Lynch the Deniers: A Climate Inquisition?

 

My brother-in-lInquisitionaw (before my Great Conversion, the only conservative in the clan) sent me a link to this piece:

Attorney General Loretta Lynch is exploring the propriety of an inquisition to investigate anyone who questions climate change science.

Just so you know: I think climate change is real; I think it is at least partially anthropogenic, and I think it is already causing, and will continue to cause, problems that we’re going to have to deal with. That being said, if they really do start persecuting “climate change deniers,” I will start wearing a Denier t-shirt or something.

Published in General, Science & Technology
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  1. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    It could happen, though I won’t try to predict the likelihood. They couldn’t prosecute every opponent, obviously. But they could intimidate most people by targeting a few big fish.

    That is the point of Mann’s lawsuit against Steyn and National Review. None of us could afford the legal bills to proceed even a tenth as far in self-defense as they have… and yet, years later, there is no verdict in sight. Whatever it is, it ain’t justice.

    Perhaps I am mistaken, but I don’t think there is a legal right to a court-appointed defense attorney where private lawsuits are concerned. If I had no money for an attorney and no organization took my case pro bono, I bet I would lose such a lawsuit within a month. If government was accusing me, at least I’d get a lawyer before being crushed like a bug.

    • #1
  2. Lidens Cheng Member
    Lidens Cheng
    @LidensCheng

    Freedom of speech is the single most important tradition in a free society. I’m glad Mark Steyn fights his climate change lawsuit as a free speech battle. It annoys me to no end that our candidates don’t talk about free speech at all.

    • #2
  3. PHCheese Inactive
    PHCheese
    @PHCheese

    We need less law suits more solutions and research .

    • #3
  4. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    I just read this after I fired up the chainsaw this morning. This burns me up. I’ve got to go get some lighter fluid for the charcoal, and besides I’ve been letting the car warm-up since seven this morning.

    See y’all later

    • #4
  5. CB Toder aka Mama Toad Member
    CB Toder aka Mama Toad
    @CBToderakaMamaToad

    I know nothing about the newspaper or editorial staff, but I feel quite heartened that the paper is opposed!

    • #5
  6. RyanM Inactive
    RyanM
    @RyanM

    well, as for your subtext…

    We may need to have another few threads about the actual science behind global warming if you still believe that it is real, manmade, and potentially catastrophic.

    • #6
  7. Scott Wilmot Member
    Scott Wilmot
    @ScottWilmot

    I was alerted to this nonsense by our friends at powerlineblog,com.

    Until now, has any American administration ever tried to make it a crime to take one side of an ongoing scientific debate? No. The Soviets did that, in order to shore up the hopeless but government-favored theories of Lysenko. Until now, such conduct would have been unthinkable in an American administration. But Barack Obama, to his everlasting shame, is willing to emulate Josef Stalin by threatening criminal prosecution of those who disagree with the equally hopeless theories of Michael Mann et al. American history has come to a very sad pass.

    As I wrote my family:

    Loretta Lynch and the DOJ are apparently unwilling to indict Hillary Clinton for violating federal laws and regulations and State Department procedures in a manner that exposes thousands of classified documents to our enemies. But they are willing to try to jail scientists who point out the rather obvious flaws in the government’s desperate effort to convince Americans that global warming is our greatest threat.

    I spent 33-1/2 years working with ExxonMobil as a petroleum geologist. The climate has always changed. The earth has gone through periods of “icehouse” and “greenhouse” climates. The Miocene greenhouse led to many of the great carbonate oil reservoirs in the Far East where I finished my career. Sure, man pollutes, but to believe we have caused global warming is something that really angers me. Obama and his DOJ are fools.

    • #7
  8. Bob W Member
    Bob W
    @WBob

    When this broke a couple weeks ago, I thought Lynch was mainly talking about going after energy companies who were supposedly misleading the public about climate science. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse was saying that this was similar to tobacco executives denying that cigarettes are addictive. But I never understood that either. How can be it a crime merely to say you don’t believe something is true? Even if it clearly is true? Same with “misleading” the public about climate? That sounds like something out of North Korea. Whitehouse is an idiot who should be ashamed of himself.

    • #8
  9. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Kate, AGW is really discrediting science due to poor practices (unfalsifiable theories, unwillingness to share data, un-reproduceability) and dismal ability of the models to predict climate. You should be more skeptical about the claims of AGW enthusiasts, and notice that most real climate scientists (as opposed to politicians and Michael Mann, but I repeat myself) are much more modest about their claims.

    Read Dan Hanson’s piece and become a regular reader of wattsupwiththat.com. You’ll become much more doubtful about what we know, and what is knowable, about climate.

    • #9
  10. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    I find the very idea that Lynch is looking into this unprofessional and over the line. Let’s hope that it is just posturing on her part and she is going through the motions to get Whitehouse off her back. Otherwise, it would be an outrageous affront to free speech.

    • #10
  11. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Western Chauvinist:Kate, AGW is really discrediting science due to poor practices (unfalsifiable theories, unwillingness to share data, un-reproduceability) and dismal ability of the models to predict climate. You should be more skeptical about the claims of AGW enthusiasts, and notice that most real climate scientists (as opposed to politicians and Michael Mann, but I repeat myself) are much more modest about their claims.

    Read Dan Hanson’s piece and become a regular reader of wattsupwiththat.com. You’ll become much more doubtful about what we know, and what is knowable, about climate.

    So far (not knowing nearly enough to really have an opinion) I have a semi-open mind on the subject itself.  But the real problem is criminalizing ideas, thoughts, criticisms of the party-line… what are these people thinking? It’s just bizarre.

    • #11
  12. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Lidens Cheng:Freedom of speech is the single most important tradition in a free society. I’m glad Mark Steyn fights his climate change lawsuit as a free speech battle. It annoys me to no end that our candidates don’t talk about free speech at all.

    Yes. Yes. Yes.

    • #12
  13. AUMom Member
    AUMom
    @AUMom

    I’ll start believing global warming is anthropogenic when those who scream most stop taking private jets to really wonderful places to whine about it. When they begin to hold internet meetings, then I know they will believe it.

    • #13
  14. Lidens Cheng Member
    Lidens Cheng
    @LidensCheng

    I think most Americans have forgotten why Freedom of Speech is where it is. It’s FIRST, not second or fourth or twelfth, or whatever; it’s First because it is the cornerstone of our liberty. Without the First Amendment guaranteeing us the right to go out and fight for all our other rights, the only thing left is violence. I couldn’t care less that Michael E. Mann and his sidekicks are out there preaching climate change apocalypse as long as those with dissenting views are free to argue their opinions. Instead of having rigorous debate, dissenters are threatened with prosecution.

    • #14
  15. Mate De Inactive
    Mate De
    @MateDe

    The pro AGW folks lack of willingness to debate or even acknowledge that there may be another side to the debate, is bizarre. To me that is not how science works, all aspects are supposed to be debated, reviewed and considered, And just because something is consensus doesn’t mean it’s correct. Also, It’s is the suppression of the opposition and the fact that almost all of their solutions necessitate more governmental control, that keeps me skeptical. The government doth protest too much, me think.

    • #15
  16. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Kate Braestrup:My brother-in-law (before my Great Conversion, the only conservative in the clan) sent me a link to this piece:

    Attorney General Loretta Lynch is exploring the propriety of an inquisition to investigate anyone who questions climate change science.

    Just so you know: I think climate change is real, I think it is at least partially anthropogenic, and I think it is already, and will continue to cause problems that we’re going to have to deal with. That being said, if they really do start persecuting “climate change deniers,” I will start wearing a Denier t-shirt or something.

    Maybe Raul Castro is right. The United States has no basis for lecturing other countries on human rights.

    • #16
  17. civil westman Inactive
    civil westman
    @user_646399

    If you are paying attention and not in denial, you will chalk this up as merely the banal evidence-of-the-day that the America you thought you lived in no longer exists. It comes in an endless parade of evidence that the liberties listed in the Bill of Rights and purportedly secured by the government are shrunken remnants of their former selves. Short of revolution, they will not ever re-expand.

    • #17
  18. Mountie Coolidge
    Mountie
    @Mountie

    Do a quick Google of “Environmentalism Paganism” and study the results of your search.

    Years ago I told a friend that if you were a sociologist that these would be interesting times because one could observe first hand the formation of a new religion: Environmentalism/Pan/Gia/whatever. When I read that Lynch was going to go after Deniers (Well well, the Pagans have given us a name) my first thought was that the pagans had flipped the circumstances and now they were going to be persecuting the Judeo-Christians.

    • #18
  19. Jules PA Inactive
    Jules PA
    @JulesPA

    Kate Braestrup: That being said, if they really do start persecuting “climate change deniers,” I will start wearing a Denier t-shirt or something.

    I agree. Though I am honestly a denier, it is not something public that I really talk about other than rolling my eyes. I can’t say that we have had no effect on the Earth, but I can say I think the Earth is stronger than the manipulative scientists think she is.

    When the government starts persecuting deniers, that is when we have to make SO MANY people seen as deniers as to make their simple little heads spin with which direction to run to catch all the deniers.

    The T-Shirts have to be FUN though. Really fun.

    • #19
  20. Jules PA Inactive
    Jules PA
    @JulesPA

    AUMom:I’ll start believing global warming is anthropogenic when those who scream most stop taking private jets to really wonderful places to whine about it. When they begin to hold internet meetings, then I know they will believe it.

    Yes, and when they turn in ALL of their electrical appliances, and vehicles.

    Can someone please do the math on the effects of 250 million people transiting through their lives with horse power, and I mean the kind that poop on the road and haul wagons and carriages. We’d be facing worse than AGW if we were smacked back to the pre-industrial age by the climate change whacks.

    • #20
  21. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Jules PA: I can’t say that we have had no effect on the Earth, but I can say I think the Earth is stronger than the manipulative scientists think she is.

    Agree.

    Back when “flag burning” was one of the issues people would get needlessly (IMHO) riled up about, I remember telling my husband; you know, I would never burn the American flag, because it wouldn’t communicate anything legitimate. Unless they pass a flag burning amendment—in which case, they’ve made the meaning of the communication “First Amendment.”

    Not sure I could actually have burned a flag, other than for dignified disposal…but I could definitely wear an “ARREST ME! I’M A DENIER!” T-shirt for the cause.

    • #21
  22. Annefy Member
    Annefy
    @Annefy

    AUMom:I’ll start believing global warming is anthropogenic when those who scream most stop taking private jets to really wonderful places to whine about it. When they begin to hold internet meetings, then I know they will believe it.

    I once won a climate change argument using this point, back in the day when Al Gore was winning awards … and flying around on a private jet.

    “Even HE doesn’t believe it”, I said. Otherwise he’d change his lifestyle and lower his carbon footprint.

    I’ve said all along that IF it is true, all the money and technology should be devoted to adaptation.

    (I don’t believe for a minute it’s true. It’s anti-modernity and a power grab)

    • #22
  23. kylez Member
    kylez
    @kylez

    Please avoid their twisted language. Nobody is denying climate change, as climate has changed throughout Earth’s history. Global warming, whether it is happening or not, is only one type of “climate change”.

    • #23
  24. OkieSailor Member
    OkieSailor
    @OkieSailor

    There is no doubt the earth has been warming for 500 years. And little doubt that greenhouse gases could be contributing to warming though the scale of their impact may be impossible to know for sure. The may very well be other forces at work either exacerbating or mitigating the warming as well. The effects of past warming have been nearly all good. Future effects may be both bad and good depending on how much warming occurs. Yet in the face our what is actually known we are told the earth will be uninhabitable unless draconian measures are taken immediately at great cost. And the benefits of the huge tax funded investments just happen to accrue to the folks pushing these urgent solutions. Are we still able to smell a rat?
    Further whenever advocates of any position, including my own, seek to close down open discussion, I conclude they think their argument has little or no merit

    • #24
  25. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    Clearly we need an office of truth telling to sort these things out.  Did I tell you about the two tribes?

    • #25
  26. Robert McReynolds Member
    Robert McReynolds
    @

    There is no scientific proof that humans are driving climate change. Climate changes naturally and to insist that it has only been changing since man became industrialized is just a flat out lie.

    Last night my wife and I were watching a travel show and the guests were in Alaska visiting a glacier. The tour guide was asked how “global warming” affected the glaciers and the guide said that there was no doubt “global warming” was playing a role in the receding of the glacier but that the glacier had been receding since 1765. I looked at my wife and asked if there were SUVs in Alaska in 1765. My point is that this is a natural thing. That to put the onus on human industrial activity is a smoke screen for Communists to gain control of production and that we, as thinking people, should not fall for this. And if Loretta Lynch wants to try to prosecute me for saying that publicly, then I say to her to send her goons to my house and I will show her some serious climate change.

    • #26
  27. Crabby Appleton Inactive
    Crabby Appleton
    @CrabbyAppleton

    You may not remember this but back in the 70’s when “Earth Day” became  a religious holiday and “back to the land” was all the rage, every loopy hippie left-wing California/Hollywood intellectual’s idea of heaven was an America with 100 million homes heated by “the comforting glow of a wood fire.”

    • #27
  28. SpiritO'78 Inactive
    SpiritO'78
    @SpiritO78

    So far (not knowing nearly enough to really have an opinion) I have a semi-open mind on the subject itself. But the real problem is criminalizing ideas, thoughts, criticisms of the party-line… what are these people thinking? It’s just bizarre.

    Right, same here. The willingness to criminalize climate denial however should be a red flag as to the strength of the research for global warming.

    • #28
  29. Richard Fulmer Inactive
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    Susan Quinn:I find the very idea that Lynch is looking into this unprofessional and over the line. Let’s hope that it is just posturing on her part and she is going through the motions to get Whitehouse off her back. Otherwise, it would be an outrageous affront to free speech.

    Loretta Lynch’s last name is perfect.

    • #29
  30. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    Another point that people concerned with global warming should hear is that Earth has been warmer during recorded human history… and the warmth was welcomed in regions that wrote about it, like northern Europe. England was able to grow vineyards. Greenland was actually green. More importantly, the world was not tormented by extraordinary tsunamis and hurricanes and whatnot.

    I have read many convincing arguments that humanity would suffer more from a general cooling than from warming. Read about “the year without a summer” when a major volcanic eruption lowered global temperatures with its ash cloud and many crops failed as a result. Generally, more warmth and more carbon dioxide means more vegetation and therefore more life for all of God’s creatures.

    • #30
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