Some excerpts from McIntyre’s full broadside:
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In today’s post, I’m going to discuss an important obiter in the ICO decision, an obiter in which the university unsuccessfully attempted to reconcile unequivocal declarations by both Acton and Muir Russell to the Parliamentary Committee that “all” the emails were available with the contradictory statements in their FOI refusals that the university no longer possessed key emails. Unfortunately, the university’s attempt was based on more untrue and unsupported assertions, this time to the ICO.
In my appeal, I had pointed out the inconsistency between assertions in East Anglia’s FOI refusal and Vice Chancellor Acton’s assurances to the Parliamentary Committee. The ICO asked East Anglia to comment on this point, reporting on the exchange as follows:
21. In relation to this information the complainant has suggested that:
“These were attachments to emails from [third named individual- Wahl] to [named individual – Briffa] that were the subject of Jones’ delete-all-emails request. At the hearings of the Science and Technology Committee, MP Stringer asked Vice Chancellor Acton “Are all the emails now available and can be read? Acton said “Yes”. If so, then the University must hold the documents that they had refused on the basis that they did not hold the documents and appeal their refusal on this basis.”
The Commissioner therefore asked the University to respond to this.
22. The University explained that:
“In his testimony in front of the Select Committee, the Vice-Chancellor was merely stating that no emails had been deleted as a result of, or subsequent to, an email form Prof. P. Jones of 28 May 2008 that suggested such an action. The documents at the heart of this present request, and the emails to which they were attached, all date from 2006. It is highly likely, even good records management practice, that such emails and attachments would have been deleted in the normal course of business between 2006 and 2008, well in advance of any request for either the emails or the attached documents.
The Vice-Chancellor was not aware of this request, or these documents, when he made his comments before the Select Committee, nor were his comments directed at these documents. The question and the answer pertained to an entirely different set of documents within a different time frame.”
“An entirely different set of documents within a different time frame”. The mind boggles at the audacity of the misrepresentations by VC Acton and the University of East Anglia.
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Amazingly, the Muir Russell panel failed to interview either Jones or Briffa on the deletion of emails (see discussion of the fall hearing below). Despite this neglect, the Muir Russell report stated (incorrectly) that there was “no evidence of any attempt to delete information in respect of a request already made” as follows:
28. Deliberate actions to avoid release. There seems clear incitement to delete emails, although we have seen no evidence of any attempt to delete information in respect of a request already made.
In September 2010, Fred Pearce wrote sarcastically in September 2010 that Muir Russell must have been the “only person studying the affair not to have known about it”:
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McIntyre:
At this point, the web is so tangled that it’s very hard for Acton and the University of East Anglia to keep their various stories straight.
…
As noted above, in August 2010, the university had said that they were not in possession of the attachments to the Wahl-Briffa emails. However, two months later, they unequivocally told the Parliamentary Committee that they could produce “all” the emails and that Jones and Briffa had deleted nothing. But in their submissions to the ICO in 2011, they said that they were not able to produce the Wahl-Briffa documents, arguing that:
It is highly likely, even good records management practice, that such emails and attachments would have been deleted in the normal course of business between 2006 and 2008, well in advance of any request for either the emails or the attached documents.
Bishop Hill points out this phrase as being relevant:
A few months back, Steve McIntyre said something that stuck in my memory:
Never under-estimate the capacity for institutional mendacity.
And these people are saying: “Trust us.” It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.
@thepompousgit: The thing about the way they are saying “Trust us” is that they aren’t asking, they are demanding. It is “We are the experts, you can’t possibly know what you are talking about, your ‘denial’ is invalid and your opinion isn’t worth my consideration”.
History is full of such cases. I am becoming quite tired of the condescending, patronizing behavior.
And 3 million more views since the “BIG 100” !
Anthony, the truth is accelerating…
The Truth is Out There….
Yes it is.. It’s right HERE !!!
There’s a place for these anti-science enablers and obfuscators: Circle 8
Described in Cantos 18-30
Fraud: Pimping and Seducing (18), Flattery (18), Simony (19), Sorcery (20), Political Corruption (21-2), Hypocrisy
More Fraud: Theft (24-5), Fraudulent Rhetoric (26-7), Divisiveness (28),
Falsification (29-30)
Did you really expect anything other than lies and deceit from the British establishment?
And it is on the evidence provided by these ‘trustworthy’ individuals that the UK is squandering £500 million a year in subsidies paid to the wind power industry. It is surprising that UEA retains its accreditation.
Science, facts, and the truth are inconsequential and merely calateral damage of the AGW machine. And, apparently, it’s going to take more than being caught in a web of lies to dissuade the believers. I say “Climategate” to most of my friends and they say “What?” (with friends like that, who needs enemies right… then again, it’s not “deniers” who we need to spread the word to).
“We didn’t delete anything because someone asked us to, we just deleted it because we wanted to. We were in error in saying that we can retrieve all of the emails, since we chose to delete them, but not, you understand, because we were asked to do so in violation of a Freedom of Information request. Definitely not because of that.”
If the “Global Warming”continues, those records will be really unavailable….under several miles of ice.
Maybe Jones, Mann, Briffa et al. should start using Burn Note, a service that destroys e-mails without leaving any trace or record.
http://www.tecca.com/news/2012/01/31/burn-note-self-destruct-email/
https://burnnote.com/#/
You’re not supposed to question, just accept what they tell us.
It worked. For sufficient duration to allow the lies to become embedded in our schools, at all grades. For long enough to gelatinize the meme into our institutions and the media. Time enough to label any who deign to disagree as deniers.
Job done. Cup of tea old chap?
I never really understood why Mcyntire bothered with any of these people. Hes been taken for a ride again and again. Also I don’t understand why he or for that matter anyone here (ie meteorologists) would bother to be part of decaying and likely to be massively sued organizations such as the IPCC, UEA and UVA. I think its about time people followed Colemans (Meteorologist) reasoning. Ill give you one example of what is very likely to happen: to the team: The Queensland Government is on the way right now to be sued for BILLIONS due to incorrect climate assumptions and data supplied by the likes of the team (The engineers covered it up)
http://www.weatherbell.com/weather-news/australia-where-drought-was-projected-repeats-major-flooding-of-2011/
Heres the BILLION dollar suit acction. I’ll bet that they based the water withholding (Dam) on the idea pushed by warmists advising the Qld Labor Government that Queensland was in for eternal drought and every dropped needed to be saved
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2012/s3424308.htm
I find all of this very confusing. It is not explained clearly at all.
There seems to be the need to distinguish between individuals deleting emails in their personal accounts and the general house keeping that IT does behind the scenes.
There is no evidence here about any of this and interpreting such evidence would require detailed knowledge of the UEA email system. In the face if this lack of knowledge there seems to be a whole lot of making stuff up.
Good luck with that billion dollar suit. Whilst the QLD Flood inquiry quibbles over what the engineers put into a report they were asked to start preparing less than a week after many sleepless days spent trying to save Brisbane from a catastrophe that would have been far worse (whilst still dealing with the effects of that event), the actual data on what was coming into the dam and what was being released is available and clearly shows the right strategy was being employed.
If 68.5m is the level at which the dam operators should make “large releases” under strategy W3 (what is being asserted by the media but certainly not what the manual says) then god help the poor people of Brisbane next time the dam level gets to 68.5m (as it did 3 times from October 2010 to January 2011). The Australian newspaper would no doubt have the dam operators dump half the contents dam unnecessarily next time this happens.
The murdoch media is focusing entirely on what the engineers reported about what happened from Saturday morning through to Sunday. Nothing has been reported in their newspapers about the dam level having stabilised and actually falling below 68.5m during that period. Nothing reported on the very low rainfall in the catchment areas during the majority of that period. Nothing about the forecasts for heavy rainfall BELOW Wivenhoe into an area that dam operators should allegedly have been releasing large amounts of water into. All this was discussed during the Past few days in the inquiry but none of it made the Murdoch papers.
There is a huge disconnect between the contents of the transcripts of the QLD flood inquiry and what is being reported in a handful of Murdoch owned newspapers who have always been staunchly pro-liberal. This is a political witch hunt at the expense of a group of highly experienced professional engineers who did the best they could based on the information they had available, as they had done previously in Oct 2010 and December 2011, the previous occasions where the dams levels exceeded 68.5m with releases not exceeding 1200m3 sec.
We don’t need a global warming induced drought to screw up QLD’s water supply (there was never one in the first place). A study showed that last century there were 3 episodes where periods in excess of 10 years passed without a signficant rainfall event in SE QLD. On 75% FSL at Wivenhoe Dam it will take just over half that period to get SE QLD’s water supply critically low.
Forget what happened during the floods, the stupidest thing the QLD government ever did was drop WIvenhoe dam down to 75% FSL (in reality only 37.5% of the dams full storage capacity) . Sooner or later the whole of Brisbane will pay a severe price for that stupidity.
And for any of you fanboys out their who are going to post that I probably work for the dam operators or the QLD government (as has been previously asserted here in other threads), I’m more than happy to provide my personal information to Anthony who will be able to confirm that I am nothing more than a weather enthusiast with no links to either.
UEA just go swept up in all the excitement–you know, the earth was going to melt, they’d get plenty of money proving the earth was going to melt, the earth was going to melt, they’d get plenty of money proving the earth was going to melt.
What’s not to like (except a rather specious example of circular logic, but it keeps the kids fed.)
Steve, like Anthony, is a tireless seeker of the truth.
Dave says:
February 6, 2012 at 1:06 pm
Wivenhoe was a flood control dam designed to prevent a recurrence of the 1974 floods. It didn’t because it was used for water storage as a result of the cancellation of the Wolfdene Dam by the incoming Goss Labor government in 1990 to appease the Greens and some people whose properties would be flooded(chief of staff to Goss was one Kevin Rudd, the second worst Australian Prime Minister ever). After the 10 year dry the Labor government was keen to maximise water storage. The dam operators were warned on the Thursday the week before the flood that there would be very heavy rain for several days but according to their story put no weight on this forecast. It rained and the dam looked like it might be in danger of bursting so the water was released and Brisbane flooded.
So who flooded Brisbane? The Australian Labor Party. Now this pack of barbarian looters are trying to destroy the Australian economy.
@Dave
What does that have to do with this? Except the obvious link that clear records need to be kept of what people are doing even in an emergency, let alone the things that they do in the course of research.
From my perspective I hope that the facts of the Brisbane Flood are fully established and that whatever rectification is necessary is made. As someone who doesnt live in (uninsured) Queensland, but is still paying for that mess, I am very keen that all the lessons that need to be learned are learned fully so that it doesn’t happen again.
Meanwhile our esteemed Prime Minister is introducing a, soak the rich (hah), Carbon Tax, based on the advice of non-experts that this research was carried out objectively and is the best available. And once again guess who’s going to pay for it.
Their actions give insight to the basis for much of the Monty Pythonesque humor we’ve enjoyed over the years.
Think of the Cheese Shop, only substitute MET.
JimB
Reading the latest news on “Global warming”, it is very obvious this scam is already over as far as the media are concerned.
The overwhelming majority of news stories are now hostile. The overwhelming majority of high-profile websites are now being updated with hostile stuff.
But like always, the politicians & civil servants are totally out of touch and about an election behind public opinion.
LT for being so highly educated as you like to point out, your reading comprehension is abysmal.
Steve McIntyre is a real person working at a real university, unlike the fraudsters at East Anglia… Sorry Kev.
No, he’s a pensioner, I believe.