Chris Horner of the American Tradition Institute writes in with this:
So the American Association for the Advancement of Science, thoroughly rattled by the American Tradition Institute’s FOIA requests of UVa and NASA — and even more so by the litigation forced by the institutions’ respective stonewalling — issued a board statement comparing FOIA requests of climate scientists with death threats. Really.
Naturally this caught the eye of the New York Times, which had a young lady contact us for comment. Right off the bat it was clear she, too, had been rattled by the horrors of our outrageous efforts to …see certain records the taxpayer has paid for and which are expressly covered by transparency laws.
Her stance was sympathetic to AAS’s to the point of temper.
She first reaffirmed a fancy for the apparently absolute truth that a FOIA request for climate scientists’ records is indeed no different than death threats allegedly made in Australia against scientists — sadly, if that’s true, they are now treated to what ‘skeptics’ have experienced for years, as I have detailed.
Well, actually, her disinterest in Greenpeace having created this little cottage practice indicated that this is true only for certain climate scientists’ records. Not the ones whose records Greenpeace is asking her for…that’s just transparency, good-government type stuff.
She continued by wondering, as such, do we condone death threats (really?) and, if not, why would we then also issue a FOIA?
Why that is particularly amusing, as opposed to sad, is that she was shocked by my assertion that Big Science/Big Academia’s objection to having laws that obviously cover their own actually applied to their own was of a part with Hollywood objecting to laws being applied to Roman Polanski. Apparently, by saying this, I was accusing Michael Mann of some heinous crime. Or something.
So see the below as I sent to her and, given the above, I expect you will not see in the story. Surely because it will be too busy explaining the tyranny of Greenpeace broadly filing similar requests. ATI’s statement is here.
—–Original Message—–From: chornerlaw@aol.com
To: fostej@nytimes.com
Sent: Wed, Jun 29, 2011 1:14 pm
Subject: AAAS release citing ATI transparency efforts
Dear Joanna,I’m told you called ATI for comment. Below is my response per an earlier inquiry.Best,Christopher C. Horner Senior Fellow Competitive Enterprise Institute 1899 L St, NW 12th Floor Washington, DC, 20036 +1.202.331.2260 (O)…Several points:I noticed no relation between our initiative and the Board’s rhetoric until they mentioned us somewhat incongruously.The notion that application of laws expressly covering academics [is] an ‘attack’ on academics is substantively identical to Hollywood apologists calling application of other laws to Roman Polanski an attack on Polanski. They rather lost the plot somewhere along the way.The failure to mention the group that invented this series of requests, Greenpeace, informs a conclusion that this attempt at outrage is selective, and therefore either feigned or hypocritical. This is also new; their problem is quite plainly with the law(s), but it is a problem they have, over the decades of transparency and ethics laws applying to scientists subsisting on taxpayer revenue, heretofore forgotten to mention.Opposition to such laws applying to them is rather shocking. But then, maybe not so much when you also note their failure to comment on scientists being outed as advocating the flaunting of transparency laws.Finally, AAUP’s code of professional ethics indicates that efforts to manipulate the peer review process are impermissible. Given the overlap and for other reasons we assume this is something AAAS agrees with or at minimum accepts. But this, too, is insincere if such behavior is permissible — or at least, where just cause indicates further inquiry is warranted, it is to be ignored — if the party at issue is one who for various reasons the AAAS or AAUP et al. elevate or find sympathetic. In Mann’s case, if our review of his documents which belong to the taxpayer also happen to exonerate him from the suspicions that have arisen, we will be the first to do so.
==============================================================
Below is the ATI statement – Anthony
==============================================================
Statement from American Tradition Institute Environmental Law Center in Response to American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Misleading Accusations Against ATI Today
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Contacts:
Christopher Horner, director of litigation, chris.horner@atinstitute.org
Paul Chesser, executive director, paul.chesser@atinstitute.org
Today the board of directors for the American Association for the Advancement of Science issued a statement and press release that denounced “personal attacks,” “harassment,” “death threats,” and “legal challenges” toward climate scientists. AAAS’s press release specifically cited actions taken by American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center in its efforts to obtain records of Climategate scientist Dr. Michael Mann from the University of Virginia, and its efforts to obtain outside employment records of climate activist Dr. James Hansen from the National Aeronautical and Space Administration(NASA).
AAAS wrote, in part,
“we are concerned that establishing a practice of aggressive inquiry into the professional histories of scientists whose findings may bear on policy in ways that some find unpalatable could well have a chilling effect on the willingness of scientists to conduct research that intersects with policy-relevant scientific questions.”
Response to AAAS from ATI Environmental Law Center director of litigation Christopher Horner:
“I noticed no relation between our initiative and the AAAS Board’s rhetoric until they mentioned us somewhat incongruously.
“The notion that application of laws that expressly cover academics is an ‘attack’ on them is substantively identical to Hollywood apologists who call application of other laws to Roman Polanski an attack on Polanski. They lost the plot somewhere along the way.
“AAAS’s failure to mention the group that invented this series of requests, Greenpeace, informs our conclusion that this outrage is selective, and is therefore either feigned or hypocritical. Their problem is plainly with the laws, but it is a problem they have had over the decades: That transparency and ethics laws also apply to scientists who subsist on taxpayer revenue. This they also forgot to mention.
“Finally, the American Association of University Professors’ code of professional ethics indicates that efforts to manipulate the peer review process are impermissible. Given the overlap, and for other reasons, we assume AAAS agrees with these principles or at a minimum accepts them. But this, too, is insincere if such behavior is permitted or ignored where just cause indicates further inquiry is warranted, as long as the parties at issue are those whose views the AAAS or AAUP sympathize with. In Mann’s case, if our review of his documents which belong to the taxpayer also happen to exonerate him from the suspicions that have arisen, we will be the first to do so.”
For an interview with Christopher Horner, email chris.horner@atinstitute.org or paul.chesser@atinstitute.org or call (202)670-2680.
================================================================
Reaction is now coming in. Alana Goodman of Commentray Magazine writes in a piece titled
Contentions – Climate Change Skepticism Now Considered ‘Harassment’?
…
Of course, what the AAAS calls “personal information” actually appears to be public data. The group’s statement comes on the heels of a lawsuit filed against NASA by the conservative American Traditional Institute earlier this month, which is trying to force the agency to release information about scientist James Hansen.
And after years of watching climate change advocates demonizing global warming skeptics, it’s hard to have any sympathy for the AAAS on this issue. Not to mention, previously leaked emails have shown climate change scientists behaving in ways abusive to the public trust. Skeptics should absolutely work to expose any potential corruption in the global warming advocacy community — and the fact AAAS is so terrified of legal challenges is good reason to believe these skeptics might be onto something.
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“John from CA says:
June 29, 2011 at 1:57 pm
New York Times has turned into a rag. I’m not sure when it happened, they used to be respected.”
John, the NYTs got a pulitzer for articles that said there was no genocide in the Ukraine due to starvation under Stalin. The NYTs author Walter Duranty was on scene at the time and ignored the truth.
Even after the stories were proven to be falsehoods the NYTs refuse to take down his pulitzer prize.
The NYTs, all the news that is fit to print. But we decide what is fit.
All it takes for the descent into a pre-scientific and superstitios/supernatural culture is for rational men & women to say nothing in the face of irrationalism/subjectivism.
John
A simple response to this desperate whining: “If you don’t like the FOIA, change it.” End of story. Now go away.
Some folks believe the New York Times only prints the news that fits.
Steve from Rockwood says:
June 29, 2011 at 2:23 pm
“the world is full of hopelessly stupid people.”
________________________________________
What might be more dangerous are the intelligent people who run parts of government and other institutions. No matter how smart certain individuals are, even a small group of geniuses, they can’t possibly manage the affairs of millions of people. The success of the free market is in the millions of little decisions made every day. No one, no computer, no algorithm, no regulations, could equal the collective independent wisdom inherently part of the free market.
The intelligentsia, or the elite running things now, can rationalize and justify virtually any action. That’s why they can’t be given much power. That’s why we need a government of limited powers. We need to strip them of the power they have wrongfully taken. They have abused regulatory authority to distort the market in favor of certain corporations willing to serve their interests. At this point, it is hard to find much that resembles a free market.
It has reached the point where they want total control. Over the air, over the water, over our food, over medicine, over what we say, and especially over our children. Naturally, these steps are taken for our own good, and for “fairness”. They claim a need to fix certain problems, but select a method that destabilizes the system they supposedly want to fix. Then of course, more fixes are required. This process continues until each targeted piece of our system breaks down. At that point they get to install what they wanted originally. And we let this process happen over and over again.
I spend a lot of time here, because WUWT deals with perhaps the most central piece of their plan, the climate-based excuse to control energy and thereby our economy and jobs. Through the mechanism of AGW, our economy and our personal lives will be controlled at a deep level. Our bright future will be replaced with darkness and hopelessness. For what? Power for a few. The scam appears to be profitable for far too many powerful individuals and businesses, at least in the short run. They have been bought off. However, the core of the green plan is rotten and is designed to break.
I just don’t know whether or not they realize they are killing their golden goose. Do the people going along with the green agenda believe we are too big to fail? Do the green leaders honestly believe in socialist utopian ideals? Perhaps those behind the scam just want the biggest piece of the carcass they can get and to hell with the rest of us.
Clearly, we need less government. We need more power and freedom in the private sector, mainly in small business. Regulations need to be eliminated that create regulatory markets for big business, and limit competition. A vigorous free market will create jobs. Government doesn’t do that. Abundant reliable inexpensive domestic energy will power our economy and grow the middle class. We have the technology to build a bright new future, but only if we are not limited by greedy power-mad bureaucrats and hidden elites. They need AGW to control energy and control us.
You are fighting the good fight. And you are making a difference.
Nick stokes said
“The AAAS didn’t “equate” FOIA requests to death threats. They simply said that they had both happened and were perturbing scientists trying to do their job.
On the other hand,
“The notion that application of laws expressly covering academics [is] an ‘attack’ on academics is substantively identical to Hollywood apologists calling application of other laws to Roman Polanski an attack on Polanski. “
is explicit equating. Academics to sex offenders. Great.”
* * *
Congratulations on destroying your own argument with your own words. So if the AAAS ( aptly named, I must add,) is really not equating transparency with death threats and personal attacks, yet another idea comparing the subverting and “pick and choose” mentality of what laws to obey based on who the offender clearly is, then you have shown the hypocrisy in your post, and is now invalid.
Hoisted by your own petard, huh?
“Scientists should not be subjected to fraud investigations or harassment simply for providing scientific results that are controversial.”
“Controversial”? I thought it was “settled”.
Like I said last week:
“Expect the behavior of cornered rats.”
Nick Stokes says:
June 29, 2011 at 4:26 pm
“On the other hand,
“The notion that application of laws expressly covering academics [is] an ‘attack’ on academics is substantively identical to Hollywood apologists calling application of other laws to Roman Polanski an attack on Polanski. “
is explicit equating. Academics to sex offenders. Great.”
No, the equation is between Hollywood apologists and those who apply FOIA laws. The NYT equated death threats and FOIA requests in the usual way by conjoining them in a sentence as follows:
“Reports of harassment, death threats, and legal challenges [emphasis mine] have created a hostile environment that inhibits the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas and makes it difficult for factual information and scientific analyses to reach policymakers and the public.”
Of course, you could read the NYT as simply hysterical, as if they had written “He went to the store to buy milk, bread, and a life.”
Your usefulness as a troll is declining rapidly.
To the AAAS Board of Directors and those who might agree with their statement:
Welcome to the real world you pompous, arrogant gits.
The age of information will knock you off your high horses in due time.
Your elitism won’t survive.
———————————————————
If the implications of this enchilada were not so worrying however, I would be laughing. Sadly, it seems though, in the information age, we appear to be moving away from rationalism. Sadly as well, the concept of simple respect has been thrown out and buried by power brokers. Campaign strategy modeled around hypocrisy and lies is sanctioned by many playing the big games. Truth be damned.
———————————————————
I’m disgusted.
Typo alert. In Reaction is now coming in. Alana Goodman of Commentray Magazine, that should be Commentary.
Nick Stokes is always like that. He’s an apologist for what is wrong and will always defend bad practices. It’s his usual stye. He trawls from blog to blog defending all malpractices and bad practices by the pro-AGW climate science crowd and their cheerleaders.
ew-3 says:
June 29, 2011 at 5:18 pm
“John from CA says:
June 29, 2011 at 1:57 pm
New York Times has turned into a rag. I’m not sure when it happened, they used to be respected.”
John, the NYTs got a pulitzer for articles that said there was no genocide in the Ukraine due to starvation under Stalin. The NYTs author Walter Duranty was on scene at the time and ignored the truth.
Even after the stories were proven to be falsehoods the NYTs refuse to take down his pulitzer prize.
The NYTs, all the news that is fit to print. But we decide what is fit.
============
ew-3,
Like I said, I’m not sure when it started but I’m very surprised it goes all the way back to the Stalin era.
I read the NYT for years and still pick-up a copy when I travel but have noticed it getting progressively worse over the years; very slanted coverage.
Thanks for the insight.
It is stunning to see essentially no condemnation of the death threats here, and instead exuses and accusations (always anonymous, of course) that they are “political stunts” or that scientists are “playing the victim.” Regardless of your position on climate science or FOIAs or anything else, threats against individuals are never, ever acceptable. Imagine receiving just one such email, let alone several or on a regular basis. I hope those found to be making such threats are prosecuted to the fullest extent before something deeply tragic happens, which is the path all of this is on. If skeptics are to retain any legitimacy whatsoever, such tactics need to be clearly and loudly denounced.
Publicly funded scientists and field experts behaving as if sharing their data and methods is so horrible as to be considered harassment akin to death threats? The world has truly gone mad and we are all witness to it. This is not the mentally challenged among us mistaking the moon for the sun because their hangover hasn’t yet ended, this is the creme of the crop telling us that we cannot cross their moat from an outcropping in the tower lest we be branded as criminals.
John from CA says:
June 29, 2011 at 1:57 pm
…Its pretty pitiful when a reporter believes the FOIA is anything other than a positive.
———
Well, all pretense of journalistic integrity ended with the 2000 presidential election. Journalists have no use for FOIA and such tools when they’re free to just make stuff up. Since 2000, main stream journalism has given up all pretense of objectivity and become nothing more than a propaganda arm for the far left ideologues who control the Democratic Party.
Add the concept of an analogy, and what one implies in particular, to the growing list of concepts Nick does not understand. Not only does each new post from the head cheerleader decrease his own apparent level of intelligence, I’m thinking it knocks each reader’s down a notch as well. You really are not nearly as intelligent as you initially appeared.
Mark
David Appell,
Excuse me if I read your comment wrong, but it seems you haven’t read the article.
No one is saying that death threats are OK. But you seem to be painting all skeptics with a broad brush here. Don’t you recall the 10-10 video and similar alarmist propaganda, which approved killing kids for giving the “wrong” answers? Did you ‘clearly and loudly denounce’ those vicious ads?
Perturbation from their job? Here’s the opening part of the statement:
So what is said explicitly here is that “legal challenges” (by which we all take to mean FOIA requests) have created a “hostile environment” that “inhibits the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas”.
So what it is saying is, FOIA requests are impeding the free exchange of information in the same sentence as saying that death threats are impeding the free exchange of information. In this manner, the statement is equating the effect on science from a death threat to the effect on science from an FOIA request. That is quite clear from the text, there is no interpretation neccessary there.
Now, what is the job of a scientist? I say a major part of the job of a scientist, particularly the altruistic kind seeking to determine how the world might end for all of us, is to freely exchange information and methods so that we all may be forewarned of what might be coming. It is not the job of a scientist to tell politicians what to do. Can we at least agree on that?
Now if part of the job of a scientist is to do this, what you are in essence saying is that the job of a scientist is akin to a death threat impeding the job of a scientist. Your argument is entirely circular.
Or someone has a wild imagination when they want to have one.
There is a word I’m searching for to describe all of this blather from the warmist, I thought clericalism was close to what I wanted but technicalrighter saying “or FATWAH, as may be the case.”, may be closer.
David Appell says:
June 29, 2011 at 6:44 pm
“It is stunning to see essentially no condemnation of the death threats here, ……”
=============================================================
Uhmm, first, this post is about equating FOI requests with death threats. Secondly, it has been loudly condemned. But, sis, I’m not going to jump up and down proclaiming beating my wife is something I abhor every time some whine-bag fabricates a story about some fictional bogeyman……. If you check it, that’s the reason why most of us are here. The fact is, given their penchant to invent killers out of thin air, it wouldn’t be beyond the pale to find that they’ve once again done the same.
Are there some unsavory characters out there? Yes, there are. Does that have anything to do with skepticism? No, not a damned thing. BTW, how come the alarmists don’t loudly and profoundly condemn genocide? I’m shocked to see that it doesn’t occur on the alarmists blogs!
J. Felton says: June 29, 2011 at 5:44 pm
well, something. But not engaging with my argument.
If I say that the US suffers from tornadoes and traffic jams, that doesn’t mean I’m equating tornadoes and traffic jams. But that’s the logic of this headline.
But if I say A “is substantively identical to” B, then that’s equating.
The New York Times? Wow! They are concerned about the release of information? You should have saved that quote from the book of Matthew on the Greenpeace post for this, far more appropriate. The information being requested is being requested through legal channels. It is not information stolen from a US Government computer marked secret and leaked to your paper by a rapist running a wiki website. I am really at a loss for words. It transcends hypocrisy. I hate to use ‘doublethink’ because Orwell is so over-quoted, but is there a better example of it?
David Appell says:
June 29, 2011 at 6:44 pm
There are no death threats in the subject matter, just FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests. That doesn’t mean the joke “If I told you, I’d have to kill you” or the more fitting but absurd “Tell me first, then I’ll kill you,” it means merely “I asked for the data nicely, now I’m asking with the force of law.” Laws which do not include the death penalty.
As for the Australian death threats, those have been covered in several previous posts. Please look them up.
I am worried that there are so many defective minds out there. many with responsible positions.