UPDATE: (9:20 PST 10-17) the FOI request has been released, a copy of which is now linked below. This story will remain at the top of WUWT for a day or two. New stories will appear below this one.
CEI has learned of a UN plan recently put in place to hide official correspondence on non-governmental accounts, which correspondence a federal inspector general has already confirmed are subject to FOIA. This ‘cloud’ serves as a dead-drop of sorts for discussions by U.S. government employees over the next report being produced by the scandal-plagued IPCC, which is funded with millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.
By Christopher Horner, CEI.org for WUWT
Although this is seedy and unlawful at any time, it also goes in the ‘bad timing’ file. Or it’s good timing, depending on one’s perspective.
Just as a brand new book further exposes the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)(which scam I dissected here, and in more disturbing detail here), and on the heels of the weekend surprise of a 2005 memo showing President Obama’s cooling/warming/population zealot of a ‘science czar’ John Holdren is the kind of guy Mitt Romney turns to to develop his ‘environmental’ policies, we’ve exposed the Obama administration and IPCC have cooperated to subvert U.S. transparency laws, run domestically out of Holdren’s White House office.
With this morning’s Freedom of Information Act request, the explaining they have to do must begin by providing the taxpayer certain records regarding — including but not limited to user name and password — for a backchannel ‘cloud’ established to hide IPCC deliberations from FOIA.
The IPCC, you will recall, is Al Gore’s co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. And the host over the years of numerous scandals involving fudged and twisted data, cut-and-pastes from student theses, popular magazine articles and green-group press releases and of course the infamous “hide the decline” in temperatures. This is not just one more scandal, however.
Until the FOI request is posted at CEI.org (later today), here is a snapshot:
CEI has learned of a UN plan recently put in place to hide official correspondence on non-governmental accounts, which correspondence a federal inspector general has already confirmed are subject to FOIA. This ‘cloud’ serves as a dead-drop of sorts for discussions by U.S. government employees over the next report being produced by the scandal-plagued IPCC, which is funded with millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.
As our FOIA request details, the UN informed participants that it was motivated by embarrassing releases of earlier discussions (“ClimateGate” key among them), and to circumvent the problem that national government transparency laws were posing the group.
CEI reminds OSTP that this practice was described as “creat[ing] non-governmental accounts for official business”, “using the nongovernmental accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of the communications”, in a recent analogous situation involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff. CEI expects similar congressional and media outrage at this similar practice to evade the applicable record-keeping laws.
This effort has apparently been conducted with participation — thereby direct assistance and enabling — by the Obama White House which, shortly after taking office, seized for Holdren’s office the lead role on IPCC work from the Department of Commerce. The plan to secretly create a FOIA-free zone was then implemented.
This represents politically assisting the IPCC to enable UN, EU and U.S. bureaucrats and political appointees avoid official email channels for specific official work of high public interest, performed on official time and using government computers, away from the prying eyes of increasingly skeptical taxpayers.
CEI also reminds OSTP of a similar, ongoing effort by the administration to claim that records on U.S. government computers belong to the UN IPCC, refusing to produce them under FOIA. This practice was affirmed in a report by the Department of Commerce’s Office of Inspector General earlier this year.
As talks resume next month to forge a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol, CEI looks forward to OSTP ceasing this unlawful activity, and providing prompt access to the requested records so the taxpayer can know what they, and the IPCC, are up to.
So this morning we requested all relevant records under FOIA, including all records sitting on that server, as they all were provided to U.S. government employees for official purposes. This was filed with OSTP run by controversial ‘science czar” and, we now know, former Mitt Romney ‘climate’ advisor John Holdren. The taxpayer deserves to know about this coordinated effort between OSTP and the IPCC to subvert U.S. law.
Possibly one Republican candidate will call in the next debate for ending US funding of the IPCC, now shown to be actively working (with the Obama White House) to subvert US law. Enough is enough is enough. Possibly Gov. Romney could defend Holdren and the IPCC.
In the meantime, we look for Rep. Henry Waxman’s outrage over Abramoff to prove it was also not political, and come down hard on the practice he so aggressively condemned and pursued, demanding preservation of records, threatening subpoenas, the whole works. With our request, that’s essentially what we’ve done, and we’d appreciate the company. You too, NPR.
Of course, it may not be of interest to the media because it only uncovers unlawful dealings to hide an effort impacting our entire economy, the premise for that “fundamental transformation” of America, with the sleazy lobbying operation being the UN. We’ll wait on OSTP’s response and hope for the best from the Hill and Republican candidates.
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UPDATE: The FOI request document: OSTP_IPCC_Elec_Comm_FOIA1 (PDF 112k)
So, should someone start a rumor that there used to be a cloud server at RealClimate?
I have to agree. If we want to attract a larger audience for our ideas, we need to boil things down better. This post has a lot of weaving together of issues which is intended to add context for highly initiated readers but must be nearly incomprehensible to someone who has not been following events for several years. The press release at the Competitive Enterprise Institute does a better job.
It’s taking some time, probably because of all of the graft that’s to be lost, but the wheels are definitely coming off of the “global Warming/Climate Change/whatever bus.
Leanne Musson Watts says:
October 17, 2011 at 7:40 pm
I don’t meant to sound stupid here, but can someone explain this to me in simple English?
A few of the letters that took me a while to understand.
IPCC = Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change * On this blog considered to be the bad guys who promote alarmist views / end of the world because of CO2
MSM = Main Stream Media * 90% of the time is on the side of IPCC
The Hockey Stick = A graph generated by a scientist named Mann which somehow was able to loose the medieval warm period ( MWP) and the Little ICE Age. Sometimes known as hide the decline.
Along with the above there are about 100 more common ones. After reading this for close to a couple months those are just starting to make sense on the surface.
Stay awhile and read, make your own conclusions. No one here will ask you to follow a belief blindly. Quite a few of the regulars here are scarey smart, I am not one of them!
All disciplines have evolved technical jargon (language), which can be quite daunting to the uninitiated. Don’t be intimidated. There is a glossary, at the top of the page, if the term or it’s abbreviation is not there: try:
http://www.answers.com
You will find yourself looking up fewer and fewer terms over time. Soon you will be techno-babbling, with the rest of us. As far as this thread goes, I will leave it to someone with a gentler tongue, to summarize fairly and simply. You must first familiarize yourself with the recent climategate and the whole Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) saga. Welcome and good-luck! GK
http://amaindy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2690:texas-tribune-ut-professor-debunks-climate-change-qmythsq&catid=49:national&Itemid=85
I was interested in debate on his work; does anyone have a KISS source?
While I was checking the above reference link at answers.com, I discovered that being discomforted by long words, technically is described as:
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia
That is what technical jargon can create. Something that is of no use to the people who suffer from it! GK
I’m just a high school science teacher, but even I know that any correspondance that I am involved in that deals with a student is subpoenable by that student’s parents. This is true if I am using my classroom computer or my personal iPhone in my own bedroom from my own gmail account. I’m a public employee, everything I do can be scrutinized by the people who hire me, which are the citizens of California. If I tried to hide something I could be in a world o’ hurt. Why should the IPCC be any different?
Nick,
Again, you are correct that some of what people are saying isn’t in the FOI legislation.
That’s because it’s in other legislation concerning the fact that work product created on public time with public resources belongs to the public.
Think of it this way: let’s assume that this is true, that the IPCC specifically said this was their intent:
“As our FOIA request details, the UN informed participants that it was motivated by…and to circumvent the problem that national government transparency laws were posing the group”.
Now, if the scientists were doing IPCC work at home, the whole “IPCC” special mailing network wouldn’t be necessary. IPCC work done privately by gov’t scientists on their own time and using their own equipment doesn’t fall under FOI.
It’s not FOI that’s being violated by individuals using the IPCC resource; it is laws that state that work product done on gov’t time and with gov’t resources is public. If the IPCC is colluding with individual gov’t scientists to steal public resources and money and hide that from the FOI laws that are supposed to provide us with audit ability to discover exactly this sort of thing, it’s a crime.
Or to put it as simply as possible…if the IPCC said “Hey, gov’t employees that are volunteering your time to us…do the work on your own time, from your own premises, using your own resources” they wouldn’t have to create a maildrop.The only reason to create a maildrop is if they expect gov’t employees to spend gov’t time and use gov’t resources.
This story got tagged on instapundit.
First “InstaLaunch” for this web site?
REPLY: third, actually – Anthony
Nixon – “I am not a crook”
Obama(soon) – “I am not a liar”
Nick Stokes;
You’re right of course. FOI has nothing to do with what they OUGHT to keep. Which has what to do with anything? Next time you get pulled over for speeding, show the officer your driver’s license and explain that it says no where on it what speed you should go. Let’s see how that works for ya!
But putting FOI aside for a moment, can you provide one single solitary reason why this work should be done in secret?
Well at least now we know why Trenberth keeps screaming that the missing heat is in the depths of the ocean. He didn’t want anyone to look into the clouds…
Well they looked… and talk about generating some HEAT!
Government officials use their private email all the time for beyond-FOI discussions. This is common practice. Has nothing to do with the UN or with climate change.
Nick Stokes –
I’ll take you to task on the corruption of this administration vs. Bush 41, Bush 43, and Clinton combined. You’ve got to be in denial on the fact that just about every agency in the Obama socialist camp is committing crimes and illegal actions against the constitution. As we speak there are ongoing investigations into the DOJ, EPA, DOE and several other lesser groups.
And in every case they have blocked investigation access to information requested. Sound familiar ?
Cloud2WaterGate
Thanks everyone for a good discussion.
Leanne Musson Watts, some people have written primers and basic info on the whole question of AGW / CAGW (“Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming”) beliefs and doubts, evidence and counter-evidence. I wish Anthony would provide a list of them on his sidebar! None is/are infallible but what folk here find is recurrent patterns highly suggestive of… science, theories, human behaviour, even truth. If you click my name you’ll find one of those primers, I tried to write for both scientists and non-scientists but it’s long-ish. Good luck.
RDCII says: October 17, 2011 at 5:39 pm
“However, I would think that if this plan were publicly accessible/available, that Horner would simply provide a link to that info…which would be much more damaging than waiting for an FOI response.
Why do you think it’s public knowledge? Can you provide a link? That would be a very helpful positive contribution of yours towards this group.”
Oddly, Horner did provide a link – it’s to the IPCC website. And quoted it:
“In order to enhance communication among the chapter authors between the meetings, chapter-specific internet fora will be available which are only accessible to the members of the chapter teams and confidentiality is protected by user-specific [sic] passwords. Additional information on the chapter forum, as well as other electronic resources provided by the TSU in support of the writing process, will be presented during the
First Lead Author Meeting.”
And he said it was a secret plan. Bizarre!
Don’t expect this story to appear in Richard Blacks column any day soon.
“Yet the Mail’s recent coverage of climate change and energy issues offers a clear demonstration of how an unaccountable newspaper editor can simply ignore the PCC’s rules when he chooses to promote its own ideological views over the best interest of his readers.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/17/paul-dacre-daily-mail-climate-change
“Paul Dacre’s climate coverage undermines his case for self-regulation of the press
The Daily Mail’s editor ignores the rules when he chooses to promote his own ideological views over the best interest of his readers”
It would appear that the Guardian believes that laws should be made to prevent the media from displaying views skeptical of AGW.
‘ I don’t think they were equivalent. One was the WH using external accounts for WH business. The other is the IPCC using IPCC accounts for IPCC business.’
The first three words of your sentance are correct. As for the rest of it – Considering the IPCC is intergovernmental it becomes government business so the two are linked. Therefore documentation should be available to anyone requesting it.
@Leanne Musson Watts says:
October 17, 2011 at 7:40 pm
Welcome to where everyone knows there right, backed up by links to the internet.
You will find that the comments here are far higher in interllectual comment from your usual name calling (Well most anyway).
JohnWho says:
October 17, 2011 at 5:28 am
Somebody tell me one more time that there isn’t a conspiracy.
==========
what? you want US to lie to you as well?
masochist:-)
yeah the overpop food shorts and climate scams all come from a real small source group, and they started the UN and all the rest. supposed advice from external sources is neither honest or meant with good intent. it suits an agenda.
LazyTeenager says: October 17, 2011 at 5:23 am
Sounds like Chris Horner is trying to channel Glen Beck.
Please bring back the other America Tradition Institute guy. I may not agree with him but at least he sounds sane. Chris is spinning so fast you could use him to power an ultracentrifuge to separate uranium isotopes.
REPLY: Ditto what I said to Nick Stokes – Anthony
Yup Lazy Teen, reads like Horner covered most known variations and reported ranges and threw the net for any uncertainties he presumes from experience observing previous patterns. Might be some new isotopes get thrown out from this spin. And that is good. Good science.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/ostp_ipcc_elec_comm_foia1.pdf
G. Karst says:
October 17, 2011 at 10:42 pm
While I was checking the above reference link at answers.com, I discovered that being discomforted by long words, technically is described as:
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia
you missed a “p” out mate
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia 😉
Regarding Nick Stokes says:
October 18, 2011 at 1:49 am
“Oddly, Horner did provide a link – it’s to the IPCC website. And quoted it:”
“In order to enhance communication among the chapter authors between the meetings, . Additional information on the chapter forum, as well as other electronic resources provided by the TSU in support of the writing process, will be presented during the
First Lead Author Meeting.”
“And he said it was a secret plan. Bizarre!”
Yes Nick, perhaps the plan to define for Govt employees a cover (cloud) wherby their communication with the IPCC may be kept safe from FOI laws was not secret, so what? Are you not misssing the point? Let me pull the operative words for you…”chapter-specific internet fora will be available which are only accessible to the members of the chapter teams and confidentiality is protected by user-specific [sic] passwords” The intent is clearly to keep communication, which is vital to public policy, exempt from FOI laws, so as to avoid embarresment and criticsm of the policy recommending processs engaged in between the IPCC and govt figures. And you upport this why?