The ultimate smear

It was reported in Sunday's Telegraph, that a leading advocate of global warming policies, was trying to persuade the US Congress to allow the prosecution of chief executives of US energy companies for the high crime of denying global warming.

James Hansen, who made an historic speech on the subject in 1988, is head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and he and Al Gore are arguably the chief evangelists in the cause.

Their absolutism was unabashed last year when Hansen was forced to admit that that for a few years temperatures had declined "temporarily" despite rising carbon dioxide, and that the highest land surface ever recorded in the USA was in the 1930s.

He is perfectly entitled to his opinion, and to seeking to persuade the rest of us, so long as he does not use evidence selectively. What I am concerned about is the attempt to outlaw private thought and opinion in the way parts of Europe have with the concept of Holocaust Denial as a major crime.

If your case is not strong, or well qualified people are opposing it, you can always shut them up by having them in prison! Will they burn unfavourable books as well? This all sounds like the Nazis and their wish to abolish anyone who disagreed and would not swallow their teaching.