Bin Laden, Unabomber, Manson Are Climate Change Believers So You’re Evil

The Heartland Institute, “the primary American organization pushing climate change skepticism,” has a new billboard campaign featuring Osama bin Laden, Ted Kaczynski, aka, the Unabomber, Charles Manson, and Fidel Castro, and the words, “I still believe in Global Warming. Do You?.” Heartland is suggesting that adherents to the science of climate change are mass murderers and political tyrants.

“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,” the Heartland website states. They add that “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 are so similar, in fact, that a Web site has a quiz that asks if you can tell the difference between what Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, wrote in his “Manifesto” and what Al Gore wrote in his book, Earth in the Balance.

The point is that believing in global warming is not “mainstream,” smart, or sophisticated. In fact, it is just the opposite of those things. Still believing in man-made global warming – after all the scientific discoveries and revelations that point against this theory – is more than a little nutty. In fact, some really crazy people use it to justify immoral and frightening behavior.

Yes, these are some impressive facts, right? What’s that you say? “What facts?” Exactly.

Asking, “What on earth were they thinking?,” the Guardian calls Heartland’s new campaign, “quite possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns,” and adds:

As a result of the embarrassment caused by the release earlier this year of its internal funding documents, the US car giant GM pulled the plug on its funding for Heartland. Will Microsoft, Pfizer or GlaxoSmithKline, for example, now also choose to cut their funding to this organisation?

You also have to wonder if any of the scheduled conference speakersare now having doubts about whether they want to be associated with Heartland.

Heartland, a so-called “think tank,” “worked closely with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question the science linking secondhand smoke to health risks, and to lobby against government public-health reforms” in the 1990s.

Clearly, climate change is having dramatic effects on humans and all life on earth, and cigarette smoking is also deadly. Which camp is the death camp? Heartland Institute, which lobbied against government cigarette smoking health reforms and is a climate-science denier, or people who are anti-smoking and believe the vast, vast majority of scientists around the world who know and have proven that climate change is both real, man-made, and will have drastic affects on the world?

Wikipedia notes:

In its early years, the Heartland Institute focused on policies relevant to the Midwestern United States. Since 1993 it has focused on reaching elected officials and opinion leaders in all 50 states. In addition to research, the Heartland Institute features an Internet application called PolicyBot which serves as a clearinghouse for research from other conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the libertarian Cato Institute. The Institute’s president and CEO is Joseph L. Bast.

Yes, Heartland is in bed with ALEC. Big surprise…

Heartland reportedly believes that climate change, or global warming, is not real — but if it were, there would be financial benefits from it. Perhaps they have the mortician industry cornered?

Wikipedia also notes:

In 2008 a bibliography written by Dennis Avery was posted on Heartland’s Web site, titled “500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares”. In late April 2008, Heartland reported that the web site DeSmogBlog had “targeted The Heartland Institute in late April 2008, and in particular two lists posted on Heartland’s Web site of scientists whose published work contradicts some of the main tenets of global warming alarmism.” The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the work of Jim Salinger, chief scientist at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, was “misrepresented” as part of a “denial campaign”.

In response to criticism, The Heartland Institute changed the title of the list to “500 Scientists Whose Research Contradicts Man-Made Global Warming Scares.” Heartland did not remove any of the scientists’ names from the list.Dennis Avery explained, “Not all of these researchers would describe themselves as global warming skeptic”…”but the evidence in their studies is there for all to see.” Heartland’s president, Joseph Bast, wrote “They have no right — legally or ethically — to demand that their names be removed from a bibliography composed by researchers with whom they disagree. Their names probably appear in hundreds or thousands of bibliographies accompanying other articles or in books with which they disagree. Do they plan to sue hundreds or thousands of their colleagues? The proper response is to engage in scholarly debate, not demand imperiously that the other side redact its publications.”