Prominent MIT researcher Kerry Emanuel has been receiving an unprecedented “frenzy of hate” after a video featuring an interview with him was published recently by Climate Desk.
Emails contained “veiled threats against my wife,” and other “tangible threats,” Emanuel, a highly-regarded atmospheric scientist and director of MIT’s Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate program, said in an interview. “They were vile, these emails. They were the kind of emails nobody would like to receive.”
“What was a little bit new about it was dragging family members into it and feeling that my family might be under threat, so naturally I didn’t feel very good about that at all,” Emanuel said. “I thought it was low to drag somebody’s spouse into arguments like this.”
Climate Desk has seen a sample of the emails and can confirm they are laced with menacing language and expletives, and contain personal threats of violence.
Emanuel began receiving emails “almost immediately” after the video was posted on Jan. 5, and the volume peaked at four or five emails a day. The threats have now petered off.
Threats are nothing new in the world of climate science.
Nope. Ask abortion providers how that works. I don't think we're too far from that particularly fatal next step, either. It's only a matter of time, I suspect.
Emanuel says climate scientists are not used to the intensity of political debate around climate change: “We scientists are usually not in any kind of heated public debate, as is the case in climate; we’re not used to this, we’re not trained for it.”
That needs to change, and quickly. Lord knows sooner rather than later.
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