The Graun is reporting that some of the climate scientists at the centre of the email scandal have received abusive emails.

Yuk. I hate it when people behave like this.

I laughed though when I read David Appell's coverage of the story:

A society in which anyone, but especially scientists, are not free to express their findings, thoughts, and opinions (regardless of what they are) without being threatened by death is a society which no longer respect freedom, reason, rationality, or decency.

It goes without saying that hounding them out of their jobs or closing journals to them is quite acceptable (if they are sceptics of course), but abusive emails, no.

Free speech goes for people you disagree with too.

(As a footnote, now we know that the break-in suffered by Andrew Weaver was a misleading piece of spin (the breakin was a year ago, during a spate of such incidents at the university) I think I would like to see these abusive emails.)