Guest post by Christopher Horner, CEI.
Today, NOAA finally delivered thousands of pages (hard copy, oddly, despite our request for electronic copies) of additional records that had been withheld during the deliberations over what to produce for a thorough FOIA seeking records relating to the HS, Mann’s appointment, Menne/surface stations, M&M, Climategate and the like.
This is a request from two years ago that has produced thousands of pages of papers and emails (all of the good stuff among which, in an odd coincidence, having already been produced under Climategate) and was the last in a series of four requests in response to which NOAA claimed ‘no responsive records’, when actually referring to records which they possessed but which Susan Solomon had said were really IPCC records and therefore not agency records. The subsequent IG investigation uncovering this response given to others, which we challenged when given to us, affirmed that this claim was not appropriate.
After congressional interest was expressed, NOAA offered differing defenses to us and Congress, what with Congress being subject to certain arguments against release which are not applicable to FOIA (eg seeking to protect the integrity of the scientific review process…), and we being subject to certain FOIA arguments to which Congress is not vulnerable (pre-decisional and the like).
The cover letter and inventory of withheld records, which counsel has been working on for a year, is attached. I have yet to review it in detail; I also will go over the records this week. A very superficial pawing through of the records indicates they’re mostly “IPCC” docs (there are also some emails…remember, these are the docs over which NOAA’s counsel and review panel have been fighting for more than a year, over whether to redact or withhold), and makes one wonder what they were so insistent about. But, as they fought like the devil to keep these secret, there — as the old joke has it — must be a pony in there somewhere.
Here is the cover letter:
CEI_NOAA_Solomon_Memo_and_Withholdings-1 (PDF)
LazyTeenager says:
“I find it amusing that you guys are convinced that there is this huge conspiracy between climate scientists. The obvious consequence of such a conspiracy of course would be a huge amount of email traffic to coordinate the supposed fakery. But there is no sign of that traffic in the nicked emails exposed by your favorite thing, namely climate gate.”
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“I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process,”writes Phil Jones, a scientist working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a newly released email. ~ Climategate 2.0
If that’s not a conspiracy, I’m not sure what is.
Or to not supply the emails when asked. Hadley Center at UEA are still doing this. Why would they do that unless they have a lot to hide?
@ur momisugly LazyTeenager
I find it amusing that you think we (whoever ‘we’ are) “are convinced that there is this huge conspiracy between climate scientists.” Its strange how people see what they want to. I think “we” are looking for self-serving bias, pal review, and bad science. We are looking for the ones who have prevented a fair representation of facts. Conspiracy? You could call protecting yourself from others discovering that self-serving bias a “conspiracy” but I prefer to call it a self protective strategy. You see, when a task (the science predictions) are regarded as important and the researcher expects success (which has decidedly not happened for the warmists) but fails, it leads to the magnification of self-serving bias and a percieved threat–so these scientists are simply protecting themselves from this threat and they make it harder for people they discover the truth they themselves won’t face. This too, is science, albeit one of the “soft” sciences.
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~crsi/Selfthreat.pdf
LazyTeenager says:
August 22, 2012 at 5:28 am
I find it equally amusing that you can come up with such a crass comment. You are right in that a coordinated conspiracy of such magnitude would be difficult to conceal. However, what is quite clear, from the evidence already in the public domain – is that there has been a degree of collusion, fraud, deception, etc, etc by a distinct group of climate scientists. Whether this collusion, fraud etc permeates through further ranks is difficult to determine – but certainly the self reviewing, pal review nature of some of their work may suggest a wider dissemination of the ‘conspiracy’? Of course, this implies that a conspiracy is present, which I don’t believe it is, but there is definitely a closed shop xenophobic mentality and a self promoting attitude of the AGW promoters, this of course includes the various government depts, as well as the NGO’s. MSM and the scientists.
The underlying fraud/scam is there for sure – whether it be a massive conspiracy or not – the fraudulent claims, the fraudulent science, etc – is clearly self evident………
LazyTeenager says:
August 22, 2012 at 5:28 am
Lazy, you could have been less snarky, but I understand your point. For myself, I do believe that at some level there is a conspiracy of sorts. History is littered with power grabs effectuated through deception. Good deception involves playing to beliefs people already hold and convincing them they can help save the world.
A recent example is the successful campaign to convince Americans and Brits that Saddam had stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq and was actively working on acquiring even deadlier weapons. Never mind that U.S. and international weapons inspectors certified that wasn’t true; never mind that 10 minutes of Googling would show how ridiculous those claims were. People WANTED to believe it because it confirmed things that were important for their worldview. I know several smart people who still claim, after all this time, that we just haven’t found those WMDs – they’re hidden somewhere or something. That doesn’t mean they are, or ever were, part of the original conspiracy to establish that claim.
Climate scientists are people too. When it comes to doing science that will either confirm or falsify deeply held beliefs, they will see what they want to see and ignore the evidence that doesn’t fit the narrative. Most folks at WUWT are pretty intelligent and much more nuanced than you give them credit for. Most, in my experience, aren’t dogmatic in what they believe; they just want to see the (taxpayer-funded) evidence so they can make up their own minds.
If you assume that an effort to hide something means there was nothing to hide, you might be a Lazy Teenager with a green-neck.
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
It doesn’t take a manufactured conspiracy to achieve a goal. All it takes is the right people in the right places. For example, those hiring applicants for NOAA simply have to screen people to make sure the ones hired match the desired profile. After 20 years you pretty much have a group that thinks alike and works to produce a desired result.
Now, who might have been the vice president close to 20 years ago that could have influenced the selection of the leaders at NOAA. Don’t hurt yourself thinking.
2 Years…
That means someone(s) went through those documents with a fine two comb and made sure all embarrassing items were left out. (Especially the Darft Horse we were looking for)
Also it is the end of August and the elections are to be held on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. That leaves very little time to influence that all important presidental election and especially the Republican nominations. This means were are stuck with OBAMA-LITE:
“Republicans should never abandon pro-growth conservative principles in an effort to embrace the ideas of Al Gore. Instead of sweeping mandates, we must use America’s power of innovation to develop alternative sources of energy and new technologies that use energy more efficiently.”
“With regards to our developing more energy, I want to see us use more of our renewable resources: bio-diesel, bio-fuel, ethanol, cellulosic ethanol. I want to see us developing liquefied coal if we can sequester the CO2 properly.”
“On the other side of the equation, in addition to developing our energy, we have to be more efficient in our use of it. And that means more fuel efficient vehicles. It means more energy efficient homes. The combination of more efficiency and the generation of more domestic-sourced energy will allow us to become energy independent. And we do need an Apollo type project. A Manhattan style project where we put in place the funding necessary to seriously get on track to becoming truly energy independent. And that has as the benefit, of reducing our emissions of CO2.”
“…Moreover, even as scientists still debate how much human activity impacts the environment, we can all agree that alternative energy sources will be good for the planet. For any and all of these reasons, the time for energy independence has come.”
Interview when governor, June 2006:
Judy Woodruff: “Talking about Global Warming, is this an issue that everybody should be concerned about, that the government should be doing much more about?”
Mitt Romney: “The issue of the over use of energy in our country is a major issue. The over use of oil in particular is a major issue. It has political implications around the world for us. And it may well be that the emission of carbon dioxide is contributing to global warming. I don’t know how much is related to CO2 emissions, how much is cyclical. But it certainly wouldn’t hurt to reduce our use of CO2, and it certainly would be great to dramatically reduce our use of oil.”
http://aboutmittromney.com/environment.htm
Seems Mitt is right on board Maurice Strong’s Train ride to hell.
:“It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class, involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work place air conditioning, and suburban housing are not sustainable.” Maurice Strong’s speech at the opening session of the Rio Conference (Earth Summit II) in 1992,
davidmhoffer’s statement of the laws of evidence above (at Aug 21 8:37 pm) is incorrect, at least for US jurisdictions.
The laws of evidence require that a documents submitted for that purpose be a true and complete copy in all ways that are material to the question at hand. A hardcopy contract signed in blue ink does not have to be photocopied in color for the copy to be admitted in court. (It may be better in color but it is not required.) If the original of an electronic copy held metadata but the metadata was not relevant, then there is no spoliation if that part of the metadata is not produced.
Of course, relevance is a subjective matter and often gets argued in the court. What we can say here is that the blanket statement “all metadata must always be produced” is untrue.
Even if metadata is relevant, there are some circumstances when you can be excused from that obligation. For example, if you have an MS Word document containing birthdate and Social Security number, you may be required to redact that information for privacy reasons. Redaction in native format is functionally impossible. There is no way to remove the SSN without also making changes to the document which alter it from the original, often seriously. Legal review tools universally convert the document to an image format (such as PDF) and then “burn in” the redaction overtop the image. That way, you see the full context plus the black box where the person’s SSN used to be. What you don’t see anymore is the embedded MS Word metadata. You do have to keep the original (with all its metadata) and you may have to defend your redaction and conversion decisions to a judge but you do not have to turn over the original until and unless the judge finds your process deficient.
Of course, even beyond that, you are assuming that the hardcopy documents were maintained in electronic form. That may or may not be true. The legal requirement is that you turn over documents in the form as they are maintained in the normal course of business (or an equivalently usable form). If your practice is to print off emails and file them in your desk drawer (yes, there are still very many people who do that), then your only obligation is to produce hardcopies of those documents. You are not obligated to turn the paper copies into new electronic copies.
What you are not allowed to do is dumb-down the copies from the way they are normally maintained. That is, if you have OCR’ed PDFs, you may not deliberately remove the machine-readable layer unless there is a specifically allowed legal reason (redaction being one of them).
By the way, the scenarios I have laid out are based on the US Rules of Civil Procedure. (I am not a lawyer but I read about it a lot.) There is some cross-over to the FOIA rules but my understanding is that the requirements for metadata are even looser than the civil procedure rules. That is to say, there are even more reasons why format conversion can be legitimate.
so while the production in hardcopy is suspicious, it alone is not evidence of wrongdoing.
Keep ignoring the corrupt bankers, the insane military and the inane politicians and keep digging for the golden piece of “evidence” that there is a world wide conspiracy of climate scientists…and don’t forget your tinfoil hat!
Seriously guys…can’t you hear the sound of the fossil fuel propaganda machine?
Andrew says:
August 23, 2012 at 5:28 pm
Keep ignoring the corrupt bankers, the insane military and the inane politicians and keep digging for the golden piece of “evidence” that there is a world wide conspiracy of climate scientists…and don’t forget your tinfoil hat!
Seriously guys…can’t you hear the sound of the fossil fuel propaganda machine?
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I think your +3 tinfoil helmet is a bit out of tune.
(PS Do they still make actual “tin” foil?)
Andrew says:
August 23, 2012 at 5:28 pm
Andrew, I don’t think anybody is ignoring the many various frauds being perpetrated. This site just happens to be about the climate fraud and the money trail that leads to, e.g., Al Gore. Other sites focus on the other things you mention.