Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova and James Delingpole – A group of climate scientists, including Professor Kevin Trenberth, have demanded President Obama abuse the RICO act, to silence criticism of their theories.
The letter;
Dear President Obama, Attorney General Lynch, and OSTP Director Holdren,
As you know, an overwhelming majority of climate scientists are convinced about the potentially serious adverse effects of human-induced climate change on human health, agriculture, and biodiversity. We applaud your efforts to regulate emissions and the other steps you are taking. Nonetheless, as climate scientists we are exceedingly concerned that America’s response to climate change – indeed, the world’s response to climate change – is insufficient. The risks posed by climate change, including increasing extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and increasing ocean acidity – and potential strategies for addressing them – are detailed in the Third National Climate Assessment (2014), Climate Change Impacts in the United States. The stability of the Earth’s climate over the past ten thousand years contributed to the growth of agriculture and therefore, a thriving human civilization. We are now at high risk of seriously destabilizing the Earth’s climate and irreparably harming people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people.
We appreciate that you are making aggressive and imaginative use of the limited tools available to you in the face of a recalcitrant Congress. One additional tool – recently proposed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse – is a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) investigation of corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change. The actions of these organizations have been extensively documented in peer reviewed academic research (Brulle, 2013) and in recent books including: Doubt is their Product (Michaels, 2008), Climate Cover-Up (Hoggan & Littlemore, 2009), Merchants of Doubt (Oreskes & Conway, 2010), The Climate War (Pooley, 2010), and in The Climate Deception Dossiers (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2015). We strongly endorse Senator Whitehouse’s call for a RICO investigation.
The methods of these organizations are quite similar to those used earlier by the tobacco industry. A RICO investigation (1999 to 2006) played an important role in stopping the tobacco industry from continuing to deceive the American people about the dangers of smoking. If corporations in the fossil fuel industry and their supporters are guilty of the misdeeds that have been documented in books and journal articles, it is imperative that these misdeeds be stopped as soon as possible so that America and the world can get on with the critically important business of finding effective ways to restabilize the Earth’s climate, before even more lasting damage is done.
Sincerely,
Jagadish Shukla, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Edward Maibach, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Paul Dirmeyer, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Barry Klinger, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Paul Schopf, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
David Straus, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Edward Sarachik, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Michael Wallace, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Alan Robock, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
Eugenia Kalnay, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
William Lau, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO
T.N. Krishnamurti, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
Vasu Misra, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
Ben Kirtman, University of Miami, Miami, FL
Robert Dickinson, University of Texas, Austin, TX
Michela Biasutti, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY
Mark Cane, Columbia University, New York, NY
Lisa Goddard, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY
Alan Betts, Atmospheric Research, Pittsford, VT
It never fails to amaze me how climate alarmists regularly accuse skeptics of being unhinged conspiracy theorists, while at the same time the alarmists themselves regularly advance lunatic conspiracy theories, to “explain” why a lot of people refuse to accept their doomsday predictions on faith, despite the complete and utter failure of alarmist climate models to demonstrate predictive skill.
Must get more yarn.
You’ll need it. When it comes to Senator Whitehouse and the particular accusation he’s pushing, there is an entertaining history to it. The man might just open up a Pandora’s Box instead that he never counted on. Please see ” ‘Skeptic Climate Scientists are Industry-Paid Shills’ (sir, what is your source for that?)” http://gelbspanfiles.com/?p=2842
Oh, btw, re-read names/books in the second paragraph. I covered Brulle here http://gelbspanfiles.com/?p=1237 , Hoggan here http://gelbspanfiles.com/?p=2728 , Oreskes here http://gelbspanfiles.com/?p=2009 , and the UCS’ Climate Deception Dossiers here http://gelbspanfiles.com/?p=2891 , plus I can directly tie David Michaels’ book and Eric Pooley’s book into the same solitary source for the idea that skeptic climate scientists are ‘paid industry shills’. These letter writers could have saved themselves some ink if they has simply cited Ross Gelbspan’s 1997 “The Heat is On” book. The actions of the “corporations and other organizations” have NOT been extensively documented, that’s a literal talking point I covered here: http://gelbspanfiles.com/?p=2907 . Anybody smell a rat in this situation?
What’s needed now is for a similar letter to be drafted and sent to Pres B O from skeptics and signed by ALL conservatives in congress demanding that the same rigorous standard (I.e. RICO investigation), if approved by him as a tool against skeptic science needs to be utilized with the same rigor to investigate all the claims of current climate science. In both cases the investigating panel NEEDS to be bipartisan in makeup
A panderer’s box?
This is not a yarn being spun…
Most people believe this “narrative”. I have spent many hours discussing this with an anthropologist who has worked at a senior policy level. They described to me how a narrative is built upon till it is virtually unstoppable. (Do you remember the part that Margaret Meade played in composing this narrative?)
People believe this narrative even when they are in possession of, and understand, contrary evidence.
Keep this in mind when you are “dissing” these good doctors. They know what they are doing and they know that the possibility of “winning over” the law with their point of view is very real.
Of course, what they have failed to consider is that many contradictory points of view compose “The One True Narrative”. Some of them will be sacrificed on the alter of Gaia along with the unbelievers. Indeed in most cases it will be impossible to distinguish unbelievers from true believers. The solution is simple. “J’accuse!” shall be sufficient for imprisonment or execution.
We live in interesting times.
Its a witch!!!!
JJ Reuter:
For the most part witches received trials.
Trenberth should review the career of Robespierre….
http://www.historytoday.com/marisa-linton/robespierre-and-terror
It’s a lesson to us all.
You mean Dangerous Times!….
JJ Rueter, and what weighs the same as a witch…
https://youtu.be/k3jt5ibfRzw
WillR,
I agree – but the amazing thing is that these people assume that Nature will cooperate at least to the extent that they can pull this AGW thing off. I’d say there’s a limited horizon effect at work here.
7.8 million women and children die every year from bad indoor air – from using wood stoves and dung because The Greens prevent any energy to be developed in those regions. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs292/en/
.
3.4 million people die every year including 760 000 children.
Fanatics block the fuel needed to run drinking water and sanitary systems.
http://water.org/water-crisis/water-facts/water/
.
850,000 people die every year because refrigerated vaccines cannot be maintained…The Fanatics block any electrical services and think a 6 solar panels powering a single surgery room light bulb is enough to also run a refrigerator.
.
2 million women and children die every year and another million go blind because the Greens will not allowed Golden Rice, which is free, to be grown.
.
Now those are measurable outcomes of Green policies while the Greens are incapable of justifying any of their claims.
Perhaps fanatics need to bring a RICO lawsuit. Then they can bring their coveted data, explain how we would grow food for the world using horses and Quaker technology.
They can explain how the powerful corporations stopped all the ice from melting, kept temps and seas from rising.
Then they can explain how Clinton approved the Alberta Clipper Pipeline after ‘donations’ from wealthy Canadians but turned down Keystone and sent rabid tules to protest over there. Then they can explain how Soros crashed coal and is buying it all for pennies. Or explain Steyer.
Replace dung with coal and you can say goodbye to cheap food produce from there. The west is built on the exploitation of poorer nations. We give them a dollar or 2 a day so we can enjoy free coffee at our workplace. When overpopulation creates famines that would make Bob Geldof self harm is the moment land leased by the west will be taken away.
Empowering Africa will make us or our companies lose a lot more than the ones devoid of empathy are about to allow. These monsters have power and it is them that good people have to get rid of first. One has to decide what is more important – human life or non vital comforts?
Africa should be given a chance to develop like the rest of the world has. Exploitation must end first.
Wow, Wu, is there anything that you know that is actually correct?
The west doesn’t get cheap anything from there, because they don’t produce anything for export.
So take your communist inspired nonsense and tell your cell masters that your propaganda isn’t working.
The only exploitation is being done by your communist masters.
You’re right, Mark–China is grabbing up all the natural resources it can world-wide, particularly in Africa where there’s still significant room for their expansionist dreams. China gets the action and the West gets the rhetoric.
Communist? It is interesting you lump anti – exploitation sentiments with communism, a form of governance that was implemented each time to exploit everyone but those in power.
There is a lot of psychology in your reply Mark. Perhaps you believe Reagan beat communism rather than simply outspending USSR.
Have all the WMDs that were sold to fund Reagan’s illigal black ops been recovered yet?
Don’t be blind to the despicable done on our behalf. I expect more from this group… the one that is fully aware just how devious those in power can be.
Just remember ONE thing: EVERY GOVERNMENT ON EARTH is aware, you may bet your bottom dollar, of the skeptical arguments in addition to the alarmist ones. There is a REASON why all of these Climate Conferences since Kyoto have been mostly sound and fury, accomplishing nothing tangible. The “smart money” knows this is nothing but NOISE being promulgated by a lobbyist group no different from any others. Yes, the Powers That Be will dutifully fly to Paris and go through their tut-tutting act–and at the end of it we’ll carry on as before. Frankly, the only people fooled by this nonsense are the “NPR class” who want to appear Earnestly Concerned. Same ones who spend all their weekends acquiring impotence by riding bicycles to “cure cancer.” Notice cancer being cured? I thought not! But it makes them feel very, VERY self-righteous because they CARE about things like being green, fair trade, pthalates leaching out of their water bottles, etc. They comprise about 4% if you’re lucky of the general population. The rest have long since yawned and moved on. They know it’s “noise,” not “news” any longer.
Here’s a great rebuttal also….http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/09/arrest-those-climate-skeptics.php
UT-Austin has it’s own IDIOT on the short list who signed the letter …
http://www.iges.org/letter/LetterPresidentAG.pdf …
https://www.jsg.utexas.edu/researcher/robert_dickinson/ …
Robert Dickinson robted@jsg.utexas.edu
George Mason University I see. I also see from our ‘friends’ at DeSmog this little tittle tattle.
This is how to fight climate change.
1. At engineering school they told us to always remember if you point a finger at someone, there are three pointing back at you.
2. My engineering firm’s lawyer told us to always negotiate settlements of disputes because people that sue usually get counter sued for several times the original claim. Watched it happen many times, fortunately usually as a witness for one side or another. These folks are treading dangerous ground.
“The stability of the Earth’s climate over the past ten thousand years contributed to the growth of agriculture and therefore, a thriving human civilization.”
Who exactly is spreading misinformation?
Indeed. How pathetically incomplete and misleading can you be? It wasn’t the “Stability” of natural climate variation that contributed to agriculture, but the “instability” of the interglacial. Hmmm, what does that make me think of?
Idiots that’s who.
A case in point: Palouse soil is fine grained chemically rich soil blown from one location (usually sourced from drought dried vegetative sediment from a long gone glacial sheet fed inland lake) to another location some distance away where it is now used to grow abundant produce, contributing to the health and well-being of humans and animals alike.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0790b/report.pdf
http://idahoptv.org/outdoors/shows/palouseparadise/soil.cfm
So much for stability. Our little dust bowl era was a tiny newborn flea biting mother Earth compared to the continent sized dust storms of long ago, depriving one area of soil while enriching another.
Hi Pamela,
This sounds like what I have always known as loess soil, an aeolian deposit, with huge accumulations occurring in places like Iowa, and other states of the corn belt. Highly productive and with excellent drainage and cation exchange capacity, the very thick loess soils of the Midwest can hold a huge amount of moisture, another reason for the high productivity of this region .
I have only heard of Palouse as a region of highly productive farmland in Idaho, which I had always thought was due largely to volcanic enrichment of the loess soil in the region.
I shall have to study this more, as soils and soil types are a hobby of mine.
You are correct.
Growing up in the Palouse area in the 1950s, I was always told that the Palouse Hills were made of wind-blown ash from the volcanoes in the Cascade Range.
Read the links, especially the old pdf. Indeed it was once believed that these soils were volcanic in nature. Modern spectromic and chemical analysis, in addition to microscopic identification, reveals a variety of loess soils in the Palouse areas, with very few being substantially volcanic in origin. In some places, these soils are still building.
Yes, the Palouse is thickly covered with aeolian loess. Amazing stuff: when oven-dried it is like talcum powder; when saturated, it acts like clay. It’s fertility makes the Palouse in Eastern Washington one of the, if not the, primary producer of winter wheat, amongst other stuff.
Pamela, is there any substance to the theory that the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon are not mountains at all, they are in fact gigantic heaps of compressed tumbleweeds?
The deceivers are listed in the letter isn’t it?
The climate hasn’t been stable over the last 10K years. We haven’t slipped into an ice age, but not the definition of stability.
Who is spreading misinformation? You, for one.
Copycats?
Posted in 2014, written in 2013:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/21/salmon-climate-and-accountability/#comment-1743273
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
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/24/uk-met-fastest-decline-solar-activity-last-ice-age/#comment-1972538
PROPOSAL – SUE THE WARMISTS IN THE USA UNDER CIVIL RICO
I have been considering this approach for several years and I think it is now time to proceed..
Civil RICO provides for TRIPLE DAMAGES. Global losses from the global warming scam are in the trillions, including hundreds of billions on the USA.
We would sue the sources of warmist funding and those who have significantly profited from the global warming scam..
The key to starting a civil RICO action is to raise several million dollars to fund the lawsuit, which will be protracted and expensive.
If serious funders are interested, please contact me through http://www.OilsandsExpert.com
Regards, Allan MacRae
Calgary
Best approach for Canada is to ban any involvement with the California carbon trading exchange. Why the State of California believes it has the right to conduct an International trading exchange is beyond belief.
John commented : “… Why the State of California believes it has the right to conduct an International trading exchange is beyond belief.
Hubris. The governor of California, Jerry Brown, is not only a powerful useful idiot but a narcissist equal to the POTUS. He is intent on destabilizing the ninth largest economy in the world by taxing businesses and openly inviting illegal immigration. He is touring the world touting California’s Climate Change activism like it’s a product to be exported.
Depending on how the steyn case goes and where mann legal money is coming from. He would be a great front man for such a suit. He can argue standing since he was targeted for oppression and standing will be the biggest issues the cultist will use to try to block the suit.
RE-posting.
Moderator, I think you deleted this post in error – I wanted you to delete my incomplete post at September 22, 2015 at 10:01 am. No worries – thank you..
John said:
“Best approach for Canada is to ban any involvement with the California carbon trading exchange.”
Hello John.
The problem in Canada is that the Ontario and now Alberta governments have been taken over by uber-warmists who KNOW that “”the science is settled” and they are now planning to impose their costly and ineffective “green energy solutions” upon us.
The problem with our politicians is they are so eager to flaunt their green credentials in Paris that they are falling over each other to adopt ever-more-costly-and ineffective “green” solutions to non-existent problems.
Their ridiculous green solutions will actually increase energy costs and drive up Excess Winter Mortality Rates*.
The problem with green energy is that it is not green and it produces little useful energy.
Cheap, abundant reliable energy is the lifeblood of society – it IS that simple.
Regards, Allan
* Post Script
Recently Joe d’Aleo and I published two papers that were adapted and submitted to the new warmist Alberta Climate Change Advisory Panel.
1. The UN’s IPCC Has No Credibility On Global Warming September 6, 2015
by Allan MacRae
2. Cold Weather Kills 20 Times as Many People as Hot Weather September 4, 2015
by Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRae
Our submissions to the Alberta Climate Change Advisory Panel are now posted on the Panel’s website – see 108, 108.1 and 108.2 at
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B1whOKweyfKHfndDdUpxYXlQdUF0MGhSM25jR3RuLXppLU01NXlMcDFqR2pJZHpkSmo2T2M&usp=drive_web
The point, you can’t sue opinion as opinion relates to 1st amendment rights. Anyone who attempts to use RICO would be laughed out of town.
Your point related to Climategate emails is interesting. Collusion with intent to defraud?
RICO cases are really tough cases to win. With a substantial portion of the public not buying the global warming claims, getting a 10-2 verdict (which is what is needed in civil court) would be very difficult.
This case would be nothing like a tobacco case. Tobacco is not necessary for a person to live on, but having an adequate source of energy is, and energy is necessary to run our economy.
It would be a battle of experts and the fossil fuel industry would have no difficulty finding experts who have never taken a dime from the fossil fuel industry to testify. There are many in the academic community who have very fine credentials.
This idea is not going to get very far in my opinion.
I am a retired personal injury lawyer who practiced law in both Texas and Tennessee and I am reasonably familiar with RICO cases although they were not my exact field of specialty.
Below are the global warmers. The groups who keep telling us about the dangers of global warming AND the groups who compare us to the tactics of BIG TOBACCCO.
As a warm up here are the fossil fuel funded climate change and green bodies
TOBACCO LINKS and global warmers. I didn’t inhale but I took the money. Baaaah humbug and LOL.
Additionally, they asked too late in the Administration. This isn’t a drone strike and can’t be pulled together in a few hours. Putting together a RICO case would take months before the first filings and we are under 500 days until the next inauguration day. This is just another publicity stunt,
David and Jean – you appear to misunderstand.
I was and still am proposing a Civil RICO lawsuit against the global warming alarmists, not the skeptics.
The Climategate emails, the warmists’ falsifying of climate science, climate models and now even climate data are damning evidence of deliberate falsehoods, deceit and fraud.
These are not incidents of accidental and random error – the falsehoods are too consistent, there are far too many of them, there is ample evidence of conspiracy, and nobody who earns a PhD can be that imbecilic for that long without deliberate and conscious effort.
Civil RICO is a cause of action unique to the USA that is well-suited to these warmist fraudsters.
Regards, Allan
Could the divergence between predicted and observed temperature be part of the case? For some years now the divergence has been well outside the error bars indicating the models are faulty or they have been extremely unlucky, but we keep getting told the models are widely believed and the situation may be worse than they thought. To carry on pretending that the models are valid is disingenuous at best, and that this issue is ignored in the above letter signed by Trenberth and others shows a cavalier disrespect towards the interests of the public at large who are under-righting the scam they are running .
Yes Julian, and also the accelerating divergence of the Surface Temperature data from the Lower Tropospheric Temperatures – in order to fraudulently represent that the models are more accurate (actually less INaccurate) than they really are.
Marks,
This from Cornell.edu
International Law
The Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution empowers Congress to “regulate commerce with foreign nations,” U.S. Const. Art. I, § 8, cl. 3, while other Article I provisions empower Congress to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises,” id. at Art. I, § 8, cl. 1, and prohibit states from doing the same without congressional approval, id. at Art. I, § 10, cl. 2. Pursuant to this authority, Congress has enacted numerous federal statutes, including the Tariff Act of 1930, the Trade Act of 1974, and the Trade Agreements Act of 1979.
Has Congress approved California Carbon Trading with Canada?
Thanks for the reply Allen and links to your papers.
With the extreme Canadian winters, I’m surprised anyone would consider green energy. Windmills would self-destruct and solar is largely useless. What green energy are they considering? Bio-fuels are silly given Canadian natural gas and coal reserves.
Hi John,
Wind Power is what Canadian warmists typically embrace – Canada has squandered billions of dollars on worthless grid-connected wind power schemes that require life-of-project subsidies and drive up energy costs..
Some background on grid-connected wind power schemes:
The Capacity Factor of wind power is typically a bit over 20%, but that is NOT the relevant factor.
The real truth is told by the Substitution Capacity, which is dropping to as low as 4% in Germany – that is the amount of conventional generation that can be permanently retired when wind power is installed into the grid.
The E.ON Netz Wind Report 2005 is an informative document:
http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/eonwindreport2005.pdf
(apparently no longer available from E.ON Netz website).
Figure 6 says Wind Power is too intermittent (and needs almost 100% spinning backup);
and
Figure 7 says it just gets worse and worse the more Wind Power you add to the grid (see Substitution Capacity dropping from 8% to 4%).
Same story applies to grid-connected Solar Power (both in the absence of a “Super-Battery”).
This was all obvious to us decades ago – we published similar conclusions in 2002.
Trillions of dollars have been wasted globally on green energy that is not green and produces little useful energy.
Thanks Allen,
I’m surprised wind is even considered. From a practical standpoint, icing issues alone would render the windmills useless in the winter. maybe I’m wrong.
Hi John,
Icing would probably be a bigger problem in Eastern Canada where they get more freezing rain.
The wind quality in Southern Alberta is actually more consistent than most because of the cnfirguation of the
Allen,
I’ve got a suggestion related to a standardized methodology for all scientific papers and related communication; structured content.
I find it mind boggling, AR reports, scientific papers, and related Peer Review and Journal articles are not structured content. SGML or XML should be used to make the content easy for all to cross-correlate and cross-reference.
So much time wasted stumbling over prose and so little ability to manage the content insightfully.
Example: if AR5 and its related AR5 report for policy Decisionmakers were structured content, the cross comparison would take a matter of seconds to define credibility.
Perhaps the best solution for the scientific climate is a commonly shared schema and DTD? Why blame politics and zealots when science can discount both with structured logic?
Great EON article which focuses on limitations.
Best,
John
Interesting thoughts John.
I suggest that as a minimum, the authors of every technical paper should post online all their data and calculations, as we did when I proved in January 2008 that the atmospheric rate dCO2/dt varied ~contemporaneously with global temperature T and thus CO2 lagged T by about 9 months in the modern data record. The paper is here
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
and the spreadsheet is here
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRaeFig5b.xls
Even though the proof is apparent, my conclusion was deemed false (climate heresy!) for several months until it was finally admitted to be true. After that admission, the best my opponents came up with was: “IT MUST BE A FEEDBACK EFFECT” because THEY “KNOW” THAT CO2 DRIVES TEMPERATURE. [Haw! Occam says hokum! 🙂 ]
Compare that with Michael Mann’s famous hokey stick, where as I recall (perhaps imperfectly – its been a long time) he would not provide his data or his calculations.
Opposition to your good suggestion is likely to come for the global warming fanatics, who after almost two decades of NO NET GLOBAL WARMING are relying more and more on blatant BS (apologies for using engineering terminology) and less and less on real verifiable data.
Regards, Allan
Hi John,
Icing would probably be a bigger problem in Eastern Canada where they get more freezing rain.
Wind quality in Southern Alberta is actually more consistent than most because of the topography of the Crows Nest Pass to the west, which funnels the wind through to Rockies into this region.
Nevertheless, wind power projects in Southern Alberta require huge life-of-project subsidies to survive and this cost is passed on to consumers, driving up our electricity costs.
Wind power can also dangerously destabilize the power grid. Quoting from the above E.On Netz 2005 Wind Report:
“The feed-in capacity can change frequently within a few hours. This is shown in FIGURE 6, which reproduces the course of wind power feedin during the Christmas week from 20 to 26 December 2004. Whilst wind power feed-in at 9.15am on Christmas Eve reached its maximum for the year at 6,024MW, it fell to below 2,000MW within only 10 hours, a difference of over 4,000MW. This corresponds to the capacity of 8 x 500MW coal fired power station blocks. On Boxing Day, wind power feed-in in the E.ON grid fell to below 40MW. Handling such significant differences in feed-in levels poses a major challenge to grid operators.”
The way I read this, the Germans came close to crashing the regional or national power grid during Christmas 2004 due to a drop in wind power equivalent to EIGHT 500MW power stations within only 10 HOURS.
I suggest the grid operators deserve a medal, and the politicians responsible for this energy insanity should be held fully accountable, especially if their foolishness results in increased winter mortality.
Interestingly, one could argue that the activities of alarmists are designed to siphon off billions of dollars from taxpayers in useless or fraudulent studies which is not what so-called deniers (skeptics) do.
Can I plea for a lighter sentence?
How about Helvetica, 9 point?
OK, almost spit up coffee all over my keyboard for that one! Good joke!
Personally, when I become Emperor, I’m going to send CAGW folks to environmental reeducation camp on the North Slope of Alaska building roads for the oil companies, comrade.
If the “science” of CAGW was robust it could stand on its own without the proponents constantly trying to silence any and all rebuttals. The whole attitude of “Why should I provide the data to you if you’re only going to try and prove it wrong” mentality proves this has nothing at all to do with science and everything to do with ideology and control.
Not without my safeway cheaters.
Brilliant.
If I was Emperor, I would make them embark on a lifetime long confession tour, in which they travelled from one end of the country to the other and confessed to an assembly of schoolchildren in every single school district how unscientific and dishonest they were.
I would not trust them to set the record straight, but they must be made to recant.
A Climate Syllogism:
A: “Truth needs no defence”
B: Global Warming needs the federal government to prosecute dissenters.
C: You do the math.
Yep, you do not see ‘evolutionists’ needing to shut up ‘creationalists’. When you are lacking in supporting facts you want to shut up the other side.
Thats why you dont want bibles in the schools?
The worship of religion has no place in public education. The study of religion should be required reading lest we repeat its mistakes in every generation.
“The study of religion should be required reading lest we repeat its mistakes…”
Christians actually have no objection to unbiased religious studies. We would love for people to become aware that forced government control of organized religion is the source of objectionable “Christian” behavior, such as the Crusades, wars between Protestants and Catholics, burning at the stake for those accused of heresy (speaking out against abuses of power by religious/government controllers).
Those abuses were the reason for the first amendment to the U.S. constitution: to prevent government control of religion, not to eliminate religion.
Government control of organised religion is echoed by today’s government control of climate science, such as the EPA’s war on coal.
SR
Mod., can my 10:53 am comment be removed?
SR
They’re taking the logical fallacy “appeal to authority” to a whole new level…..
They are using the fact that the govt is able to use the legal system to blackmail entire industries as evidence that the govt is right to use the legal system to blackmail entire industries.
We might want to welcome such an investigation, once some honest/unbiased people are running the justice department.
I don’t expect to see that again in my lifetime.
Obama should take heed, should he not? That is an 100% consensus.
It looks like it was written by a 12-year old.
Apologies to 12-year olds everywhere for the generalization.
I like this: “If corporations in the fossil fuel industry and their supporters are guilty of the misdeeds that have been documented in books and journal articles, it is imperative that these misdeeds be stopped.”
IF? i thought they were calling for prosecution.
Charles Samuels
They are really calling for the process of prosecution. This is the next leap up from frivolous civil lawsuits that punish through harassment and expense. Having seen the mistake Michael Mann made by filing a civil suit they now figure to let the Federal Government do their dirty work. Frivolous government investigations under the guise of potential prosecution would have a devastating effect on the innocents so targeted. That is the entire point of it. And think of the screaming headlines of the main stream media!
“It Can’t Happen Here”? Liberalism is the new face of Fascism. If you have been following the news you know what the liberal state prosecutors of Wisconsin did to supporters of Scott Walker.
Eugene WR Gallun
Doubly ironic, considering the long history of standing up for the civil liberties of people with all sorts of non-mainstream views, attitudes, and lifestyles.
The thinking too is like a 12 year old. Glieck was convinced about massive funding, so he used illegal methods to trick Heartland, got the documents and could not find it. They are still convinced of some sort of conspiracy. Oil companies KNOW they aren’t about to go out of business. Obama approved something for them in the Arctic recently too.
Oil companies are among the biggest winners in the whole charade.
The government is busy eliminating the coal companies, which will leave the oil/gas producers with a far more valuable product line.
Plus, many of these companies are big players in the renewables money party.
Oil companies are among the biggest winners
======================
so true.
1. eliminate coal as competition and secure a monopoly
2. get paid to pump co2 underground to enhance oil recovery.
win. win.
Menicholas,
Some oil companies pump in co2 into wells (enhanced oil recovery) to recover residual oil / hard to get at oil. They have been at this since the 1970s. They must be licking their lips at co2 ‘sequestration’.
I don’t know where the oil companies get the CO2 that they pump underground. I doubt it was taken out of the air. That’s expensive.
Most CO2 that is used in industrial processes is created on the spot from chemical reactions.
Any money they get from the govt for sequestration would have to be more than the extra cost involved in extracting CO2 from the air.
The co2 is taken from ‘domes’ of co2. This could be why the big oil folks are licking their lips over co2 sequestration. 🙂
The oil company Shell has been a pioneer of co2 enhanced oil recovery since the 1970s.
Here is Shell on enhanced oil recovery</b. and co2.
Enhanced oil recovery patents had been filed since at least the 1950s
Here is an oil fracking patent from the 1960s.
Shell began co2 enhanced oil recovery as early as 1972 in Texas.
“We are now at high risk of seriously destabilizing the Earth’s climate and irreparably harming people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people”
the growth in world’s population seems to be coming from third world countries.
Not included amongst the world’s poorest people, are the otherwise unemployable ‘climate scientists’ who are totally dependent on swilling at the taxpayer’s trough for their continued sustenance.
It is they who have the greatest need to continue to promote their unproven theories.
If it is true that the science is settled, and the overwhelming consensus is that we must do something; I call on the aforementioned US Government tyrants led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, to immediately terminate all Federal taxpayer funding of further un-needed climate research, and divert those resources to qualified engineering practitioners to enable them to implement practical amelioration systems to cure the problem.
g
and eliminate public funding of “higher education”
let the market decide
If it is true that the science is settled, and the overwhelming consensus is that we must do something
I call for bombing all coal fired power plants being built around the world since the science was settled. Or at least all the new ones built and being built. The health of the Earth’s Climate is at stake. What? Saving the Earth is not worth a war? I claim a lack of seriousness.
M Simon
I call for bombing all coal fired power plants being built around the world
Wow:
I understand the sarc but given the current state of US foreign policy there’s a non 0 probability that someone could take that seriously. Clearly the US has bombed countries on less noble sounding pretexts. C02 is the new WMD
You’d think people whose manipulation of data is well documented would be leery of bringing up the RICO statutes.
Zactly. The letter writers should be charged under RICO. Oh, the ironing!
In psychology it’s called “projection.”
Are you sure NOAA Programmer, that it is not called “Prediction”?
Where is Terry, our resident linguistics decider?
Ah, but the end justifies the means. If the data don’t show what you expect, a tiny bit of manipulation is totally acceptable if it will help to save the world from the (imagined) catastrophes. /sarc
“Tiny” bit of manipulation… ??, LOL
“Tiny” bit of manipulation
============
only manipulated 1 thing. the data.
“a tiny bit of manipulation is totally acceptable if it will help to save the world…”
That is a lovely example of what we British call understatement – first class!
Question…If the science is settled, why do we need to fund climate science or “scientists” anymore?? Just wunder’n.
It only just got settled a few days ago, when word got out that everyone else had been using improper statistical methodology.
Now that they invented some new ways to manipulate data, and used to show no pause ever occurred…NOW the science is settled.
How would the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act apply to individuals?
You claim that the individuals are working in concert, which makes them part of an “organization”.
If there is an organization of “deniers” or one of “sceptics” can someone send me their address I want to join and get “RICO’d”.
wattsupwiththat.com
“How would the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act apply to individuals?”
Simple…the climate racketeers and corrupt grant recipient organizations just make up any silly lies about skeptics they want…just like always.
Are we supposed to believe the “science” put forward by people who adopt such irrational positions in a public letter? I mean, you can’t have any credibility after signing a letter like this
“I mean, you can’t have any credibility after signing a letter like this”
… or before even. Travesty Trenberth signed it.
TRENBERTH LOSES HIS STRAWBERRIES
(See the courtroom scene in the Caine Mutiny movie)
As green house gases still accrete
This captain of the climate war
Is searching for the missing heat
That he believes the oceans store
He’ll prove to all humanity
That danger in the deep resides
The Kraken that he knows to be
That Davy Jones’ Locker hides
The soul’s more heavy than we think
A truth that everyone must face
And to what depths a soul may sink
Oh! To what dark and dismal place
Does Captain Trenberth understand
That data offers no appeal?
He tumbles in his restless hand
Three clacking balls of stainless steel
MY GEOMETRIC LOGIC PROVES
HEAT TELEPORTS FROM PLACE TO PLACE
FROM SKIES INTO THE DEPTHS IT MOVES
AND IN BETWEEN IT LEAVES NO TRACE!
When silent faces stare at you
It’s always best to shut your jaw
But Trenberth is without a clue
As he believes they stare in awe!
Eugene WR Gallun
A modern Coleridge decried
the sinking of poor Trenberth’s ship
he’d scuttled on a shoal of lies
to keep consensus membership.
And it is truly a classic!
This is horrifying. Promoting Lysenko-style suppression of dissent in science using the power of government is the last retreat of this intellectually bankrupt group. As I wrote on Dr. Curry’s site, it’s especially disheartening to see that so many signatories are employed by George Mason University, named for the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, predecessor of the Bill of Rights.
True, but remember it takes that many in a group to confront Dr. Walter E. Williams and even then they are at a disadvantage.
Well handsome WEW is a damned side smarter than the whole cadre of those churls who signed this personal hara kiri letter.
g
And a considerate husband, too. As I recall, he once gave the late Mrs Williams a new snow shovel for Christmas.
Thank you for the great gift idea!
I shall finish my shopping early this year!
Yes, GeneDoc – Horrifying is the word which first came to my mind also. I think I actually felt physically frightened as I was reading it. I could feel the hairs on the back of my head! Is that really what it has come to? A real threat to expressing an opinion in words and speech? In the United States of all places?
Oh, it’s OK! Barry Klinger explains it all!
http://mason.gmu.edu/~bklinger/rico.html
It’s only a call to suppress COMPANIES (you know, like those evil suppliers of fuel that makes the world work) who have knowingly misinformed the public in order to sell their dangerous products. He doesn’t want to suppress or even jail any individuals, he just wants retribution (justice?): a big ol’ pot of money to be taken from those evil companies a la the tobacco settlements, presumably to support his vital research into whether the science is truly settled or not:
http://mason.gmu.edu/~bklinger/Warming/warminghome.html
Of course he had to go along with his boss and his family-feeding foundation, the slimy IGES operation:
http://www.iges.org/aboutiges.html
Barry, time to free yourself from these anti-science ideologues. You are destroying your reputation and that of the graduate program you run.
How would you like to be paying tuition bills To George Mason for some science education these days? Wow. Apparently, instead of dorms they utilize re-education camps until conformity is achieved! Shameful abuse of educational privilege by these profs and if RICO needs to be enforced let’s start with the higher ed cabal of over indulged ‘professors’.
try these (for anger management – not):
https://www.heartland.org/sustainability-education-new-fundamentalism
http://www.aashe.org/resources/academic-programs/
gone is education and in its place is indoctrination and it is everywhere in US
I saw this in another venue last night and sent it to a number of media folks asking that they expose those who do not believe in freedom of speech and true Science.
I will also send this to Drudge in an attempt to have it added to his news page.
I suggest that others also consider sending this outrageous letter to a many media venues as possible to expose the folks who propose the misuse of the RICO act to push their un scientific agenda.
Obviously they have been taking lessons from the Spanish Inquisition, if you can’t convert then imprison, torture and burn the heretics.
Just normal for climate “science”
The liberal ” Eco-Terrorists ” are getting desperate !!! They know this the last time a Democrat will sit in the White for a very long time !!
OOPS !! ” is “
“House”. We can but hope but with so many RINOs in the mix I doubt the train to Hell will stop. If it can be slowed until the Potomac freezes over we may have a chance.
with 47% of the population getting more in govt goodies than they pay in taxes. Your claim is in doubt.
Those who believe that the job of the govt is to take other people’s money and give it to them are rapidly becoming the majority.
RICO penalties are too light for Anti-Science Neanderthals who continue to obfuscate, put forth bad data, claim scientific consensus is evidence against AGW while they have no consistent or scientifically supportable view of the climate, and promote snark as a substitute for thinking. Put them in jail and throw away the key.
Wouldn’t you know that the perennially wrong crank warrenlb would be in the alarmist peanut gallery, cheering on this proposed new Inquisition?
“Put them in jail and throw away the key,” demands warrenlb. If any proof was needed that warrenlb has lost the science argument, that comment says it all.
If the alarmist cult had good arguments they wouldn’t need Big Government coercion to feed their hatred. But with only pseudo-science arguments that the public is now ridiculing, warrenlb predictably is one of the “good Germans” in the mob attacking the hated “deniers”. They are hated by warrenlb and his ilk because skeptics have decisively trounced them in the science debate, and the public is now turning on the climate alarmist crowd.
If any more proof is needed that the alarmist contingent has decisively lost the ‘dangerous man-made global warming’ debate, see warrenlb’s comment above. He can’t win the argument because he has no credible evidence, or measurements, or reasonable arguments — and Planet Earth herself is making a fool of his scary predictions. So warrenlb’s impotent response is: Put them in jail and throw away the key. I’m sure that gives warrenlb goose bumps just thinking about it.
Poor Warren, he was just born in the wrong era. If this was the late 1930’s in Germany, warrenlb would be an active dues-paying member of the Nazi Party, having great fun organizing anti-Semitic book burning rallies. After reading his intolerant comment above, is there any doubt?
dbstealey.
Warren only made one little error in his comment, I’m sure he’d wish to correct it as below:
RICO penalties are too light for Anti-Science Neanderthals who continue to obfuscate, put forth bad data, claim scientific consensus is evidence
againstfor AGW while they have no consistent or scientifically supportable view of the climate, and promote snark as a substitute for thinking. Put them in jail and throw away the key.It just takes one little Freudian slip to ruin your whole comment!
dbstealey, what warrenlb doesn’t understand is that if they come for us, it won’t be long before they come for him, too.
Actually, I misspoke. I only advocate encarceration for you. /sarc.
When you’re through the looking glass “off with their heads” seems a reasonable response. In just that way environmentalists find themselves consistently on the side of tyranny and repressive government at the same time professing a liberal love of the oppressed! Warren, your charity towards those you disagree with qualifies you to be a stormtrooper for the modern face of fascism.
Yes, warrenlb you are truly the “poster child” for the warmunist movement.
“Profess a liberal love of the oppressed” ?? Not me. I endorse this Republican view of Free Market solutions to AGW: http://republicen.org
(By the way, last time anyone checked, the atmosphere and the Climate followed the Laws of Physics, not politics as you seem to believe.)
The last time I checked proposing to incarcerate anybody for any reason was a political view so stop with the pretend nomenclature issues. What’s so annoying about you Warren is your petulance reminds one of that guard in the “Green Mile” whose admissions of consent drip with pusillanimity.
Well, warrenlb, you certainly are a shining success story of the “core subjects” program of the . Fortunately, no matter how hard the apparatchiks of the left try, there is always a small but relatively fixed percentage of students that know they are being force fed ideological pap. I am, however blown away by their 100% success with you. I guess there is no point in explaining that if the science is settled (the first science to be so annointed) demonstrable, and supported by a 97% consensus, how can a credible opposition be launched, no matter who is supporting it? Just for the heck of it, try asking that at the next rally of the “Cultural Revolution” or the “Great Leap Forward” and see what answer they can give you.
The tiny minority of skeptics in the world keep the enlightened ones up at night via a “Princess and the Pea” type mechanism, whereby an insignificant annoyance is somehow able to dominate the lives of these brave souls who are attempting to save us all from ourselves.
/sarc off
“RICO penalties are too light for warrenlb who continues to obfuscate, put forth bad data, claim scientific consensus is evidence for CAGW while warrenlb has no consistent or scientifically supportable view of CAGW*9+-, and promotes snark as a substitute for thinking. Put warrenlb in jail and throw away the key.” is how it would look if the shoe was on the other foot, by the way.
Wow, the troll actually believes that anyone who fails to worship the lie that all real scientists agree with it should be prosecuted.
What is it about liberals and their desire to eliminate all opposition to their goals?
Warrenlb is NOT a liberal. My (empirical) evidence? See his comment above.
You cant get much more illiberal than that.
Warren
….Substitute for thinking. You clearly do not know what thinking is. If you did you would not write such an idiotic comment
Mark Steyn’s take:
http://www.steynonline.com/7182/twenty-more-disgraces-to-the-profession
“Frustrated at the failure of global-warming alarmism to shift an apathetic public, Big Climate could do several things. Most obviously, they could resume public debate with those who disagree with them, win the argument and thereby persuade the people – which is how change is effected in self-governing societies.
Instead, twenty of them have written to the President to demand that the most powerful government on earth use the RICO laws to prosecute climate “skeptics” and “deniers”. Instead of winning the debate, it’s easier to criminalize it.”
As a graduate of a school with two signatories, I am leaning towards sending copies of Mark Steyn’s book to them both and the University President with a request they “write their own chapter” for Mark’s sequel.
[snip -mod]
Maybe this would be a good thing. If they start looking for any funding that would allow them to use RICO on us skeptics, they will find us unfunded and thereby not a problem. Then they might look into where the oil money is really going and slap the Warmers ( Read that as the REAL D*niers ) with the RICO statute.
It would take an AG with a pair and a POTUS to have his back.
Sorry about the doom and gloom outlook but as the days become colder, so too my mood. My doctor prescribes a slow-cooked beef stew and slowly quaffed sour mash for this condition.
Cheers
I’m all for that. Let the children battle it out. They seem not able to learn any other way. I make a pretty damned good venison stew wrought from the end of my 35 Remington, along with a batch of pan fried beer bread, and am learning to make homemade brew.
Great video!
It is my considered opinion that the way to deal with the signatories of this epistle is to in the words of Rooster Cogburn “Give em a fair trial and a nice hangin!”
“Give em a fair trial”
There are days when I’m tired of being nicer to my enemies, than they are to me.
They have no desire to give us a fair trial …
True dat, homeslice.
An appropriate name for the attorney general. Fair trial, nice hangin’
Attorney General Lynch.
The science is settled. We are swivel-eyed loons. So why the legal stuff?
On agriculture and climate stability. They must have forgotten the global record cereal output last year in the face of ever rising co2. There cannot be any link at all.
They would be welcome to come and investigate me.
What they would uncover is that I a regular citizen.
And maybe they might learn that I am a formerly convinced and alarmed proponent of the climate change hysteria, who just happens to have woken up from the sleep of dreams.
Principally, because I became suspicious of what was being pumped into my head by the govt. and mass media and decided instead to take an interest almost exclusively in study of the data, first via searches for graphs of rainfall averages on google images. (Then sea level charts and averages, then antarctic sea ice records, then satellite troposphere measurements, then Argo float records…etc, etc)
To quote the great Yuri Bezmenov (former KGB spy):
“You can see it with your own eyes. All you have to do — all American mass media has to do — is to unplug their bananas from their ears, open up their eyes and they can see it. There is no mystery.”
Quote from: https://mcalvanyintelligenceadvisor.com/demoralization-destabilization-insurgency-normalization
You don’t want to pay higher taxes or higher energy prices.
Therefore you are acting in your own selfish interest.
The fact that you post here, where people of like mind also post proves that you are part of corrupt organization.
Therefore you can expect to be fined, and if you continue in evil ways, jail time.
/sarc
indefatigablefrog I was exactly the same as you and assumed that what these people were saying mad sense, until someone said that earth would end up like Venus, which I realised was impossible. I started looking at the “science” and realised there were gaping holes in it, heat disappearing into the oceans, from a warming atmosphere was one such gem. I then took a look at other branches of science and found the same self-serving, grant money comes first, attitude of some scientists. Here are some of the examples:
1) Diet low in animal fat, low in protein high in carbs is good for you. No it isn’t
2) Second hand tobacco smoke causes lung cancer in non-smokers, only if a meta study of separate totally unlinked studies is carried out and the results “adjusted”.
3) A 21 year old should have a blood pressure of 120/80 as should a 90 year old.
4) Safe blood cholesterol levels are lowered because the drug companies want us all on statins.
5) Same with blood glucose and type 2 diabetes but with metformin.
6) Lead in petrol finds its way into human tissues, no it was lead in water pipes that was the source. Thanks to these studies we now have petrol that is a 1000 times more toxic due to the benzene it contains and poor overall fuel consumption in petrol cars.
7) NASA keep showing us tantalising photos of the surface of Mars with a cubic metallic object, conveniently blurred that they say MAY be alien (looks like part of a space probe from Earth to me), plus a variety of rock formations that COULD be fossils. I would imagine that this is to get US government funding for a manned mission to Mars.
There must be many more, but these are the ones that I know that have more than an element of truth in them
Your Freudian slip is priceless!
“…mad sense…”
I fell for the high complex carb, low fat diet bullshit, too.
Those bastards ruined my life with their flawed, ideologically motivated so-called “science”.
As a science worshipping teenager I shunned breakfasts of eggs and bacon and chose the muesli and skimmed milk. Eventually I became quite severely malnourished and started to suffer with IBS.
Thanks to Gary Taubes and his skeptical expose, “the Diet Delusion”, I now have a real diet comprising real food.
But, I fell for the “Diet Delusion” and I also fell for the “Extreme Weather Delusion”.
I wasted what should have been the best years of my life believing in harmful nonsense.
When I first heard of this nonsense of man-made global warming, I thought it might be possible, but I’d need to see the data, as I was fighting a group of activists that were irrationally afraid of nuclear power due to Three Mile Island and the movie “The China Syndrome”, and had seen hysteria from people who were otherwise rational get passed off as “SCIENCE”. Then Dr. Mann published a temperature reconstruction which eliminated most of the history I had studied for my whole life. The explanation for the various migrations and wars in post Roman Europe were eliminated with the stroke of a paper. I knew for instance that Grapes were grown just south of Hadrian’s Wall in Britain, that the Vikings had farms in Greenland, and the ancient Roman Alpine mines were reachable during the medieval warm period. I knew that the Thames froze over, there were Ice festivals held all over Europe, that Valley Forge was just a typical winter during the Little Ice Age. These things were definitely real. I had seen the documentation. Dr. Mann’s paper was lauded and hyped to the hilt by the true believer evangelists in the press, and I smelled a RAT. Since then every single time I look at a warmist-hyped paper’s data (when I can get ahold of it!), there are major manipulations and data strangulations that would have gotten me thrown out of my degree program if I had tried to pass any of it off as a lab report. I lumped CAGW in with the ozone hole scare as a giant faked political science experiment designed to enhance one-world government control of every life on the planet. Of course, I never saw it as a conspiracy, as I had seen leftist group-think in action before and know there does not need to be any coordination for indoctrinated leftist to come to the “correct” solution. Then came the Climategate emails…conspiracy exposed, but providence of the data and chain of custody requirements make them inadmissible in court so the chance to prosecute is basically zero.
Perhaps the Republican controlled Congress should pass a resolution for the President to invoke RICO on all those that signed the letter. They are the liars and charlatans.
Oh, I’m sorry. The lame ass Republicans won’t do anything that might involve having some balls.
“NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
Or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.”
Gil Scott Heron- The Revolution Will Not Be Televised“
It’s “potentially serious”!!!!!!
So is the blister I always get when I wear those new shoes I bought…but I have not gone and written to the Preezy of the United Steezy to lock anybody up over it.
“knowingly deceived”? In a fair world they would be hoist on their own petard. How come they can’t defend their science as accountable scientists do?
The Warmist Religion not only has a pontiff, Pope Gore the first, it now wants to set up the Warmist Inquisition.
I foresee heresy trials in each town. Warmist Inquisitors and teachers will visit each house, asking the children if their parents ever talked about there being no global warming. Those denounced by their own frightened children would be taken out to the town square to meet their doom – just like the Cathars during the Albigensian Crusade.
First they came for the Climate Realists, and I stood by and did nothing. And then they came for the Nuclear Scientists, and I stood by and did nothing. And then they came for the Wealthy, and I stood by and did nothing. And then they came for the Middle Classes, and there was nobody left to protect me……
(With apologies to Pastor Martin Niemöller.)
.
“Did your Father ever Deny Climate Change?”
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/images/paintings/warg/large/nml_warg_wag_2679_large.jpg
(With apologies to William Frederick Yeames — The English Civil War.)
I totally agree, the failure of the AGW proposition is now so intense that an inquisition is required to quiet the skeptics they call “deniers”.
I hope it’s in the winter when it minus 20 below 0. We can stand outside and discuss. … yes your lordship, the world is heating up, I can see that…. and horror of horrors today some car dealer announced that snow was on the way.. by official proclamation snow is no more… he should be tarred and feathered, run out of town on a rail…. yea say the religion of AGW
A Watermelon attack! Communists always attempt to silence of jail their opposition…pg
Don’t be surprised if the current administration takes this letter seriously and follows through on it’s demands. The head narcissist is hell-bent on leaving a legacy of “fundamentally transforming” the United States. Nothing would do so more than the implementation of his climate agenda, which he has stated will be his grand push during the remainder of his term of office. God help us all.
Now that he has given Iran the bomb, and the Middle East to the Russians, he is ready to turn his full attention to destroying his domestic opponents.
Alarmism takes more than one form, none more sinister than your bogus brand of hysterical hyperbole, the likes of which has already created chaos in the Middle East, and the refugee crisis in Europe.
Everything I’ve said has happened, how is historical truth hyperbole?
Iran will have the bomb in a couple of years, Obama has ensured that.
Russia has troops in Syria, something 50 years of American presidents have tried to prevent.
Take the letter seriously? The Obama administration probably wrote the letter and then got these people to sign it.
I am also very sure that ‘we’ could put together a much more impressive list of names against this folly. I recognized only two names in that list.
I must be a recluse; I could only recognize one, and that only because we have similar geographical origins.
g
Two for me…Betts and Trenberth.
But without Trenberth, the letter might as well have been written by Manny, Moe and Jack.
More like- Larry, Moe and Curly
Yeah, where was Michael Manny?
/Mr Lynn
>>increasing ocean acidity
How can they get away with writing things like this? This is a deliberate deception, in order to gain government grants and persecute a vulnerable minority. Are there not laws that prohibit fraaudulent claims like this?
Ralph
Imagine an anti-tobacco crusader caught in a neo-natal intensive care unit, puffin’ away on an evil-smelling stogie and blowing smoke-rings into the faces of the unit’s precious babes, struggling for life. Got that image? Time to call the cops, right?
Now transfer the above image of the gent with the cigar to those who are convinced that CO2 emissions KILL BABIES!!! and KILL POLAR BEARS!!!, but who, nevertheless, carbon-bigfoot their way about the globe, spewing the very CO2 that they are convinced is a lethal gas! Good match, I think you’ll find. And for what ends do the “beautiful people”, our Philosopher King and Queen betters, exude their vast quantities of carbon “pollution” ? Well, for frivolous recreation activities like skiing; vacationing at ritzy, tourist-trap resorts; pleasure boating; nature-cruises, jet-set hob-nobbing, and the like. And for what else? Well, for book-signings, award-ceremonies, eco-confabs, and the like–all activities that could be easily and reasonably conducted as zero-carbon (i. e. zero dead-baby/Polar Bear) video-conferences.
So if there is any criminal conduct associated with the Gaia-con, then the crime is mass-murder. And the perpetrators of that monstrous crime are–surprise! surprise!–our very own hive-hero betters wielding their CO2-emitting, party-animal, homicidal lifestyles, as their eugenics thrill-cull weapon-of-choice. Report them to the police, I’d say–including, of course, all those proto-perp-walkers heading to COP-21.
P. S. Has anyone calculated the “dead-baby equivalents” the upcoming COP-21’s carbon-footprint will cost humanity? And for those hive-worthies who think that killing babies is a Gaia-friendly good deed–as long as none of the tykes are anyone our betters might know, it goes without saying–what is the “dead Polar Bear equalivent” measure of that Paris confab’s CO2 footprint?
You ask, “Has anyone calculated the “dead-baby equivalents” the upcoming COP-21’s carbon-footprint will cost humanity?” Just as soon as third world countries provide free abortions along with the sale of parts. It’s the new money crop of the age, something China has probably been doing for decades and has just recently upped the price for a beating heart.
They must be out of their minds. I am sorry to see so many esteemed colleagues among the signatories.
Harry is a very big name in the history of atmospheric science, for those who don’t know.
“What is PROJECTION?”
“A psychoanalytical theory, projection is the process whereby one subject believes they see attributes (both good and bad) in another. The theory views this tendency as a defense mechanism whereby unenviable or unpleasant traits, impulses or ideas are attributed to another. In this way, the projector is able to avoid the unpleasantness in themselves. However, the theory goes on to explain that in severe cases of projection, the condition of projection may degenerate into paranoid delusions to the point that the projector believes others are responsible for the projector’s problems and are secretly plotting against them. The projection basically allows a subject to ignore faults within themselves.”
http://psychologydictionary.org/projection/
As far as I am concerned, this letter from Trenberth and the others is an admission of the own feelings of guilt by projecting onto skeptics the idea that they (the skeptics) are the ones in the wrong. Having been cooking the temperature books and putting out bad science (Karl’s paper involving the buoy and ships’ temperature data) they are in the process of projecting the idea of wrongdoing onto skeptics in order to protect themselves against the consequences of their (Karl’s and Trenberth’s) own actions.
it is rather childish behavior if one were to ask me. “I know you are, but what am I!?”
So, then the proper reply to the letter would be ” I am made of rubber, and you are made of glue”?
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
– Shakespeare on the “dirty twenty”
Skeptics have worked hard to avoid any and all questionable funding/associations. On the other hand, the people involved in the climate change garbage are actually doing things that the RICO laws cover. It wouldn’t take long for the people from other side of the aisle to nudge the justice department onto the blatantly obvious paper trail of the eco-mafia…if not at the federal level, at the state level.
This is just a sciencey version of how religious zealots or political extremists behave regarding defending their distorted faith and ideology from dangerous heretics and dissenters….until the zealots and extremists can work up the social support to start implementing a final solution, purge, pogrom, etc.
Trenberth’s descent into this sort of pathetic cowardly madness is particularly interesting. He got away with turning the scientific method on its head, demanding proof that his apocalyptic claptrap was untrue. Now, still with no apocalypse taking place, he is ready to simply jail those pesky people who keep pointing out he is wrong.
Sadly, this President has demonstrated no critical thinking ability and he is clearly an extremist. I will not be surprised to see the demands of this letter actually implemented.
Prepare for a revisit to the McCarthy witch hunt days several orders of magnitude worse. McCarthy never had the full backing of the Dept. of Justice. The climate clowns have this President’s full backing.
This is a letter to the President – an appeal of desperate losers. Dangerous, anyway – it shows how their minds operate. If he acts on it, the Democrats will be a non-entity in November 2016. Mr. Obama is probably a good enough politician to see it – unless he does not care and plans to follow Mr. Gerard Depardieu to Russia, where he would be undoubtedly awarded a honorary citizenship.
From the thread at William M. Briggs’ post on this:
http://wmbriggs.com/post/16865/#comments
If this comment is anyplace close to the truth, we need a RICO investigation of the people associated with the letter!
~Mark
Wow, sleaze ball faux scientist with a phony NGO he runs through his wife and daughter writing a letter to silence critics of their work and money source.
The climate fanatics are shameless and unaccountable….so far.
A petty point I know but looking at the website of Institute of Global Environment and Society I read:
The president of the society is J. Shukla, who is a signatory of the letter. He was the Lead Author, IPCC Working Group 1 Report, Climate Change 2007. Interestingly Kevin Trenberth is one of the signatories of the letter.
I have been told that climate scientists don’t make predictions. Kevin Trenberth wrote a piece in Nature and said that the IPCC does not make predictions and never has. I begged to differ here.
Call Terry!
Roger Pielke is busy draining the swamp to expose these nefarious charlatans.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/09/22/scientist-leading-effort-to-prosecute-climate-skeptics-under-rico-paid-himself-his-wife-1-5-million-from-govt-climate-grants-for-part-time-work/
I think the bigger danger, initially, is to those like our esteemed host here. The frivolous prosecutions and seizures could ultimately silence blogs like this one in a heart beat. Remember that Obama is still using the IRS to kill conservative groups with similar methods. This is not beyond the realm of possibility and the current admin has shown they are willing to do it.
The fact that this is even being suggested by these people, should send shivers down your spine. Thinking that this could not happen in the US is dangerous. They have simply found a way to control the internet by criminalization of unapproved thoughts.
And they are coming for skeptics of all stripes soon. I see climate loyalty oaths coming to academia, insurance, finance, media, and more.
It is 100 per cent true. Look up his CV and his consulting company. All there for everyone to see.
Capture it now before they remove it
He appears to be Indian. Is it common for foreign workers to attempt to use the US Justice system to silence people that don’t agree with them. Doesn’t he risk losing his Green Card?
Thanks MarkStoval for relaying Brigg’s observations.
If you check the name of the people on that letter you will find they have received rich grants.
Here is a good example :
https://newsdesk.gmu.edu/2014/09/new-3-million-grant-expand-climate-change-coverage
Next comes some sort of symbol we must wear on our sleeves and either Barack or Clinton let their facial hair grow into a mustache, neatly trimmed.
Dang ! I knew Hillary was hiding something from us !
I’m pushing 60 and will overtake it shortly. I have discovered exactly where a man’s hair disappears to. It switches gender and can be found right above my lip and in straggly lengths under my chin. The lip hair I can see. The under the chin hairs I don’t notice till they begin to tickle my cleavage.
Pam, that’s way too much information. 🙂
Ok, Pam one last thought and I’m done. A man’s hair actually disappears from the top of his head and reappears in his nostrils and ears.
Things get lots funnier and less decorous as you age. And my constitution dictates that I laugh instead of whine.
For some men, Pamela, you may have noticed it migrates down-head and begins to sprout out of the nose, ears and back.
OOh, Tom beat me to it!
LOL!!! Being short I don’t notice what goes on with a man’s head of hair. Noses? Different story.
Your daughter goes on her first date to the movies:
$25.00
Your daughter goes to the Senior Prom.
$200.00
Your daughter gets an engagement ring.
+$1,500.00
Your daughter’s too short to see that her fiance’s bald.
Priceless!
The eyebrows as well: They seem to have an unfortunate tendency to begin to resemble a couple of wooly caterpillars inhabiting a man’s forehead.
….. an overwhelming majority of climate scientists ….. .
Number?
Link to poll?
No, didn’t think so. As usual, no evidence, just shouting.
I guess the same old 97% claim.
1616 – Galileo was forbidden from holding or defending his belief that the earth was not the center of the universe
1633 – Galileo was convicted of heresy.
Yup. They’s a gonna get medieval on our ass…
Well, Obama is a muslim, isn’t he. They live in the 7th century still.
Break out the pliers and blowtorches, eh?
Stephen Richards September 19, 2015 at 11:41 am
No, he isn’t.
No, most don’t.
No, that doesn’t help – it makes us all look nuts.
You are right. So anyone who disputes “settled science” should be sued under RICO. The Ptolemaic system was once settled science. So anyone who thinks differently should be sued under RICO including teachers who have taught other than the Ptolemaic system as well as their students which nowadays includes most educated people.
Drudge has picked up on this RICO story. He has it together with a link to an article by Tony Heller on NOAA temperature data tampering. This may be a case of: be careful what you wish for.
I agree! RICO should be used against Mann, Hansen, Nye, Holdern, Kerry the EPA and a whole host of others. Too bad it couldn’t be applied outside the US to the likes of the UN and IPCC, UEA, Connolley of Wikipedia and most of all, Maurice Strong!
Rico maybe the wrong tool for dealing with the likes of IPCC and their mercenaries.
I have been looking at the early publications on the subject of radiative transfer and climate science written in the 1960s and 70s from persons such as Hansen, Houghton and Manabe and was very impressed with the scholarship and style in those early papers , even if the conclusions do not do not always stand the test of later work .
So what happened to turn those and other contributors into rabid followers of the most extreme predictions? One answer might be the arrival of massive processing power , enabling global modelling on possibly insecure assumptions , but i think that the major influence was the establishment of IPCC which intruded a political element that was previously missing.
Given that the ultimate objective of IPCC , according to some of its proponents, is the end of the western capitalist society , then the action should be to label IPCC as a terrorist organisation and deal with it accordingly..
No, the turning point was the appearance of massive funding.
Well, it sells periodicals, I guess:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/what-exxon-knew-about-climate-change
Written by. . .
Bill McKibben. ‘Nuff said.
/Mr Lynn
I think what is really a sad state of affairs is that anyone listens to scientists directly. Science by its very nature can have experimentally demonstrated behaviours coupled with heavily theoretical behaviours. So to paraphrase Steve McIntyre, you need to watch out for the assertion thimble.
However the real world relies on large groups of people to take science theory or initial demonstration / proof of concept, and turn this into something useful and safe for all of us to use. All those assumptions and assertions need real characterisation so that only a few remain and can be bounded with tolerance. Scientific principles still apply but then so does engineering process and most importantly, ethics and morality, hence the idea of qualification and acceptance for use.
The accuracy of climate data alone should give you pause to think, and should give people like Trenberth pause to think. Ironically a reason he searches for that mysterious heat is because he believes in a high climate sensitivity. As is stated in Hansen et al 1981, if you stick to lower sensitivities (assuming of course you believe in this Co2 to temperature relationship) you don’t need that heat in the ocean. As an aside, in the very same paper Hansen mentions getting a sensitivity range from to 1.4°C to 5.6°C fitting to the same temperature data. I think I’d a bit dubious about a metric that could change by 400% but still match the input data. I’d probably try and stick to lower sensitivities as it required less assumptions.
But if you spend your career on one path of thinking then you end up only seeing what you want to. A scientist can afford that at times; an engineer or anyone else in a human-facing field cannot. So maybe these guys should check themselves the next time they drive their car and turn on their smart phones, because someone cared enough to make sure that those objects behaved in a safe manner before being let loose on the world.
And then think about why they are trying to take their speculative hypotheses with little experimental evidence and try to force real change to real world economies.
Here in Canada, here is the kind of garbage a CBC meteorologist is spewing during the Federal Election campaign:
http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Technology/ID/2675749375/
If this is not politically motivated, what is?
She could be replaced by a robot. No artificial intelligence required – just word soup.
Well, it is nice to have another list of names to prosecute for academic fraud when the cooling really kicks in.
Propaganda does not change the truth. I can not image what will be the media and political response to unequivocal natural global cooling.
The age of the cult of CAGW is not going to end well. We are going to experience NGC which is no surprise as there is cyclic abrupt cooling in the paleo record that correlates with solar cycle changes. The planet will and has started to cool due to the abrupt change in the sun which is now obvious based on observations.
There is no CAGW problem. There is no AGW problem. It appears there may be CNGC problem.
In a world run by logic, truth, honor, and courage, a scientist’s primary responsibility would be to publically acknowledge and investigate and encourage the investigation (funding to investigate the anomalies and paradoxes) of anomalies and paradoxes that disprove or question the validity of a theory.
It is fact that are astonishing breakthroughs in multiple fields that are obvious from a detailed analysis of the anomalies and paradoxes. The fact that in field after field anomalies and paradoxes are disregarded or worse actively suppressed and discouraged indicates that there are hidden agendas in the field in question and that the scientists in question do not understand how to solve complex holistic problems.
In a world run by logic, truth, honor, and courage, politicians would understand that every country has limited funds to spend and a long list of problems to solve. We do not need a CAGW problem to solve. Regardless spending trillions of dollars on green scams that do not work – do not significantly reduce total CO2 emissions and do tripling the cost of electricity – or spending money on crazy carbon trading scams will result in less jobs, lower GDP, higher national debt, and less money to spend on things our countries do need.
it’s a frivolous travesty.
If one political party gives in to this idea the other political party will take up the cudgel too.
Greenpeace have broken laws. They’ve broken laws to raise publicity and funds.
Greenpeace board remembers could easily be caught in a RICO case, if this genie let out of the bottle.
No-one is foolish enough to take these anti-debate campaigners seriously.
Skeptical scientists should litigate using the RICO act showing the conspiracy to silence them in violation of the US constitution and promoting a theory that observations have falsified.
The silence is settled
Don’t want to play politics in some one else’s pond, but any attempt to use RICO would only unleash the Impeach Obama dogs of war!
I am all for warmist RICO actions. It would be the trial of the century. Something would break and an important social realization would be achieved. Bring it on soonest. GK
You mean like the Scopes Monkey Trial? Be careful what you wish for. wiki
I guess with the Commie Pope in power. Will the Spanish Inquisition make a return? So true about your comment TomRude about the CBC. 10 million per month for a network no one hardly watches and I rarely hear it on in stores and homes I visit.
Let them play these games, they serve to expose the weakness of the so-called settled science. In the event of an investigation there would be thousands of individuals saying “I am Spartacus”, it would probably galvanise rather than suppress the sceptic movement.
What Trenberth can’t do due to lack of talent, IQ and integrity, he thinks can be compensated by fascist thuggery perpetrated by dogs like himself. What a dreadful piece of anti-science and morally bankrupt bastardry.
To avoid prosecution, I guess I’ll have to go along with the AGW fairy-tale. But that doesn’t mean I can’t warn folks about the coming Ice Age, right?
Wow, 26 scientists from 9 US academic establishments! Doesn’t sound to me like an “overwhelming majority”. The USA must be a much smaller place than I recall.
This entire CAGW thing reminds me of an anonymous saying I’ve heard: “If you show an honest man that he’s wrong, he either stops being wrong or stops being honest.”
Here, they not only stop being honest, if they ever were in the first place, but turn aggressively totalitarian and attempt to punish those who prove them wrong. Which is why I think every society and culture/civilization in history never survives prosperity, they seem to commit suicide and we see the handwriting on the wall here, our Western Civilization is in the process of killing itself over trivia.
Severian
September 19, 2015 at 8:14 am
hi Severian.
Please allow me to make a small adjustment to your last part of your comment…apologies too. Simply trying to show my point which is very similar, for not saying the same as yours. thanks in advance. 🙂
“Which is why I think every society, people, nation, kingdom or empire, ever, and their “civilized” culture in history never survives when it makes a stand against the prosperity , the growth and evolution of the Civilization itself, they seem to commit suicide and we see the handwriting on the wall here, our Western societies and their structures are in the process of self harming and social self destruction over trivia and the insanity of stubbornly challenging the Civilization and its order in its basic essence…..
sorry if this will seem not that proper to you….
cheers
Severian’s reads better. Yours is a lot wordier, and to be honest, I can’t see exactly what the point of the difference is. Could you simplify please? perhaps in your own words. cheers.
Time to sue the Global Warming cultists under the False Claims Act.
A few things need to be established:
– The defendant has actual knowledge of the false claim
– The defendant deliberately ignored the truth
– Disregard was reckless
Source: http://study.com/academy/lesson/deterring-business-crime-rico-false-claims-act-sarbanes-oxley-act.html
Shouldn’t be a problem imho.
Yes, eventually this will all be in the courts because lying and altering data is a crime.
We have a case before the courts now. Michael Mann has sued Mark Steyn
Mann could just drop his suit before he has to produce discovery or go on the stand and he will still have inflicted major pain on Steyn. To prevent that, and to make sure Mann has to produce evidence in discovery and to make sure Mann has to take the stand, Steyn has countersued Mann. link
To help Steyn with his legal fees you can buy his new book A Disgrace to the Profession. The book is doing well:
It’s doing much better than the latest books of Michael Mann and Naomi Klein. 🙂
Is it only in climate science that such nonsense is going on ? .I cannot think of any other scientific or professional field where one party asks for criminal investigation and jail time of another party just because the latter party points out major errors of the first party’s views or disagrees with their views. Imagine one group of doctors asking for criminal investigation and racketeering charges of another group of doctors over the medical views of another group of doctors with whom they disagree. Racketeering charges just because you have a different point of view in science . How absolutely idiotic. One would never expect this kind o nonsense in the country which is supposed to be the leader of the free world and freedom of expression. The saddest part in all this is that the entire scientific community sits in silence and allows this to happen without any objection . Loss of their freedom could be next if they remain silent.
It’s not about science any more. Actually, it never was, not since people like Maurice Strong and Margaret Mead decided to push the hypothesis of ‘Global Warming’ as the prod to world socialism. And that was back in the ’70s. The IPCC was founded to give ‘scientific’ cover to this political movement.
/Mr Lynn
L. E. Joiner commented: “….It’s not about science any more. Actually, it never was, not since people like Maurice Strong and Margaret Mead decided to push the hypothesis of ‘Global Warming’ as the prod to world socialism. And that was back in the ’70s. The IPCC was founded to give ‘scientific’ cover to this political movement.
+1
Do not send your children to any of the Universities associated with the authors. The AGW Kool-aid is tainted…although sweet, it will rot the brain
Yes, I was very disappointed to see my alma mater in the list, but not too surprised. I haven’t sent them any money for years because of their CAGW shenanigans.
How many wars, in modern times, have started this way?
Patrick
September 19, 2015 at 8:44 am
All of the most blooded ones?!!
Especially the last world war stands out as the best candidate!
cheers
The list of signatories seems rather short – I’m surprised that Michael Mann is not among them, for example. Maybe his appetite for getting enmeshed in more legal troubles is satiated for now.
Overlooked is the fact that IPCC fits perfectly the legal definition of a “Racket.”
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/09/18/anti-racketeering-initiative/
Exactly so. From Wikipedia:
“A racket is a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not actually exist, that will not be put into effect, or that would not otherwise exist if the racket did not exist. Conducting a racket is racketeering.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_(crime)
RICO would do the job on warmists too. We live in interesting times.
And even worse, the protection racket distracts energy and money from actions to adapt and prepare for real environmental threats.
Witness California, after decades of underinvesting in water conservation now find themselves facing a potential long drought. Abdicating responsibility, their governor claims it is the fault of global warming, and they will fight it with an emissions trading scheme.
Send in the Clowns. Oh wait, they are in charge.
“A racket is a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not actually exist, that will not be put into effect, or that would not otherwise exist if the racket did not exist.”
One would have to be a true doubleplusgood doublethinking statist to exclude more than a low single digit percentage of what all governments do from that definition.
This will backfire.
It has to backfire because evidence is required by courts.
You’ve obviously missed the implications of the Roberts doctrine: the government is no longer required to make and support a winning argument to prevail; it is enough that the court find the goverment could have made a winning argument. So while RICO might not work, the government could enact a 100% tax on income made from climate denial activites. Such income need not be real to be taxable; it could be imputed income from the massive oil company denial funding that 97% of climate scientists are certain their computer models demonstrate might be real.
The US government has the unlimited power to tax income, so as long as they call a new law a “tax”, or if Justice Roberts determines they could have called it a tax, then the law passes constitutional muster.
So if you publish a piece denialist misinformation, the IRS will demand that you report and pay taxes on the value (modeled, of course) your lies have to the energy companies in their quest to achieve obscene profits while destroying the planet and killing all the polar bears. I’d say Anthony could be socked for $100K or so in imputed income for each article. Who needs RICO when you have the US tax code?
/sarc (I hope)
PS: it is never wise to assume there is a limit to the silliness to which tax authorities will go. One time my company attended a computer conference in Canada, and had to pay import duty on the estimated $100 worth of product brochures we brought to give out (free!) to other attendees.
This letter will be featured in history books in the chapter entitled ‘The Corruption of Science in the 21st Century and the Abandonment of the Scientific Method’.
The letter to Obama et al uses the phrase
“that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change”
to describe the people that they want prosecuted under the RICO statute. It seems to me that it is the Warmists that are the ones guilty of this charge.
CliMcCarthyism?
A list of fraudsters which should be recorded for use in future trials.
In the US Holdren is the CEO and Obama is the COB of the AGW Industries (Solyndra et al.) and Research Division (NSF et al.) so eve ry endorser name on the letter is a shill and a pimp rewarded by Holdren and his NSF to do Obama bidding.
Funny for an organized crime group within the executive government to try and use the courts of the judiciary government against (class action) private citizens to stymie public debate and discussion (first amendment to the constitution).
Munich spring 2.0, the black flag of fascism rises in the USA. Truth and honesty always the first victims. CAGW is the most colossal lie in human history.
Intensifying extreme weather events? Not happening.
Sea level rise acceleration? Not happening.
Ocean acidification? Not happening.
Interesting that they forgot to mention global warming.
There’s a thread on this at Climate, etc. too.
The letter states:
“Knowingly deceived” MAY apply to Exxon, to some extent, based on the New Yorker story linked to above. Or it may not. It’s hard to see how other oil (and coal?) companies were wittingly deceptive. Anyway, it is and was impossible to be as knowing about the degree of future warming and its impact as it was about the association of smoking with disease. The linkage rests on lots of iffy inferences and dodgy data.
How have the American people been targeted by these deceptions? Have these companies pooh-poohed alarmism the way the tobacco companies did? No. It’s been over 15 (?) years since Mobil ran its last debunking ad. Since then 90% of their money has gone to mainstream climatology, and their statements have mostly paid homage to the consensus.
Knowing deception hasn’t been documented, only inferred; what’s mostly been documented is some spending going to think tanks that employ skeptical climatologists, or that conduct educational activities, like Heartland. And, of the money they donate to ^organizations that deny global warming^, as alarmists deceptively put it, 90% goes to non-climatology matters.
An investigation would be OK with me. It won’t find deception, just disagreement. Alarmists are so sure they’re right, and have such one-track minds, and such faith in mass opinion, that they can’t imagine honest disagreement. That extreme prejudice and arrogance is what will come out of an investigation.
Alarmists should volunteer to have all their internal documents subject to discovery in a RICO-type investigation, to demonstrate that they have clean hands. If they don’t volunteer, they should be challenged to do so.
Another arrow in the alarmists’ quiver is that the PR firm for a coal company suggested that the proper strategy for delaying or stopping legislation is inculcating doubt. This sounds nefarious, because it’s what criminal defense lawyers do to get a guilty client off.
But it isn’t necessarily nefarious. It may simply be a recognition that an effort to prove the alarmists wrong in the public forum by dissecting their case fully be unsuccessful (being too complicated, too long, and too boring), and so a better strategy would be to hammer at a few salient flaws and uncertainties in the alarmists’ case, and to make an issue of the costs. That’s simply realpolitik.
“As you know, an overwhelming majority of climate scientists are convinced about the potentially serious adverse effects…”
“Know”, “Majority”, “Convinced”, and “Potentially” are terms of partisan politics. How great it must be to work in a job where your employer pays you to lobby your employer to do your bidding and spend more money on what you want.
Yeah, sure, come arrest me for an opinion, guys. I probably won’t shoot your ass. Probably.
This is a sad development and an enlightening one at the same time. The alarmist side becomes so alarmed about the truth that nature continuously throws in their face that they want to resort to a tyrannical way of shutting up the true scientists and therefore deliver a fatal blow to all science. That is the sad part.
Getting in any lawsuit from any side will only muddle the subject more and will not lead to a definitive conclusion. Shear waste of money and time. In the end, we know that nature will show us the real truth and that is all we can hope for.
Inside every dark cloud there is a silver lining (I know that’s a really old saying), and there’s one here as well. Let us do a thought experiment. Let us imagine that Carly Fiorano cannot stop the Donald Trump ascendancy and he gets the Republican nomination (if you don’t like him don’t puke quite yet). And, let us imagine that Hillary Clinton and/or Befnie Sanders are doing poorly in the polls. (This should require very little imagination.)
Still with me? This is where it gets good. All these newfound, Constitution obliterating, extralegal, supreme powers, inclusive now of RICO, which the left has promoted for the acquisition of the executive (i.e. Barack) …
… are now conferred over to Trump!
You’ll note, when hands are behind back, left meets right.
Those old, antiquated, so 1700s, Founding Fathers of the USA envisioned the possibility of all of this stuff. James Madison wrote that one could never be assured of a good leader at the helm, which is why they never ever should be given too much power. These people are fools and they’d learn how foolish they are real fast if it looked like Trump began to coast towards the “helm.”
Tom J
If Trump got anywhere near close to winning Schmidt et all would be trying to pump money at his opposition as fast as they could.
Incidently, from France, the Trump – Fiorini ticket looks an exciting one but I dont think it will happen.
If you look at Trump’s political and economic statements over the last 20 years, it’s hard to tell him and Hillary apart.
If I have to vote for a socialist, I’ll probably go ahead and vote for Hillary. That way when the whole system collapses, the Democrats will get the blame.
You’ll only have to wait til year-end to see that collapse in progress.
It would seem to me that RICO would apply to the warmists more than the skeptics. Ironically their threat to use RICO to silence the skeptics would appear to be in itself racketeering.
Depends upon who the AG is.
Every judge in america is buyable§ IMHO
In the first Obama Care ruling, justice Roberts wrote both the majority and minority opinions.
There is no climate science or any other kind of science in this letter to Obama. Its argument leans totally on the alleged “authority” of the authors based on their membership in the climate research organization. The members of this group are responsible for spreading false information about climate and now they want to apply the RICO act on those who have discovered this fact in order to silence them. Whenever I can pin these guys down to specifics the details turn out to be so distorted that pseudo-science is the kindest word I can apply to it. This of course does not exclude inquiry into their out-and-out falsification of climate data to fool the public. Michael Crichton gave a presentation to the Congress a few years ago in which he severely criticized the constant revision of climate observations that he saw around him. These same “authorities” writing this letter are the ones wrongfully adjusting climate data. I will give you a specific example of how large this falsification of scientific data has gotten. The incident I speak of happened in the twentieth century but its effects are fully visible today. It involves the existence of a hiatus (period of no warming) in the eighties and nineties which has been covered up by means of over-writing its official record with a totally phony warming. In 2008 I was using the satellite database to do research for my book “What Warming?” when I discovered that there had been no warming at all from 1979 to 1997. Cross checking it with ground-based temperature records I found that instead of showing a horizontal temperature segment their record had been changed to show a rising stretch of temperature they called “late twentieth century warming.” That was a neat disappearing act indeed. Luckily they still don’t control the satellites or we would know know nothing about it. I also discovered that HadCRUT3 official temperature source was the origin of this phony warming. I even put a warning about it into the preface of my book when it came out but nothing happened. They just brazenly denied it and kept showing their non-existent warming. And that is still true today,eighteen years later. But this is not the end of it. Later I discovered that GISS and NCDC had been co-conspirators in this disappearing hiatus act. All three had their databases treated by the same computer which left its footprints in exactly similar locations in all three publicly available data sets. They are sharp spikes pointed up near ends of years. Two of them sit right on top of the super El Nino of 1998, easy to spot in comparison with satellite data. If you are looking for accuracy use satellite records, not these compromized data that are foisted upon the public. Now this kind of falsification of data with intent to fool the public really is something that should be investigated under the statute enabling RICO.
There is no science cuz…Obama.
To the right of your little finger is the Enter (or Return) key. Use it now and then and you’ll create paragraphs, which will make your screeds much easier to read. /Mr L
They sure are confirming Gandhi’s sequence :
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Unfortunately, Gandhi, while tipping the hat to his other qualities, would have been marching with the watermelons.
…but in bare feet, without a mobile phone and the other trappings of today’s watermelons.
If Gandhi had tried the same tactics on the Nazi’s they would have simply hung him from the nearest lamp post.
Earlier this year i visited the Magna Carta 800 year exhibition in the precincts of Durham Cathedral. The exhibition itself , which dealt with the document(s) and its influence down the centuries was interesting in itself , but at the end of the exhibition there was a small presentation about the relevance to civil rights and liberties today , in England and around the world .
Each attendee was given a token and invited to vote the token in one of about 6 large perspex boxes labelled with various “freedoms” or “rights” . eg the right to work , civil equality , right to protest or the right to privacy .
The box with the most tokens , so full it was overflowing was “freedom of expression” more visitors voted for that than for all other “rights ” combined on the day i was there.
Lest you think this a singularly British preference, judging from the voices and appearance there were many visitors from US and Canada , France and Netherlands and many from China and Japan , so freedom to express your opinion seems to be a major universal desire , free to comment on matters of the moment without fear of incarceration in Guantanamo Bay.
Only in the hallowed halls of academia is this freedom at risk .
Amazing how in their first sentence they give it all away and don’t even know it….”As you know, an overwhelming majority of climate scientists are convinced about the potentially serious adverse effects..”
“Potentially” this maybe might be bad cause it is possible that our theory is right therefore you should punish them with certainty….we just can’t prove it.
Not too long ago in the grand scheme of things the consensus held that the sun went around the earth and that the planets all moved in circular orbits on crystal spheres. Galileo, Keppler and Copernicus proved the consensus wrong. In those days any dissent could have very serious consequences, including imprisonment and forefeiture of property and excommunication from the church.
Today we’ve changed all that. Questioning the status quo is in. No one would even consider prosecuting scientists for having different viewpoints. Provided they blindly support AGW!
Freedom of thought is the enemy. Conform in the name of Liberty. Believe or go to prison. It’s the only way to fight tyranny!
Sincerely,
Josef Stalin
Burning at the stake, too.
The aim of this letter is to attempt to silence people with different beliefs about public policy to their own. Even if you are a true believer in the worst scenarios, the difference between the United States current targets and doing nothing is a near zero. Emissions are global and so emissions reductions need to be global. Do the math and it is clear that the USA cutting emissions by 20-30%, with less than 5% of the global population, will have little impact. To get a sense of proportion I did an estimate of global emissions in 2020, dividing the world into eight country groups. I plotted emissions per capita against population, so the area of each block represents total emissions.
Then I have plotted three lines.
The highest is the average global emissions per capita in 1990 the time of the first IPCC assessment report.
The second in pale pink is the global emissions per capita in 2050 needed to limit global warming to 3 degrees according to the IPCC.
The second in bright pink is the global emissions per capita in 2050 needed to limit global warming to 2 degrees according to the IPCC. This is the target that countries will be supposedly signing up to later this year in Paris. That is to reduce emissions to the level of those of the average African today.
Details of my calculations are here.
Why should climate activists not be able to see the blindingly obvious policy issue? Stephen Lewandowsky’s who is infamous for smearing skeptics has inadvertently managed to provide a compelling reason from his two internet surveys. The first, the “Moon Hoax” survey, was discussed at WUWT (and on other blogs such as Climate Audit) extensively three years ago this month. Having been conducted solely on climate alarmist blogs, the survey was a good opinion poll of most dedicated climate activists. The second was a cross section of the US population. There were two common sets of questions in both surveys. The first was opinions on climate “science”. The second was what Lewandowsky calls “free-market ideation” – but are more accurately questions of “free-markets” against environmentalist or socialist/liberal positions. I plotted the results in both surveys. (Full analysis is here) In the USA politically most people are in the center of the political spectrum, giving a bell-shaped graph. On climate, with five options, respondents could be for (in green), against (red) or in the middle (amber). Lewandowsky confirms that belief in climate is associated with people with left-environmentalist opinions.
http://manicbeancounter.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/042114_1802_extremesoci5.jpg?w=600
The “Moon Hoax” survey gives a different perspective. The was no middle option in the question, so there is no amber. The responses are mostly deep green for strong belief in climate science. Politically the views are well to the left.
http://manicbeancounter.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/042114_1802_extremesoci6.jpg?w=600
The inescapable conclusion is that climate activists have quite a narrow range of opinions that are at odds with the vast majority. They cannot appreciate that other views and opinions could be possible, just as they cannot appreciate that the evidence for climate alarmism is considerably weaker than for the harmful effects of smoking.
I am curious to see what the per global capita emissions are for today, more than or less than in 1990. Do you happen to have a figure for now?
In 2013 the per capita emissions were about 5.25 t/CO2 per capita, as against 4.14 in 1990.
In that period global emissions grew 71% and population 35%.
Thank you. I was guessing that it is now higher than 25 years ago. So we now have to cut 50% to hit the 2050 goal. It’s not going to happen. Unfortunately, the only solution seems to be damaging cold in the face of this farce.
Do they need parental approval to write these letters?
Yep, I would take that RICO act, and use it on these racketeers:
Jagadish Shukla, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Edward Maibach, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Paul Dirmeyer, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Barry Klinger, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Paul Schopf, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
David Straus, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Edward Sarachik, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Michael Wallace, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Alan Robock, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
Eugenia Kalnay, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
William Lau, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO
T.N. Krishnamurti, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
Vasu Misra, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
Ben Kirtman, University of Miami, Miami, FL
Robert Dickinson, University of Texas, Austin, TX
Michela Biasutti, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY
Mark Cane, Columbia University, New York, NY
Lisa Goddard, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY
Alan Betts, Atmospheric Research, Pittsford, VT
If this is settled science, why are we (taxpayers) still paying these scientists’ salaries. Go home. Your job is done. Please ask your congressmen to stop paying for settled science.
Excellent. With this tool at hand all members of alarmist organizations can be prosecuted for their deeds, or at least extorted to cease and desist. At the same time the constitutional republic can be killed once and for all. Who could wish for more?
Dr. Edward Maibach holds a BA in social psychology from University of California at San Diego (1980), an MPH in health promotion from San Diego State University (1983), and a PhD in communication research from Stanford University (1990).
http://communication.gmu.edu/people/emaibach
Sung to the tune of “Me and My Uncle” (apologies to the Grateful Dead)
Me and my Uncle Kevin, went ridin’ down,
NCAR at Colorado, West Texas bound.
We stopped over in Santa Fe,
That day in the Prius, just about half way,
And you know it was the hottest part of the day.
I took all our followers, out to the mall,
Went to the barroom, ordered drinks for all.
Three days in a Prius, you know my body hurt,
It bein’ summer, I took off my shirt,
And I tried to wash off some of that dusty dirt.
Well, climate scientists, they’s all around,
With liquor and grant money, they loaded down.
So soon after grant approval, know it seemed a shame;
You know my Uncle Kevin, he starts a friendly game,
High-low jack and the winner take the same.
Uncle Kevin starts winnin’; climateers got sore.
One of them called him, and then two more,
Accused him of cheatin’; Oh no, it couldn’t be.
I know Uncle Kevin, he’s as honest as me,
And I’m as honest as a climate scientist can be.
One of them climateers, he starts to draw,
And I shot him down, Lord he never saw.
Well I grabbed a test tube, cracked him in the jaw,
Shot me another, oh damn he won’t grow old.
In the confusion, my Uncle Kevin grabbed the gold,
And we high-tailed it down to Mexico.
I love those climate scientists, I love their gold,
I loved Uncle Kevin, God rest his soul,
Taught me good, Lord, Taught me all I know
Taught me so well, I grabbed that gold
And I left his dead a… there by the side of the road.
pretty sure Jerry won’t mind
He’s probably giggling at us humans from up there.
I’m sure you’re right.
Good lyrics, by the way.
Eric Worrall points to the work of Stephen Lewandowsky and others in smearing climate skeptics with the false accusation of being accusation of being conspiracy theorists. This was based on the infamous “Moon Hoax” survey, which was discussed at length three years ago. A follow-up internet-based survey of the US population largely falsified this claim. Analysis of the data leads to the following conclusion:-
“The stability of the Earth’s climate over the past ten thousand years contributed to the growth of agriculture and therefore, a thriving human civilization. We are now at high risk of seriously destabilizing the Earth’s climate and irreparably harming people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people.”
The rusts, smuts, scabs, blights, mildews, nematodes, weeds and millions of other killers and reducers of crops have largely been brought under control in our country because of tractors and chemical inputs. Period.
These organic-only, local-only, sustainable activists are just grooming the victim. They are preparing the victim for the most malicious crime of attacking agriculture and good food.
They know very well that they are trying to break the staff of life. There are a hell of a lot of bugs and worms and microorganisms that will eat your food long before you do.
Hey, good news! The Arctic is ice-free, just as predicted!
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/scientists-predict-seasonal-ice-free-arctic-by-2015/article1350832/
Amazing duplicity on Kevin Trenberth’s part.
He is the one who deceived the public in a news conference back in October of 2004 regarding the link between hurricanes and global warming. Hurricane expert Chris Landsea had warned Trenberth prior to the news conference that there was little to no link, but Trenberth ignored the science and spouted his dogma. How long is the statute of limitations for RICO? The RICO act should apply to HIM!
Here are the Climategate emails regarding the event:
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=0890.txt&search=landsea
Chris Landsea did not pull any punches when he stated:
“I did try to caution both Dr. Trenberth and Dr. Linda Mearns before the media event (email included below) and provided a summary of the consensus within the hurricane research community. Dr. Mearns decided not to participate in the panel perhaps as a result of my email correspondence. I sincerely wish Dr. Trenberth had made the same decision. Dr. Trenberth wrote back to me that he hoped that this press conference would not “go out of control”. I would suggest that it was out of control the minute that he and his fellow panel members decided to forego the peer review scientific process and abuse science in pursuit of a political agenda. Sincerely, Chris Landsea”
Landsea resigned from the IPCC process shortly thereafter.
I think you people are all forgetting that the signatories of this letter, and the organizations they work for, all stand to lose serious money if the gravy train comes to a halt as a result of actions by skeptics.
Please, show some sympathy for the rich.
$1.5 million smackaroos for the lead grifter and his wife…
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/09/22/scientist-leading-effort-to-prosecute-climate-skeptics-under-rico-paid-himself-his-wife-1-5-million-from-govt-climate-grants-for-part-time-work/
David Roberts of the Gristmill website suggested something similar back in ’06:
“When we’ve finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we’re in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards—some sort of climate Nuremberg.”
Climate extremists are not only totally and tragically wrong about “the science”, but are vicious. And those Warmists not necessarily agreeing with their extreme tactics give their tacit approval by keeping quiet. That is tyranny in the making.
Yesterday evening I listened to Part 1 of the CBC’s “Ideas” program that explored how scientists are suppressed by political power.
Science Under Siege, Part I
Friday Sept 18, 2015
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas
“Are we living through an Anti-Scientific Revolution? Scientists around the world are increasingly restricted in what they can research, publish and say — constrained by belief and ideology from all sides.”
The two specific examples of the attack on science provided were vaccines in autism, and the denial that human activities cause climate change. Supposedly their respective bodies of evidence pretty much amount to the same thing.
What ensues on the program is an exquisite bit of science hypocrisy.
35:30 – Science writer Shawn Otto, author of “Fool Me Twice:”
“Four hundred years ago that somebody was the Catholic Church, who was the seat of world economic and political power. And today it could be argued that the seat of world economic and political power is the North American energy industry … So it is not really surprising when you consider that, for instance, Exxon-Mobile is the largest public traded company in the world … It’s no surprise that we see a lot of debate around the science suggesting that the planet is warming.
“So when vested interests are threatened by the creation of new knowledge they tend to mount very familiar propaganda and political campaigns against the scientists that are creating that knowledge.”
“A scientific statement is only powerful or only reliable to the extent that it is vulnerable to being falsified. That we can disprove it. If it cannot be phrased in a way that it is vulnerable to disproof, it really isn’t science; it’s more an assertion of faith.”
“Science is always political … anti-authoritarian.”
” Those who deny freedom to others , deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God, cannot long retain it (Abraham Lincoln)
The first amendment was necessary because people like Sheldon Whitehouse exist. Whitehouse needs to resign in shame because he is doing this: http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/senators-ask-us-chamber-of-commerce-board-member-companies-about-the-chambers-climate-denial-efforts
This is nothing short of intimidation in a nation that abhors (or used to) a government of confrontation. People need to remember and never forget that the constitution does not grant freedoms, it defines limits of government. We already had the right to freedom of speech. The first amendment specifically prohibits government from the exact thing Whitehouse is doing. The first amendment reads:
Where the hell is liberal outrage?
I’m a liberal and I am outraged, but as an attorney, let me say you don’t know the first damn thing about the Constitution if you think it doesn’t guarantee individual freedoms.
The idea the there is wrongdoing because some people have a different opinion than you do, as the basis for a RICO case, is a real stretch.
Well, you’re both right. The freedoms are held (in the Declaration) to be endowed by Providence. The Bill of Rights to the Constitution is intended to restrain the Federal government from abridging those natural rights. So yes, in one sense the Constitution can be said to “guarantee” the freedoms, by restricting the Federal government.
But to DP’s point: Whitehouse and these ersatz ‘scientists’ are proposing nothing less than to prosecute people for speaking their minds on matters of science and public policy. That’s a violation of the First Amendment.
/Mr Lynn
I see the entire faculty of George Mason U was frog marched in to sign or else – almost a third of the signatories. Most notable is that there is only one guy anyone can recognize – Kevin Trenberth. He must have been at a seminar at George Mason. Does he realize he was used as a poster boy for the signing which otherwise would have no impact. During the depth of the dreaded pause he maintained a certain integrity in his famous remark about it being a travesty that they couldn’t explain the pause. Since, he appears to have come down a lot. I suppose having agonized out loud about the “pause” he felt the need to explain it away and away went integrity. Presumably, he’s relieved that his colleagues have taken a no nonsense approach and abolished the damned thing. But what is he doing in the climate of these nobodies.
I wonder if Trenberth knew what he was signing during that poster session signature grab? Was the final form of the letter in front of him? I would lay a 50/50 chance that he removes his name from that letter. If he doesn’t, I put him on the bottom of the pile and move Mikey up one slot.
Does Trenberth not have a “PhD” after his name? Is it too much to expect people with 10 or more years of post-graduate education to read a non-technical letter and understand the implications of asking the chief executive officer of the United States to embark on a new policy direction?
Was Einstein unaware of the likely results of signing Leó Szilárd’s letter to President Roosevelt?
Ph.D.’s are no promise of wisdom. Far from it. I have known a few and some do idiotic things and are somewhat without a reasoning mind.
Delusional on so many levels !
1) they really think skeptics are funded by big oil ???? Skeptics are generally self funded
2) they think their case is so iron clad that it could stand up to scrutiny in court? I guess they don’t look at observed data, just model outputs. Good luck with that
3)this all sounds good until skeptics turn the table on them & pursue Big Green with the RICO act. Our case would be far stronger. My suggestion to the signers of that letter – dont pick a fight you can’t win & you can’t finish
I find this article oddly reassuring as it indicates the barely concealed panic increasingly apparent among warmists in general and warmist ” scientists ” in particular. Interestingly enough the UK Met Office recent commentary on climate in the short to medium term indicates that some influential supporters of the orthodoxy are now preparing a defence for what they consider to be an increasingly likely and imminent period of cooling. UK Met concede that the pause has happened but that strong warming will reassert itself in the near future. But the warming will ” paradoxically ” lead to cooling of the northern half of the northern hemisphere with “some” recovery of Arctic ice (Daily Telegraph Sept. 14 2015).
It would be hilarious for politicians – particularly the Obama administration – to prosecute anyone for having “knowingly deceived the American people.”
I plan to email every single one of those numbskulls.
I always love the attempted parallels to big tobacco…especially since Michael Mann lawyered-up with an attorney who successfully defended big tobacco (R.J. Reynolds) in a lawsuit.
What were these people thinking when they signed this letter? Maybe this:
“We keep telling everyone there’s a 97% consensus, but they would rather believe their lying eyes. So we need to politicize science. Let’s make climate science a partisan issue by appealing to the current party in power to force everyone to accept our pet theories. What could go wrong?”
Actually I fully support the concept of targeting people/corporations who deliberately mislead, especially if it is for profit. That goes for no matter who it is or what they are saying. How can anyone argue with that?
The time has arrived, Arm yourself.
We are already armed in the UK.
Hmmm, no mention of Global Warming, which is supposedly what this is all about. One should always remind these charlatans when they talk of “climate change” they are actually talking of global warming.
But read the comments on warmist blogs, They all refer to warming, not climate change.
Always remember, when the Democrats/Leftists/Marxists point the finger and accuse their opposition, they do it to protect themselves from the same charge. The difference is, the charge would be valid against them, but obviously invalid against us. The objective of making the charge against someone else is if the issue ever comes up, the public will be tired of hearing about it, and it won’t have traction even if it is real.
Don’t bother defending yourself against such phony charges by trying to prove you are innocent. Start finding out how the Democrat socialist-fascists are guilty in reality of exactly what they are accusing you of doing. There won’t be any evidence they can find, but if you waste your time defending yourself against nothing, you’ll have no opportunity to get it to stick on them.
In this case, clearly the scientific literature is littered with falsehoods designed to perpetuate a corrupt grant system. Of course, that quid pro quo gaming was hinted at in the CRU email releases.
I believe in freedom and liberty for all except for people who don’t think or feel the way I do about everything. They must go away. They have coodies.
The Ego of Trenberth is amazing. On his NCAR bio, it states:
“Shared Nobel Peace Prize that went to the IPCC 2007″
As Anthony reported in a post on June 17:
In a statement of 29 October 2012 the IPCC clarified that the “prize was awarded to the IPCC as an organisation, and not to any individual involved with the IPCC. Thus it is incorrect to refer to any IPCC official, or scientist who worked on IPCC reports, as a Nobel laureate or Nobel Prize winner. It would be correct to describe a scientist who was involved with AR4 or earlier IPCC reports in this way: ‘X contributed to the reports of the IPCC, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.’”
So Mr. Trenberth, please correct the lie in your NCAR bio.
Telling the truth seems to be a problem with this guy. He just can’t let the Nobel prize go.
But it’s a Nobel lie.
Is this a MANN thing?
Hate to say, but I hope this happens.
Would be very interesting to see how this played out in court.
Can you counter-sue under RICO?
Its civil in nature so… Yes you can counter sue…
This letter from the 20 disgruntled climate scientists to President Obama illustrates the immaturity and stubbornness of these 20 climate scientists despite their age and experience in science. Appealing to the boss when you are unable to convince the public, the politicians or your fellow dissenting scientists of your views, is a sign of a group who are used dictating their views regardless of its correctness or merits . Left to their own devices they try to pull scientific rank and demand obedience and even requesting criminal action on anyone who disagrees with them. Instead of using the dissenters in a positive and participatory way to flush out the errors and weakness of their science, they resort to underhanded ways in an attempt to silence any dissent.This group would do well to read the book called SWAY by Ori and Rom Brafman about the irresistible pull of irrational behaviour . There is an excellent section on dissenting justice and how the Supreme court uses dissent wisely even to the point of including the dissenting opinion and report as well as the opinion of the majority. This approach is a well established technique in management and group interaction and the use of idea initiators, blockers and dissenters can greatly facilitate better and quicker decision making on complex issues
Using the same logic, RICO should be used against the President considering what he has promised and what has actually happened. Especially consider the ACA which is not the health care that the President promised. He made numerous promises about health care that has not been kept. In particular, all members of the President’s party in congress could be named as co conspirators.
Will they send in a non bias attorney general in to investigate like in thise two last public shakedown investigations?
They say that mostly it is the skiers themselves who cause the avalanche in which they get caught.
This is just what we sceptics need – because it will bring the house of cards tumbling down around their ears.
Despite some of the mendacious characters in this list, I doubt they dreamed this up on their own. I don’t think even Sheldon Whitehouse’s grandstanding would have been sufficient to inspire it. No, this has the trademark of proactive pursuit of the administrative agenda. It had to be inspired by higher levels, if not directly from the White House, then indirectly through its promoters of doom like the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Let’s see, who are the signers funded by?
I don’t know what disturbs me most: That Trenberth’s Twenty don’t believe this twaddle they have written, or that they do.
First the alarmists in their letter to Obama start with a non statement that the overwhelming majority of climatologists believe in “the potentially serious side effects” of human induced climate change. But that’s not the same as saying that they agree THERE IS human induced climate change ongoing. This is a cleverly worded misrepresentation which can never justify violating someone’s right to free speech under the Constitution.
Might this be a great chance for Key skeptics to answer press inquiries about this RICO call with succinct replies of the falsity of CAGW ? . I.E. …20 years with no warming, no increase in storms, arctic and Antarctic ice doing fine, etc. Trillions which could help the poor would be wasted chasing immeasurable reductions in temperature. . 5 top bullet points
Johngar,
Yes, I think that’s right. The situation is similar to Mann’s lawsuit against Steyn: now Mann has a tiger by the tail. He can’t do anything, and he’s afraid to let go. And Dr. Tim Ball is laughing at Mann’s reluctance to turn over information.
We’re not at the point yet where someone, or some group can arbitrarily be delared
witchesguilty. There would have to be a trial, no?Let’s have that trial! Complete with cross-examination of everyone who signed that letter: How much taxpayer loot have they received? How much would be cut off if they lost the trial? Why did Trenberth demand that the Scientific Method must be turned on its head, putting the onus of proof on skeptics, instead of where it properly belongs: on those promoting the MMGW conjecture?
And what about counter-suits? If they pulled the trigger on this, there would be plenty of counter-suits. At that point, opinions would be secondary to verifiable facts, like the fact that global warming stopped many years ago. And where is the global damage, or global harm, from more CO2? Doesn’t “no harm” mean “harmless”?
Mark Steyn has shown that standing up to a bully makes the bully suddenly wish he hadn’t taken any action.
dbstealey, I agree 110%. never merely defend against these scum, attack back! At the core they’re gutless.
I think it’s time skeptics put alarmist liars and rent seekers on notice. When the whole edifice comes tumbling down – as it must – we and they all know it – but they lie about it – those who manipulated science for personal gain, induced others to do so, or knowingly accepted funding or remuneration (including profits in carbon trading, payments for making, erecting, or leasing land for, wind turbines and bird-torturing solar concentrators) for destructive acts will be charged with high crimes against humanity, wildlife and the planet. Corruption of science should be treason against the human race, as we rely on good science for our very existence. When collaborators’ involvement falls short of knowing conspiracy, nevertheless all monies made from participating in the scam will be pursued and repaid, even pursued down through the generations if necessary. But humanity will be repaid for this hoax.
Put them on notice. Get the wording right, make sure genuine innocents are not criminally charged (but their profits should still be recovered on the same principle as accepting stolen goods). Then build momentum behind getting the signatures.
Who here has the time and money to mount such an attack? It would take an organization, maybe a foundation. I’d contribute; I’d even work for them. But how to herd the skeptical cats that frequent blogs like this?
/Mr Lynn
I am talking about when the whole house of cards falls down and the “regime” is overthrown.
People who are commenting that this is an act of desperation are correct, to which I would add, it is also an act of ignorance. Any lawyer who read that, including those who support the writers’ agenda such as Obama and Lynch, would smile knowingly if not laugh out loud while finding an appropriate place for it in the round file.
Look at it this way, given that their Prez had weighed in on the Brown shooting, Justice looked at every angle they could think of to prosecute Wilson for civil rights violations. But they declined to do so, even though they had a violent death and a corpus delicti and everything.
Because, you see, posturing for the public is one thing. But for a lawyer, the last thing on God’s green earth you want to have happen is to be laughed out of the courtroom by a judge.
I’m all for RICO. 30 years to life for Trenberth. Confiscation comes to mind. The same may be for the others.
“We appreciate that you are making aggressive and imaginative use of the limited tools available to you ”
Says it all really.
Full Definition of RECALCITRANT
1: obstinately defiant of authority or restraint
2-
a : difficult to manage or operate
b : not responsive to treatment
c : resistant
— recalcitrant noun
I guess they want to default to def. C, but the other two defs are incongruent with the way the constitution says the government works. Looks like they use this word to imply that the president is the manager, operator or authority over congress.
In my education the three branches of government had equal powers. That means the president can’t “pull rank” like a superior and become a monarch.
Why do they consult Obama as a “king”, to control the legality of questioning their obviously inept and misleading overstatements of the “carbon greenhouse effect”?
They are truly recalcitrant; not responding to the treatment of reality.
Not that this letter should be taken seriously, but RICO does require there to be an underlying criminal behavior behind any conspiracy charge. What is the criminal activity these people are accusing “deniers” of? Denial itself, of anything, is not, even were it shown to be true, a crime. To prosecute “deniers” under RICO, the activity of denial itself must be criminalized. Then an organized criminal conspiracy could then be prosecuted. But free speech law and the First Amendment would make that impossible. So, forgetting about the scientific debate over climate for a moment, what kind of batshoot crazy is this?
brokenyogi.
And OTOH, the Climategate emails show convincingly there is an ongoing conspiracy, led by Michael Mann and others, to silence skeptics whose only ‘crime’ is having a different scientific point of view.
Yes, but again, such “conspiracies” are not criminal in nature, unless there is an underlying crime.
Each signed their name
To the Hall Of Shame.
Both left and right love to outlaw debate when either is in power.
The saving grace of the USA is our vast ‘middle of the road’ people.
This latest letter from the alarmists scientists illustrates why there is a serious problem with credibility and program management among the global warming scientists . The correct scientific understanding and scientific solutions to deal with climate change are not being flushed out because the current crop of climate scientists are incompetent in management techniques to deal with legitimate dissent and uncertainties. Instead of using proven techniques to deal with dissent in a positive way as other professionals do , they seem to act like young siblings who argue and one tells the other that he or she will call on dad( the President) to punish the other . Yet other professionals like medicine, legal , airlines, and even NASA use CRM OR crew resource management. It teaches the participants how to be effective blockers or dissenters in order to flush out the best or proper solution to complex issues. They actually welcome dissent and use it in positive way not like the climate scientists who use every possible way to block dissent . Is it any wonder why the climate science is in such a disarray .
“investigation of corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change”
That could bounce back badly on the climate scare industry IF that RICO investigation would be a serious audit of the climate science micro cosmos…..
Why is it that Mann and the rest of the “team” haven’t singed on?
Should be “signed on” above. But there is a lot of singing these days. Are they in some kind of holy revival?
GANGREENS have done much worse than RICO.
Typical hollow threats from the ganGREEN Mob.
Gangreens really have no shame.
All it takes is a change in administration, and a new attorney general to enforce RICO, FARA, and other laws broken by the climate warming Mob and their Trust Fund Flunkies in Frisco.
http://freebeacon.com/issues/foreign-firm-funding-u-s-green-groups-tied-to-state-owned-russian-oil-company/
http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=8af3d005-1337-4bc3-bcd6-be947c523439
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/061215-757095-california-drought-caused-by-environmental-activists.htm
Gangreens have played their hand, and only the present administration has shielded many of them from the legal consequences of your ‘efforts.’
The question in my mind is what will happen to the ganGREEN mob next?
Upon election of an administration not favorable to them, what will happen first?
Prosecution?
Will some of them just move to a country without an extradition treaty with the U.S.?
Or nothing at all?
Who can say for sure, but blatant use of foreign money, shell companies, secret emails, government spies, spreading of hate speech and threats against skeptics, businesses, industries and others who recognize their lies…WHAT THEY ACCUSE SKEPTICS OF DOING, THEY HAVE DEFINITELY DONE.
They’ve been VERY busy, and the statute of limitations on certain crimes not prosecuted today is many years beyond the term of the next president.
As the little people grow more impoverished, the pendulum will swing back, and gangreens should think very carefully about what they have done, and what it may legally cost them, their businesses, and Families.
Because I like a good show, might I humbly suggest some of them start planning an international exit soon?
I for one will be waiting to see the drama unfold with a very large bucket of POPCORN.
I have found the general response for thousands is to simply quote Al Gore. If he believes it, then it must be wrong and ipso facto there is no climate change.
Thawing Permafrost: The Speed Of Coastal Erosion In Eastern Siberia Has Nearly Doubled, Arctic Methane Released At Blinding Speed, Climate Change, Core Of Earth Heats Up
https://dublinsmickdotcom.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/thawing-permafrost-the-speed-of-coastal-erosion-in-eastern-siberia-has-nearly-doubled-arctic-methane-released-at-blinding-speed-climate-change-core-of-earth-heats-up/
For bloggers interested in the legal side of science and risk regulation, there is an excellent book called SCIENCE AND RISK REGULATION IN INTERNATIONAL LAW by Jacqueline Peel , CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS,2010
Chapter 8 deals with WHAT ROLE FOR SCIENCE IN INTERNATIONAL RISK REGULATION
I quote part of page 379
“However in the end , the discourse of science is no replacement for political contestation over the appropriate goals of the international risk regulation. If instead of engaging in such debate , global risk governance turns exclusively to science, thereby extending scientific knowledge beyond the bounds of its accepted competence and representing it as the definitive circumstances where it is subject to uncertainty -science will eventually lose all credibility as a resource for global decision making “
The author points out that the greater the uncertainty in the science involved , the greater is the need for more openness and transparency to outside parties. The greater the social political debate over the harms of the risk , the greater is need for more public input into the risk decision making
This sound advice seems clearly not being followed by the climate science decision making process in the world where every effort is being made to shut down any any public debate or input. The public is only told after the decision has already been made and are not party to the decision making . The 20 scientists clearly have to more right to urge the government that the decision should be based on their still unsettle science .
The 20 scientists clearly have to more right to urge the government that the decision should be based on their still unsettle science
I meant to say ” The 20 scientists clearly have no right to urge the government that their climate change decisions should be based on their still unsettles science .”
Ever wonder why the left always ends up with millions of deaths at their hands? The signatures are a list of leftist fascists that want the government scum to ruin the lives of people who disagree with them. The left is a bunch of psychopaths.
talking ’bout opportunism – approximate ‘climate change’ nuisanced next to You.
And then google for
‘The cleansing of the Temple narrative tells of Jesus expelling the money changers from the Temple.’
Rings a bell: ‘CHANGE’ is cheap, ‘CHANGE’ is bad. CHANGE is for the gutter.
And worthlessed ‘climate change’ narrative is the new banner to follow.
bad, worthless climate CHANGE.
do away with.
Really? Hans
Ain’t CHANGE the currency to enter a new, more developed world – just asking.
Hans.
mod, OK with me.
Best Regards, Sentinals – Hans
by the way, I’m a built ’53.
and I won’t spend my livetimes small earned on
climate
change.
‘Who D’ya think Y’re fooling.’
Just help me clarify something. Who is “Hans”?
Václav Klaus, second president of the Czeck Republic, has been a vocal critic of the man-made global warming doctrine. His concerns about the flawed global warming doctrine, embraced by governments around the world, are well documented. He has warned that the largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity is no longer socialism or communism but, rather, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.
This letter by the 20 eco-warriors is just a fine example of the agenda of these alarmists to attack freedom… scientific freedom of expression and scientific free speech in accordance with the scientific method… this, in the United States of America with its Constitution that I need not remind people about but which these 20 alarmists clearly despise.
Pursuing, fining, and jailing people that feel marriage is a biological union? With this RICO proposal, there is a pattern emerging that’s rather disturbing.
It would be great if they tried to use the RICO act. Once the court fails in favour of those demanded, they could not keep insisting on the same false accusations.
Well, at least not without looking deeply stupid.
The longer the time to follow the main efforts of science and policy to define and determine the cause of climate change and the consequences in terms of global warming. But, unfortunately, I have not seen anything logical in many stories, especially those that support the policy and not a science that studies and respecting the laws of nature.
In many places I have called attention to the fact that climate change on the planet, not only on nšoj planet, depend on the relationships of the planets and the sun.
In what way can this be proved? It depends on the interests and moods of powerful circles and when they realize that the progress of science can not be achieved with a profit interest in this field.
Today they all run and rush headlong into the unknown, only if they consider that there can be realized a personal profit.
These all who read this, I can not ignore this, as they wish, because nobody can forbid you, but remember, that I have the obvious idea that these ENIGMA successfully complete !!.
Offering up with his idea, but now I stand by that, that NASA and the Government of the United States if they have this interest, can be a little “lowered down” and to accept the offer with a contractual obligation to perform it in detail.
Read this and think there is no need to be making fun of this, but to try to solve.
I can not wait to fall soon many false theories about climate change.
All of this talk of using the US RICO act is just a diversion. Thinkers (that is skeptics in Greek), are already being tried in the court of public opinion. And losing.
Al Gore put out a movie which told full of scientific misdirection. Repeated green shiboleth after green shiboleth. And is now known to be almost completely wrong in every important point. And yet can you point to any mainstream journalist that has outed Gore, or his sources of misinformation? NO.
Because the journalists, almost to a man, are owned by the green movement. Heart and soul.
Something I should have said:
The warmists will never bring their case into a real court, because in a real court skeptics would be given a chance to reply. A chance nobody is giving them now.
I think the RICO act needs to be stretched to include NGOs, UN agencies, and certain university departments. Unfortunately, the only track record of stretch that goes on is by the current dear leaders and some running to return to the WH.
The philosophy guiding warmists was never far from fascism – and they prove it every chance they can.
AGW is racketeering to seal global investment in China and India, it also ignores pollution in those countries. The fact that it has changed to “climate change” is all the evidence you need to know of its provability. Nothing will be able to be produced in countries outside of China and India as a startup if its ensuing laws are introduced. Its an area of key importance to keeping Exxon well funded and shipping all the way from China to your doorstep.
I tried posting that on a couple of those “science” boards without success.
Jagadish Shukla on the take, rips off taxpayers.
Where’s RICO when you need it?
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/09/22/scientist-leading-effort-to-prosecute-climate-skeptics-under-rico-paid-himself-his-wife-1-5-million-from-govt-climate-grants-for-part-time-work/
Follow the money, What was the name of that guy in the Matrix movie who wanted to be a climatologist or rockstar?
I suggest the grid operators deserve a medal, and the politicians responsible for this energy insanity should be held fully accountable, especially if their foolishness results in increased winter mortality.
The UNFCCC was born by a pitiful First AR IPPC. Both are nothing but political trash.
Canada is not bound by ignorance nor will ever be bound by stupidity.