Which scientists are being persecuted?

James Hrynyshyn has a great response to John West's quote in today's New York Times article on creationism and global warming:

Any efforts to ensure science education is "balanced," in any subject, must be accompanied by reassurances that science classes will stick to science, and not embrace misinformation from ideological or religious think tanks masquerading as proponents of science.

How can one tell the difference? It can be challenging for dilettantes not familiar with doing a little work. For example, when John West of Seattle's creationist Discovery Institute says things like this:

"There is a lot of similar dogmatism on this issue," he said, "with scientists being persecuted for findings that are not in keeping with the orthodoxy. We think analyzing and evaluating scientific evidence is a good thing, whether that is about global warming or evolution."

...it's critical that anyone unfamiliar with recent events do a little sincere research. Then they'd discover that the only climatologists being persecuted these days are those who accept the basics of anthropogenic global warming. From the Guardian:

Rick Piltz, a former official in the US government climate science programme who now runs the Climate Science Watch website, said Inhofe and others were getting in the way of scientific work. "Scientists who are working in federal labs are being subjected to inquisitions coming from Congress," he said. "There is no question that this is an orchestrated campaign to intimidate scientists."

Michael Mann, a scientist at Penn State University who is on Inhofe's list of 17, said that he had seen a sharp rise in hostile email since November.

"Some of the emails make thinly veiled threats of violence against me and even my family, and law enforcement authorities have been made aware of the matter," he told the Guardian.

He said the attacks appeared to be a co-ordinated effort. "Some of them look cut-and-paste."

Or this from The Climate Daily:

The e-mails come thick and fast every time NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt appears in the press.

Rude and crass e-mails. E-mails calling him a fraud, a cheat, a scumbag and much worse.

To Schmidt and other researchers purging their inboxes daily of such correspondence, the barrage is simply part of the job of being a climate scientist. But others see the messages as threats and intimidation - cyber-bullying meant to shut down debate and cow scientists into limiting their participation in the public discourse.

"I get a lot of hate mail," said Schmidt, a climate modeler at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies who also runs RealClimate.org, a website devoted to debunking myths and errors about climate change. "I get a lot of praise mail, but pretty much every time I have a quote in a mainstream publication I'll get a string of emails from various people accusing me of various misdemeanors and fantasizing about my life in prison."

Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has a 19-page document of "extremely foul, nasty, abusive" e-mails he's received just since November.