If I ever meet NCAR’s Keven Trenberth (again), I’m going to punch him in the mouth. Same thing if I cross paths with Rutgers’ Alan Robock. Pow! Right in the kisser. I’m too much of a gentleman to pop one across the chops of University of Maryland’s Eugenia Kalnay, but she has it coming.
Why?
These cowards, these inferior intellects, these cry babies, these poor losers, these promulgators of a failed science want to sic the full force and might of United States Government on persons like yours truly and the companies or organizations that might fund me. (None do, unfortunately.)
A whole slew of these people wrote a letter to President Obama, Attorney General Lynch, and Science Adviser Holdren. It said in part:
We appreciate that you [President Obama] 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…
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.
The RICO act! Dems fightin’ words, dammit. These delinquent meager mentally deficient blights attempt to crush their enemies, not through truth logic reason and rational demonstration, but by running behind the skirts of a merciless army of mindless bureaucrats and lawyers. Craven gutless poltroons.
This isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened. I and my brother scientists have been called treasonous, Anti-American, evil, and every other name you can think of. We have had people say we should be fired, fined, jailed, even hung. All for holding a view of science that just happens to comport with reality.
I’m sick of it. I’ve taken all I’m going to take. So when next I meet any of these pusillanimous spineless unmanly (and unwomanly) dolts, I’m coming out swinging.
Look. Civilians don’t realize how much of science is raw bullying, how many theories that are touted as unquestionable truths are in reality teetering on the flimsiest evidence, how much bluster and brashness are a cover for deep ignorance. Fights are inevitable. And because big brains and even bigger egos are involved, these quarrels are waged as dirty as any tavern brawl.
But I am a scientist and I know how shaky things are. I expect fights. I don’t even mind them. I like them. A good argument with a truly intelligent opponent is like sparring around with Joe Louis. Keeps the wits sharp. Saves you from growing complacent.
What these mamma’s boys (and girls) are doing isn’t sticking to the rules, though. The instant these weak-wits realized they were losing—and we were really creaming them—they ran off the playground to get the principal, hoping their hot tears would enrage him enough to break out the paddle.
Given the way things are, their cheap trick might even work. It’s certainly suckering in those in the academy who haven’t much resistance to fringe thought.
Like this guy, Timothy David Snyder, non-scientist specialist in slave societies like the Soviet Socialist Republics and the National Socialist Germany, who says climate “deniers” will cause the next genocide.
This foolish man took to the pages of well known broadsheet and said:
Hitler spread ecological panic by claiming that only land would bring Germany security and by denying the science that promised alternatives to war. By polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, the United States has done more than any other nation to bring about the next ecological panic, yet it is the only country where climate science is still resisted by certain political and business elites. These deniers tend to present the empirical findings of scientists as a conspiracy and question the validity of science — an intellectual stance that is uncomfortably close to Hitler’s.
Hitler. Boo!
Where does this uncouth uncultured unknowing uncomprehending twit get off telling the world that scientists with whom he disagrees will cause the next genocide? Genocide! From people like Trenberth, Robock, and Kalnay, that’s who.
If I ever have the chance to meet this jackass, I will explain to him as to a child, with care and great patience, just where his thoughts have gone awry.
I share your anger, but you can’t beat idiots by acting like one – and, if you did manage to send a few to hospital, they win by sending you to jail.
Just remember, Herr Hitler was an extreme environmentalist. (Both Mein Kampf and Zweites Buch express this).
Paul, what is the solution, if the deck is stacked against you, and the jury is rigged?
Even Pope Francis seems to endorse a well-aimed punch if the circumstances call for it: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30838667
(Disclaimer: This is not an endorsement for hitting anyone.)
(Briggs: You need a trigger warning with this one.)
Anon,
God bless the Pope.
Re: Timothy David Snyder
I read his A Call to Be More Civil in the Christian Science Monitor
WOW!!!
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse was a state attorney general and a U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island. He initiated a lawsuit against lead paint manufacturers. He initiated an investigation into the corrupt mayor of Providence who was eventually convicted using RICO. He’s overseen legal efforts in the area of environmental protection (prosecuting an oil spill case). It’s in his nature to use the power of the State to punish bad guys. The problem is that he’s also fully committed to nanny government so the bad guys are going to be who ever disagrees with his utopian vision. A typical northeast Democrat in a deep blue state, he’s not going to be defeated electorally so it gives him license to be an unthinking idiot.
Take heart, Briggs. Not all is lost. I think I’ve talked some sense into a few of my liberal neighbors here in the People’s Republic of Ann Arbor. Well, at least I’ve got them thinking they might not be getting the whole story. But nothing will change the minds of those with a vested interest. With the casual observer though, change is possible. There is nothing else to do except to endeavor to persevere.
Briggs & Anon:
“Even Pope Francis seems to endorse a well-aimed punch”
Given the context, Bergoglio’s remarks were widely condemned at the time, including by me, as a morally infantile excuse for Islamic terrorism in the form of mass murder. If by “God bless him” you are expressing a wish that the deity somehow endow him with the ordinary moral understanding of a well brought up nine year old, I can’t help but agree.
Some people clearly think ignorance is a virtue (as well as strength) and would have the state back it up as a weapon against deviant behaviour and thought criminals.
When I read that ‘Hitler’ piece it was a real FFS moment.
Briggs: I’m okay with just punching people. What else can one do with the totally unteachable besides remove them from the path of those who can learn? (Paul: I normally agree with your idea, but the idiots have deteriorated to the point that out and out slapping is our only hope.)
As I have noted before, greens are angry because they are not getting their way. Their arguments are not persuasive and they are not willing to give them up. Worse yet, they have virtually unlimited money from taxpayers and from oil and gas investments (In the case of Soros, buying coal after Obama made the market drop) and they still are not winning. It will be interesting to see where all the “oil money” is going, since there are no paid skeptics that I know of. Even tougher will be showing there’s a conspiracy (wait, I thought skeptics were the believers in conspiracies–seems warmists are too, doesn’t it?) to suppress climate change legislation. Oil and gas love wind and solar subsidies. Love them. Maybe the Koch brothers don’t, but Duke, Shell, Chevron, all love them. They all have wind plants. So where’s the conspiracy? I think maybe these folks are just crybabies, all right.
Don’t worry–the next 10 years of increasingly cold and nasty weather will really show just how wrong these people are. You’re not going to sell global warming to people buried under 5 feet of snow. Nature will correct this. (I vote we refuse to sell heaters, blankets, etc to anyone involved in this RICO nonsense since they are insisting warming is real.)
RICO should be invoked to investigate the global-warming cabal.
Exactly. The US academics missed their target. The IPCC fits perfectly the legal definItion of a “Racket.”
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/09/18/anti-racketeering-initiative/
Speaking of global warming, an interesting graph in the Washington Post on September 17: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/09/17/new-statistical-studies-dismantle-the-notion-of-a-global-warming-pause/
Seems someone found out if you move the starting point of a regression line over a time series, you can get the answer you want. Nifty.
Sheri,
When you do a least squares curve fit by solving the normal equations there is an implicit weighting of the data points by their distance from the center. You just have to pick the correct end points to get the desired trend . I thought everybody knew that trick.
While I am totally against hits to the face (in most circumstances), I am all for smacks to any other part of the body for emphasis during an argument. Some people don’t listen to logic and need their circuits adjusted.
He wrote, rhetorically.
.
NCIS shows how it’s done.
https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=dinozzo+slap&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-001
Ray: I thought so too until I started engaging global warming believers. Then I discovered that it’s only “cherry picking” if it disproves the global warming mantra. Otherwise, it’s perfectly acceptable to choose whatever date gives the answer you need. (I am being sarcastic here.)
If someone can show there is some fraud being perpetrated, so be it. It seems the scientists criticizing the current concerns over climate change are not producing any fraudulent anything, or anything at all, for that matter. Most all of what I’ve seen are critiques of other works, not that there’s anything wrong with criticism, even if it seems specious.
JMJ
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
Regarding AZ Rep Grijalva, he inadvertently pointed to another facet of this same history problem: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/26/the-origin-of-climate-smear/
Failing that, there’s the “World” Court to get things rolling
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/18/world-court-should-rule-on-climate-science-quash-sceptics-philippe-sands
Oh Russell,
Don’t even get me started on Grijalva…
What a gentlemanly post!
Failed climate scientists call? The letter was dated September 1, and it’s shot down already. Fast government response, I’d say.
Why would anyone add (continued on page 2) at the bottom of a page on a two-page letter? Is it necessary to use heading “Letter to President Obama, Attorney General Lynch, and OSTP Director Holdren”?
Well, just because I have never read or written a letter with this particular format doesn’t mean the format shouldn’t be used though. However, the letter format and its content raise suspicions of its authenticity.
I am curious to know who wrote the letter, authentic or not, just like whenever a paper has more than two authors, I’d like to know each author’s contribution.
JH : letter format and its content raise suspicions of its authenticity
See the Guardian story – pretty much in line with the letter
The continue is because the letter is over by page one (they don’t want the other signatories left out.
Let each of the signatories “deny” the authenticity
And the eco-left has the temerity to call climate realists “fascists.”
The left is defined by its projection. It does — constantly — what it accuses others (falsely) of doing, without a smidgen of self-awareness or reflection.
The letter was written by Jagadish Shukla, a climate modeler at George Mason University. His GMU CV lists ~16 million in federal funds in five years, If we back those years (2004-08) out and go forward, he’s probably good for about 100m (that’s1/10 of a billion) in 2006 dollars over his career. But wait, there’s more!
The letter did not come from GMU. It came from his consulting company, the Institute of Global Environment and Society [sic]. There, you will see that his wife and (apparently) his daughter are the administrators, no doubt for a princessly sum, because most CV’s don’t list your outside consulting contracts. But wait, you can get eight for one!
That’s because the largest number of people who signed this miscarriage work for him, at the same company, or at GMU, where probably a load of his consulting stuff is funneled through.
Talk about RICO! I can’t make this up, it’s too good. They had better hope a vindictive Republican never gets elected while they are still kicking. If that person had control of only one house of Congress, the government would probably run amok against them, to the detriment of all of science, as governments don’t know when or where to stop.
This attack-dog behavior looks an awful lot like the second stage of grief.
Thought is not yet a criminal offense, so I suspect this plea is largely hot hair and more about scoring a propaganda point by propagandists. It would certainly be ab unworkable proposition in a court, where jurists would be forced to adjudicate scientific arguments, something they are unqualified to do. The problem is, of course, that fraudulent behaviour is nearly all on the Establishment side (where research grants and corporate interests mesh), and not on the lone skeptical blogger side.
The idea of RICO is repugnant on its face. Originally it was sold as a tool to fight organized crime like the Mafia or drug cartels. Even then, the government had plenty of laws to deal with criminals and did not need RICO at all. It was just one more step towards the police state you now have in the USA. And as always, radical libertarians were on the forefront pointing out that RICO was a super dangerous power to hand to the state.
Do we fear that the state will use RICO and all its other unconstitutional powers against those persons it does not like or that it fears? Why hell yes — what do you expect? Did you think the NSA was spying on everyone just for the fun of it?
The climate alarmists are minions of the state and they have run to daddy for help. Totally expected.
Well if Patrick Michaels is correct, and I doubt very much that he isn’t, all these ‘Global Environmental Research Institutes’, which are now everywhere and enormously costly to tax payers, are starting to become increasingly fearful. Their existence is predicated on imminent global catastrophes that were always implausible and ridiculous (or to put this another way, popular fads and fashions), but become increasingly more obviously so to the ‘man on the street’ as time passes.
Thanks, Pat & Jim!
Remind me again…
Which side is promoting the idea of purging 90% of the world’s human population?
The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honor you can bestow on him. It means that you recognize his superiority to yourself. —Joseph Sobran
Pity them instead of punching.
Paul W: Ignoring them is how we got to this point. Sobran’s saying is cute, but ineffective in large groups. As we ignored them, they took over schools, universities, the media and the government. Granted, it probably works on “Survivor” but not in society like ours.
Calling for prosecution of those you have a scientific disagreement with is quite beyond the pale. They would do well to remember the golden rule.
Also see this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_O’Clock
Sheri, I wasn’t really trying to be cute. I was trying to encourage Dr. Briggs. Don’t miss the truth in that quote by applying it to a context larger than what was intended.
Paul W: Sorry I overreached. Still, I really don’t think that trying to silence someone is an acknowledgement of their “superiority to yourself”. While I do say that the warmists are angry that skeptics can make money go further than warmists can and have far more volunteers, I truly believe these people believe they are the top of the heap and anyone who dares question that is wrong, wrong, wrong. I see no evidence that trying to silence people is an acknowledgement of anything other than one’s current position failed to be accepted and silencing the opposition is the next best option. Warmists despise skeptics for questioning anything warmists say because warmists are “right” and everyone must agree with them.
I appreciate that the climate debate could be seen as a bit of a battle but to label non-scientists as civilians and , by inference, the scientists as military is somewhat arrogant to say the least.
Strictly speaking, they don’t call for a prosecution. Merely for a conviction, by any means available. Long Live the Great Inquisitor!
Do you not think that Holdren called Trenbirth and planted the idea that such a letter would be looked upon “with favor” by the White House. Odds anyone??
Can the GULag be far behind? Alexander Solzhenitsyn had it pegged. It is ideology that matters. By comparison Shakespeare was a piker because his characters lacked ideology:
“Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb, too. The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology. Ideology – that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes…. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations…. Without evildoers there would have been no [GULag]. Archipelago.”
The people in favor of the lawsuit assume that the “climate deniers” are obeying their corporate masters and if the Forces of Light can shut down those corporate masters, the “climate denier” movement will vanish. This is, of course, absurd but that’s the way they think.
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Check out this appraisal — cool and rational, far more than the loons deserve http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_20_02_01_butos.pdf
Thanks, Dr. Briggs. A call to arms!
Yes, after wasting millions and obstructing development, condemning the already poor to starvation, the climate fear-mongers want a witch hunt to cap it off. Some balls!
Dear President Obama: when do we burn the books?
Jagadish “current climate models have such large
errors” Shukla of ClimateGate II fame, as Steven Hayward pointed out in the 9th-to-last paragraph here in 2011 http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/climategate-part-ii_610926.html?nopager=1 Shukla’s ClimateGate email is this one http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=5131.txt
And there’s always more, as I pointed out about the RICO letter’s 2nd paragraph via my WUWT comment http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/19/climate-alarmists-demand-obama-use-the-rico-act-to-silence-critics/#comment-2030748 . What Shukla ultimately does here is poke at a cancer that’s eating away the AGW issue from within, its enslavement to character assassination based on a literally unsupportable corruption accusation.
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