we’re all dangerous

These people have just lost the fucking plot completely. Here’s a photo of one of the billboards put up by the fine folks at The Heartland Instititute.

It goes without saying that they are a climate change denial “think tank”, their position being to dismiss scientific opinions on climate change, insisting that global warming is not occurring and then neatly hedging that bet by claiming it will be beneficial even if it is, but this is taking things a notch above anything I’ve ever seen before, at least on the topic of climate change.

The billboard here has since been taken down—it was up for 24 hours or so—but according to a statement by Heartland it has served its purpose. What purpose is that?

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. We found it interesting that the ad seemed to evoke reactions more passionate than when leading alarmists compare climate realists to Nazis or declare they are imposing on our children a mass death sentence. We leave it to others to determine why that is so.

Heartland has further plans;

The billboard series features Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber; Charles Manson, a mass murderer; and Fidel Castro, a tyrant. Other global warming alarmists who may appear on future billboards include Osama bin Laden and James J. Lee (who took hostages inside the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in 2010).

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…..

….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. 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.

That link is in the original pullquote from the Heartland website, and there is indeed a quiz there. It’s very cleverly done, and I recommend you take a look. I managed 75%, and that was with a couple of somewhat uncertain guesses.

The reality is that Al Gore and Ted Kaczynski were on the same page with some of their ecological insights, but the fact that the similarities end there, and the equally obvious fact that almost all climate science confirms, daily, the validity of those insights is occluded completely by this kind of bullshit.

This is dreadfully effective and dangerous propaganda worthy of Goebbels himself. We know the drill—everything dangerous lunatics believe is nonsense: Kaczynski was a dangerous lunatic who believed in anthropogenic climate: climate change is therefore bollocks: Al Gore believes in climate change: ergo Gore is a dangerous lunatic.

I’m left wondering just how high a level of hysteria these kinds of outfits are willing to ratchet things up to.  This is batshit crazy, and will get someone hurt.