By Vijay Jayaraj
We have reached the end of the Olympic summer in Paris, comprising of the Olympics and the Paralympics. Though the U.S. finished at the top in the Olympics and in the top three at Paralympics, much of the world’s attention was on the Olympics’ obscene mockery of Christianity in its opening ceremony at Paris.
It also overshadowed some unprecedented events in the city. A few days prior to the games, French authorities fined the country’s second most popular news channel 20,000 euros for challenging the popular narrative about a purported climate crisis.
CNews, a round-the-clock news operation, was charged by the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (ARCOM) with a broadcast’s failing to adequately challenge views skeptical of the global warming scare.
“This is the first time in France and internationally that ARCOM or a regulatory authority has issued a financial sanction for a breach concerning an environmental subject,” said QuotaClimat, an organization that reportedly has complained in the past about the climate reporting of various media.
The case of CNews raises serious concerns about press freedom – a cornerstone of democratic societies — and the public’s access to diverse perspectives on environmental issues. While the regulator argued that the channel failed to provide sufficient context and counterarguments, critics contend that the decision sets a dangerous precedent, effectively requiring media outlets to adhere to a specific ideological position.
The role of journalism in a democracy is not to parrot official viewpoints or consensus opinions but rather to investigate, question and present different perspectives on important issues. By imposing restrictions on how climate issues can be reported, France undermines this crucial function of the media.
This crackdown on climate reporting exemplifies a broader trend of using authorities backed by official powers to curb the expression of views that challenge a government’s preferred narrative, a concerning development for anybody favoring an open society.
The practice has become far too common in academic research as well. Scientists who challenge the crisis narrative are subjected to witch hunts and termination from their professions.
Many climate scientists, influenced heavily by funding sources, are transforming their discipline into something that hardly qualifies as science. While their work has the appearance of scientific research and is conducted by those with scientific credentials, both its methodologies and findings are heavily shaped by the agendas of special interest groups, political figures and international governing bodies.
Researchers and their organizations, in too many cases, have become harvesters of grants rather than seekers of truth. Such scientists are supplicants of governments and wealthy foundations wanting particular findings and willing to pay for them.
Those who champion genuine scientific inquiry must speak out against deliberate efforts by climate alarmists to discredit sceptics, whose questions are manifestations of critical thinking. Inquiry into popular theories should be welcome, not treated as sedition.
From Galileo’s astronomical discoveries to more recent controversies in fields like genetics and nuclear energy, attempts to protect the popular view have often backfired. slowing scientific progress and technological advancement.
In the case of climate change, this is true too. Restrictive energy policies — justified on the basis of addressing a “climate crisis” — already have impeded economic growth and increased prices. Ideologues seek to reverse decades of advancement in clean-coal power generation, oil and gas development and other technologies.
Scientific understanding of Earth’s climate is not furthered by silencing dissent but through rigorous research, peer review and open debate. By allowing a diversity of voices in the media, including those that challenge the so-called “consensus,” opportunities for truth arise.
Isolated intrusions on press freedom are annoying. But actions like that of the French regulator for reporting on a climate story can be replicated by other governments and for other subjects – a certain eventuality without the intervention of honest citizens
For this is the proverbial slippery slope greased by powerful people’s lust for control or money or both. Left alone, only the most ruthless of the politically connected get to say where it ends. Even they can’t say for sure, but history tells us it ends badly.
This commentary was first published at yourNews on September 10, 2024.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research and Science Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, U.K., and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, U.K.
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It has been said before, but this is a replay of Trofim Lysenko. Stalin found Lysenko consistent with his views of genetics as needing to be consistent with Marxist-Leninism, so he agreed to suppress all doubt about Comrade Lysenko.
Lysenkoism is about as consistent with science as Young Earth Creationism, so Soviet genetics was totally a matter of politics until the mid 1960’s.
The same people who no longer know what a woman is(Except for Michelle Obaman and Brigitte Mancron)
know exactly how the climate will be.
Ahhh, yes, the obligatory swipe at Christianity, put forward to give a gilt edge to your post…like a passport at the border. Wink wink.
C’mon, Tom! You aren’t that obtuse to think the nonsense of materialism and evolution are any more consistent with the scientific method than is young-earth creationism. Are you?
Why play a game that is both unnecessarily divisive and reasonably refutable to make the point that everything claiming to be “science” is, in fact, not? Lysenkism is about as consistent with science as:
Corduroy is to satin
Colorado high country weather to San Diego weather
Boxed wine to good wine
John Kerry to a…person
US press to informed
Mike Mann to a man
etc…
Evolution is a fact. It has nothing to do with whatever your religious cult might be.
Sure it is. I suppose your scientific education stopped in 11th grade, too…
No, I do have BS degree in natural resources- and that was 52 years ago- I’ve never stopped heavy reading of mostly non fiction- including in many sciences, history, political science, the arts, travel and many others. I’ve read a lot on evolution (all of Stephen J. Gould), astronomy, geology, anthropology, genetics, etc. Anyone not believing in evolution is losing out on the best overview of our planet. But believing in evolution doesn’t mean you have to be an atheist, though I am one. And lucky for you, you have a right to not believe in it. Whatever turns you on.
“Evolution” as hammered into the masses is nonsense.
I really dislike X or Y is a FACT when it’s merely a hypothesis.
Doing that is just as bad as the climate changer’s so called proof CO2 is a control knob of the climate.
The “evolution is a fact” if you are stupid enough to use what is now the same meme as “global emergency” has a hammer in its tail….
The complete and total absence of any link fossils whatsoever. (I used to collect loads of them btw).
Oh well you tried hard, but it’s just propaganda and not a very funny variety.
The evidence is VAST– nothing like the climate scam. You obviously don’t have a clue. Go take a geology course and argue with the professor. And if you still don’t believe it, that’s OK- we won’t cancel you ’cause we believe in freedom of speech and your right to believe anything you like.
Evolution is a theory. Much science, many experiments support the theory. But it is not a “fact.”
Personally I believe evolution is highly credible, but too often it is used in appropriately to explain stuff.
Everything in science is only a theory. How is it misused? Of course it could be misused like any concepts humans come up with. I’m just not aware of it being misused. I’d like to know what you’re thinking. It’s certainly not a “final theory” with all questions answered. It’s unknown how life got started.
If one really wants to be a Young Earth Creationist, consider the proposal by Phillip Gosse in Omphalos (1857), that the universe was created already old, showing all the signs of a history that never happened.
I doubt you will accept that, any more than I will accept your conflation of Christianity and YEC literalism.
Darwin said the human eye could not result because of Evolution. Absurd to believe in highest degree. Darwin’s money (some), for The Evolution book was provide by his friend …. who last name…. Rothschild.
Nope.
Darwin never said any such thing.
Darwin professed skepticism as the evolutionary path to the eye is not obvious, especially in Darwin’s time. That is, he couldn’t explain the evolutionary path or when it occurred.
“Darwin himself confessed that it was “absurd” to propose that the human eye evolved through spontaneous mutation and natural selection. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) have now tackled Darwin’s major challenge in an evolutionary study published this week in the journal Science. They have elucidated the evolutionary origin of the human eye.”
Unlike spurious claims that misquote Darwin, he never doubted evolution.
Dawkins discussed the topic in The Blind Watchmaker. He points out that various kinds of eyes have evolved throughout the animal kingdom – and in some cases, evolved away again, such as the blind fish to be found in underground lakes where eyes were useless. They confer a very obvious evolutionary advantage, so are very likely to evolve in any environment with lighting.
Dawkins is a foolish man, more akin to Fouci than the idealized, not realized, man of science. His Watchmaker is trite, tendentious twaddle that a first year uni student could make fun of — if said uni student didn’t go to a public school. So let’s not go to him as the arbitrator of whether the eye could evolve.
That doesn’t make Darwin right though, does it? I believe that was the point. In fact, I don’t see much difference between what you say Darwin said what Big Al said. You seemed simply to want to have the opportunity to say something, even if it doesn’t add value.
He worked on the theory for decades before publishing his ideas and mostly because another guy was about to publish the idea (Wallace?)
Tom, you are more concerned with being seen as right than being right. Consider what Scruton, Kant, Wittgenstein said about reality… But nevermind, for you, it isn’t about onboarding new info, or even thinking about the content of a post, but being seen as right.
To restate: my point was not that X or Y were correct, but that the ‘joke’ was unnecessary and divisive. It was unnecessary because there are dozens more apt (and funny) comparisons — “as scientific as a PCR is diagnostic.” It is divisive, as such threads inevitably are, drawing out the usual ill-informed pillocks.
Sounds like the same sort of people are still running Russia- as they claim Ukraine is a Nazi state- run by a Jew.
Story tip
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/us-doe-nuclear-power-capacity
US nuclear plants can double power, add 95GW capacity to existing structures: Report
“While the Regulatory Authority argued that the channel failed to provide sufficient context and counterarguments”
The news media just has to link to Willis’s DATA to prove the opposite of a climate crisis/emergency:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/25/wheres-the-emergency/
Any study or research used to justify public policy should automatically be open to challenge by anyone at anytime.
Except in 1984.
When I read that book in high school in ’65 or so, it seemed like that year was in far distant future. Same for watching “2001 Space Odyssey” in ’69.
Humanity got spoiled by the rapid advancements in science and technology from about 1800 on, and just assumed that the pace of such advancements would continue into perpetuity. But by 1970 all of the “easy” science and technology had been done, which explains why the entertainment industry got the future so wrong. For the last half a century, and into the foreseeable future; progress is more incremental, more expensive, and more difficult to achieve.
This is another step in the march from science and observation to the state totalitarianism that embodies Lysenkoist outcome driven, opinion first “science”.
“Climate Science” dares not allow publication of criticism of its’ outcomes or alleged facts, as that would reduce the power and state control of people and their life choices that a totalitarian government needs.
Their focus on a few trees in Kamchatka ignores the 8,000 year European archeological tree-ring dating record, which identifies wood found in archeological sites by the pattern of wet and dry years shown in the wood itself.
The Roman warm period left archeological records in the Westfold of Sweden, above the Arctic Circle, of sites that, over the 800 years centered on year 0 AD, transitioning from summer grazing camps and tundra, to farms growing barley, then wheat, to stone fruits, and back to summer grazing again.
That warming, population expansion, then cooling again is very likely what caused the population shifts of the Migration Period, and the advent of the Viking expansions into mainland Europe and the Mediterranean.
There are too many inconvenient facts to support centralist and totalitarian policies based on claims of “Climate Change / Global Warming / Global Cooling” to allow uncensored reporting.
Thanks to all who contribute to this site, and to the examination of weather and the natural world.
Struck a bit close to the nerve did they? Hehe. While Europe putzes around with this climate crises China is actively taking over the world.
Well, France is run by a president who works for the same Banking Dynasty who were the main
main pushers of the infamous Rio Climate Scammit 1992 where almost 200 nations signed the climate crap.
And the dude (Edmond de R.)pushing for this was at the same “working” for a major oil company.
In 1988 it was their(co owned 21%) The Economist who “predicted” a DIGITAL WORLD CURRENCY – and that Nations around the world must cede national sovereignties (sounds so fimiliar globalist,so climate,so EU) for this world currency.
And before all that they started something else with a global impact in 1917.
The hospital I use now doesn’t accept cash or checks anymore.
Well said Vijay. “Many scientists heavily influenced by funding sources….”. As we have been told so many times – 97% of scientists agree …… with those who fund them.
Everything the Climate Lobby does, financial, legislative, scientific and social makes life for the ordinary citizen more difficult and more expensive. The flow of money and concessions is always in one direction, from the many to the few. It is becoming so egregious that oppressive measures such as censorship are necessary to keep the restive people on the reservation. The tools that the elites have to hand are myriad and we have only the vote to fight back with. Unfortunately the vote has been hijacked.
Error in the first line , Keitho.
The climate lobby does absolutely nothing that is “scientific”
What are the ruling class doing? -Saving the world!
Who are they saving it from? -Us!
Can there be too much oppression if it’s saving the world? No!
It’s the same here in the UK. The only news channel to question Climageddon is GB News, and the government regulator insists on pain of huge fines they include an on message Greta worshipper in every piece they broadcast. This usually takes the form of Jim Dale. For reference, just look up “moron” in the dictionary.
Vijay,
Thank you for a lovely, clear sketch of a social problem pushed by people who ought to read, learn and digest it.
Geoff S
The more money, power, control you have the more correct your opinion is – apparently.
Seems life has always had bullies in the play areas.
In the days of the good old USSR the dissidents had a solution. The Samizdat.
https://www.britannica.com/technology/samizdat
Time to revive the tradition?
We know they’re lying and they know we know they’re lying and ……….but they don’t care because they have the cushy jobs and the megaphone-
Australia’s EV targets are “complete nonsense” – MacroBusiness
Great! About time!
I’ll look forward to every other news channel fielding people sceptical of man-made climate change whenever the channel tries to push the narrative.
Are you listening BBC? Of course, not.
Exactly. These types of fascist regulations are only enforced in one direction.
Lefties can’t even pronounce irony let alone spell it out loud-
BBC presenter Jay Blades charged with ‘controlling and coercive behaviour’ (msn.com)
It is a different kind of ‘inquisition’, but it indicates where we are trending. ‘Shut down opposing views, and ‘wrongthink’, at all costs.
If we really were in the midst of a genuine climate crises, there would be no need to silence dissenting voices.
‘Let them eat cake’ is a warning not a training manual.
Vichy France. Part of the Axis. The Milice rounding up Jews on behalf of the Germans to be deported.
People forget.
France: since absolute monarch’s, revolutionary committees, The Terror – plus ça change as we English say.
Those who claim Fascism was defeated at the end of WWII haven’t been paying attention to Europe since 1945.
“A few days prior to the games, French authorities fined the country’s second most popular news channel 20,000 euros for challenging the popular narrative about a purported climate crisis.”
Insane- but coud it survive a court case?
A judge in the UK has ruled that burning oil from a UK well must be considered – unlike oil from other wells, if I understand the reasoning.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdrlrkz5k2ro
Other links doubtless available.
That suggests that this ruling by a quango would probably sail through a court case in the UK, at least.
Now, do wind subsidy troughers consider the effects of taking energy from wind, downwind [for the UK, that is taking energy away from the waters of the EU, mostly]?
This would seem to be a case for the courts, if they have not, using the same precedent.
Auto
In my younger years I concluded that GB was the “common sense” nation in Europe, not like those perennially idealistic nations. Probably the source of Yankee common sense, once so common here in New England, now pretty much gone with a few exceptions, mostly in New Hampshire and Maine- where there are still a few loggers and lobster-men.
The CAGW and Net Zero crowd have no proper science to backup their claims. The only way forward for them is by intimidation, coercion and punishment. That is where the government comes in. Remove the government from the picture and the whole mess goes away.
The UN, that has the loudest voice on the planet, is the main organization pushing the so-called “Climate Change” agenda with their IPCC coming out with climate doom-and-gloom forecasts every few weeks.The western nations are just following their lead.
The western nations should make their own climate models that include natural variation unlike the IPCC models that were made to show human causation of warming and exclude natural causes.
Olympics’ obscene mockery of Christianity in its opening ceremony at Paris
It wasn’t. It was a portrayal of Greek mythology and their pantheon of gods; most of whom were, from all reports, licentious and debauched; the original daytime soap opera. Ancient Greece is where the Olympics originated. Nominal Christians might try practicing what Christ taught for a change rather than using their feigned religion as a club to sanctimoniously beat down others.
Not only that, the regulator of the written press (probably an “independent regulator” lol) removed France Soir from the list of legit journals over
based on a note from the Health Ministry, the same Health Ministry who promoted vaccines and restricted hydroxychloroquine (not totally but made it harder to get).
So we have the administrative state telling the independent regulators to stop the critics of the administrative state.
But it gets nastier: that was based on the now retracted, patently fraudulent
“Deaths induced by compassionate use of hydroxychloroquine during the first COVID-19 wave: An estimate”
An article widely promoted by the mainstream media like dw.com: Hydroxychloroquine: COVID ‘cure’ linked to 17,000 deaths :
Nobody talks about that in France outside social networks!
The French are a disappearing group. The country, famous for surrender, has been overrun with Muslims and will sink into oblivion in not too many years.
In reality France is famous for its military victories.
What do you think the “authorities” are trying to do other than close off channels of information that they have no control over?
Sure, riots in England were “far right”, Covid wasn’t designed in a Lab and “climate crisis” is a real threat requiring much sacrifice before the weather changes …