The Left Criminalizes Scientific Debate !

The always-entertaining, ever-opinionated Bitch Girls point us to this little article in the Boston Globe (of all places!) where an "inconvienent truth" is exposed: Liberal pressure groups are attempting to criminalize opinions that are not in lockstep with their own.

No hyperbole, I swear, read the article by Alex Beam:

Speech codes are rare in the industrialized, Western democracies. In Germany and Austria, for instance, it is forbidden to proselytize Nazi ideology or trivialize the Holocaust. Given those countries' recent histories, that is a restraint on free expression we can live with.

More curious are our own taboos on the subject of global warming. I sat in a roomful of journalists 10 years ago while Stanford climatologist Stephen Schneider lectured us on a big problem in our profession: soliciting opposing points of view. In the debate over climate change, Schneider said, there simply was no legitimate opposing view to the scientific consensus that man - made carbon emissions drive global warming. To suggest or report otherwise, he said, was irresponsible.

Indeed. I attended a week's worth of lectures on global warming at the Chautauqua Institution last month. Al Gore delivered the kickoff lecture, and, 10 years later, he reiterated Schneider's directive. There is no science on the other side, Gore inveighed, more than once. Again, the same message: If you hear tales of doubt, ignore them. They are simply untrue.

Is the left's facts and arguementation in the global warming debate so thin, and so bereft of logic and facts, that it cannot withstand questioning? Apparently so:

Here's the kind of information the ``scientific consensus" types don't want you to read. MIT's Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology Richard Lindzen recently complained about the ``shrill alarmism" of Gore's movie ``An Inconvenient Truth." Lindzen acknowledges that global warming is real, and he acknowledges that increased carbon emissions might be causing the warming -- but they also might not.

``We do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change" is one of Lindzen's many heresies, along with such zingers as ``the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940," ``the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average," and ``Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and were advancing for several centuries before that. Since about 1970, many of the glaciers have stopped retreating and some are now advancing again. And, frankly, we don't know why."

YES, WE DO KNOW WHY! IT IS BECAUSE MIDLE AMERICA IS DRIVING SUV'S INSTEAD OF HYBRIDS, LIVING IN HOUSES IN THE SUBURBS INSTEAD OF APARTMENTS IN THE CITY, AND RUNNING THEIR AIR-CONDITIONING WHILE RELAXING INSIDE INSTEAD OF GETTING THEIR FRESH AIR ON THE FIRE ESCAPE LIKE GOOD PROLETARIANS! And no, it has nothing to do with your liberal betters flying around in private jets or blocking renewable energy sources (like wind farms ) that might disturb our vistas!

And if you dare mouth off like our friend the good MIT scientist, we'll come after you, even if the facts are on your side:

While vacationing in Canada, I spotted a newspaper story that I hadn't seen in the United States. For no apparent reason, the state of California, Environmental Defense, and the Natural Resources Defense Council have dragged Lindzen and about 15 other global- warming skeptics into a lawsuit over auto- emissions standards. California et al . have asked the auto companies to cough up any and all communications they have had with Lindzen and his colleagues, whose research has been cited in court documents.

``This is the criminalization of opposition to global warming," says Lindzen, who adds he has never communicated with the auto companies involved in the lawsuit. Of course Lindzen isn't a fake scientist, he's an inconvenient scientist. No wonder you're not supposed to listen to him.

This is scary stuff, and since this politicalization of science and squashing of dissenting scientific debate is being perpetrated by the liberal elite, you will see no mention of it in the American media. Remember also, that silence is consent...

Can you imagine what will happen if, come November, Congress is put in the hands of ideologues like Nancy Pelosi and Charles Rangel? Expect the weight of the law to come down behind these radical eco-groups like Enviornmental Defense, and watch as scientific fact becomes decreed, and non-debateable, as per the prevailing political winds of the far-left wing of the Democratic Party...