Uh, oh…It’s about to become more about the people behind the letter, than the letter itself.
Now all we need is a steamy potboiler novel and some internal investigations and it could be Rajenda Pachauri all over again.
The big story at Climate Audit this week (see Shukla’s Gold) is about the twenty authors of the letter demanding that climate skeptics be put on trial, and in particular the man pushing the letter, Jagadish Shukla, seems to be getting quite prosperous with all that Koch Brothers money Oil Money public money he gets sent his way. Steve McIntyre writes:
In 2001, the earliest year thus far publicly available, in 2001, in addition to his university salary (not yet available, but presumably about $125,000), Shukla and his wife received a further $214,496 in compensation from IGES (Shukla -$128,796; Anne Shukla – $85,700). Their combined compensation from IGES doubled over the next two years to approximately $400,000 (additional to Shukla’s university salary of say $130,000), for combined compensation of about $530,000 by 2004.
Shukla’s university salary increased dramatically over the decade reaching $250,866 by 2013 and $314,000 by 2014. (In this latter year, Shukla was paid much more than Ed Wegman, a George Mason professor of similar seniority). Meanwhile, despite the apparent transition of IGES to George Mason, the income of the Shuklas from IGES continued to increase, reaching $547,000 by 2013. Combined with Shukla’s university salary, the total compensation of Shukla and his wife exceeded $800,000 in both 2013 and 2014. In addition, as noted above, Shukla’s daughter continued to be employed by IGES in 2014; IGES also distributed $100,000 from its climate grant revenue to support an educational charity in India which Shukla had founded.
But it seems Shukla doesn’t like people looking into that, because the letter seems to have been disappeared from the IGES website. I’ve confirmed this over 24 hours and several search techniques. What was once visible to search engines, is no more:
The original link that no longer works: http://www.iges.org/letter/LetterPresidentAG.pdf
The letter survives on the Wayback Machine here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20150920110942/http://www.iges.org/letter/LetterPresidentAG.pdf
And here is the letter as a single image, with page 1 and 2 combined from the PDF:
Bishop Hill notes:
You can imagine the horror on the signatories’ faces when they realised that some very determined people were about to take a close interest in their financial arrangements and those of their colleagues at IGES.
I’m not sure taking the letter down is going to help much though.
The Streisand effect has been unleashed Mr. Shukla, enjoy the ride.
h/t to Russell Cook
Note: shortly after publication, this story was updated to make two links active (a recent wordpress problem caused this) and a hat tip added.
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I applaud this excellent counter-attack. Looks to me like a bulls eye shot from Steve McIntyre
Actually, I would credit Roger Pielke, Jr. for noticing Shukla’s comfortable arrangement and tweeting it out in response to the news of the letter. here. Steve et al are clearly digging deeper as we speak. And it appears again to be worse than we thought.
My thanks to Anthony Watts for the hat tip to me. I was in the process of writing up my own blog post for GelbspanFiles about the RICO letter’s single source problem on accusing skeptic organizations of corruption, but when going back to the letter for one more detail, it was not there anymore. An internet search revealed the Google Cache version of it, and a commenter at ClimateAudit spotting the disappearance ( http://climateaudit.org/2015/09/25/disinformation-from-barry-klinger-and-the-rico-20/#comment-763637 ) days earlier than I did.
Since IGES says:
Here are their FTP files via Google search.
ftp://iges.org/
The whole family is in on the cash…
IGES Personnel:
President Shukla, Jagadish
Business Manager Shukla, Anastasia
Assistant Business Manager Shukla, Sonia
Director, COLA Kinter, James
Assistant to the President Shukla, Sonia
How did that Kinter guy get in?
Kinder was a resident of Delaware ? ( saves on state taxes)
It’s worse than it first appears.
The money was given to the charity by the State in order to do good works.
Some of that money needs to go on administration but that must be minimised. It’s not what the money is for.
So who did he find as the most efficient administrators? Who snatches least from the mouths of the needy?
His Wife and Daughter.
That’s worse than it first appears.
How did that Kinter guy get in?
Wild Guess, Sonia Shukla’s significant other, Anastasia is too close to the cheddar
A short search turns up Anne D. Siegel as Kinter’s wife. I’ve found no connections to the Shukla crew, but I’ve no time to search further.
Like the OLD fighter pilot’s caveat says: — Tracers work equally well in both directions !!
g
Amen! And the bigger target gets hit the most!
It sounds to me a little like The Clinton Foundation
Coupla orders of magnitude different in $. Same M.O.
I am looking forward to this thread because I know nothing about IGES or any of the signatories to the letter. However, I do know about the letter and it’s clumsy attempt to bring back the Dark Ages.
I have no doubt WUWT will give me an interesting education over the next few hours.
Personal opinion regarding the 20 signatories: Stupid fools. They would be well advised to read James Madison’e Federalist Paper on a free press and free speech
Madison’s = Madison’s
I can’t imagine what Trenberth was thinking when he signed this one. I also can’t imagine the outcome of a real vested-interest investigation into the entire climate change issue on the part of, say, congress, especially one conducted with a lack of political bias or prior convictions. Might they decide that an entire scientific research industry that has been created from nothing over the last 25 years has a strong vested interest? Might they be forced to reassess Climategate?
This is indeed the kind of thing that I’m sure everybody would like to see disappear. Shining a light under wet rocks is a good way to find a lot more than you bargained for.
rgb
I have no desire to see this disappear.
I want a very bright spotlight shone on it, long and hard.
Yes, but I’m sure Robert was referring to the signers and other funding beneficiaries.
Aah, yes. No doubt.
Sorry.
A “real vested-interest investigation” (presuming that there is a “real” one) should not lose sight of the forest for the trees. The gross diversion of public funds in all likelihood was conducted with the blue ribbon stamp of approval of government bureaucrats. Expect the i’s to be dotted and the t’s crossed. The focus should ultimately turn to the bureaucrats who, to push a political agenda that would likewise benefit them, were participants in this practice, one that appears to have extended over many years. My money is on the bureacurats who handed out $6M to develop climate games.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/26/5-7-million-nsf-grant-to-columbia-university-for-climate-voice-mails-from-the-future/
Bets anyone?
Looks like Trenberth is about to find some missing heat.
That’s a hot one!
Trenberth likely received compensation for his advisory role from IGES.
Like joining the Mafia, the only exit is death.
It’s now wonder Trenberth felt he had to signed the letter.
A Google site search of the IGES website yields ‘About 126 results’. Citations of his ‘scientific’ publications, and references.
site:http://www.iges.org “Trenberth”
It is always astonishing to me how people seek the limelight when actual light is the last thing they want.
Hubris?
My personal opinion is
(a) that they don’t actually think what they are doing is “bad”. Until its pointed out, which is way too late.
(b) They think they are safe, because the opponents are too stupid or incompetent. Or don’t have access to the internet.
I will go with (a). Never attribute to conspiracy, that which can be accounted for by incompetence.
I wouldn’t entirely discount (b). Living in an area where “everyone’s a progressive” gives me an insight into groupthink. Since they live entirely within an echo chamber and have never, once, ever heard an opposing view – the thought that there might even be an opposing view is foreign to them. As vile and abusive as what you may have read by way of response by a progressive in any online post – it doesn’t even begin to approach the level of invective they use in private. So – yes, they really DO think their opponents are too stupid, incompetent, and nowhere near well read enough, to dispute them.
Or the more obvious, since they have always accused sceptics of being in thralldom of “Big Oil” , that they were actually the ones who owed their souls to the company store.
A and B each describe different subsets with plenty of examples of each. The RICO 20 probably are mostly “A” types that think deniers are evil (and also a tiny minority); doing evil to evil is good.
I suspect some (a)s are also (b) and some (b)s are also (a).
Hubris it is, at least for the leaders of the pack. The rest are swept up in the emotion of it all. I have played this game with real people who were stealing real money, lots of it. Shinning a very bright light on the scam is what eventually stopped it. The leaders know exactly what they are doing, but their belief in being bullet proof is what makes them vulnerable. The followers are taken by emotion and are enthralled with the leaders, believing every word that the leaders tell them and sure that they all are somehow untouchable.
But once they see a leader get wounded, they do start to bail. The leaders, in fear of losing their stream of money, fight back, so holding that bright light has big costs. I greatly admire those who are willing to shine light on the scam. The efforts that I was part of were on a tiny scale compared to this international sized scam. We can see this same process all playing out now on a grand scale.
“… but their belief in being bullet proof is what makes them vulnerable.”
They do the Ghost Dance every day before leaving for the office.
As one mike Hesseler at Bishop Hills blog states
“IT IS TIME WE SCEPTICS STOPPED JUST TALKING ABOUT THIS SCAM AND DEMANDED THAT THIS WHOLE RACKET WAS INVESTIGATED PROPERLY BY LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS”. Surely lawmakers must see big dollars and time on this.
Until a sleaze breaks a law there is no crime. Bending regulations won’t get you there. The government and the universities are using other people’s money so don’t expect to hear much more about this. Example: Is there any news about the Ship of Fools from OZ that got stuck in the ice?
JH, I suspect sending $100k of research grant money to a personal charitable foundation in India breaks more than one law about use of federal grant funds.
Yeah, I was wondering about that part of it.
Thanks Dr. Istvan.
“Until a sleaze breaks a law there is no crime. ”
Isn’t lying on one’s applications for grant funding in support of your research (and receiving such funds) theft of value by deceit and therefore criminal fraud? How about colluding to substantively misstate facts of reality in such grant applications being conspiracy to commit fraud?
Anybody want to speculate on how many family members in India are “employed” by the personal “Charitable Foundation”.
It doesn’t have to break a law. $800 hammers and toilets for DoD didn’t break a law. This looks terrible in the court of public opinion. Even in today’s America where Socialism is barely still unseemly, cronyism gets the populists’ dander up. This is why MSM will bury this so deep that even Mann’s upside down curves will never find it.
In govt contracts, they typically take the cost of overhead and spread it out evenly over each item in the contract. The $10million dollar computer and the $5 dollar hammer, both got $800 added to them for overhead.
Nobody notices on the computer, but everyone makes a stink about the hammer.
As to the toilet seat, it was a one off job for a nuclear submarine. Needed to be water tight and included latches to make sure it didn’t open if the sub needed to make drastic maneuvers.
There was also the thousand dollar coffee maker, that was designed to go into an unpressurized patrol plane, so the entire maker had to be pressurized. You couldn’t just go down to Wal-Mart to get one of those.
Eliza.
Absolutely correct. We must not let this be forgotten through ‘moving on’ . Someone in the US should write formally to the Enforcement Authorities and ask for a detailed investigation, and we ask Mr Watts to keep the subject ‘hot’ by providing newly found information as a new topic under a different heading rather than add it to this particular contribution that might not be picked up amongst all the other topics covered.
As an alumnus of George Mason University I no longer contribute anything at all to them because of their official sponsorship and promotion of all sorts of CAGW programs and indoctrination. It used to be a good school but is now just another politically-correct propaganda mill in my opinion.
Tobacco companies are a much different entity than free people with a right to free speech. The way these 20 people think is disgusting and I’m sure enjoy the thought of the US Constitutions protection of their freedoms, but for us others, they would deny the same privileges they enjoy.
No matter what the Tobacco industry said or supported, it was ALWAYS up to the buyer to chose to buy or not to buy. Not so with this Global Warming industry!!!
Add this to the list: Climate change causes nepotism.
As the late Yogi would have remarked: Nepotism is OK as long as it’s kept in the family.
Credit should be given to R.P. Jr., he’s the one that sparked this entire ‘investigation’.
Duly noted
good job McIntyre! Some like this needs to be done on EPA with NRDC and Greenpeace in the collusion on the Clean Air and Water acts as well as the new Ozone regulations
in case you didn’t it see today – another 10 million acres in the western states will be withdrawn from development – thanks BLM EPA ABC DEF etc…..
Dont forget GIH- Gubmint Invaders from H-e-double hockeysticks.
Aw’ c’mon folks. Let’s not be too condemning. After all, that guy, Shuks … er, Shukla, um, probably has a pretty heavy duty Carbon Credits tab. Or, maybe, he’s just got an addiction to expensive tastes: an addiction he’s fought mightily against, but just can’t quit. So, let’s not single him out from our other virile, brave, honorable Climate Warriors who all seem to exhibit the same symptoms of addiction to expensive tastes, or simply a lust for other people’s money.
“Officer! I am trying to save the world from future threats and these citizens are getting in my way! I command you by the authority of settled science to arrest them!!!”
How far would that get you?
I’m not even going to try it.
In the UK you can petition a judge to issue an ASBO.
Are they going to take legal action against the UAH and RSS satellites, for transmitting data that supports non-alarm?
Are they going to take action against the Antarctic sea ice, for growing to its maximum extent since satellite measurement began? Against Cat3+ North Atlantic hurricanes for totally disappearing from the US coastline for the last ten years? indeed against cyclones globally for showing no increase in cumulative energy? Against the sea level for showing no increase in its average rate of rise from the non-alarming 3.4mm/year long term trend? etc etc.
Doubtlessly once Obama is told that some personal catastrophe (such as family asthma) is directly caused by the evils of “climate weirding” then he will surely take a great personal interest in suing natural forces and in pursuing the evil skeptics who have allied themselves with the devious weather. Weather which in so many cases is deviously refusing to behave in the anticipated alarming manner.
Just as happened in the case of King James, who whilst formerly a skeptic, was finally convinced of the reality of witchcraft induced storminess after having to tolerate a surprise day-trip to Norway:
“As part of the background to the trials, a year or so prior to these events, King James VI of Scotland, who had initially been quite lenient towards witchcraft, experienced terrible storms while sailing to Copenhagen to marry Princess Anne of Denmark, and was forced to take refuge on the coast of Norway for some time. More storms greeted their return journey, and the admiral of the escorting Danish fleet (among others) blamed the storm on witchcraft. These events drastically changed James’ views towards witchcraft, and he became single-minded in his persecution of witchcraft in Scotland, later writing a book, “Daemonologie”, instructing his followers that they must denounce and prosecute any supporters or practitioners of witchcraft.”
http://www.witchcraftandwitches.com/trials_north_berwick.html
Speechless. For now, by choice it would seem.
Evidently George Mason has also slipped on ethical standards of financial conduct as well. Bring in the auditors.
Yep – move over, Penn State – you have company.
Friends they started this with RICO what can I say??
Ah Try to..
Think..
ahm….
NO PRISONERS!
michael
I know 11 of them, esteemed scientists, pretty good too, but they must be out of their mind.
Maybe we’re assuming too much, i.e., that the supposed signers actually know they’re signers or knew what they were signing.
climatologist
Not at all unusual for highly (but narrowly) educated people to look/behave like fools when they wander outside their speciality (reference Linus Pauling & vitamin C).
You are aware, are you not, that Dr. Pauling is a Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry. Are you suggesting that he, after studying a wide variety of aspects of human health for 20+ years, would be confused to the point of foolishness. Please.
BTW, In 1970 his principal scientific research was on the molecular basis of disease.
I suspect someone else is behaving like a fool here, perhaps wandering outside his specialty.
Please read Dr Pauling’s book: Vitamin C, the Common Cold and the Flu.
JW
Come on Chip. Pauling was a brilliant chemist who got half way to the structure of DNA on purely theoretical grounds, while Crick & Watson had X-ray crystallography working for them (read Watson’s book,The Double Helix). Plus on his daily diet of vitamin C, he lived to be 93. I’ll take some of that. Plus Pauling was a polymath and wrote widely on many subjects other than chemistry.
it is well established that Linus, eventually, in his life, went off the deep end.
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pauling.html
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/high-dose-vitamin-c-and-cancer-has-linus-pauling-been-vindicated/
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/luc-montagnier-and-the-nobel-disease/
Pauling may have been a Nobel prize winner but he was completely wrong on Vitamin C. There’s no evidence to support his Vitamin C ideas. Regarding DNA he did get close but he failed to realise the role of the duplex ATGC intermolecular base pair bonding. In fact he got the structure inside out. His son was also at Cambridge and leaked Pauling the X-ray structure so he wasn’t working blond
“…he wasn’t working blond…”
I like it!
Wurts, it happens all the time. Just because you have put him up on a pedestal, don’t expect everyone else to.
@ur momisugly J Wurts Sep 29 3:23
Funny you should mention that JW.
As a matter of fact, I actually attended a lecture by Nobelist, Linus Pauling.
Subject of his lecture, was essentially; The Molecular basis for Disease.
More specifically he explained in great detail exactly how a molecular structural variation in Hemoglobin radically alters the shape of the hemoglobin molecule, and leads to the disease known as ‘ sickle cell anemia ‘
SCA is a disease that is somewhat prevalent in some Africans an as a result in some Americans, with African ancestry. It causes the red blood cells, which are like hockey pucks, to bow into a curved disc, that doesn’t go through the fine capillaries as easy, leading to oxygen starvation of tissues.
Pauling asserted that this was the first disease to have a definite molecular chemistry structural cause. Don’t know if that presumably genetic defect has ever resulted in a cure or at least treatment therapies for SCA victim.
By the way; Pauling was just about the most exciting lecturer, I have ever heard. Bill Shockley was also a live wire lecturer.
That was at U of A circa 1960.
g
George E. Smith September 30, 2015 at 12:23 pm
@ur momisugly J Wurts Sep 29 3:23
Funny you should mention that JW.
As a matter of fact, I actually attended a lecture by Nobelist, Linus Pauling.
Subject of his lecture, was essentially; The Molecular basis for Disease.
More specifically he explained in great detail exactly how a molecular structural variation in Hemoglobin radically alters the shape of the hemoglobin molecule, and leads to the disease known as ‘ sickle cell anemia ‘
SCA is a disease that is somewhat prevalent in some Africans an as a result in some Americans, with African ancestry. It causes the red blood cells, which are like hockey pucks, to bow into a curved disc, that doesn’t go through the fine capillaries as easy, leading to oxygen starvation of tissues.
Pauling asserted that this was the first disease to have a definite molecular chemistry structural cause. Don’t know if that presumably genetic defect has ever resulted in a cure or at least treatment therapies for SCA victim.
The nearest thing to that George would be ‘Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation’, usually from a near relative who does not have the disease.
Dave September 30, 2015 at 7:22 am
Regarding DNA he did get close but he failed to realise the role of the duplex ATGC intermolecular base pair bonding. In fact he got the structure inside out. His son was also at Cambridge and leaked Pauling the X-ray structure so he wasn’t working blond
The X-ray diffraction image came from Rosalind Franklin at King’s so his son, Peter, being at Cambridge wouldn’t have done any good, Pauling certainly hadn’t seen the photo. Had he been able to travel outside the US and visited King’s it’s quite possible that Crick and Watson would have been scooped (something they were paranoid about), however as a suspected communist he wasn’t allowed a passport, it was restored to him in 1954 in order that he could receive the Nobel prize.
As it happened with the poor images he had he made the same mistake that Crick and Watson initially made, however he didn’t have the advantage of having Rosalind point out their elementary chemistry error (something that Watson resented, hence his referring to her as the ‘Dark Lady’).
So when does he get the invite to the WH and Medal of Freedom award or the invite to Stockholm?
The phony Nobel Prize is Oslo
One other thing this letter has unearthed is the existence of the “Center for Climate Change Communication” at George Mason Uni.
It is headed up by Edward Maibach, one of the co-signatories, who is also a Professor at the University, specialising in communication.
He is joined by no less than sixteen other staff from George Mason, mainly Professors or Assistant Profs, and another thirteen from other universities.
The Center’s role is described as :
Climate change is the result of human actions and choices. Limiting climate change – and protecting people and ecosystems to the degree possible from unavoidable changes in the climate – will require significant public engagement in the issue so that difficult decisions can be made by members of the public and policy makers. Our center was created to conduct unbiased social science research that will facilitate such public engagement.
Amongst its providers of major funding are listed NASA, the National Science Foundation and private foundations such as Grantham Foundation and Rockefeller Family Fund.
This sounds like one hell of an expenisve effort to push global warming propaganda.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/09/24/edward-maibach-the-center-for-climate-change-communication-that-letter/
https://pgtruspace.wordpress.com/2015/08/13/climate-change-is-now-a-1-5-trillion-industry/
Notably absent is Dr. Walter E Williams.
…and that ain’t no surprise.
At least the economics department at GMU didn’t sign…
By it´s role description – the center seems corrupt.
Well spotted.
I love the first sentence, “Climate change is the result of human actions and choices” – unequivocal and decided… followed by “Our center was created to conduct unbiased social science research…”
I think the author needs to meditate on the meaning of ‘unbiased’
unbiased social science research?
when everyone of them is prowarmist?
oh suuure its going to be unbiased, ruly truly it is
No mystery then what is meant by the green movement. And a good example of the Peter Principle at work.
As Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds says, the only way to deal with bullies is the punch back twice as hard.
There is so much wrong with what these 20 persons have done. Here is just one perspective.
It is quite silly by these 20 to implicitly indicate that public funded scientist have superior integrity:
“Research funding – is a term generally covering any funding for scientific research …. The term often connotes funding obtained through a competitive process, in which potential research projects are evaluated and only the most promising receive funding.”
“The process of grant writing and grant proposing is a somewhat delicate process for both the grantor and the grantee: the grantors want to choose the research that best fits their scientific principles, and the individual grantees want to apply for research in which they have the best chances but also in which they can build a body of work towards future scientific endeavors.”
“A theoretical model has been established whose simulations imply that peer review and over-competitive research funding foster mainstream opinion to monopoly.”
(Wikipedia)
The idea that a person or group, who makes a living and build their professional careers by such funding will automatically provide high integrity research is simply wrong. The perspective on the issue at hand is governed by the funding process. There are few incentives to expose own and other´s ideas, hypothesis and theories to the fiercest struggle for survival – even though that is fundamental to the scientific process – fundamental to the accumulation of knowledge. Theories are merited by the severity of the tests they have been exposed to and survived.
These 20 have certainly written themselves into the history of science, unfortunately by defaming themselves.
I gather that one way to maintain IGES’ non-profit status is to periodically drain off any accumulated taxpayer-funded surplus grant money into family accounts. Based on SM’s analysis showing this has been going on for several years, there is a risk of addiction. That’ll be hard to pin on Big Tobacco, though.
A non-profit can accumulate funds. Totally reasonable. The directors of the organisation with said accumulations cannot (legally) derive personal benefit from those funds.
Please guys, you are causing a diplomatic incident. Prof Shukla is an advisor to the Indian government. https://newsdesk.gmu.edu/2015/09/mason-professor-appointed-to-indias-prime-ministers-council-on-climate-change/
So is he registered as a foreign agent?
(not a joke, it’s the law)
michael