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The climate witch trials. Questioning the climate-change narrative is now the ultimate form of heresy.
Spiked ^ | 22 Jul 2023 | Brendan O'Neill

Posted on 07/24/2023 8:23:24 AM PDT by Chad C. Mulligan

In 1590, in Scotland, an elderly woman named Agnes Sampson was arrested. She was from East Lothian. Earlier in her life she had been a midwife and a healer, but lately she had been living in poverty. She was tried, found guilty and taken to Edinburgh Castle where, on 28 January 1591, she was strangled to death by rope and then burnt at the stake. Her offence? Climate change.

RTWT - Long read but worth it

(Excerpt) Read more at spiked-online.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: climate; denial; dissent; freespeech; globalwarminghoax; hysteria; warming
"Describing, demonising and punishing ‘climate-change denial’ has become a veritable industry. There are books that search for the psychological origins of these apparently demonic thoughts. Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, one is titled. The author of that book, George Marshall, suggests that the ‘in-group loyalties’ that ‘evolved’ in the ‘hunter-gatherer era’ may be an ‘obstacle when dealing with a universal shared threat’ like climate change. Slaves to the evolutionary process, we’re unable to see climatic dangers clearly."

"Psychiatrists analyse the ‘powerful psychological component’ to people’s ‘blindness to scientific reality’. Apparently, ‘millions of people share the phenomenon of climate denial’ and something must be done about it. A report in the Guardian in 2014 said ‘neuroscientists and psychologists’ were finally ‘beginning to understand just why people behave so irrationally [on climate change]’. It’s because ‘our brains are wired to respond to short-term problems, not long-term risk’. And so our brains must be fixed. Priests of old who were concerned about the influence of heresy sought to save men’s souls – today’s eco-priests, horrified by the heresy of climate denialism, endeavour to mend our minds. Not through rational discussion, though – we’ve already established that human beings behave ‘irrationally’ on climate change – but rather through the manipulation of language and thought. As a report from British think-tank the IPPR put it, ‘the task of climate-change agencies is not to persuade by rational argument but in effect to develop and nurture a new “common sense”’."

1 posted on 07/24/2023 8:23:24 AM PDT by Chad C. Mulligan
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To: Chad C. Mulligan

That is because we are smart enough to recognize BS when we see it.


2 posted on 07/24/2023 8:26:36 AM PDT by Shady (The Force of Liberty must prevail for the sake of our Children and Grandchildren...)
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To: Chad C. Mulligan

I read the article this morning. Excellent job by Brendan O’Neill putting the current climate nonsense into historical context. I confess that I am a heretic, a “climate denier.”


3 posted on 07/24/2023 8:30:07 AM PDT by Blennos
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To: Shady

It’s foul odor precedes it.


4 posted on 07/24/2023 8:37:21 AM PDT by Bonemaker (invictus maneo)
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To: Blennos

Does Brendan O’Neill seem reformed? I remember him from the time when he was a stupid a-hole in the Revolutionary Communist Party spreading commie propaganda, but now I have seen this article recommended by normal people. Still not easy to trust him or Spiked (formerly Living Marxism).


5 posted on 07/24/2023 8:40:15 AM PDT by Krosan
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To: Chad C. Mulligan

I think the author misses the opportunity to label the current climate religion as to the source of the Climate change. All discussions of this sort needs to distinguish between actual climate change which does occur, and no one denies it, and the “Man Made Climate Change” religion. The argument and science needs to apply to the cause of the climate changing. And you don’t let them vote away the scientific inquiry. Sun spots, warm ocean patterns, cold ocean patterns, etc. Patterns of CO2 which increase and decrease as part of the overall pattern of God created nature. And then the horror question, is the world and it’s climate self regulation as God created it?


6 posted on 07/24/2023 8:50:01 AM PDT by kvanbrunt2
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To: Chad C. Mulligan

Robert Kennedy Jr. Blames Reagan For 9/11 [for rolling back CAFE standards in 1986] https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1855875/posts

RFK, Jr. wants me jailed … as a war criminal https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3211190/posts

RFK, Jr.: Climate Skeptics ‘Should Be at the Hague with All the Other War Criminals’ https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3206882/posts

RFK Jr.: Hog farmers bigger threat than Osama https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2178592/posts

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Wants To Jail His Political Opponents https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3206573/posts

Watch RFK, Jr. lose it at climate change march when confronted about his hypocrisy https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3206578/posts

Andrea Mitchell Applauds RFK Jr.’s ‘Impassioned Plea’ for Obama to Stop Keystone Pipeline by Fiat https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3120692/posts

RFK, Jr. 15 months ago: Global warming means no snow or cold in DC https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2446226/posts

RFK Jr. Says AGW Skeptics Should Be Silenced https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1864945/posts

RFK Jr.: Bush, Barbour to Blame for Katrina https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1473838/posts


7 posted on 07/24/2023 8:50:24 AM PDT by Republican Wildcat
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To: Krosan

I wasn’t aware of Brendan O’Neill’s background nor that of the magazine. Interesting. Maybe he has come to his senses. The article certainly would seem to have been composed by a solid conservative. The climate nonsense, like the sick transgender movement, is making strange bedfellows of the sane opposition.


8 posted on 07/24/2023 8:59:47 AM PDT by Blennos
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To: Chad C. Mulligan
Recipe for a dead Earth:

First, reward alarmists with grants and public acclaim - (reporters don't put stories about "half degree changes" in temperatures over a hundred years on the front page.) But they do run with 'earth will end in 8 years IF we don't act NOW to save the planet'

Second, cut grants and support for real scientists who know science is NEVER 'settled'. Better, drum rational intelligent real scientists out of the profession.

Third, create majors in 'environmental studies' that are more akin to political 'science', liberal arts and basket weaving, than to real science. How do you know? Fake science departments cut math requirements.

Fourth: Put idiots with lots of money at the top of 'the earth religion'... Fools like John Kerry and Bill Gates. Feed their natural hysteria and need for grandiosity, audience and approval.

Fifth, encourage power for the true believer 'more money than brains' types. Encourage their insanity when they speak of 'seeding the atmosphere', while being too stupid to understand the complexity of interrelated weather systems (gulf streams etc)and the result will be a dead planet.

9 posted on 07/24/2023 9:20:24 AM PDT by GOPJ (The sexual weirdo community ARE the people attacking DeSantis AND sabotaging "Sound of Freedom")
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To: Blennos

It is always a double-edged sword. We can get the best information about how the communist brainwashing cults work from the former cult members.

On the other hand the ones who fell for that cult are usually mentally unstable and will likely fall for some other cult in the future.


10 posted on 07/26/2023 8:35:50 AM PDT by Krosan
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To: Krosan

What you say makes perfect sense.


11 posted on 07/26/2023 9:31:49 AM PDT by Blennos
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