From Bishop Hill, such a short story that it is difficult to excerpt, and given the importance, and the continuation reference to the story I broke on WUWT, I don’t think he’ll mind if I repost in entirety.
He writes:
Richard Tol reports from the IPCC WGII lead author meeting in San Francisco:
…the IPCC member states have ruled on freedom of information legislation. Specifically, it has been decided that FoI does not apply to IPCC material. This is false. FoI is national legislation. These laws can only be interpreted by the relevant courts. These laws can only be changed by the relevant parliaments. The civil servants that speak on behalf of their countries have no right to usurp FoI legislation, and the IPCC has no say in this matter.
This of course is a continuation of this story.
George Monbiot was winning considerable plaudits on the Dark Matter thread for his strong stand on freedom of information. He is also, of course, a fan of the IPCC. It would be interesting to see what he makes of this.
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Can we get the minutes of the meeting where it was decided the their publicy funded information is secret, so that we can understand their position.
Richard Tol says: December 14, 2011 at 1:14 pm
“Let me be clear: The IPCC cannot do this. “
Dr Tol, please do be clear. Who in the IPCC said what? And what can’t they do?
crosspatch says:
Well, the IPCC, strictly speaking, is not a government so they would be exempt from FOIA requirements. I believe FOIA only covers government, doesn’t it? I mean, I can’t just go to Coca-Cola and ask for the secret formula with an FOIA request. I can’t even ask for their salary database.
IPCC isn’t a government organization. The UN is not a government, it is a diplomatic body. The UN has no force of law except that granted it by the sovereign member states (in other words, treaties ratified). The UN has no more authority than Occupy Wall Street has.
Strictly speaking the US FOIA applies to the executive branch which appoints the ambassadors who made the resolution to form the IPCC, therefore IMO subject to US FOIA. Obviously, it’s not something that is absolutely black and white, therefore at the very least the IPCC shouldn’t be making a “ruling”, but rather a higher authority should decide. I don’t see any reason why an ambassador wouldn’t have to comply with a FOI request unless the national security exemption applied.
The IPCC was never subject to FOIA. FOI Acts only relate to the sovereign nations where they operate. Nothing in the UN is subject to FOIA – which is a whole separate concern, since we are paying for it and are apparently subject to it.
What we need to watch here is the pea and thimble trick. Academics/researchers who are on the public payroll either claim that they were not being paid while they did work for the IPCC, or that they were being paid but can’t tell us what they were doing because of ‘IPCC Protocols’. Either way, they were working for the IPCC, which claims to be unassailable in its science but lacks transparency and accountability. Yet, it claims scientific authority for public policy decisions of massive scope.
Expressions that come to mind are ‘running with the fox and hunting with the hares’, or for cricketers ‘batting and bowling at the same time’.
If your facts are unassailable, why not release all the data that is relevant to them? And why not make your processes transparent, including conflict of interest provisions that the most insignificant local authority instituted years ago?
The IPCC model for dealing with information requests is what this seasoned bureaucrat would have recommended to avoid disclosure. It is all up to every one of the dozens of nations who contributed hundreds of researchers (and many more institutions that they worked for at the time) to figure it out. Of course, each country has different FOI laws, and some have none at all. It is a guaranteed way to get no result for many years, by which time everyone will have forgotten the question.
It’s not about FOIA. It’s about science. If the IPCC want the world’s economies to make major changes, why are they so resistant to being transparent about their processes? And, how can they possibly justify not putting all the data on which their assessments are made on the table?
Watch the pea and the thimble closely, but also recognise that neither are the main game.
JJ says:
December 14, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Wow.
IPCC members declare themselves above the law.
We should anticipate that those who consider themselves above the law, will also consider themselves above morality. We should expect that they will lie, cheat, and steal when it serves their purpose to do so.
Zero credibility should be assigned to anything produced by IPCC members.
You got to it first JJ… I’ll just say ditto.
Not me. These are leftists, technocrats and they are pushing their leftist political vision and reality on the world. I believe that their mindset is that almost any means necessary to achieve their socialist utopia is ok.
The question to me is, are we going to let them roll over us and dump their egalitarian socialist utopian hell on us? I hope not. To me, it’s “let’s roll” time and we should roll these ‘effin leftists right out on their asses.
The only reason to want to be above or outside the law is because you intend to break it.
A lawless supranational force which fails to respect sovereignty of nation states, and Rule of Law, is also know as an Axis of Evil. Axes of Evil must be dismantled or a road to perdition will ensue.
The IPCC is a proven pseudoscience organization.Subject to many political and environmental pressures.
They have been exposed by exposing their numerous rule breaking (their own) .And allows many un-vetted papers and lesser,be published in the report.
Now that they are planning to be as irrational as their reports in transparency.It is time to disband the biased organization.
In the US, it’s called FOIA, and it’s been around in various forms since the 1960s. Democrats used to love it and Republicans didn’t. Now, not so much.
Make that FOIA.
My post from Bishop Hill’s website:
What I fear is that we are going down the Yellow Brick Road once again. I do not blame Richard Betts for any of this and I am sure that he is reporting as well as he can. However, what he is reporting is that we are going down the Yellow Brick Road again. When it comes to the IPCC, matters become ever so complex and authorities in the IPCC cannot simplify this complexity at all and yes the IPCC will be transparent in some distant future that cannot be specified through all this complexity.
Someone should call foul on all this and do so in the clearest and most concise language. If that is not possible then all of us should do whatever possible to make clear to the blogosphere that the IPCC is once again behaving like a family of carpet salesmen. They intend to provide no transparency whatsoever. The IPCC should be disbanded for conduct unbecoming an adult with nothing to hide.
Begs the question,what have they got to hide????
RichieP says:
December 14, 2011 at 1:08 pm
“In German but fully and clearly subtitled. And very scary. Please watch.” [video about the ESM]
Thanks a lot! Our media here in Germany does NOTHING to explain this, no matter whether public, left wing or conservative. Seems like collective loss of freedom is such a natural thing for German journalists that they don’t find it worthy of mention.
The ESM is expected to come into force in July 2012. I hope the EU explodes before it can pull this off.
Who knew. People working for the UN and the Univ.s of VA and PA are exempt from FOI requests. And the Dep’t of Justice wants to pass a rule, that this administration gets to lie about FOI requests. Wonder what they are all hiding?
Hiding from their decline, the Insidious Panel for Climate Clownage.
“You think youre above the law. You aint above mine”.
Now what you COULD do, is that if any project or study used by IPCC got US government funding, you can go to the funding agency and get information WRT that study. So, for example, if a study by Mann was in AR4 that included data collected with the help of a government research grant of grant from a public university, you should be able to go to the funding agency at the federal or state level and get the information you want but that would probably only apply to the portion of the study that is derived from public money. I don’t believe you would be able to use one small part of a larger study being government funded to get access to the entire thing.
Imagine for a moment the discredited Dr. Michael Mann and the discredited Dr. Phil Jones were to publish a paper tomorrow that said the world was going to fly apart at 7:32 pm next Thursday and through their research they had discovered that it was all due to people doing “jumping jacks”. So he immediately takes this to the IPJJ who gathers a bunch of other data that might support the conclusion that “jumping jacks” will make the world fly apart and sends that report to the UNFCJJ. UNFCJJ recommends that a tax be placed on jumping jacks in order that people won’t do so many of them. The proceeds from this tax and additional payments from countries that do the most jumping jacks will then be distributed to poor countries and to those who are researching jumping jack alternatives such as the “sitting jack”.
Now keep in mind, all that would be required is for countries that perform the most jumping jacks to simply ban them or limit them. There really is no need for a bunch of money to be involved. But the money is the entire point, it really isn’t about jumping jacks, heck it could be anything else, maybe claiming that fossil fuel could heat the planet up and melt the ice caps or something. That doesn’t matter. Just like in the Ecuador outtakes from “Crude” the research report is only “smoke and mirrors” in order to get the money allocated. The only thing that matters is that they can collect data that can be shown in a way that would convince people to fork over the money. The money is the real issue. If they can collect 1000 people outside the conference center in Durban, they figure they are golden.
Now lets say some small portion of their research is a time series of micro-vibrations collected by UC Berkeley which is a publicly funded school. You could probably request information about that study that recorded the micro-vibrations but it might be hard to say that since the discredited Dr. Mann and the discredited Dr. Jones used that survey then their entire research is by extension publicly funded. But it might work, who knows. Particularly when it becomes known that they inverted that data from the survey and used it backwards, one might be able to obtain the portions of their research where they used that publicly funded data but I am not convinced you could get the entire thing out of the discredited IPCC.
The point here is that for a mere 100 billion dollars a year, the IPCC is pretty sure the world won’t fly apart as long as that money gets from the international 1% to the international 99% and those who research sitting jacks, of course, because they need to skim off a little bit for their pals and send the rest to third world despotic governments, for the most part.
See? It isn’t really about CO2 or jumping jacks or climate change. It’s about cash.
How about this? What possible benefit for U.S Energy can be obtained from donating $635 K of U.S. Taxpayer money to Phil Jones, the British U. of E. Anglia’s CRU, and his Church of Global warming? Read the response from the U.S. D. O. E. to my FOIA request, and then weep for our nation:
Office of Science
Memorandum
TO: Robert Paglee
Subject: Financial Support/ Grants for Climate Research, Response to SMART Ticket#Hqdoclog2011-1208
1.0 Department of Energy, DOE, does (yes) provide financial assistant to British Universities, i.e Anglia University, UK.
2.0 SUMMARY:
POC; Phil Jones with Program, BER
Address: Norwich NR4 7 TJ, UK
Phone 441603591484
Type: Educational Grant
Amount : (2011) 198,485 (negotiated down from $207,887)
211,344 (cont. 2012 Negotiated from 217,956)
225,301 (cont. 2013 Negotiated from 226,264)
The Biological and Environmental Research Division, BER , regarding Climate Research and Grants Support can all be located under the Department of Energy, Office of Science website. There you can find a plethora of information regarding how to gain financial support and grants for Universities with funding opportunity announcement templates to view also. (http://science.energy.gov/programs/) select BER under programs.
BER has a list of standing Funding Opportunity Announcements listed in their website that you can view, offering what the paperwork you submit will eventually look like. You then will be instructed to go to the grants website to apply for any and all grants for your University on: http://www.sc.doe.gov/grants/
The Office of Science requires the submission of all financial assistance applications through Grants.gov.
Grants.gov allows organizations to electronically find and apply for competitive grant opportunities from all Federal grant-making agencies. Grants.gov is THE single access point for over 1000 grant programs offered by the 26 Federal grant-making agencies. Once you have entered all o fyour information the information will be forwarded to DOE grants office.
BER Offices can be reached directly at the Germantown Location at: SC-23 19901 Germantown Road, Germantown, MD 20874 (301) 903-3251
Curiousgeorge says:
December 14, 2011 at 12:52 pm
This position by the IPCC and the UN generally, has some frightening implications for other UN objectives and plans, such as the entire Agenda 21 program, and various international regulatory and treaty proposals. This is very dangerous, if it stands!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes it most certainly is given the UN’s “Commission on Global Governance” and their stated stance on National sovereignty.
The last thing we need is a bunch of would be world dictators meeting behind closed doors to decide our collective fates, not that they do not do this already.
crosspatch says:
December 14, 2011 at 12:56 pm
“Well, the IPCC, strictly speaking, is not a government so they would be exempt from FOIA requirements. I believe FOIA only covers government, doesn’t it? I mean, I can’t just go to Coca-Cola and ask for the secret formula with an FOIA request. I can’t even ask for their salary database.
IPCC isn’t a government organization. The UN is not a government, it is a diplomatic body. The UN has no force of law except that granted it by the sovereign member states (in other words, treaties ratified). The UN has no more authority than Occupy Wall Street has.”
Yes, but a bazillion of its documents are produced by scientists who work for government funded universities, NASA, you name it and who are doing IPCC work on government time. The IPCC is not paying their salaries. So, how does the IPCC get the authority to protect those documents from FOI?
@ur momisugly RichieP says:
December 14, 2011 at 1:08 pm
‘Jeff in Calgary says:
December 14, 2011 at 12:37 pm
What nation will give them money when there is no accountability. Time to send some letteres to my Federal Representatives.’
If any of you wonder why us Brits are getting deeply pissed off with the Euro-Union’s proposals to make us all one happy family without the need for democracy, you should take a look at this: a financial plan without any accountability, entirely beyond the law or even enquiry from the governments who themselves fund it. It’s things like this they’re expecting us to sign up for, besides all the other things we’ve already handed over to them. And those 17 poor sods already in the euro currency zone are lined up for it. Makes the IPCC look like amateurs. The world is heading this way at a breakneck pace. You are lucky to have the 2nd Amendment.
We are, and we do take it seriously: http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2011/12/13/firearm-sales-way-up-during-holiday-season/
Quote:
This surge in gun sales — the best holiday sales season in three years, according to the Firearms Dealers Association — got a shot in the arm on Black Friday.
“Black Friday sales were off the charts this year,” a TDS employee said.
FBI stats show the number of background checks done on Black Friday three years ago pales in comparison to the number done this year — a 32-percent jump.
“People are just coming in to protect themselves,” the employee said. “I think there’s just a lot of things going on in the world that are getting people thinking.”
More women are buying guns than ever before as criminals get more desperate.
Like break-ins while people are at home sleeping. It’s happened twice in a few weeks in a Rocklin neighborhood.
TDS Guns says at least three women from the area have come in to buy a gun because as one victim told CBS13: “I’m gonna be ready for the next time.”
Just. Like. That.
Made me laugh … like that’s going to ‘fly’ or go over ‘real well’.
It does kinda fit into the category of “Who died and made you _____ ?” like the boy who once turned around and said to his mother, “Just who died and made you king? (”1) or “Who died and made you king of the zombies?” (*2)
(*1 From a “Dear Abby” column by Abigail Van Buren, pg. 9A, col. 3, 17 February 1990, Casa Grande (AZ) Dispatch)
(*2 All Things Zombie – Movie Reviews, Shaun of the Dead, 2004)
More such lines can be found here: http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/who_died_and_made_you_king_god_boss/
.
SteveSadlov, December 14, 2011 at 2:24 pm
… from the piece by Frank Rich in the NYT, 2002 Titled “The Road to Perdition”?
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/20/opinion/the-road-to-perdition.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
“Maybe only unilateral annihilation of the entire axis of evil will do.”
.
Stephen Brown December 14, 2011 at 12:48 pm
‘How can any organisation declare itself to be above the law? No person or organisation can turn round and say, “Sorry, but that might apply to you but it does not apply to me.””
The only situation where an organization might say they are above a law is when the law in question violates a higher law. A State in the U.S can nullify an unconstitutional law which is like saying they are above the law in question, but only if that law violates the higher law of the U.S. Constitution. It’s happened several times in the U.S. but most States are now intimidated to try it. Also, a grand jury can decide a law does not apply in a specific case under their review.
Is the IPCC making some such claim here?