ATI Statement on Results from Today’s Hearing in Freedom of Information Act Case Against U. of Virginia
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, September 16, 2011
Contact: Paul Chesser, paul.chesser@atinstitute.org
Today in Prince William County court Judge Gaylord Finch delayed arguments and the scheduled production of documents in American Tradition Institute’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the University of Virginia. A brief hearing was held to discuss a Motion to Intervene in the case by lawyers for former UVA professor Michael Mann, whose records that were created while employed there are what ATI seeks. Judge Finch, recognizing the important precedent-setting potential of the case, said he wanted to schedule a longer hearing — two hours — to hear arguments about whether to allow Dr. Mann, now at Pennsylvania State University, to enter the case.
Judge Finch granted ATI a sur reply in the case, which allows ATI Environmental Law Center director David Schnare to place additional materials before the court as Judge Finch considers whether to allow Dr. Mann to intervene. The two-hour hearing is scheduled for Nov. 1.
Statement by ATI Environmental Law Center director Dr. David Schnare about today’s developments:
“If it wasn’t clear before, it should now be clear to everybody. This is an extremely important case, and we appreciate Judge Finch’s careful attention to detail as we proceed.”
See case documents, press releases, media coverage, commentary, broadcast interviews, etc. pertaining to ATI v. University of Virginia by clicking here: http://bit.ly/mLZLXC
h/t to Bob Ferguson
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,….
The laws delay, the insolence of office…”
Just sayin’, or rather, someone else said it.
(Hamlet’s 4th Soliloquy.)
barry;
Incredibly, it appears no one here is interested in the actual contents of the emails etc. Why might that be, do you think?>>>
Incredible. The trolls have taken to making claims so completely ridiculous that they defy logical rebuttal.
It is irrelevant what the emails contain. The fact that “scientists” work so hard to hide data and obscure their methods tells us all we need to know about the current state of “climate science”. When a colleague approached Issac Newton and ask about a mathematical description of planetary motion, Newton responded ‘I have that, I will send it to you’. THAT is science. THAT is the joy of discovery, the joy of human understanding.
What Mann, Schmidt and the rest of the political advocates are engaged in is anti-science. These advocates have thrown their scientific reputations on the scrap heap of history. It is a sad, sad thing to witness.
davidmhoffer,
The principle of the VFOIA is to be questioned by Mann’s attorneys on privacy issues. That should be a simple challenge for the Virginia courts to overcome, since ‘in camera’ review by the UVA and ATI attorneys already guarantees privacy during the review process to determine which of the emails are indeed exempt from VFOIA due to being found to be private.
To me Mann’s strategy appears to be just obstruction and delay. I say that because there is no hope that a court is going to overturn a citizen’s right to know what a government body is doing with its money (FOIA) in favor of a professor working at a government university on government funded research.
Why delay by Mann? Is there an alternate Team strategy we are not seeing that is churning away in the background during this Mann delay distraction with UVA? Is that alternate Team strategy focused on AR5 or on something cooked up by a Team hired PR company (one similar to OO used by the UEA)? We know the Team is capable of confidential actions and hidden strategies based on the climategate emails.
John
It’s no wonder that Michael Mann is fighting the release of his emails, given the way that the meanings of the emails stolen from the CRU have been endlessly and viciously distorted. He can be certain that somewhere in his emails, there is a word or phrase that, taken out of context, can be made to suggest anything that his attackers want. He may have written that Steve McIntyre’s mother wears army boots, as a joke for a colleague who knows how to take his facetiousness — not seriously — but what fun his attackers would have with that! He can’t win. Either he releases the emails and endures the smears that are based on them, or he fights the release, and exposes himself to the charge that he is hiding something. Mann publishes the results of his science for all to see, to verify or refute. Everything that we need to know to determine whether his science is good is already public. There can’t be any motive behind the request for his emails other than a desire to find the word or phrase that can be converted into a cudgel to beat him with.
Roger Sowell: Many, many times the attorneys for one party draft a contract with unenforceable provisions or even illegal provisions, in the hopes that an un-knowledgeable other party will not know this.
Will not the court rule against the party that actually drew up such an agreement?
Jesse Fell “It’s no wonder that Michael Mann is fighting the release of his emails, given the way that the meanings of the emails stolen from the CRU have been endlessly and viciously distorted.”
Is there any evidence that CRU emails were stolen rather than leaked? That the emails became public doesn’t work as evidence of theft. So, what do you know about this that the rest of us don’t and how do you know it?
Could you please give an example of one of the emails that had a meaning explained but someone (who?) “viciously distorted” that meaning? Please explain just one with the specifics. I’ll certainly listen if you do that. Am I asking too much?
A dime says neither of my questions will be answered as asked, if at all.
@juanslayton,
Re “Will not the court rule against the party that actually drew up such an agreement?”
The response below, and all other responses or comments on this thread are not legal advice, but merely general comments on broad points of general interest. The viewpoint of the comments below is US law, specifically California law. Everyone’s specific situation is different, therefore anyone who needs legal advice should seek the services of an attorney.
A court ruling against the party that drew up the agreement is the general rule, but like most things in the law, it gets complicated. I referred above to the situation where one party is unsophisticated; that is, he (or she) is not represented by counsel and doesn’t know much if anything about the law. The other party, having an attorney, is considered sophisticated. In this context, sophisticated and unsophisticated merely means the extent of legal knowledge, nothing more.
Regarding contract interpretation, the legal issue is that ambiguities will be construed against the party that drafted the agreement, where both parties have a reasonable interpretation of the ambiguity. The key word here is “ambiguities.” Attorneys spend a lot of time and write many, many words to achieve unambiguous documents because of that legal issue. However, in spite of best efforts to achieve clarity, there are still disputes over the meaning of contract clauses. Where the court agrees that the meaning is ambiguous, the non-drafting party’s interpretation is usually granted. But, this is not an iron-clad rule because there are many factors to be considered.
This does not refer to un-enforceable provisions, however. To have an unenforceable provision struck down, a party generally must provide either statutory citations, or case-based precedents to the court that show such provisions have been unenforceable in the past. In short, just because an agreement is in writing, and signed by both parties, does not mean it is an enforceable contract. As I wrote above, there are more than a dozen ways that a written agreement can be found null and void, or unenforceable. There is room in the law, also, for a party to carve out a new reason for a contract provision to be unenforceable. It is rare, but it can be done.
barry says:
September 17, 2011 at 7:34 am
ATI hold 3,800 pages of Mann’s emails and other information from UVA. They have this stuff right now after the courts released them. My question to you is not rhetorical – why has no one from WUWT demanded that ATI release the 3800 pages of Mann/UVA material that they received via court order nearly a month ago?
I think the answer is that nobody is really interested. Having followed the threads on this at WUWT, there’s been barely a comment on this state of affairs, let alone an explanation. Could you enlighten me, please?
Not sure what enlightenment you are seeking barry but speaking for myself, I don’t need any additional evidence that Mann et. al. are playing some kind of game here. This is not science. The hockey stick is not science. The corruption of peer review is not science. If my tax dollars are going to be used to fund science I expect the scientists to be open and forth coming with all of their work product. It’s really that simple and fits nicely with the scientific method. There should be no problem, it all should work for every stakeholder. The fact that it is not working tells me there is a problem here and it needs to be addressed. Simple.
@ur momisugly Nat Wilcox,
My pleasure. This is a fascinating case with far-reaching implications. From an attorney’s point of view, this is good stuff. The precendent, if one is indeed set, could have great implications for scientists in all fields. If this gets much further, I expect that many amicus briefs will be filed.
“davidmhoffer says:
September 16, 2011 at 8:24 pm”
Super!
“Jesse Fell says:
September 17, 2011 at 7:52 am
Everything that we need to know to determine whether his science is good is already public.”
I am not so sure about that. We are not interested in an inside joke that may be misinterpreted by others. Why can Mann not just give McIntyre what he specifically asked for? For the example, what computer code was used to get the hockey stick graph and would some random hockey statistics give the same hockey stick graph with Mann’s computer code?
barry says:
September 17, 2011 at 7:34 am
davidmhoffer,
Incredible. The trolls have taken to making claims so completely ridiculous that they defy logical rebuttal.>>>
barry says;
Troll, is it? Great to meet you.>>>
REPLY: Good to meet you too. I’m a Billy Goat. You may call me Gruff.
barry says;
The very next post after yours reinforces my point.
“It is irrelevant what the emails contain”>>>
REPLY: So a bunch of commentors have suggested that the way in which Mann is tying himself and the legal system in knots to keep those emails out of the public eye is good enough for them to suggest that he is guilty of something, and something big. I agree 100%. Add to that the context of everything else that Mann has done, including being exposed for building a computer program that produced a “hockey stick” graph regardless of the data being used, building a 1000 year reconstruction of earth’s climate based 50% on a SINGLE tree, refusing to release his data, which in every case where he was forced to turned out to discredit his results, and one can easily see why a whole bunch of people need no further evidence to conclude he is hiding something incriminating.
But trust me barry, they want to see those emails as do the rest of us. Because along with our conclusion that Mann is so clearly and obviously hiding something, WE WANT TO KNOW EXACTLY WHAT IT IS THAT HE IS HIDING.
The days of the public accepting the great and mighty’s smoke and mirrors show are over. We keep getting told not to look behind the curtain. We know the smoke and mirrors are all show, we know there’s some damning evidence to prove it behind the curtain. The phalanx of armed gaurds and the dire warnings about not looking behind the curtain sort of spell that out.
But make no mistake about it. When the curtain is pulled aside, we’ll be looking at that tiny little excuse for a human and all his wires and handles and other trickery and taking it apart with considerable interest, in considerable detail.
barry says:
“ATI has already received 3,800 pages of Mannian material…” & blah, blah, etc.
barry, Mann can voluntarily give ATI 3,800 postcards from Cancun for all anyone cares. It’s what he’s fighting tooth and nail to withhold that people want to see.
The judge can hear both sides on particular emails that are of a personal nature, etc., and rule to accept or deny them as evidence. But a leopard doesn’t change its spots, and Michael Mann has been caught time after time engaging in what appears to be serious scientific misconduct.
Based on his past actions, it is very likely that Mann is fighting the release of these emails because they are incriminating. We’re talking about the weather and climate here, not nuclear defense secrets – yet Mann’s desperation to avoid disclosing what the taxpayers funded comes across loud and clear.
Mann is hiding evidence of serious wrongdoing, IMHO. And if witnesses are ever called, there are no doubt people who have been steamrollered by the arrogant Michael Mann, and who will be eager to testify against him. Mann has stepped on plenty of toes, as the Climategate emails show.
Laurie,
You ask how I know that the emails were stolen rather than leaked. I would reply that no evidence has turned up pointing to anyone at CRU having leaked the emails — and if the leaking had occurred at the CRU site, it would be easy to detect. But even if someone at the CRU had leaked the emails, it still would be a form of theft — just as it is when a clerk at a department store goes home with an unpaid-for diamond bracelet in his pocket.
As an example of vicious distortion of the meaning of the emails, I would mention that charge that scientists at CRU were conspiring to blackball scientific papers that didn’t echo their views. First of all, they were not in a position to prevent anyone’s papers from being published. But what they were in fact talking about was whether to cite the findings in certain already-published papers in the IPCC report. The IPCC conducts no original research; it merely aims to provide a digest of “the best that is thought and known” on climate change. The IPCC is under no obligation to incorporate the results of ALL research conducted on any given point; that is neither desirable nor possible.
Now, I’ll toss the ball back to you: what did Phil Jones actually do that he referred to as hiding the decline?
JF
Werner Brozek,
If I were Michael Mann, I would be similarly loath to give Steven McIntyre anything. McIntyre is a hanging judge if ever there were one. He is industrious and has spotted some statistical errors in NASA data (for which NASA thanked him graciously). But his efforts are not in the interest of making the science better, but in the interest of discrediting the scientists.
He has Michael Mann in a tight spot. If Mann releases anything, he can be sure it will be converted, somehow, into weapons to use against him. If he resists releasing things, he is open to the accusation of having something to hide.
Questions for you, Werner: Aren’t there other hockey stick models? What do they show? If they show roughly the same thing, do we have reason to believe that they are based on fudged data?
barry says:
September 17, 2011 at 5:29 am
ATI has already received 3,800 pages of Mannian material underwritten by the tax payer. Instead of posting it immediately online, they informed us that they will review the material and decide whether or not to post any of it on their website.”
I’m sorry but you have no clue what your talking about. Yes ATI has gotten a huge amount of the data to review… However THEY AREN’T ALLOWED TO RELEASE IT UNTIL THE COURT APPROVES. Once again because you seem to just link without reading any of the links THE COURT/JUDGE MUST APPROVE THEIR RELEASE which is what Mann jumping in is trying to prevent and why theirs a court case to begin with….
FOIA on this scale normally goes through at least 2 review processes before its released to the public now with the court(thats 3) and Mann(thats 4) your stacking more and more parties that must “approve” of a public release. Getting documents to review to argue a public release IS NOT the same is being able to release said documents to the public.
Jesse Fell: “As an example of vicious distortion of the meaning of the emails, I would mention that charge that scientists at CRU were conspiring to blackball scientific papers that didn’t echo their views.”
Fell, are you monumentally and willfully ignorant? Or are you a paid troll?
In fact, the charge of blackmailing is true (from Montford’s site, updated with live links)
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/20/climate-cuttings-33.html
-Phil Jones to Michael Mann, July, 2004: “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !” (http://www.di2.nu/foia/1089318616.txt)
-Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(http://www.di2.nu/foia/1047388489.txt)
-Tom Wigley – Says they need to get editorial board to resign. Says they need to get rid of von Storch too. (http://www.di2.nu/foia/1051190249.txt)
-Santer says he will no longer publish in Royal Met Soc journals if they enforce intermediate data being made available. Jones has complained to head of Royal Met Soc about new editor of Weather [why?data?] and has threatened to resign from RMS.(http://www.di2.nu/foia/1237496573.txt)
And now you ask us to do your work for you about “hide the decline”? It only takes a few seconds on ClimateAudit or Bishop Hill to find that out, so it appears you choose to be willfully ignorant.
Here’s a question for you? Why do you believe the POLICY of hiding data and methods, of refusing to allow independent replication in direct and deliberate violation of the Scientific Method, constitutes anything resembling “science”.
Jesse Fell;
Now, I’ll toss the ball back to you: what did Phil Jones actually do that he referred to as hiding the decline?>>>
Other than truncating the data for two large time periods for which the proxy indicators showed a decline in termperature you mean? Something other than that?
Ball back to you JF. Do you believe your own bulls**t? Or are you just posturing for someone? do you need some grant money or data that Kevin Trenberth is in control of? what’s your excuse for such a blatantly misleading and ridiculous question?
Jesse Fell;
But even if someone at the CRU had leaked the emails, it still would be a form of theft — just as it is when a clerk at a department store goes home with an unpaid-for diamond bracelet in his pocket.>>>
Really? You’re trying to equate copies of emails with a diamond bracelet? E-mails are records of communication. They have no physical value. Identical copies can be made as many times as you would like. Try that with diamond bracelets! Emails have NO VALUE. The information they contain however is subject to the same rules as contracts, (in fact, some emails ARE contracts!) and they constitute EVIDENCE just like a recorded telephone conversation or an over heard verbal conversation.
If you want to argue that the EVIDENCE was improperly released, by all means. I’ll just point out in advance that many jurisdictions are implementing legal protection for “whistle blowers” for the express purpose of protecting them and ensuring that evidence of wrong doing is released.
Blather on all you want about “leaked” or “stolen” but don’t insult our intelligence by trying to equate them with a diamond bracelet. It makes you look foolish and doesn’t change the important fact that:
THE EMAILS ARE BLATANT EVIDENCE OF WRONG DOING.
In a maze of sticks
Jesse sticks to the story.
Crook at the ending.
==========
davidmhoffer,
Gosh, I’d never thought of that — getting grant money by promulgating bull**t! I’m a camera buff and have my eye on a snazzy new camera — which goes for $2k. So if you could tell me how to get grant money, I’ll be much obliged.
In the meanwhile …
My understanding of “hide the decline” is that for the period after 1960, the temperatures that could be inferred from a certain set of tree ring diverged sharply from temperatures obtained by direct instrumental measurement for the same period. Ordinarily,the temperatures that can be inferred from proxy data are fairly close to instrumental data; where both forms of data are available, however, the more accurate instrumental data is to be preferred. It is especially to be preferred when the temperatures inferred from proxy data are contradicted by more reliable forms of data.
Jones’ decision to use only the instrumental data in constructing the final portion of his graph was what anyone would do to produce the most accurate graph possible, given the available data. To the best of my knowledge, no one has charged that this instrumental data was flawed, or argued that it was less reliable than the anomalous tree ring data.
Jones failed to document his switch to instrumental data, which he should have. He was constructing his graph for the cover of a brochure, however, and not for a scientific paper, so perhaps he thought that he didn’t need to document his sources. At any rate, his failure to document the switch in no way invalidates his graph. The data he used was sound, and no one has been able to show that it wasn’t.
Fell again: “Jones’ decision to use only the instrumental data in constructing the final portion of his graph was what anyone would do to produce the most accurate graph possible, given the available data.”
Ah yes, cherry picking data that fits your theory and throwing away data that doesn’t is what consitiutes “science” in your eyes, no? No one with a shred of scientific ethics supports this corrupt behavior. What Jones had was hard evidence that tree rings CANNOT reproduce temperatures in any century, so he deletes that evidence. He’s a Lysenkoist fraud and your support for him says quite a lot.
So how about answering my earlier question?: “Here’s a question for you? Why do you believe the POLICY of hiding data and methods, of refusing to allow independent replication in direct and deliberate violation of the Scientific Method, constitutes anything resembling ‘science’?”.
Andrew Russell,
You wrote: “In fact, the charge of blackmailing is true (from Montford’s site, updated with live links).” Now, “blackmailing” would be new turn of the screw — but I assume you meant to write “blackballing”.
At any rate, the link to Montford’s site no longer works.
However, next quote in the list you sent me to shows that CRU people were determined to keep a certain paper from being cited in the IPCC report. That, in itself, is not damning; in fact, the IPCC needed to be selective about what papers to cite — papers are not all of equal quality. And the quotation does not indicate that they were opposing the citation of a particular paper for any other than scientific reasons.
Kim,
I love haiku! Thanks.