June 25, 2008
Global warming doomsayer wants heretics burned at stake
Honestly, this report is like something out of the middle ages.
James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.
Speaking before Congress again, he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading.
In an interview with the Guardian he said: "When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that's a crime."
He is also considering personally targeting members of Congress who have a poor track record on climate change in the coming November elections. He will campaign to have several of them unseated.
Yes, how dare anyone disagree with the high priests of the Church of Global Warming.
Heretics!
It brings to mind another episode wherein a religion demanded intellectual fealty, the science be damned.
By 1616 the attacks on Galileo had reached a head, and he went to Rome to try to persuade the Church authorities not to ban his ideas.
In the end, Cardinal Bellarmine, acting on directives from the Inquisition, delivered him an order not to "hold or defend" the idea that the Earth moves and the Sun stands still at the centre. The decree did not prevent Galileo from discussing heliocentrism hypothetically.
For the next several years Galileo stayed well away from the controversy. He revived his project of writing a book on the subject, encouraged by the election of Cardinal Barberini as Pope Urban VIII in 1623. Barberini was a friend and admirer of Galileo, and had opposed the condemnation of Galileo in 1616. The book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, was published in 1632, with formal authorization from the Inquisition and papal permission.
However, the Pope was displeased by the tone and tenor of the arguments in Gallileo's book, feeling that he -- and the Church -- had been made the subject of ridicule, which bode ill for the scientist.
However, the Pope did not take the suspected public ridicule lightly, nor the blatant bias. Galileo had alienated one of his biggest and most powerful supporters, the Pope, and was called to Rome to defend his writings.
With the loss of many of his defenders in Rome because of Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo was ordered to stand trial on suspicion of heresy in 1633. The sentence of the Inquisition was in three essential parts:
Galileo was required to abjure the opinion that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe, and that the Earth is not at its centre and moves; the idea that the Sun is stationary was condemned as "formally heretical." However, while there is no doubt that Pope Urban VIII and the vast majority of Church officials did not believe in heliocentrism, heliocentrism was never formally or officially condemned by the Catholic Church, except insofar as it held (for instance, in the formal condemnation of Galileo) that "The proposition that the sun is in the center of the world and immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical; because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures", and the converse as to the Sun's not revolving around the Earth.[89]
He was ordered imprisoned; the sentence was later commuted to house arrest.
His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.[90]
After a period with the friendly Ascanio Piccolomini (the Archbishop of Siena), Galileo was allowed to return to his villa at Arcetri near Florence, where he spent the remainder of his life under house arrest, and where he later became blind.
When will the fanatics who preach and proselytize the gospel that all the world's ills are born of humanity admit that their beliefs are based on faith, not fact, that "Global Warming" -- conveniently morphed into "Climate Change" to counter the inconvenient truth about recent cooling trends -- is a religion?
Seems to me that we're not far removed from putting modern day Gallileos' on trial for daring to disagree with Church of Global Warming -- for the crime of "actively spreading doubt about global warming" -- if fanatics like Hansen have their way.
And that's a bigger threat to intellectual freedom than anything advocated by mainstream American religions. Seems to me that it's the EcoWarriors who need an Enlightenment or Reformation. Where is their Martin Luther?
Posted by Mike Lief at June 25, 2008 07:14 AM
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