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Thursday, April 21, 2016

Climate Alarmism and the Muzzling of Independent Science - By Ari Halperin

This Friday (Earth Day and Lenin’s Birthday) President Obama will sign the Paris Agreement, supposedly to control global climate.  Last week, the attorney general of a tax shelter – the US Virgin Islands -- subpoenaed the Competitive Enterprise Institute.  This was part of a campaign to intimidate climate realists and to shake down, and possibly shut down, the energy industry.  The campaign was launched by a number of Democrat Attorneys General and Al Gore, colluding with trial lawyers and other special interests, under the guise of investigating ExxonMobil.  As bizarre as these moves are, they are just an escalation of 30 years of persecuting distinguished scientists who disagreed with Al Gore’s climate change fantasies.

Scientific research is supported by private industry, governments, universities (largely government dependent) or some combination of the three.  Before Gore’s tenure as vice president, the majority of scientists with some knowledge of the subject firmly rejected climate alarmism.  During his two terms almost in the White House, Al Gore and the academic liberals executed a quiet purge.  They packed the scientific establishment with environmentalists, defunded inconvenient research fields, removed distinguished scientists, and bullied others into silence or equivocation.  Huge budgets allocated to climate studies (even before Gore) produced hordes of worthless PhDs, incapable of making a living outside of climate alarmism.  But a large segment of scientists and professionals versed in science are independent in a free society, deriving their income from private business.  Al Gore and other climate alarmists had a problem…………