On Sep 10, 8:01 pm, "Eddie Haskell" <gdgd...@apapap.com> wrote:

conservatives are sociopaths:outspoken scientists of human-caused
climate change in the U. S. endure torrents of freedom of information
requests/hate mail/even death threats from skeptics:their counterparts
abroad have been free to do their work without fear

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-10/climate-scientists-face-orga...

Climate Scientists Face Organized Harassment in U.S.

By Katherine Bagley Sep 10, 2012 11:10 AM CT

InsideClimateNews.org -- The harassment faced by U.S.-based climate
scientists has been well documented in the media—but not the
harassment of scientists in Europe, Canada or the rest of the world.
That's because there hasn't been much to report.
While outspoken scientists of human-caused climate change in the
United States endure torrents of freedom of information requests, hate
mail and even death threats from skeptics, their counterparts abroad
have been free to do their work without fear.
Jochem Marotzke, managing director of the Max Planck Institute for
Meteorology in Hamburg, said there is "no systematic attempt by a
political camp" to target climate scientists in Germany. "I get the
odd critical email from a skeptic, but would not classify anything as
personally aggressive," said Marotzke. "Very different from the U.S.
scene."
"I feel for my American colleagues and what they've had to deal with,"
said Tim Lenton, an earth system scientist who specializes in climate
tipping points at the University of Exeter in the UK. Lenton said he
has never had to fend off skeptic attacks against his work or his
integrity. "British scientists aren't immune to attacks, but it is a
very different level than compared to what is happening in the U.S."
InsideClimate News contacted scientists working on climate change in
Europe, Canada and Japan and learned that virtually everyone believes
that the harassment is specific to the United States. They said that
it could have long-term consequences for public understanding of
global warming.
"The harassment has an intimidating effect—especially on young
scientists," said Stefan Rahmstorf, head of earth system analysis at
the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
Rahmstorf said that watching colleagues be harassed often deters them
from speaking to media or the public about their research, which skews
the debate.
Already, there is evidence of the U.S. public being swayed, said Tony
Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change
Communication.
Climategate, for instance, the 2009 hacking of emails from the
University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit in the UK, "had a
significant impact" on public opinion, he said. During that scandal,
U.S. skeptics pounced mainly on emails written by Michael Mann,
director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University,
as evidence that he and others were overstating the human influence on
global warming. In a yet-to-be-published Yale study, nearly 13 percent
of on-the-fence Americans in 2010 said climategate reduced their trust
in climate science and in scientists, Leiserowitz said.
Since then, Mann was cleared of any wrongdoing, and the scientific
consensus has strengthened—virtually all working U.S. climate
researchers believe human activity is causing the climate to warm.
But the polls have barely budged.
The most recent global poll from 2011 found that only 48 percent of
Americans believe climate change is occurring from either human
activity or a mix of human and natural causes, the lowest among
developed countries. Eighty-three percent of people in Asia expressed
this opinion, which was shared by 72 percent in Canada, 69 percent in
Europe and 65 percent in Latin in America.
Why Harassment Here and Not There?
U.S. skeptics ramped up efforts a few years ago when momentum built in
Washington in both political parties for national climate policies,
following the seminal 2007 report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, which concluded that Earth is warming mainly from
fossil fuel emissions.
Their campaigns coincided with the rise of the Tea Party movement,
whose members are far more dubious about the science of global warming
than the public at large, adding to the growing chorus of skepticism.
There are two main types of harassment in the United States—by
individual skeptics, or by campaigns led by conservative groups, often
bankrolled by fossil fuel industries, that seek to sow confusion on
the climate issue and undermine support for carbon regulations.
Their tactics have included filing onerous Freedom of Information
requests that can overwhelm a scientist's workload and force them put
their research on hold; barraging scientists with hate mail; and
filling online comment boards with claims that researchers manipulated
their results.
The foreign scientists interviewed for this story expressed concern
about the intimidation and about the state of America's climate
debate. They have their own opinions about why this country—and not
their own—has become fertile ground for skeptics.
Weak Political Leadership
Lenton, the scientist from the University of Exeter, said he believes
it comes down to political leadership, which helps to increase public
confidence in the science, and to deter skeptics.
"Governments here [in the UK and Europe] have largely accepted ...
that we've got to massively cut our carbon emissions and change our
whole way of doing things by 2050," Lenton said. When climate
scientists talk to politicians or to the public on climate dangers
"one ends up preaching to the converted," he said of Europe.
The UK has pledged to cut emissions by at least 34 percent by 2020,
and 80 percent by 2050. The government has funded climate science
education at home and has even extended those efforts abroad. The
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) gave about $20,000 to the U.S.-
based Environmental Defense Fund to help fund a project to counter
climate skepticism in the Texas State Legislature, the Guardian
reported earlier this year.
The European Union, home to the world's largest carbon market, has
promised a 20 percent reduction of emissions by 2020, and says it
would increase that to 30 percent by 2020 if other major emitters
agree to the same. Germany is undergoing an energy transformation on a
massive scale to replace its retiring nuclear fleet with renewable
power.
In contrast to Europe, climate policies in the United States are dead
for the foreseeable future, and climate skepticism has become a tenet
of Republican politics. GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney has
reversed his earlier position that human activities cause global
warming. Even Barack Obama has steered clear of climate change,
despite research showing that he would benefit from addressing it.
Lack of political leadership alone, however, doesn't explain the
harassment in the United States.
Stephen Harper's Conservative government in Canada has pulled the
country out of the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 global treaty to reduce
greenhouse emissions, and has appointed several climate skeptics to
crucial federal scientific bodies, including the Natural Sciences and
Engineering Research Council and the Canada Foundation for Innovation.
Yet Canadians still have some of the world's strongest belief that
global warming is happening—and harassment of scientists is not on the
scale of its southern neighbor.
"We are generally left alone to do our work," said Bruno Tremblay, a
climatologist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Tremblay said
that unlike many conservative Americans, Canadians generally don't
harness suspicions about the government overstepping its powers by
trying to control carbon emissions and conserve energy, and in fact
they encourage it. So the skeptics' message doesn't mesh with them, he
said.
Abuse of Free Speech
Alan Leshner, chief executive officer of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, the world's largest scientific society,
said he sees the attacks on scientists in the United States as "very
disconcerting." Last year, AAAS released a statement condemning the
harassment.
"The incidents reflect two unfortunate things," Leshner said in an
interview, "we live in a society where ideologies trump our
willingness to hear what science says, and in a country where free
speech is so widely valued, people are being attacked."
The foreign scientists interviewed for this story generally agreed
that religion and ideology play a bigger role in U.S. politics than
they do in their own countries. "This inevitably means things are more
about belief than about evidence in the U.S.," said Lenton of the
University of Exeter.
According to a 2012 poll by Yale and George Mason Universities,
Americans' climate change beliefs divide along party and ideological
lines. Among those who said they were "alarmed" or "concerned" about
global warming, more than two-thirds identified themselves as
Democrat, Independent, or moderate or liberal. In contrast, less than
15 percent of Republicans or conservatives described themselves as
alarmed or concerned.
Generally, the more conservative the Republican, the more likely they
are to flat-out deny the existence of climate change. Former
presidential candidate Rick Santorum, for instance, referred to the
acceptance of global warming as a "pseudo-religion" in a column
earlier this year for Red State.
Australia Steps Up Climate Efforts Amid Harassment
After the United States, the country with the most harassment by
skeptics is Australia. Most speculate that's because the country is
the largest exporter of coal in the world. Coal industry groups in
Australia have sought to cast doubt on climate science and have
lobbied against carbon emission limits. But political will for climate
action has been strong enough to counter their opposition.
Last month Australia joined the EU and New Zealand in putting a price
on carbon dioxide emissions, and will launch a carbon trading scheme
in 2015.
German climatologist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a scientific advisor
to Chancellor Angela Merkel, was reportedly threatened in Melbourne
last year during a guest lecture, when a member of the audience stood
up and brandished a noose at the scientist.
The incident led Schellnhuber to declare in an interview earlier this
year that it was only a matter of time before deniers kill a climate
scientist. Last year, several researchers at the Australian National
University in Canberra, located in the southeastern part of the
country, had to be relocated to a secure facility after they received
a deluge of threats from skeptics.
Beyond the safety of the scientists, "the worrying thing is the
message that is sent to the public," said Tremblay of McGill—that the
science isn't settled when it is. "[The harassment] just serves to
polarize the debate even further. People need to start speaking about
this issue for what it is, and leave political and other agendas on
the side."
Republished with permission of InsideClimate News, a non-profit, non-
partisan news organization that covers energy and climate change—plus
the territory in between where law, policy and public opinion are
shaped.
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