Watch for the butterfly net to overtake the hockey stick in global warming symbolism.
Note how Mann’s phony anthrax attack segues into claims about tobacco industry tactics to discredit and intimidate scientists.
From an interview on ABC Australia’s Lateline program:
EMMA ALBERICI: Now you’ve just published a book called The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars and I have to say it’s a book that reads much more like a thriller than a scientific textbook. You’ve had death threats and charges that you misappropriated funds. On one occasion you went to work and were greeted by the FBI. Tell us what happened there.
MICHAEL MANN: Oh, well, the FBI actually came in at my – when I reported to them the fact that I had received a letter, an envelope that had white powder in it. And initially I had assumed the worst, but the FBI sent it off to their lab, they checked it out, it turns out it was a false alarm. Nonetheless, as you allude to, I have been subject to all sorts of personal attacks, threats to my safety, my life, threats to my family, and it’s not just me, it’s dozens of climate scientists in the US, in Australia and many other regions of the world where our findings are finding that climate change is real and potentially poses a threat to civilisation if we don’t confront that challenge. That represents a threat to certain vested interests and they’ve tried hard to discredit the science, often by discrediting and intimidating the scientists. Unfortunately it’s not all that new a tactic. We saw the same thing back in the 1970s, 1980s with tobacco, with the tobacco industry trying to discredit research establishing adverse health impacts of their product. It’s an old tactic and it’s now being used to try to discredit climate science, mainly coming from vested interests who don’t want to see us shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels because they – understandably, they profit greatly from our current addiction to fossil fuels. [Emphasis added]
A lot of us actaully wonder if he is actually getting threates. It wouldn’t be the first time that a lefty has falsely claimed to have been threatened by a right wing activist. Remember all the lies against the T_Party?
Intimidation is a nasty tactic, whether by AGW/enviro types or by those who oppose the AGW/enviros. But, as noted, there are wackos aligned with nearly all controversial topics and controversial positions. The API, for example, is less responsible for those who may have threatened Dr. Mann than Dr. Mann is for those who may have threatened API’s people (I dunno if anyone did, just for illustration.) The API, after all, has engaged in a campaign of education, advocacy and legislation, never calling for direct action or civil disobedience. I believe Mann has and I know Hansen has.
This pretty much says climate science is politics. Law enforcement and politicians are the ones targeted with “white powder” in most cases. If Mann had stuck to science……Who sends white powder to a lab researching new drugs or cures for cancer? (If they don’t do animal research, of course.) If you want to get out there an be an ACTIVIST as Mann insists on doing, you make yourself a target. Stay in the lab if you don’t like the attention. No one knows the names of Mann’s lab techs. Only “Look at me, I’m important” Mann.
So true. “Big Oil” is making big bucks off the environmental movement’s free government money. They love it.
@Gamecock
Exactly. Scientists like Mann step out of the lab and into the political arena. They insist their job isn’t just to provide observations and data but to dictate society’s response to the data.
in fact, the decision as to how we should respond is properly the purview of the comminity as a whole. It should be a matter of widespread public debate. Mann tries to stifle that debate and when he’s challenged he interprets it as an attack against him as a scientist. No, it’s pushback against his inappropriate POLITICAL activism.
“I have been subject to all sorts of personal attacks, threats to my safety, my life, threats to my family, and it’s not just me, it’s dozens of climate scientists in the US, in Australia and many other regions of the world where our findings are finding that climate change is real and potentially poses a threat to civilisation if we don’t confront that challenge.”
Personal attacks? Really? I think he believes that debate is a personal attack.
The threats in Australia were debunked.
“Big Oil” is trying to sell bio-fuels and windmills. Mann’s their best bud. Guessing it was “big coal” sending him the baby powder.
So “Big Oil” is sending him talcum powder in the mail to silence him? What a vast and diabolical conspiracy they have going…
For every kook who does something like this to someone on the left, there are ten doing the same thing to conservatives.
Poll: Did he send it himself or was he Gleicked?