Doubting Toms are terrorists 23/11/2006
You have doubts about the manmade global warming theory — and that’s all it is, a theory — and aren’t afraid to express them? Sounds perfectly reasonable in a democratic society that values free speech.
Well, to a leader in increasingly totalitarian Great Britain, expressing such views makes you no better than a murderous terrorist.
Foreign secretary Margaret Beckett called on the media to deny terrorists and their supporters a platform because it “artificially polarises debate”.
Likewise, Beckett said, media wheeled out resident sceptics of climate change, “however unrepresentative or discredited”, to generate tension and voice provocative views in the name of editorial balance.
“It makes for more heated exchanges and louder headlines. But it is not the way to build a common consensus on the ground we share.”
As Brendan O’Neill writes in — of all places, The Guardian — Beckett explicitly compared “climate-change sceptics” to terrorists, and implied that both should be denied media air time. In one fell swoop, she demonised those who challenge the consensus on climate change by lumping them in with radicals who support the use of violence, and suggested these sceptics should be censored.
Whatever you might think of climate-change sceptics, the fact is that most of them are scientists, and many of them work in British universities. Yet here we had the secretary of state for foreign affairs putting these middle-class professionals in the same camp as terrorists who, according to the government, pose the greatest threat to life and liberty as we know it.
Hey, I thought the debate was all over: the consensus, if not the proof, is in. Yet this high-powered politician slanders her intellectually honest countrymen and advocates totalitarianism to bolster her “truth”. Perhaps there’s not as many gullibles across the population as Beckett would like.
O’Neill reveals Beckett is regrettably not alone with her repugnant views and that a Greens commentator wants Nuremberg-style trials for manmade global warming sceptics.
I agree they are terrorists if they use their power in the media to advance sceptical positions that are not based on science.
In the same way that – for example – people who say that unprotected sex with the hiv infected doesn’t lead to hiv – lik Mbeki says – are terrorists
That’s ridiculous, Wadard. Sceptics don’t advance positions, they just demand that those who do supply proof. The manmade global warming advocates have yet to supply that proof. Consensus, peer reviewed papers or even majority agreement is not scientific fact.
I didn’t think it would be possible, but your equating of global warming doubts with Mbeki’s position is even more repulsively ignorant than Beckett’s. How do you shave? Surely you can’t look in the mirror.
Sorry to harp on this topic but there is also another problem with Wadard’s position: some of the most significant skeptics are emminent scientists. Professor Ian Plimer [Fellow of the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, Eureka Prize (x2), Fellow of the AusIMM, Fellow Geological Society, Centenary Medal, Clarke Medal, Leopod von Buch Plakette] comes to mind as only one example.
Any country that would deny somebody of Plimer’s credentials from airing their (informed) views and denounce them as a terrorist is seriously on the road to ruin. Obviously Beckett and company will not be concerned about a skeptic would his is a fool. No, they’re concerned to stop the intelligent and learned skeptics. It is not unlike the Soviet era Lysenkoism which enforced denial of any significant role for genetics in human behaviour.
From the looks of your photo, this one comes straight out of the Karl Rove playbook; accuse others of what you are most guilty of.
The consensus is there – has for a while: global warming consensus solid since 1988. If you don’t want to consider it, that’s your problem. The rest of the worlds moving on, and you are fighting a losing battle, simply because you won’t consider facts.
When Plimer, the geologist, publishes his opinion on climate science in Institute of Public Affairs journal, not a peer-review journal; he is doing drive-by science.
Considering the public interest stakes – yea, he’s in the same class as a terrorist, upholding a peverted version of reality just to stuff things up for everyone else.
Having said that, I won’t be repeating this again because it is harldy a constructive conversation.
With your spelling and absurd, offensive logic it sure ain’t a constructive conversation. Annoy others please.