time it comes up), it's just the extremely vocal minority of far-right whackjobs with a bullshit persecution complex keep screaming because the rest of the media doesn't echo their nonsense the way Limbaugh and Glenn Beck do. I mean, the very fact that Sarah Palin was treated as a serious candidate, despite what a complete and utter moron she is, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the media is mostly centrist. A "leftist" media would have laughed her stupid ass right off the airwaves after her first Katie Couric interview, when she asked hard-hitting questions like "What do you read?"

Yes, You Would Have to Go that Far Back

[eldavojohn]

It was also once consensus that the Earth was the center of the universe.

But it wasn't published in peer reviewed journals. I dare say at the time there was no "scientific community" and that nationality determined which intellectual circles you could run in. Although I do agree that, to compare the state of where we are today, you would need to go back to pre-Renaissance times.

A consensus of people in some places think it's okay to stone adulterers.

Yeah, a consensus of people who were not scientists. Who were not using statistics or science at all ... who were basically calling themselves judge, jury and executioner. Again, what these strange archaic Puritanical concepts have to do with modern scientific consensus is well beyond me. I link you 18 scientific associations' assertions on global warming and you refute it with some ancient lynching. Apples to oranges.

Just because a majority of people believe something is true doesn't mean that it is.

It's really weird that when the top minds of physics postulate that black holes exist, we're not adverse to it. But when the top minds of climate science agree on something, suddenly we are the armchair scientists who are better than those who have studied this most of their lives and have compiled samples from decades past from around the world. And the key difference seems to be that you don't want to face the consequences. You're okay with no longer using CFCs, you're okay with trying to wrap our minds around the existence of black holes and could you tell me why now you choose to shove your fingers in your ears and scream "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU."

You can point out factual errors in another's post without going down the road of "cheap rhetoric" and "buillshit" in your own.

This befuddles me the most. The original post I replied to said:

Last I knew, it was still heavily debated exactly how much of an effect humans have had on global warming compared to natural causes (IE: volcanic eruptions).

So I provide a citation and hard numbers on man-made CO2 versus volcanoes. And you label that "cheap rhetoric" and "buillshit"?

The Cherry Blossom festival happened sooner than ever in its history this year in DC and NASA says it's not just cherry blossoms but all plants (published in Nature's May 2nd issue, a peer-reviewed journal). Of course, this natural basic indicator of the state of the climate doesn't have an immediate perceived threat to mankind's existence so you're free to keep your fingers in your ears. At some point though, it's going to become annoying, then problematic for third world countries, then it will slowly climb the chain up to the protected Americans. And then, and only then, will we be willing to do something about it. When it's too late.

Heartland: a policy advocacy group, not science

[Geoffrey.landis]

Shills for the oil industry.

Well, they are funded by the fossil fuel industry (not just oil; that includes coal), or by billionaires whose money comes from in the oil industry. (For this campaign, anyway; they also work on other issues.) Whether this makes them "shills" is a value judgement.

What we learn the billboard, however, is simply this: the Heartland Institute is a policy advocacy organization, not a science institute. They are no longer even pretending to have any interest in actual science. Their only interest in science is to attack it in order to make policy points.

They have stated this before-- Joseph Bast, the president of Heartland, stated that the Heartland Institute's focus is "commitment to a free market policy agenda," and that the main motivation for the Heartland Institute being involved in this debate is to "prevent the U.S. government from adopting policies that favor renewable energy," which he claims would cause an "economic disaster for the country."

But, despite clear statements that their agenda is related to policy, not science, people have been taking their attacks on science seriously.

Some links:
http://rockblogs.psu.edu/climate/2012/01/ethical-analysis-of-the-climate-change-disinformation-campaign-introduction-to-a-series.html
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201107070016

Intellectual dishonesty

[TapeCutter]

Why wasn't the science good enough for him?

Institutionalised anti-science groups foisting policies the directly conflict with something as important and well researched as the pentagon's annual threat assesments upset most scientists and skeptics in the same way as shoplifting upsets shopkeepers. In my book deniers are intellectually dishonest people who cannot be swayed by reason and evidence, the exact opposite of what it means to be a skeptic or a scientist. Yes, it really is THAT simple, some people still live and die by their principles other's sell them for whatever they can get. No grand conspiracies, no scientists living the highlife on the taxpayer's dime, no NWO, no reputable journals playing the role of Pope Urban VIII. Just a loose group of 50-odd "think-tanks" all headquareted within a mile of K-street and all selling the same (surprisingly cheap) product - tailor made anti-science propoganda and face to face access to the likes of senator Inhofe.

I can understand why honest, descent people sacrafice things to try and shut these morally bankrupt institutions down, especially when 'the people' are supporting their FUD factories via a tax free charity status. What I can't understand is how easily their obvious propoganda convinces literally millions of otherwise intelligent people that someone like Lord Monckton is anything but batshit insane and/or a compulsive liar for hire.

Unindicted Co-conspirators

[ThatsNotPudding]

Science cannot compete with cheap and nasty PR, especially when a large chunk of the population is scientifically illiterate.

The main selling point of HRI in particular and the Right Wing in general is this: You and your family don't have to ever change your lifestyle or even think about the devastating environmental, financial, or human rights effects of said lifestyle.

Even on a subconscious level, being absolved of ones' sins is very alluring. Praise Jesus and turn up the A/C!!