A man elected to the United States Senate by a sovereign state has suggested to the Obama administration that it could use anti-gangster laws to punish those who doubt the theory of man-made global warming.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., claimed in a recent Washington Post opinion piece that oil companies and their “allies” are “funding a massive and sophisticated campaign to mislead the American people about the environmental harm caused by carbon pollution.”
With such ideas, we have inched closer to the world of “1984,” the novel by George Orwell in which the Thought Police work to uncover and punish thoughtcrime against authority and the status quo and those who perpetrate it.
Whitehouse’s suggestion comes in a climate where, increasingly, global warming “facts” are being challenged and incidents occurring to make skeptics even more skeptical.
NASA, for instance, had to refute its claim that 2014 was the “warmest year on record.” An in-depth analysis found that the government agencies NOAA, NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy had been manipulating data to show global warming. And just last week NOAA researchers magically decided to “adjust” their data to show that a long plateau of global temperatures borne out by evidence actually should show a warming trend.
Whitehouse compares the use of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act against climate deniers to that filed by the Department of Justice in 1999 against tobacco companies and industry groups for engaging in a “50-year-scheme” to “defraud the public.”
“The parallels between what the tobacco industry did and what the fossil fuel industry is doing now are striking,” he said.
Following the publication of his opinion piece, evidence that Whitehouse had relied on for his claims about “a massive and sophisticated campaign” was quickly discredited.
And even with his outlandish suggestion, the Rhode Island senator admitted in the article he could be wrong.
“To be clear: I don’t know whether the fossil fuel industry and its allies engaged in the same kind of racketeering activity as the tobacco industry,” he wrote. “We don’t have enough information to make that conclusion. Perhaps it’s all smoke and no fire. But there’s an awful lot of smoke.”
Unfortunately, suggestions like his and publication in a reputable newspaper only serve – no matter the facts – to give credence to his wrongheaded ideas.