Reader Poll: James Hansen calls for trials of energy executives, what next?

You make valid points Anthony and M. Jeff,
Clearly with over 10,000 visits to this site a day and only ~5600 votes cast, most of the votes are in fact from this sites own readership.
REPLY: Actually I can’t tell where the votes come from. Nobody can, so you are just making an assumption that may or may not be true. All I know is I got some notices as pingbacks (which I don’t always post) from other blogs where they were saying they were inviting readers to crash the poll in support of Hansen. Last night question 1, at about 3000 total votes had about 100 votes, today after those invitations on other blogs question 1 votes soared while the others did not.

As the great Oscar Wilde once said: “There is only one thing worse in life than being talked about….and that is not being talked about.” The hijack response to your poll is entirely understandable given the ever increasing influence of your excellent blog and the ever more desperate position in which AGW proponents find themselves. I would treat it as a compliment that this poll merits such a dedicated effort from its detractors – clearly your articles carry as much weight with them as they do with your many regular readers.
In any case, I believe a court case would, in reality, be the last thing the AGW crowd would want, given the inherent weakness of their case.

Bill Marsh (04:56:46) – why let such details get in the way of a good soundbite. That might involve some actual thinking 😉
I find activists in general to be a pretty mindless bunch – just through social circles I’ve met so many over the years. Most are not nearly as smart as they like to think they are, and mistake being ‘informed’ or ‘educated’ with sharing the same opinion. Even in University when someone quoted some number (like tons of wheat per cow, species lost, etc.) and I’d merely ask where they got that number from, or some details on how that number may have been arrived at they’d get mad, but they certainly wouldn’t be able to provide a reliable source.
I actually started to really doubt the AGW theories the more I read sites like realclimate and desmogblog and realised they were more interested in attacking anyone who questioned their dogma, or in particular their models. That, and when I found out exactly how shoddy that Oreske’s paper was (by actually reading it). That it was published at all, never mind with such a glaring error as a missing keyword made me really suspect the emphasis on ‘peer-review’ – at the very least there seem to be two different standards of scrutiny applied. They’re not beyond fudging data to support their theories – that’s pretty clear now; they lie over and over again and cherry-pick whatever data they haven’t fudged.
If they really had the truth behind them, why would it be necessary to resort to such propagandistic tactics? Why the need to manipulate an internet poll, this need to control what people think in every forum they can? I find it odd that AGW proponents use the phrase ‘denier’ in reference to the Holocaust, but it is they who are always on the hunt for dissent, and who try to expel it from every dark corner much like the Nazis hunted Jewish families hiding in walls and underneath floorboards.
I think alarm is being ramped up now precisely because there has NOT been a warming trend in the 2000s. I see so many sites that claim that it IS still warming, and this is flat out – ‘scuse the language – bullshit. The models are wrong, I think J. Hansen knows they’re wrong, but he has so much ego invested in them that he can’t afford to be shown wrong so he and his acolytes at RC, etc. are on the attack and have thousands of mindless activists to do their dirty work. I see Hansen’s call to put oil executives on trial as a sign of utter desperation.
Ironically, while writing this, some Jehovah’s witnesses came to my door. I had a brief chat with them. They could tell I didn’t agree with them, and left a booklet and made their way after a few minutes. They were certainly far more polite, accepting of disagreement and less dogmatic than most AGW-prosthelytizers are.
As for Hansen, this is just another length of rope that he’ll eventually hang himself with. He seems to be getting crazier; if this summer ends up being cooler too he may very well just go off the deep end.

Heh, fair enough Anthony, but it does seem that many of your regulars are upset at the wider distribution that the poll has had, even (and bizarrely) labelling other peoples decision to vote as attempts to suppress free speech.
Regards

well that would show hw crazy it is and I am sure some voted jsut to say ok we did what you say now what?

Anthony: I haven’t read every comment on this thread, so this question might have been answered, but is there any way the daily or hourly results can be plucked from polldaddy’s results?
REPLY: Possibly, but I have to spend money to subscribe to the premium service to find out. Haven’t decided if I’m going to do that or not.

How about exiling Hansen in perpetuity to the South Pole station?
I don’t think it is too much of an exaggeration to compare the likes of Hansen with Joe Stalin’s favorite biologist, Lysenko– the same ideologically-driven perversion of genuine science, which is characterized by free inquiry into physical processes.

Even though I voted to get Hansen’s ass fired I think having a fair trial to expose the fallacy of Hansen’s claim that we’re in dire danger from global warming would be a good thing.

Hansen is a ClimaTautologist. All accepted evidence, all accepted observations and all accepted conclusions support his premise of AGW. Evidence, observations and conclusions which do not support his premise are non-operative.
ClimaTautology (n)
The practice of relating every extreme weather event to Climate Change, in order to create fear and/or secure funding.

Global warming is nothing more than sinister social engineering predicated on junk science and flawed data. It is the Pet Rock of the new millenium. The aging hippies and limousine liberals bandwagon, except this time around instead of a VW Magic bus with peel and stick dasies, it’s a kerosene spewing corporate jet and 20,000 sq. ft. house for Al Gore and gas shortages, massive inflation and unemployment for the masses.
read: A.G.W. is make believe like elves, leprachauns and unicorns.

Canada has a whack job as well, named Suzuki .
He wants AGW deniers jailed.
Fruit flies are his specialty.

I like to start off a conversation with a natural variation denialist by stating;
Significant AGW is physically impossible! It relies on water vapor positive feedback that has been proven not to exist! They actually pretend that water acts like an explosive compound or nuclear bomb and undergoes a runaway chain reaction. In fact you can show that by adding one CO2 molecule and then removing it again the process still runs away until the oceans boil dry. In fact you can show that any heating of any magnitude from any source will cause the oceans to boil dry! How stupid is that? Because positive feedback does not exist then the effect of CO2 has been modeled at 5-20 times greater than it actually is.
If they get irrational then point out some more basic science such as “emotion clouds judgement” and “science is based on a comparison of theory and observation, why wont you believe the observations?” and “personal attacks are pointless in science, Einstein could have been a mass murderer but his theories would still be correct”
The key to arguing with people is establishing intellectual superiority. They normally use moral superiority to justify their belief but telling them they believe in a theory that is physically impossible will probably trump their belief. ask them if they know what beer’s law is. if they don’t then you can tell them them how silly they are and that maybe they should learn the fundamental equation that determines the absorption of energy by CO2.
finally if all else fails and they refuse to even contemplate the opposing side you get to point that ” science demands that both thesis and antithesis must be examined equally.” ie if they refuse to consider the opposing views then they are not conducting science.
cheers