Ouch. Seriously, Ouch:
Anthropogenic global warming is a scientific hypothesis, not an article of religious or ideological dogma. Skepticism and doubt are entirely appropriate in the realm of science, in which truth is determined by evidence, experimentation, and observation, not by consensus or revelation. Yet when it comes to global warming, dissent is treated as heresy — as a pernicious belief whose exponents must be shamed, shunned, or silenced.
Newsweek is hardly the only offender. At the Live Earth concert in New Jersey last month, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. denounced climate-change skeptics as “corporate toadies” for “villainous” enemies of America and the human race. “This is treason,” he shouted, “and we need to start treating them now as traitors.”
Some environmentalists and commentators have suggested that global-warming “denial” be made a crime, much as Holocaust denial is in some countries. Others have proposed that climate-change dissidents be prosecuted in Nuremberg-style trials. The Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen has suggested that television meteorologists be stripped of their American Meteorological Society certification if they dare to question predictions of catastrophic global warming.
All that goodness, and Global cooling references too! This one is a must read, and note that it’s only part I of a series.
via Ace
Update: Welcome again, Instapunditeers! Thanks, Glenn, for linking.
Filed under: Global Warming, Hysteria, Politics
Well, we could go back to the time after the medieval warm period when it became colder and miserable. It was determined that those who were on the outside of proper beliefs were at fault, were tried as witches and sorcerers and executed. So at risk of being martyred for being a fence sitter, or in effect a denier, we are close to entering a cooling period, maybe anther mini ice age, per Dr. Patterson professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University in an article in the Canadian Financial Post. Dr. Patterson explained in the article that an extensive scientific project he conducted for his government regarding the health of the Canadian fishing industry yielded results that concerned not just the condition of the native fishery, but how solar activity regulates climate. He wrote, “Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the little ice age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada.”
I am in the process of adding insulation to my house, as Instapundit mentioned, which works for both scenarios; that is what fence sitters are inclined to do.
This should be interesting to watch, since already governments are seeing the political and economic cost of following the anthropogenic global warming fanatic’s demands and the information that the basis for determining the US temperature increases were in error. But alas, at 62 years of age, I may not be around to see the ending of this story.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/comment/story.html?id=597d0677-2a05-47b4-b34f-b84068db11f4
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007/6/21/123227.shtml
Looking around me, it seems the “Climate Change” (can’t call it “Global Warming” because of the Gore Effect) folks have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, and failed.
I say failed because most people I know have simply given up on “Climate Change”. They see it as beyond their ability to influence, and so they’ve simply given up on the whole notion, in order to simply get back to the business of living.
“Climate Change” is therefore reduced to a topic for the chattering class, and an advertising meme.
I really don’t mind the advertising meme. If BP or Valero want to lump concern for “Climate Change” in with community service and other feel-good advertising bits, all well and good. Let people feel good about the products they purchase.
What concerns me is the chattering class. I worry that its dogma will get turned into law. At that point, men with guns will be empowered to come to my door and demand – on pain of death or imprisonment – that I conform to the will of a tiny minority. That’s just not right.
Oh, and they can have my SUV when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Drive the Global Warming fanatics nuts: tell them you believe them, but you don’t care.
[...] For a different take on of this article, check this out. [...]
How is it that people that still bring up McCarthy want to resort to his tactics when it fits their purposes?
Since we all KNOW that capitalism is bad, bad, bad (hiss boooo) and that it is INEVITABLE that it will be consigned to the DUSTBIN OF HISTORY there HAS to be another reason why it..MUST…..collapse…of…its…own….
inner…contradictions. Computer climate models are the virtual proletariat of the bourgeoisie. A lot less smelly than those nasty manual laborers too!
They told us dissent was the highest form of patriotism. Now we dissent and they call us traitors. I wish they would get their stories straight.
“I worry that its dogma will get turned into law.”
If this hasn’t already happend, it soon will. It is really worrisome when the Speaker of the House and other prominent politicians make statements like “the debate is over”.
Global warming has become “climate change” to fend off the embarrassing fact that just a few years ago these whack jobs were trying to scare us with claims of global cooling.
If questioning dubious scientific theories is treason what do you call it when Joe Kennedy toadys up to Hugo Chavez? Business as usual?
Just be patient.
In the 60’s there was Vietnam.
In the 70’s…Well I don’t know, they’re a bit of a blur.
In the 80’s we had homelessness.
In the 90’s we had AIDS.
As far as I know we haven’t cured homelessness or AIDS. It’s just the the reasons why capitalism and America are evil change every decade.
It’s late 2007. Just hang on until 2010 and “climate change” will fade too, to be replaced by some new thing to be “alarmed” about.
I personally hope the next decade will be looking for the solution to the Pan-Galactic Rabid Aardvark.
And I hope you’ll remember that I was the first to alert the world to it’s dangers
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken
Cites or links, please? This sounds rather hystrionic.
Some environmentalists and commentators have suggested that global-warming “denial” be made a crime, much as Holocaust denial is in some countries. Others have proposed that climate-change dissidents be prosecuted in Nuremberg-style trials. The Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen has suggested that television meteorologists be stripped of their American Meteorological Society certification if they dare to question predictions of catastrophic global warming.
As a Christian, I welcome skepticism as long as the skeptic is able to make a conclusion based on logic. God invites us to test him.
What this is is bad religion, and very bad at that. It offers little food for the soul; both a diet that is low in nutrition, and not variable as a good diet ought not to be. Christianity offers a vastness with each seeker able to find what their soul needs. This offers the jo of being in an in-group, and the fun of anathametizing those you dislike, and an apocalypse, but little else. What comfort does it offer to the dying, or guidance in moral quandries other than Think Green?
There is very little science or religion in this thing which is pretty much an indictment of our modern age of ignorance.
As far as I know we haven’t cured homelessness or AIDS. It’s just the the reasons why capitalism and America are evil change every decade.
This is a basic truth of the Left which is rarely understood — too bad, because it’s part of the key to truly understanding them. If you look at their history, the sole constant throughout it all is that whatever the problem is, the solution is always the same: expansion of government power at the expense of individual liberty.
After the last century, you’d think that we’d have figured it all out by now, and relegated the Left and its hatred of capitalist liberty to the dustbin of history… but they’re still here, still on MSNBC, still running the New York Times, still ensconced in the colleges and universities. No matter how many disasters follow from their ideas, nobody holds them to account in the long run… nobody ever seems to take a good look at the history of ideas and discovered that all the totalitarianisms of the last century were solidly consistent with each other when seen in that light.
Instead, there are huge numbers of people who think that National Socialism was a species of capitalism, that fascism and socialism are not only different, but “opposites”, that democracy is a species of freedom, that political and economic freedom are somehow discontinuous, and that individual rights are not absolute. All of these are ideas that originated with the Left at one point.
It’s almost as if the Left were paralyzing the mainstream by means of the very ideas it thinks with.
“In the 70’s…Well I don’t know, they’re a bit of a blur.”
In the ’70s we had the Energy Crisis. Remember lines at gas stations and even/odd license plate rules? Remember Jimmy Carter telling us to put on a sweater and turn our thermostats down to 68 in the winter? Remember “the moral equivalent of war”?
I like the author’s reference to auto-da-fé.” The bug-eyed hatred of the climate change zealots is a still pale imitation of the Khmer Rouge and China’s Cultural Revolution. Who can say how much worse it will get before it gets better?
When I was in junior high school, I had 4 or 5 lit classes where each one would assign Arthur Miller’s, “The Crucible.” I grew very tired of that play but, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to think that I could not have had received a better preparation for understanding today’s left wing lunacy.
On a related note, here’s an idea on how to flummox your friends, family and co-workers who are eco-conscious and global warming true-believers.
The popular emphasis on how to decrease atmospheric CO2 is emission reduction but there is another side to the equation – sequestration. We’re talking the carbon cycle. As carbon – in the form of CO2 – is released to the atmosphere about 55 percent is reabsorbed by a variety of mechanisms, including oceanic absorption, terrestrial and ocean biomass, calciferous rock formation, etc. Each of these sequestration mechanisms holds the carbon for a varying period of time before it’s eventually released. This is the carbon cycle. Naturally, carbon held in rock is sequestered for the longest time – millions of years – and carbon in the terrestrial biomass the shortest time – as short as 46 years for some forest types. Therefore, if we want to reduce the increase of atmospheric CO2 we need to sequester as much carbon as we can by a mechanism that has a long carbon cycle. For instance, research is now being done on pumping CO2 down old oil wells – basically, burying the carbon. Burying is a grand way to sequester carbon for long periods of time.
Now, consider the landfill.
In global warming terms, a landfill is not just a smelly dump – it is a long-term carbon sequestration site. Everything organic contains carbon. Newspapers, paper bags, plastic, cardboard – all contain carbon. If these items are recycled, the carbon cycle is extremely short. However, if they are buried in a landfill their carbon cycle lengthens considerably – even to thousands of years for plastics. Therefore, any recycling of organic material is harmful to the environment and could actually destroy the earth through global warming. (That’s what you tell your eco buddies anyway.) Talk about a mind-boggling conundrum – their heads might explode. And if they squawk about the shortage of landfill sites, tell them to drive through Wyoming – there’s enough room for the whole world’s garbage for a thousand years.
Do something about global warming. Quit recycling!
(Biodegradable is bad too.)
Lonesomecharlie, that’s GREAT!!
My personal plan to defeat global warming is related to yours.
Remember “Nuclear Winter”? That was the theory that all the particulates kicked up by a global nuclear exchange would block so much sunlight that it would cause semi-permanent winter.
There was some evidence to back this up. I am going by memory but I should be close. In 1840 or 50 something a volcano blew up (Tambora if I recall), throwing so much ash up that the year was called the “year without a summer”.
Therefore aerial particulates decrease temperature.
My personal plan is to buy a Dodge one ton diesel truck for my birthday. 4×4, obnoxious, and smoky.
I can’t wait for some eco-concious person to come along. “But it’s fighting Global Warming!!”
Tee Hee Hee
[...] Global warming: “Denialists” should be criminalized? Ouch. Seriously, Ouch: Anthropogenic global warming is a scientific hypothesis, not an article of religious or […] [...]
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I believe that when we get the next recession, and people start losing their jobs in large numbers, all talk of global warming and raising taxes to fight global warming will immediately cease.
The global warming campaign is just one symptom of the disease of prosperity.
This campaign is mainly political, anyway.
Perhaps as soon as a Democrat gets into the White House, the Democrats will forget about global warming.
Global cooling is part of the proof that the ozone is eroding.
Global warming denial should be a crime?? Yeah, that’s real “freedom” for you! I know Obama may ask Robert Kennedy Jr. to be in his Presidential Cabinet. He’s one of those “denial is a crime” freaks. That’s a scary thought! What else will be a “crime”? Looking at blacks sideways? Asking questions about the government? Not contributing money to Israel? Writing this comment??