Death Threats

SEE TWO

bak 819

sadly, we must add rape threats (tho hayes before)

420, are they dirty trick, meant to intimidate like doxxing?

aha: they are automatic when wacko(?) feels existential threat? eg coal export australia; almost always from right/male?

Will Carless @ USA Today: When Libs of TikTok tweets, threats increasingly follow.

USA TODAY has confirmed dozens of bomb threats, death threats and other harassment after Libs of TikTok’s posts since February 2022.

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'Guerrilla tactics against MAGA bullying': House Republicans opposed to Jim Jordan have a plan - Alternet.org

house Republicans opposed to Republican Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan‘s quest to become Speaker have been executing a plan to ensure he not only loses votes but appears to be designed to ensure he loses credibility and respect and suffers, as some are saying, “humiliation.”

Jordan’s candidacy has been strongly opposed by Democrats, largely based on his ties to Donald Trump and the January 6, 2021 insurrection, along with allegations he ignored years of sexual abuse inflicted on his wrestlers when he coached at Ohio State (OSU).

After Jordan lost more votes in the second round on Wednesday than he lost on Tuesday, CNN’s Melanie Zanona reported House Republicans opposed to a “Speaker Jordan” have been “staggering” their no votes.

“Some of Jim Jordan’s opponents tell me they’ve been purposely staggering their ‘no’ votes over multiple ballots — a strategy designed to show Jordan’s speakership opposition is only growing,” Zanona writes. “And that’s why they tell me Jordan will bleed even more support on a third ballot.”

That third ballot currently is expected to take place Thursday at noon.

“I know it’s inappropriate to take joy in anyone’s suffering but Jim Jordan has spent years being a bully and jerk to his own party and the Democrats. Seeing a bully put in his place is always good,” wrote former Lincoln Project executive director Fred Wellman. Later, responding to Zanona, he added: “This is what happens when you’ve done nothing for your colleagues for years except make their lives harder. Some places call it ‘karma.'”

Veteran foreign policy journalist Laura Rozen wrote, “the House GOP is trying to maximize the humiliation for Jordan by having him lose by more votes every time.”

Former Jezebel editor-in-chief Laura Bassett added, “they’re like not only will you not win, we also have a plan to slowly humiliate you.”

Longtime Republican political strategist Mike Madrid called the plan, “guerilla tactics against MAGA bullying.”

Meanwhile, others are taking notice as well. The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake reports, “The non-MAGA GOP finds some backbone — against Jordan and intimidation.”

As NCRM reported earlier, some Republicans are suggesting or even alleging Jordan and his allies have been sending threatening or intimidating messages attacking members of Congress for not voting to elect him as Speaker. Some say their families have also been targeted.

The Washington Post’s Jacqueline Alemany reported that U.S. Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) said “in no uncertain terms: The opposition against Jordan is ‘profound.’ He notes that the people who are against Jordan do not want anything but are opposed to him ‘on principle.’ He also says Jordan’s ‘tactics’ have massively backfired.”

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https://www.alternet.org/maricopa-county-elections/

threat jail az 8 23

school bd attacked for masks, rx hosp workers attacked, election workers

1021

921 trms # went from dozens to 100's to thousands? election officals/ppl, MOC

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/michigan-lawmaker-alleges-she-was-threatened-and-harassed-by-a-gop-colleague-i-fear-for-my-safety/

qanon shaman left threat on VP desk

aha note politics no longer about legislation [cf guy said i have no legis staff just PR, // cawthorne] but attacking libs/dems score pts in media eg talk radio and soc med

an 621 ah

no lnx twt

When Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018, the progressive Democrat expected to have frequent policy differences not only with Republicans, but also, with centrists in her own party. However, attacks on Omar from the far right — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and pundits at Fox News — go way beyond policy disagreements, painting her as fundamentally anti-American and an outright enemy of the United States. And on June 9, Omar tweeted a racist, threatening message her office received following a tweet by Boebert and the June 7 publication of an anti-Omar article by Houston Keene on Fox News' website.

In a June 8 tweet, Boebert — a supporter of the far-right QAnon conspiracy cult — described Omar as an "honorary member of Hamas" and one of the "terrorist [NOTE SUBS COMMIE-] sympathizers in Congress." Members of QAnon were among the violent extremists involved in the January 6 insurrectionist assault on the U.S. Capitol Building.

In her June 9 tweet, Omar — who is a Muslim and is originally from Somalia — noted that it isn't unusual for her to be "inundated with death threats." And she cited the call that she tweeted as a prime example. That racist caller can be heard saying, "Muslims are terrorists. And she is a raghead n*****. And every anti-American communist piece of shit that works for her, I hope you get what's fucking coming for you."

Omar tweeted that calls like the one she posted are "incited directly by articles like this" — a reference to Keene's article for Fox News' website — and "far-right politicians like" Boebert.

TW: Every time I speak out on human rights I am inundated with death threats. Here is one we just got. “Muslims ar… https://t.co/tKLay3dwdl

— Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan Omar) 1623286390.0

This is incited directly by articles like this and far right politicians like this. And it is enabled by a politic… https://t.co/6Ogf2nXnMX

— Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan Omar) 1623286456.0

Here are some reactions to the racist, threatening call Omar's office received:

@IlhanMN Its really ironic since Boebert is literally a terrorist sympathizer (if not directly involved) when it co… https://t.co/RBMVTRqWyJ

— AnarchyPunished2:ElectricBoogaloo (@AnarchyPunished2:ElectricBoogaloo) 1623287545.0...

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/right-wing-violence/

...We had seen this building over the past year, though. If you go back to January 2020, in Richmond, Virginia, 20,000 armed people showed up at the state House there. In the spring, there were protests that were armed in Michigan at the state House, including one in which people stormed the building and intimidated legislators with weapons, with AR-15 assault rifles. We saw the Idaho state House get stormed. We saw the Oregon state House get stormed. We saw, in Olympia, Washington, by the Capitol there, there were shootings in the street two weeks in a row. Two people were shot, one each week. And so, this had been building for a long time.

I personally was at an armed rally at the Virginia state House a couple months ago, where about 50 men with weapons showed up and basically dared the police to arrest them, because they were in violation of the law. So, this was something that had been coming for a long time. And if you looked at the rhetoric online and you looked at what had been said by members of these groups for a long time, it was all about revolution, it was all about death to tyrants, it was all about civil war, for a long time.

On the day of the event, we saw militia groups like the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers, who were playing a big role. We saw the conspiracy theorists, like the QAnon people, who were there. We saw, I think, a significant role played by the Proud Boys, who you could call an ultranationalist street-fighting gang or group. And I think we saw a lot of military vets and some current military there. And there were also people who belong to straight-up white supremacist or white nationalist groups.

AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned Virginia. We reported earlier this week that two of the rioters were off-duty Virginia police. And this goes to the issue of police and military from all over the country. You know, people were saying, "Where were the police?" Well, they were part of the riot, the insurrection, a number of them. You have police from Seattle, apparently New York, Philadelphia transit officers, a number of them, two Virginia officers. Now, this is just people who were identified. Can you talk about the — a PSYOPS guy, a military psychological operations. Can you talk about the significance of this?

A.C. THOMPSON: You know, I think there is a big concern that what we've seen in recent years is a lot of members of police departments, or at least some members of police departments, being radicalized in this right-wing direction. And in part, I think, what that's been a product of is they've seen the rise of the racial justice movements and police accountability movements, and they say, "I feel under attack. The person who's sticking up for us is Donald Trump, who's super law and order, and so I'm going to get deep into the Donald Trump world." And I think that's part of what's happened.

What's happening now, though, is different. And what's happening now is, when I was in D.C. at "Stop the Steal" protests and other protests in recent months, you would see the right-wing protesters did not want to fight with the police. They would say, "We're the law-and-order people. We're the pro-police people. We're not going to fight with the police. We want to fight with the police, but we're going to back off." That has changed. That has pivoted. And now what you're seeing in the chatter amongst the right-wing groups is, "We are at war with the police. The police are in bed with the reds. The police are a tool of this socialist takeover, which we believe magically is happening, without any facts. We believe that the police are subverting democracy. And we are now going after the police." And that's what you saw at the Capitol.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let's talk about the lack of preparation at the Capitol. You see these police officers, the Capitol Police, some help by the Metropolitan Police, fending for themselves. And we got the reports this week of the level of threat assessment reports that would come before each Black Lives Matter protest. Nothing like that was issued now, and yet you have this coming together of all of these people from — and if you can explain what the terrorist watch list is? It's not a no-fly list. And for many progressives, they may be very concerned about who makes up this list, but the fact is, scores of people on the FBI's own list had gathered, and yet the FBI issued no reports, and there was so little preparation. We saw African American Capitol police essentially running for their lives, saying they didn't have the support from the top, and they were being chased by the mob.

...

AMY GOODMAN: The Washington Post reported earlier this week the FBI explicitly warned of violence and "war" at the U.S. Capitol in an internal report issued one day before last Wednesday's deadly invasion. The report cited online posts, including one which said, quote, "Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die."

So, A.C. Thompson, I mean, how much more explicit can you get? And, I mean, we're not only talking about let's do a postmortem on last week's event — and "postmortem" is the right word. I mean, you're talking about a number of people dead: two police officers — the Capitol Hill police officer, Sicknick, who died, and then one who took his own life — and then you have three people who died in medical emergencies, apparently. But we're not only talking about the past; we're talking about whether this is prologue to this weekend. I mean, Monday is Dr. Martin Luther King's federal birthday, which is official — his birthday was today. But for years, white supremacists marched on state capitols to prevent it from being recognized as a national holiday. And then, of course, Wednesday, the inauguration.

A.C. THOMPSON: Yeah, I think I don't want to be alarmist, and I don't want to be the person who says the sky is falling, but I do think we have to be vigilant. I think we have to be looking forward. I think we have to be very, very careful in the months ahead. And this is why.

We were out on the campaign trail filming for Frontline at Trump rallies and at Trump speeches. And when we'd meet people, they would all say, "The only way the president is going to lose the election is if there's massive fraud, and it'll be probably massive fraud orchestrated by those nefarious globalists." There are millions of people who believe, because of Trump's incessant false messaging, that the election was fraudulent, that the election was stolen from him. And if you have just a very small percentage of those millions of people who are inclined to take violent action because they believe that we are on the cusp of a massively undemocratic transition of power, built around fraud, of course some of those people are likely to take very violent action to save, in their mind — you know, in their minds, to save this republic.

And that is the thing we must be concerned about. In America, it does not take very much money and very much skill to create a mass casualty event with a bomb or a gun. And that is something we're going to have to be very vigilant about, while at the same time ensuring that people have a right to protest, that people have a right to express themselves.

AMY GOODMAN: I'm wondering if you can talk about the alliances between all of these groups and current sitting members of Congress. You've got Utah Republican Congressmember John Curtis, who showed reporters a death threat left on his door on Thursday, a poster with skulls and crossbones pasted over his eyes, and the caption, "Wanted for treason! For resisting the true electoral victor Trump." Now, here is a congressman who, of course, was voicing concern about the fact that Republicans were not accepting the election of Joe Biden, but you've got other ones who led the charge about doing this. Can you talk about whether — the congressmembers and what should happen to them now? Even in President Trump's latest video, he will not acknowledge this election of Joe Biden. And does it actually encourage the violence, the fact that he's not showing up for the inauguration? Many may be deeply relieved that Trump won't be there, but does that send a message it's OK to target?

A.C. THOMPSON: I think there's a couple things going on here. And the first thing is that we have not acknowledged the scale of threats, intimidation and violence against public leaders that's occurred over the past year.We have so many public health officials in this country, at county and state levels, who have been threatened — at federal levels, as well — been threatened, who have been terrorized, who have had to get extra security, who have been doing their jobs and are in fear for their lives. And we, basically, as a society, have not grappled with that.

Now we've got elections officials, Republican and Democrat, who are dealing with that. We've got members of Congress who are dealing with that. We've got law enforcement leaders who are dealing with that. You know, in California, we had two law enforcement officials who were shot by an extremist group, allegedly, during the spring. Somebody is now facing federal charges for that. So I think there's been a —

AMY GOODMAN: Boogaloo bois.

A.C. THOMPSON: Yeah, the boogaloo bois, exactly. So I think there's been a level of violence and aggression towards public officials and government leaders that we have not seen in decades. And I don't think we've reckoned with that at all. It's a scary time to be a public leader.

Now, when you're talking about Congress, this is a thing that we're going to have to understand deeply, and we're going to need serious, serious investigations about what was the role of sympathetic members of Congress in possibly fomenting or even enabling this insurrection, because I don't think we've gotten to the bottom of that. We've heard names thrown out as potential members of Congress, from Arizona and Alabama, who may have aided and abetted these groups, but we don't know yet. I think that's a very concerning thing, as well. We also —...

building on gubmint base? doxxing escalates?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-cult/

kos

while the arrival of vaccine doses is finally bringing some hopeful news about the pandemic, the state of U.S. democracy continues to be at an historic low point fueled by the complicity of the Republican Party.

The past week has included a rash of threats against public servants trying to fulfill their duties and uphold their oaths of office. Nowhere was that more evident on Monday than in Michigan where the Capitol building was shut down to everyone but the 16 electors and others essential to certifying the state's Electoral College vote after credible threats of violence emerged. Each elector was provided with a police escort, but the atmosphere was so toxic, one elector ultimately decided to wear a bullet-proof vest to faithfully cast her vote for the state's rightful winner, Joe Biden.

The situation in Michigan followed on a week in which a so-called "enemies" list of state and federal officials who weren't sufficiently loyal to Donald Trumpsurfaced on the internet, according to the Washington Post. The list included the officials' home addresses along with photos of them covered by red targets and hashtags such as #remembertheirfaces and #NoQuarterForTraitors.

That sentiment bled into a weekend of protests turned violent from Washington State to Washington D.C., with four people stabbed and another shot in Olympia while a series of altercations broke out in D.C.

And it's not just public officials who are being targeted. The Georgia GOP election official who warned earlier this month that someone would wind up getting killed if Republicans didn't speak up outlined instances in which random citizens are getting caught in the crossfire.

"We have people stalking outside of our elections offices in Cobb County," said Gabriel Sterling last Thursday. "We've had a warehouse manager, he was simply taking trash out to the dumpster, and he had somebody follow him with a camera telling him he's going to prison."

Hate crimes spiked across the country following Trump's 2017 defense of white supremacists in Charlottesville as "very fine people." But Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino, told the Post threats targeting government officials increased last year and were then exacerbated by the onset of coronavirus restrictions.

"The direction of the threats and intimidation against state and local officials took an eerie turn in the last couple of years and accelerated during the pandemic because aggrieved people are interacting with their government at the local level — in public health and elections," Levin said. "And those officials are the very ones labeled as legitimate targets for aggressions on cable news, social media and particularly by the president."

Following the spate of violent threats, the question becomes who will even want to serve in these positions anymore?

"There is an ugliness and cruelty in our national rhetoric that is reaching a fevered pitch here at home, and that should worry us all," said Diana Lachiondo, a local Idaho health official who was forced to flee a meeting last week about pandemic restrictions when menacing protesters showed up at her home [12 yo kid?] . Lachiondo, who recently lost reelection, added, "I'm out. ... I've got a light at the end of the tunnel here. But who is going to want to run in the future? Do you need to live in a gated community to feel like you're safe? That is my concern going forward . . . what does this mean for our democracy?"

One of her colleagues, physician Ted Epperly, agreed the problem isn't going away anytime soon. "I think it'll take a lot of healing, quite frankly, to get us back to working together as a society," he told the Post. "I'm sure people will write about this for years to come," he added. "What happened? What happened here in this country? Who are we as people?"

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Coronavirus Crisis

:{Long Island Protest Praised by Trump Featured Anti-Vaxxer Call to “Hang Fauci”:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

420 jurors in danger?! judge nix new trial? flipbd

climategTE 2009

Mann quickly became a central target for climate change deniers. Right-wing groups and Republican politicians called for the federal government to revoke his research funding and for his university to investigate him. He received an envelope in the mail containing white powder; it turned out to be cornstarch. “You and your colleagues who have promoted this scandal ought to be shot, quartered, and fed to the pigs along with your whole damn families,” declared one emailer. Along with other climate experts, Mann was featured in an anti-Semitic post on the white supremacist website Stormfront—an ominous foreshadowing of 2016.

“I could easily brush off many of the attacks,” Mann would later write in his book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, which discusses the right’s assault on his research. “But to the extent that the industry-funded disinformation machine was taking direct aim not just at me—my livelihood, my reputation, my safety—but even my family, I was becoming incensed.”

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/01/politics/anthony-fauci-security-detail/index.html

dr Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country's top medical expert on the coronavirus pandemic and a member of President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force, is facing threats to his personal safety and now requires personal security from law enforcement at all times, including at his home, a source confirms to CNN.

A law enforcement official told CNN that the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General, the agency's law enforcement arm, asked the US Marshals Service for assistance following threats to Fauci. The Marshals then deputized HHS officers to act as personal security for the doctor.

The Washington Post first reportedthe threats to Fauci and the increased security.

A source also confirmed to CNN last week the presence of several members of the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department stationed at all times around Fauci's home in the district. The source added the stepped up visible police presence was a response to growing threats to Fauci's safety, though the source of the threats was not identified.

During the White House coronavirus task force briefing with reporters on Wednesday, Fauci was asked whether he orWhite House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, who also serves on the task force, had received threats of any kind or whether they had been assigned a security detail. He said he was not able to answer.

"Anything that has to do with security detail I would have to have you (ask your question) to the inspector general of HHS," he said, referencing the Department of Health and Human Services.

Fauci's response was quickly interrupted by Trump, who stepped up to the podium to say the nation's most visible infectious disease expert doesn't require protection.

"(He) doesn't need security, everybody loves them," said Trump. "Besides that, they'd be in big trouble if they ever attacked."

However, as Fauci's profile in the pandemic crisis has grown, so has the concern for his welfare. Fauci's guidance to Trump for the country to remain as locked down as possible to help control the virus spread has not earned fans among some fervent right-wing voices.

Fauci was among the health advisers on Trump's team encouraging a continuation of the current guidelines after the President heard from business leaders and some conservative allies that the restrictions were more damaging than the virus itself....

https://www.mediamatters.org/60-minutes/fiona-hill-tells-60-minutes-about-receiving-death-threats-after-she-was-targeted-roger

lESLIE STAHL (60 MINUTES CORRESPONDENT): When you took the job, I know that there were some of your friends who had urged you not to. I wonder if any of your friends stopped talking to you.

FIONA HILL: There were some people in the professional circles in which I move through certainly took, let's just say some took offense, frankly, at the fact that I had-- decided to give this. They had given me counsel not to do the job.And they, you know, actually did believe that I would be aiding and abetting something nefarious by joining the administration. I felt very strongly, however, that we were in a situation where we were to a confrontation with Russia that someone like myself, who was not political, someone who was an expert should step up and try to do something.

STAHL: Right after you started at the White House, there was a smear campaign against you. Public. Distressing I'm sure. What was that all about?

HILL: Well, I'm still trying to get to the bottom of some of that, to be honest.

(CLIP BEGINS)

ALEX JONES: He's got a major Soros mole discovered in the White House, breaking now--

(CLIP ENDS)

STAHL: May 2017, right-wing conspiracists launch an online campaign to discredit her.

(CLIP BEGINS)

ROGER STONE: George Soros has penetrated the Trump White House. A woman named Fiona hill

(CLIP ENDS)

HILL: I have to say that the scale of this did take me by surprise.

STAHL: This was Roger Stone--

HILL: I was, Roger Stone, Alex Jones. And I did think--

STAHL: So from the right?

HILL: "Why me?"

STAHL: Were there death threats?

HILL: There were death threats. There was-- quite a number of them, especially online.

STAHL: She found it disturbing. And she doesn't rattle easily.

...

STAHL: In becoming an overnight public figure, she found herself contending with the anxieties of her 13-year-old daughter. How did she absorb all of this?

HILL: Initially, she was, you know, somewhat concerned about the whole thing.

STAHL: She must have been worrying all that time?

HILL: But she also helped me put things into perspective. Because on the day before I was meant to testify in public, and obviously I was trying to prepare myself for this, she was preparing for a big test. And she was having me quiz her in the car when I was driving her to school. And she was getting quite anxious. And, you know, I was kind of trying to pull rank on this one and said, "Look, put it into perspective. You know, Mommy, tomorrow has to, you know, kind of testify before congress and millions of people might be watching. And, you know, I mean, this is a test. And she just looked at me and she said, "This is much worse." And I said, "What do you mean?" And she said, "Well, you just have to tell the truth."

### :{Fiona Hill testified on the dangers of the “fictional narrative” of Ukrainian collusion -- the same conspiracy theory Fox News has relentlessly pushed for years:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

11/21/19 1:37 PM EST

1. ### Former NSC staffer Fiona Hill testified about receiving death threats after being labeled a “Soros mole.” It started with Roger Stone.

11/08/19 5:38 PM EST

1. ### Alex Jones presses on with Roger Stone’s smear campaign against Fiona Hill

11/25/19 3:30 PM EST

mma 919

ppearing Friday on Fox Business to discuss the Democratic debate the night before, Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren suggested that Americans may have to shoot immigrants, saying “The people in the middle of this country, we are going to be armed and ready, because we have to have a means to defend ourselves from — who knows who's coming in?”

Guns were a main topic in right-wing media after former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-TX) called for a mandatory buyback of AR-15s and AK-47s. Shortly after, a Texas state rep. tweeted that "My AR is ready for you Robert Francis.” Many right-wing media figures defended the obvious death threat, and the representative was even feted on :{Dana Loesch':(style="background-color:#ffcc66;"):}::{s radio show:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: and on Fox News.

Elsewhere on Fox News, Fox host Jesse Watters suggested that a buyback program, similar to what Australia has done, would result in gun owners in America murdering police officers. Others on Fox have made similar remarks.

dems as ihan omar sec upped after send her back

Ohio man who said AOC ‘should be shot’ has been arrested on felony gun charges, interstate threats

Jen Hayden / Daily Kos

Kathy Griffin still gets death threats: ‘People want to kill me on stage’

Mary Elizabeth Williams / Salon

She’s been pushing buttons for three decades now as a comic, a reality star, an actress.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/us/threats-congress-john-kless.html

trump re?-tweets

Rep. Ilhan Omar Sees Spike in Death Threats After Trump 9/11 Attack

daily caller fox news 43 sec video her interspersed with 911 images with quote out of context

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/rep-ilhan-omar-has-seen-an-increase-in-direct-threats-on-my-life-since-trumps-attack/

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/advocacy-groups-warn-against-normalized-hate-speech-after-trump-continues-to-ridicule-rep-omar-despite-death-threats/

Advocacy groups, progressives, and politicians are warning about the dangers of “normalized hate speech” and Islamophobia after the latest round of threats targeting Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee and one of the first Muslim congresswomen.

“The political environment, led by an Islamophobe in the White House, has normalized hate speech and emboldened bigots in their actions,” Afaf Nasher, executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY), said Saturday.

“The rising threat of Islamophobia and white supremacy must be taken seriously,” he added. CAIR is the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group.

Nasher expressed relief that law enforcement tracked down Patrick Carlineo, of Addison, New York, who was arrested and charged on Friday with threatening to assault and murder Omar, a Democrat who represents Minnesota.

In a phone call to Omar’s office last month, the 55-year-old allegedly told one of her staffers: “Do you work for the Muslim Brotherhood? Why are you working for her, she’s an (expletive) terrorist. I’ll put a bullet in her (expletive) skull.”

While being questioned by the FBI after the incident, “Carlineo told the agents he is a patriot, that he loves President Trump, and hates radical Muslims in government,” the Elmira Star Gazette reported Friday, citing the complaint.

News of Carlineo’s arrest came after The Blast reported Wednesday that, according to court records, Omar was the target of an unrelated bomb threat in mid-March when she was the featured speaker for a CAIR event at a Los Angeles hotel.

A female caller, who dialed from a blocked number, reportedly left a voicemail saying: “What would you do if I told you your hotel was going to be bombed. That is exactly what’s going to happen if you allow the likes of Ilhan Omar into your hotel. She is a danger to American society and your hotel. You are not to allow her foot into there if you value your own safety. Do not allow her in there. Cancel the event.”

The newly reported threats provoked sympathy and support for Omar, including from activist Linda Sarsour and the advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace:

https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060094801

One scientist was called Climate Barbie.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

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."

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.

"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."

Abortion doctors have literally been targeted and killer,eg Tiller, often egged on by rightwing radio, who then distance themselves.

Gifford on Palin website under crosshairs.

In Australia, where significant legislation on carbon was passed, climate scientists were put into protective custody. One American climate scientist so depressed by threats he contemplated suicide (see also mirror strategy for example Jesse Ventura Consp Theory in which disguised scientist claimed he'd been denied tenure for opposing climate change).

NPR 318

Jennifer Kabbany, editor of The College Fix, told NPR that the site's purpose is to train future journalists, not to foment hate. "The College Fix has publicly denounced any vile emails that a professor might get," she said. "I'm sorry if professors received that kind of backlash." In reference to Ponce, of Diablo Valley College, she added, "It appeared the lecture was not balanced and didn't do academic inquiry and debate justice."

The College Fix is run by the Student Free Press Association. The association has had Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' son listed on its board of directors and is funded by an anonymous conservative donor fund.

Campus Reform is a project the Leadership Institute, a conservative think tank. Professor Watchlist, which lists more than 250 professors who advance what it calls a "radical" left-wing agenda, is maintained by Turning Point USA, an on-campus group that has been labeled "alt-right."

Campus Reform and Professor Watchlist did not respond to requests for comment.

The Red Elephants is a pro-Trump "alt-right media collective" founded in November 2016. Founder Vincent James Foxx has reportedly denied the Holocaust and been accused of urging violence at rallies. The site posted an edited video of Ponce's talk on YouTube with commentary calling it "Marxist, Communist, disgusting rhetoric that they spew in these classrooms to indoctrinate these children." It used the video to kick off an initiative called "Film Your Marxist Professor."

The administrator of the "Film Your Marxist Professor" Facebook page, who gave his name as Aaron Burr, told NPR via Facebook message: "We receive around 10 submissions per day. Our goal is to stop the anti-white and anti-American rhetoric that is being spewed on college campuses all across the country."

From these specialized sites, content travels to alt-right media sources like Breitbart and Infowars and neo-Nazi sites like Stormfront, and then, sometimes, to Fox News and the New York Post, CNN and other outlets.

Meanwhile, harassment is coordinated out in the open on anonymous, uncensored forums like 4chan, 8chan and Reddit, where self-identified "trolls" uncover and post people's personal information, known as doxing, and try out strategies of attack. Cuevas at the University of North Georgia obtained screenshots of the 4chan forum on which people were fabricating social media posts in an attempt to paint him as anti-Semitic and racist or, alternatively, as pushing anti-Trump views onto his students.

"Their stated goal was to get me fired," he says, but he fears that is not the worst of it: "Georgia had just passed the campus carry law [for firearms], and what worried me was a lone nut case."

Flyers for Ponce's talk about white supremacy in the United States sit next to a flyer for Identity Evropa, a white supremacist group.

Anya Kamenetz/NPR

Ponce says he sees a fresh wave of abusive calls and letters every time a new media story hits. He has gotten letters in the mail, emails and Facebook messages, and his colleagues and administrators have gotten calls and emails.He has found his personal information on a Hungarian right-wing websiteand gotten calls from South America. He, like other professors, has called the police, but the messages keep coming.

Most troubling, he says, are "the real threats against my family" and "pictures on the Web of my 9-year-old daughter."

He and his wife are trying not to park their cars in the same places every day, peek out into the street at night and warn their daughter not to touch the mail....

===

Last week, a Michigan man named Brandon Griesemer was arrested for threatening to kill CNN’s “fake news” anchors. In December of 2016, North Carolina resident Edgar Maddison Welch burst into a pizza restaurant near Washington with a rifle and fired off three rounds, in part because Jones and his staff had spent hours telling their followers the place was the center of a global child-sex ring.

Following Welch’s guilty plea last March, Jones begrudgingly and partially retracted his support for the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory. His actions since, however, suggest he has no legitimate intention of cleaning up his act.

People have mocked the idea that Trump could become a dictator. What's clear is that many people he likes are telling him to become one.

Matthew Sheffield

===

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/professor-forced-cancel-book-tour-after-fox-news-fans-threaten-lynch-her-ripping

A black professor was forced to cancel the rest of her book tour after a Fox News report prompted dozens of death threats against her — and she accuses the conservative network of inciting its viewers to violence.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor delivered the commencement address last month at Hampshire College, and Fox News aired a portion of the 20-minute speech Sunday that called attention to her criticism of President Donald Trump, reported *The Stranger*.

Taylor, a Princeton University professor of African-American studies, described the president as a “racist, sexist, megalomaniac,” and the Fox News report suggested that she was encouraging activists to lawlessly thwart the Trump agenda.

After the report on her “Anti-POTUS tirade” aired, Taylor said she has received more than 50 hateful and threatening emails — some of which were issued with such specificity that she canceled portions of a tour to promote her new book, “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation.”

“Shortly after the Fox story and video were published, my work email was inundated with vile and violent statements. I have been repeatedly called ‘n****r,’ ‘b*tch,’ ‘c*nt,’ ‘dyke,’ ‘she-male,’ and ‘coon’ — a clear reminder that racial violence is closely aligned with gender and sexual violence,” Taylor said. “I have been threatened with lynching and having the bullet from a .44 Magnum put in my head.”

She accused the conservative network of airing the report in an attempt to silence her and other Trump critics.

“I am not a newsworthy person,” Taylor said. “Fox did not run this story because it was ‘news,’ but to incite and unleash the mob-like mentality of its fringe audience, anticipating that they would respond with a deluge of hate-filled emails — or worse. The threat of violence, whether it is implied or acted on, is intended to intimidate and to silence.”

Taylor placed the threats into context with recent violent acts by white supremacists, including the fatal stabbings of two men on a commuter train in Portland, Oregon.

“Their side uses the threat of violence and intimidation because they cannot compete in the field of politics, ideas, and organizing,” she said. “The true strength of our side has not yet been expressed in its size and breadth, and so they believe they are winning. We have to change this dynamic and begin to build a massive movement against racism, sexism, and bigotry in this country. I remain undaunted in my commitment to that project.”

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/professor-who-criticized-trump-hiding-after-death-threats

11/15 note, no links or img

As delegates from 195 countries work diligently in Paris to hash out an international deal to tackle climate change, their work relies on the huge consensus of climate science that shows the world is headed for a dangerous future if greenhouse gas emissions are not curtailed. But back home in the United States, historically the biggest carbon emitter of all, climate science gets a much rockier reception. In fact, climate scientists find themselves and their work regularly under attack.

Not only are there organized efforts likeLamar Smith's House science committee issuing subpoenasand striving to discredit scientists, but harassment and hate mail arrives every day via the Internet. Their work has found itself in the crosshairs of a political ideology that has an ugly side.

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.

An example of a hate message directed at a climate scientist and obtained by ICN.

While fervent public mistrust of established science is not unique to climate change (the anti-vaccination movement is another prominent example), the level of cruelty of climate harassment is alarming, and is also largely a U.S. phenomenon.

A recent poll by the Pew Research Center shows that only 45 percent of Americans—compared to 54 percent of people worldwide (and nearly 100 percent of working U.S. climate scientists)—believe climate change is a serious problem. Among Republicans, that percentage falls to 20 percent.

Another recent study, by PNAS, showed that the campaigns funded by fossil fuel companies to sow doubt about climate science have been remarkably effective in shaping public opinion in the U.S.

"This is more like politics, with nasty ads that often tell lies or half-truths, distort records," said Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Co. But unlike many politicians, "scientists don't have a superPAC to fight the claims. This is the new reality for us. Scientists moving into the realm of climate science need to be aware of this. Unfortunately, this is the new world we have to live in."

An example of a hate message directed at a climate scientist and obtained by ICN.

This phenomenon isn't unique to scientists either. Journalist Seth Borenstein, who covers climate science for the Associated Press, frequently gets harassed on social media. "Why can't we put these dangerous eco-terrorists in prison, or better yet, just execute them!" one Twitter user wrote in September, tagging Borenstein in the post.

The harassment gets scarier when it isn't contained to the Internet.

A few weeks after a local California magazine published a story about Benjamin Santer, an atmospheric scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the researcher got a knock on his front door at 10 p.m. By the time he answered it, there was a dead rat on his doormat and a yellow Hummer was speeding away from the house, its driver yelling profanity out the window. Santer's young son was upstairs at the time.

Michael Mann, a climate researcher at Penn State University, was left a suspicious looking package with a white powdery substance at his office. The FBI later determined it was cornmeal. Mann and nine other climate scientists also had their names, bios and for some pictures posted on the White Nationalist web forum Stormfront.org, a group whose members have been linked to the hate crime murders of nearly 100 people across the globe.

An example of a hate message directed at a climate scientist and obtained by ICN.

Harassment can be particularly jolting for young scientists, Trenberth said. Most science graduate programs offer some sort of media training, but they largely focus on how to effectively talk to journalists, not how to deal with a barrage of hate mail from the public that follows that interaction. For someone just a few years out of their PhD, an onslaught of personal threats and questions to their scientific credibility is disturbing and confidence-shaking. As a result, young scientists often retreat to the ivory tower to focus solely on research, rather than continue to engage with the public, said Trenberth.

Researchers told InsideClimate News that when they were dealing with the first wave of climate-related harassment in the 1990s and early 2000s, they found themselves ill-equipped to deal with the torrent of attacks. Over the years, however, they have set up informal support networks to fight back.

An example of a hate message directed at a climate scientist and obtained by ICN.

In 2011, Mann and other researchers set up the Climate Science Defense Fund, a nonprofit that helps scientists defend themselves against politically motivated legal actions. The organization helps scientists find pro bono representation and raises funds to assist with legal costs.

"When I find myself with younger climate scientists who are subject to similar harassment, nasty emails, letters to superiors, I try to convey...[that] there’s an infrastructure," Mann said.

Even with that help, hate mail and harassment takes a toll on scientists—and science. Researchers spend time and resources addressing denialists' debunked claims in a way the scientific community has never done before, according to a study published in May in the peer-reviewed journal Global Environmental Change. They also often downplay future climate risks to avoid being labeled an "alarmist" by climate contrarians, concluded the same study.

It can also take a toll on personal lives and relationships. And for some, the fear of being attacked, ridiculed or investigated remains years after the hate mail stops.

Hayhoe has found herself snapping at her son during particularly intense periods of attack. "That shouldn't be happening, it shouldn't be affecting my personal life," Hayhoe said. "As scientists we need to take a step back and ask, what toll is this having on me, on my professional work and on my personal life?"

Many of the researchers InsideClimate News spoke with said they have taken steps to protect themselves and their families from hate mail and harassment. Some have unlisted home addresses and phone numbers. Others have arranged that any mail or visitors get filtered through a central office at work, such as the headquarters of their university department.

"Some things are worth fighting for," said Santer, who has been the target of harassment since the mid-1990s. "A clear public understanding of the nature and causes of climate change is worth fighting for.

"If you are doing science that people care about, that is relevant, there will be pushback," he added. "You will receive not only justified or unjustified scientific criticism, but you will encounter attacks on your integrity, your character and your motives. You need to be prepared for them. They are the price of doing what we do. But it is important to remember they are just background noise."

The world needs more researchers talking about global warming right now, not less, climate scientists and communicators said.

"If you work in string theory or big bang cosmology, do great work inside the ivory tower. That's fine," said Hayhoe. "But when you are doing work on something like cancer, Ebola or climate change, there's an urgency. People are being harmed today. If we keep our results to ourselves, that's lives lost."

Ultimately, these attacks haven't stymied the flow of new climate research being published or the suring up of the scientific consensus for human-driven global warming. Many of the researchers InsideClimate News spoke with considered stepping out of the public eye at some point in their career, but in the end, none did.

"I am not looking back in anger," said Santer. "I really do think the main lesson I've learned through all this is wow, I get to come into work every day and learn something new about this incredible planet on which we live. That is an extraordinary privilege."

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/11122015/climate-change-global-warming-denial-ugly-side-scientists-hate-mail-hayhoe-mann

MIT Climate Scientist's Wife Threatened In A "Frenzy of Hate"

Kerry Emanuel's inbox was flooded with menacing emails after Climate Desk's video on Republican climate hawks.

By James West | Fri Jan. 13, 2012 7:00 AM EST

Kerry Emanuel began receiving four or five emails a day.: James West

Prominent MIT researcher Kerry Emanuel has been receiving an unprecedented "frenzy of hate" after a video [1] featuring an interview with him was published last week by Climate Desk.

Emails contained "veiled threats against my wife," and other "tangible threats," Emanuel, a highly regarded atmospheric scientist and director of MIT's Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate program, said in an interview. "They were vile, these emails. They were the kind of emails nobody would like to receive."

"What was a little bit new about it was dragging family members into it and feeling that my family might be under threat, so naturally I didn't feel very good about that at all," Emanuel said. "I thought it was low to drag somebody's spouse into arguments like this."

Climate Desk has seen a sample of the emails and can confirm they are laced with menacing language, expletives, and personal threats of violence.

Emanuel began receiving emails "almost immediately" after the video was posted on January 5, and the volume peaked at four or five emails a day. The threats have now petered off.

Threats are nothing new in the world of climate science. But Emanuel was surprised by the viciousness of the emails. "I think most of my colleagues and I have received a fair bit of email here and there that you might classify as hate mail, but nothing like what I've got in the last few days."

"This was a little more orchestrated this time," he said.

The video—"New Hampshire's GOP Climate Hawks"—documented a climate change conference run by a group of Republican voters upset by their party's anti-science rhetoric. Kerry Emanuel was a keynote speaker along with former Republican congressman Bob Inglis from South Carolina (who, incidentally, has not received any threats since the video).

In one clip, Kerry Emanuel says, "It makes me feel to some extent disgusted with politics and to some extent ashamed to be an American."

The comments were seized upon, Emanuel suspects, by "bloggers bent on distorting that message and amplifying it." One website, Climate Depot, posted Emanuel's email address.

Emanuel notes that in the full video he went on to explain that the Republican candidates "have either been misled in which case it's not great to be part of the political system where candidates for the president of the United States could be so misled on such an important issue, or they were dishonest, in which case equally bad in my view: How could we live in a country where candidates are being dishonest about an issue of such importance?"

Kerry Emanuel was featured in Climate Desk's story about Republican

Kerry Emanuel was featured in Climate Desk's story about Republican "climate hawks." James West

Another website, Junk Science, raised questions about his wife's anti-war feelings in the 1960s.

"Somebody came to the conclusion that back in the '60s she was a Marxist—which she was back then," Emanuel said. He notes that "conservative heroes of today like Norman Podhoretz [and] Jeane Kirkpatrick" were also socialists in the '60s. "So I don't quite know what the problem was there!"

In June 2011, top Australian climate scientists said they had been targeted by death threats [2] and menacing phone calls, including threats of sexual attacks on family members. Australian National University in Canberra reacted by tightening security, and the police began investigating. US researchers received a torrent of hate mail [3]in the wake of "Climategate," in which a trove of emails were stolen and released at the University of East Anglia in the UK.

Emanuel decided not to alert police.

Emanuel says climate scientists are not used to the intensity of political debate around climate change: "We scientists are usually not in any kind of heated public debate as is the case in climate; we're not used to this, we're not trained for it."

"I've done a lot of public speaking, and I've spoken to many types of audiences, including audiences that are very conservative, and while I certainly have people push back—which is understandable and encouraged and people debate that's all part of that, that's fine—I've never ever encountered in direct contact with the public any behavior that I thought was bad or threatening or vile or anything like that. So I don't have any trouble communicating directly with the public. I think it's the distortions that occur sometimes in certain formats that are the root of the problem."

Kerry asked me to publish the full audio of our interview, which you can listen to below.

http://www.motherjones.com/print/156601

Climate News Network [1] / By Tim Radford [2]

Conservatives Don't Like the Message on Climate Change, So They Want to Shoot the Messenger

November 10, 2014 |

If you don’t like the message on climate change [3], it seems that the answer is to shoot the messenger.

According to a new book by veteran environmentalist George Marshall [4], thousands of abusive emails—including demands that he commit suicide or be “shot, quartered and fed to the pigs, along with your family”—were received by climate scientist Michael Mann [5], director of Pennsylvania State University’s Earth System Science Centre, who drew and published the “hockey stick graph [6]” that charts a steep rise in global average temperatures.

Glenn Beck, a commentator on Fox TV, called on climate scientists to commit suicide. A climate denial blogger [7] called Marc Morano claimed that one group of climate scientists deserved “to be publicly flogged.” And the late Stephen Schneider found his name and that of other Jewish climate scientists on a “death list” maintained by an American neo-Nazi website.

Very Strange

As Marshall points out in his absorbing, all-embracing, immensely readable book, Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, something very strange is going on.

Louis Pasteur’s revolutionary microbiology work on disease prevention never resulted in him having to think about how to use a gun. Jonas Salk never needed to fortify his house as result of working on the development of a polio vaccine.

Other scientists are trusted and respected. But the way climate scientists are now treated, Marshall argues, is without parallel in the history of science: “They have been set up to play that role in a climate storyline that, it would seem, cannot refute climate change without demonising the people who warn us about it.”

Forget, if you can, the people who seem to be whipping up these furious responses. Climate change can only be met or mitigated by action—and there are plenty of reasons why a very large number of people nod in agreement about what must be done and then fail to insist that it is done.

Dan Gilbert [8], a psychologist who won the Royal Society’s science book prize in 2007 with an examination of the puzzles of happiness, says that climate change is something unlikely to strike fear in the human heart anyway. It is impersonal, it is gradual, it is amoral and it isn’t—or doesn’t seem to be—happening now.

Other researchers have pointed out the alarming tendency, shared by all humans, to believe what they want to believe. Furthermore, climate change is not (death threats and public flogging fantasies aside) an immediate or an emotional issue. “A distant, abstract, and disputed threat just doesn’t have the necessary characteristics for seriously mobilising public opinion,” says the Nobel laureate, Daniel Kahneman [9].

There are other difficulties. When, for instance, will the awful things start to happen? How do you mobilise public opinion on an argument with uncertain timescales, imprecise outcomes and real puzzles about the costs and benefits of any actions? No one, Marshall says, is ever going to march under a banner of that says “100 months before the Odds Shift into a Greater Likelihood of Feedbacks.”

Marshall founded the Climate Outreach and Information Network [10] (COIN), based in Oxford, England. He is a veteran of Greenpeace and the Rainforest Foundation, and there isn’t much doubt about what he thinks and knows to be true.

But the appeal of this book is that he lets others talk. He examines the political doublethink that seems to infect some legislatures in the U.S. He listens to the skeptics [11], the worriers, the oil giants, the conspiracy theorists, the celebrity environmental campaigners and the other ones who invoke imagery of death, fever and smoking ruin.

And he refers to the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute [12], which polled academic experts on global risk, and found an estimate of a “19 percent probability that the human species will go extinct before the end of the century”.

Altruistic Behavior

The title, direction and burden of this book seem to augur almost apocalyptic failure to confront the coming crisis. But, of course, Marshall pulls out an ace near the end.

He concludes that while human brains may be hard-wired to not worry about what may or may not happen in two generations, they also have an immense capacity for pro-social, supportive and altruistic behavior.

“Climate change is entirely within our capacity for change,” he says, “It is challenging, but far from impossible.”

That is good to know. And the book ends with some serious advice about how to make the case for action—and instead of capital punishment, we get generously shouty advice in capital letters. CLIMATE CHANGE IS HAPPENING HERE AND NOW, he reminds us. And he urges campaigners to DROP THE ECO-STUFF, especially the polar bears.

Marshall suggests that we really do try to contain global average warming to 2°C. He quotes John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research [13], who told the Australians:“The difference between two and four degrees is human civilization.” And, yes, do think about it.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/27/journalist_allan_nairn_threatened_for_exposing

Attempts to intimidate Climate Scientists Link. Update: Death threats against Australian scientists 6/11). UPDATE: moved to secure locations. 10/11. Attempt thwarted by newspapers 5/10, defense of Michael Mann, famous for the "hockey-stick" graph. Here he is completely vindicated. Several different investigations have cleared everyone in so-called Climategate scandals. Related videos.

Newsweek article (editorial?) on better behavior in the debate. 2/10

rfk2;

pork WU from goon followed rfk2, threatened

There’s no police tape across Michael Mann’s office doorway this morning. “Always a good start,” he says, juggling a cup of coffee as he slides his key into the lock.

Mann, a paleoclimatologist, wears a sport coat over a turtleneck. As he takes a seat at his desk, a narrow sunbeam angles through the window, spotlighting a jumble of books, journals and correspondence. Behind him, a framed picture of his six-year-old daughter rests near a certificate for the Nobel Peace Prize he shared in 2007. Propped into a corner is a hockey stick, a post-lecture gift from Middlebury College, which Mann jokingly says he keeps “for self-defense.”

Mann directs Penn State University’s Earth System Science Center. Several months ago, he arrived at his office with an armload of mail. Sitting at his desk, he tore open a hand-addressed envelope and began to pull out a letter. He watched as a small mass of white powder cascaded out of the folds and onto his fingers. Mann jerked backward, letting the letter drop and holding his breath as a tiny plume of particles wafted up, sparkling in the sunlight. He rose quickly and left the office, pulling the door shut behind him. “I went down to the restroom and washed my hands,” he says. “Then I called the police.”

For someone describing an anthrax scare, Mann is surprisingly nonchalant. “I guess,” he says, “it’s so much a part of my life that I don’t even realize how weird it is.”

“Weird�� is perhaps the mildest way to describe the growing number of threats and acts of intimidation that climate scientists face. A climate modeler at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory answered a late-night knock to find a dead rat on his doorstep and a yellow Hummer speeding away. An MIT hurricane researcher found his inbox flooded daily for two weeks last January with hate mail and threats directed at him and his wife. And in Australia last year, officials relocated several climatologists to a secure facility after climate-change skeptics unleashed a barrage of vandalism, noose brandishing and threats of sexual attacks on the scientists’ children.

Those crude acts of harassment often come alongside more-sophisticated legal and political attacks. Organizations routinely file nuisance lawsuits and onerous :{Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to disrupt the work of climate scientists. In 2005, before dragging Mann and other climate researchers into congressional hearings, Texas congressman Joe Barton ordered the scientists to submit voluminous details of working procedures, computer programs and past funding—essentially demanding that they reproduce and defend their entire life’s work. In a move that hearkened back to darker times, Oklahoma senator James Inhofe, the ranking member of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, released a report in 2010 that named 17 prominent climate scientists, including Mann, who, he argued, may have engaged in “potentially criminal behavior.” Inhofe outlined three laws and four regulations that he said the scientists may have violated, including the Federal False Statements Act—which, the report noted, could be punishable with imprisonment of up to five years.

It’s late February when I visit Mann in his office, almost two years after Inhofe issued his “list of 17.” Though it’s still winter in central Pennsylvania, the temperature outside hangs in the upper 60s, crocus stems poke up from flower beds, and shopkeepers have thrown open their doors along College Avenue. Mann is home for three days between conferences in Milwaukee and Hawaii and West Coast stops on a promotional tour for his new book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.

In the late 1990s, Mann developed a graph that demonstrated a recent and dramatic uptick in global mean surface temperatures. The hockey-stick-shaped curve has become emblematic to both sides of the climate debate. To the vast majority of climate scientists, it represents evidence, corroborated by decades of peer-reviewed research, of global warming. To climate-change skeptics, the hockey stick is the most grievous of many illusions fabricated by thousands of conspiring scientists to support an iniquitous political agenda.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) included Mann’s graph in its Third Assessment Report in 2001. Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim then included it in their 2006 climate-change documentary An Inconvenient Truth. The film galvanized both the pro- and contra-climate-science camps, propelling the issue of human-caused global warming into the culture wars—and Mann along with it. ��Since then, my life has been crazy,” he says. “People have stolen my e-mails and bought billboards and newspaper ads to denounce me; they’ve staged bogus grassroots protests; they’ve threatened my family. I’ve been through eight investigations by everyone from the National Science Foundation to the British House of Commons. Every time, they find no evidence of fraud or misuse of information. Every time, they conclude that my methods are sound, my data replicable. And every time I’m exonerated, another investigation pops up.”

Mann has been called a “compulsive liar, a con man and an extraordinary psychological case.” Some critics accuse him of masterminding a cabal of scientists that aims to establish a new world order. Still others compare him to Hitler, Stalin and Satan.

At the time of our meeting, Mann was juggling several FOIA requests and two lawsuits��one of which would be resolved the following week, when the Virginia Supreme Court rejected the state attorney general’s demand that the University of Virginia (Mann’s former employer) turn over the researcher’s e-mails and other documents. The university spent nearly $600,000 to argue that releasing personal correspondence would chill academic research. “Yes, there’s been a toll on me and my family,” Mann says. “But it’s bigger than that. Look what it’s doing to science, when others see this and see what happens if they speak up about their research. These efforts to discredit science are well-organized. It’s not just a bunch of crazy people.”

Force of Nature: Michael Mann, a paleoclimatologist, has been the subject of lawsuits, congressional investigations and an anthrax scare. Tom Clynes

“There’s really only about 25 of us doing this,” Steve Milloy says, shortly after sitting down at Morton’s, a Washington, D.C., steakhouse favored by lawyers and lobbyists. “A core group of skeptics. It��s a ragtag bunch, very Continental Army.” Milloy, a Fox News commentator and former tobacco-industry advocate, runs a website called JunkScience.com that is an outlet for attacks on those he calls “global-warming alarmists.” Many of those who question mainstream climate science resent being called deniers; they say it unfairly equates them with Holocaust deniers. They prefer doubters, skeptics or realists. “Me, I just stick with denier,” Milloy says. “I’m happy to be a denier.”

Milloy is dressed in a striped pink button-down shirt and khaki pants, classic Potomac prep. He moved into climate denial in the 1990s as funding from the tobacco lobby began to dry up. At the time, conservative and libertarian think tanks were just starting to take aim at climate science. Milloy, who has received funding from entities controlled by oil billionaires Charles and David Koch, helps them get their message to the masses.

Milloy and other aggressive deniers practice a form of asymmetric warfare that is decentralized and largely immune to reasoned response. They launch what Aaron Huertas, a press secretary at the Union of Concerned Scientists, calls “information missiles,” anti-climate-change memes that get passed around on listservs, amplified in the blogosphere, and picked up by radio talk-show hosts or politicians. “Even if they don’t have much money, they are operating in a structure that allows them to punch above their weight,” Huertas says.

Scientists who speak up quickly become targets. Both Milloy and his counterpart Marc Morano, who runs the site ClimateDepot.com and once declared that climate scientists “deserve to be publicly flogged,” occasionally publish the e-mail addresses of climate researchers, a stunt that can result in scientists receiving a flood of vitriolic messages. A few weeks before our meeting, Milloy had offered a $500 bounty for a video of anyone who would heckle Mann with “an alarmism-debunking” question during the California leg of his book tour. The hecklers never materialized but, as with the white powder in Mann’s letter (which the FBI determined to be cornstarch), the threat made an impact.

Mann calls Milloy “a valueless, all-purpose denier for notorious industries who need a hired gun.” But Milloy, like others in the movement, says that he’s fighting an existential war with forces that would, without his intervention, steal the American way of life. “This whole green thing, the whole environmental scare industry, is really just an ingenious plan to exert government control over everything we do,�� Milloy says. “I have yet to see an environmental scare that is remotely true when it comes to human health. Secondhand smoke, air quality, ozone depletion, pesticides, superfund sites—you name it.”

* * *

The evidence to support the theory of anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change has been mounting since the mid-1950s, when atmospheric models predicted that growing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere would add to the natural “greenhouse effect” and lead to warming. The data was crude at first, and opinions vacillated (skeptics like to recall a 1974 Time cover story that predicted an impending ice age). But by the mid-1990s, thousands of lines of independent inquiry supported the conclusion summarized in the 1995 IPCC report: ��The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.”

Since then, the case for anthropogenic climate change has only strengthened; 98 percent of actively publishing climate scientists now say that it is undeniable. But several finer points remain unsettled. For instance, researchers still don’t completely understand the role of aerosols in the atmosphere, the variable effects of clouds at different heights, and the influence of feedback mechanisms such as the changing reflectivity of the Earth’s surface and the release of gases from permafrost or deep seabeds. Climate-change skeptics have been keen to capitalize on those gaps in knowledge. “They play up smaller debates,” says Francesca Grifo at the Union of Concerned Scientists, “and divert the dialogue by attacking particular aspects. They represent climate science as a house of cards, where you pull out one and it all falls apart.”

In 1998, following the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the American Petroleum Institute convened a task force to spend more than $5.9 million to discredit climate science and quash growing public support of curbing emissions. The group borrowed many of the methods and people, including Milloy, that had been used to mislead Congress and the public about the connection between smoking and cancer and heart disease. In a leaked memo titled the “Global Climate Science Communications Plan,” the task force laid out a strategy to “build a case against precipitous action on climate change based on the scientific uncertainty.” The memo details a plan to recruit, train and pay willing scientists to sow doubt about climate science among the media and the public. “Victory will be achieved,” the memo states, when “recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom’ �� and when “those promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of the extant science appear to be out of touch with reality.”

In March 2001, George W. Bush’s administration declared that climate science was “too uncertain” to justify action (such as ratifying the Kyoto treaty) that might put the brakes on economic growth. That refrain would be echoed again and again, weakening or derailing successive international agreements and domestic policy. How had a small band of non-scientists managed to so quickly and thoroughly pursuade the nation’s leaders to reject an ever more coherent and definitive body of scientific evidence?

Stop Global Warming: A protester at a pro-climate-science rally in 2007. Reuters/Hyungwon Kang

“Multiple feet of sea level rising in the next few decades, that’s just fantasy,” says Myron Ebell, the director of energy and global-warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank. Ebell is in a taxi heading down K Street, Washington’s lobbyist row, talking to a reporter from the Naples Daily News in Florida. The journalist called to get his perspective on a new scientific study that warns of more frequent flooding along U.S. coastlines as higher temperatures accelerate rising sea levels. “The evidence is inconclusive,” Ebell says. “The [Antarctic] ice sheet is not shrinking but may in fact be expanding. The reality from the experts is . . . ”

Ebell does not claim to be a scientist. His background is in economics, and like Milloy, he was a member of the American Petroleum Institute task force in 1998. Yet his lack of scientific credentials has not deterred a stream of journalists from requesting his opinion of the newly released study. “Happens every time I get quoted in the New York Times,” he says. Ebell provides two things most scientists can’t: a skeptical view of climate science and clear, compelling sound bites ready for the evening news or the morning paper. For a deadline-pressured journalist covering “both sides” of a complex issue, Ebell might seem an ideal source. Yet by including unscientific opinions alongside scientific ones, that same journalist creates an illusion of equivalence that can tilt public opinion.

“It’s that false balance thing,�� Mann says. “You’re a reporter and you understand there’s an overwhelming consensus that evidence supports a particular hypothesis—let’s say, the Earth is an oblate spheroid. But you’ve got to get a comment from a holdout at the Flat Earth Society. People see the story and think there’s a serious scientific debate about the shape of the Earth.”

On the taxi’s radio, a weatherman forecasts that tomorrow will be Washington’s hottest March 15 in recorded history. Ebell glances out the window at the cherry trees, in full bloom two weeks earlier than usual, as he thumbs down to his next call. ��This one’s a producer at PBS NewsHour,” he says. “They’re interviewing one of those sea-level guys and they want to know how they should approach asking him a negative question.”

Ebell connects with the producer: “What they’re saying is, we’ve got to throw huge, scarce resources into what is essentially a nonproblem, that would be the point I’d make to him. The modelers will never admit that their models have no forecasting ability. They’re just saying that this could happen.” Then he winds up for his kicker. “Well, I’m sorry, a lot of things could happen. The Earth could be hit by an asteroid tomorrow.”

* * *

“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

In 2006, Jeffrey Gleason and Charles Monnett, two government scientists working out of Alaska, published a report that described dead polar bears floating in the Arctic Ocean. The apparently drowned animals raised concerns about the effect of melting ice in the Arctic. As with Mann’s hockey-stick graph, the story of drowned polar bears made its way into An Inconvenient Truth and became a point of contention for climate skeptics. In 2010 both scientists came under investigation by the U.S. Office of the Inspector General for what it termed “integrity issues.”

Jeff Ruch, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, is providing Gleason and Monnett with legal representation. ��After more than two years of investigations, there have been no charges, no timelines, no requests for response,” Ruch says. “It’s Kafkaesque. We don’t know what started this and what’s keeping it going. But we do know that for both men, their lives have been hell.” Monnett, Ruch says, has vowed not to publish another scientific paper, and Gleason has left his job in Alaska. Neither scientist responded to our requests for comment.

The story of Monnett and Gleason is exceptional. Few scientists have actually left their field as a result of harassment, says Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA Goddard who is currently defending a case brought by the ATI. “But,” he says, “it does dissuade people from speaking out about their work. They see the harassment and intimidation and say, ‘It’s more stress than I need.’ ”

“When I get an e-mail that mentions my child and a guillotine,” Hayhoe says, “I sometimes want to pull a blanket over my head. The intent of all this is to discourage scientists. As a woman and a mother, I have to say that sometimes it does achieve its goal. There are many times when I wonder if it’s worth it.”

With scientists reluctant to speak out (and drowned out when they do), skeptics have had more room to attack climate-research programs. Last year, Republicans in the House of Representatives made a unanimous decision to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse-gas pollution threatens public health. Texas representative Ralph Hall, the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, along with 10 of his Republican colleagues, also called for budget cuts and program terminations that directly targeted climate-science research, efforts to curb emissions, and preparations for climate-change impact at the National Science Foundation, the EPA and the Department of Energy.

Although many of the cuts were undone in the Senate, funding for climate-related programs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration did not fare as well. After launching an investigation into NOAA’s attempts to reorganize its climate services into a single unit, Hall successfully pushed through legislation to cut the agency’s climate-research funding by 20 percent, forcing it to cancel research grants.

“Now government agencies and researchers are doing anything to keep the word ‘climate’ out of their budgets and proposals,” says Rick Piltz, a former senior associate in the U.S. Climate Change Science Program Office (in 2009, it was renamed the U.S. Global Change Research Program). “And this at a time when all agencies need to be thinking about how the nation will be affected by climate change and factor it into their planning.”

Worldwide, proposals for carbon taxes, cap-and-trade programs and meaningful CO2 reductions have foundered on a lack of political consensus. In December, Canada became the first country to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, citing the cost of compliance. The U.N.’s 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen yielded little actionable policy, and this June’s Earth Summit +20 in Brazil has been newsworthy mostly for the low expectations surrounding it.

In the U.S., local climate skeptics have been advancing their agendas. In Virginia, Tea Party–inspired residents recently derailed municipal preparations for sea-level rise around Hampton Roads, the body of water that borders Norfolk-Virginia Beach. They disrupted planning meetings and disputed as a plot NOAA’s findings that the area faces the second-highest risk from sea-level rise of any region of its size in the U.S. In April, Tennessee lawmakers passed a measure that allows teachers to question accepted theories on evolution and climate change in the classroom. Science advocates were also stunned by a recently disclosed initiative to design a school curriculum that questions climate science. Science educators say they’re increasingly worried that climate could become the same kind of flash point as evolution. The question science advocates ask now is, how do they turn the conversation back to the science?

Face of Denial: The Heartland Institute launched an anti-climate-science ad campaign in Chicago in May. The ad was pulled within a day, but other versions would have shown Charles Manson and Osama bin Laden. Heartland Institute

Scientists are starting to fight back. Schmidt co-founded RealClimate.org, a forum for climate scientists to quickly respond to developing stories and “provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary.�� Several other scientists launched the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund last year to help scientists and institutions respond to nuisance lawsuits. “We have a responsibility to the scientific community to not allow those looking to discredit us to be successful,” Mann says. ��What they’re going to see is that they’ve awakened a sleeping bear. We will counterpunch.”

But playing the activist can be a slippery slope. In February, climate analyst and MacArthur “genius” grant recipient Peter Gleick admitted using a false identity to obtain and distribute files that provided a detailed picture of the finances and plans of the Heartland Institute, an anti-regulatory think tank that calls climate research “junk science.” The incident was a bizarre mirror of the 2009 “Climate Gate” scandal, in which hackers gained access to the e-mails of prominent climate scientists and distributed excerpts out of context. Although eight independent investigations later found that the scientists did nothing unethical, Climate Gate has become a rallying point for climate-change skeptics. Gleick was almost certainly aiming to incite a similar reaction among climate-science advocates. Instead many in the scientific community quickly condemned his tactics. Schmidt deemed them “completely irresponsible” and predicted that “public discussion on this issue will be much the poorer for this.”

Seated at a conference table in Heartland’s new downtown Chicago headquarters, Joe Bast, the organization��s president, is a bit more forceful. “Peter Gleick was so desperate and delusional that he was willing to break the law repeatedly and lie and deceive people. Once again, the most alarmist voices in the debate have been found to be behaving very badly.” Bast is compact and intense, with a well-trimmed beard and a raspy voice “from years of smoking,” he tells me. He says the documents, one of which appears to have been forged, don’t show a smoking gun. “Our enemies are calling it ‘Denial Gate,’ ” he says, leaning forward over the table. “We’re calling it ‘Fake Gate.’ Try to find anything in there that suggests we are anything other than sincere and above the table, and doing exactly what we say we’re doing.”

“We cannot allow those looking to discredit scientists to be successful. They’ve awakened a sleeping bear. We will counterpunch.”Probably the most surprising revelation is that Heartland’s climate work is funded primarily by one individual, referred to in the institute’s fundraising plan as the Anonymous Donor, who has contributed $12.7 million over the past five years. The organization’s climate programs include the school curriculum questioning widely accepted climate science and its annual International Conference on Climate Change, an event many scientists lampoon as “Denialpalooza.” Despite those programs, Bast says Heartland does not reject all of mainstream climate science. “Virtually everybody agrees,” he tells me, that “there has been warming in the second half of the 20th century [and] that there is probably a human role in that warming, that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and that the increase in atmospheric concentrations can be attributed to human activity.” The organization, he says, argues primarily for “cost-effective solutions” to climate change. As our meeting is wrapping up, Bast says genuinely, “Don’t call us deniers. Skeptics is fine. Moderates, realists. But not deniers.”

But a few weeks later, Heartland would launch a new advertising campaign. As drivers crawled along Chicago’s busy Eisenhower Expressway, they were confronted with a large billboard that compared believers in global warming with Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. The text on the billboard read, “I still believe in global warming. Do you?” The advertisement was meant to be the first in a series. Others would liken climate-science advocates to mass murderers, including Charles Manson and Osama bin Laden. Bast did not respond for comment following the launch of the campaign, but Heartland issued a press release: “The people who believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”

“There are powerful voices of unreason,” says Ben Santer, who led the 1995 IPCC team, “but every year, the science becomes stronger and the data are telling an ever more consistent story.” As with tobacco, the more consistent the scientific story, the more difficult it will become for skeptics to reject anthropogenic climate change. That point was driven home after the Charles Koch Foundation donated $150,000 toward a study by Richard Muller, a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley who was, at the time, a darling of the climate-skeptic community. Muller spent two years investigating claims by global-warming deniers that temperature rises verified by multiple studies were skewed because of flawed analysis, unreliable weather stations and the effect of urban heat islands. Muller and his research team (which included Saul Perlmutter, the joint winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics) compiled 1.6 billion readings at 39,000 sites and examined other historical data.

Muller’s conclusion was most likely not what the Koch brothers had in mind. Last October, his team announced that the global mean temperature on land had increased by 1.6 degrees since 1950, a result that matched the numbers accepted by the mainstream climate-science community. “The skeptics raised valid points, and everybody should have been a skeptic two years ago,” Muller told me. “Now we have confidence that the temperature rises previously reported had been done without bias. Global warming is real.”

Some conservative think tanks have since begun to soften their positions. Jeff Kueter, the current president of the George C. Marshall Institute, which has been advocating against mainstream climate science since the 1980s, told me in his office in Virginia last month that “climate change is not a hoax” and that “human activities undoubtedly have an impact on climate change.”

Those who fund the denial machine are likewise reconsidering their positions. Exxon has scaled back its annual anti-climate-science funding by 78 percent, or $2.7 million, since 2006. Other publicly traded oil companies have followed suit. In response to Heartland’s billboard campaign, some of its biggest donors, including State Farm Insurance, the beverage giant Diageo, and the insurance and financial-services company USAA, announced that they were pulling their funding. In a message on Heartland’s website, Bast wrote, ��We do not apologize for running the ad, and we will continue to experiment with ways to communicate the ‘realist’ message on the climate.” The billboard, however, was gone a day after it was put up.

Public opinion in the U.S. about anthropogenic climate change is also changing. This spring, four major universities released polls showing that a clear majority of American citizens now say that the world is warming and that the country should take action. Jon Krosnick, a professor of communications at Stanford University, conducted one of the polls. He found that 83 percent of Americans say they believe that the Earth has been warming. One significant factor, he suggests, is that Americans can finally see and feel climate change happening.

“You no longer have to believe a scientist who is telling you that something is happening that you can’t see,” Krosnick says. “Now people are saying, ‘I can tell my plants are flowering much earlier, and I’m wearing shorts and T-shirts to the fall fair, when I used to wear jackets.’ ” Among those he polled, 71 percent support the U.S. taking action to reduce emissions regardless of whether other countries do so. “If the public does in fact support these views,” Krosnick asks, “why are politicians not taking action?”

Voice of Doubt: Myron Ebell educates the media about the “uncertainties” surrounding climate science. The brothers Charles and David Koch support a number of anti-climate-science programs. Kevin Dietsch/UPI/Newscom

On a summery afternoon in mid-March, Senator Inhofe dashes onto the stage at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., to introduce his new book, The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future. “Why?” he asks the crowd. “Why, when the United Nations IPCC is totally refuted, when Al Gore is totally discredited, when man-made global warming is totally debunked, when passing a global-warming cap-and-trade bill is totally shot down, why is this book necessary?” He veers off-topic for several minutes to rail against “liberal Republicans” and “an unelected bureaucrat at the EPA.” Then, suddenly, he looks around and asks, “Am I going to be introduced?”

I scan the room. Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Marc Morano, the ClimateDepot.com blogger and former Inhofe aide who is widely considered to have ghostwritten most of his book, are there. So are about 150 others, a mostly older crowd that’s captivated by Inhofe’s folksy outrage and his PowerPoint presentation, which begins with his famous 2003 quote: “With all the hysteria, all the fear, all the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it is.”

It’s an entertaining ride. Inhofe doesn’t mention Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s comment earlier that week referring to him as “Big Oil’s top call girl.” Instead he speaks of the current “war on fossil fuels” and about how the U.N.’s interest in climate is motivated by ��power, autonomy and control.” He boasts of how, in 2005, he called science-fiction novelist Michael Crichton to the Senate floor to testify as an “expert witness�� on climate change and about how in 2009 he flew to Copenhagen as “a one-man truth squad” to take the wind out of the U.N. Climate Change Conference. He shows a picture of the igloo his children built in front of their Washington, D.C., home in 2010 to mock Al Gore.

Throughout his presentation, Inhofe deftly manages to be simultaneously affable and outraged. “I love everybody,” he tells me after the crowd has departed, adding that he and Gore were “good friends” at one time. “I still am,” he says, “because I love everybody. That’s the difference between me and my adversaries.”

Just as in the rest of the country, belief in human-caused climate change in Oklahoma has been rising with the thermometer—according to Krosnick, a large majority of Inhofe’s constituents now believe that anthropogenic global warming is real. I ask Inhofe if he’s noticed any climate changes in his home state, such as last summer’s unprecedented heat and severe drought, withering crops, wild fires and dramatically expanded tornado season. “There’s not been any warming,” he snaps. “And there’s actually been a little bit of cooling. It’s all documented. Look at the Dust Bowl. Back then it was a lot hotter. Matter of fact, now they say the hottest time was actually during that time—1934, I guess.”

Actually, last summer’s average temperature of 86.9? was the highest ever recorded in Oklahoma. And last spring’s drought, when hundreds of farmers abandoned livestock they could no longer manage to feed or water, was the worst since 1921.

Many of the scientists I’ve spoken with say that no single act of harassment or intimidation has stung more than Inhofe’s “list of 17,” the call for the congressional investigation of prominent climate scientists. Mann, I tell Inhofe, said it “smacked of modern-day McCarthyism.��

“I’m not the guy that called for investigations, I don’t think,” Inhofe says. He quickly glances at his communications director, Matt Dempsey. “Did I ever call for investigations?” I study Inhofe’s face for a clue as to whether he’s joking—he brags about the episode in his book. It’s clear that he is not. Dempsey nods at his boss. “Okay,” Inhofe says. “Maybe right after Climate Gate, I said they need to be investigated.��

The room is nearly empty when I ask Inhofe, finally, if he could imagine the possibility, however remote, that science could provide any amount or type of evidence that could convince him that human-caused climate change could be real. The senator darts an impatient look at his watch, and his handlers rise. It’s clear that the interview is coming to an end. “When people like you ask that question,” Inhofe says, “I can tell you believe it.”

Tom Clynes is a contributing editor at Popular Science. His last story, in March, was The Boy Who Played with Fusion.

When a tree-planting advocate receives threats of sexual assault and violence against her children, it is perhaps a red flag that the practice of healthy discussion has gone terribly awry.

In the heat of a carbon pollution tax debate, Australia’s top climate change scientists are facing an attack that has led some to go into hiding.

Over 30 researchers across Australia told The Canberra Times that they are being harassed with abusive emails. The violent threats haven't just targeted the scientists, but their families as well.

Why are people so angry? AFP explains that a debate is raging over Prime Minister Julia Gillard's plans to reduce pollution through a tax on carbon emissions. The goal is to tax polluters with a fixed price levy, and then move to an emissions trading scheme within the next five years. Reuters reports that Australia is the highest emitter per capita due to its reliance on coal (providing 80 percent of the nation’s power.)

The seemingly excessive anger towards scientists was fueled a few weeks ago when a new ad campaign featuring Cate Blanchett launched, advocating for the carbon tax. The ad suggests that big companies should pay for their pollution. The carbon tax proposal would result in more jobs, better health for children, and, as Blanchett says, “finally do something about climate change.” The ad appears to be rather understated (there is literally a singing birds sound cue), and yet the clip further enraged some people. As Grist writes, “Positivity + babies + gorgeous actresses seems like a pretty good recipe for getting people to, if not agree with you, at least not want to KILL YOU.”

The Guardian reports that Tony Abbott, the conservative opposition leader who once described man-made climate change as “crap,” critiqued the advertisement and actor, stating, "People who are worth $53m have a right to be heard – but their voice should not be heard ahead of the ordinary working people of this country.”

One recent poll found that 58 percent of the 500 voters questioned were against the tax. The proposal’s opposition argues that the carbon tax would damage the economy.

Meanwhile, Treasurer Wayne Swan argues "Our economy will continue to grow solidly while making deep cuts in carbon pollution," according to a speech excerpt provided by Reuters. According to Australia's ABC News, the debate comes on the heels of a new report commissioned by the Federal Government, predicting that by the end of the century, thousands of buildings could be destroyed with $226 billion worth of assets at risk due to climate change.

The problem is that this debate has in some cases materialized into serious anger.

According to *The Canberra Times*, The Australian National University moved high-profile climate scientists into secure buildings after they received explicit threats.

Scientists from other universities have been threatened as well. One scientist told The Canberra Times, ''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.''

One researcher told the paper of an instance where her photo appeared in an article promoting a community tree-planting day -- she then received threats of sexual assault and violence against her children. Another scientist received death threats and was advised by police to install a ''panic button'' in his office.

Many have changed their home security systems, deleted social media accounts, and switched to unlisted phone numbers after receiving threats to their homes.

Australia's new chief scientist, former ANU vice-chancellor Professor Ian Chubb, denounced the threats, stating, ''These hurtful attacks are intended to intimidate scientists, to scare them off and stop them from participating in public discussions on climate change. They are the antithesis of democratic debate.”

Christine Milne, Australian Greens deputy leader, said the emails were ''an orchestrated, extremist anti-science campaign attempting to threaten and intimidate people into silence.''

Professor David Koroly from the University of Melbourne tells Australia's ABC News that he receives threats every time the media interview him. Yet, he argues, "It is still very important that climate scientists present the best available information to the community, to the business community and to politicians and that we seek to protect our individual safety, but that we still provide the best available climate science."

Environment
- Climate change

Australian climate scientists receive death threats

Universities move staff into safer accommodation after a large number of threatening emails and phone calls

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- Oliver Milman
- The Guardian, Monday 6 June 2011 10.09 EDT

Australian marine scientists examine coral cores at Clerke Reef, Western Australia. Climate scientists have recently received death threats, universities say.

A number of Australia's leading climate scientists have been moved into safer accommodation after receiving death threats, in a further escalation of the country's increasingly febrile carbon price debate.

The revelation of the death threats follows a week of bitter exchanges between the government and the opposition in the wake of a pro-carbon price TV advert featuring actor Cate Blanchett.

The Australia National University (ANU) in Canberra said that it has moved a number of its climate scientists to a secure facility after they received a large number of threatening emails and phone calls.

Ian Young, ANU's vice-chancellor, told ABC national radio that the threats had worsened in recent weeks.

"Obviously climate research is an emotive issue at the present time," he said.

"Green Fascism": Let The Facts Speak

If you can’t win an argument, you can always use force—or so some of the more fanatical climate change deniers out there appear to feel. I’ve always believed that the truth will out—but these folks either don’t believe that, or don’t have confidence that they are really on the side of verity.

Well—I must be fair here--so far it’s not actually force--just the threat of it. Ideological firebrands on the right, people of the ilk of Rush Limbaugh, have long applied violent and defamatory language to scientists concerned about climate change. For example, on his November 24, 2009 show, Limbaugh stated that scientists involved in the global warming “hoax” should be “named and fired, drawn and quartered, or whatever it is.” (Drawing and quartering was a particularly gruesome Medieval torture/execution/mutilation.)

The drawing of William de Marisco, 13th-century England. The first phase of drawing, hanging, and quartering. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

In the blogosphere, the scientists have been reviled (not always coherently) as frauds, fascists, socialists, murderers, parasites, and worse. Things turned particularly bad in the wake of the so-called Climategate hack (in which emails were stolen from the servers of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.)

Dr. Phil Jones, at the epicenter of the scandal, received over 200 threatening messages, according to Nature.com. The most troubling said things like “Someone, somewhere, will hunt you down,” or “Expect us at your door to say hello.” The result for Dr. Jones was depression, rapid weight loss, suicidal thoughts and a reliance on anti-anxiety medications—a decline that reportedly stunned his friends.}:

He wasn’t, however, the only one. A number of climate scientists reported this sort of harassment, and apparently some threats were deemed serious enough to merit police protection of one sort or another being put in place.

Attacks have also taken place in the print media: Dr. Rajendra Pachauri was falsely alleged to have profited from his position as head of the International Panel on Climate Change; and Dr. Andrew Weaver was similarly defamed by Canada’s National Post:

I asked the National Post to do the right thing, to retract a number of recent articles that attributed to me statements I never made, accused me of things I never did, and attacked me for views I never held. To my absolute astonishment, the newspaper refused.

Both cases were settled favorably to the scientists who had been libelled, and the defamatory statements were retracted.

Rajendra Pachauri.

Official intimidation has been forthcoming, too. For instance, Dr. Michael Mann—a frequent target of denialist ire as the architect of the so-called “hockey-stick” graph, has for over a year now been the target of investigation by the Attorney General of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli.

In April 2010, Cuccinelli issued subpoenas for a lengthy list of Mann’s papers while at the University of Virginia, including years worth of emails to 39 named individuals. The rationale was that Mann had received a state grant while on faculty at the University of Virginia, and though the work specified in that grant had been satisfactorily completed, Mann had used his professional resume in applying for the grant—and since the “hockey stick graph” was false (according to Mr. Cuccinelli) that meant that Dr. Mann had fraudulently applied for the grant.

On August 30, a Virginia judge rejected this theory, writing:

"The nature of the conduct is not stated so that any reasonable person could glean what Dr. Mann did to violate the statute."

On September 29, Cuccinelli offered a slightly redrawn “Civil Investigative Demand.” Five days later the University of Virginia revealed that it had spent $350,000 to that date in legal expenses—more than the original grant had been worth. It is not known how much the Attorney General's office has spent on the investigation so far.

The matter of the original ruling is before the Virginia Supreme Court, and the new Demand is unresolved. Costs continue to mount, despite widespread denunciations of the witchhunt as both expensive and chilling to academic freedom.

Update: As of March 2012, Cuccinelli has lost at the state Supreme Court level; it is unclear whether any further options to continue the witch-hunt exist, though the willingness to do so apparently does. Direct costs to the taxpayer have reportedly exceeded $600,000.

Virginia Supreme Court tosses out AG Cuccinelli inquisition on Michael Mann | Climate Science Watch

Summary of Virginia Supreme Court decision and related facts. Links to related documents and stories.

Cuccinelli's $600,000 IOU to Virginia Taxpayers

Opinion piece on case. States that UVA spent $600,000 to defend the suit, though this was "raised from private funds." (Presumably since only a relatively small proportion of UVA funding is from the state.)

Political and fiscal intimidation is in play, too; the Republican majority in the House of Representatives has repeatedly tried to use the power of the purse against any hint of action that might help control carbon emissions. On February 18, for example, they voted to defund EPA efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and in March attempted to defund the EPA completely.

Currently, they are attempting (absurd as it may sound) to defend the incandescent light bulb, having just passed a measure to defund any promotion of energy-saving lightbulbs. Apparently it is our inalienable right to spend more lighting our homes.

But it isn’t only the enforcement arm that’s under attack; the House voted in February to defund US support for the International Panel On Climate Change, and may well force cuts to NASA satellite missions that provide essential data in understanding climate.

(What could more clearly demonstrate the will NOT to know the truth than this? Perhaps the GOP emblem should be not the elephant but the ostrich.)

But turning back from the institutional to the personal, Australia has recently suffered a spate of death threats against climate scientists. The Canberra Times reported that:

Australia's leading climate change scientists are being targeted by a vicious, unrelenting email campaign that has resulted in police investigations of death threats.

The Australian National University has confirmed it moved several high-profile climate scientists, economists and policy researchers into more secure buildings, following explicit threats to their personal safety.

June 17th saw the publication of a report in the Canberra Times that said:

Two of the most shocking cases involved young women who have had little media experience or exposure. One was invited to speak on climate change at a suburban library. Her brief was simple - talk about everyday things people can do to cut their carbon footprint, talk about climate books available at the library (list provided), leave time for questions, and mingle afterwards. The other woman was asked by a local newspaper to pose with her young children for a photograph to illustrate an article promoting a community tree-planting event. She was briefly quoted as saying planting trees could help mitigate climate change. Two days after the article appeared, she received emails containing threats of sexual assault and violence against her children.

As for the woman speaking at the library, her car windscreen was smeared with excrement - animal or human, does it matter? - and the words ''climate turd'' written (also in excrement) across the car bonnet. Proof perhaps, of a climate dissenter with a Freudian complex indicating arrested development.

June 20th saw a new incident, as reported in The Australian:

In the latest incident, Federation of Australian Science and Technological Societies executive director Anna-Maria Arabia received an email today saying she would be "strung-up by the neck" and killed for her promotion of mainstream climate science.

The threat was emailed to her this morning before a "Respect the Science" campaign at Parliament House in Canberra today.

The most recent threat was caught on video—by the organization perpetrating it, the Australian LaRouchite group calling itself the Citizens Electoral Council. Their carefully placed video camera caught the incident and posted it to Youtube, along with an explanation that their target is a Fascist tool of the British Empire. (Yes, you read that correctly.)

Members crashed a talk being given at the University of Melbourne by physicist Hans Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, presenting a shocked Dr. Schellnhuber with a noose. Of course, they disavow any intent to threaten; they’d be fools—or bigger fools—not to do so. But there is no doubt that Dr. Schellnhuber read the implied message quite clearly. The Australian quoted him:

"I was confronted with a death threat when I gave my public lecture," Professor Schellnhuber said. "Somebody got to his feet and showed me a rope with a noose. He showed me this hangman's rope and he said: 'Mr Schellnhuber, welcome to Australia'.

"As I tell my colleagues from time to time, 'Some day some madman will draw a pistol and shoot you'. It will happen -- to me or somebody else. I'm pretty sure about that."

Let’s hope that Dr. Schellnhuber is wrong about that. There’s a right and a wrong way to win a debate—or ‘debate,’ as it’s questionable that the climate controversy really merits that term. Subtle or not-so-subtle intimidation and overt threats are not the right way to win. And they are more than bad enough. I’m hoping it doesn’t get worse.

It’s ironic that Dr. Schellnhuber, Dr. Jones and others have been branded by some of the extreme ideologues opposing the mainstream science as being “green fascists,” “eco-Nazis,” proponents of “the Big Lie” and so on. What does Wikipedia say about Fascism?

"Fascists promote violence and war as actions that create national regeneration, spirit and vitality. Fascists view conflict as a fact of life that is responsible for all human progress. Fascists exalt militarism as providing positive transformation in society, in providing spiritual renovation, education, instilling of a will to dominate in people's character, and creating national comradeship through military service. Fascists commonly utilize paramilitary organizations for violent attacks on political opponents, people whom they oppose, or overthrowing a political system."

Doesn’t sound much like Drs. Schnellnhuber, Jones, Weaver or Pachauri—nor even like Dr. James Hansen, who was arrested June 23, 2009, for trespassing as part of a non-violent protest against mountain-top removal for coal-mining.

Perhaps that description sounds like someone else altogether? Someone who presents speakers with nooses, who smears excrement on cars, who threatens children with rape?

Note: Ironically, the mine Dr. Hansen trespassed upon belonged to Massey Energy, later to become famous for its callous disregard of miner safety in the aftermath of the Upper Big Branch disaster.

Interestingly, Ken Cuccinelli, the Virginia AG investigating Dr. Mann, is alleged to have received $10,000 worth of campaign contributions from Massey; he has not only declined to investigate Massey’s activities in his state—it is headqurtered there and operates one Virginia mine--he has allegedly worked cooperatively with Massey on a lawsuit against the EPA!

UPDATE

Unfortunately, events compel an update—Anders Breivik, as the world now knows, bombed and shot 77 people to death on July 22, 2011. Breivik serves admirably as a poster child for the facets of fascism described above, which may be summarized as a systematic glorification of violence, domination and force.

Although climate change was not Breivik’s primary focus—islamophobia and anti-Marxism provided that--his manifesto reveals that he, too, believes that ‘greens’ are a threat to Western civilization, and that climate change is a hoax they have invented to further their sinister political agenda:

You might know them as environmentalists, enviro-communists, eco-Marxists, neo-Communists or eco-fanatics. They all claim they want to save the world from global warming but their true agenda is to contribute to create a world government lead by the UN or in other ways increase the transfer of resources (redistribute resources) from the developed Western world to the third world. They are using our trust and faith in science to spread lies and hysteria that will allow Marxists to implement socialist --solutions to a problem that never actually existed.

And:

. . . top scientists conspired to falsify data in the face of declining global temperatures in order to prop up the premise that man-made factors are driving climate change.

Prominent climate change denialists echoed, quoted or linked by Breivik include James Dellingpole, Steve McIntyre (by way of Alex Jones), and Lord Monckton.

For more on this aspect of Breivik's views, see:

http://www.desmogblog.com/norwegian-terrorist-anders-breivik-reveals-climate-denial-influences

Second Update--9/15/2011

Another incident of harassment and intimidation has come to light.

Dr. Charles Monnett, who had been under investigation with respect to his 2006 paper documenting polar bear mortality and with his administration of a cooperative study of polar bears carried out jointly with the University of Alberta, appears to have been un officially vindicated. Yesterday, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), who have been representing Monnett, released emails showing that he had not acted improperly in any way.

They also noted that, unfortunately:

Finally, the fact of the investigation has subjected Dr. Monnett’s family to harassment, especially from climate-change skeptics who have, for example, posted his wife’s work email address on the web and invited readers to flood her inbox at her workplace which lead to a number of hateful and threatening messages.

Sadly, they are correct. I personally verified on 9/15/2011 that Climate Depot website had indeed done just that. Their post, date-stamped August 1, 2011, repeated the false claim that Dr. Monnett's wife (a respected scientist in her own right) had served as peer reviewer to her husband's paper, and publicly posted her work email address.

The post also commanded readers to:

Contact Monnett's wife [name redacted] with questions/comments about the Polar Bear paper: [email redacted.]

The reaction of some climate change denialists was apparently as predictable as it was regrettable, but PEER has drawn a merciful veil over the specific threats and insults that were hurled.

Third update--1/6/2012

The latest victim of anti-science repression is Katharine Hayhoe, an Evangelical Christian who is also a climate researcher at Texas Tech University.

Dr. Hayhoe had been tasked in 2007 with writing a chapter on climate change for a forthcoming book by Newt Gingrich on environmental issues. She is well-known for engaging with the public, and particularly with religious conservatives, on the issue of climate change. She told the UK paper, The Guardian:

I really, really deplore the politicisation and polarisation of this issue. There are these increasingly unprincipled attempts to polarise the science when the science is fact – like the sky is blue, the grass is green and the temperature of our planet is increasing.

With the Iowa caucus in full swing, that represented a juicy target for anti-Gingrich partisans. Predictably, this 'scandal' was leaked to Rush Limbaugh, who waded in in his usual style:

Katharine Hayhoe is one of Newt's experts, and is a person who, when asked if the science was settled regarding global warming, she said, "Among climate scientists, people who spend their lives researching our world, there's no debate regarding the reality of climate change and the fact that humans are the primary cause." This woman is writing Newt's chapter on climate change in the new book. She says, "It is primarily laypeople like talk show hosts who are perpetuating the idea that there is no scientific consensus." Marc Morano, our man in Washington, claims that Newt's new book has a chapter written by a babe named Hayhoe -- no offense, Reverend Jackson -- that man-made global warming is happening, caused by man.

Gingrich quickly went into damage control mode, throwing Dr. Hayhoe under the bus:

That's not going to be in the book. We didn't know that they were doing that and we told them to kill it.

It is not known whether Dr. Hayhoe will be compensated for her wasted work in writing the chapter, which she had been told on December 7 would be accepted without major changes. It is known that she found out otherwise from a reporter, who was seeking her reaction. In a later Tweet she expanded upon her initial phlegmatic resonse:

. . .so much 'spare' time wasted I cd've spent w family, & 2. what an ungracious way to find out, eh?

However, the Gingrich chapter does not represent the end of Dr. Hayhoe's troubles. The Guardian reported that she has become a target for harassment:

. . .in the past six months or so, Hayhoe's growing prominence has also made her a target of opinion makers like Limbaugh, and of the shadowy network of well-funded thinktanks. In addition, "the hate mail has gone off the charts", she said.

Such thinktanks – though registered as non-profits – are often funded by the oil industry and conservative billionaires, such as the Koch brothers.

One such group, the American Tradition Institute, has been waging a legal battle to force the University of Virginia to hand over all emails from climate scientist Michael Mann, who used to work there.

Now the American Tradition Institute is coming after Hayhoe. On 10 December the organisation wrote to Texas Tech asking the university to turn over all Hayhoe's emails with even the most glancing reference to Gingrich or Maple.

Katherine Hayhoe Interview

Katharine Hayhoe Q&A: Climate change science in the USA | RTCC

Katharine Hayhoe speaks to RTCC about the state of climate science in the USA, the daily attacks she and colleagues suffer and her efforts to clean up the climate debate.

Source for the Hayhoe story

Climate scientist disowned by Newt Gingrich speaks out over book spat | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Katharine Hayhoe says the dumping of her chapter from Gingrich's book following rightwing pressure came as a surprise

Fourth Update: 2/5/2012

One of the less-spectacular, but perhaps most socially-corrosive tactics of Fascism is the Big Lie technique. As reported in the New York Times, that is now being directed at Dr. Michael Mann.

A planned speech at Pennsylvania State University by Dr. Mann has become the object of a multi-media smear campaign. Deriding him as a "disgraced academic" of "questionable ethics and motives" who is guilty of "extreme political activism, disguised as academics," two groups urge the University to "disinvite" him.

The reality is, of course, that Dr. Mann is anything but disgraced: despite severe (and in some cases malicious) criticism his research has held up, and continues to be widely cited today. Moreover, investigations into allegations against him stemming from the so-called Climategate email hack have repeatedly exonerated him of any wrong-doing.

It is true, of course, that some continue to cry "whitewash," and continue to impugn Dr. Mann; but being subject to hysterical accusations unbacked by any real substance does not amount to 'disgrace.'

The groups themselves appear to be Astroturf groups fronting for the Bituminous Coal Operator's Association. They claim to be for those poor, down-trodden coal miners, and for America's energy security. Noble aims, no doubt--but do they really have to resort to slanderous disinformation to make their case?

Story Links

A Shameful Attack on Free Speech by a Group Claiming to Speak for Coal-Dependent Workers - NYTimes.c

A coal-backed group pushes for the cancellation of a lecture by a Pennsylvania climate scientist.

Coal-Powered PAC Runs Harassment Campaign Against Climate Scientist Michael Mann | ThinkProgress

Fifth update: 2/15/2012

Another instance of intimidation came last month, when Dr. Kerry Emanuel of MIT suffered a spate of particularly virulent hate mail after addressing a meeting of Republicans who have the courage to believe that climate change is real. As reported in The Guardian, the emails "are laced with menacing language, expletives and contain personal threats of violence." Particularly contemptible is the fact that threats extended to Dr. Emanuel's wife:

Emails contained "veiled threats against my wife," and other "tangible threats," Emanuel, a highly-regarded atmospheric scientist and director of M.I.T.'s Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate program, said in an interview. "They were vile, these emails. They were the kind of emails nobody would like to receive."

As in the Monnett case, which also involved the wife of a scientist, the website The Climate Depot was responsible for publicizing emails for the convenience of hatemailers.

US climate scientist's wife suffers email 'frenzy of hate' | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Inbox of MIT scientist Kerry Emanuel's wife was flooded with menacing emails after he appeared in a video featuring Republicans who believe in man-made climate change

Sixth update: 5/15/2012

The Australian leg of this story has a new development: climate 'skeptic' (ie., denialist) websites worldwide are hailing the 'debunking' of the story of death threats at Australian National University. (Hat tip to "Charlie," a reader who brought this to my attention--though I rather think he takes this more at face value than I do.)

There is, however, less to this 'debunking' than might appear at first glance. A Freedom Of Information request to see ANU correspondence and documents relevant to this topic from January to June of 2011 eventually resulted in the publication of 11 emails. Only one contained an actual threat, and that was second-hand, and implied rather than explicit. Rather weak beer, one would be inclined to agree.

However, note that the original stories were not limited to ANU--the threats to the anonymous women in the incidents described above, to Ms. Arabia, to Dr. Schellnhuber, and in fact to "at least 30 climate scientists at institutions across [Australia]" were quite real. Moreover, the threats at ANU were not limited to a six-month period in 2011; in fact, the Climate Unit's "move to more secure quarters" came in the spring of 2010, roughly a year before the period specified in the FOI request.

Ironically, this 'debunking' is a pretty good example of denialist technique: minimize the seriousness of one thing, ignore a bunch of other stuff completely, and then claim that since the result doesn't add up to the original any more, one's opponent is deceitful.

Mature debate, not abuse, the only way forward

Rosslyn Beeby, of the Canberra Times, comments on the ANU emails.

May 2012; Graham Readfearn

Blogger comments on the ANU 'non-threatening' emails.

Seventh update: 7/6/2012

A selection of obscene and threatening emails sent to Dr. Jone has been released as a PDF file. Don't read these unless you are prepared for a flood of crude language!

They are interesting, however, for the insights that they afford into the motivations of the writers. In particular, several mention the idea that efforts to address climate change have had severe impacts on national economies and consequently upon the lives of everyday people--one writer believes, indeed, that many people have died as a result of these efforts. Another states that climate science and related policy efforts have been responsible for lack of development in what used to be called the "Third World."

(Needless to say, perhaps, this last idea is wrong in just about every possible way, as not only is there little evidence to suggest that climate change policy has had any great macroeconomic effect on any national economy, and not only were developing nations specifically exempted from Kyoto, but it's a matter of public record that the developing world has made great strides during the early years of the twenty-first century--witness public health statistics, economic statistics, and the popularity of the so-called "BRIC" nations as destinations for foreign investment dollars, just to name a few indicators. But the fervor with which an idea is held has never been a reliable indicator of that idea's soundness.)

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/116404/response/288373/attach/4/Appendix%20A%20Data%20file%200

Emails sent to Dr. Phil Jones in 2009 and 2010, following the 'Climategate' hack and data theft, and during the associated smear campaign against selected climate scientists.

Afterword

Of the 39 Hubs I have published to date, this has been by far the toughest to write—not in the sense of effort or time, but emotionally. The topic leaves me with a metaphorical bad taste in my mouth, literally with a physical sensation of heaviness in the pit of my stomach, and intellectually with doubts about whether addressing this issue so forthrightly is the right thing to do, and about whether I have done so fairly and appropriately. Let me address some of those doubts.

Some will feel that I am ignoring extreme speech on the other side of the issue—and there has been some, though I am not aware of any specific threats to, say, Marc Morano, Roy Spencer or Lord Monckton. It does not appear to me that the use of intimidation is anything like symmetrical in the climate ‘debate,’ which makes sense given the style and content of commentators such as Limbaugh, for which there is no functional equivalent on the side of the mainstream science.

Others will object to my mentions of the US House of Representatives: clearly, they are operating within the bounds of the law and their constitutional duty when they undertake to set funding priorities. Why, then, it might be asked, do I implicitly associate their actions with those of fringe groups and (to put it plainly) nuts? Yet the public statements of a number of the Representatives make abundantly clear that, not only do they not understand the science they are in effect attempting to suppress, but they have not made the most elementary attempt to understand it. In that, they are (in my opinion) derelict in their duty, and they fall under the rubric of attempting to settle by force—fiscal force, in this instance—what they are unwilling to attempt to settle by reason.

Still others may feel that by mentioning threats and intimidation, I encourage them. They may be right; terrorists issue press releases for the good reason that their outrages are most effective in intimidating a populace when that populace actually knows about said outrages. But will ignoring this issue help the situation? I feel deeply that we must name what is happening. This, too, is a form of responsibility to the truth.

Lastly, I must acknowledge that as an individual I do not have the capacity directly to verify the information which I transmit in this Hub. I believe it to be accurate, but I am forced to rely on my sources. Some of those sources are named at the very bottom of this Hub; others, more widely reported, I consider to be well-established in public discourse.

Additional information from readers is welcomed.

Other Climate Change Hubs by Doc Snow

Global Warming Science And The Wars: Guy Callendar

The story of the man who brought CO2 theory into the 20th century, and latest in a series on 'classic' climate change science. "Nearly everybody likes to be right, and scientists perhaps more so than the rest of us..."

"Keeping Our Cool": A Summary Review

Dr. Andrew Weaver tells us what it's like to be an IPCC lead author. A Canadian perspective on global warming.

Through A Glass Darkly: Equinox Reflections On Sea Ice--2010 And Onwards

As of this writing, no-one is talking in mainstream media about the continuing 'death spiral' of the Arctic sea ice. But it's not for lack of things to say. Here's the set-up to the stories not (currently) being told.

Water Is A Dancer: Climate Science And The Element Of Change

Water vapor is, in some ways, the most important greenhouse gas. Here's why.

Global Warming Science: A Thumbnail History

A history of global warming science, and specifically how and why it was NOT invented in 1992--astronaut Walter Cunningham to the contrary!

This Hub was last updated on July 6, 2012

http://doc-snow.hubpages.com/hub/Green-Fascism-Let-The-Facts-Speak