Tuesday's debut of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. introduced viewers to "Rising Tide," a mysterious group of hacktivists who are attempting to expose the work of S.H.I.E.L.D. to the public. Unfortunately, there's also a real-world organization called Rising Tide, and it isn't entirely thrilled to have its name associated with a group described as "a looming threat" to the world.

The real-life Rising Tide, it turns out, is an international volunteer group created to work on climate issues on a grassroots level. With networks on four continents – including groups in both the United Kingdom and Australia – the North American network, founded in 2006, now spans the U.S., Canada and Mexico. "In the last two years, we've seen a spike in interest, based in part around issues of extraction and coal mining," the organization's Scott Parkin told WIRED. "There was a big fight last year in Texas around the Keystone pipeline, and that started out as a Rising Tide chapter."

The organization is particularly concerned about sharing a name with the fictional Rising Tide on *Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. *because it also appears to be an activist group, and one that is portrayed as a danger to the heroes of the show.

"The show's shadowy main threat, as described in the publicity materials, has the same name as our group – it also has a logo that looks very similar to ours – and is described as a hacktivist group, similar to Anonymous," said Parkin. "[But] we're very much above ground, and work with front line communities, including people who live next to mine sites or pipelines... We don't want to be seen as a 'shadowy terrorist organization.'"

Rising Tide has launched a campaign to help address the possible confusion and educate the public about their work. In a post on its website, the organization also discussed its larger concerns about the way activists are portrayed in mainstream media and culture:

[The fictional Rising Tide's] role in the show is to expose super humans, like the Hulk and Thor, and secret government agencies like S.H.I.E.L.D. In our estimation, exposing governmental secrets and lies is a most worthy pastime and similar to what groups like WikiLeaks and Anonymous have done in real world. Unfortunately, the series plays to our mainstream culture’s fears around anarchists and radicals, and portrays the group as a threat to national security. Some reviews call the group “cyber-terrorists.” This is par for the course in a Hollywood that uses pop culture to turn government agents into heroes and seekers of truth, justice and ecological sanity into evildoers.

The group has also created a petition that asks Disney to "stop co-opting our name and logo," but Parkin says that he hopes that the campaign will really start a conversation on the role of activist organizations in America. "Our intention this week was to make a big splash about the [show's] premiere, and see where it goes from there. If anything, this is really an educational campaign."

While Rising Tide hasn't heard any response to their campaign from Disney or Marvel, the same can't be said of S.H.I.E.L.D. fans. "On social media, we've actually gotten attacked quite a bit by fans of the show," Parkin said. "We're getting tagged in tweets that tell us that we don't know what we're talking about, that they wish we'd go away."