Bishop Hill The strange case of the gun licence that wasn't
May 11, 2012 Climate: Sceptics In recent days, the Australian National University has released the emails at the centre of the death threats controversy. The details are discussed in this useful article at Quadrant. Here's the critical message
ANU Climate Change Institute.
Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2010.
URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL.Dear All,
Looks like we've had our first serious threat of physical violence. It has come from a participant in [the] deliberative democracy project last weekend. One of the participants left early after he took exception to my talk about climate science...[Deleted’s] exact words were:
"Moreover, before he left, he came to the Fri dinner and showed other participants his gun licence and explained to them how good a sniper he is. Because he didn't attend day 2 he will not be allowed to attend the final day. I will be notifying security to be on hand in case he turns up and causes a problem."
I think the final day is this weekend but I am not sure. Anyway, I've asked XXX to brief the VC [vice-chancellor] and the head of security ASAP. The latter will determine whether this should go to the AFP [Australian Federal Police] or not. [It didn’t]. But in the meantime, we should be careful about anyone we don't know who approaches our offices.
There are some real oddities in the timing, with this alleged incident taking place a full year before the story hit the media. But there is also this comment posted on a thread at Catallaxy Files blog.
John Coochey
11 May 12 at 7:07 am
I feel I can throw some light on this matter as I am undoubtedly the person who is alleged to have shown my gun licence to people at the dinner. That is not accurate. At the mediocre dinner on the first day I was approached by Dr Maxine Cooper, then the Commissioner for the environment, who recognized me as someone involved in the kangaroo culling program in the ACT which occurs each winter. After politely asking if she could sit next to me she asked me how I had gone in the recent licence test which is challenging. I told her I had topped it with a perfect score and showed her my current culling licence, not gun licence, to prove it. The conversation around the table then drifted around the benefits of eating game meat v the poor fare on offer.
Reader Comments (74)
Roogate!
Apologies, but I have to repeat some of this comment from the last Quadrant thread. If it was this guy Coochey then he may not realise the full implications of what was spun out of that conversation - it does seem he would have mentioned a police follow up if it happened. I wonder what the Australian FOI rules are about getting your own name revealed from a redacted mail? After all it is alleged that police where called in.
However regarding the Catallaxy blog I actually found their two other points more revealing than the Coochey story. They have dug out the actual contemporary ANU report of the meeting, which in a footnote mentions a sceptic “clashing verbally” and one leaving certainly no hint of physical threats. However, that meeting obviously stuck in their minds as a heated debate and no doubt became an easy event to source when later prompted for retrospective musings about what, if anything, constituted a threat. So is it no wonder that a farmer talking about a gun license could easily be remembered and eagerly added to a meagre pile of threat evidence?
The main thing I notice on that page is the news that some guy call Readfern disputes the threat debunking because he quotes an ANU guy saying the move to secure premises actually took place in March/April 2010 before the FOI period. Now, if you are willing to forget the press claims of an escalation of threats, which was the purpose of the FOI period, (as I am sure some are ;) ) then what about the
(my emph above)
Dated 6 June 2010 !?
It doesn't add up. This story is actually looking really, really shonky - as I believe they say in Australia ;)
Indeed TLITB, shonkier and shonkier. I put Coochey's comments up on unthreaded while you were all in bed. Also of interest in comments is a request from Christian Kerr, the reporter from the Australian who wrote the original article, asking John Coochey to contact him.
There will be more on this story, although I'm sure Dr Nick Stokes (for he is indeed a Dr) will have a logical but extremely complicated explanation. FWIW in my opinion and in light of Coochey's subsequent comments, William of Ockham could have explained it much better in the first instance.
BTW for "gun license" I should have said "culling licence" ;)
More material for Josh (or maybe Fenbeagle) I think. I see a film poster with a suave character holding a Walther PPK and a worried-looking kangaroo nearby, titled Licence to Cull...
The same post by 'Spence' has appeared on Delingpole's DT blog.
More material for Josh (or maybe Fenbeagle) I think. I see a film poster with a suave character holding a Walther PPK and a worried-looking kangaroo nearby, titled Licence to Cull...
May 11, 2012 at 9:17 AM | James P
And the kangaroo with its arms up saying "don't shoot I'm a climate scientist'
I don't know about anybody else, but reading the snippets about the rationale and the reportage from the "sceptic re-education experiment" left me feeling a bit queasy:-
They explicitly note a parallel between “genocide denial” and “climate denial”. The latter denial must be defeated so that “democracies [can] gain early consent for tough climate change mitigation measures”.........
The researchers categorized the 35 sceptics into sub-species, as a zoologist might group various types of zebras. The sub-species became types A (12 present), Emphatic negation; B (21), Unperturbed Pragmatism; C (32), Proactive Uncertainty; D (15), Earnest Acclimatization; and E (32), Noncommital Consent..........
“For example, the individuals loaded on discourse A – who might be called climate deniers – were not moved by the scenario interview, and 2 left the deliberative process as they felt, in their words, they were not being listened to. Indeed, qualitative data from the interview and forum suggest that not only were these individuals unmoved, they became more dogmatic and belligerent, suggesting that public climate change communication strategies or interventions can unintentionally alienate such individuals further...
..... after reading that lot, I began to feel an urgent need for a "culling licence" myself.
It is even worse than portrayed above, as the ANU conference where the alleged death threats were uttered was actually designed (see Tony Thomas at Quadrant Online below) to provoke such threats, except that the only actual "threat" emanated from John Coochee who was incited by the Government's CC Commissioner to admit that he is a licensed kangaroo culler.
The good news is that the ANU's Climate Change Institute's Steffen (the actual author of the only death threat email) thereby admitted that he himself has the the same rather limited intelligence of kangaroos and should be figuratively culled for that, by termination (as Luther would have demanded) of his grossly overpaid appintments there and at the Australian Government's Climate Change Commission.
Grossly graphic gun-play in Goulburn
by Tony Thomas
May 11, 2012
________________________________________
Now that the 11 “death-threat” emails sent to climate scientists at the Australian National University are on the public record, we can read them with appropriate bemusement.[1]
________________________________________
Privacy Commissioner Tim Pilgrim was quite right to say there ain’t no death threats. But there are some four letter words and in one case, he says, an exchange that was intimidating and at its highest perhaps alluding to a threat, with danger to persons being only a possibility, not a real chance.[2]
I happen to be aware of the details about that exchange, and suggest that the person involved suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from prolonged patronising by the ANU climate academics.
Here’s No 5 email:
ANU Climate Change Institute.
Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2010.
URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL.
Dear All,
Looks like we've had our first serious threat of physical violence. It has come from a participant in [the] deliberative democracy project last weekend. One of the participants left early after he took exception to my talk about climate science...[Deleted’s] exact words were:
"Moreover, before he left, he came to the Fri dinner and showed other participants his gun licence and explained to them how good a sniper he is. Because he didn't attend day 2 he will not be allowed to attend the final day. I will be notifying security to be on hand in case he turns up and causes a problem."
I think the final day is this weekend but I am not sure. Anyway, I've asked XXX to brief the VC [vice-chancellor] and the head of security ASAP. The latter will determine whether this should go to the AFP [Australian Federal Police] or not. [It didn’t]. But in the meantime, we should be careful about anyone we don't know who approaches our offices.
First, some oddities:
The incident was a full year before the ‘death threat’ hullaballoo hit the media.
The timing of that media furore was during the Parliamentary hearings on the carbon tax; a couple of days before the “Say Yes” rallies in Canberra by warmist folk; and a fortnight before the “Science meets Parliament” event where 200 scientists were tasked by their organisations to rev up MPs against sceptic ‘misinformation’.[3]
Warmist blogger Graham Readfern interviewed the director of the ANU’s Climate Change Institute, Will Steffen, about the threats last week. Readfern reported: “Shortly after ANU staff were moved, there was an incident at an ANU public engagement event where a climate sceptic who had been invited to attend had become frustrated. During an exchange, the individual had showed what he claimed was a gun licence to people sitting at the table, before claiming he was a ‘good shot’. The individual is understood to have left voluntarily.”[4] I wonder, is that word “sniper” in the email just spin from an over-excited academic?
Was the gun-man “sceptic” who was invited to attend the ANU event, a high profile person? Normally such invitations would go to the likes of Bob Carter, William Kinninmonth or Garth Paltridge FAA. No, in fact this sceptic was just an ordinary Joe.
Here’s the background: Dr Kersty Hobson, an Oxford University visitor, and Dr Simon Niemeyer, Senior Fellow, of the ANU’s modestly titled “Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance Centre” helped bag $378,500 in 2008-10 grants from the Australian Research Council.
The grants were partly or mainly to work out ways to browbeat climate sceptics towards sanity, or in academia-speak, “provide insight into the scope for positive community behavioural change”.[5] The researchers still considered themselves under-funded.
They tell (nearly) all in their paper last January for the peer-reviewed journal, Public Understanding of Science. The paper is titled, “What sceptics believe: The effects of information and deliberation on climate change skepticism.”[6]
They conclude that warmist preaching should be tailored to particular varieties of skepticism, but it is tricky to identify them “and how would one test the various treatments?” they ask, in white-coat medical mode.[7]
They explicitly note a parallel between “genocide denial” and “climate denial”. The latter denial must be defeated so that “democracies [can] gain early consent for tough climate change mitigation measures”, requiring wide-ranging policy responses from strong leaders integrated over a prolonged period of time.[8]
The authors lament that a nation-wide ‘citizen’s assembly’ on climate change, proposed in 2010 by a high-level but un-named person (could that be Prime Minister Gillard?) had bombed out. But capitalist think-tanks like the Institute of Public Affairs remained at work ‘to actively frame public discourse about climate change’.[9]
Not being climate scientists themselves, Hobson and Niemeyer initially had to show that warmism is a true doctrine. A piece of cake. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in 2007 that human-caused warmism was ‘unequivocal’. Despite that, “a non-trivial modicum of doubt and skepticism linger [sic] in various sectors of society”. They cite public intellectual and ethicist Clive Hamilton for an answer: the lingering is because of “an organized social movement”. Flip to the paper’s citations and you find Clive’s 2007 book, Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change, all about greedy corporations and craven Johnny Howard.[10]
The project’s rationale was to round up citizen sceptics from around Canberra and Goulburn/Mulwaree Shire. Then hit them with three days of scary warming scenarios out to 2100, elaborated by famous ANU climatologists, and test their reaction before-and-after by questionnaires.
Our gun-man, “Percy” (not his real name), was among the 2300 subjects painstakingly screened and sampled for this exercise, and Percy made the final cut to isolate 35 sceptics. I envisage him as a grizzled Towrang grazier with crow’s feet round the eyes from watching the weather since 1960. He doesn’t sound like a Canberran, definitely lacks a degree, and perhaps has it in for ivory-tower wankers.
The researchers categorized the 35 sceptics into sub-species, as a zoologist might group various types of zebras. The sub-species became types A (12 present), Emphatic negation; B (21), Unperturbed Pragmatism; C (32), Proactive Uncertainty; D (15), Earnest Acclimatization; and E (32), Noncommital Consent.[11] The numbers add to more than 35 because of overlaps. There were 21 men and 14 women, including ten people aged 60-75.
The researchers’ hope was that after three days of warmist natter (viz. ‘deliberative processes’), even the most evil A’s would migrate towards least-evil E’s, who believe “Strong political leadership needed; Trust scientists; Adaptation is possible; Government should act; Climate Change probably dangerous.”[12]
Movies run the disclaimer, “No animals were harmed during the making of this film”. Our ANU researchers had to be wary that their herd of untamed sceptics might panic and stampede, knocking over tables of wine and cheese, injuring themselves and more seriously, trampling and biting their human guardians.
The risky step in the study was to discuss with the 35 sceptics the two scenarios about climate impacts within the broad Australian Capital Region in the next 90 years. These derived from the CSIRO’s OzClim model.[13] Strange, but even the Academy of Science’s 2010 climate bible says such small-regional predictions “are very hard to estimate”, and that’s putting it mildly![14]
If the 2050 OzClim scenario for Goulburn/ACT is super-scary, the 2100 scenario makes Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” movie look wussy. Animated maps show growing angry red blots of high temperatures and low rainfalls engulfing Marulan, Tallong, Towrang, Bungonia, Windellama, Lake Bathurst and Tarago. By 2100 Goulburn will have a climate roughly equivalent to Queensland’s Warwick, Goondiwindi and Cunnamulla. The farmers’ livestock and crop production tumbles 20%. Picturesque stands of redgum evaporate.
Even by 2050 Goulburnians are beset by heat-caused heart attacks (up 38%), food and water-borne diseases, unsafe drinking water, food poisoning, reduced fresh foods and respiratory attacks from dust storms.[15]
All too much information for the herd, which included Percy our gun-man. As the email shows, he went AWOL for a day, turned up for the Friday dinner (as one does), flashed his gun licence while bragging about his aim, and was banned from the delights of Day 3 of the seminar. We get hints of the excitement even in the boring old research paper:
“For example, the individuals loaded on discourse A – who might be called climate deniers – were not moved by the scenario interview, and 2 left the deliberative process as they felt, in their words, they were not being listened to. Indeed, qualitative data from the interview and forum suggest that not only were these individuals unmoved, they became more dogmatic and belligerent, suggesting that public climate change communication strategies or interventions can unintentionally alienate such individuals further.”[16]
“What Figure 5 does not show is that of the 13 [severe] sceptics who started the forum, only 11 finished it. By the end of day 1, the 2 individuals uniquely loaded onto discourse A had left. While there is not space here to detail the machinations of how this happened, this is a significant point… There is uncertainty about whether public processes can attend to ‘deep’ differences (see Dryzek, 2005) that exist around such contentious issues as climate change. If it is the case that deliberation requires participants to personify the ‘free and equal citizens’ of deliberative democracy theory (Bohman, 2004: 23), what happens when, as Campbell (2005: 693) suggests, participants become ‘angry, confused, demanding, and uncooperative’?...In this case, the Emphatic Negators arguably came to the forum with little intention of embodying this ‘free and equal citizen’… [17]
“…Mention must be made of participant 1598: one of the few participants who stridently self-identified as a climate sceptic throughout the research process, including at the end of the deliberative forum. She talked about her spouse as a firmly committed climate sceptic, and through the forum repeated key sceptical storylines e.g. that the presence of debate and disagreement amongst climate scientists is proof of fundamental problems with their ‘story’; and the ‘evidence’ of global cooling from the ARGO Buoys adds further weight to such claims. The fact that the initial data from the ARGO programme – that did suggest ocean temperatures cooling – have since been corrected and show ocean warming was not noted or commented upon during the deliberative forum (see Schiermeier, 2007)[18]…It would seem that, for this individual in particular, the identity of ‘the sceptic’ has become ‘an important component of the person’s self-concept’ (Smith et al., 2007: 2728): and one that would be difficult to alter, in her own mind at least.”[19]
Sadly, the researchers concluded that any drift of the sceptics towards warmism, thanks to all the deliberative processes, were ‘rarely sustained’ and more or less no sceptic changed sides.[20]
They lamented that although some milder sceptics moved to least-evil E positions, a ‘positive’ result, it hardly seemed worth the huge time and effort spent on the exercise. “In short, if 2 hours seeing (at times quite challenging) climate scenarios for your local region, and then 3 days spent deliberating cannot dispel the myriad of forms of climate scepticism, what will?”[21]
Regrettably, this project never reached its intended zenith owing to the ‘lack of research funds’ and participants bitching that they were ‘surveyed out’.[22]
How nice, if gun-man Percy would now step forward and give his side of the story?
[He just did, at Catallaxy Files, go back to top]
Tony Thomas is a retired journalist.
Looks like an interesting side-effect of cargo-cult science is that when the money from the sky is threatened, the acolytes pretend they are being culled by evil spirits.
This is truly a new religion. Will it end up as a crew of children keeping the faith in a hidden valley as in 'Mad Max and the Thunderdome'?
Again, True Believers think skeptics are simply ignorant or misinformed. If they show us shiny pictures of all the bad things, we'll come into line.
We don't believe your outlandish catasrophe lies! Showing us dramatised versions of them won't convince anyone! No matter how many fictionalised movies I show you of green cheese on the moon, I don't expect you'll come away believing in a green cheese moon. Unless you are a social sciences grad.
They think we're as gullible as they are, honestly.
Truly frightening stuff Tim Curtin. Bish, what happened to my much earlier post?
I feel rather sorry for the poor kangaroos who have done nothing wrong - apart from to thrive in a human-dominated area and hence get themselves killed ('culled' is a PC euphemism).
But when it comes to the climatologists.......
Perhaps the climate (social) psyscientists who organised the sceptic re-education programme were suffering from repressed childhood memories of seeing that 'roo culling scene in the first Crocodile Dundee movie - where Croc dons the 'roo skin & starts shooting back.
Time they spent some of that budget on in-house "psychotherapy" methinks.
Nothing from Dr Stokes...............
GrantB
Thanks for the heads up via Skiphil :)
It seems in Australia they are further down the road than we are here to the strange state of elevating climate scientists to positions of authority on policy. As a consequence I think that means that these scientists start new to the political game, unelected and inexperienced, fresh with deluded expectations about what constitutes debates about political and social change - they really think they have scientific backing for all their recommendations and so when disagreements at any level are seen they are just considered as pathological and to be soothed rather than adressed.
Once you accept that this is their own state - a fairly pathological one that almost denies human nature; it becomes easier to understand why they may get into a state of exagerating every dispute as if it is life threatening. They are the ones who need to sort themselves out, not the "deniers"
As an Australian I previously looked into the requirements to become a 'roo shooter', just out of interest (really!).
Roo shooters are the authorised hunters who supply the meat industry -- we can buy roo meat from butchers but it doesn't come from farms but the wild. It's taken seriously and the shooter is required to kill them with a headshot so they die quick and there's hygiene issues with an open body wound. Lots of other requirements too, vehicle, bullet caliber etc.
The story sounds credible.
If nothing else that appears to be a rather nasty slander of Mr Coochey if it was indeed him named in the widely circulated email.
Hi Arthur,
I'm around. It does sound as if no threat was intended. I guess we'll hear from Maxine Cooper in due course.
Thanks Tim Curtin.
I really am learning a lot about Australia and beginning to think the situation there regarding climate makes the UK seem pretty normal and benign. I've just been reading the comments at Catalaxy and a commenter Jupes quotes this ABC story regarding the released emails.
This is utterly untrue. A lie no less. How on earth is it possible to say this from the emails that we can all see now and read for ourselves!? That the Australian national media (which I assume is supposed to have the highest impartial standard) is shown to be incapable of processing information at the simplest level, or is willing to pass on outright lies, really begins to indicates that no reports could be taken seriously on this subject from the Australian media. Weird.
And the kangaroo with its arms up saying "don't shoot I'm a climate scientist'
May 11, 2012 at 9:32 AM | TinyCO2
You seem to have stumbled upon the Great Secret of Australian Climate Science.
They're all kangaroos.
Hopping around their labs in their little kangaroo-sized lab coats, jumping to conclusions...
I've only ever killed one kangaroo, though I've eaten more than that. Will I be blacklisted? Sorry, redlisted?
David
It's taken seriously
Indeed. A few years ago there was an excess of kangaroos at Puckapunyal, our local Army base. Kangaroo shooters were called in. There was an animal rights fuss. But then another fuss - why does the Army need to call in shooters?
The answer - the Army doesn't have a culling licence.
Brilliant visual fodder. Darn day job gets in the way of so much cartoon fun.
The original email that was circulated by the climate scientists ("looks like we've got our first threat") beat up the situation by saying 'he showed his gun licence and said he was a good shot'.
We find out later that it wasn't a gun licence, it was a roo culling licence. To have a roo culling licence, you have to prove you're a good shot. The 'good shot' part of it is describing the test you have to pass in order to be licensed to cull roos.
Thus the supposedly scary part of it 'I'm a good shot' actually turns out to be an explanation of the hoops one has to jump through in order to legally shoot kangaroos. It's like hearing an accountant say "I'm good with numbers".
Unfortunately the MSM in Australia is still heavily weighted towards the left of politics and thus climate change alarmism. (UK Conservative MPs take note and please listen to Peter Lilley - the alarmists are laughing behind your backs.) Even the most even-handed broadsheet, The Australian, until recently illustrated every story involving Gillard with flattering glossy mag type photos, whereas the opposition leader Tony Abbott is routinely depicted with the weirdest or grimmest facial expressions from their selection.
And this in a climate where opinion polls have Labor now at 27% of the vote. Even with the Greens added in to the preferential vote they are heading towards a massive defeat. But they're sticking with the carbon tax anyway, it seems out of sheer bloodymindedness.
From now on, I shall call any climate scientist I meet 'Skippy'.
The original email that was circulated by the climate scientists ("looks like we've got our first threat")
I know climate scientists are a favorite whipping boy here, but their role is exaggerated. The conference was organised by ANU's “Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance Centre”. It seems some climate scientists addressed the meeting, but they were not the organisers. In the email quoted at the top here, Steffen relays a report that he got from one of those organisers. It is alarming (whether or not well-based). The email you see is his alert to his staff. He says that he has informed the V-C and ANU Security. I do not see how he could not have taken these actions.
Is anyone really surprised that a "climate scientist" has exaggerated the amount of heat? It's their job after all.
TLITB, the debate in the UK does seem a little benign at times. In Australia it is vitriolic, viscous and ugly and that's why I enjoy it so much. As a physicist I find it fascinating to see squadrons of psychologists, ethicists and social scientists earnestly debating the scourge of climate denialism and how it can be understood and treated. Dr Stokes is a gentleman debater compared to some of that crew.
Of course the ABC and most of the MSM follow the CAGW line. The much maligned Rupert's papers are the only ones where sceptics get a guernsey. Meanwhile as far as the opinion polls go, the average Ocker swilling a chilled one at the local wonders why we are farting about with a carbon tax and windmills etc when we have at least 250 years of coal, huge gas reserves and about a 1/4 of the world's reserves of both uranium and thorium.
I don't see the debate in the UK as being particularly political. Is there a party with a chance of forming government who will repeal your climate act (or whatever it's called)? In Australia at least we do. The Liberal (Tory) coaltion will repeal the carbon tax and dismantle the climate change bureaucracy the moment it forms government. Hopefully in about 16 months time.
......... and thus the episode shall forever be referred to as........
SKIPPYGATE
GrantB
There is something to said for getting the debate out in the open as it seems to be in Australia, especially if there is honesty on both sides. Howeve that ABC report would shame the BBC if they tried it here - too overt in partisanship and - well, a lie. In the UK our system seems to have perfected a creepy uniform political consensus that espouses the "Nudge" philosophy which is supposed to be encouraging social change by consensual degrees, but is in effect a method where elites just gradually implement laws in the least public way, via unelected methods, leaving us waking up one day wondering why energy is expensive and our water and energy infrastructure is so useless. When it gets that far our pols can then leisurely choose anything else to blame for "the state we are in" and carry on with the usual method. I think Huhne made the mistake of being too overt and pompous ;)
By contrast the Australian situation seems more vibrant and may end up showing the way forward - if you can get over the special pleading, and feelings of entitlement that seems to be rife in the climate orthodoxy circles of all nations.
I have only just become aware of this discussion. I was present at this "deliberative forum", and have just posted the following comment at Catallaxy.
"I was the first sceptic referred to in the updates – the one that was “stressed”. That is a correct description. What I was stressed about was the incredibly manipulative way in which the so-called “forum” was conducted.
For example, Messrs Steffen and his team delivered presentations on various aspects of climate change. We were not allowed to ask questions, or to challenge the multifarious false statements made. Instead, we broke out into groups, with the idea that a group could ask a question. Of course, each group was dominated by “warmists”, and the lone sceptic in each group was a) abused, b) derided, c) not listened to.
The result was that Steffen and co were presented with soft questions that were based largely on ill-informed views, convenient to the organisers.
It is true that I was feeling stressed. But the reason was because while this was billed as an open-ranging discussion, in fact it was a tightly choreographed, manipulative discussion designed to capture an outcome favourable to the warmists. In no way was it a fair discussion.
All this soon became clear to me, and it was evident to me that it was fruitless and pointless to stay. I explained my issue to the organiser, and then left.
I met John Coochey at the forum. He is a knowledgeable and capable person, and I trust his account of the events relating to his gun license."
It is possible that although factually correct my comment above that "The good news is that the ANU's Climate Change Institute's Steffen (the actual author of the only death threat email)..." could be misinterpreted as implying that Steffen issued a death threat to himself. So I withthdraw my comment, even though it is factually correct that he is the author of the ONLY email alleging death threats, as the John Coochee he cites never said or emailed any such thing:
ANU Climate Change Institute.
Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2010.
URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL.
Dear All,
Looks like we've had our first serious threat of physical violence. It has come from a participant in [the] deliberative democracy project last weekend. One of the participants left early after he took exception to my talk about climate science...[Deleted’s] exact words were:....
[Steffen]"
Australia's ABC cannot tell the difference between emailed threats and bogus hearsay threats falsely reported in an email by the ANU's CCI's Director with deliberate intent to cause unwarranted alarm at the ANU and its mendacious Climate Change Institute.
I have documented some of that mendacity at my just published paper, available at these urls:
Timothy Curtin, "Applying Econometrics to the Carbon Dioxide “Control Knob”," The Scientific World Journal, vol. 2012, Article ID 761473, 12 pages, 2012. doi:10.1100/2012/761473.
http://www.tswj.com/contents/
Alternatively, you may directly access my article at the following location:
http://www.tswj.com/2012/761473/
I feel I can now throw some light on the matter. The document viewed as most "threatening" referred to an alleged Deliberation at the ANU about climate change in the Canberra region at which one person “made a death threat” (sic) by showing his gun licence and boasting about his skill as a sniper.. Only two people dropped out of the conference only one of those who did so attended the even meal. Me. I am certainly the one who is alleged to show someone their gun licence. That is not true while at the evening meal (of poor quality) comments moved to eating game meat and I was approached by the Commissioner for the Environment ACT, Dr Maxine Cooper who recognized me as someone involved in the kangaroo culling program in the ACT. She politely asked if she could sit at the vacant seat next to me and asked if I had past the recent licence test - not easy. I replied yes and showed her my current licence. I also impressed on any one interested the high standard of marksmanship necessary to allay any cruelty concerns. I might add that earlier in the day I had challenged two speakers to comment on a letter in the Canberra Times that claimed that temperatures had not increased in the Canberra area for decades. They were unable to do so, having not apparently checked the record despite the the “Deliberation” (conference) supposed to be about rising temperatures in the Canberra region. As all daytime conversations were recorded (we all signed waivers to allow this) this can easily be checked.
To illustrate further: A few years ago a professor of social work set up a climate change themed conference; from memory "gender" issues were prominent. And where was this conference to be held? Why in Tuscany of course! Nothing like a few dozen (maybe a lot more) international flights to a coincidentally beautiful part of the world to help them feel good about saving the planet!
Hi John Coochey
I am guessing not, but could I ask you if you had any follow up from the police on this at all?
According the "threat" email that details the report.
mondo, perhaps you would also contact Christian Kerr of the Australian. His email address is in the Catallaxy thread.
And I must say I am shocked, absolutely shocked to hear that you feel you were being manipulated.
Nick Stokes, where are you mate? We'll make a skeptic out of you yet!
Victimhood is the natural refuge of Leftists when anybody opposes them -- even if the opposition are just a few surly cranks writing in green biro from their bedrooms, the Left can turn them into 'oppressors', no doubt 'associated' with 'vicious organised denialist machines'.
Also, the same names (Will Steffen, for example) come up time and time again in these dreary agit-prop events -- you'd think they might learn enough self-awareness to see that the more they rage and fulminate, the less people listen.
Naa -- won't ever happen.
Maybe we can have a cartoon with an university official aiming a gun at his own foot, and ten climate folks pointing: "looks like we have our first threat of physical violence"
"Looks like we've had our first serious threat of physical violence." sounds like a planned, anticipated action.
Like the Reichstag fire.
As I wrote on Twitter, a moral crime has been committed, not by the authors of the imaginary "death threats", but by the spinsters who tried to evoke into existence something that never happened.
It's a crime against those who receive real threats, and especially real death threats. And it's a crime against those who are regularly bullied on the internet and in real life, and especially against women and journalists.
Everybody knowingly involved in this deception is either a total idiot or a very despicable individual.
I've been a bit depressed recently by the way Aussies, who always seemed robust practical folk, seemed to have let themselves be led by the nose by the green movement.
Reading the comments on the Catalaxy Files blog, linked to by Bish above, has completely restored my faith - sample:-
warmies are lying, hypocritical, smug, self-serving, mediocre, anti-scientific, fraudulent commie charlatans who have debased scientific enquiry, wasted billions of taxpayers’ dollars and abused and smeared their usually reasonable, evidence based detractors.
Quite frankly I’m hopping mad about the fact that this utterly monstrous scam still hasn’t had a stake driven through its suppurating, sclerotic heart. It doesn’t seem to matter how much evidence there is that completely debunks the warmist morons and their preposterous fraudulent (untestable) hypothesis, they just will not let it go. They are extremely, unjustifiably and unforgivably proud (as are vile morons like ruff and dullard). As we all know, pride cometh before a fall.
Therefore, these warmy scum deserve all the abuse they get and more. I want them to keep looking over their dandruff flecked shoulders and I want them to be wary of flogging the latest hysterical, fact and evidence free fraud.
I’ve been hearing incessantly about this utter bollocks for well over two decades now and there is still not one definitive piece of evidence that supports any of this ‘catastrophic human induced climate change’ malarkey in any way, shape or form.
What is becoming obvious however is because of this utter crap, people in the third world are being denied the right to economic development and that people in this country are hurting big time. My quarterly power bill in 1997 was $80. Now it is $420. That’s over a fivefold increase in just 15 years. If I wasn’t a high income earner, or I had a family to support, I’d probably be out there getting in the faces of the evil morons responsible this anti scientific, anti-progress and anti-human idiocy.
In the meantime, harden up, you bedwetting apocalyptic pantywaists!
P.S. Apologies for the length of this missive.
...... and more succinctly....
I’ve been thinking about this and John’s reasonable description of kangaroo culling.
The only explanation which fits the facts is that the climate scientists are either f*cking kangaroos or, f*cking kangaroos.
Nothing else would explain why they would feel threatened by his comments.
(my asterisks)
I think I want to emigrate to Australia.
From 'death threats', to 'threats', to 'abuse', to nothing. If the spectre of death threats is raised, debate is suddenly shut down. No one wants to go there. And you feel sympathy instead.
It is a time-honored tactic. And I am speaking from experience here :) (of debate being shut down!)
I am almost half-serious:
Someone ought to perhaps investigate whether the University had any help from a certain outside organization.
This thread is interesting. The science in climate science is almost an irrelevance. When last in Australia I met the Red-Green Alliance, as in the UK a cover for Trotskyites. I have also debated on-line with Aussie climate scientists who as in the UK work in a Marxist-dominated environment.
The RS road shows in the UK are equivalent propaganda; it's anti-science because the aim is to shut down independent enquiry to confirm the approved line.
"looks like we've got our first threat"
As I posted on Catallaxy, this line smells to me of them waiting, anticipating and maybe even hoping for such a threat, and so they conjured a threat out of nothing.
Perhaps members of the Red-Green alliance should take to sporting shirts in a blend of these colours so they can more easily recognise each other and so we will all know to accept their authority.
What do you get if you mix red with green? Brown, right?
So some "watermelon" academics decided to squander $378K on a "study" about propagandizing their political opponents.... then when they detected (real or imagined) discomfort with the propaganda sessions they concocted non-existent "threats" of violence to further serve the progressive narrative. All in the context of the push for a "carbon tax" in which the myth of threats of violence became a useful tool to discredit and diminish opposition.