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.
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.