A stark mug shot of domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski briefly took center stage in the increasingly ugly debate over climate change Friday as the Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank funded by major corporations, launched a billboard campaign equating people convinced that global warming is real to the convicted killer.

“I still believe in Global Warming. Do you?” read big orange letters next to the Unabomber’s infamously grizzled face on an electronic billboard along the Eisenhower Expressway outside Chicago, the Heartland Institute’s home.

The billboard went live Thursday afternoon. But by 4 p.m. Eastern time, an outcry from allies and opponents alike led the Heartland Institute’s president, Joe Bast, to say he would switch off the sign within the hour.

By the time this surfaces on the blog, of course, the story will be old news. But Heartland’s people will still be assholes of brobdingnagian proportions. Sent May 7:

According to the Heartland Institute, the fact that various unsavory individuals have expressed concern about climate change is ipso facto an argument against the existence of anthropogenic global warming. Pooh. Ted Kaczynski probably mentioned the law of gravity somewhere in his screeds, but that doesn’t mean we should reject Isaac Newton’s math.

The grotesque billboards positing a false equivalency between a worldwide scientific consensus and the deluded rantings of Charles Manson and the Unabomber are a new version of an old trick: guilt by association. During the fifties and sixties, Khrushchev criticized American racism — and in response, segregationist politicians labeled Martin Luther King a communist. Unable to argue away the facts of the climate crisis, Heartland Institute can only resort to name-calling.

Aside from demonstrating the susceptibility of American conservatives to irrelevant ad-hominem arguments, Heartland’s latest stunt only reminds us: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Warren Senders

The federal government has given generously to the clean energy industry over the last few years, funneling billions of dollars in grants, loans and tax breaks to renewable power sources like wind and solar, biofuels and electric vehicles. “Clean tech” has been good in return.

During the recession, it was one of the few sectors to add jobs. Costs of wind turbines and solar cells have fallen over the last five years, electricity from renewables has more than doubled, construction is under way on the country’s first new nuclear power plant in decades. And the United States remains an important player in the global clean energy market.

Yet this productive relationship is in peril, mainly because federal funding is about to drop off a cliff and the Republican wrecking crew in the House remains generally hostile to programs that threaten the hegemony of the oil and gas interests. The clean energy incentives provided by President Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill are coming to an end, while other longer-standing subsidies are expiring.

Fun with analogies. Sent May 6:

America’s energy economy bears a remarkable resemblance to a heart patient who’s beginning to recognize that a pulmonary condition requires old habits to be abandoned and new ones taken up. On the one hand, no more cigarettes and cheeseburgers; on the other, lots of exercise and plenty of vegetables. Any part of this program can be beneficial, but for a robust recovery, both are essential.

As in our own bodies, so too in our nation’s consumption of energy. Since it’s essential for our long-term survival that we shift rapidly toward renewable sources (exercise and vegetables, if you will), expanding government subsidies to clean energy is an essential part of a systemic return to health. But the fact is inescapable: if we are to end our dependence on oil and coal (cigarettes and cheeseburgers), it’s time for our taxpayer dollars to stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry.

Warren Senders

Thus, volunteers in Waitsfield will be cleaning up debris along the Mad River left by Tropical Storm Irene. It is part of what 350.org is calling Climate Impacts Day. At the same time, villagers in Pakistan have participated in demonstrations showing their understanding that cataclysmic floods that destroyed vast regions in Pakistan over the past two years are also a manifestation of the changing climate.

The climate change movement is focusing broadly on fossil fuel industries and new projects for expanded exploitation of fossil fuels. It is the burning of fossil fuels, after all, that has heated up the atmosphere to a degree that extreme weather events are spreading devastation across the globe. Drought in Texas and Mexico, floods in Vermont and Pakistan, hurricanes, tornadoes, rising ocean levels, destruction of habitats — Climate Impacts Day has much to consider.

The climate crisis cannot be addressed without confronting the fossil fuel industry, which has billions of dollars at stake in the coal they hope to mine and the oil they hope to extract. Many current controversies grow out of industry’s determination to make use of new sources of hydrocarbons, including oil from tar sands in Alberta, coal from the American West and natural gas from shale formations underground in Pennsylvania, New York, Wyoming and elsewhere.

This is a fairly generic better-get-our-shit-together-soon type of letter. Sent May 5:

Industrialized civilization’s gleeful consumption of fossil fuels over the past century or so is turning out to be more expensive than any of us anticipated. Like teenagers turned loose with our parents’ credit cards, we’ve racked up enormous bills with no thought of paying them.

While we’ve long been aware of the health and environmental impacts of coal and oil extraction (factors never included in price calculations), the long-term costs of carbon-based fuel are only now becoming apparent. As human-caused global climate change emerges as an imminent threat to agriculture, infrastructure, and regional environments everywhere on the planet, we are faced with the necessity of transforming our energy economy, mitigating the damage we cannot prevent, and finding ways to restore equilibrium to the planetary climate system. It’s going to be expensive and inconvenient — but we have no choice if we are to bequeath a livable Earth to our posterity.

Warren Senders

Across the planet now we see ever more flood, ever more drought, ever more storms. People are dying, communities are being wrecked – the impacts we’re already witnessing from climate change are unlike anything we have seen before.

Every time we pick up the newspaper and read about another record-breaking natural disaster, it becomes increasingly clear that climate change is not a future problem – it’s happening right now.

But because the globe is so big, it’s hard for most people to see that it’s all connected. That’s why, Saturday May 5, we will “Connect the Dots” starting at the Decorah Court House.

A revision of the letter for yesterday, which was also sent May 4 (putting me 10 days ahead):

Robust and enduring responses to the burgeoning greenhouse effect must begin with understanding and awareness — without the long-term perspective that allows us to imagine centuries in the future, climate strategies are doomed to fall off our collective radar screens.

Combating climate change doesn’t require a “new Manhattan project” or a “new Apollo program,” although climatology will surely be one of the most important scientific fields of this millennium. While the atomic bomb was an absolute secret until it fell on Hiroshima, successful climate technologies must be transparent and accessible to all. While there was little ordinary citizens could do for the race to the moon (beyond sending pennies to NASA), preparation for global warming’s consequences has to happen in our daily lives, not just in the top echelons of government.

But it all starts with connecting the dots between extreme weather and global climate change. Let’s get to work.

Warren Senders

Climate change is costing Cape Codders. It is eating at our shorelines, causing storm surges to overrun our beaches and houses. It is raising the price of our homeowner’s insurance. Our vulnerable sandy habitation, 10 miles wide, is part of a global system of weather that affects us locally, according to four experts who spoke at a climate change forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters at the Harwich Community Center April 28.

The takeaway message is that while belief in climate change is falling, the reality of it is increasing via accumulated science from real events, according to Dr. Eric Davidson, executive director of the Woods Hole Research Center, which looks at climate science from the Amazon to the Arctic. Davidson warned that hard facts prove the dangers of rising global warming. He said that since the world focused its attention on this issue at Rio de Janeiro in 1992, emissions have been lowered in some nations, but by and large, little has been accomplished.

Unless we mitigate, adapt and change now, Davidson said, there will be increased suffering from heat, violent weather extremes, famine, drought and flooding, all of which, data collected, measured and sifted over time show, will increase exponentially. He added that actuarial information from insurance companies supports the data.

Describing global warming as the “parked car effect,” Davidson said that heat from the sun comes through the window, but in re-radiating back out it becomes trapped, heating up the car. The earth’s atmosphere is the same, trapping rising methane, carbon dioxide and other gases from fossil fuel use in a big puffy blanket of molecules that prevent the heat from getting back through the “car window.” Since Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and others have been keeping records, from 1960 to now carbon dioxide has increased from 320 parts per million to 380 parts per million. (The Arab oil embargo of 1973 diminished greenhouse gas emissions briefly by lowering usage.) Davidson says that La Nina and a sun spot cycle actually are cooling the planet somewhat now, but when the solar cycle changes and we enter El Nino, warming will accelerate. Best scenario, the Cape will have a mid-Atlantic-states climate in the future; worst, a climate like South Carolina’s.

This is a generic letter, but one that makes a useful point. I’m going to do a few more on this theme today (May 4) if I get the time.

We often hear that combating climate change will require a “new Manhattan project” or a “new Apollo program.” But both of these analogies are inexact. America’s development of the atomic bomb was kept under wraps until the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — but successful climate technologies must be transparent and accessible to all. While the race to the moon was no secret, there was little ordinary citizens could do beyond sending pennies to NASA — but preparation for global warming’s consequences has to happen in our daily lives, not just in the top echelons of government.

Mounting a robust and enduring response to the burgeoning greenhouse effect is not in itself a goal, like making an explosion or returning safely from the moon. Rather, it is an essential transformation in the way we collectively understand our responsibilities to the environment and to our posterity. If we are to survive and prosper in the coming centuries, our species and our civilization must change our focus to the long term. And, perhaps paradoxically, we’ve got no time to waste.

Warren Senders

As the climate warms, many plants are flowering 8.5 times sooner than experiments had predicted, raising questions for the world’s future food and water supply, a new international study concludes.

Higher carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels can affect how plants produce oxygen, and higher temperatures can alter their behavior. Shifts in natural events such as flowering or leafing, which biologists call “phenology,” are obvious responses to climate change. They can impact human water supply, pollination of crops, the onset of spring (and allergy season), the chances of wildfires and the overall health of ecosystems.

To better understand this, scientists from 22 institutions in Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States studied 1,634 species of plants across four continents. They compared how plants responded based on historical monitoring data and on small-plot experiments in which warming was artificially induced.

Jeez. Nobody saw that coming, did they? Sent May 3:

It’s unsurprising that researchers studying the responses of plants to increased atmospheric CO2 found their predictions nearly an order of magnitude too low. The uncomfortable fact is that almost without exception, scientific forecasts have underestimated the magnitude, speed and significance of climate change and its effects. There are two important reasons for this disconnect.

The first is that scientific language is inherently conservative, striving for accuracy without emotion. A phrase like “statistically significant correlation” doesn’t immediately trigger anyone’s adrenalin — even when it’s linking greenhouse gas concentrations to a warming planet. The second is that scientific research is usually specialized, thereby minimizing the effects of interacting factors in a complex situation — and if any situation deserves the term “complex,” it’s global warming.

America and the world must mount a robust and meaningful response to the climate crisis, if we are to avoid a future full of unpleasant surprises.

Warren Senders

Forecast the Facts, the activist group that first confronted GM about its support of climate change doubters the Heartland Institute, now plans to muster a public campaign targeting the Discovery Channel. The purpose: to get Discovery to acknowledge the scientific consensus on man-made climate change in its programming.

The flap follows the recent airing of the final episode of Discovery’s lush exploration of the polar regions, “Frozen Planet.” The last of the seven-hour series, “On Thin Ice,” was devoted specifically to presenting evidence of climate change including discussion of the challenges facing polar bears, collapsing ice shelves, diminishing habitat, and naturalist David Attenborough (Alec Baldwin is the narrator and host of the series) saying, “The days of the Arctic Ocean being covered by a continuous sheet of ice seem to be past. Whether or not that’s a good or bad thing, of course, depends on your point of view.”

Strangely missing from the narration, however, is any mention of the causes of climate change, even presented as theory. An April 20 story in the New York Times revealed that the producers made a deliberate choice not to present this material, anticipating criticism from the small minority of viewers who do not accept scientific opinion about human causes of global warming.

Series producer Vanessa Berlowitz told the New York Times that including the scientific theories “would have undermined the strength of an objective documentary, and would then have become utilized by people with political agendas.”

Whores. Sorry. That’s a libel on whores. Sent May 2:

It is unfortunate but unsurprising that the Discovery Channel has chosen to soft-pedal any mention of the human causes of climate change in their “Frozen Planet” series. In the decades since Ronald Reagan’s deregulation of media ownership, the influence of corporate ownership on news and opinion programming has increased, invariably to the detriment of the truth.

The notion that discussing the facts of anthropogenic global warming would allow the series to be “utilized by people with political agendas” is utterly disingenuous. By omitting the facts of climate science from the documentary programs, the producers had already allowed their work to be “utilized” by corporations — whose political agendas are firmly anchored in the profit motive.

The scientific agreement on climate change is extremely robust. To characterize thousands of dedicated researchers as “people with political agendas” is both journalistically and morally irresponsible. Let us hope the Discovery Channel finds its conscience.

Warren Senders

Religion that is focused on and filled with spirituality, like life itself, does not and need not make sense in the human mind as it seeks to address the deep desires and highest aspirations in people who perceive themselves to have a soul. The human institutions of religion are imperfect expressions of human superconsciousness, and to the extent that any repetitive mental effort seeking to understand realities beyond its intended purpose mostly serves to confound intelligibility, I agree that studying multiple imperfect expressions of superconscious truisms must by definition produce an irrational and pointless result.

Does this mean anything?

As a conservative Republican who very much understands the need to reduce and control our spending, it may seem strange that I understand and accept that climate change is impacting my home, state and country.

It is beyond comprehension that my party would so adamantly avoid dealing with the fact that we now are facing historical events on such a regular basis that it is impacting our state and national budgets in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

Why do we continue to miss the chance to address proactively the adverse impacts of our past and current actions? Why is it that we have not connected the dots between climate change and real life events that have occurred in our own backyards? Why do we find it acceptable to have massive damage to our university, and yet sit by and be satisfied with the hundreds of millions of dollars that are being spent locally to repair the damage?

Another day, another chance to educate the increasingly rare moderate Republican on why his party is full of idiots. Sent May 1:

Bill Ferrel can’t understand why his party “would so adamantly avoid dealing with the fact” of global climate change. He’s not alone in finding the antics of the current Republican party incomprehensible, but one wonders why it’s taken him so long. While the GOP’s fraught relationship with inconvenient expertise dates back to the Truman administration, when “old China hands” were expelled from the State Department by Joe McCarthy’s henchmen on charges of communist sympathies, the party of Lincoln really left its moorings with the administration of Ronald Reagan, whose anecdotal governance left facts gasping for breath in choking clouds of fairy dust.

Mr. Ferrel wants his fellow conservatives to “ask the questions and seek reasonable solutions.” But their decades of anti-intellectual posturing and ideological inflexibility have made Republicans both incurious and unreasonable — and created an overheated political environment with likely consequences almost as damaging as the burgeoning greenhouse effect.

Warren Senders

In his interview, the president expressed frustration that “internationally, we have not made as much progress as we need to make.” Surely, though, the inattention from leaders such as Obama has contributed to the slow progress at home, which is a major reason for the slow progress abroad. As a 2007 Foreign Affairs article explained, strong U.S. action is critical to international efforts to defeat this “epochal, man-made threat to the planet”:

“As the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases, America has the responsibility to lead. While many of our industrial partners are working hard to reduce their emissions, we are increasing ours at a steady clip. … We need a global response to climate change that includes binding and enforceable commitments to reducing emissions, especially for those that pollute the most: the United States, China, India, the European Union, and Russia.”

The writer was Sen. Barack Obama.

So I figured, since it’s in the Christian heartland and all, perhaps the paper wouldn’t mind a little eschatology. Sent April 30:

Anyone who’s paying attention knows that fossil fuel interests use their massive financial resources to co-opt media voices and redirect the energies of legislators away from policies that would hurt their profitability. But when it comes to the issue of climate change, President Obama’s dilemma is complicated by a factor that is rarely if ever discussed in polite company: religion. The uneasy alliance of corporate and theocratic conservatives has brought about a situation where a significant percentage of Americans and their representatives in Congress are actively and eagerly anticipating Apocalypse, finding a Biblical rationale for inaction in the face of a rapidly mounting crisis. While religion may provide solace for many, it should not become the vehicle for an irresponsible failure to plan for possible disaster.

“Wait for the Second Coming” is not a valid environmental policy. If we are to achieve sustainability in America, we must repudiate the Rapture.

Warren Senders