Insurers pull support for Heartland Institute after campaign likens climate change supporters to terrorists, murderers

What chagrins me is that they supported the Heartland fountain of lies in the first place. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. From Matthew Sturdevant in the Hartford Courant: Insurers and a Connecticut alcohol conglomerate halted their financial support of The Heartland Institute after it paid for billboard advertisements likening supporters of climate change science to murderers, terrorists and a dictator.

The Chicago-based Heartland Institute announced last Thursday that it paid for billboards in Chicago featuring Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Charles Manson and Fidel Castro with each saying they "still believe in global warming." The self-proclaimed free-market think tank planned to feature Osama bin Laden in a billboard at some point in the future.

The cast of villains was picked "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," the organization wrote.

A public backlash was almost immediate, and it appears to be enduring as the organizations who give money to the institute withdraw their support amid public pressure.

One day after the campaign started, The Heartland Institute yanked the ads, saying, "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."...

Sunset at the cement factory in a snow storm, shot by Stefan Wernli, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license