Hell in the Eye of Consensus

The always coolly rational London Telegraph reports that global warming denialists are receiving e-mail death threats! One guy says he got FIVE of them! And, uh, that's the whole story.

Scientists who questioned mankind's impact on climate change have received death threats and claim to have been shunned by the scientific community.

They say the debate on global warming has been "hijacked" by a powerful alliance of politicians, scientists and environmentalists who have stifled all questioning about the true environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions.

Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, has received five deaths threats by email since raising concerns about the degree to which man was affecting climate change.

One of the emails warned that, if he continued to speak out, he would not live to see further global warming.

"Western governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and they feel threatened," said the professor.

"I can tolerate being called a sceptic because all scientists should be sceptics, but then they started calling us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust. That is an obscenity. It has got really nasty and personal."

Former Professor Ball is this person. It's a bit rich that he's saying it's the global warming proponents who are motivated by paychecks. Though he is a personage worthy of being spoken of in Hushed, Awed Tones, for he is responsible for one of the all-time greatest-ever weasel lines ever in the history of weaselling:

TB: The High Park Group paid me.  I don't know who paid them.
Q: Which is a public relations group?
TB: I have no idea where they get their money from. ... I make a point of not trying to find out who's paying me. I don't care.

That's just fantastic stuff. "I don't care who's paying me" is a fantastic motto, one cherished by, uh, hookers, and, um, hit men.  Ahem. 

Anyway, you can tell that the Telegraph employs perfessional journamalists because of their conscientious attempts to present only one side of the issue and their apparent inability to try to confirm the charges of harassment, or the charge that denialists are "having their funding cut." Perhaps the Telegraph similarly refuses as a matter of principle to care who's paying them.

But fear not. Geniuses like Noel Sheppard of News Busters are on the case, warning us that "It’s getting scary out there, folks." Because of five -- FIVE! -- threatening emails. That's some bad juju. (Of course I don't condone threatening emails, having received them myself. But then, getting nasty shit electronically is hardly evidence of worldwide government conspiracies: at worst, it's something to refer to law enforcement.)

But, damn, look what the wingnuts are reduced to flinging on the Global Warming stuff. Talk about your dead enders. Or rear enders. Something like that.

Comments

[dumbass comment thread troll]

You missed the real point of the story - that there are scientists who don't believe the anthropogenic global warming propaganda. It's amazing that the green censors allowed it to make it on the television in the U.K. Obviously someone must have been bribed.

[Sir Oolius]

Tim Ball's comment comes at the end of the movie and is followed by some fairly nasty characterizations of non-skeptics. Will Tim Ball distance himself of those remarks?

[dan mcenroe]

I can't think of anything scarier than being threatened by crazed climatologists. Brrr.

[¡El Gato Negro!]

¡Shiny New Integridad!

(choplick)

[mrs. ibrahim al-jafaari]

isn't Global warming itself a death threat? how do you prosecute a death threat against 4 billion people?

[Nancy Willing]

Ha! the rear-ending of climate whores I hope. Delaware has on man, Legates, who was putting out his taint with a pseudo-title of State Climatologist and our governor publicly clipped his wings, asking him to retract his faked state association while dancing the Exxon-Moblie bogry.

[Newsy types]

"Si vous refusez de lire, vous êtes des cons.", indeed! This is one of the best things I've seen written on the subject - factual and funny. Way to go.