RICO Charges Against 'Climate Deniers': A Case of Goose and Gander

Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball

As the people in power, like Al Gore and the White House, see the false claim of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) losing public interest they resort to nastier tactics to win the day. It won’t. Instead, it makes more people aware that something is wrong. People despise bullying and when the force of government and the courts are used to silence or intimidate they side with the oppressed. As Shakespeare said in Measure for Measure,

O, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.

Consider the recent use of RICO, defined as the

Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act: a U.S. law, enacted in 1970, allowing victims of organized crime to sue those responsible for punitive damages.

Technically, the charges were filed under Criminally Influenced and Corruptions Organizations Act (CICO) because the Attorney General of the Virgin Islands brought them. One media outlet reported that,

A group of Democratic state attorneys general and former Vice President Al Gore have announced the creation of a coalition of “top law enforcement officials” to investigate whether oil companies committed fraud in order to hide the effects their businesses have on global climate.

Speaking at a press conference at his Manhattan office Tuesday afternoon, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said the group would look for “creative ways” to use existing law to investigate whether “fossil fuel companies” have “profited from the confusion” those companies have allegedly sown over global warming.

Extensive debate ensued over the suppression of free speech, control of science, and other restrictive practices in a supposedly free society. It caused retraction of many of the charges and exposure of apparently unethical or even illegal activities by those bringing the charges. WUWT did a good job reporting and exposing the sequence of events.

Keywords or phrases are a phenomenon of the search engine society. Consider the following from the commentary so far. Victims of organized crime; committed fraud; hide the effects on global climate; profit from the confusion. Now turn those charges back on the individuals, groups, and politicians who instigated, propagated and disseminated the entire deception that is the AGW hypothesis. Consider filing RICO charges against them.

It is likely the politicians are protected from such charges, which is why people are angry at all politicians; there is no accountability. Space precludes a complete recounting of what, how, and why the real racketeering occurred. Details are laid out in my book The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science. They are more succinct for a wider audience in a book due for release shortly (Figure 1). I refer to it as a Revised Summary for Policymakers (RSPM) (Cover by Josh).

Figure 1

RICO charges brought by the AGs claimed that Exxon knew the truth and sought and paid scientists (deniers) to create a false truth. Now consider RICO charges against Senators Al Gore and Timothy Wirth and all the scientists who participated in the promotion and dissemination of the false AGW hypothesis.

People know Al Gore and his career, but few know much about Wirth. Here is a brief Wikipedia entry that provides sufficient context.

Following two decades of elected politics, Wirth was national Co-chair of the Clinton-Gore campaign, and served in the U.S. Department of State as the first Undersecretary for Global Affairs from 1993 to 1997. He led U.S. foreign policy in the areas of refugees, population, environment, science, human rights and narcotics He chaired the United States Delegation at the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development, and was the lead U.S. negotiator for the Kyoto Climate Conference until he resigned from the Administration in late 1997 to accept Ted Turner’s invitation to be President of the newly created United Nations Foundation.

His concerns were almost the same as those listed by the Club of Rome. In a remarkable 2007 interview with Frontline on PBS, Wirth provides a context for the manipulation of the AGW story and a basis for RICO charges. In response to the question

… What was it in the late ’80s, do you think, that made the issue [of global warming] take off?

Wirth replied

I think a number of things happened in the late 1980s. First of all, there were the [NASA scientist Jim] Hansen hearings [in 1988]. … We had introduced a major piece of legislation. Amazingly enough, it was an 18-part climate change bill; it had population in it, conservation, and it had nuclear in it. It had everything that we could think of that was related to climate change. … And so we had this set of hearings, and Jim Hansen was the star witness.

The product for sale is not a fossil fuel, a physical product, but a political idea with far more value in power and profit. It is selling advocacy, something that under the name of advertising advocacy was a major debate at the time. The issue was the legitimacy of a private company paying for advertising that sold an idea, a political view, rather than a tangible product. The situation with Wirth is similar. It is also a forerunner to crony capitalism. You need scientists or experts to provide or at least appear to provide legitimacy and credibility

They asked Wirth,

“How did you know about Jim Hansen?”

He replied.

… I don’t remember exactly where the data came from, but we knew there was this scientist at NASA who had really identified the human impact before anybody else had done so and was very certain about it. So we called him up and asked him if he would testify. Now, this is a tough thing for a scientist to do when you’re going to make such an outspoken statement as this and you’re part of the federal bureaucracy. Jim Hansen has always been a very brave and outspoken individual.

Paradoxically, by their definition, this labels Hansen as a “denier” because he is far outside the scientific community.

The one thing that Hansen didn’t do that day in front of your committee is use the term “global warming.” He said, “Gentlemen, I’m 99 percent sure that human beings are contributing to climate change,” but he didn’t quite have the nerve, because he was outside scientific consensus at the time. …

To which Wirth replies,

Oh, Hansen went a long way. This was a very, very brave statement. He was on the edge of the science and almost 20 years younger than he is today, so he’s relatively new in the field. He’s working for the federal government, and certainly this was not cleared far up the line, what he had to say. So the summary of what Jim Hansen had to say that year, plus the fact that it had gotten so much attention from the [press] — it was on every channel, Hansen was widely reported. He went as far as anybody could possibly have expected him to go, I think. Again, it was a very brave thing for him to do.

There are a number of implications in that statement. It was only brave because it was outrageous and unsubstantiated. Hansen knew he would not have approval from “up the line.” But, how far up the line did he have to go? He was appointed head of NASA GISS eight years earlier in 1981 and as we know from the later revolt of astronauts at NASA, few knew what was going on. He knew his statement was without scientific support. It wasn’t brave because he knew he was saying what the politicians like Gore wanted to hear and undoubtedly was told they would protect him. Hansen’s boss, John Theon told me when I asked him why Hansen wasn’t reigned in that the word came from above to leave him alone. Wirth was backed by Al Gore, who was in his Presidential campaign in 1988.

Wirth then speaks about the degree of deception involved in Hansen’s 1988 appearance.

What else was happening that summer? What was the weather like that summer?

Believe it or not, we called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer. Well, it was June 6 or June 9 or whatever it was, so we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo: It was the hottest day on record in Washington, or close to it. It was stiflingly hot that summer. [At] the same time you had this drought all across the country, so the linkage between the Hansen hearing and the drought became very intense.

And did you also alter the temperature in the hearing room that day?

… What we did it was went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right? So that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room and so when the, when the hearing occurred there was not only bliss, which is television cameras in double figures, but it was really hot. …

So Hansen’s giving this testimony, you’ve got these television cameras back there heating up the room, and the air conditioning in the room didn’t appear to work. So it was sort of a perfect collection of events that happened that day, with the wonderful Jim Hansen, who was wiping his brow at the witness table and giving this remarkable testimony. …

Did Exxon or any of the climate change deniers ever do anything like this? Is this committing fraud? Hansen’s information was apparently designed to “hide the effects of climate change,” natural climate change that is. It was designed to allow “profit from the confusion.” The profit was political at first, but became financial later for many like Gore and others.

Hansen continued his distortion of the science even though, as Wirth said, he was working for the Federal government. He also continued his activism, including protesting and being arrested outside the White House in contradiction of the Hatch Act.

Exxon or climate change deniers didn’t alter official modern weather records or alter historic records by eliminating decade long warm periods. They didn’t create a panel to study causes of climate change that only considered human causes. They didn’t let the public believe the panel was studying all causes of climate change. Exxon reportedly spent $16 million on climate research with virtually none of it going to deniers. Meanwhile, from the time Hansen appeared before the Senate Committee in 1988 to 2009, Gore, Wirth, and their political partners directed $79 billion to promotion of the unproven AGW hypothesis. It remains unproven. The total cost to societies from the implementation of unnecessary energy and environmental policies is in the trillions.

It is clear who the racketeers are. But then, it may not be racketeering but politics as usual.