Though climate alarmists never tire of demonizing greenhouse gases and “fossil” fuels, hell has no fury equal to the venom they reserve for those maligned as “climate deniers.” “This is treason, and we need to start treating them as traitors,” spat environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at the 2007 Live Earth Concert at New Jersey’s Giants Stadium. NASA’s James Hansen testified before a congressional committee in 2008 that “CEO’s of fossil energy companies … should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.” A 2009 Talking Points Memo article reached bloodthirsty pitch by asking, “At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers?” Earlier, in 2006, the environmental news magazine Grist wrote that “we should have war crimes trials for these bastards — some sort of climate Nuremberg.”

The smear campaign involves more than mudslinging and threats. In a May Washington Post op-ed, Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island called on the Obama administration to investigate and prosecute the “climate denial network” under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). More recently, New York’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, ordered an investigation of whether Exxon Mobil has lied to the public and investors about its contribution to global warming. The French government fired its chief meteorologist, Philippe Verdier, after the October release of his book, Climat Investigation, in which he criticizes alarmists in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for having “taken the world hostage” with misleading and erroneous data.

Likewise, the states of Delaware, Oregon, and Virginia have each muzzled their official climatologists for failing to toe the party line, according to a U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee press release. Patrick Michaels, who holds a Ph.D. in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, declared, “I resigned as Virginia state climatologist because I was told that I could not speak in public on my area of expertise — global warming — as state climatologist. It was impossible to maintain academic freedom with this speech restriction.”

This fantastic article is for subscribers only.

Login

Username/Email Address

Password

Remember Me

Lost Password?

JBS Member or ShopJBS.org Customer?

Sign in with your ShopJBS.org account username and password or use that login to subscribe.

Subscribe Now

Use code SUB25 at check out

• 24 Issues Per Year
• Digital Edition Access
• Exclusive Subscriber Content
• Audio provided for all articles
• Unlimited access to past issues
• Cancel anytime.
• Renews automatically

Subscribe Now

Use code SUB25 at check out

• 24 Issues Per Year
• Print edition delivery (USA)
  *Available Outside USA
• Digital Edition Access
• Exclusive Subscriber Content
• Audio provided for all articles
• Unlimited access to past issues
• Cancel anytime.
• Renews automatically