Readers of these pages will know that Dr. Katharine Hayhoe is a powerful voice for climate sanity in the United States, and particularly threatening to the climate denial noise machine, in that she is an evangelical Christian, and carries the facts of climate science into communities that very often have been subjected to intense disinformation campaigns.
Dr. Hayhoe came to the attention of a wider audience this week, when it was revealed that she had been tasked to write a chapter on climate for a new book coming out under GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich’s name – and that, in the heat of a tea-party troglodyte dominated primary campaign, she, her chapter, and her message, had been unceremoniously dumped from the project.
Now Dr Hayhoe is the target of the kind of hate and intimidation campaign that has become the hallmark of the professional climate denier community.
Dr. Hayhoe made headlines after the Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich came under pressure and dropped plans to have her write an opening chapter on climate change for his upcoming book.
Now, her teaching duties at Texas Tech University have resumed and the sting from the Gingrich snub is fading. But the hate mail is still pouring in, dozens of insulting e-mails every morning.
“It’d be a lot easier to stay home. It’s not easy having people standing up and screaming at you. It’s not easy opening your mail in the morning and seeing a hundred e-mails, each one more hateful than the last,” Dr. Hayhoe said Monday, in her first interview with a Canadian news outlet.
“That’s not easy. And it’s not the science that motivates me. It’s what comes from the heart.”
That introduction to the sharp-elbowed world of politics was the latest blow for the 39-year-old, who already had a taste of hostile audiences from public speaking at Christian schools, seniors homes, farmers’ group and book clubs.
She was prepared to deal with emotional, unfriendly reactions. But she wasn’t expecting what came with the name recognition, she said.
“There’s a well-organized campaign, primarily in the United States but also in other countries, including Canada and Australia, of bloggers, of people in the media, of basically professional climate deniers whose main goal is to abuse, to harass and to threaten anybody who stands up and says climate change is real – especially anybody who’s trying to take that message to audiences that are more traditionally skeptical of this issue.”
It was even more shocking because she didn’t see herself as a “Godless, tree-hugging activist” but a scientist who also happened to be a member of an evangelical Bible church. She is also married to a pastor.
“The attacks’ virulence, the hatred and the nastiness of the text have escalated exponentially. I’ve gotten so many hate mail in the last few weeks I can’t even count them.”
On one occasion, after appearing on Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox TV, she received nearly 200 hate e-mails the next day.
The template is a well worn one, as veteran scientists like Mike Mann, Ben Santer, Kevin Trenberth, and Phil Jones can attest. I outlined one of the more notable examples in the video below. The parallels between modern science denial and medieval witch hunts are more than rhetorical. Climate deniers like the execrable Marc Morano have openly called for scientists to be dragged into the streets and flogged Sharia style. If you wonder how a civilized nation can descend into brutality and darkness, look no further than the hateful, anti-intellectual, and frighteningly well financed campaign of the science denial movement.
The question here is how far the extreme far right will go in their scapegoating of climate scientists- like they did in Germany against others who disagreed against scientists and intellectuals from 1933-1945…..
Peter Mizla- you’re late to the party. Nuremberg style trials have been proposed already by rabid warmists.
As for Hayhoe it’s too bad etc etc but unless she substantiates the allegations it’s just words. We’ve seen already the case of “harassed” climate scientists in Oz dissolving into nothing.
If she’s got evidence of a “well-organized campaign” she better get the evidence out now and I’ll join her in stamping it out. Everything else is paranoid rubbish by a person rather too often in the news to complain about it.
it won’t be Nuremberg style, although that is well deserved.
More like Tobacco style. Several cases are working their way thru the system right now, waiting for the aftermath of the right climate catastrophe.
The case of harassed climate scientists in Oz did not dissolve into nothing at all. Australia’s Telegraph ran a piece claiming that some the threats in question were old news. Subsequent reports by other papers found that the threats were many and ongoing – including threats to people’s children.
Now let’s see your claim about Nuremberg style trails substantiated. Let’s see chapter and verse from an independent source. Or doesn’t the same standard of evidence apply to you?
And, by the way, what exactly constitutes a “rabid warmist”, exactly? Anyone who accepts that the findings of climate scientists are what they purport to be, perhaps? Or is anyone ‘rabid’ who doesn’t agree with your scientifically indefensible position?
I would say 200 emails each day is evidence of a well organised campaign. This sort of thing does not happen by accident. People, it seems, cannot think for themselves.
Nevermind…as soon as the first geoengineering scheme will be up, I’ll collect a few millions after the first hailstorm… 😎
BBC James Lovelock Interview 2011 (1 hour) http://climateforce.net/2012/01/11/bbc-james-lovelock-interview-2011/
“Just the melting of all the floating ice in the arctic ocean, will add as much heat to the earth, as all the Co-2 we put in the atmosphere to date.” Dr. James Lovelock http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-v5UGK9Ajc&feature=player_embedded#t=610s
I hope Hayhoe can Hayng-on. The propaganda is so thick in the community she’s trying to reach that only a good old-fashioned Old-testament God-smacking is going to turn some heads. But as we’ve seen in much of the American MidWest, West, and South recently, that’s actually now on the table (thanks to the success of the deniers advocacy). I’m guessing they already ‘get’ her message in New Orleans, Central Texas, and Joplin, Missouri. Nothing like having the ‘Wrath of God’ on your side, and her ‘celestial partner’ will only be ramping-up his voice in the near future.
‘Can you hear me now?’
“Like” this page to show your support for Katharine Hayhoe. It will give her some encouragement. She needs it now.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/We-Support-Katharine-Hayhoe/312375825468333
I’m not going to do that yet. I have reservations about ‘liking’ the page of a person who would donate a chapter of a book, regardless of its content, in order to support the Presidential campaign of Newt Gingrich.
I am open to enlightenment to the contrary, though.
She can hardly be accused of preaching to the choir then. Surely it’s a foundation stone of Christianity to take your message to the heathens and as far as AGW is concerned, Newt is one of the lions in the coliseum. Regard her contribution as an ambush rather than a capitulation.
Aloha Dr. Hayhoe. It is brave and honest folks such as you who will lead the Climate Preservation movement to victory over greed and materialism. I will ask my church families (Church of the Crossroads and Unity Hawaii) to pray for you and your family, and for love and compassion to change the hearts and minds of those who hate you and campaign against you because of your belief in both science and Christianity. You are a gift from God to the future generations whose planet is imperiled by those who are destroying the environment today.
Mahalo a nui loa,
Mike (aka kokuaguy) in Honolulu
http://www.newser.com/user/39776786/1/kokuaguy.html?type=stories
Isn’t it scary that people would go to a pastor for advice about the climate? That’s like asking the plumber about the lump on one’s daughter’s neck. But on second-thoughts, I suppose it isn’t surprising, because I bet the same approach would be to approach a pastor or priest about evolution.
It may be a natural thought-process for the deeply religious, but it’s still wrong. What it about the education system in the US isn’t good.
It also says a great deal about the pressure that religious groups feel about science.
What a shame there isn’t a means to scramble the laws of quantum physics in their cell phones, computers, TVs, cars and etc. That would soon bring them to understand their reliance upon science. A localised EMP would achieve the same end result, but it wouldn’t discriminate between scientifically literate and scientifically illiterate.
Extremist Republicans and Christians can only achieve full employment with modern slavery. The Looter Limbaughs claim to be the source of all science. The Mitt Romneys’ parrot Looters’ propaganda that is twice paid with outlet advertisers. The final solution will be the loss of the EPA so they can harvest the air, land, and water in addition to national parks, health of future generations, and invasion of other countries. The attack on science is to discount any education below questioning the legal injuries and murder of employees by employers who take it upon themselves to determine the health and wealth of all who step onto their property.
“Only when they have cut down the last tree,
poisoned the last river and caught the last fish,
will they see that you cannot eat money.”
You have to wonder about people who, having earned such fabulous amounts of money they have to hide it in Swiss banks accounts or such, award themselves even more fabulous bonuses. Then turn around and condemn their grandchildren to a living hell.