Climate scientists get Windsor style ‘death threats’.

H/t: Australian Climate Madness.

Around a year ago independent Gillard backing MP, Tony Windsor was feeling rather friendless, (something he is now used to) and made the rather dramatic claim that he was getting death threats. Rather than accept that his support for the carbon tax was responsible for enraging the electorate, Tony blamed radio ‘shock jocks’ and likened himself to Gabriel Giffords.

This got him sympathy from the Canberra Press Gallery for a time but after being challenged to release the threats he eventually came up with one saying: "You're a f**kin liar, a dog, a rat, a big f***en MP dog doing damn nothing. You wait. You're not going to get voted in again. I hope you die you bastard.”

This is somewhat intemperate but hardly a death threat, unless it came from someone with a bit if influence from the Almighty like Cardinal Pell, Arch Bishop Phillip Aspinall, or Rev. Fred Nile however this is unlikely. Being men of the cloth they would tend to frame it more delicately such as, “I fervently pray for your imminent demise, you bastard.”

Not wanting to be left out of a good drama, our Australian climate scientists, at least the sort who get government grants for their work, decided to claim that they were just like Tony. The public broadcaster the ABC, declared breathlessly:

Several of the scientists in Canberra have been moved to a more secure location after receiving the threats over their research.

Vice-chancellor Professor Ian Young says the scientists have received large numbers of emails, including death threats and abusive phone calls, threatening to attack the academics in the street if they continue their research.

He says it has been happening for the past six months and the situation has worsened significantly in recent weeks. …

Professor Young says the outrageous behaviour has left the scientists shaken. "Academics and scientists are actually really not equipped to be treated in this way," he said.

Blogger Simon Turnill from Australian Climate madness submitted a FOI request for the documents relating to these claimed threats, which was rejected. He then appealed this decision with the result that the Privacy Commissioner ruled that none of the documents produced contain such threats:

CLAIMS that some of Australia's leading climate change scientists were subjected to death threats as part of a vicious and unrelenting email campaign have been debunked by the Privacy Commissioner.

Timothy Pilgrim was called in to adjudicate on a Freedom of Information application in relation to Fairfax and ABC reports last June alleging that Australian National University climate change researchers were facing the ongoing campaign and had been moved to "more secure buildings" following explicit threats.

In a six-page ruling made last week, Mr Pilgrim found that 10 of 11 documents, all emails, "do not contain threats to kill" and the other "could be regarded as intimidating and at its highest perhaps alluding to a threat."

Chief Scientist Ian Chubb, who was the ANU's vice-chancellor at the time, last night admitted he did not have any recollection of reading the emails before relocating the university's researchers. "I don't believe I did," Professor Chubb told The Australian. Instead, he said he had responded "as a responsible employer."

"I had a bunch of concerned staff and they thought they should be moved to a more secure place so I moved them," he said.

Curiously, despite the claimed nature of the threats to life and limb of the 'scientists' involved, no complaints were lodged with the police on what is normally considered a very serious matter.

Global Warming induced home runs.

But is this stuff peer reviewed?

We are used to some of the more extreme claims of global warming frantics, such as 50 meter sea level rises, anthropogenic earthquakes and tidal waves, as well as the specter of global warming induced alien invasion.

The saner, more moderate elements tend to talk of simultaneous extreme droughts and floods, extreme heat waves, global warming induced freezing temperatures, and the need to let the government take control lest you all die miserable deaths from thirst, heatstroke, and drowning.

As baseball is not a popular sport in Australia we are unfamiliar with the name, Tim McCarver, so it is difficult to tell whether he is a commentator or climate scientist. He may just be moonlighting in the latter role, but has come up with the theory of global warming induced home runs:

… Tim McCarver said one of the stupidest things ever spoken on a television broadcast today, blaming global warming for "making the air thin" and thus leading to a rise in home runs.

Climate change, or in McCarver's words "climactic change," is the culprit (and not, say, steroids, the age of which McCarver insists is over) …

We are not certain whether this claim has been peer reviewed, so we wait with baited breath for the next IPCC report to find out.

Climate change confusion saved by the horsemen of the medical apocalypse.

Hot on the heels of reports that the possibility of increased catastrophic events due to global warming climate change may not be as accurate as first thought because of the random nature of such events, we have the suggestion that the effect of CO2 may not be as bad as first thought:

High levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may have less of an impact on the rate of global warming than feared, a new study suggests.

The authors of the study stress that global warming is real and that increases in atmospheric CO2, which has doubled from pre-industrial standards, will have multiple serious impacts.

But more severe estimates that predict temperatures could rise up to an average of 10 degrees Celsius are unlikely, the researchers report in the journal Science.

The 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report estimates that surface temperatures could rise by as much as an average of 3 degrees with a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from pre-industrial standards. The new study suggests temperatures will rise on average 2.3 degrees under the same conditions.

So, on the same data its gone down from 10degrees to 2.3, or less than a quarter. It will be interesting to see how this plays out with Al Gore’s predictions of twenty feet rises in sea levels, and Tim Flannery’s augury of never ending drought being the normal climatic condition for Australia. Given the flood levels of the early part of this year, and the forced releases of water from dams for flood mitigation purposes currently happening, a guy could almost lose confidence in our climate gurus.

But not to worry, the Climate Change Commission has released a new report confidently predicting the imminent arrival of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, (Well three actually, Pestilence is favorite in the fifth at Doomben on Saturday.):

CLIMATE change is a threat to the health of Australians and will cause deaths, diseases, injuries and even post-traumatic stress disorder in coming years, a new government report claims. But climate change sceptics have called it "alarmist" and describe it as "nonsense." (bastards)

The Climate Commission's The Critical Decade: Climate Change And Health report, released today, states climate change - including rising temperatures, sea-level rise and extreme weather events - has "serious consequences on health" and scientists predict it will only get worse.

With Australia already susceptible to extreme weather conditions such as floods, bushfires and drought, the report states such incidents will be more intense and more frequent because of the changing climate, causing more deaths.

Other predicted health risks include water and food contamination from rising temperatures, mental health problems such as post traumatic stress disorder because of the physical and economic impacts of extreme weather on people, and the spread of infectious diseases such as dengue fever.

Perhaps those mental health problems will be post traumatic stress disorder among climate frantics unable to cope with their predictions going out the window.

Nobel Prize winner defied ‘science is settled’ argument.

Cartoon: By Pickering.

A frequent theme these days from the global warming climate change frantics, is that the science has been settled and a consensus has been reached, so STFU. Daniel Shechtman, the discoverer of quasicrystals, for which he has been awarded the Nobel Prize, was told something similar by his peers and endured years of ridicule for his efforts.

Shechtman is probably fortunate that he didn’t do this a few hundred years ago when the scientific consensus was that the earth was flat and the universe revolved around it. Back then, challenging the consensus was considered Heresy and would get you imprisoned or executed in the most indescribably horrible manner, usually both. Back then though religion dominated science in much the same way as the warming faith does today.

So much for scientific consensus, perhaps this guy should have listened to his peers and given up the way GW sceptics are supposed to do:

An Israeli scientist says he endured years of ridicule for the discovery which has now won him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Thirty years ago Daniel Shechtman discovered quasicrystals - a new form of crystal that had a structure many scientists said at the time was impossible.

For years his peers rejected and ridiculed the findings, with the head of his laboratory handing him a textbook in crystallography and suggesting he read it.

At one point Professor Shechtman was even branded a disgrace and asked to leave his research group at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology.

But since then the Professor's quasicrystals have helped change the way chemists conceive of solid matter. …

His discovery was "extremely controversial," the Nobel committee said, noting that the atoms were "arranged in a manner that was contrary to the laws of nature."

Perhaps the statement, "arranged in a manner that was contrary to the laws of nature," should have been, "laws of nature as they were understood at the time."