A protester outside Heartland's climate denier conference. Photo: Kelly Mitchell

“I don’t appreciate being called a terrorist,” the woman said firmly.

I was standing outside the Hilton Chicago hotel talking to Jim Lakely, the director of communications for the Heartland Institute, when an elderly woman approached us on the street. Dressed in a business suit, she was loading her luggage into a taxi when she noticed Lakely’s Heartland name badge and interrupted our conversation.

“We can have a civil discussion. But I really don’t like being labeled a terrorist,” she said, referencing a billboard posted by Heartland equating people who believe in global warming to the Unibomber. “That’s all I wanted to say.”

“Well, I appreciate you telling me that,” said Lakely, who was taking a break from managing Heartland’s conference to watch the 60 or so people protesting the event outside the hotel.

The woman, who was wearing a badge for a different conference, got into her taxi and drove away. There was a brief moment of awkward silence between me and Lakely.

The exchange perfectly encapsulated the public relations disaster the Heartland Institute has created for itself over the last few weeks. The downfall started with an offensive billboard campaign on May 3rd and ended with 11 companies pulling support for the organization — stripping 35% of corporate funds overnight and leaving its financial future uncertain.

The dramatic drop in support was facilitated by the advocacy organization Forecast the Facts, which collected more than 150,000 signatures from people calling on corporate donors to end their relationship with Heartland.

This series of events built on an earlier incident in which Peter Gleick, a scientist with the Pacific Institute, faked his identity to acquire internal documents from the Heartland Institute. Those documents showed that the organization planned to secretly develop school curriculum to spread doubt about the causes of climate change. It also opened up a window to the organization’s donors, which were forced to make a decision about whether or not they wanted to be associated with Heartland’s tactics.

And then yesterday, the other shoe dropped. In his closing speech, Heartland President Joseph Bast announced that the organization does not have the money to continue putting on its hallmark climate conference — an event that had become a rallying point for an insulated group of climate disinformers.

“I hope to see you at a future conference, but at this point we have no plans to do another ICCC,” said Bast, explaining that Heartland was struggling to meet expenses.

The cancellation marks the end of an era — albeit a short era — for the oddball world of organized climate change denial.

The event, called the International Conference on Climate Change, was started in 2008 as a way to organize libertarians  — many of whom believe that taking action on climate change would create a one-world government dominated by the United Nations.

Heartland tried hard to label the event a “science” conference. But the presentations were almost always political, peppered with anti-government rhetoric and conspiracy theories.

“We’re in a war. We’re in a war against our standard of living,” said Walt Cunningham, a former NASA astronaut, speaking in a morning session on Tuesday.

“There’s not a lot of science here,” said Scott Denning, an atmospheric scientist from Colorado State University who attended the event last year to present the so-called “warmist” case. Neither Denning nor any of the other 97% of climate scientists who say human activity is warming the planet presented at this year’s conference.

In fact, none of this year’s top speakers had any background in climate science. Instead, they spoke about the issues in highly conspiratorial terms.

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Monckton watches the protesters outside Heartland's conference.

With the Heartland Institute suffering from a public relations disaster that caused 11 donors to abandon financial support, one might think the organization would attempt to moderate messaging tactics at its climate denial conference this week.

Or maybe even find an expert who doesn’t freely admit that he “has no scientific qualification” to challenge the science of climate change.

Not quite.

After comparing people who understand global warming with serial killers in a billboard campaign, the organization featured a presentation yesterday that called into question the legitimacy of President Obama’s citizenship.

Enter Lord Christopher Monckton, Heartland’s “mystery guest” who popped in to the conference Tuesday to perform a quirky stand-up comedy routine for a couple hundred eager attendees.

His presentation peeled back yet another layer on the conspiratorial beliefs of many within the climate disinformation community.

Monckton, a man frequently held up as an expert among deniers, started his speech off by boldly admitting his lack of scientific qualifications. He thanked the attendees for having the “courage” to challenge climate scientists, explaining: “It is particularly hard, if like me, you have no scientific qualification to do so.”

Monckton then joked about what he needed to do in order to build his credibility in America.

“I have concluded what one needs to have is a freshly minted Hawaiian birth certificate,” he said, referencing the belief among “birthers” that President Obama’s birth certificate is forged. He displayed a picture of a Hawaiian birth certificate with his personal information filled in. The crowded erupted in laughter.

“I was born at a military hospital. What is marvelous is that this [birth certificate] is just as genuine of that of the President of the United States,” said Monckton.

Even with the release of official documents and the repeated confirmation from Hawaiian officials, Monckton is an outspoken believer that President Obama’s birth certificate is forged. The conspiracy has gotten so ludicrous in the face of documentary evidence, the Washington Post labeled remaining birthers “crackpots” who “live for their pet conspiracy theory.”

Explaining that his forged birth certificate prepared him to run for President of the United States, Monckton presented Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast with a freshly minted campaign button. Bast shook Monckton’s hand, jokingly saying he would endorse the candidacy.

The opening skit raised resounding laughter and applause throughout the room.

Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher, has become a form of comic relief for the climate disinformation community. Australian satirists did a hilarious interview with him in which they “mistook” him for an act by Sacha Baron Cohen. But Monckton has also said those who embrace climate science are “Hitler youth” and fascists. He travels around the world making grossly inaccurate presentations filled with peculiar jokes poking fun at climate scientists, who he labels “bullies” and “liars.”

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Speaking at the Heartland Institute’s climate denial conference in Chicago this afternoon, Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) said that labeling heat-trapping carbon dioxide a pollutant is “propaganda.”

Sensenbrenner is a long-time climate disinformer who says that the science of man-made global warming is an “international conspiracy.” He also happens to be Vice Chair of the House Committee on Space, Science and Technology.

Blatantly ignoring the “science” part of his committee responsibilities, the Congressman today attempted to argue against the basic physics of CO2 in the atmosphere:

“CO2 is a natural gas. Does this mean that all of us need to put catalytic converters on all our noses? The fact that people think CO2 is a pollutant … basically goes into propaganda.”

The so-called “radiative forcing” of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels has contributed enough heat in the atmosphere over the last century to equal roughly half a billion Hiroshima nuclear bombs each year. As one researcher explained: “When there’s more energy radiating down on the planet than there is radiating back out to space, something’s going to have to heat up.”

Rep. Sensenbrenner took his unscientific personal conclusions one step further, saying he believed CO2 would help “crop yields go up” and make it “easier to feed 7 billion people.”

“I’m not one of the people going around saying CO2 is bad for you,” he concluded.

In fact, scientists around the world are calling man-made global warming one of the biggest threats to agricultural production. In Texas, a brutal warming-driven drought cost farmers $7.5 billion last year; In Thailand, “weather whiplash” in 2010 devastated rice crops, causing $40 billion in lost economic productivity; and in Mexico, severe drought reduced agricultural output by 40% already this year.

These incidents came as world food prices hit record highs in 2011 due to a combination of extreme weather events and rising oil prices. In the lead-up to these global price spikes, 2010 was the warmest year on record globally — with 19 nations setting all-time heat records.

Sensenbrenner delivered his speech to a crowd of roughly 200 people at the Heartland Institute’s 7th annual international climate conference — a yearly gathering for the nation’s most active climate change disinformers. The Heartland Institute has come under fire in recent weeks for a disastrous billboard campaign linking people who understand human-caused global warming to mass murderers. Since the billboard was put up, 12 companies have pulled their support for Heartland in the lead-up to the conference.

Sensenbrenner ended his speech with an appropriate anecodote. He referenced New York Times Columnist Paul Krugman, who wrote in a 2009 column that climate deniers were practicing “treason against the planet.”

“Mr. Krugman, I plead guilty as charged,” boasted Sensenbrenner — a politician who helps oversee one of the most important scientific committees in Congress.

The crowd burst into gleeful laughter.

Sensenbrenner also assured the crowd that Mitt Romney would not take action on global warming. When asked by an attendee who said he was “scared to death” that Romney would change his stance on man-made global warming and support renewable energy, Sensenbrenner replied, ” I don’t think that’s true. I talked to Romney before the Wisconsin primary.”

Since I lost many relatives in the Holocaust, I understand all too well the unique nature of that catastrophe. The Holocaust is not an analogue to global warming, which is an utterly different kind of catastrophe, and, obviously, one whose worst impacts are yet to come.

I have explained this many times, including a 2008 post (“PLEASE stop calling them skeptics“) and in my 2009 post, “Anti-science conservatives are stuck in denial but for climate science activists, the reverse is true,” which I’ll excerpt in this post.

Over the years, I have explained why “denier” is not my preferred term. I tried to coin the terms “delayer” and “disinformer” for those who make a living spreading disinformation about climate science — and I still use the term ‘disinformer.’  But coining terms is nearly impossible, and the fact is that almost everybody has embraced the term “deniers” – including many, many disinformers.

As the National Center for Science Education explains in their 2012 post, “Why Is It Called Denial?”

“Denial” is the term preferred even by many deniers. “I actually like ‘denier.’ That’s closer than skeptic,” says MIT’s Richard Lindzen, one of the most prominent deniers. Minnesotans for Global Warming and other major denier groups go so far as to sing, “I’m a Denier!”.

Heck, even disinformers associated with the hard-core extremists at the Heartland Institute like the term:

So clearly, using the term ‘denier’ doesn’t inherently mean you are equating a disinformer with a Holocaust denier. So if for no reason than for clarity’s sake — as well as for people doing web searches — we seem to be stuck with ‘denier’ for general usage.

But undefined labels are always subject to criticism and out-of-context attacks, especially by people who spread disinformation for a living, so I’m a big fan of defining one’s terms, as NCSE does in its post. As I have written many times in the past:

I understand that some of the deniers take offense at the apparent implication that they are like Holocaust deniers.  I am not trying to make that connection — since climate science deniers are nothing like Holocaust deniers.  Holocaust deniers are denying an established fact from the past.  If the media or politicians or the public took them at all seriously, I suppose it might increase the chances of a future Holocaust. But, in fact, they are very marginalized, and are inevitably attacked and criticized widely whenever they try to spread their disinformation, so they have no significant impact on society.

The climate science deniers, however, are very different and far more worrisome. They are not marginalized, but rather very well-funded and treated quite seriously by the status quo media.  They are trying to persuade people not to take action on a problem that has not yet become catastrophic, but which will certainly do so if we listen to them and delay acting much longer.

This doesn’t stop the disinformers from misrepresenting what one was trying to say, of course, since that is what they do for a living.

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The Heartland Institute is doubling down on its widely-condemned effort to label leading proponents of climate science as “murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”

CEO Joe Bast has sent a letter to one of the scholars who “have expressed trepidation about continuing their long-time associations with us.” Not to worry, says Bast, we’re still into wacky hate speech, same as ever, we just will use our website — and not billboards — to smear folks. He explains:

Of course, what’s fake here is, well, pretty much every single word in this letter. Heartland lecturing folks on accuracy? If you look up chutzpah in the dictionary….

Heartland posted a statement saying “We do not apologize for running the ad.” And they kept online their original defense of the billboard, which made absurd statements like, “the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.” Some mistake.

Obviously, Bast stands by this nonsense. The uber-vindicated Michael Mann, one of the most highly regarded climatologists in the country, had this to say in reply to Bast:

Being called a “mad man” by Joe Bast & Heartland is like being called overexposed by Kim Kardashian.

Michael Mann and Bill McKibben?

UPDATE: The too-sane-for-this-world Bill McKibben sends me this response:

Was preparing to feel insulted, but then I thought … Don Draper! and fired up some Johnny Mathis on my spotify.

How out of touch are Bast and Heartland?

They post their beyond-the-pale extremism in a blog named “Somewhat Reasonable”:

In the Bizarro World of Htrae that Heartland inhabits, I guess Somewhat Reasonable = Most Unreasonable.

Finally, Bast just can’t stop defending the billboard with nonsensical arguments:

Our billboard was factual: The Unabomber was motivated by concern over man-made global warming to do the terrible crimes he committed. He still believes in global warming. We simply put his picture on a billboard, pointed out the “inconvenient truth,” and asked, “do you?”

But wait, I thought Bast just said the billboard was a mistake? In any case, as Greenwire reported on the Unabomber’s manifesto (which you can confirm online):

The words “climate change” don’t appear in the manifesto, nor are there references to “global warming” or “carbon.”

Asked about this discrepancy, Heartland spokesman Jim Lakely pointed to a passage from Kaczynski’s manifesto that says the Industrial Revolution has “inflicted severe damage on the natural world.”

#FAIL

The right-wing Heartland Institute launched an “experiment” Friday, comparing believers in climate change to infamous figures such as Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber), Charles Manson, and Osama bin Laden. After 24 hours, the group pulled down its Chicago billboard but made no attempt to apologize for or retract its stunt.

Even worse, the image of the billboard is still on their website along with some of the most extremist hate-speech ever seen from a global warming denial group — including this absurd assertion, “the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”

Now, Heartland is seeing the fall-out: After the latest outcry, the leading drink company Diageo, which owns brands like Smirnoff, Guinness, and Johnnie Walker, told The Guardian it will end its ties to Heartland:

DIAGEO SPOKESPERSON: “Diageo vigorously opposes climate scepticism and our actions are proof of this. Diageo’s only association with the Heartland Institute was limited to a small contribution made two years ago specifically related to an excise tax issue. Diageo has no plans to work with the Heartland Institute in the future.“

A few months ago, ThinkProgress reported on Heartland’s corporate-funded plan to teach climate denialism in schools. At the time, Diageo said it “vigorously” opposed climate skepticism and it would “be reviewing any further association with this organization.” Diageo contributed $10,000 to Heartland in 2010. Diageo joins corporations including General Motors and AT&T that have recently ended its funding to Heartland’s radical agenda.

UPDATE: ClimateWire (subs. req’d) reports this morning:

The Heartland Institute’s failed billboard campaign attacking the existence of climate change is driving a surge of corporate donors to abandon the group and prompting a mutiny among its Washington-based staff, which is decamping for less volatile surroundings, according to sources.

At the center of the retreat is a contingent of insurance companies and trade groups that donated more than $1 million over the last two years to the libertarian group’s Center on Finance, Insurance and Real Estate in Washington, D.C., for programs related to federal insurance reform….

“It was disgusting. It was revolting,” Brad Kading, president of the Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers, said of the ad in an interview over the weekend. “It was a terrible mistake.”

Insurers express ‘disgust and shock’

His group, which donated $125,000 to Heartland over the last two years, told the libertarian president of Heartland, Joe Bast, that their relationship is “untenable” in a letter Friday evening.

Other insurers are also cutting ties in a major upheaval that coincides, sources say, with the departure of Eli Lehrer from Heartland’s Washington-based center, known by its acronym, FIRE. Lehrer and his staff were shocked by the billboard campaign, which they learned about in an emailed press release from Heartland headquarters Thursday, said Ray Lehmann, deputy director of the center….

“All of the insurers and reinsurers that funded Eli are either in the process of withdrawing funding from Heartland or are considering doing so,” said the source, who asked not be identified. “I think everybody’s reaction [to the billboard] was one of disgust and shock. It was the last straw for everybody.”

How radioactive has Heartland become? Consider one invited speaker to their forthcoming conference, Donna Laframboise, a Canadian climate denier who has spent the last several months launching an absurd attack on the IPCC [see Fox Scraping the Barrel for Attacks on UN Climate Panel (or, You Have Got To Be F*!$*%@&! Kidding Me)]. She just published a piece, “Why I Won’t Be Speaking at the Heartland Conference,” writing:

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by Michael Mann

As a climate scientist, I have seen my integrity perniciously attacked, politicians have demanded I be fired from my job, and I’ve been subject to congressional and criminal investigations. I’ve even had death threats made against me. And why? Because I study climate science and some people don’t like what my colleagues and I have discovered. Their attacks on scientists are part of a destructive public-relations campaign being waged in a cynical effort to discredit climate science.

My work first appeared on the world stage in the late 1990s with the publication of the third assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which featured what is now popularly known as the hockey-stick graph. Using what we call proxy data – information gathered from records in nature, like tree rings, corals, and ice cores – my co-authors and I pieced together the puzzle of climate variability over the past 1,000 years. What we found was that the recent warming, which coincides with the burning of fossil fuels during the Industrial Revolution, sticks out like the blade of an upturned hockey stick.

By itself, this finding didn’t indicate that humans were solely responsible for the warming, but it was a compelling demonstration that something unusual was happening and, by inference, that it was probably related to human activity. Over the last few decades, the evidence, based on work from thousands of studies, has become much more robust and conclusive.

Nevertheless, our graph depicting the anomalous warming trend became an icon in the climate-change debate. Since then, I’ve found myself a reluctant, and almost accidental, public figure in the larger discussion about human-caused climate change.

Being caught in the middle of this “debate” has given me an opportunity to talk about the stark reality and dimensions of the problem. As the staid scientific journal Nature put it, climate researchers are in a street fight with those who seek to discredit the accepted scientific evidence, and we must fight back against the disinformation that denies this real and present danger to the planet.

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Speaking to a group of Republican political donors last week, Ohio’s conservative Governor John Kasich called for action on climate change, saying he was “all for” developing clean energy

At a time when climate change denial has become a de facto national platform for the Republican party, Kasich’s comments are a notable break from GOP rhetoric. The Columbus Dispatch reported on his statement to fellow Republicans:

“This isn’t popular to always say, but I believe there is a problem with climates, climate change in the atmosphere,” Kasich told a Ross County Republican function on Thursday. “I believe it. I don’t know how much there is, but I also know the good Lord wants us to be good stewards of his creation. And so, at the end of the day, if we can find these breakthroughs to help us have a cleaner environment, I’m all for it.”

Kasich’s comments came during a talk about his “all-of-the-above” energy plan. However, that plan, which does support efficiency, wind and solar, still relies heavily on fossil fuels — particularly coal and shale gas.

Meanwhile, scientists warn that we are hitting tipping points that could soon force unstoppable global warming. Given this reality, squaring aggressive support for fossil fuels with the need to address climate change is virtually impossible.

The fact that Kasich’s comments are “news” shows how dramatically Republicans have turned around on climate change. Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, once said that “now is the time to take action toward climate protection” and called for a “no regrets” approach to dealing with the problem.

Today, Romney says “we don’t know” whether humans are causing climate change — even though 97% of climate scientists actively publishing in the field say human influence is the primary driver of a warming planet.

by Ros Donald, via The Carbon Brief

“‘If you don’t believe in climate change you must be sick’: Oregon professor likens skepticism to racism,” read an article published on the Daily Mail‘s website over the weekend. But this Orwellian news of a villainous conspiracy to cure dissenters looks like little more than one more example of the Mail’s willingness to add … selective reporting to its daily churn.

Professor Kari Marie Norgaard, to whom the views are attributed, presented a paper at the Planet Under Pressure conference in London last week. Norgaard and her colleagues had conducted a study to examine “cultural inertia as a social process” in the case of the policy measures that are needed to tackle climate change. She says that the climate change message damages our perception of ourselves because it raises “fear about the future, a sense of helplessness and guilt”.

It is a little bit difficult to know where the Mail got its claim that Norgaard “suggest[ed]  that doubters need to have a ‘sickness’” — but it appears to be attributing it to a sentence in the press release:

“Resistance at individual and societal levels must be recognized and treated before real action can be taken to effectively address threats facing the planet from human-caused contributions to climate change.”

Treated! As in sickness – get it? We were at the professor’s talk at the Planet Under Pressure conference last week and heard no suggestion Norgaard considers skeptics to be sick. It looks rather more like some bright spark at The Register (which incidentally left out the other half of the sentence, therefore divorcing it from the context) made that connection. The paper itself isn’t yet available but you can see some of her previous work along similar lines here and here.

The University of Oregon has since removed the offending word from the press release, along with Norgaard’s email, prompting hue and cry at the skeptic website Watts Up With That. There, the thought is briefly entertained that she may want to avoid receiving unpleasant emails, before being brushed aside in favour of dark murmurings about a Communist plot.

The second press release quote exercising The Register and the Mail is:

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