While Dr. Mann has made statements in the press during the last week to the effect of “I welcome this investigation” I wonder if he’s seen some of the correspondence being sent to PSU regarding him. Here’ s one from Pennsylvania State Senator Jeff Piccola that has some very pointed language.
PDF of letter is here Sen-Piccola-Letter-on-PSU-Prof-Michael-Mann
And here is one of the letters to Senator Piccola that prompted his letter to PSU:
h/t to WUWT reader “Rod”
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The politicians never let slip an opportunity for partisan gain. If the integrity of this IPCC gang is subject to the crucible of public hearings, I am all for it. Climate science needs a purge of advocates masquerading as scientists.
Denis Hopkins, keep watching.
I suspect CRU/EAU made a significant error when they involved the authorities by labeling this leak as a criminal hack. In doing so, they validated the contents and placed them in the possession of law enforcement, and likely provided a complete chain of custody for the materials and it’s context in their interviews.
The materials may indicate criminal activities – which will eventually be questioned. When that questioning comes, it will have both the validated documents and their various interviews as relevant material for the investigation. In the US, we refer to that as a perjury trap. It would have been far better for CRU/EAU to simply issue a no comment or refuse to discuss the confidential matter. If they had done so, then every expose from that trove of documents would have to cross-checked and validated independently. The short term, public relations advantage of the “hack” meme may in the long term come back to bite them.
“The work of Dr. Mann and other scientists at the CRU is being used to develop economic and environmental policies in states and countries across the world. Considering the saliency of the work being conducted by the CRU, anything short of the persuit of absolute science cannot be accepted or tolerated.”
Whyyyy couldn’t he be a lawyer?!
🙂
Ouch ! The senator is serious, no mistake. PSU will find it difficult to whitewash their investigation.
And Pamela . . . Go girl !
Great stuff
I’ve saved copies of these letters in a directory I’ve called ‘Fall of Mann’. It is highly entertaining watching this develop. The smugness of Mann has always been irritating.
And to recall the number of RC sycophants who regularly called for ‘deniers’ to be taken to court. Ho, ho, ho.
I’ve saved these letters in a directory I’ve called ‘Fall of Mann’. The developments are highly entertaining.
And to recall how often RC-sycophants have called for “deniers” to be taken to court. HO, ho, ho!
Was there a second page to the Commonwealth Foundation letter? I would be very interested to see who the author of the letter was and what the grounds he stated were. Maybe it is just my browser (Safari). Cheers.
Included in the definition of hubris is that bit about retribution. So, after a couple decades of the sweet side of hubris, comes the balancing out. Wonder how they’ll feel after a couple decades of funding reductions/cuts and investigative hearings at mutiple levels of government. The lawyers are going to have a field day.
Mann got off easy after the Wegman Report. Not gonna happen this time. On top of that, expect to see that issue come back to haunt him. This time there’ll be no dismissive ignoring of calls for data.
There’s always community college.
Richard Saumarez (10:27:27) :
Talking of completely unbiased search for the truth, this is worth looking at:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/12/vast-nexus-of-influence.html
Good find. So we know who to sling in Jail with Mann and pals then.
Not another dollar, pound or quatloo for any of them. With-hold your taxes until they are behind bars.
Scott B (10:31:34) : @Invariant
Agreed. I took a closer look and found that I did actually disagree with at least 50 of the statements. I wonder what is the purpose of the article?
Interesting take on this here:
http://volokh.com/2009/12/15/michael-mann-should-not-be-investigated-by-penn-state/
I’m inclined to agree, but if the academics will not enforce academic integrity, and if they are feeding from the public trough, then public scrutiny, aka investigation, is fair game.
If I were anything to do with the administration of the PSU I would be trying to escape responsibilty for the consequences of Prof Mann’s work at my university. I would be trying to demonstrate that if Prof Mann has been involved in fraud it was completely unknown to me and that once I knew about it I took all reasonable steps to protect innocent outsiders from what might have happened inside my institution. The problem is that Steve MacIntyre has been questioning the methods fo Prof Mann in public for many years and it was unreasonable not to have had an investigation into the work of Prof Mann earlier when these problems first surfaced many years ago.
I’ll only be impressed when the likes of Mann push back on the “investigators,” saying “we were acting on your orders. See, here is an email from your types, encouraging me to find any hint of AGW so that the money keep coming from the Feds. Don’t you dare try to let me take all of the blame for this. You were complicit too.”
I have previously thought our unsubtle, gun wielding, cousins, across the pond to be a bit of a liability, but I would just like to say a hearty thanks in advance for saving the world from AGW nonsense. American voters actually have some power. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said over here. I am proud of the efforts of Monckton et al, but I think that the yanks will be the first to stand up and be counted when it comes to rejecting this fraud.
I hate to dump cold water on this celebration, but this appears to be Republican related politicians, threatening a school in (democratic) PA, while they are the minority party…. I saw a distribution on this of Republican Senators and it was signed by the Minority Something or other… There are 40 of these guys and gals, fairly toothless at the moment, in the US Senate. How many Dem’s will cross the aisle to help them “punish” a University, helping the Dems to raise Billions???
This letter might have more substance behind it if there was any Dem Senators backing it, you know the other 58,59,60 guys and gals, depending how you count it… If they send a letter saying they are sure, wink, wink, that PSU has the highest standards and will look into this wink, wink as it deserves, well, this letter may be wasted carbon!
I’m just saying!
I might get more excited when a Democrat senator makes a stand. So far, the debate is polarized along the usual fault lines.
Invariant (10:19:37) :
Anthony: this belongs in a new thread. http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/146138
CLIMATE CHANGE IS NATURAL: 100 REASONS WHY
Reply:
New scientist is on the offensive:
“A British newspaper today published a list of “100 reasons why global warming is natural”.
Here we take a quick look at the first 50 of their claims – and debunk each one”
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/12/50-reasons-why-global-warming.html
And they are flghting back at climategate with “Deniergate”:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18279-deniergate-turning-the-tables-on-climate-sceptics.html
[quote]I hate to dump cold water on this celebration, but this appears to be Republican related politicians, threatening a school in (democratic) PA, while they are the minority party[/quote]
Republicans control the senate in PA.
P.S. And those Republicans haven’t yet supplied PSU with this years funding.
A couple of years ago I wrote the University of Arizona to point out that they were blocking Steve McIntyre from downloading data. They promised to look into the matter, and perhaps it was rectified.
I just sent them my old correspondence, as well as some climategate emails with their researchers discussing concealing data. Hopefully, universities will start to enforce some higher standards.
Dave D:
Senator Piccola is a PA State Senator, not US Senator. Currently the MAJORITY party in the PA State Senate is Republican.
Democrats have only a slim 104-99 majority in the PA House of Representatives.
Penn State University is a Public Institution that gets funding from the Commonwealth of PA.
Seems Republicans have a majority in the PA State Senate while Democrats have a narrow majority in the PA State House.
http://www.csg.org/pubs/Election2008/PostGELegislativeBreakdown.aspx#PA
Dave D,
This is the state legislature in action, not the Federal level. Pennsylvania happens to have a Republican controlled state senate. This happens to have teeth. The state is the funding source for Penn State. As such, the State could cancel funding to the University, until it cleans up its Mann based climate issues.
The first letter is from the Chairman of the Education committee. He was letting his majority know he was focused on the topic. If I was Mann, I would be seriously worried.
Pennsylvania is only Democratic in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the middle of the state in overwhelmingly Republican. Even State College, with its Democratic University types is dwarfed by the surrounding Republicans. The Blue/Red map is pretty dramatic. Left-leaning Academia is not very trusted in an environment where the jobs are disappearing anyway. Sort of like being in a farm house surrounded by Zombies, I suppose. (From their perspective).
Monash University publishes volumes of unsubstantiated alarmist tripe. A search on Monash gets 6 hits in the ClimateGate documents. I wonder if there’s any money flow involved here as well ?