Climate scientists face organized campaign of threatening e-mails
Denialist organizations target Australian scientists and journalists with insulting and offensive e-mails.
By Stephanie RogersWed, Feb 24 2010 at 12:18 PM EST
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Image: Striatic/Flickr Scientists, journalists and public figures in Australia who speak out on the subject of climate change are paying a steep price: harassment, threats to their lives and threats to the safety of their children.
Professor Clive Hamilton, an author and Greens Party candidate and founder of progressive think tank The Australia Institute, says he and others have been victims of cyber attacks arranged by “denialist organizations”, which aim to silence climate scientists and environmental journalists.
Hamilton wrote on ABC’s The Drum Unleashed, “Apart from the volume and viciousness of the e-mails, the campaign has two features — it is mostly anonymous and it appears to be orchestrated.”
Some of the e-mails are merely insulting, calling various scientists including David Karoly at the University of Melbourne and professors Andy Pitman and Ben McNeil at the UNSW “arrogant, conceited, ignorant”, but others went much further than that. The threats against scientists’ families are too offensive to repeat.
Among the more polite e-mail snippets quoted by Hamilton:
"Burn in hell. Or in the main street, when the Australian public finally lynchs [sic] you.""It is probably not to [sic] extreme to suggest that your actions (deceitful) were so criminal to be compared with Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. It is called treason and genocide.”"If we see you continue, we will get extremely organised and precise against you."
The e-mails come in by the dozens over periods of a few hours.
“It's fair to assume operatives in these organisations constantly monitor the media and, when a story or interview they don't like appears, send messages out to lists of supporters, linking to the comments, providing the scientist's e-mail address and urging them to let him or her know what they think,” writes Hamilton.
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Comments
Aaron
02/24/2010 19:16 PM
Gee, now they're facing the heat just like skeptics have for all this time? Sucks to be the unpopular one, doesn't it?
Elaine
03/02/2010 21:06 PM
Aaron, you have got to be kidding. It is the denialist camp that hurls abuse and insults at 'the other side'. Denialist scientists who identify themselves as 'skeptics' have never faced campaigns of abuse. The most they've 'suffered' is not having their hare-brained theories taken seriously because they lack substance. Scientists are rightly critical of work that shows poor understanding and doesn't stand up to scrutiny - they respectfully disagree and give scientific reasons why. In contrast,.... More
Boobialla
02/24/2010 16:01 PM
It's Clive Hamilton, not Harrison.
