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Anti-Science: Those Who Wish to Debate Climate Threatened with Death or Jail

George Washington's picture




 

Preface:  The scientific method requires allowing a free-for-all of hypotheses, which then rise or fall based upon the results of actual experiments.  In other words, science means that you throw out theories - no matter how good they look on paper - that are disproven by experimental results, and adopt those confirmed by the results. [Economics is supposed to do that, too ... but hasn't.]

For example, imprisoning Galileo for life because he didn't agree with the "accepted" consensus that the Sun revolved around the Earth was not a great example of the scientific method. Instead of conducting experiments to see whether the Earth or Sun were the center of the Solar System, those with the prevailing view simply silenced the dissenter.

Anyone who has studied the history of science knows that many theories that were universally accepted and “known” to be true turned out to be false.   See these examples from the Houston Chronicle and the Guardian.

 

Noam Chomsky said years ago that he would submit to fascism if it would help combat global warming:

Suppose it was discovered tomorrow that the greenhouse effects has been way understimated, and that the catastrophic effects are actually going to set in 10 years from now, and not 100 years from now or something. Well, given the state of the popular movements we have today, we’d probably have a fascist takeover-with everybody agreeing to it, because that would be the only method for survival that anyone could think of. I’d even agree to it, because there’s just no other alternatives right now.”

In 2006, Grist called for Nuremberg-style trials for climate skeptics.  (The article was later retracted.)

Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lashed out at global warming skeptics in 2007, declaring “This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors.”

In 2007, a UN official – Yvo de Boer – warned that ignoring warming would be ‘criminally irresponsible’ Excerpt: The U.N.’s top climate official warned policymakers and scientists trying to hammer out a landmark report on climate change that ignoring the urgency of global warming would be “criminally irresponsible.”

The same year, another UN official – UN special climate envoy Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland – said “it’s completely immoral, even, to question the UN’s scientific consensus on climate.

In 2008, prominent Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki called for government leaders skeptical of global warming to be “thrown into jail.”

The same year, British journalism professor Alex Lockwood said that writers questioning global warming should be banned.

In 2009, a writer at Talking Points Memo advocated that global warming “deniers” be executed or jailed. (He later retracted the threat.)

James Lovelock – environmentalist and creator of the “Gaia hypothesis” – told the Guardian in 2010:

We need a more authoritative world. We’ve become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It’s all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can’t do that. You’ve got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it. And they should be very accountable too, of course.

 

But it can’t happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What’s the alternative to democracy? There isn’t one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.

Earlier this month, an assistant philosophy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology said he wants to send people who disagree with him about global warming to jail.

And there are many other examples of threats made in regard to the climate debate.

Postscript:  If we can’t have free speech and an open scientific debate, then we are no longer living in a democracy or a society which follows the scientific method. Threatening scientific debate is anti-science and anti-liberty.

It is especially troubling given the background of climate discussions.  Specifically, in the 1970s, many American scientists were terrified of an imminent ice age.   Obama’s top science advisor – John Holdren – was one of them.  Holdren and some other scientists proposed pouring soot over the arctic to melt the ice cap and so prevent the dreaded ice age.   Holdren warned of dire consequences – including starvation and the largest tidal wave in history – if mankind did not rally on an emergency basis to stop the coming ice age.

Were those who questioned the likelihood of an imminent ice age also threatened with death or imprisonment?

Moreover, it is also concerning that many of the “solutions” proposed to combat a changing climate could do more harm than good (and see this).    That’s sort of like invading Iraq after 9/11 because we had to “do” something…

Let’s say that – hypothetically – 100% of all climate scientists reached a consensus that manmade global warming from carbon dioxide was an imminent threat.   Shouldn’t we choose approaches that actually work – and which do more good than harm (more) – instead of messing things up even further?

 

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Mon, 03/24/2014 - 15:57 | 4586835 MeelionDollerBogus
MeelionDollerBogus's picture

I'm  not asking for draconian measures.
You contain your pollution, I'll contain mine, and we're fine.
The anti-AGW people, the hoaxers, are demanding the right to pollute everything and pretend it isn't pollution, to increase the heat so bad that crops I feed from will die, then pretend they had no responsibility at all, even though it's proven.
This can mean war and war should be avoided.

We know what measures can be used: stop burning fuel, just use it in more efficient ways with catalysts, and stop shipping everything you can already source locally. If you can't do this then someone with tanks and missiles will make you stop.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 16:16 | 4586438 Flakmeister
Flakmeister's picture

Dexter,

how often do you need to remove your head from the sand in order to breathe?

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 10:31 | 4585351 Kobe Beef
Kobe Beef's picture

Right. Carbon Dioxide is Cyanide. You be a reel skientist.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 16:01 | 4586857 MeelionDollerBogus
MeelionDollerBogus's picture

Excess CO2 is poison. It will kill as poison instead of working as plant food.
Excess cyanide is poison.
Excess methane is poison.

Sit yourself in a sealed box with only CO2. Bring a plant with you. Let's have a debate while you're in there, without letting you out until we're done the debate, about how healthy you're going to be in a day. Our debate will last about 50 years.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 09:58 | 4585211 ATM
ATM's picture

Global warming because we add small amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere is a failed theory.

The earth warmed from 1979 to 1998 as it came out of a colder period. The earth has not warmed at all since 1998 as CO2 concentrations has increased by small amounts. The AGW theory could not predict and cannot explain it.

AGW theory is backed by secret data, failed projections, altered data and cherry picked results. The fact is AGW does not meet the scientific definition of an accurate theory. It's has morphed into religion. 

What is interesting is that the true believers are almost all of the same political pursuasion. That seems to be an oddity for a scientific theory. Perhaps it really is true that the AGW believers are really just watermelons - Green on the outside but red on the inside.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 16:03 | 4586884 MeelionDollerBogus
MeelionDollerBogus's picture

We added the largest amount of CO2 from any moment in history of the entire Earth since living things were on it, actually.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/temp-analysis-2009.html
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2011-temps.html
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2013/20130806_stateoftheclimate.html

We have data, we have theory, we have hypotheses, we have confirmations from repeated experiments and observations, we have it all.

AGW is complete & absolutely peer-reviewed top-level science, no less than nuclear physics & engineering, no less than genetic engineering.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 10:17 | 4585289 Flakmeister
Flakmeister's picture

Write up a paper then with your theory, we won't be holding our breath though...

BTW, if we haven't warmed since 1998 explain this:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/1_heat_content2000m.png

http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/climatedenierlogic.jpg

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 00:01 | 4584304 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

The drive for world government has stalled because it came up against the very powerful Ingroup-Outgroup Moral Sphere - where one's survival is based on their own Ingroup.

The way around this was to create an Outgroup threat to all of humanity. That supposed threat is AGW and, in my opinion, the only thing preventing a world government is the small group of dedicated AGW debunkers.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 16:32 | 4587039 MeelionDollerBogus
MeelionDollerBogus's picture

The "debunkers" who are  themselves all liars are in fact the most powerful ally the NWO ever had. If they win the NWO wins for eternity.
That eternity requires making more heat, more pollution, controlling crops and doling out only the food which is earned by slavery.
No other food will be available because the land will be barren from decades of drought caused by global warming.
The population will increase but the life-span will drop in half for the slave-homonid that eventually will only be a worker-bee, not a real human, while the elites will become homo sapiens sociopathicus.

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 22:44 | 4584165 johnQpublic
johnQpublic's picture

if it was about the earth we would do something real

wheres the garbage trading credits market?

how about a radiation pollution credits trading scheme?

how about trading chemical poisoning of the water creddits?

its all fucking nonsense to bring about a global tax and centralze control and not one thing more

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 08:24 | 4584885 PT
PT's picture

Ssssshhhhh.  Don't give 'em any ideas.

The science is almost irrelevant.  It has been totally swamped by the politics.

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 20:47 | 4583834 KennyW
KennyW's picture

What organization desires temporal power the most and is the best organized to push for it? Those are your true fascists.

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 23:13 | 4584269 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

Notice Chomsky was willing to give everyone the blessings of fascism.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 02:37 | 4584595 zionhead
zionhead's picture

I'm  certain that like always on ZH, the quote and the POST are completely out of context,

It's irrelevant, ... cuz USA is FASCIST, and chomsky didn't have a fucking thing to do with it,

But all the right-wingers and that is the MAJORITY on ZH, they all hate chomsky cuz he hates ISRAEL an AIPAC.

 

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 19:46 | 4583687 Your Creator
Your Creator's picture

They exclude most of the deniers,  scientists who don't agree with them. Leftist communist sheisters lying as usual.

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 22:35 | 4584141 fonestar
fonestar's picture

Great article George Washington.  Hysterical, delusional people making veiled threats of violence and pushing junk science should never be listened to, no matter what their credentials are.

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 23:01 | 4584230 Pay Day Today
Pay Day Today's picture

Says someone who has clearly never witnessed the devastation of a many-decades long megadraught, nor witnessed the societal impact of corporate violence and corporate junk science first hand.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 03:03 | 4584630 UselessEater
UselessEater's picture

actually a person over 5 year old gets to witness a lot.

on one continent I have live there was supposed to be drought 4ever, then after great floods it was flooods forever, now we have droughts in part again...........witnessed many more things to like multiple nations attacking one who wants to keep its central bank free or retain control over its natural resources and local economy. Doesn't take much to be anti-establishment PR.

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 23:08 | 4584252 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

So let's separate people into two groups:

The non-AGW people can move south and the AGW people can move north, and let Mother Nature pick the winner.

Run your own goddamn life and leave other people alone.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 03:22 | 4584646 MeelionDollerBogus
MeelionDollerBogus's picture

You're missing the point.

The non-AGW people are fucking up the entire planet so the AGW people have only one choice: shoot the offenders.

Stop offending and we won't have to kill the rest of you. You're destroying all our supplies of water, fish & crops and that means we have to kill you to stop it.

We armed and ready. You better be too.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 09:49 | 4585177 ATM
ATM's picture

Oh, the Authoritarian-AGW proponents are armed?

Geez, who the fuck would have guessed that? Authoritarians armed and looking to gain ultimate power is such a straying from the historical record that I'll have to rethink my personal combat weapons.

Perhaps I do need long range bombers, land mines, anti-tank weapons and a few EMP weapons..... 

 

Same story we've read time after time. 

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 17:01 | 4587179 PT
PT's picture

They got lead-free bullets!  I think its a special blend of Zinc, Selenium and Molybdenum.  The guns themselves are carved out of rocks, though they might get replaced with a new, lighter, bamboo model ...

;)

 

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 16:45 | 4587105 MeelionDollerBogus
MeelionDollerBogus's picture

We're the libertarians, the anti-AGW's are the Koch brother police-state funded apparatus.
Those who want to stop AGW are saying "don't tread on me" and those who are saying AGW is a hoax want to stomp all over my food and water and survival and pretend I was never "there" in the first place to be stomped on, and by the time I'm dead, I'll have no way to argue back.
You're the Fascists working hand in hand with Exxon, Kochs & Goldman Sachs, swilling their AGW-is-a-hoax cum. It's disgusting but what's worse is you're demanding every human on earth swill it on your behalf against our will.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 08:12 | 4584855 PT
PT's picture

Global one child policy and don't pay people to have kids.  No?  Then humans are not causing climate change and we can all drive around in 6 litre V8s.  The least intrusive way to "save the planet" is less people.  Less people need less cars, less transport all up, less houses, less furniture, less water, less washing machines, less refrigerators, less clothing, less wood, less oil, less plastic, less metal etc etc etc and those still alive do not have to live on rations.

You can halve your environmental foot print but in four decades the world population doubles and you are right back where you started except for one thing:  twice as many people are already on half rations.  What's your next move?  Oh, that's right - quarter rations.  And in another four decades, what is your next move?

All AGW legislation operates one way - take money from the poor and weak and force them to work harder for less.  It is not a science. It is an "excuse".  It is a guilt trip.  I guess not enough people are Catholic so they have to invent a new guilt trip for everyone else.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 16:43 | 4587098 MeelionDollerBogus
MeelionDollerBogus's picture

"All AGW legislation operates one way" : ya, it doesn't even exist and it will not as you pretend.
The legislation is PRO-AGW as in CAUSING MORE global warming because the legislators are all 100% paid for by the corporations that cause global warming to enslave the poor.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 09:16 | 4585049 holmes
holmes's picture

most egregious misuse of the word less of all time (should have used fewer). However, I do agree with your comments.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 03:41 | 4584665 UselessEater
UselessEater's picture

your target is a very small group that are playing both sides e.g. Rothschilds buying weather stations, Gore buying into fossil fuels and meg mansions, Gate, Clintons and far more exciting characters you may never have heard of.

 

Don't threaten average joe silly billy go to the top of the top, or lie back comfortably and enjoy your new taxes and global scial equiety re-modelling that will make sure poor get poorer and elite get MOAR......

 

you're armed for a dellusion fighting shadows whilst we're all on the same losing team - fiat money etc its all linked if you take a mo; we're on the same losing team!

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 23:18 | 4584289 Pay Day Today
Pay Day Today's picture

That may be possible in a fictional fairyland scenario. Back in reality, we've created a highly interdependent, fossil fuel reliant, global economy. What happens on one side of the world impacts the other side, and vice versa.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 09:04 | 4584993 holmes
holmes's picture

If that's so, get your dumb ass over to China and stop them from generating massive amounts of coal plant emissions.

Our CO2 is a drop in the bucket compared to China's. What's that, you don't want to have your balls cut off in China. O, ok.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 16:40 | 4587080 MeelionDollerBogus
MeelionDollerBogus's picture

Their pollution is YOUR POLLUTION, you offshored YOUR manufacturing there, remember?
Their pollution drops when YOUR consumption drops.
You tried to send all the garbage away but get all the benefits. The atmosphere doesn't work that way.
You fail.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 06:47 | 4584771 Mesquite
Mesquite's picture

So why doen't anyone squawk about the massive rape of the rain forests.. (with as much strength n fervor) ??

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 23:42 | 4588795 MeelionDollerBogus
MeelionDollerBogus's picture

holy shit.

We still have rainforests?

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 03:09 | 4584636 UselessEater
UselessEater's picture

"WE" did not create a highly interpdendant fossil fuel reliant global (monopolistic) economy - WE sat back and let other tech be bought out or controlled via the dumb ass patent system which has only served to shut down and confiscate knowledge.

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 23:38 | 4584332 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

Bullshit.

It's about one group's fevered beliefs about the future dramatically worsening the present lives of the rest of the population.

If all you true-believers went back to living like a caveman you could SAVE THE WORLD.

Put your lifestyle where your mouth is.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 00:35 | 4584456 UselessEater
UselessEater's picture

when Al Gore puts his lifestyle where his mouth is and his elite mates follow, it'll be a good day - hell I'll even send him a patch kit for his bicycle .... imagine the yard sale when he downsizes to the stack'n pack micro-smart living conditions we're supposed to adopt

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 02:41 | 4584600 zionhead
zionhead's picture

Al-Gore is a zionist, and he's a rich brat to boot,

But when Al-Gore talks about global-warming, he see's a new tax on the world,

It's not a fucking thing to do with 'environmentalism'.

It's everything to do with KLEPTOCRACY aka ZIONISM.

*

The zio-mafia knows the USD is not FREE FIAT forever, so they're trying to CARBON-TAX the world so that CLUB-ZIO can keep its lifestyle for its spawn forever.

Nothing less, nothing more.

Carbon-Taxation to be paid in GOLD, the ZIO's will take nothing less.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 17:29 | 4587313 MEAN BUSINESS
MEAN BUSINESS's picture

When did the Zi-Maf learn that the USD is not free fiat forever?

Tue, 03/25/2014 - 08:32 | 4589432 MEAN BUSINESS
MEAN BUSINESS's picture

paging zionhead

Wed, 03/26/2014 - 00:37 | 4592873 MEAN BUSINESS
MEAN BUSINESS's picture

zionhead, waited 25 hours for a reply *crickets*

pales in comparison to the 25 years they've waited to start collecting their 6% carbon tax. Why the cabal didn't diebold Al Gore and get that tax happening really MYSTIFIES me. Global GDPx6%x25 years is alot of cash to pass up so what gives? 

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 02:53 | 4584615 UselessEater
UselessEater's picture

some are bred, some are seduced, some are induced

it ends up the same self serving kleptocrat and technocrat mob behind the wheel

but its seems from current events that there is an internal power struggle and not all on the same hymn sheet

hmm, whats coming???

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 22:58 | 4584218 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

Civilization fails when it reaches a certain threshold of failed humans.

Man the animal cannot sustain civilization, let alone create it.

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 23:30 | 4584310 El Oregonian
El Oregonian's picture

I'd be way more worried about the pea-brained, idiot scientists opening up their pie-holes and uselessly adding to carbon dioxide emissions than actually falling for those moronic dolts and proven liars at the UN IPCC. Tried to fool us once, no way you fascist thieves.

http://www.inquisitr.com/1097877/global-warming-facts-losing-support-in-...

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 23:24 | 4584290 Manthong
Manthong's picture

In related news, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has reviewed the movie Noah and published a study that supports the movie's global warming thesis that the original inundation was the result of massive CO2 emissions by Sumerian SUV’s.

NOAA’s and Noah’s extended forecast indicates forty days and forty nights of torrential rain following the end of the currently entrenched global warming induced arctic cold of the polar vortex. Extensive flooding can be expected over every square inch of the earth’s surface.

Dow Jones futures are up 10 points following last week’s close of 16302.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 01:14 | 4584493 0b1knob
0b1knob's picture

Zero Hedge seems to have been taken over by the peak oil, global warming, the world is ending tards long ago.      I only show up for the entertainment value of the lunacy here. 

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 02:44 | 4584563 dogbreath
dogbreath's picture

Wait till flakzuki shows up

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 10:46 | 4585393 ebworthen
ebworthen's picture

Who is flazuki?

I searched the Internets and all I got were links to ZeroHedge.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 09:15 | 4585046 Flakmeister
Flakmeister's picture

Yeah, because lying sacks of shit like you have a clear aversion to facts....

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 09:26 | 4585092 dogbreath
dogbreath's picture

Yeah,  you've got the facts

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 10:05 | 4585243 Flakmeister
Flakmeister's picture

Why don't you surprise us with some for a change?

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 01:48 | 4584552 Cap Matifou
Cap Matifou's picture

Truth never needs the threats of jailtime to proove and protect itself.

Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!