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Aussie Climate Scientists Receiving Death Threats
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."
Yo. Conservative checking in. There's no hatred of science. There's a dislike of fudged numbers, BS, doom and gloom, including the usual "If we don't..." and "we'll be drowning in 10 years, no wait 30 years, no wait 80 years!!11!" that people get tired of. That's not forgetting the refusal to disclose publicly funded data, and then spending years tying up the courts over that pubically funded data. And so on either while refusing FOIA/SOI requests either. Nah. I know it's difficult to accept, but damn. But I suppose you can't fault groups like greenpeace(among other groups) turning around and trying to get their fingers in the pie either. I mean they sure have gone out of their way to invent BS to get written into the last several IPCC's.
Then again, perhaps I could simply say ah liberals. Actually going out and attacking people, including attempting to assassinate them when they don't like their political ideology. Which is sadly much closer to the truth. The US sure has had no shortage of liberals running amok in the last 6-8mo physically attacking conservatives that's for sure.
Also tip: I'm a canuck.
Om, nomnomnom...
And scientists (who want to abide by the law) can't defend themselves using guns...
Source of death threats is likely sock puppet army software by HBGary or similar, commissioned by USA federal government, discovered by anonymous hack.
Probably the source of lots of climate denial posts all over the web.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-UPDATED:-The-HB-Gary-Email-That-Should-Concern-Us-All?detail=hide
Link to government solicitation document not working, lucky the document is copied inline for our records.
No, that was rhetorical bullshit from an anti-intellectual luddite designed to build up a strawman fit to be lynched.
Diabolical super-criminals with a grudge against weather scientists are pretty rare. Stupid ones are much more common.
I think these guys are probably safe - basically if someone holding a gun in one hand and a picture of you in the other asks you if you're 'you', point the other direction, say "I think I saw him go that way" and just keep walking.
And there were just those two threats, five years ago, eh? No. You need to get your information from other people than Andrew Bolt. Followup to TFA:
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/change-of-attitude-needed-as-debate-overheats/2194216.aspx?storypage=3
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
As the facts continue to mount against them, these groups...
Climate change skeptics
Evolution denialists
"Birthers" (USA only)
become increasingly more extreme due to cognitive dissonance. I guess the end is when they can no longer even separate the facts from the messengers and having lost the factual battle seek to strike back in any way they can.
How pathetic.
They are, but the "Liberals" (just a name; they're actually the conservative group) have been adopting more and more American neo con tactics. They actually invited over several key Tea Party and Republican strategists to discuss tactics in private. Let's not forget the Rupert Murdoch owned newspaper "The Australian", which despite losing money year after year is subsidized by Murdoch to parrot right-wing talking points (see the National Broadband Network "debate"). Australia's media has consolidated and is failing them. The NBN will change that, but for the time being it's a real problem.
And you're so sure because? Of what. A two letter word? Sorry doesn't wash. "Climate scientists" in australia have been doing the same thing as their colleagues have been in the UK, US, and in Canada. Refusing to disclose data including methodology for years.
Actually they have been disclosing their methodologies for years. As one would expect from papers submitted to various peer reviewed journals. That isn't quite the same as feeling inclined to satisfy arbitrary, time consuming FOIA requests from armchair bloggers who want the data merely to nitpick it. It's funny how the so-called "climategate" email leak didn't unveil some vast librul conspiracy. What it did reveal was a bunch of scientists bitching in private about armchair bloggers wasting their time with specious FOIA requests.
We don't care if polluters are paying a tax. We want them to stop the pollution. Banishing coal electricity really is possible.
I do agree that some protocol should be put in place for scientists to release data and in return to be immune from being pestered by FOIA requests but that's a separate topic altogether, and certainly does not imply that absence of arbitrary-data-request-being-satisfied that somehow it implies conspiracy. It doesn't. The UEA emails don't reveal any "smoking gun" at all, just a bunch of scientists engaged in technical, mundane and occasionally bitchy chitchat with their peers.
And how do you intend to make them stop doing it? In case you missed it, that's the entire point of taxes on pollution: they gradually raise the cost of polluting until it's not economically feasible anymore. Simply legislating that coal-fired power plants had to be switched off tomorrow would be a disaster, because there's no transition plan. A tax that increases every year at a predictable rate lets people depending on coal have a predictable point where it will no longer be feasible and plan accordingly.
More importantly, it gives a financial incentive to be the first person to switch. If you say 'no more coal in 10 years' then there's a strong incentive to let everyone else pay the R&D costs of developing and deploying other technologies and then roll out your own version in 9 years, for much less since everyone else has helped push the economies of scale. If you start taxing and keep increasing the tax rate, then someone who switches now saves a lot of tax, while someone who switches in 9 years pays a lot more.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I truly can't say if you honestly believe in this absurd oversimplification, or if this is supposed to a parody.
Of course it is. A dogma is an abstract concept and quite unable to impose its will on anyone, since it doesn't have any. People holding to a dogma are a different matter entirely. And at that point it doesn't really matter what the dogma is; it has become a flag, a symbol to divide the world to us and them and justify oppressing or outright killing the latter.
Most people aren't obsessive-compulsive enough to impose their dogmas on others, but some are, and at that point it's up to the rest of the society whether they'll kill all opponents or write propaganda books.
Go to any forum where atheists and theists debate each other and watch the arguments used. Are they persuasive? Or are they just a pack of chimps flinging feces at each other? Because I've rarely seen the former - in fact, the only times I have has been when the people haven't tried to persuade each other, but have simply debated for fun.
Then again, I guess this doesn't really disagree with you: only a persuasive argument will work, and short of a personal appearance of God(s) there simply aren't any persuasive arguments about their existence.
It should also be noted that the whole concept of "God hands down morality and punishes you for disagreeing" is pretty much confined to monotheistic religions; and even for them, it's an oversimplification (and sometimes downright incorrect - even with basic Christianity, there's a view that sin creates its own punishment without any interference from God) - exactly the kind of oversimplification people engage in to make other people and their beliefs seem ridiculous, so they can be dismissed without bothering to actually argue them. This is also know as the "strawman argument".
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
No you fail at comprehension. It was a joke. The reason a Christian doesn't believe in thousands of different gods is pretty much the same as the reason the atheist doesn't believe in them.
The only difference is that the atheist also doesn't believe in the Christian god.
It's a modification of the quote:
"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours"
Stephen Roberts
Meanwhile, floods and fires continue. I have always thought that the first major impact on society will be on food supplies, with a concomitant increase in food prices. This will at first bring civil unrest in poorer countries, as food takes up an increasingly large proportion of their livelihood. Eventually these high food prices will have a severe economic impact on wealthy nations as well.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)