DiCaprio Calls for “Deniers” to be Banned from Public Office: President Obama Stays Silent, by Eric Worrall.

“The scientific consensus is in and the argument is now over,” DiCaprio said at the White House’s South By South Lawn event.

“If you do not believe in climate change, you do not believe in facts or in science or empirical truths and therefore, in my humble opinion, should not be allowed to hold public office.”

Obama agrees, apparently:

President Obama, sharing a stage with DiCaprio, did not object – Obama’s words in my opinion appear to actually lend some support to DiCaprio’s outrageous demand, for limiting the US people’s freedom to choose leaders who represent their views.

“Climate change is almost perversely designed to be really hard to solve politically. It is a problem that creeps up on you,” Obama said. “The political system in every country is not well-designed to do something tough now to solve a problem that people will really feel the impact of in the future.”

Here’s a challenge for you, guys. If it turns out that the carbon dioxide theory of global warming is wrong, will all the people who have professed belief in that theory be disbarred from office? Will you call for that?

Hints: The theory is wrong, and it is likely to cool soon.

From a draft of my upcoming book:

Our Current Political Elites are Stupid, Incompetent, and Ideological

There is really no way to spin this for the regulating class, the coalition of “progressive” bureaucrats, media, academics, and politicians that increasingly dominates public discussion and decision making. They look stupid or dishonest for supporting the carbon dioxide theory for so long, whilst simultaneously discrediting the critics so vehemently. If it weren’t for their near-total control of the mass media, they would be in a terrible quandary.

They are wordsmiths, and honesty is not their highest value, so they will use words to hide and obfuscate the obvious failure of their theory — just like they changed “global warming” to “climate change.” They will block contrary data from the public for as long as possible. They are politically correct, so they will play the man instead of the ball as we say in football — criticizing the messenger, abusing and discrediting critics rather than offering counter arguments or boldly owning up to their failure.

The loss of face ought to be huge, but their dominant control of the media will soften the blow: “we don’t talk about that now, how un-cool, I knew something was wrong with it all along”.

Harder for them to hide will be the loss of their presumed qualification to lead society. Part of the justification for their privileged status and their right to govern, at least in their own eyes, has been contradicted. Remember how often they implied that anyone who didn’t “believe in climate change” was a backward fool? How frequently they suggested that they were rather wise and clever because they believed, so just as well for everyone that it is they who ran the show? Well it turns out they were the stupid ones, not the critics. The death of the carbon dioxide theory of global warming reverses their claim to being wiser and more capable. They will fight it fiercely and dogmatically, with only feigned respect for evidence. This phase may persist for years.

A disinterested onlooker would long ago have judged the carbon scare bogus: it was only ever based on a dubious model, the hotspot was verified as missing beyond reasonable doubt by 2000, in retrospect the world stopped warming in about 1998, and by 2003 it was universally acknowledged that temperature led carbon in the past (which didn’t stop Gore’s movie, made in 2005, from presenting the ice cores as its only evidence that increasing carbon dioxide caused global warming). There was no empirical evidence presented for the carbon dioxide theory, only computer models and a “consensus” that was obviously manufactured and exaggerated.

By 2010 about half the western population was skeptical to a significant degree, even if they didn’t know the exact details of how and the theory was wrong. The evidence didn’t fit, the scientists were caught cheating on temperatures and playing publishing games to prevent challenges, green apostles like Gore and DiCaprio have hypocritically huge carbon footprints, and so on. If half the population had worked it out by 2010, what’s wrong with our ruling elite?

History is unlikely to be kind to a political class who “believed” in an obviously failing theory, but pursued it anyway because it suited them politically and financially. They should have known better. It’s not as if they were not told how and why it was wrong, but they choose not to listen. The Greens, in particular, will be big losers. That class encouraged a profligate carpetbaggery to develop. The climate change industry worldwide is enriching some people mightily from government coffers via subsidies and salaries, yet is woefully inefficient at reducing carbon emissions.

Our permanent government of bureaucracy, academia, and media must duly be regarded as stupid, incompetent, or ideological for not having seen through it, or worse, for continuing to knowingly foist it on us for their own purposes.

UPDATE: From a reader on the emergence of the carbon dioxide scare in the 1970s:

Bert Bolin started with annual  conferences from 1971. Each with about 40 climate scientists making climate models and presenting a report. After some years he purged all non-belivers in his hypothesis from the conferences and future funding. Already in 1990, in the first IPCC report, p. 352, he writes “it is a Scientific Consensus”. People with a different opinion was slandered as taking money from big oil. Bolin was taking the moral high ground.

He points out a similar methodology is being used by Rogoff and co. against cash:

Rogoff uses the same tactics in his new book, “The Curse of Cash”, which argues for banning cash. He implies that people against banning cash are defending drug dealers, money laundering and tax evasion. As many countries in the West are more or less bankrupt now, it is for sure a political demand for stealing money from savers, without making the political/parliamentary decision of increasing taxes.

Only in the Third Reich did they really try to abolish paper money. This was the reason why Schacht, who was against this idea, was fired from the Reichbank 1937. Replaced by Walter Funk, who got a jail for life sentence in Nürnberg in 1946. Rogoff has no reference to this real world monetary experiment in his book!