Bishop Hill On abusive analogy
May 6, 2012 Climate: Sceptics Climate: other The Heartland Institute is stepping back from their awful poster campaign, which has been widely reported and widely condemned by both sides of the debate. I think the reverberations are going to be felt for quite a while.
Abusive analogy and smear by association are a time-honoured rhetorical approaches, which people on both sides of the climate debate are very fond of. Although Brad Johnson's Think Progress article on Anders Breivik's dissent from the climate orthodoxy seems to have been "disappeared", it is still available on Google's cache, and I have taken a copy for posterity here. Some choice excerpts follow:
Although Breivik’s conspiracy theories are insane, they are in line with mainstream opinion among American conservatives. He cites Christopher Monckton’s speech before the Minnesota Free Market Institute in 2009, accusing President Obama of trying to cede United States sovereignty to the United Nations through climate treaties. Monckton — a rabid conspiracy theorist who claims his opponents are Nazis — was a Republican witness before Congress on global warming in 2010.
Breivik also believed that the “Climategate” hacking incident “revealed how top scientists conspired to falsify data in the face of declining global temperatures in order to prop up the premise that man-made factors are driving climate change.”
One of his sources for this delusional claim is right-wing climate conspiracy theorist James Delingpole, who regularly appears on Fox News, including Glenn Beck‘s now defunct show. The Norwegian terrorist also cited climate conspiracy blogger Steve McIntyre, who appeared in a one-hour Fox News special on global warming in 2009. McIntyre’s conspiracy theories have been promoted by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK). Dozens of Republican members of Congress have endorsed the Climategate conspiracy theory.
It's also interesting to read the Think Progress view on the Heartland billboard campaign in the light of this earlier posting.
DeSmog's article on the same theme remains in place.
It is extraordinary that Think Progress and DeSmog seem to be allowed to do this kind of thing without attracting any significant criticism. I can't help feeling that the people who are now writing letters to Heartland's funders calling for them to cut off support ought to be writing to the backers of Romm et al and DeSmog too.
I think we can all agree that comparisons to individual mass murderers is beyond the pale, but there are of course milder examples of the abusive analogy too. I have spent many a dull minute snipping references to "eco-fascists" and "green Nazis" from the comments threads here. The use of these terms is widely seen as reprehensible.
On the other hand, use of "denier" and "denialist" is extremely widespread among upholders of the IPCC position - indeed it has been used by Rajendra Pachauri himself on occasion. I also wonder if the the Guardian's interest in the BNP's policies on climate change represents more of a general attempt to smear by association than a serious attempt to analyse the party's position.
Is there one rule for upholders of the climate orthodoxy and another for dissenters?
Bishop Hill
Grist's article on Breivik is here.
This one is particularly interesting because Grist is part of the Guardian's Environment Network.
Here is what Leo Hickman had to say about the Heartland billboard affair:
Earlier, I sent [Roger Helmer MEP] him an email with a link to Heartland's poster campaign press release and asked him: "Will you now be reconsidering attending in light of this new poster campaign for the conference? Do you approve of or condemn the poster campaign?"
He confirmed he was still attending, adding:
I am delighted that the Heartland campaign for the Chicago climate conference has succeeded in its purpose and attracted the attention of the Guardian. I urge Guardian readers to attend the conference if they can, but failing that, to follow it on the web.
I simply have nothing further to add.
If Leo thinks that Helmer should dissociate himself from Heartland, then presumably he thinks that the Guardian should remove Grist from its Environment Network?
Reader Comments (93)
Warmists were eager to point out that the Norwegian terrorist, Anders Breivik, is a climate change sceptic. So it didn’t take long for some sceptics to point out that the Unabomber is an articulate global warming alarmist. In fact, it is a challenge to distinguish excerpts of his writings from those of Al Gore.
For some fun, you can take the test here: http://www.crm114.com/algore/quiz.html.
This is not to say that Kaczynski is VP material, or that Gore is unbalanced, only that they are strange bedfellows on this topic. So you can’t dismiss anyone’s views based on crazies who may share some of them.
Let’s get back to the debate. The null hypothesis is that climate is nature at work. Those who believe otherwise must present proof of AGW above and beyond natural variability.
John
I believe that Unabomber didn't actually mention climate change.
May 6, 2012 at 2:15 PM
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
TK's Manifesto was written on or before 1995 - before "climate change" was coined. Back then it was Greenhouse Gases.
May 6, 2012 at 2:46 PM | Bishop Hill
True, but if you spend all your time condemning daft actions from your "side" that will be a full-time job :-)
(Same goes for me too, incidentally!)
BTW I thought Josh's cartoon of the "Sceptic Isle" was a much, much better approach to both winning / maintaining support from your "side" and laying out a clear position for rational debate with others. Well done Josh!
Donna may or may not be around. She pulled out because she was offended by the ad. FIne. But to post a diatribe on her blog about how her reputation has been "harmed" is just over the top. So her reputation has been harmed by something a third party did, with no reference to her, with which she disagreed publicly and as a result of which she has publicly broken ties with that entity. And yet she wails that her reputation has been harmed? For Christ's sake. No-one is allowed to cause offence anymore and if they do the entire world howls about how offended they are. Victim mentality writ large.
Same with the warmists. Maiden aunts scowling and looking down judgmentally on others - all the time, every time. I am so bored of this world where laws have been made to encourage the professional victim - you can now go to jail if someone you have never met finds comments you make offensive even though they were not directed at that person - we have IN LAW arrived in 1984 - and we're all here talking about how we need to deal with each other with respect, tolerance, berating others for their hypocrisy, whatever. Its all hot air and entirely tedious. We should say what we say and stick to our principles and not worry that someone we have never met might be such a feeble wallflower that they will wail about how ofended they are. Im not even 50 yet and the world is FUBAR as far as I am concerned.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHMoDt3nSHs. Watch it. Think about it.
Bish (2:15PM), looks like you are right. I have not been able to find any remarks by Ted Kaczynski about climate change nor on global warming. So that seems to make the Heartland billboard worse than foolish, it makes it wrong.
I have come across a commentary pointing out that the Guardian environmentalists and the Unambomber share some attitudes (http://www.climate-resistance.org/2011/01/the-immoderate-moderator-comment-is-not-free.html) in their belittlement, indeed contempt for humanity ('environmentalism is an open poison pen letter, to all humanity.'. As Ben Pile points out there, the Comment is Free (CiF) censorship is remarkable:
So you can say that humans are a cancer on CiF. You can say that humans are a virus on CiF. You can say that the human race is ‘not obviously worth preserving‘.
But you can’t say that these ideas are dangerous. You can’t challenge these ideas. And you can’t hold the authors of these ideas to account.'
I also found a quiz inviting the player to decide which of a set of 12 quotes was due to the bomber and which to Al Gore (http://www.crm114.com/algore/quiz.html)
There is also this essay from 2011 by the meteorologist Brian Sussman (http://www.theclimategatebook.com/eco-terrors-inspiration/). Extracts:
'Last week eco-terrorist James Jay Lee executed a dangerous hostage plot inside the headquarters of the Discovery Channel. Armed with what appeared to be pipe bombs and a cheap pistol, Lee claimed to have been “awakened” by Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth. Lee regarded humans as the “most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around.” His desire was to force the Discovery Channel to fill it’s programming schedule with “solutions to save the planet.” Lee was shot and killed by police.
...
And discovered by the FBI in the Unabomber’s Montana hovel? A well-worn copy of Al Gore’s 1990 screed, Earth In The Balance. Kaczynski apparently was quite taken by Gore’s missive. His copy of Earth In The Balance was dog-eared, underlined, marked and well worn.
The question is, why should anyone be surprised when environmental nut jobs mentally detonate? If one takes the warnings of Al Gore and his comrades as gospel, planet earth is a ticking time bomb and if nothing is done to stop it we’ll all perish. For some such fear mongering becomes a clarion call to aggressive action.
For example, in Earth In The Balance, Gore likens the fight against global warming with that of a deadly wartime enemy, stating, the “assault on the earth is breathtaking, and the horrific consequences are occurring so quickly as to defy our capacity to recognize them…Isolated pockets of resistance fighters who have experienced this juggernaut first hand have begun to fight back in inspiring but, in the final analysis, woefully inadequate ways.” '
It is not surprising that out of this facile and aggressive alarmism, offensiveness will follow. We have the 10:10 group's 'No Pressure' as an illustration of how readily decency and compassion can be cast aside by zealots. Kaczynski went further and used real bombs rather than make-believe ones.
We are already in a coarse and offensive climate of 'debate'. The Heartland billboards have added to it by hitting back using innuendo. Which is a huge shame since their conferences for example have been invaluable beacons of decency and calm appraisal of climate knowledge.
But the billboard fiasco may well succeed in getting more attention paid to inflammatory language and destructive, inhumane attitudes on the part of some of those playing prominent roles in the promotion of acute alarm about airborne CO2.
Maybe some good will come out it after all.
Here is my take. From an e-mail I sent to Jeff Condon:
Wow. Rationality took a vacation this weekend. What's with all the normally sane people losing their heads over a silly billboard?
I don't give a damn about Heartland one way or the other. And I don't care about left-wing idiots like Keith Kloor who think the billboard is the worst thing ever. I expect the wingnuts, wackos and opportunists to wet their pants and have the vapors. What is disturbing, however, is for people I trust and respect to lose all sense of proportion and grossly overreact.
The billboard is silly and it makes a dumb argument. If people want to distance themselves from silly and dumb, I won't argue with them. But it isn't reprehensible. Michael Mann is reprehensible. Fraud and slander are reprehensible. People need to take a deep breath and look at what the ad says and what it doesn't say. The ad is factually correct. It isn't dishonest. It isn't fraudulent. It doesn't defame anyone (defamation being far worse than simple lying). It is merely political speech making a silly argument. Silly and dumb.
Political speech -- that's the first thing that needs to be noted. This isn't about science. You don't do science on billboards. This is politics. And it should be judged by the same standards we apply to politics. By political standards, it's pretty tame. No one is being called a racist or sexist or homophobe. No one is being accused of wanting to starve kids or kill seniors or rape the planet. No one is being slandered as e.g. doctors were slandered when Obama accused doctors of cutting off limbs needlessly because they wanted the extra pay for doing an operation. There is a whole bunch of nasty reprehensible political speech out there lately. The Heartland ad isn't even in the ballpark with that kind of ugly stuff. Again, no lies, no fraud, no slander. Pretty tame by comparison.
The ad says the unabomber believes in global warming. True statement. Irrelevant and silly, but true. Everyone with at least a room temperature IQ knows that politicians and political causes have no control over who votes for them or supports them. Everyone with a pulse recognizes that millions of people will vote for either Obama or Romney in November. Each of those groups of voters will include a whole bunch of folks who are nasty, ugly, mean, rotten and terrible. And not one of them, by virtue of his vote, will be a reflection on whichever candidate he supports. If we all know this, why have so many people lost their minds condemning Heartland for a silly political ad?
The ad does not say that everyone who believes in global warming is a murderer and terrorist. Doesn't even imply it. Not to anyone with a whit of intelligence. If Obama ran an ad that says Bubba Cracker, head of the KKK, endorses the GOP, we would all laugh. Who cares? Unless the GOP solicited Bubba or catered to him, his support would be meaningless -- no different than if a Bill Ayers wannabe endorses Obama. Does anyone past kindergarten age really think that tenuous arguments of guilt by association have any persuasive power? Really?!
If the people who have gotten their panties in a bunch want to point a finger at reprehensible actions in the climate wars, let's focus on fraud, defamation, and dishonesty. When Michael Mann dishonestly says a particular scientist is a shill paid by fossil fuel companies to be a 'denier', he is guilty of something exponentially more reprehensible. When scientists fraudulently misrepresent their own work or lie about the state of the science in an IPCC assessment, they are guilty of moral turpitude far, far worse than a silly political billboard ad.
Some people need to get a sense of proportion. If this is the reaction to a silly billboard ad, I can only wonder why lynch mobs haven't descended on the homes of a number of alarmists to extract appropriate justice for their sins.
Bish & others
Just for the record - the Unabomber did mention the "greenhouse effect" twice in his manifesto, although his main thrust was the destruction of what he called "industrial society" -
Also operating against autonomy is the fact that
technology applied in one location often affects people at other
locations far away. Thus pesticide or chemical use near a creek may
contaminate the water supply hundreds of miles downstream, and the
greenhouse effect affects the whole world.
and -
No one knows what will happen as a result of ozone
depletion, the greenhouse effect and other environmental problems that
cannot yet be foreseen. And, as nuclear proliferation has shown, new
technology cannot be kept out of the hands of dictators and
irresponsible Third World nations.
Stan 5.57 Good post.
Heartland with this ad have juxtaposed the hypocrisy of the warmist camp. Mann in his last fairy story still reiterates his ill conceived hockey stick and calls people who disagree deniers and fossil fuel paid shills.About time the gloves came off and this waste of time, money, life and well being of the human race was described with the derision it should be.
What irks is that Heartland has spent $thousands, devoted oodles of time, and maturely managed the production of a bunch of reasoned, properly referenced, downright sensible reports - NIPCC - and then they go and chuck it downwind on a catastrophic self-described "experiment".
I would guess that the cause is that smart people think they can do everything. Their defence displays no understanding.
While there is no doubt about the double-standards, this was the wrong way to expose them, in my view. They have failed - totally - to frame the debate and have probably done more harm than good in consequence.
Instead they could (one idea) have made this a key conference topic, posted up some of the worst warmist propaganda and then put up the billboard poster as a "what if we were to play the same game" example. That would highlight the disparity and give context to the issue.
Crucially they could also have gauged the degree of support from delegates and garnered their input to develop an approach which would achieve the aims without alienating much of the intended audience.
Heartland has brilliantly exposed the hypocrisy in the MSM and climate blogosphere by setting themselves up for this condemnation. The condemnation came as predicted giving us solid evidence the hypocrisy exists. We can now compare apples to apples in the reaction to Heartland's adverts and the exploding children, Heartland and the exploitation of the Norwegian madman, and many more comparables.
That same hypocrisy will also result in a diminished Heartland. Sometimes you have to take one for the cause. Congratulations are in order for Heartland for this selfless act. It is in the best spirit of those scientists who publicly refuse to be rolled over by the consensus thugs who run the CAGW machine.
What about this one? I cannot fathom the insanity at work here. Why would anyone allow comments on how to disrupt functioning power plants using EMP devices to be published?
EMP/HERF devices could be used to simply turn off coal plants or disrupt fossil fuel infrastructure without drawing the attention of conventional improvised munitions/explosives.
“Complete EMP Systems Crated With All Setup Instructions
Sold only to qualified research companies and personnel” EMP150 – 150 Joules, 15 KV, 20 KA (Instructions, by Download – $1.00)……….$8000.00
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Here, on Joe Romm's blog
May 6, 2012 at 3:59 PM | shub>>>
I'd have thought this was in flagrant breach of anti-terrorist legislation.
Perhaps the authorities are simply allowing enough rope to lassoo all the eco nut-cases at the same. time.
Personally, I think this is a serious own goal by the Heartland Institute. But I think they should be left to explain or justify it themselves.
dp, your point about exposing the bias and hypocrisy in MSM is well made, but I really can't imagine this was the intention at Heartland. It was a stupid idea that wasn't thought out properly, and is the kind of thing that happens when - instead of bringing in a PR company - executives get caught up in group think. Or, if it really was the "experiment" that Joe Bast claims, it's the most dumb-ass experiment I've seen in a hell of a long time.
But I do agree that Leo's response has demonstrated in a significant way that he (and Kloor, of course, as usual) can't see past his own biases. He cannot, apparently, grasp how DeSmogBlog's "Breivik: climate denier" deserves equal condemnation. He seems to have an "out of the country" moment every time these things crop up, and merely wafts aside direct questions about the imbalance in his reporting, saying he doesn't have time to deal with such things.
re: Leo Hickman
Life is more comprehensible if one does not expect honesty, consistency, or ethical behavior from such hypocrites. The double standards and hypocrisies of the rabid left are always on display for anyone who bothers to look.
"I don't see why anyone not involved in the HI needs to apologise, condemn, defend, or distance themselves from the adverts. And I don't see why anyone not involved in the HI's campaign cannot ask of the people who are demanding denunciations where their apologies for making connections between violence and scepticism are."
Well said Ben Pile.
May 6, 2012 at 4:41 PM | John Whitman
Thanks! Yes, it's going OK, got another intense couple of weeks finishing off our First Order Draft, which will be out for review in June.
Ironically I've actually found Heartland's NIPCC report to be a useful source of references on the direct effects of CO2 on plants! However, despite this, I was already disappointed and frustrated with the report itself - it's very hard to read, mostly just long blocks of text giving their interpretation of one paper after another and linking these rather vaguely to their assertions that "IPCC is wrong", with little attempt to make systematic, quantitative comparisons with specific IPCC conclusions.
It's also very hard to trace the top-level assertions in the NIPCC summary all the way through to the specific literature cited in the chapters, so it can't really be verified whether Heartland's assertions really are backed up by the literature in the way that they imply (which makes me suspect that it isn't!)
The key thing I get from this billboard thing is that it says a lot about the way Heartland operate in order to get publicity, and gives me some insight into why the NIPCC report may be written the way that it is. The billboard campaign seems to be intended for maximum impact with minimum effort and expense, and I now wonder whether this is also the case for the NIPCC report.
Specifically, my impression is that the key thing about the NIPCC report is not the actual content, which is somewhat superficial when you actually read it, but the size and appearance of the report - it is of a similar physical size to the IPCC report (in terms of page numbers and dimensions) and laid out in a broadly similar style, with references. The long, rambling blocks of text have much less actual information content than equivalent length of text in IPCC, but it all helps keep the book nice and thick and therefore looking "authoritative"! It doesn't seem to matter what the NIPCC report actually says, just as long as it looks like it says something equally as important and well-referenced as IPCC!
I may be wrong of course - it might just be bad writing style! But either way, when you actually read it, there is far less to it than you initially might think.
"It is extraordinary that Think Progress and DeSmog seem to be allowed to do this kind of thing without attracting any significant criticism."
Well, a blog post is not the same as a Billboard campaign. Anthony Watts Charles Manson becomes an advocate for global warming was also little criticised at the time. Did this blog comment on any of them?
Hi Richard, completely agree about the NIPCC. Tedious, and v. long winded, and clearly an attempt to produce a document that looks as authoritative as the IPCC ARs. But then I'm of the opinion that the IPCC ARs at 3000 pages are also put together to give politicians the impression that anything 3000 pages long is authoritative. WG1 is, despite the gatekeeping and selectivity, a tour de force, but you and I know that no policy maker is going to plough through it, or for that matter, read the SPMs. In fact I don't believe anyone outside of the climate science disciplines will read through the WG1. The IPCC ARs are political documents entirely focussed on making politicians believe that the "science is settled" so that they, the politicians, will implement the policies of a small, unelectable, group of green fanatics. You may not believe that now, but I'm certain that with the passage of time you'll come to that view.
As for Heartland's billboard campaign, unbelievably stupid.
Hypocracy is fine if you're the right *kind* of hypocrite.. Just ask George Monbiot.
Oops, 'hypocrisy'..
Maybe it's just the season. Election fever in the States. Not always pretty.
"It is extraordinary that Think Progress and DeSmog seem to be allowed to do this kind of thing without attracting any significant criticism."
Well, a blog post is not the same as a Billboard campaign. Anthony Watts Charles Manson becomes an advocate for global warming was also little criticised at the time. Did this blog comment on any of them?
I have said elsewhere (WUWT) that I repudiate the way in which Heartland uses the image of the "Unabomber" Ted K. in the billboard, BUT..... what they are doing is in fact a close equivalent (intellectually and morally) to what countless C-AGWarmists do with such garbage as the "deniers" label (crafted to compare skeptics on C-AGW to "Holocaust deniers").
So while I do not think it is a proper style of rhetoric or thinking (to compare one's adversary to the most fanatical extremists of whatever ilk).... it is in FACT what many C-AGW activists have been doing for a long time now.
Heartland wanted to call attention to such abuses by their opponents, but I don't think that repeating such abuses is helpful or conducive to rational discussion.
It does, however, mirror closely the way in which many critics of "skeptics" have been operating.
p.s. Do not miss the exposure on Climate Audit of the serious mishandling of Yamal data and subsequent CRU cover-up:
Climate Audit Prevails with FOI Success! CRU Misdeeds Exposed Again....
I had a quick visit to the Grauniad and skimmed Leo Hickman's piece about that which I consider to be HI's billboard gaffe - the tone of the article and of the CiFfers who responded is generally incredibly shrill and the great majority post ridiculously silly, tired nonsense about 'oil shills', etc. Balance, sound information and taste - don't look there!
I suspect what HI has really done is demonstrate that a considerable section of the American populace is, in fact, much more different from the rest of the English-speaking world than us non-Americans suspected - perhaps even more different than other Americans suspected! I was pleased to read Anthony Watt's immediate and unequivocal reaction to HI's billboard. Anthony's poll about this on WUWT is illuminating too, showing a huge majority of WUWT's readership see HI's billboard as very ill-advised, at least.
Nick
I haven't commented on any of the smear-by-association blog posts. What I found interesting was the completely different reaction to the Heartland billboards. Why is being offensive on a billboard different to being offensive on a blog post? Nobody can quite put it into words for me.
Because Bishop on an Internet Blog ,Facebook or a Twitter account you dont have to use your real name
One thing occurs to me. Is there some sort of dodgy PR company behind this train wreck?
May 7, 2012 at 2:31 AM | JJB MKI:
"Oops Hypocrisy"
One thing's sure, we are living in a hypocracy.
Sorry for the lame French joke.
Bishop now that Heartland Institute have done Their Gerald Ratner
And they will have to Stay Quiet for the next few months whilst this PR Fiasco Blows Over or even change their name
Your now the Public Face of Climate Skeptism you thought any more about doing a Video Youtube version of Hocky Stick Illusion
@Ben Pile: Do you think Donna should have attended and expressed here concerns?
I feel this was a missed opportunity for a moderate sane voice to slap down the extremist sceptical element that gives us all the "right-wing nut-job" image.
Donna should have unleashed her fury and then given her blinding IPCC WWF infiltration speech.
Heartland Institute are a Right Wing Think Tank 1st and Climate Change Skeptics 2nd
They have done a Gerald Ratner and accidently Toxified their own Brand Name
Donna L was right to stay away for now ( damage limitation )
Heartland handled Peter Glieck really well they survive him they can survive this PR fiasco
They will be back proberly with a new name
But we cant abandon Heartland and leave them out to dry
I now read that Glieck is now on permanant leave from his Institute
They ve dropped him
Heartland Institute are an American Right Wing Think Tank 1st and Climate Change Skeptics 2nd
They got the connections to Politicians in Washington
What ever new name they comeback with we re goona need them
Hopefully this time they ve learned
Here is a useful summary (hat tip http://climatenonconformist.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/green-totalitarianism/ ) of provocative intolerance from those advocating acute alarm: http://www.thecommentator.com/article/1153/the_rise_of_leftist_eco_fascism
This is not smearing by association, these are words from the horses' mouths. The horses galloping in stampede to scare us witless about CO2 and trample on those who say 'Whoa, steady!'.
Extract:
Fascist intolerance? We’re only getting started.
Alarmist high priest James Hansen has called for skeptics to be put on trial for “high crimes against humanity”. Hansen has also endorsed a book by Keith Farnish that advocates sabotage and environmental terrorism by blowing up dams and demolishing cities to return us to an agrarian age. Hard left Grist magazine columnist David Roberts wants“war crimes trials for these bastards – some sort of climate Nuremberg.”
Canadian environmentalist author, David Suzuki, suggests finding a “legal way of throwing our [climate foot-dragging political] leaders into jail” their climate negligence being “a criminal act”. Wouldn’t the Canadian Civil Liberties Association be appalled? After all, Suzuki is a former board member. Talking Points Memo is fairly representative of the views of hard left websites, asking, “At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers?” Don’t you just love the liberal virtue of tolerance?
Kari Norgaard is professor of climate change at the University of Oregon. At a recent London conference she called for skeptics to be viewed as “racists” and climate scepticism as a “sickness” needing to be “treated”. And the infamous Climategate emails scandal revealed key contributors to the UN IPCC reports threatening science editors, burying data and sounding generally like Richard M. Nixon at his most paranoid.'
Bishop,
What I found interesting was the completely different reaction to the Heartland billboards. Why is being offensive on a billboard different to being offensive on a blog post?
Well, I guess one thing is that people choose to read blog posts. They don't choose to be confronted with pictures of a murderer with the message "This man believes in global warming - do you?".
But I was really addressing your question "Is there one rule for upholders of the climate orthodoxy and another for dissenters?". You usede the Breivik post as your exemplar. But here is Anthony Watts, with a similar post, and a similar lack of response. So that doesn't seem to be the explanation.
Nick
I wondered if that was what people were getting at. It seems to me that the problem with this argument is that it seems to try find a distinction, not in the number of people who are on the receiving end of the abusive analogy, but on the number who observe it happening. I don't see how this can be the cause of the kind of moral outrage we have witnessed in the last few days.
I take your second point, but this brings me back to the question of why we have the moral outrage this time round.
The logical fallacy might be mitigated or removed by examining the reasons each of the "psychopaths" had for espousing CAGW. Was it not to justify powerful top-down authority aimed at reshaping society and the world's economy by suppressing human activity and self-determinism? The excuse of Noble Cause Corruption sometimes applies, and sometimes not -- it's frequently hard not to see the hyper-environmentalism as a ploy and distraction.
In the end, it's their solutions which are the problem; the extremity of the ranting about the destruction of Gaia and extinction of the world's proliferating species etc. is necessary given the mass-murderous steps incorporated in their plans and programs.
And if there's one thing that should have been learned, but seems almost impossible for the sane and civilized public (or their opportunistic leaders) to 'grok' or retain, is that wannabe tyrants tell you in advance, often at great length in published tomes and pronouncements, what they intend to do. And then they do it!
Consider, as few have, the standing ovation Chavez received at Copenhagen for his de-industrialization anti-Western civilization rant. Was that just for his personal charm and flowing rhetorical brilliance? I think not.
Coming very late to this story, I've been intrigued by some of the reactions.
Obviously this was a very ill advised own goal by Heartland. After all, other than criminal psychologists, who gives two hoots what Manson or the Unabomber (or Breivik, for that matter) think?
About as likely to win converts to scepticism, as would be a poster campaign about Hitler's vegetarianism to convince vegans to nip out and try a Big Mac.
It has correctly been pointed out that (a) Heartland's billboards were pure politics (and very inept) and that (b) we sceptics have to put up with this kind of offensive nonsense on a daily basis and those most loudly hyperventilating about Heartland now, are amongst the most likely to have form in dishing it out to those 'evil deniers'.
But Hey! This is a very highly assymetrical struggle. The Thermageddonists have virtually all the resources and all the media support. We just have the ability to keep on pointing out that the Emperor's scrawny arse is still in plain view. And to remind everyone that it isn't the sceptics who advocate spending Trillions (which we don't have) on solutions (which don't work) to problems (which don't exist).
But one of the sad things is that Heartlands' Billboards could have easily been made far more effective.
Instead of using Manson & the Unabomber, why not use Al Gore? Castro would likely have worked. Possibly Osama Bin Laden. But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would have been a gift. Why not Hugo Chávez & Evo Morales? I'd like to see a billboard with David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg together. Here in the UK that would effectively tap into an increasing cynicism about the self-serving main political parties and the complete lack of any questioning or audit of the "consensus" view.
I wouldn't use Osama - too obviously "smearing". But billboards with Gore / Chávez + Castro + Morales / Ahmadinejad / Cameron + Miliband + Clegg would all be effective and would have been very difficult to whinge and moan about. Any of them would have wrong footed the alarmists and made the masses of the uncommited stop and (who knows?) maybe think.
Can I call them "Watermelons"? Or will that get snipped too?
HI's mistake was in getting into the mud with Romm, Hansen, Gleick, etc. They enjoy the wrestling and HI got dirty.
HI always was, except in the minds of true believers, a very small player.
The conclusion being pushed by the AGW community- that since HI made a bad mistake they are correct- is laughable.
Move on.
It will be too bad if this fubar by HI means Gleick gets to pretend he did nothign wrong.
".......It will be too bad if this fubar by HI means Gleick gets to pretend he did nothign wrong."
May 7, 2012 at 10:28 PM | hunter
When I first saw the billboard image, I did wonder if it was all a dirty trick by Gleick and his chums. I certainly wouldn't put it past them and have no doubt the media response would have been identical.
But, unfortunately, not. HI have fessed up and blustering about being unapologetic doesn't cut it. I wouldn't apologise. But I would fire the idiot who decided on this campaign.
May 8, 2012 at 7:58 AM Martin Brumby
" But I would fire the idiot who decided on this campaign."
Joe Bast is unlikely to fire himself.
I do think it's a matter of airing each others' dirty clothes in private vs in public. The number of Grist or ThinkProgress readers is fast dwindling, the number of drive-by Chicago cars by the billboard is enormously larger.
Just as well, of course if a poor idiot with two readers writes a blog post about killing off the entire human population, that's not worth discussing. If it's anybody with thousands of followers, it becomes a matter of outrage.
Leo and Kloor and all the enraged warmists are simply confirming that they do value what Heartland thinks. This shows how they live in the twisted, reality-free Oreskes World where Heartland has a massive influence on climate change skepticism. As if we all here were Big Oil shills and the likes.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the universal rejection of the PR stunt might wake them up to reality. OTOH eg in Leo's case, he's surrounded by mad people who take Mann's words as gospel, so any approach towards reality might be difficult and/or dangerous for him.
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