The left, dissent and "climate change"

I published this in April,2016 in another blog I had and I reprise it now prompted by Dr. Nick Waddy's latest post on his courageous and well argued blog Waddyisright.com.,  concerning climate change and America's considerable achievements so far in addressing this concern.  The big difference is, of course, that we now have a loyal American and his direct appointees in charge of policy in this regard, so though that doesn't change my original theme, I did update some wording :

Original title - Crushing Dissent: A Leftist Goal.  In this post I will describe an ongoing, relentless, purposeful process enacted by the American left to destroy dissent from its views to aid it in achieving a dominance it cannot attain legislatively. With its inspiration being the successful Federal legal effort  against the tobacco industry, which was enabled by a true scientific consensus based on overwhelming empirical evidence, the left  attempts, in its proposals to take to law industries and some individuals who express doubt about "global warming" and its ostensible human provenance, to employ a new, far less rigorous standard for scientific consensus.  ("The Enlightenment be damned".) Once established, this new model, based on the concept, already shamefully rampant in the American academy, of "social scientific consensus" (my term for forced unanimity among social "scientists" about ideas deemed "correct" by the leftists who dominate most social science faculties), would give future radical governments wide latitude and consequent full power, to discourage and punish dissent from irresponsible government measures based on badly supported conclusions. Once the left turns any issue into a social issue, the sanctimonious engine of "political correctness"  kicks on with characteristic fuss, fume and totalitarian vindictiveness.
                                                                         
 The Obama administration explored the possibility of prosecuting both some researchers who express doubts about possible "global warming" and its origins, and fossil fuel corporations which
  uncooperatively encourage such doubt in hopes of defending their financial viability and that of their employees and stock holders from questionable concerns.  I would assume that many fossil fuel corporation executives have science degrees and that, being human, they have exercised  a reasonable and conceivably honorable  belief  in the virtue and the soundness of their companies' enterprises. This is naturally denounced by such as Al Gore,with all their experience in the real world of free enterprise, despite Al's conspicuous enjoyment of the fruits thereof.

The left still, despite its monumental  setback in the election of a man who knows it and does not fear it, yet seeks the dismantling of free enterprise, capitalism, and the "undeserved"  well being they generate.  Successful Federal prosecution of the  tobacco industry provided useful precedent and practice for confronting powerful industries and for this purpose.. The government argued that researchers were unanimous in finding tobacco smoke consumption addictive and poisonous. The public, using common sense and experience, eventually agreed.  I remember my 9 year old classmate in the '50's telling his father "here are your cancer sticks". The present day left is loath to trust such a democratic process  and looks longingly to the fact that  Federal courts convicted several tobacco companies under the RICO statute; it would dearly love to do the same to the fossil fuel producers and the heretics who doubt Ol' Al .

The standards of proof and credibility satisfied by scientific inquiry into the dangers of smoking are not satisfied by current research about  possible global warming.  Much credible dissent from the view that it is happening and that it is caused by humans, is readily available in creditable informational  resources and direct personal experience of human culpability is impossible.  Who can claim to have actually witnessed human warming of the good old earth? But we've all seen smokers coughing their lungs out.

The human provenance of "global warming" is devoutly to be wished for by the left because it provides justification for yet another hellish trek toward a perfect world with the left at the helm. That's where it becomes a social issue for them.

Can it be that the left's scientific objectivity (it is, after all, the child of Marx) is  yet to be doubted? Not by its lights to be sure.  Its breathless and essentially emotional idealism having been tragically and thoroughly discredited in the laboratory of the murderous 20th century, the always predominantly very far left nonetheless glimpses vindication in this issue.
                                                                                                                                                                  Within the left it is consensus - it just "feels" right and so is, as in all issues on which radicals have "fallen in" in unserried ranks, unquestionably true and just.  This visceral conviction informs and motivates the left's determination to destroy the still quite legal and perhaps even beneficial fossil fuel industry in hopes of seriously wounding  the real America.  Should it reacquire governmental sway, it will again seek to make researchers and doubters fear Federal lawsuits and criminal prosecution . In doing so it would suppress open minded inquiry and debate and thereby, reduce the possibility of convincing empirical evidence contradicting its views ever being gathered and freely disseminated.  The consequent establishment of a new, far less empirically rigorous definition of "scientific consensus" , requiring nonetheless, the draconian measures taken against big tobacco, would set for the left  an incalculably useful precedent as an outcome even beyond the defeat of "global warming" doubters. Here is how it would be used:

Most government decision makers and all lawyers are college educated. The American academy is dominated , at the very least in the social sciences and humanities, by leftists who view dissent from their unquestionably just outlook as incorrect, morally reprehensible and deserving of punishment and suppression. This is the fruit of the boomer '60's, where painfully evolved and established verities were dismissed, out of hand and overnight. Already well regarded in perhaps the majority of  such "university" departments is the concept of "social science consensus" (again, my term). And its infection of the physical sciences is apparent. After all, scientists need gainful employment  too. But the social sciences are not as beholden to empirical evidence are they? Could a sociologist have caused Saturn V to lift off? In the politicized anti intellectual  atmosphere in today's academia its not a very long step, is it, from "scientific consensus" to "social science consensus" to "consensus", especially when it serves  already resolved "social justice" ends. If you have no compunctions against excoriating those who disagree with you and have the means to do them material dirt, why you're good to go. Those who imprudently depart from the leftist view won't be hired or promoted and  will be ridiculed and marginalized in their discipline.

All this is only to be expected; the totalitarian essence of the American left is long established and has already turned much of the American "university" into a swamp of bigotry infested with a determination to force leftist change by any means and by an appalling hostility to academic freedom.  Check out SUNY New Paltz these days.

It is from this setting that lawyers and  Federal bureaucrats have and will have graduated into settings which may afford them unlimited power to  intimidate and coerce (eg. with taxpayers' money). A marriage, at their disposal, of a  new and corrupted definition of consensus would give government what it needs to shut down opposition to its fiddling and meddling with American life and could in the hands of its progenitors, the America hating left,  permanently tip the balance in the conflict in our country between democracy and a  "scientific" totalitarianism of which Stalin and his terrified factotum, "biologist" T.D. Lysenko, would have approved.    Jack