Legal Bully-Boy Senator Inhofe Ducks ABC Interview; His Mendacious Toady Marc Morano Claims "No one is advocating violence"

"[Senator] Inhofe refused to grant ABC News an interview..."---ABC News (5-23-10)

Last November, the world learned that cyber-criminals had breached the server of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), stolen the scientists' correspondance, and posted selected e-mails on the server of TomCity, an "internet security business" in Tomsk, Russia. The scandal was dubbed "Climategate" by gleeful global warming denialists.

According to The U.K. Times (12-5-09), the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) "works closely" with the U.K.'s Meteorological Service (MET), which is a branch of the U.K.'s Ministry of Defense.

As the oceans expand due to a rise in temperature and the glaciers on the land melt, the population and cities of the island nations of the U.K. will be threatened; therefore, U.K. government officials consider global warming a threat to their national security. If hackers are breaking into the servers of CRU scientists who work with a department of the U.K. Ministry of Defense and are posting stolen e-mails on the server of an "internet security business" in Tomsk Russia, it should come as no surprise that the British authorities are probably determined to get to the bottom of it.

We don't yet know who the criminals are because the British authorities don't devulge information from ongoing criminal investigations, but The Financial Times (4-15-10) reports:

There have been indications that the hackers could have been based in Russia, and some experts believe they may have been hired by sceptics based in the US.

While the British pursue the criminals who breached the CRU server, the FBI is investigating threats of violence made against climate scientists. Veiled threats against climate scientists have even been made by demagogues in the media.

According to a video titled Flogging the Scientists, the FOX News personality Glenn Beck said that there aren't enough knives for all the climate scientists to use to commit hara-kari; radio personality Rush Limbaugh said climate scientists should be drawn and quartered; and Senator Inhofe's former adviser, the denialist blogger Marc Morano (who told ABC that no one is advocating violence), reportedly called for climate scientists to be publically flogged. These violent suggestions have encouraged some people to e-mail threats to climate scientists.

Scientists are somewhat troubled about the threats of violence, but they are more concerned about the attempts at judicial persecution coming from well-financed demagogic politicians such as Senator Inhofe and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia's very own "Grand Inquisitor."

These politicians don't care about what the scientists are writing, because it is fairly easy to read the scientific articles and see that the denialists mischaracterise and lie about what the scientists say. The denialist politicians and their mouthpieces seem to be just like that discredited "scholar" Ward Churchill--chock full of glib, cynical, brash lies.

Conspiracist demagogues like Senator Inhofe and Attorney General Cuccinelli only want to ride to wealth and power on a tidal wave of ignorant canards about the "crafty plots" of "communist" scientists who study global warming. Ironically, these conspiracist politicians are repeating the same canards about global warming that I read in the Russian media--- which is controlled by the Russian government and owned by fossil fuel companies. One day denialists say that more carbon dioxide is good for the earth. The next day they say that climate scientists are hiding the "fact" that the earth is getting cooler. It is so stupid.

I believe the scientists, not the dishonest, greedy, power-hungry politicians. I wish some of our scientists would become politicians. Cynical creeps like Senator Inhofe and Attorney General Cuccinelli remind me of the manipulative, demagogic, political bosses in the former U.S.S.R. and Russia. They are no different than those shameful liars who didn't even admit that Chernobyl had blown up and was spewing radiation all over Europe. Global warming is as real as Chernobyl and as real as the BP oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, yet some people deny it.

ABC News (5-23-10) reports:

The FBI says it's seeing an uptick in threatening communications to climate scientists. Recently, a white supremacist website posted [climate scientist Michael] 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...

Many climate scientists, however, say the most disturbing recent example of what they call intimidation is not anonymous hate mail.

Rather, they point to a governmental report released in February by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., one of the most vocal climate skeptics in office, which names 17 climate scientists and argues some of them may have engaged in "potentially criminal behavior."

Inhofe's report referred to an incident late last year known as "Climate Gate," in which e-mails hacked from computers at the University of East Anglia in Britain gave the impression some climate scientists may have been trying to hide flaws in their research. Several subsequent investigations have exonerated the scientists' work.

One section of Inhofe's report outlined the laws the scientists may have violated, including the Federal False Statements Act, which the report noted could be punishable with imprisonment of "not more than five years."

Climate Scientist: 'Modern-Day McCarthyism'

"It's reminiscent of other periods in American history," Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climatologist named in Inhofe's report, told ABC News. "People were smeared not on the basis of anything they did but just by powerful people seeming to ... insinuate that they've somehow done something wrong."

Mann agreed.

"Some of the attacks that are being made against climate scientists smack of modern-day McCarthyism," he said....

254...members of the National Academy of Sciences, recently signed a public letter calling for an end to the intimidation of climate scientists. [This letter was signed by the great Russian Academician Roald Sagdeev, who, in 1987, publically disavowed, on behalf of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the KGB claims that "crafty" US scientist invented the AIDS virus in secret Pentagon laboratories.]

"Many recent assaults on climate science, and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers, are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory," read the letter, which was published in Science magazine earlier this month.

"We...call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distraction to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them," the letter continued.

Gavin Schmidt of NASA said attacks are meant to keep scientists from speaking out about climate change in public.

"They're trying to dissuade people from being involved in the public discussion about what this means and what we can do to prevent it," he said. "I think people who care about the integrity of science in this country should find that worrying."