Saturday, May 5, 2012

The Heartland Institute Ad Campaign Against Climate Change

via The Huffington Post

The Heartland Institute is out with what is quite possibly its most ill-considered publicity stunt to date: a poster ad campaign comparing a belief in global warming to the psychology of mass murder.

The Chicago-based think tank notorious for denying the basic facts about global warming on Thursday launched billboards in Chicago featuring the likes of Ted Kaczynski (better known as the Unabomber) and convicted murderer and cult leader Charles Manson, saying these notorious criminals "still believe in global warming" and asking viewers if they do, too.
What do you think? Are these conservatives something or what?

15 comments:

  1. The purpose of billboard advertising is to grab your attention. Evidently, these worked.
    orlin sellers

    ReplyDelete
  2. Billboard makers have bad taste? This is news to whom? By the way, I share a lot of views with the conservatives, and I accept the scientific evidence and conclusions about climate change.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Meanwhile, this is a great campaign......

    $10,000 To Anyone Who Provides The College Transcripts of President Barack Husein Obama

    http://thetrenches.us/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Your inexplicable Obama hatred must be rooted in racism. Besides, this is completely off topic.

      Delete
    2. Mikeb, just because you can't figure out what his reasons are doesn't mean that the single reason is racism. I've told you before, the world is more complex than your simplistic view of it.

      Delete
  4. A major part of the evidence for historical global temperatures are tree rings. If you have ever seen tree rings, you will understand that it is impossible to measure the width of them because they all blend together and they are irregularly shaped. And even if you could measure the width of tree rings, precipitation and sunshine have a major impact on tree growth. For these reasons I cannot see how anyone could claim to determine temperatures from tree rings and thus I reject tree ring temperature data. So how do we really know if the Earth is even warming?

    There is another problem. Even if the Earth is warming, who is to say that human activity is causing the warming? How much carbon dioxide have volcanoes released in the past 80 years compared to previous centuries? And no one knows how much energy the sun radiated 100 or more years ago. What if the sun radiates 5% more energy now than 200 years ago?

    Plus meteorologists, who have boatloads of accurate real-time data, cannot reliably predict tomorrow's weather. If meteorologists cannot reliably predict tomorrows weather, how can climatologists reliably predict global weather 20 to 100 years out?

    These factors cast too much uncertainty for me to buy in.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tree rings are but one source of data. Ice core samples from Greenland glaciers give a sample of the atmospheric content and the average temperature going back several hundred thousand years. Coral reefs grow at varying rates, depending on the CO2 content of air and water and the water temperature. Measurements of glaciers going back around a hundred years show retreat all over the globe. The British Royal Navy has conducted extensive measurements of temeprature and atmospheric phenomena all over the planet for a couple of centuries. The list goes on.

      The scientific evidence is clear: The planet is heating up, and human activity is the primary and major cause.

      Delete
    2. Can anyone prove it is necessarily a bad thing? Besides, the Earth is more powerful than mankind combined and is quite sufficient in healing itself.
      In my opinion, I think all the tree huggers should hold their breath and quit letting all that poison out of their lungs. That right there would stop a lot of any damage those moron are contributing to our possible, but highly unlikely demise.
      Additionally, the Earth is going to continue even if man doesn't. Big deal. So be it.
      orlin sellers

      Delete
    3. Orlin Sellers, it will be bad for us, given the famines, severe weather, and flooding that will result. The planet has been through hot periods, but we weren't adapted to those conditions. I'm personally fond of the human species.

      Delete
    4. Greg, if I, personally, were that concerned I'd be stocking up now - on everything. And, if the human species was the cause I wouldn't be very fond of them.

      In my mind I think they are all a bunch of Malthusians and Ehrlichians. I'm still waiting for that Population Bomb to explode.
      Just my opinion. I can't get excited about anything AlGoreans have to say.
      orlin sellers

      Delete
  5. Hey, the response billboard has a picture of Anders Breivik and the caption, "I don't believe in global warming. Do you?"

    ReplyDelete
  6. My personal observation about climate change is the extremely drastic weather we've had over the last 5 or 10 years. To me it makes perfect sense that man-made pollution is fucking up the whole planet.

    How this became a right against left argument is the weird part.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mikeb, is there any subject in which you use evidence, rather than your feelings, to make a decision? I'm glad that your sense of things agrees with the evidence here, but I know that your sense isn't reliable.

      Delete
    2. Greg, that wasn't a feeling I described, that was observation. Isn't observation one of the pillars of scientific reasoning? Why do you need to disparage what I say like that?

      Delete
  7. OOPS! We called it "Global Cooling" but we made a mistake.
    Now, we must call it "Global Warming" because that is what is destroying Earth.
    OOPS! We must change the name to "Climate Change" because we didn't know WTF we are talking about.
    Yup, those are some credible AlGoreans we got feeding us their line of crap.
    Kinda like all those animals that they told us went extinct, but they really didn't, along with several hundred new species they didn't know existed.
    But, don't worry citizens, centralized government will fix the problem and we won't let nature get in the way.
    Excuse me if I'm not impressed.
    orlin sellers

    ReplyDelete