We’ll see how badly they want to protect these emails, and if they rise to Mannian UVa protection level seven.
Over the last couple of days, CEI’s Chris Horner has been emailing me news of a FOIA request he made earlier in the year. The FOI request is for correspondence between NOAA’s Dr. Thomas Peterson and Thomas Stocker, the head of the IPCC Working Group 1. It is hoped that this correspondence might get him some information on the IPCC secret letter sent by Stocker to all of the IPCC lead authors right after Climategate:
We have the announcement above, but not the attachment. The attachment is apparently secret since nobody wants to talk about it or even acknowledge its existence.
Steve McIntyre wrote an eviscerating essay about the secret letter circulated by the IPCC to UEA/CRU, which they are refusing to divulge, because:
there would be an adverse effect on international relations between IPCC WG1 and academic institutions within the United Kingdom because it would force is to reconsider our working arrangements with those experts who have been selected for an active role in WG1 AR5 from your institution and others in the UK”.
McIntyre writes:
On Feb 26, 2010, as part of their first response to Climategate, Thomas Stocker, a Climategate correspondent of Phil Jones and by then Co-Chair of AR5 WG1, sent a still secret letter to all WG4 Lead Authors, Coordinating Lead Authors and Review Editors under the letterhead of WG1, purporting, it seems, to represent the parent IPCC organization. The existence of this secret email came to light as a result of David Holland’s persistence in trying to cut through IPCC authoritarianism and secrecy. After learning of its existence, David submitted an FOI request, which has been refused, and which is now under appeal at the Tribunal.
What’s happened is that NOAA has not responded with a refusal, documents, or even replied to acknowledge Horner’s request. That’s a legal no-no.
Horner, an attorney skilled in such matters, said this is something called “constructive refusal”, and it throws opens the door for an immediate lawsuit, and he’s taking advantage of it.
Horner says in his email:
We will soon learn out how badly the global warming establishment wants to fight to keep this, and similar public records, from the public. Will NOAA disregard the caviling from usual suspects and promptly move to produce the record, which should take mere minutes? Or will it heed the calls and hunker down, risking a certain judicial order affirming what an inspector general has already concluded.
IPCC-related records in the possession of government employees (or accessible by them, now that we know about third-party servers established to dodge FOI laws), are indeed agency records subject to release to the taxpayers who underwrite the IPCC enterprise.
It’s game on now:
The full legal document (PDF) is here:
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I wouldn’t be surprised if in the near future there was simply an all out effort on the part of ‘climate science’ to scrap FOIA altogether.
They won’t release the letter. No way. Cuz it has info on Romney’s tax returns for ten years, and has Obama’s birth certificate info. /humor off.
One wonders why agencies of the federal government believe they are exempt from federal laws written to include them specifically.
“Enquiring minds want to know.”
Very interesting to see what happens next.
Oh my, pull up chair and break out the popcorn! Entertainment fest is on, first Mark Styn v Mann, now this! Fantastic!
There is no indication of a follow up communication after the initial. They can creditably say we were on holiday and we over looked it, or the in box was full and we lost the email, or we just have no record of the email – style the dog eat my homework.
The normal, calm persons action would be to resend the request by snail mail with proof of delivery or give them a call, or otherwise GENTLY remind them.
Imagine if you were threaten with legal action you failed to read a email. This is way way to aggressive and looks like haressment, even if it legally valid.
This is going to be fun. Get the popcorn out. Failure to respond to reasonable requests do not make happy judges. Rule number one of litigation is don’t make the judge mad….
I’ll bet that that letter is in the FOIA.zip along with some other goodies.
NOAA shouldn’t be made to produce the email. That would have a chilling effect on government sponsored … uh, well, it would be chilling, OK?? Yeah, so there.
nuclearcannoli says:
September 6, 2012 at 8:51 am
I wouldn’t be surprised if in the near future there was simply an all out effort on the part of ‘climate science’ to scrap FOIA altogether.
====================
This is how it starts, in Obama’s home state of Illinois.
http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20110830/news/708309733/
“FOIA changes create ‘nuisance’ class, critics say”
“Changes to the state’s Freedom of Information Act allow government agencies to delay response times to individuals who are deemed to have made too many requests.
The “recurrent requester” provision of the law signed by Gov. Pat Quinn Friday allows government agencies to delay responses up to 21 days for individuals who make more than seven requests in a week, 15 requests in a month or 50 requests in a year. The state’s FOIA law requires government agencies to fulfill information requests within five days, though taxing bodies can demand a five-day extension if they deem the request to be too time-consuming.”
Slippery slope, and all that.
sean;fr says:
Imagine if you were threaten with legal action you failed to read a email. This is way way to aggressive and looks like haressment, even if it legally valid.
haressment? If they read the mail or not is completely irrelevant. They are subject to a FOIA request and should be handed over without any futher legal action. Read or unread is a red herring.
And btw. This is no game. Policies are being planned and implemented based on the science being correct, and these employees of the people refuse to let independent parties review their public work and communications. Come back and talk to me about harrasment when old people die because they can’t afford the spiking energy prices caused by policies based on science we’re not allowed to review.
Look at the big picture please..
“One wonders why agencies of the federal government believe they are exempt from federal laws written to include them specifically.” – Ed Reid
The laws are never meant, in their minds, to apply to them. Only to us simpletons who need to be governed by their wiser-than-thou selves. The government has never been about setting reasonable rules for free and responsible people to abide by, it has always been about busybodies trying to control other people’s lives and force them to live to standards the busybodies themselves disregard on a whim. Their reasons and causes being oh so noble and all that…
The Obama administration’s contempt for the law is well established. (See the ATF “Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal and AG Eric Holder’s refusal to cooperate with congress.) What makes anyone believe that the same administration would give a hoot about NOAA’s failure to respond to an FOIA request?
sean;fr says:
September 6, 2012 at 9:25 am
“There is no indication of a follow up communication after the initial. They can creditably say we were on holiday and we over looked it, or the in box was full and we lost the email, or we just have no record of the email – style the dog eat my homework.”
I understand where you are coming from, but on the other hand, I highly doubt my local traffic cop would let me off the hook if I failed to read the stop sign I barreled through.
NOAA shouldn’t be made to produce the email. That would have a chilling effect
At last, a solution to AGW. Release the letter, save the World
sean;fr says:
September 6, 2012 at 9:25 am
“There is no indication of a follow up communication after the initial. They can creditably say we were on holiday and we over looked it, or the in box was full and we lost the email, or we just have no record of the email…”
=========================================================================
Haven’t spent much time around lawyers or government bureaucrats have you? You can bet the FOI request was NOT emailed. It undoubtedly had to be submitted in a particular form to a specified office address and delivered either by the U.S.P.O, or FedEx, or by hand, and signed for when received.
Lawyers know how to do this. NOAA will not be able to deny they got the request. Thus the lawsuit.
Oh,I am so going to enjoy all the followup. And when the judge rules for immediate release of the documents and they release the email and NOT the attachments because they don’t save attachments…I eagerly await the follow-up.
It is a pity that the legal action is taken against faceless NOAA. Ideally, it should also be taken against the individual(s) who failed to respond. While its against the organization no problem – who cares knock yourself out. However, once it starts getting personal and individuals have to take time to talk to lawyers about their own liabilities then there could be an altogether different response.
@Neo
Very odd isn’t it? That all these supposedly transparent people who prattle on about being transparent, with nothing to hide. Want to hide all these supposedly transparent things.
February 2010 is after the Belmont Forum was set up but before the Belmont Challenge was issued as these clowns went operational with their gut capitalism and let the state plan the economy in the name of Green Growth scheming.
If you have never seen the post I wrote about why NOAA does not care about actual temps and has issued a formal report called USGCRP 2012-2021 on using education and social science and psychology to model and influence behaviors anyway, here it is http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/if-reality-is-ignored-or-disregarded-when-do-we-become-
a-state-against-its-people/
As the post shows the govt site dealing with this is globalchange.gov.
The MIT site pushing systems theory and the IGSM model is http://globalchange.mit.edu/research/IGSM . MIT is on my radar because of systems theorists Peter Senge and Otto Scharmer there. And their Sustainability and education K-12 initiatives.
I am showing my ignorance on computers and domain names here but I find it interesting that globalchange is always the prefix. Basically these are all models to gain political change whatever the hard science may be.
kirkmyers says:
September 6, 2012 at 10:34 am
The Obama administration’s contempt for the law is well established. (See the ATF “Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal and AG Eric Holder’s refusal to cooperate with congress.) What makes anyone believe that the same administration would give a hoot about NOAA’s failure to respond to an FOIA request?
================================================================
Well, were it in the UK, I would say – because it is now a matter for the judiciary, and not the executive. How things work (?) in the States, I have no idea. If they work at all, of which there seems to be little evidence for a few years now.
If Obama wins, he could issue an Executive Order declaring FOIA invalid in these and other cases.
I think realistically what’s going on here is this:
CEI filed their FOIA via email.
Now, maybe there was an SMTP problem somewhere. Maybe there was a screwup inside NOAA. Or maybe they really did decide to duck and cover.
Had they not done so, had they responded, we could expect the usual sort of six-month slow-walk in the denials, the administrative appeal, the issuance of a piece of paper two-thirds covered with black redaction blotches, another administrative appeal, another denial, and finally a trip to court.
The appearance of misdeed, or at least of failure of procedure, gives CEI a chance to run to court and possibly short-circuit this process, getting the request in front of a judge where it was probably going anyway, just that much sooner.
Oh dear an NOAA own goal with the ‘Streisand effect’ : )
Still, I won’t hold my breath for the truth to come out, although Chris Horner seems like a dog with a bone!
It’s obvious. This information is so transparent, it’s invisible! They wouldn’t know if they have it or not. Also, so was the FOI request, they couldn’t see it either.