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.
Smokey – Don’t need to, RC have already seen to it
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/
DirkH (17:25:35) :
“AdderW (17:14:00) :
[…]
The Met Office said it would get colder with more snow forecast.”
They ALWAYS get their forecast wrong, that means it’ll get warmer, no?
They know Piers Corbyn well. They probably read his forecast first and then came out with this. 😉
While many dislike the concept of ratting on your workmates and the tone of the email, one thing is absolutely certain… humans react to incentives (read some Freakonomics if in doubt).
Someone who is probably indifferent to Mann & Co is likely to step forwards if the incentive is high enough. What makes people think it is going to be an academic? Some underpaid staffer who sees far more of the accounting and knows where the money is … that is far more likely. Academic colleagues are hardly going to be witness to the cash flows relating to climate change research unless they are in the area itself. If that is the case they are hardly going to rat on a colleague.
My money would be on a staffer in the finance section of the relevant department if anyone. Based on my experience in government and academia, the secretaries and HR folks know far more about what is going on in an institution than the professionals do. This is why I always go to lunch with the departmental secretaries on Fridays … keeps me in the loop 🙂
philincalifornia (17:42:01) :
Math prowess isn’t much of a requirement at a jury trial. In fact, it’s probably a negative.
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I still remember one of the jurors on the OJ trial; when she heard the DNA sample had shown that there was a 7 billion to 1 chance that the blood wasn’t OJ’s she said, “What are they talking about? There aint even 7 billion people on earth.”
Erik Anderson (18:46:16) :
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.” – Nietzsche, BG&E §146
huh, was he talking about himself?
Connor (20:09:51) :
Where is the code! I demand an audit! When will the flood of FOIA request begin?!
… Or are you a bunch of shameless hypocrites?
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You should read the article more closely. The code is already released.
Connor (20:42:46) :
Andrew – When was the last time you questioned the motivation of Anthony Watts a FOX NEWS weathercaster!
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How long ago did you see him on there? …….me scratches head…… And even if he was what would it mean??
I think it will be a sad day when scientific decisions are taken to court.
It is due to the centralization of financing science and all the emphasis on products etc, trying to make scientific output pay. It has introduced the money factor into science, and we see what happens then.
I keep proposing that financing research should go back to financing institutions rather than researchers. When researchers can bring lots of money to a university, they gain the upper hand and people like Mann, that is people who understand and can manipulate finances better than average get the upper hand. The bombastic over the quiet honest researcher. I have seen it happen in all the disciplines.
Research financing should go to individual universities and research centers and the money distributed internally with a peer system that involves all disciplines: decide how much each discipline gets democratically. This gives a chance to the quiet an honest researcher to survive doing what he/she knows best, research, and not to run after bureaucracies for money. In addition this will introduce the lost competition between universities. Remember, there were “schools of thought” developed differently in different universities, and independent financing of universities will allow for rigorous testing of tentative hypothesis, as this AGW hypothesis was. If Lindzen had had his “school” financed as solidly as Mann got financed, we might be talking of a different world now.
Conner
Please also work on James Hansen’s delays with FOIA requests. I don’t think you want to give the appearance of hypocrisy. Please demand audit of him.
John Egan (15:06:28) :
Ughhh!
Witch hunts –
Regardless of the political affiliations of the witches and the hunters –
Are never very pleasant affairs.
1. Crimes have been committed.
2. Most crimes are solved because someone who knows something talked to the investigators.
3. QED…
Photon without a Higgs
A. I think Steve McIntyre is doing a good enough job of that himself
B. See Wikipedia:
Career
Watts became a television meteorologist in 1987 when he joined WLFI-TV in Lafayette, Indiana, and KHSL-TV, a CBS affiliate based in Chico, California.[1] After working at KHSL for 17 years, he left in 2004 to became the radio meteorologist for KPAY-AM, a Fox News affiliate also based in Chico, California. Watts also operates several companies that make weather graphics systems for use on television broadcasts.[2]
Again for photon,
You should read the article more closely
Scafetta said the code in question had been submitted to a scientific journal and that if “the journal takes its time to publish it, it is not our fault”. Benestad says the code he is asking for relates to papers already published.
The way most grants work is that quarterly submissions are made and they are paid out.
What will it be spent on?
1. Salaries for junior staff.
2. Computers and research tools.
3. Uni. accommodation/maintenance costs.
4. 10% goes to the principal grant holder to use ‘at their discretion’.
I suspect you will only be able to go for section 4. Because the accommodation costs are sunk, the junior staff costs are sunk, the supercomputer access time is sunk and any PCs/Sun Workstations will depreciate like crazy.
And if Michael Mann has used this to sub his lab, as many do, then they won’t be able to get that either.
Only if he has used it as ‘a Wall Street-style ‘bonus” will there be a chance of recouping it.
IMHO.
With such an amount of money, anybody in need of it will try to say something. This has nothing to do with scientific investigation.
In short, given the nature of the Obama Administration, no one should trust the Department of Justice to do its job. Maybe a brief way to summarize the situation would be to have people try to think of the Obama Administration as the U.N. now governing America.
Therefore, outside interests need to be involved, which is what I assume a Lawyer specializing in helping Whistleblowers does, for a fee. So the Lawyer needs a Whistleblower reward. The Whistleblower can always refuse a cut or donate it usefully. I wouldn’t trust the DOJ under AG Holder to even handle the evidence correctly or to not instead demonize the Whistleblower.
Among other very strange things, the Obama Adm. has already fired one Inspector General of Obama’s National Service operation for uncovering an $800,000 fraud involving the Mayor of Sacramento, Kevin Johnson. The Administration said the IG was ~”acting erratically” or something like that immediately after the IG nailed the fraud and got a $400,000 payback.
Now if Obama were to suddenly have the EPA stand down and completely review the question of CO2 being a taxable “pollutant” just the way the FDA considers diseases and treatments – which would involve doing what the ipcc has not done, real science going as far back toward the beginning as necessary – that might change the Administration’s credibility, but I’d stll want to know who did all the brain transplants.
Or maybe I don’t understand how the Whistleblower process works?
After 2 totalitarian regimes here in Germany I am no more interested in whistleblowers.
I expect to be a lot of political pressure on Penn State University and CRU in favour of Mann and Jones and my guts tell me that Mann, Jones and some more should appear before the international court in The Hague.
This is exactly the right and much needed tack. Let’s get this in to the courts and shut this wasteful fraud down ASAP. This should be a slam dunk. And haven’t we all worked for a smug {snip} like Michael Mann that deserves a little justice?
Blow whistles! Blow!
“b.poli (02:31:30) :
After 2 totalitarian regimes here in Germany I am no more interested in whistleblowers. ”
b.poli, i’m german as well… don’t confuse whistleblowers with state-run spy organizations.
I know how much you guys like evidence. So is there any actual evidence of a CRU whistleblower or is it all just wishful thinking?
Mark:
Lots of evidence–all circumstantial and none conclusive.
That’s what I thought.
And it was most-likely a whistle-blower who gave us the evidence on the Motley CRU…
Ironic to see Wolfgang Knorr bashed in here considering he recently released a report that found any warming over the last 150 years could not be due to a rise in atmospheric CO2.
http://bristol.ac.uk/news/2009/6649.html
Sorry for off topic but during Prime Minister’s questions yesterday in the House of Commons Anne Winterton MP (Conservative) asked Gordon Brown if it was wise to spend GBP100Billion on windmills when the world was clearly cooling. At last the sceptics are starting to come out of the closet.
In his response, by the way, he just said that this was another example of how the opposition party was split.
anna v (23:20:07),
You are exactly right. Big money has corrupted the system. Rainmakers like Mann and Jones not only control the grant money, they are given huge amounts of money by outside entities that the university has no control over. The CRU website listed the millions granted in 2008 alone to Phil Jones and others. But when climategate broke, that web page was unfortunately taken down.
When Fenton Communications, or the Heinz Trust, or the Grantham Foundation allocate $millions only to those scientists actively promoting AGW, they are getting their money’s worth. But the taxpayers who will have to pay the $trillions, based on the corrupt and dishonest science that was bought and paid for by outside entities with a heavy pro-AGW agenda, are not represented.
Corrupt scientists, working hand in glove with corrupt and devious outside organizations, have learned to game the system at the expense of the taxpaying public. If there is a way to make them accountable for their scam, I’d like to know how.
I’d like to believe that b.poli (02:31:30) has the answer, but I know better. There is no way the same evil people that infest the UN and the EU have disregarded the ICJ. Like the young priest in The Exorcist telling the old priest about all the different Satanic voices and personalities, the old priest responded: “There is only one.”
I think someone, somewher mentioned the lost list of grants to CRU?
CRU grants from CRU’s site (via the WayBackMachine)
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/research/grants.htm
download if needed before they dissapear