RUTHFULLY YOURS

The People’s Climate March is Saturday, April 29, and it will be the third iteration of an anti-Trump rally just this month. (April has been busy for the perpetually agitated.) It is a day when lefties accomplish little more than exposing their planet-sized hypocrisy on the environment: Eco-celebs such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo will walk arm-in-arm to lament the Earth’s destruction by greedy fossil-fuel companies, and then they will jet off to their next fossil-fuel-powered movie set to make millions. Jerry Brown, Andrew Cuomo, and other politicians will lecture us about the dangers of CO2 as they close zero-emission nuclear plants in their own states. Millennials will snap selfies on cellphones that operate off an electric grid powered by natural gas made abundantly available by the fracking they will protest.

According to its website, here is the point of the People’s Climate March:

On the 100th Day of the Trump Administration, we will be in the streets of Washington D.C. to show the world and our leaders that we will resist attacks on our people, our communities and our planet.

Now set aside for a moment the comical idea that angry anti-Trumpers, who have been in attack mode since November 8, are themselves under attack. This statement reveals the height of hypocrisy from the climate crowd; they are the bullies attacking anyone who dares to question climate science or who doubts whether human activity is causing climate change. Most Americans are unaware of the vicious campaign — including character assassination, political witch-hunts, and media propaganda — waged by climate activists against people who do not recite the strictest tenets of the manmade-climate-change creed.

When the New York Times announced a few weeks ago that it had hired Bret Stephens, a former Wall Street Journal columnist, the climate cult went insane. (Stephens has been critical of climate-change dogma.) Joe Romm, the editor of Climate Progress, and others demanded that the Times fire Stephens. Hundreds of people threatened to cancel their subscriptions to protest the hiring of a so-called climate denier, including leading climate scientist Ken Caldeira who accused Stephens of having a “reckless disregard for well-established scientific facts.” Michael Mann, a climate scientist from Penn State University and keynote speaker at the March for Science, tweeted this:

“It should trouble everyone in the scientific community that the primary response of its leading voices when they encounter a voice they don’t like is to try to get that person fired from their job. That is doesn’t trouble anyone very much says something,” wrote Roger Pielke, Jr. in a blog post this month. Pielke is a scientist who concluded a decade ago that climate change was not contributing to more extreme weather events such as hurricanes and floods, a finding that was eventually supported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

By exposing this flaw in climate science, Pielke has since been targeted by powerful climate interests determined to destroy his career and reputation. He has been called a climate denier, even though he believes human activity is causing climate change and he supports a carbon tax. President Obama’s top science adviser, John Holdren, wrote a lengthy missive against Pielke, which prompted one Democratic congressman to call for an investigation into Pielke’s research (he is a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder). The coercion was so great that Pielke left the field of climate science a few years ago.

He’s back in the fray now, after some climate bullies, including Mann, who is suing National Review for alleged defamation, attacked Pielke for his testimony on Capitol Hill last month on climate science. Pielke will start posting a monthly blog about climate issues, mostly to fight back against the campaign of intimidation by climate activists and the complicity of the scientific establishment.

By exposing this flaw in climate science, Pielke has since been targeted by powerful climate interests determined to destroy his career and reputation.

“The science community not only allows this bullying, they applaud it. And the power brokers endorse it. There are no ordinary checks and balances in the profession,” Pielke told me. “There is a view among climate activists that if they can get everyone to believe the same thing, then the right policies will take place. It gives these people political standing.”

And that is what most terrifies the climate tribe: the loss of political power and policymaking influence, as well as the government funding that goes with it. In a recent interview, Steven Koonin, a former undersecretary in Obama’s Energy Department and now the director of NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress, said scientists are fearful of reprisals if they hold a different view of climate change: “If you get scientists in a room together, it’s a vibrant, alive science. But somehow that gets muted, if not suppressed, when you get out into the policy-making discussions,” Koonin said. “It’s very difficult to get into the club, so to speak, if you’re a contrarian. You might see your money cut off, but even more significantly, you’ll see opprobrium from your peers. If you speak up, you can be in big trouble.”

Or even threatened with violence. After the March for Science this past Saturday, shots were fired at the office of John Christy, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama, Hunstville, and a well-known climate-change skeptic. Christy’s colleague, Roy Spencer, reported the shooting on social media on Monday: “When some people cannot argue facts, they resort to violence to get their way. Maybe the ‘March for Science’ should have been called the ‘March to Silence.’”

This is the kind of thuggery climate leaders promote so they can keep their agenda intact. They play the victim by insisting that the Trump administration and Republicans are trying to oppress them, but they are the perpetrators, intimidating and coercing anyone who dares to defy them. Contrary to what they say, it’s about silence, not science.

— Julie Kelly is a writer in Orland Park, Ill.