What irony. The latest attack on fellow scientists was
launched by academics from a university named for the patriot who wrote the
original Virginia version of our Bill of Rights. Those rights include freedom
of speech and assembly, the right to petition our government, and protection
from unreasonable search and seizure of our property.
Sadly, it reflects the appalling state of “academic
freedom” on too many campuses, which today celebrate every kind of diversity
except diversity of opinion.
Jagadish Shukla, four associates at his George Mason
University-based Institute of Global Environment and Society, and 15 other climate
researchers have signed an outrageous letter, asking President Obama and
Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate “organizations that have
knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change.”
They want people like me and the groups I work with
prosecuted and punished under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations (RICO) Act.
The letter claims the organizations’ “misdeeds” must be
“stopped as soon as possible,” so that the world can “restabilize the Earth’s
climate, before even more lasting damage is done” to human health, agriculture,
biodiversity and the world’s poorest people.
Their action attempts to coerce, intimidate, slander and
silence organizations and scientists who question claims that humans are
causing dangerous climate change; shut down skeptic research, speech and
publication; destroy skeptics’ funding, businesses and livelihoods; protect
alarmist funding, standing and influence; and bankrupt skeptics, who would have
to spend personal fortunes responding to a Justice Department that has
limitless resources at its disposal.
RICO is used to prosecute underlying patterns or practices
of criminal behavior. It defies belief to say questioning claims that humans
are causing climate cataclysms — or opposing campaigns against anti-fossil
fuels, modern living standards and better lives for billions of impoverished
people worldwide — somehow constitutes a “criminal enterprise.”
Moreover, the “misdeeds” alluded to in the RICO-20 letter
are studies, reports and discussions that contradict alarmist allegations and
what cataclysm skeptics believe are exaggerations and computer model failures
underlying those claims.
Indeed, extensive, solid scientific research and
publications challenge the climate chaos thesis. They include satellite and
weather balloon temperature data, peer-reviewed reports, conferences, articles,
interviews and briefings. Not only do they undermine climate chaos theory; they
are protected free speech — reflecting careful, replicable science.
“Racketeering” means conducting a
“racket,” which frequently means fraudulently offering to solve a problem that
does not actually exist or proffering a solution would do nothing to solve it.
Many would say this definition accurately describes the climate crisis industry.
Climate change has been “real” throughout Earth’s history.
Driven by powerful natural forces that we do not yet understand and certainly
cannot control, it has ranged from gradual to sudden, from beneficial to
harmful or even devastating.
Contrary to alarmist assertions and computer models, there
is still no observational evidence that any climate changes we are experiencing
today are different from what our ancestors confronted. Nor is it clear that
changes are now driven by plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide instead of natural
forces, nor that they could be prevented by ending fossil fuel use.
In fact, the notion that we can “restabilize” an unstable
and frequently fluctuating planetary climate is absurd. So is any claim that
carbon-based fuels are more damaging to human health, agriculture, biodiversity
and the world’s poorest people than eliminating those fuels and relying on
expensive, unreliable wind, solar and biofuel “substitutes.”
Equally doubtful is any suggestion that Mr. Shukla and his
associate can understand or predict Earth’s ongoing climate variations by
focusing on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and ignoring the solar,
cosmic, oceanic and other natural forces that govern Earth’s climate.
The Institute of Global Environment and Society derived
99.6 percent of its 2014 funding ($3.8 million) from taxpayer-financed
government agencies. It would likely lose that funding if it expressed doubts
about carbon dioxide or redesigned its climate models to include natural forces
— and thereby assure accurate monsoon and climate forecasting.
Mr. Shukla, his wife and daughter received salaries and
other compensation totaling $499,145 in 2014 from their tax-exempt research
organization. Mr. Shukla worked there only part-time, and his $333,048
compensation package “was presumably on top of his $250,866-per-year [George
Mason] academic salary,” says professor Roger Pielke Jr.
That totals $750,000 a year to the RICO-20 leader and his
family “from public money for climate work and going after skeptics,” Mr.
Pielke adds.
The ultimate irony would be an evenhanded investigation
that exonerates the skeptic organizations that the RICO-20 want investigated —
and results in charges against organizations that engaged in collusion, data
manipulation, junk modeling and other deceitful, alarmist research practices
highlighted over the years by “Climategate” emails and various inquiries.
The alarmists are desperate. They are losing the climate
science fight. Contrary to their models, planetary temperatures haven’t budged
in 18 years, and Oct. 24 would mark a record 10 years since a Category 3-5
hurricane hit the United States.
They face major odds in Paris, where they will likely get a
toothless treaty that places no binding emission targets on poor countries — which
will keep burning coal and sending atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels ever
higher — with no effect on the climate.
• Paul
Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee for a Constructive
Tomorrow.
http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/20/paul-driessen-using-rico-against-climate-skeptics/
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