The more recent revelation is that Dr. Mann claims that:
This has been known for a year and a half that all I did was forward Phil’s e-mail to Eugene.
But….apparently he did not intend Dr. Wahl to act on it as if it was an instruction:
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’m struggling with this. At the time, Mann wrote to Jones “I’ll contact Gene about this ASAP.” How could a private mail from Jones to Mann be used against Wahl? Jones asks Mann to ask Wahl? and this could be used…. against Wahl? huh? Wahl hasn’t done anything wrong. Yet. The claims being made are ridiculous and clearly conflict with Wahl’s testimony.
I think I finally get it. These scientists just have too good a sense of humor and we’ve been missing the joke, just like the public misunderstood the sophisticated humor of the Nixon Administration as demonstrated by this video clip.
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dp; Wahl and Mann aren’t going to rot in jail over this. They probably won’t even get a wrist slap. The FOI was under British jurisdiction – not US. Neither lied under oath, Mann because he wasn’t questioned under oath and Wahl because he told the truth.
A RICO investigation, on the other hand . . . .
Maybe Mann should invoke the Chewbacca defence from South Park (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Xywqv1cDH8&feature=related)
Susan posts in the PS inquiry section at Climate Audit the following statement:
“We now know that Mann forwarded the email — without further comment — to Wahl. Wahl deleted the emails as Jones suggested. Mann states that he did not delete those emails. He produced copies of those emails to the inquiry and apparently satisfied their questions.”
I’m sorry if everyone knows this but me. I do try to keep up. Do we know the contents of the emails, requested by Jones to be deleted but instead Mann presented in hard copy to the inquiry?
Hehe, funny you mentioned kumbaya… JAE griped about all the kumbaya crap recently and I was laughing so hard I almost cried.
Mark
Seconded. There was a brilliant long quote here a few months ago about how in certain fields of science, where a lab experiment can’t falsify a claim, the credibility of the leading figures in the field and its nonpartisan of its environment are of extreme importance. They mustn’the be a faction with a bee in its bonnet about something, or a snake oil to “sell.”
Climsci needs a do-over before we commit to the expensive preventive measures it’s prescribing. There should be an oversight panel composed of 100 retired scientists from related fields that can keep an eye on these characters and hear appeals from scorcher-scoffers when their papers are delayed or toned down, the IPCC pulls a fast one on them, etc. Its internal proceedings could be handled in a secure, members-only web site.
A similar, separate panel needs to do a rerun of the entirety of climsci, including full debates (both written and oral) on every aspect of the topic.
Eh? Eh? You’re too far away!
Exactly–the notorious “reality distortion field” (RDF)!
So let me get this straight – Wahl receives a forwarded email message instructing him to delete emails so he deletes them but neither the person who wrote the original email message nor the person who forwarded it to him will take responsibility?
If it was a murder case there would be no question – you indict all three of them together. (I was just looking at my knife and then someone else pushed me from behind into the victim – 50 times.)
A good point, but it’s unlikely, given that there aren’t allusions to a second channel in the Climategate e-mails (are there?) Still, it’s a question the PSU investigators should have asked.
Incidentally, someone should check on what the reaction has been to this affair by the PSU’s campus newspaper. (And by the UVA’s paper to Cuccinelli’s win.)
Here are some nuggets from the thread so far.
This is very simple but it seems many are struggling with the concepts of what Mann did. The facts as accepted, even by Mann are (1) Jones violated the Brit FOIA act but due to statute of limitations was not prosecuted, (2) Mann forwarded Jones request to destroy as part of the FOIA violation and (3) Wahl acted on the emails Mann forwarded.
So what, exactly, is this all about? The answer is really very simple. (a) Jones is a principle in that he violated, at the least, the Brit FOIA law(s). (b) Wahl, under Brit law, likely would be a principle as well (either directly or as an accomplice). The issue is whether Mann is an accessory. There are lots of definition on the web but layman can start with the wikipedia one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_%28legal_term%29#England_and_Wales and skip down to the England and Wales section.
One of the key “elements” needed to hold Mann as an accessory is whether he thought he was doing something wrong (the “mens rea” thing). The defense Mann is using is saying “I had no intent, thus I’m innocent”. This is, in reality, his only defense, given the emails and Wahls sworn statements. Thus Mann’s very carefully crafted answers.
Whether Mann is an accessory goes to his moral turpitude (again, wikipedia is a decent starting place http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_turpitude and go down to the last entry in the table of aiding, abetting, accessories). Simply, it one proves Mann fails this test then his veracity as a witness in ANY legal proceeding can be pursued to impeach his testimony. This means, in layman’s terms, if you have a proven liar then don’t believe much, if anything, from them ever again. It’s so important that there is a crime of perjury.
Mann simply has to defend himself. The defense he’s using with the Jones emails, imho, is very, very thin.
“dp; Wahl and Mann aren’t going to rot in jail over this. They probably won’t even get a wrist slap. The FOI was under British jurisdiction – not US. Neither lied under oath, Mann because he wasn’t questioned under oath and Wahl because he told the truth.?”
Besides RICO there are a number of other acts that might apply. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, for example, where it is illegal to bribe foreign officials. The aiding of the exchange of grant money may provide the monetary link, writing of funding recommendation letters, etc. If its not a violation it may be time the FCPA gets amended once again to broaden its scope as we do not want jurisdictional boundaries to provide cover for corrupt practices as a general rule and as a national health and security issue it has real world relations implications.
Working on government grants and corrupting a UN process, if that’s not worthy of a prosecution should anything short of murder be?
Michael Mann’s mission in life is to deny the MWP when in England we had vineyards as far North as York and it was when the Vikings lived in what is called Greenland. They gave it the name because so much of it was covered in grass.
Due to people like Mann and his friends we have had a non-proven scientific theory rammed down our throats as the truth and those of us that dissagree are call “deniers”, suggesting we also deny the Holocaust.
Our children are being brainwashed and the general population is being treated with contempt by politicans who cannot fill out an expense claim form. On top of this we have a media, especially the BBC betraying all the trust we ever had in them.
We are now paying the highest price for fuel in the developed world at a time when the other main players in the EU are paying substantially less.
France in particular have quite rightly gone the nuclear route whilst we build windmills.
If people like Mann were to end up in court we may at last see the beginning of the end of the nonensense.
“De Nile” ain’t just a river in Egypt, eh? Eventually it will come to this, as Ayn Rand said: “We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality.”
Laurie says:
March 10, 2011 at 10:54 pm
Producing copies of emails is not evidence that you did not delete them. It shows simply that, at some point, you made copies of them.
Mann wrote to Jones “I’ll contact Gene about this ASAP.” How could a private mail from Jones to Mann be used against Wahl?
Why wouldn’t Jones just email Wahl directly? If Mann had to forward the email he’d probably read the contents as they wouldn’t be private in this case. If Mann was so inclined to save his emails you’d think he would’ve written to Wahl himself or added to the email from Jones. This has to be a cover up, there’s no innocent way or interpreting this scenario.
I was just thinking how many arguments about climate science are affected by all this deletion. Consider:
Where’s the raw data from which you got these results?
DELETED
Too bad, can’t figure out…anyway, what’s with these land temps over the ocean, what happened to the ocean temps?
DELETE
Uhm…ok, never mind that, what’s this anomalous warming period here in the 1940’s?
DELETE
Oh, its gone, well what about all this Medieval Warmin Period evidence?
DELETE
Hmmm, was there before, but the Roman Warming Period-
DELETE
Now this is getting suspiscious. I should check the emails of some of the people who are coming up with this stuff and see if they are acting with integrity.
DELETE
Jee whilikers, can’t catch a break. Hey, here’s an email saying to delete emails and telling other people to delete emails…calling that guy right now…hey, thanks for answering, did you delete any emails or tell anyone else to?
EXPLETIVE DELETIVE
Well that was colorfull, but didn’t answer my question.
EXPLETELY NEGATIVE RE DELETE
OK, what about the other part…oh dear, he hung up on me. OK, call the guy he sent that email to, dialing….oh hey hi, that guy forwarded an email from another guy saying to delete email, what did you do when you got it?
DELETE
Is that a standard practice? all this deleting? what’s that” you all trained at the Nixon Academy for Professional Deletion? wow, didn’t know there was one…and also the Academy for Advanced Obfuscation? Never heard of that one either…
OH! Never Inhaled, Didn’t Have Sex With That Woman, you mean the CLINTON Academy for Advanced Obfuscation. Can we get back to the science… I was wondering about
DELETE
Hey, I didn’t even ask the question yet…oh… pro-active deletion, I see…
His address had changed, or Mann had lost it.
Roger Knights says:
March 11, 2011 at 11:34 pm
LightRain says:
March 11, 2011 at 7:20 pm
Why wouldn’t Jones just email Wahl directly?
His address had changed, or Mann had lost it.>>>
Jones couldn’t email Wahl directly not because he lost his email address, but because he DELETED IT! See what a bind deleting things gets you into?
So he had to get Mann to relay. Which he did. And when he got caught, he claimed this, then that, then the other thing until it was obvious that he has pretty much “lost it”
At the height of the watergate scandal it was discovered that Nixon’s secretary had inadvertently erased some of the tape recordings. Her demonstration on TV, of the bodily contortions required for the lapse to have happened, was worthy of the children’s game “Twister”. For some reason that image comes to mind when I think of this issue.