More Fire!

Read a random page from Foxe's Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, and you'll soon realize that the martyrs of the past had it pretty easy. William Tyndale, for instance, was strangled before being burned at the stake.

This basic courtesy has been denied Dr. Jim Buckee, who is being immolated -- figuratively speaking -- while in full possession of his senses.

Dr Jim Buckee says he feels like a heretic, persecuted for his views and treated like an outcast. His crime? Being a climate change sceptic.

Next week the former chief executive of the oil and gas firm Talisman, who has a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Oxford, will try to convince others that climate change has nothing to do with human activity.

Dr. Buckee, who has no one on his side but sympathetic journalists and media outlets, countless interlocking conservatarian thinktanks, a fair number of influential politicians, and the oil and gas industry he served so honorably, "believes human behaviour has no effect on the climate." Not only that, but we're about to enter a global cooling period. And furthermore, "it's teh sun, stupid!"

Scientists who have seen evidence against each of these propositions believe that Buckee's wrong, which naturally means that they comprise a new Holy Vehm:

"Any dissension is like a heresy," he says. "People are stamped on so they can't be heard. That has religious overtones."

I'm impressed by Buckee's courage, Lord knows. But let's also have a round of applause for Jenny Haworth and her paper The Scotsman, who have dared to record the words of this brave man, despite the likelihood that Haworth will be prosecuted under the State Secrets Act, and the paper will be turned into an official organ of the Alliance for Green Socialism by an act of Parliament.

Please be advised that Dr. Buckee doesn't like wind farms unless they're "economic." Most of them, however, are "non-economic," in the sense that the government makes them viable through incentives and subsidies, which is what distinguishes wind farms from coal mines and nuclear plants.

That is Dr. Buckee's view of the matter. You would do well to make it your own.

Also, just because Dr. Buckee is a heretic, and has had his tongue pierced -- figuratively speaking -- by the white-hot poker of professional disagreement, don't go thinking that his views are somehow out of the mainstream.

"I think it is the dominant view in professional science circles," he says.

Why shouldn't it be? All climatologists can read and understand the data at least as well as Dr. Buckeee, and they surely agree with Donne's claim, regarding the sun, that "thy duties be to warm the world." If they won't admit it, they must be afraid. And if they're afraid, someone must have frightened them. QED!

Above all, don't imagine that Dr. Buckee's career in the energy industry has warped his perceptions. If he had any conflict of interest, he'd keep quiet in order to avoid scandal and contention:

"A vested interest would make me shut up because it would drag up controversy," he says.

At this point, Ms. Haworth buckles under the pressure of the Warming Cult, and devotes the rest of her article to people who think that Buckee's a self-aggrandizing schmuck with a poor grasp of the facts.

Mr McLaren says that, far from having their views suppressed, sceptics have been given too much exposure.

"It has been massively damaging on a public and political level that the views of a small minority of ill-informed sceptics have been given virtually equal weight to the consensus of the scientific community by the majority of the mainstream media," he says.

"Something that's contrary to the accepted wisdom is more likely to be seen as news. If a scientist stood up and said the IPCC was right, there wouldn't be any news."

Harsh words, alongside of which the terrors of the bastinado are as nothing. But at least Dr. Buckee can take some satisfaction in the fact that Haworth's treachery proves his point: why would she go to the trouble of reporting other people's opinions censoring him, if his views didn't pose a threat to Teh Powers That Be? Anyone can see that in damning Buckee, these babblers damn themselves.

That being the case, Buckee would be wise to follow the example of John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, who, having been placed upon the stake and set alight, "said with an indifferent loud voice, For God's love, good people, let me have more fire!"