Pete Ridley: Global Warming Denialism's Benighted Black Knight

"The earth is suffering from global warming as a result of our excessive consumption of energy."---The Vatican (Scroll down.)

The scientific agencies of the U.S. government, the National Academies, the CIA, the Pentagon, the United Nations, and the Vatican all say that there is man-made global warming.

A global warming denialist blogger who calls himself Pete “the ferret” Ridley (his own appellation, see comment) is threatening to “ferret” me out and tell the world my real name because I criticize denialists behind a nom-de-plume. (Ferret means "little thief in Latin.)

The supremely overconfident Ridley reminds me just a bit of the Black Knight in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Pete "the ferret" Ridley has already claimed over at DeSmogBlog that Kent Clizbe (a self-proclaimed ex-CIA case officer who reportedly spams college professors and offers them a multi- million-dollar bounty from the federal government if they will denounce the climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann for fraud) can easily find out who I am with the help of his CIA contacts.

It is possible that Kent Clizbe really is a trained ex-CIA operative privateering as a political operative for some political entity or for a denialist politician such as Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli; but I doubt that Kent Clizbe has many contacts in the CIA, because he is off-message when it comes to global warming: the CIA isn't harrassing climate scientists; the CIA is giving climate scientists security clearances so they can help the CIA study the national security implications of climate change. The CIA official in charge of the CIA's Center on Climate Change and National Security is named Larry Kobayashi, not Kent Clizbe.

"Beavis" Ridley and "Butthead" Clizbe can easily "ferret me out" by asking Virgina’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to blow the lid off "Snapple." I email his deputy W. Russell all the time to complain about the persecution of our scientists, and I use my real name.

Since Virginia's Attorney General Cuccinelli can’t seem to expose Dr. Mann, he might just have to settle for exposing old ladies who teach Catholic school. Perhaps Cuccinelli would also like to round up the Catholic Sisters who teach children about climate science, while he’s at it. Catholic schools don’t teach global warming denialism because it’s not science and it’s not Catholic.

Attorney General Cuccinelli cites the Kremlin’s official press agency RIA Novosti in his suit against the EPA, but the Vatican says there is global warming. Choosing between the Vatican and the Kremlin is not exactly a tough pick, like Thin Mints versus Do Si Dos.

Cuccinelli home-schools his older children; but if I am outed, young Virginians who attend Catholic school might end up discussing science and religion on that Facebook and Twitter the young people use these days to foment revolution.

If Cuccinelli outs me to this "ferret" or to this apocryphal ex-CIA operative, Cuccinelli might actually make a lasting, if unintentional, contribution to climate science; he might even trigger a Facebook revolution against foreign tyranny in Virginia, all in one fell swoop! After all, Cuccinelli is always encouraging Virginians to remember their revolutionary roots, and I hear him loud and clear!

Pete Ridley says I am a coward not to use my real name on my obscure blog and that he has a “low regard for those who hide behind false names.”

The low regard of benighted, hypocritcal ferrets who threaten me with apocryphal Clizbes does not especially trouble me. We are used to that in Soviet Studies. For example, the famous dissident samizdat publications Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania and the Chronicle of Current Events in the USSR were written by anonymous authors. That slowed down the political operatives of the Communist Party, the KGB.

While Pete Ridley may have a low regard for sharp-tongued, anonymous teachers, the not-very-sincere Ridley actually has a high regard for the anonymous hacker-criminals who stole the CRU emails and denounced the climate scientists anonymously. The criminal hackers are also big fat hypocrites who call themselves “honest men.”

Perhaps the benighted Pete Ridley grew up in the USSR where accusations of disseminating the CIA or Vatican line could get you charged with anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda; but so far, spouting the CIA and the Vatican line is not a crime in Virginia.

If you are an aficionado of irony, check the ferret’s droppings in the comments here and here.