Monday, January 16, 2012

The Latest Cyberterrorism

Late (I've was very under the weather), but worth linking to still -- Morano's Minions have been busy threatening yet another climate scientist, Kerry Emanuel of MIT, after he appeared in this video about conservatives in New Hampshire who believe in climate change. This time they dragged his family into it. The section with Emanuel starts at about the 4:00 mark, and apparently what he said wrong was "it makes me feel, to some extent, disgusted with politics and, to some extent, ashamed to be an American."



But that wasn't enough, Morano saw fit to write that "His wife, the Boston-born Susan Boyd-Bowman, actually surrendered her U.S. citizenship to become a UK citizen...Though she lists her primary residence as Lexington, MA, she only has a U.S. resident visa."

That came from Steve Milloy at Junkscience.com, which elicited this priceless pair of comments from someone named Frank Dias:

Hey, who cares, as long as Frank got to rant, right? (At least one of Milloy's commenters spoke up for decency.) The Third Horseman of Science Hatred, Lubos Motl, made sure to get in while the getting was good. Then Morano came back for more.

By the time they were done, there was plenty of evidence making it clear why Emanuel might feel (to some extent) the way he did. Or why others witnessing this sorry episode might now feel the same way. Way to go, guys.

It's clear now that this is an accepted strategy by these people to terrorize -- yes, it's a form of terrorism -- scientists who speak up on climate science. It's deliberate, it's purposeful, and it's cyberterrorism.

I wonder if Anthony Watts has denied these threats?

2 comments:

Dano said...

I guess one benefit of the increased spying on Murricans, is that mouth-breathers threatening violence every time they encounter cognitive dissonance can more readily be caught...

Best,

D

Steve Bloom said...

Well, Watts himself was once terrorized in his very own office by, um, a female Harvard biology PhD in her '50s whose internet avatar is a mouse. and who came to his office and, and, and... asked to speak to him! Oh the horror.

Actually Watts' account of this is a laugh riot. Basically he took the approach of neglecting to describe the extremely non-threatening qualities of his assailant while playing up the entirely verbal "assault" (the actual nature of which was to ask some hard questions, and even to add a couple on her way out while complying with a request to leave). Anyway, this one-sided description led his readers to wail about how Anthony's very life must have been in danger from some brute of an alarmist. I wonder if it's still posted.