Hayhoe, K

=Biden
JOE BIDENRep. Dingell hospitalized for surgery on perforated ulcerBiden administration renews Temporary Protected Status for HaitiAmash warns of turning lawmakers like Cheney into 'heroes'MORE has put climate at the front and center of foreign and domestic policy. He’s appointed climate leaders at Treasury, State, Transportation, Interior, Energy and throughout the government. His proposed 50 percent emissions cut by 2030 is consistent with the Paris Agreement. For the first time, the U.S is taking action at the scale needed if we’re to have any hope of tackling the climate crisis in time.
To emphasize the benefit of these actions to the American people, the president says, “when I think of climate, I think of jobs.” That’s true — many jobs can be created decarbonizing our industrial, energy, housing and transportation infrastructure, investing in smart agriculture and nature-based solutions, preparing to weather the impacts of climate change we can no longer avoid, and by accelerating the transition to clean energy. Jobs are an important solutions message.
But this is only half the equation. To want to solve a problem, you first have to know there is one. And the data is clear: most Americans don’t know how much of a crisis we truly face, nor how little time we have left to solve it. They still view climate change as a distant issue, one that matters only to future generations, to people in low-income countries, to ecosystems — but not to them.
The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication finds that only 26 percent of Americans are “alarmed” about climate change. Even more disturbingly, the Yale researchers consistently find that people don’t talk or hear much about climate change. Among those surveyed, 64 percent say they “rarely” or “never” discuss global warming with family and friends. Only 35 percent talk about it even occasionally, and only 22 percent say they hear people they know talk about global warming at least once a month. 
Here’s the connection: if we don’t clearly communicate the risks climate change poses to us, here and now and in concrete ways that matter to our lives, why would people care? And if they don’t care, why would they want to do anything about it? 
Biden does refer to climate change as an “existential threat.” But that’s a term most people won’t understand, when so many are already so confused. The research finds that 40 percent of Americans still believe climate is changing due to the ozone hole; only 21 percent know there’s a strong scientific consensus on the issue; and the majority don’t think it matters to them.  
Addressing these misconceptions helps people understand that climate change is real, and serious; and explains why solutions are needed.
For example, extensive testing has shown the effectiveness of simple and clear explanations like the following:
When we dig up and burn fossil fuels, we are wrapping a blanket of carbon pollution around the earth. This pollution blanket is trapping heat in our atmosphere that would otherwise escape back out to space.That trapped heat causes more damaging downpours that wipe out farmers' crops. It powers stronger hurricanes that devastate our coasts. It means hotter temperatures that fuel wildfires and cause crippling heat waves, where our kids can't play outside. It causes sea level to rise, which will flood millions of American homes.As for the science, 99 percent of climate scientists agree: it’s real, it’s human-caused, it’s serious, and there are solutions that will benefit us all. The faster we cut our carbon pollution, the better off we’ll all be.President Franklin Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” used radio to help the public fight the Great Depression and win World War II. Today, as Bill Gates argues, to solve climate change we need the equivalent of a mobilization for war. But you can’t mobilize for war if people don’t know they are under attack. And Americans largely don’t. 
Biden could change this quickly, by talking about the risks from climate change. The president “literally has the ability to change what people know, think and talk about,” according to UC Berkeley linguist George Lakoff.  
Embracing the power of what Teddy Roosevelt called the “bully pulpit,” Biden can clearly communicate that we are in a war, a race to save our livable planet. And when opponents challenge climate action, it’s not about justifying the job numbers — as Lakoff would say, change the frame. Ask what their plan is to protect America’s health, security and prosperity from the dangers of climate change. 
Environmentalists see infrastructure as crucial path to climate goalsBiden adviser: Infrastructure counterproposal shows 'willingness to...In the United States, Paul Revere has not yet made his climate ride. Most people do not know what is coming. Biden can fix this. Depending on who the next president is, that opportunity may not come again for many years. The science is clear: later will be too late. 
Katharine Hayhoe, Ph.D., is chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy and an atmospheric scientist and professor of political science at Texas Tech University. She is the founder of Science Moms. Her new book, “Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World” will be released in Sept 2021.
David Fenton founded the social change communications firm Fenton in 1982. =12/9 short interview
<a href="https://www.texasobserver.org/how-katharine-hayhoe-stays-hopeful-as-the-planet-warms/">https://www.texasobserver.org/how-katharine-hayhoe-stays-hopeful-as-the-planet-warms/</a><div>=</div><div>op ed about her</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2019/12/19/for-her-work-as-a-climate-change-diplomat-texas-techs-katharine-hayhoe-is-a-finalist-for-texan-of-the-year/">https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2019/12/19/for-her-work-as-a-climate-change-diplomat-texas-techs-katharine-hayhoe-is-a-finalist-for-texan-of-the-year/</a></div><div></div><div>Hayhoe at tx tech u</div><div>
</div><div>may 2016</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/katharine-hayhoe-lubbock-climate-change-evangelist/">https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/katharine-hayhoe-lubbock-climate-change-evangelist/</a></div><div>
</div><div>quote long</div><div>
</div><div>...Some critics feel so threatened that they resort to ad hominem attacks on climate scientists. Hayhoe receives a steady stream of hate mail, which she files away in a special folder. When I asked her when this started, she replied, “The first time I was ever quoted in a newspaper article.” The ugliness reached its height in 2012, during the presidential race. At the time, Hayhoe was writing a chapter on global warming for a book Republican hopeful Newt Gingrich was co-authoring about the environment. Rush Limbaugh mentioned it on his radio program, dismissively referring to Hayhoe as a “climate babe.”</div><div>
</div><div> A few days later, an Iowa voter buttonholed Gingrich on camera to ask him about it, and Gingrich swiftly replied, “That’s not going to be in the book. We didn’t know that they were doing that—we told them to kill it.” Hayhoe took to Twitter to respond: “What an ungracious way to find out, eh? Nice to hear that Gingrich is tossing my #climate chapter in the trash. 100+ unpaid hrs I cd’ve spent playing w my baby.”</div><div>
</div><div class="promo-in-body" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="promo-in-body__ad" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Most of the time, she laughs these incidents off. “I got one today that was exceptional,” she told me in late September, as we sat inside the Climate Science Center. “Most of the stuff is rambling, but this one was not. Someone wrote on Facebook, ‘She is a lying lunatic, and probably a witch.’ That was very concise,” she said with a grin. But sometimes the comments veer into violent territory. <p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Hayhoe recalls one email that prompted her to call authorities. “You are a mass murderer and will be convicted at the Reality TV Grand Jury in Nuremberg, Pennsylvania,” the email began. “After the Grand Jury indicts you, I would like to see you convicted and beheaded by guillotine in the public square, to show women that if they are going to take a man’s job, they have to take the heat for mass murder.” But most of the time, Hayhoe doesn’t let such vitriol drive her to despair, though dealing with it can be exhausting. “What frustrates me the most, and what I find difficult not to take personally, is how much of the hate mail comes from so-called Christians.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">That bile is something Hayhoe never anticipated when she was applying to graduate school 22 years ago. A native of Toronto, she had double-majored in physics and astronomy at the University of Toronto and spent every clear night one summer gazing through the telescopes on top of the physics building. She found that the astronomer’s life appealed to her and planned to study that in graduate school. Then she took a climatology class her junior year. “Until I took that course, I did not realize that climate change is affecting everything, from poverty to biodiversity to health, and so you can’t fix any one of them if you leave climate change out of the picture,” she told me. She also realized that her background in physics had perfectly positioned her to study climate modeling.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">If she was going to leave astronomy behind, Hayhoe wanted to do policy-relevant climate science. When she was considering graduate programs, she was thrilled to learn that Don Wuebbles, who had been instrumental in addressing the chlorofluorocarbon problem in the eighties, was the new head of the department of atmospheric science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He would serve as her adviser for both her master’s degree and her doctorate. Under Wuebbles’s guidance, Hayhoe eventually began focusing on statistical downscaling, which was still a relatively new field when she started graduate school, in 1995. “There was very little of this being done at the time,” Wuebbles recalled recently, “and the methods were not capturing the full extent of the science, so she set about to develop a new technique and very successfully did so. She’s brilliant.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Statistical downscaling involves combining historical weather observations with global-climate models to better predict what the future could look like in a particular place. “The local environment, whether it’s hilly or flat, with crops or forest, urban or rural, modifies the weather patterns we get,” she said. “So, for example, if we had identical high-pressure systems over Lubbock and Houston, it would mean something different for the temperature, for the humidity, for the rainfall patterns.” Hayhoe also tries to see if the global models reflect real-world conditions on the ground. “When we get an El Niño, we see a very wet winter from here in Lubbock all the way across to Florida. Do the models pick that up or not? We need to know,” she explained.<div>
</div><div>....</div><div><span style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Lyndon Baines Johnson was at his ranch outside Johnson City recuperating from gallbladder surgery on November 5, 1965, when his science advisers published a 317-page report warning about the dangers of air pollution. Tucked away in an appendix were 23 pages about atmospheric carbon dioxide. “Through his worldwide industrial civilization, Man is unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment,” the report states. “Within a few generations he is burning the fossil fuels that slowly accumulated in the earth over the past 500 million years.” This additional carbon in the atmosphere would, over time, raise the earth’s temperature, slowly melt the antarctic ice cap, and lead to increased ocean acidity, the report proclaimed. “The climate changes that may be produced by the increased CO2 content could be deleterious from the point of human beings,” the report concluded....</div><div></div>horner ATI BS<div>
</div><div><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130522152522/http://www.atinstitute.org/the-collusion-of-the-climate-crowd/">https://web.archive.org/web/20130522152522/http://www.atinstitute.org/the-collusion-of-the-climate-crowd/</a></div><div>
</div><div>christopher C. Horner; <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130522152522/http://washingtonexaminer.com/sunday-reflection-the-collusion-of-the-climate-crowd/article/2501500" target="blank">The Washington Examiner</a>; July 7, 2012</div>Not long ago, the American Tradition Institute initiated a transparency campaign using federal and state freedom of information laws to learn more about how taxpayer-funded academics use their positions to advance a particular agenda. On its face, this should have been welcomed by the Left, which often lays claim to the “transparency” mantle. It is instead causing great angst.Our project would compile the context to the “Climategate” scandal, which, as activist academics central to its revelations assured us, was really an out-of-context misrepresentation. Curiously, the same people think this project a very bad idea.So do the media and environmentalist establishments. Of the latter, the Union of Concerned Scientists became particularly exercised, mobilizing left-wing groups to urge universities not to satisfy our requests for public documents.None of these groups, incidentally, was troubled by a series of similar requests by Greenpeace,[SOON?] whose effort we replicated. They only became opposed when we sought the emails of the sort of activists with whom they work.Some of these, recently obtained from Texas A&M [hayhow?]University, provide one explanation for this reversal.For example, they reveal a sophisticated UCS operation to assist activist academics and other government employees as authorities for promoting UCS’s agenda. This includes “moot-courting” congressional hearings with a team of UCS staff, all the way down to providing dossiers on key committee members, addressing in particular their faith, stance on gay marriage and stimulus spending. Of course.This also includes directing the taxpayers’ servants to outside PR consultants — apparently pro bono or else on UCS’s dime. Keep this last point in mind.They also expose the New York Times reporter who covers the environment, science and specifically the global warming issue, Justin Gillis, as being no disinterested party.Gillis wrote a piece in May laboring to undermine one of the most highly credentialed and respected climate “skeptics,” the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Dr. Richard Lindzen. This front-page article prompted my request for information reflecting how the A&M professor and activist whom Gillis quoted was using his taxpayer-funded position.The specific correspondence began when Gillis wrote that interviewing Lindzen for a piece on his area of expertise was “unavoidable,” and “[s]o I need a really good bibliography of all the published science” countering Lindzen’s position on cloud feedback — “that is, anything that stands as evidence against Lindzen’s claim that the feedback has to be strongly negative.”Remember, this was a reporter for the New York Times writing this. In the released emails, Gillis comes off as an activist posing as a journalist, sneering at Lindzen. Of another prominent skeptic, Gillis wrote, “I sense you’ve got him in a trap here … can’t wait to see it sprung.” (Ellipses in original.)Our transparency campaign caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth among academia and its affiliated societies, the Washington Post, and the American Constitution Society. They joined UCS to attest that these sacrosanct exchanges of ideas would be fatally chilled if not granted an unlegislated exemption from freedom of information laws.So you might be surprised to learn that the Texas A&M email production shows the academics actually forwarding their email discussions outside their circle. To New York Times reporters, for example. They even often copy reporters on the very exchanges they otherwise insist represent an intellectual circle that must remain free from violation by prying, nonacademic eyes. Awkward.Following my Texas A&M request, a producer contacted me from “Frontline,” a PBS program known for grinding liberal axes. She wanted to discuss our Freedom of Information Act litigation. As we are currently only involved in the high-profile case involving the University of Virginia’s Climategate records, I referred her to lead counsel.It turns out she was really interested in records requests with two different, more cooperative schools: the Texas A&M request, and one I filed at Texas Tech University. The latter sought a professor and climate activist’s correspondence about a chapter she was writing for Newt Gingrich’s upcoming book. (Naturally, this Texas Tech professor who opposed providing me the emails had already provided them to a Los Angeles Times reporter.)Now, you might ask, how would two otherwise fairly obscure Texas activists become the subject of interest to “Frontline”? That brings us back to UCS.One of the emails produced by Texas A&M shows its activist contacting, and being given advice by, a D.C. media consultant, Richard Ades of Prism Public Affairs, “a strategic communications firm that operates at the intersection of public policy and the media” according to its website. The professor says he was referred by Aaron Huertas of UCS.I have sent two other public records requests following up on these points. Expect the usual suspects to respond in their usual way. The media, academia and environmentalist pressure groups share an agenda, and work closely together to advance it. Remember this when these interests assail efforts to obtain public records shedding light on these activities.Christopher C. Horner is director of litigation for the American Tradition Institute and author of the forthcoming book “The Liberal War on Transparency: Confessions of a Freedom of Information ‘Criminal’” (Threshold)<div></div>february 4, 2018In January 2018, more than 200 scientists<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/climate/rebekah-mercer-natural-history-museum.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"> endorsed an open letter </a>calling on the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) to remove climate change denier <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/rebekah-mercer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Rebekah Mercer</a> from its board and to “end ties to anti-science propagandists and funders of climate science misinformation.” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/climate/rebekah-mercer-natural-history-museum.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">The New York Times reported</a> that those among the AMNH letter calling for Mercer to step down were Michael E. Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, and Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/steve-milloy#s60" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">[60]</a>https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060094801<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">One scientist was called Climate Barbie.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Another was described as an "ugly fake scientist." A third had an erect penis drawn on her car window while she was in the field researching sea-level rise.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Such is the life of many female climate scientists in 2018.All researchers face the risk of being criticized when speaking publicly about their findings. But women in the field describe being attacked based on their gender. They've endured insults, sexual taunts and degrading comments about their professional acumen. Most of their harassers use social media, email and the phone for their attacks. But there's a fear that it could become physical.Threats of death, rape and other forms of violence have left a number of researchers feeling concerned for their safety. They worry about opening envelopes with handwritten addresses and answering phone calls from unfamiliar numbers. Anonymous emails that try to entice a response cause agitation."We get this additional layer of hate mail, and people, I think, find it easier to put us down because we are women, or feel like they have more right in telling us what is right or wrong despite our expertise, which is always frustrating," said Andrea Dutton, a geologist at the University of Florida and an expert on sea-level rise.Dutton said she often hesitates to answer the phone after she's quoted in the media. The feeling can last for days, prompted by harassing attacks in the past from unfamiliar numbers.One prominent researcher who has spoken about being harassed asked not to be quoted in this article. She worries it would trigger a new wave of trolling. Her concern goes beyond online attacks and hateful phone calls. She's worried for her safety.The attacks aren't new. But some scientists say the harassment they're enduring is becoming more personal, increasingly sexist and less focused on their scientific conclusions. Some suggested that it coincides with rising societal tensions over gender and race, laid bare by President Trump's political rise.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">"There is a huge underlying fear of change, and that's spawned the whole 'Make America Great Again,'" said Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University."When was America great?" she added. "Back when women were in the kitchen and others knew their place, and so because of that, the whole climate change thing, the whole idea that humans could actually interfere with the planet's climate and that fossil fuels were the way that we got great way back in the day, that's what underlies all this, and that's why there is such a mix between gender and climate denial, because it's all coming from the same perceived threat to identity, and position and power and rights."<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Online harassers have called her a "sad, little mediocrity," an "ugly fake scientist" and an "old thin-looking hag." They've gone after Hayhoe for sharing her climate research and for her outreach to the evangelical Christian community.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The verbal and written attacks derive mostly from men. That's probably not a coincidence. Studies show that climate skepticism is a male-dominated perspective. Men are less likely than women to accept scientific conclusions about people being responsible for rising temperatures. And they're more likely to overestimate their knowledge of the issue.Threats aside, some of the most frustrating attacks experienced by Hayhoe are those that denigrate her professionally. Some men talk to her like she's a "certified, Grade-A idiot," she said."These same men who are sending me all this stuff and telling me I know nothing, that I'm not qualified and that I'm ignorant, if I were one of the top cancer surgeons in the country, at the same level that I'm a climate scientist and they had cancer, I am sure that most but not all of them would be happy to have me operate on them. They wouldn't be challenging my credentials; they wouldn't be saying, 'I know more about natural cycles than you do.'"Someone on Twitter called her "Climate Barbie 2.0." There were repeated hang-ups on her voicemail, something she finds particularly disturbing because she's worried the caller might be unstable. Are they angrily dialing over and over again? Other "pseudo-engagers," as Cobb calls them, have written to ask seemingly sincere questions about climate change. One of them called her "stupider than a cow" after receiving her thoughtful response.Public appearances on national television outlets, in particular, bring waves of hatred for scientists. Kim Cobb, a professor of earth and atmospheric science at Georgia Tech, recently appeared on national news programs to talk about the dangers of climate change. Now she's being called a liar over email.Cobb said this is the reality for female scientists. She has learned to take the nastiness as an indication that her message is reaching people."This is a sign of your effectiveness," she said. "You have to take it that way, and when you take it that way, it can push you forward and give you the armor that you need."<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Still, she has noticed a shift in the tone of her critics. After she tweeted recently about a bedtime conversation about climate change with her 11-year-old daughter, she was accused of making it up. Some questioned the existence of her daughter and told her she was guilty of child abuse.The attacks on her motherhood are representative of the vitriol in recent years, she said. In the past, climate deniers would at least try to convince her of their findings.Now there's mostly rage.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">"I do see a shift toward a lack of substance sharing," Cobb said. "So much of the flak from the climate-denial community, I think, was in the form of trying to share graphs to show their point, trying to question you on the validity of the science. And a lot of that was very misguided, of course, but it was still pretending to be substantive, on the data, on the issues themselves. But it seems much of it today has turned completely to ad hominem attacks, these stream of emotionally laden insults with no substance whatsoever behind them, just trying to land one below the belt."Women who research climate change aren't only facing the threat of harassment from strangers on the internet. A recent report shows that female scientists in academia are among the most at risk to face sexual harassment from their colleagues and superiors.An analysis this year by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine highlighted high rates of workplace harassment for female researchers in sciences, engineering and medicine at universities. The report's authors noted that 58 percent of female academic faculty and staff experienced sexual harassment, making academia second only to the military (with 69 percent) in rates of workplace sexual harassment. They pointed to a number of factors that create an environment ripe for harassment, including a reliance on advisers for career advancement and a "macho" work culture.Climate scientists do have some legal recourse against the most serious threats.The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund is designed to protect researchers who are victims of harassment. The defense fund also directs scientists to other resources for workplace sexual harassment and offers counseling to help scientists respond to incidents that may be troubling but not illegal. The fund's executive director, Lauren Kurtz, said laws addressing online harassment are "behind the times." They tend to focus on bullying of children, not adult victims.Reports from women since the fund was created in 2011 fall into two main categories.Some complaints are similar to the types of harassment faced by men, but "there is a sense of a lack of cooperation on the part of the institution or difficulty raising the issue with their supervisor," Kurtz said.There's also sexual harassment. The group received a complaint a few months ago from a climate scientist who reported "really odious rape threats" on Twitter.Sarah Myhre, a paleoceanographer at the University of Washington, blames polarization on climate change for disproportionate threats against scientists compared with other disciplines."When you ask people, 'Do you believe in climate change?' what you're asking isn't 'What is your topical knowledge?' it's 'What is your tribalism?'" Myhre said. "Because it has been so hijacked in this partisan dystopic narrative, it leads to misogyny being used to discredit climate science."One of the most visible climate scientists in the country, Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, said he sees a difference in how female colleagues are treated. Mann said he has been targeted by people who reject climate change for two decades. He has received death threats, has been mailed white powder, and was targeted by fossil fuel and conservative interest groups to be fired or imprisoned. Still, he sees an extra element of vitriol in the way women in the field are treated."I can tell you that there is a very large overlap between those who harbor conspiracy theories about climate science and those who express unenlightened views when it comes to matters of ethnicity and gender," Mann said. "In short, yeah — a surprisingly large number of climate deniers are misogynists. And so our female colleagues are at the receiving end of a particularly toxic brew of denialism, conspiratorial ideation and misogyny. It is most unfortunate and most disturbing."Still, there seems to be an increasing public awareness of the harassment directed at female scientists, observers say. Those who have been harassed say they want more of their colleagues, especially men, to speak out about the problem. That's happening more and more, said Dutton, the geologist at the University of Florida."That's what we really need; it can't all come from us," she said. "It shouldn't have to be the victims; that's how we're really going to have change, when it's the other people calling out the bad behaviors, and I have started to see some of that."That's heartening."<a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/i-was-exxon-funded-climate-scientist">http://www.alternet.org/environment/i-was-exxon-funded-climate-scientist</a>ExxonMobil’s deliberate attempts to <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f" style="text-decoration-line: none;">sow doubt</a> on the reality and urgency of climate change and their <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/fight-misinformation/exxonmobil-report-smoke.html#.WZ8syZOGM6h" style="text-decoration-line: none;">donations to front groups</a> to disseminate false information about climate change have been public knowledge for a long time, now.<a href="http://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-arctic/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Investigative</a> <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/content/Exxon-The-Road-Not-Taken" style="text-decoration-line: none;">reports</a> in 2015 revealed that Exxon had its own scientists doing its own climate modeling as far back as the 1970s: science and modeling that was not only accurate, but that was being used to plan for the company’s future.<img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/49855/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" width="1" style="border: none;" />Now, a <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f" style="text-decoration-line: none;">peer-reviewed study</a> published August 23 has confirmed that what Exxon was saying internally about climate change was quantitatively very different from their public statements. Specifically, researchers <a href="https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/geoffrey-supran" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Geoffrey Supran</a> and <a href="https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/naomi-oreskes" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Naomi Oreskes</a> found that at least 80 percent of the internal documents and peer-reviewed publications they studied from between 1977 and 2014 were consistent with the state of the science – acknowledging that climate change is real and caused by humans, and identifying “reasonable uncertainties” that any climate scientist would agree with at the time. Yet over 80 percent of Exxon’s editorial-style paid advertisements over the same period specifically focused on uncertainty and doubt, the study found.The stark contrast between internally discussing cutting-edge climate research while externally conducting a climate disinformation campaign is enough to blow many minds. What was going on at Exxon?I have a unique perspective – because I was there.From 1995 to 1997, Exxon provided partial financial support for my master’s thesis, which focused on methane chemistry and emissions. I spent several weeks in 1996 as an intern at their Annandale research lab in New Jersey and years working on the collaborative research that resulted in three of the <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=hayhoe+kheshgi" style="text-decoration-line: none;">published studies</a> referenced in Supran and Oreskes’ new analysis.Climate research at ExxonA scientist is a scientist no matter where we work, and my Exxon colleagues were no exception. Thoughtful, cautious and in full agreement with the scientific consensus on climate – these are characteristics any scientist would be proud to own.Did Exxon have an agenda for our research? Of course – it’s not a charity. Their research and development was targeted, and in my case, it was targeted at something that would raise no red flags in climate policy circles: quantifying the benefits of methane reduction.Methane is a waste product released by coal mining and natural gas leaks; wastewater treatment plants; farting and belching cows, sheep, goats and anything else that chews its cud; decaying organic trash in garbage dumps; giant termite mounds in Africa; and even, in vanishingly small amounts, our own lactose-intolerant family members.On a mass basis, methane absorbs about 35 times more of the Earth’s heat than carbon dioxide. Methane has a much shorter lifetime than carbon dioxide gas, and we produce a lot less of it, so there’s no escaping the fact that carbon has to go. But if our concern is how fast the Earth is warming, we can get a big bang for our buck by cutting methane emissions as soon as possible, while continuing to wean ourselves off carbon-based fuels long-term.For the gas and oil industry, reducing methane emissions means saving energy. So it’s no surprise that, during my research, I didn’t experience any heavy-handed guidance or interference with my results. No one asked to review my code or suggested ways to “adjust” my findings. The only requirement was that a journal article with an Exxon co-author pass an internal review before it could be submitted for peer review, a policy similar to that of many federal agencies.Did I know what else they were up to at the time? I couldn’t even imagine it.Yet Exxon’s choices have contributed directly to the situation we are in today, a situation that in many ways seems unreal: one where many elected representatives oppose climate action, while China leads the U.S. in <a href="http://www.gwec.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Global-Installed-Wind-Power-Capacity-MW-%E2%80%93-Regional-Distribution-1.jpg" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">wind energy</a>, <a href="http://www.ren21.net/status-of-renewables/global-status-report/" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">solar power</a>, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-energy-renewables-idUSKBN14P06P" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">economic investment in clean energy</a> and even the existence of a national <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/09/28/with-cap-and-trade-plan-china-adopts-emissions-policy-that-couldnt-get-through-u-s-congress/" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">cap and trade policy</a> similar to the ill-fated Waxman-Markey bill of 2009.Fresh out of Canada, I was unaware that there were people who didn’t accept climate science – so unaware, in fact, that it was nearly half a year before I realized I’d <a href="http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/healthscience/2015/July/Christians-Who-Believe-in-Climate-Change/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">married</a> one – let alone that Exxon was funding a disinformation campaign at the very same time it was supporting my research on the most expedient ways to reduce the impact of humans on climate.Personal decisionsThis latest study underscores why many are calling on Exxon to be <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/fight-misinformation/decades-deception-must-stop" style="text-decoration-line: none;">held responsible</a> for knowingly misleading the public on such a critical issue. For scientists and academics, though, it may fuel another, different, yet similarly moral debate.Are we willing to accept financial support that is offered as a sop to the public conscience?The concept of tendering literal payment for sin is nothing new. From the indulgences of the Middle Ages to the criticisms some have leveled at carbon offsets today, we humans have always sought to stave off the consequences of our actions and ease our conscience with good deeds, particularly of the financial kind. Today, many industry groups follow this familiar path: supporting science denial with the left hand, while giving to cutting-edge research and science with the right.The <a href="http://gcep.stanford.edu/about/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Global Climate and Energy Project</a> at Stanford University conducts fundamental research on efficient and clean energy technologies – with Exxon as a founding sponsor. Philanthropist and political donor David Koch gave an unprecedented US$35 million to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in 2015, after which three dozen scientists called on the museum to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/in-the-loop/wp/2015/03/24/scientists-to-smithsonian-cut-ties-with-koch-brothers/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">cut ties with him</a> for funding lobbying groups that “misrepresent” climate science. Shell underwrote the London Science Museum’s “Atmosphere” program and then used its leverage to <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/at-the-edge/2015/06/01/science-museum-exhibit-funded-by-shell-under-fire" style="text-decoration-line: none;">muddy the waters</a> on what scientists know about climate.It may be easy to point a finger at others, but when it happens to us, the choice might not seem so clear. Which is most important – the benefit of the research and education, or the rejection of tainted funds?The appropriate response to morally tainted offerings is an ancient question. In the book of <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+8" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Corinthians</a>, the apostle Paul responds to a query on what to do with food that has been sacrificed to idols – eat or reject?His response illustrates the complexity of this issue. Food is food, he says – and by the same token, we might say money is money today. Both food and money, though, can imply alliance or acceptance. And if it affects others, a more discerning response may be needed.What are we as academics to do? In this open and transparent new publishing world of ours, declaration of financial supporters is both important and necessary. Some would argue that a funder, however loose and distant the ties, casts a shadow over the resulting research. Others would respond that the funds can be used for good. Which carries the greatest weight?After two decades in the trenches of climate science, I’m no longer the ingenue I was. I’m all too aware, now, of those who dismiss climate science as a “liberal hoax.” Every day, they attack me on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/katharine.hayhoe/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Facebook</a>, vilify me on <a href="https://twitter.com/KHayhoe" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Twitter</a> and even send the occasional hand-typed letter - which begs appreciation of the artistry, if not the contents. So now, if Exxon came calling, what would I do?There’s no one right answer to this question. Speaking for myself, I might ask them to give those funds to politicians who endorse sensible climate policy – and cut their funding to those who don’t. Or I admire one colleague’s practical response: to use a Koch-funded honorarium to purchase a lifetime membership in the Sierra Club.Despite the fact that there’s no easy answer, it’s a question that’s being posed to more and more of us every day, and we cannot straddle the fence any longer. As academics and scientists, we have some tough choices to make; and only by recognizing the broader implications of these choices are we able to make these decisions with our eyes wide open, rather than half shut.This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/i-was-an-exxon-funded-climate-scientist-49855" style="text-decoration-line: none;">original article</a>.<div wibbitz="embed-main-player" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="bio-new body_environment" style="width: 630px; line-height: 22px; height: auto; border-top: 3px solid rgb(223, 223, 218); clear: both; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="author-bio" style="">Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist whose work focuses on developing high-resolution climate projections and helping businesses, cities, states, and federal agencies prepare for a changing climate. She is a professor and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, and CEO of a scientific consulting company, ATMOS Research.</div></div>==U.S. GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH PROGRAM

CLIMATE SCIENCE SPECIAL REPORT (CSSR)<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/leaked-climate-change-report-2470544185.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/leaked-climate-change-report-2470544185.html</a>http://www.alternet.org/environment/renowned-scientist-calls-hardcore-climate-deniers-dismissives-whose-minds-cant-be<a href="http://katharinehayhoe.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Hayhoe</a> is a leading climate scientist at <a href="https://www.depts.ttu.edu/politicalscience/Faculty/Hayhoe_Katharine.php" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Texas Tech University</a> and has been featured in documentaries such as “<a href="http://yearsoflivingdangerously.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Years of Living Dangerously</a>,” but she’s probably best known for engaging diverse communities—including Evangelicals—in an ongoing discussion about the impacts of climate change. Hayhoe stopped by Ensia’s offices to talk about her experiences bridging the climate change divide.TR: When did you first decide to speak publicly about climate change? And how did it feel to do so?KH: To answer the second question first, scary. The spark was when I realized that rejection of climate science was an issue for groups that I was actually part of or associated with. I attend an Evangelical church. We’re living in Texas where it isn’t just 20 or 30 percent of the people around me [rejecting climate science]. Depending on where I am and what I’m doing, it could be 99 percent of the people around me who don’t think climate change is real.So that was the point at which I felt I had not just a collective responsibility as a climate scientist, but I had a personal responsibility because I knew that I would probably be the only scientist many of them would ever meet, and the only one that they would ever listen to. I still take that responsibility very seriously so when I get invitations for speaking engagements, for example, I preferentially accept the ones where I know that if I say no, they’re not going to invite anybody else.TR: You gave a talk at the University of Minnesota where you asked, “Can we change people’s mind about climate change?” What’s the answer?KH: First of all, we are changing minds, not hearts. Often we think we have to change someone’s heart. We have to change their identity. We have to change who they are. We have to change what they care about. That is not going to work if they’re over the age of 12. So we are changing minds but not hearts.We’re starting with the assumption that someone’s heart is in a good place. Someone’s heart has good values. We’re just trying to show how the values already in their heart connect with the issue of climate change.The second thing, though, is that we know about the <a href="http://environment.yale.edu/climate-communication-OFF/files/climatechange-6americas.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Six Americas of Global Warming</a>. Even though the alarmed and the dismissive categories at the very end are the smallest categories, they’re the loudest voices. So when people attack me online, when people send nasty hate mail, e-mails, those are not coming from people who are cautious or disengaged. And most of them are not coming from doubtful people. They come from dismissive people. So given that 90 percent of the people that we hear from are dismissive people and they have never moved an inch, then many of us will say, “Well, clearly we can’t change people’s minds.”TR: But that “dismissive” category is pretty vocal.KH: What we have to realize is dismissive people only represent 10 percent of the population. There are many more people out there who are doubtful, or maybe even cautious, or maybe just checked out and disengaged. So can we change dismissive people’s minds? I don’t think we can because for a dismissive person to change their mind on climate, it is like asking them to cut off a body part. That is how much rejection of the sciences is part of their core identity. They would feel like they were a different person if they changed it. The way I think of dismissives is that literally a brand new set of stone tablets from heaven hand-delivered by an angel with “Global warming is real” written on them would still not be enough to change their mind.But there’s a much larger percentage of the population that ranges from doubtful to concerned. That’s where the bulk of people are, and those are where the minds can be changed.TR: Are you sure?KH: How do I know that? Because I’ve actually talked to people whose minds have changed again and again. And sometimes, they may not be very gracious about it. Sometimes they may be like, “Well, I didn’t think this thing was real, but you addressed all the reasons why and so now I’d have to come up with some new reasons if I’m going to still think that.” You know that they’ve moved.We’ve actually been running studies at some Christian colleges where [the researchers] show a video that I’ve made, and they do the Six Americas of Global Warming assessment before and after the video to see if there is significant change in attitudes, actions and perspectives. And thank goodness, there is.TR: Given the political polarization surrounding climate change, how can we move forward? KH: The situation we’re in with climate change is a casualty of the polarization of our society. If it were 25 years ago, I don’t think we would be in the situation we are today, politically or culturally. That is why bringing in unusual voices is so important — from the business community, from the national security community, etc. If someone such as a Navy Seal commander [is talking about climate change], you’re not exactly going to tell that person, “You’re involved in a worldwide communist conspiracy.” Bringing in faith leaders is important, but they’re not as important as people thought they were.TR: Why is that?KH: Back in the ‘90s and early 2000s, there was this whole movement to find Evangelical leaders, put them on boats, take them to the Arctic … take them to Africa. [Environmental leaders] figured, “If you see it with your own eyes, you’re going to change your mind.” One of two things happened.Either that person came back with their mind totally changed, made a big statement about it and completely lost all position to influence or they came back and said, “Wow, this really is serious and real,” but then they looked around and realized, what’s going to happen if I start talking about it? Then they said, is it worth it? Is this the hill I want to die on? Probably not. And they just pulled their head back into their shell and went on their way.TR: What do you think of media headlines that scream “Warmest month ever” or “Hottest year on record”? Is that the best way to engage people in the issue? KH: Most people in the United States live in places where the climate has been changing in a way that makes it a more favorable place to live based on how people pick where to live. People don’t pick where to live based on flood risk, drought risk or hurricane risk. They pick a place like Phoenix because they want to retire to a pleasant, mild climate. So by saying it’s the warmest March on record, most people in the United States live in a place where a warm March is a good thing.TR: You strike me as someone who’s pretty unflappable. What frustrates you when it comes to communicating climate science?KH: You have to be pretty unflappable in this field; if you’re not, you shouldn’t be in communication. I want to make this clear: Just because we are climate scientists does not mean that we necessarily have to be communicating about this issue because many of us, personality-wise, are not made to be good communicators. It is not something that comes naturally. Many of us are terrible at it. I worked really hard. 
TR: When did you first decide science communication was important to you?KH: For me the turning point was back when I was involved in writing a report with the Union of Concerned Scientists. It was a scientific report on climate change impacts on the Great Lakes. So we did all of our science-y stuff, and they had a technical editor that just made sure it was grammatical and all that. Then we showed up for our final meeting, and it was a media-training workshop. I went to this workshop, and it was like these scales fell from my eyes. I thought, “Oh my goodness. There’s a science to communication? There are ways to design messages? There are ways to answer questions that actually reflect these messages back?” I felt like there was this alternate universe that had always existed, and I never even knew it was there.TR: When I first saw “Years of Living Dangerously” I remember thinking, “This is great but it seems like it’s just preaching to the choir.” How do we expand the climate change conversation?KH: I think it really is important to work with thought leaders and organizations of influence in very different communities, in marginalized communities where they often feel environmental issues are a luxury of the rich. And climate change, of course, really isn’t environmental. I think it’s a human issue.moyers 9/14
<a href="http://ecowatch.com/2014/09/12/evangelical-christian-climate-change/">http://ecowatch.com/2014/09/12/evangelical-christian-climate-change/</a>
InsideClimate News spoke to nearly a dozen climate scientists and communicators about the harassment they face. For them, death threats, sexist remarks, claims of fraud, bomb threats, letters laced with powdery substances, references to rape and Nazis have become almost standard. According to emails shared with ICN, messages range from derisive ("I hope your mental illness gets better") to downright threatening (“YOU ARE GOING TO HANG SOON!”).
Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University, who does outreach with evangelical Christians, says she can receive up to 200 emails and letters a day following a media appearance, telling her she's a fraud and a liar, threatening her family and challenging her religious views. People have also shown up unannounced and agitated at her office to confront her about her scientific views."One email I got said something like, 'I hope your child sees your head in a basket after you've been guillotined for all the fraud you climate scientists have been committing,'" Hayhoe said."There are people who become dedicated to following you, who have Google alerts set up on your name, who stalk your Twitter and Facebook accounts, who essentially make a career out of ridiculing and vilifying you," Hayhoe said.

popsci: * * *

“When I get an e-mail that mentions my child and a guillotine, I want to pull a blanket over my head.” For the many scientists who consider themselves both political conservatives and supporters of the consensus position on anthropogenic climate change, ideology and party affiliation provide little shelter from attacks and harassment. Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University, a political conservative and an evangelical Christian. In 2007, Terry Maple, the co-author of Newt Gingrich’s forthcoming book on environmental entrepreneurship, asked her to write a chapter reviewing the scientific facts surrounding climate change. For most of his political career, Gingrich championed the virtues of science, but last year, while campaigning in the Republican presidential primaries, he dropped Hayhoe’s chapter after Rush Limbaugh discovered her contribution and ridiculed her as a “climate babe."

“Nice to hear that Gingrich is tossing my climate chapter in the trash,” Hayhoe tweeted on hearing the news. “100+ unpaid hours I could’ve spent playing w[ith] my baby . . .” The day after Hayhoe’s tweet, the American Tradition Institute (ATI), a conservative think tank, announced that it had filed a FOIA request with Texas Tech University “relating to collaboration on a book, using public time and resources.” The ATI’s paperwork referred to Hayhoe as a “climate activist.”

“I can delete the hate mail I got calling me a ‘Nazi bitch whore climatebecile,’” Hayhoe says, “but responding to nuisance lawsuits and investigations takes up enormous amounts of time that could be better spent teaching, mentoring, researching, doing my job.”

David Schnare heads the Environmental Law Center at the ATI, which since its inception in 2009 has sued the employers and former employers of a number of climate scientists, including Mann and James Hansen, the outspoken head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The ATI wants the researchers’ correspondence and research records. “We are not a venal organization,” Schnare says. “Our law center seeks to defend good science and proper governmental behavior and to expose the converse. Citizens have the right to know how government money is spent. Scientists who feel they shouldn’t have to respond to these requests shouldn’t be working in a government institution, because this is the price of entering.”

Richard Muller: Muller, a physicist, was one of the few prominent scientists skeptical of global warming. He reversed his position last year.�� Dan Tuffs

===

A sequel to Newt Gingrich’s 2007 book Contract with the Earth is in the works, though not until after the 2012 elections. The book, being edited by Contract co-author Terry Maple, is provisionally titled Environmental Entrepreneurs and will contain “essays by various businesspeople and scientists” on how to fight climate change. One of the essayists is climate scientist <a href="http://www.katharinehayhoe.com/">Katharine Hayhoe</a>, asked by Maple to provide “a good opening chapter that lays out the facts on global climate change.” Hayhoe is a Texas Tech climate scientist and conservative evangelical Christian, who has written <a href="http://climateforchangethebook.com/">A Climate for Change</a>, calling on her fellow evangelicals to stand up to the climate crisis. According to the Los Angeles Times, Maple believes “<a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/08/news/la-pn-gingrich-climate-book-20111208">Gingrich is still interested in doing the book</a>“:

Hayhoe submitted her climate science chapter in mid-2009 but never heard back from the authors. Maple said the book has been delayed because he has been too busy to focus on it. He said Gingrich is still interested in doing the book and has not asked him to slow walk it. The Gingrich campaign did not answer emails seeking comment about the project.

</blockquote>

“Humans are altering the average conditions of the planet,” Dr. Hayhoe wrote for ThinkProgress Green in August, responding to Gov. Rick Perry’s (R-TX) contention that global warming is “phony.” “We can continue to <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/08/16/297009/texas-climate-scientist-katharine-hayhoe-responds-to-rick-perry/">challenge the reality</a> of the issue; or we can seize this as an opportunity to wean ourselves off our dependence on the old, dirty, inefficient, and limited fuels of the past.”

At the moment, Gingrich <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/11/09/365248/gingrich-i-actually-dont-know-if-global-warming-is-occurring/">questions</a> whether global warming is occurring.

tpm

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<a href="http://www.southernstudies.org/2012/07/climate-science-attack-group-turns-sights-on-texas-professors.html">http://www.southernstudies.org/2012/07/climate-science-attack-group-turns-sights-on-texas-professors.html</a>

<h1 class="title">Climate science attack group turns sights on Texas professors</h1>

The American Tradition Institute, a conservative think tank with <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Tradition_Institute#Funding-asserted_v._actual" rel="nofollow">financial ties to fossil fuel interests</a>, made headlines last year for a <a href="http://www.southernstudies.org/2011/10/special-investigation-whos-behind-the-information-attacks-on-climate-scientists.html" rel="nofollow">controversial freedom of information lawsuit</a> against the University of Virginia targeting former UVA professor and leading climate researcher Michael Mann, who's now at Penn State.

Now ATI's campaign to discredit mainstream climate science is targeting professors at two Texas universities -- and it's particularly interested in their communications with journalists.

ATI recently sent requests under the Texas Public Information Act to Texas A&M University seeking all emails to or from a university account used by Andrew Dessler (photo at left), a professor in the school's Department of Atmospheric Sciences whose research focuses on climate systems and climate change policy.  As the Climate Science FOI report blog <a href="http://climscifoi.blogspot.com/2012/07/atihorner-targetting-texas-scientists.html" rel="nofollow">observed</a>, ATI's requests were unrelated to scientific data.

The group's <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/99680945/Ati-Dessler-Txam-Foi-Request-i" rel="nofollow">initial request</a> for Dessler's emails was made on May 1, the day after the New York Times ran a critical <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/science/earth/clouds-effect-on-climate-change-is-last-bastion-for-dissenters.html" rel="nofollow">story</a> quoting Dessler about MIT meteorology professor Richard Lindzen, who is part of a small minority of climate researchers who argue that mainstream science exaggerates global warming trends. (Lindzen is also a <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_Lindzen#On_Tobacco" rel="nofollow">skeptic</a> about the <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/health_effects/cancer/" rel="nofollow">well-documented link</a> between smoking tobacco and lung cancer.) That request sought emails that mentioned Lindzen and Mann, among other things.

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Then earlier this month, ATI sent a <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/99680950/Ati-Dessler-Txam-Foi-Request-II" rel="nofollow">second information request</a> to Texas A&M expanding the emails it sought from Dessler's account to include any exchanges with New York Times reporter Justin Gillis, who wrote the Lindzen story, as well as any communications with the PBS investigative journalism show Frontline, Frontline producer Catherine Upin, Associated Press science reporter Seth Borenstein, and Suzanne Goldenberg, U.S. environment correspondent for the British newspaper The Guardian. Also covered in that request were any communications Dessler had with the watchdog group Union of Concerned Scientists and <a href="http://www.prismpublicaffairs.com/professionals/richard.php" rel="nofollow">Richard Ades</a>, a public affairs professional who directed the Project on Climate Science, which worked to disseminate high-quality scientific climate research to media and lawmakers.

Late last year ATI sent out a similar information request to Texas Tech seeking information on professor Katharine Hayhoe (photo on right), an atmospheric scientist who directs that school's Climate Science Center. Hayhoe wrote a chapter on climate for a book about the environment by former Georgia congressman and GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich only to have him <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/06/climate-scientist-newt-gingrich-book-chapter" rel="nofollow">cut it</a> after criticism from conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, who <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2011/12/19/quick_hits_page" rel="nofollow">refers</a> to Hayhoe as a "climate babe." Other scientists targeted by ATI include NASA climatologists James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt, co-founder of the <a href="http://www.realclimate.org/" rel="nofollow">RealClimate blog</a> along with Mann.

ATI's initial lawsuit targeting Mann came on the heels of a similar effort by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R), a global warming skeptic who sought to investigate whether Mann defrauded taxpayers by using manipulated data to win government funding. That case went all the way to Virginia's Supreme Court, which <a href="http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2012/mar/02/11/va-supreme-court-rules-against-cuccinelli-uva-clim-ar-1735035/" rel="nofollow">ruled against Cuccinelli</a> earlier this year.

In a recent <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/sunday-reflection-the-collusion-of-the-climate-crowd/article/2501500" rel="nofollow">opinion piece</a> in the conservative Washington Examiner, Christopher C. Horner, ATI's director of litigation and a senior fellow at the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Competitive_Enterprise_Institute_And_Global_Warming#Exxon.27s_Cash_Pipeline_to_CEI" rel="nofollow">fossil fuel-funded</a> Competitive Enterprise Institute, described ATI's efforts as part of a "transparency campaign using federal and state freedom of information laws to learn more about how taxpayer-funded academics use their positions to advance a particular agenda."

But others take a different view. Jeff Ruch, an attorney with the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, which has helped Mann and others with legal fees, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/10/american-tradition-institute-climate-science" rel="nofollow">told</a> the Guardian that the requests represent a "new chapter" in ATI's ongoing campaign against mainstream climate scientists:

<blockquote>"Before they were going after interactions between individual scientists. This is basically a spying operation to see who are you talking to, but presumably the idea is the same: to find material that is potential[ly] of use in discrediting a scientist."</blockquote>

Originally known as the Western Tradition Institute, ATI is the 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit arm of the American Tradition Partnership, a 501(c)(4) "social welfare" nonprofit that was founded in Colorado in 2008 with <a href="http://www.freerangelongmont.com/2010/02/12/who-benefited-from-outside-influence/" rel="nofollow">backing from fossil fuel interests</a>. ATP, which changed its named from Western Tradition Partnership, was registered by Scott Shires, a Republican operative who was <a href="http://www.freerangelongmont.com/2010/02/12/who-benefited-from-outside-influence/" rel="nofollow">fined</a> over $7,000 for campaign finance violations in that state, pleaded guilty in a <a href="http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/05/jury_returns_conviction_in_cas_1.php" rel="nofollow">scheme</a> to fraudulently obtain federal grants for developing alternative fuels, and was <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_11882167" rel="nofollow">tied</a> to an illegal gambling ring.

ATP was the plaintiff in a recent U.S. Supreme Court case that <a href="http://www.iwatchnews.org/2012/06/25/9189/supreme-court-rejects-montanas-election-spending-law" rel="nofollow">overturned state bans</a> on corporate and union spending in elections under the court's 2010 Citizens United decision. That case originated in the group's challenge to a Montana law that aimed to limit the influence of the state's powerful mining industry.

By Sue Sturgis on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 11:38</div>

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