{"id":339842,"date":"2024-08-17T15:17:08","date_gmt":"2024-08-17T13:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=339842"},"modified":"2024-08-17T15:17:11","modified_gmt":"2024-08-17T13:17:11","slug":"climate-deniers-of-the-world-unite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=339842","title":{"rendered":"Climate Deniers of the World, Unite!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by\u00a0Tilak Doshi<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given how rigid the official orthodoxy is when it comes to the public health \u2018crises\u2019, the \u2018climate emergency\u2019 and the supposed moral defects of Western civilization, it\u2019s no surprise that the slur words of choice today are \u201canti-vaxxer\u201d, \u201cracist\u201d, \u201chomophobe\u201d, \u201cIslamophobe\u201d, \u201cfar right\u201d and, not least, \u201cclimate denier\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cclimate denier\u201d epithet is used to shut down rational debate on climate change with specious claims about \u201csettled science<\/a>\u201d. As the physicist Steve Koonin says: \u201cI find it particularly abhorrent to have a call for open scientific discussion [on climate change] equated with Holocaust denial, especially since the Nazis killed more than two hundred of my relatives in Eastern Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scurrilous epithet resurfaced last week in an article in the Guardian<\/em><\/a> entitled \u2013 cue shock, horror \u2013 \u201cClimate change deniers make up nearly a quarter of U.S. Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How much longer will this heresy be tolerated?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview on GB News<\/a> with Andrew Doyle, British environmentalist Jim Dale demanded the criminalisation of climate denialism. He said that \u201cclimate deniers\u201d are \u201cdangerous\u201d for society and their scepticism about Net Zero \u201cpollutes the discourse\u201d. Mr. Dale demurred in spelling out just exactly what sanctions should be applied to \u201cillegal\u201d opinions about climate change, stating that it would be up to politicians like Sir Keir Starmer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That interview took place three months ago, and Starmer is now Prime Minister. Having moved from his previous role as the Director of Public Prosecutions to Parliament and then to the highest political office in the U.K., his response to last week\u2019s riots has been to push for quick and harsh sentences, threatening freedom of speech<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sky News reported<\/a> on Thursday that a woman was arrested over a social media post on the Southport stabbing attack<\/a> that killed three little girls and injured several others. Evidently, her media post was considered \u201cdangerous\u201d as she publicly shared a mistaken description of the perpetrator of the Southport killings. The question of her intentions did not seem to be an issue in that arrest, although she still hasn\u2019t been charged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. Supreme Court holds that the legal threshold from protected to unprotected speech is crossed when the words in question are \u201cdirected to inciting or producing imminent lawless action\u201d and they\u2019re \u201clikely to incite or produce such action\u201d. Both those tests have to be met for the words to lose their protected status under the First Amendment, something known as the Brandenburg test<\/a>. In the U.K., the land of the Magna Carta, recent court cases suggest that no such test is necessary for criminal conviction<\/a> for \u201cstirring up violence\u201d online or indeed even for believing in \u201cforms of toxic ideology which has [sic] the potential to threaten public safety and security\u201d. The blurring of the line between \u201ccriminal thought\u201d and criminal conduct is a sad reflection of jurisprudence in the U.K.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day before the arrest of the woman who posted inaccurate information about the Southport killer, the Director of Public Prosecutions in England and Wales, Stephen Parkinson, warned<\/a>: \u201cWe do have dedicated police officers who are scouring social media to look for this material, and then follow up with arrests\u2026 You may be committing a crime if you repost, repeat or amplify a message which is false.\u201d UK Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley told a reporter<\/a> in response to a question about Elon Musk supposedly \u201cwhipping up hatred\u201d on X: \u201cBeing a keyboard warrior does not make you safe from the law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The purpose of blaming the riots on social media, of course, is that it deflects from the real issue: a great many Britons disapprove<\/a> of the government\u2019s complicity in the scale of the mass immigration of the past two decades. That \u2018thoughtcrime\u2019 has fueled the riots in the country is reflected in the deluge of mainstream media headlines singing from the same hymn sheet:<\/p>\n\n\n\n