As previously reported, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology has openly argued that those who disagree with the government regarding catastrophic-manmade-CO2-driven-global-warming should be criminally prosecuted and imprisoned.
Now another prominent manmade-climate-change alarmist is calling for prosecution and imprisonment of (what he calls) climate-change “denialists.”
Adam Weinstein, former editor of MOTHER JONES and now a senior writer at Gawker, says those who disagree with the government must be punished.
In a column entitled, “Arrest Climate-Change Deniers,” Weinstein states that some “denialists should face jail. They should face fines.”
Weinstein claims he is “not talking about the man on the street who thinks Rush Limbaugh is right,” but about arresting Rush Limbaugh himself: “I’m talking about Americans for Prosperity and the businesses and billionaires who back its obfuscatory propaganda. I’m talking about public persons and organizations and corporations for whom denying a fundamental scientific fact is profitable.”
“Those malcontents must be punished and stopped,” Weinstein continues.
According to Weinstein, the First Amendment should not pose a barrier to such punishment. “First Amendment rights have never been absolute,” he writes. The tragic irony of Weinstein’s position seems lost on him; in another time, Weinstein and other socialists were themselves targeted for their views.
Eric Worrall, a skeptic who might face jail if Weinstein’s regime is ever imposed, writes that Weinstein’s assumptions are fundamentally inaccurate:
However, [Weinstein’s] claim simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Even the IPCC has failed to establish a link between CO2 and extreme weather. In addition, the rise in CO2 has so far been strongly beneficial for crop yields – satellites have detected a substantial greening of the planet, thanks largely to the fertilisation effect of the rise in atmospheric CO2.
