I&I Editorial

The global warming faithful are always quick with the talking points about a “scientific consensus” that doesn’t exist, and the tale that 97% of scientists say man is causing the planet to overheat. But we’ll never hear them discuss publicly how researchers who don’t agree with the narrative have been blacklisted.

What are they afraid of?

Of course the climate alarmists will never admit such a list even exists. But Roger Pielke Jr., who teaches science, environment, and technology policy at the University of Colorado, says it does.

“A climate advocacy group called Skeptical Science hosts a list of academics that it has labeled ‘climate misinformers,’” Pielke recently wrote in Forbes. “The list includes 17 academics and is intended as a blacklist.”

Pielke says we know this through a Skeptical Science blogger “named Dana Nuccitelli.” According to Pielke, Nuccitelli believes that Judith Curry should be “unhirable in academia” based on her statements about global warming.

Nuccitelli tweeted that “Curry’s words, as documented … are what make her ‘unhirable.’” Both the blog and Nuccitelli of course deny there’s a blacklist.

The “unhirable” Curry is no crank. She is the former chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and is a fellow of both the American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society. She stepped down from her position at Georgia Tech at the insistence of an administrator, she told Pielke. The Earth and Atmospheric Sciences dean had heard from “several activist climate scientists who had a very direct pipeline to” the dean’s office, and had expressed their “extreme displeasure” over Curry’s presence at the school, she said.

Curry looked into positions at other universities, interviewed for two, but was never hired. According to her headhunter, “the show stopper was my public profile in the climate debate.”

But there’s no blacklist – nothing to see here, so let’s move on … to Pielke’s father, Roger Pielke Sr. The atmospheric scientist “is also listed on the Skeptical Science blacklist.” The younger Pielke says some statements from the Skeptical Science site that had been obtained through hacking included: “We are HUNTING Pielke,” “We are trying to bring him down,” and “My vote is to take the bastard down!”

What has happened to Curry and Pielke Sr. are not isolated incidents:

“Authors of a study published recently in the journal Nature Communications want editors and journalists to blacklist “climate change contrarians,” says Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

“The contrarian list includes politicians (Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), former Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), former Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas)), hosts of popular blogs (Mark Marano, Anthony Watts), journalists (Mark Steyn, James Delingpole), and best-selling authors (Matt Ridley, Chris Horner).”

Hungarian atmospheric physicist Ferenc Miskolczi left his position at NASA in 2005 when the space agency “refused to publish work contradicting” the narrative that human carbon dioxide emissions are warming Earth, according to Accuracy in Media.

“Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd said a little more than a year ago that his show was no longer going to “give time to climate deniers.”

In 2015, the Capital Research Center published an article exposing how leftist politicians and the media were trying “to blacklist scientists who are skeptical about global warming.”

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation host Rex Murphy discussed “attempts to blacklist critics or skeptics of the global warming cause” in 2009.

Matthew Brouillette of the Commonwealth Foundation wrote in 2010 about researcher Michael Mann’s attempts “to subvert the scientific peer-review process and blacklist critics from key academic journals.”

There must be something to these claims. Researchers who aren’t fully committed to the man-caused-warming claim have complained that research grants for their work is drying up. This is because, as Henry Payne wrote in National Review, “the overwhelming majority of climate-research funding comes from the federal government and left-wing foundations,” and it is directed “only toward research that advances the warming regulatory agenda.”

Missing out on research grants is one thing. Being tossed in prison takes everything to a higher level, which is what Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island has proposed for those who don’t think like him. He suggested a few years ago that members of “the climate denial network” should be prosecuted under the mafia-busting law enacted by the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

Meanwhile, says economist Steve Moore, “a lot of people are getting really, really rich off of the climate change industry.” A Government Accountability Office report backs him up.

“Federal funding for climate change research, technology, international assistance, and adaptation has increased from $2.4 billion in 1993 to $11.6 billion in 2014, with an additional $26.1 billion for climate change programs and activities provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009,” says the GAO.

The system is clearly rigged. But the public is not supposed to know this. Only by keeping voters in the dark can the charade continue.

— Written by J. Frank Bullitt

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