Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Climedown – “Its time”: Speaking on GB News, British environmentalist Jim Dale demanded criminalisation of public climate denial.
Andrew Doyle clashes with environmentalist demanding climate denial is criminalised: ‘Tyranny by stealth!’
By Ben Chapman
Published: 13/05/2024 – 09:57Jim Dale likened climate denial to flat earth conspiracy theories
- Andrew Doyle and Jim Dale clashed over whether climate denial should be criminalised
- JOIN THE DEBATE – Should climate denial be illegal? COMMENT NOW
Andrew Doyle became embroiled in a feisty free speech row with environmentalist Jim Dale as the latter demanded climate denial is criminalised.
Speaking on GB News, Dale likened climate denial to flat earth conspiracy theories, arguing they are too dangerous for public discourse.
Andrew took a differing perspective on the matter, asking what Dale expects to achieve by silencing climate change sceptics.
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“Denial is factually wrong and it pollutes the political discourse.
“It puts certain politicians in certain spins. They don’t necessarily know about the climatology or the meteorology that’s involved.
“Therefore, they go off on a tangent or sit on a fence like Rishi Sunak, and we end up going nowhere fast when we have to act.”
…
Read more: https://www.gbnews.com/news/andrew-doyle-environmentalist-climate-denial-tyranny-latest
I watched the video of the interview. According to environmentalist Jim Dale, climate skeptics would still be allowed to talk to family and friends, “nobody would kick in the door”, but would face criminal sanctions if they “pollute” people by voicing their opinion in public.
Jim Dale refused to specify exactly what sanctions should be applied to deniers – he said that should be up to politicians like Labour Party leader Keir Starmer.
Asked for an example of how climate denial could be suppressed with criminal sanctions, Jim Dale suggested it would be like how racism has been driven from public discourse. Britain has harsh anti-hate speech laws.
Andrew Doyle tried to get Jim Dale to admit there might be a few issues with banning disagreement, he cited the example of how the Covid Lab leak theory was vigorously suppressed. For a long time Facebook and Google deleted accounts and silenced public posts which speculated that Covid was an escaped lab virus. Then Fauci made continued censorship untenable, by publicly admitting a lab leak was a possibility. Facebook hilariously tried to justify their censorship of lab leak theories by explaining why it is up to people like Fauci to decide what public opinions are acceptable.
However environmentalist Jim Dale refused to concede the possibility that people who claim we are currently experiencing a climate crisis might be wrong.
The reality of climate change is that the Earth is currently experiencing a very cold period by geological standards.
We are currently living in the Quaternary ice age, a severe cold period which started two and a half million years ago, and continues to the present day.
The Quaternary is one of only five great glaciation periods which have been detected in the geological record – the others are the Huronian (2.2 billion years ago), Cryogenian (720-635 million years ago), Andean-Saharan (460-420 million years ago), late Paleozoic (360-255 million years ago), and the Quaternary Ice Age, our current period of extreme cold.
Think about that – during more than 2 billion years of geological history, only 5 great cold periods have been identified, and we are currently living in one of those periods. The last time the Earth was this cold for a sustained period was 255 million years ago.
Given the geological evidence is that we are living in a significant period of extreme cold, how can today’s temperatures possibly qualify as a global warming emergency?
Yet an opinion such as I just provided, a simple statement of fact, would likely be illegal under Jim Dale’s climate denial rules. Under Dale’s proposed rules, myself or anyone who retweets this article could go to jail or lose their house, merely for suggesting that people living in the middle of an ice age should be more concerned about glaciers than beach weather.
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