Climategate: Michael Mann's very unhappy New Year

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.

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George S.
January 7, 2010 5:55 am

JER0ME (17:41:58) :
DirkH (16:04:32) :
“Anticlimactic (15:52:20) :
[…]
I think I need to get a T-shirt printed : ‘Climate Modeller – Will Prove Anything For Money’”
Make that ‘Climate Modeller – Will Prove Anything For Food’
How about ‘Climate Modeller – Will Prove Anything for a bag of Coal!
All very clever! I’m embarrassed to contribute my initial reaction…
‘Climate Modeller – Will Prove Anything for Some Warmth!’

photon without a Higgs
January 7, 2010 6:19 am

Connor (00:15:03) :
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.

——————————————–
Code and papers related to code are not the same thing.

photon without a Higgs
January 7, 2010 6:22 am

Connor (00:09:48) :
I asked what it would mean if Anthony Watts was on Fox News?

photon without a Higgs
January 7, 2010 6:26 am

You are making claims that aren’t clear. What is you are trying to say? Come out and say it clearly. But It looks like you’re trying to create some kind of conspiracy.
Also, if Scafetta is hiding something it’s just as wrong him to do it as any other scientist.

photon without a Higgs
January 7, 2010 6:29 am

Also Conner,
Are you as hot about James Hansen’s not complying with FOIA requests as you are about this Scafetta issue?

ammonite
January 7, 2010 6:35 am

‘Climate Modeller in Decline’
‘Climate Modeller seeks job, Airbrushing a Speciality’
Seriously though folks
The darker side is not our job, the media will do it anyway.
The move with the BBC’s full scale review though has me intrigued…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=y&authornamef=Paul+Revoir

Ian Preddy
January 7, 2010 6:52 am

Not strictly the most appropriate place to add this comment, but check out the following website and fast-forward to 26mins 30sec, for a question by an MP on offshore wind energy. Scary response!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00ptssl/Prime_Ministers_Questions_06_01_2010/

Ian Preddy
January 7, 2010 6:54 am

Sorry – I should have said 25mins 30 for the actual question.

JonesII
January 7, 2010 7:09 am

It will not have any consequences on them, they are heavily protected by the most powerful people in the world; if removed from their posts it would be only if their bosses click the refresh button and replace them by new ones. Right now they are surely in the selection process of, if possible, more faithful people among their servants.

Indiana Bones
January 7, 2010 7:43 am

Photon:
Massively scalar elementary response to each WUWT post will not hasten discovery of the Boson. A slightly less impulsive response might succeed though… peace.

photon without a Higgs
January 7, 2010 7:50 am

Conner
you must be saddened and indignant at what ClimateGate revealed. Connection to big oil, manipulating data, altering computer code, intimidation.
All of these must have shaken you.

Tim Clark
January 7, 2010 8:13 am

DJ Meredith (19:25:28) :
Hate to burst the bubble, really, I do…but Penn, or most any other university would never actually DO anything to jeopardize their image, much less funds. Sure, they’ll put on a good show, but their best fog machines will be covering up the shredders runnin’ 24/7.
I know, I’m watching it happen right here at good ole UNR. Whistleblowers are treated to the full wrath of the administration.
http://www.rgj.com/article/20091212/NEWS/912120346/Judge-partially-grants-petition-in-UNR-corruption-suit

From your link:
The plaintiffs’ petition includes allegations of fraud, embezzlement, bid rigging, falsification of evidence and public documents, perjury, abuse of power, forgery, witness intimidation, civil rights violations and animal abuse
May I be so impertinent to question exactly what the animal abuse applies to? Could this allegation also apply to Mann?

DirkH
January 7, 2010 8:22 am

Cool down photon. (Open a window! ROTFL!)

89AKurt
January 7, 2010 8:34 am

I just posted a link to here on this article:
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/paper-trail/2009/11/30/penn-state-will-investigate-climategate.html
Sure would like to see Algore in his propaganda flick again, miss the scene of him on the lift pointing upward on the Hockey Stick graph.

A C Osborn
January 7, 2010 9:13 am

Conner, you shot yourself in the Foot ( or mouth) with the link to RealClimate.
You obviously didn’t notice the
“selected sources of code and data”
i.e. only those that they can afford to show, not “ALL”.

Kay
January 7, 2010 9:37 am

Bernice (16:06:53) : The whistleblower program is a way out for those that recognize wrong doing. Financial motivation is secondary. The climategate whistleblower is just the tip of an iceberg that’s getting bigger .
And I wonder just who that whistleblower is.
Would Mann’s grad student(s) be willing to turn him in? Their careers are pretty much shot before they’ve even started; what do they have to lose? $15 million would keep them going for quite a while, I imagine.

J.Peden
January 7, 2010 9:55 am

Rob Vermeulen (01:26:06) :
With such an amount of money, anybody in need of it will try to say something. This has nothing to do with scientific investigation.
Granted, but it sounds exactly like Climate Science. Ha ha…..
Let full public disclosure and Civil and Criminal Trials sort it out. They’re also imperfect but that and the election process are the best we can do to avoid the next move, War.

Johnhayte
January 7, 2010 11:13 am

so its been established that whoever released the emails is a whistleblower? Source anyone?

Johnhayte
January 7, 2010 11:17 am

re: Kay
I don’t think a grad student would have the necessary info/access to be a credible whistleblower. It would have to be a colleague who works closely with Mann, or on his projects, I would think.

Johnhayte
January 7, 2010 11:29 am

re: John Hooper (04:19:44) :
“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
It doesn’t say anything of the kind, not in this story and not in the actual study. Don’t jump to wild conclusions.
“New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.”
How does that match up with your your statement?

January 7, 2010 11:34 am

Ern Matthews (21:55:53) :
“Give me night or give me Blucher” which is a paraphrase of
“Either night or the Prussians will come.”
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Arthur_Wellesley,_1st_Duke_of_Wellington
In battle pursuit turns victory into a rout.
We need to restore skepticism to its proper place in science.

J.Peden
January 7, 2010 11:42 am

I totally agree, Smokey.
Smokey (05:12:32) :
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.
If you look at what’s going on as a Parasitic-Communistic “Business Plan”, that helps to see it. The solution will involve a battle, first using all the proxies for War available, starting with rational analyses and obviously including Words and Statements wherever. They work.
I’d like to believe that b.poli (02:31:30) has the answer [Internatikonal Court of Justice], 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.”
Again, I totally agree. Fantasies of a World Court or Government are just that, if only because they allow an easy access for Totalitarian Controllists, just as the U.N. system has. There must always be a niche for an effective counterforce to Totalitarianism. The rest of us really don’t care to even try for Totalititarian control, but Parasitic-Communists types do – call them anything you want, but their natures are basically the same and they do exist as a hominid form.
That’s why previous American Administrations have eschewed the ICJ. Why should defenders of freedom and free individuals turn their fate over to The World when The World is obviously not anything like what America represents and has done – America’s mistakes and failures being acknowledged but notwithstanding in net and in comparison, if only as per Winston Churchill’s wry comment about such a system being the worst imaginable, until you compare it to everything else.
Note, I’m using “America” as symbolic for any one or Country who agrees with what a free America represents, not to say that no one else shares these values or hasn’t counted or doesn’t still count in an equally important way.
The answer is not to diss “America” but instead to join it in the form of independent actors – Countries and people – who know what America’s Constitution with its Bill of Rights represents, because it is what they are, free individuals with inherent rational powers who see it, know it, and recognize a subrational groupist threat when they see it.
It helps me a lot to view what is going on now on a very large scale, as an Evolutionary struggle involving two different Hominid Forms, just has occurred in the past as Humans have evolved: currently it’s the more Parasitic and thereby less potentially successful who also react with classic bigotry to individual free thought – which they can’t really understand but sense in a basically bigoted way as some kind of threat, versus the more Independent individuals possessed of a creative free thought capacity which understands what it is, understands but has no interest in Totalitarian Thought Controllists – who view thought control as both a means and an end – instead sees all progress as a result of an individual free thought capacity necessarily dependent on the presence of institutionalized individual rights, and does not want to have to engage in War to survive. But will!
Only by making the American type system, including real Science, work the way it was designed to, in regard to this large scale attempt by Totalitarians to take over as much as possible of the World by way of the U.N.’s ipcc “Climate Science”, will Totalitarianism be pushed back without either it holding sway to the detriment of freedom, or a large scale War eventuate.
The American system itself as designed and expressed by the Framers of the Constitution is currently under the same threat internally represented by the U.N. with its “Climate Science” to whomever in the World, a threat again which itself is really “only” a massive thought control propaganda operation by Totalitarians in order to achieve more thought control, from which every other form of control follows.
But, still amazingly, the signs are strong and getting stronger each day that the current Totalitarian Parasites here in the U.S., represented by the Obama Adm., are going to lose without the necessity of a real War. They are actually doing a pretty good job of self-destructing – by virtue of apparently being able to only act according to their Marxian “Marxisant” [effete] Political Science Fantasy World, which specifically denies Reality to the point that it almost can’t possibly work – even to benefit itself. Again, it’s amazing to see the actions this Adm. takes at least daily, which make no sense even concerning its own survival.
Of course their machinations also threaten the rest of us here but in what is probably not itself a fatal way, even though it looks pretty bad so far.
However, this somewhat unique feature – which probably allows Totalitarians to lose here in the U.S. without us having to resort to violence – also is probably due to the relative persistence of America’s and Americans’ “rogue” nature when it comes to wanting to be free. Anyone similarly fired should join up.

January 7, 2010 12:08 pm

AdderW (05:46:12),
Thanks for that. I notice that quangos [quasi-autonomous non-elected government organizations; like NGOs – non-governmental organizations] such as Scorchio and Eco-change are already scrubbed from the site.
Also, that grant funding is only what went to CRU over the years [a quick scan shows well over $4 million paid to Phil Jones and pals in just the last reported year].
Oh, and thanx to Connor for the info on how successful Anthony Watts has been in his business carreer. I don’t use Wikipedia, but I’d bet that Connor has no page of his own like Anthony does. When a someone with no notable accomplishments becomes a site pest, they’re just a tool.

January 7, 2010 12:10 pm

Connor (20:40:11) :
Smokey – You are just deflecting now. The whole house of cards that is cosmic ray theory has come tumbling down with a deafening crash!

I missed the memo. Could you provide a link?
My understanding is that the results from Svensmark’s CERN experiments are not due out until 2013 or there abouts. Please explain how the results can be shown to be in error if the results are not available?

Johnhayte
January 7, 2010 12:17 pm

re: J. Peden
??????? I didn’t realize that there is a stunningly similar country called America on Mars . . .