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The hate campaign — it’s “science by insults” revealing the deepest fear of believers

Should David Rose’s children murder him for the sake of the planet?

Welcome to western civilization’s advanced scientific debate. There there are no shades of gray, we can’t discuss whether climate sensitivity is 1, 2,or 3 degrees, and it’s not even about numbers. It’s about whether you are good or evil.

For a religious believer, the worst thing that could happen is a polite conversation. They know (at least on a subconscious level) that they don’t have the answers, and that if skeptics were heard the voters would flee… the only possible answer is to “win” through bully-boy tactics. Unleash the righteous indignation!

David Rose does Daily Mail articles asking dangerous questions about error bars and wanting to know pedantic, unreasonable things like where the scientific data is.  One commenter urged his children to kill him.  Rose has been a journalist for 34 years. He has seen nothing like this vitriol. As he writes below, The Guardian and other newspapers support brutal threats in comments but filter out skeptics.

Climate of Hate: His children are urged to kill him, he’s compared to Adolf Hitler and labelled a ‘denier’ – even though he’s Jewish. Disturbing article reveals what happens if you dare to doubt the Green prophets of doom

The remark about my children killing me was made some months ago, after The Guardian published one of several critiques of my work by its climate activist blogger, Dana Nuccitelli. One of the online commenters posted: ‘In a few years, self-defence is going to be made a valid defence for parricide [killing one’s own father], so Rose’s children will have this article to present in their defence at the trial.’

Another commenter compared me to Adolf Hitler. Frankly, I didn’t take either of them too seriously. But last week on Twitter, someone else wrote that he knew where I lived, and posted my personal phone numbers.

Meanwhile, Nuccitelli had written another vehement attack, this time against Matt Ridley, The Times columnist, Tory peer and fellow ‘lukewarmer’. This fresh assault was illustrated by the paper’s editors with a grotesque image of a severed head. One who commented, called ‘Bluecloud’, said: ‘Should that not be Ridley’s severed head in the photo… Why are you deniers so touchy? Mere calls for a beheading evolve [sic] such a strong response in you people. Ask yourself a simple question: Would the world be a better place without Matt Ridley? Need I answer that question?’

In fact, Bluecloud is a Guardian contributor called Gary Evans, who is also a ‘sustainability consultant’ funded by Greenpeace. Ridley complained, but the statements stayed on the website for at least four days. Comments in support of Ridley were removed by the site’s moderators, because they did not ‘abide by our community standards’. In an email to The Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, Ridley pointed out that a Japanese hostage had just been beheaded by Islamic State.

Language only barely less extreme is now common. In the US, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has written that anyone who denies global warming must be ‘punished in the afterlife… this kind of denial is an almost inconceivable sin’.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

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