Unable to convince Americans of the alleged dangers of man-made global warming using evidence or the scientific method — or even billions worth of tax-funded propaganda and manipulation — a group of self-styled climate scientists want a new weapon to make you believe their controversial theory: government coercion and even prosecution of climate heretics. In a letter to Obama and his attorney general, a team of 20 professors, echoing the recent factually challenged ramblings of Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), urged the administration to start prosecuting climate realists under the anti-mafia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). In other words the debate is not really over after all, if the threat of prosecution must be employed in an attempt to end the allegedly non-existent debate.
Ironically, the RICO statute would be far more appropriate if used to investigate and prosecute the tax-funded global-warming industry for its organized efforts to defraud humanity of its wealth and liberties. As exposed in the ClimateGate e-mail scandals, for example, which involved at least one of the recent letter’s signatories, the tactics of the $1 billion-per-day global-warming industry include brazenly violating freedom of information laws, concealing data that contradicts their theory, bullying scientific journals and scientists into silence, threatening those who actually follow the evidence, and much more. Separately, even a cursory examination of the predictions of climate fear-mongers — from the global-cooling alarmists of yesteryear to the warming theorists of today — reveals an embarrassing track record in which virtually every falsifiable prediction has been proven wrong. Just the laws of probability suggest an occasional climate prophecy would come true, yet the facts speak for themselves.
In the letter to Obama, there was no hint of the generations worth of failed climate prophecies — often made by the same alarmists warning of imminent climate doom today. “We appreciate that you are making aggressive and imaginative use of the limited tools available to you in the face of a recalcitrant Congress,” celebrated the 20 alarmist activists in reference to Obama’s unconstitutional “climate” decrees. “One additional tool — recently proposed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse — is a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) investigation of corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change. The actions of these organizations have been extensively documented in peer-reviewed academic research (Brulle, 2013) and in recent books.… We strongly endorse Senator Whitehouse’s call for a RICO investigation.”
Critics, though, are already fighting back, lambasting and ridiculing the effort. “This action is a clear display of the illogical thinking by some of those in the largely publicly financed Climate Establishment whose vanity exceeds the rigor of their work,” explained atmospheric physicist Fred Singer, founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), in response to the letter. “Rather than producing compelling physical evidence that human emissions of CO2 are causing dangerous global warming, they will compel others to publicly think as they do by legal action. In effect, they are undermining their own position and their action illustrates that simply because some people trained as scientists believe X that does not make belief in X scientific.”
But it is even worse than that. “The evidence these individuals cite demonstrates their lack of critical thinking,” continued Singer, emeritus professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia. “The absurdity of the RICO accusations by the 20 individuals with scientific training (the 20) is increased by their citing political support by Sheldon Whitehouse, a senator from Rhode Island. Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations was founded by Roger Williams, who left England for the Massachusetts Bay Colony to seek religious freedom. Massachusetts, the ‘American Experiment’ was considered to be founded on the idea of religious freedom. However, Williams was tried for his independent thinking in Salem, Massachusetts, and was banished. Apparently, Senator Whitehouse wishes to continue the concept of ‘freedom of thought for me, but not for thee.’”
It is, of course, true that the overwhelming majority of Americans reject the increasingly discredited anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory pushed by Obama and the United Nations. According to a Pew survey released last year, just 40 percent of Americans believe human activities are responsible for alleged global warming. And even among most of those who do believe the theory that man’s emissions of the gas of life (carbon dioxide) will produce dangerous global warming, “dealing” with “climate change” consistently ranks dead last on humanity’s list of priorities. If Senator Whitehouse and other climate alarmists get their way, though, that might change as climate skeptics — or realists, as they often prefer to be called — face potential prosecution as gangsters and mob bosses for pointing out the facts. Perhaps Obama’s recently unveiled “behavioral science” decree to “nudge” Americans on anti-carbon hysteria and other issues can complement the more coercive witch hunt advocated in the letter.
“As you know, an overwhelming majority of climate scientists are convinced about the potentially serious adverse effects of human-induced climate change on human health, agriculture, and biodiversity,” wrote the coalition in their September 1 letter, unscientifically pointing to an alleged “majority” opinion about “potential” effects rather than observable scientific evidence to make their case. “We applaud your efforts to regulate emissions and the other steps you are taking. Nonetheless, as climate scientists we are exceedingly concerned that America’s response to climate change — indeed, the world’s response to climate change — is insufficient.” They never do say what would be “sufficient,” but judging by the rest of the letter, crushing those who point out obvious flaws in their theory is a prerequisite to their vision of sufficiency.
Ironically, to support their view about the alleged risks of alleged man-made global warming, the coalition also pointed to the Obama administration’s “Third National Climate Assessment (2014), Climate Change Impacts in the United States.” As The New American and others reported at the time, Obama’s massive climate report was discredited by scientists less than two weeks after its release, with the document promptly becoming a global laughingstock. Indeed, a team of 15 respected independent scientists, often relying on United Nations reports and the federal government’s own data, blasted the Obama climate report’s “nonsense” and “deception.” “The problem with their theory is very simple: It is NOT true,” explained the scientists who debunked Obama’s report. “Our climate is constantly changing for perfectly natural reasons that have nothing to do with carbon dioxide.”
In fact, the experts continued, the White House climate report is “so grossly flawed” that it should play “no role” in analyses of U.S. energy policy and CO2 regulatory schemes. “As this rebuttal makes clear, the [National Climate Assessment] provides no scientific basis whatsoever for regulating CO2 emissions,” they said. That statement, of course, cuts to the heart of the issue: Global-warming theorists claim carbon dioxide, exhaled by humans, is “pollution” that must be taxed, regulated, and used as the pretext for a draconian global “climate” regime led by the UN to ration energy — despite the fact that human emissions of the essential-to-life gas make up a fraction of one percent of all the greenhouse gases naturally in the atmosphere. The fact that there has been no warming for almost 18 years and counting — debunking 73 out of 73 UN climate models — also does not seem to have chilled the alarmists’ zeal for controlling all human activity and even prosecuting those who disagree.
Another “study” cited in the letter to Obama, “(Brulle, 2013),” also offers more insight into the deception that has become so crucial to propping up the global-warming industry. The paper in question, published by Drexel University “sociologist” Robert Brulle and also cited by Senator Whitehouse in his earlier call for jailing climate heretics with RICO, claimed that huge sums of “dark money” were nefariously being pumped into what Brulle called “climate denial.” Ironically, that deceptive paper, published in Climatic Change, also became a laughingstock almost immediately after its publication. Within a week, the supposed “study” had been so thoroughly discredited by the Heartland Institute and Forbes that climate realists were almost dumbfounded.
Among other problems, two of the top three organizations identified in the paper as “denier” groups were actually shilling for carbon taxes. But the headlines that accompanied the paper in the press were even worse than the paper itself. The alarmist U.K. Guardian, for example, ran its article under the title: “Conservative groups have spent $1bn a year on the effort to deny science and oppose action on climate change.” Other outlets had similarly fraudulent headlines. Heartland Senior Fellow for Environmental Policy James Taylor did the math, however, and exposed the real numbers. “At most, only $6.4 million of the ‘dark money’ addresses global warming topics, with a net of only $3.2 million opposing global warming activism,” he wrote. Compare that to the almost $400 billion per year (or more) in tax funding to the alarmist industry, and it becomes clear that the climate debate is truly a David-vs.-Goliath-type struggle. Even most of Big Oil has joined the alarmist bandwagon — yet David is winning, as illustrated in opinion polls, the scientific evidence, and even the calls to prosecute skeptics.
Also ironically, the coalition calling for prosecutions of climate realists cited their alleged concern for the “world’s poorest people.” In the real world, if global warming was real, those poor people would benefit immeasurably as agriculture became more productive and warmer temperatures prevailed over colder ones, as cold temperatures are far more dangerous and deadly. As well, the policies being demanded by tax-funded climate alarmists would prove devastating to humanity — and most especially to the poor. Climate scientists know this well. Dr. Roy Spencer, who served as senior scientist for climate studies at NASA before joining the University of Alabama at Huntsville, warned last year that the fascist-style “radical policies” of the “global warming Nazis” literally threaten the lives of millions of people — especially the poor. Presumably Spencer is among the climate scientists who would be slated for the climate-skeptic gulags — at least if Whitehouse and his “scientist” supporters get their way.
Other climate experts — no doubt bound for the climate gulags, too — have long ridiculed hysterical global-warming theorists as a “cult” that refuses to adjust its beliefs in the face of scientific evidence. Indeed, as the amount of observable evidence debunking their theory continues to grow — no warming in two decades according to the undisputed global satellite temperature record, record levels of sea ice, less hurricanes, and on and on — the alarmists defend the theory with increasing extremism, even calling for skeptics to be re-educated, imprisoned, and executed. “As with any cult, once the mythology of the cult begins falling apart, instead of saying, ‘oh, we were wrong,’ they get more and more fanatical,” explained MIT Meteorology Professor Emeritus Richard Lindzen. “I think that’s what’s happening here. Think about it…. You’ve led an unpleasant life, you haven’t led a very virtuous life, but now you’re told, you get absolution if you watch your carbon footprint. It’s salvation!”
Even Rajendra K. Pachauri, the UN climate-alarmism ringleader forced to step down this year amid criminal sexual-harassment scandals, has essentially admitted as much. In his resignation letter, the Pachauri announced that his scheming was “more than a mission.” “It is my religion,” he proclaimed openly. UN climate-policy boss Christiana Figueres, meanwhile, opened a UN climate summit in Cancun by offering a prayer to the ancient Mayan jaguar goddess known as Ixchel. Describing the mythic entity as a goddess associated with the moon, reason, creativity, and weaving — while carefully omitting Ixchel’s association with war, human sacrifice, and cannibalism — Figueres called on Ixchel to “inspire” the climate delegates. “I am convinced that 20 years from now, we will admire the policy tapestry that you have woven together and think back fondly to Cancun and the inspiration of Ixchel,” proclaimed Figueres, who said publicly that Communist China’s murderous dictatorship was better suited for fighting “global warming” than America’s constitutional system of self-government.
The coalition derided the “methods” of climate realists, comparing them to those allegedly used earlier by the tobacco industry. The letter writers claimed the federal government must quash dissent — and quickly. “If corporations in the fossil fuel industry and their supporters are guilty of the misdeeds that have been documented in books and journal articles [sic], it is imperative that these misdeeds be stopped as soon as possible so that America and the world can get on with the critically important business of finding effective ways to restabilize the Earth’s climate [sic], before even more lasting damage is done,” wrote the scientists. As the Soviet Union and other totalitarian regimes discovered through experience, though — think Lysenkoism, for instance — murdering and imprisoning skeptics of bad theories often produces horrifying results, even for those who escape the gulags.
Fortunately for humanity, the climate cabal did not resort to such brazenly totalitarian tactics during the global-cooling scare of the 1970s. Back then, some climate scientists were calling on governments to melt the Arctic ice cap “by covering it with black soot,” among other crackpot ideas, according to a 1975 Newsweek article headlined “The Cooling World.” If they had resorted to the gulag approach, Obama’s current “science czar” John Holdren — a former man-made global-cooling alarmist who has touted forced abortions, drugging the water supply with sterilizing agents, and creating a “planetary regime” to control humanity — may have won the day, along with his cohorts. Holdren was also a recipient of the recent letter to Obama calling for RICO prosecutions, along with controversial Attorney General Loretta Lynch. The administration had not issued a response to the demands for prosecutions by press time.
The alarmists signing the letter included top UN “scientist” Dr. Kevin “Travesty” Trenberth, with the widely ridiculed UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); and Rutgers University Professor Alan Robock, a fan of the murderous communist dictatorship enslaving Cuba who recently gushed with delight during a private meeting with Castro. Other signatories include Jagadish Shukla, Edward Maibach, Paul Dirmeyer, Barry Klinger, Paul Schopf, David Straus, Edward Sarachik, Michael Wallace, Eugenia Kalnay, William Lau, T.N. Krishnamurti, Vasu Misra, Ben Kirtman, Robert Dickinson, Michela Biasutti, Mark Cane, Lisa Goddard, and Alan Betts. As with virtually all global-warming alarmists, their funding largely comes from the taxpayers they hope to imprison for rejecting their theory.
The latest effort to enforce ideological compliance offers further evidence that the AGW bandwagon is coming apart. Truth does not require billions of tax dollars worth of propaganda and the threat of prosecution or worse to support it — lies and cult movements do. It is time for the GOP-controlled Congress to halt all funding to these political and religious activists pretending to be scientists. And since the Constitution does not authorize federal funding for activism, religion, regulating the gas of life, or a planetary global-warming regime, lawmakers serious about their oath of office must put a stop to it.
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.
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