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.
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.