Climate Mafia Chronicles

Okay, this Obama guy is really starting to annoy me.  John has already noted Obama’s risible comments about “climate deniers” in the commencement address he gave at UC Irvine the other day, and as I argued last week in the Weekly Standard, Obama and the rest of the climatistas are swatting after the thinnest of straw men, as there is virtually no one who is saying climate change doesn’t happen.  The climatistas resolutely refuse to engage in any deliberations about the question of how much, and refuse to consider alternatives to their lust to gain control of the energy sector.

Instead the climatistas continue to behave like a cross between a religious cult and the mafia.  The latest outrage concerns Caleb Rossiter, a left-leaning professor of media studies at American University and a fellow with the very-left Institute for Policy Studies who wrote a terrific op-ed for the Wall Street Journal entitled “Sacrificing Africa for Climate Change.”*  Rossiter makes a simple point that escapes the climate policy “reality deniers” (sauce for the goose I say) that requiring expensive energy in an energy-staved world is to condemn millions of people to continue their lives of misery.  The agenda of the climatistas is just a new form of neocolonialism, Rossiter thinks:

I’ve spent my life on the foreign-policy left. I opposed the Vietnam War, U.S. intervention in Central America in the 1980s and our invasion of Iraq. I have headed a group trying to block U.S. arms and training for “friendly” dictators, and I have written books about how U.S. policy in the developing world is neocolonial.

But I oppose my allies’ well-meaning campaign for “climate justice.” More than 230 organizations, including Africa Action and Oxfam, want industrialized countries to pay “reparations” to African governments for droughts, rising sea levels and other alleged results of what Ugandan strongman Yoweri Museveni calls “climate aggression.” And I oppose the campaign even more for trying to deny to Africans the reliable electricity—and thus the economic development and extended years of life—that fossil fuels can bring.

The left wants to stop industrialization—even if the hypothesis of catastrophic, man-made global warming is false.

For this heresy, Rossiter had to be purged and scourged.  ClimateDepot reports:

In an exclusive interview with Climate Depot, Dr. Rossiter explained: “If people ever say that fears of censorship for ‘climate change’ views are overblown, have them take a look at this: Just two days after I published a piece in the Wall Street Journal calling for Africa to be allowed the ‘all of the above’ energy strategy we have in the U.S., the Institute for Policy Studies terminated my 23-year relationship with them…because my analysis and theirs ‘diverge.’”

“I have tried to get [IPS] to discuss and explain their rejection of my analysis,’ Rossiter told Climate Depot. “When I countered a claim of ‘rapidly accelerating’ temperature change with the [UN] IPCC’s own data’, showing the nearly 20-year temperature pause — the best response I ever got was ‘Caleb, I don’t have time for this.’”

Here’s the email Rossiter received from IPS:

—–Forwarded Message—–
From: John Cavanagh
Sent: May 7, 2014 9:51 PM
To: Caleb Rossiter
Cc: Emira Woods, Joy Zarembka
Subject: Ending IPS Associate Fellowship

Dear Caleb,

We would like to inform you that we are terminating your position as an Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. As you know, Associate Fellows at IPS are sponsored by an IPS project director or by the director. In your case, both of us sponsored your Fellowship. Unfortunately, we now feel that your views on key issues, including climate science, climate justice, and many aspects of U.S. policy to Africa, diverge so significantly from ours that a productive working relationship is untenable. The other project directors of IPS feel the same. . .

* Caleb Rossiter is the son of Clinton Rossiter, the prominent conservative political scientist of the 1950s and 1960s.

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