Should the U.S. Department of Justice begin to sue people who question scientific studies on global warming?
According to one U.S. Senator, they most certainly should. Watch the video interview below, and hear for yourself.
In the interview, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse characterizes people who raise questions about the validity or certainty of global warming as “polluters.” He leaves no room for the possibility that one might question the validity of global warming because, for example, of evidence that the earth is actually heading for another ice age, not warming; or that because it’s impossible to predict temperatures decades or centuries into the future given the difficulty or impossibility of predicting temperatures days or weeks into the future. Or, that there’s an overwhelming body of evidence showing how fossil fuels overwhelmingly add to the lifespan of human beings despite any negative effects of warming, real or speculative.
Instead, we’re told that global warming is true because the government — and only scientists whose funding or visibility the present administration approves of — says so.
That’s not science. That’s dogma. Dogma is when you select certain actual or imagined facts, while deleting or leaving out facts, theories or arguments that support a different conclusion. This is the mental process of control freaks, of intellectually dishonest sycophants and of dictators. It has nothing to do with science, which rests on objective reasoning and considering multiple theories and explanations before settling on a certain or probable conclusion.
One of the reasons for leaving government the hell out of science is so that blowhard anti-intellectual power lusters like Sen. Whitehouse can stay out of the way of the search for truth and certainty that only science — not politics — can ever hope to bring.
Sen. Whitehouse arrogantly presumes that nobody would ever question global warming for objective or scientific reasons — but only because one wishes to make money at polluting. Of course, even if one wishes to make money which involves pollution, if the global warming theory is correct, then we will all be dead within 10-15 years due to that pollution, including both the profit-seeking polluters and their customers themselves.
Nevertheless, the more important issue here has nothing to do with global warming. The critical issue here is freedom of speech, and freedom of thought. It also involves the integrity of science itself.
If Sen. Whitehouse is correct, that the federal government should sue, or launch other legal initiatives against people merely because they hold a view in opposition to the current government in power, then he has established the exact operating principle of a dictatorship. Because that’s what dictatorships do: They determine what facts, topics, ideas or conclusions are “fit to print” — and those which are not.
The governments of free societies do not sue their citizens for promoting research, hypotheses or conclusions — in science, or in any other field — with which the government disagrees. Tobacco companies were accused of fraud. Whether those charges were valid may be another debate, but global warming dissidents are not even accused of fraud. Sen. Whitehouse doesn’t want them sued for fraud; he wants them sued for disagreeing with the government.
Do you still believe we’re living in America?
Even if the case for global warming were as obvious as the case for the fact that the earth is round (rather than flat), the government does not — and should not — prosecute people who claim the earth is flat, however few there may be (if any) who actually believe this. People are free to judge for themselves, with the evidence of their own senses, or via the knowledge science has brought to bear over the centuries, on that subject.
You have no right to sue another for disagreeing with you. Sen. Whitehouse and his party used to call themselves “liberals” and now call themselves “progressive.” Since when did freedom of speech and thought become oppositional to their idea of liberalism?
Obviously, something other than freedom or the motivation for truth is what’s animating these people. It’s called being a control freak — not only over the actions of others, but over the opinions of others. It’s called censorship.
“Don’t you dare disagree with me. Otherwise I will sue you.” Next stop: “Don’t you dare disagree with me. Otherwise I will jail you.”
One more stop, and we’re all the way there. America should never have come this close.
Regardless of where you stand on global warming, you really ought to have a strong opinion about this Senator’s appalling remarks, if you value your freedom of speech. If and when it goes completely, don’t say you weren’t warned.
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