To a climate scientist, *swearing* equals a Death Threat (no wonder these guys can’t predict the weather)

Wait for it, some death threat emails have been released. Number eight is positively sinister with intent (shield your children):

Now several of the abusive emails have been published on a blog by environmental writer Graham Readfearn, after the scientists agreed to release the poison pen letters.

Number Eight:

“If we see you continue, we will get extremely organised and precise against you. We will not do so if you rightfully argue against our points from a science view. But we will if you choose to stray into attacks on us as people or as a movement. The institution and funders that support you will find the attention concerning.”

God forbid, imagine a member of the public imploring a scientist to argue with science instead of slurs. Well I’ll be!

How chilling does it get? These scientists must get hundreds of emails a week. Here are the worst two Sunanda Creagh could find:

…several correspondents had a more chilling message for the scientists.

“Just do your science or you will end up collateral damage in the war, GET IT,” reads one email.

“If we see you continue, we will get extremely organised and precise against you,” reads another.

Obviously we need to protect our scientists against this unreasonable intrusion on their right to issue baseless propaganda and unsubstantiated smears. Imagine the threat of members of the public getting “precise” in their arguments? How dare they?!

The rest of the emails released by Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a climate scientist at the University of Queensland, were unbecoming, rude, and full of four letter words. (I strongly advise skeptics not to swear in emails.)

This is sheer beef-it-up spin, making a mountain out of  a molehill, clutching at straws in desperation to eek out a PR victory from the dregs of a fading scam.

There must have been more to the “death threats” than these surely?

If not, I take back any suggestion that these emails might have been purposefully done by people wanting to discredit skeptics. No organized campaign would be so pathetic.

My previous post on these threats: Death threats are never OK, but for those without morals they can be a useful PR tool

7.5 out of 10 based on 4 ratings

182 comments to To a climate scientist, *swearing* equals a Death Threat (no wonder these guys can’t predict the weather)

  • #
    Lawrie

    I have not had an e-mail directed at me apart from responses to blog comments. I like every one here have been called a denier, a neandathal and many other epithets. We are derided and our views held as proof of defective genes. Some want to tattoo us or deny us our democratic rights. Some want us jailed all want us to shut up and go away. They don’t like our view of the truth nor do they like our use of real data to try and educate the public. They prevent good scientists from publishing their findings. They even want newspapers abd TV to ban our alterative views.

    Now they complain because one or two have demanded honesty of them personally. A reasonable request when taxpayers`are expected to forego billions`for their very suspect cause based on their even more suspect science.

    If they want respect they should earn it.

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  • #
    Harry Buttle

    The Australian Federal Police have examined these ‘death threats’ and found that there is no reason to take action. Having read the emails published so far the worst of them are childish and grubby, but death threats? hardly.

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  • #
    TrueNews

    Perhaps we should just threaten to Tattoo their bodies with their beliefs, or tie them to a post in the desert, so that in 2040 they can get their feet wet.

    OOPS
    Got it wrong – That was wat the Warmists wanted to do to us – Sorry

    10

  • #

    Gillard took relief with a visit for a few days to the Alice – Swan – minus his hand holder – put in a pathetic performance at the Australian Treasurer address – National Press Club today – almost the equal of his Budget speech …

    Laura Tingle 9Financial Review) – asked a pearler of a question that Mr Swan hid from – can’t wait for the media spin on his performance today … will give a view as to which way the Media Barons are swinging …

    I wrote to all ALP Ministers and Mr Turnbull asking them to share their ‘light bulb’ moment that convince them of climate change – Mr Swan’s was included in his speech today – can be read here.

    The death threat’s were a beat-up and something a Union organiser would think of … this Government is looking very thuggerish as they cower away from the reality of their position …

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  • #
    Grumpy Old Man

    “Just do your science or you will end up collateral damage in the war, GET IT,” reads one email.
    That quotation certainly does not suggest that the author is a champion of free speech, and hints at more robust measures that echo the methods devised by Mussolini to silence opposition. There are plenty of examples from recent history of the reliance by sections of the warmist community to use robust methods to silence dissenters. Judith Curry has been the recipient for more threatening emails from senior warmists ever since she started to publicly voice her doubts about the science of CAGW, and the unscientific, undemocratic and antisocial activities of extremists in the CAGW camp are a matter of public record.

    It is easy – and very human – to go down the route of,”if they can’t take it, they shouldn’t dish it out”, but that actually legitimises the very behaviour we find repugnant. The authors of intemperate emails in reality harm the very cause they affect to support. Just relect on the damage done by CAGW Jihadists to the cause of CAGW.

    Those who wish to act against the folly that is CAGW could do worse than lend support to the Thompson family, who are the target of vested interests who amongst other things will be seeking to establish a precedent which will affect all of Australia. I have recently sent my widow’s mite to the Thompson fighting fund from the other side of the world. We also have eco-loons in charge in the UK who are being challenged on an increasing number of fronts, but eco-lunacy must be confronted everywhere.

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  • #
    Grumpy Old Man

    @ 5. Should read,” Just reflect”.

    10

  • #
    gnome

    I wonder what they make of something like “voters are waiting with their baseball bats”. AVOs all round. Perhaps Clive Hamilton is right- we should agree to the suspension of democracy, not so that they can fix the world with new taxes but so that their delicate sensibilities can be protected.

    Or perhaps we already have- we all (except the Greens) voted against a carbon (O2) tax and are now being subjected to an Orwellian “say yes” campaign with nowhere to say yes or no. How long will it be before the gumment declares that the say yes campaign provides a new mandate for the tax?

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  • #
    MadJak

    Of course, if this was climategate, the AGW cheer squad would be saying

    “But they’re out of context”

    and

    “Lets have some whitewash enquiries”

    10

  • #
    Joe Lalonde

    Jo,

    Should climate scientists or any scientist have a “Vail of Authority” around them entitling them to NEVER be questioned?
    Strictly arrogance that no one can question their science.

    I put my science and mechanics on the line for all to view or criticize as is their right. Not hide behind the “I am the expert and should not be questioned” mantra that has been erected by current scientists.

    10

  • #

    Question: at what point can we fairly construe warnings of global catastrophe, consistently delivered over several years, as a death threat?
    No irony here. Threats should not be encouraged, but since the global warming doomshow has been threatening us with all sorts of punishments if we don’t fall into line they should maybe take a look in the mirror.

    10

  • #
    manalive

    Oh spare me for pity’s sake, these scientists are lending their names to policies which will adversely affect many people’s very livelihoods — more so in some cases, they are the instigators of those policies.

    They are meddling in politics and politics can get very dirty — heat / kitchens.

    10

  • #
    lmwd

    I threatened Stutchbury today. Warned him he would end up looking as much a fool as the Govt if he ignored the problematic nature of climate science!

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/carbon-price-may-take-the-heat-off/comments-e6frg9p6-1226070476597

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  • #
    Sundance

    I’ve seem worse in the Climategate emails.

    10

  • #
    Quasimado

    Just for the record, from which side of the debate did the UnaBomber and James J Lee (disovery Channel Invasion) come from – also the (very) recent tattoo threat in a daily newspaper, and of course Clive’s classic appeal to children concerning their father’s occupation…

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  • #

    […] vapid response from right wing commentator Tim Blair, but I was horrified by the unrepentant tone adopted by Joanne Nova: This is sheer beef-it-up spin, making a mountain out of a molehill, clutching at straws in […]

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  • #
    DavidA

    They get extra security for what a swear filter would fix.

    10

  • #
    Speedy

    Jo’s right – there is not excuse for threats or violence – from either side. Voltaire said something to the effect of

    “I disagree with what you said but will defend to the death your right to say it”.

    It would be nice if the AGW crowd share this enlightened view as well, but frankly no examples come to mind…

    Cheers,

    Speedy

    10

  • #
    chris y

    Professor Michael Tobis set the standard of what CACA (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alarmists) consider acceptable prose with his posted argument back in April.

    “Let me explain why. It is not because I am a pusillanimous chickenshit, Mosher. It is because the f*****g survival of the f*****g planet is at f*****g stake. And if we narrowly f*****g miss pulling this out, it may well end up being your, your own f*****g personal individual f*****g self-satisfied mischief and disrespect for authority that tips the balance. You have a lot of f*****g nerve saying you are on my “side”.”

    This is a classic writing style that should be adapted whenever climate discussions occur. It is a sure-fire argument winner…

    http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/record-for-f-words-in-climate-blog-post/

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  • #

    […] Jo Nova: To a climate scientist, *swearing* equals a Death Threat (no wonder these guys can’t predict the weather) […]

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  • #

    […] Jo Nova: To a climate scientist, *swearing* equals a Death Threat (no wonder these guys can’t predict the weather) […]

    10

  • #
    AndyG55

    ““Just do your science or you will end up collateral damage in the war, GET IT,” ”

    Or this could just be what happens. If this thing pans out as I suspect, many careers may go down the tube.

    Or ought to !!

    10

  • #
    AndyG55

    Just thinking, it’s a good thing that these guys are at Uni and not high school teachers.. they would last one day 🙂

    10

  • #
    wes george

    Rude people incited by politics exist on every side of every argument.

    The internet has created one giant schoolyard in which our whole society plays, making instant rudeness a new and sometimes disturbing part of our culture. Everyone knows this is a fact of the networked world we live in and everyone who is involved in contentious political debate has received exactly the same kind of crude instant lashings that Gramham Readfearn has posted. Yes, it’s deplorable.

    But is it is even more contemptible to maliciously and hypocritically manipulate this fact of our networked culture in a highly orchestrated agitprop campaign designed and timed coincide with the Say Yes Rallies in order to incite exactly the same kind of hatred one is disingenuously pretending to condemn!

    It’s one thing for a sad lone loser to express hatred in an email. It’s entirely more serious level of misconduct when a conspiracy of national institutions attempt to do the same using all the powers at their disposal.

    The people who really deserve public scorn above all others are those in the high offices of universities and the ABC who manipulated the vileness of few internet losers as propaganda vehicle for generating even more hatred.

    All the universities involved have achieved is to damage their reputations and credibility. And for what end? To poison a few mind with bigotry and lies?

    A shameful abuse of authority and power!

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  • #
    denial != skepticism

    I wasn’t aware of personal threats being sent by climate scientists to anyone, like CEOs of large industrial concerns or the political leaders of large carbon-emitting countries. So the claim that “I’ve seem worse in the Climategate emails.” is a false equivalence, as those emails were not sent to the people being slagged in an effort in intimidate them.

    I expect that most of the commenters who find those remarks to be just playful banter (really? did you read the ones in the linked page or just the cherrypicked ones on this page?) would crap themselves if the speaker/writer went nose to nose with them in a private corner somewhere. The two threads here — one, the idea that science is somehow negotiable, that everyone’s opinion is equal and two, that shouting down opposition, behavior we can’t use at school, at home, or at work, is acceptable — are pretty pathetic examples of human development at that stage of civilization.

    10

  • #
    Stacey

    They are trying to create martyrs out of people who are not saints.

    By my posting here Jo has access to my email if I made a threat to her or was abusive then no doubt my email could be passed to the police? Similarly if I sent and abusive email it could be traced.

    Why aren’t the police investigating these deaths threats but more importantly why aren’t they investigating the fairies at the bottom of my garden? 🙂

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  • #
    klem

    That email is clearly a translation. The writer’s mother tongue is not English.

    10

  • #

    Mr Denial%&skepticism

    Me thinks I’ve found equivalence. Not so much swearing but more violent.

    Ben Santer (Climate Scientist): Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him.

    Our point is not that it’s ok to send rude boorish emails. But we get them all the time and don’t call them death threats and issue a national press release.

    10

  • #
    Richard S Courtney

    denial != skepticism:

    At #24 you say:

    I wasn’t aware of personal threats being sent by climate scientists to anyone, like CEOs of large industrial concerns or the political leaders of large carbon-emitting countries.

    As a result of his skepticism of AGW, Dr Tim Ball had genuine death threats and obtained police protection . He is now being subjected to a spurious libel action from Michael Mann that is funded by an anonymous donor (probably Soros) in an attempt to bankrupt him.

    I have had two computer systems subjected to massive, coordinated attacks.

    Several ‘warmist’ blogs have published threats against the lives and person of people who reject their superstitious creed.

    Your comment concerning “science is somehow negotiable” are equally ignorant and stupid.

    SCIENCE IS NOT NEGOTIONABLE despite the assertions of “concensus” somehow being scientific evidence which are made by ‘warmistas’: you are guilty of pschological projection.

    As for “opinions” having worth in science: they don’t. Empirical evidence has value in science.

    I consider your comments to be so inflammatory that they warrant your apologising for them.

    Richard

    10

  • #
    TrueNews

    OFF TOPIC

    An article in Time magazine reports that since the advent of Google Earth, 657 new Barrier Islands have been discovered.
    (Bringing the total count to 2149)

    Could it be that this, nearly 50% increase in visible coastal formations, has been missed by all but Google Earth.

    OR

    Could it possibly indicate falling Sea levels?

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  • #
    Roy Hogue

    When the words, “No debate is possible,” were first uttered the die was cast. One side declared the other to be illegitimate. When your voice is silenced…

    10

  • #
    Reed Coray

    If I submited comments to a blog using the name “Mad, bad and dangerous” (comment 15), the last thing I’d do is offer an opinion on “unrepentance” or “threats”.

    10

  • #
    Joe V.

    Reading the typically bad language examples on the linked Readfern website, I have to say, for a part of the readership of certain tabloid journals, that’s just the way they talk – all of the time.
    Of course it’s unpleasant for academics to be addressed in such a manner, and that these powerless & frustrated members of society should be addressing them at all is perhaps inappropriate.
    We’ve not all had the benefit of an education to teach us the finer points of web etiquette. Really the ones you have to watch though are the more restrained, who don’t say what they mean.

    10

  • #
    Beth Cooper

    No 24 . No one here says that science is ‘negotiable,’ they argue that’The science is not settled.’ Be aware that SCIENCE is never settled.Science is an evolutionary process of empirical testing and elimination, replacing theories found wanting with tentative new theories that have more explanatory power concerning real world problems.
    The Inquisition charged Gallileo with being a denialist because of course ‘The science was settled.’ Turns out this was beginning of the modern scientific revolution that lead on to Newton,Maxwell and Einstein And those who will follow 🙂

    10

  • #
    Rereke Whakaaro

    … extremely organised and precise …

    Now that is interesting … I haven’t seen that phrase for years!

    It used to be a favorite threat of the British Trade Union Council, when targeting individual companies over a specific issue, rather than an industry as a whole.

    The EYE-BALL Opinion: #4 is probably correct when he/she says:

    The death threat’s were a beat-up and something a Union organiser would think of …

    Conclusion: There is a strong possibility that this email is the work of an agent provocateur – they are getting desperate.

    10

  • #
    Bulldust

    Dear CAGW sockpuppet at 24:

    Perhaps you are not aware of the public death threats made by CAGW types over the years, but I see Jo has already set you straight with just one example. In fact just a couple days ago the SMH saw fit to publish a piece in which the author suggested branding skeptics forcibly and providing an avenue for their potential death. Ring any bells from history? Unlike the email excerpts above, and at the Redfearn alarmist blog (yes some of us did read the garbage thanks), they were not vague suggestion that harm may befall the readers.

    Might I suggest:

    a) that you not assume what we are thinking as a basis for your arguments;
    b) choose a new handle for this blog not so obviously intended to inflame;
    c) L2Read.

    10

  • #
    Bulldust

    Looks like the UK has it’s first job (1,500) looses in part due to the carbon market mechanism they intrioduced:

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/07/green-economic-thinking-revenge-not-economics/

    Seems that a co-architect of the mess is somehow surprised that this should come to pass. I guess economics 101 is a distasteful subject for those on Green crusaders.

    I wonder if our unions will take heed of that development… they did posture that they would fight the Government if there was going to be a single job loss. Their mindless backing of Labor probably prohibits anything but a verbal gesture…

    10

  • #
    Bulldust

    PPPS> Another thought occured to me … unlike our “mate” John Brookes, I did not heckle the speakers at the Yes rally on the weekend. You see John, that is how civilised people behave at other people’s gatherings. I did, as mentioned in previous posts, have a quiet debate with one of the more silly banner carriers. Perhaps next time you will extend us the same courtesy … I know, why do I kid myself?

    10

  • #
    Joe V.

    Well Rereke @ #34. that

    … extremely organised and precise …

    phrase is unmistakable as the message received by Andy Pitman, that Clive Hamilton was writing about over a year ago, last February.
    Then it was just being portrayed as ‘Cyber Bullying’.
    In fact the more I read of that piece of Hamilton’s the more I recognise of the recent article. This appears to be just more shameless rehashing of old news with a new spin, released again just for effect as if it were current.
    The Graham Readfern piece claims these have all been received since this January. That would seem a remarkable coincidence, with the year before – or just more duplicitous spin to instil an emotional reaction & make up for the dearth of Science?

    10

  • #
    pattoh

    Has anybody seen anything in the Australian MSM about the job loss/gain ratio in Spain as they went into renewables?

    Has commentary in the Australian MSM linked any of the recent economic/unemployment social unrest in that region been linked to renewables policy?

    Has any of the push into renewables in the “PIIGS” been directly tagged to overarching EU policy?

    Where is the AUS opposition when it comes to joining these dots?

    Did any of our brave journalists put any tough questions to the Treasurer yesterday?

    Does Treasury use the same computer programmers as BoM?

    10

  • #
    Graeme Bird

    I wonder why they didn’t include any of my ones? Of course I always used my own name. So that could be the reason.

    One thing about shouting at these people is that it really breaks their confidence. Look at Karoly. I shouted at him and he doesn’t come out in public any more. Look at Clive. He’s never been the same since I took a shot at him. He’s not getting his outsized print-time to defame everyone else, lie all the time, and advocate that we be subjected to yet more stealing on the grounds that we are not happy.

    http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/03/02/windsor-receives-death-threats-as-climate-of-hate-ramps-up/

    He tried to embarrass me publicly by revealing what was after all a private communication. So I showed up and now he seems scared to let his head catch the sunlight.

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  • #
    Joe V.

    Oh look.
    Clive’s even done an acadaemic looking piece on it:-
    Bullying, lies and the rise of right-wing climate denial

    replete with references an’ all, & with a citation for our very own Joanne, in the part entitled : – Who is orchestrating the cyber-bullying? (Reference 7, on Page 5)

    Nothing but emotive, sensationalist journalistic tripe, with delusions of acadaemic grandeur.

    He’s not so coy about the identity of his victims either, as his erstwhile imitator Readfearn seems at pains to appear to protect.

    10

  • #
    Brendan

    Wow, you mean the AGW proponents released an ooga booga press release that has been found to have grossly exagerated the actual data?

    Who would have believed it!

    10

  • #
    Damian Allen

    Another example of how DANGEROUS and VIOLENT these global warming cultists are………

    ‘Execute’ Skeptics! Shock Call To Action: ‘At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers’ — ‘Shouldn’t we start punishing them now?’

    http://www.climatedepot.com/a/1096/Execute-Skeptics-Shock-Call-To-Action-At-what-point-do-we-jail-or-execute-global-warming-deniers–Shouldnt-we-start-punishing-them-now

    10

  • #
    Dennisk

    Time to look behind the Climate-gate scam, and get a handle on the real agenda.

    Climate fear is just a tool to further their destruction of civil society.. Please have a look at this ineractive click-able map of what is happening in the big picture..

    It is called “COMMON PURPOSE” and somebody put a lot of work into this, and is it becoming more important every day that we know what is going on behind the scenes..

    It will ease your mind on all the seemingly stupid decisions made in Canberra every day, and the reasoning behind it will become clear.

    Please people.. just have a look at the link below and then make up your own mind.

    http://www.stopcp.com/cpmindmap.php

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  • #
    MudCrab

    Ove Hoegh-Guldberg?

    Remind me but isn’t he the man who has made a living telling the Great Barrier Reef “IT’S GONNA DIE!!!” ?

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  • #
    Raven

    OPEN LETTER TO ALL AUSTRALIANS ..It’s a huge worry for all these leftwing puppets that  a pointless & repressive Tax will NOT get up Why ..?(more about that a bit later )
    HOWEVER let us suspend disbelief for just a moment , if it did  , what would happen ,AUSTRALIA WILL GRIND TO AN ECONOMIC HALT :  unemployment will rise to heights not seen since the great depression!!! I state this as a fact I can prove !! My business will move off shore ( job losses ) and I am aware of  others now looking to resettle .this is not a joke this minority Govt will destroy yours and your children’s future !,  Reduce Australia to an economic third world wasteland ,if you love this country like I do , do not listen to Govt propaganda !
    Cast your eyes outside Australia and see for yourselves ..
    FELLOW AUSTRALIANS we are being LIED TO !!
    WAKE UP AUSTRALIA BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE .

    10

  • #
    Keith

    The emails are abusive and certainly not decent and many respects. But threatening ? Not really.

    As someone said on Deltoid’s blog :
    “I hope the police are really busy investigating these threats. Has there been any progress ?”

    So far, politely ignored.

    Even they know it’s a beat up.

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  • #
    pat

    pattoh –
    i have also been wondering why on earth the MSM has not pointed out spain is bankrupt and the renewables’ policy meant a loss of two jobs for each job created. the MSM is raking in $$$$$ with the batts then solar ads, so we cannot expect anything other than propaganda, i guess.

    as for the alleged “death threats”, having read far worse in online comments discussing whether or not one pop star is better than another, i won’t go there, except to say the alleged senders could have been tracked down by now if the police considered it was worth investigating. meanwhile, the MSM jumps in with horror “stories” of “death threats” to precious “climate scientists”.

    the MSM has much to answer for.

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  • #
    thRealUniverse

    Well topic or not incase you dont know…
    Its “Bilderburg season” Yes at St Moritz Switzerland. Relavent here as it alot of where “Carbon trading and world carbon (dioxide) taxes ideas originate as well as other orwellian ideas. Heres a nice quote
    “The elite owns numerous “think tanks” that work for expanding, consolidating and perpetuating its hold on the globe. The Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, and many other similar organisations are all funded by the elite and work for it. These think tanks publish journals, such as Foreign Affairs, in which these imperialist and anti-mankind ideas (CO2 scam is one) are edified as publications, and then, if need be, expanded in the form of books that are given wide publicity.

    And heres another
    “A top Bilderberg member has revealed that globalists are panic-stricken about a potential eurozone crisis caused by a Greek debt default that could precipitate the collapse of the Euro and also derail the wider agenda for multi-regional currency unions and eventually a global currency system.”
    Great time for a CO2 TAX isnt it! Whos Gillard’s REAL advisors???

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  • #
    Rereke Whakaaro

    Joe V.: #38

    … phrase is unmistakable as the message received by Andy Pitman, that Clive Hamilton was writing about over a year ago, last February. …

    Thanks Joe,

    I missed it that time (not that I was looking, you understand).

    So you are probably right. It is likely to be a rehash of the old messages, regurgitated now for effect. Alternatively, the messages could be generated by a bot working from a script that includes those old messages.

    10

  • #
    crakar24

    I can add Dinosaur to the list of names i have been called by this stupid and inept government

    “He says Australia cannot become a country incapable of reform and destroyed by “the deniers, the dinosaurs, the vested interests and partisan commentators”.

    Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/carbon-tax-wont-stop-economy-swan/story-fn3dxity-1226070568334

    I hope he understands why the 80 odd% of people who dont want a TAX dont vote for him or his party come the next election.

    PS

    If i replace Denier=Skepticism with Dip=Shit would i be acting in a threatening manner, or simply name calling like the nations treasurer?

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  • #
    Raven

    I would like to confirm with little doubt almost positively that labor should win the next election about
    Probably around 2076 . !
    You can see what is coming ,!
    A  monkey would win the next election against this coalition of traitors to their country . ALP /greens: independents   etc I would not want to be in your shoes for all the coal in china !
    If the majority of Aussies find out what you lot are really up to ,!!!!!
    I’d be getting the heck outa town !! Why you ask . ? Simple really 
    In other parts of the world people have been lynched for less !
    Stealing by taxation then wealth distribution Is still theft if it could be proven you didn’t let the facts get in the way of a good rort !! 
    Now if you will excuse me I’m off to dump my  last million or so shares of
    Rearair wind scam ! 

    Ps if you don’t believe me have a close look around Europe and former soviet states .Mmmmmmm 

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  • #
    Chris

    I had someone on Twitter say my wife is a whore and I deserve to have one of my children die because I oppose climate change legislation.

    Sheesh.

    10

  • #
    woolfe

    What about Crazy Crrrrrreeeepy Clive talking about hate over at “The Conversation”?

    10

  • #
    Bush bunny

    Tory Aardvark has run a piece on how British industry is reacting to the UK’s climate change strategy. I’m trying to get them to send the article to me so I can send it on to you.

    You can Google his site, and then look for the article involving
    CBI?

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  • #
    Bush bunny

    Don’t they know that death threats sent by email, rarely get police acting. I had some a few years ago, and I told the police and they laughed. ‘Look – these people are idiots – if they were serious they wouldn’t add their names to it?’ And that is true, but academics live in ivory towers, and they should be used to being subject to peer criticism, it always happens.

    I think if the police were worried they could easily check who sent them. Genuine assassins do not make known their threats. I don’t wish these alarmist’s harm, they put a disclaimer on their report didn’t they, admitting that they could not be held responsible for any inaccuracies. I wonder how much they were paid to produce it. It seems to me by them publishing these,
    they are not doing themselves a favor? They are drawing attention to they bungled their report.

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  • #
    Graeme Bird

    Guys; is anyone familiar with James McCanney. Not that I endorse everything he says but on many topics he seems years ahead of his time. He’s helped me understand space weather, and its interaction with earth weather …. a lot better …. when I was feebly scratching at the surface and getting everything only a little bit right. He does waffle a bit. But if you like playing something in the background while you are doing unseemly chores, then you will definitely learn a great deal from him. He’s in the Velikovsky line of scholars.

    Now here is a fellow who catches a lot of abuse for his science. No mainstreamer can begin to talk about this subject, coming from a position of righteousness. Mainstreamers are who they are BECAUSE they avoid taking the heat. Because they are “Johnny-punchcard” (as one contributer at the ABC has put it.)

    They avoid the abuse because they never have an original thought of their own, never side with the unpopular truth, or if they had a good idea they never follow up on it. They move like flotsam and jetsam with the currents.

    Look at the abuse Jennifer had to put up with!!!!! Abuse that no lady ought to cop. Thats why I cannot stand people like shiny-head-Hamilton with his Stalinist retouching of history.

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  • #
    Damian Allen

    Wayne “Con” Swan………

    What a Liar and a Goose !!!

    Only a mentally challenged AMOEBA would think that more Tax would benefit anyone except the federal “government” !!!!

    @##$%^&*!!!!!!!!!!!

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  • #
    Brian H

    Bush Bunny;
    Here it is: CBI Warning.

    As in everything in the whole Church of Climatology scam, it’s normally a half truth, half thought through, or both. This is dangerous enough when being pushed by the Green zealots, but when it’s Government policy and the net result is loss of competitiveness of British Industry, or worse still, more job losses in a flaky recovery, it literally defies belief that any sane person could belive this to be in the best interests of Britain and its people.

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  • #
    Bush bunny

    Thanks there sir!

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  • #
    crakar24

    I think it is fair to say the 8 emails would be the worst emails sent as i am sure Readfern would want to present the worst case to shore up his argument, so lets have a good look at the emails, i am assuming the emails have not been redacted in any way apart from the clipping done by Readfern.

    3 of 8 emails make reference to an AGW topic.

    3 of 8 emails have been clipped, this means they have a quote from a particular scientists.

    The 8th email discusses the correct way a scientist should act, not the way they currently are.

    What the above emails tell me is that they were written by people who have some knowledge of AGW, now one may argue their knowledge is incomplete and therefore their assumptions are wrong and this maybe so however they do have some knowledge which means they have taken the time to try and understand.

    Of course no one can condone the langauge but the way i see the warmbots have brought this on themselves through ignorance and can be explained thusly:

    Average Joe: I have been reading up a little on this AGW thing and i am not sure i accept it to be true

    Labor MP/Green zealot: No, no, no let me assure AGW is real the signs are all there to be seen *YOU* must pay a TAX *YOU* cannot afford to fix it.

    Average Joe: Yes but what about (insert favorite AGW sticking point here) eg Ice core dat, missing hot spot etc

    Labor MP/Green zealot: I will not stand here and be spoken to like this (turns back and walks away)

    Its like what JFK once said “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable”

    The Labor/Green zealots brought this on themselves and the scientists who rode on their coat tales have no place to hide.

    Welcome to the real world fellas.

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  • #
    GBees

    Thumbnail @#58
    Puffington Post – No surprise there. Its as left wing as you can get and funded by who might you ask? George Soros of course!!

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    crakar24

    Completely off topic and should be filed in the “its not the sun stupid thread” i know but i thought i would share it anyway.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/08/3238436.htm?section=justin

    selected quotes

    “An unusual solar flare observed by a NASA space observatory could cause some disruptions to satellite communications and power on Earth over the next day or so, officials said.”

    and

    “Mr Murtagh said space weather analysts were watching closely to see whether the event would cause any collision of magnetic fields between the Sun and Earth, some 150 million kilometres apart.”

    And just think this baby was not pointed at Earth.

    Disclaimer:

    In line with current IPCC dogma (Reg TM) this event or any events involving the sun that falls outside the bounds of TSI is deemed inconsequential when discussing climate change on Earth. This information is supplied with the sole purpose of entertainment and is not intended to be used by *anyone* as a talking point in relation to said climate change. If it is to be used as a discussion point on climate change then you are on your own.

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    AndyG55

    A question for the economically inclined.

    Given that nearly EVERY component of a house (except the timber) comes from high energy production products, eg cement, bricks, tiles, steel, copper, aluminium etc..

    what will happen to the cost of building a house, or any decent sized structure, under a carbon tax.?

    Maybe we will have to go back to all timber construction 😉

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  • #
    Olaf Koenders

    clutching at straws in desperation to eek out a PR victory from the dregs of a fading scam

    I’m not so sure it’s fading quickly enough. The more ads we see on TV telling us that energy costs are rising simply gives the gubberment and energy companies “permission” to raise their prices. There’s huge money to be made in this scam as can be seen by current advertising and it’s not evaporating as fast as it should. Show the REAL data and make it public with flyers:

    http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/sea-level-plummeting-lowest-level-since-at-least-2004

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  • #
    Olaf Koenders

    Oops.. forgot the endquote.. [sheepish grin]..

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    crakar24

    Another off topic story (sorry)

    Is this another case of “unintended consequences” by our inept government?

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/08/3238759.htm?section=justin

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    janama

    OT _ Think Inc. Conference 2011:

    Hosted by Josh Thomas, and featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson, Christopher Hitchens, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Michael Shermer, Tim Flannery, ZOMGitsCriss, Shane Koyczan and Father Bob.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7HAmbX5s28&feature=player_embedded

    Michael Shermer is described as a sceptic – he’s not – he is a full on warmist who was converted Tim Flanney’s The Weather Makers.

    The Weather Makers is shown to contain 23 misinterpretations, 28 contradictory statements, 31 untraceable or suspect sources, 45 failures to reflect uncertainty, 66 over-simplications or factual errors, 78 exaggerations and over a hundred unsupported dogmatic statements, many of them quite outlandish.

    http://www.irenicpublications.com.au/html/excerptsWMR.html

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  • #

    Crakar24: If the scientists worried about death threats ever read “Unintended Consequences” by John Ross they’d really be frightened. LOL!

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    crakar24

    Mike,

    I havent read the book but am familiar with its plot………..i would be more worried if i were a politician.

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  • #

    Some time ago an anonymous troll tried to imply that a get square might be in the offing. So I simply pointed out the fact that I was a licensed gun owner. And I then reflected on the fact that the only time I am lawfully entitled to blow the brains out of a green scumbag was during, or just after, an attempt was made on my life. I am a booringly stable individual with a profound respect for the law but that brief period in which scumbagicide is allowed free rein is about as near to heaven as a grumpy old fart can reasonably aspire.

    Winston Churchill always carried his own revolver with him despite the careful security that followed him everywhere, for exactly the same reason. If life is meant to be short then carpe diem.

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    Llew Jones

    denial != skepticism@24

    This sort of nonsense can only be entertained by those who fail to realise that Climate Science is but a small subset of contemporary science. The physics and mathematics including modelling techniques that Climate Science borrows from the natural sciences is not the plaything of alarmist climate scientist but is readily understood by scientists from other areas of specialisation as well as professional engineers.

    Not one of the present day climate scientists of the alarmist variety or otherwise, are renowned for their stature in science or mathematics. Most of them are mediocre intellects who are employed by government funded Climate Change Departments, fiddling around with models about which the truly great scientist, Dyson Freeman says;

    “I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry, and the biology of fields and farms and forests,” writes Dyson.”

    Dyson Freeman and there are others, stand head and shoulders as science authority figures above any from that science subset called Climate Science. Thus he and they are far more compelling, because of their universally accepted credentials, than the mediocre lot most of whom are best typified by the ridiculous Tim Flannery or his cohort, Will Steffen, the Climate Change academic.

    That is why those of us who at least know something about the breadth and content of contemporary science are not prepared to accept most of the promulgated alarmist nonsense that claims to be genuine science. Rather we see that alarmism as springing from a mostly evidence – less climate “science” combined with wishful thinking rather than credible science based predictions.

    Thus we owe them no respect for their “science” but abhor threats to their safety. We retain the intellectual right to separate the two and challenge them on the former

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    Bulldust

    I see the “reasonable” eco-activists are at it again:

    http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/coal-protesters-detained-by-nsw-police-20110608-1fshq.html

    Not satisfied with the Green-led minority coalition getting ready to tax CO2 emissions, they are trying to damage the coal export industry as well. If equivalent action were taken against some eco-nutter mob the press would go ballistic. It is a sign of the times that these eco-nutters barely make the news.

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    J.Hansford

    Right!……. That does it!

    I too threaten these Warmer Catastrophists with Precision….. Absolute Precision and nothing Less.

    There. I’ve said it…… 😉

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    wes george

    Here’s a list of the top-10 ways to know you’re talking to a Warming cultist…

    1.They’re hypocrites. For example: Cate Blanchett just bought beachfront property for a holiday house on a low-lying Pacific island. By definition, if you’re an evangelical warmist, unless you live in a cave on a diet of bugs and weeds, then you’re a hypocrite.

    2. They project. Wayne Swan is angry about Abbott’s “scare” campaign. Wayne is projecting. Isn’t the whole basis for a carbon tax that unless we self-harm our economy the bloody planet is going to DIE? How scary is that? How does one run a scare campaign against the biggest scare campaign in Australian history? Alarmists unconsciously project their worst vices. Skeptics are using violence to suppress the climate debate says ANU’s Vice Chancellor? Uh-huh. Projection.

    3. Selective memory. Warmism requires a very short memory… Forecasts for the end of snow in England? Down the memory hole. What about the endless Australian drought? Down the memory hole. Now both snow and big wets are signs of CAGW. The end is always nigh, but the day of doom and the means of our demise keeps shifting with the latest local weather forecast.

    4. Bizarre Fantasies: CAGW activists make stuff up, and then they forget that they made it up and soon they believe their own propaganda lies are factual. Bulldust saw a big banner at the Say Yes rally that said “100% Renewables by 2020.” When Bulldust politely questioned the bloke with the banner about this fantasy it became clear that the poor sod had so long ago disconnected from reality that he was living in a cognitive hallucination where 100% renewables in 9 years was achievable. This level of impaired perception of reality can only be achieved by the kind of indoctrination religious cults perform.

    The poor sod is an extreme case, but there are tens of thousands like him and many more suffering from less pronounced cases of alarmist fantasia. This explains why Jo Nova so often wins the rational debate yet so rarely converts any warming cultists. Cultists are immune to reason.

    5. Fear, and Loathing: The driving agents behind the CAGW myth. Why? Because you’re so fat and greedy that the planet would be better off if you hadn’t off been born!! But there is salvation, my friend, if you learn to stylishly loathe yourself.

    We should loathe our lifestyles, our culture, and our national identity because we should be afraid of the future. If you aren’t afraid of the future, if you don’t feel guilty that you aren’t living in a hovel, if you don’t loathe Australian culture then you’re morally inferior to those that do loathe themselves and huddle in fear.

    Cate Blanchett “can’t look her children in the face” unless she slaves daily to save the planet. So the multi-millionaire evangelical jet setter is determined to cajole the average Aussie battler into feeling guilty about their greedy desideratum to take up space on the planet. A bloody tree could be growing right where your fat arse is planted! Loathe yourself yet? Cate is just the warmist version of a mega-church preacher in Oklahoma preaching fire and brimstone from the pulpit while entertaining underage girls at his mansion. You want salvation? Then pay your carbon tithe, brother.

    6. Sneering: The only fun thing about being a warming cultist is that you’re morally superior to non-believers. Your primary facial expression is the classic sneer alternating with the smelling shyt look. Naturally, warmists are so sneeringly superior they can perform supernatural acts, such as Saving the Planet or controlling the weather, just by sneering daily. Also by performing simple rituals such as avoiding taboo foods, installing sacred light bulbs and tithing the Greens you can increase your kismet health number, you know, like in a computer game. Ultimately, all this sneering leads to the bizarre fantasy that parliament, if given the power to tax the air we breathe, can legislate fine weather for our grandchildren.

    7. Hate is Love! Any cult worth being brainwashed by needs a source of evil, a hated “other” to direct the self-loathing of its membership upon. That’s where we “Denialists” come in. We’re the sub-human other. Because we’re inferior and evil it’s OK to abuse us and have fantasies about torturing and killing us. The fact is humanity has been down this sordid path so many times in history that we would be unwise to imagine our enlightened modern culture is beyond descending into pogrom-like cleansing. Warmists have already created a bigoted name for us, which allows them to internalise reflexive hate to the point where comparing sceptics to Nazi denialists is ubiquitous. Warmist intellectuals repeatedly call for purges and imprisonment. The only thing saving us is that the warmist nutters are a minority and we’ve won over public opinion…. I have little doubt that if, in some parallel universe, Bob Brown were dictator of Australia we would all now be languishing in concentration work camps.

    8. Anti-Enlightenment. Warmists hate technological evolution. They hate progress and private enterprise. If the Greenies had been as powerful as they are today in 1911 there would be no mining in Australia. No coal fired power. No electricity or freedom of movement, except for the great leader and the party elite. There be no fishing industry, no paved roads, No Snowy Hydro-electric project. No dams at all. No irrigation. And our population would be capped at 5 million. Indonesia and the UN would provide us with foreign aid and send doctors on mercy missions.

    9.By Any Means Necessary: If you’re a religious cultist who believes the planet is going to die because sinister denialists are murdering Gaia for money then of course democracy is just the foul game that the denialists have set up in order to destroy the planet. So why play by the moral or legal rules of our socially unjust society. When the Gillard/Brown government loses in the next election and the carbon tax fails this view will become gospel to the warming cult.

    We can expect the behaviour of the Warmists to become increasing unhinged in proportion to their failure at the polls. Already we are almost weekly plumbing of new lows in warmist deceit and foul play. Don’t expect eco-terrorism because the warmists have lost the popular culture and with it the young who are primarily aspirational rather than angry. We should instead expect more official misconduct from technocrats, NGOs, government ministries and academic and media elites. Including amateur-hour black ops and dirty tricks from activist groups. Expect continued abuse of power and authority extending from inappropriately evangelical teachers in grade schools to university VCs who are willing to violate the dignity of their office. And, of course, continued scientific misconduct.

    10. No sense of humour: Anyone ever witnessed a warmist admit they were wrong or share a laugh. Nothing funny about Saving the Planet by confiscating other people’s money and civil liberties? Hard to feel jolly when inciting hatred and smearing your political opposition?

    When the 10.10 exploding skeptical children video came out, the warmists said it was their idea of comedy gold. Humour is about being honest and curious and open enough to expose your foibles and failures. Good humour is the antithesis of the warmist gestalt.

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    crakar24

    Ian Mott in 72,

    With what precision can you shoot your guns?

    Probably should not have said that……………

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  • #

    It is so easy to become flippant about those who hold the opposition opinion – this blog was about so called ‘death threats’ and in the light of their revelation – all seemed to be a bit over the top so to say – but and it is a real but – as the comments continue to diminish into one-liners and in many ways less about the original comment – the context of the post is being diminished in my opinion –

    Just because someone else holds a different view and wants to defend that view – denigrating their opinion with humour and jest weakens every position – whilst the moral ground is at stake – can one suggest that the battle to hold that moral ground be continued in a way that does not make one worthy of ataining the higher moral position.

    This ClimateGate – Climate Change – Carbon pollution – Greenhouse effect – and all the other names used to form debate – let us all remember that the matter in all seriousness – proposed to expend trillions of taxpayer funds over the next few decades if the Politicians have their way – the battle is in extracting the opportunities where like can be debated with like – and where scientist can operate in an environment where Governments are not promising funding if the results reflect what they want them to reflect –

    The Scientists are the messengers and their integrity as scientists is at question – pressuring them will only turn us back to 1940 when the rush was on to discover nuclear power and scientist were promised all types of deals by Governments on both sides of that conflict to develop their science in the direction the Governments wanted …

    Who of those who have posted on this blog really understand the science or are readers of the science – one mans story is another mans reason to dis-believe – let the scientist do their work … and let our task be to convince the Politicians to do the same …

    Please – do not see this as lecturing – just some friendly and common suggestions …

    The Eye-Ball

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    AndyG55

    J @#75..

    Threatening them with something they know nothing about ?? not sure that will help 😉

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    Geoff Sherrington

    Cry Babies.
    At the peak of my pro-nuclear phase, which was more anti-anti-nuclear and spare time:
    a. The 4 wheels of our car had all wheel nuts loosened
    b. The car electrical system was fiddled one day so the lights went out that night on a winding, hilly, dark road at 100 kph
    c. A device that looked like a bomb, with electronic circuits and a battery visible, was left on our home BBQ table
    d. My wife received about a dozen death threat telephone calls in my (publicised) absence; and others with heavy breathing
    e. My wife had police patrol protection at times
    f. I organized financial payment as salary with some NT Police to form a gold theft squad, with self as the quite public President of the NT Chamber of Mines and industry/police interface, knowing that 2 people in the racket were missing believed murdered
    g. Our car was rolled down a driveway, to smash into a house.

    Sorry if the shoe hurts on the other foot.

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    Jim

    Those emails sound like they were written by Warmists for propaganda purposes, they echo the dumbed down intellect we associate with bed wetting climate scientists.

    Any decent skeptic would only have to send them raw data, they know that alone would send them into meltdown.

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    Mark

    With this in mind, I’d be inclined to utter a few threats.

    Link

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    MadJak

    Jim

    Those emails sound like they were written by Warmists for propaganda purposes

    Of course they were. They’re about as good at cooking up threats as they are at defending the hockey stick!

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    Mark

    Mod.

    Please delete faux pas comment #81 as well as this one.

    Ta muchly.

    [Done]Yoda

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    Rereke Whakaaro

    Llew Jones: #73

    Nicely said, Llew.

    You might also have added that models, when used skillfully, are very good at indicating areas where your understanding is incorrect or insufficient.

    Mostly, they are best used in demonstrating that the results of any calculation can never be more precise than the precision of the most inaccurate input parameter. Or to put it another way: garbage in will always be equal, to or less than, garbage out.

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    Lawrie

    crakar 24 @ 51.

    Thanks for stirring me up. Your reminder forced me to email the goose.

    Dear Treasurer,

    Recently, in The Australian, you referred to me as a denier, a dinosaur and a partisan commentator. You also said I had a vested interest in opposing the carbon (dioxide) tax. The latter is correct. My interest lies in the science or lack of it that surrounds the notion that CO2 is a major contributor to Global Warming and hence Climate Change. That particular hypothesis was proven wrong when CO2 emissions rose 5% in the past decade whilst temperatures remained flat or even decreased. Real world data has effectively shown the hypothesis on which you base your tax to be worthless.

    As for being a denier I would ask , a denier of what? Natural climate change? No. I have been a farmer for at least two climate periods, one cooling in the 60s and 70s and one warming, the 8os and 90s. Now we are at the beginning of the next cooling phase. I do not agree with distorted data being used to “prove” a case and then with-holding data to prevent others from checking the method and conclusions. So I do deny the scientific method upon which you base your case for a tax.

    Calling me a dinosaur is rude particularly when you know nothing about me or my life as an innovator and inventor.

    The most remarkable aspect of your statement is that you lumped me in with between 66% and 80% of the Australian people who oppose your tax. You are insulting a lot of voters many of whom are not as dumb as you think they are.

    By the way, you are putting a tax on Carbon Dioxide emissions not on carbon emissions. The only carbon emissions these days are when someone illegally burns tyres. Power stations haven’t emitted carbon since they installed scrubbers back in the 70s. To call carbon a pollutant is also disengenuous. All living things, including yourself strangely enough, are carbon based and CO2 (you would call it carbon) is a necessity for plant growth and the subsequent food chain.

    Both you and the Prime Minister promised there would be no carbon (dioxide) tax. You call carbon dioxide (a gas) carbon (a solid) and refer to one of the elements which give us life as a pollutant. You believe computer models which are at best unreliable and ignore real world data which shows oceans cooling and sea level rise slowing. Is it really so hard for you to accept that we, the people, don’t believe anything you, the PM or her advisors say?

    As requested I included my name and adress. I wonder which flunkey will respond.

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  • #

    This is a great response – and likewise I too wrote to the ALP Cabinet Ministers and Mr Turnbull asking them for their light bulb moment and if they would be prepared to share what is was that made them converts –

    Given the science and it is detailed – how can anyone be convinced to the point of complete conversion … most sceptics are just not convinced – and in the process of being forced to make a decision – of course there is gonna be hesitation – do we all remember the Y2K bug (Millennium Bug) that scientist got us all in a flap about …
    The Eye-Ball …

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    Ian Hill

    wes george @ 76

    If you’ll allow me to complete the cricket team:

    11. Smugness: The tone in which they talk to you. I’ve had friends comment on the heater being on. When I question what they mean they change the subject in a way that you know you’ve been belittled but you are assured you are still friends with them. I’ve seen a lady minister at a funeral service very inappropriately preach about how “correct” Christianity is. At the Adelaide Say Yes Rally the lady MC did it … “something is finally being done about climate change” … . It’s just the way they say it. In each case it’s “I’m right and if you dare question me you’re dead meat buster”.

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    Raven

    Hi folks
    I was sent this link from U.S it claims global warming scam architects are based in England and hold to a belief in something called communitarianism I’d not heard off it before , however it did make interesting reading , this website slanders without mercy yet he is not taken to task for his claims , thoughts anyone ?
    Is the guy out there or could there be some truth to it ?

    http://www.stopcp.com/cpmindmap.php

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    Cookster

    OT, a great piece by Gary Johns in todays The Australian (linked below).

    Apologies to non Australian readers of Jo’s site but the proposed Carbon Tax is a huge issue for our country and to quote one (in)famous Climate Scientist it is a ‘travesty’ it is even being considered.

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/european-pissants-humbug-hypocrisy/story-fn59niix-1226071958175

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    Joe V.

    Raven @ 89.
    Such ideas of a coordinated movement enjoy a certain popularity in the US, and are often readily brushed aside as just such.
    Who is behind these claims – I can’t seem to work it out from the site. I’m afraid personality plays rather a part in giving credence to such claims. Knowing who is behind it often suggests how much effort is worth looking into it further.
    The claims might be plausible, but it’s not quite like science this kind of thing.

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    1DandyTroll

    Maybe they get some real death threat or what ever once in a while, but, without saying it is right, is that not to be expected when the whole CAGW is a death threat to pretty much all of humanity unless we do what the crazed climate communist hippie parade wants, i.e. shit loads of cash.

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    Damian Allen

    Even those supposed “death threats” to global warmists are a beat up……

    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/even_those_death_threats_are_a_beat_up/

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    Damian Allen

    We shouldn’t forget the INSULTS that so called journalist laurie oakes spewed out at ordinary decent Australians who don’t want a Great Big New Tax on EVERYTHING all based on the global warming FRAUD.

    Wingnuts and looney tunes abound :-

    http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/editorials/wingnuts-and-looney-tunes-abound/story-e6frfhqo-1226016151079

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  • #

    Good point, Crakar24. My problem is that scumbags all look the same to me so I might just follow the splendid advice of the D Coy 6RAR CSM at the battle of Long Tan, who jumped down beside a digger under a hail of shot and said, “do you know any of these people, Dig? No sir. Good, then shoot anyone you don’t know”.

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    crakar24

    Ian in 95,

    I like your style but a better idea would be to just look for the “tattoo” on the forehead if you see one hold your fire if not light them up. Which reminds me of a joke, if you know someone who is bald tell them they should get rabbits tattoed on their forehead because from a distance they look like —hares sorry hairs.

    By the way dont know if this has been posted

    http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/false_alarmists/

    I love this line

    “Some old, already-exposed emails. A five-year-old letter. And an argument at a faculty wine-and-cheese night. That’s the extent of the threats facing Australian climate scientists. Must these people exaggerate everything?”

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  • #
    MattB

    I don’t see how you guys can;t see that #8 has sinister undertones.

    If you don’t do XYZ … “we will get extremely organised and precise against you.”

    “The institution and funders that support you will find the attention concerning.”

    I mean surely sceptics should already be organised… seem fairly organised to me. And I guess your interpretation of “concerning” is as valid as mine.

    There is also the fact that these guys are scientists, they argue the science, so essentially the threat is that if you don’t push science we agree with the consequences will happen.

    I note you guys didn’t quote the other ones:)

    But anyway essentially I do agree… there are nutters out there and anyone with a public profile recieves abusive emails from keyboard warriors – it is par for the course and nothing to worry about (although if something seemed particularly direct then you would do something).

    Just on here I’ve certainly felt that posts have been directed against me implying that people will attempt to take actions to discredit me publically, “out” me if you like, for my position. It was a few months ago and I’ve slowed posting a lot since because yeah, imagined or otherwise, I genuinely felt threatened at least in terms of the removal of my freedom of speech (not from a mod or anything).

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    Ken Stewart

    First comment I ever got on my blog was very similar to these, so I just deleted it. Big deal. Not threatening, just abusive and ignorant. get over it.

    Ken

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    Konrad

    There has been some discussion of this issue at WUWT. I have copied my post from there as I feel it may cast some light on the machinations behind these conveniently timed press releases:

    The half baked stories of recent death threats to Australian climate pseudo scientists were cooked up from stale emails years old. These stories however were not intended to garner sympathy for the climate activist scientists, rather they were intended as a smear against sceptics. This was supposed to lend support to calls for less coverage of sceptic views in the media as it may encourage such behaviour. This is evidenced by stories such as this –

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/calls-to-calm-a-climate-of-fear/story-e6frgcjx-1226070849313

    – being placed in media shortly after the initial death threat stories. Delightfully the whole sorry edifice of lies has collapsed, causing main stream media embarrassment to it’s intended benefactors.

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    Damian Allen

    Maybe these GAIA CULTISTS will run a national competion to find the best tatoo design for all the MAJORITY of Australians who don’t a want a Great Big New Tax on EVERYTHING based on the FRAUD of global warming……

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    Damian Allen

    The term ‘DeathThreatGate’ is now being used to describe these FAKE death threats………….

    The motto of the alp (Australian Liars Party), “Whatever it takes”.

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  • #

    Mattb, at #97: Thanks for your comment. Let me know next time you see a comment that you find threatening. I don’t want that, and I have asked people in the past not to be so tough on you. I find your faith in the compulsive-exaggerators who pretend to be impartial scientists, a little puzzling, but I’m glad that you post here. Fans of AGW who are as well mannered and good humoured as you are are rare indeed, and your contribution would be missed.

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    Graeme Bird

    Its a thing common to all organisms that their own effluent is toxic to themselves. Still, having said that, one would like to be warned when a fellow is known to be so sensitive. You shout at these people once or twice, they are likely to lose 5kg, lose contact with the sun, and lose touch with the rest of humanity outside of work.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxwvOncHVbQ

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    Damian Allen

    “MattB”,
    Have you claimed your $10,000 prize from the Global Warming Challenge yet by providing them with irrefutable PROOF that human beings and carbon DIOXIDE (PLANT FOOD) are responsible for global warming ????????

    http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/10k-for-the-first-person-to-prove-weve-caused-climate-change/

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    MattB

    Look Jo it is probably a healthy dose of occasional paranoia too:)

    Damian Allen.. you prompt me to ask of Jo or the mods if it is possible to “ignore” posters on this blog? You seriously are a fool of the highest order and I wish you and your mental health professionals all the best.

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    Damian Allen

    “MattB”,
    Just answer the question instead of responding with OBFUSCATION and ABUSE.

    Still that is the Modus Operandi of you and your fellow GAIA Cultists…..

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    Damian Allen

    One of our regular Warmist Contributers “Matt b” actually stated the following admission in post (199) of this discussion:-

    http://joannenova.com.au/2011/03/thousands-of-angry-ordinary-australians-turn-up-and-alarmist-smears-begin/comment-page-5/#comment-244212

    …………
    The words of MattB;-

    “Therefore we can only logically conclude that there is No Proof, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that mankind is responsible for global warming”

    THAT’S WHAT I SAID!!!
    THAT’S THE ANSWER!
    ……………….

    That response was in relation to my challenge at post (121) of the same discussion

    My Words (and challenge):-
    Simple question for you characters “MattB”, “John Brookes” etc..

    Please post at least one Peer Reviewed Scientific Paper which PROVES, Beyond A Shadow Of A Doubt, that mankind is responsible for global warming.

    I await your responses with baited breath…….
    …………

    Well there you have it!

    The warmists admit that there is No Proof and thus No Justification for a carbon DIOXIDE (Plant Food) Tax!!

    I rest my case.

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    Damian Allen

    Silly Nazi hijinks: let’s tattoo global warming deniers “for the grandchildren”…….

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/09/silly-nazi-hijinks-lets-tattoo-deniers-for-the-grandchildren/

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    Damian Allen

    Nazi collaborator Soros behind Carbon Cate’s ‘tax me’ ad

    Foreign billionaire hedge fund speculator, drug pusher and Nazi collaborator George Soros is the éminence grise behind the Cate Blanchett carbon tax ad, which is sponsored by Soros’ Australian front, GetUp.
    “The media circus over Cate Blanchett is irrelevant,” Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood declared today. “The real issue is George Soros’ underhanded intervention to manipulate Australian politics.”
    By his own admission, George Soros was a witting participant in the Holocaust, as a Nazi collaborator with the extermination machine run by Adolf Eichmann in Soros’ native Hungary. In at least two television interviews, in 1994 and 1998, Soros freely admitted to his Nazi collaboration, and declared that he felt no guilt over his actions, or over the extermination of nearly a half million of his fellow Hungarian Jews. Even worse, he exulted in his autobiography that, “It was actually, probably the happiest year of my life—that year of German occupation. For me it was a very positive experience.”
    Soros went on to become an agent for the City of London, using his Quantum hedge fund as a political battering ram to smash nations and national currencies, under the personal direction of British cabinet minister Lord Malloch-Brown, a board member of the Quantum Fund.
    Aside from forcing British imperial economic policies such as free trade and deregulation onto targeted nations, Soros has used his ill-gotten loot to madly push the legalisation of hard drugs and euthanasia. And, on behalf of British geopolitical strategy, he has helped topple national governments by financing the creation of fake “grassroots” protest movements, such as the Ukrainian “Orange Revolution” and Georgian “Rose Revolution”, aimed at destabilising Russia. And GetUp is just one more fake “grassroots” movement. Look at the history.
    GetUp is the Australian counterpart to Soros’ MoveOn.org in the United States. The two co-founders of GetUp, Harvard graduates Jeremy Heimans and David Madden, both worked for the Soros-funded MoveOn.org in the U.S. to also launch the global web “movement”, Avaaz.org. Madden was previously a consultant to the World Bank and Heimans previously consulted for the UN, OECD and ILO. And when GetUp suddenly popped up in 2005, this “people’s organisation” boasted among its founding board members: John Hewson, former federal opposition leader, former Macquarie Bank Executive Director, and Trilateral Commission member; Don Mercer, a mining chief, former ANZ CEO, and a past Director of the Australian Institute of Company Directors; and Evan Thornley, the super-rich Labor Party money-bags who was also National Secretary of the Australian Fabian Society, to which belong all of the ALP’s leading advocates of population reduction—Julia Gillard, Bob Carr and Kelvin Thomson.
    The Blanchett ad is also sponsored by the Australian Conservation Foundation, World Wide Fund for Nature Australia, Greenpeace Australia Pacific and the Australian Council of Trade Unions.
    Mr Isherwood said, “It’s not exactly surprising to see the Prince Philip-founded ACF in bed with a former Nazi collaborator, Soros. After all, Philip’s own family in Germany was full of ranking Nazis as documented in the new film Unlawful Killing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnzmk1E6QmE) , while his two partners in founding the WWF in 1961—the mother of the world’s entire environmentalist movement—were former Nazi SS member Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and British Eugenics Society President Julian Huxley, and here in Australia the guy he deployed to do all the legwork in setting up the ACF, Francis Noble Ratcliffe, was a professed admirer of Mussolini. And of course Hitler’s Nazi Party grew out of the post-World War I ‘green movement’ in Germany in the first place. Most of the top Nazis were Greens.
    “So what is the ACTU doing in bed with Philip’s ACF and WWF and the old Nazi George Soros? Perhaps it should explain to its members why it is spending their money to support a Nazi agenda, and one which will tax them out of existence, literally!”

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    MattB

    Damian, 107 being the case why do you keep asking me the same question?

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    Graeme Bird

    Its about time you answered don’t you think?

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    MattB

    If you read 107 you’ll see I did answer it Graeme. There is no paper that proves anything beyond a shadow of a doubt. That is an answer is it not?

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    Graeme Bird

    Did you use BECKS CO2 RECORD????????

    Or did you bring a CO2 record of your own choosing?

    Get serious. Get real. Or give it away, apologize and retract. You are not perfect. You can get things wrong.
    You might think you are perfect but you are not. So its okay to say sorry and retract.

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    MattB

    Is that addressed to me Graeme? I honestly have no idea what you are talking about?

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    Mark

    MattB is right that it’s impossible to prove a hypothesis beyond any doubt. Likewise, Einstein was right when he stated “a thousand experiments can’t prove me right, just one can prove me wrong”.

    I don’t think AGW as a hypothesis even gets started. The last ten years have seen a fall in temps. despite a continuing rise in CO2. One can’t keep saying “just wait a bit longer, it will get hotter”. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Given the predictive skills of the GCMs I won’t hold my breath waiting for AGW to become a theory.

    There was a good thread recently at WUWT on the perils of using the “exclusionary” principle in science. It seems even a luminary like Charles Darwin made an excursion down this false path and had to retract. He learned from his mistake. Pity so many “climate scientists” don’t.

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    Paul S

    Proving things beyond doubt is not the business of science. All scientific “truths” are contingent – hence Einstein’s statement. Interestingly, those pushing CAGW seem to want to have a bet both ways. On the one hand, they say we can’t know with absolute certainty that CO2 et al are causing climate changes, but the precautionary principle dictates that we act as if they are. On the other hand, they appeal to scientific truth as if the moment a statement is declared as being scientific, it is somehow beyond argument – that there is a higher form of knowledge not available to the ordinary masses. They make claims about future events with a certainty that is not supported by the data. They ignore data and arguments contrary to their own view and instead impugn the motivations of those with whom they disagree. This is standard practice in academia, as anyone who has knowledge of universities will know, but is not useful to public policy.

    Matt B; I agree that personal attacks are unpleasant and, more to the point, useless. They do not further debate or understanding. I do note however, that I have responded to posts of yours on at least two occaisions, to which you did not reply.

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    TrueNews

    @wes george: #76
    Brilliant

    This has to be the best post I have read so far.
    Well written and easy reading humour.

    Thank you Wes

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    TrueNews

    @MattB #97

    I had noticed your absense, but, of course, didn’t know the reason.

    I just want to echo Jo’s sentiments at #102.
    “I’m glad that you post here. Fans of AGW who are as well mannered and good humoured as you are are rare indeed, and your contribution would be missed.”

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    Graeme Bird

    Look people. Proving things right is the very essence of science. And you prove things right by virtue of finding convergent evidence. The idea that proving things right isn’t scientific comes from the preponderance of exceptionally bad science in the 20th century. You can never prove special relativity right because it is wrong. Not merely wrong but ridiculous; a walking contradiction. Its not science its religion.

    This sort of thing surrounds us now and people start to think its what science is all about. But with bad twentieth century theory there is no science in its development, nor in its maintenance. And when you want to lock in something really unscientific and wrong you set up a conference and go to Copenhagen.

    We see that science is about proof when we look at good science and scientific conclusions that are no longer controversial. Does anyone still believe that the moon, sun and stars rotate around the earth in the firmament? No because there is convergent evidence that it happens another way. Not “validation” (a deeply unscientific word) but VERIFICATION. Convergent verification.

    We find these things out by ranking and re-ranking competing hypotheses as the new evidence comes in. If you are surrounded by dud ideas like plate tectonics, the big bang, special relativity and so forth, and you think that nothings amiss, of course you are going to be lead to believe that science cannot prove anything. Science cannot take wrong ideas and make them right.

    Now if you want to prove the global warming fraud isn’t fraud first you must start with the CO2 record. But if Becks record makes you weep then you have to formulate your own. This is why this matter is science fraud. Since you cannot prove that CO2 is a more-than-beneficial warmer or hateful cooler without the CO2 record.

    The inability to prove that CO2 is a bigtime warmer is not something inherent to science. Its something that is inherent to CO2 not being a bigtime warmer, or to someone showing up without a CO2 record.

    You cannot prove bad science. You cannot prove things without using the scientific method. But the pursuit of good science is about proving things. And it isn’t about much else.

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    Graeme Bird

    Here is the CO2 record. If you have someone claiming that we are destroying the biosphere by way of CO2 enrichment, and he is making his claim without reference to the CO2 record (or his own CO2 record) then he’s engaged in inherently fraudulent activity.

    Also we are seeing the use of a single proxy, ie the ice core data, as if it were accurate measurement. Its not measurement. Its a proxy. You need at least 3 proxies to reconstruct a substitute record of anything, and no edifice ought to be built up from a single proxy study.

    You can see why this is the case, because suppose you start with your ice proxy record. And then you go to your leaf stomata proxy record, and the two are giving you radically different outcomes? Well obviously you are going to need a third proxy, just to tell you if either of your first two proxies are valid. If one proxy is way out for a particular year you need a tie-break to help you investigate what has gone wrong in that year. So all this talk about the Vostock record is pretty misplaced.

    A terrible example of using a single proxy and messing everything up is with red shift. When people are measuring red shift they are not measuring distance they are measuring a red shift proxy for distance. They ought never have deluded themselves that they were measuring distance. To be sure about distance they needed three or more proxies for distance ….. hence the bad science of the big bang.

    Here is the CO2 record. I think you may find it useful for anticipating what years you will find ghastly hunger and famine. But not particularly useful when anticipating heat waves.

    http://drtimball.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/composite-of-co2-measurements.jpg

    “I’m glad that you post here. Fans of AGW who are as well mannered and good humoured as you are are rare indeed, and your contribution would be missed.”

    Oh come on truenews. She is just being kind. The fellow is dead wood. If you haven’t found out by now that this is science fraud you have to be judged as mentally deficient, terminally stupid, degenerate, and so forth.

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    Richard S Courtney

    Friends:

    To my surprise, I write to support Matt B (in part) because a ‘scientific proof’ is a contradiction in terms.

    Science does not attempt to prove ideas: it attempts to disprove them.

    Pseudoscience attempts to prove ideas.

    Science consists of the following:

    (a) Observations are made.
    (b) An hypothesis is evinced to explain the observations.
    (c) The hypothesis is useful if it makes predictions.
    (d) The predictions are compared to observations of the real world.
    (e) If the hypothesis agrees with all observations then it is elevated to the status of a theory.
    (f) If any observation disagrees with the hypothesis or theory then the hypothesis or theory is disproved.
    (g) A disproved hypothesis or theory must be amended or rejected.

    The above list is the basic method but there are complications; e.g. more than one theory may exist and be used (wave and corpuscle explanations of light) to explain contradictory observations, when there are competing hypotheses then the hypothesis that contains least assumptions is favoured (Occam’s Razor), and etc..

    Pseudoscience consists of the following

    1. An hypothesis is adopted as fact and is called a theory.
    2. Observations that refute the hypothesis are ignored.
    3. Observations that agree with the hypothesis are asserted to be proof of the hypothesis.

    AGW is a disproved scientific hypothesis and is a pseudoscientific theory.

    Richard

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    Mark

    Graeme Bird:

    Yes, indeed!

    Red-shift and its associated Big Bang “theory” drives my otherwise excellent blood pressue sky high. I am an amateur astronomer and have largely ceased to purchase magazines in the field which consist of a steady diet of articles fervently professing the “truth” of BB theory.

    As for “dark matter-energy”, if there’s so much of the stuff around how come we can’t detect it in our immediate vicinity? The squillions squandered on crap science in the last century would have eliminated poverty world-wide many times over.

    What do we have instead? A world-wide cabal of centres of “learning” dedicated solely to the enrichment of themselves at the expense of taxpayers.

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    Andrew G

    Interesting that back in January Prof. Andy Pitman went forth with this article:
    http://www.smh.com.au/environment/beware-the-slings-and-arrows-of-outraged-sceptics-scientists-warned-20100125-muka.html

    And now we get the big story about death threats that weren’t.
    If it wasn’t sullying a serious topic it would just be sad.

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    Graeme Bird

    “To my surprise, I write to support Matt B (in part) because a ‘scientific proof’ is a contradiction in terms.”

    No you have changed the subject Richard. We are not talking about “A proof” that is some sort of one- nerd-creation in a bedroom with pen and paper. Don’t change the subject.

    We are talking about the reality that science, undertaken properly, is about sorting truth from falsehood. That is to say proving stuff. Thats what science is about and if its not about that you are not doing it right.

    And science has proved stuff. Science, prior to the 20th century proved a great many things. Now we just “validate” wrong theories. But this is simply because we are not following the scientific method.

    The philosophers, in their own priesthood self-interest, have told us that truth is about bivalent deductive exactitude. They have done so in error. Truth is about convergent evidence. Bivalent deductive exactitude has nothing to do with it.

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    MattB

    “We are not talking about “A proof” that is some sort of one- nerd-creation in a bedroom with pen and paper.”

    Maybe not you Graeme… but your not as thick as Damian. I’m pretty sure that is exactly what he wants.

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    Graeme Bird

    “Red-shift and its associated Big Bang “theory” drives my otherwise excellent blood pressue sky high. I am an amateur astronomer and have largely ceased to purchase magazines in the field which consist of a steady diet of articles fervently professing the “truth” of BB theory.”

    Yeah and lets hope Phil Plait burns in hell for awhile. We see this rolling thunder of lies in every area of intellectual life. The financial review is a relentless drumbeat of Keynesian error. Its just deadening and deafening and people only notice it in their area and imagine that its an odd and awkward artifice to do only with their specialty.

    I thought only economics was affected because of all the hired bullshit, and the associated political ideology. I was most surprised that the exact same drumbeat of nonsense was a living reality in the physical sciences.

    In every area of life we are being treated like Soviet peasants. If you thought it was just your subject you need to disabuse yourself of that notion. As far as I can make out Chemistry is relatively free of this relentless lying and cult of personality. But then the Chemists are themselves divorced from reality since they do not realise that everyone else is being lied to about all things.

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    Graeme Bird

    “(a) Observations are made.
    (b) An hypothesis is evinced to explain the observations.
    (c) The hypothesis is useful if it makes predictions.
    (d) The predictions are compared to observations of the real world.
    (e) If the hypothesis agrees with all observations then it is elevated to the status of a theory.
    (f) If any observation disagrees with the hypothesis or theory then the hypothesis or theory is disproved.
    (g) A disproved hypothesis or theory must be amended or rejected.”

    No good. Because you need the context that only the ranking of three or more hypotheses can bring. In the same way as we need to have at least three proxies for a reconstruction, we ought to have three or more hypotheses for ranking and re-ranking as the data is considered. Or else all the data will be contextualized inappropriately; in view of the hypothesis one has in mind.

    You cannot and must not judge an hypothesis in a vacuum. Its the hypotheses that wind up falling by the wayside which are those that point you in the right direction. Think of a dying man fingering his murderer as he silently keels over, and you will remember what I’m saying here.

    In this context it must be understood that there is no such thing as the null hypothesis. This is such a daft and anti-philosophical notion its hard to understand how it ever got started. The invention of the null hypothesis is really a failure to properly define the competing hypotheses.

    The design of research projects is bedeviled by these philosophically incoherent notions. Should we wish to design a research project with only one hypothesis we can do nought but “validate” that hypothesis. To validate an hypothesis is simply to FAIL TO FALISIFY that hypothesis. There is a technical term for research projects designed along these lines and that technical term is: “a waste of money.”

    Any of you who want to try things my way will see your productivity and cost-effectiveness will pick up immediately. You need to do a lot more pacing about and pre-production before the project is launched. You have been handicapped by crap epistemology coming from 20th century philosophers.

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    Cookster

    This might be a bit late for this post but it is on topic in terms of hate messages relating to the climate debate. Richard Glover of the ABC has just written another opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald bemoaning the ‘hate’ messages he received after his recent article suggesting Climate Change deniers be tatooed. Clear case of rose coloured glasses or Pots and Black Kettles me thinks!

    http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/a-climate-change-wave-of-hate-20110609-1ftix.html

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    Larry Fields

    I think that the Australian government should do something to help their poor beleaguered climate scientists. Poor babies! How about free lifetime prescriptions for Prozac? If that’s too expensive, the least the government could do is supply every climate scientist with a free unabridged dictionary, with the definitions for the words “death” and “threat” highlighted in yellow.

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    Richard S Courtney

    Graeme Bird:

    I am replying to points made in your posts at #124 and #127.

    In #124 you say to me:

    No you have changed the subject Richard. We are not talking about “A proof” that is some sort of one- nerd-creation in a bedroom with pen and paper. Don’t change the subject.

    Bollocks!
    I never change the subject: I always cling to it like a limpet.

    My post at #121 was addressing the long-running issue – continued here at e.g. #104 – between Damian Allen and Matt B where Damien Allen asks Matt B:

    “MattB”,
    Have you claimed your $10,000 prize from the Global Warming Challenge yet by providing them with irrefutable PROOF that human beings and carbon DIOXIDE (PLANT FOOD) are responsible for global warming ????????

    That is why my post at #121 began by saying:

    To my surprise, I write to support Matt B (in part) because a ‘scientific proof’ is a contradiction in terms.

    Science does not attempt to prove ideas: it attempts to disprove them.

    Pseudoscience attempts to prove ideas.

    I fail to understand how you can accuse me of changing the subject.

    Then you wrongly assert:

    We are talking about the reality that science, undertaken properly, is about sorting truth from falsehood. That is to say proving stuff.

    No! That is plain wrong.

    Science is about seeking the closest approximation to the truth that we can find. And every scientific ‘truth’ is conditional: every real scientist knows his work may be overthrown or modified by future work.

    In science nothing gets to be proven but everything is conditional: theories stand as our best explanation because every attempt to disprove (i.e. falsify) them has failed to date.

    My post at #121 itemised the basic method of science and added:

    The above list is the basic method but there are complications; e.g. more than one theory may exist and be used (wave and corpuscle explanations of light) to explain contradictory observations, when there are competing hypotheses then the hypothesis that contains least assumptions is favoured (Occam’s Razor), and etc..

    But you quote my “list” and respond saying:

    No good. Because you need the context that only the ranking of three or more hypotheses can bring. In the same way as we need to have at least three proxies for a reconstruction, we ought to have three or more hypotheses for ranking and re-ranking as the data is considered. Or else all the data will be contextualized inappropriately; in view of the hypothesis one has in mind.

    Say what!?
    My post you are answering included the paragraph I have quoted in this post which begins “The above list is the basic method but …”. It specifically addresses your point.

    It is a bit rich for you to say what I have written is “No good ” because you failed to read the part of my post that addressed your point.

    And your assertion that “we ought to have three or more hypotheses for ranking …” is plain daft. What if we can only think of one hypothesis (e.g. things fall down – not up – so we hypothesise that there is a force acting in the downward direction which – for convenience – we shall call ‘gravity’)?

    And you make a ridiculous assertion when you say:

    In this context it must be understood that there is no such thing as the null hypothesis.

    Absolutely wrong!
    The null hypothesis is a fundamental principle of science.

    It says that a system is expected to not change unless a change is imposed on it. Or, to put that another way, if no change to the behaviour of a system is observed then it is assumed that the system has not changed.

    Indeed, the null hypothesis is important within the context of the AGW debate because no recent climate behaviour has been detected that differs from previous climate behaviours and, therefore, the null hypothesis (i.e. that the climate system has not changed) applies.

    In conclusion, your posts at #124 and #127 demonstrate that you need to learn the basics of the scientific method before again writing about the subject.

    Richard

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    Brian H

    Richard S Courtney:
    June 12th, 2011 at 9:41 am

    Excellent post. To put a finer point on it, true scientists love to see hypotheses, even their own, disproven, because it opens the door to concocting even better ones!

    E.G. – true physicists hunger to see find fatal exceptions to The Standard Model. Its persistence blocks the way to understanding gravity and EM simultaneously.

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    Brian H

    Arg. Forgot preview.
    s/b “see or find”, not “see find”.
    {Blush}

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    Graeme Bird

    Yeah you are right Richard. I should have reviewed the thread. But there is no null hypothesis. Thats a fundamentally wrong notion. There are only competing hypotheses.

    “In science nothing gets to be proven but everything is conditional: theories stand as our best explanation because every attempt to disprove (i.e. falsify) them has failed to date.”

    What about the hypothesis that you cannot prove anything? Your position is self-contradictory.

    Are you willing to say that the hearts role as a pump faces the possibility of being overturned? That the sun may revolve around the moon? From the individuals point of view its pretty easy to say that you might always be wrong. But science as an institution has proved many things.

    The emphasis on falsification as opposed to verification is just Popper. He’s no great shakes when it comes to epistemology.

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    Graeme Bird

    I want to really emphasize this. Science is about verifying, ie PROVING stuff. If thats not what you are doing you are doing things wrong. Now fine, as a practical matter, you can always be proven wrong, by information coming out of left field. But that doesn’t mean that the pursuit of science isn’t about verification …. ie proving stuff.

    And how do you prove things? By mustering convergent evidence and by no other method. The Popper approach is a crude cookie-cutter approach. Its never worked. Its never resolved anything. Like most philosophers Popper got a good idea and took it way too far. Falsification is a useful idea. But it ought never replace the pre-eminence of VERIFICATION ie proving stuff.

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    Graeme Bird

    I sez:

    “We are talking about the reality that science, undertaken properly, is about sorting truth from falsehood. That is to say proving stuff.
    No! That is plain wrong.”

    Richard sez:

    “No! That is plain wrong.”

    No I’m right and you are wrong. I’m not prepared to take shabby twentieth-century epistemology from anyone. Bad epistemology is really at the heart of all the problems we face today.

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    Graeme Bird

    “(a) Observations are made.
    (b) An hypothesis is evinced to explain the observations.
    (c) The hypothesis is useful if it makes predictions.
    (d) The predictions are compared to observations of the real world.
    (e) If the hypothesis agrees with all observations then it is elevated to the status of a theory.
    (f) If any observation disagrees with the hypothesis or theory then the hypothesis or theory is disproved.
    (g) A disproved hypothesis or theory must be amended or rejected.”

    No its STILL wrong. Its not ever going to be right. You need the perspective that ranking three or more hypotheses brings.

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    Richard S Courtney

    Graeme Bird:

    Your posts at #133 and #134 provide additional demonstration that you do not know what you are talking about.

    They admit that you made a false allegation: ie.

    Yeah you are right Richard. I should have reviewed the thread.

    Make demonstrably untrue assertions of your self-imposed ignorance: i.e.

    But there is no null hypothesis. Thats a fundamentally wrong notion. There are only competing hypotheses.

    No! You are plain wrong.
    Google “null hypothesis definition” and you will discover it is as I said at #130, and that each branch of science applies the null hypothesis in its own way: e.g. this is how chemistry applies it according to
    http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryglossary/g/Null-Hypothesis-Definition.htm

    Definition:
    The null hypothesis is the proposition that implies no effect or no relationship between phenomena. The null hypothesis is popular because it can be tested and found to be false, which then implies there is a relationship between the observed data.
    Also Known As: H0, no-difference hypothesis

    Examples:
    “Hyperactivity is unrelated to eating sugar.” is an example of a null hypothesis. If the hypothesis is tested and found to be false, using statistics, then a connection between hyperactivity and sugar ingestion may be indicated.

    As I said at #130, the null hypothesis is an important scientific principle. It has importance when considering AGW because there is no statistically significant difference between climate behaviour before and after the start of industrial civilisation.

    Then. in response to my having said:

    In science nothing gets to be proven but everything is conditional: theories stand as our best explanation because every attempt to disprove (i.e. falsify) them has failed to date.

    You ask me:

    What about the hypothesis that you cannot prove anything? Your position is self-contradictory.

    I answer that my point was about “In science ..” but your question is about “in philosophy”. The scientific method is an attempt to understand the natural world: philosophy is an attempt to understand human thought. So, my answer is not “self-contradictory” because your question has no relevance to what I wrote.

    Then you post two ‘straw men’, saying:

    Are you willing to say that the hearts role as a pump faces the possibility of being overturned? That the sun may revolve around the moon? From the individuals point of view its pretty easy to say that you might always be wrong. But science as an institution has proved many things.

    No, I am not willing to say that because
    (a) “the heart’s role” and the Sun’s orbit are ‘straw men’:
    i.e. they are arguments I did not put,
    (b) I know almost nothing of human physiology, and
    (c) I cannot predict the future.

    However, from the perspective of somebody on the Moon, the Sun does orbit the Moon. And, from the perspective of somebody on the Earth, the Sun orbits the Earth. This is an example of ‘relativity’ which Einstein demonstrated when he famously asked the Ticket Collector, “Please tell me when Cambridge reaches this train”.

    But it is NOT true that science has proved anything. Please note that this is a philosophical – n.b. not a scientific – point. For centuries it seemed that Newtonian Mechanics had no “possibility of being overturned”, and then the perturbation of Mercury’s orbit was observed.
    We have the most refined theories our present knowledge enables and nothing more.

    You conclude by saying to me:

    I’m right. You are wrong.

    So, I can see no purpose in further discussion with you.

    Richard

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    Richard S Courtney

    Graeme Bird:

    Your posts at ‘135, #136 and #138 appeared whilst I was drafting my post that appeared as #138.

    I concluded my post at #138 saying;

    I can see no purpose in further discussion with you.

    Your posts at #135 to #137 confirm me in that conclusion.

    Richard

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    MattB

    Don’t give up Richard… he’s not called you a blockhead yet!

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    Graeme Bird

    There is no need for me to google the null hypothesis. There is no such thing. There are only competing hypotheses.

    The process is to rank and re-rank competing hypotheses in parallel. If you aren’t doing this you are wasting taxpayer money and you ought to stop. Again: You are wrong and I am right. Further you have no basis upon which to contradict me, since by your own estimation you cannot know a damn thing.

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    Graeme Bird

    Lets go over it again. There is no null hypothesis. There are only many competing hypotheses. To claim that there is a null hypothesis means failing to define properly an hypothesis for no good reason. And also singling out one hypothesis for special treatment. Also for no good reason.

    Richard you are nobodies philosopher.

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    Graeme Bird

    You are a dummy Richard. You just have no capacity when it comes to philosophy. You ought to have seen the failure of the “null hypothesis” hypothesis the minute it was pointed out to you. Not bright.

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    Richard S Courtney

    Graeme Bird:

    Thankyou for your posts at #141 to #143. They prove to all onlookers the wisdom of my decision:

    I can see no purpose in further discussion with you.

    However, you may care to consider if my being “nobodies philosopher” and “Not bright” affect the facts I have presented.

    Richard

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    Graeme Bird

    Lets have that retraction Richard. You say that science cannot prove anything. I gave you two examples that prove you wrong.

    You have been proven wrong you blockhead. You have to retract.

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    MattB

    Wait for it, wait for it….. ZING – #144 ahh there it is “blockhead”.

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    Richard S Courtney

    Friends:

    I write to explain why I addressed the nonsensical arguments put in this thread by Graeme Bird.

    Firstly, the demands for Matt B to provide “proof” for AGW have been repeatedly posted on this blog over several months. Those demands deflect serious discussion of subjects on this blog. Indeed, such a demand again occured in this thread and I fail to see its relevance to the subject of this thread.

    But nobody can provide a scientific “proof” of anything: science can only provide disproof of suggestions and ideas. Simply, science shows some things are wrong but cannot show anything is right.

    Hence, the disruptive demands made of Matt B need to be stopped because – otherwise – they could continue for ever. At #121 I made an attempt to stop them.

    Secondly, this idea that science “proves” things is directly pertinent to the AGW debate. When somebody says “The science is settled” then (as I explained at #121) they are making a pseudoscientific statement. In science nothing is ever “settled” because science only “proves” some things are wrong and cannot “prove” anything is right.

    Thirdly, Graeme Bird uses the logical falacy of ‘argument by assertion’ (which is also widely used by AGW-advocates). For example, he repeatedly asserts that the null hypothes is not an axiom of the scientific method (e.g. at #141) he says;

    There is no need for me to google the null hypothesis. There is no such thing. There are only competing hypotheses.

    But that was in response to my having shown (with a link and a quotation at #138) that my explanation of the null hypothesis is correct.

    And he keeps asserting the silly idea that there is a need to evaluate three hypotheses; e.g. at #137 he writes;

    You need the perspective that ranking three or more hypotheses brings.

    Although I had already answered that assertion (which, it seems, is derived from his own imagination) when I wrote at #130 saying;

    What if we can only think of one hypothesis (e.g. things fall down – not up – so we hypothesise that there is a force acting in the downward direction which – for convenience – we shall call ‘gravity’)?

    And I add that Newtonian Mechanics has provided great benefits despite its basis in only having a set of single hypotheses (known as Newton’s Laws) none of which was evaluated against two or more other hypotheses.

    It is troll behaviour to make assertions that are based on nothing, to ignore contradictory evidence that is presented, to repeat the assertions ‘ad nauseum’, and to insult those who refute the assertions.

    It needs to be stopped whatever the views on AGW that are held by those who do it.

    Richard

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    Dave

    WOW!

    Thanks MattyB – your insight into Mr. GB has now proved the existence of Graeme Crackers!

    Yeti’s, DoDo’s etc are yet to be proven!

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    Richard S Courtney

    Dave:

    At #151 you provide good illustration of the nature of science when you say;

    Yeti’s, DoDo’s etc are yet to be proven!

    Many people assert that they have seen a Yeti but – to date – no empirical evidence concerning the existence of the Yeti has been obtained. Thus, the existing scientific hypothesis is that the Yeti is a creature which may or may not exist but the failure to find evidence for it suggests the Yeti probably does not exist.
    In the event of empirical data for the existence of a creature similar to a Yeti (e.g. one were captured) then that would require a change to the hypothesis which would be the fact that this creature exists suggests that this creature was responsible for the claims of Yeti sitings.

    Please note that this would not be “proof” that the Yeti exists: it would be evidence that a creature exists which may – or may not – have been responsible for claims of Yeti sitings (n.b. it can be anticipated that some would claim the captured creature is not the Yeti because it is not what they think they saw when they reported seeing a Yeti).

    The dodo is an historical fact. Science has nothing to do with it.

    Large fossil bones are an empirical fact. Dinosaurs are our best theory of their origen.

    Richard

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    memoryvault

    MattB @ 149

    I see you are STILL popping in and out as you old disruptive self.

    And STILL with no Plan B.

    And PLEASE no more appeals to not knowing what I am talking about. I am quite happy to repost your reply (but non-answer) to the original query.

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    MattB

    Seriously, I have no idea what you are talking about.

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    Graeme Bird

    [SNIP. I don’t get paid enough] ED

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    Graeme Bird

    If you go into a discovery process you [find Graeme Bird is a boorish oaf] ED snip all the rest of the gibberish

    No taxpayer[snip] no proof ED

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    Graeme Bird

    When the global warming swindlers say that the science is settled they are lying. Simple as that. Its not an inherently pseudo-scientific statement. Its just them lying.

    The science is settled on the heart having a function as a pump. Because all convergent evidence points to this, nothing goes against it, and no outstanding anomalies. The science is settled on the planets going around the sun. The moons rotating around the planets. The earth being spherical and rotating as opposed to being flat and stationary. Since all convergent evidence points towards this, none away from it, and no outstanding anomalies.

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    Richard S Courtney

    Graeme Bird:

    You are swamping this thread with ignorant, offensive and illogical twaddle.

    And your silly posts are not pertinent to this thread. Indeed, they are likely to kill this thread.

    Stop it! Grow up and get a life.

    Richard

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    Mark

    Hmm… nine comments in an hour and all of them very angry. You need to take a step back Graeme. I hope that isn’t typical of your reaction to dissenting opinion. We don’t need any Ben Santers on this side of the debate.

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    Larry Fields

    Graeme and Richard,
    When I posted my pedestrian comment the other day, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. My email in-box is cluttered with your off-topic salvos at each other. And my computer skills are not sufficient to unsubscribe from this thread. Please give me a break!

    I also suggest that you settle your differences like men. How about ripe tomatoes at 10 paces?

    Cheers, Larry

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    Roy Hogue

    Well get Richard to back down then. He’s acting as though his lame Popperism is carved in stone or pulled out of a burning bush. In reality its just got to be a case of an uppity English bloke pulling rank but not wanting to say so.

    Graeme,

    Now I’ve had enough. It’s not bad enough that we have a schoolyard scrap going on between adults who should know better. But you now push off the job of subduing Richard onto someone else?

    You both really should take a good look at yourselves.

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    Larry Fields

    Graeme and Richard,
    I’ve got a shoe-phone, and I know how to use it!

    Not only am I on-topic, but I’ve established that I have a better sense sense of humor than either of you. As the resident expert on humor, let me assure you that your private little war is not funny anymore. As the old dyslexic saying goes: Get a file!

    Cheers, Larry

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    Graeme Bird

    “But you now push off the job of subduing Richard onto someone else?”

    Oh the humanity. How shocking.

    Both sides of this debate have to get up to speed on epistemology or else its basically just two tribes squabbling and another 70 billion will be wasted. Its not okay just to go around feeling superior to these trace gas hysterics, when you yourselves aren’t up to projecting a way out of this quagmire. If nothing can be proved these fearful unmanly folk have no real choice but to go in for bogus ideas like the dogma of peer review or the idea of the “weight of evidence”.

    Richard ought to have been open to updating his feeble Popperian dogma. But he got Butthurt at a humble colonial speaking to him as a teacher.

    [HUMBLE?] ED

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    Richard S Courtney

    Friends:

    I apologise that I have offended.

    I tried – and I clearly failed – to present coherent, factual information in the face of a barrage of abuse, then I lost patience and said so. This is seen as my presenting a “schoolyard scrap”.

    Sorry.

    This blog is too valuable for it to be damaged by what others see as my boorish behaviour so I shall withdraw from it to avoid similar offence.

    Richard

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    Graeme Bird

    Weak.

    So….. You think that the earth rotating and being spherical isn’t an established fact?

    There is no demarcation between a scientific truth and any other type of truth. The idea that the truth can never be established is just ridiculous.

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    Guys. Phew. This got way too hot. Philosophizing about science is fascinating, though let’s discuss it another time without the personal attacks. (GB: note this.)

    And as far as the question of “proof” goes: Technically, yes, GB, for practical purposes it’s a fact that the world is round and rotates, but for scientific purposes and the pursuit of knowledge, that humble attitude, that anything can change, and even our most favourite theories can be proven wrong is invaluable. It’s only the endlessly enquiring mind that pursues the things that no one else thought of, that gives us our most hard won insights.

    Hence, I go with the idea that Popper has a lot to offer. Outside science, there is proof, but inside science, there is only disproof. The pure scientist is always open to the ideas that appear unlikely.

    As for the “round” world; do I know for sure we don’t live in an alien playground with curved space-time Earths, that appear to be round, but aren’t? No. I can’t absolutely rule that out. I think it’s incredibly unlikely, but until we’ve mapped all the stars and planets and can explain all there is to explain I’ll allow that we live as a speck on the the vast abyssal plains of the unknown.

    And, if you guys want to corner an alarmist, forgoodnesssake, avoid these distractions by asking them for long term empirical evidence that doubling CO2 will lead to more than 1.2 degrees of warming.

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    Larry Fields

    I hope that I’m not jumping the gun, but it appears that the recent food-fight is over. Graeme and Richard, I think that you can both agree that doing the bloody experiment, or doing the bloody field study, beats the hell out of worshiping GIGO climate models.

    Joanne, you’re spot-on as usual. A Swedish acquaintance had a great idea for dealing with flame wars. Create a special place, called the Fighting Room, where the argumentatively inclined can duke it out, and where the Queensbury Rules do not apply. When combatants on normal threads get out of hand, you can transfer all of those postings to a new thread in the Fighting Room. (If I remember correctly, WordPress does have that capability.) And readers who need a break from reality, can don their Viking helmets, quaff their VB, munch their popcorn, and watch the battles unfold in the Fighting Room.

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    Mark

    Let’s not give comfort to the rorters and bed-wetters by going further down this path.

    As the latest post from Steve McIntyre shows, the real enemy is still out there and the methods are still the same.

    http://climateaudit.org/2011/06/14/ipcc-wg3-and-the-greenpeace-karaoke/

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    MattB

    Heres an interesting angle on this media “beat-up”:

    Canberra Times

    Here are the good bits:

    Just over a week ago, The Canberra Times published a story revealing Australia’s climate scientists are being targeted by ”a vicious unrelenting email campaign that has resulted in police investigations of death threats”. It’s been interesting to watch, and read, the reaction.

    Various bloggers have accused us of ”beating up” our front-page story from a handful of complaints. Not so. We spoke to more than 30 scientists, in all states and territories, to ascertain if threats were confined to pockets of high-profile scientists regularly quoted by the media. They were not. It seems anyone speaking up on climate change – however briefly – is fair game in this trolling campaign.

    Two of the most shocking cases involved young women who have had little media experience or exposure. One was invited to speak on climate change at a suburban library. Her brief was simple – talk about everyday things people can do to cut their carbon footprint, talk about climate books available at the library (list provided), leave time for questions, and mingle afterwards. The other woman was asked by a local newspaper to pose with her young children for a photograph to illustrate an article promoting a community tree-planting event. She was briefly quoted as saying planting trees could help mitigate climate change. Two days after the article appeared, she received emails containing threats of sexual assault and violence against her children.

    As for the woman speaking at the library, her car windscreen was smeared with excrement – animal or human, does it matter? – and the words ”climate turd” written (also in excrement) across the car bonnet. Proof perhaps, of a climate dissenter with a Freudian complex indicating arrested development.

    Several bloggers who dispute the reality of climate change have disputed the veracity of these threats. Opposition science spokeswoman Sophie Mirabella issued a statement claiming, ”the apparently false allegation of death threats have diminished the individuals involved and reflect poorly on the scientific community”.

    False allegation? Who did she speak to? Apparently not the climate scientist who has been advised by state police to install a panic button in his office after receiving death threats. Or to the scientist who had his house vandalised (hence police advice to install video surveillance), or the researcher who received an email, with a marksman’s target superimposed on his photo. Sorry Sophie, none of this behaviour is acceptable.

    The unpleasant reality is several universities across Australia have been forced to upgrade security to protect scientists. This has ranged from deleting phone numbers from websites and removing names from faculty notice boards, to installing multiple card-swipe entries, office doors protected by punch-in codes, and moving researchers to areas with secure lifts.

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    Mark D.

    The unpleasant reality is several universities across Australia have been forced to upgrade security to protect scientists.

    REAL OR IMAGINED unpleasentness?

    Every day I wake up and life threatens me. I don’t have the luxury of a UNI employer to save me from life’s little inconveniences.

    If they are really worried, maybe they should more clearly state the margins of error?

    Or go back to the safety of farming like Peter Spencer.

    Nice try MattB……….

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    MattB

    I guess you didn’t read the article Mark D. I don’t think it was imagined shit on the windscreen, or imagined threats of rape and harm to children.

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    Mark D.

    ANY ACTUAL rapes or children harmed? How about any arrests?

    Yea I read the propaganda, oldest trick in the world.

    Have you read Farnish?

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    MattB

    Ahhh – so you think threats are just par for the course. You are only interested in threats that are executed. With morals like that no wonder you are defending the threats. propaganda… lol.

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    Mark D.

    Do you think exaggerated claims of climate doom are threats?

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    Mark D.

    By the way, don’t ever pretend that you know MY morals. You KNOW NOTHING about my morals.

    I seriously doubt you comprehend the word moral. In fact I’d like an atheist socialist to define morals with some historical references. Go for it.

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    MattB

    I think I do know. You mentioned them in 168 – you think threats are perfectly acceptable and only have a problem with ACTUAL implementation of said threats.

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    Mark D.

    Read again dumbass, the most you could infer is that I question whether there WERE any threats at all.

    I also asked if you have read from your green side friend Farnish? Do you find his clear threats equally troublesome? Or are you a slippery Green?

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    Mark

    So MattB believes in “hate speech” crimes, even if they are merely perceived as such by the “greeny” subject. As for me, sticks and stones….

    It’s Green policies which are toxic, not plant food.

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    Graeme Bird

    “Hence, I go with the idea that Popper has a lot to offer. Outside science, there is proof, but inside science, there is only disproof. The pure scientist is always open to the ideas that appear unlikely.”

    You can leave people alone for five years with this cookie-cutter approach of “Conjectures And Refutations” and when you come back no-one will know anything more about the weather or any other subject that is to hand.

    It was a typical philosophers way of trying to overestimate the importance of bivalent deductive logic, in preference to all other cognitive tools. He assured for himself a place in the hearts of the priesthood by coming up with another way of boosting the prestige of the one tool the philosopher is trained in. So he goes up alongside Hume as a superstar because of this. Only Hume really was brilliant. Everyone spends all their time debunking others in extremely superficial and mindless ways.

    In practice he’s spawned the hateful skeptics movement. Not the brilliant skeptics movement of the 70’s. But the new version who never saw a mainstream idea they didn’t like. They stand around with their arms folded, claiming for themselves always the burden of proof handicap. They believe in Keynes, the Keynesian multiplier, global warming, NASA, and that comets are snowballs. They believe in the Einstein cult, the Big Bang. You name it. Any bad mainstream idea they will claim as their own. Worse than the jihad they are. A total nihilistic attack on science.

    Always when you place things in terms of two hypotheses only you are inviting this one-sided approach. They can frame things as to always have the null hypothesis as their own and never need to provide evidence for it.

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    MattB

    I think I read something about Farnish here once? same guy?

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    MattB

    Hmm I guess you are safe Mard D that most here will not read your post then my post and see who speaks truth. I’ll do it for them

    MattB “imagined threats of rape and harm to children.”

    MarkD “ANY ACTUAL rapes or children harmed?”

    That is clearly NOT as you claim “the most you could infer is that I question whether there WERE any threats at all.”

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    Graeme Bird

    “MattB is right that it’s impossible to prove a hypothesis beyond any doubt. Likewise, Einstein was right when he stated “a thousand experiments can’t prove me right, just one can prove me wrong”.

    Einstein cannot be proved wrong since special relativity is religion and not science. So logic and reason do not apply and the requirements of evidence for his side are not there. Plus there is the problem that when the data contradicts special relativity they just dump the data.

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    Mark

    Graeme:

    Einstein and his theories will have to withstand kicking, probing and maybe even total falsfication as time passes. He’s not a god to me. That said, did not his Special Theory of 1905 achieve theory status when it was shown that light bent as it passed by the sun?

    I was always under the impression that it was his later General Theory (1916) that is a dog’s breakfast. He went to his grave forty years later still no closer to having it accepted as a workable theory.

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    Mark D.

    That is clearly NOT as you claim “the most you could infer is that I question whether there WERE any threats at all.”

    Really? which of your two excerpts ends in a question mark? Let me help:

    MarkD “ANY ACTUAL rapes or children harmed?

    Yes Mattb, you accept “reports”, I would like “proof”

    My statements infer that I question whether the “threats” happened to any serious degree not that I would find threats acceptable. You have not produced any hard evidence (such as an arrest).

    My inference stands. This is nothing more than a typical smear campaign i.e. propaganda as I stated in 168. Whereas you (typical) dodge the question about Farnish who has in print a book(s) that condones, teaches, and urges dangerous actions (threats) to “save the climate”.

    You have a problem with double standards as you have not answered my question at 170. The morality of “threats” you spout about now on behalf of some probably trumped up claims compared to the threats of climate doom as made by your “climate experts”.

    see who speaks truth

    You haven’t made a go at my request at 171 to define your moral foundations so I’ll leave off with a jaded view of your use of the word “truth”.

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    Granny J

    I am neither a Denier, a Dinosaur, an Extremist or a Rightwing Nutter, I am simply a realist and too old to swallow the twaddle dished out by politicians and scientists who are on a bender on government grants, or those hanging out to “invest” in the carbon Credit scam when the so called “Carbon Tax” become an ETS.

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    […] The public then sees for itself the kind of blood-freezing hate speech to which the world’s most important researchers are exposed on an almost yearly basis, in emails like this: […]

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