More about the blunders of leftist environmentalism.

Cuccinelli's attempt to turn a scientific dispute into a crime is unfortunately the logical outcome of the whole wretched politicization of the global warming issue over the last couple of decades. And the environmentally activist scientists who have worked assiduously to stifle normal scientific give and take — and even assassinate the characters and destroy the careers of those who raise legitimate questions about the supposed "scientific consensus" on global warming — bear their share of the blame. A milestone on this road to hell was the reprehensibly thuggish vendetta in 2001 against the Danish researcher Bjørn Lomborg, who dared to suggest in his now-famous book The Skeptical Environmentalist that polluted drinking water, indoor air pollution from open fires, and malaria were far more serious environmental threats to the well-being of most people in the world than theoretical projections of future climate change or other exaggerated and alarmist claims routinely given currency by the environmental movement.

Environmental scientists responded with a determination to stamp out this heresy that would have done Torquemada or Khomeini proud. A dozen scientists served Cambridge University Press with a demand that it cease printing the book, fire the editor who oversaw it, and "convene a tribunal" to investigate the book's "errors." Nature ran a truly egregious review by the scientists Stuart Pimm and Jeffrey Harvey attributing to Lomborg ridiculous statements that he never even remotely made in the book or anywhere else. And Pimm and Harvey along with other members of the environmental goon squad lodged a complaint with the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty — a legal body of the state — alleging that Lomborg had committed "scientific misconduct" for having reached conclusions that Pimm and Harvey did not like.

This attempt to criminalize intellectual disagreement ought to have chilled the hearts of all scientists. It also ought to have chilled the hearts of all liberals, because this is exactly the kind of totalitarian and authoritarian mindset that liberals have always proudly stood up to.

Liberals (in the peculiar American sense of the word) only stand up to the totalitarian and authoritarian mindsets of their political opponents. If you sincerely oppose totalitarian and authoritarian mindsets then liberals are the wrong team for you since they are, and always have been, the staunchest of totalitarian and authoritarian believers. You'd even be better off with the conservatives, though not by much.