Following on Dr. Egnor’s comments of yesterday (“Criminalizing Scientific Dissent“), I would add that support for prosecuting climate skeptics is not limited, as you might think, to a fanatical elite in the media or academia.

Rasmussen Reports headlines the news about its new survey, “Little Support for Punishing Global Warming Foes.” But the Power Line blog points out that the survey’s own figures suggest otherwise. The question posed was this:

Should the government investigate and prosecute scientists and others including major corporations who question global warming?

Power Line:

In response, 27% of Democrats called for prosecuting global warming realists. (Remarkably, 11% of Republicans did, too.)

Whatever your political party, these figures say something remarkable about the nation’s state of mind. Some Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls who have qualified for the recent televised debates enjoy support well under 11 percent, yet their candidacies are judged to be potentially viable and not mere fringe phenomena.

27 and 11 percent? By contrast, 3.2 percent of Americans are vegetarians. 1 percent ride a bike to work. 2 percent live on a farm. 10 percent own a fish as a pet.

The idea of “prosecuting scientists” with dissenting views on climate change is a minority opinion but, by the numbers alone, apparently far from just cranky, bizarre, or irrelevant. And you think that scientists with dissenting views on Darwinian theory don’t hear such things and resolve yet again to keep their secret to themselves?

Image credit: U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Gustavo Castillo [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.