Global warming deniers mount ad campaign calculated to outrage (and it's working!)

Los Angeles Times ^ | May 4, 2012 | Dan Turner

[Zakeet]

It has finally happened: The Heartland Institute, an anti-science front group that used to focus on downplaying the dangers of smoking on behalf of Phillip Morris but now spends much of its time denying the scientific consensus on climate change, has decided to stop even trying to be credible in order to attract publicity. In the vernacular: It has gone all PETA on us.

"I still believe in global warming. Do you?" reads a caption written in bright red on a billboard recently mounted in Chicago by the Heartland folks, next to a wild-eyed mugshot of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. The implication: Only mad bombers would accept the proven fact that global average temperatures are rising. Heartland says this is only the first in a series of similar billboards featuring such renowned tyrants and killers as Charles Manson, Fidel Castro, Osama bin Laden and the lesser-known James J. Lee, a radical environmentalist shot by police after taking hostages at the Discovery Channel's Washington headquarters in 2010.

It hardly takes genius to figure out why these billboards are bizarre and absurd, but I'll spell it out anyway for clarity's sake: This would be like mounting a picture of Adolf Hitler with the words, "I was a Christian. Are you?" or a picture of Blackbeard with the slogan, "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. Do you?" Kaczynski's acceptance that the world is getting warmer no more tarnishes the theory of climate change -- which isn't a "belief," but a well-established scientific theory accepted by virtually every credible expert in the field, despite contradictory theories put forward by non-climatologists and published in the sort of junk-science journal favored by Heartland -- than Hitler's alleged embrace of Darwinism, if true, would tarnish the theory of evolution.

[Marine_Uncle]

Sure looks like the Heartland Institute will remain a target of ridicule. Meanwhile we witness the extended sea ice build up in the bearing straights and Arctic Ocean in general.

[Moltke]

What does that even mean, "the origin is suppressed?" What 'origin?' How is it 'suppressed?'

Origin = see the first paragraph of the following:

Cartesian_coordinate_system

To wit, the "zero" point. It is not shown in the graph I commented on, hence it is suppressed. As my further comment pointed out. Which leads to a distortion of the perceived significance of the slope of the curve. Learn some basics before trying to piss on my leg.

[TigersEye]

The zero point of CO2 in the atmosphere would have been sometime during the planet’s formation. You really won’t accept a graph unless it goes back 4.5 billion years?

[Moltke]

The zero point of CO2 in the atmosphere would have been sometime during the planet’s formation. You really won’t accept a graph unless it goes back 4.5 billion years?

No! You are totally missing my point, as it were. It's a question of *how* data is represented. There is *no* time scale involved in the graph, or this argument.

When the origin is surpressed for the ordinate (the 'y' axis), it does not give a proper - or exaggerated - perspective of the data. Read my original post again. The graph looks like there is a steep - significant - rise of CO2 over the provided timescale (abscissa, or 'x' axis).

*If* the ordinate values properly started at 0 and went to 400 or so, it would be obvious that the rise of CO2 is actually very slight.

The general public is often mislead by such representation of data. It makes it look much more significant than it actually is. How can you not understand this?

[TigersEye]

I don't know what graph you're looking at but the one I posted in post #44 has a time scale from 1995-2009. The only purpose of it is to show that CO2 increased over that time period and that temperature did not. That is true.

Peeve away!

[TigersEye]

FWIW ‘surpressed’ is not a word even though you keep using it.

[Moltke]

Wow. You still don’t get it.

And you also do not seem to understand that my original post was not a criticism directed at you but at whoever made up that graph. (The *content* of which I have no issue with - just the way it is *represented*.)

[TigersEye]

I do get it. The graph has one purpose and one point to make that CO2 was rising while temperature was not. It was not intended to convey that the rise was significant only that there was a rise. When a graph is made to put on a poster to be shown in front of an audience, as that one was, it is common to compress the axes in relation to each other so that the key point is in contrast enough to be easily seen. There was no attempt to mislead anyone.

Your point is moot because you are arguing against a premise that is non-sequitur to the intention behind the graph.

[Cyber Liberty]

As I’m always saying to Mrs. Liberty: Ya gotcher ipsos, ya gotcher factos, and ya gotcher QEDs....