Tony Thomas: Grossly graphic gun-play in Goulburn

Here’s a partial repost from Australia’s ‘Quadrant’ magazine, be sure to read the rest of this entertaining article at their site. H/T the author ‘tthomas2′ .

UPDATE: Nick stokes reveals the mystery gunman’s identity in comments.

Doomed Planet
“Today’s debate about global warming is essentially a debate about freedom. The environmentalists would like to mastermind each and every possible (and impossible) aspect of our lives.”

Vaclav Klaus – President of the Czech Republic
Blue Planet in Green Shackles

Grossly graphic gun-play in Goulburn
by Tony Thomas

May 11, 2012

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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]

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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.

[1] Cleaned of their email clutter, I have made the texts available here…; see also See also ‘Death-threat’ fictions

[2] http://www.oaic.gov.au/publications/decisions/2012_aicmr12.html

[3] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-06-20/scientists-hit-back-amid-fresh-death-threats/2764356    View video.

[4] http://www.readfearn.com/2012/05/hate-campaign-against-climate-scientists-hits-the-denier-spin-cycle/

[5] www.arc.gov.au/rtf/DP08/DP08_ANU.rtf

[6] http://jonathanstray.com/papers/What%20Climate%20Sceptics%20Believe.pdf

[7] ibid p14

[8] ibid p3

[9] ibid p4

[10] ibid p2