Columnist advises forcibly tattooing climate change deniers. Or, just kill them

Sidney Glover, a Sydney Morning Herald columnist, wrote a piece today that is shocking in its incivility and intolerance. What have we come to when an influential writer has a piece published that advocates mutilation or death to those who disagree with him? He wrote in "The dangers of bone-headed beliefs"--

"Surely it's time for climate-change deniers to have their opinions forcibly tattooed on their bodies. Not necessarily on the forehead; I'm a reasonable man. Just something along their arm or across their chest so their grandchildren could say, ''Really? You were one of the ones who tried to stop the world doing something? And why exactly was that, granddad?''

A reasonable man? Forcing tattoos on people who deny that man causes change to climate? He recants a bit though in the next sentence, claiming that forcing tattoos on people is "a bit Nazi-creepy." So instead, he visualizes their death.

"So how about they are forced to buy property on low-lying islands, the sort of property that will become worthless with a few more centimetres of ocean rise, so they are bankrupted by their own bloody-mindedness? Or what about their signed agreement to stand, in the year 2040, lashed to a pole at a certain point in the shallows off Manly? If they are right and the world is cooling - ''climate change stopped in the year 1998'' is one of their more boneheaded beliefs - their mouths will be above water. If not … OK, maybe the desire to see the painful, thrashing death of one's opponents is not ideal."

YA THINK?

The first point to recognize is that it is never, ever appropriate to call for the death of people with whom one disagrees. Mr Glover's credibility was immediately bankrupted the moment his frustration with people who share an opinion differing from his overtook his good sense, propriety, and manners. How "intolerant."

Secondly, I would have thought that the scam science behind climate change that was uncovered at Climate-gate would have punctured at least the animosity, if not the entire proposal. Apparently the animosity against climate change deniers still exists, though now, of course, the reason for it is even more laughable because it doesn't have a scientific leg to stand on.

Third, the opinion piece proposed the death or mutilation of people who do not share the writer's view. But such an opinion is not born of a moment and written in a second. The writer must first feel the rising frustration for a period of time, which actually tipped over into rage, given the level of action he demands. He used the word 'frustrating' but when you're frustrated with someone you shrug and throw up your hands, not call for their execution in such a lengthy fashion as staking out at low tide. That's blind rage. It must have been visualized, written, edited. Then published. Mr Glover has spent a lot of time with his anger, and he selected this topic from among many others from which he could have chosen. 

Fourth, as a Christian, I agree that global warming (now called "climate change") is happening. It has always happened, since the Flood. The climate changes. The term 'global warming' was actually coined inadvertently by a scientist named Dr. Wallace Broeckner, who was responding to the twenty-year decline in temperatures in a paper and wondered if a global warming was about to occur. That was 1975. Even as recently as 1992, Mr Glover forgets that there was little consensus on the facts of global warming among scientists. In a paper written by Richard S. Lindzen titled, "Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus" he says, "Most of the literate world today regards "global warming'' as both real and dangerous. Indeed, the diplomatic activity concerning warming might lead one to believe that it is the major crisis confronting mankind. The June 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, focused on international agreements to deal with that threat, and the heads of state from dozens of countries attended. I must state at the outset, that, as a scientist, I can find no substantive basis for the warming scenarios being popularly described."

Then Climategate occurred in 2009. The UK Telegraph reported, "The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka  CRU) and released 61 megabytes of confidential files onto the internet. When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest: 'Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.' "

So with all the scientific error, muddiness, myth, and hollowness of the climate change theories, Mr Glover is still so sure of his position that he calls for death and mutilation of those who dare to disagree. Perilous times indeed, when intolerance and blind rage outpaces debate and reason.

Though I agree the climate is changing, the difference I have with Mr Glover is that I disagree that it is man-caused. It is not. It is God-caused. There is nothing that mere man could or would to to disrupt the cycles set forth by God and cause an extinction. God is fully in control of creation, at all times. And there we have the root of the antipathy toward 'climate change deniers.' They are in reality angry because we do not agree with their atheism, instead we put the Lord over ourselves and not ourselves over ourselves. Antipathy toward God will always rouse ire disproportional to the situation.

Nebuchadnezzar was in a rage and a fury, calling for the deaths of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego. (Daniel 3:12-14) because they refused to worship the image he had set up. In Luke 4 and Luke 6, listeners of Jesus were driven into a blind rage, in Luke 4, they determined to throw Jesus off a cliff. In Acts 7:54, they who heard Stephen's admission of the truth became so incensed they gnashed their teeth and stoned him to death. The truth rouses ire.

I am one who refuses to bow down to the idol of man-made climate change. Instead I bow down to the Lord's divine power and control over creation. The irony is, Mr Glover, unless he repents and understands man's proper place in creation, is the one who will wind up with a tattoo. THAT is the real danger of bone-headed beliefs.

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