Watch the video below, it is quite something. Amazing that they were stupid enough to tape themselves saying this much less turn it into a documentary!
UPDATE: The legal pleading has been added, link below, quite a read.
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Excerpt From Wizbang: Environmental Scientist Caught Agreeing To Ignore Her Own Data, Make Up New Claims
Dr. Ann Maest is a managing scientist at Straus Consulting, and she’s the go to expert on all things groundwater. In the press release announcing her reappointment to the National Academy of Sciences, they mention that she is focused on the environmental effects of mining and petroleum extraction and production, and, more recently, on the effects of climate change on water quality.
Maest is in high demand as an expert for those looking to stop oil and mineral exploration. She’s also heavily used by the federal government, even though after new details about her past work are coming to light as a result of a lawsuit. From The New York Times:
An environmental consulting firm named as a defendant in a racketeering suit filed by Chevron Corp. over a landmark pollution lawsuit in Ecuador is continuing to work on another blockbuster case: the Deepwater Horizon oil spill investigation.
Boulder, Colo.-based Stratus Consulting, a long-term contractor with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other federal agencies, is gathering and analyzing data concerning the Gulf of Mexico spill.
Chevron is suing those behind the Ecuadorian case including: the lead attorney Steven Donziger; Stratus Consulting; and Maest. As part of their lawsuit, Chevron obtained through discovery, outtakes from a documentary called “Crude” that show Donziger and Maest colluding ignore their own findings and make up some new unsubstantiated claims. Watch this:
from the YouTube description:
The following is an outtake from Joe Berlinger’s movie Crude. At the March 4, 2007, lunch meeting between plaintiffs’ lead U.S. lawyer Steven Donziger and plaintiffs’ U.S. consultants Charles Champ, Ann Maest and Richard Kamp, they reveal the truth about plaintiffs’ lack of evidence and their intent to manipulate the Ecuadorian court. Maest tells Donziger that they need evidence of groundwater contamination, because plaintiffs did not submit any. Maest admits that, “Right now all the reports are saying it’s just at the pits and the stations, and nothing has spread anywhere at all.” Donziger responds, “Hold on a second, you know, this is Ecuador. … You can say whatever you want, and at the end of the day, there’s a thousand people around the courthouse. You’re going to get what you want. Sorry, but it’s true.” Donziger continues, “Because at the end of the day, this is all for the court just a bunch of smoke and mirrors and bulls**t. It really is. We have enough, to get money, to win.” View more outtakes at YouTube.com/TexacoEcuador. For more information about the Ecuador lawsuit, visit Chevron.com/Ecuador
Read the whole thing at Wizbang: Environmental Scientist Caught Agreeing To Ignore Her Own Data, Make Up New Claims
Here’s the legal pleading, quite a read h/t to Steve
http://www.chevron.com/documents/pdf/ecuador/StampedComplaint.pdf
For people doubting the veracity of this case, check the Chevron link to the filings. This case has been going on for a few years and discovering plenty of evidence for fraud, collusion and corruption. Chevron discovered that the supposedly independent report commissioned for the Ecuador judge was written by Donziger’s team, then ‘peer reviewed’ by his team. This didn’t stop Pablo Fajardo winning a Goldman Environmental Prize, or a CNN Hero award, or the Crude movie winning a slew of documentary awards. Even though they seem to have missed the real story discovered in the outtakes, which are probably enough for a sequel. Crude 2- The Shakedown. Might even be some books, like Merchants of Extortion.
Hopefully Maest is an isolated case though and there’s no cause for concern regarding other activities by Stratus employees, such as their VP Joel Smith’s work as an LA on IPCC WG2.
“Ann S. Maest, PhD, of Buka Environmental, is an aqueous geochemist specializing in the fate and transport of contaminants…”
http://www.pebblescience.org/pdfs/ComparisonsReportFinal.pdf
We look around us in the world.
We see politicians, bureaucrats, stockholders, shareholders, public servants, etc. grafting (and being caught), cheating (and being caught), lying (and being caught), stealing (and being caught), corrupting (and being caught), etc. and mostly getting away with weak punishment (even if they get caught) such as suspension on full pay, reprimands, fines, etc.
Pretty soon some folks start to think, “Hey, if them why, not me?” and so the corruption of morals spreads downward from those who should be setting the best example.
Would I trust someone who wears sunglasses all the time? (based on her wearing them during what appears to be a nice little expenses paid soiree with colleagues). Nice (Piece of) work, if you can get it. Or “to get money” for it.
Looks more like the garden variety NGO training video on tactical deployment of monetary extraction and getting paid doing it by conspiracy to cheat and scheme.
Its science Jim, but not as we know it.
This is a smoking gun, they should aall get the bullet,today.
I have worked with lawyers before and they have always played it straight down the line. They of all people know the penalties for stepping outside the law.
This isn’t biassing a narrative to suit your case. This is coaching a witness in an outright lie.
Still, here’s one truth they can’t cover up – its snowing in South West England today. Didn’t Team AGW tell us we’d never see snow in England again?
Ahh, none of you rational folk understand do you.
The environmentalist here is right, just and principled, because he CARES, and unless you CARE you will always be wrong. The CAUSE justifies everything, because they CARE.
It reminded me of the Wannsee conference in 1942, where everyone ‘CARED’, but everyone was totally disconnected from reality.
.
The comment above comparing this lawyer to Realtors was on the mark. For 12 years or so I was a real estate salesperson and associate broker, as well as an instructor of real estate principles and broker courses. Of course there are dishonest (and honest) real estate people, and of course temptation to shade things is everywhere. However, unlike the subject of the current discussion, in a real estate transaction there is a real property, which (in the US at least) the buyer has the right to examine in detail or have professionally inspected, and which he will occupy or rent out once closing has occurred. After the sale, any flaws found by the buyer and deliberately withheld by the seller will likely be noticed and can be the subject of legal action, from rescission of the sale (and restitution of the price and costs) to suits to prison time. The case under discussion here has its realities, too; but they are so far away, so nebulous, so subject to dispute and to shading or concealment of evidence, that a mere real estate case is straightforward and easy by comparison.
Alex Heyworth says:
December 13, 2011 at 11:34 pm
“The surprising things about academics is not that they have their price, but how low that price is.”
George Bernard Shaw once asked a lady if she would go to bed with him for a million dollars. After humming and hawing for a while, she agreed. Then he asked if she would go to bed with him for two dollars. She was extremely upset and asked him who he thought she was. He answered: “We have already established that. Now it is a matter of determining the price!”
To an honest person this behaviour by a scientist is beyond the pail. One can only hope that chevron has the balls to nail these obsequious fools or useful idiots in a court of law to regain the lost monies and future incomes denied.
Some time in a cell with Bubba would give then an entirely new aspect of the real world.
Since nobody else said it: groundwatergate?
Pretty sure we can say these criminals *are* organized.
Stuck on Stupid, but organized.
YouTube is vexatious.
There, that should fix it.
[nope . . not really . . kb]
Bill says on December 13, 2011 at 3:11 pm:
Which I thought a wonderful metaphor; to which I feel compelled to add (with your permission Bill): “…the high moral ground having been eroded by the rising sea of cynicism and swept away on a tide of corruption”
wayne says:
December 13, 2011 at 3:29 pm
Yep! Boulder Colorado. Now why does that small town keep coming up over and over and over again
NCAR
http://ncar.ucar.edu/
Nobody has mentioned the potential damage this does not just to the so-called science in “climate science,” but to the National Acadamy of Sciences itself. Here many of us have been speaking of a rigged game, noting how easy it is for once reputable organizations to become co-opted by activism, and now there’s cold hard proof that such a thing can, and does, occur, even on the loftiest of perches. How many other notable cases of extortion in the name of the environment (or heaven forbid, “the children”) have been likewise corrupted by such malfeasance?
One has to wonder to whom we have handed the reigns of “scientific authority.”
Mark
Look who is in the movie “growthbusters” Dr. Ann Maest top right. This marxist/eco-nazi propaganda movie. http://www.growthbusters.org/
rk says:
December 13, 2011 at 3:44 pm
http://www.chevron.com/documents/Pdf/Ecuador/AmendedComplaint.pdf
here is the entire complaint against these people. Maest is listed as a defendant along with Strauss Consulting. I skipped around in the doc, and it looked like some people (other experts) ran away from this whole thing…telling Donzinger that they didn’t want anything to do with his suit. I think those would be the good guys. Looks like Maest et al. stayed with him to the bitter end.
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I’ve read through the first 60 pages (out of 231!), which is about all I have stomach for. I think there is considerable merit to Dick’s (the butcher) suggestion in Shakepeare’s Henry VI, Part 2:
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”
As much bad press as the radical environmentalists get here on WUWT, the lawyers are far, far worse. The practices outlined in the complaint were no doubt not original with the Chevron (TexPet) case in Ecuador, but have been practiced for years. Trial lawyers are the major sponsors of junk science.
This page in wikipedia is worth a read
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Affair
Could this same group be connected to the attempts to halt fraking due to fears over groundwater contamination?
Mydogsgotnonose says:
December 13, 2011 at 11:39 pm
“What has happened in the US is that the scientists have in effect gobn freelance and were dumb enough and arrogant enough to video themselves doing it.”
This is commonplace in academia. It happens even in teaching hospitals. Why? Two parts. One is that academics are by nature and culture arrogant. Laws are for the great unwashed who do not understand the higher wisdom. Two is ignorance. Having no experience of the world of business, they have no clue when they do something illegal such as advise patients to commit fraud against their insurance companies. Donziger strikes me as someone who has not worked “in harness” for a legal team whose bread and butter is serving traditional businesses.
Could someone else have the sixth claim used against them?
Unjust Enrichment.
I can think of a few climate scientist that have got unjustly rich (Million dollar grants for a start) off there claims.
Video’s also at http://chevrontoxico.com/ got this link from the court document.
Looks like the extrapolation in the clip is exactly analogous to that used in Steig 09 to smear the warming trend for the West Antarctic peninsula across the whole continent. Any chance of a RICO against Dr “matlab” Steig?
I don’t understand. Did that guy not know a video camera was taping the conversation? This looks like a Project Veritas clip only I don’t see James O’Keefe’s name anywhere.