You may recall that WUWT reported this on Sepetember 6th, 2012:
Game on – NOAA’s refusal of documents earns them a lawsuit
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”.
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That was then. We have that letter now….it seems about duck and cover from media stories about the various IPCC “gates”, followed by business as usual:
Here is the original:
Letter_WG1AR4Authors_26022010 (PDF)
And the email from NCDC’s Thomas Peterson:
Chris Horner deserves praise for his dogged persistence.
This letter was sent to IPCC Working Group 1 rather than to the IPCC. A similar letter was sent to WG2 and (I assume) WG3.
McIntyre worries about another letter by Thomas Stocker, in which he may have encouraged Phil Jones and co not to comply with UK FoI legislation.
Duke.. “he opened and resaved it.”
ummmm……….. now why would anyone do that?
You open a PDF, read it…then close it.
the ONLY time I would “resave” a PDF is if I had made changes to it in Acrobat Pro.
or if I opened it in MSWord and resaved it to a PDF.. which I would ONLY do if I wanted to change it.
Neville
Try a proxy server, e.g. http://www.hidemyass.com
Lucia self hosts and self protects, she once, by mistake, banned any IP address from Norway!
“The IPCC strengths of taking time to consider all the evidence and subject it to
careful review before drawing any conclusions….”
This is completely inconsistent with accusing a scientist, who was completely correct, that his work was “Voodoo Science”, as the IPCC chairperson R.K. Pachauri did.
http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/article83613.ece
Mooloo says: (October 4, 2012 at 4:07 pm)
“This is not particularly heartening to read in a document purporting to be about scientific investigations. They admit that they have already decided the answer, and that the purpose of AR5 is merely to strengthen those findings.”
My thoughts exactly.
And that is what so potentially harmful about this memo for them and the reason for hiding it so lang. AR5 will just be a convulsive final attempt to cover up their nearly exposed scam.
Richard writes, “McIntyre worries about another letter by Thomas Stocker, in which he may have encouraged Phil Jones and co not to comply with UK FoI legislation.”
Now that would be worth going to the wall over. But this is no more than standard operating procedure for an international organization. So why fight the release?
My own sense, derived more or less entirely from close familiarity with “Yes Minister” is that the IPCC wants to establish the legal precedent that it is immune from national FOI laws. The content of the letter is irrelevant; the point they are trying to make is that, as a UN-sponsored, supra-national organization they do not answer to anyone but the UN.
And, realistically, the IPCC probably does not; but the scientists who work for the IPCC are, in fact, subject to one national law or another. While the IPCC may very well be immune, the argument is that the scientists which do its actual work are obliged to obey the laws of their nations even where such compliance makes the IPCC uncomfortable.
The IPCC and its “scientists” will fight that idea to the death but, I suspect, at law they are pretty much screwed.
Storm in a teacup comes to mind!
I don’t believe this really is the document they wanted to hide as there’s nothing controversial in it.
omnologos says:
October 4, 2012 at 3:26 pm
So….where would the “adverse effect” stem from, exactly??
The adverse effect is in encouraging the idea that outsiders can vet, check, complain and demand technical errors be corrected, that political influences be publicly acknowledged if not stopped, and generally look over the shoulders of a transnational organization with a mandate and agenda not necessarily equal to that the taxpayers think exist.
The adverse effect is in the expectation of being professionally transparent, something no political worker can handle, as Tony Blair explained as he said that the FOIA he brought in stood in the way of “good government”.
The trouble with sequels:
A list celebrities are willing to tag their names to success, but after sequel 4 has flopped
AR5 will likely “go straight to DVD” ….attracting B or C list talent….lets hope so!
This document isn’t banal at all. There’s this right in the middle of it.
“In addition a number of governments are considering beginning their own investigations or asking IPCC to conduct a review.”
The next sentence then refers to “growing concerns” of governments.
No, they wouldn’t want this coming out. The key question now is which governments are these and why are there concerns growing. Can’t ever let the mainstream press, which has been nicely carrying our water thus far, ever suspect that there are serious reasons to doubt all the great work the IPCC has done. If they are discovered, then officials are going to be put on the spot of having to justify why they want the IPCC investigated.
Second, “review” is often government code for “we’re cutting your funding”.
Third, this bit:
“If allegations of errors in the WG1 contribution to AR4 are made, please be assured that the current WG1 Co-Chairs will take responsibility for investigating these.”
Freely translated, “We can’t trust Rajenda Pachauri to pick his own nose, let alone anything more complicated.” This to me is a clear statement in lack of confidence in the IPCC Chair and his ability or lack thereof to defend the IPCC’s ARs.
This letter is an admission by Stocker to his colleagues that:
1. AR4 used non-peer reviewed stuff that did not meet the IPCC standard, hence giving rise to all kinds of embarrassing errors.
2. AR5 had better not be vulnerable in this way. Otherwise the government “investigations” or “reviews” could become a witch hunt for those culpable.
In short, this is Stocker saying, “Get your sh!t together or we’re all going to get boiled in oil.”
What a waste of time and money this has been. First all the grants, schemes, taxes and increased costs to all of us… then add the uncountable hours millions of people spent trying to uncover the truth. We could have paid off the national debt easily by now. These people need to pay!
I pity the next enviro-wacko-liberal nutjob that says anything earthsaving when I’m within arms reach.
See you when I get out of jail, if I ever do.
“If allegations of errors in the WGI contribution to AR4 are made, please be assured that the current WG I Co-Chairs will take responsibility for investigating these.”
My interpretation of this letter, is that this letter is intended to discourage participants from talking publicly, instead encouraging them to defer and have all responses to public inquiry centralized and controlled by the WG1 co-chairs and related folks.
In other words, put a lid on what’s happening and have everything released only through “approved” avenues.
But that’s just my interpretation.
Reminds me of the first Presidential debate where apparently O thought it so personally demeaning of his regal nature to be called out and questioned, that he offered a silent protest to the nerve of someone to directly question the Emperor, that he declined to demean himself by giving a direct, coherent, response.
In this case there was also an apparent concern over the potential of other governments climbing out of the box and taking off its lid, and debate its contents??? OMG, IPCC could never let that happen.
AndyG55 says:
October 4, 2012 at 11:22 pm
Duke.. “he opened and resaved it.”
ummmm……….. now why would anyone do that?
You open a PDF, read it…then close it.
the ONLY time I would “resave” a PDF is if I had made changes to it in Acrobat Pro.
or if I opened it in MSWord and resaved it to a PDF.. which I would ONLY do if I wanted to change it.
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It is possible that it was renamed after opening it or saved to a new folder.
I’m going to echo Mooloo and Lance Wallace.
“.. robustness of AR4”.
That is a flat out admission that their investigation has a predefined “end” in mind. They just admitted that they are not investigating the science .. they are data mining for support for their predefined position.
I agree this is no banal document in govt speak, the wolf is at the door.Which govts and mine had better be one of them,
In the spirit of R.I.C.O. is there a list of the persons this letter was sent to?