Truth or Obsession?
July 24th, 2007 by Wyatt
As I’ve noted before, those who would argue that Global Warming is new, dramatic, and manmade are sounding more and more like dictators and cult leaders than scientists. They make unfounded claims and then simply threaten to either de-fund or unethically discredit critics when they argue with the “one true faith”. Here is a case in point: Marlo Lewis writes this article for The American Spectator that challenges the idea that we can effectively limit our carbon dioxide emissions without dramatically affecting our economy. Within a couple of days, Dr. Lewis received this juvenile threat letter from the President of the American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE) as mentioned in this this blog post at National Review Online:
Marlo –
You are so full of cr*p.
You have been proven wrong. The entire world has proven you wrong. You are the last guy on Earth to get it. Take this warning from me, Marlo. It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on.
Mike
Michael T. Eckhart
President
American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE)
Wow. What a clear and concise rebuttal of the facts! Mr. Eckhart has really convinced me of his point of view!
Then there was this approach by RFK Jr. while speaking at Live Earth (from this Newsday.com article):
“Get rid of all these rotten politicians that we have in Washington, who are nothing more than corporate toadies,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the environmentalist author, president of Waterkeeper Alliance and Robert F. Kennedy’s son, who grew hoarse from shouting. “This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors.”
Again, I ask, where is the debate? Where is the willingness to discuss facts that may conflict with the “one true faith”? Where is the civility?
Finally, Dr. Walter Williams wrote this article in January for WorldNetDaily that really sums up the insanity now going on. Read the whole thing, but the key points are:
Heidi Cullen, Ph.D., the Weather Channel’s climatologist, hosts a weekly program called “The Climate Code.” Dr. Cullen advocates that the American Meteorological Society strip their seal of approval from any TV weatherman expressing skepticism about the predictions of manmade global warming, according to a report by Marc Morano, communications director for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works.
Dr. Cullen has had a lot of help in demonizing skeptics of catastrophic manmade global warming. Scott Pelley, CBS News “60 Minutes” correspondent, compared skeptics of global warming to “Holocaust deniers,” and former Vice President Al Gore calls skeptics “global warming deniers.” But it gets worse. Mr. Morano reports that on one of Dr. Cullen’s shows, she featured columnist Dave Roberts, who, in his Sept. 19, 2006, online publication, said, “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.” (See the Morano report.)
And finally, Dr. Williams hits the real issue:
The environmental extremists’ true agenda has little or nothing to do with climate change. Their true agenda is to find a means to control our lives. The kind of repressive human control, not to mention government-sanctioned mass murder, seen under communism has lost any measure of intellectual respectability. So people who want that kind of control must come up with a new name, and that new name is environmentalism.
When you all are ready for a actual, legitimate debate of the evidence, ideas, and consequences, let’s talk.