RUTHFULLY YOURS

The climate cabal is in a panic. The Trump Administration is systematically dismantling President Obama’s climate change legacy: Federal agencies are scrubbing references to climate change, President Trump announced the United States. would exit the Paris Climate Accord, and his cabinet is peddling American-made fossil fuels around the world.

Climate change barely registered a blip in the 2016 presidential election, and even members of the alleged Party of Science are increasingly uninterested in global warming. Only 19 percent of Democrats say climate change is the most important issue in the mid-term elections, and that support drops to 11 percent for independent voters. On the heels of an El Nino season where temperatures were customarily warm, most of the country is now enduring a frigid, blizzard-like winter, which the climate propagandists counterintuitively also blame on global warming.

So, as the climate cabal feels their grip on federal policy and public opinion weaken, its zealots are becoming more desperate. Michael Mann, a Penn State University climatologist and the media’s go-to-guy for any apocalyptic quote about how anthropogenic global warming will kill us all, seems more unbalanced than usual. As the “Citizen Secretary of Science and Environment” in Donald Trump’s so-called “Shadow Cabinet”—which also includes Laurence Tribe and Robert Reich—Mann appears to be taking his pretend post a bit too seriously. Mann recently called White House advisor Kellyanne Conway “evil incarnate,” said Trump is a “moron” and a “threat to the planet,” and denounced Devin Nunes as “a traitor to this country” and demanded he “be subject to appropriate sanctions.” He’s mocked the president’s son and tweeted at the First Lady. (Pretty ironic coming from a guy who filed a lawsuit because someone called him a mean name.)

Last April, he started the #ShowYourCancellation hashtag to urge others to join him in cancelling their New York Times subscriptions after the paper hired anti-Trump “conservative” and former climate change skeptic Bret Stephens. (As a Wall Street Journal columnist, Stephens mocked climate change as a “religion” and vilified “climate prophets and profiteers” for years. He quickly reversed his view once he joined the Times.) Channeling his inner child—apparently, an easy task for him—Mann just published a children’s book to help indoctrinate the nation’s youth in the ways we human beings are causing global warming. He smears other scientists who don’t adhere to strict climate dogma, but still portrays himself as the victim. In testimony last year on Capitol Hill, Mann compared himself to scientists purged under Stalin’s reign of terror. But despite his inane bleating about his supposed oppression, Mann still manages to earn awards and accolades from climate acolytes around the world, and is the most quoted climate scientist in the American press.

Now, the notorious “Hockey Stick” creator is going after the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Mann is demanding that museum officials remove Rebekah Mercer from its board of trustees: Mercer is an heiress, philanthropist and major Republican Party benefactor who supports Donald Trump. She runs the Mercer Family Foundation, which has donated $4 million to the museum since 2008—and probably helped raise much more than that—and has been a museum board member since 2013. Her father was a scientist, and Mercer has a master’s degree from Stanford in management science and engineering.

Despite her scientific credentials and largess, Mann wants her kicked off the board because she doesn’t agree with the mythical consensus on man-made global warming, and because her foundation donates money to nonprofits that challenge climate science. A letter signed by Mann and more than 400 activist-scientists gives a scary glimpse into the next stage of attack by the climate cabal: “We ask the American Museum of Natural History, and all public science museums, to end ties to anti-science propagandists and funders of climate science misinformation, and to have Rebekah Mercer leave the American Museum of Natural History Board of Trustees.”

In a New York Times op-ed on February 5, Mann accuses Mercer of spending millions to “discredit science.” While he rants about President Trump, the Koch brothers, and conservative climate deniers, Mann laughably argues his stunt isn’t rooted in politics: “Let’s be clear: This is not about partisan politics; it’s about mission alignment and truth. A financier of climate denialism does not belong in a leadership position at a science museum.” He arrogantly suggests that Mercer’s donations should be spent “to develop exhibitions and programs that educate the public about the climate-denial machine, that illuminate its history of using propaganda to obstruct pro-climate action and that document how we’ve arrived at this current crisis point for the planet.”

Here, I have a suggestion for Dr. Mann: After you raise the $650,000 the Mercers donate to the museum every year, then the board can ask her to step down. It’s easy to rage about “climate deniers” and make demands for a litmus test that museum board members must pass. The hard part is putting your money where your big mouth is.

He’d better start selling a lot of those kids’ books.

But this is not about science. Silencing anyone who dares even to question climate change orthodoxy is yet another oppressive tactic in the Left’s anti-speech crusade. They simply cannot abide any opinion that does not align with their progressive worldview. It’s an extension of what’s happening in academia, in Hollywood, in the media, and in the private sector. “Mission alignment” is the creepy term they will use to impose their speech and conduct codes.

They are even starting to turn on their own. Scientists recently blasted Mann’s pal, Bill Nye the Science Guy, for attending the State of the Union address with Jim Bridenstine, Trump’s pick for NASA administrator. More than 500 women scientists accused Nye of placing his “personal brand over the interests of the scientific community at large” and blamed him for using his “public persona as a science entertainer to support an administration that is expressly xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, ableist, and anti-science.” They claimed, “it is impossible to separate science at major agencies like NASA from other pressing issues like racism, bigotry, and misogyny.”

So Bill Nye—a man on record saying he wants “climate deniers” to die off and who is a shameless promoter of identity politics—is now some kind of Trump stooge because he dared to sit with someone who holds a different opinion from his friends. Not only is he banished from the scientific establishment for his dirty deed, he is now branded racist, homophobic, and misogynistic.

This is a scary trajectory for science, and it’s being led by pernicious bullies like Michael Mann. The good people in the field need to speak out or it’s only a matter of time before they, too, are targeted just like Mercer and Nye.