Breaking: Mann and Wahl have responded. See updates below.
3/9 12:45 PM Pacific Time. This story is now updated to be consistent with Mann and Wahl’s response:
By Steven Mosher
and charles the moderator
Sources confirm that a federal inspector has questioned Eugene Wahl and Wahl has confirmed that Mann asked [forwarded] him [a request] to delete emails. Wahl has also informed the inspector that he did delete emails as the result of this request.
There are times during the course of Climategate when you feel like you are in a twilight zone episode, especially the kind where the ambiguous meaning of terms plays a critical role, like “To Serve Man”.
That episode is apt because of the central role trust plays and because of the role puzzle solvers play in uncovering that the do-gooder aliens cannot be trusted. “Serving”, of course, has now taken on new meanings, as in “you got served” or pwned. With the release of the news that Mann successfully [forwarded instructions] instructed [to] Wahl to delete emails, it’s clear that Mann got served or pwned by Wahl; but more importantly, he got served or assisted by Dr. Pell, Dr. Scaroni, Dr Brune, and Dr. Foley. Who are they? They are the Penn State team who served Dr. Mann by purporting to exonerate him in the Penn State inquiry, despite Mann’s own non-responsive response to a key question being on its face evasive, and begging followup questions. Regardless, Mann’s non-answer did not even purport to support their conclusion about his actions. In short, they covered for him.
The puzzle begins back in 2006. Keith Briffa the author of chapter 6 in the 4th Assessment Report of the IPCC (AR4) is struggling under the directive of review editor Johnathan Overpeck, who has encouraged him to come up with something “more compelling than the Hockey Stick”, that iconic symbol of Global warming created by Michael Mann in the third assessment report.
Briffa is struggling with the comments and suggestions of a particular reviewer who we now know was Steve McIntyre, the citizen scientist who has been dogging Mann for several years. In what appears to be violation of IPCC rules Briffa writes to Eugene Wahl asking for assistance in answering McIntyre’s comments. More important than this communication being apparently at odds with IPCC directives, is that Briffa is asking Wahl to comment on McIntyre’s work, a process that is clearly supposed to take place in peer reviewed literature. Wahl and McIntyre had both been critical of each other’s work and such disputes are most fairly handled by independent third parties and not by the disputants themselves.
In mid 2006 the following exchange occurs between Briffa and Eugene Wahl:
From: Keith Briffa [mailto:k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx]
Sent: Tue 7/18/2006 10:20 AM
To: Wahl, Eugene R
Subject: confidential
Gene
I am taking the liberty (confidentially) to send you a copy of the reviewers[McIntyre’s] comments (please keep these to yourself) of the last IPCC draft chapter. I am concerned that I am not as objective as perhaps I should be and would appreciate your take on the comments from number 6-737 onwards , that relate to your reassessment of the Mann et al work. I have to consider whether the current text is fair or whether I should change things in the light of the sceptic comments. In practise this brief version has evolved and there is little scope for additional text , but I must put on record responses to these comments – any confidential help , opinions are appreciated . I have only days now to complete this revision and response
Wahl responds
Thoughts and perspective concerning the reviewer’s comments per se. These are coded in blue and are in the “Notes” column between pages 103 and 122 inclusive. It got to the point that I could not be exhaustive, given the very lengthy set of review thoughts, so I am also attaching a review article Caspar [Ammann] and I plan to submit to Climatic Change in the next few days….Please note that this Ammann-Wahl text is sent strictly confidentially — it should not be cited or mentioned in any form, and MUST not be transmitted without permission. However, I am more than happy to send it for your use, because it succinctly summarizes what we have found on all the issues that have come up re: MBH. As you can see, we agree at some level with some of the criticisms raised by MM [McIntyre] and others, but we do not find that they invalidate MBH in any substantial way.
Briffa responds
Gene
here is where I am up to now with my responses (still a load to do) you can see that I have “borrowed (stolen)” from 2 of your responses in a significant degree – please assure me that this OK (and will not later be obvious) hopefully.You will get the whole text(confidentially again ) soon. You could also see that I hope to be fair to Mike[Mann] – but he can be a little unbalanced in his remarks sometime – and I have had to disagree with his interpretations of some issues also. Please do not pass these on to anyone at all.
Keith
Wahl responds, jumping into the “divergence” problem which has come to be known as the “hide the decline” problem.
Hi Keith:
Here is the text with my comments. I will go over the “stolen” parts (highlighted in blue outline) for a final time tomorrow morning, but I wanted to get this to you ASAP. The main new point I have to make is added in bold/blue font on pp. 101-103. I question the way the response to the comment there is currently worded, as it seems to imply that the divergence issue really does invalidate any dendro-based reconstructions before about 1850–which I imagine is not what you would like to say. I give a series of arguments against this as a general conclusion. Maybe I got over-bold in doing so, as in my point (1) I’m examining issues that are at the very core of your expertise! Excuse me that one, but I decided to jump in anyway. Let me know if I got it wrong in any way!
Briffa responds
First Gene – let me say that I never intended that you should spend so much time on this – though I really appreciate your take on these points. The one you highlight here – correctly warns me that in succumbing to the temptation to be lazy in the sense of the brief answer that I have provided – I do give an implied endorsement of the sense of the whole comment. This is not, of course what I intended. I simply meant to agree that some reference to the “divergence” issue was necessitated . I will revise the reply to say briefly that I do not agree with the interpretation of the reviewer. I am attaching what I have done (see blue highlighting) to the section in response to comments (including the addition of the needed extra section on the “tree-ring issues” called for by several people). I have had no feedback yet on this as it has not been generally circulated , but thought you might like to see it. PLEASE REMEMBER that this is “for your eyes only ” . Please do NOT feel that I am asking /expecting you to go through this in any detail – but given the trouble you have taken,I thought it reasonable to give you a private look. Cheers
Keith
So, Briffa writes confidentially to Wahl for help and Wahl assists him by passing a copy of a paper that has yet to be published. The aim is to answer concerns that McIntyre as reviewer has raised. Wahl and Amman’s words are incorporated in the response to McIntyre with the hope that no one will ever notice.
Two years later, someone does notice. It’s May 24th 2008, Steve McIntyre, climate science puzzle solver, is reading the reviewer comments to chapter 6 of AR4 written in 2006. In the course of reviewing Briffa’s replies to him, McIntyre notes something peculiar. Briffa’s replies, written in 2006, seemed to plagiarize an unpublished paper by Casper Amman and Eugene Wahl published in 2007. That is, in 2006 Briffa was repeating the argument of a paper that was not published until 2007. How could Briffa plagiarize an article that hadn’t been published? Why would he repeat the arguments almost word for word? Who was feeding Briffa his arguments? How was Briffa doing this if all communication with the authors had to be part of the official record?
At the time, in May of 2008, McIntyre assumed that Briffa was getting information from Casper Ammann since Ammann was listed as a contributing author to chapter 6. It did not occur to McIntyre that Wahl was the source of the text. Thanks to the individual who liberated the Climategate emails, we now know that Wahl was the source of that text. The Climategate emails, quoted above, show Briffa and Wahl exchanging emails about the way McIntyre’s arguments should be handled. Confidentially, outside the process of the IPCC which is designed to capture reviewer objections and authors’ responses to those objections. Wahl is brought in by Briffa to defend his own work. And defend it with literature that has not been published yet.
At the same time in 2008, across the ocean, David Holland had been reading McIntyre’s work and he had issued an FOIA request to the Climatic Research Unit–CRU. That FOIA request covered all correspondence coming in and out of CRU relative to chapter 6 of AR4. The hunt for the source that was feeding Briffa was on, with Holland leading the charge. At CRU, FOIA officer Palmer instructs the team that they must do everything “by the book” because Holland will most certainly appeal a rejection letter.
In that context, Jones writes the famous email to Mann. Jones requests that Mann delete his emails and he requests that Mann contact Wahl and have Wahl delete his emails. Is Jones covering his bases in case of an appeal? Is he covering his bases against an FOIA request that might be served on Mann and Wahl in the US? In any case, he appears to be conspiring with others to deny Holland his FOIA rights.
Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.We will be getting Caspar to do likewise. I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper
Mann responds that he will contact Wahl ASAP, which he does.
Hi Phil,
laughable that CA would claim to have discovered the problem. They would have run off to the Wall Street Journal for an exclusive were that to have been true. I’ll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: generwahl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
talk to you later,
mike
As Wahl told the investigators in 2011, Mann contacted [forwarded the email from Jones requesting deletion to] him and Wahl deleted his mails.
In 2010, in an effort to clear Mann of any wrong doing, a committee of inquiry was set up at Penn State. We now know that committee failed miserably. They failed for many reasons, but the Wahl admission is the starkest example.
Here is one allegation the committee investigated:
Allegation 2: Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?
Finding 2. After careful consideration of all the evidence and relevant materials, the inquiry committee finding is that there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data related to AR4, as suggested by Dr. Phil Jones. Dr. Mann has stated that he did not delete emails in response to Dr. Jones’ request. Further, Dr. Mann produced upon request a full archive of his emails in and around the time of the preparation of AR4. The archive contained e-mails related to AR4.
The committee found this because they apparently failed to understand Mann’s reply. As they reported:
He [Mann] explained that he never deleted emails at the behest of any other scientist, specifically including Dr. Phil Jones, and that he never withheld data with the intention of obstructing science; …
What can we make of this? Mann was apparently asked the question: “Did you engage in or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete emails.”
And it seems clear he only answered half of the question, leaving the unanswered second part dangling: did you contact anyone or otherwise ‘indirectly’ participate in deleting records? This either did not strike, or did not interest, the Penn State ‘investigators’. This despite that Mann, it appears, answered “carefully” and incompletely. He only answered that he hadn’t deleted emails. He never directly denies partaking, indirectly, in the deletion of Wahl’s emails. He apparently withheld the information that he had asked [forwarded the request to] Wahl to delete emails.
Is this a lie? Not directly. It’s more what Wikipedia would describe as “Careful Speaking”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie
Careful speaking is distinct from the above in that the speaker wishes to avoid imparting certain information or admitting certain facts and, additionally, does not want to ‘lie’ when doing so. Careful speaking involves using carefully-phrased statements to give a ‘half-answer’: one that does not actually ‘answer’ the question, but still provides an appropriate (and accurate) answer based on that question. As with ‘misleading’, below, ‘careful speaking’ is not outright lying.
So why did the inquiry, stocked with Mann’s fellow professors, fail to ask good follow up questions? We really do not know because we don’t have access to the transcript of their interview with Mann. Did he intend to deceive? Or did he just speak “carefully?” It would seem that the actual transcript of the questions and answers should be published. Perhaps Congress should serve the members of the inquiry with a subpoena. That would allow people to decide if Mann lied or if he just spoke carefully.
And there are a few more questions we need to ask. Mann claims that he never deleted the emails. But he asked [forwarded Jones’s request to] Wahl to delete the emails. This makes no sense. It makes no sense that Mann would participate in a cover up by passing along a message to another participant of that cover-up downstream and not delete emails himself. It defies any logical reconstruction of events. Why would Mann ask [forward a request to] Wahl to do something that he himself would not do? We also know from the inquiry that Mann delivered emails to the inquiry. From that evidence and his testimony they concluded that he deleted no emails. This does not compute. [S.M: See update below for a possible explanation ]
Jones requested of Mann: Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
The inquiry stated: The archive contained e-mails related to AR4. (Hmm…more “Careful Speaking”?)
Did the inquiry find any emails of Mann communicating with Briffa re AR4 or just some emails related to AR4?
Did Mann turn over all the emails he wrote/received or only those he didn’t delete?
Was the email from Phil Jones requesting deletion among the emails Mann delivered to the inquiry?
Did the IT staff serve Mann, by letting him know that what he initially attempted to delete were in fact retained on the University mail server?
Did Mann turn over emails to the inquiry that he had previously deleted, deleted and then recovered with the help of some sympathetic University IT staff?
These questions need to be asked.
Perhaps Congress should serve Mann a subpoena.
Perhaps, the IG, the NSF, or some other suitable independent third party can investigate this with people who know how to watch for the pea under the thimble, and not be mislead by “Careful Speaking”.
=================================================================
UPDATES:
Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit has the goods in this: Wahl Transcript Excerpt
Chris Horner at DailyCaller also has a review: Penn State whitewashed ClimateGate
In fact, Chris Horner and the Competitive Enterprise Institute were instrumental in efforts over a year to get this and other forthcoming FOIA info into the public domain. – Anthony
UPDATE 3/9 12PM Mann and Wahl have responded see here.
Excerpt:
Mann, reached on vacation in Hawaii, said the stories yesterday were “libelous” and false. “They’re spreading a lie about me,” he said of the Web sites. “This has been known for a year and a half that all I did was forward Phil’s e-mail to Eugene.” Asked why he sent the e-mail to his colleague, Mann said, “I felt Eugene Wahl had to be aware of this e-mail … it could be used against him. I didn’t delete any e-mails and nor did I tell Wahl to delete any e-mails.” Why didn’t Mann call Wahl to discuss the odd request? “I was so busy. It’s much easier to e-mail somebody. No where did I approve of the instruction to destroy e-mails.”
Also at the above link, Wahl has now publicly stated that he did in fact delete emails in response to the request forwarded to him by Mann, rendering moot our need to wait for our original sources to confirm this story.
UPDATE: 3/9 6PM Chris Horner, whose story at the Daily Caller prompted a fair amount of outrage from AGW proponents, has responded to Wahl and Mann here
==========================================================
h/t SF Grand Master, Damon Knight, who was the author of the original short story this Twilight Zone episode was based upon.
Jones specifically asked Mann to delete emails with Briffa with regard to AR4. Mann claims that he deleted no mails. This is entirely possible, especially if there were no mails fitting the description. Canvasing the Climategate mails, we can only find a few mails between Briffa and Mann related to Ar4. If there were few or no mails to delete, then it does make sense that Mann could have passed the instruct to delete onto Wahl, without deleting mails himself. S. Mosher.
I always thought that Mann’s reply to the Penn State investigators regarding this issue was too clever by half.
Tastes like pork I am told.
Good work on this, Steven. The problem is if Congress subpoenas Mann, they will have to offer immunity from prosecution. This certainly looks worthy of the interest of a criminal prosecutor to me.
It certainly makes one wonder what other communications with authors was not part of the official record.
Fascinating reading! Of course it is just another plum in the pudding as far as the scope of the climategate emails go. But as we have seen even in recent days (I think it was your article with the link to the Alternate web site instead of the beast), there are those out there that refuse to acknowledge any fact not fed to them by their handlers. So the pontificating blowhards of PSU will go on thinking what a good boy they are, when in fact the world is laughing at their nakedness.
Careful Speaking Steven?? You are at the bottom of the barrel here. How can an answer be appropriate if it is partial and tends to obscure the fact that it is incomplete?? It may be appropriate from the point of view of the liars, for whatever reasons they have, but, this needs to be explicitly stated when discussing it. It in no way changes the FACT that the truth is not conveyed within the context of the question(s).
Try a REAL resource instead of Wikipedia next time.
Steven and Charles:
This is a very nice summary of the issue. Is there a reason that you cannot be more explicit as to the source of Wahl’s statements? Is there likely to be more to come?
There another possibility. We know that Briffa took emails home “for safe keeping”. Perhaps Mann “moved” the emails from the server to a memory stick and then took them home “for safe keeping”. In this way, if the university ever looked for emails, they would not find any, but if Mann was specifically asked for them, he could produce them from the hidden location. Just speculation on my part.
Use the telephone next time, guys.
and this is why i don’t donate to my alma mater any more.
well, that and they decided to let ramona afrkia speak on campus.
I really don’t like the idea of statements from anonymous sources, but if true this is gonna get ugly and undermine the credibility of the academy and science in general… after all, the panel that exonerated Mann were not climate scientists.
The house of cards will soon be coming down.
Kudos to all those stalwart individuals that have doggedly pursued this noble cause. I have never made a “charitable” donation that made more sense and gave better results than supporting this and other climate realist organizations.
Well done!
As a scientist, albeit a medical scientist, I find the deceit, subterfuge and obfuscation exhibited by The Team profoundly disturbing and the lack of action taken by their parent institutions appalling.
A German professor of anaesthesia has sent shockwaves through my profession by being found to have falsified data for studies on colloids which are widely used for resuscitation and intraoperative fluid replacement. Over 90 papers, some in leading journals, have been retracted, the professor dismissed and his institution have ordered a full review.
It might be argued that The Team’s deceits haven’t cost lives in contrast to the German professor’s actions where it is alleged that the use of colloids based upon his work has increased mortality. Nevertheless, their work has been used to justify policy changes and spending decisions that have had severe adverse effects on millions of people, not least the poor through food prices and energy costs.
Where are the rigorous investigations by the parent institutions? Where are the retractions of discredited published work?
-I did not inhale.
-I did not have sex with that woman.
And so on…..
Good exposition of the events. Couple of thoughts:
Given the circumstances, it is hard to see how Mann’s “careful speaking,” if not an explicit lie, was intended to do anything other than leave an impression that the question had been answered properly. In other words it was an intent to deceive the listener into thinking that the answer was “no.” Is a lie only a lie when it is explicit, or can intentionally creating a false impression constitute a lie? Sometimes it may be necessary to engage in careful speak, for example when the question itself is logically inconsistent or when a simple answer would leave an inaccurate impression. In this case, it seems the intent was indeed to create an false impression with the carefully worded answer.
“Mann claims that he never deleted the emails. But he asked Wahl to delete the emails. This makes no sense. It makes no sense that Mann would participate in a cover up by passing along a message to another participant of that cover-up downstream and not delete emails himself. It defies any logical reconstruction of events. Why would Mann ask Wahl to do something that he himself would not do?”
I have to disagree on this one. I can very easily see Mann forwarding Jones’ request to Wahl (if for no other reason than to be able to tell Jones, “Sure I passed on the request; no idea if Wahl will delete, but I’ve done my part to ask him, as you requested.”) and then having second thoughts himself about his own actions or possible repercussions if he were to delete.
I agree with you that, given the circumstances, it would be critical to delve into Mann’s personal activities to see if he deleted (and therefore explicitely lied to the panel). Given the circumstances, we might even be tempted to think it is more likely than not that he deleted emails. But the fact that he passed on a request Jones wanted him to pass on doesn’t mean he would necessarily take the request to heart himself.
“As with ‘misleading’, below, ‘careful speaking’ is not outright lying.”–Wikipedia (ugh!)
Only a Protestant could come up with this. Of course it’s lying. Fudging, falsifying, dodging, twisting, spinning, or “careful speaking”–it doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s lying by omission, as every child tortured with Catholic catechism classes well knows. Why are most of these words listed as synonyms of “lying” in almost every English thesaurus?
Mr. Mann lied. Period. No ifs, ands, or buts. Now, what are the “authorities” going to do about it?????
If Wahl admitted this… wait my brain is trying to understand why there are no criminal proceedings going on right now.
Interesting times. I’m sure some people are hoping this will just go away, but it won’t
The people on the Penn State Inquiry wanted to be misled so they could come out eith their predetermined report and be done with all this. Now it seems they may have dug themselves a deeper hole. One can only hope that is true, but as with all the AGW fraud stuff, I’m not going to hold my breath.
Kuhnkat
“Try a REAL resource instead of Wikipedia next time.”
Actually I started with a philosophy article on lying. I’ve been pretty consistent thru this whole climategate thing. Lying is making a statement you know to be false, for the purpose of deception.
if I ask you : did you punch your brother and steal his bike
and u answer: I punched my brother.
You answered half of the question truthfully and you intend to fool me, by hoping that I wont realize that you only answered half of my question.
You might have a different definition of a lie. If so, maybe we can have a philosophy thread on it. I’m the king of england so I get to decide things.
( hint speaking falsely, with no intention to deceive)
mpaul says:
March 8, 2011 at 8:52 am (Edit)
There another possibility. We know that Briffa took emails home “for safe keeping”. Perhaps Mann “moved” the emails from the server to a memory stick and then took them home “for safe keeping”. In this way, if the university ever looked for emails, they would not find any, but if Mann was specifically asked for them, he could produce them from the hidden location. Just speculation on my part.
######
ya. I suggested the same thing to CTM. but by that point in our writing it was getting complex enough.
@kwik He didn’t either. They were talking about it on one of the news roundtable shows back at the time. One of the guys piped up and said that he didn’t because he was there at the time. When they picked up the host’s jaw from the floor, he asked what happened. The fellow was a Brit, and it was while Clinton was in London. He stated that they all got together to smoke some good hash, but when it came to Clinton’s turn, he sucked it in, but could not inhale because of his allergies. He wanted to, but couldn’t. So correct with regard to the absolute facts, incorrect according to the intent.
Nothing will happen. Orthodox Party members never get in trouble. Only heretics and truth-tellers get in trouble.
Bernie says:
March 8, 2011 at 8:47 am (Edit)
Steven and Charles:
This is a very nice summary of the issue. Is there a reason that you cannot be more explicit as to the source of Wahl’s statements? Is there likely to be more to come?
#################
I don’t want to have people thinking that the climategate leaker has anything
to do with this. So, I will say that they are not connected. There may be more to come.let me describe that.
If Mann emailed wahl the instructions to destroy, then there is a big problem.
This story will stay alive until all the records are released. That could be a process that lasts a long time.
Well, we now know for sure that Mann, Briffa, Wahl, Jones, et al are all corrupt liars.
Truthful Answer: “No, I didn’t need any prompting by anyone else, I was well ahead of the game and deleted emails of my own accord. Don’t you know who I am? Nobody tells me what to do, especially not that cry baby pommy weakling.
As for witholding data with the intention of obstructing science, is that what you call M&Ms activities, science? I don’t hand over my data to any Tom Dick or Steve, let them get their own data, I keep mine for real scientists.”
Anton.
The inquiry did not publish the transcript of its interview with Mann.
you dont know what he said. you only know what they say he said.
so, I prefer to stick to the facts as I know them. This means the inquiry
needs to be investigated.
I thought that this investigation was conducted by the University of Pennsylvania not Penn State. Am I mistaken?
Steve, you are correct. Thanks for pointing that out.
” the Climactic Research Unit”
No wonder they whipped themselves into a frenzy over global warming. They were in heat.
Good work Mosh and Charles. Whitewashing history is one of the establishments most unappealing habits. Keep chipping away, there is important stuff to be uncovered.
One other tiny nitpick:
Wasn’t Briffa lead author of Ch6 not sole author?
Eric anderson.
Thanks. those are just the kind of alternate explantions that need to be fleshed out.
good job! Charles had another scenario, which would explain Mann’s behavior, we will see if readers can come up with more.
That way investigators can ask all the right questions.
Anton says:
March 8, 2011 at 9:06 am
“As with ‘misleading’, below, ‘careful speaking’ is not outright lying.”–Wikipedia (ugh!)
Only a Protestant could come up with this. Of course it’s lying.
Thought of it myself, but maybe it’s just post-normalcy instead. Hiding the truth, be it all or part of it, is lying.
Steve McIntyre has posted on CA excerpts from the NOAA IG report of a session with Eugene Wahl. The excerpts show Wahl confirming that Mann forwarded the request to delete certain emails and that Wahl did so. climateaudit.org/2011/03/08/wahl-transcript-excerpt/
Charles,
Thanks to you as well for your work on this. I did not mean to short change you earlier.
kuhnkat says:
“…Try a REAL resource instead of Wikipedia next time…”
Interesting (not really). You toss in a quick ad hominem on the way out the door.
One thing that Wikipedia provides that many people seem to ignore, it that it is readily available and accessible. Not some dusty tome squirreled away on a decaying bookshelf.
Sure, there is an issue with accuracy, but the prudent reader will take what available references are listed and verify if the provided data is accurate.
I thought – incorrectly apparently – that universities and other organizations maintained internal servers that handled incoming and outgoing e-mail, and further, that all of this digital traffic was stored on those units. In a practical sense, then, this would mean that a person using a university e-mail system could not delete files except on a personal computer. A request for files to the university should search the servers and not the researcher’s office computer because those disk drives are not secure archives.
Allegation 2: Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?
The allegation is unambiguous, “engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly,”, begs the question of whether he saw anything whatsoever regarding deleting emails. He lied.
Or a Jesuit.
This doesn’t mean that Mann didn’t delete emails because of his own desire to delete such emails.
This statement merely says that Mann claims he didn’t delete emails BECAUSE of another scientists. In other words, it seems as if the answer addresses MOTIVE not whether or not any emails were actually deleted.
I would observe that Wahl’s testimony would indicate that Mann knew that the contents of Penn State’s Finding #2 was false when published.
His failure to correct that false finding may be indicative of his trustworthiness!
An implausible argument can be made that Mann didn’t lie. Wrong question, though. What should be asked: Did Mann tell the truth?
And for anyone who thinks the Team uses the scientific method, they don’t. They operate on a preconceived agenda as this email comment shows:
Climate charlatans riding the taxpayer gravy train.
Thank you for the great summary (and cartoon).
I wonder what Gavin et al can do to counter this? It would seem that as the divergent accounts pile up around the team, the only viable solutions are: fade quietly into obscurity, attack colleagues, or go down with the sinking hockey stick ship.
If he put e-mails on a memory stick and deleted them from the server, he could then truthfully say “that he never deleted emails at the behest of any other scientist.”
Not only that, but he could say that he never deleted them at all! If caught, he could claim he merely “moved” them!
Tangled Web city!
‘Mann claims that he never deleted the emails at the behest of any other scientist,’
First define ‘e-mails’ , then define ‘he’ and there, in-part lies the trick , of course if some one else deleted his -emails his correct , if they where not kept as e-mails but an format his correct and as wobble has pointed out there is other wiggle room to be found .
Mann is a very old hand at this game and in replies like this one it shows. Mann could have IM Wahl the order to delete and he would be correct in that he never ‘e-mailed’ Wahl about deleting e-mails
“Perhaps Congress should serve Mann a subpoena”
Just one question about this – what is the jurisdiction of congress in the UK?
Thanks a lot for your help and congratulations on winning the best “science” blog award.
http://mitigatingapathy.blogspot.com/
A simple answer to whether the e-mails were deleted by Mann. Demand he produce all the e-mails re:AR4. if he has not deleted them then surely he must have them and they go right to the heart of the Team activities.
Penn State (and Penn State alumni) better realize that they are NOT too big for this cover-up to severely damage their reputation.
Steve Mosher said:
“Is this a lie? Not directly. It’s more what Wikipedia would describe as “Careful Speaking””
Steve, when a statement is made, or information is delivered with the intent to deceive, that is called a lie. Wikipedia is wrong, again.
Definition of “lie” from Dictionary.com.
Me, I would like to get them in a sweat lodge and watch them sweat.
Could be they do not need hot rocks, a lodge or fire.
Could be hard to hide the incline of sweating now.
“Or did he just speak “carefully?”
He equivocated. And as my old High School English master taught me, to equivocate is to lie.
“RobW says:
March 8, 2011 at 10:24 am
A simple answer to whether the e-mails were deleted by Mann. Demand he produce all the e-mails re:AR4. if he has not deleted them then surely he must have them and they go right to the heart of the Team activities.”
RobW, all of the emails that are known to exist are now in the public record. Anyone with access to an internet connection can “produce all the emails” that are known to exist. Mann’s magic trick of producing the emails when asked by the investigators (which left the investigators in a state of child like delight) is not much of a feat.
paul says:
March 8, 2011 at 10:22 am
“Perhaps Congress should serve Mann a subpoena”
Just one question about this – what is the jurisdiction of congress in the UK?”
Paul, Mann is a U.S. citizen who resides in the U.S., is and has been an employee of U.S. institutions where he does what some call “research” and is funded by state and Federal tax money. Ergo, he is subject to the jurisdiction of our Congress as well as courts of competent authority. I also suspect that he would be subject to a request for extradition from either the Congress or a court if he were to take refuge in the U.K.
“Steve, when a statement is made, or information is delivered with the intent to deceive, that is called a lie. Wikipedia is wrong, again.”
Generally speaking I would not take a dictionary definition as a final word as you seem to. One simple way to understand this is to realize that we have many many locutions in ordinary language to characterize forms of deception and misleading. Those locutions attempt to represent features and properties that human beings have found important, in my philosophical world ordinary language trumps a dictionary definition.
But let’s use your definition. for your definition to fit mann, you have to know that he intended to deceive.
Maybe he forgot that he forwarded Jones mail to Wahl? maybe he wasnt sure that he did forward it. Maybe he didnt check that wahl actually deleted mails.
Lets take the last case. I’m Mann. I remember that I forwarded him the mail. But I never checked that he complied. and I didn’t delete mails.
Now, ask me if I deleted mails or participated in the deletion?
the CAREFUL answer is this: I did not delete mails.
the FULL answer is: I did not delete mails, and I dont know if wahl did.
If he said he participated in wahls deletion, that ASSUMES he knew that wahl followed the instructions passed on.
Anyway, the real question is. why didnt the inquiry show more intelligence than WUWT readers? hehe
Anton says:
March 8, 2011 at 9:06 am
“As with ‘misleading’, below, ‘careful speaking’ is not outright lying.”–Wikipedia (ugh!)
Only a Protestant could come up with this.
Not so fast, Anton: “The Jesuits hold that neither intentional ambiguity nor the fact of making a mental reservation can be regarded as lying, since, in both cases, all that happens is that one’s neighbor is not actually deceived, but rather his deception is permitted only for a justifiable cause.”’ from ‘The Power and Secret of the Jesuits’ by Rene Fulop-Miller
Since we have not seen the transcript, we have not seen his answer and hence we do not know whether Mann lied or not.
All that we have seen is a summary of what he supposedly said to the panel. If that summary, ie., “He [Mann] explained that he never deleted emails at the behest of any other scientist, specifically including Dr. Phil Jones, and that he never withheld data with the intention of obstructing science; …” is an accurate account of what he actually said, all he is saying is:
‘I never deleted e-mails…’
‘I never withheld data with the intention of obstructing science…’
If as a matter of fact, Mann never deleted any e-mails (or giving him the benefit of doubt, never deleted any e-mails with the intention of obstructing science) AND if Mann never withheld data with the intention of obstructing science, then he did not lie and the statement would be true.
It is noteworthy that he may have deleted e-mails (provided that at the time of making the deletion he did not intend the deletion to obstruct science). It is also noteworthy that he may have withheld data (provided that at the time of the withholding of data he did not intend by the withholding of data to obstruct science).
The simple fact is that if the panel’s summary of his answer is correct, he simply did not answer the question put.
The real failing here lies with the panel. They should have followed up asking him
‘Did you engage in, or participate in, whwether directly and/or indirectly, any actions whatsoever with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones, in the sense of communicating in any way whatsoever to any other person and/or persons a request and/or suggestion to, or to the effect of, deleting, concealing or otherwise destroying emails, information and/or data, related to AR4?’
We had a saying in the navy, “If ya ain’t cheatin,’ ya ain’t tryin.'” Mann’s just an over-achiever.
Dr Mann has now produced the e-mails. As I understand it, his University claimed in response to an FOI request that these did not exist. I’m delighted to hear they have been located. Perhaps he can now substantiate his claim to his investigatory panel that Dr McIntyre requested data in spreadsheet format?
I infer that the Dr McIntyre is Dr Steve McIntyre of the ClimateAudit blog.
Given that Dr Mann testified there is “no merit whatsoever to Mr. McIntyre’s claims here.” Specifically, Dr. Mann repeated that all data, as well as the source codes requested by Dr. McIntyre, were in fact made available to him. All data were listed on Dr. Mann’s FTP site in 2000, and the source codes were made available to Dr. McIntyre about a year after his request was made, in spite of the fact that the National Science Foundation had ruled that scientists were not required to do so. The issue of an “incorrect version” of the data came about because Dr. McIntyre had requested the data (which were already available on the FTP site) in spreadsheet format, and Dr. Rutherford, early on, had unintentionally sent an incorrectly formatted spreadsheet.
Italicised excerpt from http://live.psu.edu/fullimg/userpics/10026/Final_Investigation_Report.pdf
I confess I’ve always found Dr McIntyre’s claim that he asked no such thing to be perfectly plausible.
There’s a reason why when being put under oath, you are told to tell “the truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing but the truth”. A half truth, even if it spoken carefully, is still a lie.
KnR
good points. you know Charles and I spent a lot of time coming up with alternative scenarios and interpretations. at some point we just had to cut it off and throw it out to the readers to have some fun trying to understand the full story from limited facts.
Its a good exercise to flesh out all the arguments and all the possibilities.
For example, should Mann even be the focus. perhaps the inquiry should be investigated.
The point is included near the end that it appeared as if the Inquiry was “Careful Speaking” as well. This might get missed by a light read.
Another scenario that fits the known facts stated above is that Mann could have been working for years undercover with authorities in order to entrap the other researchers into engaging in bad behavior.
But somehow I think we can discard this explanation.
Mann a Liar? If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck….
Last NOAA data for the contiguous U.S. continues to show a significant cooling trend since 1998!
http://thetruthpeddler.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/latest-government-data-shows-us-cooling-at-a-rate-of-9-3-deg-f-century/
richard verney says:
March 8, 2011 at 11:02 am (Edit)
Since we have not seen the transcript, we have not seen his answer and hence we do not know whether Mann lied or not.
######
yes. he also may have not known that Wahl followed the instructions given by Jones.
Summary: dont send in university professors to lead an investigation.
Im actually quite surprised by this – a member of the team has finally admitted the truth – well done Eugene.
CSI: Climategate
How can you have a serious inquiry without having a transcript? That is a strong indication in itself that the “inquiry” was never intended to get to the truth.
Steve: I think you are mealy-mouthing about what happened. Else, why did you relate that Mann only answered half a question? Withing the context of the situation, he was lying.
The man has a PhD, and is not stupid. He knew the meaning of the question. It is clear that he intended to deceive, and his answer was deceitful. Period.
There are liars, and there are intelligent liars.
Mann is one of the brighter liars.
“Sources confirm that a federal inspector has questioned Eugene Wahl and Wahl has confirmed that Mann asked him to delete emails.”
Just ask Mann if the above statment is true.
So this “careful speaking” was “peer reviewed” by 4 of dr Manns’ peers at Penn state, and they found absolutely nothing wrong with his claims.
I really wonder how this may effect the trust in climate science, and dr Manns’ likewise peer reviewed reasearch publications.
Hopefully now the issues of eg upside-down Tijander, Re-values, and other oddities, will finally become interesting to mainstream climate scientists. Why would you trust this guys research when he now has a proven track record of… let’s call it… being creative with the truth?
After Eugen Wahl confessed to have been asked to delete emails and done accordingly,
this appears to be the last chance for realclimate and their ilk to distance themselves from Michael Mann and Phil Jones.
Steve and charles the moderator,
Very nicely put together. This reads very well. It is like a crime novel expose.
Not only did they delete the emails, as you guys showed during the Climategate aftermath, but now we see the full extent of the intent and scale of the cover-up to shield Mann from any criticism.
Steve McIntyre is a true genius.
Thanks for the great article.
Paul W
He never directly denies partaking, indirectly, in the deletion of Wahl’s emails. He apparently withheld the information that he had asked Wahl to delete emails.
Is this a lie? Not directly. It’s more what Wikipedia would describe as “Careful Speaking”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie
In my opinion, if the intention behind the ‘careful speaking’ is to avoid the attempt of the person asking the question to evince the truth, and convince them that their question has been adequately answered, then while it might not be a flat out lie, it is dishonest.
Oh and by the way, it looks like Mann lied. The fact that he can’t discern between a truth and a lie is disturbing.
I subscribe to the Aquinan definition of “lie”, not the Wikipedia notion of “Careful Speaking”
http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/aquinas/sum22069.htm
Here is just as damning notion of lying…
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lying-definition/
In reference to Serving Mann ex Twilight Zone…
I’m not fond of pork. But if one has to serve a dish of Mann, I suggest this:
http://www.porkrecipes.org/
I suggest a Burgundy wine with Mann.
Cheers
PW
@tallbloke
Re “Climactic Research Unit”… I thought the text implied that it was the “last” research unit (after all, we’re all doomed)
Bill Clinton (it depends on the meaning of “is”) is likely giving Mann legal advice.
Perhaps Mann instructed an assistant to delete the e-mails and now feels he can claim that “he” didn’t delete them.
Through all this, Keith Briffa gives every impression of being a man completely out of his depth.
Having had the dubious pleasure of sitting through one of his lectures way back when I was an undergraduate, this does not surprise me at all. At the end of the talk, I seized the opportunity of asking him the $64,000 question : “How can you be certain that tree-ring growth is solely dependant on temperature?”
He shot me a very dark look, and his mumbled reply of “it just does” did not convince me one bit. I have given zero credence to temperature re-constructions from tree-ring proxies ever since.
(from Wiki)
Noble lie
A noble lie is one that would normally cause discord if uncovered, but offers some benefit to the liar and assists in an orderly society, therefore, potentially beneficial to others. It is often told to maintain law, order and safety.
D. King says:
March 8, 2011 at 11:27 am (Edit)
“Sources confirm that a federal inspector has questioned Eugene Wahl and Wahl has confirmed that Mann asked him to delete emails.”
Just ask Mann if the above statment is true.
##############
Mann could say the HE did not ask Wahl to delete mails.
he passed on Jones request. hehe.
maybe he didnt ask Wahl if Wahl complied.
So mann doesnt KNOW if he participated in the deletion of wahls mails.
cause he didnt know whether Wahl complied or not.
even more important.
I tell you to delete mails. You tell me you have. What do I know?
I know that you told me you did. I dont know IF you did.
So, if you asked me ” steve did you participate in the deletion of mails?” I’d say,
assumes facts not in evidence. I know that I asked you. I know that you said you did.
I dont know that you did.
paul: Aquinas
“I answer that, It is one thing to withhold the truth, and another to utter a falsehood. The former is lawful sometimes, for a man is not bound to divulge all truth, but only such as the judge can and must require of him according to the order of justice; as, for instance, when the accused is already disgraced through the commission of some crime, or certain indications of his guilt have already been discovered, or again when his guilt is already more or less proven. On the other hand it is never lawful to make a false declaration. ”
If Mann doesnt know whether Wahl had complied with Jones request to delete mails, then mann really cant answer the question of whether he participated in the deletion of mails. he can only answer that half of the question where he has knowledge.
The inquiries themselves were criminal. They deceived the public. This is going to be a tough house to clean.
This is going to a big story: friendly advice: keep it on the top
Here we go! http://climatedepot.com/
What started out as a genuine concern (AGW) now stinks to high heaven. . I think Cucinelli etc will win this in the long term. My advice for the team is run while you can LOL
Lying is effectively achieved by either acts of commission or omission. Looks like Mr. Mann used both…… What is the next step?
It is time for a criminal investigation…… under oath testimony and interrogation…. where civil and criminal penalties can be applied for deceit. He can be stripped of his academic standing afterward.
The question is not whether Mann lied to Penn State — this question has very little relevance except to Penn State. The larger question is did Mann participate in a conspiracy to evade FOIA? Certainly being an active part of an email chain where people are asking other people to delete emails that are subject to an active FOIA does not look good and begs for a serious official investigation. It doesn’t matter whether Mann deleted emails or whether Mann had knowledge that Wahl deleted emails, etc., etc. What matters most is ‘did Mann actively participate in the conspiracy?’
These are just emails, university investigations, statutory FOI requests and proceedings of the IPCC.
This sort of practise does not happen in other climate science research, in climate science papers that are peer reviewed, climate model runs or in the calculation of the physics of climate.
Just because certain people show a propensity to act unethically for a good cause in their emails or in investigations by universities or in proceedings of the IPCC or under statutory FOI requests, does not mean they are doing so in more important areas of their professional lives.
paul says:
March 8, 2011 at 10:22 am
“Perhaps Congress should serve Mann a subpoena”
Just one question about this – what is the jurisdiction of congress in the UK?
Thanks a lot for your help and congratulations on winning the best “science” blog award.
————————————-
So, Paul, did you drop by to flaunt your utter ignorance of the whole issue and treat us to some mindless sarcasm? Why? Was it to get some visitors to your lame alarmist site? None of the faithful read you so you thought you’d invite some sceptics?
Here is the major tragedy, all the public knows, and will continue to know, is that these cretins have been exonerated by all of these pestigious institutions the world over. Everytime I bring up climategate to my circle of friends, their response is always, they’ve been cleared by numerous investigations, therefore they are as clean as heat caused snow.
“Careful Speaking”, equivocation, call it what you will has been around for a long time.
From the porter scene in Macbeth:
“Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven.”
From the graveyard scene in Hamlet:
“There’s another: why may not that be the skull of a
lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets,
his cases, his tenures, and his tricks?”
maybe its possible to find a definition that exhonerates the guy from lying.
But it’s clear to everyone, the guy included, that he lacks integrity.
shame on him
EO
“Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?”
The models made me do it.
A chameleon doesn’t lie, he deceives. As does the cat stalking the bird and the mouse being stalked by the cat.
They misrepresent things as best they can because they know that revealing reality will be to their detriment. In fact, in nature, deceit is a worthwhile and noble practie.
In Nature and similar human contexts it is not so noble, but it’s often successful, so folks are not going to quit it.
The very first lesson one learns when investigating or prosecuting a case is to ask short, simple questions. This way there in no opportunity for the one answering to obfuscate, prevaricate, ‘carefully speak’ or otherwise avoid giving a complete answer.
Those making queries of Mann must have known this but they insisted on asking lengthy, complex questions to which only lengthy and complex answers would have sufficed. Mann apparently gave terse, simple answers which appeared to satisfy his inquisitors but which did NOT satisfactorily answer the questions posed.
Therein lies the crux of the various problems being aired in this thread.
I am firmly of the opinion that the complex questions posed to Mann were deliberately framed in that fashion so as to give what is commonly termed ‘wiggle room’ when giving an answer. The same ‘wiggle room’ permitted the inquisitors to state that their questions had been answered to their satisfaction and thus proclaim that their investigation had discovered nothing untoward.
It is thus that the pre-determined outcome of this particular investigation was achieved with the verisimilitude of honesty.
As to the speculation (last few paras) as to what Mann did or didn’t do…
Were I Wahl (or indeed any other recipient) I might be asking myself, as the Penn enquiry was published, why Mann had told me to delete the evidence but did not do so himself.
The “Did Mann turn over emails to the inquiry that he had previously deleted, deleted and then recovered with the help of some sympathetic University IT staff?” doesn’t work – Mann still deleted the mail. He then lied. (the fact that he could produce them later with specialist help is irrelevant – they were still deleted as far as he was concerned)
This is going to get better. Were I one of his other mail colleagues I would seriously want to know why he still kept the mail after telling at least Wahl do dump it. Why did he keep copies and what exactly did he hand in to Penn?
Should we ever get a real enquiry at some point (yea right) it will be very interesting to find out who else kept the “evidence”. Surely it wasn’t just Mike who kept a copy as insurance? More interesting to see if the “archives” presented to a “real enquiry” by all match up or have selective deletions.
It may be a minor point but “Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?”. Why “Mike” and what emails between Mike and Keith did Jones think could be “damaging to the cause”? Seems there are plenty of emails missing.
It has often been said here at WUWT that “Watergate” wasn’t about a burglary.
What started out as an internal academic problem liable to result in a slap on the wrist from their respective institutions has gradually gathered up (UK) senior civil servants, senior academics, MP’s and a whole host of “just send me the press release” “journalists”. Now in the US we move through the same lot upwards and onwards to a Senate enquiry. Let’s see how far “Careful Speaking” gets everyone?
Paul Westhaver says:
“I suggest a Burgundy wine with Mann.”
Not “some fava beans and a nice chianti”?
Joe Friday here.
Just tha facts, Mann.
“Sources confirm that a federal inspector has questioned Eugene Wahl and Wahl has confirmed that Mann asked him to delete emails. Wahl has also informed the inspector that he did delete emails as the result of this request.”
Is this hearsay?
“Sources confirm that a federal inspector”
Who are the (unknown) sources?
Who is the federal inspector?
“As Wahl told the investigators in 2011, Mann contacted him and Wahl deleted his mails.”
So is it a federal inspector or investigators (of unknown origins)?
In 2011?
When in 2011 did this occur?
Who are these investigators in 2011? Federales or Team Audit?
Until such time as actual new factual information is put forth, I’ll take this to be another hearsay op-ed piece, thank you very much.
And you call yourselves skeptics. 🙁
Reply: This is all we could reveal at this time. Head on over to CA for more. ~ ctm
On the first read-trough of the Climategate emails, it was the context of the conversations that appalled me. Is this the way a responsible group of REAL scientists go about doing their business and the answer came back a resounding NO!
Thanks Steve and Charles for finding out just how bad the IPCC brand of cargo cult science has become by taking the time to examine the detail.
If anyone sees this on the BBC can they post a link please, cheers.
I’m going to go sit in a corner and get some pop corn, don’t expect much from the UK with Dippy Dave and his side kick Yellow Nick in charge.
They used the digital equivalent of the mechanical paper shredder. Or as in the old cowboy movies those on the run are dragging a sage brush behind their horses to cover their tracks not realizing the sage brush also leaves a trail.
I like those old western movies because while they are not much in a plot the acting is always great. No good western is complete without the chase scene almost always ending in a fight when the bad guy is caught. And of course only those willing to fight commit to the chase.
That Wikipedia definition of “careful speaking” is truly offensive. What they define is deceptive speaking NOT careful speaking.
When you speak carefully, you choose words that are precise, and convey your meaning unequivocally. It’s really not careful at all to choose words intended to hide the truth, because when the person you are speaking to find outs what you’re up to, there may be hell to pay!
I think that it is remarkable that Prof Jones sent a request to delete E-Mails, by E-Mail.
In so far as there does not appear to be an E-Mail from M Mann asking why they should be deleted, it seems that he understood the significance. I cannot see that passing the request on is any less important than deleting his own E-Mails, quite the reverse. By passing the request on, he becomes a participant in the conspiracy.
Here’s an interesting quote on that matter, from Henry Bauer’s Science or Pseudoscience?, p. 56:
Stephen Brown.
yup.
I sent this to Drudge.
I had a dream the other night that the team, Gore, and all their like, all had a meeting and decided to come clean…
It seems the team does not realize that we are not after them in particular. No one wants to see them go to jail. For gods sakes they are just scientists really.The point is that the work they have produced is costing billions for nothing (acka there is no AGW. or it hasnt been proved). It has to be stopped! This is why legal action/inquiries etc are is now taking place…
Yes, as several comments have noted, it is positively Clintonesque.
Other glaring examples:-
During an Australian court case, when the chap quoted below was challenged as to the truth of testimony under oath he (squirmingly) replied:
‘A misleading impression, not a lie. It was being economical with the truth.’
– Sir Robert Armstrong
Sir Robert’s statement has passed into the lexicon of dishonesty in Britain, along with Alan Clark’s ‘economical with the actualite’.
It’s semantics really. When is a lie not a lie? I know what I think of Mann’s obfuscation. He was wriggling like a worm on a hook, and they gently let him off it.
In any case the “real marketplace” ie actual temperature data is resoundingly showing no warming and will win the case. This from a pro AGW site!
http://processtrends.com/images/RClimate_UAH_Ch5_latest.png
We are now at -0.257C
Exactly!
“Clever speaking” is also know as prevarication. But let’s just call it what it really is, clever lying.
On the eve of the Penn State investigation Mann told the BBC, “I always thought it was somewhat misplaced to make [the hockey stick] a central icon of the climate change debate.”
Right. Sure he did. There’s loads of evidence to support that statement.
According to Wikipedia, the Investigatory Committee “determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community.” So evading FOI by going along with a scheme to destroy State’s evidence is normal academic practice?
I hope some congressional committee or attorney general is paying attention here. The super-rich universities are all lawyered-up. No normal person would stand a chance in a legal battle with them. It’s way past time to roll the big guns up to the front line. (Figuratively speaking, of course.)
– dT
“No one wants to see them go to jail.”
Speak for yourself.
If Mann has taken part in passing on messages to delete emails, then has he has conspired to defraud the US taxpayer? Who after all is paying his wages.
As uncle Remus once sang ;Zippity doo daa zippity yay! My oh my what a wonderful day! Welldone Steven and Charles the mod.Lets hope the MSM pick this one up and people start to take notice, especially in Congress to start with.Phil jones must S****** himself another interview at the behest of parliament.
Forget about “careful speaking.” I’ll defer to Robert A. Heinlein:
.
.
What we’ve got here is simply somebody who has lied artistically, and there’s an end to it.
I say go for the data not the Mann hahaha
RealClimate are running a comentary. Looks like being good fun if you can bring yourselves to read it.
“Is this a lie? Not directly. It’s more what Wikipedia would describe as “Careful Speaking”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie
Careful speaking is distinct from the above in that the speaker wishes to avoid imparting certain information or admitting certain facts and, additionally, does not want to ‘lie’ when doing so. Careful speaking involves using carefully-phrased statements to give a ‘half-answer’: one that does not actually ‘answer’ the question, but still provides an appropriate (and accurate) answer based on that question. As with ‘misleading’, below, ‘careful speaking’ is not outright lying.”
——————————————–
I am pretty sure it may not be ‘outright lying’, but it is still ‘lying by ommission’ And therefore may be considered plain lying.
Stephen Brown says:
March 8, 2011 at 12:44 pm
As an ex-professional interviewer I can say that while I planned many opening questions most were simple ‘open’ questions such as ‘Tell me about these emails’,. You are always looking for a hook which will help you to guide your interviewee towards YOUR target. The more ‘open’ the question the more difficult it is to answer without dropping yourself dans la merde.
I’m sure the BBC are working on it as we type.
Penn State and CRU, We need no stinking badges.
this appears to be the last chance for realclimate and their ilk to distance themselves from Michael Mann and Phil Jones.
—————-
That would just be the biggest blogosphere farse ever. It would be the worlds most incredible blogosfarse. Sadly, I expect gavin et al to go down the hard and painful way. They’ve already made their reputations from never being wrong and hardly ever less than completely certain. I can’t see them backstabbing mann.
Interesting, but given where this developed-world disaster has been all these years, “Sources confirm” just isn’t good enough. When does it become tangible?
Roger Knights says:
March 8, 2011 at 10:03 am
Anton says:
March 8, 2011 at 9:06 am
“As with ‘misleading’, below, ‘careful speaking’ is not outright lying.”–Wikipedia (ugh!)
Only a Protestant could come up with this.
Or a Jesuit.
Now that was quite a laugh 🙂
This is great! And just in time for the Congressional reviews. The sooner these crooks masquerading as scientists are dealt with the better.
And it is as interesting to read as most detective novels.
There are known untruths we know about and unknown untruths we don’t know about. It’s the unknown untruths we should know about that have the potential to hurt mannkind most.
Steve and Charles, GREAT WORK, look forward to more from you guys.
Anthony, ATTA BOYS all around to the whole crew, your blog award comes to you for reasons like this.
As far as is known from the inquirys into Mann about what he actually told them we will have to see. Personally from what we are told he said: i would have to say he MISLEAD them, IMO it is the same thing as carefully speaking. Misleading statements to the board is OBSTRUCTING them from thier duties even if thier duties where to whitewash it! Just my opionion!
“I am pretty sure it may not be ‘outright lying’, but it is still ‘lying by ommission’ And therefore may be considered plain lying.”
Our original idea for the essay was more along the lines of “what kind of statement is this” and lies of ommission was on the table. Then it became clear that we really dont have evidence of anything but THIS: the Penn state inquiry was a mess. more questions than answers. but one sad fact: the inquiry did not get to the bottom of the story. or they did and they mislead the public.
Steve Mosher: “I don’t want to have people thinking that the climategate leaker has anything
to do with this. So, I will say that they are not connected”
Hmm. Does that mean you know who the leaker is? Obviously in view of the hue and cry, it is entirely reasonable that they should be protected, so could you just please pass on our thanks for the huge service they have given to science. An object-lesson for the vain self-publicist Assange.
Bill Illis says:
Just because certain people show a propensity to act unethically for a good cause in their emails or in investigations by universities or in proceedings of the IPCC or under statutory FOI requests, does not mean they are doing so in more important areas of their professional lives.
Please tell me you forgot the /sarc tag
On Congressional Subpoenas and immunity from prosecution – I think in this case a plead to the 5th amendment (I refuse to answer on the grounds it might tend to incriminate me) before a congressional committee would be as devistating to the AGW as an admission of guilt. Don’t forget these—people—are using tax dollars to fund their work – and even congress has difficulties giving money to someone who can’t answer a question so pleads the fifth…
Nice work – maybe we can get back to doing science rather than watching a weary sideshow.
Mike
You are a far nicer person than I am. Anyone else attempting to cause multi-billion to multi-trillion dollar dislocations in the American economy with malice aforethought would be labled a terrorist and should be rightly treated as such.
My five-year old son is prone to tantrums as children sometimes are. Favors or rewards are withheld because what was required to be done was left undone, or restraint was not evident after several warnings. Then the meltdown. Then the inquiry:
Me: Did I ask you to do so-and-so?
Him: Yes.
Me: Did you do so-and-so?
Him: No.
Me: Did I say you wouldn’t get to do this-and-such if you didn’t do so-and-so?
Him: Yes.
Me: So whose fault is it you can’t do this-and-such?
Him: (small voice) Mine.
Me: Yes. Remember, choices have consequenses.
Clearly a lesson not well-learned in certain climate circles. I can only hope that it soon will be.
Mark Bowlin says:
March 8, 2011 at 11:00 am
“Anton says:
March 8, 2011 at 9:06 am
“As with ‘misleading’, below, ‘careful speaking’ is not outright lying.”–Wikipedia (ugh!)
Only a Protestant could come up with this. ”
Or a senior British civil servant. In all this debate on the nature of lies, I think Sir Robert Armstrong is an archetypal figure and deserves a round of applause:
‘Armstrong, who retired as head of the Civil Service in late 1987, is credited with coining a memorable phrase (others credit Edmund Burke) in 1986 when cross-examined in the supreme court in New South Wales, Australia during the ‘Spycatcher’ trial. Armstrong was asked whether a letter contained a lie and replied that it was a “misleading impression”:
Lawyer: What is the difference between a misleading impression and a lie?
Armstrong: A lie is a straight untruth.
Lawyer: What is a misleading impression – a sort of bent untruth?
Armstrong: As one person said, it is perhaps being “economical with the truth” ‘
For everyone questioning, “Sources confirm”.
This was all we were allowed to say at this time. These sources will be confirmed in time. We do not know the schedule of the issuance of the Federal Inspector’s report. We stuck our necks out because these are good sources. Feel free to bash us if demonstrated false in the future.
Sorry, forgot the link – that quote on Armstrong came from here:
http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Robert_Armstrong
This thread must include a hat tip to the late, great SF Grand Master, Damon Knight, who was the author of the original short story that TZ ep was based on. Knight loved that kind of word play. . .
Reply: Done ~ ctm
Steven Mosher says:
March 8, 2011 at 11:59 am
paul: Aquinas
“I answer that, It is one thing to withhold the truth, and another to utter a falsehood. The former is lawful sometimes, for a man is not bound to divulge all truth, but only such as the judge can and must require of him according to the order of justice; as, for […]
If Mann doesnt know whether Wahl had complied with Jones request to delete mails, then mann really cant answer the question of whether he participated in the
Oh my, oh my 🙂 This is delightful. I’ve been taking a course in philosophy over the net and would you now what got me stuck for six months — what is truth, and what is knowledge, and whether there is “untrue knowledge”.
And to my surprise (just one of them) there is such a thing as truth by consensus! (Post-modern coherence theory). Argh. It’s very far from our usual, pragmatic “truth is what works”.
Perhaps we can update the post with this.
exonerating mann:
lets first begin by looking at the mail from Jones:
“Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? ”
Then lets look at what the committee requested.
“On January 15, 2010, and on behalf of the inquiry committee, Dr. Foley conveyed via email an additional request of Dr. Mann, who was asked to produce all emails related to the fourth IPCC report (“AR4”), the same emails that Dr. Phil Jones had suggested that he delete. ”
do you see the problem? Jones asked Mann to delete mails to KEITH with regard to Ar4. What if Mann had no mails to Briffa WRT Ar4?, or perhaps he looked at them and found nothing troubling. no need to delete.
Mann forwards this onto Wahl. Mann doesnt know if Wahl had any mails to Keith or if Wahl actually followed Jones’ instructions.
So, Mann can say that he didnt delete any mails ( to Keith WRT AR4) and he just doesnt answer the question about Wahl because he doesnt know if wahl had any mails or if Wahl deleted them
Time to check the climategate files and see if Mann and Briffa exchanged mail about Ar4. thats a start.
I would have thought that the university would have had backup tapes of all the emails.
EFS_Junior says:
March 8, 2011 at 12:53 pm
Joe Friday here.
[…]
And you call yourselves skeptics. 🙁
Keep hitting us, lest we fall into groupthink slumber like climate scientists do. Zen masters use canes.
bob says:
March 8, 2011 at 11:26 am “Mann is one of the brighter liars.”
Does this not make him an outlier? or, perhaps, an outed liar?
It appears that enquiries into the emails have elicited answers which were ‘ecomonical with the truth’. Information was withheld in response to questions with the apparent attempt to decieve. In this way those questioned may convince themselves that they have not lied.
But there is no moral distinction between outright lying and being ‘economical with the truth’, in order to avoid saying something which is untrue, if the intention in either case is to deliberately deceive or mislead others.
AGW proponents seem to go to extraordinary lengths to avoid having to accept any evidence which would compromise the idea that if they believe something is true then it must be true.
The results of AGW related research are invariably based on a ‘formal fallacy’, whereby, although the premises of their theories might be true, the conclusions are not supported. For example:
Greenhouse gases cause climate change
Man produces greenhouse gases
Therefore man is changing the climate
Apologies for the over-simplification, but AGW scientists appear to arrive at formal fallacies because they seem to draw conclusions from empirical research using wishful thinking (I’m being generous with this term) rather than deduction.
Excellent news. Well done, you two. The noose continues to tighten, albeit too slowly for some of us. That said, the longer this part of it goes on and the more obfuscations and economical untruths we get from the team, the greater the fall from grace.
Apologies if someone has said this already, and if not, apologies for raising it, but there is the possibility that Briffa didn’t send any dodgy emails to Mann (there seems to have been a certain amount of coolness between the two of them), so there would have been nothing for Mann to delete.
I hope I’m wrong, seeing him exposed for the charlatan he is would go some way to compensating me for the amount of time I have wasted on this idiot.
Stephan says:
March 8, 2011 at 1:08 pm
“No one wants to see them go to jail. For gods sakes they are just scientists really… ”
Oh really. If they have done something criminal it doesn’t matter what cover they use. And calling some of these people ‘scientists’ is a joke in any case.
I would suggest that the only way to fix this larger problem is to put some of these advocates masquerading as ‘scientists’ in jail, complete with perp walks and the whole deal. Otherwise they will continue to be as corrupt as the Banksters that sleazed their way off the hook.
Also time for institutions like Penn State to return all the funding they have received under the false pretenses provided by the crook they covered for.
We know that DoT’s InspectorGeneral did his work reasonably as to NOAA, identifies an issue with Wahl, but could not investigate further Wahl’s conduct due to Wahl only becoming a NOAA employee some time after the event (the FAR report drafting).
Now there in another IG, the one in charge @ National Science Foundation ; it was mentioned by Fox News at the time (early 2010) when Penn State published their ‘investigation’ report that NSF’ IG was about to review how this university implemented federal rules as to scientific conduct investigation ; I’m not sure whether anybody heard anything about this inspection.
Maybe, DoT’IG report may inspire NRF’s IG …
They never get you for the crime but always for the cover-up.
Giving Mann immunity and convicting the professors that whitewashed the case is possibly the best outcome. There are plenty of venues where people will be asked to whitewash dishonest climate research. Sending the message not to do it will provide greater penetration into the conspiracy to defraud than getting this one Mann.
So, can the members of the Penn State investigation face fraud charges if they arranged to let Mann off the hook?
EFS_Junior says:
March 8, 2011 at 12:53 pm
Joe Friday here.
.. snips self …
Reply: This is all we could reveal at this time. Head on over to CA for more. ~ ctm
Been there, done that, same with your Horner/CEI link;
“This has been confirmed to Senate offices. It will not be released to the public for some time because the investigation is ongoing.”
Hmm, now who called for ‘requires further investigation’ and is in the Senate, I wonder? Inhofe.
Well ctm, I’m most interested in the Chris Horner/CEI/Steve McIntyre/James Inhofe connection.
Since, I don’t inherently trust any of the above individuals/organisations to tell the actual truth, given their well known track records.
Did Inhofe’s office “leak” this “information” to McIntyre?
Or somesuch?
That would be my guess at this point in time, if Inhofe’s office releases similar information at a later date, then we’ll know this for sure.
I do think we need another investigation of this “leak” though.
Full email audit trail, if you know what I mean. 🙂
These “scientists” (so called) are wilfully giving misleading information in support of a bunch of evil human-hating psychopaths who are using their positions as leaders of the environmental movement to call for the eradication of up to 95% of all humanity. These fraudulent scientists are perverting science by ignoring the ‘scientific method’ to create false data supportive of the lie that we are currently suffering unprecedented warming. By claiming that current temperatures are the warmest for over 1000 years, they seek to give “scientific” justification for the global genocide of a scale which make Hitler, Stalin and Mao look like girl scouts at a nice picnic.
For that alone, they should be in prison. Add to this the starvation and heat/cold related deaths caused directly by environmental policies and these so-called “scientists” have a huge amount of blood on their hands.
Steven Mosher says:
March 8, 2011 at 9:14 am
I think KuhnKat was suggesting that your remarks about lying and your use of wickedpedia raise the question of whether you might be at risk of soiling yourself.
Steven Mosher says:
March 8, 2011 at 11:08 am
“…Summary: dont send in university professors to lead an investigation”
Couldn’t agree more since if the summary of Mann’s answer is accurate it should have been blatantly obvious to the panel that Mann had not answered the question that they put to him, whether because Mann did not fully appreciate the question (it was after all a very lengthy question) or because he deliberately did not wish to address the full question.
It really would be interesting to know what questions were asked. Obvious questions would include:-
Is it normal to receive a request from a colleague to delete an e-mail or series of e-mails? If so, in what circumstances would this be considered normal?
Is it normal to receive a request from a colleague requesting you to contact a colleague with a request that they should delete an e-mail or series of e-mails? If so, in what circumstances would this be considered normal?
If such a request is not normal practice, did you consider reporting this request to anyone and if not why not?
On receipt of the e-mail from Jones, what did you think of his request? Do you know why Jones requested that these e-mails be deleted? What were in these e-mails?
Did you give or show a copy of Jone’s email to anyone else? If so who and why was this done? In particular, did you request any other person to act upon either and/or both of the requests made by Jones?
Did you personally, or did you procure someone, to delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Following receipt of Jone’s email, did you contact Gene, and if so when and why?
Following receipt of Jone’s email, did you contact Gene (whether by phone or email or otherwise) asking him to delete any emails that he may have had with Keith re AR4 and/or in any way whatsoever communicating the request made by Jones or the gist of the request made by Jones?
Following receipt of the Jone’s email, if you did not delete any of the emails that you had with Keith re AR4, why did you decide not to act on Jone’s request.
Following the receipt of the Jone’s email, if you did not contact Gene why did you decide not to contact Gene.
Upon receipt of Jone’s email, did you, at any time thereafter, have any communications (whether oral or written) with any person regarding the deletion of any emails sent to and/or exchanged with Keith re AR4 irrespective as to the author of the email(s)? If so, with whom and what was the gist of the conversation or communication.
Do you know from any conversation or other communication that you may have had at any time with Jones, Keith, Gene and/or Casper whether any or all of them have at any time deleted email exchanges with or from Keith re AR4? If affirmative, ask for full details (who, when what etc.).
Of course, if anyone was serious in investigating this matter, they would download the server and back up servers. These days, most institutions make daily or weekly backups, often off site. These backup copies are often kept for lengthy periods such that it is very difficult to complete delete all traces of e-mails. I understand that there are programmes that can check different versions of back up data compiled aty different times and identify the difference.
The problem is that it appears that nobody is that interested in getting to the bottom of all of this.
Roger Knights says:
March 8, 2011 at 10:03 am
Anton says:
March 8, 2011 at 9:06 am
“As with ‘misleading’, below, ‘careful speaking’ is not outright lying.”–Wikipedia (ugh!)
Only a Protestant could come up with this.
“Or a Jesuit.”
Same thing.
It’s about time that Charles has finally earned his lucrative pay here at WUWT.
;?p
Wikipedia has it right:
Lying by omission
One lies by omission when omitting an important fact, deliberately leaving another person with a misconception. Lying by omission includes failures to correct pre-existing misconceptions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie
John F. Hultquist says:
March 8, 2011 at 9:58 am
I thought – incorrectly apparently – that universities and other organizations maintained internal servers that handled incoming and outgoing e-mail, and further, that all of this digital traffic was stored on those units. In a practical sense, then, this would mean that a person using a university e-mail system could not delete files except on a personal computer. A request for files to the university should search the servers and not the researcher’s office computer because those disk drives are not secure archives.
============================================================
Hi John,
It actually depends on the configuration of the email system. If the email server is configured for the POP3 protocol, then there are no copies on the server. If the email server is configured for imapi or SMTP, then there could be emails stored on the server.
It’s all up to the technology used and the whim of the server administrator.
I would expect most university email server administrators frequently purge their systems and instruct professors and students to maintain archives.
However, I would also expect the servers themselves get backed up, which might very well include the email store. Typically, backups would be performed a couple of times a week, with last month’s and last year’s backups stored offsite. Weekly backups are then rotated offsite as necessary, and older offsite backup tapes are rotated onsite to be used for the daily backups.
So, older emails might be able to be recovered from the old backups, but these would not necessarily be complete, as some emails would have been purged between the backup tapes being rotated offsite.
Certainly, no university or corporation stores all of the emails the system has processed. It would be cost prohibitive to do so.
Users maintain personal archives (such as your Inbox, or .pst files) because the systems will purge emails regularly.
Try this
And have a look at this for a idea of how hard some people try to please – and why.
Reply: Good one David, I would add the question, Did the files delivered to the inquiry by Mann include 1148577381.txt? ~ ctm
Excellent deductive work by Mosher, Mcintyre, and Charles. They easily lay out the facts and have gotten to the bottom of yet another white-wash. The defense of those involved does not match up.
As someone who is in the field of law enforcement, and has numerous experience in interviewing and conducting investigations of wrongdoing, I can tell you the fault also lies on Penn. States ” investigators,” who were really there to not ” find” anything, and in fact, were probably part of the cover up themselves. By completely missing the erroneous response and the lies given to them by Mann and co. it does not make sense to claim incompetence, rather the more likely answer is collusion.
The reason is simple. If Mann were to be found of wrong doing, not only would all his work be suspect, by default, this would mean the work of Penn. State as well.
If an employee has been found to have committed a error or outright fraudulent work, people ask how the bosses at the top allowed it to happen, and why they were not aware of it.
Penn. State is undoubtedly a receiver of massive grants from organizations that have an interest in the AGW theory, and a lot of this is probably because of the work Mann and his cronies do for the IPCC, and so on. There is no way the “investigators” would invite bad press or possibly even jeopardize funding due to the corrupt actions of one of their star employees. Rather, their ‘ damage-control” scenario would be to give the appearance that they are looking at the problem, when in practice they are actually there to look out for themselves.
In this case, the money trail is a thousand miles long.
but if we just reach across the isle, re-frame our message, engage the disbelievers in conversation…..
….and communicate out message better
everything will be just fine
(sorry, I’ve been reading Judith’s blog again)
richard vereny says:
Nice list of questions. I think in the end there is a definite possibility that Mann did not delete mails because there were no mails with keith to delete. And its unclear if Wahl was even doing anything wrong by deleting mails, legally wrong.
So its far better, for the science, just to get to the bottom of all this.
As it stands they present mysterys and puzzles. That’s fun for guys like me, but hell on the guys caught in the middle.
Steve and charles the moderator,
Thank you for all your considerable efforts to bring us this.
There are some great comments.
I wish we could know more about the soucre and the federal investigators now.
John
Mods,
I think my post may have been filtered.
Thanks 🙂
Scott Ramsdell;
It actually depends on the configuration of the email system. If the email server is configured for the POP3 protocol, then there are no copies on the server.>>
Certainly, no university or corporation stores all of the emails the system has processed. It would be cost prohibitive to do so.>>
Nyet.
I retrieve my email every day via POP3 and the originals are all on the server. The protocol simply defines the manner in which the client (Outlook, Netscape, Firefox, what ever) gets the mail from the server. The functions allowed for deleting mail from the server are under the control of the email system on the server. End users could only delete from the server IF the server was set up to allow that.
Best practices in North America are that ALL email is retained, EVEN if the end user deletes it, they are only deleting it from their own account, the server still has a copy, and if backup systems are run properly, there should be additional copies on backup. Email may ONLY be destroyed if the organization has a data retention policy that sets out guidelines which must be followed in all cases. The fine potential under compliance law is enormous.
However, there is a nuance to British law that may come into play. In North America, an email written and sent from the workplace is the property of the employer. In Britain, my understanding is that the email is in fact the property of the employee. If so, that provides some justification for an email system so shodily run that an employee could delete email such that it disappeared from the entire system including server and backups. If not, then either the emails exist on server backups, or someone should be asking some pretty tough questions of the university’s IT staff as to why not.
Anything is possible says:
March 8, 2011 at 11:51 am
Through all this, Keith Briffa gives every impression of being a man completely out of his depth.
Having had the dubious pleasure of sitting through one of his lectures way back when I was an undergraduate, this does not surprise me at all. At the end of the talk, I seized the opportunity of asking him the $64,000 question : “How can you be certain that tree-ring growth is solely dependant on temperature?”
He shot me a very dark look, and his mumbled reply of “it just does” did not convince me one bit. I have given zero credence to temperature re-constructions from tree-ring proxies ever since.
————————————————–
Good point, and very scary. It is always the simple questions that go to the heart of the matter that uncover the truth.
Thanks for this post, guys. As others have said, this story has been like following a long-running crime/mystery novel, except that in this case the consequences are very real and very expensive for people all over the world.
Those interested in how scientific fraud happens, and is dealt with, in academic environments might enjoy C P Snow’s novel “The Affair”. Based on a real case, it tracks how accusations of scientific fraud simply cannot be properly dealt with by insiders in the groves of academe, however well intentioned. Two internal inquiries failed to quell the unease, and finally they brought in two lawyers who knew how to ask the right questions and insist on clear answers to settle the matter. I won’t spoil the story by saying what the outcome was, but as an insight into the processes and mindsets that define these kinds of inquiries, it is a masterpiece.
As PPs have said, getting to the truth in an inquiry requires skills which no random bunch of academics is likely to have. They may be utterly honest and well intentioned, but it is like asking a plumber to perform surgery, or indeed a surgeon to plumb a building (assuming no prior expertise in either case).
You all are missing the obvious point. Mann deleted the emails to FURTHER science not obstruct it. He could not let inconvenient data that disagreed with his ‘science’ be allowed into the hands of those who only wanted to discredit ‘science’.
When will they learn from Watergate?
The cover-up, or “DINIAL”, always hurts more than the original crime.
Let me try again — if Mann lied to the Penn State investigators, then he might face suspension from the faculty club for a few days. This is an inconsequential issue. I also suspect that Mann could use a variant of the Roman Polanski defense (of course I did it, but did you see Chinatown!) to persuade Penn State not to do anything about it: ‘of course I lied to you, but did you see how much grant money I’ve pulled in.’
The real issue is did Mann participate in a conspiracy to evade FOIA by forwarding on Phil Jones’ email? Does the act of forwarding an email, where a scheme to delete information subject to FOIA is discussed, represent conspiracy to commit fraud? Since it happened via email, does it represent conspiracy to commit wire fraud? In my mind, these are not simple questions, but they certainly need to be examined.
Unfortunately for Mann, there are some pretty powerful people who will be demanding a full investigation of this. It was ill advised for Mann to go so far out of his way to alienate powerful politicians.
There seems to be a lot of Mann-centred comments. While Mann was no doubt trying to present himself in the best light possible during the enquiry, and therefore using some sophistry – duplicitous or otherwise – in answering the deletion question, as Steve and Charles have pointed out the criticism should be leveled at the inquiry members for not following up on Mann’s response.
Maybe they just didn’t know what the issue was or its significance.
As I consider the cartoon that adorns this topic and as we head into the NHL playoffs, I believe Mann is say with his careful obfuscations, “Puck you!”
One of the exculpatory arguments I have read is that Mann did not ask Wahl to delete any e-mails, but merely forwarded Jones’ e-mail to him. Is this e-mail in Wahl’s collection, or Mann’s for that matter?
We have a cabal who were raking it in, even if they themselves occasionally saw, or at least doubted, the errors of their ways. But they were sucked into their own con and couldn’t, or weren’t allowed to, offer Mea Culpa as the bigger guys, their Universities and many larger organs, could not admit their errors, and had no commercial reason to do so.
Maybe he was just 95% certain he hadn’t delete anything!
Thank you for all your work dogging this horrendous manipulation of science. Hopefully the outcome is not too far off.
davidmhoffer says:
March 8, 2011 at 4:11 pm
Scott Ramsdell;
It actually depends on the configuration of the email system. If the email server is configured for the POP3 protocol, then there are no copies on the server.>>
Certainly, no university or corporation stores all of the emails the system has processed. It would be cost prohibitive to do so.>>
Nyet.
I retrieve my email every day via POP3 and the originals are all on the server. The protocol simply defines the manner in which the client (Outlook, Netscape, Firefox, what ever) gets the mail from the server.
====================================================
David, sorry I’m late to the party. I agree with what you’re saying, but to the uninitiated, you may be lacking clarity. In that I’m familiar with your postings, rather than me attempting to speak for you and possibly getting your meanings wrong, I just thought I’d point it out and let you clarify if you thought necessary.
What people need to understand, is that e-mail today is such an analogous term it could mean almost anything.
Protocols are simply guidelines and 100% compliance with the various laws and protocols and entity rules and “best practices” is almost impossible. Further, backups……..anyone that has had to retrieve data from backups created several years in the past, knows that this, too, is a very difficult task. It simply doesn’t work like popping the tape in and telling the server to “make it so #1.”
What I’m saying, is that knowing all the details to this saga may not be possible.
davidmhoffer says: March 8, 2011 at 4:11 pm
“…However, there is a nuance to British law that may come into play…. In Britain, my understanding is that the email is in fact the property of the employee.,,,”
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I would be very surprised if that statement is correct. The general rule (and starting point) is that anything done in the empoyer’s time belongs to the employer. Accordingly, there would be arguments that even a private e-mail written in the employer’s time (and not forgetting using the employer’s equipment) belongs to the employer. Irrespective of that, a business email is almost certainly the property of the employer. After all, the employee is only an agent or servant of the employer.
In some limited circumstances, the employee may have some property/interlectual rights in the contents of what he writes but that would depend upon the terms of the contract of employment.
Scott Ramsdell & davidmhoffer RE: email systems
Well, I suspect that when such systems were just getting started there may have been many different and not so secure operations. Naming conventions have evolved such that one cannot just ask for the name they would like. Each country, maybe each state in the US, could have special rules. I suppose one would have to query each of the universities or agencies involved in the “Climategate” emails and go back to the start to seek policy and changes. Only then would it be known. That might require a court order and investigation, by country. [Ten years or so ago a university tech person told me their system would have stored emails from a situation that happened in a prior week, even if the person having sent it had tried to delete it. We just made a big fuss about it and let it go hoping that would be sufficient to get folks to exercise more restraint. I didn’t really learn more about backup times and such.]
Thanks, though, for clarification, John
Not entirely OT: “To Serve Man” is best appreciated as the original 1950 Sci Fi short story by Damon Knight:
http://prime.peta.org/2011/03/serve
The Twilight Zone TV version was good, but Damon Knight’s written story was even more enjoyable. It can be downloaded from
http://www.4shared.com/document/X4gIth_Y/1951_-_Damon_Knight_-_To_Serve.html
EFS_Junior,
I unable to find the words to express the degree to which I am concerned about what you are most interested in, but the prefixes pico and femto come to mind.
Mann might be lying, or he might be obfuscating to cover up for someone who did lie.
A simple question to Mann would be ” Were you alarmed upon receiving a request from Jones to delete emails?”
And “Did you question Jones about his request?”
and go from there.
So many questions.
For those arguing about “lying by omission”…
I recently wrestled with this question on my own, and this was my take on the subject (not that my take has any more validity than anyone elses, but it makes sense to me. :))
Lying is saying something that you know to be untrue. As the Heinlein quote above suggests, its the simplest and stupidest of the methods used to deceive.
I think everyone in this part of the discussion an agree that Mann’s answer was designed to deceive, and IMO deceive is the operative word.
There are lots of ways to deceive; obfuscation, misdirection, half-truths, semantic-splitting (“depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is…) all of which can help a person avoid being held legally liable for lying under oath…because lying has a very specific legal meaning…saying something untrue. (I will admit that I don’t then understand what a “whole truth” is, but all I can say is that part of the oath doesn’t seem to really be enforced in law; strictly speaking, if “whole truth” were enforced, all a lawyer would have to say is “Tell me everything you know on this subject”, and the defendent would be liable for everything they forgot to say or left out).
So there are three things to note:
1) Mann was intending to be deceitful. He did not fully answer the question asked, and he added verbiage to confuse the issue.
2) This is an advanced form of deceit, used by those who are foxy. Mann is unlikely to be taken down by an actual “lie”, and no committee that undertakes to investigate his behavior will ever succeed unless they have a LAWYER who is intending to PROSECUTE. In any other circumstances, Mann will deceive successfully.
3) Mann has shown himself to be such an able deceiver that under no circumstances should he ever be trusted on any issue.
“So why did the inquiry, stocked with Mann’s fellow professors, fail to ask good follow up questions? We really do not know because we don’t have access to the transcript of their interview with Mann.”
Can any of us peons request the transcript with a FOIA request?
One other comment: I understand that UVA won’t release Mann’s emails per a FOIA request. I hope that VA. AG is successful in getting them released.
richard vereny says:
March 8, 2011 at 4:47 pm
davidmhoffer says: March 8, 2011 at 4:11 pm
“…However, there is a nuance to British law that may come into play…. In Britain, my understanding is that the email is in fact the property of the employee.,,,”
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I would be very surprised if that statement is correct. The general rule (and starting point) is that anything done in the empoyer’s time belongs to the employer.
=================================================
I think David may be referring to some legal actions that viewed the private e-mails of the employee as just that……private e-mails. While the similarities of British and U.S. customs and laws are strikingly similar, there are times when the differences are so much that it isn’t easy to conceptualize what’s occurring. Being a U.S. citizen, that’s probably all I can say without misinterpreting what occurred, other than IT types are made aware of IT considerations not only in the U.S. but also worldwide, especially European.
At 4:59 PM on 8 March, G. E. Pease had posted:
.
Readers might also like to be made aware of an item issued by small SF&F publisher Owlswick Press in 1976, titled To Serve Man: a cookbook for people by Karl Würf.
Owlswick Press was founded by speculative fiction fan, writer, and editor George Scithers, who passed away last year, and “Kark Würf” was his pseudonym.
By the way, Mr. Pease, don’t use the term “Sci Fi” unless you’re referring to the gormless garbage that appears in almost all of Hollywood’s productions ostensibly in the SF genre. Forrest J. Ackerman credited coinage of the term to writer Robert A. Heinlein (see here) in the 1950s, but use of the term in discussing real speculative fiction – such as that written by author and critic Damon Knight – marks the speaker as a cement-headed mundane.
.
.
===
Note: Sorry for the “Wiki-bloody-pedia” references, but despite the idiocies, duplicity, and swarming fascist evil of the warmists infesting the site, it’s still a useful spot for aggregating information with which these incontinent sons-of-indeterminate parentage don’t concern themselves.
Drip, drip, drip, call in the plumbers to fix the leaks.
Just take it to the bastard… Love it…. Tree Ring Boy, you are toast ,,,, when did you lie, then or later? Did you or did you not forward the e-mail from Jones? Did you or did you not delete your own e-mails? What e-mails were deleted?
James Sexton,
As far as I understand it, no e-mail is private, as it is sent under UDP through a publically accessable network; it’s route from sender to recepient is also undefined.
My personal opinion is that all internet surfings and e-mail sendings are public, equivelant to speaking out in the Roman Forum or Greek Agora.
What an excellent word “pwned” is, I had never heard it before. Similar to blackmail but more subtle and specific. You have to feel for the man, starts working for NOAA in 2008, just before Climategate hits the fan, The pressure put on a new employee must have been enormous.
Ken Hall says:
“These ‘scientists’ (so called) are wilfully giving misleading information in support of a bunch of evil human-hating psychopaths who are using their positions as leaders of the environmental movement to call for the eradication of up to 95% of all humanity. These fraudulent scientists are perverting science by ignoring the ‘scientific method’ to create false data supportive of the lie that we are currently suffering unprecedented warming. By claiming that current temperatures are the warmest for over 1000 years, they seek to give “scientific” justification for the global genocide of a scale which make Hitler, Stalin and Mao look like girl scouts at a nice picnic.
“For that alone, they should be in prison. Add to this the starvation and heat/cold related deaths caused directly by environmental policies and these so-called ‘scientists’ have a huge amount of blood on their hands.”
You said it. They do have blood on their hands, but they’re too arrogant to notice, and too proud to ever admit being wrong about anything. Their egos are in complete control, and their spirits are withering on the vine. Meanwhile, they’re piling up the bad Karma that will keep them living in the kind of misery they want for everyone else for countless lifetimes to come.
Hundreds of people died in the UK this winter because they couldn’t afford heat, thanks to the green taxes, price hikes, and shutdown of effective power stations. Do these scientists give a flip about these people? How about the pets who have died or been deprived of humans because the latter couldn’t afford heat? The carbon trading industry is the greediest, potentially most destructive force, in human history, and its players are without conscience. Their billions have contaminated so many disgusting people in search of trillions in profits for doing absolutely nothing that I don’t know if any human effort can undo the damage.
They lie and they know that they lie.
We know it too.
Others must, but choose not to say due to their pay.
Love the irony from the Outer limits clip and one of Niven’s ‘Draco Tavern’ stories. ‘How to serve man’. “It’s a cook book.” Still chuckling. Thank you.
A leading Republican Pennsylvania state legislator–perhaps one who was head of the Education committee–wrote to the head of Penn State telling him that his University’s investigation had better not be a whitewash or there would be consequences.
Now maybe his committee will conduct hearings. Perhaps he will ask Steve McIntyre to be a witness. Perhaps he will pose the questions RV listed.
This revelation, once it’s officially released (or maybe even beforehand) should strengthen Cuccinelli’s hand in court, giving him more probable cause or grounds for suspicion to lift up the rug.
Anton says:
March 8, 2011 at 6:18 pm
Ken Hall says:
Jonathan Swift produced a vivid satirical portrait of eco-loon morality and tastes in Part IV of Gulliver’s Travels. The Houyhnhnms are a race of super-rational horses who have highly developed moral sensibilities but who decide that the only solution for the Yahoos (humans) is to sterilize them. (You can download for free at gutenberg.org.)
I cannot tell you the number of times that I have been in conversation with an academic of highly developed sensibilities who has quite sincerely said that the only solution for most of humanity is to eliminate them. Not through violence, of course, that would be insensitive but through population control. Some of these individuals are really good people, but they are incapable of seeing that they are a coin stamped with angels on one side and Satan on the other.
Here’s the link to the Amazon page for the book. Used paperback copies are a buck (plus shipping):
http://www.amazon.com/Affair-Strangers-Brothers-Charles-Percy/dp/1842324276/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299638933&sr=1-2
James Sexton;
In that I’m familiar with your postings, rather than me attempting to speak for you and possibly getting your meanings wrong, I just thought I’d point it out and let you clarify if you thought necessary.>>>
Thanks James. Based on some of the follow up comments, you may be right. I’ll address the British ownership of email first:
Who owns the email? I’m not certain of the answer in Britain, I was hoping that someone from Britain with knowledge would comment. That said, I’ve been involved in implementing large email systems in multi-national companies with a view to meeting compliance standards in each country. Britain always came up as an exception in how deletion was handled, and my understanding was that employees had personal rights to their emails, and email servers in Britain were deployed with unique configurations to accomodate that. More detail than that I cannot provide.
E-mail 101
James is correct that email is now so ubiquitous that its like dial tone. We pick up the phone and just expect it to be there, we don’t worry about how it works. I’m not certain I can do the topic justice in a comment of reasonable length, but I shall try and provide the basics….
OK, I was about 14 paragraphs in when I realized I wasn’t doing the topic justice AND it was way too long. So I’ll just respond to some main points:
James Sexton;
Protocols are simply guidelines and 100% compliance with the various laws and protocols and entity rules and “best practices” is almost impossible.>>>
“Protocols” in this discussion refers to communication standards that allow computers to exchange information with each other. “Compliance” is a term that means meeting the standards required by law. There are standards for credit card transactions (PCI or Payment Card Industry), standards for private information and how it is used in healthcare (HIPPA) and publicly traded companies in the US are subject to SOX (Sarbanes Oxley). If you do not manage information (email just being a kind of information) in “compliance” with what ever standards apply you and your organization, then you are not in compliance, and there are potential fines just for that. Merryl Lynch is the oft cited example in that during a court proceeding told the court that they had a data retention policy that required that data over a certain age be destroyed. When it came to light that they had a closet full of backup tapes from the time period in question, it was obvious that they were NOT in compliance with their own data retention policy, that they had (mistakenly or otherwise) misinformed the court, and so without to much as examining the data on the backup tapes, the court entered a default judgment against them and a fine of $1.3 BILLION. Since then, corporations have been MUCH more aware of compliance issues.
“Best Practices” is a refference to known industry policies and procedures that deliver consistant quality. Backup for example can be implemented in many different architectures, each with their own best practices. The most common requires a “full” backup of everything on the server once per week, and an “incremental” meaning just the changes since the last full, once per day.
James Sexton;
It simply doesn’t work like popping the tape in and telling the server to “make it so #1.” What I’m saying, is that knowing all the details to this saga may not be possible.>>
You may be correct, but if you are, the IT shop needs to be held accountable. The “best practices” that make it possible to know the details are well known, easily implemented, and any organization that isn’t following them is opening themselves up to fines, litigation, and for no reason. Best Practices for email and backup are inexpensive to implement and there is no excuse for not having the information to in fact know all the details of the saga.
Richard Vereny;
The general rule (and starting point) is that anything done in the empoyer’s time belongs to the employer.>>>
I lay no claim to being an expert. But I do know that international companies frequently segregate their British employees onto a separate email server with different retention policies to accomodate British law. That’s my understanding of why, but I’ve never delved into the details. I would think that somone from Britain could comment?
John F Hultquist;
Well, I suspect that when such systems were just getting started there may have been many different and not so secure operations. Naming conventions have evolved such that one cannot just ask for the name they would like>>>
Actually naming conventions haven’t changed very much at all, its just that all the good ones have been gobbled up! As for older systems that were implemented when there were many different and no so secure operations…sorry, I don’t buy that. For starters, the primary target of “hackers” from day one was email, so even if your email system is “old” it better be running to current security standards or it will be compromised in minutes. Further, the volume of spam, denial of service attacks and so on would cripple any server not protected by current state of the are firewalls, Anti-virus filters, spam filters and so on. Even if the email system is old, it wouldn’t survive unless current best practices for things like that were being implemented. If so, why not backup and retention as well?
John F Hultquist;
I suppose one would have to query each of the universities or agencies involved in the “Climategate” emails and go back to the start to seek policy and changes.>>>
If the email system at CRU was run properly, then the vast bulk of the information would be available from that server. Anything that would have to be looked at on an email server at another university etc would have clear pointers to it in the headers of the emails at CRU. (every email has a header which you don’t see unless you know how to open it that has all sorts of information about what server it was sent from, when, what IP address the user was on, etc etc). That header information would point at SPECIFIC emails on other servers, including identifying the specific server and enough info that it would be very simple for an email administrator to retrieve it.
John F Hultquist;
I didn’t really learn more about backup times and such.]>>
There are two main “best practices” for backup architecture. The most common is weekly “fulls” meaning a copy to tape of everything on the server, and daily “incrementals” meaning a copy to tape of the days changes. A well run backup system should be able to restore the data to exactly the original state on any given day going back as many years as the backups are retained for.
James Sexton;
While the similarities of British and U.S. customs and laws are strikingly similar, there are times when the differences are so much that it isn’t easy to conceptualize what’s occurring.>>>
Per my previous comment, email systems in multinational corps are frequently segregated to accomodate British law. My comments as to why are my understanding of the matter, but I am no expert.
#
#
charles the moderator says:
March 8, 2011 at 5:01 pm
EFS_Junior,
I unable to find the words to express the degree to which I am concerned about what you are most interested in, but the prefixes pico and femto come to mind.
—————————
Perhaps you undervalue Junior’s contribution. As the sole representative of the opposition to show up for this discussion, his fervent loyalty and the jejune defense he offers should warrant a micro or nano rating out of compassion, if nothing else.
I have commented at Climate Audit about this and I repeat it here.
Steve McIntyre said – do not focus on individuals, it’s the institutoins that are important – or words to that effect.
I commented – I agreed.
If certain individual scientists have not discharged the position of trust that their exaulted occupations demands – THEN
They deserve to be punished and certainly dismissed in disgrace.
BUT – that’s not the important thing.
The important thing is to nail the institutions that have been involved in hand waving.
Hand waving misdtruths through, past red traffic lights.
It’s the institutions and the institutional enquiries that allow the MSM and following them, the politicians, to keep misleading the public on this important – nay, vital issue.
If just one institution in the USA or the UK is brought to heel, then all the rest of the rag tag mottley crew will be much more careful in the future.
Australia might even, just might, be snatched from the ravenous jaws of the evil, known variously as “a tax on carbon”, “tap and trade” and “creating a more robust healthy economy (by taxing it out of existance)” and so forth.
Keep your eye on the pea.
The pea is the institutional dishonour.
Do not be distracted by the smoke and mirrors surrounding the various individual villians.
So typical of Al Gore’s Disciples of New World Order Religion. Unfortunately the massess are lapping up all the deceit and “pseudo science”. Goebless once said that 100 times repeated lie will eventually be accepted as truth. Al Gore’s snake oil franchise is perfect example of that.
Robert of Ottawa says:
March 8, 2011 at 5:50 pm
James Sexton,
As far as I understand it, no e-mail is private, as it is sent under UDP through a publically accessable network; it’s route from sender to recepient is also undefined.
My personal opinion is that all internet surfings and e-mail sendings are public, equivelant to speaking out in the Roman Forum or Greek Agora.
=====================================================
Hmm, I don’t think that holds up in U.S. law. And, I wouldn’t agree with the personal opinion either. My internet surfings are a private contract between me, my ISP, credit card company and porn site of my choice! In none of these agreements have I expressed permission to make this information publicly available knowledge. Which, of course, is quite different than my posting here. Which is publicly available knowledge. But then, the law in the U.S. may apply differently to me. Towards privacy, in the U.S., it often boils down to a “reasonable expectation of privacy” and not whether it really is private or not. What I know is private and publicly available, and what a typical reasonable person may know may not be the same thing.
Both Jones and Mann are guilty of lies of omission. They have both neglected to mention key truths which are both pertinent and pivotal to the line of discovery of the questions asked of them.
Chris Horner says on the GWPF website,
– – – – – – – –
Those 2 ‘Bigs’ of Horner are, in my view, arguably two ‘Bigs’ too far.
I might have agreed with the application of the ‘Bigs’ if Horner had qualified applying them to Science and Academia with the additional words ‘government’s irresponsibly overfunded’; to wit if he had said (my words) “Big Government’s Irresponsibly Overfunded Science and Big Government’s Irresponsibly Overfunded Academia”.
Aside from that, I think Chris Horner hit an important point about expecting the senate related NOAA Inspector General inquiry to feed the determinism of other inquiries like the one being conducted by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. I think the senate related NOAA Inspector General inquiry will inspire the Pennsylvania Attorney General (or equivalent position in PA) to take action similar to Cuccinelli.
Horner points out that Mann is talking as if he is getting personal legal advice. He looks like he has lawyered up. To me that begs the question, since Wahl was interview by the senate related NOAA Inspector General inquiry, then shouldn’t one expect also that Mann, Ammann and Overpeck will also be interviewed. So, does Mann get to take a lawyer?
Another penetrating point by Horner on the GWPF webpage (emphasis mine):
I think Horner is hinting (in the sentence I bolded), not so subtly, that Mann may have been led to believe the question would be purposely be put to him in the way it was and he was given a reason by somebody to answer it the way he did. I do not know about whether this could be the case because without more transcripts of and inquiries into how the PSU original inquiry into Mann was conducted then we just do not know enough.
Get some popcorn, indeed!
John
Why don’t you take your disgusting shtick to the Tabloids. That is where you and all your contributors belong. It would be better than continually slandering better men than can be found on this site. Genuine scientists. Men and women of integrity.
Forwarding this to my attorney general…
He probably is already aware….but this website works wonders.
Chris
Norfolk, Virginia, USA
@HR
Maybe he was just 95% certain he hadn’t delete anything!
Or maybe relevant scientists have formed a consensus to that effect.
Amused. says:
March 8, 2011 at 8:05 pm
– – – – – –
Amused,
Do you speak for the body of scientists who are watching the ‘climategate’ related inquiries by private citizens, blogs, institutes, universities and governments play out?
The way I perceive the situation is that the more it (climategate) has been openly discussed and evaluated, then there has been increasing numbers of scientists and citizens alike who are expressing rejection of the behavior of the scientists involved in ‘climategate’. They each evaluate the situation with their own eyes, and decide. That is as it should be.
I respect your evaluation, but disagree with it.
John
Hardly; they’re vinegar and oil.
Isn’t it nice to think so.
Amused doesn’t seem very amused. Interesting that you see the “genuine scientists” who manipulate data and peer review as well as seek to keep opposing views from being published as “genuine scientists.” I’m only a lay person (amateur scientist with no science degree), but I though true scientists understand that the more who challenge and test their theories, the better the science is.
Guess it only works one way. I think they call that a “double standard”.
Men and women of integrity….right. This isn’t science, it’s become a religion and a political cause. The science keeps falling apart every day under the light of the truth.
Not sure if this was mentioned in any other comments, but in the ‘Real World’, where work is based upon profit and loss, most companies archive all them emails. Therefore deleting them from a specific computer doesn’t actually delete them. I believe companies are now required to do this, but most larger ones have been doing this on their own accord for years. ( case in point, Enron and Henry Bloggett from Merrill Lynch) Companies have to do it because of lawsuits.
In the ‘Real World’ if you screw up, you pay for it. But if you are caught covering something up, you pay BIG time, think Ford Pinto.
The cover up is usually always worse, right Dick, H.R., John, Chuck, G Gordon?
“What did the IPCC know, and when did they know it?
Steve M and Anthony, the modern day Howard Baker and Fred Thompson…how ironic, Al Gore took Bakers seat, and Thompson took over for Gore…
…cue Rod Sterling….
I honestly don’t know which planet people like ‘Amused’ (March 8, 2011 at 8:05 pm
) come from.
Ken Harvey says:
March 8, 2011 at 10:45 am
“Or did he just speak “carefully?” He equivocated. And as my old High School English master taught me, to equivocate is to lie.”
Churchill had a way with words, he preferred “Terminological Inexactitude”.
Amused. says:
March 8, 2011 at 8:05 pm
Yes, it must really be frustrating for a person that has been sucked in by Mann etc to then see them ripped apart by the truth! It seems that your “religion” is blinding you.
As for “Better Men”…..I can only hope you are not referring to Mann!
Haven’t read all of the comments fully, so I don’t know if anyone else has picked up on this yet or not, but… here’s one thought on Mann’s response which was so “carefully worded” above… [one really should read all of the comments before weighing in . After all that is common courtesy and it will certainly improve the quality of one’s contribution. It would also help to ensure that one’s contribution adds to the debate. ]
…”He [Mann] explained that he never deleted emails at the behest of any other scientist, specifically including Dr. Phil Jones, and that he never withheld data with the intention of obstructing science”
Two things in there leap out at me:…
1) …”at the behest of any other scientist”… If Prof. Mann had already deleted those emails on his own initiative, knowing that he needed to do so as part of a coverup, then he could rationalize his reply by saying to himself; “Well, I replied honestly that I didn’t delete those emails AT ANYONE ELSES behest… Right?” Nope, he may have done it on his own initiative.
2) … “he never withheld data with the intention of obstructing science”… Well, “with the intention of obstructing science” is an interesting qualifier, as he MAY have done so with the intention of obstructing an FOI request.
The double-speak contained in Prof. Mann’s reply seems obviously contrived in such a way as to deceive… ie: to “lie” without really “lying”, so to speak. Shameful!
charles the moderator says:
March 8, 2011 at 5:01 pm
EFS_Junior,
I unable to find the words to express the degree to which I am concerned about what you are most interested in, but the prefixes pico and femto come to mind.
_____________________________________________________________
So, just to be clear, you have no interest in the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Notice the above is not in the form of a question, as it is a statement of fact.
forwarding an email != deleting emails
James Sexton; Robert of Ottawa;
As far as I understand it, no e-mail is private, as it is sent under UDP through a publically accessable network; it’s route from sender to recepient is also undefined.>>>
Privacy is a matter of both technology and legality.
From a technology perspective, it is important to understand two things. From the internet perspective, route from sender to recipient is in fact undefined. The major servers on the internet are traffic hubs that (for lack of a better explanation) have a vague idea as to what direction to send any given message. So when an email is sent between two servers, it may be passed from one server to the next many times before it arrives at final destination. Those main traffic hubs are under very tight security for a variety of reasons, one of which is that should a hacker get control, they could literaly intercept mail in transit and read it. In fact, in the early days of the first viruses and anti virus programs, there was an internet server compromised (hacked) and the hackers intercepted anti-virus updates, inserted actual viruses in them, and sent them on their merry way. The same applies in a different way to local networks of which wireless is an excellent example. When you log into a public wireless network, your security software should pop up a warning that your internet traffic can potentially be seen by others. This is true. With some free tools, any computer can be set up to watch and record the traffic between all the other computers and the wireless network. Credit card transaction software has some nifty ways of defeating this, but simple things like email, porn, can easily be “watched” and recorded. Networks with a physical connection (ethernet cable) have tremendous variability in terms of implementation, and depending on the specific configuration, may suffer from the same security issue.
Turning to the legal aspect…
I’m not 100% current on this stuff, the last time I had a look in any detail was almost 2 years ago. In the United States, all data stored by all organizations can be freely accessed by various three letter government agencies without (I believe) a warrant for the purpose of fighting terrorism (Patriot Act perhaps?). This even applies for example to Canadian companies who have American operations. If they store their data in the United States (at a disaster recovery site for example) their data is no2w wide open to government inspection. Beyond that, all data is “discoverable” by court order. In a legal proceeding, if one side can show sufficient evidence to make a credible claim that corroborating evidence exists on the other sides computers, the court may order it to be made available. This is why retention policies are increasingly important. If you delete data randomly, you’ll be accused of doing so to hide evidence. If you don’t have a retention policy, then your policy by default is to keep everything…which may or may not be a good decision down the road. If you are going to delete data such as old email, then if it is done according to the official retention policy, it can’t be used against you, and you can’t be accused of hiding evidence via selective deletion.
Beyond that however, there is the matter of what information your ISP can be compelled to caugh up, and that’s the part I’m fuzziest on in terms of current state of the law. Music sharing sites sparked a huge battle, one chapter of which was an attempt by the record labels to force the ISP’s to provide the names of who had downloaded what and when so they could be billed. I’m pretty certain that one died, but what didn’t was getting sufficient info from the ISP’s to calculate the revenue lost to sharing sites and then going after the sharing sites. ISP’s will in general cooperate with law enforcement, though the extent varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Bottom line is that there is a ton of information about you at your ISP and most people don’t realize it.
David Holland says:
March 8, 2011 at 3:54 pm
Time to check the climategate files and see if Mann and Briffa exchanged mail about Ar4. thats a start.
Try this
And have a look at this for a idea of how hard some people try to please – and why.
Reply: Good one David, I would add the question, Did the files delivered to the inquiry by Mann include 1148577381.txt? ~ ctm
——————————————————-
And it goes further:
It is now confirmed at climateaudit that Mann sent the email to Wahl. As this deletion request was as well related to AR4, it should have been on Mann’s list, but obviously wasn’t.
My personal opinion is that all internet surfings and e-mail sendings are public, equivelant to speaking out in the Roman Forum or Greek Agora.>>>
Nyet.
As per my comments above, these may be technicaly accesable but that is different from being legaly accessible. Your ISP if approached by law enforcement to turn over all their customers who have downloaded from a known child porn site, is likely to cooperate in a heartbeat. If not, they quickly will be forced to by a subpoena, and same goes for any criminal evidence that may exist in email. On the other hand, there is nothing compelling you to make it easy for someone sitting next to you in the airport to intercept your information. You are reasonably safe using a credit card for example because the credit card company builds an encrypted tunnel between your browser and their server. someone monitoring your traffic just sees jibberish. But then you send and email in plain old text telling someone else your credit card number, and presto! you just gave it to anyone who was wathing the traffic. Encryption keys for email are a bit of a pain, but you can make it pretty miserable for anyone who does intercept your email to get anything usefull out of it. Bottom line, don’t put anything into an email in clear text that you wouldn’t leave in your mailbox on the front of the house where miscreants can have a look just by lifting the lid.
“…and that he never withheld data with the intention of obstructing science”
Interesting choice of words. It doesn’t actually say that he never withheld data, only that he never withheld data for the specific purpose of “obstructing science”. Is it “careful speaking” or just careless sentence construction?
Amused.
Sadly my friend, you have no idea how we long for someone of your clear opinion to appear on this site with cogent arguments and factual statements to support their position. Those who do are treated cordially, and both sides come away from the discussion having learned something.
Then there are those who shout slogans and spout arguments that they are clearly just repeating and have no real understanding of. They are quickly exposed for their lack of knowledge and inability to defend their claims.
Then there are these rather pathetic sorts who just pop in, hurl some insults, and that’s it, they’re done. We used to be amused, but now it turns out that you are amused. Amused, you sound rather angry. I’ve noticed a lot of anger coming from people who’ve made up their minds, refused to be swayed by the facts, and can mount nothing more in rebuttal than a string of insults. I find that oddly amusing. But should you come up with anything more than insults, please feel free to post something usefull. I don’t think you can.
Andrew says:
March 8, 2011 at 8:50 pm
Not sure if this was mentioned in any other comments, but in the ‘Real World’, where work is based upon profit and loss, most companies archive all them emails. Therefore deleting them from a specific computer doesn’t actually delete them. I believe companies are now required to do this, but most larger ones have been doing this on their own accord for years.>>>
For clarity Andrew, you can take a look at my previous comments. Archive is different from backup. Archive is a repository in which emails over a certain age are placed and NOT backed up. In a standard backup environment, a given email has been copied to backup 13 times in 3 months. How many copies do we need? So by moving email over a certain age to archive, it is out of the backup cycle (which saves time and tapes for doing backup) and still accessible electronically. So if we use that as an example, and email one year old would have 13 copies in backup tapes, and one in the archive.
That said, it is legal for companies to destroy email provided that they have a clearly stated retention policy and only destroy email in compliance with the retention policy.
At 8:37 PM on 8 March, Roger Knights had added yet another comment on this “Protestant and Jesuit” thing, writing:
.
I sense that this was not posted in the sense that if we were to put one of each into a container and agitates them vigorously we’d wind up with a Christian emulsion.
But there is a difference, and one critical to those of us raised in adherence to the doctrines of Holy Mother Church.
1) A reverend father of the Society of Jesus can be excommunicated.
2) A Protestant cannot.
===
davidmhoffer says:
March 8, 2011 at 7:08 pm
lol, No, it can’t be done in one post. Yes, you and I were discussing 2 different meanings to the word protocols. I was referring to company bylaws and SOP’s.
While you are correct about compliance to HIPPA/SOX and the like, it isn’t reasonable nor in many cases feasible to be able to restore data from many years ago. David, I know if you thought about this for a few, you would understand what I’m saying. But, for the benefit of other readers, and no other purpose, I’ll attempt to explain.
There are many laws in the U.S. and other nations that mandate data retention. Often, applicable laws overlap jurisdiction and are not always mandating the same things. As a result, often the practice is simply to save everything. Although sometimes this too would run afoul of certain laws. But, as to our ability to look back in time as to what occurred, so far so good. But time and technology advance at different rates. What is a backup? A backup either full or incremental only addresses data. Nothing else. You can restore the data, but often you cannot restore the programs. Does anyone have a copy of MSWord II still out there? It will not restore using the current MSWord program, or any other that I’m aware of. So, while you’ll have the data that went on the MS Word program, it will be useless. I only used Word as an example because people are familiar with it. But what of all the other programs that have come and gone and died in obscurity. Old Word, yes, its possible, not true with many others. Further, to restore a backup, you have to have the same configuration as the backup was made. (Not to mention the media player). For instance, if you backed up data on a drive called L: or what ever, unless you have that drive or are able to convince the server a different drive is L:, it won’t restore. (Yes, I know I just personified a server, but like David, if I were to attempt to explain, I’d be several hundred more words and be just as clear as I am now.) I’ll just state, much of what you can and can’t do with a backup depends on the OS(operating system) one used and is currently using. In the ideal world a backup gets restored on an apples to apples restoration. That is to say, you’d have the same server, the same OS, the same programs, the same hardware, and the same configuration of such.
In the real world, that never happens. And certainly not with backups from 10 years ago. You can’t. Well, you can, I have. But its brutal, incomplete and uncertain. I’ve been forced to restore backups twice in my life. I never wish for such experiences again.
charles the moderator says:
March 8, 2011 at 11:09 am
“Another scenario that fits the known facts stated above is that Mann could have been working for years undercover with authorities in order to entrap the other researchers into engaging in bad behavior.
But somehow I think we can discard this explanation.”
Well, maybe that particular explanation. But they may well come up with something surreal to try to get out of this.
This is not correct. You can configure a POP3 client to leave copies on the server. I do it all the time.
I don’t consider “careful speaking” to be lying. What I’ve been told by lawyers when I have to give testimony in court is to answer questions I’m asked by the opposing side as succinctly and specifically as possible. This of necessity involves “careful speaking” because I have two opposing duties; first to tell the truth and secondly to my injured patient who is the reason I’m in court. The prevailing view is that it is up to the opposing lawyer to phrase the questions in such a manner so that the truth they are seeking will come out. I’ve been in situations where the opposing lawyer has noted the careful phrasing and zeroed in on the subject that I hadn’t explicitly mentioned. When he asks a direct question about that subject I have to answer it truthfully.
A good example of how “careful speaking” is effective was a colleague of mine who had two insurance company lawyers come to his office to discuss injuries sustained by one of his patients in an MVA. They were allowed to peruse the patients chart only from the date of the accident forward as well as question the doctor on all medical topics relating to the patient. One of the injuries claimed by the patient was that he was unable to perform sexually after the accident. My colleague was mystified why so much time was spent on exploration of this topic after the accident and that neither of the lawyers asked the obvious question: was sexual function normal prior to the accident? My colleague informed me that it wasn’t and failure to ask that question resulted in a good settlement for the patient.
What is needed to find out what happened with Mann and the emails is to get an independent investigator who will ask the hard questions and Mann will either have to answer truthfully or perjure himself. It wouldn’t surprised me if the Penn State review was setup in such a way so that the questions could be answered narrowly thus not requiring Mann to lie and give the illusion that a satisfactory review of his work had taken place. An aggressive intelligent lawyer with familiarity of the climategate emails would make short work of Mann.
Latitude says:
March 8, 2011 at 4:01 pm
but if we just reach across the isle,
CALIBAN
Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
The Tempest 3.2.148-156
So now can we see the emails Mann has NOT deleted ?
Amused. says:
March 8, 2011 at 8:05 pm
“Why don’t you take your disgusting shtick to the Tabloids. That is where you and all your contributors belong. It would be better than continually slandering better men than can be found on this site. Genuine scientists. Men and women of integrity.”
_____________________
[snip . . ad hom]
Do you think these e-mails are fraudulent? Or, innocent?
I hope nobody’s counting on you to save the world.
During the course of an enjoyable 40 year stint in the construction industry, I soon learned that “if you know the truth then, given sufficient time, you can fabricate very good lies”
David Holland says:
March 8, 2011 at 3:54 pm (Edit)
Time to check the climategate files and see if Mann and Briffa exchanged mail about Ar4. thats a start.
Try this
And have a look at this for a idea of how hard some people try to please – and why.
##############
the are also some in the dec 13 time frame 2005.
If mann followed the rules ( unlike Wahl) then he would have very few mails to Briffa WRT AR4. he made his comments through the process or thru overpeck and solomon.
“A good example of how “careful speaking” is effective was a colleague of mine who had two insurance company lawyers come to his office to discuss injuries sustained by one of his patients in an MVA. They were allowed to peruse the patients chart only from the date of the accident forward as well as question the doctor on all medical topics relating to the patient. One of the injuries claimed by the patient was that he was unable to perform sexually after the accident. My colleague was mystified why so much time was spent on exploration of this topic after the accident and that neither of the lawyers asked the obvious question: was sexual function normal prior to the accident? My colleague informed me that it wasn’t and failure to ask that question resulted in a good settlement for the patient.”
Nope that is lying by omission, an attempt to conceal the real truth.
It would be like saying “after the accident he had no use of his legs and that remains the same today” – when in fact the patient never had use of his legs. As a doctor you should be expert enough to make no mention of this, since it was not in any way related to the accident. To make such a statement or allow it to stand uncorrected is a conspiracy to hide the truth from the courts. Sure the opposing lawyer is a jackass but as a doctor a medically false statement is being made about your patient and you are collaborating to defraud the insurance company.
[snip – too far off color]
Steve, Charles – excellent work, gentlemen. I think we knew anyhow that, if your reputation depends on a government (or academic) inquiry, then you have no reputation; you & CA provide the proof. A *lot* of us will now be watching eagerly for those eventual disclosures and attributions – pity they’re unlikely to appear in the MM where everyone can see them.
As more of this stuff floats to the surface, the worse it stinks.
I’ve been turning scenarios over in my head on this one. Quite complicated; many people have no idea how e-mail works, others do. So you have this request to delete e-mails, which as many point out is probably pointless since e-mails are kept on servers (as in Climategate). You have Mr. Mann, who, to give him the benefit of the doubt, did NOT delete e-mails. But then Mr. Wahl (we hear) said Mr. Mann told him to delete, and he did. If all this is true, then either Mr. Mann or Mr. Wahl is mistaken, or lying. Or it might not be true, could be an erroneous leak. Even disinformation fed to WUWT to discredit it.
But let’s go with it being a good leak.
I’d have to say that for Mr. Mann to outright lie would be dumb. He had evidence that e-mails are obtainable without the cooperation of the sender/recipients (Climategate). So he’d get caught in a lie rather easily, and it had to be obvious that the stakes were rapidly getting high with the laws of multiple countries coming into play. But then how do you explain what Wahl is said to have said?
Is it possible that Mr. Wahl is merely mistaken about WHO told him to delete? Mr. Mann provided Mr. Jones with the e-mail address. Did Mann maybe get cold feet and Phil contacted him? Maybe Phil started out by saying, “Mike gave me your e-mail address…”. Faulty recollections are quite common, you know! So maybe Mann did not comply, did not ask Mann to comply, he’s just guilty of faulty recollections.
Another scenario is a phone call by Mann. Either because they had something to talk about, or maybe just the desire to minimize electronic records? But if the desire was to minimize electronic records, why even respond to the request? Just delete and handle communications on both ends with a calling card.
Last scenario, the use of private e-mail accounts. These folks seemed to rely on work e-mail accounts, but then since the e-mail extensions were frequently X’ed out in the Climategate work, it is possible that home e-mail accounts were used and I missed it. Many people will use home e-mail accounts to work after-hours if they can’t easily access work e-mail remotely. So some of this may have been handled off of public accounts?
Anyway, more to come. Just putting my ruminations out there to add to the fun. My guesses are usually wrong though–I posted the idea that the professional intelligence agencies (Rooskies) were the Climategate hackers before the logical theories emerged (FOIA request, leaked; inside job by disgruntled Gemini).
James Sexton;
Everything you said about difficulty of restoring is correct…sorta…we’d need a couple thousand pages to handle all the exceptions to the best answer.
The data is useless without the application, true. That’s why you back up the application as well! On the other hand, then you are confronted with trying to find a piece of hardware that will run the application. pdp8’s just aren’t sitting on store shelves anymore. I’ve also run into backup tapes so old that there aren’t any working tape drives anymore that can read the tapes. Then’s there’s those poor souls who committed to an incremental forever architecture and never did a save set consolidation. First disaster and they discover that to recover one server they need 38 tapes and tape number 6 is corrupt. HOOPED!
The point of a properly architected and run backup and recovery system however is to put mitigation strategies in place in advance. This isn’t rocket science, it just needs to be done. As tape technology advances, you copy your old save sets onto new technology tapes, before the old drives go off maintenance (and no excuses, the manufacturer sends notices ahead of time). Applications that run on servers going off maintenance and which can’t run on new hardware have to have their data converted. Its not that hard in most cases as long as you do it while the old gear is still available. Almost any legacy application has a next generation application that can convert to/from. As for email systems, you’d have to go back a lot longer than 10 years to find something that couldn’t be easily restored. It isn’t that restoring is all that difficult in a properly maintained backup environment, its that so many backup environments are sloppily maintained. Which is insane when you think about it. Nuke every server in the company and being up and running is a matter of how long it takes to get new servers and plug them in. Lose your data…you are hooped and something like 70% of companies that lose their data go bankrupt in 12 months or less. So why anyone DOESN’T have a well run backup system is beyond me. That said, I’ve not seen a single article about what the CRU email system was, how old it is, what backup systems were in place, nothing. Odd is it not?
As for the myriad of standards that overlap, yes they can be a nightmare to work through. However, when you do work through them, there is less conflict than you might think. They almost all state some standard or metric, but with the caveat that in the case of a conflict, the resolution shall be blah blah blah. Once you go through the conflict resolution wording, a surprising number of issues evaporate. You’ll see a lot of things like “must be retained for 7 years unless in conflict with another statute in which case the longer time frame of the two shall apply”. So you find one conflict that says 5 years, but has the same caveat, so no problem either way. You can even buy purpose built appliances that have all the regulatory databases installed and you can just go through, pick off the ones that apply to you, and go. The appliance does the rest. At enormous…I mean cost effectively. would you like to buy one? A smidge more complex than that of course, my point being that it is all pretty manageable…if you actually manage it.
Ha ha ha. Guess I just got pwned. Serves me right for not going to Climate Audit first. Guess there WAS an e-mail, and guess who it was from? So two choice. You can either NOT post my first rumination–since it’s awaiting moderation and not subject to FOIA, that isn’t illegal deletion. Or you can post both so people can watch me eat humble pie. Either works!!
Thanks, Charles the Moderator and Steve Mosher for giving us a peep of a new chapter of an unfolding mystery which is not only the most fascinating serial mystery of all time, but the squalid ramifications arising from it for the world’s economies and most immediately for the poor and elderly are enormous.
Those who argue above about the various definitions of a lie are following the lead of Mrs Clinton, who when caught in a quite serious lie about the circumstances of her being under fire in Sarajevo during the recent hostilities there, explained it away by saying that she ‘mis-spoke’; what a nasty and self-serving misuse of language. She not only lied, but invented a new and less evil-sounding adjective for lying in an attempt to save face.
EFS_Junior says:
March 8, 2011 at 9:40 pm
forwarding an email != deleting emails
forwarding an email containing an incitement to unlawful action = collusion in conspiracy
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/fred-pearce-climategate-and-credibility/
Actually that clip is quite funny. “It’s a cook-book!”. Hahaha.
Alexander K says:
March 9, 2011 at 1:54 am
Mrs Clinton, who when caught in a quite serious lie about the circumstances of her being under fire in Sarajevo during the recent hostilities there, explained it away by saying that she ‘mis-spoke’; what a nasty and self-serving misuse of language. She not only lied, but invented a new and less evil-sounding adjective for lying
Mis Spoke and her lover boy Mister Minoligised have a great deal to answer for.
This mealy mouthed misuse of language shows little more than the deviousness of the authors, and speaks volumes about their integrity. In the states, Mosquito Mann needs to meet govt employee Fed Erl Inquiry and in the UK Phil Ling-my-eyes-here Jones needs to get acquainted with his sister Judi Cial Inquiry.
Methinks that the good old Middle English word (from the French), dissemble covers what Mann said (or, actually, didn’t say).
I do hope I live to see the conclusion to all this.
Oliver Ramsay says:
March 8, 2011 at 12:29 pm
paul says:
March 8, 2011 at 10:22 am
“Perhaps Congress should serve Mann a subpoena”
Just one question about this – what is the jurisdiction of congress in the UK?
Thanks a lot for your help and congratulations on winning the best “science” blog award.
————————————-
So, Paul, did you drop by to flaunt your utter ignorance of the whole issue and treat us to some mindless sarcasm? Why? Was it to get some visitors to your lame alarmist site? None of the faithful read you so you thought you’d invite some sceptics?
This is an important question as Dr Jones’ email asking for the deletion was triggered by a UK originated FOI request. So any deletion by Wahl was requested by the director of UK CRU (a department of the University of East Anglia) in order to avoid UK FOI requests uncovering issues. One presumes that if an email trail to the US was being deleted to avoid disclosure in a UK FOI request then similar deletions were being carried out/requested in UK CRU of the University of East Anglia.
The answer for Paul is that the UK FOI does not have legal force in the USA nor does the USA FOI have legal force in the UK. However, the US Department of Energy is one of the major funding sources for UK CRU of the University of East Anglia. If it is found that the CRU has been involved in avoidance of FOI (it was found guilty but the offence had been ‘time expired’ due to the delay in legal action) then the US Department of Energy could stop all payments to CRUof the University of East Anglia, and cease to provide any further contracts to them. I have no doubt that similar withdrawal of funding and contract withholding would occur at Mann’s current and past universities if they were also found to be colluding in this avoidance of FOIA requests. From the current running in circles in Virginia it would appear that at least one US University has something to hide.
tallbloke says:
March 9, 2011 at 1:54 am
EFS_Junior says:
March 8, 2011 at 9:40 pm
forwarding an email != deleting emails
forwarding an email containing an incitement to unlawful action = collusion in conspiracy
_____________________________________________________________
Are you a lawyer? No.
But even if you were, it would still only be “your” legal opinion on such matters.
As it stands now it is just your opinion as a layman, and IMHO a very bad one.
Therefore the original inequality still stands, is a true statement, and a matter of fact, RE:
forwarding an email != deleting emails
But as conspiracy theories go, have at it, as this makes up 99.44% of what all you people always say anyway.
Ron Cram says:
March 8, 2011 at 8:41 am
“Good work on this, Steven. The problem is if Congress subpoenas Mann, they will have to offer immunity from prosecution. This certainly looks worthy of the interest of a criminal prosecutor to me.”
They don’t *have* to offer immunity from prosecution. I also very much doubt that the republican-chaired committee would agree to immunity either. That said, immunity from prosecution doesn’t protect someone from academic punishment for ethical violations even if they wind up immune to criminal charges.
Not all that much to go on at this point. At least regarding anything prior to the IG questioning. See this link for the OIG summary by NOAA on the emails:
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110224_climate.html
Follow the link and read page 5 of the “details” about the U of PA prof and the person that is now a NOAA employee. NOAA falls under the Dept of Commerce (DOC) OIG perview. Some things about the OIGs are important to remember. Lying to one is a crime (if procedure is followed) so you can be charged with felony perjury. However, the OIG can only refer to the Dept of Justice (DOJ) any “suspected” crimes and then it’s up to the DOJ.
The Dept. of Commerce OIG basically said “nothing here regarding anything the government did”. The entire thing is only 24 pages. You can determine the scope of their examination yourself.
A really big point is the Department of Commerce is the most political of all the government departments surpassed only by the White House itself. Mostly the DOC said, imho, “Gee, you shoulda tried harder. Go back and try a tad harder will you?” and their response to Congress “Nothing here. Move on.” One should note how Obama has fired other IGs and/or discredited them. It wouldn’t be difficult, in such large agencies, to produce just about any result desired, especially at DOC.
And then, even if referred, what are the chances that Holder’s “My People” DOJ will go after anything remotely touching Obama’s Green agenda?
Thus, Wahl told the truth it seems since it’s better to avoid criminal charges and, at worst, only worry about possible civil fines – if that.
Ha ha, Mickey Mann and his Pinocckey Stick, say no more.
There was a young Mann from VA
Who said “I’ll be famous one day”
He misspoke to the trees
And collected the fees
But then Phil sent an email his way
It asked to delete what he’d seen
Of the dialog ‘twixt Keith and Eugene
Plus many and more
Of report ‘AR4’
So the team would look all squeaky clean
Muir Russell looked into the CRU
But didn’t have much of a clue
When picking the papers
To check out his capers
Told Jones “Well, we’ll leave it to you”
Well Mike Mann then got rather Irate
Said ‘deniers’ were to blame for Phil’s fate
But then got the call
To come down the hall
And face the Elders in charge at Penn State
When quizzed if he’d done A or B
He carefully spoke “Do an A? not me!”
But before they could ask
About the B in their task
He’d gone to the john for a P
So they allowed the matter to rest
On the nothing to which Mann confessed
Such shameful behaviour
Won’t be science’s saviour
It’s back to the bloggers long quest
But now WUWT and SteveM@CA
Bring new facts to the light of the day
Mike Mann asked Eugene
To do something unseen
Now more questions are coming his way!
EFS_Junior says:
March 9, 2011 at 3:20 am
tallbloke says:
March 9, 2011 at 1:54 am
EFS_Junior says:
March 8, 2011 at 9:40 pm
forwarding an email != deleting emails
forwarding an email containing an incitement to unlawful action = collusion in conspiracy
Are you a lawyer? No.
I don’t need to be or have a lawyer to know right from wrong. How about you?
But as conspiracy theories go, have at it, as this makes up 99.44% of what all you people always say anyway.
Did you use decentred principle components analysis to come up with that figure?
EFS_Junior;
As it stands now it is just your opinion as a layman, and IMHO a very bad one.
But as conspiracy theories go, have at it, as this makes up 99.44% of what all you people always say anyway.>>>
I think you mispoke.
As a conspiracy, this one took in 99.44% of the people.
As they say, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Nor can you fool most of the people for ever. After a while the litany of failed predictions, the inability of the key proponents of warming to, by their own admission, demonstrate change of any statistical significance, and the string of flimsy excuses excusing bad science one by one crumbling into deliberate misdirection or outright lies adds up. The conclusion that was obvious to only a few slowly becomes obvious to almost everyone.
But, as EFS_Junior demonstrates, you can in fact fool some of the people all of the time. My question to you EFS, are you knowingly attempting disuade the rest of us of the evidence we can see with our own eyes? Or are you simply one of those unfortunate people who are fooled all of the time?
One need not be a lawyer to consider the facts and see clearly that criminal acts have been commited to cover shameless behaviour that in itself my also be criminal. In fact, only a fool would see them otherwise.
I doubt anything will happen to any of these characters. They are slippery and there isn’t any “smoking gun” or “DNA evidence”. Everything is in a grey zone and subject to interpretation.
The only way these types get caught is that they keep it up and their next transgression is their doom. Like OJ Simpson.
I can’t help feeling that Mann is in many ways similar to Libya’s Gaddafi.
1. Untrustworthy, deceitful and a serial manipulator of facts/data.
2. Widely exposed as a congenital liar.
3. Almost everyone wants rid of him, but don’t know how to do it.
4. Both react violently to any criticism, the one with rants and writs, the other with bombs and secret police.
5. Having no credibility whatsoever, except among a dwindling fanatic few.
6. Neither has any real understanding of science or statistical methods.
Difficult to know who would be the better contributor to the next IPCC fantasy report.
RayG
I think you are missing my point. I thought that Mann’s “offence” was being part of an agreement to delete emails that might be/were requested by a FOI request, which is something to do with British law, hence my question about the jurisdiction of Congress in British law. I guess the subpoena could be for something else, but the article doesn’t say what this is and that was what I was curious about. He was, of course, repremanded for forwarding people’s manuscripts without their written consent, but I don’t think this is a very serious offence.
http://mitigatingapathy.blogspot.com/
The oath goes something like, “the Truth, the whole Truh, and nothing but the Truth….”
the real test is how much circulation these latest revelations receive. Many team apologists and sycophants have diligently recited the mantra on Climategate that “there’s nothing to see here” and that it is one vast tea party for the same old group of skeptics. The icing on this particular cake has always been the plethora of “independent” reviews which have “exonerated” the Team and found them to be perfectly good academic citizens of impeccable standing and victims of a nasty, overwhelming, oil funded skeptic machine (sarc).
As these latest instances of “careful speaking” illustrate both the reviews and their whitewashing of the Team appear to be both inaccurate and overly indulgent.
So, does the rest of the academy now, finally, concede their may be some real problems with this whole IPCC/CRU/Team mess? Do otherwise conscientious professors distance themselves (see Curry, see self-respect)?
Thus far, at my instittution the response has been to ignore the situation, hope it goes away quietly and that business as usual continues unabated.
Put simply, the vast majority of academics do not get the significance of Climategate for public trust in all intellectuals, nor have they bothered to try.
Lastly, a previous commentator said these guys are not stupid, they have PhD’s. Let’s not confuse education with intelligence: many PhD’s are educated but lack common sense. Moreover, they supplant the humility that comes from admitting what one doesn’t know with an overwhelming arrogance that their PhD means they know everything about everything — well at least the stuff worth knowing, which is of course, their view on anything.
To put it simply, Hitler is a monster for killing six million.
Yet environmentalists are given a free pass by the media even in spite of wanting the eradication of over six billion people.
There is only one word, used correctly and in its proper context, for these people. Evil.
Was the Twilight Zone episode meant to act as the pun? “It’s a cook[ed]-book”?
There is absolutely no need to keep the original self-made program used to turn raw data into pretty machined pictures. The raw data is King, Queen, Jack, 10, and Ace in the whole.
If these poor excuses for Ph.D.’s lost their original program and have only raw data and machined data to share, no problem. If the raw data is available as it should be, and is subjected to many different forms of machinations but cannot be made to duplicate an author’s results, that, in and of itself, negates a significant finding. The null hypothesis would stand. If their results were robust, several other researchers should be able to play with the raw data and machined data without changing the outcome. The null hypothesis would rightly be rejected. However, if they lost the raw data as well as the program and have only the machined data to show for their years of toil, their moment in the Sun should be forgotten and results retracted from all journals. Further more, their next job should be stocking shelves under supervision. Allegedly.
Briffa’s statement that “I will revise the reply to say briefly that I do not agree with the interpretation of the reviewer” shows that the IPCC authors do not meet the standards of peer review. They can publish whether they have been technically responsive to points raised or not, there is no follow-up cycle, no editor holding their feet to the fire.
Is EFS actually arguing that you need to be a lawyer to determine whether conspiracy to commit a crime is itself a crime? That’s pretty daft. It’s not just opinion, it is a crime. The only question of opinion would be whether or not the act itself constituted a crime.
Mark
Pamela Gray, it is ninety per cent probable, their efficiency being what it is, that they would even lose the null hypothesis, if that were possible.
My fantastical speculative reconstruction follows. I am sure if Michael Crichton were still with us he could do incredibly better. My operating guideline for the reconstruction is, though intention must follow motivation, satire overrules everything. : )
The setting: The countdown to AR4 deadlines gets deep into the count. Lack of sufficiently ‘on message’ drafts looms darkly over the staunch IPCC teams. There is pressure from the top IPCC lords and ladies on the industrious worker bees (aka lead authors, etc). Tic Toc Tic Toc. NOTE: In other words it was a dark and stormy night.
The protagonists:
First we have the fellowship of the white hats, the noble heroes of the media induced crusade against human carbon based life’s use of carbon. Who they are: just read the newspapers, any newspaper anywhere. OK?
Next we have those scientists whose science shall not be named. They are the deniers of white hat fellowship’s science and unholy promoters of evil dissention in the gullible populace and in uniformed elected politicians alike. A populace who are characterized by Judith Curry’s lower nether region of lesser epistemics; her conception of scientific intellectual knuckle draggers. This is a populace that is incapable (see Ravetz), by their very nature, to comprehend the lofty Ravetzian PNS that will save the fellowship of the white hats and the world. Who are the scientists whose science shall not be named? Well, see the exhaustive list of people decried by the likes of Romm, Revkin, RC et al. OK?
The plot: All is not well in the halls of consensus of settled science that is valiantly guarded by the white hatters, the IPCC and RC. Nature is not conforming with the dictates of the white hat fellowship of the anti-carbon crusaders. Also, there is unease in the troublesome populace and in some unsupportive non-left political groups (whose numbers are surprisingly/alarmingly growing). Urgently needed is a story that does not reveal these inconvenient weaknesses. It must look like science . . . . yet not be strictly based on scientific method with its pesky falsifiable hypotheses ideas. A covert pseudo-science strike force springs forth spontaneously (or not) to spin the AR4 as necessary. Their mission is to not get caught. Then, curses, the existence and operations of the covert team is revealed by some traitor within the fellowship of the white hatters (at this point in the plot they look more like mad-hatters). Nuts, they google Watergate frantically to see how to screw up a cover up! They succeed in screwing it up. The final scene shows some inglorious financial accountants, who work for the lawyers representing the defendants, preparing for the disclosure phase of legal proceedings. It is just as well the plot ends here, because we will have certainly run out of popcorn at this point.
John
As someone who had a protestant upbringing I have to defend the jesuits wrt “equivocation”.To equivocate is to lie, but to do so justifiably, as in ” Do you know where is the priest hole in Waverly Castle?”.
Climate alarmists, and environmentalists are the very vilest of liars and scoundrels. on the other hand.
There is no proof to any of the allegations in the article or the comments which have followed. Without proof, shouldn’t we be skeptical of the allegations?
There is one salient fact from this thread I find astonishing: e-mail configured in POP3 is saved and stored by my server. That would include every 10mb e-mail of doggies doing cute; Wal-mart people not so cute; every important e-mail received from kind folks concerned about my penis size. All stored in perpetuity. Wow!
Special Scepical,
I for one am sceptical that John Kerry knows yet that he lied.
Same for this group of self awarded citations and grants.
When you sign your name to a report knowing it false you just may get swiftboated.
And I mean it in the best swiftboat way.
Alexander K says:
“Those who argue above about the various definitions of a lie are following the lead of Mrs Clinton, who when caught in a quite serious lie about the circumstances of her being under fire in Sarajevo during the recent hostilities there, explained it away by saying that she ‘mis-spoke’; what a nasty and self-serving misuse of language. She not only lied, but invented a new and less evil-sounding adjective for lying in an attempt to save face.”
No, she didn’t invent the word. It’s from Middle English mispeke, mispeken, misspeke, misspeken, meaning to speak incorrectly (as in mispronounce), or to slander. I don’t know who concocted the current popular definition of speaking too hastily.
The Clintons were serial liars, and apparently still are. Lying appears to be highly admired in their political circles, and was heavily advocated by Saul Alinsky, Obama’s and Hillary’s hero. These are the same political groups to which most members of the Team are committed, so their dishonesty is not remarkable. People who believe their ends justify the means can never be trusted in anything. The word has no meaning in their world.
EFS Junior…….can you read? It is a serious question?
That Mann forwarded an email to Wahl that asked Wahl to delete emails is without question.
That Wahl deleted emails is without question.
That Mann did not answer the allegation–“Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?”–is without question.
Mann lied to Penn State inquirers is without question.
The emails proof everything AND it is brought forth in their own words.
Please, do be a dove, and point me in the direction of the actual “conspiracy theory” here.
We only want the facts, which are being obfuscated by the players that have committed the sins.
sceptical says:
March 9, 2011 at 7:58 am
There is no proof to any of the allegations in the article or the comments which have followed. Without proof, shouldn’t we be skeptical of the allegations?
cedarhill posted a link that, if you’d bothered to follow it, would have given you enough evidence. The OIG report can be downloaded in .pdf format here:
http://www.oig.doc.gov/oig/reports/2011/001688.html
I’m sure you’ll ignore the part about Wahl admitting to receiving an e-mail from Mann and complying with the request for the deletion of e-mails and focus on the parts that say no one at NOAA did anything wrong. Frankly, the report is a disappointment…. it seems to be more of the same “careful speech” we’ve seen in all the other inquiries.
sceptical says:
March 9, 2011 at 7:58 am (Edit)
There is no proof to any of the allegations in the article or the comments which have followed. Without proof, shouldn’t we be skeptical of the allegations?
#######
what are the allegations?
Pamela Gray says:
March 9, 2011 at 6:16 am (Edit)
Was the Twilight Zone episode meant to act as the pun? “It’s a cook[ed]-book”?
######
I thought folks would see the similarity of appearence between Romm and the Aliens.
The TZ episode is full of allusion and common themes..
This is why Google should offer tours through its server farms like Disneyland. I think the average person doesn’t really grasp just how much storage is functioning in the world, and just how much is retained. Since the earliest days of the internet, the saying went, “What goes on the internet, stays on the internet.” Individuals really have very little power to delete things, and there are so many webcrawler programs running at this point, crawling through links and saving copies… nothing is every really deleted. It might become lost to the owner, but a copy exists somewhere. Incidentally this is another reason I find the general population’s fascination with Facebook/Myspace tragically humorous. Generations from now their pictures will still be available to their grandchildren, and photoshop will only get more capable. Best to live life off of the internet (at least from a personal information standpoint), and keep in contact with friends using pseudonyms.
“Horsehockey Stickey Gate?”
“They’ve already made their reputations from never being wrong and hardly ever less than completely certain. I can’t see them backstabbing mann.”
Too true. Likely mann has insurance. Dirt sufficient to bring the rest of the team down if they tried this. Like being a “made mann” in the mafia. You can’t be trusted until the group has evidence against you sufficient to hang you should you try and turn against the group.
Until and unless this matter comes before a prosecutor I can’t see the university doing anything meaningful.
q. why did you tell us you didn’t participate in deleting emails, when whal says you did, by forwarding him an email requesting him to delete emails?
a. did i? i don’t recall. i get so many emails i must have forwarded it without reading the contents.
@woodNfish March 8, 2011 at 9:11 am:
The Watergate cover-up folks would know all about this kind of behavior. Nixon certainly had a cow when Alexander Butterfield – in not “carefully speaking” – revealed that there were tape recordings of everything that went on in the Oval Office. And once that bomb was dropped, the White House Legal Advisor John Dean took the “full truthy” path and the rest was history.
Had Nixon just admitted right out that they had made a bad choice in directing the Democratic Party HQs to be “searched,” he would have lived to see another day. After all, Nixon was the same guy who gave the “Checkers Speech,” so he knew how forgiving the public was, if one fell on one’s sword with a few “mea culpas.”
So the CRU-Mann crowd keep on only admitting what has been revealed by others – a step-by-step path to disgrace. That meant they admitted nothing before Climategate. And they admitted nothing to the panels as long as they thought they could get away with it.
That is the bottom line, you know: “We will do whatever we think we can get away with. Don’t admit anything unless they’ve caught us with our pants down.” That is the tone of all the Climategate emails, and it is the tone of the “careful speaking” of Mann. It is the tone of the advice given to the IPCC, too – make any and all assertions to “supplement the message.” But the whole issue involves the IPCC’s actions and intents, too, especially when the IPCC was asking Briffa for something to outdo the Hockey Stick – “Do and say whatever we think we can get away with and which we think the public will swallow.”
tallbloke says:
March 9, 2011 at 4:25 am
nice bit of rhyming. maybe you’ll have to change your handle from “tallbloke” to “longfellow” ;>)
Jeremy;
Best to live life off of the internet (at least from a personal information standpoint), and keep in contact with friends using pseudonyms.>>>
Best to live life ON the internet. An honest and ethical life, with private communication sent via encryption keys. No point running away from the primary traffic system of the planet, just learn how to drive on it without hitting on coming traffic or sliding into a ditch.
On the “Careful Speaking”, there are two other phrases that might be more accurate: Lying by Omission and Dissembling.
Re ‘To serve Mann”
“It only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there is someone being served.
The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master. ”
– Ayn Rand
@ Larry Hamlin:
I thought that this investigation was conducted by the University of Pennsylvania not Penn State. Am I mistaken?
You are. 🙂 They are two different schools. The University of Pennsylvania is Ivy League and in Philadelphia. Penn State is a state-run school.
Climate Gate, the gift that keeps giving.
Steve and CTM,
I just want to compliment this excellent post. Top shelf stuff. Great writing and organizational skillz.
The President of Penn State.
Would a college President accept an exoneration where they didnt get Wahl’s E-mails or interview him? No he would say the investigation produced no finding. Due either to lack of effort or lack of cooperation.
Put yourself in his shoes. Youve got an allegation of coruption against a top prof. You must investigate.
But the prof is an ideological hero to the other profs. They will not accept censuring Mann. So if you investigate, you must exonerate. Thus the softball investigation.
The corruption is all pervasive.
Its not Mann. A bad apple. Nothing new.
Its not the University President. A corrupt official. Career uber alles. Nothing new.
Its teh Academy. Look at the president’s motive. The faculty wont accept justice.
lol, they just keep digging.
Not what I was saying. What I was trying to get across is don’t splash your Vegas pics on teh intarwebs because you felt like sharing.
From that update link:
“On the contrary, Wahl says, he was responding to a request by East Anglia’s Phil Jones that Mann forwarded to him “without any additional comment … there was no request from [Mann] to delete emails.””
I see. Mann is trying to place all blame on Jones. Apparently Mann was ‘just following orders.’ Completely innocent.
What is Mann doing in Hawaii? Such CO2 costs! The horror! Why not just stay in Penn and enjoy the warmcold there? Or last chance to enjoy that beach before it is flooded?
OK. I’ve read the story in ScienceInsider with the Wahl
statement and Mike Mann’s comments:
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/03/exclusive-climatologist-says-he-.html
Both Wahl and Mann seem to have different racks upon
which they stretch the truth and torture logic.
Mann passes along an request (order) from Jones just like
a good subordinate in an organization (the Team) would do.
Passing the order along to Wahl, with or without commentary,
signifies Mann’s acquiescence.
Mann knew all about the FOI requests, thanks to the many
e-mails he’d been copied. (See the Climategate letters)
These folks are still playing hide the sausage… but the game
is running out of places to poke it.
Well did Mann encourage Wahl in any way to delete the e-mails other than sending him the request to do so?
He says not. So, seeing as he also said he hasn’t deleted any e-mails relating to this subject, he can therefore produce the actual e-mail he sent to Wahl to prove this can’t he?
If he does not, or says he can’t produce it, then he either has something to hide about this e-mail or it is proof that he actually has deleted e-mails relating to this matter and confirms he has lied.
So which is it? Anyone want to speculate?
Alan
Wait. WattsUpWith the markups of the headline story? Something change? Someone make accusations they shouldn’t have? …
Reply: More a demonstration how little the changes matter to the big picture even if we now take Mann and Wahl at their current word of the day. ~ ctm
This is great news for potentially putting the scientific method back into climate science.
What are the possible penalties for Mann and Wahl?
How likely is it that they will be brought to justice for their alleged crimes (assuming that deleting the emails was a conspiracy and a crime)?
What impact does this have upon their, ahem, science careers, if any, if they are prosecuted and if they are not?
How might this help to put the scientific method back into climate science in your view?
[snip – still too much OTT]
Martin Lomasney: “Never write when you can speak, never speak when you can nod, never nod when you can wink. ”
Eliot Spitzer: “and never put it in e-mail.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Lomasney
I have read the updated responses from Mann and Wahl and reread the partial transcript posted by Steve, Wahl’s present denial doesn’t jive with his statements in the transcript. That needs ‘splaining.
Bishop hill has given some answers to Mann and Wahl reply why why why? c4yourself
Mann’s response is disingenuous at best. He can only claim virtue if, upon forwarding the e-mail, he had also added advice to NOT delete any e-mail. In forwarding the e-mail without comment, he’s signaling his approval of the contents. He may not have actively advocated the deletion of e-mail, but neither did he caution against such an act when he should have done so.
RC (Gavin) has posted it’s rebuttal (Wahl):
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/03/wahl-to-wahl-coverage/
And for those who were doubting our “Sources”.
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/03/exclusive-climatologist-says-he-.html
Wahl now states publicly for the record:
So he’s stating Mann gave the email no “value add”, weak.
Mann’s story:
Interesting, where was it known for a year and a half that this email was forwarded? Did the Penn State inquiry know? If so then this is another reason their finding was inadequate. I would love someone to find an example from before March 6th, 2011 where this information was known.
The Post here has been modified to be completely consistent with Mann and Wahl’s statements at the above link and it changes very little. ~ ctm
My mind…, it cannot take the potential humor here… You are exactly right. If Mann didn’t delete e-mails, as he claimed in Penn State investigation, where is the e-mail where he thoroughly discouraged Wahl? Produce the e-mail, and not just some text file which anyone could fake. I want an auditor to stand over Mann’s logged-in e-mail account and witness/screenshot this supposed e-mail, with full headers. It also must appear in his sent folder or it means nothing. It also must appear in the most recent e-mail database backups kept off-site or it never existed.
This is looking pretty serious. This time they (RC and Co, Science mag, etc) have been forced to give a reply. They now know there is potential legal stuff coming from this. I think Mann and Wahl has now dug themselves deeper with his reply (see BH blog).
Guys guys… did you read the response?
1) Wahl says that he deleted the email of his own volition. Which begs the question: Are all the scientist involved coincidentally equally deceptive? or
2) Is Wahl a liar also?
Academia…. is poisoned by people like this.
PW
I would post this on RC, but it will either disappeared or be edited to make me look bad. I challenge Gavin to address it here:
Also in Finland, E10 gasoline cathassrophe and all windmillills, no oil but trees are allowed to burn.
Iám sähköeurastaja, if you deliver video what i send, in Finland, maybe tide turns.
You are my idol.
Passing on information in furtherance of an illegal act is still a crime, even if you don’t otherwise participate. Whether or not the act was illegal is for the courts to decide, however. A legitimate lawyer would not have allowed Mann or Wahl to issue either of these statements as they are admissions.
Mark
Just read that RC response. Here’s Gavin’s sweet response to the first comment, from “John,” who dared to say:
“I totally understand. As publicly funded scientists there should be no reason to avoid the appearance of hiding anything by skirting the limits of FOI laws. I mean, even though public money goes into it, ultimately it’s your data, we should just trust you.”
“[Response: As an example of misconstruing almost every available fact, this comment rates high. Given that all of the relevant data and code related to this have been available for years, and yet the mono-maniacal desire to find something (anything!) wrong continues unabated, it is clear to any objective party that this continued harassment has nothing to do with science or climate or data or replication, but everything to do with partisan personal attacks. – gavin]”
The whole thing stinks so bad. I think it is amusing that the team doesn’t think that people can see through thinly veiled “careful speaking.”
Doesn’t it put a resonable amount of carbon into the atmosphere to fly a person from Pennsylvania to Hawaii? Can someone tell me how to spell hypocrate again??
“Mann, reached on vacation in Hawaii”
I guess life is good when you can wrangle some stimulus funds.
Person A sends me an e-mail asking that I murder some people. Person A also asks me to forward the e-mail inciting violence to Person B.
I forward the pro-violence e-mail to Person B, but I don’t commit any violence. I haven’t done anything wrong, have I? I am just a conduit, an inert piece of the Internet, as it were. Right?
I posted the following snide remark at RC.
“Jimmy Haigh says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
9 Mar 2011 at 4:43 PM
There’s a lot of smoke here boys. I hope there’s no CO2 in it…”
I doubt that it will appear but I kept a screenshot for posterity.
Now if this was known for one a a half year…
Allegation 2: Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?
How could the inquiry find no proof of Mann directly or indirectly participating in actions with the intent to delete data? If he forwarded the mail, even with no comment attatched, he did participate in the subsequent deletion of those mails.
I have to say I am shocked that Mann and Wahl were permitted to make these public statements. Their statements have undercut a number of potential defenses that they might have had. I can only guess that they got no legal advice before making the statements. For example, Mann could have argued that he was very busy and didn’t read the email carefully. All he picked up was that Phill was asking him to forward something the Eugene, which he did. This would be a reasonable defense. But by saying “I felt Eugene Wahl had to be aware of this e-mail … it could be used against him”, any reasonable person would conclude (IMO) that he knew the content of the email and understood that Phil was asking people to delete emails.
[no, we don’t post those ~ ctm]
Don’t press “post comment” prematurely. Refer to my post above…
Or is this just another way to creatively tell the truth. Who was this known to? Was it known to the Penn state inquiry?
The answer from Mann just raises more questions.
Mann said, “I felt Eugene Wahl had to be aware of this e-mail … it could be used against him
Next Question : How? Mail was sent to Mann from CRU Mann receives email. If mann deletes email NOW how in hell’s name can it be used against Wahl. They are crap scientists and even worse liars and boy is that saying something. RC’s Angliss has been adding support over at the Science mag blog. Usual rubbish, nothing important, don’t know what skeptics are shouting about, time to move on. Sorry Brian A but not this time. The gates are closing on you.
Can someone tell me how to spell hypocrate again. It’s not like that. I think it should be MANN
God, I LOVE Gavin. His ego and comments on his (RC) page are so perfect for driving people away from his position. Stink it up boys, with your careful speaking. Stink it up!
From today’s “update”:
Oh, my! How very decent of him; however, I, for one, would really like Mann to explain how (and by whom) the contents of an E-mail from Jones to Mann could be “used against” Wahl.
I’d also like to know if in climate-science-speak the word “indirectly” is not unlike … oh, I dunno …”trick”, perhaps … in that it carries a connotation heretofore completely unbeknownst to those for whom English is not a second language.
I was just obeying orders. These climate bandits are digging the hole ever so deep.
RC (gavin) has posted a statement and rebuttal;
http://www.realclimate.org/
Eugene Wahl asked us to post a statement related to some incorrect claims circulating in the blogosphere:
The Daily Caller blog yesterday contained an inaccurate story regarding a correspondence that was part of the emails hacked from East Anglia University Climate Research Unit (CRU) in November 2009.
For the record, while I received the email from CRU as forwarded by Dr. Mann, the forwarded message came without any additional comment from Dr. Mann; there was no request from him to delete emails. At the time of the email in May 2008, I was employed by Alfred University, New York. I became a NOAA employee in August 2008.
The emails I deleted while a university employee are the correspondence I had with Dr. Briffa of CRU regarding the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, all of which have been in the public domain since the CRU hack in November 2009. This correspondence has been extensively examined and no misconduct found. As a NOAA employee, I follow agency record retention policies and associated guidance from information technology staff.
Dr. Eugene R. Wahl
March 9, 2011
Our comments
These claims are simply the latest attempt to try and manufacture scandals and smear scientists, particularly Mike Mann, based on the UEA emails. The story appears likely to have come from Senator Inhofe’s office who presumably had access to the transcripts taken by the NOAA Office of the Inspector General (whose investigation found no evidence of any wrongdoing by NOAA employees). The story was planted with Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts, and Chris Horner, and then linked to by Inhofe’s office to provide a little plausible denialability – a rather blatant media spin operation.
But the facts of the case do not support the narrative they are pushing at all. While Jones’ original email was certainly ill-advised (as we stated immediately it came to light in Nov. 2009). Eugene Wahl was not subject to FOIA at the time (since he was not a federal employee) and was not subject to UK FOI anyway since he was working for a US-based university. Nor was he aware of any ongoing FOI actions in any case. In the original emails released, Mann stated that he would notify Wahl of Jones’ email, and his only involvement was to forward the Jones email to Wahl which Wahl’s account confirms.
So what is the actual issue at the heart of this? A single line in the IPCC AR4 report (p466) which correctly stated that “Wahl and Ammann (2006) also show that the impact [of the McIntyre and McKitirck critique] on the amplitude of the final reconstruction [by MBH98] was small (~0.05C)”. This was (and remains) true. During the drafting Keith Briffa corresponded with Eugene Wahl and others to ensure that the final text was accurate (which it was). Claims from McIntyre that this was not allowed under IPCC rules are just bogus – IPCC authors can consult with anyone they like at any time. However, this single line, whose inclusion made no effective difference to the IPCC presentation, nonetheless has driven continuing harassment of everyone involved for no good purpose whatsoever. Wahl and Ammann did show that MM05 made no substantial difference to the MBH reconstruction, whether it got said in the IPCC report or not.
That this inconvenient fact has driven hundreds of blog posts, dozens of fevered accusations, a basket load of FOI requests, and stoked multiple fires of manufactured outrage is far more a testimony to personal obsession, rather than to its intrinsic importance. The science of paleo-reconstructions has moved well beyond this issue, as has the interest of the general public in such minutiae. We can however expect the usual suspects to continue banging this drum, long after everyone else has gone home.
there is a chart on the site as well but I couldn’t copy it. The summary of gavin seems an obfuscation of the stakes at the time.
At 1:41 PM on 9 March, John M had written about:
.
Perhaps Dr. Mann was in the Aloha State looking up his birth certificate.
Or maybe dodging process servers?
‘Mann said, “I felt Eugene Wahl had to be aware of this e-mail … it could be used against him. I didn’t delete any e-mails and nor did I tell Wahl to delete any e-mails.” ‘
Then, there should be no problem for Virgina’s AG to follow up on Mann’s last “Employer”. Right?
This is like Hillary Clinton’s famous answer when questioned about her one-off miraculous futures contract profit of 100K: “There’s no proof.”.
Exactly.
However, let us presume Mann is 100% truthful. The issue then becomes whether Mann participated in an illegal/sanctioned endeavor, namely destruction of data to “hide the decline”, so to speak.
To understand the distinction, suppose you have a long term friend that declares he’s planning a bank robbery and ask you to destroy all the notes you have of his culpability as well as telling a mutual friend to destroy similar notes so there is no evidence of the plans. You comply by searching of your materials and so inform the mutual friend to comply with the request. You have “aided and/or abetted” what your long term friend was doing. You “furthered” his activity. You “participated” in his activity. Had you not forwarded the request to a mutual friend you might beat the rap but the fact that you “acted” meets the “beyond a doubt” test.
What Mann should have done was to report the request to destroy materials subject to FOIA requests to “the authorities”. He admits he forwarded the email(s) and they were, in fact, acted upon.
What is curious is the IG’s conclusions. Perhaps since it’s not a United States FOIA, furthering destruction of documents is OK since it was only a Brit FOIA? Such is how the AGW Cabal will wiggly through. As I stated earlier, the DOC is part of the most political Dept. in the US government. But make no mistake, Mann absolutely knew what Jones was requesting, why and the reasons behind it.
Mann/Wahl attempt to shift the blame to Phil Jones (“I only forwarded …”).
Nasty (and sneaky). Statute of Limitations in England (Scotland’s Law is different in many aspects) – 6 months – means his offence is “time limited” (q.v. comments by prosecuting authorities in England – “prima facie evidence of an offence but …… “).
If they put all the blame on him – all spring free.
Crafty, what?
guys
make screen prints of all these admissions and statements….the team will try to scrub them…post them on public fora like here in a single area for future reference
Stephen Richards says:
March 9, 2011 at 1:56 pm
Close enough!
Plausible deniability (horrible phrase) is all this is about. If certain people can come up with a form of words that cannot be directly disproved, while refusing to fully answer questions put to them, then they think they’ve ‘won the game’.
A great example from the UK in the 90s here:
This could be the first crack in the wall.
Frankly, John Whitman, you seem to be one of the very few who appear on this site who is not steeped in muck and most comfortable with lies.
This is a tissue of lies as the muckrakers know. It is a deliberate ploy to blacken the name of a great scientist.
All this was investigated and shown to be false. There are also, on the web now, accurate versions of the affair.
Like some of the contributors here – probably all, actually since there seems to be no interest in science only in the mumbo jumbo of the fakes and pseudo scientists , I am not a scientist. However, I am related quite closely to a few quite prominent ones, a couple of whom are published in the Climate field. I know what they think.
This blog has degenerated from misinformation to the sleaziest character assassination imaginable.
I wonder that some have not taken legal action against the perpetrators o these slanders as Andrew Weaver did in Canada. He silenced a group of prolific deniers.
My signature of “amused” came from early readings when the amateurism of the owners was dominant. Before it descended totally into sleaze. I am not amused now. I am repulsed.
The science has moved on… LOL
The above article claims ” Sources confirm that a federal inspector has questioned Eugene Wahl and Wahl has confirmed that Mann asked [forwarded] him [a request] to delete emails. Wahl has also informed the inspector that he did delete emails as the result of this request.”
However a statement from Dr. Wahl, denies that he received a request from Dr. Mann to delete emails. The statement from Wahl follows: ” The Daily Caller blog yesterday contained an inaccurate story regarding a correspondence that was part of the emails hacked from East Anglia University Climate Research Unit (CRU) in November 2009.
For the record, while I received the email from CRU as forwarded by Dr. Mann, the forwarded message came without any additional comment from Dr. Mann; there was no request from him to delete emails. At the time of the email in May 2008, I was employed by Alfred University, New York. I became a NOAA employee in August 2008.
The emails I deleted while a university employee are the correspondence I had with Dr. Briffa of CRU regarding the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, all of which have been in the public domain since the CRU hack in November 2009. This correspondence has been extensively examined and no misconduct found. As a NOAA employee, I follow agency record retention policies and associated guidance from information technology staff.
Dr. Eugene R. Wahl
March 9, 2011″
Now it is not clear whether the forwarded email (without comment from Mann) asked Wahl to delete emails. Based on the statement from Wahl, it is clear that Mann did not himself request it. Further, Wahl only deleted email from Dr. Briffa.”
One can see that the above article has already been “corrected”. My guess is further revisions will be required to accurately represent what transpired with Dr. Mann and Dr. Wahl.
Amused doesn’t seem to be amused that the purveyors of the runaway global warming scam are on the run.
Dr. Mann very clearly wants to defend his actions. If he simply forwarded the email it was a mistake, perhaps, but not much more.
He didn’t edit or amend the original which the world has already seen. And he hasn’t deleted any emails. Might I suggest he simply produce a copy of the forwarded version?
I forwarded the email before I was against it?
Can’t you just see the terrorist’s lawyer at an atrocity trial
q. Did your client forward an email instructing the defendant to carry out the attack?
a. Yes, but he didn’t add any comment to the email so he wasn’t part of the conspiracy
Right on schedule…
“I did not have relations with that email” – Bill Mann
Anthony
I think it might be worthwhile restating in big red letters on your post that the main fault lies with the inquiry not Mann.
Mann forwarded an email which made a request to delete emails. He answered the inquiry questions about this in such a way as to state that he himself did not delete any emails.
The failure of the inquiry was to not understand the significance of Mann’s answer such that they did not ask if he forwarded the request to Wahl or to challenge the answer that Mann gave.
I know Mann is a “hate figure” for some but this one episode in itself should not be Mann centred IMO.
Whitewash ready, waiting for Tom Sawyer.
“This is a tissue of lies…”
There is indeed a tissue of lies, and you are part of the cover-up.
“All this was investigated and shown to be false.”
What has been shown is that there was no meaningful investigation at all, and the Penn State team has a great deal on which to answer.
“It is a deliberate ploy to blacken the name of a great scientist.”
Given the shoddiness and lack of transparency in his methods, Dr. Mann has thoroughly blackened his name all on his own. And thanks to the Climategate emails, we have it in his own words.
“…as Andrew Weaver did in Canada. He silenced a group of prolific deniers.”
Oh. Would that be his hysterical claims of his office being broken into? Given press counts over the past 12 months, Weaver has been remarkably silent recently compared to the previous ten years. So who silenced who?
“However, I am related quite closely to a few quite prominent ones, a couple of whom are published in the Climate field. ”
Which is why I suspect you are “..most comfortable with lies.”
“Allegation 2: Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?”
Mann: I did not delete mails, but I forwarded the request to delete mails to Wahl. It was not MY INTENT that he delete mails, I was just trying to make sure Wahl was protected. I realize that but for my action the mails might not have been deleted. I had no way of knowing that Eugene would act on the request. My forwarding of the mail was not an endorsement of the request. I thought gene would do the right thing and ignore the request.
is that what you wanted to say mike?
Smokey says:
March 9, 2011 at 3:16 pm
“Amused doesn’t seem to be amused that the purveyors of the runaway global warming scam are on the run.”
‘Amused’ is clearly in denial.
Amused – I’m afraid you’ve completely missed the point.
In the corporate world, particularly in the US, if someone sends a textual message in any form, the first thing you’ve got to do is assume that it’s been logged or archived and will become public if the company is ever sued. If someone commits the cardinal sin of committing to text a request that you do something ethically dodgy, you must treat that that message like a loaded weapon pointed at you that will, should things turn sour, fall into the hands of someone who wants to ruin your life. You cannot ignore it, you must affirmatively disarm it.
Perhaps Phil Jones and some of the segment of cloistered academe within which he functions hadn’t caught on to this yet, but that’s the world we live in.
So, let’s get back to the point at issue here. Phil Jones was a very bad boy. There’s absolutely no way around that. He made clear his intent to avoid the applicable FOI laws. If you’re not prepared to concede this point (as indeed even the UK Information Commissioner concluded) then there’s no sense attempting a discussion.
The current points at issue are these:
1) Should Mann and Wahl have understood enough of the context of Jones’ request to conclude that Jones was asking them to participate in a conspiracy to do something illegal?
2) Was the Penn State inquiry just sloppy, or wilfully blind, when it failed to even ask Mann the right questions?
Q. So, did you find the request unusual, that they were — that the request — that you were being requested to delete such emails?
A. Well, I had never received one like it. In that sense, it was unusual.
via CA
Wahl to Noaa
If someone forwards a request to delete emails you can claim that the forwarder wasn’t endorsing the concept??
It looks like a very thin defense.
timheyes – there’s two points at issue.
One is whether Mann and Wahl knew, or should have known, that failure to affirmatively reject Jones’ request left them open to accusations of conspiracy to evade FOI laws. This is of course complicated by the trans-Atlantic nature of the communication.
The second is whether the Penn State investigation was merely sloppy or whether they intentionally avoided attempting to get answers.
Darren, in depends on what “forward” means.
Mosher channelling Mann
I realize that but for my action the mails might not have been deleted. I had no way of knowing that Eugene would act on the request
And just imagine how different the state of our understanding would be if those crucial missives had survived.
Oh, they did.
Sheesh.
cwon1 says: (Quoting RealClmate)
March 9, 2011 at 2:20 pm
“These claims are simply the latest attempt to try and manufacture scandals and smear scientists, particularly Mike Mann, based on the UEA emails.”
It’s a nice attempt by RC and Amused to hide the fact that
Mike Mann knew that the e-mails Phil Jones
wanted both Wahl and Mann to delete were covered by FOI
requests in England, and might also be subject to either FOI
requests or a Congressional subpoena on down the line in the
United States.
A Congressional committee can subpoena testimony and/or
materials from anyone, putting them under oath if
they’re within their jusridiction no matter if they’re employed
by a public or private institution.
Wait until a House committee asks Mann, et alia, to testify
and subpoenas ALL the emails held by “the Team” America.
timheyes,
So if an investigator is incapable of proving a misdeed occurred when they should have been able to, the investigator is at fault but not the perpetrator of the misdeed?
I agree a major premise of this post is how poorly the investigation appears under the spotlight, but how does this make Mann look any better?
The contortions displayed by Mann and Wahl in this latest round would break the backs of normal men.
The thing about e-mail is that you cannot guarantee where the message passes through. It is a property of the internet. My e-mails can go through any physical server anywhere in the world; it cannot be predicted; nor can privacy be guaranteed. Therefore, legally, e-mails, and all internet communications, should be considered public.
timheyes says March 9, 2011 at 3:30 pm
Mann forwarded an email which made a request to delete emails. He answered the inquiry questions about this in such a way as to state that he himself did not delete any emails.
One can possibly give Mann the benefit of doubt in his (potentially larcenous) statement that he did not delete any e-mails; we only have his word for it.
But, by forwarding the request to Wahl to delete e-mails, he did, IN FACT, cause e-mails to be deleted. He just didn’t hit the DELETE key himself.
Unfortunately by sending the email to Wahl without any added instructions would be tacit orders by Mann to Wahl to carry out the actions of deleting emails. Had Mann added a commentary to the email in question that said “I want you to know about this but to comply with the law we must not delete any emails” then Mann would have a defense. Mann is just grasping for a “defense” but it’s clear that he should have added some context to the forwarded email with that email for clarity of why the email was being forwarded.
‘timheyes says:
March 9, 2011 at 3:30 pm
He answered the inquiry questions about this in such a way as to state that he himself did not delete any emails.’
Questions, questions, questions
After the Mann’s trick and hide the decline, timheyes, why should I take Mann’s word that he didn’t delete any emails? Did anybody investigate or did everyone just take his word for it? Is there any hard evidence that he didn’t delete emails?
Ya know, if someone forwarded an email to me from a 3rd party asking for emails to be deleted, my first reaction would be to pick up the phone, call that person, and ask “what the f*** is this about??
So has anyone dumped the phone logs, private and work, for those two individuals to see if they were in voice communication in that immediate time frame?
Is Michael Mann the Charlie Sheen of climate science?
“A wonderful thing a sub-poee-nee!”
This is very simple new information.
Mann now admits, for the first time as far as I can tell, that he forwarded the email to Wahl.
Wahl admits, for the first time, as far as I can tell, he deleted emails with Briffa because of receiving it.
It makes Mann look bad. It makes the Penn State Inquiry look bad. It makes Wahl look bad. It continues to make Jones and Briffa look bad.
It goes to ethics and trust, and possibly breach of policies and law as well.
The strawman that Gavin erects is not the point.
Gavin, can you hear me?
Why would mann/jones care that others delete the email but not delete them directly?? did jones delete the emails?
They don’t take inconvenient questions over at Real Climate do they?
By forwarding the email from Jones, Mann condoned the act. That he did not destroy emails himself is moot; he passed the request on to another person without caveat or warning that the act was illegal, and thus was an active participant by association in the destruction of public property.
@ Smokey,
I like your graph, but in the spirit of many very spirited posts at WUWT in the past, worry that the projected trends are based on too much cherry picking of recent data. Perhaps you should include a line to show long term trends? And supply confidence intervals? LOL.
Robert of Ottawa says:
March 9, 2011 at 4:45 pm
Is Michael Mann the Charlie Sheen of climate science?
Robert –
I believe you just insulted Charlie Sheen.
+2.5
Your honor, I merely passed this gun on from a good friend and coleague to another good friend and coleague. I had NO IDEA WHATSOEVER that this gun might be used in a bank robbery.
Sean Peake says:
March 9, 2011 at 4:52 pm
I think the word you might be looking for, in British English anyway, is complicit.
Kindest Regards
Robert of Ottawa says: “Is Michael Mann the Charlie Sheen of climate science?”
His show is called “Two and a Half Men.” I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.
Dr Wahl says: ” there was no request from him to delete emails. ”
OK…so Dr Mann forwards Dr Wahl an email from Dr Jones, which contains specific instructions to delete emails.
Somehow that’s not meant to be interpreted by Dr Wahl as a request to delete email…??? Are you serious???
If there was *ANY* other purpose to Dr Mann forwarding the delete request email, surely he would have said so in the forwarded email….???
Moreover, Dr Wahl then deleted email. If Dr Jones’s forwarded email didn’t cause Dr Wahl to delete the email, then what did???
Dr Mann and Dr Wahl, you are just digging a deeper hole.
Try telling the truth.
Sean Peake saysvMarch 9, 2011 at 4:52 pm
By forwarding the email from Jones, Mann condoned the act.
Head of nail. Mann did condone the deletion of e-mails that he knew were detremental to his party’s cause. Otherwise, he would have ignored the request. This Mann is culpable ; he condoned, aided and abetted the cover-up.
Steven Mosher, the allegations include, but are not limited to, Dr. Mann being dishonest and a cover up by Penn St. With corrections already being made to the article, my skepticism as to the validity of these and other allegations grows.
While I commend those here working so diligently to restore the good name of Science, I can only advise patience and calm, thorough persistence. It will be almost two years before we have a DOJ that will touch this problem and even then it will require a skeptical administration.
All the thoroughly researched details that you good people can provide may make the difference in the end because any new administration is going to have it’s hands full fixing the disasters being created by this one. And we can count the media out wrt educating the electorate.
Robert of Ottawa: ” Is Michael Mann the Charlie Sheen of Climate Science?”
Jorgekafkazar: ” Well, his show is called Two and Half Men.”
Well, if Mann had his own show it could be called ” Two Men and a Half Truth.”
ctm, JEM, Robert of Ottowa and old contruction worker.
I’m not seeking to defend Mann in any way, however, as far as we can ascertain to date he’s guilty of forwarding and email which contained an illegal request by Jones under UK jurisdiction. As far as we know those emails were not the subject of a US FOIA and he therefore did not break any law in the US as far as I’m aware. He managed to evade part of an inquiry question on which he was not pressed further. As far as I’m aware he was not under oath during the inquiry and not bound to tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. Apparently he answered the inquiry questions to the satisfaction of his interrogators.
He may be guilty of many things in the court of public opinion but if a prosecutor in a trial (or a quationer in an inquiry) fails to prove the case of guilt (or misdemeanor) despite prima facie evidence then justice dictates that he’s not guilty.
For these reasons IMO the greater “crime” is the hopelessly inadequate inquiry which is supposed to hold Mann to account. I have no great liking for Mann but I do think criticism should be justly apportioned. He played the game at the inquiry and seems to have got away with it.
AGW/Climate change won’t fall because one man cleverly answered a question. It might if it can be shown that pro-AGW scientists are completely unaccountable to the taxpayers who pay their salaries and grants.
@ajones
Thank you for that. That is a much better, more concise word. Were it not for the grim realization that my supply of 18 year old MacCallan, which I had carefully rationed since Christmas, was now exhausted, I would have used it… once I got over the heartbreak.
MAnn says this:
“This has been known for a year and a half that all I did was forward Phil’s e-mail to Eugene.” Asked why he sent the e-mail to his colleague, Mann said, “I felt Eugene Wahl had to be aware of this e-mail … it could be used against him. I didn’t delete any e-mails and nor did I tell Wahl to delete any e-mails.”
“I felt Eugene Wahl had to be aware of this e-mail … it could be used against him.
If that was a part of his thought processes at the time, Uhm… you would think he would communicate that to Wahl. Wouldn’t you think Mann would say something like…
Wait….
How exactly could it be used against him? This defense makes no sense. If Mann doesn’t forward the e-mail, then it can’t be used against Wahl. If Mann forwards the e-mail with a note, advising him NOT to delete any mail, or at least talk to a policy adviser before deleting any e-mail, then both their butts are covered against the evil skeptic horde! How does simply forwarding the email convey any warming what-so-ever?????
It doesn’t
Mann certainly seems to be making stuff up here.
I’ve made some observations at CA and BH which I think are much more pertinent questions for the IPCC, the Team and AGW.
http://climateaudit.org/2011/03/08/wahl-transcript-excerpt/#comment-257672
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/3/9/the-wind-from-hawaii.html#comments
“Why, why, why?”
Here’s what I think and what many seem to be missing. The request was to delete AR4 email correspondence. The correspondences, some of which we know was communication between Briffa and Wahl about responses to McIntyre’s comments about AR4 and contrary to IPCC protocol. Furthermore, Wahl sent Briffa an unpublished paper for Briffa to use in addressing McIntyre’s comments against IPCC protocols. It is these things which could be “used against” Wahl.
Circumstantially this suggests one of three things:
a) Jones and Mann were party to the fact that Briffa and Wahl had colluded in responding to AR4 comments i.e. the Team were all fully aware of “irregulairties” they were using in creating AR4, or
b) there was other collusion or irregularities in the AR4 process which Jones and Mann were aware of and they wanted to make sure that the whole Team were “sanitised” before these were revealed by FOI/EIR requests even though they didn’t know the details of what the rest of the Team had done, or
c) Jones just panicked at the FOI/EIR request, sent the email to Mann who forwarded it to Wahl without thinking what he was being asked to do.
Option c) seems the least likely as Mann had no reason to suppose that Wahl had anything that could be “used against him” under this option. It also suggests that Jones and Mann both didn’t understand that what they were doing was illegal.
Options a) and b) suggest that either the Team were acting in concert to present their interpretation of the science to the exclusion of all criticism or that the AR4 process was being corrupted by the Team individually and separately. Either way it’s not very edifying.
The main fault in the whole saga is the failure if the inquiry into Mann to understand the issues behind the emails and to ask follow up questions where Mann’s responses were not answering the questions put to him. The inquiry was supposed to be the check which balanced the implications in this particular climategate email.
Libelous “and” false, he says. It couldn’t be libelous if it was the truth, right? He should bring a suit against the perpetrators to clear his good name.
If deleting the emails was a crime then Mann appears to be an accessory to the crime.
Surely Mann knew a request to delete emails pertaining to a certain subject was an attempt to destroy evidence especially given the history of people requesting information and their refusal to provide it.
What Mann should have done was reply to Phil Jones and say “I’m sorry Phil but I will not play any role in helping you destroy evidence. Please do not ask me to do anything of this nature again.”
Just sayin’.
Amused said
” I wonder that some have not taken legal action against the perpetrators o these slanders as Andrew Weaver did in Canada. He silenced a group of prolific deniers.”
As many others have shown your statements are wrong, I feel I should too.
As someone who is close to the Weasel ( Ahem, Weaver) scandal, knowing several students of his, indeed, this glorified model programmer works in my hometown, I know a lot more then you obviously do.
Andrew Weaver started a lawsuit claiming the National Post newspaper slandered him by publishing stories that were contrary to his point of view. He has also attempted to sue several others.
Not only has he proved he is a lawsuit-happy egomaniac, but his actions havnt ” silenced” anyone. His NP lawsuit is still before the courts, with the newspaper mounting a massive defense, and nobody has retracted their statements or been ” silenced”.
Amused, I’m ” amused” that you havnt done your homework.
Epic Fail.
I sent this to the Dean of The Earth Sciences Faculty at Penn State University:
—————————————————-
“To the Faculty Dean
Dear Sir
Yesterday’s revelations that Dr Eugene Wahl deleted email following an email forwarded to him by Dr Mann (from Dr Jones at the CRU) in 2008 raises serious questions about Dr Mann’s credibility.
The explanation Dr Mann has offered is manifestly inadequate.
Dr Mann’s reputation is now compromised.
It is in the University’s best interest to terminate Dr Mann’s tenure lest it be tarnished with the scandal that is now emerging.”
Careful Speak is actually Lawyer Speak. Mann has been coached by attorneys on how to respond to questions. However, a lie of omissions is still a lie.
I think Mann and Jones and the rest of them should be at liberty to delete whatever personal communication they want. FOI law in this case seems like a set of silly rules for boys in school rather than achieving anything with any point.
Isn’t it interesting how much more interest can be garnered and energy expended on a “he said, she said” pissing match than on some significant scientific revelation? I’m all for chasing chasing these devious scoundrels to ground and applaud the chasers, but the enthusiasm from the peanut gallery is just breathtaking. It’s like watching a Jerry Springer production.
“vigilantfish says:
March 9, 2011 at 5:07 pm
@ Smokey,
I like your graph, but in the spirit of many very spirited posts at WUWT in the past, worry that the projected trends are based on too much cherry picking of recent data. Perhaps you should include a line to show long term trends? And supply confidence intervals? LOL.”
Hah! I got a kick out of that too, good stuff. Hey Smokey, and where’s your error bars? At first glance I thought your GCM was overshooting: the CAGW are going extinct sooner than your graph shows (methinks)!
“pwl says:
March 9, 2011 at 4:33 pm
”…Had Mann added a commentary to the email in question that said “I want you to know about this but to comply with the law we must not delete any emails” then Mann would have a defense…”
Excellent point, the tough part is that many of us may have a tendancy to “go with our gut”. For those who have followed this over time, and are familiar with Mann’s behavoir: obfuscation, manipulation, denializations, etc, etc, our guts are sore, sour and steaming. He might as well have replied to Jones that, “…hell ya chief, they’re all deleted and you were so succinct I didn’t bother to change one word: just forwarded the whole shebang on to Gene…hope we don’t get caughtLOL!! ;0)…as if!!” As far as I’m concerned. Does that make me jaded, I wonder?
But that’s just me…maybe not eh? 😉
Seems to me that Mann is running a variation of the Nuremberg Defence… “I was only passing on orders”.
Martin Borman was sentenced to death “in absentia” for only passing on orders. But there is a distinction between passing on and following… so I suppose this should be called the Penn State Defence…
Yeah Claude (Harvey) and its been just breathtaking watching the Gore Springer production all these years
“Mann, reached on vacation in Hawaii”
Isn’t Hawaii half way to China? Isn’t Maurice Strong taking refuge in China?
Maybe soon, China will have all our ideological, asylum seeking climate “scientists”.
We live in a bizarro world. GK
Onion2 said
“I think Mann and Jones and the rest of them should be at liberty to delete whatever personal communication they want. FOI law in this case seems like a set of silly rules for boys in school rather than achieving anything with any point.”
Onion, I’m sure if evidence surfaced of your boss colluding with another boss conspiring to delete emails which contained details of them holding back a massive amount of money you were owed by said bosses, I’m sure you would be using a different tone.
J. Felton says: (March 9, 2011 at 5:49 pm)
Well, if Mann had his own show it could be called ” Two Men and a Half Truth.”
You have to work the word “boat” into this title, J. Felton. Something that can sink…
Found in warm sunny Hawaii during a climate scandal – awww Mann!
Act of forwarding an e-mail, as in pressing “Forward” button, filling in e-mail address and then pressing “Send” button, is not something that is done accidentally. Mann’s participation was obviously important enough, otherwise why was he asked to do it? Why couldn’t Briffa just ask Wahl directly?
If he, as he claimed, forwarded his e-mail as FYI and not as participant, he should have added a statement to the effect. I think that his simple forwarding of the e-mail is more damaging to him than forwarding with some carefully worded comment. SOmething like “Look what I got in my mailbox today!” or “Thought you’d be interested to see this” even simple “FYI”. Without this he is coming out as some sort of a courier or a mule that transported illegal stuff over the border.
Mann’s explanation simply not believable, and if were I a member of the jury I’d find him guilty.
J. Felton says:
March 9, 2011 at 5:49 pm
Now that was clever. Good one 🙂
Where’s the email from Mann to Jones stating that the request to delete emails is unlawful, immoral, corrupt, wrong and against various protocols, including the IPCC’s?
Where is the email from Mann to Jones stating, categorically, that he will not delete emails as he (Mann) is an ethical researcher and Jones should be ashamed of himself for suggesting such deletions?
Where are the emails from Mann to whoever is relevant that Jones should be investigated and castigated for even suggesting that he (Mann) delete emails and that he was being encouraged to involve other, presumably ethical, scientists?
Maybe thesehave been deleted as well. Pity, they could have been a good defence for Mann.
I haven’t read all the comments, but I did a search for the key words and I’m surprised no one has used that often repeated AGW phrase: “It’s worse than we thought.”
I hope this didn’t ruin Mann’s vacation.
/Sarc on
I didnt write the robbery note. I just passed it to the teller.
carbon-based life form says:
March 9, 2011 at 6:06 pm (Edit)
Libelous “and” false, he says. It couldn’t be libelous if it was the truth, right? He should bring a suit against the perpetrators to clear his good name.
#######
how can it be Libelous when they argue that deleting the mails was OK?
err.
I am wondering if Mann deleted Jones’ email about deleting emails after he forwarded it on to Wahl… I assume its still in his in box archives. Is it a crime if he deleted it?
Roger Carr said
“You have to work the word “boat” into this title, J. Felton. Something that can sink…”
Well, a rendition of ” The Unsinkable Molly Brown” comes to mind.
And, like the Titantic, Mann and Co. do seem to think AGW is “unsinkable.”
Let me try…ahem.
ICE BERG RIGHT AHEAD!
But this is just how real scientists communicate. Forwarding an e-mail with instructions to destroy evidence is just a way that working scientists say “hello” in the morning. You are all blowing this way out of proportion. It’s an e-mail “trick” that we use. Let’s move on.
Hey,Mosh,haven’t you got something more useful to do with your time?
These guys are giving the term “Piled Higher and Deeper” a new definition.
Mann and three others have just published an opinion piece in the Politico where they link climate change deniers (their word) to big oil. The lead paragraph is:
“To our dismay, and the nation’s detriment, self-described climate change deniers – strongly supported by fossil-fuel interests — continue to mislead Congress and the public.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/50842.html
Further down they state: “Like the tobacco industry before them, fossil fuel interests regularly trot out discredited voices, false and disproven arguments and selective and misleading evidence to generate doubt.”
I was not aware that people like Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre were shills for the “fossil fuel interests”.
Also, I wonder how well this op-ed piece will resonate with Congress after the Inspector General’s report comes out.
[snip a bit over the top]
On vacation in Hawaii during a cold winter? Mann obviously prefers it naturally warmer so why is he afraid of a little warmer climate? Well things are heating up back at home for him; I wonder when the next proceedings will be served against Mann now? [:)]
I can just hear Judge Judy saying, “Oh, of course! ‘Forwarded a request…’ sounds much, much more innocent! Tell it to the judge! Who do you think I am, a first year student of the bench?”
Good on Wahl for being open and honest about the deleting of emails – that takes courage – hopefully people will be gentle on him, given that he hasn’t sought to divert or use “careful wording” like others often do
“I’ll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: generwahl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
talk to you later,
mike”
I’m just trying to figure out why Mike responds in this way to Jones request that mike ask Wahl to delete mails?
What is mikes intent? he now says he passed the message on because he thought gene had a right to see it. what is the ASAP about?
Yep. I’m waiting for my gas subsidy from my buddies, the oil shills. Any day now. I’m sure it’ll be in the mail tomorrow. Or at least a phone call.
Steven, I think it would be stretching the truth to say that the forwarded email could be used against him. Really. I think the truth was stretched. By a lot.
Vacationing in Hawaii? I really hope it’s for that nice fresh air, and I hope he gets a lot of it.
BTW… SO2 output at Kilauea jumped to about 10,000 metric tonnes per day during the ongoing Kamoamoa Fissure eruption.
Breath deep Mike.. it clears the soul.
Ummm… liar liar pants on fire? Just a guess.
Mark
the other weird thing is mann says he was too busy, so he just forwarded the mail without comment
But he had time to write Jones and say
” I’ll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: generwahl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
talk to you later,
mike”
Weird. I dont know what to make of this.
He doesnt add a little note to say ” gene protect yourself” he writes to Jones, then he forwards the mail, without comment. and then he’s shocked that Wahl deleted mails?
Dude owes wahl an apology.
J. Felton says:
March 9, 2011 at 6:19 pm
Re “Amused said
” I wonder that some have not taken legal action against the perpetrators o these slanders as Andrew Weaver did in Canada. He silenced a group of prolific deniers.””
I liked the earlier part where A Weaver suggested that some apparent burglary in his building was related to his vital work… coincidentally, just in time to distract from the breaking Climategate story.
Nothing but silence on that story ever since as far as I know. But that Climategate thing seems to have legs.
Prof. Mann’s response to Chris Horner’s blameless article included:
That is, of course, a despicable smear that, more than anything else, speaks to the depths of dishonesty and the inept, fallacious reasoning of professional climate-change propagandists such as Prof. Mann.
Steven Mosher says:
March 9, 2011 at 10:32 pm
“I’ll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: generwahl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
talk to you later,
mike”
I’m just trying to figure out why Mike responds in this way to Jones request that mike ask Wahl to delete mails?
What is mikes intent? he now says he passed the message on because he thought gene had a right to see it. what is the ASAP about?”
How’s this plot?
Mann knows that forwarding that message is ethically and professionally wrong because of its contents. He doesn’t really want to send it because that leaves his fingerprints. So the ASAP was a stall, intended to prompt Jones to send Wahl that message directly – which is why he sent him his new email address.
But Jones knew what it meant too, and didn’t bite. So Mann had to take that risk for the Team and send it. Just imagine how much simpler Mann’s life would be if he had not sent it and Jones had?
Or maybe Jones would have sent it to both Mann and Wahl if he had the latter’s new email address?
Or maybe Mann really did just forward that email to protect Wahl, all in the interests of national security or something like that.
In any event, here we are now, thanks to Climategate.
Nick said
“Hey,Mosh,haven’t you got something more useful to do with your time?
”
You might also want to ask Mann and Co. that. Surely they have better things to do on taxpayer time then to lie and commit scientific fraud in order to justify their own overpaid salaries.
Steven Mosher says:
March 9, 2011 at 10:56 pm
“the other weird thing is mann says he was too busy, so he just forwarded the mail without comment”
Mann is minimizing his fingerprints on it.
Steven Mosher says:
March 9, 2011 at 10:56 pm
In a post above I used the word complicit.
Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.
Fortunately we have persons such as yourself willing to use their cunning arts to unpick this web of deceit.
I may not concur with your views or you with mine but in the end we are looking for the same thing, the truth in as much as it can exist.
What that truth might be remains obscure because we simply do not know enough about the climate system or the great natural forces which drive it.
Given it’s complexity we may never know.
But we do know about how people traduce fashionable supposition for their own ends. When we see it.
But unpicking the details is a slow process and as likely or not the mountebanks will have left town before it can be finished.
Which is not to say that taking apart their pseudo scientific charlatanism is not worthwhile: it is, if we didn’t we would still be back in the dark ages.
Kindest Regards
Al Gored said
In response to J. Felton
” I liked the earlier part where A Weaver suggested that some apparent burglary in his building was related to his vital work… coincidentally, just in time to distract from the breaking Climategate story.”
Right again.
Not trying to be O/T here, but Weaver assumed that a break-in in his building must be the work of the oil industry out to silence him and steal his ” work.” ( Probably just several hundred hours worth of playing Solitaire on Windows ’95.)
He neglected to mention that 5 other buildings in the complex that night were broken into, and had property stolen, and not one of them had to do with him. Arrogant, really.
Steven Mosher says:
March 9, 2011 at 10:56 pm
” I’ll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: generwahl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
talk to you later,
mike”
Maybe he contacted him by phone? That would explain the lack of comments added to the email he forwarded.
conspired past tense:
Make secret plans jointly to commit an unlawful or harmful act
-they conspired against him
-they deny conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service
(of events or circumstances) Seem to be working together to bring about a particular result, typically to someone’s detriment
-everything conspires to exacerbate the situation
Was it secret – yes.
Did they plan jointly – (plan: Decide on and arrange in advance) they certainly acted together and communicated arrangements for future actions
Was it unlawful – it would appear to be unlawful
On the facts available, it does seem that the actions fit the dictionary definition of a conspiracy.
“In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement.”
Agreement: 1. the act of agreeing or of coming to a mutual arrangement. 2.the state of being in accord. 3. an arrangement that is accepted by all parties to a transaction.
Was it a mutual arrangement? It’s hard not to interpret it that way. Were they in accord? There’s not the slightest hint that they weren’t. Was it an arrangement accepted by all the parties? To pass on an instruction from someone to commit what is seems to be a criminal act without explicitly condemning it or without appearing to have any context such as previous discussions condemning it, if those instructions were read and understood as Mann appears to be saying, then it does appear on the surface to be an acceptance of the instructions in email.
Obviously I’m not saying anyone actually committed a criminal conspiracy because I don’t know all the facts, but it does look very damning for all involved and if I had to rely solely on the public evidence available to me at this time, based on the dictionary definitions and simple definition of criminal conspiracy I located and I had to produce a verdict, then there’s only one verdict I personally could reach.
The committee found this because they apparently failed to understand Mann’s reply. As they reported:
“He [Mann] explained that he never deleted emails at the behest of any other scientist, specifically including Dr. Phil Jones, and that he never withheld data with the intention of obstructing science; …”
Somewhat related anecdote: when the Lewinski affair was heating up on the broadcast airways, Bill Clinton’s real-time, national tv response to Jim Lehrer’s question as to whether Bill was having any kind of sexual affair with Lewinsky was so obviously devious from his groundbreaking use and emphasis of “is” in his apparently pre-fabbed response to any such question, that I almost became estatic from a fit of instantaneous sarcasm, because it also sounded really funny .
Clinton’s response was something like, “There is no sex going on between me and Ms. Lewinski.” I’m thinking, yeah, unless it’s invisible to me from where I sit watching you, you moron. It was so bizarre that it looked like Lehrer was at least fairly well dumbfounded and didn’t know how to follow it up, which I could understand, but it clearly didn’t answer Lehrer’s question.
Sigh, I have gone through ALL comments here plus at RC, CA, and BH about the ‘Delete Emails on AR4’ events to date including the latest statements from some of the participants in the ‘Delete Emails on AR4’ episode of ‘Climategate’ .
Here are my categorizations and my comments on the possible range of conducts in the ‘Delete Emails on AR4′ episode of ‘Climategate’.
Academic Conduct (PSU) – The original PSU investigation of ‘Climategate’ is now shown to be significantly more inadequate than previously thought. It will take the State of Pennsylvania attorney general and/or Federal pressure on PSU to re-open the investigation. Most likely scenario for reopening the investigation is escalation of the ‘Climategate’ noise level in Congress which may result in enough pressure for some additional PSU investigative action. I do not see a possibility for the general international scientific community rising up to press for any academic (PSU) re-investigation; the scientific community does not appear to self-correct science by that process. However, the very open discussion on the internet enhances the possibility of enough concern being publically shown to stimulate academia (PSU) into additional action.
Scientific Conduct (independent of affiliations) – To me the question of scientific conduct is the most insidious aspect of the whole (up to now) ‘Delete Emails on AR4’ episode of ‘Climategate’. In the greater view, any perception of lack of integrity by a group of scientists has a more profound impact than just the reputation of a university or upholding the Laws of a country or state. We are considering the reputation of science now. I personally am disappointed so far by the scientific community’s response. However, maybe I am just too impatient with the process of scientific self-correction; me having mostly a background in the relatively quick and efficiently adapting environment of technical corporate America.
IPCC Protocol Conduct – There appears to me to be reasonable doubt that IPCC protocol was followed by the ‘Delete Emails on AR4’ participants in the circumstances preceding, during and following the ‘Delete Emails on AR4’. All of the participants appear to have had, at the least, knowledge of a lack of conformity to IPCC protocols by their colleagues. Do they maintain that not one of them did anything about it to IPCC leadership? I do not know what they did as a result of this knowledge, but if they did nothing then all of their behavior is, at the very least, lacking in any integrity and bordering on much more serious issues (?collusion?). Before I consider the question of misconduct, I will wait for them to respond to the question, “Did any of you inform the IPCC leadership that protocols where not being followed by your colleagues and if so who in IPCC leadership did you tell and where is your evidence that you did inform IPCC leadership?”
Legal Conduct (USA Law)– I know there is a lot of discussion on whether the pertinent FOIA in UK applies legally to a citizen & resident of USA, and also discussion that there may not have been any pertinent US FOIA requests pending on USA participants in the ‘Delete Emails on AR4’ episode. Also, PSU denied FOI requests on Mann if I recall, that is dead ended. FOI approach looks inconclusive to me, so my I cannot say there was legal misconduct. But there is another approach to possible legal action that can be probed (if it hasn’t already been); the USA funds the IPCC. The USA Federal Government could theoretically conditionally defund the IPCC until allegations of IPCC misconduct are resolved by an independent (of IPCC) investigation. One (of the several) areas of the investigation can be the ‘Delete Emails on AR4’ episode of ‘Climategate’. If it is found that a USA citizen was not following the IPCC protocols, then evaluation of legal action could be considered.
Legal Conduct (British Law) – Looks like nothing here, even if somehow a USA scientist could be held accountable for a UK FOI violation, the statute of limitation period has passed . . . moving on.
Legal Conduct (Int’l Law)– ? ? ? . . . no comment. I will wait for input . . . moving on.
Employee Conduct – This may be too subtle to be of value. A professor is an academic but is also an employee. If a professor is investigated by a USA public university as an academic, does that mean that person is also at the same time, investigated in her/his capacity as an employee of a government sponsored university? Is another investigation warranted on the employee level instead of academic level? Again maybe this is mute.
Mosh and CTM, again thanks for the setting up this lively and informative discussion.
John
Reply: Moot? not mute? ~ ctm
Ed Waage says: (March 9, 2011 at 10:06 pm)
Mann and three others have just published an opinion piece in the Politico …
And a surprisingly weak piece it is too, Ed. They surely could have used the space better for their purpose. Disappointing they can’t even do basic PR; or even roar loudly…
Steven Mosher says:
March 9, 2011 at 10:32 pm
“I’ll contact Gene about this ASAP.”
“what is the ASAP about?”
To make sure he doesn’t delete any emails as soon as possible.
You see Steve it’s the new-doublespeak. Here is a little training video that may help.
ctm,
You actually read my long winded diatribes at that level? WOW.
Probably moot work better.
Thanks, you are a gem (?in the rough?).
You got the nightshift! It is 4 pm in the afternoon here in Taipei.
John
Reply: I skim for tone, I’m good a skimming. Sometimes what one writes actually interests me to the point of a careful read. Yours did. Hey everybody, I know it appears I’ve come out of retirement, but this past few days have actually helped me determine that this level of participation takes a serious toll on my life, so now that I have totally ruined my week, with these kinda sorta exciting events. Answering emails at 5 am, and being unable to sleep, I’m going to ride off into the sunset for an indeterminate time. Ciao, Adios, Adieu, Bye, Atalogo, Auf Vedersehen, Shalom. I’m so glad we had this time together, just to laugh and maybe sing a song…. ~ ctm
You can tell it’s bad for the warmista’s when there running round using the denial insult.
Is the default posistion for the elite in our society dishonesty now? (Please be aware I’m not calling the Team elite’s just the stupid people in charge that will completely ignore this as the blame will simply be pushed onto Jones as they know the UK goverment will do nothing about it).
The MSM seems to be quiet?
Reply: Moot? not mute? ~ ctm
Caution here, Charles; seems to be a lot of “mute” going on in the whole firestorm, so perhaps ..
Steven Mosher says:
March 9, 2011 at 10:56 pm
the other weird thing is mann says he was too busy, so he just forwarded the mail without comment
But he had time to write Jones and say” I’ll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: generwahl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx talk to you later, mike”>>>
The email forwarded without comment just stands out like a sore thumb. It doesn’t seem natural to have communicated in that fashion unless there was additional communication to go with it that we haven’t seen. Something like:
Ring. Ring. “Hello?”
“Gene, you at your computer? I’m about to forward something to you…”
Or an exchange of emails in which Mann tells Wahl what Jones asked him to do, and Wahl expresses disbelief that Jones would ask such a thing, followed by the “forward incident”.
There simply must be additional context for the communication to make sense. Speaking of which, this one keeps going through my mind as well:
Dr Mann, did you delete any emails?
No!
Did you hide them instead by moving them someplace? Encrypt them? Put them in a file system marked as something else? Unplug the computer trhey are on and hide it in a closet? Put the hard drive through a shredder which would be shredding, not deleting?
lock them all up and loose the key
Didn’t we have people arguing recently that calling a statement “libelous” was actually a threat to sue?
Or is that only if a sceptic does it?
The legal aspect is largely immaterial. The question is, should the world buy a used and battered hockey stick from this Mann and his fellow peddlars of doom and hobble their economies to no purpose?
Seems to me large sections of it already decided they’re not going to. How long will the governments of the E.U. and Australia continue to hold out against the staringly obvious?
Time will tell.
@ctm
It’s been good to see you back for a while. You should know some of us lurkers really do enjoy your light moderation touch. Recharge your batteries and come back soon.
“tallbloke says:
March 10, 2011 at 1:12 am”
Gillard (Labour) is an ex-POME, and a saunch strongly left leaning politician. Abbot (Liberal) is not well respected it appears and between wanting some form of “tax to control climate” and stating “climate change” is crap, he’s just reacting what he thinks will put him into power. Turnbull (Liberal – Ejected as Liberal leader for supporting an ETS, used to work for Goldman Sachs, made lots of money too, so he’s real keen on the alarmism to support a “price on carbon” and/or an ETS. The independents ignored their electorates, thus comitting political suicide, are not openly supporting a “carbon tax”, but, of course, will to stay in power with . Brown (The Greens) is also keen to introduce an unlimited revenue stream, reduce the population (I guess expect them) etc. So I won’t hold out much hope our Australian “leaders” will take note of the obvious. Bit like rabbits fronzen in the headlights of a car. Too late!
Sweet. I imagine this really ruined Mann’s Hawaiian vacation too. Criminals who push junk science as a means to sweeping public policy change don’t deserve Hawaiian vacations.
Ctm- Don’t go! You are too good at what you do!
Hit the nail on the head and drove it home!
ctm,
May the bird of paradise fly up your nose . . . .
May an elephant caress you with its toes . . . .
Take care friend
John
Regardless of the deleted or not deleted e-mails, this whole expose (thanks, mosh and ctm!) shows clearly that the enquiry into Mann’s conduct was the same sort of whitewash as we’ve seen over here, regarding Jones and the CRU.
It is one thing to say ‘whitewash’ because of gut feelings – it is quite another to show clearly and irrefutably why and how it has been done.
Thus the squealings from AGW believers, that the scientists have been shown to have been whiter than white, can now be silenced.
But do keep track of the fumblings by those concerned who are clumsily trying to move the pea under the thimbles yet again. They don’t seem to notice that the debate has moved on and that their efforts at obfuscation are not fooling anybody any longer.
Ian W.
thanks a lot for answering my question – much appreciated.
Mann is as innocent as a person who willingly passes a note from a mob boss to a hit-man, where the person passing the note knows that it contains instructions to ‘erase’ someone.
Patrick Davis says: (March 10, 2011 at 1:42 am)
Abbot (Liberal) is not well respected it appears and between wanting some form of “tax to control climate” and stating “climate change” is crap, he’s just reacting what he thinks will put him into power.
I choose to think a lot better of him than that, Patrick. Your assessment of him seems a trifle jaundiced to me. I prefer to believe he is accepting the limitations of the “possible” with the greater electorate whilst pursuing a course which will eventually see the climate fraud unmasked and thence irrelevant.
Wow, that’s a pretty big retraction of this story. I don’t know how it started off so wrong (that Mann asked Wahl to delete e-mails) in the first place. In any objective analysis, this really damages Horner’s and Mosher’s credibility. You can’t just make things up and allow them to fly around the Internet, only ‘fixing’ them after someone (under threat of a libel suit) points out that you’ve made them up. Folks are still using satellite analyses from Christy and Spencer that have been shown to be inaccurate, and temperature reconstructions from Loehle, and inaccurate WSJ articles on the weather not getting wierder … the skeptics demand accuracy and lack of hyperbole from the AGW theory proponents; skeptics need to hold themselves to the same standards.
OT Take note: Google is definitely trying to hide surreptitiously any negatives about AGW. For example they will ALWAYS quote the pro warming statement even in a skeptic/denier news situation example Russia’s hot summer not due AGW but natural causes etc story. This is the main quote relating to story which they picked. Someone at Google is really trying to steer this boat
http://news.google.com.au/news/more?pz=1&cf=all&ned=au&cf=all&ncl=dobH767Tbyuwk7M4F2jZFzbFw8IbM
“Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past,” Dmitri A. Medvedev, the Russian president, told top advisers during a meeting on the heat wave last July.
more by Dmitry Medvedev – 11 hours ago – New York Times (blog) (87 occurrences)
Another tactic at Google seems to delay any skeptic news as long as possible and minimize it. That’s my impression anyway..(me paranoia?) LOL
Patrick Davis says:
March 10, 2011 at 1:42 am
I won’t hold out much hope our Australian “leaders” will take note of the obvious. Bit like rabbits fronzen in the headlights of a car. Too late!
If all the major parties are united in delusion, then it’s time for the population to give’em a whack with the cluebat. Organise.
[Snip. You can’t call people “deniers” here. Read the Policy page. ~dbs, mod.]
Hey “Team”sters,
Add context to the request to delete emails.
**************Wahl agreed with SteveMc’s objections before Phil Jones told him not to. And Wahl used text from Phil Jones as yet unpublished paper to refute SteveMc’s position. Phil Jones was supposed to be outside of the IPCC process.*****************
These are the emails being deleted.
Can you not see the forest for the trees?
Here is one allegation the committee investigated:
Allegation 2: Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?
Finding 2. After careful consideration of all the evidence and relevant materials, the inquiry committee finding is that there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data related to AR4, as suggested by Dr. Phil Jones. Dr. Mann has stated that he did not delete emails in response to Dr. Jones’ request. Further, Dr. Mann produced upon request a full archive of his emails in and around the time of the preparation of AR4. The archive contained e-mails related to AR4.
The committee found this because they apparently failed to understand Mann’s reply. As they reported:
He [Mann] explained that he never deleted emails at the behest of any other scientist, specifically including Dr. Phil Jones, and that he never withheld data with the intention of obstructing science; …
What can we make of this? Mann was apparently asked the question: “Did you engage in or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete emails.”
And it seems clear he only answered half of the question, leaving the unanswered second part dangling: did you contact anyone or otherwise ‘indirectly’ participate in deleting records? This either did not strike, or did not interest, the Penn State ‘investigators’. This despite that Mann, it appears, answered “carefully” and incompletely. He only answered that he hadn’t deleted emails. He never directly denies partaking, indirectly, in the deletion of Wahl’s emails. He apparently withheld the information that he had asked [forwarded the request to] Wahl to delete emails.
_____________________________________________________________
As I understand it, Mann had no prior knowledge (as of yesterday) of what actions Eugene Wahl actually took with respect to the forwarding of Jones email (sans any additional comments/commentary by Mann when he forwarded the email was “as is”).
The key words in the above allegation are “any actions with the intent to delete” whether “direct or indirect” Mann himself, at no time had any “intent” to delete any emails whatsoever. What others did with such a request was totally outside of Mann’s control. Mearly forwarding an email, as Mann was asked to do, implies no intent whatsoever, in and of itself. It was, and still is, merely a forwarding of an email from someone else making said request.
Therefore, Mann did indeed make a truthful statement.
At no time did Mann himself ask anyone to delete emails.
The classic 2nd Amendment argument holds true here, it wasn’t the gun that killed someone, it was the holder of said gun that killed someone. The holder of said gun being one Eugene Wahl. Wahl pulled the trigger, and only Wahl pulled the trigger.
McIntyre is also incorrect as to the final IPCC publications deadline with respect to AR4 WG1, the final IPCC document states (and dated 01 July 2006);
“We are very grateful to the many reviewers of the second draft of the Working Group I contribution to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report for suggestions received on issues of balance and citation of additional scientific literature. To ensure clarity and transparency in determining how such material might be included in the final Working Group I report, the following guidelines will be used by Lead Authors in considering such suggestions.
In preparing the final draft of the IPCC Working Group I report, Lead Authors may include scientific papers published in 2006 where, in their judgment, doing so would advance the goal of achieving a balance of scientific views in addressing reviewer comments. However, new issues beyond those covered in the second order draft will not be introduced at this stage in the preparation of the report.
Reviewers are invited to submit copies of additional papers that are either in-press or published in 2006, along with the chapter and section number to which this material could pertain, via email to ipcc-wg1@al.noaa.gov, not later than July 24, 2006. In the case of in-press papers a copy of the final acceptance letter from the journal is requested for our records. All submissions must be received by the TSU not later than July 24, 2006 and incomplete submissions can not be accepted.”
So 24 July 2006 was, in fact, the final drop dead date for inclusion in AR4 WG1.
Wahl and Ammann (2006) was published by Science on 28 April 2006.
Wahl and Ammann (2007) was accepted on 1 March 2006.
Both of these papers satisfy the final IPCC publication deadlines as outlined/quoted above.
As to FOI and EIR requests, from their origination (in 2008) to the present date, in regard to UEA emails the UEA has been very consistent in their responses;
“Release of some of the information likely to adversely effect the interests of the person providing the information.”
“The public interest in withholding this information outweighs that of releasing it due to the need to protect the openness and confidentiality of academic intercourse.”
“What is being asked for here is informal, personal correspondence passing between academics engaged in IPCC work. It is clear that the IPCC envisages that there must be a ‘space’ in which employees of public authorities can work, and exchange views that are excepted from public disclosure in order to provide an arena for views and discussions that would not be appropriate in a public venue but are essential to academic work, collegiality, the progress of science. To disclose the requested information would be to close off this space, reducing the opportunity for academics to exchange such views and discussions, and altering substantially the content of such exchanges.”
“I have reviewed Mr. Palmer’s application of the public interest test and I do not believe that our position has changed in this respect and uphold Mr. Palmer’s original decision.
We would now consider this to be our final position on the internal review of this matter, and would advise that if you are dissatisfied with this response, you should now exercise your right of appeal to the Information Commissioner at;
.
.
.
Please quote our reference given at the head of this letter in all correspondence.”
I also believe I was the first to called out the whole Chris Horner/CEI/WUWT/McIntyre/Inhofe conspiracy (see my previous posts above) theory though (seeing as Inhofe has now linked to CA/WUWT/Chris Horner we pretty much know, in an oblique way, the Senate source of said smears).
Now that’s the real email audit trail that people here (you know like real skeptics would do) should be asking for.
But as I do like a great conspiracy theory, so please do, carry on.
A bit off-topic, and referring to the “Twilight” episode above: Were those “Kananites” of the “liberal” kind?
EFS_Junior says:
“Now that’s the real email audit trail that people here (you know like real skeptics would do) should be asking for. But as I do like a great conspiracy theory, so please do, carry on.”
Junior entirely misses the central point: Real skeptics ask for an adversarial investigation, in which someone making the accusation has the right to question Mann and others. It is the only way that the truth will emerge. Taxpayers deserve nothing less.
Every so-called investigation has deliberately avoided allowing someone such as Steve McIntyre and Ross McKittrick to ask Mann and others questions. If Michael Mann is being honest, he should have no objection to answering questions under oath. If his science is sound he should be happy to explain it. The fact that he talks and acts like a slippery eel tells us that his science is faulty and he’s got plenty to hide regarding the email issue.
There is no doubt that there is an ongoing conspiracy on both sides of the Atlantic to avoid an adversarial investigation at all costs. That is the reason why the warmist crowd goes ballistic over Cuccinelli’s investigation: the truth will come out if it is allowed to proceed. That prospect terrifies the climate alarmists; seven billion dollars a year and their scientific credibility is at stake.
I left this at RealClimate, awaiting moderation. I’m sure it won’t pass through their rose colored glasses filter.
Mike Lewis says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
10 Mar 2011 at 8:46 AM
Are you people seriously believing this? Obfuscation at work but not very convincing. Michael Mann FORWARDED an email from Dr. Jones to Dr. Wahl, in which Dr. Jones asked Dr. Mann to delete emails and to have Dr. Wahl do the same. Dr. Mann therefore became DIRECTLY involved in the request to DELETE emails. What more needed to be added to the email? “Hey Gene, I concur with Phil – delete all emails at once!” No additional commentary was necessary. His opinion can be inferred by the mere fact that he forwarded the email.
I seriously doubt this will pass moderation but it was worth a shot. Regardless of the attempts to suppress the truth, it is finding it’s way into the light.
EFS_Junior the link below gives the time line of what happend and tells a rather different story to the one you’re selling .
http://climateaudit.org/2008/05/25/wahl-and-ammann-2007-and-ipcc-deadlines/
Once Mann confirmed to Jones that he had passed on his e-mail he became actively involved in the process by his own admission. He further reduced his own wiggle room by claiming that it could bring some trouble to Wahl , which in effect tells us not only did he pass it on, but he read it and he understood the implications of the message.
And Penn State asked, ‘directly or indirectly’ if Mann’s answer to former is correct, it’s clear his answer to the second is incorrect .
“If that was a part of his thought processes at the time, Uhm… you would think he would communicate that to Wahl. Wouldn’t you think Mann would say something like… ” – Sonicfrog
Not necessarily. Speaking from my own experience where I work, I have several managers who are always trying to do an end run around our company’s processes. I work for one of the higher ups, when I get an email that shows they’re up to their tricks again I often just forward it to my boss as an FYI, he implicitly knows why he’s getting it. If Mann and Wahl are close enough, it wouldn’t surprise me for him to forward an email like that without explanation. What sticks in my head is that, if that’s the case, then apparently Mann and Wahl have a less than stellar opinion about the East Anglia crew, as if this is the behavior they expect from them.
“Roger Carr says:
March 10, 2011 at 3:44 am”
Ok, I guess I should have quantified my post. It is how I interpret the Australian media’s portrayal, and those who respond in blogs at say The Sydney Morning Herald, of these “leaders”. So my post is entirely representitive, IMO, of my observations (As a migrant).
“tallbloke says:
March 10, 2011 at 3:56 am”
I wish. Problem is, as I have stated before, easy food at KFC (Kant F[snip] Cook), dumbed down education system, welfare dependency (Middle class and business too), too much footy and other rubbish on TV. Basically, Australians are too comfortable. If Gillard gets her way, and it is likely she will, things will change. Not dramatically, maybe 20-30 years *might* result in public protest. Does this ring familiar with recent events in the ME and North Africa?
Suggested Scenario: Mann calls Wahl after receiving the email from Jones. They discuss the proper course of action, or Mann leaves a phone message to talk to Wahl about it. Whichever, Mann seems to have had a bit of concern over the request and fears the email bit-trail. The phone call is either completed or not, with the results seemingly to be, forward the request without comment from Mann (because Mann didn’t want anything to do with this but is feeling pressure to play along as he is still considered to be a junior member of the A team?).
My hunch is that now Mann could be under pressure (from outside or his own innerds) to downplay this like a good team player, in spite of his true feelings about the whole affair, in order to keep his hockyschtick afloat. Mann clearly stands on shakey ground in terms of his contribution to climate science and is wanting to hold onto that shakey ground till firmer footing is available. Could this be the behavior of a man willing to play a slightly dirty game of pool in order to stay on the game board? If so, I bet he is feeling a bit used, kinda like the passive net in a game of ping-pong between Jones and Wahl.
carbon-based life form says:
March 9, 2011 at 6:06 pm
I’ve seen Mann bluster about legal suits before, but I haven’t seen any. Does anybody know of any? Have I missed any? I’d have to conclude that lack of legal action on Mann’s part speaks volumes. I would dearly welcome such a suit–I think Mann would be left hanging in the wind, hoisted by his own petard.
Reply: I skim for tone, I’m good a skimming. Sometimes what one writes actually interests me to the point of a careful read. Yours did. Hey everybody, I know it appears I’ve come out of retirement, but this past few days have actually helped me determine that this level of participation takes a serious toll on my life,
======================================================
Damn ctm, I hadn’t realized you walked away…..maybe you announced on a heavy beer night? Or when I was out agitating warmistas? Or both? At any rate, that sucks. You’re a great moderator! Perhaps we can look forward to a different form of participation? Best wishes,
James
Look, I know that educators are the new group of whipping boys, but I really get sick and tired of the notion of “dumbed down education”. For those who wish to take a second look at such unsubstantiated drivel, 48 states have banned together and have adopted very rigorous Common Core State Standards. If you want a peek at what we are jamming into kids’ brains these days, go to:
http://www.corestandards.org/
These standards now form the basis for educational goals (and soon to be, a common rigorous assessment across these states), even on documents meant for kids with learning disabilities. This year, I spent many lessons on x and y with a group of 10 and 11 year old kids that not only have significant math disabilities, they also struggle learning how to read. And I must say, every one of them rose to the challenge.
I don’t know where you get the idea of a dumbed down education system, because it does not exist in real life. And most certainly, it does not exist in the dedicated group of kids I serve every day. So put up or shut up as to your rhetoric.
There is such an extended discussion of morality (lying, dissembling, careful speaking, etc) in this thread, I would like to pose a question to this august group of ethicists.
I am scrolling through this extended thread, completely skipping any weighty discussion (although I did read a couple of the comments about Jesuits), looking only for replys to EFS_Junior so that I can enjoy the fisking. CTM hooked me with “femto” and I couldn’t stop.
Does this make me a bad person?
“What sticks in my head is that, if that’s the case, then apparently Mann and Wahl have a less than stellar opinion about the East Anglia crew, as if this is the behavior they expect from them.”
Richard… Interesting point. But if that were the case, would Wahl also not delete any of the e-mail?
Pamela Gray,
So have they indeed shifted focus to developing critical thinking skills in America? That’s not the case here in Canada. Watching twenty somethings reach for a calculator for basic math or regurgitating verbatim read text in obvious absence of comprehension is really getting annoying here in the real world where what has been written of and what actually is are usually two different things.
The boundary between lying and deliberate deceiving is a subtlety in the eye of the beholder. There is no moral difference
Hi Anthony,
seems like K. Cuccinelli won his appeal:
http://www.courts.state.va.us/courts/scv/appeals/102359.html
I am very interested how this story continues .. perhaps you could even ask him to write a post here!?
Keep up the search for the truth!!
And like many others I am looking forward for your surface station paper . . 🙂
Cheers,
LoN
Those of you that have followed this saga for some time will probably understand what it is all about, but for the benefit of any new readers let me again put up a link to my Russell Review Submission and say that paragraphs 62 and 63 are what I believe the “delete all email” is really about.
Jones’ email is certainly not the only reason for the Climategate leak, but the “hockey team” have so far managed to mount plausible defences to the “hide the decline”, to interfering with peer-review, to Eugene Wahl’s back-channel to Briffa and even to the retrospective change in the “in press” deadline that allowed Wahl and Ammann 2007 to remain in AR4. Indeed AR5 have adopted AR4’s policy of allowing citation of papers not “in press” until 3 months after the Government and Expert Review stage. Four inquiries have made little criticism of the climate scientists or the IPCC process.
No sceptic is convinced, of course, but that does not matter so long as their supporters remained committed to them as they are now – and would still have remained committed if everything released in Climategate had been disclosed 20 days after I first asked for it on 5 May 2008.
So why did Jones take the career-ending risk to try to get all AR4 emails held by Briffa, Mann, Wahl and Ammann deleted? What I think made the difference on 27 May 2008 was not my request to UEA but what I asked the Secretary of the IPCC, Renate Christ, a couple of hours earlier.
Government and Expert Reviewers had sent suggestions for correcting or improving the IPCC Report in “comments” and each was given a unique reference. By the June 2006 Bergen Lead Authors’ meeting, I will bet dollars to doughnuts that Jones, Overpeck, and Solomon knew that the US Government and other Expert Reviewers had pointed out that Wahl and Ammann 2007 broke the citation rules and that those published rules required its removal from the IPCC Report.
In Briffa and Osborn’s evidence to Russell, Solomon admits that, with her Head of the TSU, Manning, and Jones, Overpeck, and the other Lead Authors she retrospectively changed the deadline to two months after the review stage had ended. On 3 July 2006, WGI TSU sent a memo to all 600 Expert Reviewers which said that “many” of them had made suggestions that resulted in the new guidelines that the memo contained. Unsurprisingly the memo did not say that it would allow Wahl and Ammann 2007 to be kept in the Report. Indeed it applied only to “additional” “2006” papers. However, the critical Review comments on Wahl and Ammann 2007 were rejected by reference to these new guidelines.
But, regardless of whether the Lead Authors were entitled to change the deadline (and technically they may have been), what if it was totally untrue that “many” Reviewers had suggested the deadline change? What if no Reviewer had? If it were beyond doubt that WGI TSU, with the agreement of the Co-Chair, all Lead Authors, and with the acquiescence of all Review Editors, had sent out a lie to all Reviewers? How could anyone in the world trust any of them?
So you can guess what I asked the IPCC secretary on 27 May 2008 and what may have spooked Jones into his email on the 29 May. Having seen the loose talk in the Climategate emails I doubt that he could be sure of just what he, Briffa, Mann, Wahl or Amman might have put in an email.
I simply asked to be told which of the 11, 283 comments, that thanks to Steve McIntyre and despite the best efforts of Susan Solomon had just been released, suggested the deadline change. She did not answer then and she did answer when I asked her and Susan Solomon on 2 April 2010. By then I had thoroughly searched electronically all the comments whereas previously I had only searched four chapters. I put it to them that there were no suggestions and asked them to disprove me.
On 12 April 2010, I think I got an indirect reply. The Russell Review refused to publish the submission that I had sent on 25 February 2010 and has since refused to say why. However, after saying that they needed to correct every statement in my submission, Briffa and Osborn, in their evidence to Russell, chose not to show or comment on paragraphs 62 and 63 of my submission.
Despite Russell’s suggestion that someone might want to sue them for defamation if my submission was published no one, so far, has even hinted at it to me even though it is easily available through the Parliamentary website. If AR4 WGI wishes to prove it did not lie, it is very simple. They need only quote the references to some of the “many” comments from AR4 WGI Expert Reviewers that suggested the deadline change.
“Richard… Interesting point. But if that were the case, would Wahl also not delete any of the e-mail?” – Sonicfrog
Possibly, I don’t think we know enough. We’re dealing with a situation that includes a lot of people with their own standards and motivations. All I’m saying is fowarding an email without embellishment could mean a lot of things, some of them more to Mann’s favor than not. Like Pamela Gray said, he might be feeling pressured to behave in ways contrary to what he’d normally do. And to be honest that just makes him human. And, I wouldn’t think that kind of pressure would be unexpected when embroiled in this polarizing issue. It’s perfectly possible Mann forwarded the email thinking it was wrong and improper, but seeing skeptics as a greatr enemy, perhaps his only course to avoid having his own ass handed to him. When you see enemies every where the tendency to circle the wagons even with people you normally wouldn’t like in order to protect against a greater foe is common. It’s another way of saying politics makes strange bed fellows. And in his past communications Mann strikes me as an overly paranoid type, I hink he’d be particularly open to an us against them attitude, even with people in the ‘us’ crowd that he doesn’t particularly like or agree with.
Perhaps the greater point and one that needs more emphasis is that all this conjecture about Mann et al and their motivations wouldn’t be necessary if all the facts were on the table. To that, they’re all wanting.
KnR says:
March 10, 2011 at 5:55 am
EFS_Junior the link below gives the time line of what happend and tells a rather different story to the one you’re selling .
http://climateaudit.org/2008/05/25/wahl-and-ammann-2007-and-ipcc-deadlines/
_____________________________________________________________
McIntyre does not post the last IPCC Publication Deadlines dated 01 July 2006, that document postdates McIntyre’s information.
Being from Team Audit, you’d think he’d get this right, don’t you think?
The PDF file is titled;
PublicationDeadlines_2006-07-01.pdf
What I posted was verbatim from said document, I was able to find this through a Google search (there is a reference to it at Bishop Hill in a post by David Holland, he does quote from it almost verbatim, as I have done above);
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/20/climate-cuttings-33.html?currentPage=3
As to direct or indirect or intent, none of these types of questions apply to what Mann did not do, Mann did not delete any emails.
Simply forwarding an email, when asked, does not imply, directly or indirectly, the intentions of asking someone else to delete emails, never has, never will.
Jones made a very specific request, Mann forwarded that email per Jones request, so in fact, Mann not adding any commentary should also be considered, like not saying you should do as Jones suggests, also implies something, in and of itself, Mann did not act on Jones request to delete emails, however Wahl did act on Jones request and deleted emails.
Something along the lines of killing the messenger, not the message, comes to mind here.
Nothing unlawful here, by Mann or Wahl, not in criminal court, not in civil court, and certainly not with respect to anything PSU has, or will, look into at any future date.
You are simply scapegoating Mann, for the sake of skapegoating Mann.
I welcome a civil or criminal investigation, or whatever, Mann will escape unscathed, of that I am certain.
It’s now 2011, but you all seem to be stuck in 1998 for some very odd reason. Is that part of the Team Audit effect? Someone is going to take a hockey stick to their grave (in due course by natural causes, of course, don’t want to be accused of something like an action or direct or indirect or intent, mind you, give you people an inch and you’ll turn it into light-years), and it won’t be Mann.
To expland on that last point, when there’s questions about something that happens at y job, first thing I do is go to my boss and tell him everything that happened, including any of my potential screw ups. And I print all the relevant emails and make them available to him and senior management. Similar behavior here from the climate ‘scientists’ would be nice.
As I posted at Bishop Hill, and as has been mentioned elsewhere, if Mann simply forwarded Jones’ email, it would have retained the subject line:
Subject: Re: IPCC & FOI
This makes it hard to credit Wahl’s statement to the inquiry that he knew nothing about it being connected with FOI requests:
Q. I guess if the exchange of comments and your review was appropriate, I guess what I’m just trying to understand why you’d be ask to delete the emails after the fact, at the time that they’re — it appears that the CRU is receiving FOIA requests
A. Yeah. I had no knowledge of anything like that
Looks like Wahl has more explaining to do…
“Mann himself, at no time had any “intent” to delete any emails whatsoever. What others did with such a request was totally outside of Mann’s control. Mearly forwarding an email, as Mann was asked to do, implies no intent whatsoever, in and of itself. It was, and still is, merely a forwarding of an email from someone else making said request.”
It hard to say definitively whether mann had any intent to delete. The best we can do is ask mann why he forwarded the mail.
First off, mann contacted Jones and wrote that “he would contact gene about this ASAP” Then he claims ( we have no evidence) that he merely forwarded the mail to Wahl. He claims he forwarded it because it could be used against wahl. how? Mann’s report of his intent doesnt really make much sense.
I suspect to get to the bottom of it one would have to have him on the stand.
Blanket statements inferring stupidity are generally something I like to avoid. However I have had such horrific experiences with the California educational systems that I have developed quite a bias. Perhaps the most absurd interaction wasn’t something I was directly a part of. A long time ago, when I was in a math tutor hall at a junior college in So.Cal, I saw another man (a math PhD) tutoring a middle-aged woman. She was having trouble with fractions. She was quite frustrated already and started voicing as much to the tutor trying to help her. She somewhat loudly proclaimed she had no need for this knowledge, she was only planning on teaching K-6 kids. The tutor, being a big math/science guy, took offense to this. He tried to assert to her that she would be teaching a wide variety of young individuals and she could not possibly know what would interest them. She then took offense to this, and a seriously loud argument ensued. The woman was actually trying to openly justify her distaste for math while becoming a teacher.
This example, in my experience, is not isolated. I have close acquaintances who have serious desire to be good teachers, but will loudly object to having to think/act/teach science or math to kids. I’m dance-partner friends with one woman who has no science background, but was recruited to teach it because no one else would. She likes teaching and I encourage her when I talk to her, but she’s woefully unprepared to instruct on critical thought processes.
So yes, when some of us here say that education is being dumbed down, we have actual reasons for saying such. All due respect to the teachers who love science/math, but you need to shout down and even actively seek to remove those colleagues of yours who ruin that subject for everyone else.
Steven Mosher says:
“I suspect to get to the bottom of it one would have to have him on the stand.”
That may yet happen. Cuccinelli won his appeal.
Steven Mosher says:
March 10, 2011 at 8:06 am
“I suspect to get to the bottom of it one would have to have him on the stand.”
==================================================
And even then, I’m not convinced he’d be forthcoming. From plausible to implausible deniability. No one can objectively read this stuff and believe Mann’s explanation, that he was seeking to protect Wahl from the e-mail he forwarded to Wahl from Jones. Did Mann have a Sheen break and suddenly think Jones was out to set Wahl up with an e-mail requesting deletion of information? He seems to be implying as much.
This is looking even worse now that it has become public. Wahl and Mann sound like childish quibblers with their self-righteous blather. Just like Clinton did about sex with an intern.
Excellent catch.
You don’t know this, you can’t say this.
Forwarding an e-mail is the generation of a new e-mail. you are not delivering someone else’s packeted information to another router with no knowledge of its contents, the forward-button actually creates a new message from your mailbox. If this were 1960 and you handed an envelope to a secretary and said, “forward this to Bob”, and the envelope contained instructions for murder, the secretary is blameless so long as she does not open the envelope. The forward button in e-mail software is akin to the secretary opening the envelope, typing out a new copy of the letter, and forwarding the new copy on to its destination. There is no way the secretary can consider herself blameless in such a case, she is an accessory to a crime. You are terribly incorrect in your assessment here.
This is a common theme from team alarmist, which seeks to obstruct free access to truth at any turn. Somehow the people who seek to understand what happened are labeled as obsessed by those who obstruct their ability to get all the facts.
“Why are you guys still stuck in 1998??”
“Maybe because it is now 2011 and you still haven’t spoken the whole truth about what you did in 1998?”
Just at CA this looks even bigger PSU caught out
http://climateaudit.org/2011/03/10/what-did-penn-state-know/
maybe headline post here 2 hahahah again!
ctm,
I was really enjoying your return… great work as always. Ciao!
Richard said:
Possibly, I don’t think we know enough. We’re dealing with a situation that includes a lot of people with their own standards and motivations. All I’m saying is fowarding an email without embellishment could mean a lot of things, some of them more to Mann’s favor than not. Like Pamela Gray said, he might be feeling pressured to behave in ways contrary to what he’d normally do. And to be honest that just makes him human.
Yep. I was going to write a blog post on this topic, but decided to scrap the idea. I can add nothing, and this kind of stuff gets to be a bit tabloid after a while. I’d rather stick to the scientific analysis.
On to the science. I will hopefully have a post up today analyzing Gavin’s year end review on the state of the climate. BUT… It’s my b-day today… So maybe I’ll just take the whole day off!!! 🙂
This is great reading: I just can’t help coming back to it time after time to read more – plus the links (and, CWON1, thanks for the video link to Absence of Malice, one of Paul Newman’s best films. And what wouldn’t you give for an investigator like actor Wilford Brimley!).
After reading pretty much ALL the comments I get the distinct impression that Mann could well have the following call to Phil Jones:
Mann: ‘Well, Phil. That’s a fine mess we’ve gotten into. I’m up to my ankles in bull poo!’
Jones: ‘So not too bad then, Mike?’
Mann: ‘Not too bad?? Phil, when I say I’m up to my ankles, you have to understand that I’m in it head first!
EFS_Junior says: if you think there was no problem with IPCC deadlines , why then did Jones ask for these e-mails to be deleted ?
Mann read the e-mail , we knows is becasue he comments on it , he then passed it on to Whal and e-mailed Jones to tell him he had do so . He is an ACTIVE participate in the event. If he deleted any e-mails is very much of debate and even here he is given himself wiggle room in the land semantics.
Mooloo says:
Didn’t we have people arguing recently that calling a statement “libelous” was actually a threat to sue?
Well, we have “Amused” saying they should:
I wonder that some have not taken legal action against the perpetrators o these slanders
(Apparently with an Irish accent)
Seems to me that if the statements were, indeed, libelous or slanderous, someone WOULD have taken those making the statements (AW & co) to court over it. But it’s difficult to sue someone over slander if what that person says is true.
I don’t think the Team want to see ANY of this in court.
Alan F says:
Pamela Gray,
So have they indeed shifted focus to developing critical thinking skills in America? That’s not the case here in Canada. Watching twenty somethings reach for a calculator for basic math or regurgitating verbatim read text in obvious absence of comprehension is really getting annoying here in the real world where what has been written of and what actually is are usually two different things.
No, they have not. What they have done is define a specific set of criteria, and they follow up by teaching specifically to that criteria.
As the father of three school-aged children, I can speak to this first-hand. There’s a reason we homeschool.
I believe I have read all of the comments here, and also at RC. (Interesting to note that RC currently has what I would consider to be a paucity of comment in comparison to here [10%], and of that perhaps 1/4 are critical and counter to Gavin’s position.) (By the way, it is also interesting to note that Gavin finds the Jones e-mail to be ill-advised but is silent as to whether or not the forwarding of it was equally so.) One thing stands out: nowhere on either site do I recall seeing the word ethics mentioned. In my own little public world, a good sense of ethics means avoiding the appearance of impropriety. In a broader sense, it is defined as doing the right thing even when no one is looking.
I cannot/will not ascribe motivation to any of the players, or chime in as to legalities, possible scenarios, obfuscating remarks, etc. as many here have done. Rather, I would just want to know if, given the definitions above, anyone involved would have altered their behavior had they relied solely upon their own sense of ethics. That would tell me more than anything.
man, oh man …
the emails are “science” at its finest …
Bigdinny says:
I believe I have read all of the comments here, and also at RC. … One thing stands out: nowhere on either site do I recall seeing the word ethics mentioned.
I feel I must point out that it HAS been mentioned in the comments here, at least a few times. Leaving out those mentions where it clearly doesn’t fit the context, you still have:
Bill Illis: March 8, 2011 at 12:11 pm (albeit in an odd way)
Mike Lorrey: March 9, 2011 at 4:15 am
JEM: March 9, 2011 at 3:50 pm
John Trigge: March 9, 2011 at 8:22 pm
Al Gored: March 9, 2011 at 11:25 pm
So, definitely part of the discussion here. Can’t speak for RC.
EFS_Junior says: March 10, 2011 at 5:05 am
Allegation 2: Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?
He [Mann] explained that he never deleted emails at the behest of any other scientist, specifically including Dr. Phil Jones, and that he never withheld data with the intention of obstructing science; …”
—————————————–
It’s clear to me that Mann did not answer the question: “Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete….” Therefore the investigators did not get a complete answer out of Mann. Whether Mann lied or merely deceived is a matter for the next investigation. Also whether the investigators were merely incompetent or were constructing a whitewash is also a matter for the next investigation.
EFS_Junior says:
March 10, 2011 at 7:52 am
” Mann did not delete any emails.
Simply forwarding an email, when asked, does not imply, directly or indirectly, the intentions of asking someone else to delete emails, never has, never will.”
You can cite legal precedent for this?
Tony: While I would argue that mere mention of the word ethics does not constitute discussion, you are indeed correct that the word is in fact mentioned, albeit somewhat obliquely except in the case of Mr. Trigge. More importantly, as I munch on crow, is how in the HE**(double hockey sticks) did you come up with the references? I am somewhat of a neophyte in this blogging stuff.
When it comes to the definition of lying, wikipedia falls short.
We all know when we have been lied to. It’s when we come to a conclusion or opinion, or take a course of action, which is not supported by all the facts known to our informant.
When you are told by a local resident that the hotel is the first right, second left and you drive over a collapsed bridge that’s been down for weeks and die in the car crash, it is no comfort to you that the wikipedia definition tells you that the local was merely carefully speaking.
And I hope it still happens that your kith and kin would demonstrate to said local that lying and carefully speaking ain’t too different to us common folk.
Vince Causey;
Simply forwarding an email, when asked, does not imply, directly or indirectly, the intentions of asking someone else to delete emails, never has, never will.”>>>
And so? The point here is that the process was circumvented in order to bolster a pre-ordained conclusion and the evidence of doing so was covered up. The intent of forwarding an email can be debated, but let’s not lose sight of the big picture:
The science could not stand on its own merit
The process was comprimised to cover that up
Phil Jones asked Mann to help him cover up the cover up
Mann, at Jones request, passed the request on to Wahl
Wahl assisted in the cover up
Back to what initiated that string of events:
THE SCIENCE COULD NOT STAND ON ITS OWN MERIT
Patrick Davis says: (March 10, 2011 at 6:21 am)
Basically, Australians are too comfortable.
Here I can agree completely with you, Patrick. It is a universal shame that humanity has this defect. We strive for comfort, and when we attain it we become discontented and, like bored children, look for some mischief to distract us. — On the other hand, without discontent there is no progress; so perhaps it is not a shame at all?
Regurgitate what they have read? Okay. Let’s have a game of questions. In what book did Mark Twain insert himself into the fictional story, and why do you think, as an author, he did that?
And just so you are prepared for the next question, in what ways are “The Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum, and “The Butter Battle Book” by Dr. Suess, alike?
My 5th grade class discussed the Mark Twain question today.
Chapter 2 from “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”:
“If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”
And he penned this in the same chapter:
“Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. ”
Regurgitate that, and then ask that question of students having significant learning difficulties. What they say will send you into spasms of emotion and leave you both humbled and uplifted for the rest of your life.
Now back to science. If you climate scientist Ph.D.’s wish to impress me, work as hard as my public school students do.
Pamela Gray says:
March 10, 2011 at 8:04 pm
Regurgitate what they have read? Okay. Let’s have a game of questions.>>>
Fair enough Pamela. I’ve been frequently pleasantly surprised by what my kids come home with in terms of math and literature skills. They are at a higher level by far than when I was in high school.
But when my daughter comes home with a geography exam with garbage like:
Question; Why are people in oil rich countries in Africa starving?
Answer; Because big American oil companies own all their oil.
Question; Why are people in Brazil starving?
Answer; Because companies like Folgers tell them to grow coffee instead of food.
I kid you not! Worse, when I took it up with the administration, they asked me to provide credible information to the contrary. I got a letter from Folgers indicating that they didn’t even source much of their coffee from Brazil and certainly didn’t have any influence over their agricultural policy, and the Brazilian consulate provided a letter advising that coffee wasn’t even on the list of the top ten crops in Brazil so it certainly wasn’t displacing any significant food production.
The administration “allowed” that the teacher may not have presented “both sides” of the issue.
The lack of critical thinking was appalling, as was the attitude of the administration. The number of times my kids have come home spouting some garbage that could be discredited with just a couple of obvious questions is something I lost track of long ago.
Pamela Gray – While you make very good points, with which I have no difficulty agreeing, there was a serious imbalance reported to me by one of my children (the school was in Australia, but I suspect that the same would have applied in many schools in the UK or USA) :
If you have trouble with maths, that’s understandable.
If you have trouble with english, you’re stupid.
My general observation was that the teacher mattered just as much as the pupil, as did the matching of the teacher’s methods to the pupil’s style.
At 9:32 PM on 10 March, davidmhoffer had responded to Pamela Gray‘s “game of questions” comment, writing about:
.
I had to deal with much the same when my own kids were in the hands of the pedagogues, and now I’m going through it with my youngest grandchildren, though I’m surprised that Mr. Hoffer’s daughter is taking “geography” as a subject.
The practice in these United States has been – since the time when my children were in school – to rol” geography, history, and civics into something called “social studies,” and in the process to make it the most consistently hated part of the curriculum.
At first, I had some trouble figuring out why my children (and their children) despised “social studies” so much. Civics was pretty boring, but geography was a trip to foreign countries, and history was a pure delight, a chance to learn “true stories” about real people in the distant past.
“Why don’t you like social studies?” I’d ask.
Neither my children nor my grandchildren could answer easily. I could see their frustration as they made the effort to put it into words. Almost always, it came out (and continues coming out) something like:
“I can never be sure what the right answer is.“In other words, the kids can’t make sense of what they’re getting in “social studies.” They’d be perfectly happy to “Regurgitate what they have read” if that’s what the ex-Education major at the front of the classroom demanded of them, but it’s not their grasp of content that’s being tested in their quizzes and examinations.
It’s the kids’ conditioning.
The people controlling the grade school and high school curricula don’t just want their students memorizing Ministry of Truth dogma. They want the children thinking the same way our NEA-member teachers do. They want the reliable production of responses which indicate “socialization.”
Mr. Hoffer, you’re going to get precisely nowhere in your efforts to address either the teachers or the administration of your daughter’s school. To these people, there is neither the intention to present “‘ ‘both sides’ of the issue” nor to engage students in the practice of searching out factual support for assertions.
They want your kids to think about everything the way teachers and school administrators do. They want to impose upon their students their own peculiar Weltanschauung, and they will punish your daughter (as they’ve punished my kids and my grandchildren) if the kid’s responses on her tests don’t prove that her conditioning has taken hold.
We have all noticed that warmists tend reliably to be politically leftist, and that they seem constantly to push the strange notion that a proper scientifically skeptical regard of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis is borne preponderantly of a politically conservative (“right-wing”) sentiment, not of the honestly rigorous consideration of the facts of reality as those facts can be perceived and truthfully reported.
I would like to venture speculation to the effect that the “man-made climate change” alarmists take their position on this issue for the same reason that they advocate the intrusive expansion of civil government beyond the powers specified in the U.S. Constitution and those other charters which define the concept we call “rule of law.”
It is part of their Weltanschauung, their view of the universe and the place of humanity in that universe, that the individual human being should not be the central focus of moral and therefore political valuation, but rather the society – the aggregate, as some kind of “organic” whole – which is supposed to benefit, invariably through the “contributions” of the individual.
And any individual who balks at making his or her “contributions” is evil.
Thus we get to “social studies,” and the endless stress made by the ex-Education majors on the process of “socialization” for America’s children.
Hoo, boy. Mr. Hoffer, do you hate these people as much as I do? And do you wonder about how it is that they can’t figure out why they’re hated so very, very much?
Jeremy says:
genette says:
March 10, 2011 at 8:05 am
As I posted at Bishop Hill, and as has been mentioned elsewhere, if Mann simply forwarded Jones’ email, it would have retained the subject line:
Subject: Re: IPCC & FOI
Excellent catch.
—————————
Wouldn’t the subject line have actually read:
Fwd: IPCC & FOI
unless he changed it?
In any case, if you were part of the IPCC process at this time, you probably got thousands of emails with IPCC and FOI in the title, so changing the title to something else doesn’t imply conspiracy – I get lots of emails entitled “seminar” to forward to my department, and I change the title to the name of the seminar series to avoid confusion. Just a (probably unhelpful) thought.
http://mitigatingapathy.blogspot.com/
Paul – a possibility : Mann clicked “Reply” and cc’d Wahl, so that Jones could see it had gone on to Wahl. Hence “Re:” not “Fwd:”. Another possibility: He clicked “Reply” and changed the recipient to Wahl. Both seem more likely than changing “Re:” to “Fwd:”?
Wait. I thought this was suppose to be a top story for days? Did all of the corrections made to the original force it down on the page? Is the website trying to hide a poorly written article?
[ryanm: there was a historical earthquake, and when the Mann post was no longer a “sticky”, it went to where it was in terms of blog chronology]
sceptical, It was a top story for days, if it was up there for another few days it would be a week. What do you want here? But hey the noose is closing on the mann or men involved, in my opinion.
CTM, I just posted this to Tips & Notes:
Anthony, I’ve noticed that Gavin is saying some rather rude things about you on RC:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/03/wahl-to-wahl-coverage/
The story was planted with Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts, and Chris Horner, and then linked to by Inhofe’s office to provide a little plausible denialability – a rather blatant media spin operation.
—-
I notified Sen. Jim Inhofe’s Chief of Staff about the CRU emails on the Russian server on Nov. 29, 2009 since Jim’s name was mentioned numerous times. Gavin can blame me if he wants.
Sounds like you got Gavin’s attention, CTM! Good job!
Pass the Mann, please…..Charles the DrPH