Lately I have been using the term climate McCarthyism to describe a
particularly evil turn of events in the debate over global warming.
There has been a concerted effort by global warming alarmists to
marginalize anyone who questions their position. One of the terms often
invoked to describe dissenters from the environmentalist orthodoxy is
“climate change deniers.” This is a conscious attempt to associate the
skeptics with holocaust deniers. At least one editorialist has gone so
far as to suggest that skeptical views on global warming be
criminalized with “Nuremberg” style trials for scientists who hold
opposition views. David Roberts from the online magazine Grist writes “When we’ve finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are
really hitting us and we’re in a full worldwide scramble to minimize
the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards — some
sort of climate Nuremberg.?
Recently at a meeting of North Carolina’s Legislative Commission
on Global Climate Change, one of the commissioners accused Arizona
State University climatologist Robert Balling, who has written for the JLF,
of being the equivalent of scientists hired by the tobacco companies to
deny the relationship between smoking and cancer. It should be noted
that Ballings facts were not contradicted.
Through all this there is a consistent theme–discredit, insult, impugn
the integrity of your adversaries, but don’t debate them. Do not
confront arguments, but instead personally attack the scientists who
are making the arguments. This is the hallmark of people who are
insecure in their arguments and are afraid of what open debate may
bring. This
article from the online magazine Spike does a great job at describing
what is going on and how it represents a dire affront to free speech
and the pursuit of truth and science. Author Branden O’Neill sums it up
this way:
The message is clear: climate change deniers are
scum. Their words are so wicked and dangerous that they must be
silenced, or criminalised, or forced beyond the pale alongside those
other crackpots who claim there was no Nazi Holocaust against the Jews.
Perhaps climate change deniers should even be killed off, hanged like
those evil men who were tried Nuremberg-style the first time around.
Whatever the truth about our warming planet, it is clear there is a
tidal wave of intolerance in the debate about climate change which is
eroding free speech and melting rational debate.