Dishonesty and hate; my brush with Marc Morano

My comment about the PNAS paper that analyzed the expertise and prominence of scientists who have signed public declarations stating that they are convinced, or unconvinced by the evidence for global warming, and the disgusting references to the Stasi, and the holocaust made by some deniers got me more attention that I expected.

Why? Because Marc Morano linked to my post, and posted my email on his site Climate Depot.  What happened next provides a look at why Morano should not be trusted and the absolute hate that his followers have for people like me who accept mainstream science and are disgusted by inappropriate equivalence to horrible events in recent history that cheapen the experiences of those who survived them.

Morano at first misread my post (willingly?) and assumed that I claimed that I didn’t know that the Stasi were not Nazi’s he published this:

Morano published my email address; I removed it from the screen grab. Also notice the meaning altering ellipsis in the third paragraph.

For the record I spent exactly I spend exactly zero seconds thinking that the Stasi were per of the Nazi movement. They were not. I was complaining about both the references to the Stasi and the Nazis. They are both disgusting; the Nazi references however I take personally.

I told Morano about this, and he mentioned that he never used a Nazi reference. Despite the fact that I seem to recall him linking approvingly to someone making a Nazi reference I could not find the link, so I quickly made it clear in my original post that Morano did not make a Nazi reference, but that he did make a reference to the Stasi. Morano eventually accepted that he was wrong, and said he would make a correction.

Did he? Not really, but he did take my email down. He published this:

Updated: Oops! Alarmist attempts to slam Climate Depot for ‘Nazi’ reference — But Climate Depot did not make one — only to East German Stasi

Instead of issuing a correction he focused on my admittedly real error, but an error that I had already corrected. Nowhere did he retract his original incorrect claim. It still exists, the only thing he changed was him adding a link to his ‘clarification’.But to make matters worse that link is broken.

Not very honest, if you ask me.

Now none of this matters much, but it serves to highlight how even on issues that are ultimately inconsequential Morano cannot be trusted. On matters of real substance, Morano is completely untrustworthy, frequently bending the truth beyond all recognition.

But there is another aspect of this issue that deserves attention. It has been reported that climate scientists have seen an increase of threatening emails since the CRU email leak late last year. One major reason for this is the fact that Morano publishes email address of anyone he is attacking. He published My email address, and it got me plenty of hate mail.

Most were just baseless assaults on my character, but a significant number of them wished me harm, usually in the form of a painful death. Some of them were threats of violence towards me. There were hundreds of emails, and my address was only posted for a few hours. It wasn’t pretty, but didn’t make me worry about my safety. Were I in the same position as Michael Mann or Stephen Schneider I am not sure I could say that, their emails are frequently published, and unlike an unknown like me, deniers are well aware of who Mann and Schneider are. They are frequently mentioned by Morano, and to make matters worse their place of work in public knowledge.

The level of vitriol and hate that Morano directs with his site is astonishing. And he knows it. That he continues to publish email addresses is irresponsible to say the least.