So far, ordinary citizens can get away with the response “just asking” when chastised for questioning the inconsistencies in narratives about man-caused global warming, but maybe not much longer if that starts falling into what ‘Big Tech’ vilifies as spreading misinformation. Regarding other controversial political issues in recent weeks, credit the collective far-left with cleverly concocting the propaganda notion that citizens questioning ‘established facts’ in the mainstream media about the U.S. presidential election or the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol might be dangerous radicals so hopelessly enslaved to conspiracy theories that they need to be re-educated. How long will it be until it’s insinuated that anyone who wonders why details in the global warming issue don’t line up right may be part of the unstable fanatic population posing a threat to democracy? Oh, wait, that’s already happened.
Maybe that kind of reasoning is meets with little opposition in the unreal world of news media / social media, but in the very real world of litigation (if the 20+ “Exxon Knew”-style global warming lawsuits resolve legal technicalities of whether they fall under Federal or state court jurisdiction), the law firms hired by energy company defendants will start questioning the often-repeated accusation from Al Gore that their clients colluded with skeptic climate scientists in disinformation campaigns designed to undercut the certainty of man-caused global warming. Perhaps enviro-activists may try to spin that as “Big Oil’s defense lawyers push right-wing conspiracy theories” for the biased news media to repeat, but that intimidation tactic to shut down questioning is not likely to work out well at all within the confines of any courtroom.