Heartland Bleeding Badly

Scott Mandia gets things done! In the wake of his letter, State Farm is pulling their support for the Heartland Institute. They're the biggest donor yet: "...between 2010 and 2011 State Farm and State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance gave the Heartland Institute $464,200. The company was expected to give the think thank $155,000 this year."

This may be turning into a watershed moment for the climate cause -- or at least, against the denier cause.

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Anthony Watts jumps on Climate Progress for withdrawing their Web page "Norway Terrorist is a Global Warming Denier," but as of right now, the page is present.

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Jo Nova has her mind made up about the Australian death threats, and apparently nothing will change it: "Appell has merely dug up the same old rude emails that were scraped together last time this came out. They were not death threats then, and still aren’t now. His big breakthrough is that the privacy commissioner did not consider some other non-death threats? So? Is 20 rude emails that different from 11? Check my index for “death threats”, I’ve already written about these exact emails. This only shows how desperate they are. At the time they made the claims about deaths threats so assertively and repetitively, there was nothing to base it on. How exactly are rude emails, made to people outside the ANU, a good reason to shift ANU scientists to new offices? – Jo"

In the real world, writing "Just do your science or you will end up collateral damage in the war, GET IT" is certainly a death threat, as is showing someone a hangman's noose. Minimizing and denying these things is Heartland-level ugly.

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Added: Stephan Lewandowsky:

"What will become of climate denial?

"Much is known about what passes for cognition among those who deny overwhelming scientific evidence by resorting to conspiracy theories and scurrilous accusations against actual scientists.

"The overwhelming tenor of this psychological knowledge is that, by definition, such denial will remain impervious to evidence as it is based on ideology and frantic defence of worldviews rather than the rational scepticism of actual science.

"As the evidence for climate change continues to pile up, and as the frequency of severe weather events continues to skyrocket, we can therefore be fairly certain that climate denial will take ever more scurrilous forms.

"That much is certain, but given that even the conservative American commentator Andrew Sullivan has described the current American Right as “close to insane as well as depraved” over the Heartland billboard, exact predictions of this forthcoming maelstrom must elude rational grasp at the moment."