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July 15, 2008

Here's How to Get That Scientific Consensus on Globaloney: Jail "Deniers"

Hatched by Dafydd

Though he now insists he didn't mean it "literally" (any of the several times he said it), Canadian anthropogenic global climate change (AGCC) advocate and occasional scientist David Suzuki has called for imprisonment of politicians who didn't kow-tow to globaloney hysteria, for the "intergenerational crime" of rejecting the Kyoto Protocol and other international global-warming demands:

"What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there's a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they're doing is a criminal act," said Dr. Suzuki, a former board member of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

"It's an intergenerational crime in the face of all the knowledge and science from over 20 years."

The statement elicited rounds of applause.

After a furor erupted over the "scientist's" call for an end to freedom of speech on this issue, Suzuki claimed he didn't really mean it literally. It was just a joke.

If we were talking about the United States, I wouldn't be worried; but this is Canada... the same country that is prosecuting both Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant for violating the "human rights" of Moslems by opposing creeping sharia-law through the West. The National Post notes at least one legal means by which Suzuki's joke could actually be implemented into law:

The Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, a Liberal-sponsored private member's bill that passed and was given Royal Assent last year, legally requires the Conservative government to abide by the international pact's short-term environmental targets.

In the event that conditions are not met, government officials are held liable.

"Every person who contravenes a regulation made under this Act is guilty of an offence punishable by indictment or on summary conviction, as prescribed by the regulations," the act reads, "and liable to a fine or to imprisonment as prescribed by the regulations."

Adding fuel to this carbon-releasing fire, in late June, James Hansen -- the NASA scientist who has been the prime mover behind Globaloney for the past two decades -- agreed with Dr. Suzuki: Jail those globaloney deniers! He wants us to start with the CEOs of energy companies, who (it is well known) legally have no freedom of speech rights, because they're always saying things that any fool knows are damned lies:

James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature (?), accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

Hansen will use the symbolically charged 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking speech to the US Congress -- in which he was among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming -- to argue that radical steps need to be taken immediately if the "perfect storm" of irreversible climate change is not to become inevitable.

Speaking before Congress again, he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading.

In an interview with the Guardian he said: "When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that's a crime."

Yes; any fool. Hansen was unavailable to reveal whether this, too, was just a joke.

Here is the transcript of that "interview," which appears to be more of a monologue by Dr. Hansen:

Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming.

CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.

Mr. Hansen was also unavailable to answer whether he thinks that infamous "deniers" who are also prominent, independent scientists, unconnected to any "fossil energy companies," should also be tried for "high crimes against humanity and nature." (Some of these AGCC dissenters, or "deniers," as Lawrence Solomon puckishly dubs them, are enumerated in the "slither through.")

The lesson here should be clear: Global warming hysteria is a creature of the Left; and like all leftish projects, freedom of speech is globaloney's enemy: Those who dare speak out are liars; liars are criminals; and criminals should be prosecuted... on whatever fanciful charges can be plucked from the ether. ("Intergenerational crime in the face of all the knowledge and science from over 20 years!" "High crimes against humanity and nature!")

Persuading the world that terrorism by Islamists has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam is another project of the Left... and as such, it too is subject to the "wicked words" exemption to freedom of speech, as Steyn and Levant have discovered: Both are now fighting for their liberty as of this writing.

I have a simple rule: If your thesis can only be supported by gagging anyone who dissents, then it is almost certainly wrong, and risibly so. Apply as needed.

As noted above, NASA scientist and AGCC High Panjandrum James Hansen has not stated whether he wishes to see criminal prosecutions against the following ~~Holocaust~~ Anthropogenic Global Climate Change deniers; each of these is mentioned in the Lawrence Solomon book the Deniers, whence I compiled the list.

These are the men that Hansen, Suzuki, et al dismiss as poseurs, charlatans, and lickspittles of Big Energy:

Syun-Ichi Akasofu, Founding Director of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) and its Director since its establishment in 1998 until January of 2007. Previously he was director of the Geophysical Institute since 1986;

Reid Bryson (deceased), atmospheric scientist, geologist and meteorologist; professor emeritus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison; first chairman of the Department of Meteorology; first director of the Institute for Environmental Studies;

Robert Carter, research professor in the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, Australia; geologist and marine geologist with special interests in stratigraphy and, more recently, climate change; former Director of Australia's Secretariat for the Ocean Drilling Program;

Rhodes Fairbridge, Australian geologist and expert on climate change; taught at Columbia University from 1955 until his 1982 retirement; supervising editor for the Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences; developed the Fairbridge Curve, a record of changes in sea levels over the last 10,000 years;

Eigil Friis-Christensen, expert in space physics; Director of the Danish National Space Center; geophysicist at the Danish Meteorological Institute; between 1976 and 1997, Principal Investigator of the Greenland Magnetometer Array; 1991 paper, "Length of the Solar Cycle: An Indicator of Solar Activity Closely Associated with Climate", published in Science, presented his findings on global warming and sun activity correlation, pre-dating the Rio Conference and Kyoto Conference; between 1991 and 1997, Head, Solar-Terrestrial Physics Division, Danish Meteorological Institute; Friis-Christensen and Henrik Svensmark were the earliest scientists to suggest a possible link between galactic cosmic rays and global climate change assisted by solar wind intensity variation, termed cosmoclimatology; Adjunct Professor of geophysics and space physics, 1996 to 2006, Niels Bohr Institute of University of Copenhagen;

Vincent Gray, New Zealand-based coal chemist, climate author, self-selected Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) expert reviewer, founder of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition;

William Gray, pioneer in the science of forecasting hurricanes; Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University (CSU); head of the Tropical Meteorology Project at CSU's Department of Atmospheric Sciences;

Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw; former chair of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation; principal investigator of three research projects of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and of four research projects of the International Atomic Energy Agency; held posts with the Centre d'Etude Nucleaires near Paris; the Biophysical Group of the Institute of Physics, University of Oslo; the Norwegian Polar Research Institute and the National Institute for Polar Research in Tokyo;

George Kukla, retired professor of climatology at Columbia University; researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory; co-author of a chapter in the book "Natural Climate Variability on Decade to Century Time Scales" published by the National Research Council;

Christopher Landsea, Science and Operations Officer at the National Hurricane Center; formerly research meteorologist with Hurricane Research Division of Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory at NOAA; member of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society;

Richard Lindzen, Harvard trained atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology;

Paul Reiter, professor of medical entomology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France; member of the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Committee on Vector Biology and Control; employee of the Center for Disease Control (Dengue Branch) for 22 years; Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society; specialist in mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever;

Nir Shaviv, Israeli associate professor of physics, carrying out research in the fields of astrophysics and climate science (correlations between sun activity and climate change); associate professor at the Racah Institute of Physics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem;

Sami Solanki, Professor at the Institute of Astronomy at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich[1] (Swiss Federal Institure of Technology in Zürich); Director for the Sun-Heliosphere Department of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research; scientific member of the Max Planck Society; Chair (and spokesperson) of the International Max Planck Research School on Physical Processes in the Solar System and Beyond at the Universities of Braunschweig and Göttingen; editor-in-chief of the Living ReviewsTM in Solar Physics, an online review journal for solar physics and related fields;

Henrik Svensmark, physicist at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen; director of the Centre for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish Space Research Institute (DSRI), a part of the Danish National Space Center; previously headed sun-climate group at DSRI;

Hendrik Tennekes, former director of research at the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute (Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut, or KNMI); former professor of aeronautical engineering at Pennsylvania State University;

Richard Tol, Research Professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, Ireland; Professor of the Economics of Climate Change at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Adjunct Professor at the Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (PA, USA); Associate of the Research Unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University and Centre for Marine and Atmospheric Science, Hamburg, Germany;

Edward Wegman, statistics professor at George Mason University and chair of the National Research Council’s Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics. He holds a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics and is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and a Senior Member of the IEEE.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, July 15, 2008, at the time of 10:33 AM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: Steven Den Beste

Am I the only one who is having flashbacks to Lysenko?

The above hissed in response by: Steven Den Beste at July 15, 2008 5:05 PM

The following hissed in response by: Bob Hawkins

No, you're not the only one thinking the L-word here.

Real scientific theories can live just fine with dissent. Many physicists did not accept the atomic theory as proven until the publication of Einstein's explanation of Brownian motion in 1905. Einstein, in turn, never accepted quantum mechanics -- which didn't stop him from making fundamental contributions to it. I had a professor in grad school who thought the uncertainty principle was trivial, and it was a joke that Heisenberg got credit for it.

Worrying about "deniers" isn't science. It's irrelevant to science.

The above hissed in response by: Bob Hawkins at July 15, 2008 6:01 PM

The following hissed in response by: Da Coyote

Virtually any of the grad students I've had the pleasure to teach could out argue Hansen. No wonder he wants to stifle dissent. He's become as silly as the typical social science professor, with just about as much intellectual gravitas. And, those types really hate to be laughed at.

The above hissed in response by: Da Coyote at July 16, 2008 5:38 AM

The following hissed in response by: David M

The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the - Web Reconnaissance for 07/16/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.

The above hissed in response by: David M at July 16, 2008 8:20 AM

The following hissed in response by: Michael Babbitt

After spending a lot of time at AGW challenging sites like climataaudit.org, Wattsupwiththat.com, www.CO2sceptics.com, climate-skeptic.com, and www.climatesci.org, I came to several conclusions:

1) The scientific process in the world of the proponents of AGW is badly in need of an independent and rigorous review process -- an auditing process.
2) If the general public knew the kind of data and statistical games played to create the AGW scenarios -- not only which data sets are selected but their availability to be reviewed independently as in other science fields -- they would be outraged.
3) The lack of willingness of leading AGW proponents to debate publicly is a disgrace, since their theories have such devastating economic impacts on the world and they have a duty to defend the policy decisions they are pushing.
4) The mass media is filled with parroting idiots.

The above hissed in response by: Michael Babbitt at July 16, 2008 8:38 AM

The following hissed in response by: Mark Alger

Ok. But fair's fair. Hansen should be fired and arrested for fraud and misappropriation of government funds. Or whatever the names of those crimes are in legalese.

The above hissed in response by: Mark Alger at July 16, 2008 8:41 AM

The following hissed in response by: snochasr

How about we employ the actual scientific method here? We have a hypothesis that the world is warming, caused by known changes in the CO2 content of the atmosphere so that we can accurately predict, within 1/100th of a degree, what the global temperature will be 100 years hence. According to the scientific method, all we have to do is wait 100 years or maybe just 20 years, measure the global temperature, and prove that the hypothesis is correct? It's fundamental science-- 5th grade stuff.

Of course we know why the climate change denier deniers don't want to do this "experiment." They not only know that they cannot predict the future (their models vary by 10 to 1 or more as to what temperatures will be), and that their models are badly flawed, but they cannot even agree on how a "global temperature" can be measured. If the "debate" is not over, then the truth will soon out.

The above hissed in response by: snochasr at July 16, 2008 11:25 AM

The following hissed in response by: Dishman

We're already 20 years out from Hansen's testimony to Congress. According to his predictions, we must have dramatically reduced our CO2 production.

Keeping up with the spirit of Lysenkoism, they've already moved on to newer predictions.

The above hissed in response by: Dishman at July 16, 2008 10:58 PM

The following hissed in response by: GW

Hello Dafydd. This actually is but one step on a movement occuring just below the radar it would seem to criminalize politics, of which global warming is part and parcel today. Linked.

The above hissed in response by: GW at August 8, 2008 12:25 AM