Newest video from the companion series I am producing for The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media. Intro by Bud Ward:
Peter Sinclair’s monthly Yale Forum video uses historical footage to debunk an assertion that the most well-known climate change ‘advocates’ are … ‘murderers, tyrants, and madmen.’
This month’s “This Is Not Cool” Yale Forum video explores a phrase popularized — or more likely made infamous — by the recent Heartland Institute Chicago highway poster featuring Unabomber Ted Kaczynski: “murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”
In a word-association game, it’s unlikely that many would bring up the names of Margaret Thatcher, or of Columbia University’s Wallace Broecker. Nor, for that matter, those of NASA scientist James Hansen; of the late biochemist and novelist Isaac Asimov; of theoretical physicist, author and cosmologist Stephen Hawking; of the late Cornell University astrophysicist and author Carl Sagan; of Microsoft’s Bill Gates; of Navy Admiral David Titley; or of Nobel Laureate, and now Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu.
Through an artful selection and piecing-together of some historical video and audio materials featuring each of those individuals expressing deep concerns about climate change, the video tees-off from a Heartland remark — defending its poster prank while at the same time ending the effort — that “the most prominent advocates of global warming are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”
That billboard campaign, the first featuring Kaczynski, initially had been intended to include subsequent posters featuring Fidel Castro, Osama bin Laden, and one or two additional scalawags and scoundrels. Instead, it has led a number of large corporate funders to follow-up Heartland’s pulling of the plug with a pulling of the plug on their own part: A number of well-known corporate sponsors have announced they are ceasing their relationships with, and funding for, further Heartland efforts.
Excellent job Peter!
It should be interesting to see which way the trolls start twitching this time.
Keep up the good work!
Kind regards,
Larry Oliver @tweetingdonal
@peter murderer, tyrant , madmen.hmm then you show margaret thatcher…er not a good idea…a lot of people in the UK under maggie, sinking of belgrano battlship, 4 million unemployed, anti union, privatisation..yep sounds like murderer,madwoman and tyrant….
Now, now. Politics aside, her words in the video above still ring true, yes?
Bob, the sinking of the Belgrano was extremely controversial but even the Argentinians admitted that it was a legitimate “Act of War”. During her tenancy, the UK signed-up for numerous environmental initiatives; as did the USA under Ronald Reagan. Thus, both Thatcher and Reagan demonstrated that you can be fanatically right-wing without going down an anti-intellectual anti-scientific blind alley (although your ideology may force you to suppress some truth – which is why all IPCC reports are reviewed by government apparatchiks prior to publication to ensure nothing is left in them that “might scare the horses”).
Therefore, whatever criticism may legitimately made of her, Thatcher was not a murderer (we were at war), she was not mad (she listened to reason), and she was not a tyrant (she allowed herself to be voted out of office).
A cool response to an irrational accusation. Well done.
Maybe the most prominent believers in ANYTHING could be considered murderers, tyrants, and madmen because the most prominent people (prominent as in everyone knows their names and remembers them) are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.
So it’s not QUITE a lie.
Heh.