Why Growing Harassment of Scientists by Climate Change Deniers Is So Dangerous

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http://www.alternet.org/environment/why-growing-harassment-scientists-climate-change-deniers-so-dangerous




When Michael Mann chose a career in science, he didn't think that he would be denounced on billboards, grilled by hostile legislators on Capitol Hill and in the British House of Commons, have his emails hacked and stolen, receive letters laced with an anthrax-like white powder, and become the target of anonymous death threats.

Mann also did not imagine that he would be spending quite so much time with lawyers and in courtrooms. Today, he is the plaintiff in a controversial case that is being argued before the Virginia Supreme Court. It pits the scientist against a climate change denialist group, which is seeking to get a hold of several years worth of his emails, as well as those of dozens of other climate investigators.

Mann, who currently directs Penn State University's Earth System Science Center, is one of the authors of the so-called " hockey stick graph", which Al Gore used in his film, An Inconvenient Truth, to illustrate the precipitous rise in global temperatures since the dawn of industrialization when humans started spewing the heat-trapping greenhouse gas CO2 into the atmosphere. For the "sin" of helping to create this "exhibit A" in the scientific case for climate change, the conservative semimonthly, the National Review, called Mann "the Jerry Sandusky of climate scientists." Blogger Rand Simberg wrote on the Review's online site:

Except that instead of molesting children, [Mann] has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science.

The Penn State researcher didn't take this insult lying down. He sued the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which also published the offending blog; the case is currently pending.

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