Just don't tell me the debate's over…
I didn't really love it beforehand…
It is likely (although not guaranteed) that ABC’s Media Watch will cover the ANU freedom of information request story tonight.
Regrettably, I think we can all guess that criticism will be reserved for The Australian‘s coverage of the FoI release rather than for the ABC’s original reporting of the story (still, as of 2.10pm AEST, to be corrected or clarified).
See more on ACM’s FoI page here.
Media Watch is at 9.20pm AEST on ABC1.
Australian graphic (Click to enlarge)
Chris Merritt, Legal Editor, writes today in the Weekend Australian of the ABC’s failure to correct their report of 4 June 2011, which claimed that ANU scientists had received “death threats” in the six months prior to the report:
THE accuracy of the ABC’s reporting on climate change has been called into question by an activist who uncovered documentary evidence that undermines one of the national broadcaster’s most sensational reports on the subject.
Climate change blogger Simon Turnill told The Weekend Australian the contents of 11 emails he uncovered using the Freedom of Information Act were at odds with last year’s ABC report that death threats had been made against climate scientists at the Australian National University.
Then, when the ABC reported on the contents of those emails after they were uncovered, it did so in a manner that he regarded as being incomplete. The ABC neglected to include the key fact that there was no evidence in those emails of death threats at ANU, contrary to previous ABC reports. Mr Turnill said he was disappointed but not surprised because he believed the ABC’s approach to climate change “toes the consensus line” and anyone who challenged the orthodoxy received short shrift.
The original ABC article read:
Several of Australia’s top climate change scientists at the Australian National University have been subjected to a campaign of death threats, forcing the university to tighten security.
Several of the scientists in Canberra have been moved to a more secure location after receiving the threats over their research.
Vice-chancellor Professor Ian Young says the scientists have received large numbers of emails, including death threats and abusive phone calls, threatening to attack the academics in the street if they continue their research.
He says it has been happening for the past six months and the situation has worsened significantly in recent weeks. (source)
But instead of conceding that there were no death threats to ANU scientists in the period referred to in the original story, the ABC merely repeated the claim that the emails contained abuse, conveniently forgetting that the original article referred specifically to “death threats”:
The Australian National University has released a series of abusive and threatening emails which were sent to its climate change scientists.
The 11 emails to members of the university’s Climate Change Institute have been made public after a Freedom of Information request. (source)
In reality, only 2 of the 11 emails were seriously abusive (of the crank “f*ck you” variety), with the majority containing language that could simply be viewed as passionate disagreement. Not one single email contained a “death threat”. The ABC has not clarified or corrected the following claim either, which appears in the same article:
One email, dated June 2, 2010, describes a threat to use a gun against an academic because a conference participant reportedly disagreed with the climate change research.
It has subsequently been revealed that the discussion in question related to kangaroo culling in the ACT, and the claim that it was a “threat to use a gun against an academic” is fiction. [Also, why was this email even included in the ANU’s FoI release? It occurred well before the six month period in question – Ed]
The Weekend Australian also reports that ABC’s Media Watch intends to report on the matter on Monday:
While accepting Mr Pilgrim’s findings that the 11 emails did not contain any death threats, Media Watch supervising producer Amy Donaldson asks how this newspaper could conclude that other alleged threats outlined in The Canberra Times had also been debunked.
While The Australian’s reporting had focused on Mr Turnill’s FOI investigation, Ms Donaldson asked why this newspaper had not approached other climate scientists. The parameters of Mr Turnill’s FOI request had been heavily influenced by the six-month timeframe used in the original ABC report asserting that there had been death threats at ANU.
Late yesterday, this newspaper sent questions of its own to Media Watch seeking a response from presenter Jonathan Holmes on whether he saw his role as defending climate change orthodoxy? Holmes replied: “No. The program’s role is to apply accepted journalistic standards to the output of the Australian mainstream media.”
Sounds all very reasonable. But, unfortunately, we know for a fact that Holmes is a believer in catastrophic man-made climate change, and has written about News Limited’s coverage of the issue in the past:
The evidence for climate change, since then [2007], has only got stronger. The reasons for taking precautionary action have only become more compelling. Of course News Ltd can’t, on its own, affect the global climate by reducing its carbon footprint, and nor can Australia. But if every company, and every nation, acted – or refrained from acting – on the basis of that logic, the chances of eventually stabilising global temperatures at less than catastrophic levels would be reduced to zero.
You have to be an alert and habitual reader to notice that week after week, year after year, The Australian and The Weekend Australian massage their news coverage and grossly unbalance their opinion pages so as to send the message that the existence of human-induced climate change is highly debatable, and that any action by Australia to reduce its emissions would be economically ruinous and politically foolish. (source)
And thankfully, Weekend editor Nick Cater spells it out:
“Media Watch’s flaw is that it is vulnerable to capture by its presenters’ pet obsession. Jonathan Holmes has taken a neutral stance on most issues, but on climate change he has clearly fallen victim to ABC group think.”
One has to ask, who benefits from this “death threat” story anyway? And who suffers? Clearly, the climate scientists who are portrayed as the victims of this campaign will be viewed sympathetically, whilst the story also helpfully demonises anyone who questions the consensus view on climate as a crackpot who would go to the extreme measures of sending death threats to silence debate.
Last week’s Media Watch headline reads “Sensational stories invite serious scrutiny”. I wonder if the ABC’s sensational (and inaccurate) story of death threats at ANU will receive the same treatment?
Weekend Australian, p3, 19 May 2012
FOI request
UPDATE 3: Anthony at Watts Up? posts on this again (many thanks!):
UPDATE 2: Will Steffen speaks again on ABC’s The World Today (link):
“Well I think that newspaper headline you’ve got there in front of me called ‘Climate of Fear’ could actually be turned around to describe what happens in some cases to climate scientists and our staff.
But there’ve also been direct aggressive and threatening events, physically threatening events to some of my staff. But there were a couple of incidents there which my staff interpreted as being threatening and I think they had very good reason to do so.
I took a whole range of pieces of evidence – email, non-email and so on – to our security people at ANU (Australian National University) who are experts in the field and asked their advice. And their advice obviously taking a rather conservative position to ensure our safety, which is appropriate, that we move to much more secure quarters, which we have.”
“A rather conservative position”… Note how the ABC is once again cozying up to the alarmists and showing not a hint of critical questioning of anything Steffen says.
UPDATE: Alan Jones’ comment this morning is again on the death threat emails. Listen here.
They don’t learn do they? ANU’s Professor Will Steffen, the Gillard government’s alarmist in chief, was given a free kick to plug the Climate Commission’s latest doom and gloom report (video here). I’m not even going to bother going into it, because, well, life’s too short. What was more interesting was the response of Steffen to a very gentle question by the interviewer about the “death threat” emails:
Interviewer: Have you ever received a threatening email? Have you received a death threat in your work in the climate change area?
Steffen: It’s certainly a matter of perception there – I believe I have in terms of some very threatening actions to staff and to myself personally. They weren’t via email though and they weren’t during the period under question, so we certainly took the action we thought was appropriate. My number one concern was the safety and wellbeing of my staff and it wasn’t an isolated incident it was a number of incidents that were coupled with very threatening emails. I took all of this to experts on security, I’m not an expert on security, so I had to go to our own people to interpret what was going on. Their expert judgment was we needed to take some measures to ensure the safety and wellbeing of my staff and that was my number one priority.
Interviewer: You certainly got the impression you and your staff were under direct threat?
Steffen: I certainly got the impression I was and my staff were the recipients of some fairly aggressive actions in person.
So the threats were suddenly not by email, and they weren’t during the period in question, i.e six months before the story broke. So what did the ABC write again?
Several of Australia’s top climate change scientists at the Australian National University have been subjected to a campaign of death threats, forcing the university to tighten security.
Several of the scientists in Canberra have been moved to a more secure location after receiving the threats over their research.
Vice-chancellor Professor Ian Young says the scientists have received large numbers of emails, including death threats and abusive phone calls, threatening to attack the academics in the street if they continue their research.
He says it has been happening for the past six months and the situation has worsened significantly in recent weeks.
So according to the ABC, there were plenty of threats by email, and within the six months prior to the story, completely contradicting what Steffen said on the ABC this morning. Who’s right?
FOI request
UPDATE 1: Andrew Bolt has a lengthy article here (paywalled):
“Perfect Climate for Hollow Threats
IT was just too convenient, which is why some of us smelled a rat the day the story broke. It was June last year, and here’s the start of a Canberra Times story that went around the world.
“Australia’s leading climate change scientists are being targeted by a vicious, unrelenting email campaign that has resulted in police investigations of death threats.”
UPDATE 2: Tim Blair has more here.
UPDATE 3: Scans of The Australian article and Tim Blair’s article added below.
The Australian, which is doing a brilliant job of covering this story (thank you Christian), reports on page 2 the innocent discussion of kangaroo culling which top climate scientists at ANU decided to regard as a “death threat”:
SECOND-HAND accounts of a casual chat about Canberra’s regular kangaroo culls over dinner at an Australian National University forum on climate change turned the talk into a “serious threat of physical violence” against ANU researchers, one of the participants in the conversation believes.
The Australian revealed this month that 10 of 11 documents found in the wake of a Freedom of Information request lodged with the ANU after reports in Fairfax Media and on the ABC of “death threats” against climate scientists at the university were found by the Privacy Commissioner not to “contain threats to kill or threats of harm”.
An 11th, the commissioner ruled, “could be regarded as intimidating and at its highest perhaps alluding to a threat”. But he added: “I consider the danger to life or physical safety in this case to be only a possibility, not a real chance.”
The email says: “Looks like we’ve had our first serious threat of physical violence.”
A climate sceptic taking part in a deliberative democracy project on climate change in May 2010, it continues, “showed other participants his gun licence and explained to them how good a sniper he is”.
Retired Canberra public servant and 20-year kangaroo culler John Coochey believes he is the kangaroo culler referred to.
Mr Coochey took part in the first day of the project.
At a dinner for participants, he says, he was approached by the ACT’s then commissioner for sustainability and the environment, Maxine Cooper, whom he knew over matters to do with kangaroo culling, a vexed issue in Canberra.
Dr Cooper, Mr Coochey says, asked how he had gone in the annual accreditation test cullers are required to pass.
“I answered that I had top-gunned it with a perfect score,” he told The Australian. “I also showed her my new culling – not firearms – licence.”
Mr Coochey says he realised some fellow participants might have been disquieted by kangaroo shooting, so he “made small talk” about the marksmanship expertise needed to gain the licence.
“This has now been portrayed as ‘showing a firearms licence and boasting about my ability as a sniper’,” he complained yesterday. (source)
But for our brave climate experts, it’s back to business as usual, as commenter OhSmeg reports the ABC is already on to the rehabilitation process, interviewing Will Steffen on ABC Breakfast this morning, spruiking yet more alarmist projections (widely reported in Fairfax*, surprise!) for the end of the world due to a tiny increase in a harmless trace gas.
Funnier still however, is that he allegedly blamed the overreaction to the emails on “security experts”. Have yet to see the video of this exchange but will post when it becomes available.
*Fairfax inadvertently captions a photo of Flannery with the term “climate activist” – at least they’re finally honest about that. Impartial my foot.
The Australian, p2, 14 May 2012 (click to enlarge)
Tim Blair, Daily Telegraph, p13, 14 May 2012 (click to enlarge)
FOI request
With 10 of the 11 emails released by the ANU containing no threats, there has been considerable focus on the 11th, a third hand report of an alleged “threat” at an off-campus event, referred to as the “Deliberative democracy project”.
ACM commenter “mondo” was a participant at said project, referred to in Document 5. Click here to download the zip file if you haven’t done so already.
To give it its full title, which is (rather worryingly) Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance (“DDGG”) [who said anyone who mentions global governance is a conspiracy theorist? – Ed], part of the ANU, the unit describes itself thus:
Deliberative democracy is one of the major growth areas in contemporary political theory and social science, and ANU claims what is possibly the world’s largest concentration of deliberative democracy scholars. Many of the world’s leading deliberative democrats have spent time with us. The ‘Global Governance’ in our title emphasises research directions that encompass transnational democracy and democratisation, though research on democratic theory, local and national deliberation, and the micropolitics of deliberative forums also flourishes.
One of the projects of the DDGG was entitled “Climate Change & the Public Sphere” has a web site here with rather paltry information. It appears the intention of the project was to subject some volunteers to some alarming projections of possible climate change between now and 2100, asking them at each stage to answer a number of identical questions – presumably to show how they would be more willing to accept the alarmist scenarios when presented with this kind of information. The final research paper from the project appears to be this one.
The project took place on 28/29 May 2010, which ties in with the date the ANU email was sent (2 June 2010). That ANU email (document 5), which is claimed to be a veiled “death threat”, states :
Looks like we’ve had our first serious threat of physical violence. It has come from a participant in [redacted] deliberative democracy project last weekend. One of the participants left early after he too exception to my talk about climate science. [redacted] exact words were:
“Moreover, before he left, he came to the Fri dinner and showed other participants his gun licence and explained to them how good a sniper he is. Because he didn’t attend day 2 he will not be allowed to attend the final day. I will be notifying security to be on hand in case he turns up and causes a problem.”
I think the final day is this weekend but I am not sure. Anyway, I’ve asked [redacted] to brief the VC and the head of security ASAP. The latter will determine whether this should go to the AFP or not.
But in the meantime, we should be careful about anyone we don’t know who approaches our offices.
Commenter John Coochey admits to being the person in question in a comment posted on ACM (and at other blogs – with my emphasis):
I feel I can now throw some light on the matter. The document viewed as most “threatening” referred to an alleged Deliberation at the ANU about climate change in the Canberra region at which one person “made a death threat” (sic) by showing his gun licence and boasting about his skill as a sniper.. Only two people dropped out of the conference only one of those who did so attended the even meal. Me. I am certainly the one who is alleged to show someone their gun licence. That is not true while at the evening meal (of poor quality) comments moved to eating game meat and I was approached by the Commissioner for the Environment ACT, Dr Maxine Cooper who recognized me as someone involved in the kangaroo culling program in the ACT. She politely asked if she could sit at the vacant seat next to me and asked if I had past the recent licence test – not easy. I replied yes and showed her my current licence. I also impressed on any one interested the high standard of marksmanship necessary to allay any cruelty concerns. I might add that earlier in the day I had challenged two speakers to comment on a letter in the Canberra Times that claimed that temperatures had not increased in the Canberra area for decades. They were unable to do so, having not apparently checked the record despite the the “Deliberation” (conference) supposed to be about rising temperatures in the Canberra region. As all daytime conversations were recorded (we all signed waivers to allow this) this can easily be checked.
Mondo has now followed up by admitting to being the second “sceptic” to pull out of the project (my emphasis):
I was the other sceptic who left on the first day – the “stressed” one. You might have seen my comments at Catallaxy, Bishop Hill and Andrew Bolt on this. In case you haven’t this is what I said:
“I was the first sceptic referred to in the updates – the one that was “stressed”. That is a correct description. What I was stressed about was the incredibly manipulative way in which the so-called “forum” was conducted.
For example, Messrs Steffen and his team delivered presentations on various aspects of climate change. We were not allowed to ask questions, or to challenge the multifarious false statements made. Instead, we broke out into groups, with the idea that a group could ask a question. Of course, each group was dominated by “warmists”, and the lone sceptic in each group was a) abused, b) derided, c) not listened to.
The result was that Steffen and co were presented with soft questions that were based largely on ill-informed views, convenient to the organisers.
It is true that I was feeling stressed. But the reason was because while this was billed as an open-ranging discussion, in fact it was a tightly choreographed, manipulative discussion designed to capture an outcome favourable to the warmists. In no way was it a fair discussion.
All this soon became clear to me, and it was evident to me that it was fruitless and pointless to stay. I explained my issue to the organiser, and then left.
I met John Coochey at the forum. He is a knowledgeable and capable person, and I trust his account of the events relating to his gun license.
In fact, one of the aspects that I was annoyed about was that the forum had been billed as a “Citizen’s Jury” which implied that there would be opportunity for the “jury” to hear both sides, to cross-examine witnesses etc. Instead it was a tightly choreographed, controlled presentation of weak arguments from one side, with no opportunity (effectively) to ask questions.
So now we have two independent accounts of events at the Deliberative Democracy weekend. Unsurprisingly, with Will Steffen as one of the presenters, Mondo was rightly annoyed at the blatant propagandising of the climate debate according to the IPCC and the sceptics, in typical form, abused and ignored. So how was this comment so wildly misinterpreted by the project’s organisers that it turned into a “death threat”? Did they actually make any enquiries, or just take the email report of the exchange at face value?
Death threat?
UPDATE 2 (15 May 2012): Media Watch don’t touch the story – perhaps next week.
UPDATE: As Marc reports in the comments, the ABC appears utterly oblivious to any of this, still parroting the same line:
“They include an email describing a physical threat to use a gun against an academic because the conference participant reportedly disagreed with the climate change research.” (source)
This is turning into the story that keeps on giving. After yesterday’s revelation that the one possible “threat” was actually an innocent discussion about culling kangaroos, now Legal Affairs editor Chris Merritt writes in The Weekend Australian:
Media Watch eyes climate scientist death threat claims
AFTER triggering a global news event with reports about death threats against climate scientists, the ABC and Fairfax Media are under investigation by Media Watch after a central plank supporting their reports was found to be non-existent.
Before the flaws in their reports were revealed, their versions of the truth had been picked up by Britain’s The Guardian and the scientific journal Nature.
The critical error in their reports, which has been revealed by The Australian, is that emails held by the Australian National University that were supposed to outline death threats against climate scientists have been independently assessed as containing no death threats.
Those emails were made public on Tuesday after a long Freedom of Information campaign by blogger Simon Turnill.
But when ABC radio chose to report on the affair yesterday, it did not reveal that the ABC had reported on June 5 last year that ANU climate scientists “have been targeted by death threats”.
Others who gave credence to the “death threats” story were Lateline presenter Tony Jones, who asked Chief Scientist Ian Chubb on June 22 last year whether he was worried that scientists were receiving death threats.
“Oh, absolutely,” Professor Chubb replied. “I mean, I think it’s appalling.”
Media Watch executive producer Lin Buckfield said yesterday one of her program’s researchers was examining reports on the affair that had been carried by The Australian, ABC news, Lateline and The Canberra Times. “If through our inquiries we decide that an item is warranted, we will proceed accordingly,” she said.
Click to enlarge
UPDATE: Cut & Paste (humorous editorial section) focusses on the same story here:
Click to enlarge
The report goes on to claim that the Canberra Times‘ reporting of the threats at ANU was “in tatters”, as were the associated reports by the ABC. It also correctly states that the ABC,
“focused on the abuse – not the fact that they provide documentary evidence that the ABC produced flawed reports that have not been corrected.”
The full article is here.
Ian Young
The ABC reports on the release of the death threat emails and quotes the ANU Vice Chancellor:
“My view is the more we discuss these things in public – these are emotive issues – the more you tend to beat the whole issue up.
“We had issues, we dealt with them we believe in an appropriate way and we don’t want to make more of it than that.” (source)
Then please explain why you chose to release the story to the media in the first place?
Unbelievable.
FOI request
The ANU on Tuesday agreed to release the 11 emails which were the subject of my FOI request, redacted to maintain the privacy of the individuals concerned. LINK HERE to a ZIP file of the documents. The Australian reports on this here.
Analysis of the Documents
Seven out of the eleven documents contain no threats, and at worst contain mild abuse – these are documents 1, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10 and 11.
Document 1 discusses Svensmark and CLOUD, is generally polite, is signed “a concerned citizen” and the worst that can be said is that it says:
“Are you morally and ethically aware (awake) of your actions? ALSO please stop telling lies about sea level rises. It is so full of BS it is not funny it is insulting to anyone with enough intelligence to do simple research about sea level rises.”
Document 3 refers to Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery’s failed predictions and the government funding for climate alarmists. One paragraph refers to ANU scientists as “con men” and another reads:
“We have had enough! Sometime in the future your days of leeching off the tax payers of Australia will end and you will be looking for work in the employment office where you might find a real job and contribute to society in a positive way.”
This could be viewed as abuse, or alternatively merely strongly worded and passionate disagreement.
Document 4 refers to Will Steffen’s claim in the warmist Age that the climate debate is “infantile” and compares the certainty of climate armageddon to the certainty of gravity. ACM posted on this laughable article here. Another reader felt moved to write to ANU in generally polite terms. I see no abuse, again just strongly worded disagreement.
“It takes a tax-payer funded Professor to equate AGW to gravity. It must have taken years of education to be able to issue pronouncements like this eh? If Australian taxpayers were hoping to get a bit more than just bluster and name-calling from certain public servants, they’re bound to be asking for their money back soon.”
Document 6 is politely worded disagreement, following a Climate Commission report, and citing scientific papers that challenge the consensus. How the ANU construed this email as abuse or threats a mystery. Again, it seems as if challenging the consensus is by default “abuse” in the minds of the some.
Document 11 is an absolute PEACH and fell into the FoI because it was sent on the day after the “death threats” story broke in June 2011, and just prior to the FoI request being received. It is actually a critique on the ANU’s actions in bringing the issue to the attention of a sympathetic media rather than the proper authorities. Unfortunately, it calls out the ANU all too clearly, and, once again, passionate disagreement is therefore regarded as abuse by the ANU in determining which documents to provide.
Here is a sample of what the writer has to say:
“Death threats are intolerable and indefensible. Period.
So is the way that the ANU is thuggishly manipulating the demented expressions of a few sick people as a propaganda weapon to smear the entire sceptical community. Period.
The death threats obviously come from mentally diminished losers. That’s their excuse. Using it as an agitprop smear on rational scepticism coming from our nations most powerful university timed to incite mob outrage in this weekend’s Say Yes rally is malicious, pre-meditated and abominable abuse of authority and power. What’s ANU’s and the ABC’s excuse?
The Australian Federal Police said it had not been contacted by the university…”
Duh. Why did the ANU take this information to the ABC rather than the AFP? If the threats are credible, why didn’t someone at the university pick up the nearest phone and call for police help, ASAP. Instead of calling the AFP, the university organised a public relations campaign utilising the powers of our state-owned nation broadcaster to announce at the top of every hour for the last two days that climate skeptics in a concerted effort to stop the “release of climate data” and thwart public debate are issuing death threats to climate scientists.”
Couldn’t really put it better myself!
Document 10 is a record of a phone call in which the caller states a member of the climate science team is “uneducated, has never worked like the real people and receives handouts from all us taxpayers”. That’s it. Abuse? Perhaps, in its mildest form.
Document 9 is a one line email that states:
“Mate, that report is the biggest load of rubbish I have ever seen.”
Abuse or just disagreement? You decide.
Three (two) of the documents are crank abuse emails – the kind that our correspondent above refers to, peppered with bad spelling, swear words and offensive language. These are documents 2, 7 and 8, although documents 2 and 7 are identical in content, so I assume they are the same message.
One document contains a report of an alleged threat of violence which I discuss below. This was dated June 2010, well outside the six-month scope of the FoI request. By the way, that period was chosen because the news reports stated that the threats had been going on for six months, but had increased in the last few weeks (see later). It states (in full):
Looks like we’ve had our first serious threat of physical violence. It has come from a participant in [redacted] deliberative democracy project last weekend. One of the participants left early after he too exception to my talk about climate science. [redacted] exact words were:
“Moreover, before he left, he came to the Fri dinner and showed other participants his gun licence and explained to them how good a sniper he is. Because he didn’t attend day 2 he will not be allowed to attend the final day. I will be notifying security to be on hand in case he turns up and causes a problem.”
I think the final day is this weekend but I am not sure. Anyway, I’ve asked [redacted] to brief the VC and the head of security ASAP. The latter will determine whether this should go to the AFP or not.
But in the meantime, we should be careful about anyone we don’t know who approaches our offices.
Let’s analyse this carefully. One participant “left early” after he took exception to a talk on climate science. People are entitled to do that if they disagree. Moving on to the “threat”, this is a third hand account of the actions of that participant at an earlier dinner. This can obviously be interpreted in a number of ways. Either you can view this as a veiled threat, as if the individual in question was actually hinting that he would use his skills to cause harm, or you can interpret it as someone having had a few shandies disagreeing with the consensus and making a joke about his marksmanship. Without any evidence of the manner or demeanour of the individual concerned, or the circumstances in which it the comment was made, the hearsay report above is worthless.
Conclusion
Let’s reread the ABC’s story on this (my emphasis):
Several of Australia’s top climate change scientists at the Australian National University have been subjected to a campaign of death threats, forcing the university to tighten security.
Several of the scientists in Canberra have been moved to a more secure location after receiving the threats over their research.
Vice-chancellor Professor Ian Young says the scientists have received large numbers of emails, including death threats and abusive phone calls, threatening to attack the academics in the street if they continue their research.
He says it has been happening for the past six months and the situation has worsened significantly in recent weeks.
In fact, it appears that the six most senior and well-known climate scientists at ANU received NO death threats in that six month period. Of the “large number” of emails allegedly received, the university only provided 11, only 2 contained anything other than mild abuse. The one “threat” was received over a year prior to the story, and its authenticity would vary substantially depending on the circumstances – an answer to that question we will never know. The remainder were innocuous and were expressing little more than passionate disagreement. And apparently there are no transcripts or records of the abusive phone calls referred to above, since the only phone message disclosed is relatively tame. Politicians will receive far worse every day, of that we can be sure.
ACM unreservedly condemns the sending of threats and abuse, particularly in the febrile atmosphere of the climate debate. However, we believe that high profile organisations, such as ANU, operating in that environment, should be very wary of making claims that may act to emotionalise the issue yet further. To claim that the above constitutes a “campaign of death threats” is stretching credibility.
Note: various bloggers have criticised (a) the fact that it took me 2 whole days to comment on this, and (b) nothing changes except that I am now part of the problem. As to (a), I have many other things in my life besides climate blogging, and it takes a back seat sometimes – there is nothing more to it than that, despite your fertile imaginations trying to think otherwise. As to (b), I believe that when claims such as these are made, organisations should be prepared to back it up with evidence. I am glad that the public can read these emails and can make up their own minds about the contents.
Weak response
The (warmist) journalist who broke the ANU death threats story in the Canberra Times last June responds to the article in The Australian. Beeby is “surprised” that I dared make an FoI request, apparently. She claims the “death threats” were “irrefutable”. Sorry, the “trust us” line doesn’t work on me, nor on the Privacy Commissioner.
So it came as a surprise to learn last week that a Sydney climate blogger had made a freedom of information request to obtain examples of these emails from the Australian National University. The ANU initially refused to release the documents, and in response to a formal appeal by the blogger, the Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim was asked to a adjudicate. He is reported as ruling that 10 of the 11 emails sought under FoI ”do not contain threats to kill” and the other ”could be regarded as intimidating”. The emails in question pertain to one scientist, ANU Climate Change Institute director Professor Will Steffen.
How could she possibly know this without access to the emails? It isn’t stated in the FoI decision that they “pertain” solely to Steffen, so it appears the ANU are clearly happy to provide this information to a sympathetic journalist when it suits them, but are fighting every step of the way to prevent their release to me. Hypocrisy.
We eventually get to the point, namely, that according to Rosslyn Beeby, the single “threat” was made verbally to one of Steffen’s staff, and she won’t discuss it (I assume that this may relate to the infamous “11th document” from the FoI judgment):
He was among the group of 30 contacted by The Canberra Times, and revealed the worst threat he received – and we will not divulge it – was made verbally to one of his staff. It was the chilling nature of that threat – and the casual way in which it was made – that prompted the ANU to question its security arrangements. If they had not, they would have been guilty of ignoring staff safety requirements. (source)
And despite all this, there is still no explanation as to why the police were not involved if the threats were so serious. And no explanation as to why the ANU are so desperate to avoid releasing the emails. Show us the evidence – it’s very simple.
(h/t Tim Blair here)
Simon discusses the ANU “death threats” story and the freedom of information request with Alan Jones on 2GB.
See the previous stories on this subject:
The Freedom of Information appeal decision is here.
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Australian Climate Madness 
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