Good News, Peoples Climate March toddling across Manhattan in the background on Sunday ... a march prominently featuring the Socialist Workers Party, the Communist Party USA and other far-left nut cases, unrealNEOGOPRNCunt#1 Plain Dealer EDITOR Kevin OBrien, who calls YOU far-left nut cases, is now expressing their rational FEAR THEY WILL GO TO JAIL FOR THEIR ENVIRONMENTAL CRIMES, here in CLEVELAND, as I HAVE TOLD THEM TO FEAR! ... more analysis to follow: The Kennedys have always been better at rhetoric than follow-though. Americans can count themselves fortunate in that, in view of what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had to say over the weekend to an interviewer from Climate Depot, a website dedicated to blowing up the overheated claims of climate-change hysterics. With the Peoples Climate March toddling across Manhattan in the background on Sunday, Kennedy had this to say about his fellow Americans who question the notion that human activity is responsible for climatological change on a planet that has seen some remarkable swings in climate, with and without humans on the landscape: I wish there were a law you could punish them with. One would think the son of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, a politician whose 1968 presidential campaign was a direct challenge to the established consensus of the Democratic Party and to the policies of the experts — the whiz kids, as they were known — would be at least a little more sympathetic to dissidents. But no. For years, Kennedy and a frightening number of others of less-exalted lineage have accused questioners of anthropogenic climate change — which is to say, people who consider the scientific method preferable to the politically driven method of measuring, interpreting and reporting climatological phenomena — of being criminals deserving of imprisonment. Since some folks are in desperate need of a refresher on the scientific method, heres how it works: 1. Someone has a brainstorm — maybe a theory to explain why something in nature is the way it is. 2. Other people think really hard about whats wrong with the theory. They do their best to poke holes in it. Some may well spend their entire careers trying to disprove it or come up with better alternatives. 3. The issue is never truly settled, even if a preponderance of smart people who have thought long and hard about it havent found a way to disprove the theory. As scientists who pursue the measurable, quantifiable, actual truth, they understand that its possible that they havent thought of everything — that some tiny, as-yet-unrecognized variable could throw the whole scheme into a cocked hat. Political theory works differently: 1. Someone makes a value judgment. For example, Fossil fuels are evil. 2. People in a position to gain from a decline in the use of fossil fuels contribute gobs of money toward pushing that outcome in the political arena. 2a. People who take a contrary view contribute gobs of money toward protecting their interests, because thats how politics works. 3. When the vast majority of people walk away from the anti-fossil-fuels argument, its proponents get angry and shrill, and have a march in Manhattan. 4. Robert Kennedy Jr. suggests (again) tipping the scales of public opinion against fossil fuels by locking up people who havent been persuaded or sufficiently intimidated. The eternal questioning integral to the scientific method isnt merely discouraged; those who try to engage in it are threatened and ridiculed. If climate extremists — Kennedy isnt the first or the only — had their way, practitioners of the real method would be tried for treason (Kennedys word) and imprisoned. How can anyone of serious and objective mind take such people seriously? They cant. Public belief in man-caused climate change, never particularly strong, has tailed off considerably in recent years, as nothing has changed. And its hard to imagine that view will be helped by a march prominently featuring the Socialist Workers Party, the Communist Party USA and other far-left nut cases. Their avid participation offers a worthwhile clue to the goal of todays environmentalist politics: Authoritarian leftists want control of national and international policy regarding science, technology, trade and — obviously — energy production and use. They want to be able to outlaw your backyard barbecue, monitor your thermostat, impound your SUV and hand you a bus pass, confiscate your leaf blower and issue you a rake. They want to outlaw the kinds of energy they dont like, force utilities to use the kinds of energy they prefer and increase the cost of everything — every product, every service — to make it happen. Control of energy is the ultimate control of the means of production. The leaders of the movement are willing to lie — and have done so, copiously, for decades. Global cooling, global warming, climate change — whatever catch phrase might instill enough fear. Theyve threatened the human race with climatological annihilation incessantly since the 1970s. The followers, meanwhile, are nicely summed up by a new commercial for the Toyota Prius, in which a father gazes admiringly out the window at his soaking-wet son, a lad maybe 10 years old. The voice-over says the boy waited until it rained to wash the family Prius, because he didnt want to waste water. The voice in my head marveled, The man is raising his son not to have enough sense to come in out of the rain — and hes proud of that. In the long run, such useful idiots are of little consequence. They just provide compliant bodies for brainless marches. The leaders, however, know what theyre doing. They know theyre lying and, as their captured emails have shown, they collaborate carefully to sell and safeguard their lies. Theyre losing now, and theyre desperate. They see power that had been so close receding again. Hypothesis: Science — even climate science, such as it is — eventually will recover from this era of gross politicization. The need to know things that are true will save the scientific method from a complete subversion by politics. Corollary: People who have done tremendous damage to science over the past several decades will do everything they can to prove that hypothesis wrong. OBrien is The Plain Dealers deputy editorial page editor. cleveland/obrien/index.ssf/2014/09/losing_its_grip_on_climate_deb.html#incart_opinion
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 04:11:06 +0000