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’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.