Kill The Skeptics

Posted on Fri 12/28/2012 by PA Pundits - International

By Andrew Bolt ~

Professor Richard Parncutt

I guess I should be pleased after all to have been overlooked by DeSmogBlog in its list of climate change “deniers”.

See, it turns out that Professor Richard Parncutt of the University of Graz believes those on it – including prominent scientists – should in many cases be put to death:

In this article I am going to suggest that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for influential GW deniers…

For years, hard-nosed scientists have been predicting global warming (GW) and its devastating consequences…

What will it take to get people to sit up and listen?

Much more would have happened by now if not for the GW deniers… For a long list of climate change deniers and their stories see desmogblog…

I have always been opposed to the death penalty in all cases, and I have always supported the clear and consistent stand of Amnesty International on this issue. The death penalty is barbaric, racist, expensive, and is often applied by mistake… Even mass murderers should not be executed, in my opinion. Consider the politically motivated murder of 77 people in Norway in 2011. Of course the murderer does not deserve to live, and there is not the slightest doubt that he is guilty. But if the Norwegian government killed him, that would just increase the number of dead to 78…

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.

I wish to claim that it is generally ok to kill someone in order to save one million people. Similarly, the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for GW deniers who are so influential that one million future deaths can with high probability be traced to their personal actions…

Another counterargument is that we can never be sure that the predicted GW will happen, or that its effects will be as severe as predicted. But this is not a strong argument. The courts are used to dealing with uncertainty…

I don’t want to be a saint. I would just like my grandchildren and great grandchildren, and the human race in general, to enjoy the world that I have enjoyed, as much as I have enjoyed it. And to achieve that goal I think it is justified for a few heads to roll. Does that make me crazy? I don’t think so. I am certainly far less crazy than those people today who are in favor of the death penalty for everyday cases of murder, in my opinion. And like them I have freedom of speech, which is a very valuable thing.

But that freedom of speech that is so valuable must be denied to those who doubt man is heating the world catastrophically. They must pay with their lives for pointing out, for instance, that the world hasn’t warmed for 16 years.

Truly, the global warming faith has become just the latest haven of the closet totalitarian – of those who in past times would have shipped the doubters and heathens to the gulag, the Inquisition, the guillotine or the death camps. For the betterment of humanity, of course. And to sate the lust for power of the inner circle.

The Professor’s page has since been deleted, presumably by his university. Jo Nova is hosting an excellent discussion. Reason is under attack, as is free speech. This call for executions is extreme, but it is simply an extension of the same punitive instinct that drives, say, the Press Council to hound sceptics into silence.

Be worried.

UPDATE from TonyfromOz:

After some pretty strong condemnation (mainly from areas that do not support Global Warming/Climate Change) Professor Parncutt has withdrawn, first his main article, and then a second article that was some sort of explanation in the form of a semi apology. After the University that is his employer condemned the original article, Professor Parncutt then withdrew that second article and he has issued an unreserved apology. The details are shown at this link to a Post at the JoNova blog in Australia.

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10’s The Bolt Report each Sunday at 10am. He is also heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of radio station MTR 1377, and his book Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/