Secretary of State John Kerry says that global warming skeptics should be disqualified from “high public office.” By all means, Secretary Kerry, let’s allow you to unilaterally set the eligibility requirements for elected officials. We’ll just turn it all over to you and your astute judgment.
Here’s the gaseous statement that elicited our playground response, made Wednesday by Kerry from his Climate and Clean Energy Investment Forum, as recorded by Talk Radio News Service:
“But when I hear a United States senator say, ‘I’m not a scientist so I can’t make a judgment,’ or a candidate for president for that matter, I’m absolutely astounded. I mean, it’s incomprehensible that a grownup who has been to high school and college in the United States of America disqualifies themselves because they’re not a scientist when they’ve learned that the Earth rotates on its axis, but they’re not a scientist; where they’ve learned that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and it does so 24 hours a day; and you can run the list of things that we know science tells us happens, and we accept it every single day.
“And to suggest that when more than 6,000-plus peer-reviewed studies of the world’s best scientists all lay out that this is happening and mankind is contributing to it, it seems to me that they disqualify themselves fundamentally from high public office with those kinds of statements.”
As is often said at children’s parks all over the country, two can play this game. So we propose here that no climate change alarmist or uncritical believer in the man-made global warming story should hold high, medium or even low public office. It makes sense. Almost all of those who meet these descriptions are either: 1) political opportunists who are simply saying the right things to a voting bloc or some other group whose support they’re courting, or 2) the sort of folks who haven’t given the issue enough thought, in most cases because they don’t want to.
Spare us the nonsense about “6,000-plus peer reviewed studies” and the new perennial favorite “97% of scientists say man is warming the planet.” The first is either a poorly done study or con job, and the second is … either a poorly done study or con job.
Actually, we don’t mind if those who believe in man-made global warming hold office, as long as they came by their views honestly. What we do mind is believers using office to hector us all incessantly about our prosperous lifestyles, and enact policies that won’t change Earth’s temperature one bit but sure will overwhelm developed economies. The rest of us shouldn’t have to pay the price of their opinions.
