Suppression

Debra Saunders writes about real suppression going on today. Not the imaginary Hollywood version, mind you. You know, where some star or other goes on national television to complain about being silenced, or gives 30 interviews to national magazines to complain about how they are being stifled. No, this is real, this is trying to take people's livelihoods away from them. And it is the left doing it.

According to the SEJ guide, University of Virginia professor Patrick Michaels "still claims to be the Virginia 'state climatologist' although the state has disavowed him." The publisher of George Mason University professor Fred Singer's books is connected with the "Moonie" leader, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. The Competitive Enterprise Institute think tank has received oil money. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., has a flack "whose resume brags of starting the 'Swift Boat' story that injured candidate John Kerry." The short list, with a senator even, suggests they had run out of dissident scientists — or dissident scientists they could squeeze into the venal-lightweight box.

James O'Brien — director of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies and former Florida state climatologist, and not listed in the SEJ guide — said of guide's terms for nonbelievers: "I don't like the term 'deniers.' They're trying to say we're like Holocaust deniers." He didn't make that up. Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman recently wrote that "global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future."

It ought to tell you something that the guide focuses not on the issues, but personal issues and credentials of nonbelievers. Ooooooh, a senator has a flack who spins. How nefarious. I'm sure global warming guru and former Vice President Al Gore only hired monks.

Most insulting is the insinuation that skeptics are after money, while believers are pure. Nonsense, David Legates, Delaware state climatologist, told me. Dire global warming predictions draw the big bucks in research these days: "There's a lot more money to be made by saying the world is coming to an end than to say that this is a bunch of hooey."

"Hooey" is the term also used by Reid Bryson, the father of scientific climatology, in the (Madison, Wis.) Capital Times, as he explained: "If you want to be an eminent scientist, you have to have a lot of grad students and a lot of grants. You can't get grants unless you say, 'Oh global warming, yes, yes, carbon dioxide.'"

Legates tells students who are not global-warming true believers, "If you don't have tenure at a major research university, keep your mouth shut."……..

…….Oregon state climatologist George Taylor is a skeptic. Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, a Democrat, asked Oregon State University to stop Taylor from using a title he had used without complaint since 1991. Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, also a Democrat, pulled a similar move on Michaels, who is now the American Association of State Climatologists-designated state climatologist in Virginia.

It is, of course, the intent of the "deniers database" to intimidate. The very real moves to take people's jobs away is the first step. But there is real dissent that the true believers want stifled at all costs – even to the point of suppression. Real, tangible suppression. Not the Hollywood version. And we, as a society should be angry about that.