Science Defies Politics

Mark Morano has published on WUWT a bonus chapter that was too strong to make it into his The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change! From Intimidating the “Deniers” to Enforce the “Consensus”:

… why don’t more scientists buck the “consensus?” The answer is simple:
Anyone who questions the climate change scare is attacked and threatened.Attacks against scientists increase as more of them speak out in dissent from the climate change orthodoxy. Climate campaigners seem to think that if one can’t counter the message, one should silence the messenger.
From smearing, to intimidating, to name-calling, and threatening lawsuits or criminal prosecution, climate activists are leaving no stone unturned.
Activists—and “reporters” for theoretically objective media outlets—
have targeted skeptical scientists.

I asked Nye about the chilling effect of threatening scientists who dissent
from man-made global warming claims with criminal investigations and
jail time, and he responded, “That there is a chilling effect on scientists who
are in extreme doubt about climate change—I think is good.”

In 2009, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman accused congressmen who voted against the climate cap-and-trade bill of “treason against the planet!”: “As I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason—treason against the planet,” Krugman wrote.

In 2009, a public appeal on the influential U.S. website Talking Points Memo
asked, “At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers?” The
oft-cited website helps set the agenda for the political Left in the United States.

On June 5, 2009, former Clinton administration official Joe Romm of
Climate Progress defended a posting on his website warning that climate
skeptics would be strangled in bed for rejecting the view that we face a
man-made climate crisis. “An entire generation will soon be ready to strangle
you and your kind while you sleep in your beds.”

British journalism lecturer and climate activist Alex Lockwood proposed
shutting down skeptical blogs. The internet, he said, “should be nationalized
as a public utility” to combat global warming skepticism. [This is very similar to what the FCC did through Obamanet in 2015]

“ Surely it’s time for climate-change deniers to have their opinions forcibly tattooed on their bodies.” —Richard Glover, The Sydney Morning Herald (2011)

Here is a small sampling of the hate mail I have received in recent years: “Let’s meet man to man and I’ll rip that stupid smile off your face.” “ If you have children, I hope beyond hopes that you must bury them, and that your grief will know no end.” “You and your children should be burned in public.” “Hi I just wanted to let you know what a goddamn stupid lying idiot you are. I really hope you are someday put on trial before a world tribunal on charges of ‘crimes against humanity.’”

After Arizona Democratic Congressman Raúl Grijalva … opened an investigation of seven U.S. academics including Pielke Jr., whom he considered not in line with the climate change consensus, Pielke announced, “I am under ‘investigation” and denounced it as a “witch hunt”: “Congressman Grijalva doesn’t have any evidence of any wrongdoing on my part, either ethical or legal, because there is none.” Grijalva “simply disagrees with the substance of my testimony,” he added. “My 11-year old asked me if I was going to jail. Really nasty stuff,” Pielke wrote. “My older kids in High School had teachers pull them aside to ask about their father’s ‘investigation’. Smear campaigns are about collateral damage,” he explained.

In 2014, hurricane forecasting pioneer and atmospheric scientist Bill Gray told me his personal story about facing the climate change establishment. Gray’s story begins when Al Gore was vice president and one of Gore’s colleagues called Gray and invited him to lunch. “I will tell you that I’m not a believer in global warming, human induced global warming, there’s natural global warming.” Gray told to him. The Gore story did not end there for Gray. “But right after that—I had had NOAA funding for the hurricane work for years that I would be doing—no grants came after that. NSF (National Science Foundation) cut me off.”

Another who was cut off is atmospheric physicist Murry Salby, who formerly held the Climate Chair at Macquarie University in Australia. Salby’s finding that man-made CO2 emissions could only cause warming of “a few tenths of a degree, if at all” made shockwaves in the climate change world. … But instead of seeing his research welcomed by the scientific community, Salby soon found himself out of a job.

Patrick Michaels was forced out of his job as Virginia State Climatologist in 2007 after clashing with Virginia’s governor over climate change.

In 2011, [Dr. David] Legates was formerly asked to step down from his position [of Delaware State Climatologist].

Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor, the past president of the American
Association of State Climatologists, also ran afoul of the global warming
establishment because of his skeptical views.

In 2017, Climatologist Judith Curry, serving as the chair of the School of
Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology, had
had enough. She walked away from her tenured professorship, citing climate
“craziness” and an untenable situation of “a battle of scientific integrity
versus career suicide.” … “The deeper reasons [for my resignation] have to do with my growing disenchantment with universities, the academic field of climate science
and scientists,” Curry continued.

The late atmospheric scientist and hurricane pioneer Bill Gray noted in
2014, “I am just appalled science has been hurt greatly by this because the
government has come in and dictated science, much like Stalin and the
Lysenkoism”