Steve McIntyre tears to shreds an anti-speech ruling by the British equivalent of the FCC, Ofcom.
Ofcom ruled that a documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle” violated rules, essentially, because the producers presented evidence contrary to the party line of the United Nations and the Labor government. In other words, in the UK, thou shalt not question global warming.
For all the details (way too involved for this blog) see McIntyre’s Climate Audit beginning here.
What’s happening in the UK is on its way to the United States. Powerful people like George Soros, Al Gore, and David Hansen have billions of dollars and huge reputations riding on man-made global warming. The facts do not support their view, and the people are getting tired of hearing about it. To perpetuate this fraud, they will limit freedom of speech on the matter. Gaining popularity is David Roberts’s position that skeptics should be tried at a war crimes tribunal. Moreover, politicians in Europe and elsewhere are seeking to ban skeptics from access to any form of mass communication:
The task of the skeptic is made even more difficult by the burgeoning effort to silence dissent. There have been calls recently to equate global-warming skeptics with Holocaust deniers and to have them punished as the equivalent of war criminals. On September 19, 2006, in a post on the blog run by environmentalist magazine Grist, David Roberts wrote: “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 b*****ds — some sort of climate Nuremberg."1
This type of rhetoric has not been confined to just one anti-heresy crusader. Columnist Vin Suprynowicz, editorial page editor for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, pointed out in a recent column that “the British foreign secretary ‘has said that skeptics should be treated like advocates of Islamic terror and denied access to the media’” and that “European Union Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas [told] the BBC that people should view the battle against climate change as a war — accepting the privations of a wartime economy and expecting millions of casualties."2
Under other circumstances, I might be inclined to sit out this election and let Obama screw up the country Jimmy Carter style. He has all the right stuff to do just that. But I can’t. Freedom itself, the First Amendment, is on trial. In a recent speech, Al Gore left little doubt as to his view on those of us who disagree with him:
Those who, for whatever reason, refuse to do their part must either be persuaded to join the effort or asked to step aside. This is such a moment. [h/t windfarms]
Against free speech, free thought, and scientific investigation stand powers and principalities. Clearly, people are serious about incarcerating me and others like me for penning such words as these. The most dangerous weapon against fraud being the cold, remorseless light of day, fair and intelligent questioning of the data, the means, the motives, and the accuracy of Hansen’s conclusions must be stopped. At all cost.
Al Gore has said that climate change is the overarching issue of our time. He’s right, but for very different reasons than many believe. Climate change offers cover for would-be dictators and totalitarians to abrogate freedoms, establish world government, and choke out, for good, the nasty conservatives who, throughout recent history, have stood athwart the diabolical plans of despots like Gore, yelling “Stop!”
UPDATE This is un-f***ing-believable. Or, wait . . . we should have seen it coming. Anthony Watts reports that British newspapers, today, carried full-color enviro-Nazi propaganda sheets encouraging kids to rat out their families, friends, and neighbors for “climate crimes.” Watts:
I find this method of indoctrinating school children to normal everyday living being harmful to the earth with the “climate crime” connotation as distasteful and wrong headed. I have no problems with energy conservation, in fact I encourage it. But combining such advice with a “climate cop” idea is the wrong way to get the message across. Can you imagine what sort of reaction the neighbors will have to the kids hanging this door hanger on their front door? Will the result of this now be hiding your electric dryer behind false walls so the kids and neighbors don’t see it?
Indeed.
If you haven’t lately, you might want to re-read “The Diary of Anne Frank” and “The Gulag Archipelago.” The Greenhouse Gestapo will sound and behave much like the Nazis and KGB. Heil Hansen.