When I first saw this I thought to myself “maybe posting this isn’t appropriate on Veterans Day”. Then, after additional reflection, I realized this is exactly what our American veterans and the allies fought for: freedom of speech and freedom from tyranny. The seeds of tyranny appear to be taking hold again in the German government at least when it comes to climate change issues. – Anthony
~~~~~~
From Pierre Gosselins “No Tricks Zone”, apparently they really don’t like Fred Singer in Germany.
Branding of Dissenters Has Begun – Clearing The Path To A Climate Science Pogrom
What is it with these intolerant zealots who refuse to learn anything from history?
Right smack on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, German Parliamentarians, in a frontal assault, are now openly calling out and branding scientists for the crime of scientific dissent. These out-of-control Parliamentarians are demanding that the German government take a position against dissenting views in climate science.
What follows makes McCarthyism look like a treasure hunt. What a number of zealous German Parliamentarians are calling for borders on a call to launch a science pogrom.
The climate dogmatists are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the growing scepticism and dissent now spreading in Germany and Europe, and want to stamp it out – and now.
Journalist Dirk Maxeiner here brings our attention to this latest development on the exploding intolerance that has gripped certain factions in Germany. The branding of climate science dissenters has begun. Fred Singer and EIKE (European Institute For Climate and Energy) are the first to feel the sting of the denier-branding-iron. Read background here.
Some may think that I’m being over-dramatic here. I am not. The situation that the few, yet very vocal, sceptics face here is precarious. Just read the following query written by a faction of Parliamentarians to the German Government, translated from the German text at Dirk Maxeiner’s site (emphasis added, and note the use of the term “denier” throughout the text)):
Read the full post here: Branding of Dissenters Has Begun – Clearing The Path To A Climate Science Pogrom
Luboš Motl has an opinion also, here
It is not true that Germany has not seen this kind of intolerance in 65 years.
In the 1970s Germany practiced something called Berufsverbot, where communists and other radicals were barred from holding posts in government and academia.
It appears that silencing and harassing dissenters is a bit of a knee-jerk instinct in Germany.
Have to agree with Dan J and Jim G – just because a few leaders of the German Green Party (who are in opposition, not part of the government) have made fools of themselves over their ignorance of the credibility of Singer and the scientific bankruptcy of the CO2 AGW hypothesis, does not mean that it is acceptible or correct to submit to this crass national stereotyping of all Germans, or their government as jackbooted-eco-facists. We can never forgive or forget what the Nazis did in WW2, but every German I have spoken to has been deeply ashamed of and sorry for the actions of their fore-fathers. Incidentally, I am sure that Angela Merkel is much less gullible with respect to the IPCC’s junk science than David Cameron or Barack Obama. I have sent an email of support to Marie-Luise Dött for daring to question the AGW religion, but I have to say I wish the political discussions on this blog were as enlightened as the scientific can be.
Germany manufactures and exports large quantities of products which are used in fighting the modern mythological dragon of AGW.
The continuance of manufacturing these products is essential to the future economy of Germany. Angela Merkel is a politician first and foremost, and the economy of Germany will come first by far, let the physics of it be damned. Merkel is fighting for the economic survival of Germany.
Dave Springer says:
” The problem with Europe is sloth.”
Sorry, but that would be wildly inaccurate if you are talking about Germans.
Roy says:
November 11, 2010 at 3:11 pm
“The Germany of today is an infinitely more tolerant and peaceful country than the Germany of the period 1870-1945,”
Remember the radical youth shouting at COP15? Todays young protesters are every bit as intolerant and radical as the fanatics of oldentimes.
Over the past 5 years, about 700 cars, mostly expensive ones, have been burnt down in Berlin and Hamburg, in the night, smack bang in the middle of the cities. Young leftist radicals. Don’t expect any tolerance from them – they’ll just call you a fascist when you have a Mercedes and that’s sufficient justification for destroying it.
The decisive difference is that in the first half of the 20th century, Germany had a youth bulge – families had more kids so there was a much higher percentage of unemployed, dissatisfied youth, radical and angry.
Todays Greens and Communists are too old on average to cause real trouble – but they might well tank the economy once given the opportunity, even Gordon Brown managed that for his economy.
So when Germany appears peaceful today, it’s largely because it’s old.
@ur momisugly Chris, Matt,
… what’s up with these “Klimaleugner” rhetorics ?
Just disassociate from that bullshit clearly, without any shilly-shally – and there will be no more inappropriate historical reminiscences …
Sam Hall says:
November 11, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Ostensibly in the UK we speak a single language too. TV has largely eradicated dialect but not completely.
I currently live amongst Yakkers, who are different to Mackems & Geordies. I’ve also lived with Scousers & Scots of various persuasions. They all speak differently with different colloquialisms. The only group coming out of this badly are those of the South East who have difficulty with anything broader than Essex.
My ex-wife incidentally was amazed when she asked me if I could tell where she came from. I told her, Scotland, East coast, North of Edinburgh. She’s from Banff and lived in England for 48 years!
DaveE.
Essentially, on the surface, only Germans like Germans. However the, wink wink, “green socialists” have put on a stellar propaganda show for decades, pretty much living on the unhindered snowballing effect from the 80’s. But of course then there is logic.
For all the green power production in Germany, excluding hydro from rivers since the dumb hippies hampered that evil long long ago, is still foobar level compared to nuclear and good ol’ coal.
Recently Germany adopted a, well, pseudo pro-nuclear stance, for apparently wind and solar isn’t delivering as much as promised for the next to null price as promised, nor, apparently, can’t they keep up with demand.
If you want to understand how backwards the german climate-socializts really are understand this: a bunch of hippies wanting to down all evil nuclear power plants fully knowing such a result would add a proportionally amount of coal fire power plants in reality.
Funny how it’s the oposite in the next country over: France. Of course France wouldnät need as much nuclear as it does if it weren’t for the hampered hydro by river power plants.
James Sexton says:
November 11, 2010 at 3:15 pm
“Dirk, were I German, I’d tell you Germany needs their patriots at home.”
Well. The worst i fear is even more taxes, economic slump, a Lost Decade or two. And as the boneheads here go on my nerves anyway, i’m just informing myself about ways out.
You know, the CIA world factbook says about Germany – slightly smaller than Michigan, or something like that. And that’s what it is. A lot of Germans emigrate to Switzerland, Canada, NZ, Oz, USA (they prefer California, mostly… duh).
We pay the second highest rate for electrictiy in the World. Shortly behind the Danes. Thanks to renewable energy. We’ll overtake the Danes in two years from now. It’s easy to compute.
OTOH, if the Social Change comes, i might even prefer to be unable to work and exploit the welfare system… if the socialists make me a good offer. It all depends.
Meine Ziele sind beweglich.
Anthony I met you at the Heartland climate conference in Maythis year where I was a speaker. It was a great conference, .however we urgently need such a conference in Europe,either the UK orGermany We need all our big names DrsSpencer,Lindzen,Singer, Plimer and Carter from down under plus Lord Monckton. The situation here is much worse than in the US In the UK and Germany the political alarmists are in total control. we should organise a organising committee now.
Why don’t they like Fred singer in Germany?
Fred Singer held a speech/presentation in the German parliamentary forum discussion on the economic impacts of climate protection held by the FDP Free Democrats, the junior coalition partner of Angela Merkel’s CDU/FDP coalition government as a guest speaker. They must think he is the only climate skeptic in the world.
http://notrickszone.com/2010/09/20/german-parliamentarian-under-massive-fire-for-skepticism/
I’ve also posted an essay at http://ecotretas.blogspot.com/2010/11/o-totalitarismo-climatico.html (in Portuguese)
Ecotretas
Mike
Has anyone ever considered how much their life would suck without Big Oil?
DaveE: Pierre did not get the translation wrong but some information regarding the type of query might have been useful – A “Kleine Anfrage” such as this is usually made for tactical reasons, saber-rattling, if you will, mostly to demonstrate to one’s voters that their MPs are truly earning their keep.
If the Greens had meant business they would have made not a minor but a major query (“Grosse Anfrage”) as this requires the government to answer by thoroughly investigating the matter and most importantly by forcing a parliamentary debate on the issue. The tone and focus of this minor query suggest it is nothing more than an exercise in PR.
To me this merely indicates that the Green party is thoroughly rattled by what’s been happening over the course of the last year. It almost sounds as if they are looking for reassurance from the government that it has not abandoned the climate change agenda. They are right to be rattled, too, as Merkel has been forced to focus on the state of the economy, quietly leaving aside the ambitious climate change measures. She will sacrifice the green agenda to the interests of the economy, and the greens know it, too.
If I remember right we Australians are not that bad either. CSIRO made a Black list of sceptic scientists some months ago. Don’t forget it. Jorgen O
Once all the GERMANS were WARLIKE and MEAN…
We taught them a LESSON in 1918 !!!
They’ve hardly bothered us since then…
(Appologies to Tom Lehr and “That was the Year that Was”…)
James Sexton
Are you thinking of Granville Sharp and the famous legal case?
“It was a clear victory for Somersett, Sharp and the lawyers who acted for Somersett: Mansfield had acknowledge that English law did not allow slavery, and only a new Act of Parliament (“positive law”) could bring it into legality. However, the verdict in the case is often misunderstood to mean the end of slavery in England. It was no such thing: it only dealt with the question of the forcible sending of someone overseas into bondage, that a slave becomes free the moment he sets foot on English territory”.
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Granville_Sharp
Tonyb
Chris : “If you a relly considering Fred Singer a relible scientist, and his work empiric I can just commiserate with you. Despite his vita, he is also know for very controverse positions including:
– denial of existance on a connection between passive smoking and lung cancer
– denial of existance on a connection of CFC emission and influence on the ozone layer
I would suggest that (a) it is necessary to distinguish between scientific thinking and advocacy, and (b) Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information [a lot of the negative information about climate skeptics seems to come from there].
On passive smoking, Fred Singer is reported as saying “When all else fails, there’s always tobacco. I am nonsmoker, belong to an anti-smoking organization (ACSH), and hate cigarette smoke. But this does not affect my science. Expert epidemiologists, including those at the Congressional Research Service, all agree that EPA cooked the data in order to link ‘second-hand’ smoke to lung-cancer deaths.“.
On the ozone layer, there has been a lot of discussion recently, and it seems that there really might not be much connection between CFC emissions and the ozone layer, and that the influences on the ozone layer are mainly natural.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/25/new-theory-predicts-the-largest-ozone-hole-over-antarctica-will-occur-this-month/
The greens are the new Nazis. Even Hitler didn’t kill as many. The total ban on DDT is killing a million kids each year due to malaria. Biofuels are causing misery and food riots. Banning dams perpetuates poverty in India. Lack of electricity condemns Africans to poverty and ill health.
They share the totalitarian need to control every aspect of everyone’s life and all information.
They were the old Nazis too. The Nazis believed the Volk had a special link to nature, and that the Jews were like rats that lived in the cities.
It is not difficult to understand why there is currently some open dissatisfaction being expressed by some European Parliamentarians about the slow rate of progress with respect to implementing world wide global warming mitigation policies. They have been given or chose to believe only the global warming worst case scenarios over and over again for decades now. The other and more likely worst case scenarios like the possible global cooling for the next 20- 30 years with possible cold winters like the latter part of the 1970’s [which they had only a brief taste during the winters of 2009 and 2010,] are not even on their radar . Their climate scientist, mainstream media and governments seem to have isolated the public from this much more realistic and possible scenario. The arrival of this next extended cooling cycle is not exact or clear as the cooling of the north Atlantic is difficult to predict exactly and the best estimates forecast for the AMO ,PDO and AO all going negative for extended periods is 2015 . The effect of the current low solar cycle is not all that clear yet. PDO is already heading cool. AMO is again dropping but this may be seasonal only. The uncertainty is not whether the cooler cycle is coming but only the exact timing. Once the reality of this latter scenarios sinks in as the weather starts to cool for extended periods, there will be lot of questioning of the climate scientists and governments and how they possibly could have gotten it so wrong. This questioning is already starting to happen in UK, Australia, New Zealand and North America several smaller European nations and including Russia. These so called “out of control Parliamentarians” better be careful. Europeans may be somewhat authoritarian but if they find out that that they have been duped and the cold cycle option was real possibility and the authorities and scientists knew about it back in 2010 and did not warn the public properly, the public will really be angry and rightly so. These Parliamentarians better do their home work now about all the possible climate scenarios [including possible cooling] and not just unprecedented global warming options or face wrath of a very angry European public in the very near future.
“”””” netdr2 says:
November 11, 2010 at 9:19 am
Poptech says:
November 11, 2010 at 9:09 am
Dr. Singer’s scientific credentials are impeccable
*************
So what ? Does that make him right ?
He is an ideologue
There are five attributes of ideologues:
1. Absence of doubt
2. Intolerance of debate
3. Appeal to authority
4. A desire to convince others of the ideological “truth”
5. A willingness to punish those that don’t concur “””””
Well that’s an impressive list of characteristics.
It is quite apaprent how they all apply to Both Al Gore, and Dr James Hansen.
Please enlghten us with a documented example of each of these characteristics as exhibited by Dr Fred Singer; we’d all like to be alerted to his foibles.
Does Al Gore stand for the US?
Neither stands the German Green Party for Germany.
Unfortunately nearly all Parliament Members and the whole government believe in Al Gore’s and Michael Mann’s Global Warming Phantasies – but not all Germans do.
Pull back Al Gore, Michael Mann, Obama – the German Government will think again.
Maybe even Chancelor Merkel, the great opportunist; she is the daughter of a red protestant priest who moved from free Germany to Stalin’s Germany to support communism; therefor she was allowed to study, and she got engaged in the communist youth organization FDJ. Then changing sides when power changed sides. She will always follow the path of power. She’s power Angie.
Mr Watts, your post on veterans day was GREAT, AWESOME; SOCIALISM -a more adequate name for it is SADISM- is the evil that you americans fought against. And you won!
Socialism is a militaristic regime of bullies, a regime of force, a regime of lack of respect for the person rights, free will and property and sadly germans often are socialists/sadists so such things are not surprising from the people that brought us National Socialism.
Socialism is arrogant, pedantic and intolerant by definition, socialism is about a very few arrogant having extreme power and control over our lives, socialism means not respecting the individual. Socialists main driving force often is SADISM, the vice for controlling our lives, for taking pleasure on punishing us, for having extreme power over us. EXTREME SOCIALISM meant EXTREME MASS MURDER often with extreme sadism, THEFT OF ALL PROPERRTY and, among other things, all kinds of sadistic punishments and prohibitions by a small group of sadistic depraved mass murderers mass robbers that called themselves “government”. Joseph Stalin was the quintaessential sadist, 41 million murdered by his regime, more than the National Socialism 21 million murdered. To that me must add the circa 50 millions dead in combat.
If some one alleges that I am insulting germans then I tell you that I have german blood in my veins and I am proud of it. I would be proud to have too some jewish blood in my veins but I have none . The sadistic tendencies often found in german people had done ENORMOUS damage to the world and GERMAN SADISM must be fought as your american heroes did in World War II
I understand that Germany has many excellent public facilities for the mass destruction by incendiary means of certain written materials, although they have gone unused for over half a century. Perhaps the practice could be revived in order to prevent anyone being mislead by the publishings of the skeptics, or, as they’re now known, the deniers.
Those who believe that warming can be explained by solar fluctuations could wear a yellow star to symbolise the link, whilst those who believe anthropogenic global warming will cause many deaths could wear a deaths-head cap-badge.
My previous comment was poorly written, I was exalted and wanted so much to praise Mr Watts for his excellent “Veterans day” post. It is the evil of socialism / sadism that american heroes FOUGHT and DEFEATED
There are many germans that are socialists, but obviously only a very small fraction of the german population are extreme socialists.
Germans voted classical liberal Konrad Adenauer as “The Greatest German Ever” so you see they are not as many extreme socialistic germans as one may think by reading my previous poorly written comment.
But it is obvious that the “greens” and socialists are often driven by the same vice of having more power, control & punishment power over our lives.