Threats could have chilling effect on climate research, science group says
By Andrew Restuccia
Personal attacks — including legal challenges and even death threats — on climate scientists have created a “hostile environment” that could result in a “chilling effect” on much-needed research, one of the country’s leading scientific organizations said this week.
The board of directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science issued a rare statement Tuesday underscoring that it “vigorously opposes” personal attacks on climate scientists. It’s the organization’s strongest rebuke of efforts by conservative groups to criticize climate scientists. (E2 Wire)
Response to AAAS from ATI Environmental Law Center director of litigation Christopher Horner:
“I noticed no relation between our initiative and the AAAS Board’s rhetoric until they mentioned us somewhat incongruously.
“The notion that application of laws that expressly cover academics is an ‘attack’ on them is substantively identical to Hollywood apologists who call application of other laws to Roman Polanski an attack on Polanski. They lost the plot somewhere along the way.
“AAAS’s failure to mention the group that invented this series of requests, Greenpeace, informs our conclusion that this outrage is selective, and is therefore either feigned or hypocritical. Their problem is plainly with the laws, but it is a problem they have had over the decades: That transparency and ethics laws also apply to scientists who subsist on taxpayer revenue. This they also forgot to mention. (ATI)
