Steve Budiansky has a good piece at his Liberal Curmudgeon blog. He argues — and I
agree — that heavy handed legal attacks on climate scientists,
like Attorney general Ken Cucinelli’s in Virginia, are
reprehensible, but that to some extent environmental scientists are
reaping what they have sown, for example in their reaction to Bjorn
Lomborg’s 2001 book The Skeptical Environmentalist:
Environmental scientists
responded with a determination to stamp out this heresy that would
have done Torquemada or Khomeini proud. A dozen scientists served
Cambridge University Press with a demand that it cease printing the
book, fire the editor who oversaw it, and “convene a
tribunal” to investigate the book’s “errors.” Nature ran a truly
egregious review by the scientists Stuart Pimm and Jeffrey Harvey
attributing to Lomborg ridiculous statements that he never even
remotely made in the book or anywhere else. And Pimm and Harvey
along with other members of the environmental goon squad lodged a
complaint with the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty – a
legal body of the state – alleging that Lomborg had committed
“scientific misconduct” for having reached conclusions that Pimm
and Harvey did not like.