AUSTRALIA: Death threats for climate researchers

Climate scientists at Australia's top universities have received death threats and other menacing warnings to stop their research or suffer the consequences. In an unprecedented action, the Australian National University said at the weekend that several of the scientists had been relocated to a more secure location while security in the buildings where other climate researchers worked had been tightened.

The threats are a worrying indication of how inflamed the debate over climate change and the government's plans to introduce a carbon tax have become. Big business and the mining industry, along with the Opposition and the Murdoch press, have helped raise temperatures by campaigning fiercely against the plans - this despite government guarantees that most workers would not be any worse off.

Today, the peak body representing Australia's 39 universities called on political and community leaders to speak out in support of academic freedom. In a press release late Monday, Universities Australia said the call followed reports from a number of universities of threats against academics researching climate change.

UA chair Professor Glyn Davis said recent revelations of "systematic and sustained threats to many climate change scientists were a fundamental attack upon intellectual inquiry". Davis, Vice-chancellor of Melbourne University, said that to disagree with evidence or conclusions from academic research was part of any robust debate, but to seek to intimidate scientists who reached unwelcome findings was an assault on the ideal of a free exchange of ideas and undermined a democratic society.

Australian National University (ANU) Vice-chancellor Professor Ian Young told ABC Television that at the weekend scientists at his university had received large numbers of emails that included death threats as well as abusive phone calls warning them and their families they would be attacked if they continued their research.

Young said threats had been made over the past six months but the situation had worsened significantly in recent weeks. In an understatement he said: "Obviously climate research is an emotive issue at the present time. These are issues where we should have a logical public debate and it's completely intolerable that people be subjected to this sort of abuse and to threats like this."

Although Young said the university's academics and scientists were "not equipped to be treated in this way", he made no mention of calling in the police.

The Canberra Times newspaper reported the Federal Police as saying they were aware of the issue but that no investigation was underway. Threatening to kill someone in the Australian Capital Territory is a crime that carries a 10-year jail sentence.

One anonymous ANU researcher told the paper: "If you want to find me, it's impossible unless you make an appointment, sign in with some form of photo identification and are personally escorted to my door. That's directly as a result of threats made against me."

Other scientists said they had upgraded security systems in their homes, had unlisted phone numbers and deleted their online profiles. Former ANU vice-chancellor and now Australia's Chief Scientist, Professor Ian Chubb, said the threats were intended to intimidate academics, "to scare them off and stop them from participating in public discussions on climate change.

"They are the antithesis of democratic debate".

Australia relies heavily on coal-fired power and is not only among the world's worst per capita emitters of carbon but also exports more coal than almost any other country. Such facts appear not to have affected the Opposition, the Murdoch editors or the climate sceptics who dismiss talk of a warming world as plain wrong or some sort of global conspiracy.

When Australian Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett appeared in a television campaign last week calling for action on climate change and urging the public to support the carbon tax, she came under savage verbal attack from Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and the Murdoch tabloids. The papers dubbed her "Climate Cate" and accused her of being rich and well able to afford to meet the costs of a tax, leaving the "poor workers to suffer".