Critics excoriate the President Bush administration for, among many things, allegedly stifling dissent regarding the War on Terror.  They are accused of labeling anyone who disagrees with their policies as anti-American and soft on terrorists.  Of the civil liberties Bush has allegedly infringed, Freedom of Speech is front and center.

Meanwhile, many environmental activists and the politicians who support them have declared a war of their own:  The War on Global Warming.  How then, after admonishing the Bush administration for trying to silence those skeptical of its War on Terror, do proponents of this war deal with their own dissenters?  Surely, being a liberal-minded, tolerant group, they must welcome the beliefs of those who are not in lockstep with their own. Not quite.

Instead of calling them unpatriotic or anti-American, they simply call them crazy.  When asked about the global warming skeptics on 60 Minutes, Al Gore responded in a recent interview," They're almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the Earth is flat." 

Gore attempts to demean thousands of reputable scientists in the highly complex field of climatology by comparing them with wild conspiracy theorists who still don't believe there was a moon landing. And people think Karl Rove is shrewd.

Most of the media have bought in fully to the global warming alarmist gospel and some take their criticisms of skeptics a step further.  Not only are they a little nutty, they are truly evil.  Several journalists have likened global warming skeptics to Holocaust deniers.  Here is taste of this type of regrettable language from a Boston Globe Op-Ed: 

"I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future."

The not-so-subtle message to skeptics from this type of eco-fundamentalist rhetoric; you're either with us or you're against us.

As the politically correct police have so ably demonstrated regarding issues of race and gender, the suppression of free speech doesn’t always come from the government.  Just ask Larry Summers, Trent Lott, Geraldine Ferraro, and even Bill Clinton how pervasive the chilling effect on free expression has become in this country when it comes to these touchy subjects.  As they and so many others have learned the hard way, its much easier to remain silent on these issues. 

Little of this suppression has anything to do with government censors and everything to do with hyper-sensitive reactionaries who gain politically and financially from creating an environment where opinions contrary to their own are given little room for expression.  So it is quickly becoming with global warming skeptics. 

Liberal academia squeezes them out of grants and positions of authority.  The media marginalizes them.  Politicians mock them as ignorant.  Publishers are very reluctant to give them book deals. And before long they have been drowned out completely by overzealous environmental opportunists who will be damned if they’re going to let these skeptics crack the golden egg a Democratic President and Democratically controlled Congress would most assuredly lay for them. 

And just who are these skeptics?  Eco-fundamentalists along with their cohorts in the media enjoy demonizing them as evil Philistines who have been bought off by the big bad corporations.  The reality is that they are a diverse group of professors, scientists, politicians and yes, environmentalists, most of whom have no relationship whatsoever with big oil. They tend to lean left politically and happen to care deeply for the planet.  Some of them even helped pioneer the environmental movement.

At the heart of their criticisms is that the good-intentioned work formerly being undertaken to better understand our environment has turned more political and less scientific.  Objective observations have been replaced with impassioned partisanship.  Austere adherence to the scientific method has been replaced by outcome driven studies. 

There is, of course, a great deal of irony at work. Who is playing the oppressor here?  Who is playing the role of big brother watching closely, seeking to stifle voices of dissent?  Liberals are supposed to stand up for the underdog- the contrarian who dares challenge the wisdom of current authority.  Not when it comes to the environment. 

Conformity of thought is the order of the day and those who question prevailing wisdom had better tread lightly.  After all, the fate of the planet is at stake, and of course, trillions of redistributed dollars in the form of government contracts, handouts and subsidies. (Yes, that's trillion with a "T", as in 6.7 trillion dollars that Congress would collect from the public and redistribute as they see fit under the recently defeated Warner-Lieberman bill that was ostensibly aimed at combating climate change.)

What danger does this censorship pose?  History is replete with well-intentioned experts who were profoundly confident in their theories only to be found woefully wrong when the omniscient gaze of hindsight reviewed their work. If those experts were able to induce official state action, it was often with disastrous results.  Sometimes it was merely a waste of the people's money and time.  Sometimes it killed thousands.

The latter took place in Victorian England as vividly retold by author Steven Johnson in his book Ghost Map, which retraces the battle to rid London of its dreaded Cholera outbreaks.  The conventional "wisdom" espoused by most of the medical and political establishments of the day, was that Cholera was an air borne disease.  Many leading minds of the day, including several high ranking bureaucrats, were extremely reluctant to hear why that theory had holes in it.  Cholera was an air borne disease and that was final.  It made too much sense not to be correct.

As it turned out a few brave skeptics proved that it wasn't unsanitary air but unsanitary water that caused the spread of Cholera.  However, it was too late to save all the people that perished from drinking contaminated water that was pumped into their homes by a government proudly expanding its sewer and water delivery systems all the while ignorant to the fact that often it was this very water that was killing Londoners by the hundreds or even thousands.

There is something that strikes Johnson about the tone and confidence of all the experts of this time who turned out to be so deadly wrong.  He explains,

"So often what is lacking in many of these explanations and prescriptions is some measure of humility, some sense that the theory being put forward is still unproven.  It's not just that the authorities of the day were wrong about miasma; it's the tenacious, unquestioning way they went about being wrong."

A fair argument can be made that climatology experts of today do not understand global warming any better than medical experts of Victorian England understood epidemiology.  Think how primitive our understanding of the climate today will look in 150 years.  Think how ridiculous "the debate is over" will sound to subsequent generations who will spend the next century studying... and debating global warming.

This sums up the fear at the heart of the global warming skeptic, or really any skeptic.  When people in charge start acting overly confident on subjects where there is still much to be debated, it should make everyone uncomfortable.  Bush critics never miss an opportunity to remind us that we saw this type of false confidence from our own government regarding the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  They regret what they perceive as a rush to judgment leading to the War and lament that a more deliberate and cautious approach wasn't taken. Too bad many critics of that war don't advocate that same prudent approach when it comes to combating global warming.

Upon proper reflection, does joining the Kyoto Protocol still seem like the right move for the United States? As many countries struggle to keep their people from starving does it makes sense to divert so much energy and resources into making crops for biofuels instead of food for humans?  Did we fail to adequate account for how much precious fresh water is needed to make so many of the highly touted alternative sources of energy?  What other errors in judgment are we rushing to make in the name of doing something, anything to stop global warming? Only time will tell but you don’t have to be a skeptic to know those errors will be costly.

And make no mistake, there is still so much to be debated.  How much of global warming is attributable to man?  How much of the process is irreversible? What are the positive effects of global warming?  What are the proper measures needed to address the negative effects?   Is any attempt to reduce the man made effects of global warming pointless if emerging mega-countries like China and India don't cooperate? 

If people like former Democratic Congressman Mike Gravel are right and we are going to be "cooked alive on planet earth" within 50 years, what's the point in doing anything?  If in twenty years we will all be resorting to "cannibalism" due to the effects of global warming as suggested by CNN founder Ted Turner, is driving a hybrid really going to help? (Someone should remind these gentlemen that there is such a thing as overplaying your hand). 

Apparently, there is a very fine line between "fear-mongering" versus "raising-awareness" that only the eco-fundamentalist, anti-Bush crowd are nuanced enough to understand. Oh, and the use of propaganda? For global warming alarmists such as Gravel and Turner it's a perfectly acceptable technique to sell this War.

Then again, if the media treat your outrageous claims as legitimate then why not warn that Manhattan and Florida will be underwater in 20 years?  Why not cherry-pick the most dire assessments about the impact of global warming and highlight those to the general public while ignoring the more tempered ones?

No doubt amidst this hysteria and suppression of opposing viewpoints, devastating mistakes are and will continue to be made by governments in their zeal to combat global warming.  The only question is how profound those mistakes will be and how many will suffer needlessly because of them.  The moment we close off honest, open debate on the subject, is the moment we increase the chances of more mistakes being made and increase the negative consequences they will have. 

Like Cholera or terrorism, global warming may be very real and very deadly- all the more reason we should be encouraging robust and diverse debate on the subject-all the more reason not to silence the skeptics.