“Death threats” story now proven false by ANU Chancellor Ian Chubb
The bizarre now laughable “climate scientists get death threats” at Australian National University has finally imploded completely with the former chancellor Ian Chubb going on record in the Australian today saying:
“For the record, there were no alleged death threats except when journalists picked up the story.”
That puts an end to the issue of there ever being any death threat. There weren’t ever any at ANU, then or now.
Now the issue of how the Australian media took annoying and rude emails (we’ve never questioned that) and turned those into a lie of international proportions will take the stage.
A screencap of the story:
Well that’s the end of that. Simon Turnill has more at Australian Climate Madness.
David Appell, who went on record to say I deny the existence of my own mother because I had the journalistic sense he didn’t and didn’t believe any of this was credible from the beginning is was recently whining that I’m a “bully” for pointing out the truth and calling him on his own childish behavior in this matter. His reputation as a science writer now lies in tatters, as he’s destroyed his credibility with his crusade of the non existent death threat issue.
Likewise, blogger/scientist Nick Stokes, who fancies himself as being cool and methodical, was completely taken in, and like Appell, seems unable to come to terms with his own quik-set epoxy position that seems to be a product of the tribalism he and Appell share.
They’ve earned a place in climate blog history right up there with “Vermin Supreme” for their inability to accept reality. I expect they’ll be making some sort or wardrobe change/fashion statement soon. In the Vermin Supreme style, I suggest wearing orange road cones:
-or-
They can be men, apologize for their errant and childish behavior towards me and other skeptics on this matter, and move on. I’ll be happy to accept their sincere apologies posted here or on their own blogs and put the matter behind us. Ball’s in your court fellas.
I hope it is the latter rather than the former. Otherwise, I see Josh cartoons in their future.
Related articles
- Paging David Appell – ‘death threats against climate scientists’ story even deader than yesterday (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Andrew Bolt: The perfect climate for hollow threats (junkscience.com)
- Lying climate scientists lie again – about death threats, this time (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
- ‘Death threats’ against climate scientists story deader still (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Quote of the week – Death by Coochey coup (wattsupwiththat.com)
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Ian E:
Surely Washington DC would suffice to ensure victory in this particular contest?
@Nick Stokes.
You do an excellent impersonation of Macavity.
You should be proud.
“Indeed there was an email which in his terms described an incident that could be seen as possibly threatening”….HE THREATENED TO TURN ME INTO A NEWT !
Tilting at emails.
“Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty emails that rise from that machine. And no sooner did David Appell see them that he said , “Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, denier Watts, thirty or forty hulking death threats? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils I shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.”
“What threats?” asked Watts
“Those you see over there,” replied Appell, “in their emails. Some of them have threats well nigh two leagues in length.”
“Take care, sir,” cried Watts. “Those over there are not threats but criticisms. Those things that seem to be threats are facts which, when they are whirled around by the truth, make the science”.
My apologies to Cervantes.
Now we can add paranoia as a required qualification to be a “climate scientist”.
“For the record, there were no alleged death threats except when journalists picked up the story.”
I reckon that’s ducking and weaving – just blaming someone else.. I no longer care if they lose their ..ahem.. “jobs”..
– – – – – –
Nick Stokes,
Now you are still imagining skeptic threats toward academics, this time the academic threatened being yourself? Your first paragraph alludes to you being threatened with censorship by our worthy host (Anthony). Your support of academically made-up threats is rather consistent . . . I give you credit for that. But cheer up because incipient paranoia is treatable if you catch it in the early stages.
Your second paragraph would have us all believe that doors to Post Offices and DMVs (etc) should be locked during business hours because some dissatisfied citizen might want to make a stern complaint in person about gov’t employees. The professors at ANU can dish out complaints but are too milktoast to look critics in the eye? You guys need to participate more in the actual society of normal humans.
John
Eric Simpson says:
May 29, 2012 at 2:45 am
This is a man who strives to ferret out our weaknesses, and then uses this against us elsewhere. I don’t know why he’s allowed on any skeptic sites, imho. But, I understand, that some might like the interaction.
There are those who set a good example and those who serve as a horrible example.
Appell is performing his function admirably as the latter.
The endeavour of CAGW Alarmism is SO bereft of integrity that it’ll be staining and discrediting it’s promoters for a long, long time.
Nick Stokes
“Since then, Mr Coochey has come forward to explain in non-threatening terms how he came to be producing a shooting licence at an ANU gathering.”
———————————————
Seems like you’ve worked hard on that sentence to retain the idea that there was something sinister about the non-incident.
Mr Coochey didn’t just come forward and explain in a non-threatening manner – he was non-threatening all along. It would be nice if you hadn’t constructed a sentence which sounds like he could have been threatening originally even if his later explanation wasn’t.
He showed someone the culling license (It is called a culling license, not a shooting license as you have it.) because they asked about it. Maybe if they had been interested in his passing a driving test he would have shown them his driving license too.
There is no reason to suppose that he wouldn’t have happily pulled the license out if he had been asked about it in a cafe, a train or a library. rather than an ANU gathering – he was just perhaps more likely to get into a conversation about culling at such a gathering.
You still seem to be struggling to make the whole incident sound threatening. Notably the person to whom he was talking – someone who sounds like they profoundly disagree with Mr Coochy’s culling activities – didn’t inform the police which is what any sensible would have done if they had thought he was even hinting at death threats.
Tom in Florida says:
May 29, 2012 at 5:00 am
Tilting at emails…..
____________________________________
Now all we need is Josh to do the cartoons that go with the words.
I seem to remember somewhere I read (might have been on Andrew Bolt’s blog) that there was already a plan to move those scientists anyhow. I could be wrong but if I am not, what a convenient embellishment.
The term that comes to my mind, introduced to me playfully by ‘the line’ (literally: assembly line/factory floor personnel) ‘women’ some years back is “Drama Queens”.
Wise geek has this on the subject:
From the Urban Dictionary we have this series of user-supplied defs:
.
Nick Stokes says:
May 29, 2012 at 2:33 am
I respond without great hopes, because my responses at WUWT now just seem to disappear. However, if I’m paged, here’s hoping.
Welcome back, Nick. That said…
First, I’d note that having people barge in off the street to berate you in your office is serious business. So the relocation was indeed understandable.
First, I’d note that the person who said that the scientists had been threatened by walk-in visitors seems to be the same person who claimed the scientists had been receiving threatening e-mails. That’s cause to reflect on the veracity right there.
But the original Canberra Times story stood up well. As they say:
“As for death threats at ANU, where did that come from? Not from the Canberra Times. Perhaps from the ANU’s Vice-Chancellor.”
and go on to probe that a bit more. Meanwhile the report uncovers a lot of other stuff that has been going on.
And the “other stuff” going on reported by the Canberra Times and your link to it is…?
kev in uk
I demand that you retract your comment immediately. If I rearrange your words, turn some upside down and ignore every fourth letter then when I half close my eyes and squint at what remains I consider that, in some lights, and with a following wind, it could be argued that they could be seen as possibly a threat of some sort if the reader were of a feeble disposition and prone anyway to a touch of the vapours. . Shame on you sir
tonyb
Nick Stokes says: @ur momisugly May 29, 2012 at 2:33 am
First, I’d note that having people barge in off the street to berate you in your office….
__________________________________________
Well Good ole Nicky just proved how sensitive and sequestered the ivory tower crowd is.
He should try working as a Quality Engineer, listening to consumer complaints, or as a waiter or store clerk or in any other job where you have to deal with the public. Heck even doing children’s entertainment I get people in my face screaming at me. I know school teachers and child care providers have it happen too.
Where do these people live anyway? In a Monastery? You get idiots screaming in shopping mall parking lots over parking spaces for Josh sakes.
@Glenn Skankey thompson
I am hugging myself with glee that Chubb is so actually …..Chubby!
The word could have been invented for him. He clearly has no issues with anorexic tendencies.
On the subject of death threats I was just thinking yesterday how really the 10:10 video and that little indian kid saying he knew where we lived and they were many etc is pretty damn close to a death threat. Can someone who knows how to embed put the vids in the thread – just in case some undecideds want to see who’s threatening who.
Dear Anthony
Please be careful as you have shown that their credibility is dead in the water and no doubt they will squeal and say you, are sort of, kinda making death threats? 🙂
To Mr Appell and Mr Stokes please note: “As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest blabbers,”
Amusing post on Appell’s ‘blog’:
http://davidappell.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/anonymous-comments-are-meaningless.html
Essentially what he’s saying there is that who says something is not only more important than what they say, but the _only_ important thing; that if a ‘scientist’ tells him up is down, he’ll believe them whilst ignoring the ‘anonymous’ hordes trying to tell him he’s walking on his head.
I would agree with many. The skeptic’s position being one of preventing tax dollars from being spent down a climate sink hole, we are, in essence threatening the livelihoods of climate scientiests who believe in CAGW. Job security has its benefits and when removed, leaves one feeling rather exposed to the whims of the buying private citizen. Not unlike private sector jobs I would imagine.
And while climate scientists are whining about phony threats, we have the head of a major climate science group within NASA saying that he would like to see the heads of fossil fuel companies tried for “crimes against humanity and nature.”
Put oil firm chiefs on trial, says leading climate change scientist
James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.
—
Question to Nick Stokes (though I doubt he will answer) and others: Is calling for innocent persons to be put on “trial for crimes against humanity and nature” a threat? Should the climate science community collectively and forcefully condemn this kind of rhetoric? Should the person making such threats be removed from his position of authority within the climate science community?
By the way, everyone should read this about the definitions of “Crimes Against Humanity”.
Nick “Mr Amnesia” Stokes has now produced his response: “Death threats – who said anything about death threats?”
Mr Stokes, please read the previous thread on how scientifically literate people can delude themselves. There can be no cure until you admit there is a problem.
– – – – – – –
Nick Stokes,
By that statement you are promoting the idea that the ANU scientists, whose false claims of death threats showed them to not be telling the truth, should now somehow be simply believed about their claims that they were verbally abused by citizens walking into their offices.
Nick, I suggest you reconsider your apparent continuing naïve belief, without substantiation, of anything the ANU scientists say about being victims of skeptic behavior . . . I suggest you especially should be more skeptical about what the ANU scientists are saying now about receiving verbal abuse in their offices; given the falseness of their previous claims of receiving death threats. Where are the corroborating witnesses to citizens walking into their ANU offices and verbally abusing them? Especially, where are the witnesses who allegedly verbally abused the currently less than credible ANU scientists? This still smells funny.
John
Anthony – simply outrageous stuff and dangerously simplistic if you want to delude yourself.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/07/15/another-day-another-death-thre-1/ try this video
or sample some of the choice material received http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/1216_scientist.pdf (warning that language here is rank) from an larger analysis at http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2012/05/21/death-threat-denial/
My colleagues in BoM and CSIRO have told me of the vilest threats made against person and family in email and postal mail, and sometimes in person at presentations.
Having sat through various anti-carbon tax rallies I’m not surprised – some of the informal audience chatter is off the meter. And the way the audience is whipped up by agitators I’m not surprised.
In fact why would any of us imagine that extreme views do not exist on both sides of the AGW debate. If you told me that you had received hate mail or threats I’d have no trouble taking your word for it.
Are you naive enough to think this is not going on – or are on entrenched that you cannot imagine any anti-AGW person never making such comments ? Really ….
REPLY: I and other skeptics do get hate mail, I don’t whine about it since none of it is credible. The issue is about death threats, of which there were none. I’ve never disputed there were angry emails. I’ll say the same thing to you that I’ve said to David Appell, show me some evidence of death threats. Hearsay on angry Deltoid isn’t evidence of death threats. The http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/1216_scientist.pdf is about the same level of stuff that I get, and Morano gets. Morano recently posted an email that reads just like that against him, but it isn’t a death threat.
People vent when they feel lied to and threatened. Given the Gillard situation in Australia, I would not be surprised if the Gillard administration gets letters like these every day. Maybe an FOIA request will tell. When I worked at the TV station we’d get phone calls and anonymous letters like this from time to time, all anonymous. We didn’t worry about it except for the one time one person signed their name to it. And that time we did call the police. The person backed down, claimed it was a “joke”. We didn’t press charges, and never heard from him again.
Appell points out that he doesn’t consider comments from anonymous people credible, on that we agree, and some anonymous angry rants sent via email are also difficult to take seriously. Yours included, since your email address is obviously an obfuscation – Anthony