Looks harmless enough, doesn't he? Nice smile, properly dressed, respectable-looking chap, could be your local choir-master, perhaps. However, if like me you are an enthusiastic and determined opponent of HAFs (Hot Air Fanatics) then - be afraid, be very afraid - because this man, Prof. Pratcunt Parncutt, wants you executed - and I kid you not! He rates you as being worse, far worse, than that Norwegian mass killer who shot and blew up 77 people:
Even mass murderers should not be executed, in my opinion. Consider the politically motivated murder of 77 people in Norway in 2011. Of course the murderer does not deserve to live, and there is not the slightest doubt that he is guilty. But if the Norwegian government killed him, that would just increase the number of dead to 78. It would not bring the dead back to life. In fact, it would not achieve anything positive at all. I respect the families and friends of the victims if they feel differently about that. I am simply presenting what seems to me to be a logical argument.
But if you are against the theory of Global Warming that makes you guilty of the murder of, er, well, people who are not yet dead, and also those who have yet to be born, you see, you are a 'future killer'! This is a novel extension of legal theory and it will be interesting, albeit, painfully interesting, to see if it catches on:
GW deniers fall into a completely different category from Behring Breivik. They are already causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of future people. We could be speaking of billions, but I am making a conservative estimate.
I must confess that as I began to read Prof. Pratcunt's Parncutt's essay I fell about laughing on the assumption that it was a giant, satirical hoax but then, gradually, I began to realize that he meant it:
If my argument is correct, it has clear political consequences. Here is a scenario for what might happen if my argument is broadly accepted, both democratically and politically.
-
- The universal declaration of human rights and every national constitution would be amended to include the rights of future generations. Incidentally, that would also make national debts illegal, because they oblige future generations to pay them. Getting rid of national debts would in turn solve an important aspect of the “global financial crisis” (more), which currently belongs to the list of common excuses for not investing money in the prevention of GW.
- The proposed legal change would be announced and widely publicized for an extended period before it came into force. During that time, GW deniers would have a chance to change their ways and escape punishment.
- The police would start to identify the most influential GW deniers who had not responded to the changed legal situation. These individuals would then be charged and brought to justice.
If a jury of suitably qualified scientists estimated that a given GW denier had already, with high probability (say 95%), caused the deaths of over one million future people, then s/he would be sentenced to death. The sentence would then be commuted to life imprisonment if the accused admitted their mistake, demonstrated genuine regret, AND participated significantly and positively over a long period in programs to reduce the effects of GW (from jail) – using much the same means that were previously used to spread the message of denial. At the end of that process, some GW deniers would never admit their mistake and as a result they would be executed. Perhaps that would be the only way to stop the rest of them. The death penalty would have been justified in terms of the enormous numbers of saved future lives.
Apparently, he is "Professor of Systematic Musicology" at the University of Graz. The coincidence that Austria is the birthplace of psycho-babble and that poor old Pratcunt Parncutt is obviously several sandwiches short of a picnic makes me wonder whether he's actually there to, er, 'take the cure', as it were! Anyway, his ravings have gone viral on the internet and apparently he has now withdrawn the whole piece and replaced it with something more anodyne. ("You zee, vee haf vays of making you zane again!")
In the interests of science I have conducted my own little experiment with the mouth-breathers over at Deltoid (pages 2&3). I pointed out to them that I would not hold them liable for the fact that some loony had attached himself to their cause but it was incumbent upon them to repudiate what the man had suggested. The silence has been deafening. Oh, plenty of abuse aimed at me - but no repudiation of 'Pratcunt', not one. By their inactions shall you know them!
