You've probably read press accounts of the attack on environmentalists levied by Czech president Vaclav Klaus at his National Press Club news conference yesterday. Klaus, a renowned economist who has erected a thriving market economy on the ashes of his country's bankrupt communist system, was in town promoting his new book: Blue Planet in Green Shackles -- What is endangered: Climate or Freedom? He also renewed his challenge to former US VP Al Gore to a debate on the issues. He told the crowd:
"The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism. Like their [communist] predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality. In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat -- this time, in the name of the planet."
Whatever your views on the arrogance or scientific credibilty of the environmental movement, it was Klaus' comments in response to media questions afterwards that caught my eye. Asked why global warming is presented to the public as the overwhelming, consensus position of scientists, Klaus responded, according to John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, explalining that
the careers and funding sources of many scientists now are dependent on 'climate alarmism' and climate alarmists have become an interest group with the power to intimidate into silence skeptical colleagues and public figures. The climate issue, he added, 'is in the hands of climatologists and other related scientists who are highly motivated to look in one direction only.'
Klaus could have been talking about the salt and health issue where anti-salt proponents have tried to convince the public that critics of their views, despite their professional prominence and unassailable credentials, should be ignored and that they, the anti-salt crowd, Not only are major voices in this group funded heavily by the government agency, but careers are enhanced by toeing the government's anti-salt line.
Perhaps Klaus should review The (Political) Science of Salt by Gary Taubes. It would be wonderful to have this courageous national leader tell truth to those in authority on salt and health.
