CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS?

The Heartland Institute, a leading right-wing think tank and advocacy group in the US is hosting its Seventh International Conference on Climate Change conference in Chicago later this month. As part of its denialist campaign, it is posting a series of billboards along Chicago's busiest thoroughfares that equate belief in global warming with notorious figures such as THE UNABOMBER



[UPDATE: The short hot campaign has been unplugged as disgust piled in from all directions. Dot Earth has an interesting roundup.]

Here's Heartland's official explanation of the originally intended campaign:

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.

Why did Heartland choose to feature these people on its billboards? 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.

If you have the stomach for it, you can read more of the Heartland campaign here.