Rowan Dean, in The Australian highlights the tactics of warmists to demonise global warming skeptics; portray their opponents as “evil denier monsters” akin to the germs on toilet cleaning commercials. We are “pursued with all the zeal of a witch hunt in 17th century Salem”. I would also compare it to the McCarthyists of the 1950s, history is repeating people.
Dean points out Richard Glover who labels skeptics the “agents of planetary death”, suggesting our opinions should be “forcibly tatooed” to us before being “lashed to a pole at a certain point in the shallows of Manly”. Elizabeth Farrelly also serves Dean’s point, portraying skeptics “cane toads” and “poison(ers of) logic”. Dean then gives Mike Carlton a mention with his suggestion that Cardinal George Pell should be subjected to torture over his opinions. “Pull out a few fingernails, stretch him on the rack, a bit of how’s-yer-father with a red hot poker.”
What these ignorant alarmists fail to comprehend however is that skeptics are on to this little tactic. When you don’t have any facts, resort to ad hominem attacks. Textbook stuff, and as such it is on page 12 of The Skeptics Handbook. Warmists can think of skeptics as scum if that comforts them in the face of their overwhelming lack of evidence, but each ad hominem attack digs them a deeper hole. What I would ask them in the light of the fact they are mirroring the tactics of Joseph McCarthy; “have you no sense of decency, at long last?”
