“When those seeking power can’t convince the populace of the merits of their ideas, they start putting people who disagree in jail, hoping that fear will keep the rest in line.” So writes Anthony Watts of Wattsupwiththat.com.
Watts will surely be one of the first people arrested and imprisoned if professors at the University of Exeter have their way. In an article in The Carbon Brief titled “How climate change misinformation spreads online,” several Exeter professors advocate fines and imprisonment for people publishing “climate misinformation” online. They justify their call for imprisonment by claiming tremendous harm from “misleading information that is created and spread with intent to deceive.”
Watts notes that “This isn’t the first time such wild calls for criminalization of contrary climate opinion have been made.” Lawrence Torcello, a liberal arts professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, NY, wrote in an essay at The Conversation that climate scientists who fail to communicate the correct message about “global warming” should face trial for “criminal negligence.”
