UPDATE: More crow pie is served here
Paging David Appell and Nick Stokes – your crow pie is ready now.
As a follow up to yesterday’s breaking news that there were never any death threats at all, as determined by a court adjudicate, Simon Turnill writes on Australian Climate Madness that it has been confirmed that there’s a new story in the Australian saying that the police were never contacted over the alleged “death threats”, indicating that the Australian National University didn’t even take the non-existent “death threats” seriously enough to even report it! Today, ANU has “no comment” as to why.
He writes:
Following the freedom of information request story which made page 1 of The Australian yesterday, Christian Kerr and Lanai Vasek write a further story today, confirming that the Australian National University made no complaint to the police, despite alleging a vicious campaign of hatred against climate scientists.
As I said in my original post on this back in June 2011:
Last time I checked, which was about thirty seconds ago, making threats to kill in the ACT was a criminal offence, thanks to section 30 of the Crimes Act (ACT) 1900, and punishable by a maximum of ten years imprisonment. A similar provision for threats to kill via a postal service or carriage service appears in the Schedule to the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act 1995, with a similar punishment.
So one has to ask why no action was taken by the university, given these were allegedly such serious crimes?
Full story here.
Will science writer David Appell now retract his vicious personal smears here, here, and here, plus his follow up smear yesterday when faced with fresh evidence and offer an apology and retraction of his claims? I doubt he will, as I believe he does not have the personal integrity within himself to do so. I’ll be delighted to be proven wrong though.
UPDATE: Well that didn’t take long, Appell has now published my email to him (which was part of an unsolicited email thread started by Appell) along with the email addresses of people on the cc list. I view this as completely unprofessional and completely within character for him. On the plus side, when myself and the other email addresses he published start getting hate mail, we now have a claim against Mr. Appell.
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2012/05/fwd-dumb-and-dumber.html
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
ANU has now released the emails. I’ve put up a post with links.
The one described to by the commissioner as “intimidating” is in Doc_5.pdf. It describes a conference/seminar organised by the University, at which, on the first day, someone “took exception” to a talk on climate change. Then:
“Moreover, before he left, he came to the Fri dinner and showed other participants his gun licence and explained to them how good a sniper he is.”
OK, he doesn’t say who he might be exercising his skills on, or how fatally. But it does sound spooky.
Nick Stokes,
If that is the scariest email of the bunch, all I can say is, you scare real easy.
I am shocked, really, that an Australian would be such a bedwetter. Maybe a resident of N.Y. City. But someone from Oz?? Your ancestors must be spinning in their graves.
BOO!! Did that scare you? Here, maybe this will help. [Click in image to embiggen]
• • •
E.M. Smith,
Lucia should be ashamed of herself.
It would appear that the “sniper” has chosen to reveal himself :
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2012/05/10/the-dog-ate-my-death-threats-ii/#comment-478546
It that is indeed the true explanation of what transpired, that is about as innocuous as it gets.
Still, can’t really blame climate “scientists” for seeing threats when none really exist. It’s what they do.
Dear Anthony,
You wrote to Nick Stokes above,
“You were put on troll moderation YESTERDAY, not after I made this post, and you know this. Both you and Appell can’t seem to embrace humility, or to even admit you’ve been wrong, try it sometime. Until then, you get the slow lane.”
I agree with you that the ANU death threats turned out to be a ruse and I strongly disagree with Nick on this. But I respect his right to hold a contrary opinion, and his right to freedom of speech. I thought this is something skeptics all stand for? Moreover, Nick is exceptional among AGW defenders in that he is always respectful and polite.
In my mind, you do huge damage to your credibility by putting people like Nick on ‘moderation watch’ and announcing that here, and I urge you to take him off it again and offer him the apology he deserves.
Alex Harvey
REPLY: Happy to do so if he 1. admits publicly that he was wrong. 2. Apologizes for some of the not so “polite” comments he made about me elsewhere related to this episode. Note, he still gets to post here, but he just gets an extra level of moderation. -Anthony
Alex,
Try and hold the alarmists to the same standards you demand of the realists. It will work wonders for your own credibility.
Dear Anthony, if you say that he must admit that he was wrong, then you are saying he doesn’t have the right to disagree. And if you say he doesn’t have the right to disagree, then how is this different from zealots who try to silence legitimate climate skepticism? I have been discussing these ANU death threats at Nick’s blog, and while I think his argument is weak, I also think he believes what he says. Meanwhile, I don’t know what Nick said about you elsewhere, but you run the most visited climate skeptic blog in the world, so I don’t see how you can afford to be sensitive about negative comments. I read Nick’s blog regularly and attacking you certainly isn’t a recurrent theme. Public figures just have to cop this sometimes. If it was me, I would be thankful that Nick takes the time to comment here. This diversity of views is what is so absent in much climate change discussion.