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First they came for the climate skeptics

16 Oct 2024 | OP ED Watch

It is now more than a quarter of a century since people started sneering at anyone who didn’t believe in an imminent man-made climate catastrophe as “deniers”. It was a deliberately ugly term, redolent of a nasty way of arguing, because it intentionally invoked Holocaust deniers. And in keeping with this malevolent spirit, there has been pressure ever since to criminalize such dissent rather than successfully defeating it in argument. The longer people in business and politics looked away from or even quietly encouraged this process, the more certain it became that one day they too would face the police truncheon for questioning the state. When John Kerry denounced the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the one guaranteeing free speech, as a “major block” to combating “disinformation”, citizens could finally see beyond doubt that establishment powers are lining up for tyrannical purposes. Now comes Oregon’s most populous county, Multnomah, home of Portland, its largest and most progressive city, suing that state’s biggest natural gas provider along with a bunch of other firms and groups for “sowing climate doubt”. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Publications like the Guardian are all for this new approach. It runs a piece not labeled either news or opinion but under the rubric “Big oil uncovered” that seems very excited about the lawsuit, including:

“Last year, Multnomah county sued 17 fossil fuel companies and interest groups for allegedly deceiving the public about the climate crisis. The lawsuit came two years after a record-shattering heat dome killed 69 people across the county. Research shows the climate crisis greatly exacerbated the 2021 temperature surge. Oil and gas companies, which fuel global warming, should pay climate damages, the lawsuit argues.”

In point of fact the “research” in question, as we detailed in our “Fact Check” video Turning Down The Heatwaves, was a very dodgy paper by World Weather Attribution whose own authors conceded in the face of withering criticism that in fact their conclusions were totally unsound and their methods bogus, a startling admission that the media outlets who trumpeted the original claims didn’t bother bringing to the attention of their readers. And soon it may be illegal to do so.

No, really. Over in Australia the government is determined to ram through the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combating Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024 that, that country’s Institute of Public Affairs warns:

“empowers an unelected government agency, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), to impose enormous fines on social media companies unless those companies censor so-called ‘misinformation’. This raises the obvious question – misinformation according to who? The revised bill and its explanatory memorandum makes clear that the decision as to what is true or false, and therefore what is allowed to be said and seen on the internet, will be government approved ‘fact checkers’. These laws will create an Orwellian ministry of truth, controlling what can be said online.”

And what’s so ominous about such measures is that their authors apparently do not take such criticism as a reproach. (In criticizing this measure Roger Pielke Jr. mentions that back in 2013 he testified before Congress about what the IPCC had really said, and was then attacked verbally by the White House and investigated by Democrats in Congress who among other things wrote a nasty letter to his academic employer at the time and adds “Imagine if I could have been fined or otherwise punished by the White House or Congress for expressing my expert, professional views in a public or policy setting?”)

In Canada a particularly nasty example is Bill C-59, one of those lumbering omnibus bills now in effect as the 546-page Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2023, which in Section 236(1) amends Subsection 74.01(1) of the Competition Act to force any company that touts the environmental benefit of anything it does to prove it, reversing the presumption of innocence that has been a cornerstone of liberty in the Anglosphere since long before Magna Carta. And does it casually.

As we noted last month, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers showed commendable spine on the issue, saying unless the provision was repealed, as it should be, it should apply to the claims of environmental activists. Environmental Defence harrumphed that it was an “old-school distraction tactic” because everything they said was true. But clearly they didn’t anticipate being forced to appear in court over and over, bankrupting themselves with legal bills, because the state actually demanded that they prove it. The process is the punishment, but only for people they and those in power don’t like. Which is not how democracies work.

It’s not just climate. In California, the Washington Post notes with apparent pleasure:

“The state of California sued ExxonMobil on Monday, accusing the oil giant of misleading the public about the effectiveness of plastics recycling and contributing to the flood of bottles, bags and wrappers polluting waterways in the state and worldwide. In the first lawsuit of its kind, California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) alleged that ExxonMobil has engaged ‘in a decades-long campaign of deception that caused and exacerbated the global plastics pollution crisis.’”

Now really. If you made a list of institutions that advocated recycling, indeed demanded it, surely governments would come first, second, third and fourth. Who makes us use those blue bins? But then they turn around and sue a company that makes plastic feedstocks for agreeing with them? (To their credit, ExxonMobil retorted “For decades, California officials have known their recycling system isn’t effective.”)

It gets worse, and will continue to if nothing is done. In Canada there is now also a private member’s bill C-413, admittedly unlikely to pass, that would “create an offence of wilfully promoting hatred against Indigenous peoples by condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying the Indian residential school system in Canada through statements communicated other than in private conversation.” The ostensible target is factually correct claims that, despite a panic aided and abetted by the New York Times in 2021 about mass graves being discovered at former Indian residential school allegedly with the bodies of hundreds of murdered aboriginal children, no bodies had been found nor have any in the three years since. But note that it paints with such a broad brush that anyone (including aboriginals who attended those schools and praised them, such as Canada’s first aboriginal cabinet minister, Len Marchand, now deceased) who said anything nice about them would be a criminal.

Clearly the authors of this legislation, like the drafters of the Oregon lawsuit and many others, do not believe in free speech. They do not think competing claims should be settled by debate (or fail to be). They want to hammer dissent out of existence. To deny the state’s position on anything will be as forbidden, and as dangerous, as in the old Soviet Bloc. This approach enjoys considerable support from our political, intellectual and cultural elite (including with specific regard to hurricanes). They really don’t believe in the principles behind free speech any more, and as a result, they don’t believe in practical legal protections for it. Which means they won’t stop with us.

You are next.

8 comments on “First they came for the climate skeptics”

  1. Step One - smear those who disagree as "Deniers"
    Step Two - refuse to engage the "Deniers" in argument because the arguments are not logically or scientifically refutable
    Step Three - obtain the assistance of social media and legacy media to de-platform "Deniers"
    Step Four - obtain the legislative authority of government to prosecute, fine and jail "Deniers" (cf Bill C-63)
    Step Five - extend the prosecution to supporters of private property, sound money, freedom of contract and free elections

  2. It's only taken a few decades of socialized education to have managed to produce a political class that has interpreted Orwell's 1984 as an operating manual instead of a warning.

  3. I keep gently pointing out to Pielkie that his irrational dislike of Trump will lead to the democrats coming after him, because he most definitely is not down with the narrative, he is voting to shut down what he does.

  4. Your step 2 is extremely telling. Of course they refuse to debate their arguments on an open forum. People will actually realize how absurd their stand and reasoning really is. That's also why John Kerry, AL Gore or ANY climate alarmist or paid scientists, refused to debate John Colman from 2003 until his death. John Colman and John Stossels invited over 2000 of them over a 12 year period, if memory serves, to an open forum debate. NONE ever showed.

  5. CDN. This is typical and has been historically the case with all radical and unreasonable ideas.
    This one seems to have gotten more traction then the 1968 docudrama that said fossil fuels were going to put us in New 'ice age', kill all migratory birds and darker the sky's all by 2010.
    So to try to get laws past to end all reasonable debate,,,, not surprising 🙄.

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