Thomas Hobbes writing in his famous work Leviathan said, “They that approve a private opinion, call it opinion; but they that mislike it, heresy: and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion”.  Leviathan was published in 1651 and the “private opinions” it espoused caused the English bishops to use their influence in the House of Lords to sponsor a motion to have him burned as a heretic. However, they had to settle for a mere condemnation by Parliament - and Hobbes was ordered to stop publishing such controversial books. He lived to be 91.

Hobbes is considered to be a late Renaissance figure. The prosecution of heresy and the persecution of heretics although mostly associated with the earlier medieval period was very much alive during his day, and isn’t altogether gone today.

Three years ago, Australian born Professor Richard Parncutt, Professor of Systematic Musicology at the University of Graz in Austria suggested that the death penalty could be appropriate for “global warming deniers”. In reaction, said his employer, “The University of Graz is shocked and appalled by the article and rejects its arguments entirely”. Professor Parncutt eventually retracted the statement and issued an apology.

I suspect that Professor Parncutt, who teaches “music psychology”, almost certainly doesn’t know any more about global warming than you or I do - and yet he thinks that those that disagree with him on this issue may very well deserve to die. The issue is therefore not global warming per se, but the medieval way of thinking that has begun to permeate modern progressivism: adopt my religion or die.

When it comes to global warming, I am an agnostic. All I know about the subject is what I read in the proverbial newspaper. Which reminds me of the Mark Twain quote: “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.” But the newspapers and blogs are rife with reports from those who are in the know about global warming.

According to one story, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has come out in favor of laws to punish those who don’t see eye to eye with him on global warming saying that they “sell out the public trust” - even referencing the term “war criminals”. Then there’s Heidi Cullen, formerly with the Weather Channel and now chief scientist for the non-profit Climate Central in Princeton, NJ. While with the Weather Channel she said in an interview, “If a meteorologist can’t speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS [American Meteorological Society] shouldn’t give them a Seal of Approval.” In the blogosphere that was interpreted as, if you don’t believe in global warming, the AMS should excommunicate you, er, de-certify you. Cullen later denied that was what she meant.

The debate is no longer about science. Consider comments made last year by the distinguished Swedish meteorologist Lennart Bengtsson, now 80. His research has included climate sensitivity, extreme events, climate variability and climate predictability. He has a long and distinguished resume, including the 2005 Descartes Prize, an annual award in science given by the European Union. It was for a paper he co-authored entitled, “CECA - Climate and environmental change in the Arctic”.

Fast forward to last year. According to Wikipedia, “As its lead story on May 16 2014, The Times [a UK newspaper] said that [a] paper Bengtsson had submitted to Environmental Research Letters in February had been rejected for what Bengtsson called ‘activist’ reasons”. Apparently, two referees had disagreed with his findings.

But the plot thickens. Bengtsson had recently decided to join the Global Warming Policy Foundation a UK think tank with a skeptic’s view of global warming. But then, (again according to Wikipedia), “On May 14 Bengtsson reversed this decision. In a press release…he cited ‘an enormous group pressure’, saying further, ‘It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expected anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years…I had not expected such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life’ “.  

So much for the vaunted Scientific Method that was taught to my generation in grade school. It has been supplanted by politics. What is the Scientific Method? I encourage you to do an internet search on it. It has six steps, and according to livescience.com, the final step is to reproduce “the experiment” until there are no discrepancies between observations and theory. “The reproducibility of published experiments is the foundation of science. No reproducibility - no science.”

The thing about the Scientific Method, and this is stressed in every definition I’ve come across is that it is “on going”. It is essential that any theory (and that would include global warming), be constantly challenged by skeptics, and that it bear up. Otherwise it isn’t science - it’s something else. Scientific theory must be challenged in order for it to be validated and remain so.

By labeling those that challenge the theory as “deniers” (think “heretics”), progressives reveal their true nature - and it scares me. Science is not something to be taken on faith. Further, global warming can easily be used as a rationale for a whole host of totalitarian-esque measures and government infringements of civil liberties - including the violation of basic human rights. If that sounds crazy, consider the suggestions above from prominent progressives. As someone who doesn’t know whether global warming is real or not, I am completely turned off by the progressives’ rhetoric on the subject.

Back in medieval times your everyday person was a serf, a subject of the local nobility. Interestingly, in Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes analyzed what he described as the three forms of government: democracy, aristocracy and monarchy and chose monarchy as the best and “most practical”. Perhaps progressives might agree with Thomas Hobbes - as they are sounding more and more authoritarian. Back when I was in college, (not quite as long ago as medieval times) the progressive mantra was “challenge authority”. Now it seeks to destroy those that challenge authority. My how times have changed.