Scientocracy Alert: Either Accept the "Scientific Consensus" or Go to Jail
This is not a post about the realities--or lack thereof--of man-caused global warming. It is about the rising hubris of "the scientists" who seem to think they are entitled to rule the world.
NASA scientist James Hanson has called for the jailing of oil executives for "crimes against nature" for being global warming deniers. From the story:James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.
There's no such thing as a high crime against nature and crimes against humanity are defined by treaties. But why let that stop Hanson? He is being defied and it ticks him off. Moreover, he sounds like a theocrat urging that the leaders of the nonbelievers to be tried for blasphemy: Go against our beliefs, and you are a criminal. I sure know who I don't want in charge.
Hansen will use the symbolically charged 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking speech to the US Congress--in which he was among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming--to argue that radical steps need to be taken immediately if the "perfect storm" of irreversible climate change is not to become inevitable.
Labels: Scientocracy.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 7:23 PM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
There's no such thing as a high crime against nature and crimes against humanity are defined by treaties.
True. But at the time of the Armenian Genocide, there was no such thing as a high crime against humanity (at least, not in any law or treaty). But the governments of Britain, France, Russia and the US charged the Ottoman government with "crimes against humanity" anyway, and I'm inclined to think they were right.
Hi duckrabbit: I see by your photo that you go by different handles depending on the issue? Interesting.
In any event, in this era, before one can be guilty of a crime, it has to be defined. That's proper, don't you think? Moreover, in our constitution, you can't have an ex post facto law, that is, try someone for a crime that wasn't one when the act was committed. It is essential to freedom.
But beyond that, to advocate criminalizing a different perspective is very scary.
Haha, no, I'm not that sophisticated. I'm just a newbie in Blogger, and I'm trying to decide whether to use my real name or my usual internet handle. You can call me Ronni, if you'd like.
I'm not defending Hansen. (In fact, I think he's wrong; see the next paragraph.) But from a philosophy-of-law point of view, I'm wondering if there's a clear distinction between the ex-post-facto-ness of the (justified!) ex-post-facto laws used in Eichmann's trial, on one hand, and the (unjustified?) ex-post-facto-ness of the laws Hansen suggests, on the other hand.
I don't think that the political world of today is so much more advanced than the postwar era, such that the ex-post-facto legal moves of that time are unjustifiable now. But I think that, both then and now, ex-post-facto penalties can only be justifiably imposed when the purported criminal-against-humanity stands in a certain relationship toward the victim. And that relationship — one of clear, direct responsibility — just doesn't obtain in the cases of tobacco and fuel companies. Whether or not Hansen has the right facts about global warming, I don't think fuel CEOs can plausibly be analogized to top-dog Nazis.
I heard you speak in Phoenix at Blackstone recently, and I wanted to second your disdain for Hansen's comments. I was actually at the speech where he made them, and people were dozing off in the room - that is, until he closed with the high crimes bit. Everyone immediately looked up with a collective "What?!"
I was pleased when the press pushed him, as well as Congressman Markey, on that issue. There may be some common sense left in the press after all.
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