As climate alarmists shift tactics from propagandizing against global-warming skeptics to intimidating and even persecuting them, the extremist attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands has officially taken it to the next level. In what critics are calling an outrageous and potentially illegal abuse of power, the Virgin Islands Department of Justice issued a subpoena for e-mails and climate documents from the non-profit, non-partisan Competitive Enterprise Institute. The CEI vowed to “vigorously” fight back against what it called an attack on the First Amendment and science. But the implications of the abuse of power are troubling and likely to have a chilling effect on free speech and inquiry.
The latest assault on free speech and the scientific process is part of a coordinated campaign by a coalition of Democrat and far-left attorneys general calling themselves “AGs United for Clean Power.” Bringing together more than 15 top state prosecutors and self-styled climate guru Al Gore, the effort aims to crack down on skepticism and skeptics of the increasingly discredited anthropogenic (man-made) global-warming (AGW) theory. Just 40 percent of Americans believe the theory, according to a Pew poll, leaving alarmists scrambling for ideas on what to do. It seems abusing the “justice” system and making a mockery of justice is the next tactic in the effort to quash the opposition.
The campaign of persecution, supported by Rockefeller-funded AstroTurf groups, was formally announced by Democrat New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman last week. “Financial damages alone may be insufficient,” he warned, suggesting prison time might be in order for climate heretics who cast doubt on the imploding AGW theory. “The bottom line is simple: Climate change is real; it is a threat to all the people we represent…. We have heard the scientists; we know what is being done to the planet.” The New York prosecutor made the announcement with Gore, just days before record cold temperatures struck New York as part of the infamous “Gore effect,” in which unusually freezing temperatures seem to follow the discredited alarmist around the world to his “global warming” events.
Lawyer Schneiderman and numerous other politicians hoping to tax the gas of life, also known as carbon dioxide, as if it were “pollution,” claim their theory is true and allegedly supported by different arbitrary (and totally bogus) percentages of scientists. However, the observable evidence suggests strongly that the alarmists, widely ridiculed by climate experts as “global warming Nazis” and the “climate cult,” are wrong. The fact that satellite and weather balloon data show there has been no global warming in some two decades or more, for example, thoroughly discredited every single United Nations climate model, all of which predicted warming.
The long and embarrassing track record of failed climate predictions and prophecies — from global cooling and global warming to hurricanes, sea level rise, polar ice, and more — also makes a mockery of the alarmist movement. The ClimateGate scandal even highlighted evidence of conspiracy and fraud among “global warming” researchers, who were exposed conspiring to “hide the decline” in temperatures, unlawfully seeking to destroy taxpayer-funded data to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests, bullying editors of scientific journals to keep skeptical papers out, and other shady practices.
But now, the prosecutors hope to silence those who point out the flaws in AGW using a new tactic: using a thus-far unknown amount of taxpayer resources and the justice system to harass, investigate, intimidate, terrorize, and potentially prosecute or even jail global-warming skeptics. Case in point: Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker, who likely just committed career suicide by brazenly abusing his power, just unveiled a subpoena seeking a decade of CEI’s materials and communications on climate policy, ranging from 1997 to 2007. The demand also calls for the market-oriented group to hand over information on its private donors. All of it is being demanded by the end of the month. The attorney general’s office did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
CEI, though, was quick to lambaste the operation as an unconstitutional assault on fundamental freedoms. “This is the latest effort in an intimidation campaign to criminalize speech and research on the climate debate,” the group said in a statement sent to reporters and posted online vowing to fight back. The non-partisan policy organization, which works to support free markets, also called the subpoena and the broader effort by the attorneys general an “attack on free speech” and a plot to “intimidate policy groups and scientists.”
The attorneys general also hope to win the debate using these tactics, rather than scientific evidence. “The subpoena from the attorney general of the Virgin Islands is another round in this long campaign by global warming alarmists to win the debate by defunding and silencing their opponents,” Myron Ebell, CEI director of energy and global warming policy, told The New American in a statement. “They cannot win on the science, so the only way they think they can win the debate is to threaten our First Amendment rights.”
In a statement to the Daily Caller, Ebell, whose face was plastered by alarmists around Paris in December for the UN global-warming summit with the words “climate criminal,” also blasted the alarmist industry’s agenda. “CEI has long been public enemy number one to the global warming alarmist industry, which knows that it can’t win an open public debate on the merits of their anti-energy, anti-people agenda,” he said. “The subpoena we received today is just the latest round in a campaign of harassment and intimidation begun in 2006 designed to win the debate by silencing and destroying CEI and other non-profit groups that rely on sound science to speak truth to power. They will continue to threaten us, but we will not give up defending freedom and prosperity.”
CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman, meanwhile, vowed in a statement to fight the subpoena and defend free speech. “CEI will vigorously fight to quash this subpoena,” he said. “It is an affront to our First Amendment rights of free speech and association for Attorney General Walker to bring such intimidating demands against a nonprofit group. If Walker and his allies succeed, the real victims will be all Americans, whose access to affordable energy will be hit by one costly regulation after another, while scientific and policy debates are wiped out one subpoena at a time.” Also working for CEI’s rights on this case are attorneys Andrew Grossman and David Rivkin, Jr., founders of the Free Speech in Science Project, which aims to defend First Amendment rights against government abuse.
As The New American reported on Wednesday, the latest anti-science, anti-speech, anti-reality campaign by a movement that top experts have long ridiculed as the “climate cult” and “global warming Nazis” has been widely compared to the Inquisition. A more appropriate comparison might be to Lysenkoism, so named after Soviet pseudo-scientist Trofim Lysenko, whose false theory of genetics received backing from dictator Joseph Stalin. The mass-murdering tyrant ruthlessly persecuted critics of the ridiculous theory, sending real scientists to die in the gulags for their criticism. Everyday citizens and scientists were among the biggest victims. Eventually, though, the theory was exposed as quackery anyway.
There is, of course, a great deal of fraud in the “climate debate,” all of it, so far, on the alarmist side. The New American has spoken to dozens of prestigious scientists, including many who resigned in disgust from the pseudo-scientific UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who have expressed such concerns. The ClimateGate e-mail leaks and the widespread data manipulation by government agencies, according to scientists, is just the “tip of the iceberg” when it comes to the fraud being employed to demonize CO2, attack what remains of the free market, empower the UN, and now, to persecute those who expose the “climate cult” and its inaccurate claims by abusing the justice system.
Obama famously received huge support from the owners of “clean power” company Solyndra, with the administration eventually showering his cronies at the company with half a billion taxpayer dollars. The firm went bankrupt and was raided by the FBI, but not before helping to enrich Obama cronies. Again, that was just scratching the surface of the “green” corruption. Many of the “AGs United for Clean Power” have undoubtedly benefited from these infusions of pseudo-“green” cash, too, potentially providing evidence of corruption and conflict of interest. As numerous critics have also pointed out, depriving Americans of their fundamental rights under color of law is a serious criminal offense as well.
The AGW theory has essentially collapsed, kept alive only by massive government subsidies and establishment-funded propaganda from a fanatical movement that, even according to the disgraced former UN IPCC chief, is actually his “religion.” By the time all is said and done, there is a high probability that the American people will know for sure who the real criminals and fraudsters are in this debate. Even the full terror apparatus of the murderous Soviet Union could not protect Lysenko’s silly Stalin-backed theory from reality. The discredited AGW theory and its supporters will likely meet a similar fate.
Photo: AP Images
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, environment, politics, education, and more. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.
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