Are there any prominent climate skeptics who have received death threats?
Climate skeptics here think the media are biased when they report on climate scientists who support the conclusions of the IPCC receiving death threats. They seem to be suggesting that the media are not reporting that climate skeptics also receive death threats. However, I’ve never heard of that happening, and from the rhetoric here, it is the skeptics who sound more violent and unhinged.
Does anyone know of skeptics receiving death threats?
Dana: Thanks for the Tim Ball reference. He made that claim in 2007 and nothing since.
Mike: You would think, from your videos, that death threats to skeptics would outnumber those to the scientists by 10:1. Instead, there is one alleged incident involving one skeptic 3 years ago and nothing before or since. Why do you think it doesn’t happen more often?
It seems as usual jim can’t get through two lines of text without referencing hitler, as far as the question GW is a large issue many people have strong views (on both sides) with that many people there are going to be a minority (on both sides) who are extreme, that’s just human nature.
Tim Ball claims to have received 5 death threats, though frankly I have a hard time believing anything he says. Ball has a history of lying. I couldn’t find any other claims of ‘skeptics’ receiving death threats. As you note, several AGW realists like Phil Jones have received death threats.
Randall – climate scientists aren’t politicians, and Phil Jones has not publicly advocated any particular policy solution to AGW.
Perhaps your point is that deniers are incapable of differentiating between politics and science? In which case, I agree.
There is a political issue. There are two sides. One side wants to enact a new tax and regulatory scheme that will increase the financial burden on the economy and all its participants. The other side opposes said scheme – for its own reasons but the end result would be to avoid said burden.
The present justification for the new tax and regulatory scheme is a scientific hypothesis. In a very rough form the hypothesis was generated apart from the political agenda, but those with the political agenda have long since seized on the hypothesis and developed the theory, with which the political agenda is now inextricably intertwined. Let’s be honest – if those guys at the UN turn out to be basically right, which could be the case, it’s by sheer accident: they just want their new power and tax revenue and if they also turn out to be right, that’s just gravy.
Generally speaking, when there’s a political issue of any magnitude, it’s the side that wants to increase the State’s control over your life and your wallet that gets the death threats. At least the death threats from individual citizens (there’s going to be a new carbon tax – if I refuse to pay it they’ll eventually come to my apartment to collect it – if I refuse to let them in, they’ll eventually start shooting – is that a death threat?).
I’m not saying it’s always justified or that it is justified in this case. I’m just saying that that’s generally the case.
I can recall one Gene Hamshi of Greenpeace making "thinly veiled death threat" (that was Reuters exact wording by the way) against ALL skeptics, deniers, disbelievers, troublemakers, etc.
This question is a poor strawman/red herring attempt anyways.
If you want violent and unhinged, just take a look at the left wing protesters at G7, G8, G20, etc. conferences. Or take some climate protests like this one: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/17/ten-arrested-ratcliffe-climate-protest …or this one: http://suzieqq.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/copenhagen-climate-summit-protest-turns-violent/
Where are the crazy un-hinged skeptics throwing rocks at police?
Why would anyone threaten to kill a skeptic? Skeptics are not the ones who propose a vast new tax on energy, therefore on transport, travel and food. Skeptics are the ones who are trying to save humanity from the die-back implied by wacky Green anti-industrial, anti-capitalist, anti-global trade, anti-human policies.
Here’s an example of green threats against those who refuse to be brain-washed by their propaganda:
"We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work.
And we be many, but you be few."
And here’s a classic: "One of the emails warned that, if he continued to speak out, he would not live to see further global warming.
Whats the point? Are death threats only restrict to extremists? That’s not what anyone would call logical by any standard. I’m fairly certain DV is the top contender.
The left likes to pretend that it is pacifist but they gave rise to nearly all the mass murderers in history, from Pol Pot, to Stalin, to Hitler, to Mao. You never see violence in a Tea Party but violence and destruction tends to be the norm with leftist rallies. Leftists see things through the prism of race, sex, and class. They typically react in knee-jerk fashion, not rationally.