Leftist Guardian to Any Global Warming Skeptic: Shut Up

by Jim Lakely
April 18, 2014



The Australian edition of The Guardian — probably the most hard-left of the lefty daily newspapers in the English-speaking world — published a story Thursday about how Attorney General George Brandis stood up for skeptics of the theory of man-caused, catastrophic global warming.
Brandis is not a skeptic himself. He believes in man-caused, catastrophic global warming, but he also believes in liberty. So he gave a “passionate” speech in which he said it was “deplorable” that skeptics are being excluded from the climate change debate. People who say the “science is settled,” Brandis said, are “ignorant” and “medieval.” He did all but call the climate alarmists in Australia’s government fascists.
Good stuff. And good for him, no matter his motivations — painted, of course, in the worst possible and distorted light by the leftist Guardian.
The comments under the story were heavy on the “science is settled” point. So, against my best judgment, I left the following comment:
The climate is always changing. But is human activity causing runaway global warming? Is man causing a climate crisis? On those questions the science is not settled.
http://climatechangereconsidered.org/
Pretty innocuous, right? It was removed 10 minutes later for not adhering to The Guardian’s community standards. Fascists! … who prove Brandis’ point.
Just before learning my comment was taken down, a gentleman added to the conversation by writing:
You’re embarrassing yourself.
I replied:
So, in four minutes you’ve already read the reports (or at least the summaries)! Fantastic. So I look forward to you rebuttals to the following points:
* Research published in peer-reviewed science journals indicates the model-derived temperature sensitivity of Earth accepted by the IPCC is too large. And how negative feedbacks in the climate system reduce that sensitivity to values an order of magnitude smaller.
* Strong empirical correlations have been reported from all around the world between solar variability and climate indices including temperature, precipitation, droughts, floods, streamflow, and monsoons.
* The IPCC fails to consider the importance of the demonstrated empirical relationship between solar activity, the ingress of galactic cosmic rays, and the formation of low clouds.
* During the past 25,000 years (late Pleistocene and Holocene) glaciers around the world have fluctuated broadly in concert with changing climate, at times shrinking to positions and volumes smaller than today.
* The relationship between drought and global warming is weak, since severe droughts occurred during both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.
* And how despite the supposedly “unprecedented” warming of the twentieth century, there has been no increase in the intensity or frequency of tropical cyclones globally or in any of the specific ocean basins.
You wouldn’t want to embarrass yourself by not having anything to say about those points, right?
Again, that reply was posted as I was being deleted. (I looked for it on the site immediately after hitting “post” and saw that I was erased.) So, I tried putting up another post — which may be taken down, as well. Who knows:
My last comment was deleted. I thought it was innocuous enough to meet the Guardian’s “community standards.” For the record …
I insulted no one. My comment contained no personal attacks, and it was not an act of “persistent trolling” (Guideline #1). I did not smear anyone or misrepresent the Guardian or its journalists (Guideline #2). It was not “offensive” or “threatening” (Guideline #3), or part of a “flame war (Guideline #4). Nor was it racist, sexist, homophobic or any other form of “hate-speech” (Guideline #5). My comment was not libelous (Guideline #6), nor was it spam (Guideline #7), though I did include a link. It was relevant to the discussion (Guideline #8), it was reasonable (Guideline #9), and objectively constructive to the conversation (Guideline #10).
So, in the spirit of the Guardian’s stated mission to make its website “a welcoming space for intelligent discussion,” I will try again. My original comment, just about verbatim:
The climate is always changing. But is human activity causing runaway global warming? Is man causing a climate crisis? On those questions the science is not settled.
I then put in a link to ClimateChangeReconsidered.org. I don’t hyperlink it here … for fear of violating some sort of “community guideline,” but you can copy and paste the URL yourself.
Argument victory strategy of the left: When you’re losing the agrument, construct a straw man. When your straw man is burned up, yell and scream. When your throat gives out, ban all who disagree.

Tags: Australiaclimate changeclimate change reconsideredGeorge Brandisglobal warmingguardianmedia

— Jim Lakely
Jim is the the director of communications at The Heartland Institute. Prior to joining Heartland, he was an ink-stained newspaperman for 16 years with many stops in "old media." Jim covered Congress and The White House during the George W. Bush administration for The Washington Times, and worked as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist for newspapers in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and California. He has appeared on the Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, and many local and national talk radio shows to talk politics and policy.

http://blog.heartland.org/2014/04/le...eptic-shut-up/