Letter To President Obama: Investigate Deniers Under RICO

Here we go again:

Written by: The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica
Gestapo: the political police of Nazi Germany. The Gestapo ruthlessly eliminated opposition to the Nazis within Germany and its occupied territories and, in partnership with the Sicherheitsdienst (SD: “Security Service”), was responsible for the roundup of Jews throughout Europe for deportation to extermination camps.

God·win's law
noun humorous

the theory that as an online discussion progresses, it becomes inevitable that someone or something will eventually be compared to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis, regardless of the original topic.

"correcting others' errors, especially online, can quickly lead to invocations of Godwin's law"

I'm against it. In the USA everyone has the right to lie and deceive people even when doing so is harmful, except when economic fraud is involved. The USA Supreme Count, and the Federal Communication Commission, said so (in a few cases brought against Twentieth Century FOX) and so does the USA First Amendment.

The correct targets for RICO action are the members of the USA Congress who delay mitigation efforts.

This is not Nazi Germany. RICO’s civil provisions allow the court to construct remedies other than imprisonment. In the tobacco case, the industry was required to stop lying and to disgorge $280 billion.

I guess in Tom Harris world any investigation would be a Gestapo tactic.

Totally in favor of this. Re comment #3, let's include all legislators accepting contributions from culpable corporations. Compared with standing in front of earth movers or drilling rigs, this seems like low hanging fruit to me.

BTW, amazing you got Godwin's Law in the very 1st comment! Congratulations.

Desertphile, We certainly all agree about those bought and paid for members of Congress, but are you saying the corrupt corporations, self-serving billionaires, and their minions are NOT committing fraud?

RICO is a dumb law and an overly broad one. If anything, I think the climate change canaries are more in danger of being prosecuted. They amplify any stat and push a doomsday scenario and then they get huge government grants. I don't see the deniers breaking any particular law, but the folks who think the sky is falling are getting plenty of government grants.

Of course this is all opinion and it doesn't deserve to be in the court room, but since we're hauling out RICO I think we should look at both sides.

Lying and deceiving people regarding climate change is a harm that involves economic fraud: It is a sophisticated way to trick people into investing their money in fossil fuel purchases under the fraudulent claim that it will not result in their future financial losses as a consequence of doing so. They are deceitfully promised that there are no additional costs of using fossil fuels that they will be compelled to pay.

Fraudulently passing on "accounts payable" to their victims is economically equivalent to stealing assets from them directly. (It's the same type of tactic that the 1% have been employing to pass their tax obligations on to the middle class to be paid in their stead.)

We should indict the corporations as well as the legislators who are benefiting from this racket.

This letter appears to have been posted in the Twilight Zone, between Bishop Hill and South Park

This is chilling -- criminalizing thought and the dissemination of that thought via the media in the name of ideology, regardless of scientific facts is against every principal of a free and open society.

While I have nothing for contempt for Tea Baggers, I have equal contempt for Progressive Liberals who have no value for the rights or freedoms of others that intrude upon shoving their world view down everyone else's throats.

In short -- both Tea Partiers and Progressive Liberals are a direct threat to our Civil Liberties. One wants to impose Biblical Law under a Plutocracy (scary), the other wants to turn us into a Totalitarian Nanny State where thinking the wrong thoughts, saying the wrong things or eating the wrong foods can put you in prison (just as scary)

Van, get your story straight. This is not about criminal prosecution, and it is not about free thought.

The greatest threat to our civil liberties is not actually reading the stuff you are commenting on to find out what it is first!

Van Carney sums up this latest bit of proposed desperate buffoonery very well.

Perchance these people can put their money where their mouth is and bankroll their own civil RICO suit. And when they lose, be liable to pay all the defendants' costs.

The most similar prior use of RICO like this was done by government and won.

"In short — both Tea Partiers and Progressive Liberals are a direct threat to our Civil Liberties. "

You have no concept of what words mean.

Not surprised at all that Harris would stoop so low as to bring the Nazis into this: once he sold his integrity to spew anti-science nothing was too far a reach.

I find it absolutely amazing that ANYONE on this site would think that a disagreement with scientific MODELS (there are no FACTS in science.. NONE, only development and testing of models that allow predictions of future observations) should be a criminal offense within the United States.

Now there might be people with views that are not supported, but I would suggest that a far bigger threat to the United States to being a long term viable society is the education of its children.

I think far more people would agree at Creationism is a far bigger "fraud" against standard scientific models and theories. Let's go after the real, well understood and almost unanimously accepted "idiots" that believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible as FACT.

Al, this would not about disagreement with models. This would be about corporations or individuals paying others to do things like lie before Congress in testimony. The scientific argument about the details of climate change is not part of this.

Creationism certainly is a fraud, but I can't think of too many examples of the equivalent of large petrol corporations or other interested parties paying people to fake the science and tell Congress lies. Though certainly there are parallels.

In any event, it is not as though one must chose between "going after" creationists vs climate science deniers. That is not a choice that is being made here.

Related, from here: http://www.climateinvestigations.org/former-dept-of-justice-exxon-clima…

The former Department of Justice lawyer who led the watershed lawsuit against tobacco companies, says that the news out today about oil giant ExxonMobil knowing as early as 1981 about the threat posed by climate change could worsen the fossil fuel industry's liability picture.

Not only the media are buzzing over the revelation today that Exxon executives knew as early as 1981 of the significance of climate change and the dangers of carbon dioxide emissions, yet continued to fund scientists and a global misinformation campaign to sow doubt about whether global warming is real for another 27 years. Lawyers thinking of suing the industry for its role in warming the planet will certainly take note of what could be a potent new piece of evidence.

The admission came in an email by Leonard Bernstein, a chemical engineer who was Exxon’s in-house climate specialist.

The revelations in the Bernstein email had a familiar ring to former federal Department of Justice lawyer Sharon Eubanks. Eubanks led DOJ’s successful lawsuit against the tobacco companies under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) laws that proved a fifty-year-long conspiracy by Big Tobacco to create doubt about smoking’s hazards.

Eubanks said the revelations in the Bernstein email could significantly worsen the fossil fuel industry’s liability picture:

“It starts to look like a much longer conspiracy. It’s like what we discovered with tobacco – the more you push back the date of knowledge of the harm, the more you delay any remediation, the more people are affected. So your liability can grow exponentially as the timeline gets longer.”

Leftist Caused Climate Hysteria is a HOAX to Control and Steal from YOU! It is a Religion more than any kind of science.

@Al, that is in fact the entire point of the letter. A number of corporations and other organizations are accused not only of committing perjury but of a long-running criminal conspiracy to commit perjury. I agree with you that RICO can be and has been abused. However, in this case it seems to me to be an appropriate use of the statute, similar to its use against the tobacco companies. The reason that RICO was created in the first place is that prosecuting individual people or even individual companies for perjury and fraud is very difficult because it is easy for each target of the prosecution to place the blame for the conduct in question on some other party. This is especially true in the case of wealthy corporations with large legal staffs. The RICO act ensures that a single prosecution can cover the entire corrupt organization and prevent the defendants from evading responsibility by each claiming that the other one(s) are responsible.

Dan @24... So, you believe that 10's of thousands of researchers worldwide, of the course of 150 years, have been conspiring to propagate a hoax to take your money?

People like you are priceless!

What did they know?
When did they know it?

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/what-exxon-knew-about-clima…
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/Exxons-own-research-confirme…
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/16092015/exxon-believed-deep-dive-int…

#26

Priceless or worthless?

Van@12 "Tea Partiers [...] [want] to impose Biblical Law under a Plutocracy (scary)"

You must have to squint quite tightly to read that between the lines of principles posted at sites like teapartypatriots dot org.

@Van Vilder:

"I have equal contempt for Progressive Liberals who have no value for the rights or freedoms of others that intrude upon shoving their world view down everyone else’s throats."

This is the most profoundly stupid thing I've read this morning. Congratulations, you.

Imagine human beings decades from now looking back upon 2015 and only wishing they could travel back in time to stuff something down the throats of people like frauds & deniers like Van Vilder and Jim Inhofe,

Funny that many of the same thinktanks receiving money to promote global warming skepticism had done the same for decades for the tobacco industry, misleading millions of human beings that cigarette smoking has any connection to the cancer that would eventually, painfully kill them and people who happen to be around them.

What would you do, Van, if you knew someone was making billions in misrepresented a product as "healthy" that happens to kill half a million people every year who use it? Even if you didn't care about people dying, the burden of unpaid medical costs is staggering, and you're footing that bill. Smarter way to look at this is tobacco companies make all the money and everyone pays for the dying people. A direct money in/money out connection.

Global warming is the same thing. Corporations maximize their profits just a bit, everyone else pays. Except a few feet rise in sea level would mean finding new homes for billions of people.

Fun fact: Bought a DVD set of vintage TV commercials, which included dozens of celebrity-endorsement cigarette ads. Surprisingly, only 2 of the celebs I recognized (Ronald Reagan & Frank Gifford) - the rest I had to look up, all dead by their 30s/early 40's by cancer.

Van @ 12... "In short — both Tea Partiers and Progressive Liberals are a direct threat to our Civil Liberties."

Since when is an investigation a threat to civil liberties?

You're over-reacting to the extreme with very little actual comprehension of the law in this case. Was it a threat to civil liberties to investigate tobacco companies under the RICO statute when it was clear that they'd been lying to the public for 50 years about the dangers of tobacco smoke?

This is almost the exact same situation where it's coming to light that an industry had prior knowledge to the dangers of CO2 emissions but, instead of warning the public, they took the approach the tobacco industry did and chose to knowingly deceive the public.

Can't we use Rico against warmists for making up and manipulating data for "the greater good"

It's the warmists that have used manipulated and made up statistics to enrich themselves with government grants and run companies into the ground. How many solar, battery, wind companies etc... have received my tax money to subsidize their uneconomic ideas only to go bankrupt while early investors got rich? Why does Al Gore live in a 7,000 Sq foot mansion, fly a private plane?

@ #1 It was the Gestapo who operated under a cloak of secrecy and deceit. They couldn't let their operations see the light of day. Just like the carbon interests must sow the seeds of doubt and attempt to obfuscate the real science of climate change. Once the truth comes out I think even the most hardened home planet warrior will be shocked at the length and depth the carbon interests had gone to to protect their investments.

Doug, what is a "warmist"?

testing.

NOTE:

There's a lot of spam coming through so expect comments to get hung un in moderation more often than usual. Plus, as you know, some of you are always in moderation because I am the Gestapo and stuff. Or was that Gazpacho. Whatever.

I'll be freeing comments regularly but at some point I do sleep, so be patient! :)

"In the tobacco case, the industry was required to stop lying and to disgorge $280 billion."

How much of the $280 billion was used for smoking cessation programs and reimbursement of Medicaid/Medicare for treatment of smoking-related illnesses?

Desertphile... "It “worked” with the tobacco industry because they lied under oath, and their “punishment” was a few months worth of their profit margin."

I don't think that's correct because that would mean those individuals perjured themselves, the case didn't revolve around prosecution of those individuals. The tobacco issue revolved around what "the industry" did, how the industry knew their products were harmful and yet continued to engage in deceiving the public.

http://bfy.tw/1shq

Doug Lord... "Can’t we use Rico against warmists for making up and manipulating data for 'the greater good'"

Sure, you could. Except that no one is making up or manipulating data.

Doug Lord... "Why does Al Gore live in a 7,000 Sq foot mansion, fly a private plane?"

A) He was born into a wealthy family.
B) He was a very high profile politician.
C) He's done well in business (blasphemy!).
D) He's a long time board member at Apple.
E) Etc.

Doug Lord...

How many [insert any industry] companies… have received my tax money to subsidize their uneconomic ideas only to go bankrupt while early investors got rich?

Welcome to capitalism.

Doug Lord, Al Gore's house also has Leed Gold certification. You missed that in your list.

This is insane and a wild abuse of authority. Can we start arresting people who don't like vaccines? It's not illegal to not believe science and we can't police people's thoughts.

Ryan, you might have a point if that was what this is about, but it in not, so you really don't.

You cannot use the Ring! Its nature is evil and it consumes those who would wield it.

Re: #13:

“Van, get your story straight. This is not about criminal prosecution, and it is not about free thought.”

Yet, the subject letter is all about using RICO to silence and punish the so-called deniers.

Wiki says “The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly referred to as the RICO Act or simply RICO, is a United States federal law that provides for extended CRIMINAL penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing CRIMINAL organization.”

Ryan... It still surprises me when people comment on things they have no clue about. RICO isn't about policing thought. At this point it would be investigating companies who allegedly knew, through their own research, that continuing to burn fossil fuels would dangerously warm the planet, and instead of acting on that knowledge, chose to deceive the public.

An Benghazi never happened right Obama ?

Under the same auspices can we also do away with religion. Equally as dangerous to our continued peaceful existence.

Actually the few "Climate Scientists" who benefit from the millions of taxpayer dollars spent cherry picking data points and "tweaking" their model are the ones who should be investigated under RICO. Democrats aren't the only ones who can legislate with a hand picked judge.

If not RICO, then a massive class action lawsuit could also do the trick.

This recent news -- that Exxon paid for climate studies decades ago, and knew the damage they were causing long before just about everyone else -- could go a long way towards dismembering that massive corporation a la Johns Manville.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/what-exxon-knew-about-clima…

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/what-exxon-knew-about-clima…

Re. Exxon:

The quote below is from a (for me) unexpected source, the online edition of Fortune magazine:

“Exxon has known about climate change for almost 40 years, despite its efforts to continue to promote fossil fuels and deny its existence throughout the 1990s as a leader of the Global Climate Coalition, according to an internal investigation by InsideClimate News.
The reporters reviewed internal records from Exxon XOM and found that the company long knew about the harmful effects of fossil fuels on the environment. Exxon researchers even said in a 1978 internal memo that a doubling of carbon dioxide levels would increase average global temperatures by as much as 2 to 3 degrees Celsius.”
http://fortune.com/2015/09/16/exxon-climate-change/

The Christian Science Monitor has written about it:

Exxon knew about climate change decades ago, spent $30M to discredit it
The largest oil company in the US has spent a lot of money fighting climate science to protect its carbon-based business, though it's known for decades that the burning of fossil fuels contributes to harmful global warming.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2015/0917/Exxon-knew-about-climate…

Andrew Revkin has written a “Judith Curry”:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/a-deep-dive-into-what-exxo…

This is about being willing to cause incalculable long-term planetary damage in order to secure short-term shareholder gains. (Equating this with the size of Al Gore's home is the height of stupidity, but that's a climate septic trademark.) We didn't know is no longer a possible defense. If the tobacco companies could be investigated, I can' see why those who acted in bad faith in regard to climate change shouldn't. Indirectly, an investigation of this sort would also expose those politicians who take fossil fuel money and protect fossil fuel interests.

Noevo (52): No.

Just reminding everyone of this:

http://www.climateaccountability.org/pdf/Climate%20Accountability%20Rpt…

Half the posts here are by corporate shills desperately trying to fend off RICO.

Why are they SO terrified of a RICO investigation? surely that would prove them right and show burning coal in the open allowing smoke to freely wander over schools and hospitals causes 0% harm to anyone?

Greg, you might enjoy this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjj9MYJ2M9A

By "enjoy" I mean "eat your own liver in mind-numbing angst at the stupidity." The video is titled "IF YOU DISAGREE WITH GLOBAL WARMING - YOU COULD BE PROSECUTED? HERE IN AMERICA???"

He admitted that he knows nothing about the RICO Act and knows nothing about climate change--- and he wants people to rise up against the tyrannical "global warming scientists" who are persecuting Americans who disagree with the subjective opinions of the educated elite.

The problem is, it ain't funny. I feel sorry for people who are afraid, and who fear so easily, at imaginary threats. Worse yet, they also tend to utterly ignore present and obvious threats.

Peter @ 54 has my favorite comment thus far. I think he might be new to the internet and got lost following links.

Reboogityamen @ 55, the RICO statute an appropriate law in the USA under which to investigate the Catholic church's worldwide cover up of child sexual abuse by its priests. I don't think that would be enough to "do away with religion," merely redress some of the harm caused.

someone @ 61... "Why are they SO terrified of a RICO investigation?"

That's such a good point. If they didn't do anything wrong they have nothing to worry about. And for those freaking out about an investigation, clearly you don't have the basic conviction of your belief that AGW is a hoax, otherwise you'd see a RICO investigation as the chance to conclusively show you were right all along!

Another climate denier posted above asking if we could use RICO against the scientists. To that I say, knock yourself out. If you can prove that there has been a global scale, century long, effort on the part of scientist to deceive the public about a non-threat, good luck.

Raucous Indignation @ 68....
I think it's a form of Libertarian Tourette's syndrome.

Raucaus, at least Peter has a Gravitar image!

The entire argument is one of free speech. Free speech may be good and it may cause harm but in our society we have already as codified in the constitution that we value it more than the harm it may cause in the vast majority of circumstances. That said those that disagree with some of the assertions of climate warming proponents do not feel that the science is proved. We have seen many cases in the past where the supposed best minds in the world were wrong. Scientists have on many occasions that all the ice shelf a would already be gone by now and that the ocean would already have flooded all the Low Countries and it has not happened yet. That's not to say it won't in the future but clearly they have been wrong in many ways. It is precisely because the are often wrong as well as many times right that science is a pursuit of truth not a prosecutor foundation.

The new new Inquisition with.a large dose of Lysenkoism.

Signs of extreme desperation of the part of the vested interests in the massive industry that the hypothesis of man-made global warming has become.

To Greg Laden #59:

If the subject letter is NOT about using RICO to silence and punish the so-called deniers with criminal penalties, then what IS it about?

Also, of the $280 billion settlement with the tobacco companies, approximately ZERO dollars went to smoking cessation programs and reimbursement of Medicaid/Medicare for treatment of smoking-related illnesses.

Noevo, there is a civil version of Rico.

Not sure how that Tobacco settlement (which was civil) being squandered by anti-Tax libertarian governors in order to pay off voters is relevant here. Also, not zero, just a very small amount.

Really isn't relevant, though.

As the author of a "denialist" book exposing the weaknesses of the standard "Climate Change" argument, I hereby offer myself up to the thought police for imprisonment and, if necessary, torture. Here's the link to my dangerous book, written under a pseudonym to protect me from bigots such as you: [Link not allowed as per blog policy]

Given your expertise in all matters scientific I doubt you'll have much trouble tracking me down. By all means, go to it, capture me, put me on trial -- and watch my sales soar.

docg, you didn't actually read the letter did you?
If your "book" is as amazingly vapid as your objection, the reaction of people when they read it will not be "Those scientists are running a scam" it will be hysterical laughter.
Either way - when you make an attempt to understand the issue, try again.

Greg, did you have a change of heart? sn stated on Evolutionblog that he was banned from posting here. Surely he wouldn't have been telling a falsehood?

Delusional

Greg, it is mandatory to face the inescapable fact that the sacred legal system is an extortion racket.

docg... No one is controlling what you think. No one really cares whether you chose to make an idiot of yourself or not.

The RICO investigation would involve corporations who knowingly deceive the public.

Hiro @ 74... If the FF industry did NOT know about the dangers of climate change due to the continued use of their products, they have nothing to be concerned about. Or, if they did the research and that research proved inconclusive or showed that CO2 emissions were NOT a problem, they also have nothing to be concerned about.

So... That begs the question: Why are YOU so concerned?

Gerald Spezio... "Mandatory?" Really?

Rob @ 82.

"Why are YOU so concerned?"

The process is of course (at least part of) the punishment. Would you be concerned if you were personally liable for all the costs of the defendants, should they win?

Not_Man_Made @ 79 is probably going to be fascinated to learn that even Exxon realized decades ago that it is man-made.

Frank... "The process is of course (at least part of) the punishment."

No, that's not true so much for large corporations. First off, we're still just talking about an investigation, not an actual RICO prosecution. But if it came to trial, the legal fees would barely make a ripple in their financial statements.

We're far enough along, even in the public understanding of the reality that FF industry companies have long understood the problem and acted in contradiction to the best interests of our nation and it's people, that most of this is an inevitable legal formality. Just like the tobacco industry.

@Desertphile, referring to comment #36:
How come that you value freedom of lying?
How do you imagine that lying is necessary for well-being of people and their societes?

Mr. Laden,

Are you using peer review in place of scientific method? It doesn't take a genius to figure out that one is a opinion and the other mandates the use of empirical evidence.

The trend in the last few decades is to rely on others opinion to make ones own opinion look like the truth. We all know that we are entitled to our own opinions but not entitled own facts.

"We all know that we are entitled to our own opinions but not entitled own facts."

It is impossible for me to believe you typed that with a straight face.

All should read the short Draft Global Climate Science Communications plan, labeled GSCT1998 as analyzed in Crescendo to Climategate Cacophony., pp.19-20.
"GCSCT members who contributed to the development of the plan are
John Adams, John Adams Associates (large PR firm);
Candace Crandall, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP, Singer‘s wife);
David Rothbard, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow ( CFACT);
Jeffrey Salmon, The Marshall Institute (GMI);
Lee Garrigan, environmental issues Council;
Lynn Bouchey and Myron Ebell, Frontiers of Freedom (FF); Peter Cleary, A mericans for Tax Reform
(ATR);
Randy Randol, Exxon Corp.;
Robert Gehri, The Southern Company (a large SouthEast utility, 70% coal);
Sharon Kneiss, Chevron Corp;
Steve Milloy, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition ( TASSC); and
Joseph Walker, American Petroleum Institute (API)."

Of course, even earlier were the coal folks, i.e., Western Fuels Association, with Balling, Michaels, etc.

Randy Randol was then a senior Exxon lobbyist, later famed for getting head of IPCC replaced.

That's some group, and you may find it correlates well with payments to folks like Willie Soon and various think tanks famed for climate denial. It is hard to find evidence of Exxon bankrolling organized denialism much before this, although I could be surprised if so.

Wow, that was fast, I rest my case. But you can google it.

PS Yes, I did do the with a strait face. It is a serious breach of logic.

There is a long history of the government going after companies who make misleading claims to sell their product. This might be closer to the situation than going after individual people. With respect to individuals who lie, I agree with DeserphiIe.

I also don't understand why the deniers bother.

The economy is strongly tied to coal and even more, oil. A policy that really came down on carbon would crash the economy and be overturned by the next election. What is really needed is a source of inexpensive renewable energy.

I think that source could be solar power satellites. It looks like they can undercut coal, but it takes careful attention to cost for that to work.

@ nmm -You meant breach on your part, right, cause that's where it is.

Not_Man_Made, do you require empirical proof of the wide-spread destruction of ecosystems, the extinction of large animals, the submerging of coastal cites under rising seas, the crashing of world economies, and the loss of life & property before you would be willing to take steps to mitigate the effects of AGW?

(Many who comment in this blog actually do require this...)

It does not take a genius to figure out that pre-emptive action --especially those which bring side benefits-- is called for when there is sufficient empirical evidence to indicate what is in store in the case of failure to take remedial action.

(I'll point out here that all of the aforementioned who refuse to take a conservative stance and spend the money required to deal with the affects of AGW are hypocrites if they purchase insurance [not already mandated by law; let's be fair.])

It is not "mere opinion" for wise men to present this in print, and for others to cite the evidence and the science that indicates the consequences of maintaining the status quo.

So, tl;dr: Greg & many who comment here do not rely on mere opinion (go ahead, Greg, and correct me if I'm wrong!), nor do they seek entitlement to their own facts. Conversely, those who promote science denialism do claim that their own facts are just as legitimate. What actually are you getting at, then?

You're doing a real good job of confusing your own thinking, nmm.

One cannot help but be reminded of the famous Upton Sinclair quote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his income depends on his not understanding it."

Which FF industry did you say you work for?

Interesting that nobody mentions corrupt scientists who are spreading fear in a shameless attempt to get more research dollars. Anyone looking at climate models will tell you they are not validated to see if they could predict past events, because they cannot. These models are considered verified if they agree with one another. Science is about questioning and these folks, like the Nazis, cannot stand to be challenged. The science world is filled with such people and often the skeptics are proven correct. So let's get off the politically correct mandates proposed by the justice department to stifle discussion. Maybe the justice department itself ought to be investigated.

I thought I would come here and see people of "science" say how stupid, unethical, immoral, unscientific, and terrible this idea was but no. Instead the idea of rounding up dissidents is defended and then people say it is nothing like the Nazis. Tone deaf is being generous.

It is people and actions like this which make me question supporting these groups with our taxes. The government academic complex is jumping the shark.

wodun, you're being tone deaf. It has nothing to do with rounding up dissidents. You should compare it to a criminal investigation of corporate illegalities -- such as the tobacco industry hiding their knowledge that smoking was dangerous and lying to Congress, et al about it.

You do understand the distinction, don't you??

Here’s a hypothesis:
What drives the anthropogenic global warming agenda is NOT concern for the climate or environment,
but rather money and power, that is,
getting money from those who have it and gaining power over peoples’ lives.

Same goes for the tobacco companies’ 1998 $200+ billion settlement. A couple points on that:
-Contrary to the settlement’s stated intention, virtually none of the $200+ billion extorted from the tobacco companies actually went to smoking cessation programs and reimbursement of Medicaid/Medicare for treatment of smoking-related illnesses.
-Conversely, how much money went to the lawyers, those members of one of the Democrats’ most loyal and powerful allies – the ABA? I bet a lot more than went to smoking cessation programs and reimbursement of Medicaid/Medicare for treatment of smoking-related illnesses.
- Although the risks of tobacco use were well known by the public for a long time [way back in 1965 Congress passed the Cigarette Labelling and Advertising Act requiring every cigarette pack to have the warning label "Cigarettes may be hazardous to your health" and in 1984 passed another more extensive law called the Comprehensive Smoking Education Act], we are supposed to believe the tobacco companies deceived us into thinking cigarettes were safe?
-If cigarettes are so harmful, why didn’t the government make them illegal? Why are the cigarette companies still in business?
Answer: Because the money hungry government doesn’t want to kill the Golden Goose. They need those eggs.

And yet, the evidence for man harming or changing the climate is as ephemeral as a smoke ring compared to the evidence for man-made cigarettes harming smokers.

But, of course, with the AGW agenda, a LOT MORE MONEY is at stake, and a lot more CONTROL over this economy’s companies and individuals.

No wonder the AGWers are fighting so hard.

Bring it on! Ass holes!

billd10, there's nothing that true, honest scientists love more than to expose corrupt pseudo-scientists for what they are, and to dispel & debunk their shameless attempts to garner attention and monetary support to push anti-scientific political agendas.

Anyone looking at their anti-climate science websites will tell you they are not validated to see if they could predict past, present, or future events, because they cannot. These false models are also not considered verified even if they agree with one another.

By contrast, science is about questioning and these denier folks, like the Nazis, cannot stand to be challenged. The media world is filled with such people and often the true skeptics (aka "scientists") are proven correct.

So let’s get off the political agendas proposed to stifle discussion of facts & real science. Maybe the justice department itself ought to investigate those who are lying to the public after all.

One of my many vanquished enemies was a lawyer for the Cambino mafia family, by the name of Abelson. He is an expert in defending against RICO indictments, mostly for pornographers and $cientology salespeople. This morning I sent email to him asking for his opinion on the idea of applying RICO to the fossil fuels industry. No reply so far. If someone named Guido comes and breaks my legs, I'll know the answer is "No."

I’m sure you you know people like that people you can”t believe even if your life depended on it. Climate denial pimps are just conspiracy theorists. You know, like chemtrails.

Yup.

wodun... "Instead the idea of rounding up dissidents is defended and then people say it is nothing like the Nazis."

My, aren't you folks a paranoid sort.

For about the umpteenth time I've said this on thread, since when is an investigation an act of "rounding up" anyone?

It's an investigation! If there is no wrongdoing then there is nothing to be concerned about. What is very clear from denier responses is, you folks have absolutely no confidence in your position. I hold that you know you're wrong and you know that the fossil fuels industry is going to have to come out publicly and finally admit that they've known for decades that AGW is a critical problem.

I can see why deniers would be flipped out, finding out that everything you thought you knew was actually concocted by the FF industry.

Climate denial pimps are just conspiracy theorists. You know, like chemtrails.

Except that the conspiracies were bought and paid for by an industry trying to protect is profit margins over the well-being of humanity.

If there is no wrongdoing then there is nothing to be concerned about.

That's what we've heard the right say about data collection on phones and random stops by police. Wonder why they object now?

This would be a good time for America to open up death camps for all the people who irritate us. I think 50% of the population sent up the chimney would be a good start.

Dean... Exactly. The hypocrisy of their outrage is clear to everyone but them.

To be fair, those who willfully don't read the material aren't being hypocritical. But they are being willfully ignorant and then get self-righteous about their issues as they wallow in it...

(Which is all the more humorous because the freedoms that they think they're defending are ones that everyone else here also defends. That's not clear to them either.)

"I would say that the evidence isn’t there but the truth is have I’ve been lied to so many times I don’t even bother to try to figure whats truth is."

As your comments readily demonstrate.

The Black Smurf... Really, not an okay comment regardless of which 50% you might be referring to.

It would kind of trample on free speech rights but in the same way lying to the cops would or the actual RICO case that was brought against the Tobacco Industry. There is a line somewhere where the distinction between a company doing marketing and a company engaged in racketeering. If it were an organic conspiracy theory science denial like anti-vaccine stuff, that would be one thing, but fomenting this stuff so that you can pad your bottom line at the detriment of all mankind? That is kind of a racket.

Reading the list of organizers, of this jolly La Jolla extension of the Reality Project by other means, one wonders if Heartland will call for a RICO investigation of their back scratching map.

The interest alone on the tobacco class acti judgement would buy a Tesla and a personal trainer for every ambulance chaser in the land.

Billd10: Interesting that nobody mentions corrupt scientists who are spreading fear in a shameless attempt to get more research dollars.

Lots of people mention that. Quite a few have done so in this very thread. They just cannot find any such scientists among those warning about the effects of climate change.

"But, I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition."

Your proposal would be a joke, but I think you're serious. Speech that disagrees with yours to be treated as a crime? Not in MY America.

It looks to me like ExxonMobil all of a sudden thinks there is something seriously threatening going on. They had a spokesman on On the Media today to deny the company was doing bad things wrt climate change. He didn't accomplish much — he must have been told not to lie outright — but he was persistent.

"The laws of physics have agendas?"

Yes - they're very big on Robert's Rules of Order too.

Bill St Clair: "Speech that disagrees with yours to be treated as a crime? Not in MY America."

We're 100% in agreement with you. All of us.

What this issue is about, if you'd care to, like, read it, is an investigation into a criminal conspiracy to knowingly, intentionally commit perjury by providing false testimony to Congress & the public regarding the impacts of burning fossil fuels -- especially in light of their own records that demonstrate that they knew this all along.

Of course, that has nothing to do with free speech, disagreements, etc., and everything to do with perpetrating crimes. You are against having crimes perpetrated against you, aren't you?

Well put. And yes, they are spooky.

Most of them should not be allowed to vote. Seriously. It's like letting the kindergarteners decide the classroom rules and agenda.

I am all for the investigation of corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the past, present, and future risks of their product , especially when that product has clearly taken so many American lives in its production, distribution, and use, as well as in its defense by the US military in the Middle East. All the bleating fossil fuel sheep in the world crying for the free speech rights of fossil fuel companies are just protecting a coalition of major criminal enterprises, so they really need to stuff a sock in their collective pie holes.

It is clear to anyone who is not a wooden headed puppet that the petroleum barons of the world undermine our government for their own illegal ends. It is long past time for us to wrest the reins of government out of the hands of the fossil fuel plutocracy.

By all means, please investigate and prosecute these clowns. Do it now. What have we got to lose? They are bent on killing our world. It is time to stand up to these fools and idiots and to defend science and scientists.

Seems to me that the first step, before criminal prosecution, would be to end subsidies to fossil fuel companies. Otherwise we would see taxpayers paying for the defense of the accused.

Ask Branscomb if the Accountability Project can hold the Chicago Carbon Exchange underwriters to account without a fundraising conflict of interest ?

Brainstorms: You said, "What this issue is about, if you’d care to, like, read it, is an investigation into a criminal conspiracy to knowingly, intentionally commit perjury by providing false testimony to Congress & the public regarding the impacts of burning fossil fuels — especially in light of their own records that demonstrate that they knew this all along."

If it's perjury, intentionally lying to a court of law, that could well be criminal. But the letter does not say anything about perjury, testifying to Congress, or anything about what oil companies knew when. Maybe that information is included in one or more of the referenced books, but I expect a summary of books to actually, you know, summarize them.

I continue to believe that the entire global warming movement is a giant hoax designed to separate huge corporations from their money and destroy western civilization as we know it. I would love to see fuels that affect the atmosphere less then burning oil does. I want to power my home and my car on a fuel cell using hydrogen that I make myself with solar hydrolysis. As soon as cleaner energy technology can fuel our advanced civilization, at a cheaper price, it will.

I certainly don't like having crimes perpetrated against me. I don't like being extorted, and being told that being extorted is my public duty. End taxation. Completely. Now. I don't like peaceful people being kidnapped and thrown into cages for ingesting politically incorrect vegetables. End the war on some drugs. Completely. Now.

I wonder if the guy who posted the Nazi remark as the very first comment was a provocateur deliberately trying to abort discussion of this breathtakingly un-American proposal.

"Congress shall make no law .. abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.". Note that the drafters did not limit the protection to ""truthful" speech (aka "goodthink"), because they knew that a self-interested government could not be trusted to determine what is truthful.

The only action needed is impeachment of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, author of a similar proposal, for disregarding his oath to uphold the Constitution.

we have climate "change deniers" on one side, and "globe deniers" on the other side, hiding the fact that even if we wreck the US economy with draconian fossil fuel cutbacks, we still have massive greenhouse emissions from China (the World's #1 producer) and increasingly from India, for whom poverty is the worst form of pollution.

We already have climate change, but decades to go before a true crisis. Instead of shutting down discussion and imposing a Club-of-Rome orthodoxy, leaving a weakened US economy unable to make a full contribution, we should spend the upcoming years researching and developing cost-effective responses. The best one might be something entirely different, eg a variable barrier in the La Grange point between Sunand Earth.

Just remember, what is sauce for the Goose is sauce for the Gander when President Walker (or Carson or Cruz or Trump or Fiorina) orders an investigation of the fraud perpetrated by the Global Warmists. We already have evidence of fixing the data to fit their grant interests, and their conspiracy against dissenters. A RICO investigation of the Warmists may prove a lot easier and more fruitful than their facist attempt to intimidate real scientists. So go ahead and appeal to the current, temporary resident of the Oval Office, there is a change a coming soon.

Greg, I'm with you on this, and I'm with all of those who signed that letter.

If there's a version of it that's open to signatures from members of the general public, say where, and I'm there.

It's time. In fact it's overdue. Denialists are directly causing casualties in a manner analogous to someone who deliberately interferes with firefighters getting to a burning building. That behavior is unconscionable, and it must be subjected to appropriate penalties under law.

The longer they put off the day of reckoning, the more severe it will be for them.

We already have evidence of fixing the data to fit their grant interests, and their conspiracy against dissenter

Really? You have that, because despite the many claims it's never been born out. If you have that evidence and are withholding it, aren't you obstructing justice?

If you don't have it, and in fact no such thing exists - aren't you simply telling falsehoods?

CLIMATE CHANGE IS A MOVEMENT! EVERYONE JOIN, AND YOU'LL RECEIVE A FREE TOASTER / OVEN!

“Movement?” LOL! Now it’s a MOVEMENT?!

Not until there's 50 people a day saying it and it has its own group W bench.

Exceptin' Alice.

(And she's just bein' polite.)

http://www.sott.net/article/277349-Top-scientist-resigns-from-post-admi…

to #156... That is pretty weak tea that you are peddling there old man. You cite one cranky old renowned particle physicist being paid by the Heartworm fossil fuel group. If quantum tunneling phenomenon were directly applicable to climatology, you might have something there. But it's not. And you don't.

Ivar has no standing in climatology, but you can cite him all you want. You have the right to cite old fools acting badly all you want. Does Ivar dispute the infrared properties of carbon dioxide, or the fact that we are putting millions of pounds of it into the air every second, or the fact that the GRACE satellites are detecting many many tons of Greenland and Antarctic land ice melting, or the fact that sea levels are rising, or the fact that the Keeling curve lines up better with global warming than any other variable we know of? No, he doesn't.

Once again, a science denier cites the opinion of one scientist outside of his field as evidence against centuries of data. Sorry NMM, that is not science. That is just opinon.

Have a nice effing day.

Hugo @ ~ 146

Tom Harris is a professional propagandist and denialist. You can look him up. I think he'd be very pleased with your weird comment.

Re comment #3 :

Any nation or society that permits lying which results in the deaths of 100s of millions of people but forbids it if money is involved is literally insane.

But the US is not any such country, as you claim. You can't cry "FIRE" in a crowded theater and you can't cry "NO FIRE" in a burning theater, just because we value human life.

It's sad to me that any rational adult would have ever supposed what you said was true, even absent specific knowledge of relevant laws.

I enthusiastically support your letter to President Obama. ExxonMobil has been consciously lying to us for decades, and it's been extremely harmful for the planet and for all of us. They need to be prosecuted under RICO, just as the cigarette companies were. I've read Naomi Oreskes' "Merchants of Doubt," and highly recommend it to others. - Art Hobson, Professor Emeritus of Physics, U Arkansas, Fayetteville

Ref #141:
“Seems to me that the first step, before criminal prosecution, would be to end subsidies to fossil fuel companies.”

As they say, even a broken clock, or a desert-baked brain, is right twice a day.

It’s already too late to do anything now about global warming. It's 2015!
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/may/05/climatechange.climat…

Video!
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/06/flashback-abc-news-warns-nyc-wi…

Global warming, global cooling: pick one, please!

You people know nothing about politics, society or policy.

And as valid as the arguments against dogmatists are when people talk about creationism, they are equally valid when people are in capable of defending the opposite side.

The sad irony is that it is quite true that the motives of most "deniers " motivations are nefarious. That does not make a mockery of the other side, their inability to do anything but threaten RICO does that.

The manipulation of certain demographics and classes of people buy the right is mirrored most efficiently in the left.

The right wing manipulates, uneducated hard-working individuals with faith, the left manipulates the disenfranchised and undereducated.

The fantastic success of the right wing of stopping anything… But bad policy is a great example of why Rico might be good. Just as the left cannot agree on any appropriate policy… Mercury lightbulbs for god sake!?!

Contingencies for both warming and cooling should be made, and we should have been working toward a zero omissions technology since long before this.

That way you increase people's industry, education, research, and you get rid of the sociopaths who are manipulating well intentioned mid-level thinkers on both sides

Otherwise science becomes the new religion and real thought control becomes available

I am pretty sure this is mostly coherent but my very slow phone and voice recognition seem to be conspiring with cannabis right now to make doublechecking not possible

Looks like I hit a raw nerve there.

In the same way an abscess tooth hits nerves: extremely painful to endure, with absolutely no positive contribution.

Recently, a barack hussein o. visited Alaska to participate in a reality TV show.
While there, he also stood before a glacier whose retreat, he bemoaned, was due to man-made global warming.

From a WSJ piece by Patrick Moore, a co-founder and former leader of Greenpeace:
“If only the president had consulted the history of Glacier Bay, where the Huna Tlingit people have lived for more than 4,000 years, he would have found a different story.

It is a historical fact that the glacier in Glacier Bay began its retreat around 1750. By the time Capt. George Vancouver arrived there in 1794 the glacier still filled most of the bay but had already retreated some miles.

When John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, visited in 1879, he found that the glacier had retreated more than 30 miles from the mouth of the bay, according to the National Park Service, and by 1900 Glacier Bay was mostly ice-free.

All of this happened long before human emissions of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, could have had any impact.

In the oral tradition of the Huna Tlingit people, it is said that the glacier has advanced and retreated a number of times during their occupation of the area. Each time the glacier advanced they would move to the village of Hoonah in Icy Strait outside Glacier Bay. When the glacier retreated, many of them would move back into the bay. These multiple migrations were certainly caused by climate change, but it had nothing to do with human activity.

The fashionable tendency to blame every change in climate and every extreme-weather event on human emissions is doing a grave disservice to the scientific tradition. We know that the climate has been changing for millions of years due to a multitude of perfectly natural factors. There is no reason to believe that those factors have suddenly disappeared and now humans are the all-powerful shapers of global climate destiny. Yet this entirely unproven hypothesis of catastrophe is compelling to those who would control our beliefs.”

Nope. The glaciers in Alaska have always grown and shrunk but now they are retreating and thinning very quickly because of the climate change you deny exists.

http://www.usgs.gov/climate_landuse/glaciers/repeat_photography.asp

We’ve come a long way since the 1992 Kyoto Protocol, haven’t we?
Thank goodness.

China still puts out massive emissions and probably more than anyone else, and has plans to build many more coal-fired power plants.

And then there are our more liberal allies in Europe and Asia.
Environment editor John Vidal writing in the Guardian (U.K.), June 8:
“Five of the world’s seven richest countries have increased their coal use in the last five years despite demanding that poor countries slash their carbon emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change, new research shows.

Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan and France together burned 16% more coal in 2013 than 2009 and are planning to further increase construction of coal-fired power stations. Only the US and Canada of the G7 countries meeting on Monday in Berlin have reduced coal consumption since the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009.

The US has reduced its coal consumption by 8% largely because of fracking for shale gas. Overall, the G7 countries reduced coal consumption by less than 1% between 2009-2013, the Oxfam research shows.”
................
The AGWers have a long road to hoe.
Thank goodness.

(BTW, Greg already addressed the "Founder of Greenpeace" nonsense...
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/06/27/who-founded-greenpeace-not…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nldpjPbGqg

Greg:

Following up on my #175 and your #176,
any photos or data from around 1750?
How about from 1,000 to 4,000 years ago, where the Huna Tlingit people tell a different story?

Speaking of retreating glaciers, what caused the retreat of the glaciers that may have formed the Great Lakes, and definitely formed NY state’s Finger Lakes?

And speaking of warming the chill, what caused the tropical environment at the North Pole, dinosaur emissions? http://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-north-pole-once-was-tropical/

To begin with what is happening is global climate change not global warming. Yes, we have had a number of years of the average global temperature increasing but this does not mean any one location temperature will be warmer.

Anyone but a cretin or paid shill can determine that there is global climate change occurring. The big question is what is the cause of global climate change. There are three possible reasons: 1. it is a totally natural event; 2. it is totally a man caused event; or 3. It is a combination of nature and man. Geologically we know that the earth has been warmer and colder at different times. Therefore we can't totally toss #1 out. The manmade option is very possible. What I subscribe to is that the earth is in a warming (which causes climate change) trend but mankind has caused this change accelerate as we are seeing now. Since the process is a positive feedback loop the rate of change will eventually accelerate much quicker than it is now.

As an environmental law person RICO is the proper format to investigate the various groups (especially if they colluded) to determine if harm came from withholding information or withholding data increased profit (see VW emission scam).

OP is an authoritarian douchebag.

Sam, did you actually read and try to comprehend the post?

So it is pretty clear to an increasing number of people that the incredibly wealthy and powerful fossil fuel interests of the world are aware that their products cause climate destabilization by changing the infrared radiation characteristics of our atmosphere. Since these powerful interests can afford the highest paid lawyers, these interests are probably not exactly quaking in their boots at the prospect of the govt launching a RICO investigation against them. After all, they currently own the House, Senate, and Supreme Court, if you consider the campaign funding for the ruling members of the first two bodies and the allegiance of the third. They also own much of the media. The fossil fuel power structure can also afford all sorts of trolling and disinformation services to cloud this issue and make resolution ever more difficult. But we of the science tribe fight on.

It gets tiring being called a fool by people with apparently sociopathic tendencies and superstitious beliefs, but there you are.

This is an issue on which I do not want my conclusion to be the correct one, and I would be glad if I found that I had made some glaring error in my assessment of the effect of fossil fuels on the climate. But instead, nearly every day, some new evidence comes to light to make the counter argument seem more and more unlikely.

So what happens next? Until or unless the fossil fuel establishment can find a way out of their predicament, they will be the 800 pound gorilla in the room, controlling the argument and the government and rallying lots of louts against any science or scientists who challenge their profitable business.

If the weather weirding gets bad enough in the near future, maybe people will wake up enough to do something about the climate problem. Unfortunately, there is an excellent chance that other related issues like war and societal destabilization could make a civilized approach to this issue irrelevant.

The opposition camp has yet to offer any robust scientific explanation for what is happening with our climate, only things like hand waving, un-named natural forces, name calling, and appeals to childish conspiracy theories.

I am an optimist in the sense that I think that humans will adapt to flooded cities and diminished food supplies that fossil fueled global warming will cause in future decades. I am far less optimistic that humans will be able to overcome the persistent state ignorance and confusion that so many of their minds have been put into by the people who rule our fossil fueled planet.

As a law student and then lawyer in the late 1970's and until the early 1990's I mostly worked counselling and representing people and groups on the Left: Anti-War, Anti-Nuclear Power, Anti-Nuclear War, Anti-Racist, Worker's Rights and such. Back then lawyers and the political activists we worked with had a constant feat that the broad RICO statute would be applied to those movements. We are talking about the power and reach of the Federal Government after all to disrupt people's lives. Groups like the ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, the Center For Constitutional Rights and many more were vehemently opposed to using RICO for anything other than its original intent: to go after criminal enterprises. So, I think that you, Greg, and others should think about what you are advocating. By the way, I find the tactics of the Deniers reprehensible too. I just want to think long-term, and how using RICO can come back to bite progressive forces.

I'm new here, but just had to ask.. What are these obvious threats of global warming? I have seen 0 evidence in 30 years ofany supposed symptoms due to root cause of AGW. Infact AGW just ignores a polluting China and India. Or seals global production investment in China. Cause nothing we be able or afforded to be produced anywhere else as a startup. This is their endgame of racketeering.

AGW is nothing more than racketeering to seal global investment in China and India manufacturing. Nothing will exist or be afforded as a startup anywhere else if its ensuing laws are introduced. Its their endgame. The fact that it has changed to "climate change" after 30yrs. Is all the evidence you need. Alongwith those notions that those changes can be horrific from 0.8 f rise in 30 years.

AGW is racketeering to seal global investment in China and India. it also ignores pollution in those countries. The fact that it has changed to "climate change" is all the evidence you need to know of its provability. Nothing will be able to be produced in those countries outside of China and India as a startup if its ensuing laws are introduced. Is an area of key importance to keeping Exxon well funded and shipping all the way from China to your doorstep.

There is something called the first amendment. This RICO proposal, in sharp contrast, is fascism. Next you will be advocating for conservative talk radio hosts to be jailed. Whenever liberals don't like the way things are going, they resort to extreme measures.

"The fact that it has changed to “climate change” is all the evidence you need to know of its provability".

Actually, it is all the evidence you need to know you are ignorant.

Hint 1: Look up what the "CC" in "IPCC" stands for and when it was created
Hint 2: Look up who Frank Luntz is, and then find the memo he wrote on climate change. Read the whole thing, but note in particular the following quotes:
"It’s time for us to start talking about “climate change” instead of global warming"
And why did Luntz propose this? Well, because
" “Climate change” is less frightening than “global warming.” "

You have fallen for the playbook from someone who proposed to the Republicans to try and evade the term global warming. Now, let me guess, you vote Republican, right?

Re: Theo in #186. The RICO laws were designed to go after any group of individuals who were operating together for financial gain using criminal means.

If Alice, Bob and Chuck all gather together and conspire to sell deadly product Deth while knowingly and systematically arranging for the dangers of Deth to be suppressed, denied, and distorted then they have acted together for financial gain using criminal means.

Here's my own advice to would be prosecutors. This is not just a criminal matter; it's also an existential threat to the national security of this nation.

That should trigger Presidential authorities needed to deploy the resources and techniques of the NSA, the FBI and the other intelligence agencies.

They should monitor, hack, infiltrate, trick, coerce, entice, reward, threaten and otherwise leverage computers, witnesses, gatekeepers and any other resource needed to produce multiple horse's mouth audio, video and electronic smoking guns to the prosecutor's table. Anything less risks failure.

You have to get the perps admitting to what they're doing in their own words, with their own voices. Sure, people like me would convict given an overwhelming preponderance of the evidence, but that won't see you through appeals to this SCOTUS.

We should treat this group of people as what they are- a mortal threat to the national security of the United States of America. Nothing should be off the table. Nothing.

We got Al Walaki, even though he was an American because he was a threat to the security of this nation. The Constitution and the protection it affords Americans should be taken as a suicide pact.

Obviously, droning oil company executives is counter-productive to the goal; my point is this is not just an ordinary criminal matter the United States can afford to lose.

Here's the thing. We need to examine the fundamentals of what obligations citizens have with respect to telling the truth when not telling the truth puts lives at risk.

When the country was founded, it wasn't possible that a small group of individuals should conspire to set off a bomb which kills everyone and for all time. But that is exactly what distorting the facts about greenhouse cases is- a slow motion bomb being set off which will deconstruct human civilization itself.

Some things go without saying, so naturally they are left unsaid. In the space of that unsaidness, people are claiming all kinds of outrageous rights, including the right to lie or be deliberately and maliciously ignorant.

In the Nuremberg trials the defendants universally claimed they had adhered to the rule of law of their own nation, and they they had a duty to do so. Faced with the magnitude of the crimes, society effectively said that all humans in any nation do have, and have always had, a duty to refrain from doing certain kinds of evil, irrespective of local (national) laws.

That was the first time it was actually spelled out that humans are never permitted to just toss aside what might be called their essential humanity.

It's the same thing here. People in positions of outsized influence and power are claiming things like as private individuals they have a right to their opinion and free speech and 1st Amendment rights etc. etc.

But the Constitution is NOT (correction to previous post LOL) a suicide pact and the Founders would have, had they known it was possible, explicitly forbade lying or its equivalent, studied ignorance, in speech which could somehow put all humans in mortal peril. It's just a thing that goes without saying.

ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, the scientists employed by them, even their PR firms, all had a duty to refrain from creating and disseminating lies about greenhouse gases and in equal measure they had a duty to refrain from being morbidly irresponsible and incurious when forming the judgements which informed their actions.

It just goes without saying when the stakes are this high.

These people act as if absent a specific, articulated law which is perfectly isomorphic to their exact actions and circumstances, they operate in some kind of moral vacuum.

We decided that wasn't true 70 years ago now. They need to be reminded of it.

I would welcome such prosecution because it would open up all the so-called evidence of global warming/climate change to discovery. Defense attorneys would then hire real scientists to comb through the falsified records, cherry picked data, and other frauds and malfeasance that make up the global warming scam. In the process exposing the hoax for what it is, a pan-global plan for taxation.

Furthermore a thorough investigation of the revenue sources that fund the so-called science of global warming.

#196, PeterM1965: Indeed.

#194,195, Terry Blake: I am reminded of a quote.

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H. L. Mencken

I'm not a climate scientist. There are only a handful of them in the world, so I doubt you are either. But you act as if the imminent doom of the entire human race is guaranteed, should the oil companies remain in business. Calm down.

I'm sick to death of prior restraint. It's been growing, more and more. Crime is supposed to be actual physical or monetary harm, aggressively and intentionally inflicted. Nowadays, the prisons are filled with people who ingested, or sold to wiling buyers, vegetables that changed their consciousness. Thought crime. Sheesh. Beam me up, Scotty. There's no intelligent life on Earth.

Not_Man_Made @156...
I clicked through to see what the article was that you linked to titled "Top-scientist-resigns-from-post-admits-Global-Warming-is-a-scam."

The article is about Hal Lewis, who was always a climate denier. (He died in 2011.) He never published any research on climate change, thus is commenting on a ideological basis rather than as an expert in the relevant field.

In such, the article is a lie since Lewis is not "admitting" anything. He's merely expressing is ideological position.

Charles @192... "There is something called the first amendment."

Sorry, but the first amendment does not protect you if you knowingly deceive people in a way that harms them. The classic example is, free speech yes, but you still can't yell fire in a crowded theater unless there's a real fire.

Klorhn... "The fact that it has changed to “climate change” is all the evidence you need to know of its provability."

"Climate change" and "global warming" are two different but related things. Global warming, obviously, is just about the fact that we are warming the planet by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. "Climate change" is what happens to the climate in response to that warming.

Both terms are actively used in the scientific research, but in the vernacular are often used interchangeably.

See Noevo... "Recently, a barack hussein o. visited Alaska to..."

That's about as much as we need to read of your comment to know that you're only speaking from extreme ideology and deserve to be ignored.

Rich Bly... "What I subscribe to is that the earth is in a warming (which causes climate change) trend but mankind has caused this change accelerate as we are seeing now."

Sorry, but that would not be accurate. Since the peak of the holocene about 5000 years ago, the earth has been on a very slow cooling trend. And even more recently, within the past 50 years, most natural forcings have been toward cooling, yet we've had warming.

This has been tested with models and they indicate that, if not for human emissions of greenhouse gases, we would likely have seen slight cooling over the past 50 years.

See Figure SPM 6 here:
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf

I would welcome such prosecution because it would open up all the so-called evidence of no global warming/climate change to discovery. Defense attorneys would then hire real scientists to comb through the falsified blog postings, cherry picked data, and other frauds and malfeasance that make up the global warming denial scam. In the process exposing the hoax for what it is, a pan-global plan for continuing to profit off activities that are destroying the Earth.

Furthermore a thorough investigation of the revenue sources that fund the so-called sceptics of global warming.

Not_Man_Made... "I can call a spade a spade: It is a tyranny under the elites."

As I just pointed out, the first amendment does NOT give you the right to deceive and harm people.

All those who are complaining now, where were you when James Inhofe called for the incarceration of a number of climate scientists, because, well, maybe they did something illegal or something. And did you protest when Cuccinelli used FOIA to try and get e-mails?

Exactly, Marco.

Great letter. Would sign or /and second that.

@ ^ Not_Man_Made : Yeah the first amendment is there and applies - but not here really.

RICO ain't fascism , suggest you check a dictionary.

Project much?

A spade is a spade, climate science is climate science, facts are observed and have constantly and overwhelmingly supported the reality of Global Overheating.

Elites? You mean the people who know what they are talking about here? Or ..?

Evidence?

It is a scientific fact that baring dramatic action to cut the GHG emitted from fossil fuels, human civilization will come to an end. That is what the vast majority of scientists tell us the science says.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/august/climate-change-speed-080113.h…

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/11/three-graphs-showing-how-the-ie…

And what does 6C (Celsius degrees) actually mean?:

http://www.c-span.org/video/?203400-1/words-mark-lynas

You don't believe it. I get it. But who cares about your opinion when we have the opinion of the vast majority of scientists to listen to?

The CIA doesn't.
http://climateandsecurity.org/tag/cia/

The Pentagon doesn't.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/31/pentagon-ranks-global-warm…

And I don't either.

James Inhofe... I can call a spade a spade: It is a tyranny under the elites. Oh wait. "It is a tyranny under the inferiors."

Senator James Inhofe, making a stunning public admission of his own duplicity regarding global warming:
"I thought it must be true until I found out what it cost."
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/03/16/446008/inhofe-maddow-global…

Tells you all you need to know...

I've always wondered how desperate people manage to get their brains tied up in such intricate knots as to be able to hold the cognitive dissonance of their own ideological nonsense together...

No wonder they said, "The Truth will set you free..."

Some of us have learned that every word that comes out of the mouth of a politician is a lie, and every action is a crime. We no longer pay attention to them. Except to pay enough protection money to keep their enforcement goons from kidnapping us and caging us like animals.

One must wonder, How many of mankind's problems would have been solved by now if these "ideology fanatics" had applied all that mental energy to producing something constructive rather than wasting it torturing logic, truth, and propriety to glorify their "god of the mind"?

Sorry... Thought I'd take a small philosophy break amidst the heat of battle. Carry on, gents!

"Brainstorms
September 22, 2015

James Inhofe… I can call a spade a spade: It is a tyranny under the elites. Oh wait. “It is a tyranny under the inferiors.”

Senator James Inhofe, making a stunning public admission of his own duplicity regarding global warming:
“I thought it must be true until I found out what it cost.”
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/03/16/446008/inhofe-maddow-global…

Tells you all you need to know…"

Really, from Think Progress. Please don't insult my intelligence. We Conservatives like to say “Liberals are so open minded the their brains fall out” and sites like Think Progress are the reason this opinion. How would you like if I countered your post an article from Foxnews? I would never do that, I would grab something from Breitbart.

nmm, that you make an issue out of the messenger, rather than making an issue out of the message itself is rather telling...

Would it comfort you if the quote was published by Breitbart instead?

Please don’t insult my intelligence.

Inhofe.

Hmm, but don't they also have a video clip of him actually saying it? If he said it, then he said it. The source is irrelevant.

Typical denialist. Deny first, and don't ask questions later. They wrap themselves in ideological cocoons of detritus, then they become vicious when larger realities threaten to intrude on their little spittle-glue homes.

A quick glance at the comments here shows a number of things. Many bloggers here have terrible reading comprehension and no evidence of deductive abilities of any sort. Knee jerk reactions and name calling are used in place of any scientific evidence of any sort. A discussion of the scientific principles involved in this climate problem does not seem to be possible here. A complete distrust of scientists at NASA and NOAA prevents a discussion of the obvious data trends. Appeals to totally crazy conspiracies bring the discussion to a really primitive, childish level. Source after source can be found to show that fossil fuel companies have had knowledge of the greenhouse gas problem for years. And source after source can be cited to show their continued attempts to confuse the public about it through think tanks and paid misinformation specialists. But these facts are completely ignored by the shouting squads. Carbon dioxide? Infrared? These are words rarely invoked by people who think that climate change is a big joke, by people who think that a blog about science or climatology is just an opportunity to take pot shots at people who have a different and more informed view of reality.

Here is a challenge to the rigid believers in their God given right to wreck this rocky orb for their own pleasure. Do you ever look at the weight of evidence of each side of this argument? Do you ever do a thought experiment where you take the other point of view of this argument and see what is right or wrong about it? Can you look at the evidence for or against an argument without dragging in the security blanket of your personal political or religious views? If you cannot look at and discuss both sides of the issue, then you are basically just coming here to have a rock fight, to bludgeon and try to humiliate anyone who doesn't feel and think exactly the way you think that they should.

Have a nice day.

The source is irrelevant.

Apparently, to a dedicated ideologist, the source is everything and the message is irrelevant, and anyone who dares notes that "the emperor has no clothes" will be laughed away.

I second PeterM1965’s #196:
“I would welcome such prosecution because it would open up all the so-called evidence of global warming/climate change to discovery. Defense attorneys would then hire real scientists to comb through the falsified records, cherry picked data, and other frauds and malfeasance that make up the global warming scam. In the process exposing the hoax for what it is, a pan-global plan for taxation. Furthermore a thorough investigation of the revenue sources that fund the so-called science of global warming.”
....................

Also, how many people were killed by man-made global warming/climate change last year, and how many are projected to be killed this year and next? Please provide the specifics on the manner of death.

Does all the content at scienceblogs bring out the kooks?

IMO, this is a perfect tactic for dealing with the corruption racket brought about by those who would take advantage of the ignorant masses for their own profit.

" This RICO proposal, in sharp contrast, is fascism."

Do you even own a dictionary?

I for one am grateful for the enormous climate change in the past.
For example, I’d much rather have New York state’s Finger Lakes than the glaciers which formed them.
I like the warmer temperatures, too. Now you can boat and swim and fish in those lakes. They even grow wine grapes on their adjacent hill sides.

Any ideas on what caused the tropical environment at the North Pole?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-north-pole-once-was-tropical/

sn, please provide the specifics on how you can continually be so effing stupid.

Looks like you guys are getting to dean. Good job.

To a criminal, all laws are some form of fascism. Thus, libertarianism.

And it's true, laws are sort of the imposition of the will of the majority upon a minority .. of criminals.

So what they're saying makes sense, if you look at it from their POV. It's just that society doesn't look at it from their POV.

RICO laws aren't a form of fasicsm. Free speech doesn't cover shouting "NO FIRE" in a burning theater. I would love to see the Lomborgs of the world brought up before a jury of THEIR ACTUAL peers. You know it's got to be their worst nightmare- to be forced to defend their theories to their peers with their freedom hanging in the balance. But hey, if that's where you want to take it, why not ask them how they feel about the idea?

The denier theories haven't convinced the other 98% of climate scientists to date and they wouldn't convince them in a court of law either.

Dean@~229

He can't. The fundagellicals I've spent time with intentionally regressed down a minimalist hole and then pulled the opening in behind them. That is to say, there was a lot of talk about being children of God, and long story short, the preaching actively cultivated immaturity and complete dependence on church leaders.

In his head, SN is just a five year old who's been told you're a baddie. Yet another brainwashed waste of time.

So here is a good example of what I am talking about. Someone makes an accusation ( falsified records, cherry picked data and other frauds) that basically appears to amount to saying that our American scientists at NASA and NOAA don't know what they are talking about. or worse, they are falsifying data.

To me, making an accusation like that is preposterous without verifiable information to back it up. When someone makes an accusation like that without a shred of real evidence, I have to wonder... Are they just feaking A delusional? Or are they sociopathic and like to lie? Do they like to hurt people? Are they paid to put forth such vile lies? Or do they do it for free, for the fun of it? Do they know they are being played? Or are they doing the playing themselves?

Tropical storm Sandy was a harbinger of things to come. It was the largest tropical depression ever recorded in the Atlantic basin if I remember correctly. It killed over two hundred people, and there is little doubt that it is linked to anomalous climate change and our rising seas. But I can imagine climate change denialists decades in the future trying to deny that a single death can be linked to AGW even when coastal flooding, drought induced famine , famine induced wars, and other extreme climate related calamities crowd the headlines. It is, after all, so much easier to defend inertia and criticize imperfect knowledge and the actions of others, than it is to get up and cause change.

"Really, from Think Progress."

Since you don't like Think Progress, straight from the horse's mouth, he says it about here:
https://youtu.be/TdaZ5zIWB-M?t=247

Sorry, that didn't quite work. It is at about 4:07

#236 SteveP said, "So here is a good example of what I am talking about. Someone makes an accusation ( falsified records, cherry picked data and other frauds) that basically appears to amount to saying that our American scientists at NASA and NOAA don’t know what they are talking about. or worse, they are falsifying data."

Can't tell if you were replying to me, since you didn't say. I didn't accuse ANYBODY of that. Just said that when somebody does that, you can't trust them. The original hockey puck graph that Al Gore featured so prominently was completely bogus, from what I've read since then. I don't know about NASA's or the NOAA's research. Maybe it's sound. I have no way of assessing that. And you probably don't either.

I do know one thing, though. If any of this were real, people would be looking for real engineering solutions, e.g. removing CO2 from the atmosphere, not trying to collect lots of money with no obvious use advertised for it.

Yup, you can see the expression change on her face when that revelation emerged. The "OMG Moment".

For Inhofe, "...until I found out what it cost" changes the nature of his reality. Extremely dangerous.

There oughtta be a law! Wait... wait...

Just said that when somebody does that, you can’t trust them.

Which is exactly why we (you) cannot trust any of these infamous science deniers portrayed in many of Greg's blog posts. They're all guilty of doing those things.

The original hockey puck graph that Al Gore featured so prominently was completely bogus, from what I’ve read since then.

You're not reading enough. Or, you're not reading enough of the proper publications (to find out). [So, there's hope.]

I don’t know about NASA’s or the NOAA’s research. Maybe it’s sound. I have no way of assessing that. And you probably don’t either.

Many, MANY scientists commenting in Greg's blog do know. It's been assessed. And it's sound. That's the bad news...

If any of this were real, people would be looking for real engineering solutions, e.g. removing CO2 from the atmosphere

Many have been looking for real engineering solutions. We also need real political policies for dealing with it. We need both. And the science deniers, in their self-serving desire to kill the messenger and deny the message, are working to block policy and hamper those solutions. That's the worse news.

The irony is that the deniers don't get that they're cutting their own throats. And those of everyone's children, too, by doing so.

Bill St. Clair:

"The original hockey puck graph that Al Gore featured so prominently was completely bogus, from what I’ve read since then."

This just demonstrates that you don't read science, you read people who lie about science and whose lies fit your preconceptions.

Bill, I can empathize with you. (I often provide software that's used in the course of climate research; I work for NASA.)

If you can't make head nor tails of climate research papers, then the next best thing is a good proxy: Listen to the opinions of other experts who do understand them.

In this case, consider the collective opinion of 98% of those who have the expertise to make a judgment on this subject. They say it's real, honest, and accurate.

You can also consider those who are using questionable tactics to spread Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about the science results. They lack the degrees in the field, have no peer-reviewed papers published on the subject, and argue not from science but from (mainly) economic self-interest and emotionally-appealing pseudo-logic.

Bill St. Clair... "Taxation, on the other hand, affects me hugely. Steals nearly a third of everything I make, just in income taxes, social security, and medicare."

Taxation is not stealing. You're receiving the benefits of those tax dollars every day. Roads, safe food and drugs, safe air travel, new discoveries, new medicines...

If you look at places in the world with little or no taxation, I don't think you'd find them attractive places to live, unless you happen to be a billionaire warlord with your own army.

" Steals nearly a third of everything I make, just in income taxes, social security, and medicare"

Steals? No, not stealing at all. You earned your education by using the taxes of people paid before you, you are repaying society for the opportunities you have.

Stealing is the mantra used by people who think "I have mine so screw everyone else."

Rob Honeycutt, it doesn't matter what the money various governments extort from me is used for. I don't give it voluntarily. And I have nearly no control over how they use it (I get to vote for a so-called "representative" every two years, who, even if the guy I voted for wins, can't possibly represent 600,000 people). Hence, it's theft. No discussion possible.

Brainstorms, I'm going to check out now. You appear to have found people who's opinion you trust. I don't trust anybody on climate change. I just see tyrants wanting to steal more money. Fuck them all. I'd rather let the planet burn than pay any of them one more penny.

" Fuck them all. I’d rather let the planet burn than pay any of them one more penny."

Congratulations. This is the meme that your party's been searching for.

"[I]t doesn’t matter what the money various governments extort from me is used for. I don’t give it voluntarily. And I have nearly no control over how they use it (I get to vote for a so-called “representative” every two years, who, even if the guy I voted for wins, can’t possibly represent 600,000 people)."

(Silly me...I thought that elected representatives distinguished a Republic from a Democracy.)

To SteveP #236:

“Someone makes an accusation ( falsified records, cherry picked data and other frauds) that basically appears to amount to saying that our American scientists at NASA and NOAA don’t know what they are talking about. or worse, they are falsifying data.”

Do you mean like these?
“NOAA/NASA Dramatically Altered US Temperatures After The Year 2000”
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/noaanasa-dramatically-al…

See also:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/10916086/The-scandal-…
…………

You say “Tropical storm Sandy was a harbinger of things to come. It was the largest tropical depression ever recorded in the Atlantic basin if I remember correctly. It killed over two hundred people, and there is little doubt that it is linked to anomalous climate change and our rising seas.”

And yet, I read elsewhere that
“The 2015 Atlantic hurricane season may be one of the least active in decades, according to an initial forecast issued Thursday by Colorado State University…
The 2014 season featured the fewest number of named storms in 17 years (eight storms)…”

Google “fewest hurricanes in years+weather channel”

@235: You've missed most of sn's most amazing bits of dishonesty and stupidity: saying he would accept evolution when, as it predicts, one animal gives birth to another of a different species, that nobody should spend time or money studying anything unless there is an immediate application available (relating to cosmology at Ethan's), and so on.

His views on minorities and women are even worse.

"Looks like you guys are getting to dean. Good job"

Yeah, because it is totally unreasonable to get fed up with the never ending lies and outright stupidity from people like you and sn.

Dean, yeah I gloss over a lot of SNs bull glop, but that's only because everything I have read of his is predictably despicable. Believe me, I'm not downplaying that aspect of his behavior.

“You’ve missed most of sn’s most amazing bits of dishonesty and stupidity… that nobody should spend time or money studying anything unless there is an immediate application available (relating to cosmology at Ethan’s), and so on…
Yeah, because it is totally unreasonable to get fed up with the never ending lies and outright stupidity from people like you and sn.”

The demon dean recently said to me: “Since YOU CALLED ME LIAR before, WHEN I pointed out your comment that “no money should be spent studying things just for the sake of learning” comment on Ethan’s blog…” http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2015/09/14/drum-states-it-plain/#…

When I asked him to provide the “liar” link to refresh my memory, I got no response.

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

That’s a quote from one of the above letter’s signatories, Kevin Trenberth.
And there’s more on Trenbeth:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/19/climate-alarmists-ob…

Here’s some background on the lead signatory, Jagadish Shukla:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/22/lead-climate-scienti…

Bill St. Clair… “Taxation, on the other hand, affects me hugely. Steals nearly a third of everything I make, just in income taxes, social security, and medicare.”

You do know that your salary would decrease by 1/3 if taxation was done away with tomorrow, right? You know salaries are set with the awareness on the part of the employers that 1/3 of their employee's pay goes to taxes,

Furthermore, *it's not your money*. Taxes was not and never is yours. It's taxes that were not collected by the government which you owe.

Be glad you make enough to owe money at the end of the year, Most people don't even make that much, and no, they're not "freeloading" off taxpayers- they're impoverished, desperate and exploited by their employers, employers like Walmart and McDonalds who don't even pay a living wage.

Of course you're free to join their ranks anytime you want if you really think they're living on Easy Street.

And what Rob Honeycutt said bears repeating:

Taxation is not stealing. You’re receiving the benefits of those tax dollars every day. Roads, safe food and drugs, safe air travel, new discoveries, new medicines…

If you look at places in the world with little or no taxation, I don’t think you’d find them attractive places to live, unless you happen to be a billionaire warlord with your own army.

We should look on taxation for what it is: an Accounts Payable. It's a debt that we owe for goods received and services rendered.

To not pay your taxes is to be a thief. (Or a 1%er, as the case may be.)

I've always liked Warren Buffett's comments on taxes.

1) "Writing checks to the IRS that include strings of zeros does not bother me."

2) "Through all my years of investing, tax rates have never been a factor in my willingness to invest in companies."

The taxes that come out of your paycheck are the cost of being a citizen of the United States. They give you the tremendous privileges you enjoy every day of your life.

Exactly. If climate change isn't mitigated- and by mitigated I don't mean a politically palatable compromise to do something is agreed upon, I mean mitigated, people with Bill St Clair's concerns are going to have a lot more to worry about than the extra 1/3 their employer pays them to account for taxation.

And no, they're not the people who are going to rise to the top in a MadMax dystopia and no, neither are the 1%ers. They're going to know only total destruction. They make their lives and money off a well complex and well functioning system which is not set up to endure the chaos of masses of migrating, starving people, water wars, the spread of extremism into the formerly compliant middle classes and all the rest.

We are the real conservatives here. We are the people who are trying to conserve our way of life, our traditions and our values by protecting and defending the ecosystem that invisibly supports them all.

To the person who said he'd rather see the whole world burn than pay more taxes - I am going to guess you don't have any children.

He does have at least one kid.

And the political Conservatives are mainly interested only in preserving their income streams. With a distinct short-term view that puts them on course to lose it in the long-term.

They don't get that we're not only trying to conserve our interests, we're trying to conserve theirs, too. Ironically, they see us as a (false) enemy to their interests and keep trying to shoot themselves in the foot. (Or head, as it were.)

“Looks like you guys are getting to dean. Good job”

"Yeah, because it is totally unreasonable to get fed up with the never ending lies and outright stupidity from people like you and sn."

Sorry dean, I mis-interpreted a short post of yours. If I had read the surrounding context, I would not have posted. Long story short, I thought you were a denier.

I am glad I came back to see this

"I don’t trust anybody on climate change. I just see tyrants wanting to steal more money. Fuck them all. I’d rather let the planet burn than pay any of them one more penny."

Well, at least he is honest and allows us to see the mentality with whom we are dealing.

sn, I did respond (twice) when you denied making that comment: here it is, from Ethan's blog (discussion was about modern cosmology, which sn dismisses because he doesn't understand it).

I don’t buy the argument that it’s just to learn. Nobody advocates, or should advocate, spending untold man-years and billions of dollars just to learn more about something that has no impact on our daily lives.

You then denied saying it, and later tried to triple down. Nobody bought your crap then and shouldn't now.

Still citing things from breitbart? Those folks are smooth liars - almost as smooth as you.

As I noted above, the demon dean recently said to me: “Since YOU CALLED ME LIAR before, WHEN I pointed out your comment that “no money should be spent studying things just for the sake of learning” comment on Ethan’s blog…” http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2015/09/14/drum-states-it-plain/#…

I’ve asked him several times now to provide the link where I called him a liar on this subject, but he has yet to do so.
So, he’s probably lying about the “LIAR” stuff.
What a shocker that would be.

See Noevo, since you lie all the time, it would be an easy mistake to make.

I am one of the signers of the RICO letter. There's a lot of exaggerations about the RICO investigation we called for. It would be very narrowly focused on corporations that might be making fraudulent claims about a product they sell (fossil fuels) and would not prosecute citizens for their views on climate science. http://mason.gmu.edu/~bklinger/rico.html

Barry, thanks for that comment.

sn @272: are you so dishonest that you don't recognize the quote of yours I repeated from Ethan's blog on cosmology?
It is @271

Back to our congenital liar
From Ethan's blog in February 2015, on issues in cosmology

sn, comment 5: feb 4, 2015

I may not be sufficiently up-to-date. What might be the newest Big Bang Band-Aid besides dark matter/dark energy?

sn, comment 15, about the model involving dark matter when, after objecting to dark matter, was asked
to propose another model with the same explanatory power:

I don’t have another scientific model. But I DON’T NEED another scientific model in order to know that YOUR/THEIR model smells like a P O S. But I guess some scientists just want SOMETHING to cling to. Even if it’s mushy and odorous.

february 4, 2015, same string, #17, after being called on his earlier asinine comments

Eric #16 says “…we continue to use the best available explanations for phenomena to guide our studies and help us make decisions, untill better explanations come along.”
His citing of “help us make decisions” brought to mind two questions:
First
“Help us make decisions” about what? Are these decisions that will have any practical impact our daily lives?
Second
Related to the First, what is the purpose of MODERN cosmology?
OLD cosmology, even ancient cosmology, at least had practical benefits for navigation and tide and temperature predictions.
But what’s the purpose of modern cosmology?
I don’t buy the argument that it’s just to learn. Nobody advocates, or should advocate, spending untold man-years and billions of dollars just to learn more about something that has no impact on our daily lives. Whatever could be the purpose?

The problem you have sn, is that since every single thing you say is a lie, you forget which ones you've said.

It is telling to see the double standard of denialists constantly saying there should be investigations of science to "expose the corruption" but with no specific details, but screaming with outrage at the discussion of an investigation with this narrow a focus.
What do they have to hide? :)

Re my ending question -I agree with your rating of it - my intent with the hint of humor at the end was to poke fun at their endorsement of it for their purposes but offense at it when it is aimed at them. Apparently I failed.

#274
Bad science should be corrected. So should bad English:
<i<There’s a lot of exaggerations about the RICO investigation...

Should be:
There are a lot of exaggerations about the RICO investigation...
http://www.grammar.cl/Present/ThereIsThereAre.htm

OK, I'll back a RICO investigation into climate change deniers when these same self-righteous "academics" back a RICO investigation into GEOENGINEERING!
Anthropogenic climate change is real.
They are spraying it over our heads EVERYDAY.
Wake up to the real climate change deniers; those who deny that geoengineering is REAL and wreaking havoc on our beautiful planet.

"Operation Fumigate Humanity "

Great band - saw them in Chicago in '98.

I am a little curious about what Dennis could possibly meant by geoengineering - but not curious enough to really want to know.

Re. #295

I know of two Swedish climate blogs. The one linked to here is the denialist blog. The article accuses some of the scientists behind the call for a RICO investigation of being corrupt.

The other blog, Uppsalainitiativet, "TAR KLIMAVETENSKAPEN PÅ ALLVAR" (takes climate science seriously).
http://uppsalainitiativet.blogspot.dk/ (Danish address)

The most recent article from Inside Climate News:

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/23092015/ExxonMobil-May-Face-Heighten…

Previous articles:

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/Exxons-own-research-confirme…
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/16092015/exxon-believed-deep-dive-int…
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/18092015/exxon-confirmed-global-warmi…

The Republicans are back to doing what they do best:

"A climate scientist who was the lead signatory on a letter urging President Obama to launch a federal investigation into whether fossil fuel companies "knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change" is now facing an investigation by Congress because of his part in the letter.

Jagadish Shukla, a climate scientist at George Mason University in Virginia, received notice Oct. 1 that the non-profit research organization he runs, the Institute of Global Environment and Society (IGES), will soon be investigated by the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology for suspected misuse of federal funding."
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/07102015/climate-scientist-shukla-bac…

The next article in the Inside Climate News series will be about Exxon and climate denialism:
Part VI: Exxon embarks on a public campaign of climate denial that would last for decades.

Naomi Oreskes has an op-ed on Exxon's research and denialism in today's New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/opinion/exxons-climate-concealment.ht…

Shukla looks to be the one with something to hide:

http://climateaudit.org/2015/09/28/shuklas-gold/

Oh btw - The RICO 20 'Letter To President Obama' has disappeared from the IGES website.

Looks like the alarmists learned nothing from the Raul Grijalva witch hunt fiasco.

Since the letter is no longer posted on the original website, it may not have been genuine. Has anyone checked with the listed authors of the letter on that issue? But let's suppose that it was genuine and not a hoax. There are many fundamentalist clerics who preach that the Earth and the universe is only 6,000 years old. I dare say that the scientific evidence and consensus that they are both far older is even more complete than that related to global warming. So should there be a RICO suit against such clerics, who have convinced millions of their views? I think not.

Daniel, it is genuine.

The answer to your question is, simply, no. And, your question, and the obvious answer, are unrelated to the matter at hand.

This is without doubt one most shrill and desperate reactions to date by idiotic warmists. Let me get this straight: They present some evidence, then demand money from the government so that they can create/discover more, in order to prove negative effects of our ever-changing climate. Then, they demand that that same government shut down any other researchers, who may be have any chance of providing any research that would refute the claims of warmists - is that about right? If the warmists are so confident that they are correct about their theories, then why would they worry about any competing data? The very idea of shutting down objective scientific inquiry is utterly anathema to the definition of the term.

Exxons days are numbered for sure, and it will be quicker than we ever dreamed. Definitely Exxon will be liquidated to pay legal bills arising from this issue, and theyre lucky thats as far as it goes.

It is the height of pretentious fantasy to claim that a 1 part per MILLION annual increase in carbon dioxide is driving earth's climate, particularly when:

1. There has been global cooling for the past 18 years,
2. The basis of total greenhouse gases is almost 16,000 parts per million, of which water vapor is 15,000 ppm.

Anthropogenic globlal warming is a fraud being perpetuated to continue scamming hundreds of billions of dollars for "research" which always shows the same predictable. results.

Presenting data which runs counter to an accepted hypothesis is now considered unscientific.

We now use religious terms like "Deniers" to describe people who question what government funded researchers describe as "accepted science" - because there is no way a computer model of long term weather patterns could ever be wrong.

And every time different scientists run those same models they get the same results and reach the same conclusions.

So, any other models would have to be heretical.

We now use religious terms like “Deniers”...

The notion that describing someone as a denier because they, well gosh, deny what the science says, is a use of a religious term is new to me. It's a level of stupid equal to saying "denier" should not be used because the intent is to equate them with Holocaust deniers.

So the question is: are the anti-science folks that completely clueless, or is it starting to sink in that their repeated misrepresentation of facts isn't working and they are simply resorting to more and more hyperbole?

Could it possibly be that the reason these scum of the earth companies are in the climate change denial business is because they know the truth?
Could it be that they KNOW there is no CO2 induced climate change because they are GEOENGINEERING the shit out of us?
The ONLY deniers, in my opinion, are the ones who deny GEOENGINEERING! Period.
Unless and until, folks are ready to accept that those trails in the sky are NOT contrails; we are never going to solve ANY of the problems presented by a fluctuating and out of control climate.
I am so sick of the smugness that most on this site seem to share.
Get it through your academic sycophantic heads, GEOENGINEERING is causing ALL of the problems wew see in our natural environment. End of discussion.
The science is settled, GEOENGINEERING is real, it has been in effect. at least according to the freaking gov't scientists who work in the OST, for at least 70 years, it is wreaking havoc on ALL life support systems and it is never going to stop until WE stop it or we are ALL dead.
So, keep feeling so superior to us (me) stupid "chemtards", your breath is being stolen from you, the earths life support systems are being destroyed for you, and the end will come in the same excruciatingly painful way for you.
Let go of your ego, open your damn eyes, and HELP stop the destruction.
Dennis

Could it be that they KNOW there is no CO2 induced climate change because they are GEOENGINEERING the shit out of us?
The ONLY deniers, in my opinion, are the ones who deny GEOENGINEERING! Period.
Unless and until, folks are ready to accept that those trails in the sky are NOT contrails; we are never going to solve ANY of the problems presented by a fluctuating and out of control climate.
I am so sick of the smugness that most on this site seem to share.
Get it through your academic sycophantic heads, GEOENGINEERING is causing ALL of the problems wew see in our natural environment. End of discussion.
The science is settled, GEOENGINEERING is real, it has been in effect. at least according to the freaking gov’t scientists who work in the OST, for at least 70 years, it is wreaking havoc on ALL life support systems and it is never going to stop until WE stop it or we are ALL dead.

The mechanical bird in my handmade Bavarian wall clock is impressed.

“Do you realize that in addition to adding chemtrails to our skies, why, there are studies underway to put geo-changing chemicals in salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake? Children’s ice cream!”

“You know when GEOENGINEERING began? 1946. Nineteen-Hundred and Forty-six, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Geo-Engineer works.”

“GEOENGINEERING is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face. I can no longer sit back and allow GEOENGINEERING infiltration, GEOENGINEERING indoctrination, GEOENGINEERING subversion and the international GEOENGINEERING conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids...”

Geo-Engineering gap

That's another band I saw in the 70s - in Detroit.

Non-tangent: About five years ago I found a little shop in Milwaukee - in my younger days it would have been called a head shop. Records, all sorts of interesting pipe-like devices, even black lights. The guy behind the counter was in his 60s, mostly bald but with pony tail and long beard. I asked if he had any Commander Cody CDs or albums and if he did I'd buy them. Turns out he was from Ann Arbor and knew them when they started. The kicker: he said
"Man, I saw a lot of their shows and had some great times. I just wish I could remember them."

Too many foreign substances or the effects of geo-engineering. I report, you decide. :)

The sixth article in the Inside Climate News series:
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/22102015/Exxon-Sowed-Doubt-about-Clim…

A couple of congressmen are urging Loretta Lynch to investigate whether Exxon(Mobile) broke any laws.
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/16102015/two-us-representatives-seek-…

Senator Sanders too has written Lynch a letter calling for an inquiry into Exxon's possible violations.
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20102015/bernie-sanders-calls-investi…

Oops –
Exxon(Mobil)

Came here to be entertained. Was not disappointed. Thanks Dennis!

Dean is jackassphile’s SOCK PUPPET account. The two are never apart when someone on this site DARES to tell the truth, especially about geoengineering.
Best to you,
Dennis

Thanks Dennis. There may have been a few people left who weren't sure whether you are as large an idiot as you seem. Thanks for doubling done to erase the doubt from their minds.

Desertphile, you post as often as everyone else combined, as if quantity would compensate for your utter lack of quality and lack of ability to do anything besides follow the environmental hypocrites all of whom are professional liars with billion dollar axes to continue grinding.

Alan, not that Desertphile needs anyone to defend him, but: the fact that folks like you are unable, or unwilling, or both, to understand even the most basic science being discussed does not mean his comments are content-free. It does, however, speak volumes about you.

Alan, do you have an ability to do anything besides follow the fossil-fuel industry hypocrites all of whom are professional liars with billion dollar axes to continue grinding.

The pot sure thinks that shiny, polished kettle is looking awfully black...

I have never heard such drivel as I read in most of these comments. A bunch of Pseudo scientists rolling in their own scat.
Why don't you read something other than that which you want to believe, like someone who disagrees with your position and has backing of a "true" majority of scientists.

someone who ... has backing of a “true” majority of scientists.

You mean someone like Michael Mann? James Hansen?

How about Richard Muller? He was skeptical about the results being published by the true majority of scientists... Until he took a good look at the data and now realizes that that true majority of scientists who used to disagree with his position were in fact correct. So now he believes the science as well and is one of those true majority scientists.

That is what you were referring to, right? Well, obviously so... They are the true scientists, and they are the majority, after all. Duh!

I have never heard such drivel as I read in Richard Watson's comment. A Pseudo scientist rolling in his own scat.
Why don’t you read something other than that which you want to believe, like someone who disagrees with your position and has backing of a “true” majority of scientists.

As author of The Carbon Series, a novel series that illustrates mankind's attempts to control CO2 going awry and threatening Earth's biosphere with suffocation, I feel slighted by not being included in the 'Gang of 20's' RICO threat. My novels detail how science is being manipulated by alarmists so the global economy can be controlled by elitists.

My novels detail how science is being manipulated by alarmists so the global economy can be controlled by elitists.

Are those the "climate science conspiracy" alarmists and the right-wing oligarch elitists, perchance? Good idea...

"My novels ..."

They are novels, not works of science. Did you miss that?

You who want to criminalize opinion may be the next to disagree; did you think about that?

You who want to conflate opinion with science may be the next to need science to save your ass; did you think about that?

"corporations and organizations" ....

Presumably tobacco corporations had financial gain by misinforming. I suppose there could be a parallel to fossil fuel corporations. Singling out other "organizations" would be a mistake. Sure, perhaps they make a buck or two on google adwords, but they are the real mouthpiece of denial. I don't think you can unload RICO on them without sacrificing the 1st amendment.

Sure if you get to the corporations they'd have to pay out billions, but did the tobacco case put the cigarette industry out of business? No, they just passed the legal fees on to their customers and insurance companies. You want an injunction against producing fossil fuels in the US? Fine. You want the UN to enforce this US RICO act globally? 80 percent of the world energy is from combustion fuel. Could net the world's governments a lot of cash. They'll need that cash to support the poor people that will be faced with massive increases in fuel costs as fossil energy companies recover their losses.