Phil Jones’ plan to hide from FOIA
Eric Worrall writes:
Anyone shocked by Mann’s broad claims of academic exemption from freedom of information, due to the “proprietary nature” of his work, should consider the following Climategate email.
Climategate Email 1106338806.txt says:
“I wouldn’t worry about the code. If FOIA does ever get used by anyone, there is also IPR to consider as well. Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them. I’ll be passing any requests onto the person at UEA who has been given a post to deal with them. … I got a brochure on the FOI Act from UEA. Does this mean that, if someone asks for a computer program we have to give it out?? Can you check this for me (and Sarah)”
Full email here: http://eric.worrall.name/Climategate/FOIA/1106338806.txt
But, there’s hope from Mark Steyn, who writes: Don’t Start Deleting Those Emails Just Yet, Mikey!
If the decision of the Virginia Supreme Court was unanimous, then they are OWNED.
That’s all there is to it.
Obviously there is an ENORMOUS amount of money in play here, and a lot to be made or lost based on the implementation of the climate religion (aka wealth redistribution).
Another case of Mann thinking he is god….
Further to my last comment, what would Thomas Jefferson say? Or the rest of the founding fathers of our nation? Or Benjamin Franklin, who was known to get a charge out of science and weather every so often?
Time for FOIA to show up and do the job, though I suspect he (/she/whatever) has been muzzled.
Ultimate irony – maybe Steyn could ask the NSA for the mails…(or, for that matter, any of the 200 other national agencies in the rest of the world…maybe they should get together and form a cloud backup service…)
FOI requests generally only cover government directly. Why do you think all these little schemes are run out of arms length agencies and universities? Because they don’t have to abide by FOI legislation. That is why academic scientists in Canada are upset at Stephen Harper. He has refused to cut loose the government scientists at Environment Canada and they are obliged to follow FOI guidelines whereas NOAA scientists don’t. Therefore they can’t collaborate.
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I guess I won’t be going to any movies in Virginia. It seems that now anyone can go into a crowded movie theater and yell “Fire!”. Any deaths or injuries in the ensuing panic cannot be blamed on the Chicken Little that raised the false alarm since he doesn’t have to show whether or not there actually was a fire.
Well said Gunda din, as always. But if grants have been given to a university for a specific research project, someone somewhere wants to see the results. The source of a grant is usually known or should be don’t you think? The researcher obviously will lean towards what the grant is aiming to prove or disprove.
bushbunny says:
April 18, 2014 at 6:52 pm
Ah, but are you not assuming that the 200 billion in “climate change” research is “really” for “science research” as we used to know it and trust it, and not propaganda, publicity, control, and politics ?
Oh I agree wholeheartedly, that was the ultimate outcome and pushing clean (?) energy. Do you remember what Hansen said when he visited Australia? ‘Clean energy was not the answer, go nuclear’ … as we have a huge coast line so could use sea water to cool the reactors. The problem there is that our population congregates in coastal cities, then thins out miles from city centres, but our agriculture and horticulture is generally almost totally based in the bush and some in the outback of course. And we do have different micro climates, from tropical, monsoon, alpine, temperate and sub tropical dictating what we can grow. Like sheep are better off away from the coastal regions because of the higher rainfall.
To deliver energy to outlying places via nuclear would be too expensive and untenable. And Aussies don’t like the idea either. We in the so called bush or regional areas pay more for electricity than city folk, because of the distance it has to travel. And if electricity is not available, say in a rural property, and it is a new subdivision You pay to have it relayed to you. We didn’t pay as much as others, as the poles were there, but we paid for the transformer that fed all the other three 100 acre farms. We wanted to build our house somewhere else, but the cost of relaying electricity to it was over $20.000. And that was 30 years ago, you can imagine how much it would be now. One neighbor had to pay for another pole as the wires from our pole would have been too close to the ground. It was just what the Australia bush is like in some areas.
When I said higher rainfall I really meant to share that sheep are prone to fly strike and foot rot in higher rainfall areas, but cows for milk thrive where there is good green pasture. Yet store cattle for meat can exist in dryer areas. Just when there is a drought they have to be sold or hand fed.
This would be worth an appeal, even the introduction of legislation. Not because that buffoon’s emails are important, we’ve seen his tweets, but because nothing publically funded is proprietary. Except to the public.
Legislation might be better because the administration is behind open access…
I am not sure gymnosperm, in Australia an email can be used to convict someone, and emails can be traced back to the sender. But if they want to hide them from a court, surely someone can get a copy of them, and produce them as evidence?
Mycroft says: @ur momisugly April 18, 2014 at 3:16 am
“….?Wow! blows the need for publicly funded universities/research right out of the water?? should we be demanding that our governments stop funding all the above?….”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That is what I keep on saying. If Academia is going tell us peons we have no RIGHT to the research our moneys pay for then fine. Let them go else where for their funding.
It is time to stop ALL FUNDING to Academia.
At present I am reading:
Willing Accomplices: How KGB Covert Influence Agents Created Political Correctness and Destroyed America by CIA case officer, Kent Clizbe. After reading fifty pages my tongue in cheek call to stop funding Academia has just become serious. Kent makes the case that the Universities are the Willing Accomplices.
When you think about it this is really is no surprise.
http://www.amazon.com/Willing-Accomplices-Influence-Political-Correctness/dp/0983426406
You and I are both old enough to remember when FOI laws were being trumpeted as major reforms furthering ethics, transparency, and democratic values in government and public policy.
How utterly disgusting and depraved that squalid little so-called “scientists” like Michael Mann and Phil Jones have been subverting the intent and application of these laws for years. If CAGW is really supposed to be one of the greatest calamities humanity has ever been faced with then there can be no excuses for hiding data and methods relevant to judging the issue.
The cowardly and intellectually corrupt complicity of these VA justices shows that biased “justice” is possible anytime dubious political correctness infects the judiciary. The twisted mis-use of the concept of “proprietary” in this judicial decision is an intellectual disgrace.
As for issues in engineering and biomedical sciences, even a bunny ought to be able to see the differences between those fields and climate psy-ence.
p.s. Some of the greatest blame lies with major funding bodies such as the NSF, which should have been requiring and enforcing full release of all publicly funded data all along. There should not even be any need for FOI submissions because all publicly funded data and methods, software, etc. should be released in full the moment a study is published, and there should be a strict time limit from the time data is collected, so that it cannot be withheld indefinitely by claiming (as so many climate psy-entists do) that work is still being done with said data for future publications.