From the Commonwealth Foundation press release
The release of embarrassingly candid emails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia has intensified, if not vindicated, suspicions that scientific misconduct has played a significant role in fueling alarmism over supposed catastrophic manmade global warming.
Just days after news broke about what has been dubbed “Climategate,” Penn State University (PSU) announced that it would investigate the conduct of Michael Mann, a professor in PSU’s Department of Meteorology and a prominent figure in the Climategate emails.
While PSU is to be commended for recognizing that Climategate is a serious matter and that an investigation into Michael Mann’s conduct is warranted, the investigation constitutes a conflict of interest for the university. Mann’s climate work brings enough visibility, prestige, and revenue to PSU to legitimately call into question the university’s ability to do a thorough and unbiased investigation.
To avoid this glaring conflict of interest and ensure that the investigation of Mann is credible, the Pennsylvania General Assembly should commission an external and independent investigation into Mann’s potential scientific misconduct.
To download the full PDF version, please click here
Paul Chesser writes at the American Thinker:
The Commonwealth Foundation in Harrisburg, Pa. does not trust Pennsylvania State University to investigate Climategate hockey sticker Michael Mann, because of the millions of dollars that his research brings to the university. The foundation today released a 12-page policy brief which addresses Mann’s Climategate emails, the significance of his role, and why the university has a conflict of interest in investigating him. Commonwealth held a press conference today at the state capitol about their report:
The hockey stick controversy and Climategate emails reveal that Michael Mann may have committed significant and intentional scientific misconduct, including improper data manipulation, inappropriately shielding research methods and results from others, and engaging in a number of forms of retaliation against those who publicly challenge his research results.
Were scientific misconduct a criminal matter, the aforementioned facts might be said to constitute “probable cause” for a search warrant. Analogously, these facts provide probable cause for an investigation into Mann’s conduct at PSU.
Although PSU has announced that it will investigate Climategate, given Mann’s financial and reputational value to the university, and the likely embarrassment resulting from an adverse finding concerning his conduct, there is good reason to believe that a PSU-managed investigation might amount to little more than a whitewash.
Commonwealth Foundation goes on to recommend that the state General Assembly commission an external, independent investigation. Pennsylvania State Senate Education Committee Chairman Jeffrey Piccola has already promised Penn State that if its investigation is a whitewash, he will do one that isn’t.
h/t to reader “boballab”
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All I’m saying is the Left is playing this as a political game and wiping the floor with the Right. I mean absolutely bucketing it all over us.
It doesn’t need to refer to GreenPeace or any of the many socialist hives for support, it has not only the UN, NASA, but practically every scientific body, scientific journal, university and government in the world on its side.
It even has Hollywood.
So if you think pulling out some small time overtly right-wing lobby group as some kind of trump card, you’re kidding yourself. It’s too easy to dismiss.
They just say “oh another one of these crackpot, gun toting, redneck, creationist, oil funded, anti-health care, oil funded, friends of Dick Cheney and Haliburton” and read no further.
It doesn’t matter whether they’re right or wrong, it’s about marketing. Just ask any Brit how they feel about Tony Blair after he jumped in bed with George W Bush.
Until we have scientific bodies that can match NASA on our side, we might as well be just a bunch of 911 truthers.
I certainly hope that Mann will get his just deserts at the hands of his ‘peers’ but I fear he may have too many people in his pocket.
Just in case it was missed by newcomers to the site yesterday, I posted this fairly typical eg of how little the IPCC ‘climatologists’ are to be trusted. This incident was from 2005, but imo it’s fairly typical of how the Mann-made warming agenda became a ‘concensus’ – and needless to say this incident sank without a trace so far as the MSM was concerned:
<>
woodNfish (16:53:58) :
I have already stated that I think this and the other internal university investigations into Jones and Briffa are all going to be white washes.
If it were anything other than GW you can bet the UK public enquiry would be well under way already. Too many people with too much invested and too much money stolen already.
There would be riots if the public ever saw the real face of “climate science” and realised just how much these cowboys had cost them.
Quoting John Hooper (13:38:07) :
“I’ll repeat it again: no-one who matters takes any notice of right-wing think tanks.”
Commenting:
Repeat all you want, but you left out the most important part: “no-one who matters TO ME, JOHN HOOPER takes any…yada yada yada.”
There are other people in the world, John.
What should happen is if they whitewash this they should lose their accreditation.
What will happen is something entirely different I fear.
No matter what the outcome of any investigation, however unbiased it purports to be, one side or the other will cry foul. I doubt they’re going to find an investigative body that can be unbiased.
John Hooper (17:13:30)
Until we have scientific bodies that can match NASA on our side, we might as well be just a bunch of 911 truthers.
Go have a good cry, John, then maybe you’ll feel better.
Smokey said: ” No wonder the CRU clique practically shouted for joy when they heard that John Daly had passed away.”
No kidding. Daly was Toto dragging the curtain away from the Wizard’s facade.
And Michael Mann is gonna be a great dissertation study for some psychologist somewhere who wants to study Narcissistic Personality Disorder, no doubt.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
“Pennsylvania State Senate Education Committee Chairman Jeffrey Piccola has already promised Penn State that if its investigation is a whitewash, he will do one that isn’t.”
I love it. An aggressive, yet civil, “threat”.
Give ’em hell, Jeffery.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
John Hooper (13:38:07) :
I’ll repeat it again: no-one who matters takes any notice of right-wing think tanks.
The epitome of arrogance..
Thanks to The Commonwealth Foundation for speaking out on the need for an independent investigation of Michael Mann’s role in the global climate scandal.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
I have written to sen Piccola as a Pennsylvanian citizen and as the current president of the state’s geologist licensing board to demand that funding to theEarth science department be suspended until the university auapwnds mann while the investigation proceeds. I received a very details reply which left me with the impression that he will follow through with his promise.
This one is great because PSU is a state university. The last whack job science professor we had was/is Micheal Behe of Lehigh U whose own department censured him but we could do nothing because Lehigh is private. With Mann we can continue screaming until someone does something.
the Commonwealth Foun dation – respectable, influential, serious? Or oil industry shills? Can an American comment for me?
Michael Mann – respectable, influential, serious? Or a Carbon Trader shill?
All the money in the world is on the side of fake AGW including the oil companies. Trying to discredit a source by saying, oh that’s just from an oil company’ shows one’s ignorance. Even the climategate emails in April 2002 said the oil companies are the ones who forced the UN to take Pachauri as head of the climate scam. They are all in on it, Pachauri has numerous connections to oil interests, it’s no secret. Perhaps they like other businesses felt it was useless to fight Goldman Sachs, Soros, and organized crime (which is already documented to be making the most out of carbon trading). There are 5 climate change lobbyists per congressman in Washington. Yes, part of the left’s method is to overwhelm the public with information and thereby demoralize those on the right. Nevertheless, we are talking now only because one human being did a brave thing a month or 2 ago. It was also just one person who brought down the mighty Dan Rather –with a typewriter spool. Remember Eason Jordan, former chief of CNN? He is gone too because one blogger heard something vile and untrue he said in a foreign country.
It should always be remembered that the pejorative term “right wing” refers to the largest fraction of Americans. The number of Americans self-describing themselves as conservatives is double the number who describe themselves as liberals.
If President John F. Kennedy were president today, he would be ruthlessly attacked by the liberal contingent as an extreme right wing nut. And Kennedy was a 100% Democrat.
There is a reason for the fact that the Left has attained control far in excess of its numbers. Following the Korean war, the Soviet Union realized that communism could not be imposed on the world by military force. The Korean conflict made it clear that Italy, across the Adriatic sea from communist Albania and next on the Soviets’ targeted list, could not be forcibly taken as planned by Stalin.
Intense strategy sessions followed the Korean checkmate, and gradually a long term plan was formulated to insinuate, one by one, individuals into key positions in all Western democracies. The Venona papers, released following the fall of the Berlin Wall, confirmed the Soviet plan. “Two steps forward, one step back” was the acknowledged path, which we see today in the endless COP climate summits. Copenhagen was one step back – but not the end of the struggle. Mexico City is next on the never ending COP agenda.
During the Viet Nam war, college students majoring in Education were given a deferrment from the draft. As a result, large numbers of students listed ”Education” as their major.
Many went straight into teaching — which maintained their draft-deferred status, unlike most other professions. [For instance, police officers were also exempt. But that’s a dangerous profession, too.]
Those draft-dodging students were well aware that other American boys had to step up and fight for our country in their place. But their guilt was not enough to convince them to serve their country. As a result, colleges had a large influx of draft-dodgers majoring in Education.
Those people were forced to rationalize their guilt and cowardice, knowing that they had put their tails between their legs and hid out, rather than serve our country like most other American boys did.
So for 35+ years now, they’ve taught impressionable students that the draft-dodgers were the real heroes, and the soldiers who served were the villains [I know, because I was one of the soldiers in Viet Nam. When I returned, it certainly wasn’t as someone admired by my young peers, who had graduated from college by then. So I kept my mouth shut].
Today’s students are simply victims of this continuous false indoctrination by those same guilt-ridden draft dodgers who, rather than serving our country in its time of need, cut and ran. Sorry if this offends the sensibilities of 60 year old college professors with tenure, but I saw this happen with my own eyes.
Now, those same professors are teaching our young kids the green eco-creed, which is the exact same ideology our country and the West fought against. The only difference is that now they’re called “Greens,” instead of “Reds.”
As in the sixties, conservative and middle of the road citizens are viciously attacked by the Left as “right wing extremists.” The news media [except for the internet] is almost completely controlled by the same kind of people who dodged the draft in the 1960’s. They deliberately censor all opposing opinion, completely rejecting the 1st Amendment. Propaganda is their weapon of choice, used by the same people who have greatly benefitted from the free market: they already have theirs, and they do not care if those who follow must work for the collective, and endure a completely avoidable lower living standard.
So now, the green reds have achieved almost complete media control. Their feckless professors are in almost every school and university, scheming for every advantage. They are at the apex of their power. The only question remaining is: will freedom loving citizens rise up to derail the push to make the world a collective, run by an opaque, unaccountable EU and UN? Or will spoiled citizens meekly allow the leash to be put around their necks at this point in history?
I’m old enough to look upon the situation dispassionately, expecting democracies to throw off the yoke of collectivism – but unsurprised if they bow their heads to their feckless, cowardly proto-superiors. All it takes is a little courage to win the battle.
There is no chance-none at all, that Mann will be implicated in any wrong doing.Mann is like Hansen and Gore to the IPCC and Obama.The damage would be intolerable.MBH98 was what started this whole thing and the UN has hitched its wagon to this horse.If Mann has his credibility even questioned the whole house of cards will fall and the powers that be know it full well.Sorry fellas but its a dead duck.
Universities rely on external funding to expand thier programmes, Having a “star” Prof. who brings in the dollars is important to an institution. But when the “star ” is shown to have webbed feet, and has created a great deal of resentment among his peers, eventually the funders start looking for more attractive alternatives.
None of he funders wants to admit they have been conned, so expect to see a sudden slide sideways where funders will start to support new projects with a different set of objectives subtly designed to exclude the likes of Mann and has fellow travellers.
Its already started !!
There was a thoughtful mail on the CA thread re why no members of the community had yet spoken out, from someone with personal knowledge of wrong-doing, i recall in pharma industry. It was hushed up, white-washed, whatever, but the person was disappeared, reputation in the industry gone.
Mann has other disadvantages, esp his personal style. Who would want to co-author with him after this I wonder?
Steve et al, can someone comment on whether this is the route it will take, that there is a silent movement not to co-author with the inner team after this?
All the discussion is boiled down nicely by above commenter: this issue is about the president of the United States. (Mike Mann=Obama, Obama goes way back to the creation of the Chicago Climate Exchange, so he’s not about to cave). Another commenter was kind enough to post John Daly’s rundown on Mann’s media list-he’s a special adviser to the White House. This movement exists because of 20 years of weak and greedy politicians. The next logical step is to have the 2007 Supreme Court case reversed, the 5-4 ruling that CO2 was a pollutant. Objective information was not available to the court at that time. For reasons Mike Mann and the many journals he ‘referees’ would be familiar with. This is do-able.
Lindsay H (23:41:28) :
(…) But when the “star ” is shown to have webbed feet…
And what is wrong with webbed feet? Come on, you know how evolution works. After the glaciers have all melted and whatever “dry land” remains is continually lashed by violent storms, webbed feet will be a significant advantage towards survival. Why, those with webbed feet may be the only remaining branch of humanity left!
Meanwhile, as evolution seems to “predict” future crises with what can appear to be random mutations that accumulate into definitive differences, we await the appearance of supplementary gills as “proof” of future catastrophic warming. By the way, it was an awful sham how they (mis)represented evolution as working after-the-fact in that alarmist speculative documentary with Kevin Costner.
CLIMATEGATE
THE TRACK RECORD OVER FOUR DECADES
a.n.ditchfield
My environmental awareness was aroused in mid 1971, when I was invited to a meeting of the Club of Rome in Rio de Janeiro. It first struck me as a constructive publicity move of FIAT, the sponsor. At intervals of a few months the Club of Rome invited noted scientists and intellectuals to meetings at tourist attractions like Rio de Janeiro, with all expenses paid. They were asked to meditate about the predicament of mankind and to listen to progress reports of a team of young MIT engineers who were using a computer model to project the impact on the planet of expanding economic activity. The results of the study were stated in the 1972 book, Limits to Growth, of which some 12 million copies were printed. The launching of the book was a masterpiece by editorial standards and its contents still remain central to such thought, including that of John Holdren, science adviser of Obama.
One of the new tools used in the study was the feed-back algorithm developed by Prof. Jay Forrester, of MIT, to portray the unfolding of complex systems over long timelines. All relevant factors are displayed in elaborate flowcharts and their interplay shown in a succession of stages like snapshots, in which the end of one stage is the beginning of the next. The idea is much like that of cinema, in which the rapid display of successive photos creates the optical illusion of movement. Forrester used his feedback innovation to the study of location problems of industry (Industrial Dynamics) and to explain the decay of metropolitan cities in America (Urban Dynamics). The new effort applied Forrester’s technique to demonstrate the Club of Rome proposition that a finite planet cannot support growth of population and economic activity at the pace seen for two decades after World War II. The conclusion was ready; it needed rationalization with a computer model to give a scientific look to what was the belief of the sponsors, FIAT chairman Aurelio Peccei and the renowned scientist Alexander King.
Limits to Growth had a large number of gloomy forecasts, speculative thought as such, but not science, and time rejected their validity. The earliest of the kind, the Malthus Essay on the Principle of Population published in 1798, foretold a grim 19th century. The population of Britain, stable at 5 million until the middle of the 18th century, had grown to 8 million and was expanding at a geometrical rate, while the supply of food expanded at a lower arithmetical rate. As Malthus saw it, population was bound to collapse to a sustainable level through famine, disease and war. But during the 19th century the population of Britain became four times larger and the economy sixteen times greater, an expansion supported by the Industrial Revolution. Most Britons entered the 20th century well fed, clothed and healthy, housed in cities with good sanitation. Gone were the days of the “dark satanic mills” of the early 19th century. The technology that had expanded industrial output also provided the means to end squalor.
Malthusian thought was discredited but remained dormant until the 1968, when resurrected by Paul Erlich with his equally grim Population Bomb. This time world population was bound to collapse on a planet that was running out of arable land to feed it; he reckoned that over the next two decades hundreds of millions would die of famine. The reasoning was crude and was superseded by the more sophisticated approach of the Club of Rome that put in motion the PAT idea, a formula that summarizes the impact of human activity on the environment I = P×A×T. In words: Human Impact (I) on the environment equals the product of population (P), affluence (A): consumption per capita; and technology (T): environmental impact per unit of consumption. Population was still at the root of coming doomsday, and its impact on the planet is multiplied by growing demand for non-renewable resources (fuel and minerals) to sustain better living standards. Food scarcity was only one factor among many driving mankind to destruction.
I made three objections to the assumptions underpinning the Club of Rome study.
• Population forecasts are uncertain. What had come about in mid 20th century was the dramatic fall of mortality while fertility remained the same. I held this to be exceptional. Nothing warranted the assumption that this imbalance would persist indefinitely as projected in the study. Indeed, UN world population forecasts now show stability to be reached in the 21st century.
• Given the vast land area of the planet the idea of an excessive population is farfetched. Overcrowding is a local problem. It is evil in Calcutta and has been successfully coped with in many metropolitan cites.
• The concept of non-renewable resources was untenable. Most of the crust of the earth remains unknown. The Club of Rome assumption was that mineral reserves stated in sources like the Minerals Yearbook of the U.S, Bureau of Mines were all that remained and, given the naïve arithmetic, most would be depleted by the end of the 20th century.
Dennis Meadows, the project team leader, conceded that simplifications were made to make the World Model fit into the humble IBM 1130 computer, but these did not invalidate the axiomatic idea that a finite planet cannot support infinite growth. I challenged the axiom too. If Meadows reasoned at limits, I had equal right. I claim that all human consumption does not subtract one ounce from the mass of a planet subject to the Law of Conservation of Mass. Theoretically, everything can be recycled. The limitation is one of energy, and fusion energy reactors will make it available in practically unlimited quantities. It may be argued that we cannot count on technology not yet developed, but we must not discount it either. That is the flaw of Malthusian thought: the assumption that technological development will cease and stagnate forever at current levels.
What amazed me was the sight of the elderly sages of the Club of Rome accepting the computer printouts and graphs as sayings of a pagan oracle. To my mind they just illustrated the truth of the adage: [garbage in] = [garage out]. I know the content of the Forrester programs in the intimacy of FORTRAN statements, so I was not awed by the mathematics or by the computer of the MIT team. As an engineer, I had a professional interest in the Forrester programs because I was then engaged in location studies for large industries.
Eight weeks after the Rio de Janeiro Club of Rome meeting I traveled to New York on a business mission, after an absence of five years, and felt that I had landed on a different planet. On the ride from airport to Manhattan I was surprised by the sight of leafless trees in full summer. The cab driver explained that a pest was killing the trees and a court order had banned the use of pesticides; New Yorkers were exchanging their trees for a collection of insects. I found fleas in the subway, cockroaches in my hotel room and flies galore everywhere. I learned that the new Environmental Protection Agency, in one of its first acts, had banned the use of DDT with no scientific evidence to back the claim that it was harmful to human health. Over the previous decade the Silent Spring book of Rachel Carson had demonized it to the American public until it became politically correct to curse all chemical products used by modern farming. The anti-scientific ban was to have consequences beyond the discomfort I was experiencing. It stopped a world wide drive to eradicate malaria, as was done with polio and smallpox. Over four decades 40 to 50 million preventable deaths can be laid at the door of the promoters of this environmental cause. One of them was Alexander King, leader of the scientific team at the time of World War II that gave the world large scale availability of DDT, and the hope of eradicating insect-transmitted diseases. In his memoirs King let slip a senile remark: “my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it greatly added to the population problem.”
I realized the strength of the grip of this new misanthropic attitude when I strolled down Lexington Avenue and stopped at a grocery that displayed boxes of worm-infested peaches on the sidewalk – sold at premium price! I entered for a word with the grocer. He claimed that he sold what the customers wanted: the presence of worms was taken as proof of legitimate “natural” fruit. To me it proved that fruit flies had sat on the peaches. I laughed. Someone with the wits to sell rotten peaches at high prices has the talent to sell anything at any price. I advised him to sell the grocery and move a few blocks west, to Madison Avenue, the hub of the advertising business, where he would earn a fortune as a gifted liar.
The mindset of America, and indeed of the Western world, was being shaken by a tectonic shift. For two centuries the Industrial Revolution had bestowed bounty on much of the world and was fast banishing the specter of dire want everywhere. Industrialization was fostered everywhere, and a national steel mill and national airline were emblematic of newly independent countries. Progress, once a universal aspiration, was now being challenged by contrarians of a new breed, not by the reactionaries of some failed Ancien Regime, of which the world still has plenty. The picturesque hippies of San Francisco who rejected progress and aspired to a life of idleness and poverty were only an echo of a wider movement that was engulfing the academic sphere and especially social studies. It was postmodern doctrine with its rejection of science, progress and of rational thought itself.
Prof. Alan Sokal, a physicist of New York University saw through it and concluded that there ain’t no thing called a social science. Anything goes, provided it is well written, scholarly-looking, in tune with the prejudices of the editor, and proved his point with publication of his paper, titled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”. The paper would have been perceived as a hoax by an engineering student, but was published as serious in Social Text. In one statement the number PI had a value of 3.141592… because it was arbitrated by the current social context; future generations in a different context would give it another value, because all is relative. Sokal didn’t invent such postmodernist nonsense; it is supported by more than 100 references to what had been published about hard science by social “scientists”. Engineers and scientists stopped being pinup boys and were vilified as robots mindlessly herding mankind to the cliff edge. It was claimed that the higher knowledge of postmodernist government was needed to avert disaster.
During the decades dominated by Thatcher and Reagan a limit was put to the politics of envy that exploited the cynical saying that “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul”. This was laid to rest by market economy reforms that returned power to Victorian values that rewarded hard work, enterprise and ingenuity instead of political craftiness. Neither Blair nor Clinton dared tamper with reforms that worked well. The market economy was accepted all over the world because it was more efficient in meeting the needs of mankind than any alternative.
In the shadow of that time Environmentalism became a big business with a myriad of non-governmental organizations that evolved into a huge extortion racket, protected by law and supported by ample funds and publicity. With the turn of the political tide the racket is out for its own grab for power.
• Its objective is to place energy production under control of governments, and ultimately of an international body. Energy consumption would be rationed. Taxing the air you breathe will no longer be a figure of speech; it will be world wide policy to submit the acts of every human being to central control.
• Its technique is the one of the Club of Rome: rationalization with computer models to give a scientific look to what is an unproved and non provable belief: that anthropogenic global warming would end civilization (no longer attributed to overcrowding and exhausted resources). One finds the UN Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change In the old role of the Club of Rome, with vastly expanded propaganda resources.
• Its instrument is the postmodern Precautionary Principle: where there is a deadlock in understanding, bureaucratic whim trumps science.
The instrument carries the threat of being lethal to democratic institutions. Its first notable use was ushered in by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under the tenure of Carol Browner, during the Clinton years, to implement her anti-tobacco project with the justification that second hand smoke caused cancer in non-smokers. Numerous medical studies commissioned by the Agency failed to deliver the justification. The studies had been done under the stern rules of Food and Drug Administration with double-blind reviews. Big Tobacco hired lawyers to state their case and these resorted to expert testimony of scientists – exactly what the other side did. This is litigation, not science, with the pot calling the kettle black. Carol Browner circumvented the deadlock with a legal dodge of the Precautionary Principle: “if an action or policy has suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action.” This opened the gates to endless mischief. On December 7th 2009, the day that lives in infamy, Obama decreed that carbon dioxide a pollutant dangerous to health, when it is the nutrient that sustains the food chain of all that lives on the planet. EPA rulings, not acts of Congress, are now the law of the land. America was turned into a Bobama Republic ruled by decree. Carol Browner is now energy adviser to Obama, not for her knowledge of the field but for her expertise in chicanery. Her achievement in the field was banning the drilling for oil on the continental shelf of Florida.
At the Copenhagen Climate Conference Hugo Chavez blamed global warming on capitalism and got a standing ovation from delegates of 191 sovereign states. Evo Morales blames Americans for the summer floods of Bolivia. They have the support of the Castro brothers, Amhadinejad, Kim Jong-il and of Osama Bin Laden. With friends like these, does Obama really need enemies?
In November 2009, three thousand documents with FORTRAN source codes and one thousand private e-mails were placed in the public domain, revealing peer-reviewed climate science as a joke on which rests the proposed expenditure of trillions of dollars. Climategate may come to rank with the climacteric events of World War II, as an event that changed the course of world history.
“the investigation constitutes a conflict of interest for the university. ”
Exactly what I have been saying about the U.E.A and Jones!!!!
Smokey (21:55:19) :
“It should always be remembered that the pejorative term “right wing” refers to the largest fraction of Americans….(etc.)”
__________________
And here I thought I was all alone on this planet. You bring tears to my eyes. I wonder if there are any more of our species. When we move on to the great beyond look me up and I’ll buy you a heavenly beer.
It should be an American project and not a European one:
A website endorsing The Commonwealth Foundation’s letter by collecting signatures. It would even have been better the The Commonwealth Foundation letter would have been shorter and without any prejudices, very neutral. This letter with thousands of signatures asking for a independent and public “jury” could gain some more public support. But there is also the risk of failure – of course.
“Pennsylvania State Senate Education Committee Chairman Jeffrey Piccola has already promised Penn State that if its investigation is a whitewash, he will do one that isn’t.”
“promised”…..really? Are skeptics still this naive?
The likelihood of “any” investigation concluding anything substantive is nil. With millions of dollars at stake, and the political power of the University, they can control any state Legislative commission. “Hand-picked” lackys will simply sustain the current AGW response with: Nothing to see here…move along.
Like painting over rust.