Sheldon Whitehouse is a Democrat Senator from Rhode Island. He recently wrote an editorial in the WashPo about climate change, nee global warming.
In it he writes, "Fossil fuel companies and their allies are funding a massive and sophisticated campaign to mislead the American people about the environmental harm caused by carbon pollution.
Their activities are often compared to those of Big Tobacco denying the health dangers of smoking. Big Tobacco’s denial scheme was ultimately found by a federal judge to have amounted to a racketeering enterprise."
His solution? RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act used against organized crime--and the tobacco industry's disinformation campaign against tobacco regulations.
"The parallels," he writes, "between what the tobacco industry did and what the fossil fuel industry is doing now are striking."
The notion here seems to be to criminalize difference of opinion.
The problems in science are demanding and might well be out of reach for some, as uncomfortable a notion as that might be for the democracy. We often have to take experts' word for it. String Theory is not going to be a big topic on Fox. But unprovable notions, like String Theory and Global Warming, should be seen for what they are. Unprovable. There is no way to prove with current double blind studies the consistency of either. Nor are models proof.
Uncertainty is a position too.
Ironically he ends his article with a weasel's hedge that exposes the exact flaw in how he thinks that is characteristic of this debate:
"To be clear: I don’t know whether the fossil fuel industry and its allies engaged in the same kind of racketeering activity as the tobacco industry. We don’t have enough information to make that conclusion. Perhaps it’s all smoke and no fire. But there’s an awful lot of smoke."
In it he writes, "Fossil fuel companies and their allies are funding a massive and sophisticated campaign to mislead the American people about the environmental harm caused by carbon pollution.
Their activities are often compared to those of Big Tobacco denying the health dangers of smoking. Big Tobacco’s denial scheme was ultimately found by a federal judge to have amounted to a racketeering enterprise."
His solution? RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act used against organized crime--and the tobacco industry's disinformation campaign against tobacco regulations.
"The parallels," he writes, "between what the tobacco industry did and what the fossil fuel industry is doing now are striking."
The notion here seems to be to criminalize difference of opinion.
The problems in science are demanding and might well be out of reach for some, as uncomfortable a notion as that might be for the democracy. We often have to take experts' word for it. String Theory is not going to be a big topic on Fox. But unprovable notions, like String Theory and Global Warming, should be seen for what they are. Unprovable. There is no way to prove with current double blind studies the consistency of either. Nor are models proof.
Uncertainty is a position too.
Ironically he ends his article with a weasel's hedge that exposes the exact flaw in how he thinks that is characteristic of this debate:
"To be clear: I don’t know whether the fossil fuel industry and its allies engaged in the same kind of racketeering activity as the tobacco industry. We don’t have enough information to make that conclusion. Perhaps it’s all smoke and no fire. But there’s an awful lot of smoke."
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