Climate Change Denial a Crime?

TRIGGER WARNING:  If you punish those who you think are wrong you are back to the Inquisition.

For John, BLUF:  We appear to be moving toward an era where not following the correct party line is enough to get you put in jail.  You should be concerned.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Calls to punish skeptics rise with links to climate change, hurricanes

From The Washington Times and Reporter Valerie Richardson, 11 September 2017.

Here is the lede plus three:

Calls to punish global warming skepticism as a criminal offense have surged in the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, but it hasn’t discouraged climate scientists like Judith Curry.

A retired Georgia Tech professor, she argued on her Climate Etc. website that Irma, which hit Florida as a Category 4 hurricane on Saturday, was fueled in large part by “very weak” wind shear and that the hurricane intensified despite Atlantic Ocean temperatures that weren’t unusually warm.

That is the kind of talk that could get policymakers who heed her research hauled before the justice system, if some of those in the climate change movement have their way.

“Climate change denial should be a crime,” declared the Sept. 1 headline in the Outline. Mark Hertsgaard argued in a Sept. 7 article in the Nation, titled “Climate Denialism Is Literally Killing Us,” that “murder is murder” and “we should punish it as such.”

Well, it sounds like hyperbole, but this kind of talk has resulted in some nasty outcomes in the past.

Do we really want to control what people think?  If we think they are thinking wrongly we do not vote them into positions of power.  If they have the majority behind them, then we have to rethink how we are presenting the data.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff