Nice fella, Professor Richard Parncutt.
“I have always been opposed to the death penalty in all cases…”
“Even mass murderers [like Breivik] should not be executed, in my opinion.”
“GW deniers fall into a completely different category from Behring Breivik. They are already causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of future people. We could be speaking of billions, but I am making a conservative estimate.”
Consequences
If a jury of suitably qualified scientists estimated that a given GW denier had already, with high probability (say 95%), caused the deaths of over one million future people, then s/he would be sentenced to death. The sentence would then be commuted to life imprisonment if the accused admitted their mistake, demonstrated genuine regret, AND participated significantly and positively over a long period in programs to reduce the effects of GW (from jail) – using much the same means that were previously used to spread the message of denial. At the end of that process, some GW deniers would never admit their mistake and as a result they would be executed. Perhaps that would be the only way to stop the rest of them. The death penalty would have been justified in terms of the enormous numbers of saved future lives.
Okay, let’s consider this guy’s warped sense of morality. Anders Behring Breivik - the evil who slaughtered 77 innocent people - does not deserve to die, yet those who question the scientific orthodoxy - who speak and write things that others do not like - do. Clearly a sense of moral clarity is required, but perhaps also a sense of history. How many tyrants throughout history, any of those who rule today, have used their power of life and death to enforce their world view on their subjects? Not only in politics, but such dictators have also sought to apply their ideology to the scientific process. To name a few, there was the persecution faced by Galileo and the institutionalisation of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union. What about these regimes does Parncutt find so irresistible?
(Via: Jo Nova)
The way some True Believers are beginning to approach us, such as one Patricia, on WUWT, recently, I suspect it is moving Out of academia, and into the public mind. That is NOT a good sign of things to come.
Pingback: Executions and now assassinations | Climate Nonconformist