By Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun

British journalism lecturer and warming alarmist Alex Lockwood says my blog is a menace to the planet. Sceptical bloggers like me need bringing into line, and Lockwood tells a journalism seminar of some options: “There is clearly a need for research into the ways in which climate scepticism online is free to contest scientific fact. But there is enough here already to put forward some of the ideas in circulation.”

One of the founders of the Internet Vint Cerf, and lead for Google’s Internet for Everyone project, made a recent suggestion that the Internet should be nationalised as a public utility. As tech policy blogger Jim Harper argues, “giving power over the Internet to well-heeled interests and self-interested politicians” is, and I quote, “a bad idea.” Or in the UK every new online publication could be required to register with the recently announced Internet watchdog.

Strangely, Lockwood sees no irony in canvassing controls on dissent in order to defend “media freedoms” - apparently believing that media freedom is at best the freedom to agree with him: “I would argue that climate disinformation online is a form of cultural and political malware every bit as threatening to our new media freedoms, used not to foster a forum for open politics but to create, in Nancy Fraser’s term, a “multiplicity of fragmented publics” that harms not only our democracy, but our planet.”

But a flash of insight does briefly flare in his brain: “Suppressing debate where it legitimately exists risks leaving the mainstream agenda open to dismissal. ‘Green bully’ and ‘religious environmentalist’ personas are invoked as evidence of hysteria at the heart of environmental commitment.” Sadly, this green panicking and bullying is seen as merely a perception to overcome, not a reality to address.

PS: In case you think this journalism lecturer must just have expressed himself badly, in an earlier missive he makes clear his desire to restrict the rights of sceptics to speak publicly: “The question for journalism (rather than journalists) is: what limits do we have to debate? What can or should we ask of the regulators, ISPs, or even governments, to help fact-check, at a structural level, the information entering the public sphere?  The question is: how much time to do we have to encourage media freedoms that freely amplify uncertainties that may be helping hold back political action on such an unprecedented issue?”

Nor is this one isolated extremist teaching tomorrow’s journalists to preach the warming faith, rather than cover the debate. Here is Cristine Russell, president of the US Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, opining in the Colombia Journalism Review: “The era of “equal time” for skeptics who argue that global warming is just a result of natural variation and not human intervention seems to be largely over. The he-said, she-said reporting just won’t do. The public needs a guide to the policy, not just the politics.”

And why stop there? Why not make scepticism a crime? The U.N.’s top climate official warned policymakers and scientists trying to hammer out a landmark report on climate change that ignoring the urgency of global warming would be “criminally irresponsible.” Indeed, putting sceptics on trial already appeals to Julian Burnside, Margo Kingston and Tim Flannery. The new faith has its Inquisition.  See this very scary story here.

For ten years or more, professor David Deming has taught a course in environmental geology at the University of Oklahoma.  In October 2008, he was informed that the “general education” certification for his course was being revoked.  Under the University of Oklahoma system, this means that student enrollment in the course is likely to drop by two-thirds.

This is a course which receives outstanding student evaluations. Professor Deming is well-known to be a global-warming skeptic.  In 2006, he testified before the US Senate that media coverage of global warming had descended into ”irrational hysteria.” Excerpt:

“Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, and distinguished guests, thank you for inviting me to testify today. I am a geologist and geophysicist. I have a bachelor’s degree in geology from Indiana University, and a Ph.D in geophysics from the University of Utah. My field of specialization in geophysics is temperature and heat flow. In recent years, I have turned my studies to the history and philosophy of science. In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years. The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me. I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.” (University of Arizona’s Jonathan Overpeck was not named in testimony but is said to be that individual).

“There is an overwhelming bias today in the media regarding the issue of global warming. In the past two years, this bias has bloomed into an irrational hysteria. Every natural disaster that occurs is now linked with global warming, no matter how tenuous or impossible the connection. As a result, the public has become vastly misinformed on this and other environmental issues.” See full testimony here.

Professor Deming is unaware of any other case in the history of the University of Oklahoma where the “gen ed” certification for a course has been revoked. It would appear possible that Professor Deming’s position on global warming was a motivating factor.  But in this case, the tragedy is that the people being punished are the students, not the professor. Those who wish to express their concern can do so by writing or calling University of Oklahoma President David Boren.

David Boren, President
University of Oklahoma
110 Evans Hall
Norman, OK 73019
telephone:  405-325-3916
email:  dboren@ou.edu

By Alan Caruba

We are all so besieged by the drivel that Greens put out daily that it is easy to forget how idiotic it is and, in many cases, how deceitful it is. I recently received an emailed news release with the following headline: “If you don’t know what to buy for the holidays, the Better World Shopping Guide will help you decide.” The Guide is described as “a must-have guide for the socially and environmentally responsible consumer or those who want to improve their awareness.” The guide purports to evaluate 1,000 companies and 75 product categories to determine “a product’s value by price point and its cost to society…” This, my friends, is bull feathers! When you are buying Christmas gifts this year, buy something the recipients will actually enjoy. If you’re in the mall trying to figure out which product threatens all life on Earth, you are certifiably insane.

Slowly, but surely, people are beginning to realize that the environmental movement is not about saving the Earth, but about destroying everything that passes for industry, business, and the enhancement of human life through the use of every kind of energy for transportation and other purposes.

An example of this is a recent editorial in New Scientist magazine titled, “The Folly of Growth: How to stop the economy killing the planet.” Using the “environment” to hide behind, all manner of lies are put forth to justify everything from preposterous schemes such as “cap and trade” of “greenhouse gas emissions”, also sometimes called “pollution credits”, to the claim that we have to scrap the most effective means of generating electricity, coal and nuclear, for wind turbines and solar panels.

The famous line from the movie about the Watergate scandal was “Follow the money.” Who will get rich selling “carbon/pollution credits”? Al Gore and his friends. Who benefits from efforts such as a proposition on the ballot in San Francisco to require that only “clean” energy be used? The owners and investors in wind and solar energy.

The bonus for the Greens is that these and other schemes will impoverish the economy worse than any sub-prime mortgage meltdown. If you have to pay out millions for “carbon credits”, as utilities around the nation are already doing, the person who gets socked with the cost is ultimately to consumer. Making energy expensive is the single most effective way of wrecking the economy.

To achieve this goal, the nation’s environmental organizations are pouring millions into getting Barack Obama elected. The trade publication, Greenwire, has published an article that affirms the findings of Sen. James Inhofe’s (R-OK) investigation into the multi-million dollar funding and partisan political activities of environmental groups. They are non-profits that are not supposed to engage in partisan political activities, but as the article points out, “In every instance, the environmental groups are backing the Democrat.”

Whether it’s what to buy for Christmas, the increased cost of the electricity from your utility or national politics, the Greens are involved via propaganda, bizarre schemes to undermine the nation’s energy needs, or who gets elected. You are being played for a chump while the Greens pick your pockets.