Bishop Hill Irony failure
Dec 9, 2009 Civil liberties Climate: CRU The Graun is reporting that some of the climate scientists at the centre of the email scandal have received abusive emails.
Yuk. I hate it when people behave like this.
I laughed though when I read David Appell's coverage of the story:
A society in which anyone, but especially scientists, are not free to express their findings, thoughts, and opinions (regardless of what they are) without being threatened by death is a society which no longer respect freedom, reason, rationality, or decency.
It goes without saying that hounding them out of their jobs or closing journals to them is quite acceptable (if they are sceptics of course), but abusive emails, no.
Free speech goes for people you disagree with too.
(As a footnote, now we know that the break-in suffered by Andrew Weaver was a misleading piece of spin (the breakin was a year ago, during a spate of such incidents at the university) I think I would like to see these abusive emails.)
Reader Comments (8)
Looks like the cat's out of the bag now at Hopenfaken :-)
Danish Text
Of course, "society" is responsible for all abusive emails that any brat with an internet connection might send, but not for the misbehavior of scientists working at prestigious institutions on a mission from the UN to save the planet. ;-)
Stupid behaviour. Reminds me also of on of the climategate emails where one scientists exclaims he's rather happy to hear that John Daly had died.
David Appell is just a Team wannabee/groupie (yes I have followed his blog.)
His 'old' blog had the sub-title: "You can never ask too many questions."
Well it should be appended with "... depeding who wants to ask."
A total non-entity as far as the Team are concerned, and expendable. And he cannot see it.
Interesting line tucked away in the Grauniad article:
That's quite a change from the "evil Russian hackers" meme.
Appell doesn't want comments on his crummy blog. Says it all really.
I believe that Tim Ball has also received death threats after calling AGW into question. I don't recall The Guardian mentioning that.
Very silly and very unpleasant, but any nut with email access can send death threats.
I'm inclined to believe that this is more propaganda along the lines of theories about evil Russian hackers.
Well, now that Inspector Knacker is on the job, I'm sure there will be a swift resolution....that's if he's not too busy harassing photographers or train spotters.