It turns out spending large sums of money to purchase grossly-offensive billboards along the Eisenhower Expressway in Chicago which compare those who believe in climate change to terrorists is not the best way to convince people that climate change is a hoax, nor is it the best way to manage your not-unlimited funding. And in the case of the Heartland Institute, it may have cost them their entire operation.
During his closing remarks at the Heartland Institute’s Seventh “International Conference on Climate Change,” Heartland President Joseph Bast revealed that the group has no plans to hold another conference and is struggling to pay its staff following the defections of corporate sponsors in the wake of the disastrous Unabomber billboard campaign and Deniergate document dump.
“I’m not a good fundraiser,” Bast admitted to the crowd today in Chicago as the gathering wound down.
Bast appealed directly to the crowd for donations, saying that “if you’ve got a rich uncle” [ask him to donate to Heartland].
I won’t call this a victory because climate change denial is a very big problem and some of the biggest deniers are sitting members of congress, but in a world where an increasing number of people are convinced that climate change is real if for no other reason than witnessing radical weather themselves, this kind of outrageous smear campaign is going to become not just ineffective but also a liability to climate change deniers.
