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A Call To RICO Climate Change Science Deniers
GregLaden writes: The argument could be made that the organized effort to disrupt climate change science and the development of effective policies to address climate change is criminal, costing life and property. The effort is known to be generally funded by various actors and there are people and organizations that certainly make money on this seemingly nefarious activity. A group of prominent scientists have written a letter to President Obama, Attorney General Lynch, and OSTP Director Holdren asking for this to be investigated under RICO laws, which were originally designed to address organized crime.
RICO is more clearly an issue for the Climategate authors. Socialist nonsense and bulllying are reaching high tide in Amerika. Notice how many guns people are buying. Those aren't their best weapons either.
If you chaps don't mind the environmental lobbying groups audited... and the financial paperwork of AL Gore's carbon trading schemes checked out... Pull the trigger.
Double dare you.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
We know from emails that climate alarmists have fabricated data, and excluded scientists with heretical views from publication in scientific journals.
We know from emails that at least a few people on the other side have done the same. Who should "win" scientific debates? The side with the best data, or the side with the best lawyers?
The models were designed to make one point -- that man might have an influence upon the climate -- and they do this with only 15% station coverage, 200 x 200 mile GCM squares, forcings at the top of the atmosphere to keep the results realistic, only a handful of stations at the poles and in the oceans, and with the sweeping assumption that the energy which the solar wind plasma dumps into the poles has no effect upon our climate system. When the models have proven to be inaccurate, ad hoc explanations are supplied to justify the failure. The scientists eagerly ignore any satellite data which does not support their case.
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You want to make this the law of the land? Talk about setting a precedent
Should NASA-funded Yue Deng stop building her own GCM models at the University of Texas which take into account the solar wind plasma? Seems that she would be in legal limbo with such a decision
A scientist named Lamarck was once persecuted for suggesting if each generation exercised their right arms, eventually the trait would be passed on to future generations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A scientist named tesla's story is more famous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Never trust orthodoxy without corroboration and reflection, not prosecution.
Edward Maibach, for example, is the Director of Climate Change Communication, and holds a BA in social psychology from University of California at San Diego, an MPH in health promotion from San Diego State University, and a PhD in communication research from Stanford University. He teaches how to talk about climate, but he doesn't study it.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Free speech is not black and white. There is a difference between lying/misleading for commercial gain and simply advocating controversial ideas. Global warming deniers at the corporate/scientific level (i.e. the fossil fuel industry and groups they fund) are basically committing fraud and should be prosecuted.
To put it another way, if you're opposed to arresting people for "speech crimes", would you be in favor of legalizing all fraud? After all, the primary basis of fraud is simply the "speech crime" of lying. By way of example:
Insurance fraud: a doctor lies about performing 100 heart surgeries and bills the insurance company accordingly.
Bank fraud: a person lies about their identity so that the bank gives them the balance of a savings account.
In each case, a "speech crime" was committed for commercial gain. And I think they should be arrested.
I agree in general. But the issue here is that certain people and groups are accused of agreeing with the climate science while orchestrating public denial of the science for personal gain. Still a tough question, but when framed that this way it seems more understandable. You really can't have a "democracy of liars".
is the Director of Climate Change Communication,
I'm seriously questioning why a university feels the need to have a Director of Climate Change Communication.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I agree. Charge and prosecute them for fraud. Probably with aggravating circumstances. (Can it be fraud if it's not for gain?)
And repeal RICO. RICO is a vile law that should never have been passed, and should have immediately been thrown out as blatantly unconstitutional. RICO has two purposes:
1) to let the enforcers steal your wealth without proving anything at all first, and
2) to prevent the accused from having any resources to hire a lawyer.
Perhaps there are other parts of the law, but those are the parts most frequently used.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Simply saying you're against it is just speech, so I'm trying to figure out what they're going to RICO them for.
Fraud. The cigarette companies were damaging people by intentionally deceiving them (and advertising to kids). So, to get a settlement from this, you'll need to show that:
1) Oil companies (or whoever) intentionally lied about what their scientists told them, or told their scientists to produce studies with the 'correct' result. I've skimmed through some of the documents provided by the link, and I'm not sure I see evidence of that.
2) They have to prove that someone was damaged. The cigarette companies didn't lose because they lied, they lost because their lies damaged people. The link says there are threats of future damage, but doesn't present evidence of any actual damage. That's something they will have to fix.
It's not illegal, unethical, or wrong to fund science. It's a good thing, even if oil companies do it. It's only unethical when they require a specific result, or otherwise pressure the scientist. The more funding we have for science, the better.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
When you have to file lawsuits to silence your opposition, that's the clearest possible sign that you are not a scientist, and what you're doing is nothing CLOSE to being a "science".
They're not "silencing the opposition". Learn to read. They're going after companies with a long history of funding bullshit at the behest of whatever companies stand to lose money because science shows that they're pissing in the pool.
This kind of crap has been happening for DECADES. It happens anytime researchers demonstrates that some company or group of companies are doing damage. Said companies then go out and higher various firms to start pumping out the bullshit so they can keep polluting/slave/labor/whatever is stuffing their pockets. They did this with leaded gasoline, asbestos, acid rain, etc. This is neither the first nor the last time something like this will happen. AGW is just the flavor of the month.
~X~
Go ahead and RICO climate skeptics, so long as we get to RICO climate fans who try to stand in the way of the massive nuclear program it will take to go carbon free.
Remember "Hide the Decline"? That's when bona fide "scientists" came across an inconvenient truth. In a multi-variate graph of several measurements showing the temperature was rising, one recalcitrant measurement trended downward to contradict very accurate contemporary thermometers. Rater than show the data they had, these "scientists" used a hiccup in the data to make it disappear. It went into the pile of lines, but did not come out. If they had left it in there it would have been a red flag they would have to explain, so they "hid the decline." This was one of many revelations in the Climategate e-mails so many people have conveniently forgotten.
So what exactly was this recalcitrant measurement? It came from tree-ring data. Why is this somewhat important? Because tree-ring data was used as a proxy for thermometers to show the temperature thousands of years ago. Those tree-ring data "prove" the temperature is rising. But the modern graph of tree-ring data shows the temperature falling when everything else shows it rising. What's up with that.
Well, it's a lot easier to hide this uncomfortable issue than it is to explain it. That's how "science" "works."
How about applying RICO to that bunch?
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
You seem to think that condemning humanity to extinction isn't a form of "oppression".
If so, then go on advocating for climate denial as somehow equal in nature to recognizing the immediate necessity to start reducing fossil fuels so that something can quickly be done to avert human extinction. However, also prepare for both the extinction of Homo sapiens and for the hate that will be directed toward you by your advocating for human extinction.
Complete bullshit. The IPCC report, which includes scientists from all over the world, concluded that there’s a 95% chance that humans are causing climate change.
I think you miss his point. The science that we are having an impact on the climate is clear. The science that it would all be rosy and merry if we didn't is not clear at all. We may very well be as clean as the dinosaurs who inhabited the world before us and still be facing global warming as there's evidence that it has happened in the past.
I for think the premise of global warming is a horrible reason to stop polluting. How about the dying of aquatic life due to ocean acidification, the rise in lung cancers, asthma, or even just the general smell. We should not stop polluting because of climate change, we should just stop polluting.
The entire debate is now framed with climate models, and what-if scenarios rather than looking out the window and seeing a morning smog.