The war over climate change got much hotter Friday, so much so that anthropogenic global warming skeptics who have claimed that there is a huge number of scientists staying silent about this issue to protect their careers may have been validated.

As NewsBusters previously reported, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Stephen Johnson, was apprised by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) during a Senate hearing Thursday of a threatening e-mail message sent to a climate change analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

On Friday, the e-mail sender, Michael T. Eckhart, President of the American Council on Renewable Energy, responded by letter to Inhofe.

Much of the letter's content was similar to what Eckhart's representative Tom Weirich sent me by e-mail Friday morning, and to what Eckhart e-mailed me himself Friday afternoon:

On July 13, NewsBusters reported that Michael T. Eckhart, president of the American Council on Renewable Energy, sent an e-mail message to Dr. Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute threatening to destroy his career:

If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity.

During a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Thursday, this matter was brought to the attention of Stephen Johnson, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, as was the shocking revelation that the EPA is a part of ACORE.

Presenting this information was Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), who showed and read the following panel of the offensive e-mail message for the record (video available here):