“Paging David Appell and Nick Stokes again: time to fess up and apologize” (2012-05-28). Those “alarmists” are always exaggerating, as Anthony Watts loves to imply remind us. Even about things as mundane as so-called death-threats!

I mean, it’s not as if they’ve had to escape from the trunk of a kidnapper’s car, is it? Or that they were threatened with having their children “brutally gang-raped”. (What, that one’s true? Never mind.) And as anyone who’s up-to-date knows “You will be chased down the street with burning stakes and hung from your f*** neck, until you are dead, dead, dead!” is what all the cool kids say when they’re chillin’. Heck even (apparently actual) scientist Judith Curry thinks saying that “AGW fraudsters” should be dealt with thus – “Knock them down. Kick them until they quit moving. Check for breathing. Repeat.” – is simply a cute turn of phrase.

So when Rupert Murdock’s The Australian declares “no death threats in emails [to climate scientists]” because an Australian’s freedom of information request for a specific institution, specific short period of time, and specific small number of individuals doesn’t turn up much, when that pretty much settles the question for Anthony. Forget all the stuff that happens outside that tiny slice of space/time! Doesn’t count.

This means that Anthony can justify swaggering across the internet spouting self-serving nonsense like this about comments deploring aggression and threats towards climate scientists by the aforementioned David Appell and Nick Stokes amongst others:

They can be men, apologize for their errant and childish behavior towards me and other skeptics on this matter, and move on. I’ll be happy to accept their sincere apologies posted here or on their own blogs and put the matter behind us. Ball’s in your court fellas.

By the way Anthony’s completely unable to control any of the vicious stream of denialist comments that his readers, without his explicit encouragement, make. It takes all his effort just to censor his critics! No time left over at all for that other stuff, which is purely for theatrical effect anyway.

As always, Anthony offers himself as exemplar. He get’s angry e-mails, but he’s strong enough to laugh them off. Man up, warmists, Anthony-style! He’d never overreact to the purely hypothetical situation of angry people trying to confront climate scientists at their offices or wave hangman’s nooses at conferences.

Oh, wait. He did overreact, didn’t he? When little Anna Haynes showed up (uninvited!!!!) at his offices seeking to speak with him, he freaked. But that, of course, is different.

One thing for sure, Anthony won’t mention the ABC News program Media Watch’s investigation into the coverage of threats against climate scientists. Nothing gets in the way of bluster like a factual dissection.

But what the emails don’t prove is what The Australian splashed on its front page on May the third… “Climate scientists’ claims of email death threats go up in smoke”

He’ll stick with the pull-quote from Rupert Murdock’s The Australian, thank you.

Update from the comments: Vicious denialist threats are pretty much routine and they are explained away by people like Anthony Watts, who do everything in they can to encourage them.