Section 14

Two US Senators, one Republican, one Democrat, have written to Exxon Mobil telling them to toe the line, or else.

The letter is of a piece with what has become a campaign of intimidation against any global warming dissent. Not only is everyone supposed to concede that the planet has been warming - as it has - but we are all supposed to salute and agree that human beings are the definitive cause, that the magnitude of the warming will be disastrous and its effects catastrophic, that such problems as AIDS and poverty are less urgent, and that economic planners must therefore impose vast new regulatory burdens on everyone around the world. Exxon is being targeted in this letter and other ways because it is one of the few companies that still thinks some debate on these questions is valuable.

Read the entire story at the Wall Street Journal (Global Warming Gag Order).

Imagine if this letter had been sent by someone in the Bush Administration trying to enforce the opposite conclusion? The left would be howling about “censorship.” That’s exactly what did happen earlier this year after James Hansen, the NASA scientist and global warming evangelist, complained that a lowly 24-year-old press aide had tried to limit his media access. The entire episode was preposterous because Mr. Hansen is one of the most publicized scientists in the world, but the press aide was nonetheless sacked.

Hat tip: Samizdata.

There’s an interesting Bob Brockie World of Science column in this morning’s Dominion Post (p B5). Entitled Muslim Science in Doldrums, it summarises a series of Nature articles about the state of science in the Islamic world.

Muslim countries only have one-tenth the number of scientists that Western countries do, spend next to nothing on science, and register virtually no patents. The picture is consistently dismal from the most poverty-stricken backblocks of Africa to the oil-rich Gulf. The only notable exception is Turkey, which has rapidly rising scientific output and a university that made the world top 500 list. Turkey is also a notable exception in being a constitutionally secular state.

Brockie (and Nature) put the problem down to limited freedom of expression:

Political leaders in the Muslim world are notoriously intolerant of dissent and don’t encourage independent, sceptical thought - a necessary part of the scientist’s tool kit.

The Nature writers conclude that science gets a bum rap in Muslim countries; that scientists can’t expect any improvement from new Islamic politicians; that further restrictions on freedom of expression are likely and, given today’s trends, the situation of science in Islamic countries can only get worse.