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Liberal Fascism in Action: Putting Man-Made Global Warming Skeptics in Jail
National Review’s Jonah Goldberg has spent a lot of time since the 2008 publication of his seminal work on the history of the progressive political movement defending the book’s title, Liberal Fascism. He can stop now.
Adam Weinstein, elite liberal journalist — who, sadly, has been reduced to writing “Rants” for Gawker — is example 13,873 that proves the thesis. And it’s a doozy.
The headline on Weinstein’s piece is plain: “Arrest Climate-Change Deniers.” Why should folks who have evaluated the observed science and found the predictions of the climate alarmists wanting be put in jail? Why should they — and those who trumpet the news — be deprived of their freedom of speech, and the freedom to live among us? Because the “smartest” elite liberals want to set up American gulags for those who dissent. Because Liberal Fascism.
The lead of Weinstein’s piece:
Man-made climate change happens. Man-made climate change kills a lot of people. It’s going to kill a lot more. We have laws on the books to punish anyone whose lies contribute to people’s deaths. It’s time to punish the climate-change liars.
Weinstein writes (absurdly) that anthropogenic global warming skeptics — and there are plenty of scientific reasons to be skeptical of that theory — are causing 150,000 people a year to die. That is absurd. But anyone who denies that “liberal fact” is labeled a “denialist.” Such people think and say the wrong things. That free speech is killing people!!! So what should liberals do about this?
Those denialists should face jail.
It’s good to have that on the record at such a popular website. Liberals who are that soaked in the ideology of catastrophic man-caused global warming are fascists. Full stop. It was good to see a least a couple of folks who commented on Weinstein’s piece call him out (you’ll have to just trust me on this), but, considering Gawker is a “liberal” site, it’s sad there were not many more.
So this is where we are now: Free-thinking Americans who have seen this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and have attended these eight conferences — and who happen to disagree with liberals like Adam Weinstein — must be put in jail.
Our fascist overlords are clever, and will probably set up work camps in which the undesirables will work as Obamacare facilitators. No thanks. I’m an old-school dissident. I choose breaking rocks.
I invited Weinstein to come to the 9th International Conference on Climate Change so he could punish me and hundreds of other inconvenient and undesirable American citizens. I’ll report how that goes … while I still have my freedom.
Published in General
I am unsurprised by this latest stage in the rising fascist movement. I recently had a heated argument with my own son in reference to the Trayvon Martin case (we haven’t spoken since), and thought was, this is what it must have felt like to be parent in NAZI Germany in the 1930s. My son’s generation (X), and the next following are thoroughly brainwashed through the schools and universities. In some ways they are no better intellectually than the Hitler Youth. Moving from merely arguing to taking real action against heretics which we represent is not a new thing by any means. Global Warming and the rest of the Leftist agenda isn’t politics, it is religion, and religion has a much more sinister side than politics when it comes to dealing with those with whom you disagree. It would be easy, had I not experienced on a first hand basis the real vitriol below the rhetoric, to dismiss Weinstein’s idiocy. However, I fear that if we do not turn this country back from the brink, Weinstein and his ilk will get their wish.
You gave a few hyperlinks so I may have missed this one: Jonah Goldberg has a piece today on this very topic.
Interestingly, former governor Bill Richardson also has a piece on global warming today. (I caught both on RealClear today.) Richardson’s argument displays why we have a problem with this debate.
This report from over 800 scientists (big number!) assures us that the science is settled. And yet these same scientists have previously assured us of an ice age, or the polar cap being gone, or the coast rising 22 feet … none of which happened.
It isn’t settled.
Some aspects of it are relatively settled. It’s demonstrably true that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. But the rest of their hypotheses, including the idea that Earth will naturally amplify the amount of CO2-induced warming, and that this will lead to catastrophic changes in climate and weather (rather than moderately negative, or neutral, or beneficial changes) is certainly not settled.
But they want to skip over the hard part so they try to use consensus on the CO2 issue (which is based on observations) to therefore claim their predictions (which are based on computer models full of assumptions and simplifications) are “settled science”. Which is, of course, impossible.
This happens somewhat often. Of course, if you keep saying it for a hundred or so years, eventually it actually will be settled science. I hate to be “that guy,” but there are many questions about macro-evolution that fall into this exact category. Yes, plenty of observations are settled, but nobody is willing to stop there. Predictions and reconstruction of the past are sacred ground. Funny thing is that conservatives speak pretty loudly on the climate change issue, but they’re happy to throw creationists (especially the yec folks) under the bus. It’s a whole new discussion (both of these) if we can honestly separate observed fact from plausible theory.
Demonstrably, there are climate-change liars on the alarmist side of the debate: scientists who knowingly falsified or cherry-picked data, who exaggerated scary scenarios of impending disaster, and who tied individual weather events (e.g., Superstorm Sandy) to global warming. Arguably, these liars did far more to discredit alarmists’ claims than did all of the “deniers” put together. As long as Weinstein is looking for people to throw into prison, perhaps he should look closer to home.
Let’s face it. Anthropomorphic Climate Change deniers are really very little different than Lysenkoism deniers. Who are they to challenge the established wisdom of the establishment. If the state says it is so . . .
I don’t think you hate being “that guy” nearly as much as you claim to. :)
Creationism (especially YEC) is on far, far, far, far weaker scientific footing than climate change. I oppose both.
:) Well, I find myself constantly raising this point, in spite of not actually being a YEC, so I do kind of hate to be that guy. As far as YEC goes, I hesitate to criticize them. If you’re going to bother believing in God at all, why limit what he can do? But I leave it to a question of theology.
Re: evolution and climate change, my point is that, in both cases, there is a cavernous difference between what is provable and what is claimed. The two are oddly similar, though, because we simply don’t have enough of a pool of data from which to pull. They are also similar in that adherence to the consensus is tantamount to religious faith. Add in claims that opposition is “anti-science,” and you’ve got dopplegangers, my friend.
You meant to say, “Anthropogenic“. I’m pretty sure “climate change deniers” are human beings. :-)
But nobody is proposing we ruinous economic and environmental policies in order to prevent catastrophic evolution.
What is “YEC” creationism?
Will Weinstein support the arrest of EPA officials and others in the environmental movement responsible for banning DDT? After all, the practical effect of this diktat has been the preventable death-by-malaria of 50 million people in the developing world.
If too much liberty-related CO2 can be criminally tied to 150,000 deaths per year, I cannot wait to demonstrate the cause of 1 million malaria deaths per year.
Young Earth Creationism, the belief that the genealogies in the book of Genesis provide the authoritative age of the Earth at around 6,000 years.
A big problem with discussions of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (“AGW”) issue is the sloppiness of the language used. “Climate change denier” is an unfair term to describe an AGW skeptic. Denial of climate change is akin to denial of plate tectonics, and I’m not aware of anyone who denies that the climate changes naturally over time.
In a CBS Evening News report last night about the IPCC report, I heard “climate change” and (once) “global warming”, but never “man-made” or “anthropogenic”. Absurdly, the CBS report accepted as fact that this year’s hard winter was a result of “climate change” (often used as a synonym for AGW in cases where use of the word “warming” makes the user look silly). The AGW alarmists take it as a matter of faith that AGW causes “extreme weather”, and news reporters (there’s a group that should be punished–for malpractice) state it as fact, yet the evidence for this is far from conclusive.
The brutal winter may indeed be evidence of climate change, of a “little ice age”, but it may just be, you know, weather. It is difficult to believe that it was caused by warming, unless one is a member of the AGW “Chicken Little” faithful, who are supremely confident in the existence of their “flying spaghetti monster” and in their belief that it causes anything and everything, including warming, cooling, hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, earthquakes, etc.
Beautiful point. Enviro-progressives remind me of house cats who wreak destruction, knocking over lamps and breaking stemware, yet seem to have no recognition or understanding of what they have done. (In my analogy, I don’t mean to diminish the seriousness of 50 million dead. It is heart-rending, and a tragedy of epic proportions.)
Link
I don’t think skeptics ought to be thrown in jail but the prevailing conventional wisdom among many conservative observers that the empirical case against AGW is weakening is questionable.
Absolutely. Nobody denies that climate changes. Similarly, nobody denies that human activity can have an impact on climate. The disconnect arrives when we are asked to restructure society — along statist lines, of course — in order to prevent calamitous runaway climate change of the sort that exists only in computer models promoted by scientists and politicians possessing a strong community organizer streak.
The alarmist models suppose that the earth’s climate is an under-damped feedback system driven by atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. The actual data do not track these models and never have. When the real world diverges from a model, I go with the real world. If that makes me a “denier,” so be it.
Not only full of assumptions, but irreversibly and hopelessly full of assumptions because there is not enough computing power in the world nor enough clean (i.e., non-noisy) data in the world to tease out the most important driver(s): the effect of GHG on deep oceans and clouds. We’ve known for 40 years that we would never be able to solve this problem, so instead our models are pure GIGO.
BTW, YEC has nothing to do with this issue because it is ultimately an unprovable issue. The role of GHG is provable, but acquiring the data is not feasible.
This is quite scary. I can actually see people being put in jail for this kind of thing, seriously. Just last night I had someone who is very, very close to me direct large amounts of animosity and disgust towards me because I said I thought the IPCC red-alert for climate change thing was a bunch of nonsense. It is very hard to have a discussion about this issue.
I wonder how many years someone can get for a lie like, oh I don’t know, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”?
Richard,
You have bumped into the big issue. Man Made Climate Change is immensely unlikely to be causing any deaths but the destruction of jobs & GNP that results from the fear mongering has probably killed many people in the last 25 years.
However, the really big new killer is Obamacare. People will be dying from Obamacare this year. You simply can not disrupt and miss-allocate scarce medical resources in this massive uncontrolled way and expect any other result than unnecessary deaths.
Perhaps deep down the Liberal Fascist knows what he is and is looking desperately for a smoke screen to hide behind.
Regards,
Jim
Well, I happen to have the final comment on the Weinstein thread for three days running now. So, I’ve got that going for me . . .