May 4, 2012, 1:23 p.m.


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 theDiscovery Channel's Washington headquarters in 2010.
It hardly takes a 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 Hitlerwith 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.
As little respect as I have for the people at Heartland and their secret financial backers, whose irresponsible work is helping to assure a grim future for our children, I suspect they're not brain-dead enough to equate Nobel prize winner Al Gore with Osama bin Laden. Under the theory that any publicity is good publicity, they have mounted an ad campaign so calculated to outrage that it will attract nationwide media coverage, thus magnifying a relatively meager ad budget into a national campaign. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is one group that has clearly demonstrated the effectiveness of this method, but I'm not sure it has done much to aid PETA's cause.
PETA is notorious for launching ad campaigns equating animal rights with civil rights in ways that are intended to shock the sensibilities, such as the time it sought to mount a billboard in Sacramento picturing a person putting a pork chop in a microwave oven alongside an image of a mother and baby pig along with the caption: "Everybody is somebody's baby. Go vegan." At the time the city was transfixed by the arrest of a woman who allegedly killed her infant daughter by putting her in a microwave. Other PETA stunts include a campaign very similar to Heartland's, involving newspaper ads that compared the murder sprees of such famous killers as Jeffrey Dahmer and Robert William Pickton to the killing of livestock in slaughterhouses.
There are few depths to which PETA is unwilling to stoop to get attention, including public nudity, splashing red paint on women wearing fur coats and exploring Internet porn. But has the attention bought PETA respect, or credibility? I haven't seen polls on that question, but in my experience the mention of the organization's name produces little more than widespread eye-rolling. In its quest for publicity, PETA has turned itself into a joke whose radicalism alienates even many hardcore animal rights supporters. Whither PETA, so goes the Heartland Institute -- which is probably good news for those of us who'd like to stop arguing about the science and start figuring out solutions.