Shoot the Messenger’s Laptops to the Lab

Police Priorities 

The Norfolk rozzers
—half a dozen of them!—durst
take stuff from Tallbloke.

Seriously, they
need six cops to search a
’blogger?  What a joke.

Sex slavery and
similar crimes increase, but
they hound sceptic folks.

Other malefactors
ignored are those who push the
global warming hoax.

The wallopers have
no clue anent images
their conduct evokes.

UPDATE I (17 December):  see Jeff Id’s “Crackdown – U.S. Representative Ed Markey (D-MA) – It’s time to bring them to justice!” and Maxim Lott’s “Climategate Bombshell: Did U.S. Gov’t Help Hide Climate Data?”.

UPDATE II (21 December):  see Pointman’s “It’s not just Tallbloke who’s in the firing line; you are too”, and Tallbloke’s “Greg Laden: Libellous article”, as well as “Tallbloke to take to torts” and then “Greg Laden caves – makes nice with Tallbloke” at WUWT.
At a silly awarmist site, Greg Laden posted some typically stupid remarks, shewing that he seems to believe in swift legal redress.  In comments on an apparently actionable post—since removed—by Zachary Shahan, one Markus had posted:  “Be very wary.  The retribution that will be inflicted on those warminista, who have harmed the orderly progress of humankind and the poorest of the poor, will reverberate throughout academia, for generations.”
In response, Laden posted:  “I think Markus is threatening you and you should sue him.”
Laden, seemingly, would consider even a polite warning as a threat.  I suggested a parallel:

Stranger: “Young boy, be more careful!  You are running too closely to that cliff! If you slide on that slippery surface you could fall onto the rocks far below and suffer serious injuries or even death!
Foolish Boy: “Help, police!  This stranger is issuing death threats!”

Unfortunately, the pseudo-scientific scoundrels pushing the CAGW fraud are the sort of unprincipled scammers who have often demonstrated that, just as they can’t discern how empirical evidence differs from incompetently formulated modelling, they can’t determine how a warning differs from a threat.  The wicked seeker of a totalitarian one-party State, and aggressive buffoon, Clive Hamilton, for instance, asserts that “If we see you continue, we will get extremely organised and precise against you” is a death-threat.

UPDATE III (22 December):  see also Tallbloke’s “Breaking news: Norfolk police to hand over Climategate inquiry”.

UPDATE IV (22 December):  see “When the Police Knock on Your Door”, by Donna Laframboise.

UPDATE V (23 December):  see  hro001’s “of Climategate, Constabularies, Hickman and l’affaire Tallbloke: a timeline to consider”. 

UPDATE VI (6 January, 2012):  slightly apposite is Donna Laframboise’s “What Financial Meltdowns Teach Us about the IPCC”:

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World is Michael Lewis’ latest book on the global financial train wreck. Brimming with sharp observations and fabulous turns of phrase, it examines recent financial shenanigans in Iceland, Greece, and Ireland among other places.

I experienced a shock of recognition while reading those case studies.  People were doing bizarre things that they—and all of those around them—should have known would lead to tears.  Yet almost everyone bought in.  Normal rules were jettisoned.  Ordinary morality was abandoned.  Disbelief was suspended.  The few souls who tried to sound the alarm were ignored, ridiculed, demoted, or fired.

In other words, the behaviour I’ve spent the past three years writing about isn’t unique to climate science.  The same pattern is horrifyingly evident elsewhere.  It’s as though our IQs have all dropped sharply in recent years.  It’s as though we have no standards anymore.  [...]

When a Danish bank wrote a report concluding that something was amiss in the Icelandic banking sector the reaction was eerily similar to what we see in climate science.  The messenger was accused of having suspect motives and the message was summarily dismissed.

When an economics professor from Chicago gave a speech five months before Iceland’s economy crashed in October 2008 (in which he declared that their banks were already dead and that the economy had no more than nine months) Lewis reports that Iceland bankers in the audience “sought to prevent newspapers from reporting the speech.”

In other words, a gang of Icelandic kids trashed their nation’s economy.  And rather than stopping them, the grownups went along for the ride.  The checks-and-balances we would all expect to have been in place, the safeguards we would imagine going hand-in-hand with financial transactions of that magnitude, were entirely absent.

Does this make rational sense?  No.  Does it sound plausible?  Not really.  But it happened.  And the people of Iceland are going to be living with the consequences for a long, long, long time.