I wish I could say that I think this is as bad as this mess will get, or even that this surprised me, but neither are true. I think anyone who believes that the attacks on climate scientists won’t get much worse is hopelessly naive.
ABC News Covers the New War on Climate Research (and on Michael Mann):
Here’s the report that (I understand) airs tonight:
Climate scientist Michael Mann has received hundreds of them – threatening e-mails and phone calls calling him a criminal, a communist or worse.
“6 feet under, with the roots, is were you should be,” one e-mail reads. “How know 1 one has been the livin p*ss out of you yet, i was hopin i would see the news that you commited suicide, Do it.”
“I’ve been called just about everything in the book,” Mann, who runs of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, told ABC News. “It’s an attempt to chill the discourse, and I think that’s what’s most disconcerting.”
Mann is not the only one. The FBI says it’s seeing an uptick in threatening communications to climate scientists. Recently, a white supremacist website posted Mann’s picture alongside several of his colleagues with the word “Jew” next to each image.
One climate scientist, who did not wish to be identified, told ABC News he’s had a dead animal left on his doorstep, and now sometimes travels with bodyguards.
“Human-caused climate change is a reality,” Mann said. “There are clearly some who find that message inconvenient, and unfortunately they appear willing to turn to just about any tactics to try to suppress that message.”
I discussed much of this with Mann on Point of Inquiry-our show together is my most popular, and currently has 23,000 downloads.
Yeah, I wrote The Republican War on Science-but I am growing to believe that in some ways, the “war” on climate research now afoot is even worse than anything that existed during the Bush years. Because it has this central new aspect-the personal attacks on individuals, the threats… the Bushies were genteel, compared with this.
Of course, this is nothing new, at least this time around. See my prior posts:
- Deniers declare war
- Climate change deniers explained
- Deniers make death threats
- Deniers screw it up, again
- The deniers’ nasty tactics
- The nature of climate change deniers
- On a collision course with tragedy
- More hate and more death threats
- Classy, classy climate deniers
The bottom line is that as long as there are people in the US who are wedded to the “Don’t Tread On Me” world view, with a little manifest destiny and rugged individualism thrown in, sprinkled with a dash of anti-intellectualism/anti-everything faux populism, it will be laughably easy to egg them on. And since we have organizations — like Fox News and the Republican party and the Tea Partiers — who have huge financial and/or political incentives to exploit these deluded souls, this phenomenon will continue to grow.
When does it end? Not when one of these wackaloons murders someone; witness the ongoing strains of racism, antisemitism, and homophobia, just to name three examples, that didn’t end with violence. No, this attack on climate scientists will flourish until the overwhelming majority of Americans condemns it. Only when the average person ahead of you in line at Home Depot or in the next lane at a stop light knows about what these denier thugs are doing and rejects it will we see this criminal behavior curtailed. Even then it won’t disappear completely; there will always be some people who actually believe the garbage Rush Limbaugh and George Will and the Fox lunatics shovel at them every chance they get, and they’ll continue to act out. Hopefully by then it will be mostly shut-ins and those too cowardly to act on their impulses and harm the very people who are trying to minimize the pain they and their loved ones will feel from climate change.
Surely I must be joking, right? I can’t even get many of you to change your freaking light bulbs or drive the speed limit or adjust your bloody thermostat a couple of degrees, and here I am asking you to (gasp!) take a stand on an issue, help educate others about what’s going on, and generally speak out against criminal behavior. For the record, no, I’m not joking. Use the material in my links above, spend 20 minutes Googling for more, and write some letters to the editors of your local newspapers and TV stations, national news magazines, etc. You know the drill; be respectful, provide sources, keep it short and to the point. And don’t write one or two letters and then stop because you’ve “done your part.” That’s a pathetic excuse none of us would accept from a fifth grader.
People on our side of this fight all too often wring their hands and whine about how there’s nothing they can do about our shared hand basket trip to hell. Well here’s something you can do, right now, and you have no excuse to delay any further.
