Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
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.
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/ 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).
So science should be ignored, as it never deals with proof. Kinda hypocritical as you're reading this on a computer. So it seems you accept science when you want to, and dismiss it as sensationalist bullshit when it suits you. You also seem to have a very perverse idea about climate science and the scientists involved in that field. Which in itself is strange, as your actions ("fuck it - it's wrong") would only be a valid position if you had a solid understanding of of this field.
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.
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.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
So the plebeians will rant and rave about how great science is when it makes their life easier and more productive (internet, modern medicine, manufacturing efficiency, productivity) but when it shows them changes need to be taken that will cost them a tiny fraction of their annual salary they go nuts. The greed of the average citizen in a capitalistic society knows no bounds.
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?
Futurist Traditionalism
The sad thing is on slashdot there could easily be a post with your exact same words but applied to climate scientists, and that poster would have absolutely no freaking idea the insane amount of research and easily accessible evidence (realclimate.org for example) that would prove them wrong.
What reports are you referring to here and why should you expect scientific predictions (which are usually couched in error bars and scenarios) to stay constant in the face of new evidence or better modelling? And your appeal for raw data is particularly laughable, given that it's the usual gambit that deniers throw out as if it's all some vast conspiracy and if only scientists would spend every waking moment satisfying specious FOIA requests this conspiracy would be revealed.
Think again. Instead of trying to fix real existing threats that we have in front of us (waste management, water resources, starvation, pollution, etc.), the goal is to have a CO2 tax for something we aren't sure about. And we're not talking about banishing fossil fuel cars here, and replacing them with electricity, which would be the first thing to do. No, just tax them... Tax everyone, make a bank of the world which will be privately held, and go with that, continuing to pollute the world. If you think that will save you from dying, you are mistaking!
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.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Are you implying that guns don't kill people...that people kill people? Careful or you'll be labeled a neo-conservative kook!
Because liberal groups would never send death threats to scientists right?
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.
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.
"Banishing coal electricity really is possible" Sure it is if you are willing to ignore the consequences. The majority of electric power on the globe is generated by coal. Remove coal from the equation and at a minimum you are reducing global power production by 50%. Can you see the population of any country, especially the leading industrial countries, putting up with this? No power means no jobs.
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.
I don't agree with your 4 steps, so I have produced my own 9 step plan below:
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