Last weekend I posted an essay on what I considered to be a pointless invocation of Godwins Law by my friend James Delingpole:
The battle of the pointless Nuremberg insults: Romm -vs- Delingpole
(Note: For those of you who don’t know, Delingpole was the first to pick up on Climategate and give it MSM legs in the Telegraph, for that we owe him gratitude. )
In my essay I had harsh words for people on both sides of the climate debate, pointing out where there’s more than enough instances of blame to go around. Both sides have fallen into the Godwin’s Law trap. From Wikipedia:
Godwin’s law (also known as Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies) is an observation made by Mike Godwin in 1990 that has become an Internet adage. It states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” In other words, Godwin observed that, given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope—someone inevitably makes a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis.
When James invoked Nuremberg comparisons, he became another Godwin’s Law statistic, joining some other loud voices on the AGW advocacy side of the debate.
Normally, when you point out where they’ve fallen into such a rhetorical trap, especially with friends, they thank you for helping them to realize this. I was quite surprised to find that Mr. Delingpole has made not one, but two critical responses to my essay:
In the Telegraph: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100211704/apologise-to-michael-mann-anthony-id-rather-eat-worms/
In the Spectator: http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnists/james-delingpole/8885551/no-i-wont-say-sorry-even-to-a-friend/
After contemplation of his reaction, I wrote a thank you letter to James for the kind words that he did mention about me (to which he responded positively), and I have now condensed the problem of our differences down to what I believe is a simple misunderstanding on Mr. Delingpole’s part.
I wrote in my original essay:
My point is, no matter who says it, in whatever context, it will turn into a shouting match no matter how many qualifiers or caveats you attach to it, and we simply don’t need it, because all it does is polarize the tribal nature of the climate debate even further.
To Delingpole, take a cue from Dave Roberts at Grist: fix it and apologize. To Mann, Romm, and others, clean up your own house before taking your outrage further.
James took that as me suggesting that he should apologize to Dr. Michael Mann. No, I’d never make such a silly suggestion, because while Dr. Mann does have a right to be upset at what Mr. Delingpole wrote, as is typical of Dr. Mann, he took the issue, made it his own, inflated it, ran with it, and added his own brand of specially seasoned Team Outrage Sauce to it:
Should we be surprised at this inflation of Delingpole’s Godwin’s Law rhetorical flourish to “calling for my murder”? No, not at all, because Dr. Mann is quite good at taking small insignificant bits and turning them into issues, it’s what he does as his hockey stick critics will tell you.
But here’s where I think James missed a critical point, and that might be my fault for not making it clearer in my initial essay. I think my mistake was dashing off my original essay too quickly, which left some things open to interpretation.
I wasn’t suggesting James apologize to Dr. Mann, nooo, I was suggesting that James apologize to climate skeptics.
Why? Well, consider what goes on in the climate blogosphere on an almost daily basis. Since AGW proponents are having a hard time successfully arguing the science these days, what with the pause, climate sensitivity, IPCC modeling -vs- reality and other issues not working out like they hope, and with the public cooling their interest, AGW proponents rely more and more on rhetorical tricks to make their points. We see more and more hyperventilated media claims of every bit of odd weather being caused by global warming, only later to discover they are nothing but hype. We see desperately silly claims of “anything goes” when it comes to connecting AGW to weather, where no matter what the forecast and result, the unseen hand of AGW is to blame.
But, probably the most desperate examples being used by AGW proponents are the execrable tactics pioneered by Dr. Stephan Lewandowski of the University of Western Australia and his sidekick John Cook of Skeptical Science. Their tactic is the same as what was once employed in the communist USSR, a political abuse of psychiatry: paint your opponent as being mentally aberrant.
And, it is we individual climate skeptics who are the ones having to fight those rhetorical battles in the blogospheric trenches. We’ll now be in a defensive position over Delingpole’s article.
My issue with James Delingpole simply had to do with handing our opponents another tool to beat us up rhetorically with. When they want to use a broad brush to paint all climate skeptics as nutters, the last thing you want to do is indulge their fantasy by invoking Godwin’s Law, giving them rhetorical ammo that they’ll re-purpose and fire back at us. One thing I’ve learned is that climate extremists have no shame, they’ll take any issue and throw it back at us with wildly inflated claims, just look at Dr. Mann’s tweet above to see this in action.
In his letter to me James wrote that:
As a scientist you are inevitably going to think this is all about the science. it isn’t – and as I documented very carefully in Watermelons – it never was.
No, I’ve never thought that. While James and I fight the battle using different tools at our disposal, we both know that that battle lines of global warming/climate change are constantly blurred between science and politics. Some days they are entirely interchangeable as Al Gore, James Hansen, Joe Romm, Kevin Trenberth, Michael Mann, and Bill McKibben routinely demonstrate to us.
I simply think we shouldn’t hand our opponents new weapons (such as Godwin’s Law eruptions) that they will inevitably use against us; it just isn’t a good strategy. For those in the blogospheric trenches who will now be forced to defend Mr. Delingpole against hyperinflated claims of “calling for my murder” like Dr. Mann has made, I think Delingpole should offer a simple mea culpa to them for the extra difficulties they will now face in the battle.
James also wrote this in his letter to me:
We’re free and open in expressing our differences. Compare and contrast the way, for example, after Gleickgate the greens/alarmists throughout the blogosphere and the MSM pretty much closed ranks and got behind Gleick regardless of the gravity of his crime. Our side would just never do that. If any one of us was involved in serious malfeasance like identity theft, we’d be quick to condemn it.
Indeed we would, we police our own, which is why I’m pointing out this Godwin’s Law instance to James.
James does make some very good (and entertaining) rhetorical points though about the eco-oriented left , and you can read about them in his book: Watermelons: The Green Movement’s True Colors
When another person/group/mob is trying to inhibit your freedom the last thing you do is let them. For that reason Delingpole should write whatever he bloody well wants to (he does – he gets it!). Can’t believe people want us to censure ourselves because the likes of Michael Mann will feign offence as a argumentative weapon. Oh dear, you’ve fallen right into his trap and you can’t even see it!
And this… “Godwin’s “Law” does not discuss whether it is wrong to ever mention the Nazis, ” – Adam above
BTW, Delingpole was being sarcastic. I mean, really?!
Ah well, lessons learned.
IMO some of you need to slap yourselves.
Delingpole’s article was full of sarcasm.
Michael Mann et al use offence as a weapon. Don’t fall into their trap.
Don’t censure yourself because your enemy wants you to censure yourself. Confront them with the opposite and laugh at them. (see above)
And as poster Adam said… “”Godwin’s “Law” does not discuss whether it is wrong to ever mention the Nazis” .
Godwin was just another guy on the internet who said something about a social topic that has some merit – it ain’t the Law of Gravity so we can take some liberty with it.
Frankly, I think this whole matter is very much a tempest in a teapot. I don’t always agree with Delingpole’s somewhat over the top style – or content; but, for the most part, I do enjoy and appreciate what I would call his irreverence – particularly when it comes to matters of political and /or climatic correctness.
It’s unfortunate that his original op ed in The Australian is behind a paywall. According to Tom Harley, this op ed began as follows:
Hartley also cites what became the initial “offending” paragraph, which was as Delingpole had stated, both in his first Telegraph piece and in his Spectator piece:
Harley’s post indicates that the antecedent(s) of Delingpole’s (extended?!) metaphor post may well have included a tweet from a Bernard Keane, whom I’d never heard of before but who evidently writes for Crikey an “independent news, commentary and analysis website that has been in business since 2000 … located in Melbourne, Australia”. Keane had wrongly summarized Delingpole’s piece as follows:
Whatever his background and credentials might be, my guess would be that one who – as Keane has done – has written an e-book, The Internet Wars, the blurb for which includes:
is an individual I would consider to be of a somewhat alarmist and hyperbolic predisposition and persuasion, for whom accuracy in tweeting may not be a high priority.
It’s difficult to tell whether or not Keane had actually read Delingpole’s op ed in The Australian. Who knows, perhaps Keane is ignorant of the fact that Delingpole’s allusion to the anachronistic black cap takes into account that it would have been worn by a judge (I believe only in the U.K.) only after a fair trial – at which one would presume all the evidence had been presented and judiciously reviewed.
In light of the above, my view is that in the context of Delingpole’s “metaphor” piece, the reference to a “climate Nuremberg” (not a phrase that he had coined, as we know) was almost a throw-away line. It was far from the focus of his piece.
The Rommian and Mannian knee-jerk gnashing of teeth and “poor me” wailing could only result from their historical ignorance – and/or willful misinterpretation – of what the Nuremberg trials were really all about. In this regard, they seem to be in the same ahistorical boat as Keane. Surely this is their problem, not Delingpole’s.
Yes, knowing their previous patterns of behaviour, this warped response was somewhat predictable. But so what?! Delingpole’s solitary allusion is hardly as egregious – or as offensive – as the many years during which they have plastered the “denier” label on us, knowing full well that it derives from their willful and deliberate denigration of those who do not share their views of impending doom and gloom.
Did Mann, Romm or any of the other big name carbophobics object to Gore’s 1989 “Ecological Kristallnacht” in the NYT? [pls. see Climatic licence] I very much doubt it. But I digress …
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect Delingpole to walk on rhetorical egg-shells simply because we know that Mann, Romm and their ilk will go overboard in waxing about their faux-furies.
IMHO, far more damage has been (and continues to be) inflicted on “our side”, particularly by friends in high places who insist on using “hoax”, “scam” and/or “fraud”, in this admittedly polarized debate, than by this relatively minor “transgression” – if indeed it can be justifiably called such – by Delingpole.
Hilary Ostrov
I prefer George Santayana’s Law to Godwin’s Law:
“Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.”
While there are too many over-the-top references to Hitler on the internet, there are times when it is appropriate to mention Nazi history so society doesn’t forget. Godwin’s Law was meant as a humorous observation. I fear the non-humorous use of Godwin’s Law will lead us down a slipper slope to censorship.
Has anyone considered the fact that Godwin’s Law mentions both Hitler and the Nazis and therefore violates itself? By its own definition, It can have no credibility because, “falling afoul of Godwin’s law tends to cause the individual making the comparison to lose their argument or credibility.” Godwin therefore lost his argument and his credibility on this subject back in 1990. Let it rest in peace.
This is my final version of this poem — and strangely this poem is very appropriate for this thread.
TRENBERTH LOSES HIS STRAWBERRIES
(see the courtroom scene in The Caine Mutiny)
As greenhouse gases still accrete
This captain of the climate wars
Is searching for the missing heat
That he believes the ocean stores
He’ll prove to all humanity
That danger in the deep resides!
The Kraken that he knows must be
That Davy Jones’ locker hides!
(The soul’s more heavy than we think
A truth that everyone must face
And to what depths a soul may sink!
O! To what dark and dismal place!)
Does Captain Trenberth understand
The data leaves him no appeal?
He tumbles in his restless hand
Three clacking balls of stainless steel
MY GEOMETRIC LOGIC PROVES
HEAT TELEPORTS FROM PLACE TO PLACE!
FROM SKIES INTO THE DEPTHS IT MOVES
AND IN BETWEEN IT LEAVES NO TRACE!
(When silent faces stare at you
It’s always best to shut your jaw
But Trenberth is without a clue
As he believes they stare in awe)
FIRST POINT
CAGW — Science has always been only a fig leaf for their propaganda. The “science by press” release we have been seeing so much of lately is new only in the sense that it is more blatant and abundant. In a strange sense it is good to see — the fig leaf has gotten tiny indeed — more people are going to notice what is hanging out. The thing these people have forgotten is that, more quickly than they imagine, people recognize propaganda for what it is. At the end who in the Soviet Union believed a thing the government said? It has nearly reached that point with their climate propaganda. Who believes it any more?
SECOND POINT
The thing about fighting a war is that you need to have many specialized troops. You don’t send in sharpshooters to fight tanks. Delingpole and Watts are in a sense specialized troops who battle as they are best equipped to fight. If Delingpole’s artillery barrage caused a disruption in Watt’s field of operations — well, Watts gets to bitch — but that doesn’t mean Delingple should switch to a peashooter.
OK, enough said. We have enemies wearing an ancient indian religious symbol to fight. Lets aim our guns at that enemy and not at each other.
Eugene WR Gallun
IMHO – False “application” of Godwin’s law here by Anthony.
The discussion actually began with a suggestion (by someone, long ago) that skeptics should be subject to Nuremberg-type trials and penalties due to the scale of their (possible, theorized, future, supposed) crimes against humanity, even over a theoretical mechanism.
This was no random comparison with any aspect of Nazism, rather a reference to a historical, highly politicized and emotive response to it.
It seems to me James Delingpole responded quite appropriately, even if his convolutions of prose did allow some hijacking of the message by the even more prose-convoluted Mann…
Anyway, I hold with a few others here that sometimes comparisons with Nazism is a most suitable analogy, and citing of Godwin’s law as an argument winner is a cop-out.
I’ve read Dellers’s article and there has been no invoking Godwin’s law and there has been no calling for Mann’s murder. Dellers euphemistically responded to virtual calls for Mann’s trial and execution and answered those virtual calls in the negative. The actual calls have not been so virtual, btw. He invoked the post war tribunal – a much needed legal body brought to the world stage to call for personal accountability as a result the German horrors committed during WWII. He did not invoke the Nazis nor did he invoke Hitler. He invoked a world court. I agree with that call.
This is the most overblown reaction possible from both Anthony and Michael (I’m the victim) Mann. There’s no Nazis, there’s no call for murder, there’s no Godwin’s law component.
I’m not so tolerant as Dellers and I fully believe Mann is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of British citizens who could not afford the consequences of Mann’s bogus climate alarmism and further, I will name as co-conspirators everyone who has contributed to the climate myth that has directly led to these thousands of deaths (I’m looking at you, Phil Jones and Jim Hansen), and moreover I call for the prosecution of these and all other co-conspirators on the world stage to be held accountable for their actions that precipitated the deaths of Britain’s treasured elders, and for those found guilty to be incarcerated and held in the coldest, most dank, and uncomfortable habitat the world can afford till they kill themselves or life leaves them from natural causes.
I’ve not invoked a single Nazi in this plea and I do not advocate for the murder of Michael Mann, and as a consequence this post is the perfect parallel of Dellers’s post.
You must understand the UK perspective, different from the US. We are at different stages of imperialism. The US Empire is still at its peak. The UK is 60 years, 2 generations into its post-imperial stage. Typically this process takes 3 generations.
The way it works is that the Imperial caste gets the best jobs for its kids. To do so they destroy meritocratic education. The elite become corrupt and the economy decays, but this has been hidden by borrowing. The elite also push socialism as part of the dumbing down. At present 7% privately-educated control the economy and other areas, e.g. sport.
What Delingpole is doing is to write as one of the elite but a bright one who understands how it is causing the UK economy to implode. The aim of the windmills and green politics is to enrich elite landowners and the Mafia, which in the UK is part of the elite because their secret societies are an integral part of the private school system and this has been so for 140 years.
The best way to attack this corruption is to show the comparisons with Nazism. Green socialist politics in the UK are fascist. The aim is to cut population by 60% with high power costs, herding the people into inner cities to die. Agenda 21 has been used to justify fascism; all it needs is a new Pol Pot.
“In other words, Godwin observed that, given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope—someone inevitably makes a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis”.
And Holocaust sorry Climate Change Deniers.
DaveA says: April 14, 2013 at 9:08 pm
“IMO some of you need to slap yourselves.”
Good advice, Dave !
hro001 says: April 14, 2013 at 9:36 pm
Well said, Hilary ! Context is essential to understanding and that Dellers was maligned in that tweet by a ‘journalist’ of the ‘opposite political persuasion’ needs to be appreciated by the US audience.
I’m with James on this one – we Brits do do things differently to you guys, and in the context of what he wrote, and given that the death penalty has been called for on us realists by more than one cooling denier, I think he had every right to take the approach he did. That Mann doesn’t understand what “mataphor” means is his problem. I nearly wet myself laughing reading the article. No – the warmers deserved that. Well done James
More strength to you James. And my apologies to anyone that this offends.
Anthony.
What you implicitly say has our unqualified support.
Scientific scepticism and unfailing courtesy are desirable not because they enable us to defeat those who disagree with us but because they are the right way to proceed. All our truths are only working hypotheses and it is helpfully sobering to remember it. None of us will, in retrospect, regret careful thought or the fact that we were respectful of others.
Yours is a scientific blog; demanding rules apply.
I suggest you both bury the hatchet.
For the avoidance of doubt I do not mean bury the hatchet’s in each other:-)
My take on the piece was that it was funny even funnier was Mann’s absolutely ridiculous response.
The alarmists in their minds are either Supermen/Superwomen saving the planet or are martyrs for the cause. Ie they are delusional.
Storm in a tea cup.
You are both doing excellent work and bringing to the attention of millions the scam of AGW. You both use different methods and techniques for getting over your points. Without James’s flowery writing I would never have had my eyes opened to the issue and without’s Anthony’s science, I would not have been able to confirm James’s words and views to my own satisfaction.
Both methods are entirely jusitfied and very necessary, even if James does sometimes push the boundaries. I feel it is necessary for him to do this.
You are both on the same side, stop behaving like fighting kids and concentrate on the excellent work you are both doing. After all, when Mann has retired and he is sitting back reflecting on his career, it will be him who has wasted his life trying to push a false hypothesis. He will be the failed scientist with just another hopelessly wrong theory. Not a great legacy!
Anthony is a gentleman & a scientist. James Delingpole is a journalist. Both are doing valiant work on the same side of this debate, as Anthony sees it & war, as James sees it.
I rather fear that Anthony has lost the big picture.
The climate scare was cooked up in order that the banksters & ecomarxists could promote their one world govt agenda at the expense of the taxpayer & to the vast profit of banksters & ecomarxists. & they are winning this war.
Anthony is winning his gentlemanly debate on the science, while the western world is coming under the heel of the ecomarxists.
In the US for example, your president wants the power to murder US citizens on US soil without due process of law, & is buying up huge amounts of hollow point ammunition in what is surely a preparation for civil war. The US is devoting millions of acres of prime farmland to produce car fuel, while a doubling of food prices & subsequent food riots have resulted in the revolutions, civil wars & mass slaughters we are seeing & have seen in the Middle East euphemistically known as the “Arab Spring”. Men do not revolt for love of democracy, they will revolt to fill their childrens’ bellies.
This is directly in conformance with UN Agenda 21 policy of world population reduction by ~93%.
Here in the UK we are seeing the mass slaughter of our expensive old folk in our hospitals, with Mid-Staffs hospital revealed to have caused many hundreds of cases of neglect, & up to 1200 deaths where our nurses are overloaded with paperwork, & basic care is left to minimum wage Health Care Assistants, who do not care. thousands of old folk are being put on “The Liverpool Care Path”, which is a euphemism for starving them to death. In addition we have ~20,000 deaths pa in winter where our old folk cannot “heat & eat”.
All manner of abominations are permissible when one is “saving the planet” from the evil of overpopulation.
In my opinion, Anthony could be advancing the debate, & helping James in his war by encouraging James to publish the facts re the slowdown in world population growth, & stories such as Allan Savory’s brilliant greening the sahara techniques, along with Matt Ridley’s Carbon & the Industrial way of life is good for the planet story. James has a most important foot in the Mainstream Media, which, alas, is mostly bought & paid for by the banksters.
Anthony is doing fine on the General Staff, James is fighting at the dirty end, up front in a much fired upon tank.
James is in the hateful position of seeing school friends troughing & profiting well from the windmill scam, while he is far less well rewarded fighting for truth & humanity in the shrinking print media. He cannot provide as well for his kids, & it’s eating him.
To give you an idea of how far along the agenda 21 totalitarian line the UK is please go to:
http://www.ukcolumn.org & click on CHILDREN in the header bar & follow the extremely harrowing video & account of our social security (SS) & police taking a one day old baby from a blameless couple from which they had already removed three other children. 5th Apr, I believe, with a further interview 11th Apr. Thousands of children are being taken from their parents each year, under the most perverted use of the Agenda 21″Precautionary Principle” ever: The children “may be in danger of possible future emotional harm” This is big business in the UK, ~£20billion pa. with 60,000 children being in care. Secret courts lay injunctions on family members & journalists who try to get this scandal in the open air, such as Christopher Booker in the Telegraph. There are suspicions that some of the children are being used as bait to trap politicians & people such as judges, civil servants & police into going along with the more odious agenda 21 policies. Read also the Bonnie Lewis case, an unbelievably James Bond like case of NHS incompetence, SS gunpoint abduction of a sick UK child from a Florida hospital, & the subsequent alienation of that child from her mother using Neuro Linguistic programming techniques.
Remember that when Alabama banned UN Agenda 21, James Delingpole got an honourable mention:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/11999-sustainable-freedom-surging-opposition-to-agenda-21-“sustainable-development”
We need both the clear heads on the general staff & the fighters on the front line.
In England we speak English in a very different way to those in the US. Nuances and meanings are easily lost or even added on. I think Anthony really should accept that we don’t speak the same language.
…
I am loving this thread.
Anthony has more then once swatted me down for making inflamatory remarks about climant scientists and the journalists who promote them. He was right! We must not sink to their level, but
no matter what we say we will fall short of their level in MNHO [my not humble opinion].
On the other hand, I am adament we must call a spade a spade and attack with whatever weapons we have against the horrible corruption of science and politics by the AGW crowd. Dellingpole’s op-ed was not as offensive as Anthony first thought but still was borderline. I am divided in whether to appuld Anthony’s high mindedness or Dellingpole’s down and dirty approach. I wish to maintain the high ground but sure do wish to ravage the enemy.
I love the thread because Anthony is getting swatted down by his readership. He deserves the swatting much less then I did, but still, he was/is making too nice in a death struggle. Godwin’s Law, phooey.
What an interesting and civilized debate. As always, it’s all in the language and Brit humour remains a very tricky area in North America. JD has given hope and inspiration to many of us at trench level taking on Big Wind and the forces fighting under the evil banner of Goremonism….it really is hugely dispiriting, combating lie after lie from hugely resourced and connected despoilers….and who can resist the occasional Goebbels comparison, Godwin or no…certainly not the enemy! This is no time to moderate anything. Stick to your last, James. We all owe you…… as well as AW.
May I suggest Godwin’s Law be renamed Godwin’s Observation, otherwise it implies a prohibition and indeed it is clear that is how many view it.
There are cases which quite legitimately can be compared to fascism, or circumstances surrounding the NAZI era, and need to be shown for what they are. If it causes offence, so what? If it happens frequently, it just shows fascism was not defeated in 1945 and how aware we should be of its ever presence.
Invoking Godwin’s Law is like invoking racism or morals, a trump card to shut down any argument which cannot be won on merit.
Anyway Godwin’s Law really should be called Fawlty’s Law, as Basil got there first, ‘Don’t mention the War’ and just as absurd.
As for James D’s commentary, his job is to be provocative, rile the object of his attention and get them mouthing off so we can all enjoy their stupidity and righteous indignation.
His job is not to spare the blushes of, or to make life easier for those in the Scepticariat.
@ur momisugly IanW
” James’ original piece was written for an Australian audience who tend to be – shall we say – less subtle, so the last lines of his article were relatively measured for that audience. ”
—————————————–
Cobblers. James’ piece was published in The Australian, a newspaper with a relatively small circulation, but which is read or monitored by every politician, business leader and otherwise influential person in the country. It targets, and reaches, the top of the demographic heap.
Delingpole has been to Australia for speaking tours several times, and his communication style is well understood and appreciated here. I think you will find that he sees no need to dumb down his message on those occasions.
“Less subtle” than whom? You, perhaps?
I didn’t find your snobbish comment particularly subtle.
Three Cheers for Delingpole!
Hip Hip Hooray
Hip Hip Hooray
Hip Hip Hooray
He can be as rude as he likes in my opinion. The Warmists deserve every bit.
As a self confessed Eco-Pinko (but not a troll) I must say that James left Godwins Law broken and flapping in the dust a long time ago. According to James practically everyone to the left of Hitler* (did you see what I did there !) is a Nazi. From the oft mentioned Eco-Nazis onwards, etc etc etc. And he did heave a ‘resigned sigh’ when saying that Mann should not actually be killed.
As for Godwin applying to the Jolly posters on here, how long did it take me to find the first reference to ‘camps’ and what our children will be doing in them? Not very long – Well done Marc at 11:37, April 14.
Seriously though, the sceptic/denier side really should just stick to the science and stay clear of of the more wacky Nazi/Eugenics/They want-us-to-go-back-to-the-stone-age/Tea-Party-Rah!Rah!Rah!/Shape-Shifting-Lizard-Overlord theories that always seem to kick in after about line three of any climate debate.
*Sorry that was to the right, up to but not including Ann Coulter. Hitler was, as you know, an Ecologist-Socialist.
On wishing for a ‘Climate Nuremberg’, I think James has chosen his words carefully, drawing an analogy between the proponents of accepted climate science and the Nazis and others who were tried for crimes against humanity . If he had wanted to say ‘Climate Court Case’, he could have done.