Climategate: The Real Story - The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars - page 159

he had misappropriated a copyrighted image of me and had used it in a defamatory manner, 129 while
the owner of the copyright informed YouTube of the copyright violation, and the video was taken
down. What happened subsequently was illuminating. No sooner had the video been taken down than
a new group connected with Koch Industries and the Scaife Foundations, 130 the “No Cap and Trade
Coalition,” initiated a public relations offensive designed to portray poor Mr. Beaureguard as a
defenseless victim. It even sponsored a press conference at the National Press Club featuring him,
alongside Patrick Michaels and Myron Ebell. 131 Fox News, of course, covered it. 132
Few if any mainstream media organizations took notice of the press conference, but the event did
generate an unusually intense burst of vitriolic and derisive, generally anonymous e-mail and phone
messages. They conveyed a remarkably consistent message, almost as if they had come from a
common template. The message was this: If I sought legal action against the attacks of the industry-
funded denial machine, I would—among other things—be challenged with endless, invasive
“discovery” demands. 133 I should, in short, just put up with the attacks and “take it like a man.” 134
The assault would continue in the months ahead. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's
chief scientific adviser Sir David King had once reported that individuals funded by the Competitive
Enterprise Institute were heckling him at his public lectures on climate change. 135 I was now subject
to the same thing. In early May 2010 when I gave a keynote lecture for the PennFuture global warming
conference in Pittsburgh, for example, a small group of picketers—led by a man who identified
himself with the Commonwealth Foundation—had assembled outside the conference center. 136
Affixed to a truck they had parked there was a billboard-sized display bearing an unflattering cartoon
of me, with the phrases “hide the decline” and “Mann-made warming” underneath, and they were
distributing T-shirts bearing the same image. (My host, PennFuture president Jan Jarrett, obtained one,
which she awarded me before the audience as a war trophy of sorts.)
Meanwhile, Mr. Clizbe persisted in sending out periodic e-mails promising colleagues financial
reward for claiming evidence of fraud in my research, 137 the Commonwealth Foundation continued to
attack me in the local press, and the No Cap and Trade Coalition (under the guise of the Minnesotans
for Global Warming, but with the ties between the two organizations now explicit) 138 continued to
produce attack videos. For a February 2011 video entitled “I'm a Denier” and hosted on the
Heartland Institute Web site, they even employed a doppelganger to play me dancing around with a
hockey stick 139 in what Eric Alterman of The Nation described as “an awful, amateurish Monkees
parody.” 140 A group known as the Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow, a sister organization to
CFACT, engaged in similar efforts to ridicule me at the time. 141
I could easily brush off many of the attacks. In fact, at some level, the attention was almost
flattering. But to the extent that the industry-funded disinformation machine was taking direct aim not
just at me—my livelihood, my reputation, my safety—but even my family, I was becoming incensed.
And it wasn't just me. Many of my fellow climate scientists were outraged by the mean-spirited and
dishonest attacks against us and our science. None had signed up for this sort of treatment. We'd seen
the public polling data that suggested our credibility as a community had taken a hit. So too had
efforts to confront the daunting challenges presented by climate change. 142 Could we allow this
assault to continue? What could we do to defend ourselves?