Twenty individuals from academia and research labs who refer to themselves as "scientists" have penned a letter to President Obama asking him to prosecute global warming skeptics under the same law that the government uses to convict mafia dons and drug kingpins.

The racketeering statute RICO is generally used against organized crime, but it has been used in the past to prosecute pro-life groups. (Supreme Court finally ruled that the government couldn't do this.)

In the letter, the "scientists" tell the president that people who disagree with them are criminals and should go to jail.

Daily Caller:

Scientists from several universities and research centers even asked Obama to use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to prosecute groups that “have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change.”

RICO was a law designed to take down organized crime syndicates, but scientists now want it to be used against scientists, activists and organizations that voice their disagreement with the so-called “consensus” on global warming. The scientists repeated claims made by environmentalists that groups, especially those with ties to fossil fuels, have engaged in a misinformation campaign to confuse the public on global warming.

“The actions of these organizations have been extensively documented in peer-reviewed academic research and in recent books,” the scientists wrote.

global warming skeptics. The idea was first put forward by Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who argued using RICO was effective at taking down the tobacco industry.

“In 1999, the Justice Department filed a civil RICO lawsuit against the major tobacco companies… alleging that the companies ‘engaged in and executed — and continue to engage in and execute — a massive 50-year scheme to defraud the public, including consumers of cigarettes, in violation of RICO,’” Whitehouse wrote in the Washington Post in May.

“We strongly endorse Senator Whitehouse’s call for a RICO investigation,” the scientists wrote to Obama. “The methods of these organizations are quite similar to those used earlier by the tobacco industry. A RICO investigation (1999 to 2006) played an important role in stopping the tobacco industry from continuing to deceive the American people about the dangers of smoking.”

“If corporations in the fossil fuel industry and their supporters are guilty of the misdeeds that have been documented in books and journal articles, it is imperative that these misdeeds be stopped as soon as possible so that America and the world can get on with the critically important business of finding effective ways to restabilize the Earth’s climate, before even more lasting damage is done,” the scientists added.

How despreate are the global warming hysterics getting? Rather than debate their opponents, they want to get rid of them. Not very scientific of them, is it?

In truth, they have invested so much into AGW theory that if their hypothesis were to crash and burn, they'd be ridiculed even more than the scientists who pushed "Piltdown Man."  Since there are a growing number of scientists who are backtracking on the idea of "catastrophic" global warming and looking at the issue of warming as a far more gradual process, the hysterics are seeing their dreams of controlling the world's economy disappearing.

I can't recall any other scientific debate in my lifetime where one side advocated arresting their debate opponents. Their nauseating thesis - that all skeptical scientists are in the pay of the fossil fuel industry - just doesn't stand up to close examination, thus eliminating any need to use RICO to prosecute anyone in the skeptical community.

You have to wonder about human progress if all scientists in history possessed the mindset of these mountebanks. What marvelous advances in knowledge would have never come to pass if their attitude had won the day? 

A sad day for the idea of scientific freedom and debate.

Thomas Lifson adds:

Shades of Galileo! Suppressing dissident scientific ideas with repression has a long and dishonorable history. "Scientific consensus" is an oxyoron, because scientific truth is not a matter of majority vote or consensus. And, byt he way, there s no consensus, since scientists vehemently disagree on the AGW hypothesis. This attempt to criminalize disgreement over a scientific theory is contemptible, and ought to make the names of the advocates into curse words for all the ages. See, for exmaple, Lysenkoism.