Aussie Climate Scientists Receiving Death Threats 638
An anonymous reader writes "With the Australian parliament beginning the debate on setting a carbon price, climate scientists are reporting an increase in threatening phone calls and even death threats. The threats are serious enough that several universities have increased security for their ecology and meteorology researchers. The Australian government is seeking to introduce a carbon tax by July 2012."
Scientific debate, huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the beginning, there was only climate science.
Then came some skeptics, and all was well. And the discussion was between scientists.
Then came some denialists, and all was not well. The discussion was now between politicians.
Now come the death threats, and all is getting worse. The discussion is now between activists.
What's next? Violence? And a 'discussion' between armies?
I'm so glad to see that a lack of knowledge does not hold the world back from taking violent action.
-- Is there any record of a scientist who threatens a religious leader for not agreeing with the Books of Science?
Re:It's too late ... the work has been published . (Score:4, Insightful)
Many activists are more interested in making grand gestures and gaining status within their own organisation, than bringing about actual change. Even terrorist organisations tend to follow this pattern.
Re:Whichever (Score:5, Insightful)
Are these the same guys who've been refusing SOI/FOIA requests because they claim that their work which is publically funded is 'proprietary'? Or are these the same ones from aussieland that made up the shit including forging the emails that they were being harassed.
No and even if they were that wouldn't justify sending them death threats. Also it doesn't seem to have come up on Slashdot yet, but the CSIRO has opened a site at http://www.csiro.au/greenhouse-gases/ [csiro.au] where you can view the raw information about green house gas concentrations that has been collected in Australia.
Then again I can't really feel too much sympathy. People will only take a decade or two(maybe three) of doom and gloom based on fudged numbers, and corrupted policies. Especially when they realize that what you're proposing will effectively bankrupt the entire country and turn it into a 3rd world dirt farming nation.
Step 1. Build a global conspiracy supported by every major research organisation world wide suggesting that emitting large amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere is going to affect the climate and don't forget to suppress the voices of the brave and heroic rouge scientists and oil company researchers who attempt to reveal your conspiracy.
Step 2. Have governments world-wide introduces nation-bankrupting schemes to charge (some) people who bump lots of carbon into the atmosphere for that privilege.
Step 3. ???
Step 4. Profit!
Or something like that right? Looking at other countries, like for example NZ, which has a very very similar scheme to what is being discussed in Australia, the results so far have been positive, or is that just more misinformation?
Hell you don't even need to believe in climate change to see the need to encourage the uptake of more renewable energies. Global coal, oil, gas and uranium stocks are predicted to run out in the next few hundred years. In the meantime as demand continues to rise, prices will go up and countries which don't have alternatives will hurt (a lot in the nation bankrupting sense).
Re:Just goes to show the lunacy of the conservativ (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Scientific debate, huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd think Dawkins would get along fine with religious leaders, seeing how they have the most dominant personality trait in common: neither can stand people not caring about what they care about.
Re:Just goes to show the lunacy of the conservativ (Score:5, Insightful)
You're talking about data submitted to the scientists by tree rings, right? Or by drilling cores? Or satellites? I'm sure those lazy satellites are just making stuff up instead of measuring it! Just like those evil weather stations all over the world!
If there was only one line of evidence that climate science was based on, you might have a point. But it's not.
Re:Just goes to show the lunacy of the conservativ (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea, the research universities use data from tired overworked coasties.
Not.
Anyways, even if you guys made up all of the data statistically some of the data would trend in the other direction also wouldnt it?
Have you thought this through?
No, OK. That explains alot.
Great (Score:5, Insightful)
Global warming is not the big problem (Score:3, Insightful)
While I think it's great people want to get involved with the environment, stop and think about this like a computer scientist.
If carbon dioxide produces global warming, we will run into problems as the ratio of humans to trees changes. Soon we will have more humans than trees, which means more carbon dioxide than nature can re-absorb.
The only solution is for us to use less land, and have more trees on it, which requires we have fewer humans.
We're like an obese person on a sofa who can't stop spreading out over the whole thing. Soon there will be no sofa left, only fat. What then?
Re:Scientific debate, huh? (Score:0, Insightful)
In the beginning, there was only climate science.
Then came some anthropogenists, and all was well. And the discussion was between scientists.
Then came some alarmists, and all was not well. The discussion was now between politicians.
Now come the doomsday threats and public ridiculing, and all is getting worse. The discussion has been supressed by activists.
FTFY
Re:Cognitive dissonance endgame (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just goes to show the lunacy of the conservativ (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Just goes to show the lunacy of the conservativ (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Scientific debate, huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
What a bizarre argument. There is obviously a difference. Atheists not believing in something does not lead directly to immoral behaviour and the persecution of others. Christians discriminate against women and homosexuals, and they seek to impose their dogma on others.
The typical response at this point is that atheism is as much dogma and seeks to impose its will on other too, but that is incorrect. Since there is no God to hand down morality and punish you for disagreeing everything is up for debate and only a persuasive argument will work.
Re:Great (Score:1, Insightful)
Death threats and science-denial are terrible ways to express it, but what's really happening here is that common people are starting to understand the enormous cost that left-wing ideology is about to shove down their throats, and they don't like it. Remember that CO2 should have been a declining problem for the last couple decades, as the cost of nuclear power dropped below all other sources due to economies of scale and minimal fuel consumption. China and India should be building a low-cost modular thorium plant per week, not a coal-fired plant per week, purely to save money. That is the opportunity cost of the left's agenda to disarm the west. Leftists are the reason we're still using what nutters call "traditional energy", i.e. digging up rocks and setting them on fire. And now they're planning to take even that away. I don't buy the climate-denial or religious bile coming from the right, but I understand where it's coming from; the left has been systematically sabotaging our economy and society for half a century, and the bills for the damage are coming due. On climate there's some hope that science will give us affordable solar and grid storage to sidestep the problem, or that a solar minimum will maybe buy us a few decades. Entitlements and other issues we'll have to fix the hard way, but at least those things can't kill billions of people the way large scale climate-driven crop failures might.
Re:Just goes to show the lunacy of the conservativ (Score:5, Insightful)
Your first paragraph can be summed up as "My one data point is so much more trustworthy then thousands of scientists." I refuse to address this point because it cannot even stand up on its own.
Your second paragraph says that scientists should instead focus on making another planet habitable. SO scientists can terraform an entire planet, but we as humans cannot cause any inadvertent change in our own environment? That is the argument du jour. That the changes we are seeing are completely natural. If there is no possibility that we as humans have caused these changes, then what hope to we have to terraform a entire planet.
To use a slashdot favorite heres a car analogy. I can probably fix a lot of little things on my car, but I don't have much of a hope building one from scratch. The Earth is our car, it is so much easier to fix what we got, then it is to build a new one.
That doesn't even touch on the fact that this generation, and I'm willing to guess the next few generations, will never live on another planet/moon in large numbers.
This has nothing to do with being conservative, this has to do with ignoring science in favor of a gut feeling.
Re:Just goes to show the lunacy of the conservativ (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you implying that guns don't kill people...that people kill people? Careful or you'll be labeled a neo-conservative kook!
Yeah... Just Conservatives (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of view that the people who send death threats to scientists are mostly conservative would be news to scientists involved in animal testing.
Re:Scientific debate, huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Christ commanded us
There is the problem. Christ can't be wrong because he is he son of God, therefore what he said must be true*. Fortunately in this case the message is a good one, but not all of them are.
* Or rather, what the Bible claims he said, and with any modifications various saints/popes/copyists/translators made along the way. You have no way of knowing for certain.
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
It just depends on the change. The threats in Australia are currently misguided aggression towards the retarded carbon tax policy that is being proposed by the government.
The current proposal is a tax on carbon. Oh but don't worry, apparently the actual polluters (people) won't be out of pocket, they are only taxing the producers. The way they will manage the increase in energy costs is ... tax rebates for the people. So you tax the producers, and then return the tax collected to the people to offset the costs which have been passed on to them.
The end result of all of this is that the producers charge more to break even. The consumers (polluters) will either be compensated completely (the poor), or compensated partially (the middle class and the rich). What is left over for "green innovation"? Less than 10% of the tax collected. What a bargain for bureaucracy.
There's one other key player though, customers who can't claim money back through the tax return. That has the net effect of simply disadvantaging Australia, a country that generates a large portion of its wealth through mining and energy exports. In the meantime the two biggest polluters in the world are effectively pissing the Kyoto protocol against the wall.
It may sound selfish but as much as the world needs to stop polluting, all this is going to achieve is to grossly disadvantage the country in a time where energy resources (its greatest export) is one of the most critical agendas in international politics. There has got to be a better way.
Re:Scientific debate, huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Most atheists
...who make themselves known to you as atheists - ie. a self selecting sample of activist atheists.
I think you'll find most atheists just don't care.
Re:Just goes to show the lunacy of the conservativ (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, planes don't fly. At least not in a deterministic fashion: Navier-Stokes is a differential equation. Non-linear, too.
Really, objects don't move, as this involves differential equations.
Clearly, thermodynamics are wrong, because it is as differential equations (or large numbers and probabilities, if you go the quantum route).
You have no clue what you are talking about: you assume that the solution must be steady state. You have no way of knowing that. In fact, you ought to know Sol cycles, so steady-state solutions are certainly wrong.
You have no clue what you are talking about: If I tell you that we are all going to die, with a certainty of .999 in 30 years, give or take 20, the proper reaction is not, in fact, to claim that as the error bounds are large, this must be bullshit.
The proper reaction is to say: oh, we'll prepare for the worst case, then.
Re:Scientific debate, huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
there are many different types of atheists
Actually, there are just two types: those that disbelieve all religions, and those that disbelieve all except for one religion. For some reason, the latter category don't like being labeled atheists though.
Re:Scientific debate, huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
I see religion as a disease on humanity. At times it has a symbiotic relationship but mostly it's just a parasite. There is no point in hating a disease. I do feel sorry for the people it has infected though.
I rarely see Atheists hating, mostly I just see frustration. Frustration that people choose to believe stuff that is just clearly not true, and allowing themselves to be manipulated. The most frustrating thing is religious groups are powerful and are able to inflect their prejudices on the rest of us. Atheists really do need some kind of union or something to balance this!
I won't try to argue with a religious person. The thing about religious people is they believe in a bunch of stuff because some people in a bunch of fancy robes tells them too. Not much point arguing with such people. The very existence of 'faith' in a person demonstrates that they are willing to ignore logic and reason so there is no point trying to convince them. I guess some people figure they may as well have a go at doing what the religious leaders do and just drill the message into their head hoping some of it sticks! It's not a very successful tactic though. What us atheists really need to do is just band together to get some political influence of our own.
Re:Just goes to show the lunacy of the conservativ (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Scientific debate, huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not going to argue semantics with you. Answer my point directly.
Go to any forum where atheists and theists debate each other and watch the arguments used. Are they persuasive?
You seem to think that "atheism" is some kind of group or philosophy. It isn't, it is merely non-belief in theism, i.e. God. It does not represent any group, any philosophy, merely a lack of faith in a higher power. So either you are saying that people who don't believe in God are not persuasive about anything, or you hold this mistaken belief.
I am an Atheist because I do not follow any religion or believe in God, but that says almost nothing about me. Philosophically I am a Humanist and find Humanist arguments compelling, so feel free to attack those if you like.
Because I've rarely seen the former
Er, okay, well just because you only talk to idiots doesn't change anything. Personally I have never heard a compelling argument from any religion but I am at least open to the possibility that someone might be able to make one. You seem to think all non-believers are morons, but I can assure you I don't have the same prejudices against Christians. Some of them are clearly quite intelligent, they just don't convince me of their beliefs.
and short of a personal appearance of God(s) there simply aren't any persuasive arguments about their existence.
So what are you saying, that God has forsaken me by not sharing the only persuasive experience I can have to save my soul from damnation? Or that I need to try harder to believe, in which case I humbly suggest that if you try hard enough you may come to see the light and welcome the tooth fairy into your life?
there's a view that sin creates its own punishment without any interference from God
In the Old Testament God seems to deal out direct punishment regularly, even going so far as to exterminate almost all life on earth with a big flood at one stage. Actually that is a good example of how modern secular societies have developed stronger moral values than God - we don't kill innocent animals by drowning if it can be helped.
Now, I'm not saying all Christians believe that, of course. Many for whatever reason don't. The problem is that the Bible presents that as the kind of thing God does some times, and as a justifiable action on his part. It is very hard to twist that around and say God was wrong and should not have done it. On the other hand an atheist is free to evaluate God's actions without prejudice purely on their merits and the arguments people can make about them. There are arguments for and against, but at least I have a free choice.
One of you already let the cat out of the bag (Score:5, Insightful)
Climate change policy is about redistribution of wealth and globalization, not saving the environment.
"One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, " -- Ottmar Edenhofer, UN IPCC
It is a tool for those seeking power, nothing more.
Re:Whichever (Score:2, Insightful)
Step 1: Recognise energy security as an issue of vital national interest
Step 2: Incentivise grant feeding egoists in academic ivory towers to produce the evidence required to help you promote your energy policies
Step 3: Vilify and denigrate anyone who does not agree with the paradigm, including equating them with creationists and holocaust deniers
Step 4: Construct idiotic renewable energy targets that cannot possibly be met without shutting down 90% of your entire economy and building 500,000 windmills
Step 5: Refer anyone who questions the paradigm to realclimate, an activist website run by Al Gore's Fenton Communications
Step 6: Completely ignore academic misconduct in support of your paradigm, including but not exclusively inappropriate use of statistical methods
Step 7: Retire before new research shows that atmospheric sensitivity to plant-food trace gas CO2 is barely perceptible, that sea levels aren't rising above trend, that Earth's thermostat is controlled by the complex interplay between ocean/sun/cosmic rays, clouds and water vapour
Step 8: ???
Step 9: National bankruptcy