By Anthony Watts
Originally published at Climate Realism
Unable to win the debate in the court of public opinion, climate activists are increasingly calling for the imprisonment of climate realists. The latest example is an article in The Carbon Brief titled “How climate change misinformation spreads online.” The authors, who are all University of Exeter professors, advocate fines and imprisonment for people publishing “climate misinformation” online. They justify their call for imprisonment by claiming tremendous harm from “misleading information that is created and spread with intent to deceive.”
That’s one take, another take is that those who publish what the Left deems as “misinformation” are actually publishing what might be dubbed “inconvenient truths.” The 2006 film by Al Gore of the same name is a case in point. Gore, not being particularly good at details, published a boatload of misinformation in that film, and social media responded to correct the record. In one scene Gore used an animated clip of a polar bear in danger of drowning, trying to get onto a tiny ice flow made smaller, presumably by global warming. Gore cited this as the new normal of drowning polar bears. The reality? Scientists documented one drowned polar bear at sea after an intense storm, something that hasn’t been seen since. According to an Associated Press article:
“A federal wildlife biologist whose observation in 2004 of presumably drowned polar bears in the Arctic helped to galvanize the global warming movement has been placed on administrative leave and is being investigated for scientific misconduct, possibly over the veracity of that article.”
Social media was the first to point out problems with Gore’s polar bear claims, and they were proven right.
Then there’s the claim Gore made about Mt. Kilimanjaro losing its ice cap due to “global warming.” Again, social media was the first to point out that what was really happening was a consequence of deforestation around the base of the mountain making less water vapor available by the process of evapotranspiration – trees releasing water into the atmosphere. Without as much water vapor aiding replenishing snows, the ice simply dried up like old ice cubes in a freezer, a process known as sublimation.
And finally, Gore made the bold claim in 2009 that the Arctic ice cap might be gone in five years. Again, social media was the first to point out the problems with this claim. To this day, the Arctic ice cap remains, and Gore no longer references any of those claims he once made.
If it weren’t for social media, we’d still be hearing about these claims. The mainstream media choose not to subject alarmist climate claims to even cursory analysis, and investigative reporting is virtually non-existent. Yet, because social media does investigate and fact-check, pushing against a group-think narrative and exposing the lies and real misinformation surrounding the climate scare, climate alarmists have to fight back using dirty tricks like labeling social media authors as if they were radical enemies of the state, worthy of imprisonment in the gulag.
This isn’t the first time such wild calls for criminalization of contrary climate opinion have been made, in fact, it goes back to 2014: Lawrence Torcello, a liberal arts professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, NY, writes in an essay at The Conversation that climate scientists who fail to communicate the correct message about “global warming” should face trial for “criminal negligence.” A commenter on his article went even further to suggest that I should be sent to the war crimes tribunal in the Hauge for having a different opinion on climate:
“… I believe Anthony Watts should be frogmarched to The Hague as well. No question, in my mind. In fact, I find the idea of a defense of his actions ethically reprehensible.”
It gets worse. An ugly theatrical play, called Kill Climate Deniers, was even created in Australia about the issue.
The bottom line? Imprisonment of political dissidents has been a common theme with repressive regimes going back to the beginning of history. When those seeking power can’t convince the populace of the merits of their ideas, they start putting people who disagree in jail, hoping that fear will keep the rest in line. Fortunately, we live in a country where free speech is guaranteed by the Constitution.
But, should the time ever come when I’m going to be imprisoned for my viewpoints, I won’t go quietly, and neither will the thousands of independent thinkers on social media.
In my years of debating the avrage climte alarmist who has read an article or two from cnn, one arrgument always stumps them:
What is the optimal co2 concentration in the atmosphere and how do we get there?
You can’t even google this answer because there is no answer to this question.
Ditto.
Here’s mine:
“In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles. The generation of such model ensembles will require the dedication of greatly increased computer resources and the application of new methods of model diagnosis. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive, but such statistical information is essential.”
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/TAR-14.pdf
Section 14.2.2.2, p. 774
The (one way) Conversation website is just another echo chamber
If this is Exeter Uni in UK then my grandson graduated yesterday with a Master’s first in physics from there. Can’t be all bad.
Oh, for imprisonment, just come and get me. But be careful of my friends, some are very disagreeable.
Having looked at the Exeter article, I would entirely agree with them: all that misinformation put out by the alarmists should result in punishment. Hoist by their own petard, I say. One should always be very careful about what one asks for as it might all bite back if what you yourself are espousing is actually not the truth.
The Carbon Brief article is unbelievably silly. If only these people would publish what they object to from so many qualified scientists rather than make generalisations about lies and untruths. 50 per cent of the narrative is spent on explaining what their clever technical words mean. But nowhere do they defend the right of opposing scientific discourse. It is well worth reading in order to appreciate how truly stupid the article is. It is clear that the authors were .struggling to fulfil a role to justify a grant that they must have been fortunate in getting. It is worth looking at the names and qualifications of the authors to see how ill equipped for writing such an article they really are. None of them has any scientific or meteorological expertise at all. Here they are: Dr Hywel Williams, Associate Professor in Data Science, University of Exeter. Dr. Saffron O’Niell, Associate Professor of Geography, University of Exeter. Kathren Treen PhD. Candidate in the Computer Science Department of University of Exeter. Their names should be broadcast far and wide in order to make them and others understand that the world will not tolerate their ridiculous outpourings, and if they want to produce papers in the name of science they need to do better.
Fortunately, in the US the Founders added the 2nd Amendment to protect the 1st Amendment. If they try to imprison political opponents there will be bloodshed in the US. The majority of patriotic Americans will be on the side of the Constitution and not care an individual’s political leanings. The Progressives know this so they just talk big to try to convince the masses and demonize their opposition.
They have found another worse punishment – sending Roger stone to a COVID prison is a death sentence.
Do not underestimate their perfidy.
And if you think people will resist, just look at how easy it has been for governments to put people under ‘house arrest’ during the COVID pandemic. In spite of what many might say, only government has a legal right to use force. They will never push hard enough to provoke a violent response. They will pick individual high-profile targets and prosecute them for technical breaches of obscure laws that have nothing to do with the person’s main agenda, whether that be climate or something else. But the message will be clear: modify your thinking and your behavior, or else. Without even looking into it I can think of some instances – in Europe, the UK and Australia – where this has already happened.
“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
Ayn Rand
…not excluding ensuring their allies – BLM, Antifa – are immediately bailed out and released after being jailed for riot, looting, destruction of property and assault on police. They can’t STAND not being in power, and have as you say finally reached the point where they will do anything necessary to get there and stay there. It really is a coup attempt.
They’re obviously completely fed up with democracy and are striving desperately for one-party rule, and have been doing so at least since the election of George W. Bush. It’s time to let them know they need a massive purge of these Marxist swine if their party is to have any credibility at all going forward. Start fielding candidates with the guts to say, “Greedy overgrown children will NOT dictate policy in this country, full stop! Grow up and get some life experience before you imagine the world ought to look the way it does in the fairytale castle inside your thick skulls!”
Power hungry little wannabees aren’t they? Their attitude is “We don’t need a dialogue or proof, off with anyone who disagrees.
I waded through the comments that all of you have made. Several things need to be emphasized, in my view.
1 – The more your opponents holler, squawk, point fingers, whatever at your opposing point of view (no matter what the subject is) as a threat to him/her/it/them personally, the more you know about them.
2 – The more you know about your opposition, the better prepared you are to bring it to its knees and put an end to it, whether it is disagreement over climate-whatEVER or fanatical blindness to a cause that threatens you.
3 – The more The They, those squawking climate change fanatics holler, and the louder they are, the better, because you know what they’re up to and can prepare accordingly. It may seem as though they have (or think they have) the Upper Hand, but every balloon or bubble has a weak point and a bursting point. That even holds true when you blow soap bubbles and let them freeze.
4 – The MORE you know about The THEM (climate change fanatics) the better. If they seem to be drawing a wider audience, they don’t know who is “with them” and who is NOT “with them”. They are clearly a weak and fearful lot of power-hungry (blankety-blanks so that Mods won’t think I’m being naughty). Unlike Germany’s early stages of destroying the past, and the Soviet and China’s early stages of mass destruction of whole populations and seizing their property, the constant hunger to be in the front of the cameras/interwebs, etc., is a weakness in THEM. They are letting ALL of YOU know what they’re up to. They are giving away what they want to do, as if they think no one can stop them. Vainglory is their middle name. They are making huge mistakes, with their constant appearance in the media at all levels.
You are far better prepared if you know what they’re up to (most of it is hot air and soap bubbles, in my view) . You cannot defeat the Stupid Climate Peeps unless YOU know what they are up to.
Apologies for being late to the party, but the University of Exeter also seems to harbour this individual, one Catriona McKinnon, “professor of political theory.”
https://en.unesco.org/courier/2019-3/climate-crimes-must-be-brought-justice
https://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/politics/staff/mckinnon/
I wonder if that has a bearing on this case?