I'd say this is a new low for climate change denialism, but there may be
no such thing:
[CNBC host] Andrew Ross Sorkin challenged [climate change denier William Happer] for "not believ[ing] in climate change" -- to which Happer responded by telling Sorkin to "shut up." Sorkin then asked Happer about comments he made to The Daily Princetonian in 2009 comparing climate science to Nazi propaganda. Happer doubled down on his comments, stating that "the demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler. Carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world, and so were the Jews."
Happer is a semi-prominent and professional "expert" denier who has
testified to Congress about how excess carbon dioxide will be just peachy; he currently chairs the George C. Marshall Institute, a famously
always-wrong conservative think-tank whose exploits include denying harmful effects of smoking, denying the impact of CFCs on the ozone layer, and telling us in the 1980s that the Soviet Union would crush us all if we did not invest heavily in the "Star Wars" program. They have close ties to the American Petroleum Institute and
ExxonMobil.
So why did CNBC book this crank? Possibly because CNBC, as a business network, gives no more sh-ts about facts than any of the others so long as the customer, by which I do not mean you, dear investor, is happy. Or it might be part of this reflexive insistence that every business-unfriendly fact must be "balanced," even if the only "balance" available is from people who think carbon dioxide is like the Jews in Nazi Germany. The next question is whether CNBC will ever book this crank again, now that his crackpottery has reached Godwinian levels. Let's (not) watch.