10.12.2006

Godwin's Law

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), Chair, US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, July 24, 2006:
"It [An Inconvenient Truth] kind of reminds … I could use the Third Reich, the big lie ... You say something over and over and over and over again, and people will believe it, and that's their strategy."

US Senate Committe on Environment and Public Works "majority fact of the day," October 11, 2006:
"Grist Magazine’s staff writer David Roberts called for the Nuremberg-style trials for the “bastards” who were members of what he termed the global warming 'denial industry.' ...

Gore and Moyers have not yet commented on Grist's advocacy of prosecuting skeptics of global warming with a Nuremberg-style war crimes trial. Gore has used the phrase "global warming deniers" to describe scientists and others who don't share his view of the Earth's climate. It remains to be seen what Gore and Moyers will have to say about proposals to make skepticism a crime comparable to Holocaust atrocities.
It is rather humorous to think about a ranking Senator who denies the existence of global warming and who has no problems flinging around insulting Hitler and Nazi references himself, approve a message on the committee's website which he chairs that links to Roger Pielke Jr.'s rather strained argument that the combination of the use of a noun followed by the word "denier" is always akin to calling someone a Nazi sympathizer / holocause denier.