You only post articles from comic books.
=
Un-American witch hunts: Karl Rove Tactic #3 from WUWT
Sou | 7:58 PM
If there is one thing that defines climate science deniers it is that they are conspiracy theorists. Some wilful deniersbelieve the disinformers who claim that climate science is a hoax and that scientists are committing fraud. WUWT is full of it. Today it's Eric Worrall's turn (archived here). This time he's doing a Karl Rove, and accusing Senator Whitehouse of being a conspiracy theorist because he is exposing the deliberate disinformation campaigns allegedly paid for in part by fossil fuel companies.
Some background. Over time, more and more evidence has been compiled showing that fossil fuel companies have paid money to climate denying organisations in the USA. This includes ExxonMobil, Peabody coal and others. Today Eric Worrall copied from the Guardian:
The Senate heard how fossil fuel companies such as ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy and the billionaire oil brothers Charles and David Koch had funnelled millions into groups that had spread doubt about the causes of climate change.The Guardian article has a lot of detail, including the role of paid disinformers like Bob Carter. It also has links to other documentation of the deliberate campaigns to spread climate science denial, including in Australia.
Karl Rove Tactic #3
Eric doesn't believe it. He is claiming Senator Whitehouse invented a conspiracy theory, and likened investigation of funding for climate disinformation to McCarthyism writing:
Whitehouse’s conspiracy theory reminds me of some of the worst excesses of the anti-communist era, in which fantasies about shadowy conspiracies were used to ruin the lives of political opponents and innocent bystanders. But Whitehouse appears to mean every word of it. The Attorneys for Clean Energy effort appears to have faltered, for now, but who knows what the future holds? We can only imagine what will happen if people like Whitehouse win control of the US government, and are put in charge of a new era of “Unamerican Activities” style witch hunts.I'm told this is Tactic #3 used by Karl Rove, accusing other people of what you yourself are doing. In this case, deniers accuse scientists of fraud and harass them endlessly. This includes everything from court cases and FOI harassment to US GOP lawmakers of misusing their powers to try to intimidate the very people who are investigating the science disinformation networks.
Leading to the precipice of a Constitutional crisis
You may have seen the letter from Eddie Bernice Johnson, in which she castigates Lamar Smith and the GOP lawmakers for "an illegitimate exercise of Congressional oversight power" and of leading "the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology to the precipice of a Constitutional crisis". What Lamar Smith and his cronies did was demand documents from 17 state and territorial attorneys general and 8 non governmental organizations (NGOs), which related to their investigations into fraud relating to the climate science disinformation campaign being waged in the USA. By this action, the GOP committee members overstepped their authority. As Johnson wrote:
State attorney generals are elected officials of sovereign state governments. They are not employees of the Federal Government, nor are they subject to federal oversight or control, including by the United States Congress.......As nearly every state attorney general who responded to your May 18 letters indicated, state government law enforcement officials acting in their official capacities are not within Congress' legislative control. As Johnson pointed out, the State Attorneys General were investigating whether or not there has been fraud committed. Lamar Smith doesn't want the states to investigate fraud when it comes to climate science. Johnson wrote:
The investigations, as multiple attorneys general pointed out, are concerned with whether certain fossil fuel companies believed or knew one set of facts, and yet publically disseminated another in order to enrich themselves at others expense. These allegations constitute textbook fraud.
Un-American witch hunt by Lamar Smith, without a leg to stand on
One irony in all this is that, as Johnson pointed out, Lamar Smith relied upon cases in the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee to support his intimidation and harassment of NGOs. This is the very same McCarthy-ist House Un-American Activities Committee that Eric Worrall decried. After going into the detail, Johnson wrote:
If ever there was an example of a "witch hunt" in the history of the United States Congress, the HUAC investigations best fit the bill. For that reason, it is more than a little disconcerting that you think those cases' fact patterns so closely resemble your own investigation.But it's worse than that. In the two cases that Lamar Smith relied upon, one of the Joe McCarthy team's convictions was overturned by the Supreme Court and the other conviction was found invalid!
Free speech does not give freedom to defraud the American people
Science deniers can protest all they want about the First Amendment. However the US Constitution does not protect anyone against fraudulent acts. It does not give the right to Lamar Smith or anyone else to falsely accuse scientists or fraud or to falsely claim that climate science is a hoax. It most certainly does not protect fossil fuel companies from indictment for fraud on a grand scale, if it is proven that they paid denier lobby groups to spread lies, while the fossil fuel company knew them to be lies. (See the articles about ExxonMobil on Inside Climate News and what Peabody got up to.)
blog.hotwhopper.com |
