Opinion by Dr Tim Ball
Free speech is essential to freedom, but with it comes a level of personal responsibility. Supposedly, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes recognized this in his observations about shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre. People assume this meant you can’t do it, but his original comment included the critical word, “falsely”. In the US, your right to shout fire is part of free speech, but Holmes argued that you couldn’t shout fire, if it is false. The trouble is, who decides it is false and once it is said, the damage is done. The question then becomes accountability. Both the need for personal responsibility in confirming there is a fire, and being held accountable, when it is determined there was no fire, and you did not check with a modicum of due diligence. What if you shout fire in a supposedly crowded world?
Who holds the person accountable and how is it done? Lack of accountability is of great public concern. It was an issue raised by engineer Pierre Latour at the recent Heartland Climate Conference. It involved a debate over the difference of opinion between engineers and theoretical physicists using physics in the science of CO2. He said engineers have to belong to a professional organization in order to practice and are legally and professionally liable for their work, unlike many others using physics, including climate scientists.
Only the US makes free speech number one in their Constitution. Some deride the fact that the Founding Fathers made the right to bear arms the second guarantee, to defend the first guarantee. However, it recognized the reality that the greatest threat to the people was their own government. This threat also applies to those who seek total government control through any form of totalitarianism. H L Mencken said decades ago, “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” Change the word “humanity” to “planet” and it is equally true today about exploitation of environmentalism for a political agenda.
Vaclav Klaus, in his prescient book Blue Planet in Green Shackles wrote,
“Environmentalism is a political movement that originally began with the intent to protect the environment – a humble and perhaps even legitimate goal – but which has gradually transformed itself into an ideology that has almost nothing to do with nature.
This ideological stream has recently become a dominant alternative to those ideologies that are consistently and primarily oriented towards freedom. Environmentalism is a movement that intends to change the world radically regardless of the consequences (at the cost of human lives and severe restrictions on individual freedom). It intends to change humankind, human behavior, the structure of society, the system of values – simply everything.”
These are the same criticism Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, made when he left that organization.
Some refer to people who use environmentalism as a cloak for political activities as watermelons. James Delingpole explains the situation in detail in his book Watermelons: The Green Movement’s True Colors.” The damage done by their false claims are virtually incalculable. Paul Driessen was among the first to identify the damage in his Eco-Imperialism. Beyond that, there is the frustration that nobody is ever held accountable.
In advance of the September Climate Conference in New York, the UN, through the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), is distributing world wide a series of short videos that are tantamount to shouting “fire”, in what they say is a crowded theater. The first one is a forecast for 2050, full of extreme events including floods, droughts, heat waves and even an indirect threat, by cynically claiming one benefit to the warming, will be easy transit through Arctic waters. They base their position and claims on the Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is not just that many scientists disagree, but all IPCC predictions (projections) are wrong to date and the IPCC was created by the WMO. In addition, they use UN money, mostly contributed by developed nations, in their effort to make them pay for causing the problem. But who decided they caused the problem? They did, using scientific methods that are clearly wrong because the predictions are wrong. It is a classic circular argument.
There are leading environmentalists in every country who practice political abuse of environmentalism, as Klaus defined it. These individuals and their organizations have done great social and economic damage with environmental misinformation and false claims, for a political agenda of total government control under the guise of saving the planet. They are effectively a green fifth-column, the enemy within. Sadly, their exploitation and misuse of environmentalism is putting the entire paradigm in jeopardy, as people stop believing anything they’re told. Something about crying wolf.
Most of the organizations, despite a tax exemption that requires them to be apolitical, are used for political objectives. Trying to determine who and what is political is virtually impossible and fully open to abuse by the user and the government making the determination, as the recent IRS scandals in the US have demonstrated. What happens is, taxpayers end up funding organizations with which they completely disagree and those organizations use the money to attack and even eliminate them. The illogic of forcing a taxpayer to pay for a gun that another person uses to shoot them, is obvious.
Salmon fishing on North America’s northwest coast has long been a target for environmentalists. They attacked all forms, including fish farming. In Canada, there was no organization more vociferous than the David Suzuki Foundation. There was no justification for any of the changes. Salmon runs were not depleted by over fishing or declining habitat, as they claimed, but natural fluctuations of numbers due to changing ocean currents and water temperatures. It is a cycle registered in the oral tradition of the west coast aboriginals. When the salmon run fails they experience a period identified as the time of “full stomach”. This refers to the distended stomach of starvation, not too much food. The oral tradition also includes description of changing conditions that preceded the return of the salmon.
In the 1990s salmon numbers started to decline as weather patterns, including temperature, precipitation, and winds, caused changing ocean currents. Conditions, along the coast and in rivers, became unfavorable for returning salmon because of natural changes. The myth is that salmon always return to the river in which they were spawned. It is only true if conditions are favorable. While numbers declined in southern latitudes, they increased significantly in northern latitudes, from northern British Columbia, the Alaska panhandle and Alaska.
Salmon numbers fluctuate like all fish populations, as a brilliant work by L.B.Klyashtorin and A.A. Lyubushin. (Figure 1) show. Nobody has promoted this work and spoken out about the misinterpretation surrounding global warming more than Gary Sharp.
Figure 1
The Canadian problem was made worse by media pressure, but enhanced by the government Department of Fisheries. Every year they produced estimates of potential runs that almost consistently were much lower than the actual runs. It didn’t matter that they often underestimated by 50 percent. The numbers they produced were used to set the fishing quotas for the season and put many fishermen out of business, causing severe hardship for thousands of people. As Margaret Wente wrote,
In B.C., there’s something almost sacred about salmon. So when the salmon runs started to dwindle, the blame game began in earnest.
The Canadian Department of Fisheries used similar declining cod population numbers on the East Coast to stop the cod fishery completely. This devastated the Province of Newfoundland, because it was akin to going to Kansas and saying you can’t grow wheat anymore. It also led to closing many “outport” communities and moving the people to bigger centers, disrupting centuries old cultures and traditions. The frustration for Oceanographer, Roger Pocklington and I, was, we were monitoring ocean water temperatures and their causes and warning Ottawa that cod numbers were going to decline because of changing conditions. Nobody listened! A complete way of life was destroyed unnecessarily, because the cod moved to inshore waters and out into warming Gulf Stream waters where Europeans continued to catch them. Canadian fishermen were banned from fishing in these areas. Proof that claims of overfishing was the problem, is that the numbers haven’t recovered, even though there has been no fishing since 1993. The sad irony is the government and its bad decisions, that would have devastated the economy, were offset by increased revenue from the Hibernia oil discovery – saved by the fossil fuel devil.
The story is different on the northwest coast because now the salmon are returning, just as they have in the past. Record runs are being recorded all along the coasts of Washington, Oregon and British Columbia. It is not making headlines in the mainstream media. The Suzuki Foundation and other environmental groups, who blamed human activities, are silent. There are no apologies for being wrong, and certainly no attempt to hold them accountable.
In addition to getting the free salmon issue wrong, the Suzuki Foundation was involved in corruption of data about farmed salmon. Again Wente commented,
But the biggest villain is fish farms. Many people believe the fish farms are responsible for spreading deadly sea lice and disease to wild fish.
Thanks to Greenpeace, the David Suzuki Foundation and other activists, fish farms are among the most loathed operations in British Columbia.
Here is what Vivian Krause wrote,
For more than a decade, the David Suzuki Foundation has run an aggressive campaign against farmed salmon. “It’s poison!” David Suzuki told a conference in Toronto. “Phone your local hospitals and find out if farmed salmon is served to patients,” said a brochure from his foundation.
The central issue they claimed, was the damage done by “farm origin” sea lice. Krause concludes,
Sea lice are found on many species of wild fish, including herring. A method to trace the origin of sea lice is under development but currently does not exist, so it is methodologically impossible to distinguish between sea lice that originate from a fish farm and those that come from other wild fish. It follows that claims about “farm origin” sea lice are flagrantly unsubstantiatable.
Damage to reputation, financial loss, emotional stress, all those things a court considers damage due to wrongful actions, were suffered by people in various situations. What is even more galling is that their taxes, either directly or through increased taxation to offset these tax-exempt organizations not paying, are used.
The Suzuki Foundation is entitled to its view, and the freedom to express it, but there is a social responsibility that they appear to abrogate. Celebrities and mainstream media, duped by the PR, or a willingness to ignore facts and evidence, support him in this abrogation. Witness the use of Leonardo DiCaprio by the UN Secretary General to promote the New York Climate Conference. The cynicism of the appointment is underscored by his title of Messenger of Peace. Global warming has nothing to do with peace, but they couldn’t connect him with science. No more than the Nobel Committee could connect the IPCC and Al Gore with science, so they got Peace Prize. If the UN climate conference requires a Peace Ambassador and the Nobel Peace Prize is about climate science, it means they have declared war on global warming. This makes the observation of Greek philosopher, Aeschylus, “In war truth is the first casualty.
It is one matter to get the science wrong, for which there is a scientific culpability. However, when you use bad or deliberately false science to direct public policy, there is a social responsibility for which there should be total accountability. A simple definition of science is the ability to predict. The UN meeting is based on the predictions of the IPCC that were so wrong from the start that they started calling them projections, but even those were wrong. It doesn’t require an understanding of science to know that their predictions (projections) failed, which raises the question, how much “due diligence” did DiCaprio apply in his desire to bring peace? He has the freedom to speak, but as Oliver Wendell Holmes said it must not be a falsity, otherwise there is liability.
Great article!
For those, like me, who have spent a few decades salmon fishing, you learn that nothing is less predictable than next year’s salmon run.
Linking salmon runs to supposed climate change is complete, total and utter BS.
The problem with salmon from salmon farms is that their flesh is not as firm, or as tasty, as those from the wild. If you can get over that, then comes the real problem and that is to do with sea lice.
Salmon farms treat their salmon with chemicals which stun the sea lice causing them to fall off. Then, along comes along the three inch long salmon smolt heading for the ocean, these smolt hug the ocean floor where an unusually high concentration of sea lice lie in wait.
So, salmon farms adversely affect the number of juvenile smolt returning to the ocean, which obviously affects the salmon runs 1-3 years later.
The solution? Do not allow salmon farms within 10 miles of an estuary used by migrating salmon.
And what has that got to do with supposed climate change? Answer: absolutely nothing.
And what has it got to do with common sense? Answer: A lot, and unfortunately not something found often amongst environmental activists or the climate faithful.
Glad to see L.B.Klyashtorin and A.A. Lyubushin get some well deserved recognition. For some reason their work has never resonated on this blog.
Not any more.
It is an open forum, spread the word.
Can’t cover everything, can one ?
Don’t forget the Chinese factory ships that strip millions of 1-2 year old salmon from the Pacific. Check the label on your “wild caught” frozen salmon fillets. Most say product of China. West coast fisherman pay millions in license fees to grow them in hatcheries to supplement natural spawning, only to have China reap the bounty.
Another bounty reaped by China from this country.
That works both ways.
Some are unashamedly Marxist, look at http://systemchangenotclimatechange.org/about
They blame capitalism and “profit” as evil. Many name the Koch brothers as the cause of carbon pollution. They are nuts.
“Watermelons” is the word. David Suzuki retired several years ago. The head of the Davd Suzuki Foundation is now one James Hoggan, owner of a Vancouver PR firm. He is a co-founder of the notorious desmogblog, founded in 2005. The Wikipedia entry for Hoggan mentions that he also is a trustee of the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education, founded in 2005 (Dalai Lama was the head of Tibetan Buddist Lamasaries but was chased out by the Chinese over 50 years ago. He was a boy then.)
The Wikipedia gives as the mission of this organization “the education of the hearts of children” by “organizing events centered on the discussion of spirituality, climate change, the environment, peace and other topics.” Thus can be detected the fine hand of a Jim Hoggan, PR specialist, in the establishment of an organization meant to indoctrinate the youth of Canada at an early age. The entry does not clarify whether or not Jim Hoggan practices Buddism. Pity the poor children of British Columbia. Many of them will ever outgrow such indoctrination.
Concerning the canard that Salmon populations are not determined by natural fluctuations in the ocean and environment, David Suzuki knows better than to propagate such a canard. He has PhD in zoology from the U of Chicago and has been a professor in that discipline and genetics at the local university in Vancouver. He is a scientist that well understands principles of natural population fluctuations.
Nonetheless, his foundation has industriously propagated this and other such canards and are busily engaged in the propagation of climate alarmism at this instant.
Another exceptional contribution by Dr. Ball. Thank you for continuing to shine light where Suzuki and others continue to cast malevolent shadows.
“Fifth column”, he writes. Yep, that’s exactly what these Watermelons are. Galling that our taxes are funding their wicked work.
All the salmon in the river will die anyway after spawning. Fishing a few hundreds will not do any difference.
Depends whether you fish them before or after spawning, surely?
There is no “after”. That’s it for them.
The difficulty for the West Coast fishermen is that hauling down a false god is tendentious. People like their gods, especially those of their own making. That is not to say it is not worth the effort. A partial truth is not different from a lie. Thus the enemy is not a person, it is ignorance. Education such as the above article is key to ending the abuse of the public in the name of protecting the environment.
“Blowing smoke” up the arse of a drowning victim with the hope of revival, a medical consensus accepted from about 1750 to 1850, is the essence of scientific charlantry. A sad portion of the claims of environmentalists amount to no more than blowing smoke, then running for cover within it. Humanity can do better than this.
How about this post? Dr. Tim Ball commenting on the David Suzuki Foundation.This is HQ in Vancouver, the very place that Michael Mann filed suit against Dr. Ball for his humorous remark about Penn State and state pen (Mann howled in pain and promptly filed suit). So some have wondered if there was a connection there between the foundation and Mann’s litigiousness (but not too loudly, lest they get cuffed).This foundation
has a website; go there and you will see how busily they propagate climate alarmism.
The term “left coast” applies to Canada too, not just the US.
Thanks, Dr. Ball. A very illuminating article.
Now, of course, the tactics from “The Left” have been honed and fire-tested in real life.
Just have look at a political world map, or at he UN rooster of nations.
Freedom is not winning. So sad.
It is sad. Note that in the United Nation’s Global Survey for a Better World referenced in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/22/more-than-310-thousand-people-with-skewed-priorities-flood-new-york/, “Political freedoms” ranked next to last. The only concern that was lower was “Action taken on climate change.”
Tim Ball
Superb essay. Thankyou.
Richard
I can vouch for the salmon runs. The sockeye season ran until the last week of July this year on the west coast of the Island, unheard of for over a decade. The sockeye are still being harvested along the coast, ans available for $4/lb. A fabulous price!
Not only does this stick a fork in the “oceans are storing heat” nonsense, but the rivers arenot heating up either.
AGW, the lie of the century, ranking up there with lies of Nazi Germany]
[snip over the top -mod]
Negative (cold) PDO is good for the salmon runs.
http://www.nwfsc.noaa.gov/research/divisions/fe/estuarine/oeip/ca-pdo.cfm
Maybe Suzuki doesnt know this.
Well one guy had an idea
“A controversial American businessman dumped around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean as part of a geoengineering scheme off the west coast of Canada.”
Worked like a charm. Carbon sequestered and lots and lots of Salmon. No negative consequences but he was drawn and quartered because it was unauthorized. Unauthorized by the same folks who get it wrong most every year. Year in and year out.
Happened upon the following:
http://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/who-funded-david-suzukis-brochure-why-you-shouldnt-eat-farmed-salmon.html
Who funds Suzuki to attack Canadian businesses and why?
Many links to related reports detailing how US businesses use Suzuki and others to destroy competition whilst hiding behind the cloak of environmentalism.
Suzuki is well rewarded for his treachery.
You should read some history on Dr. Suzuki. He follows the money, always has. Spent some time in Berkley, though that is often LEFT out of his biography (pun intended) “Dr. Suzuki is a geneticist. He graduated from Amherst College (Massachusetts) in 1958 with an Honours BA in Biology, followed by a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Chicago in 1961. He held a research associateship in the Biology Division of Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Lab (1961 – 62),” Search Suzuki Biography. Apparently doing experiments on the affects of radiation for the US military, common at that time. But in interviews on CBC, he indicated he got funding from the US military for some of his work on genetics in Canada, prior to getting on the CBC “Nature of Things.” I often wonder how deep the connections went, but that is pure fantasy speculation on my part. Watching too many Jason Bourne movies.
I now realize the content of this article identifies and attests a frustration that I’ve had – lack of accountability by the liars and their false data and false facts. And of course climate science abuse is a canary we can hold up to other, at least equally important, issues in the world. It frustrates me that the canary is showing signs.
Roy….September 21, 2014 at 12:41 pm “Don’t forget the Chinese factory ships that strip millions of 1-2 year old salmon from the Pacific. Check the label on your “wild caught” frozen salmon fillets. Most say product of China. West coast fisherman pay millions in license fees to grow them in hatcheries to supplement natural spawning, only to have China reap the bounty.”
China processes the fish, and squid, and crabs and anything we give them because it’s cheaper for them to do it meaning more profit for us. But back on topic…….I doubt there will ever be a day of reckoning for the unintended consequences caused by the environmentalists. I would love to see a class action suit leveled against Al Gore for economic damage done by his actions. Start with him and work your way down the list. Think of India and Greenpeace.
Engineers are neither required to be members of professional societies nor licensed. The latter, of course is required if an engineer wishes to offer engineering services to the public. Even that is a fairly loose requirement in most states, except for specific authorities such as anything related to construction.
Mark
Engineering failures often to lead to catastrophic failures and the death on unfortunate, innocent victims. A good engineer is well aware that a design flaw can easily kill people very suddenly. In other fields, the connection to human tragedy is not as obvious as with a chemical plant explosion or bridge collapse.
In the few states where I practiced, a stamp by a registered PE is required for almost any industrial structure or building for human use, except perhaps an owner-built private home. The real kicker is liability insurance. Given that the liability tail for an engineer can be endless and the potential for lawsuits is amazingly broad, the insurers are often more particular than the local governments.
Of course if you do not act as an engineer or represent yourself as being one in a particular field, then you will not need to register in that discipline. If you propose to hang a huge PVC or wind turbine overhead then you will probably need someone to stamp the design and take responsibility for it.
Great post. Amongst many others.
The need is to get the word out, against the MSM coverage of todays ‘300000 strong NYC march’ and the UN. For that we need better tactics, not better facts.
Everyone here should be considering contribute in their own way. or organizing initiatives like surfaceproject.org that re the collective equivalent. Stop complaining, and start sniping. In the literal sense, using live ammo equivalents.
There is one single factor that is entirely responsible for this green planet shackling ideology.
Today over one half of humanity lives in cities of over 100,000 or more people.
Across the world possibly no more than fifteen to twenty percent of all of humanity now lives close to nature and has to deal with nature as an every day part of their lives.
In the highly industrialized primarily urban based western civilisation that percentage is probably closer to ten percent or less as the food growing farming people in western countries now comprise less than five percent of the total population.
And that five percent of the population whose entire life is ruled by Nature and natural events is continuing to fall to even lower numbers as the years pass and food and fibre growing / farming technology continues to advance.
But it gets worse, much worse.
The entire political, bureaucratic, economic, financial, business, energy and legal systems along with the almost entire wealth of nations is now entirely controlled and / or owned by urban based elites whose knowledge of the non urbanised world outside of the cities is to all intents and purposes, non existent and outside of their personal, collective and generational experiences.
So the vast store of knowledge learnt over generations by those now steadily decreasing minority of non urban citizens is downgraded and ignored and frequently viewed with contempt by those urban based, elitist university academics and the urban based economic, business and political operatives, all of whom generally completely dismiss and ignore any knowledge coming from non urban citizens that conflicts with their own world view as coming from those whose intellectual qualities are entirely at a sub standard hicksville level.
The reality is of course that if those same life long completely urbanised academics, university graduates, politicals, bureaucrats and business and economic operators were thrown into the identical circumstances as the now steadily decreasing in numbers, non urbanised minorities live, they would demonstrate just as much an urbanised hicksville level of stupidity and be just as incapable of coping or worse than those supposedly country hicks when they are exposed to the pleasures of a densely concentrated urban population centre.
In short we, that is Mankind collectively are fast losing our links and real time personally experienced knowledge of Nature as the real Nature is and as the real Nature acts and the hard gained generational knowledge that could be used to guide our decisions when we are dealing with natural events and their consequences.
The world outside of the great urbanised cities is taking on the hues of the glossy magazine covers as the reality for most city dwellers and as mankind loses contact with Nature
The understandings that Mankind has always had of Nature and natural events as a necessity for survival of our species over the entire period of our existence and the role of entirely natural events on the lives of every living thing is being lost as a part of the human experience.
But there are other factors involved in the rise of green ideology extremism and that is the simple fact that for over three generations the developed world has never been subject ever to shortages of food or energy.
It is impossible for the last couple of generations to conceive of a world where energy availability is a luxury and food is regularly short or sometimes unobtainable.
This has allowed a psychology to develop that believes that restricting energy and food production under ever increasing strictures will have no personal impact for the proponents of such strictures or community debilitating effects as such effects are entirely outside of the generational experiences of the green ideology proponents of those increasingly onerous strictures.
As Dr Ball posts above, nobody seems to be held accountable for when any of these strictures and restrictions back fire and cause deep harm to so many.
Nor will they be held accountable until either food and energy production collapses under the weight of those debilitating green ideology imposed strictures or climate circumstances create conditions such as rapidly cooling climate change through natural change of through volcanic eruption induced climate change or something similar which will create vast energy and food shortages on a global scale.
Then and then only will there be an outcry for those responsible to held fully accountable.
And the revenge of the masses will be ugly indeed.
In the end it all comes down to the simple fact that we as a race and species due entirely to the rapid and accelerating five generations long urbanisation of our species are fast losing our understandings of the realities of our real world’s great natural swings and changes that we as a race have used and survived through for the last couple of millions of years of our existence.
For losing this species long understanding and respect for Nature and her whims there will be a future price to pay and that price will be high indeed for our race and our species.
ROM, that’s a great post and very, very true.
Accountability over clearly political issues? As the many, many, many times over millionaire Jon Stewart would never say, how anticlimatic.
On Accountability:
I wrote this to a friend in the USA one year ago:
I am an engineer, not a lawyer, but to be clear I was thinking of a class action (or similar) lawsuit, rather than an individual lawsuit from yourself or anyone else.
I suggest that there have been many parties that have been damaged by global warming alarmism. Perhaps the most notable are people who have been forced to pay excessive rates for electricity due to CO2-mandated wind and solar power schemes. Would the people of California qualify? Any other states? I suggest the people of Great Britain, Germany and possibly even Ontario would qualify, but the USA is where this lawsuit would do the most good.
There is an interesting field of US law that employs the RICO (anti-racketeering) statutes to provide treble (triple) damages in civil cases. That might be a suitable approach,
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Racketeering
Despite congressional attempts to limit the scope of civil RICO, only one major area of law has been removed from the RICO Act. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (15 U.S.C.A. § 77 et seq.) eliminated liability for RICO claims based on securities Fraud, unless the defendant has already been criminally convicted of securities fraud. The act thus removed the threat of treble (triple) damages in such cases. Congress concluded that federal securities laws generally provide adequate remedies for victims of securities fraud. Therefore, it was unnecessary and unfair to expose defendants in securities cases to the threat of treble damages and other extraordinary remedies provided by the RICO Act.
Critics of the RICO Act applaud this congressional action but argue that the same reasoning can and should be applied to other areas of Civil Law. These critics maintain that the act’s broad scope has given plaintiffs an unfair advantage in civil litigation.
One criticism of civil RICO is that no criminal convictions are necessary to win a civil case under the act. The plaintiff need only show, by a Preponderance of Evidence, that it is more likely than not that the ongoing criminal enterprise occurred. As a result RICO has been used in all types of civil cases to allege wrongdoing. By contrast, a criminal RICO case must be proved Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.
In addition, the judge and jury in a criminal RICO case are prohibited from drawing an adverse inference from a defendant’s invocation of the Fifth Amendment Privilege against Self-Incrimination. No such ban exists, however, in a civil RICO case. Critics contend that it is unfair for a party in a civil RICO case who has concerns about potential criminal liability to be forced to waive his or her Fifth Amendment privilege in order to mount an effective defense in the civil action. Once testimony is given in the civil case, the party has effectively waived the privilege against Self-Incrimination, and the testimony may be used in a subsequent criminal prosecution. Critics contend that the RICO Act should be amended to stay (delay) a civil RICO proceeding until a criminal RICO proceeding has been concluded.
The critics of civil RICO also believe that its use has given plaintiffs an unfair tool that often serves to coerce a party to settle out of fear of a treble damages award. These critics believe that no civil RICO action should be allowed unless the party has been convicted under criminal RICO.
[end of excerpt]
I suggest the Climategate emails could provide the necessary evidence of a criminal conspiracy to defraud the public, through fraudulent misallocation of government-funded research monies, and wind and solar power schemes that were forced upon consumers and which were utterly incapable of providing significant or economic new energy to the electric power grid.
Your thoughts?
Regards, Allan
+1
This may ultimately come to pass.
There would be some major changes in the lifestyles of those guilty in the global warming scam.
Are you studying arithmetic ?
Yes George. After differential equations I could no longer do arithmetic. 😉
G.Martin
I have just listened to the CBC news report on Climate Change! WOW what pure and political left wing bias by a panel of political hacks that the CBC calls experts ( and I have to pay for this misinformation through my taxes). They used all the usual talking points and untruths, the 97 percent consensus, floods in Calgary and Toronto, snow in Sept. in Calgary, the deniers are right wing conservatives and capitalists (as though that might be some sort of disease) and on and on they went.I almost blew a gasket! All the stuff that is easily debunked by rational thinking people but continues to be shoved down the public’s throats! I am beginning to think that there is no way of avoiding a complete and utter failure of our political system because the general public is being brainwashed by not only our public broadcasting system but also by the very education system our children and grand children are being informed by. When I sit down and read articles Like Dr. Tim Ball’s I wonder why his opinions never get beyond the pages of WUWT. I become so incredibly frustrated! He certainly has more credibility than all the panelists seen on CBC. I feel so absolutely defenseless when the agenda is so rigged in one direction. One has to wonder, how does Dr. Tim Ball think about this hopeless situation. I think a good start would be to remove the funding of the CBC and let them stand on their own two feet! I for one will not stand for this irresponsible and highly biased reporting. I will be writing to my MP which happens to be Prime minister Harper and voicing my concerns. Let’s make them accountable! This nonsense has to cease or I am afraid for the freedom and future of my grandchildren.
Check out who the parties are that are financing wind mills/wind turbines in Canada. Big money there and doubt anyone would call the parties involved in financing renewable energy projects left-wing.
The environmental groups touting wind and solar are just the water-boys. And fairly well paid as well.
Global TV, owned by Shaw, has become just as bad, if not worse than CBC on this issue. I watch just for the idiocy.
Dr Tim Ball says in his peroration: “However, when you use bad or deliberately false science to direct public policy, there is a social responsibility for which there should be total accountability”.
With respect, this leaves several unanswered questions. First, who is “you” (using the bad or false science – and what precisely is “bad or false science”?) – scientists propounding an unproven theory (or reviewing it) must be aware that it is not actually “science” to state a theory that either does not have a nul hypothesis or does not come to match observation, so I think this can only point either to scientists commissioned to advise the politicians (see IPCC) or politicians commissioning new research into fashionable but unproven theories (see Eisenhower’s farewell address). Next, what is “social responsibility” – if it is not a formal legal responsibility then, again, it is can only be down to the politicians, but (at least in democratic counties) they can always be voted from office. Finally, what exactly is “total accountability” – what is this in law and what is the process to enforce it? Here in the UK we gave up ducking stools several centuries ago …
For myself, I think that Eisenhower had it exactly right – the democracies encourage a kind of positive feedback between politicians and scientists, encouraging “the sky is falling”-type theories aimed at catching the lay public’s concerns and attention. On that basis the problem really lies with the national academies, eg the Royal Society.
The GCM models are designed to project scenarios based on subsets of physical assumptions. They ask “What if?”
It is a error for anyone, the modelers, their clients or their critics ever to claim that the models predict the future.
Five contributing scientists, including Lennart Bengtsson, submitted the paper to Environmental Research Letters – a highly regarded journal – but were told it had been rejected.
The reviewer who rejected Professor Bengtsson’s paper did so because he said that the comparison between the IPCC (model) estimates and inferences drawn from observations is not relevant to the discussion about climate change.
The reason given was that no correspondence should be expected between the GCM models used by the IPCC and observations. Therefore nothing could be gained by the science community by examining the differences between the future climate projected by the models and inferences drawn from observations. At the same time, harm would be done to the science community if skeptics were able to point to the paper as a reason for skepticism about the more alarming conclusion by the IPCC.
Most commentators focused on the political reason for rejecting the paper and missed the point that the CGM models are neither intended to predict the future or very skillful in doing so.
The CGM models are research tools and nothing more.
While this may be true, if the conditions being tested (ie the inputs) are consistent with actual measurements of those inputs, then the “projection” should be at least in the ball park of the observed climate. That the models considered most in line with the observed CO2 and other inputs are still not even close implies that the models have no value in testing the hypothesis at all and should be discarded. This also indicates that the physical understanding that went into creating these models is inadequate, bringing into question the whole house of cards that relies upon a high sensitivity to CO2 due to feedbacks.
When I model something, I check it against the real world to make sure the real process is adequately represented. While I have never tried to model anything remotely as complicated as the global climate, the modeling principles HAVE to be the same.
The models represent the hypothesis. If they do not match observations, it doesn’t matter how smart the modelers, what their names are, or how many degrees they possess, the hypothesis is WRONG or the models are flawed beyond any usefulness.
“The CGM models are research tools and nothing more.”
This would make scientists who cross the line into demanding global change based on the unvalidated and false output of those research tools liable. Best example, Schellnhuber with his demand for a Great Transformation (into a technocracy where the wise men like him rule the world. Under participation of “stakeholders”; the communitarian term for sockpuppet.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communitarianism
Good article. The chaotic-nonlinear nature of animal/fish population dynamics as well as of climate itself is a free meal ticket for environmentalist spiv-shysters who can exploit a natural chaotic downturn and spin it as a highly profitable disaster story. They exploit also the general and persistent ignorance of chaotic nonlinear dynamics which persists in the scientific community let alone the general public.
The battle for scientific truth will never end since truth is subversive of societal political control interests for whom misinformation is much more useful and convenient and facts must be tractable with policy objectives.
Environmentalism is overtaking Islam as the leading fascistic political movement world-wide.
While sympathetic to the arguments about salmon fishing, your piece was severely damaged by political posturing under false premises, such as this:
“Some deride the fact that the Founding Fathers made the right to bear arms the second guarantee, to defend the first guarantee. However, it recognized the reality that the greatest threat to the people was their own government.”
This is a completely false statement. The second amendment was enacted to ensure that a citizen militia was available at all times to defend the new, democratic government, not to defend the people from the government. It’s important to recognize that most of the founding fathers were opposed to the new federal government having a standing army, and in lieu of that, they felt that the country could best be defended by citizen militias in each state, that in times of war or rebellion could be put under the command of the Federal Government, for the purpose of protecting the government, not somehow because the government might become the enemy. Never at any time was there some provision given to the thought that citizens have a right to take up arms against the democratically elected federal government of the United States. Quite the opposite.
So it gravely weakens your credibility to begin this story about salmon fishing with this kind of irrelevant political diatribe. Why not just stick to the simple facts about salmon, rather than embark on a dubious political argument that includes false claims like this one, that suggest somehow citizens perhaps ought to take up arms against their own government if it makes mistakes on issues related to salmon fishing. What exactly was the point of all that? What has it got to do with anything relevant to either fishing or climate science?
You seem to forget how this country got started. Here, schoolchildren are taught that it was patriotic to take up arms against our government when we were aborning. But maybe that has changed.
Maybe the NSA has instructions to keep an ear out for that sort of talk.
the country began as a revolt against a distant colonial monarchy across the ocean in which we were given no representation. It was not a war against a democratic government in which we elect our own representatives. The very purpose of having a democracy is to bring an end to the use of violence to resolve political disputes. So the founding fathers were entirely against the notion of using arms to revolt against our democratic government – unless, of course, it was no longer a democracy with elections and representative government.
#1 – The US is not a democracy.
#2 – The founding documents clearly stated that the right to bear arms was not to hunt, but to protect the citizens against a repressive government.
#3 – The founders limited the central government. It has grown far beyond the limits imposed and some of the checks and balances have been removed. Just because it was not FOUNDED as a repressive government does not mean it has not BECOME one.
#1 – The US is not a democracy.
By the standards of the Constitution, it is definitely a representative form of democratic government. That it doesn’t do what you might like it to do doesn’t mean it’s not a democracy. That’s a feature, not a bug, of democracy.
#2 – The founding documents clearly stated that the right to bear arms was not to hunt, but to protect the citizens against a repressive government.
Yes, in the event that our democratic government was in danger of violent overthrow by enemies, foreign or domestic, the state militias mentioned in the second amendment would form a federal army to fight this. In those days, militias were simply ordinary folks who needed to own guns in the event that they had to fight for their country – not against it. So the second amendment insured that these militias would be armed and ready if the need called them into battle. That was the purpose of the second amendment – not to overthrow the elected government if it didn’t do what some faction wanted. That gets its purpose completely backwards.
#3 – The founders limited the central government. It has grown far beyond the limits imposed and some of the checks and balances have been removed. Just because it was not FOUNDED as a repressive government does not mean it has not BECOME one.
That is quite true, but that has been done through our elected representatives, in a legal and democratic manner. If the people don’t like that, they can simply elect representatives who will reverse that trend. If they don’t, it means that they approve of these trends. Under the constitution you are free to campaign for candidates that will do what you think needs to be done to correct that. But you are not free to take up arms against the government to insist that they do things your way. That’s not the purpose of the second amendment.
#1 – The founders HATED democracy. That is why it clearly states “Republic”. They knew democracy was mob rule and they shunned it.
#2 – The Constitution, nor any of the founding documents, talk about the second amendment being to guard against a specific government. That is your opinion not supported by the facts. They did say it was to guard against a “repressive” government. And did not differentiate.
#3 – “Legal” is subjective. The founders never saw the reimposition of slavery, which is what our government has done (forcing one person to work for the benefit of another without compensation). And SCOTUS is not elected. So your point is both false and irrelevant.
WOW, read Thomas Jefferson’s take on that. He insisted on the second amendment for both possible uses – a militia to defend against external threats, and a militia to keep overweening government in check. He was Minister to France at the time of the writing of the constitution and when he got a copy he was adamant that the bill of rights was needed.
I don’t think Jefferson ever suggested that militias should be used against our own democratically elected government, but only in the event that the government was overthrown and a tyranny was instituted, and that militias were needed to reconstitute a democratically elected government. Jefferson and most of the other founding fathers were for that reason opposed to us ever having a standing army, because they feared that such an army might take over the government and institute a tyranny of some sort. That’s why they proposed the second amendment – so that we would have strong state militias rather than a standing army to ensure the security of the country. That only lasted a short time, and the reality of the need for a standing army became clear after the War of 1812, which we almost lost because our militias were inadequate for the job.
“””””…..
Conrad Goehausen (@conradgoehausen)
September 23, 2014 at 8:46 pm
So odd that you would not quote the full text of the second amendment:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”…..””””
No need to Conrad, since you and everyone else already knows what they are.
All of which is irrelevant.
“A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free state.” Is a simple statement of a (presumed) fact.
But nothing in the rules of English grammar causes that statement to IN ANY WAY modify, restrict, define, alter, clarify, refute, augment, whatever, the following declarative statement:
“the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
The declaration of independence asserts that each of us already has ALL of our rights, which clearly includes the right to keep and bear arms.
The second amendment (and all the others) tells the GOVERNMENT, what THEY can and cannot do; it gives NO rights to anybody; we already have them.
And if you don’t like the second amendment, then just read the ninth amendment, which says that the people retain all of their right, even if they aren’t mentioned in the Constitution. So the ninth amendment protects for the people, all of the rights we don’t sign over to the Government “in order to form a more perfect union.”
It’s the Declaration of Independence that asserts things like “the right to life”
The word “LIFE” appears absolutely nowhere in the original Constitution, and I believe occurs twice in the Bill of Rights (first ten amendments), and also once in the 14th amendment.
You’ll have to check, since I don’t have my copy on me at the moment.
And you evidently didn’t read my except from The Constitution, Article IV section 4, that guarantees to each State, a REPUBLICAN form of Government That is also one of the few instances in the Constitution that INSTRUCTS the Federal government as to what they MUST do (protect each state against invasion).
In Article I section 8, the Constitution cites about 17 things, that the CONGRESS has the authority to do; it does not insist that they do them, and raising taxes, to pay the national debts and pay for defense is the first such authority. That doesn’t limit what they can spend; just what they can raise taxes for; so they just print money, or borrow it, which adds to the debt, and that they can raise taxes for. Hence the deficit spending mentality.
In a DEMOCRACY, everybody gets put their oar in the water.
Yes we do use democratic principles to select our representatives, but the USA is NOT a democracy.
Democracy is another word for Anarchy.
George,
But nothing in the rules of English grammar causes that statement to IN ANY WAY modify, restrict, define, alter, clarify, refute, augment, whatever, the following declarative statement:
“the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
The declaration of independence asserts that each of us already has ALL of our rights, which clearly includes the right to keep and bear arms.
I never said it otherwise. You seem to confuse me with someone who thinks the Second Amendment should be limited to arming militias. I do not. I agree that it confers the right to bear arms on all citizens. Not for the purpose of committing treason by rebelling against the Republic, but for personal self-defense.
The word “LIFE” appears absolutely nowhere in the original Constitution, and I believe occurs twice in the Bill of Rights (first ten amendments), and also once in the 14th amendment.
I don’t see what the point is, since I never said anything about “life” being in the constitution.
As for congress’ power to tax and spend, that’s all quite irrelevant to this discussion. Whatever you might think the limits of that power might be, taking up arms against the country to resolve any such conflict is still treason, and punishable by death. The second amendment was not put in place to enable traitors to take up arms against the elected government. Elections and courts are there to resolve any such disputes.
Yes we do use democratic principles to select our representatives, but the USA is NOT a democracy.
Then you are using your own definition of the word, for a world all your own. In the real world, a freely elected representative Republic is considered a form of democracy.
Democracy is another word for Anarchy.
No, it is not. Democracy, particularly as conceived by our Founding Fathers, is a highly structured political process that enables citizens to elect their own representatives to formulate the laws by which we live. Even a direct democracy, in which people vote for the laws directly (as in state referendums), is still not anarchy.
I don’t know where you get these ideas.
Each state had its own militia and state militias were federalized at the time of WW 1. Look back at the Civil War where each state raised troops but there was also a small regular U.S. army & navy at that time.
Maybe federalized during WW 1 so state militias could be sent overseas? Now known as National Guard units with each state having its own commanding officer.
The state militias were funded by each state and not an expense for the federal government. Federal money not needed for them in the beginning of the country. These were composed of citizen soldiers.
We have had a permanent standing army since 1812 or thereabouts. We continued to have state militias to support and supplement the federal standing army, and to deal with domestic emergencies. But none of those militias are any longer dependent on their soldiers having their own weapons at home. Our state militia’s armaments are kept in secure locations. And they are most definitely not for the purpose of going to war against our own federal government because we may not like some of the laws passed by our elected officials. We have elections to address those problems. The purpose of our militias is to protect our government, not to threaten it.
Historically, the first great test of this principle was the Whiskey Rebellion, in which George Washington used state militias to crush a violent rebellion against a tax the federal government had imposed through congress. Those militias did not fight on the side of the rebels, but against them. As intended by the Second Amendment.
Please provide documentation to your claims. I’m all eyes and ears and anxiously await your response..
I’m not teaching a seminar here, so you should do your own research. It shouldn’t be hard. Begin by examining the constitution and its requirements for a Declaration of War. What that requirement means is that unless the government is actually at war, we do not have a standing federal army that the President can use. That was because the Founders feared that a President might use such a standing army to overthrow congress and institute a dictatorship – as was proposed to Washington by his generals at the end of the Revolutionary War (and to his great credit, he turned them down). So to create a standing army, the President had to ask congress to pass a Declaration of War, which empowered him to take command of state militias and either draftees or volunteers to form a federal army. They were so worried about a President using this army to subvert the government that it was only empowered for two years at a time, and would require another vote of congress to re-empower it. Otherwise, it would have to be disbanded.
That is why every two years congress has to pass a re-authorization bill for our military. If that doesn’t happen, the military has to be disbanded. It’s pretty much automatic for that reason, but also controversial because of various add-ons that get put into the bill, which can’t be voted against without endangering our entire national defense.
The point is that the origin of the Second Amendment was both the need for state militias to be used for national defense when necessary, and the fear of having a standing federal army. Never was there some provision for it to be used to allow citizens to take up arms against our democratically elected government because they didn’t like what their representatives were doing. That’s what elections are for. So unless elections were suspended and a tyrannical, non-democratic government put in its place, there would be no legitimate cause for rebellion. See the Civil War.
Good thing you are not teaching. You would be a failure based upon content.
But then, as we see, many “teachers” are.
@ Conrad,
I requested documentation to support your earlier comments. You have offered none, just more of your very skewed opinions with regards to the Second Amendment and your version of its origin. It should be quite clear that I was not buying your BS as was my motivation to call you out. Perhaps you would do better to discuss what the meaning of “is” is.
You fail at history but at fantasy composition you would pass.
Conrad, your comments have taken you in a big and confusing circle in your mind.
I’ll leave you in your state of mind as you seem to be comfortable with it. First and foremost I reserve my right to personal self defense. I’m not concerned about any militias or war with an oppressive government at this time, just being able to protect myself, family and property. You should not attempt to take that away or that would be viewed in a completely different context. Government by mob rule would be one in need of a resolution.
By the way, I reread the lead post and have no idea how you managed scramble your mind to concoct a discussion that has led to this OT discourse.
Do you have any documentation showing that anything I’ve said is false? If not, you’re nothing more than a troll.
A distant monarchy across the ocean? That sounds like it was pretty far away- almost as far as Washington,DC.
The western states of the United States freely joined the union of their own choice and enjoy equal representation in congress. So they have little to complain about in terms of distance. The same was not true of the colonial Americans under British rule. Hence, the Revolutionary War.
Where did you find that fictional account ? The second amendment says “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” That by the way refers to the very same “people” who just a handful of words earlier assert their right to peaceably assemble, to petition their government for the redress of grievances. Well in the earlier case, they only say “abridged” but in the second, they say INFRINGED.
All that gobbledegook about a “well regulated militia” does not in any way modify or restrict the meaning of those words about not infringing on the PEOPLE’s right to keep and bear arms. It is at best one reason (out of many)why the framers thought that right should not be infringed.
They could have written thusly :
The sun rising in the east, being necessary for a warm day at the beach in a free state; the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Under the ordinary rules of English grammar, and sentence structure, that means EXACTLY the same thing as what they wrote; namely “The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
Who gives a rip about what reason they offered. The absolute right of self defense is asserted in the Declaration of Independence. Article two simply tells the government to stay the hell out of it.
I think they call it a “Right to life”.
“””””…..
Conrad Goehausen (@conradgoehausen)
September 23, 2014 at 4:41 am
I’m not teaching a seminar here, so you should do your own research. It shouldn’t be hard. Begin by examining the constitution and its requirements for a Declaration of War. What that requirement means is that unless the government is actually at war, we do not have a standing federal army that the President can use……”””””
Total rubbish.
The Constitution prohibits the several STATES from having standing armies; not the Federal government.
And in Article IV section 4, the Constitution says: “The United State [those feds] shall guarantee to every state in this union, a Republican form of government, AND shall protect each of them against invasion, …….”
How the hell do the do the latter without an army.
And Article I section 8 clause one, tells the Congress that they have the power to lay and collect taxes, To pay the debts [of the USA], and provide for the common DEFENSE and welfare OF THE UNITED STATES.
That does not authorize them to collect taxes to pay for welfare for every dead beat tom dick and harry.
So they just spend money willy nilly to buy votes, and since that goes on the National debt, then they sneak it into the pay the debts wording.
But National defense it the primary reason to have a federal government; WITH AN ARMY, etc.
So odd that you would not quote the full text of the second amendment:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
I am not arguing that the second amendment offers no protection to individuals who wish to own firearms. That has long been decided by the courts. So no need to feel that I’m trying to take away your guns. I am merely pointing out that the original reason for the second amendment, and why it was considered so important, was to protect the country from insurrection from within, and attacks from without. It was not instituted to give citizens the ability to rebel against the democratically elected government itself. Claiming that this is the purpose of the second Amendment, and that if the government passes laws we don’t like, we can resort to “second amendment solutions” completely and intentionally misunderstands the purpose of the second amendment, which was to protect the new government, not to threaten it with violence if it didn’t do what people wanted.
You have a problem with the meaning of “The State”. It was not about the nation, it was about the States themselves. Also you omitted the fact that the punctuation does not make it a dependency.
Likewise, I never said that the Constitution forbids the federal government from having a standing army. They considered including such a provision, but decided against it because they didn’t know what some future time would be like. The compromise was that any provisions for a standing army had to be renewed every two years, which is exactly what we do to this very day.
As for congressional taxing and spending, those powers are clearly given to the federal government by the Constitution, with no restrictions on how the money is to be spent. If you don’t like how they spend money, vote for someone who agrees with your ideas. But don’t take up arms against the government, citing the second amendment as your rationale. That’s not the purpose of the second amendment.
The main point seems to be about “false”. And well it should be. If you knowingly spread false information, you may he liable for libel at the least or criminal fraud at the worst. And indeed that is the issue. “knowingly”. The problem with the Suzuki foundation and others is that they are PC, so no one will pursue and prosecute them. Justice is being corrupted by the leaders who see it as a means to their ends.
Phil – please see my post of September 21, 2014 at 11:28 pm
I suggest that someone is going to sue these warmist fraudsters in the USA, probably using the civil RICO statutes.
Watch for it…
Best, Allan
I agree there is a case, especially Civil. But the forces of PC usually win out as while Justice is supposed to be blind, judges are not. I will applaud any such action and fully support it. But I do not see it happening in my lifetime.
TRIPLE damages…
There is incentive to go after them, but they still need to win to collect.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
This is important.
The enviro-alarmits are crying “Fire” in the theater, and their is no fire. They are doing it with CO2, they are doing it with fish, and they are doing it with Prairie Chickens. They are even doing it with you, claiming you are too fat or drive to big of a car, both of which they claim is harming the earth. It is sad. We really need to hold them accountable for the harm they have already done and continue to do. Environmentalism has become mental and insane and is now just a radical -ism.
As an interesting footnote to history:
The “Green” movement can be traced back to the Third Reich who promoted a health and ecological orientation. Themes of sending folks out into the sun and open spaces to exercise and slim down. Themes of preserving nature and planting new forests (in a centrally controlled kind of way…) Sending your kids off to indoctrination at camp. (Just web search on ‘green movement’ and the N*z word…)
It is one of the bits of history being disappeared by those who find it an embarrassment. Like the re-defining of them as “right wing” when that was a label applied by Stalin as they were just barely to the right of communist Russia. Though they self identified as clearly Socialist. ( Among the first “Third Way” types. You could keep your business as long as you did what the government told you with loads of regulations. Sound familiar?…) National Socialist German Workers Party; after all… (Yes, I’ve researched this a lot. Don’t bother ranting that it isn’t true. Huge list of references at my blog, so don’t try a thread hijack here, I’ll just point you at there, where it has all been thrashed out with links and references.)
So “the left” has been using the watermelon strategy for a very long time. And it leads back to Germany. To the extent “business leaders” in bed with such governments use it, it is also “the right” that is to blame. Missing from it all is the “No central control, thanks; I’ll take liberty” that is neither “left” nor “right”. Both ends being authoritarian central power types.
Per the main thrust of the article: Yes, somehow we need accountability, but how do you do that without shooting yourself when the law schools pump out ‘progressive’ judges by the truckload?
Yes you’re right – to the original, Na3i environmentalists, environmental purity was inseparable from racial or ethnic purity. Green power, black death.
The German Wandervogel movement came before the Nazis. 70% of their members became members of the NSDAP because the party had nature protection in its program. Der Wandervogel was a proto hippy movement. The word Wandervogel meaning something like Rolling Stone.
Both Wandervogel and NSDAP have some esoteric roots.
Messenger of the Peace? How about Messenger of Piece. When he isn’t acting, he’s on a yacht with a bevy of gorgeous girls, or partying in London, Cannes, and NYC. I’ve never seen him carry a book, or any device larger than a cell phone. Perhaps someone could ask our new Ambassador to explain the mechanics of greenhouse gases, and where he perceives the danger to be. That oughta’ be good for a yuck.
Dr. Ball, thank you for the most enlightening essay. Very well presented.
I believe that most of the readers here will agree that there should be some social responsibility for which there should be total accountability and liability. It seems as though most of these activists organizations fail miserably with that regards.
Again thank you.
I believe that we are very very slowly holding people accountable. As In many social changes, this one may be lost in the noise, as it is of relatively small magnitude and beset by numerous complications. Nonetheless, the thesis:
Those who espouse an alarmist and unjustified point of view, based on mythology rather than data, do so not only on climate but on other issues as well. They are being shunned from some communities (and welcomed in others). There are consequences for executing policies based on myth. They will manifest themselves both socially and economically. The shunning is from both sides, actually, and takes the form of self-segregation, or clinging to one’s own kind politically.
Even in the heterogenous larger society, with huge asset flows among the silent majority and not so silent minorities blunting the edge of most any social action, over time one group will do relatively well, and another less well, based on their grounding in reality.
Among nations, all nations have assets. Some use them well and productively, to the betterment of their populations, some do not.
Among self segregated regions, the same rule holds.
Politically, the groups doing less well will advocate “sharing”, those doing better will adovate local rights and responsibilities.
Multiple systems can succeed, with the support of the masses, so it is not the “flavor” of the politics that controls. It is the level of dealing with the realities of ones circumstances.
I think it probable that the unrealistic will, over time, be held accountable, though the punishments will be very moderate and perhaps only psychic.
Just remember that OWH used the “fire in a crowded theater” metaphor to justify imprisoning people for “sedition” when they criticized the US entry into WWI and the military draft.
Also, due to overfishing and damming of rivers, wild salmon production in the US is entirely artificial. There’s not a single fish that swims upstream to spawn that wasn’t raised for some time in some tank somewhere. This makes the fish populations even more vulnerable because of lack of genetic diversity.
They (or almost all of they) will not be held to account.
The reason being is that there are enough of them to claim “consensus”, and as such it is “obvious” that they were not unreasonable in yelling FIRE … they will claim that they had a “reasonable” concern and therefore were justified in trying to help.
If a large enough group of people see mist/fog coming in through the door, talk about among themselves, decide that it is smoke/dangerous, and then they all start yelling FIRE, then they are not going to be held to account (unless they readily admit that they knew all along that it was a deception). Or if the vast majority of the group turns on a few, and says that the few were the leaders, and the few leaders actively deceived … only then will the leaders be held to account. Not gonna happen.
It would be nice to keep a record … an open record … of who was yelling FIRE (how loud they yelled, what benefits they received from yelling, and how long they kept yelling, and if they kept yelling even when their cohorts had already realized that it was all just plain mist/fog).
Although outside the point of the article:
With respect to the fish … how do we (in the northwest … excluding Alaska) define level of historic runs? We got here 200 years ago and said wow, that is a lot of fish. Now we make an educated guess and assign a “number” to that big bunch of fish. Now that we have a number, we feel that we need to work really hard to bring the current fish runs up match to the historic “number” (that way we will know that our civilization isn’t bad). We do try to factor in (with another educated guess) the deep water trawlers impact, but we do not (and probably never will) acknowledge what happened to the one of the salmon’s biggest predators 300 to 200 years ago; because it does not play into the current narrative of consensus.
“There’s not a single fish that swims upstream to spawn that wasn’t raised for some time in some tank somewhere”. ???
Please make an attempt to see through the mist/fog.
Figure things out on your own … consensus just means that you opinion is protected by the mob, it does not mean that it is correct.
I think many cases of “adjusting” temperatures should be called “falsification of public records.”
A thermometer reads what a thermometer reads, and that is that. Raw data should be as sacrosanct as gospel. Any “adjustments”, even for obviously needed things such as urban heat islands, should be clearly labeled as “adjustments.”
Margaret Wente…. One one the lone voices of reason, in Canadian media, when it comes to climate change.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/the-it-girl-of-climate-change-doesnt-get-it/article20736274/
Government and climate focused science, when well mixed, is an ideological mess. The issue appears at a fundamental level to be why so many professional scientists with a presumed modicum of intellectual integrity embrace the ideological mess in their chosen profession.
It’s like government representatives are knocking on every climate focused scientist’s door. If the government representative says “I am here to help you by asking for your help in a noble cause” then it appears that many climate focused scientists often say “I really need help so I will do whatever you ask for the good of our country and world”.
John
Government scientists exist in a hierarchy. The boss scientists (best example Schellnhuber) are power hungry like bosses naturally are. The difference between a boss in the private and in the public sector is of course, the boss in the private sector must try to make his company bigger and better by improving products, reducing costs, delivering more better. The boss in the public sector cannot do that. He doesn’t have a product, and no customers. He must try to get a larger chunk of a loot that is already there; the taxpayer money collected by the state. The scientists that scream alarm the loudest are rewarded. So he makes his underlings scream alarm. After warmism will come another big fat government science lie.
You have touched on the dirty secret of advancement in government employment. It means, in many instances, of using your authority in a manipulative way against the interests of the polity but toward your own advancement. There can be cited many incidents of this.
DirkH on September 23, 2014 at 8:38 am
– – – – – – – – –
DirkH,
I tend to agree in part with your analysis. I take your comment as partial concurrence of my statement in my initial comment, “Government and climate focused science, when well mixed, is an ideological mess.”.
John
“…because the cod moved to inshore waters and out into warming Gulf Stream waters …”
Do you mean _from_ inshore waters _to_ Gulf Stream waters, or that they moved both ways from a somewhat offshore location?
I thought they preferred colder water?
I dunno.
I see. The sea lice thing actually also kept me away from farmed salmon for years. How was I to verify the thing? As a child I was also always told salmon only return to the rivers they were spawned in. I always was suspicious of this “truism”. It just didn’t tally with the adaptability that I was told was essence and effect of evolution.