atheism environment: assholes corporate irresponsibility denialists Heartland Institute idiots
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Year 3, Month 5, Day 30: Heartland Haz A Sad
Awwwwwwww. So sad. Heartland’s feeling some heat:
In a fiery blogpost on the Heartland website, the organisation’s president Joseph Bast admitted Heartland’s defectors were “abandoning us in this moment of need”.
Over the last few weeks, Heartland has lost at least $825,000 in expected funds for 2012, or more than 35% of the funds its planned to raise from corporate donors, according to the campaign group Forecast the Facts, which is pushing companies to boycott the organisation.
The organisation been forced to make up those funds by taking its first publicly acknowledged donations from the coal industry. The main Illinois coal lobby is a last-minute sponsor of this week’s conference, undermining Heartland’s claims to operate independently of fossil fuel interests.
Its entire Washington DC office, barring one staffer, decamped, taking Heartland’s biggest project, involving the insurance industry, with them.
Board directors quit, conference speakers cancelled at short-notice, and associates of long standing demanded Heartland remove their names from its website. The list of conference sponsors shrank by nearly half from 2010, and many of those listed sponsors are just websites operating on the rightwing fringe.
“It’s haemorrhaging,” said Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, who has spent years tracking climate contrarian outfits. “Heartland’s true colours finally came through, and now people are jumping ship in quick order.”
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of sociopaths. Sent May 20:
By sponsoring billboards comparing climate scientists to mass murderers, the Heartland Institute proves that bizarre beliefs lead inexorably to bizarre behaviors. This secretive corporatist think-tank has for years invested enormous fiscal and intellectual capital in ideas unconnected to verifiable scientific fact; their plans for the promotion of anti-science curricula demonstrate: this isn’t just ordinary climate-change denial, but near-sociopathic fabulism.
But organizations this disconnected from reality in one area cannot be expected to understand the consequences of their actions in other areas, which is why Heartland’s response to the predictable outrage generated by their grotesque guilt-by-association strategy seems so clumsily pathetic. “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,” wrote Voltaire, centuries ago. We now have a new corollary to his apothegm: those who believe their own absurdities cannot recognize their own atrocities.
Heartland’s wounds are entirely self-inflicted — yet another inconvenient reality for them to deny.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture assholes denialists idiots
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Year 3, Month 5, Day 29: Getting So Much Realer All The Time
The Ledger (Lakeland, FL) runs a piece by Charles Reynolds, addressing some implications — and taking a dig at the chuckleheads along the way.
Some people believe the concept of climate change, also called global warming, is a plot cooked up by tree-hugging liberals to get everyone else to stop treating planet Earth like a trash heap. But governments and multinational corporations worldwide don’t think climate change is a hoax.
Among corporations taking an active role in finding solutions for problems caused by ever-worsening weather patterns are Weyerhaeuser, DuPont, Boeing, Georgia-Pacific, Deutsche Telekom, Royal Dutch/Shell, Toyota and Ontario Power Generation. Hardly bastions of liberalism. And speaking of the flip side of altruism, the government of communist China is becoming increasingly concerned about the damage climate change is causing.
The organizations mentioned are, of course, worried about their bottom lines. It’s the world’s biologists, botanists and scientists who are distressed over the effects of climate change on hundreds of thousands of species of plants and animals.
Sent in a rush, 5/19 – getting ready for the Flutes concert.
When confronted with the facts about climate change, denialists respond in one of several extremely predictable ways. By far the most popular is a mix of guilt-by-association and ad hominem attack, as in the endless attacks on the integrity of former Vice President Al Gore. Another “greatest hit” for self-styled skeptics is the argument from incredulity — “it must be impossible, because I don’t understand anything about science.” And, of course, we’re always going to hear from the tinfoil hat brigade, with their increasingly far-fetched conspiracy theories: “global warming is a hoax cooked up by socialists in order to enforce global redistribution of wealth from the hands of the job creators into the pockets of greedy climatologists,” or something like that.
Meanwhile, the researchers who are actually working in the field keep finding more information that suggests the problem is actually significantly more dangerous than had been previously thought. While warmer weather is excellent news for gardeners in the short term, the steady increases in planetary temperature are going to make feeding our civilization exponentially more difficult in the centuries to come — something which should (eventually) engage the attention of the denialists.
Would those who reject the validity of climate science be willing to sign insurance waivers, relinquishing any damages from the effects of global warming? Let’s see them put their money where their mouths are.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes centrism corporate irresponsibility denialists
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Year 3, Month 5, Day 27: You Say Yes, I Say No.
The Calgary Herald has a columnist named Brian Crowley, who is attempting to thread the centrist needle on climate.
The time has come to think differently about climate change.
For too long, the debate has been monopolized by two parties. One is almost religious, fervently believing in man-made climate change, and that only large changes in human behaviour can stave off disaster.
Their opponents argue that the science is uncertain, unsettled and inconclusive, and therefore, that no action is warranted until we possess that missing certainty.
I don’t agree with either camp. In most areas, there is only ever certainty of uncertainty. In other words, both those who believe certainty has been achieved and those who say it has not share the same assumption: that certainty is what we are after and we can get it.
The reality is that long-range future energy, climate, economic and other carbon-related environmental conditions are and will remain significantly uncertain, highly variable and largely unpredictable. Scientists and mathematicians know that the systems involved in the various dimensions of climate change policy are in fact extremely complex and often chaotic, fraught with considerable, irreducible uncertainty.
But contrary to the so-called skeptics, this uncertainty does not license inaction. Most human decisions are made in conditions of imperfect uncertain information. We have to act even though we don’t know everything.
More than the usual denialist bullshit, stuff like this really makes me mad. The Herald did not stipulate a word limit, so I let myself run on a bit. Sent May 17:
In his attempt at a “centrist” position on climate change issues, Brian Crowley sets up and knocks down several convenient strawmen.
One: caricaturing those concerned about Earth’s climatic transformation as “almost religious, fervently believing in man-made climate change” misrepresents both environmentalism and religion by overlooking the simple fact that those advocating for action on climate change would be delighted to learn they’d been mistaken (unlike the faithful, who resist contradictions, facts, and logic with preternatural stubbornness). Those who understand enough science to recognize that our civilization is in deep trouble aren’t persuaded by out-of-context statistics, ad hominem arguments, or pseudo-scientific irrelevancies, which is why there aren’t a lot of “former climate-change believers” around except on internet comment threads.
Two: Mr. Crowley’s dismissal of “policies that promise to prevent climate change.” No such policies have been seriously proposed by any politician anywhere, for the simple reason that those who understand the science know that the changes are already irreversible. Realistic global warming legislation advocates either preparation strategies (e.g., investing in strengthened infrastructure) or mitigation (e.g., ways to reduce greenhouse emissions).
Three: he dismisses the notion that human attitudes and behavior can change, calling it an assumption “that has little or no basis in social science or historical precedent.” Mr. Crowley’s notion that the conveniences of contemporary civilization are somehow permanently fixed in our species’ way of living is risible. Two hundred years ago, most people never traveled more than a few miles from their birthplaces; one hundred years ago, almost nobody on Earth owned a car; fifty years ago, almost nobody owned a computer; fifty years from now, we’ll be out of oil, and living on a grossly hotter planet — and we will have to adapt if humanity is to survive.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists Heartland Institute idiots
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Year 3, Month 5, Day 26: Zippadee Doo Dah Day
More on the Heartland idiocy, this time from the Pocono Record (NY):
The Heartland Institute may be doing climate scientists a big favor through its lastest anti-climate change campaign.
The group is employing a sensational illogic in trying to debunk the theory that the earth is warming, allying repellent criminal characters with an acknowledgement of rising temperatures. It’s an odd marriage, so odd that maybe deeper thinkers will question its merit, as they should.
Recently, the Heartland Institute launched a billboard advertising campaign in Chicago featuring the image of convicted “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski along with the statement, “I still believe in Global Warming. Do you?”
The so-called think tank announced plans to link deranged murderer Charles Manson and international terrorist Osama bin Laden to global warming, too.
Maybe their idea is that the unknowing public will begin to identify climate scientists as beyond the pale — mentally ill criminals or insanely cruel religious zealots.
So is Defense Secretary Leon Panetta a nut case? Panetta has described global warming as a national security threat.
Is former vice president Al Gore a terrorist? You may not agree with his assessment that climate change is “An Inconvenient Truth,” but should he really be locked up?
I know who deserves to be locked up. Sent May 16:
Given the possible catastrophic consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect, the irresponsibility of denialist organizations like the Heartland Institute is staggering. In cherry-picking from the available climatological research only the few small smatterings of data which support their predetermined conclusions, Heartland’s “experts” engage in a travesty of scientific method. This alone would warrant dismissal of their assertions. But by framing the discussion of climate change with comparisons between climate scientists and deranged sociopaths, the corporate-funded “think tank” has sacrificed any remaining vestiges of credibility.
In reality, of course, the worldwide scientific consensus on climate change is exceptionally robust, and getting more so every day as new evidence is integrated with the old. By preventing or delaying much-needed policy responses to the rapidly unfolding crisis, organizations like the Heartland Institute are far closer to those conscienceless mass murderers than the researchers and environmentalists they have so grotesquely maligned.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists ecologies idiots media irresponsibility sustainability
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Year 3, Month 5, Day 25: The Pitter-Patter Of Little Feet
The Boston Herald (my local Murdoch rag) runs an article from the Seattle Times on a problem with animals:
SEATTLE — As climate change transforms their habitat, some animals are already on the move. But a new analysis from the University of Washington warns that many species won’t be able to run fast enough to survive a warming world.
On average, about 9 percent of the Western Hemisphere’s mammals migrate too slowly to keep pace with the rapid climate shifts expected over the next century, says the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In some areas, including parts of the Appalachian Mountains and the Amazon basin, nearly 40 percent of mammals may be unable to reach safe haven in time.
They’ll never print this one in a million years, but it was fun to write. Sent May 15:
If the thousands of mammal species whose slowly-changing migratory patterns put them at risk of extinction just knew that climate change is a hoax engineered by a worldwide conspiracy of scientists and liberal environmentalists, it would undoubtedly make them feel much better about the loss of their irrecoverable habitats.
But only humans are susceptible to the misdirection practiced by conservative news networks, which means that those endangered animals will just have to get used to their newly inhospitable ecological niches, or die. Ultimately, though, it’s not just regional and local ecosystems that are being transformed, but the entire planet. That’s what “climate change” means — global, not local; long-term, not short-term — and the implications of the University of Washington study should be a wake-up call for any still living in the denialist dreamland.
Humans are mammals, too. Where will we go when our habitats will no longer sustain us?
Warren Senders
Ha ha! The joke’s apparently on me. They printed it. And boy oh boy did it attract a fusillade of stupidity in the comments.
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 3, Month 5, Day 24: We Can Share…
The Idaho Statesman discusses the, um, intellectual foundations of the partisan divide on climate change:
The science that has driven and dominated this debate is the “psychology of persuasion.”
The Heartland Institute is an organization now leading the climate-skepticism campaign, after it ended its efforts to raise doubts about the connection between smoking and cancer. Recently, the group pushed its case with billboards citing “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, Charles Manson and Fidel Castro as examples of people who believe in global warming.
It’s not surprising that with the most famous promoter of climate change being Al Gore, the former Democratic candidate for president, many Republicans see the issue in partisan terms.
Generic “Republicans are idiots” screed. Sent May 14:
Devaluing expertise has long been a feature of conservative politics and government. As far back as the McCarthy-era purge of “old China hands” from the State Department, Republican politicians have exploited anti-intellectualism in American culture for their own electoral advantage, reaching new lows in the past few decades with the rise of ideologically slanted news outlets and right-wing “think tanks” dedicated entirely to the avoidance of inconvenient realities.
Call it “veriphobia” — fear of truth — and its greatest potential for long-term disaster lies in the area of climate change and its effects. Future historians will point to the psychological mechanisms of denial as key elements in our national failure to address the climate crisis. Do NASA studies indicate the planet is warming? Do climate scientists agree on the human causes of the greenhouse effect? Republicans would sooner defund NASA and vilify climatologists rather than admit error.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes denialists Heartland Institute idiots
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Year 3, Month 5, Day 20: Godwin Likes Puppies!
The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, on the Heartland Institute:
The Heartland Institute was forced to pull its billboard campaign comparing those who believe in climate change – the vast majority of credible scientists – to mass murderers. The recall came within 24 hours of launching the despicable campaign.
The billboard was meant to promote the Chicago-based right-wing think tank’s seventh annual International Conference on Climate Change, scheduled for later in May. A billboard along the Eisenhower Expressway featured a mug shot of Una- bomber Theodore Kaczynski and said, “I still believe in Global Warming. Do You?”
“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),” read a May 3 news release from the institute.
Generic by now. I wonder what new catastrophe will provide fodder for letters next week? Sent May 11:
The disastrous failure of their short-lived billboard campaign doesn’t appear to have embarrassed anyone at the Heartland Institute. Their irrelevant and offensive attempt to link climate scientists with mass murderers demonstrates conclusively how little factual evidence exists to support climate-change denial.
The already robust scientific consensus on anthropogenic global climate change is becoming stronger by the day, as researchers all over the planet contribute to a significant body of understanding. While climatologists do err, most of their mistakes have been in underestimating the consequences of various climate forcing agents.
Perhaps in the wake of this debacle, our media will belatedly recognize that these petrol-funded denialists contribute nothing to the discussion beyond grotesque character assassination and absurd ad-hominem arguments, and acknowledge that there is no meaningful scientific disagreement about the basic facts of the climate crisis. By revealing their intellectual bankruptcy, Heartland’s advertisements may ultimately have done us all a favor.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists Heartland Institute idiots
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Year 3, Month 5, Day 18: I Like To Use The Word “Whinging,” Don’t You?
The Christian Science Monitor, on the Heartland Institute’s billboard craziness:
Update, 5:23 p.m Eastern Time: In a statement by Heartland president Joseph Bast, the organization announced that it will be taking down the Unabomber billboard after only 24 hours. Bast wrote that the billboard was an “experiment” meant to “turn the tables” on climate-change advocates.
“We know that our billboard angered and disappointed many of Heartland’s friends and supporters, but we hope they understand what we were trying to do with this experiment,” Bast wrote. “We do not apologize for running the ad, and we will continue to experiment with ways to communicate the ‘realist’ message on the climate.”
The “experiment” resulted in “uncivil name-calling and disparagement” from climate-change scientists and activists, Bast complained.
Come the deluge, they deserve to drown. Sent May 8:
Given that Heartland Institute’s bizarre guilt-by-association ad campaign insultingly compared thousands of dedicated scientists and researchers to deranged murderers, it’s bizarre to hear Heartland’s president Joseph Bast whinging about an “uncivil” response. If any party in this wholly manufactured controversy deserves the description, it’s those who thought the grotesque billboards were a good idea, not the justifiably incensed scientists and environmentalists who responded.
But the real irony lies in the word’s deeper connotations. To be civil means more than just being polite; it is to respect the society of which one is a part. Thus means the Heartland Institute is downright anti-civil — for surviving the looming climate crisis will need the resources, cooperation and ingenuity of our civil society. By denying the problem and demonizing those who are trying to alert the rest of us, Heartland undermines America’s greatest national resource: our ability to work cooperatively with one another.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists Heartland Institute idiots
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Year 3, Month 5, Day 17: The Changer Things Are, The Samer They Get
The Washington Post is one of many papers addressing the Heartland Institute’s shark-jumping:
A stark mug shot of domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski briefly took center stage in the increasingly ugly debate over climate change Friday as the Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank funded by major corporations, launched a billboard campaign equating people convinced that global warming is real to the convicted killer.
“I still believe in Global Warming. Do you?” read big orange letters next to the Unabomber’s infamously grizzled face on an electronic billboard along the Eisenhower Expressway outside Chicago, the Heartland Institute’s home.
The billboard went live Thursday afternoon. But by 4 p.m. Eastern time, an outcry from allies and opponents alike led the Heartland Institute’s president, Joe Bast, to say he would switch off the sign within the hour.
By the time this surfaces on the blog, of course, the story will be old news. But Heartland’s people will still be assholes of brobdingnagian proportions. Sent May 7:
According to the Heartland Institute, the fact that various unsavory individuals have expressed concern about climate change is ipso facto an argument against the existence of anthropogenic global warming. Pooh. Ted Kaczynski probably mentioned the law of gravity somewhere in his screeds, but that doesn’t mean we should reject Isaac Newton’s math.
The grotesque billboards positing a false equivalency between a worldwide scientific consensus and the deluded rantings of Charles Manson and the Unabomber are a new version of an old trick: guilt by association. During the fifties and sixties, Khrushchev criticized American racism — and in response, segregationist politicians labeled Martin Luther King a communist. Unable to argue away the facts of the climate crisis, Heartland Institute can only resort to name-calling.
Aside from demonstrating the susceptibility of American conservatives to irrelevant ad-hominem arguments, Heartland’s latest stunt only reminds us: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 3, Month 5, Day 10: All I Gotta Do Is…Act Naturally
Sigh. Another day, another moderate conservative who just can’t understand why his party is so darned unreasonable nowadays. The Iowa City Press-Citizen hosts the remarks of Mr. Bill Ferrel, who haz a sad:
As a conservative Republican who very much understands the need to reduce and control our spending, it may seem strange that I understand and accept that climate change is impacting my home, state and country.
It is beyond comprehension that my party would so adamantly avoid dealing with the fact that we now are facing historical events on such a regular basis that it is impacting our state and national budgets in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
Why do we continue to miss the chance to address proactively the adverse impacts of our past and current actions? Why is it that we have not connected the dots between climate change and real life events that have occurred in our own backyards? Why do we find it acceptable to have massive damage to our university, and yet sit by and be satisfied with the hundreds of millions of dollars that are being spent locally to repair the damage?
Another day, another chance to educate the increasingly rare moderate Republican on why his party is full of idiots. Sent May 1:
Bill Ferrel can’t understand why his party “would so adamantly avoid dealing with the fact” of global climate change. He’s not alone in finding the antics of the current Republican party incomprehensible, but one wonders why it’s taken him so long. While the GOP’s fraught relationship with inconvenient expertise dates back to the Truman administration, when “old China hands” were expelled from the State Department by Joe McCarthy’s henchmen on charges of communist sympathies, the party of Lincoln really left its moorings with the administration of Ronald Reagan, whose anecdotal governance left facts gasping for breath in choking clouds of fairy dust.
Mr. Ferrel wants his fellow conservatives to “ask the questions and seek reasonable solutions.” But their decades of anti-intellectual posturing and ideological inflexibility have made Republicans both incurious and unreasonable — and created an overheated political environment with likely consequences almost as damaging as the burgeoning greenhouse effect.
Warren Senders