The US Department of Justice has been considering whether people should be prosecuted for the offense of climate change denial.

“This matter has been discussed. We have received information about it and have referred it to the FBI to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which we could take action on,” said Attorney General Loretta Lynch, responding to a question from green activist Sen Sheldon Whitehouse at a Senate Judiciary Hearing.

Whitehouse said:

“The similarities between the mischief of the tobacco industry pretending that the science of tobacco’s dangers was unsettled and the fossil fuel industry pretending that the science of carbon emissions’ dangers is unsettled has been remarked on widely, particularly by those who study the climate denial apparatus that the fossil fuel industry has erected.” “Under President Clinton, the Department of Justice brought and won a civil RICO action against the tobacco industry for its fraud. Under President Obama, the Department of Justice has done nothing so far about the climate denial scheme,”

Perhaps the kind of RICO action Whitehouse has in mind is similar to the one proposed to President Obama a few months ago by a number of key climate scientists, led by one Jagadish Shukla of George Mason University.

However this campaign appears to have gone mysteriously quiet of late.

Could it perhaps be that having become embroiled in “the largest science scandal in US history” and now being under investigation for “double-dipping” and the potential misuse of $63 million worth of taxpayer funded grants, Shukla feels somewhat less confident of holding the moral high ground?