Making Climate Skeptics A Despised Minority

krugman nytimes climate denial

Climate change is a full-blown religious crusade. News organizations, church leadersschoolscorporations, and governments all insist something dangerous is underway, and that vigorous responses are necessary.

Anyone who dares challenge this doctrine is a heretic. In other eras, religious heretics were burned at the stake.

Today, climate skeptics often remain in the closet. Some have been bullied into play acting, into mouthing what they secretly believe to be untrue in order to retain their jobs or their government grants.

It’s accurate, therefore, to describe climate skeptics as a minority – swimming against the tide, surrounded on all sides by a worldview to which they conscientiously object.

Independent thinkers don’t require society’s approval. But there’s a difference between an environment that is non-supportive and one in which vilification flows like a river from the pages of the New York Times.

Members of other minority communities – be they religious, ethnic, racial, or sexual – are usually accorded tolerance and respect. Yet late last year, Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, called climate skeptics depraved in his Times column.

He declined to use the term ‘skeptic,’ choosing instead an emotionally-laden smear.

Calling someone a ‘climate change denier’ is a deliberate attempt to link doubt over wholly unproven predictions about the future to people who dispute historically documented mass murder. (Ellen Goodman, another famous newspaper columnist, made this explicit a decade ago when she declared that “global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers.”)

Krugman insists “there are almost no good-faith climate-change deniers” – just people motivated by “greed, opportunism, and ego.”

What rubbish. He has no possible way of diagnosing at a distance the motives of any human being, never mind the thousands of diverse individuals across the globe who dissent publicly and the multitudes more who do so privately.

In 2009, this man similarly accused climate skeptics of “treason against the planet.” In 2013, he said they deserved to be punished in the afterlife for their “almost inconceivable sin.”

This is extreme prejudice. This is outright bigotry. This is a grown adult stamping his foot and bellowing that people who disagree with him are immoral villains.

In other contexts, we make a point of treating minorities with courtesy. But it remains open season on people who think humanity has more pressing problems than climate change, who draw different conclusions from the available scientific evidence, who’ve concluded that science is being abused by political operatives, or who’ve noticed that many similar eco-apocalyptic predictions have failed to materialize.

To be a climate skeptic is to belong to a despised minority, one that respectable people think it’s OK to demonize.

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Comments (5)

  • Avatar

    John Turmel

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    Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, called climate skeptics depraved in his Times column.
    Jct: Though a minority opinion is not necessarily right, a right opinion on a novel problem always starts with a minority of one. I feel rather honored to be in the minority who are right. http://SmartestMan.Ca/globalwarming poem

    Reply

    • Avatar

      Squidly

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      Just a point of fact, Paul Krugman is not a “Nobel Prize-winning economist” .. There is no such thing as a “Nobel Prize” for Economics. Paul Krugman in fact won the “Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences”, which is not the same as the “Nobel Prize”, not by any stretch of the imagination. Ever since winning that Nobel Memorial Prize award, Paul Krugman has been credited, by the left, fraudulently, as being a “Nobel Prize winner”.

      Reply

  • Avatar

    sunsettommy

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    It is hate mixed in, if this forum I commonly post in is a true measure of it, where deep nasty name calling is common.

    I have asked many times over the last few years, what do skeptics deny, most ignore the question or rarely answer with more invectives. They also often IGNORE valid contrary evidence with more of the same the “models say so” replies.

    http://www.usmessageboard.com/forums/environment.84/

    Reply

  • Avatar

    Leslie Davis

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    As Minnesota’s leading environmental and public health advocate and activist, I suggest climate fear-mongers view this climate video by Mr. Goreham. He provides compelling charts and thoughts.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtHreJbr2WM
    Where are all the climate worry-warts on fluoridated public water supplies, lead poisoning of children, high fructose soda sold to children in schools, sugar sugar and more sugar in everything, obesity, diabetes, and more? Huh? Where are they? Probably busy spending their grant money. They can do nothing about the global climate situation, at this time, so they should do something important like supporting http://www.EarthProtector.org or please shut up.
    Thank you,
    Leslie Davis, President
    Earth Protector, Inc.

    Reply

  • Avatar

    Wally

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    With all due respect, the “holocaust” narrative deserves major scrutiny.
    Frankly, it is scientifically impossible & is one of the most easily debunked narratives ever contrived.
    Below is where free speech on the impossible claims are illegal, violators go to prison for Thought Crimes. That is an obvious admission that the claims don’t stand up to scientific, logical, & rational scrutiny.
    http://theday.co.uk/images/stories/2016/2016-12/2016-12-15_holocaust.png

    See the impossible ‘holocaust’ narrative debunked here: http://codoh.com
    No name calling, level playing field debate here: http://forum.codoh.com
    Thanks.

    Reply

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