From The Telegraph: Scientists threatened for 'climate denial'.
Scientists who questioned mankind's impact on climate change have received death threats and claim to have been shunned by the scientific community.They say the debate on global warming has been "hijacked" by a powerful alliance of politicians, scientists and environmentalists who have stifled all questioning about the true environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions.
Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, has received five deaths threats by email since raising concerns about the degree to which man was affecting climate change.
One of the emails warned that, if he continued to speak out, he would not live to see further global warming.
"Western governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and they feel threatened," said the professor.
"I can tolerate being called a sceptic because all scientists should be sceptics, but then they started calling us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust. That is an obscenity. It has got really nasty and personal."
Last week, Professor Ball appeared in The Great Global Warming Swindle, a Channel 4 documentary in which several scientists claimed the theory of man-made global warming had become a "religion", forcing alternative explanations to be ignored.
Richard Lindzen, the professor of Atmospheric Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology - who also appeared on the documentary - recently claimed: "Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labelled as industry stooges.
"The Great Global Warming Swindle" is an excellent, must-see British documentary that shows how global warming is treated as a religious orthodoxy that cannot be questioned. Little Green Footballs has posted the Flash version of the one-hour-plus film. YouTube has a version in eight parts for easier viewing starting here. (LGF also noted an article about an oceanographer who says his views were misrepresented in the film).
And The New York Times both praises Evangelical Environmentalism (via TIA Daily) and reports that some scientists argue "that some of Mr. Gore's central points are exaggerated and erroneous"
Gus Van Horn has more here and here.
UPDATE I -- March 14: This books appears to have much of the information presented in the documentary (particularly in regards to climate history): The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism) by Christopher C. Horner.
UPDATE II -- March 16: Geologist Don Easterbrook commented on this topic in an interview with Glenn Beck: transcript. (via Harry Binswanger)
EASTERBROOK: It's disturbing as a scientist, because there`s definitely a move today in the direction that anybody who doesn`t sign on to CO2 as the cause of global warming is somehow either stupid or has some political reason or just some financial reason for saying that.Posted by Forkum at March 13, 2007 04:56 PMAnd it is true that scientists are being discouraged from putting out anything which is contrary to the CO2 version of global warming.
DOBBS: You say that CO2 doesn't cause it?
EASTERBROOK: That's correct. If you look at the last century, the warming is about one degree. But for the first 45 years, there was no rise in CO2, so you can`t blame half of it on CO2.
The big rise in CO2 was in 1945 to the present and during that time, during the first 30 years, the global climate actually got colder, when it should have been getting warmer. And it's only in the last 30 years where global climates have warmed in concert with rise of CO2. Otherwise, CO2 is totally out of phase.
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