The Heartland Institute has killed its offensive climate change-denying billboard campaign after climate change deniers — including a right-wing GOP Senator — and activists all decried the ads. Heartland, a so-called think tank that specializes in producing questionable campaigns and questionable “evidence” for climate change deniers to then spread, created the billboards which feature images of the Unabomber and the words, “I still believe in Global Warming. Do You?,†suggesting that climate change adherents are mass-murderers, for no apparent reason. They have refused to apologize.
In fact, it is climate change deniers who are the potential mass-murderers. The vast majority of scientists around the world agree that climate change is man-made and will have drastic effects on all humans, and the planet, potentially causing or contributing to the death of millions of people and untold billions of animals.
Amusingly calling their Unabomber billboards an “experiment,” Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast said in a statement:
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.
But the real probable reason for the end of the “experiment” — one Congressman threatened to pull his support of Heartland. The Hill reports that the billboard campaign “also rankled at least one Capitol Hill supporter of the group. Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), a climate skeptic who opposes emissions regulation, threatened to cancel his speech at the conference over the billboard.”
“The congressman will not participate in the upcoming Climate Change Conference if the Heartland Institute decides to continue this ad campaign, and he raised those same concerns to the Heartland Institute. He is glad to hear that these ads are coming down and wants to get back to the issues. He feels we can win this debate without the name-calling,†said Sensenbrenner spokeswoman Amanda Infield in an email.
Asked if he would attend the conference in light of the decision to yank the billboard, she replied, “If the ads are coming down, the congressman is planning to still participate.â€
When a right wing radical like Jim Sensenbrenner thinks you’re too radical, you’re too radical.
Who’s Congressman Sensenbrenner? A long-time House Republican, Sensenbrenner was a manager in the House for the impeachment of Bill Clinton. He also introduced the PATRIOT ACT into the House and was a strong supporter of the war in Iraq. He is the Ranking Republican on the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, which should scare anyone who has children or hopes to be alive fifty-years from now.
But Heartland’s billboards didn’t die before the Huffington Post had time to “take the idea to its logical conclusion.”
