Wow, it doesn’t get much uglier than this. In my opinion, this is hate speech. Steve Zwick writes in his Forbes column:
We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. Let’s force them to bear the cost of rising food prices.
They broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?
People who doubt the magnitude of CO2/AGW driven climate change broke the climate?
I suppose then that Mr. Zwick has never driven a car, never taken an airplane trip, never heated or cooled his home, never bought products produced overseas and shipped here, never grilled at a BBQ, or never used electricity to power his computer to write his litany of hate for Forbes. No, he’s apparently not used any CO2 producing modern convenience at all, which is why he bizarrely believes he has some sort of moral high ground.
His hypocrisy is beyond description. His full essay is here.
For those who wish to complain about his hate speech against fellow Americans, see the Forbes Contact page here.
As for his points about the Yale poll trying to make us all fear the weather as some human caused machination of climate, read this.
UPDATE: Warren Meyer offers a thoughtful rebuttal in Forbes here
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Is it a requirement that these people all have similar hair and beard styles, A Mannian gene perchance. By their ranting they maybe up for getting on http://www.darwinawards.com/
Darwin’s beard was much bigger but similar hair (case proven)
James Bull
If you changed the topic, this could be a diatribe against the jews in Germany pre 1939 and again could be the theme for the anti communist propaganda in the States after WW2. Dangerous that such a nutter has a soap box like Forbes to vent his spleen. Perhaps anger management would help here. Scary. What is going on in the editiorial dept at Forbes? Fascists? Greeny Fascists? Oh Dear.
Time and again we find CAGW evangelists unable to recognise their own totalitarian tendencies and Mr Zwick is just another sad example of that species. It’s outrageous that he should, in effect, incite hate-crimes against those who’s opinions he does not share, but as climate sceptics we should pity him and forgive him his bad judgement and basest instincts. After all, we can rise above this and hopefully keep setting a good example. And as others here have said, we should most definitely make no attempt to silence him or his evangelical peers – as true believers in free speech, we need these people to be heard by as many as possible. Only then can the moral and intellectual poverty of their arguments be exposed for the dangerous propaganda that it so clearly is.
Does Zwick have any kind of science knowledge? I don’t think so.
http://marketswiki.com/mwiki/Steve_Zwick
Education
Zwick attended Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern Unversity. Additionally, he has studied various courses at Loyola University and University of Illinois at Chicago.
Gleick was so disturbed by his alarm over CO2 that he was driven to criminal actions. Zwick is also disturbed by alarm over CO2 and has been driven to encouraging criminal actions (albeit sneakily worded in a passive sense of ‘let them burn’ – a distinction that may well be lost on any sociopath inspired by him).
Yet there is virtually no evidence that CO2 deserves any alarm at all. We know past levels were relatively low compared to what plants thrive on. We know levels rise in a lagged response to warmer spells. We know we have had such a warmer spell in the MWP. We know we have probably had a modest overall warming over the past 150 years.
We can even admit that human emissions of CO2 could account for much of the observed rise in ambient levels at Mauna Loa, and we can even admit that this rise may lead to a modest warming – 1C of less per doubling. No cause for alarm there, only rejoicing that we may see easier times ahead with less climatic stress (compare and contrast MWP with LIA – which would you rather have lived in from that point of view?).
Only in the computer models do we find displayed a positive feedback which gives cause for alarm to some: those who want to be alarmed, those who find it advantageous to be alarmed, and those who think that these models deserve to be taken very seriously indeed. Mother Nature does not seem to be in that last category. There is a fourth category – those so affected by the alarm of others that they get driven to crazy thoughts and actions.
He would be arrested in Europe for inciting a riot and then get let off with a warming!
Mr. Zwick,
You are welcome to add me to your little list. Please spell my name right.
Sincerely
By all means ciritcise what he said. Not that he said it or was allowed to. Free speech applies to everyone, doesn’t it?
This is a great idea. Can we make the people that propagate Marxism pay too?
I looked at the photo of this man then read his utterances. The colour of the pate is a dead give away, he has been subjected to incoming radiation from the solar system and the universe,
If there was ever a need for a portable Faraday cage, this man is an advertisement.
Alternate layers of foil and insulation can easily be fashioned in to a stylish beenie.
You know, the more I think about this latest outburst the more I think it had the prior endorsement of officialdom – at some level. I just can’t see Forbes magazine running with this as a marketing ploy. Maybe even official arm twisting…?
And that bizzare outburst from the sociologist crank from the University of Oregon in London a few weeks ago: calling for “deniers” to be “treated”. That had a strangely official ‘odour’ about it too…it seemed pre-meditated, planned.
What do others think?
DirkH says:
April 19, 2012 at 8:07 pm
sophocles, stop getting your economic education from Kalle Lasn’s adbusters.
==================================================================
Never read it, and until now, hadn’t even heard of it.
I do follow Michael Hudson’s blog (at http://www.michael-hudson.com)
3×2 says:
April 20, 2012 at 12:37 am
Not really a surprise that such people emerge after a couple of decades of doom mongering.
—-
A few weeks ago I posted a comment on another site, pointing out how much warmer the Arctic / Earth was, during the Holocene Climate Optimum… the person wrote back that they ‘did not want politics on their page.
The stupidity of that person is appalling. It only served to point up why I believe this is going to take a VERY long time for this idiocy to end- they’ve poisoned the minds of at least one entire generation, and we’ll be paying the consequences of that for decades.
As a regular visitor to this site I am surprised and disappointed to see you encouraging people to complain about Zwick in an effort to curtail free speech. I think that is more disgraceful than anything Zwick said.
REPLY – That’s rich. It’s “more disgraceful” for Anthony to complain about Z than it is for Z to call for “retribution” on Anthony, et al. And since when is being surprised that a magazine publishes something “an attempt to curtail free speech”? It is Z who is frantically attempting to “curtail” A’s free speech, not the other way around. ~ Evan
I don’t think we should get too excited by this, he’s just one of the many nutters on their side.
We have plenty nutters on our side too, just read the blogs.
Storm in a teacup.
A cure for slugs.
Get an old newspaper, pick them up, pour salt over the slug and scrunch up the newspaper and throw them away in a bin.
Quid pro quo………same to him when they are exposed and have cost humanity an untold fortune in windmills and wavewobblers.
Open Letter to Mr Steve Zwick.
Dear Sir,
I read your essay with considerable interest. However, it seems to me to be rather one-sided.
On the basis of quid pro quo and so forth, how about (by way of suggestion only) we even things up a bit.
How about we start by setting a time-scale: say up to 2020. This gives you another 8 years for the catastrophic predictions you seem to be so fond of to be verified. If these occur, you win.
The return bet though is that every research cent which has ever been spent on published catastrophic modelling, where the model has proven to be invalid/inadequate/misleading is to be repaid. Every single cent of it. Which means you lose the bet.
And to make things a little more interesting, how about (in poker terminology) a raise – interest on those research £/$/A$/Can$ etc from the date the funding was allocated to the end date for the bet. You can fund that part, that’s your stake. It’s good to keep an interest – and you seem very sure of your ground, so how could you refuse?
Let me state unequivocally that as I am a salaried employee in a financial services company which has no involvement in any aspect of “Big Oil” etc, and am in receipt of precisely Zero “Big Whatever” funds, I am (was) an entirely detached observer. I have read a considerable amount on both sides of the debate – I have a chemistry degree, and therefore have been thoroughly trained in the scientific method.
Until such time as any of the teams developing these wonderfully complex climate “models” are able to demonstrate:
a) the model runs on data – unadjusted, untampered, and most of all published
b) the modelling programs’ code is published and subjected to INDEPENDENT validation
the alarming conclusions must be treated with a pinch of salt.
There is so much contradictory information, that simply insulting everybody who raises the finger of innocent enquiry utterly destroys both your integrity and your reputation.
As a further and completely radical suggestion, how about a full, open and honest debate – or would this worry you too much?
Yours
Adam Nottage
Apologies to Ministry of Safety – I didn’t pinch your idea, honest!
Adam
theowolfe says:
April 20, 2012 at 2:16 am
“As a regular visitor to this site I am surprised and disappointed to see you encouraging people to complain about Zwick in an effort to curtail free speech. I think that is more disgraceful than anything Zwick said.”
Get back under your bridge, o ‘regular visitor’.
coyote says:
April 19, 2012 at 2:50 pm
Forbes is just offering the platform, and is obviously seeking writers from all sides of the political spectrum.
Zwick deserves to be spanked for incitement, but put me on the side of allowing both sides to be heard — it’s one of the things that makes WUWT such a lively place. It’s especially fun when the Warmies go into tantrum mode — all that ranting produces more CO2, which makes the plants happy…
theowolfe says:
April 20, 2012 at 2:16 am
As a regular visitor to this site I am surprised and disappointed to see you encouraging people to complain about Zwick in an effort to curtail free speech.
Why are you disappointed to see that Anthony encourages people to exercise their right to free speech?
Gunga Din says:
April 19, 2012 at 2:51 pm
“Science fiction is full of stories about a lone hero, or group of heros, detecting some danger and running around trying to convince others to take the proper course of action to prevent the disaster or, at least, try to save people from it. Often they meet with resistance, usually from those who have something to gain from the disaster or what led to the disaster. The heros do not wish evil on the resisters. They try to help them. Often the resisters do wish evil on the heros. So, who fits which role in this SciFi story of Catastrophic Man Made Global Warming … er … Climate Change?”
Science Fiction?? What about Norway, today, a person named Brevick? Those first three lines encapsulate EXACTLY his defence. Does Forbes really want some other nutter to do a Brevick on Lindzen, Singer, or other, unnamed climate scientists?
OK Zwick, lets have it your way and cut the emissions. What’s going to happen?
Well, the lights are gonna go out, followed by your heating/air-con. Your desktop PC is gonna stop straight away followed by your lappy 2 or 3 hours later. Your cell phone is going to tell you ‘No Network’ for a day or 2 before it dies. Landline will die about the same time. After a couple of days your fridge and freezers are going to stink to high heaven. You and the kids are going to be hungry. Your car wont start. There’ll be nothing in the shops when you do walk there and besides, your credit/debit cards wont work. After just 3 days you will be living below the level of a hobo.
But, hey, at least the polar bears will be safe.
Or will they?, Just like Schroedinger’s Cat, there will be no way to check on them without releasing some of those dreadful emissions and killing them. So you will have to exist in a state of ignorance regards the polar bears.
So why bother going to all that grief as its obvious you already in that happy state.
You know you have won an argument with a fanatic liberal when they start yelling liar! liar!
Well Mr. Zwick, your article was nothing more than a tap out in the climate change octagon.
(My apologies to any rational liberals with an intelligent opinion that may read this)