More and more, Anthropogenic Climate Change proselytizers are resorting to calling for either death, jail or lawsuits for so-called ACC deniers. Think about that, it is a slippery slope indeed. The latest outcry for "justice" comes in the form of jail time and lawsuits for ACC deniers on the site Gawker in a "rant" penned by Adam Weinstein. He says, "it's time to punish the climate-change liars".
The author of this inflammatory piece relies heavily on an equally disingenuous article written by Lawrence Torcello who attempts to compare ACC deniers to the scientists convicted in Italy following a devastating earthquake. He points out these scientists were not convicted for manslaughter for failing to predict an earthquake, but for supposedly signing off on a government official's message that after studying a week's worth of tremors the situation looked favorable. This is a major apples and oranges argument to be sure. The scientists were corrupt as opposed to creating ACC models that don't measure up to observation, or conversely, speaking one's opinion that ACC is unlikely.
As I've mentioned before, this crazed idea about jailing and executions is not a new trend, but it does seem to be picking up more steam lately. There is a caveat to Weinstein's condemning "denialists" to, "face jail. They should face fines. They should face lawsuits from the classes of people whose lives and livelihoods are most threatened by denialist tactics". The caveat includes a crudely drawn character, "I'm not talking about the man on the street who thinks Rush Limbaugh is right, and climate change is a socialist United Nations conspiracy foisted by a Muslim U.S. president on an unwitting public to erode its civil liberties. You all know that man. That man is an idiot." Nor does he want to jail, "scientists who must constantly hypo-test our existing assumptions about the world in order to check their accuracy". No, he wants lawsuits and jail for the corporate run denialists campaigns, but included in that he does list, "I'm talking about public persons...for whom denying a fundamental scientific fact is profitable...". There's that slippery slope, because with that remark he is talking about jailing me, and I don't take to being threatened with jail lightly.
For you see, since I've written a few blog posts on this site in which I make clear I don't believe in ACC, but conversely, do not say we should chuck every environmental law out the window, and my site has accepted donations and even makes a few nickels from advertising, yep, that's a threat of jail against me! That's the long haul when someone so blithely sweeps aside the pesky First Amendment. The author of the "rant" also uses some twisted logic by saying he's not stepping on anyone's First Amendment rights because the First Amendment is not absolute. He misstates the famous "you can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater" to bolster his jailing ACC deniers argument. Actually, you can't falsely yell 'fire' in a crowded theater. You see the difference?
The final egregious alarmist "statistic" that both he and Torcello use is the over 150,000 people die annually around the world because of ACC. Cripes! That does sound a bit bad. It comes from the reliable folks at the World Health Organization and upon closer examination, the 150,000 people that they claim die annually around the world from "climate change", actually die from weather related causes. Goodness knows I have been on the receiving end of that counter argument, "don't confuse climate with weather" on more than a few occasions. So, here, turnabout is fair play.
Do you really want to go down this slippery slope? Do you really want to jail so-called "deniers" because of what amounts to scientific dogma? Because when you preach the "debate on climate change is over", or the ever popular "97% of all scientists agree" to counteract an opinion or argument against the idea of ACC, you are being dogmatic when you start threatening with the tangibility of lawsuits, jail time and/or executions. If your faith or belief in ACC is so embedded in a bedrock of scientific observation, the notion of someone disagreeing with you should be no more than water rolling off of the duck's back.
Besides, these ranters are also making money off of ACC. So, is Al Gore. They should be thrown in jail using that logic. But they're not "deniers" so it is OK for them make a profit from ACC.
The author of this inflammatory piece relies heavily on an equally disingenuous article written by Lawrence Torcello who attempts to compare ACC deniers to the scientists convicted in Italy following a devastating earthquake. He points out these scientists were not convicted for manslaughter for failing to predict an earthquake, but for supposedly signing off on a government official's message that after studying a week's worth of tremors the situation looked favorable. This is a major apples and oranges argument to be sure. The scientists were corrupt as opposed to creating ACC models that don't measure up to observation, or conversely, speaking one's opinion that ACC is unlikely.
As I've mentioned before, this crazed idea about jailing and executions is not a new trend, but it does seem to be picking up more steam lately. There is a caveat to Weinstein's condemning "denialists" to, "face jail. They should face fines. They should face lawsuits from the classes of people whose lives and livelihoods are most threatened by denialist tactics". The caveat includes a crudely drawn character, "I'm not talking about the man on the street who thinks Rush Limbaugh is right, and climate change is a socialist United Nations conspiracy foisted by a Muslim U.S. president on an unwitting public to erode its civil liberties. You all know that man. That man is an idiot." Nor does he want to jail, "scientists who must constantly hypo-test our existing assumptions about the world in order to check their accuracy". No, he wants lawsuits and jail for the corporate run denialists campaigns, but included in that he does list, "I'm talking about public persons...for whom denying a fundamental scientific fact is profitable...". There's that slippery slope, because with that remark he is talking about jailing me, and I don't take to being threatened with jail lightly.
For you see, since I've written a few blog posts on this site in which I make clear I don't believe in ACC, but conversely, do not say we should chuck every environmental law out the window, and my site has accepted donations and even makes a few nickels from advertising, yep, that's a threat of jail against me! That's the long haul when someone so blithely sweeps aside the pesky First Amendment. The author of the "rant" also uses some twisted logic by saying he's not stepping on anyone's First Amendment rights because the First Amendment is not absolute. He misstates the famous "you can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater" to bolster his jailing ACC deniers argument. Actually, you can't falsely yell 'fire' in a crowded theater. You see the difference?
The final egregious alarmist "statistic" that both he and Torcello use is the over 150,000 people die annually around the world because of ACC. Cripes! That does sound a bit bad. It comes from the reliable folks at the World Health Organization and upon closer examination, the 150,000 people that they claim die annually around the world from "climate change", actually die from weather related causes. Goodness knows I have been on the receiving end of that counter argument, "don't confuse climate with weather" on more than a few occasions. So, here, turnabout is fair play.
Do you really want to go down this slippery slope? Do you really want to jail so-called "deniers" because of what amounts to scientific dogma? Because when you preach the "debate on climate change is over", or the ever popular "97% of all scientists agree" to counteract an opinion or argument against the idea of ACC, you are being dogmatic when you start threatening with the tangibility of lawsuits, jail time and/or executions. If your faith or belief in ACC is so embedded in a bedrock of scientific observation, the notion of someone disagreeing with you should be no more than water rolling off of the duck's back.
Besides, these ranters are also making money off of ACC. So, is Al Gore. They should be thrown in jail using that logic. But they're not "deniers" so it is OK for them make a profit from ACC.
…in climate research and modeling we should recognise that we are dealing with a complex non linear chaotic signature and therefore that long-term prediction of future climatic states is not possible…
ReplyDeleteIPCC 2001 section 4.2.2.2 page 774