When former senior NASA climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer referred last year to vicious climate alarmists as “global warming Nazis” who threaten humanity, he may have been closer to the truth than even he realized at the time. Writing in the Washington Post last week, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) called on the Obama administration to use the anti-gangster Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to persecute those who cast doubt on the increasingly discredited man-made global-warming theory — a theory that just four in 10 Americans believe, but that underpins a wide array of statist and globalist scheming at the national and global levels. Critics promptly ridiculed the Rhode Island senator and his bizarre conspiracy theory. But the totalitarian dream he expressed — using government to enforce ideological compliance and beliefs — represents just the tip of a tyrannical iceberg.
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In his wildly inaccurate opinion piece, headlined “The fossil-fuel industry’s campaign to mislead the American people,” Senator Whitehouse, ignoring the facts, claims that oil companies and their “allies” are “funding a massive and sophisticated campaign to mislead the American people about the environmental harm caused by carbon pollution.” Setting aside the fact that carbon dioxide is essential to life on Earth, that human emissions of CO2 make up a fraction of one percent of all the greenhouse gases present naturally in the atmosphere, and that Sheldon, like all people, exhales CO2 “pollution” every time he takes a breath, the radical senator from Rhode Island also concealed other key facts. For example, Big Oil and its beneficiaries — the Rockefeller dynasty, among others — have been among the chief promoters and financiers of global-warming alarmism from the start.
Perhaps hoping to profit from “carbon credits” gimmicks run by Al Gore and mega-bank Goldman Sachs, major oil and energy companies have been flocking to the alarmist cause. Giants such as BP America, ConocoPhillips, Duke Energy, PG&E, and more all joined the pro-“cap and trade” lobbying group “U.S. Climate Action Partnership.” Just this week, a cartel of the world’s top oil companies — Europe’s Statoil, Total, BP, Shell, ENI, BG, and more — demanded that the UN and its member regimes put a “price” on carbon emissions aimed at extorting consumers out of even more money under the guise of fighting “global warming.” Of course, the satellite data show there has been no global warming in almost two decades, despite contrary UN predictions and “climate models,” but Big Oil, crony Big Business, and Big Government are all demanding more anti-“carbon” scheming nonetheless.
Senator Whitehouse’s deception and extremism only get more pronounced after the initial untruths. Among other claims, the senator said the alleged activities of oil companies are “often compared to those of Big Tobacco denying the health dangers of smoking.” “Thankfully,” Whitehouse claimed,” the government had a playbook, too: the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO.” In 1999, the Justice Department filed a RICO suit against tobacco companies and industry groups claiming that they were engaged in a “50-year scheme” to “defraud the public” in violation of RICO. A federal judge appointed by Bill Clinton agreed with the DOJ (though many of her demands were overturned on appeal). And now, Senator Whitehouse wants the Obama administration to try the same tactics against those who expose the increasingly obvious flaws in the man-made global-warming theory promoted by Obama, the UN, its members, and the scientists they fund.
“The parallels between what the tobacco industry did and what the fossil fuel industry is doing now are striking,” Whitehouse claimed, falsely. As evidence, he points to a memo by an industry lobbying group outlining a tentative plan to expose the flaws in the man-made global-warming theory, just a generation after the man-made global-cooling theory was exposed as a fraud. Of course, by now, the flaws in the alarmist narrative, not to mention ClimateGate and other scandals, are so obvious that the overwhelming majority of Americans reject both the cooling and warming theories. Whitehouse’s other piece of non-evidence cited in the Post column, a “study” published by Drexel University “sociologist” Robert Brulle, claimed that huge sums of “dark money” were nefariously being pumped into what he called “climate denial.” Ironically, the deceptive paper, published in Climatic Change, 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 as “denier” groups were actually shilling for carbon taxes. The headlines that accompanied the paper in the alarmist press were even worse than the paper. The radical 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. Oops. Apparently Senator Whitehouse never got the memo.
At the very end of his screed, Whitehouse acknowledges that he has no idea whether “the fossil fuel industry” is involved in the massive conspiracy he outlines to undermine the imploding global-warming theory (not that the theory would have needed help to become discredited: Virtually every falsifiable claims of the alarmists has been proven spectacularly wrong). “To be clear: I don’t know whether the fossil fuel industry and its allies engaged in the same kind of racketeering activity as the tobacco industry,” Whitehouse concluded. “We don’t have enough information to make that conclusion. Perhaps it’s all smoke and no fire. But there’s an awful lot of smoke.” He’s right about smoke and fire — but totally wrong about the source of the growing flames and noxious smoke.
Ironically, the radical argument being made by the senator from Rhode Island would have been far more appropriate if he had instead suggested applying the RICO statute to the federal government, the UN, and their paid-for pseudo-“scientists” backing their agenda. Consider, for example, the actual conspiracy exposed in the now-infamous “ClimateGate” scandal. In a massive leak of e-mails from leading UN-backed “climate scientists,” those “scientists” were exposed conspiring to, among other crimes, destroy public records in violation of the law to avoid public scrutiny. They also wanted to “hide the decline” in temperatures to support their theory, leaked e-mails showed. “This is not a smoking gun, this is a mushroom cloud,” explained renowned climatologist Patrick Michaels at the time. Then there was ClimateGate 2, and ClimateGate 3, and numerous other scandals.
Beyond that, the evidence of deliberate fraud, threats against skeptics, and more, continues to pile up. This year, NASA was exposed repeatedly ignoring its own data to make false claims about 2014 being the “warmest” year on record — not to mention the ongoing scandals surrounding its manipulation of temperature data to show warming where none exists. In 2013, the Obama administration revealed how far it would go in its quest to lawlessly silence those who exposed the flaws in the man-made warming theory, with Interior Secretary Sally Jewell even subtly threatening to retaliate against “climate-change deniers” in the department. All over the world, in fact, power-hungry governments desperate to tax and regulate CO2 emissions, which fund virtually all of the alarmist “climate science,” have been threatening dissenters to remain silent. Yet, despite that, the roster of defectors from the theory continues to accelerate as the theory implodes on the world stage.
Perhaps the most alarming evidence of racketeering by climate alarmists and “green” forces came from the U.S. Senate that Whitehouse occupies a seat in. A comprehensive investigation by the Senate Environment Committee revealed that a cabal of establishment bigwigs, dubbed “The Billionaires Club” in the final report, was funding a vast network of pseudo-“green” AstroTurf groups pushing global-warming hysteria and other fearmongering, all aimed at supporting greater restrictions on liberty and bigger government. Many of those shadowy billionaires, ironically, made their wealth in oil and energy, which they now seek to deny to desperate poor people around the world. The explosive 92-page study released last summer, entitled “The Chain of Environmental Command: How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA,” blows the lid off much of the scheming.
Among other tactics, the Billionaires Club network relies on an “incredibly sophisticated” system of front groups and the exploitation of loopholes in the tax code. The Billionaires Club’s machinations also involve “a close knit network of like-minded funders, environmental activists, and government bureaucrats who specialize in manufacturing phony ‘grassroots’ movements and in promoting bogus propaganda disguised as science and news to spread an anti-fossil energy message to the unknowing public,” the report said. In some cases, the network funds pseudo-scientific research, too. The findings are then disseminated by far-left “media” outlets such as the Huffington Post and Mother Jones that are also often receiving funding from the Billionaires Club. In other words, perhaps it is time for a RICO suit against the alarmists, radicals like Whitehouse, and the Billionaires Club that funds them.
Of course, Whitehouse is hardly alone in wearing a tin-foil hat and imagining a vast right-wing conspiracy to discredit his already discredited theory — or in advocating outright tyranny and lawlessness to deal with climate realists who refuse to buy it. Just this week, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius with the Socialist Party, whose country was saved from the National Socialists (Nazis) by America, advocated bypassing the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Constitution to impose a UN global-warming regime on America. In recent years, alarmists have even started to demand that skeptics of the global-warming theories be fined, re-educated, jailed, and even executed. As the UN’s theories become increasingly discredited in the United States and around the world, the rhetoric of alarmists such as Whitehouse will assuredly grow more and more vicious and ridiculous. However, despite the increasing extremism, it appears that the global-warming movement is now trying to salvage what it can and move on to other schemes. That is good news for science and humanity. But the fight is not over yet.
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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