As I said yesterday, one of our jobs this year is to wipe the complacent smiles off the smug faces of the lobbyists, “experts”, “scientists”, politicians and activists pushing AGW.
This is why I am so glad to report that Michael Mann – creator of the incredible Hockey Stick curve and one of the scientists most heavily implicated in the Climategate scandal – is about to get a very nasty shock. When he turns up to work on Monday, he’ll find that all 27 of his colleagues at the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University have received a rather tempting email inviting them to blow the whistle on anyone they know who may have been fraudulently misusing federal grant funds for climate research.
Under US law, regardless of whether or not a prosecution results, the whistleblower stands to make very large sums of money: it is based on a percentage of the total government funds which have been misused, in this case perhaps as much as $50 million. (Hat tip: John O’Sullivan of the wonderful new campaigning site www.climategate.com)
Here’s that email in full:
Hi,
Greetings and best wishes for a prosperous New Year.
National Search
After the recent whistleblower revelations of emails between climate researchers and data from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, there are on-going investigations into potential fraudulent use of grant funds in Climate Research in the US. I am assisting interested parties who may have details of fraud in climate research to make contact with the proper authorities, and to share in the rewards paid when the funds are recovered.
Whistleblower Rewards Program
The federal government has established vigorous programs to identify and prosecute fraudulent grant applications and administration. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) administers the False Claims Act. It allows rewards for those who come forward with details of grant fraud to share in the recovery of federal funds. This reward can be as much as 30% of the total amount reclaimed. The program is almost completely reliant on insiders to report their knowledge of the fraud in their institutions.
Attorney Literally “Wrote the Book” on Fraud Recovery Lawsuits
Joel Hesch, Esq., of Hesch and Associates, literally wrote the book on how to report federal fraud. He has an extensive background in representing whistleblowers in all types of federal funding fraud cases, including Educational/ Research Grant Fraud. According to Mr Hesch: “Many institutions receive grants, whether for research or educational purposes. When they lie to get the grant or keep the grant or if they use the funds for purposes outside the grant, they are liable under the DOJ program. There have been many grant cases brought by whistleblowers. ”
If you know of anyone who might have details about fraudulent statements or actions by recipients of federal grant funds for climate research, please have them contact me immediately at the below email or cell phone. Alternatively, they may also contact Mr Hersch directly, and let him know that they were referred by me. All communications are completely confidential. They may want to consider using a third party email service (Yahoo, Hotmail, or other) instead of work email to communicate.
30% of $50 million is more than $12 million. Ask your friends to do the right thing, and be rewarded for doing it.
Our country, and in fact, the entire world is counting on someone to stand up and tell the truth about climate research. The effects of moving forward with taxes and policies based on fraudulent science could potentially cripple the US economy and cost lives and jobs for generations.
Look forward to hearing from you.
All the best
Kent Clizbe
Happy New Year, Climategaters.
Read original story here with comments.
Lovely thought, but the money’s gone. And the only reward is based on what recoverable. Which is nothing.
It would be nice to see some of the Climategaters under oath in a court being grilled by a skilled cross exaiminer.
Probably will get tagged by the SPAM filter. Most of these guys will likley not even see this e-mail. Too bad, would be good to have some insider wistle blowers
That crew isn’t paranoid enough? I can’t say I can consider this a positive step. If someone comes forward, that’s one thing –trolling for them in a public (and publicized) manner like this is something else.
Haha poor Michael Mann 🙂
The parents participating in the Baloon boy travesty are well under way in paying with their prison time. Mann is months from confrontation. Is Mann collecting donations for his legal defense?
This must be a larger version of the “Secret Witness” program.
Ask not for whom the Bus rolls, it rolls for thee.
Sadly it will more than likely just be used by the usual suspects as proof that powerful corporate interests are trying to persecute the good doctor Mann.
I
The worm is really starting to turn in the UK press. James Delingpole and Simon Heffer have joined Christopher Booker (all from the Daily/Sunday Telegraph) in bloody the nose of the Warm Mongers. The Daily Express hopped over to the sceptic side last year in a big way – reflecting opinion of the readership rather than leading it.
And today we get this mother of all announcements from the BBC trust
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1241049/BBC-announces-review-science-coverage-month-revealed-ignored-Climategate-leaked-emails.html
This is probably due to the thousands of letter the Trust has received from sceptics in recent months and is the best news since the Climategate e-mails were released.
These are happy days indeed.
Well I haven’t read the article yet; but my first reaction; though fully supportive of misconduct whistle blowers; I don’t hold much stock in the idea of bribing colleagues to rat on a fellow worker.
Hey if you believe it is misconduct, rat all you like; and the sooner the betetr.
But if you are a REAL scientist, shouldn’t you want to report the truth; even if it isn’t going to net you a brass razoo for doing so.
Not speaking up without being bribed, is to me almost as bad as being one of the unindicted co-conspirators.
Well maybe I’m just funny that way.
On a related issue, I just stumbled across a letter to Physics Today, for May 2009 from Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol; that seems somehow like a name we are familiar with.
He professes to be a climate reasearcher, and he thinks nano-technology and climate science are sort of parallel universes. Well he didn’t use those words; but you get the idea, so he referecnes Michael Crichton’s fictional account of nano-tech gone wild.
But more to the subject at hand, Knorr refers to a TV demonstration of CO2 “greenhouse effect as demonstrated by one Pieter Tans from NOAA’s Earth Systems Laboratory. Seems we have heard of this phony demonstration before.
The question I would ask Wolfgang Knorr, would be, if he has ever thought of (being a lcimate researcher) repeating Pieter Tans’ TV expose, but substituting pure H2O instead of pure CO2, and see what sort of GHG effect he3 can observe; or in that instance sans CO2, would he expect to see only a FEEDBACK effect, but no GREENHOUSE effect.
Get back to us on that Wolfgang, after you have done the experiment.
But to your point as to whether there is a debate about the existance of a CO2 greenhouse effect. Yes I actually know some real people who profess that vociferously; the absence of any such thing that is.
But I don’t know a single soul who is a serious skeptic about anthropogenicmanmade global warming, and the coming anthropogenicmanmade computer model prediction of catastrophe; who doesn’t accept that CO2 is a so-called greenhouse gas, and that it does intercept some surface emitted LWIR radiation, and thereby increases the local atmospheric temperature a bit. So I don’t see a cult of denial about that, despite your assertions. But a lot of people do believe that the rest of the climate system beside CO2 does come to the rescue, to prevent the remotest possibility of the catastrophe, which you so fervently believe in.
Knorr asserts (in the letter) “In the case of the greenhouse effect, people are wary of the complicated climate models that only a few experts understand.”
Well whoop de do, Wolfgang, and where do you place yourself; in the elite panel of experts; who received the stone tablets on the mountain; or are you too among us incognoscenti ?
Talk about a self serving promotional exercise; Wolfy, you are almost as pompous as your very famous ancient namesake; at least his real talents are seldom under dispute.
But as to Dr Mann’s new year; I’m all for open investigation, to see if there is real fire behind the smoke; but let’s not make it a who wants to be a millionair farce.
I doubt that many of Mann’s co-workers will even consider the money because they are usually people hand-picked by Mann for their loyalty – its how the academic greasy pole works.
The potential whistleblower will know that they will probably never work in climate science again. The evidence for deliberate misconduct has got to be compelling prima facae evidence or the whistleblower will find it very uncomfortable in a court to defend him/herself.
Mann is a past master at making claims of fossil-fuel conspiracies of everyone who dares oppose him and his acolytes will agree with him.
More importantly, the current administration and Democratic majority Congress is unlikely to do much to prosecute. If the mid-terms turn the Congress sharply Republican then things might get a lot dicier but at the moment Mann is safe IMHO
I have heard from some one inside the Penn State shop that he expects that no one will turn States evidence. Collegiality.
The person did mention that Pennsylvania politicians are drawing a LOT of heat (heh) because of ClimateGate. The word IS getting out.
It’s a start…..now for Jones, Wigley,Gore and Hansen
I’m not too fond of this approach. The distasteful aspects are all pretty obvious.
Plus I don’t think it’s going to be very effective. The complete story of what Mann did (or did not do) is going to take a painstaking marshaling of complex evidence by someone who takes the time to understand the scientific issues. The real problem with the Penn State investigation is that this type of review is unlikely to happen. This is partly because the investigators lack subpoena power, partly because they lack the investigative and prosecutorial skill to conduct the case and (perhaps) because they will be reluctant to turn over too many rocks.
Mann is obviously a very good academic politician. No crime there, but he is going to have the upper hand here.
Huge federal whistleblower awards are not BS, “merely anecdotal”, or trivial.
A friend in the Washington DC area who sometimes serves as an expert witness in these cases (fraud against the U.S. government) told me of two very recent awards of $15+ million and $35+ million to individual whistleblowers in DC Metro.
Normal, everyday government workers who saw some funny business, documented it, and reported it.
david
See ClimateAudit.org
Steve McIntyre is systematically exploring the Climategate materials. e.g.
Climategatekeeping: the Nature Intervention
Re Jim Carson (14:10:02) :
Lovely thought, but the money’s gone. And the only reward is based on what recoverable. Which is nothing.
—
With a sharp lawyer(s), don’t count on that. Mann’s assets from book deals and PR work may be one option, larger option is to go after organisations that have profited from the fraud. This is where folks in the US perhaps have the advantage over us in the UK with your lawyers and class action system.
How about something like this?
These climategate fraudsters should have their personal finances audited as well.
“We are turning up the heat in pursuit of prosecutions against scientists involved in the recent Climategate scandal. Our dedicated group of volunteers working with Climategate.com are behind a plan to entice co-workers of discredited Penn State University climatologist Michael Mann to turn whistleblowers in return for millions of dollars in federal reward money. Mann is famous for his emails obtained from the East Anglia University server hacking, and for creating the widely disputed ‘hockey stick’ graph that is depicted in Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth.””
MND
Top fraud attorney seeks climategate Whistleblowers
http://mensnewsdaily.com/sexandmetro/2010/01/06/top-fraud-attorney-seeks-climategate-whistleblowers/
Happy New Year, Climategaters.
Sets entirely the wrong tone to this email. I very much doubt it will have any effect.
Ughhh!
Witch hunts –
Regardless of the political affiliations of the witches and the hunters –
Are never very pleasant affairs.
Discover Magazine starting to come around riding on someone else’s coat tails?
That Washington Post Piece on Science Communication and ClimateGate
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2010/01/06/that-washington-post-piece-on-science-communication-and-climategate/
It’s a stupid email for all the reasons I see others have covered so well.
This whole post is unworthy of this site.
I would rather see Mr. Mann busted for his poor work.
david (14:47:22) :
You may be correct about Penn State, but not about the US Dept. of Justice.
That’s Federal money what’s been allegedly misappropriated, and that’ll get plenty of longarm-of-the-law attention. There’s blood scent in the water, and they’re a’ coming to get some.
Advantage DOJ: In times of grant $$$ being lean, the carrot is on the stick.
That’s an offer that can’t be easily refused.
Slicker & bigger fish than Michael Mann have found themselves on the wrong side of the law, and regretted it. Don’t look for big Pols to save him, they may be looking for bus fodder to save themselves.