"What I can say is that the emails come in bursts, and do seem to be timed with high-profile attack pieces on talk radio and other fringe media outlets."
Just as I have always suspected, but never really had anything like a link to add to my speculation: Rightwing talk radio CAUSES and ENCOURAGES their dimwitted devotees to act out on the bullshit they hear on their respective stations.
Specifically, I am talking about the issue of climate change and the hub-bub started sometimes ago due to those "emails" that wingnuts think disproves 30-some years of hard scientific fact-finding.
This really is the goal of rightwing hate radio laid bare, as far as I am concerned.
US climate scientists receive hate mail barrage in wake of UEA scandal
The scientists revealed they have been told to "go gargle razor blades" and have been described as "Nazi climate murderers". Some emails have been sent to them without any attempt by the sender to disguise their identity. Even though the scientists have received advice from the FBI, the local police say they are not able to act due to the near-total tolerance of "freedom of speech" in the US.
I have to make an aside here, for our friends in other countries. American free speech is an odd thing.
If you want to protest a war or a corporation or a politician, your freedom of speech is almost violently limited. Police will mess with you. The media will under-report your numbers and ridicule you.
If you are a wingnut teabagger conservative, then you can go to townhall meetings with loaded firearms and shout down whatever talk is going on and you'll be cast as a hero on the same media that denigrates the DFH's.
But back to the death threats from Americans who consume rightwing talk radio:
Professor Stephen Schneider, a climatologist based at Stanford University in California, whose name features in the UEA emails, says he has received "hundreds" of violently abusive emails since last November. The peak came in December during the Copenhagen climate change summit, he said, but the number has picked up again in recent days since he co-authored a scientific paper last month which showed that 97%-98% of climate scientists agree that mankind's carbon emissions are causing global temperatures to increase.
Schneider described his attackers as "cowards" and said he had observed an "immediate, noticeable rise" in emails whenever climate scientists were attacked by prominent right-wing US commentators, such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.
"[The senders] are not courageous people," said Schneider. "Where are they getting their information from? They just listen to assertions made on blogs and rightwing talkshows. It's pathetic."
It's very clear: Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity regurgitate their hate-speech talking points (for millions of dollars per year), doing the bidding of Big Oil (who has the MOST to lose when this world gets serious about climate change) and a cadre of wingnuts - many who can't spell worth a damn - send hate mail to highly educated people.
The article talks about the fear some of the scientists in America feel because the police can only do so much to protect them, seeing as how hate mail is free speech. (If DFH's sent hate mail, it would be terrorism, but wingnuts get a free pass.)
So there you have it: a documented example of talk radio hate-speech transforming into direct hate mail against climate change scientists.
Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are bad human beings.
And terrible Americans.