Uh, oh…It’s about to become more about the people behind the letter, than the letter itself.
Now all we need is a steamy potboiler novel and some internal investigations and it could be Rajenda Pachauri all over again.
The big story at Climate Audit this week (see Shukla’s Gold) is about the twenty authors of the letter demanding that climate skeptics be put on trial, and in particular the man pushing the letter, Jagadish Shukla, seems to be getting quite prosperous with all that Koch Brothers money Oil Money public money he gets sent his way. Steve McIntyre writes:
In 2001, the earliest year thus far publicly available, in 2001, in addition to his university salary (not yet available, but presumably about $125,000), Shukla and his wife received a further $214,496 in compensation from IGES (Shukla -$128,796; Anne Shukla – $85,700). Their combined compensation from IGES doubled over the next two years to approximately $400,000 (additional to Shukla’s university salary of say $130,000), for combined compensation of about $530,000 by 2004.
Shukla’s university salary increased dramatically over the decade reaching $250,866 by 2013 and $314,000 by 2014. (In this latter year, Shukla was paid much more than Ed Wegman, a George Mason professor of similar seniority). Meanwhile, despite the apparent transition of IGES to George Mason, the income of the Shuklas from IGES continued to increase, reaching $547,000 by 2013. Combined with Shukla’s university salary, the total compensation of Shukla and his wife exceeded $800,000 in both 2013 and 2014. In addition, as noted above, Shukla’s daughter continued to be employed by IGES in 2014; IGES also distributed $100,000 from its climate grant revenue to support an educational charity in India which Shukla had founded.
But it seems Shukla doesn’t like people looking into that, because the letter seems to have been disappeared from the IGES website. I’ve confirmed this over 24 hours and several search techniques. What was once visible to search engines, is no more:
The original link that no longer works: http://www.iges.org/letter/LetterPresidentAG.pdf
The letter survives on the Wayback Machine here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20150920110942/http://www.iges.org/letter/LetterPresidentAG.pdf
And here is the letter as a single image, with page 1 and 2 combined from the PDF:
Bishop Hill notes:
You can imagine the horror on the signatories’ faces when they realised that some very determined people were about to take a close interest in their financial arrangements and those of their colleagues at IGES.
I’m not sure taking the letter down is going to help much though.
The Streisand effect has been unleashed Mr. Shukla, enjoy the ride.
h/t to Russell Cook
Note: shortly after publication, this story was updated to make two links active (a recent wordpress problem caused this) and a hat tip added.
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Are there ways to investigate the truth of their explanation about IGES being finished in July 2015? Don’t they have to file dissolution papers of some kind for such an organization – it is a corporation!! If university state and federal authorities don’t do something about all this, then I will never be able to become more disgusted about anything. The clangor should be for an independent investigation.
A comment on CA last night, by Opluso, suggests the tie with NSF – and perhaps the difficulty in prosecuting:
Since the source of the money is NSF, I agree with those who see that agency as the problem. More specifically, I think they should target the branch of the NSF which funds climate science.
But first things first. Catch the “little” fish. Shukla has clearly been caught with his hand, arm, head and most of his upper torso wedged in the government cookie jar. Not only is the money tainted, but his organization espouses a very ugly message.
Surely this kind of graft meets every criteria for a successful prosecution. I hope that McIntyre and Pielke, who first wrote about it, agree. State of Virginia Vs. Mann divided the community of skeptics. The stink of this case is entirely different, both in magnitude and type. I agree with you that it cries for some legal action. A clawing back of a few of these wayward NSF grants could hasten a broader review of all of them under a more conservative administration. Who would not be in favor a more stable and legitimate grant process?
I second the call for (cautious) whistleblowers at George Mason University.
The letter writers prominently cite Brulle, 2013. Brulle totals money for 91 groups, and claims it pays for climate denial (whatever that is). Conspicuously overlooked is all the other things the groups work on.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/23/claim-dark-money-conspiracy-star-deniers-are-scripted-performers/
All Shukla has to do now is move back to India. I checked the extradition treaty of 1997. Must be a crime in both countries punishable by at least 1 year imprisonment. Doubt ripping off federal grant money in the US is a crime in India.
The part that sticks out for me from their letter is “…they have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change.”
This is such a loaded statement in many ways.
To even believe and say such a thing implies that the writers have taken the position that they know for a fact that what they, the accusers, are in the right about all aspects of climate change (the ‘science is settled’), and that the corporations KNEW that the accusers were right and that the corporations were wrong but acted in the opposite direction maliciously anyway. There is no proof for any of that.
-There’s no way the letter writers could know any of this without evidence in hand on paper. Where is that evidence? There isn’t any, so the writers made up the accusation.
The letter writers look like they are the deceivers here, and they look like they trying to forestall the inevitable discovery by more and more Americans that the alarmists are wrong about climate change, and that both the risks and responses are overstated reactions to a non-crisis.
There is no proof for any of that.
Well, in their minds… 97% of the scientists are in agreement with them, the science is settled, the steady droning of the MSM reinforces their beliefs, almost all the politicians nod and agree, the Pope has spoken, POTUS himself has waxed eloquent…. and still nothing seems to be happening. So in their minds, something nefarious must be happening behind the scenes.
I wonder which of the people in power they are accusing of taking bribes to do nothing? Does the conspiracy go all the way to the POTUS? Ore merely to the Pope?
Any chance of this guy going to jail himself? (as in the Oscar Wilde effect!)
History never repeats, yeah right
and of course who can forget 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Regards
Climate Heretic
So I looked over those who signed this letter. Talk about cross pollination and a web of pals and former colleagues. Lots of former GMU pals. Might be interesting to cross reference their CVs and peer (pal) reviewed publications.
I say there is probable cause for a RICO investigation. Perhaps it should start with the letter writers. There are a number of crimes already committed beginning with false accusations.
Rud, Shukla has lived the US for years. He’s probably naturalized and a US citizen now.
Ricochet touche!
Anyone who tries to investigate RPJ had better be careful RPJ doesn’t try to investigate him.
Anyone who does what they did is a bully. I never met a bully who wasn’t also a fool. (And there’s no fool worse than a highly intelligent fool.)
And there’s no fool worse than a highly intelligent fool.”
Hereks my more elegant version: No Fool Like a Wise Fool.
Ivory tower dweller meets street brawlers. Who will prevail?
Well done and thanks to all who lend their name and expertise in opposing these people. Fighting back and doing the right thing comes at a real risk no doubt – thank you!
Shukla’s double dip is one dip of university salary plus another dip of outside grant funds channeled through his closely controlled IGES.
Will the GMU funding department’s administration transparently deal with the seemly blatant appearance of double dipping? Likewise will the NFS, NOSA & NSSS funding departments deal with the appearance of double dipping?
I think they will try not to transparently deal with it.
John
Correction: that should be NSF, NOAA & NASA.
John
Given GMU’s record of dealing with such embarrassing academic issues I expect that they will try to cover it up. My experience with NASA is that they will investigate and prosecute such wrongdoing if the ‘double dipping’ is confirmed.
Where is the money coming from, Soros?….the Rockefeller’s?
AGW would be a boon for the Rockefeller’s and the bankers, not only would they continue to make fortunes on their oil holdings, they would also make huge fortunes on the skim from any carbon trading schemer and the various leveraged markets that would spring up around such a scheme……futures, options, structured derivatives, swaps etc…..and they ARE BIG OIL,,,,,,but they are also Big Finance too……..also a carbon tax carbon trading scheme would put a huge tax on the middle class and they have always been keen on that……Nelson Aldrich instituted the Federal Income tax after they jammed through the Federal Reserve Act.
In my opinion the Rockefeller’s and The Money Trust are behind CAGW…..which is ironic as they are Big Oil…..In the breakup of Standard Oil, The Rockefeller’s owned 26% of the 30 or so oil companies that came out of that and JD Rockefeller never sold a share and as I know, the Rockefeller’s still own it all never having any reason to sell a single share.
Are you kidding?
The Rockefellers are moving into renewables.
Such good PR especially after a few decades of helping/leading the drive for renewables, there is more margin in it.
And besides nowadays you can farm governments in the renewables industry.
Do a Grants search at http://www.rbf.org
Very interesting reading.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Wonder how long they’ll stay.
http://stopthesethings.com/2015/09/30/us-wind-power-outfits-curse-el-nino-for-massive-mounting-losses/
The Rockefeller Brothers selling a fraction of a fraction of their total oil holdings is meaningless. You are seriously underestimating the enormity of those holdings. The CFR and the Rockefeller’s themselves are liable to be behind the CAGW meme. How much research and how many grants and how much propaganda have the various Rockefeller entities paid for in regards to CAGW? This is counter intuitive but the Rockefeller’s who are BIG OIL are the very ones likely financing this push for carbon trading and a carbon tax.
Those sales are probably less than what their oil holdings produce in dividends alone each year.
Easily frightened viewers should turn away now.
RICOist in chief modestly and generously allows minor pollies and religious leaders to be photographed with him. And ‘his’ Nobel Prize
http://www.iges.org/people/shukla_gallery.html
Brits may recognise this personality trait in others
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/D810/production/_84021355_027990995.jpg
http://i1.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article89848.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/image-10-for-the-real-jimmy-saville-gallery-926195150.jpg
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00401/125251911_Maxwell_B_401242b.jpg
I’ll leave it to others to identify the lady in the tutti-frutti dress, or make comments about Cameron, but I was curious about the chaps standing with Leonid Brezhnev. Following the lead offered by jpg’s title, I find the bloke with the book is the flamboyant figure of Czech-born British publisher Robert Maxwell. Apparently the photo was taken upon Maxwell’s Pergamon Press publication of:
Brezhnev: A Short Biography by The Institute of Marxism-Leninism, CPSU Central Committee
A review of this work is found at CliveJames dot com, and begins hilariously:
“Here is a book so dull that a whirling dervish could read himself to sleep with it. If you were to recite even a single page in the open air, birds would fall out of the sky and dogs drop dead. There is no author’s name on the title page, merely a modest line of italic type advising us that Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev’s ‘short biography’ has been composed ‘by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, CPSU Central Committee’. This is the one statement in the entire opus which is undeniably true. Only an Institute could write like this:…”
And concludes:
“But he is less nuts than Stalin. During Brezhnev’s reign the innocent have been permitted to live, as long as they don’t heckle. Even at its mildest, totalitarianism is never less murderous than that: a society in which the rulers talk on and on without making any sense, but nobody is allowed to laugh.”
http://www.clivejames.com/pieces/shadows/brezhnev
The other fellow on the right is not identified on any of the photos I’ve seen. Another Brit, I’d say, possibly a diplomat, but who?
I wonder if and when CAGW starts to look like a scam to law enforcement. will some of those same people who were throwing rocks at critics of AGW be called to task? How dare we interrupt their gravy train! Will they go off somewhere and snicker, opps, sorry, but we’re keeping the money.
rishrac. Law enforcement is always under political control.
Again WUWT is missing the elephant in the room. If of course this is all true, this is/could MUCH bigger than climategate and is capable of bringing down the whole AGW scam. I’m pretty sure mainstream will take this up(again if actually true). The TEAM must be very very worried about this saga and very very angry with Shukla
[you have no idea what you are talking about regarding this blogs perception of anything -mod]
So sad to read about this.
I went through the engineering classes at George Mason back in the mid 1970’s.
It was a decent place, then.
Would be interesting to line up the CVs of these people. From what I could tell in their university bios they are pals and former colleagues. Wonder how much co-authoring and pal reviewing was done.
Should have been kept as TOP posting!
Ah! follow the money !
Cheers
Roger
29 Sept: Daily Caller: Michael Batasch: MYSTERY: Scientists Remove Letter Asking Obama To Prosecute Global Warming Skeptics
Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise posted on her blog NoFrakkingConsensus.com that the Institute of Global Environment and Society has taken down its letter signed by twenty scientists and researchers. “There’s no explanation, no apology – just open space where this anti-free-speech document used to reside,” Laframboise wrote…
Shukla did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment on why the letter was taken off IGES’s website.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/09/29/mystery-scientists-remove-letter-asking-obama-to-prosecute-global-warming-skeptics/
“Shukla did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment on why the letter was taken off IGES’s website.”
He’s avoiding all calls, in case any are from the IRS.
I would like to see a TED talk where someone pulls together the nuggets of truth on Global warming and the trickery, scams and fraud behind the scenes, as evidenced above. I know of no one better than Lord Monckton. Such a talk would probably be banned, but show up on Youtube as a banned TED talk. Nothing helps gets more attention than when it is banned. The 10th ICCC was superb and did not just repeat the known truths, but added further to the clarification of the truth. However, the ICCC has a limited ‘in the know’ audience, whereas the TED talks would reach those who haven’t gone after the facts, those who have heard and continue to hear only the paid political side of the fiction/fraud.
Mary Robinson, the ex President of Ireland has a recent TED talk on global warming and states all the usual rubbish.
You are correct about banning as a surefire route to more readers. Book banning was the precursor to the Streisand Effect. Go for a banned TED talk. Here is what Mark Twain says:
http://flavorwire.com/333790/famous-authors-funniest-responses-to-their-books-being-banned
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885:
“Apparently, the Concord library has condemned Huck as ‘trash and only suitable for the slums.’ This will sell us another twenty-five thousand copies for sure!”
And to a librarian on the Brooklyn Public Library’s ban on the same book in 1905:
“I am greatly troubled by what you say. I wrote ‘Tom Sawyer’ & ‘Huck Finn’ for adults exclusively, & it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave.”
It gets better:
http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/huckfinn/hfconcrd.html
“The directors of the Concord Public Library have joined in the general scheme to advertise MARK TWAIN’S new book, ‘Huckleberry Finn.’ They have placed it on the Index Expurgatorius, and this will compel every citizen of Concord to read the book in order to see why the guardians of his morals prohibited it.” So reported the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on 17 March 1885 in one of the earliest newspaper accounts of the first time Huck Finn was banned.
The letter is gone!
“The letter that was inadvertently posted on this web site has been removed. It was decided more than two years ago that the Institute of Global Environment and Society (IGES) would be dissolved when the projects then undertaken by IGES would be completed. All research projects by IGES were completed in July 2015, and the IGES web site is in the process of being decommissioned”
http://www.iges.org/letter/LetterPresidentAG.pdf