First Oregon and now Delaware. State climatologists who profess a skepticism of global warming are being strong-armed by their states’ chief executives. This isn’t the first time the strong arm of the state has come down on those unwilling to parrot wrong-headed orthodoxy. There was another case in the early days of the Soviet Union that compares to the current global-warming alarmism. The useful front man was Trofim Lysenko, who Soviet authorities claimed had invented a new technique to increase the wheat harvest. It was all bunk, however, and those who said so were branded “wreckers” and often not seen again. From Wikipedia:
Lysenko’s “revolution in agriculture” had a powerful propaganda
advantage over the academics who urged the patience and observation
required for science. Lysenko was admitted into the Communist Party
hierarchy and put in charge of agricultural affairs. He used his
position to denounce biologists as “fly-lovers and people haters,” and
to decry the “wreckers”
in biology who he claimed were trying to purposely disable the Soviet
economy and cause it to fail. He furthermore denied the distinction
between theoretical and applied biology.
Just replace the name Lysenko with Al Gore, the word “wreckers” and “biologists” with “skeptical climatologists”, and governors with “Communist Party hierarchy” and you pretty much have the situation regarding the global warming debate today in Oregon and Delaware.