CEI’s Chris Horner sends word of this development, via The American Spectator:
Last night the Competitive Enterprise Institute, through its outside counsel Gibson Dunn, filed its brief arguing against NASA’s rather scattershot and contradictory effort to dismiss our lawsuit requesting certain documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)(press release available here).
Our suit, CEI vs. NASA (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia), followed on the heels of ClimateGate, and a December 2009 Notice of Intent to Sue if NASA did not turn over certain records withheld since CEI sought them in August 2007 and January 2008 requests. That Notice was eleven months ago and, despite NASA offering some documents and admitting — temporarily — that certain others relating to the advocacy site used by NASA scientists, RealClimate.org were “agency records”, NASA then ceased its brief steps to comply with the transparency statute FOIA.
Despite NASA stonewalling CEI has already learned, for example, that NASA does not, contrary to widespread media and pressure group claims, have an independent temperature data set. Instead, as NASA told USA Today in an email, despite its serial, breathless press releases trumpeting some new temperature high, it actually is just a modeling office, which also (for unknown reasons, possibly extra attention and importance, or mere advocacy) cobbles together some US data from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) with that of the Climatic Research Unit’s temperature history. You may recall how CRU withdrew its claim to a temperature history data set after ClimateGate led to an admission it actually lost its data.
Specifically, CEI’s FOIA suit seeks documents and emails relating to NASA’s temperature record, which NASA was forced to correct in response to criticism from a leading climate watchdog, Steve McIntyre. Those corrections destroyed NASA’s stance that U.S. temperatures have been steadily rising in recent years and returned 1934, not 1998, to being the warmest year on record. NASA refuses to give CEI the computer file they used to make these changes, whose title includes “Steve” and “alternate cleaning.”
CEI also seeks emails from NASA scientists using Real Climate.org on official time using official resources, often to advance what NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (its climate activist office) has decided is appropriate public advocacy.
In addition to uncovering the “Steve”/”cleaning” file, a few of the more interesting pieces of evidence expounded upon in CEI’s brief include:
Read the rest at The American Spectator
From the press release:
A few compelling questions and pieces of information:
- Why did NASA delete timestamps off the [realclimate.org] website? After CEI filed the FOIA seeking RealClimate emails, administrators at Real Climate deleted all timestamps on all of their postings, making it impossible to show they were made during work hours.
- NASA admits that it discovered 3,500 emails on the computer used by Dr. Gavin Schmidt, a taxpayer-funded NASA researcher who spends working hours running and writing for RealClimate. But NASA refuses to produce the emails.
- Why did NASA delay? NASA did not ask Dr. Schmidt to look for responsive records until 22 months after we sent them the FOIA and threatened to sue. It is highly likely relevant emails were destroyed during this period.
- Furthermore, NASA took more than 900 days to produce documents pursuant to CEI’s two 2007 requests. The agency took more than 700 days to produce records in response to CEI’s 2008 request. NASA does not explain these delays. FOIA requires that an agency produce responsive records within 20 days. Although agencies rarely meet that deadline, even for “complex” FOIA requests, NASA’s average processing time is under 100 days. In 2008, NASA processed complex requests in 82 days, on average. In 2009, it processed such requests in 89 days, on average.
CEI is represented by Andrew S. Tulumello of Gibson Dunn, which is handling the lawsuit pro bono.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I’m encouraged by this lawsuit. But lawsuits can take a long time if defendants use delaying tactics.
But a Republican Congress has subpoena power and can act quickly, with just a House vote, or even with the vote of a subcommittee.
Let Mr. Gavin Schmidt argue that Congress can’t be permitted to see his taxpayer-funded emails, and can’t be allowed to review the time stamps on the (Michael Mann owned) Real Climate blog that he has run for years during GISS working hours.
jason says:
November 4, 2010 at 2:44 pm
“Schmidt is at the eye of the storm. I bet him and Hansen have sore fingers from hitting that delete key.”
Anyone, such as the CRU/GISS crew, who might think that hitting the delete key permanently deletes anything should not be allowed near a computer and certainly not onto the internet.
Deleted material can be recovered by forensics and the action of deletion suggests a willful intent to hide.
On the upside, with Republicans in charge of the House again I’d imagine that there would be one or two chairmen that would love to subpeona those records…
A congressional request is better than a judge. Screw with congress and you get defunded.
Can not wait to read these FOI,and emails once they are released.agw should die a timly death or as Shakespeare wrote;
“Cry ‘Havoc’, and let slip the dogs of war, that this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men, groaning for burial”
Mycroft
Comments are even better than the post. Lots of clever b…… here!
It is so sad. NASA used to stand for crazy intelligent. Now it just stand for crazy.
What the hell happened? They used to be run by your average conservative “dumb” beaurcrats but at least them “dumb” ones new the import of intelligence however crazy it was.
Why did they only keep the crazy ones? (And apparently with a preference to the crazy activistic hippies.)
….removing time stamps ….
Undoubtedly the action of those with nothing to hide, right?
Will NASA set up an ‘independent’ inquiry next?
Hats off to CEI! It’s a good path taken by CEI, to take legal actions on misallocation of (US) public funds for political science in climate, while other groups take on the non-science aspect of AGW belief. 2010-2011 could be the coffin on the nail of the AGW religion.
Ammonite says:
November 4, 2010 at 1:16 pm
It is very difficult to construct a coherent theory that accounts for the internal dynamics of recent warming in the absence of elevated GHGs.
“Recent warming” has not occurred, unless you are roughly talking about the period including Earth’s emergence from the Little Ice Age and ignoring the past 10-15 yrs. of no GW, something which none of the ipcc Model scenarios predicted. Nor has a tropical trophospheric “hot spot” developed, which the Climate Scientists are now saying is a nonspecific result of GW from any cause. Hence, there is no “recent warming” according to ipcc Climate Science itself.
The something in the air in America. What was able to be swept away before is now going to be brought into the light. Let the public see and know what has been going on at GISS. The fingers of a corrupt Washington has been thriving there. But now we the people have gotten up from the sleep. And I feel this is only a start. Washington will continue to be changed. I don’t see an end in sight.
Funny how they think it is the skeptics who are holding up the scientific process. Gavin’s justification for all the deletion of serious questions on RC. One could call it gissinformation.
predictions 2011-2012
HadCrut UEA will be sued and shut down
Giss temp will be sued and shut down (see above)
Mann and Penn Climate division will be shut down and sued
Climate science will fade as a “credible subject”
BOM and NZ climate will be sued
etc
All scientists involved will be retired LOL
“Why did NASA delete timestamps off the [realclimate.org] website? After CEI filed the FOIA seeking RealClimate emails, administrators at Real Climate deleted all timestamps on all of their postings, making it impossible to show they were made during work hours.”
Makes it hard to identify times on RealClimate’s servers.
But they keep forgetting all the places they post stuff.
Such as the discussion of the RC Wiki page:
‘…I wonder how useful the source country section is? It is not a criteria I have ever used to look for material, but maybe others do.
agreed. We could downplay this category. Initially I thought it would be interesting to see the differences in style/argument among the different source countries, but this is probably not very useful. Admin 10:17, 12 August 2008 (EDT)…”
The more you try to hide, the deeper you have to dig.
BTW, snagged a copy, in case they edit it, too.
But this post will show the time and date that the information was there.
Gavin and Mann refuse to turn over incriminating information. If they turn over only part, they will prove they have tried to destroy records.
The trouble with lies and deceit is that they usually catch up with you in the end !! The bigger the web (pardon the pun) of lies, the greater the chance the deception will ultimately fail. It doesn’t matter if it takes 10 minutes or 10 years – the truth will come out, and as seems clear to anybody from the ‘outside’, only a handful are really responsible for all this disinformation and deliberate public misleading (or fraud if you prefer).
Roll on the justice….
I will never be an apologist for GISS, Hansen, Schmidt, or the rest of that crew; nevertheless, I have first hand experience producing emails that are more than a year old. It is a huge pain in the derrier. In some cases, they are gone because the records retention policy does not require emails that are not “records” to be retained. At EPA we dump these every 90 days. Worse, most federal employees have no discipline regarding the record retention policies. Thus, the FOIA guys at GISS/NASA are in deep and are going to get creamed, either from a judge or Congress, and probably both.
It’s never the deed that gets you in trouble, it’s the cover up.
All you have to do is say “Yeah, I messed up, my bad” and generally all will be forgiven.
A prefect storm could be coming.
A Republican congress has coercive powers about making people
testify.
To RockyRoad, DCC, Gene Zeien, Nullius in Verba, JPeden. I am happy to discuss the pros and cons of CO2 induced warming (as I understand it) on any science dominated thread. Unfortunately this thread highlights the recent trend of using of the legal framework to harass scientists. I see this as a tremendous wrong. If their methods are deficient or conclusions ill-conceived, show them as such in the science journals.
Ammonite, you cannot explain earlier warming and cooling periods with CO2, so why do you think now is any different?
The fact is that once you got a convenient story that fed a lot of special interests, you stopped looking, didn’t you?
The night over day part is a signature of UHI. I believe the others have been dealt with here in the past.
re: Gene Zeien says: November 4, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Even before being cold enough for salt usage, there’s the effect of water usage in populated areas. This is particularly noticeable in very dry climates – for example Las Vegas. Phoenix too I believe, and so on. Anywhere there are significant population ‘islands’ there is all the vegetation being watered that normally wouldn’t exist (this more the case in drier climates of course), regularly watered lawns, flower beds, trees, pools, created reservoirs, ponds, and lakes, recreational facilities or displays, water fountains…. The strip in Las Vegas is notably more humid than even a few miles further out in the very tightly packed suburbs, and they are notably more humid than a bit further out in the desert. Both winter and summer.
Also, iirc, temperatures in the Antarctic have dropped, not risen.
Anthony .
Thanks for the update re CEI’s lawsuit . I should have been a little more on top of the situation , but sometimes it gets hard to stay abreast of everything . If it weren’t for Chris Horner , I’d never had found WUWT . BTW , loved ” it’s deja CRU all over again “.
Thank you USA, for having the courage to fight back, by voting to excise Post-normal sleaze, spin and stupidity from what western politicians have been taking for granted for far too long!
OK, it’s just the first steps in cauterising the cancer that threatens us, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Questions that were, until recently, unutterable are now bubbling to the surface.
The strange warmist alliance that encompasses opportunistic capitalists, hippy stoners, sloppy scientists, rent-seeking politicos, gullible journalists and, a myriad of, useful dupes can no longer duck the debate.
Consensus is a wonderful weapon but it is double edged. Early gains crumble when confronted by accurate revelations!
Welcome to the future.
Jim says:
November 4, 2010 at 5:49 pm
A prefect storm could be coming.
A Republican congress has coercive powers about making people
testify.
It’s already begun:
http://www.infowars.com/new-republican-house-promises-investigation-of-global-warming-fraud/