It has been brought to my attention that I am mentioned, once, in the “ClimateGate” email stash. If you go here and search for my name, you find this, an email from Tom Wigley of NCAR, who I have interviewed for various stories:
From: Tom Wigley <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Fwd: [Fwd: FW: Press Release from The Science & Environmental Policy Project]]
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:17:14 -0700
Cc: carl mears <[email protected]>, Frank Wentz <[email protected]>, Tom Wigley <[email protected]>, Steven Sherwood <[email protected]>, John Lanzante <[email protected]>, “‘Dian J. Seidel’” <[email protected]>, Melissa Free <[email protected]>, Karl Taylor <[email protected]>, Steve Klein <[email protected]>, Leopold Haimberger <[email protected]>, “Thorne, Peter” <[email protected]>, “‘Philip D. Jones’” <[email protected]>
Dear all,
I think the scientific fraud committed by Douglass needs to
be exposed. His co-authors may be innocent bystanders, but
I doubt it.
In normal circumstances, what Douglass has done would cause
him to lose his job — a parallel is the South Korean cloning
fraud case.
I have suggested that someone like Chris Mooney should be
told about this.
Tom.
In searching my emails, I was never told about this, and certainly never wrote anything about the situation, which I am not familiar with. As a journalist, though, I certainly do want to receive tips of things to write about, and I frequently do from a wide variety of folks. With only the most rare of exceptions, I never get around to writing anything; but in this case, I wasn’t even tipped.
Still, I can see why scientists concerned about global warming, and accepting of the scientific consensus, would want me to cover the topic, including its political side. By 2007 I already had a track record for exposing the misinformation campaign to mislead the public about climate change, something I continue to do today. And given that there is such a misinformation campaign–with “ClimateGate” being the latest and perhaps the most severe example–we need scientists and journalists alike striving to set the record straight.
I guess that that’s my way of saying that, as with virtually all of the “ClimateGate” emails that I have seen, the single one mentioning my name is not very surprising–especially as it regards me, who never even heard of this until now.