First, this press release today from the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and chair Lamar Smith . Some material obtained from George Mason University today via FOIA shed some light on the IGES/COLA organization and its founders and director.
For Immediate Release | October 1, 2015
Media Contacts: Zachary Kurz, Laura Crist
Smith: Taxpayer-Funded Climate Org Allegedly Seeks Criminal Penalties for Skeptics
Washington, D.C. – Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today sent a letter to Dr. Jagadish Shukla, a professor of climate dynamics at George Mason University who founded the Institute of Global Environment and Society (IGES). IGES is a non-profit organization that has received millions of dollars in federal grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA.
According to media reports, IGES is responsible for circulating a letter to the president and senior White House officials requesting a criminal investigation of organizations who question the risks of climate change. Specifically, the letter seeks a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) investigation that would allow the government to impose criminal penalties. The letter was posted to the IGES website and later removed and replaced with a note saying it had been “inadvertently posted.”
Chairman Smith: “IGES appears to be almost fully funded by taxpayer money while simultaneously participating in partisan political activity by requesting a RICO investigation of companies and organizations that disagree with the Obama administration on climate change. In fact, IGES has reportedly received $63 million from taxpayers since 2001, comprising over 98 percent of its total revenue during that time.”
In light of the non-profit’s decision to remove the controversial letter from its website, Smith directs IGES to preserve “all e-mail, electronic documents, and data created since January 1, 2009, that can be reasonably anticipated to be subject to a request for production by the Committee.”
The full letter can be found here.
h/t to Mike Bastasch for the PR from the House
Also today, I have been given some materials obtained by attorney Chris Horner of CEI, who made a request to The Virginia Governor’s Office for materials related to Shukla and IGES/COLA. Props to the Virginia Governor’s Office, as they responded very quickly to the request.
Of most interest is a document that answers the question I raised yesterday about what, if any, separation exists between the Shukla family enterprises IGES and COLA, especially since it was announced (in place of the disappeared letter) that IGES would be dissolved while COLA was getting NSF grants active through 2017. This is what replaced the disappeared letter to Obama:
The Schedule A attached to the 2012 through 2015 Statement of Economic Interests from COLA director James Kinter removes any doubt about any separation of IGES/COLA, and further, since the last dated Schedule A was of May 31st of this year, it suggests that “dissolution” of IGES really wasn’t in the cards at all:
Above, 2015 through 2012 (top to bottom) Schedule A’s from Kinter.
Source: FOIA obtained documents – PDF’s are linked below:
Horner, Chris – Horner Law – GMU Professor Request
Sec Commonwealth GMU Faculty Statements of Economic Interests Records Request
Shukla, Jagadish – SOEI – 2012
Shukla, Jagadish – SOEI – 2013
Shukla, Jagadish – SOEI – 2014
Shukla, Jagadish – SOEI – 2015
Note: shortly after publication this story was edited to correct the order of and some captions of the Kinter Schedule A screencaps
The far-left in our government structure is so used to getting its’ way, that the corruption is total. They think there will never be any accountability for the totalitarian tendencies.
Until Ted Cruz becomes president in 2017 !!! Then the proverbial SHlT will hit the fan !!!!
Sorry dude. Trump is the next POTUS. Look at the bright side though. He’ll be even more entertaining than Cruz as he publicly neuters these guys!
When Trump starts losing state primaries he’ll probably pull a Ross Perot (third party) and guarantee a Dem for President. I sure hope not – I support Ted Cruz too.
I read somewhere that Ted Cruz was born in Canada. Isn’t this / shouldn’t this be a problem (apart from Cruz being in 5th or 6th place in all nationwide polls)?
And John McCain was born in Panama. Cruz was born to an American citizen mother 21 years or older, which means he had American citizenship at birth.
The polling is a larger issue. But it is early days yet.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
McCain had some issues about whether he was a ‘natural born citizen’, the senate took the precaution of declaring him to be one prior to the election to circumvent any challenge.
Anything from “Real Climate” on this yet?
It seems the mainstream media are beginning to sit up and take notice of all this ‘predatory’ pseudo-science garbage and the shucksters it attracts-
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/bmc-medicine-predatory-academic-journals-a-105m-boom-industry/story-e6frgcjx-1227553026394
This post makes me smile. I hope to be laughing soon. Then … hysterical after the criminal trial.
“Give a man enough rope and he’ll hang himself.” It’s our special long term weapon. Ssssh… mums the word… Send more rope. GK
As far as I can tell, no posters have noticed what the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology is going after. The committee won’t care about what most of us here are talking about. Most of it is beyond their jurisdiction. What they can go after is spending taxpayer funds for political activities.
I’m not sure what teeth the committee has. The Hatch Act governs political activities by government employees and its only penalty seems to be removal. The best the committee can do may be to publicize the bad behaviour. I speculate that the committee could somehow take back the grants.
commieBob I agree for starts. As I said prior this is an auditors dream. They mixed the grant money up. If they payed one person outside a grant,,..
In 2009 climate-gate occurred after an election cycle. Now we are entering one. In is going to get interesting.
michael
With all due respect to professor Shukla, and not much is due,
he must feel now like he was lifted by advanced aliens
and he is given an anal probe…
Re: Australian like everything there…overrated and expensive… they live in wawa land. No one looks or pays for the Australian anymore they are extinguishing themselves with the :”subscribers” theme. BTW Thank you Mr Watts for pursuing this story, Yes Mosh only reply and yes for some funny reason he did get Gleick but to no avail whatsoever, he still works hands free… the rest have ALL disappeared… Stokes, Zeke ect and will not post on this issue, it is likely the end of AGW and the team me thinks. Thank you to Tony Heller and Mr Watts and all the other skeptic/doubter sites! LOL
“it is likely the end of AGW and the team me thinks.”
Not even slightly. Go outside of the echo chamber here and see how many people know anything about this. Wait 3 months, 6 months, whatever, and see what comes of it.
The machine is way too big.
The question is, given all the facts, why did Shukla make waves?
The answer is that for people like him, truth becomes relative.
A matter of power over others, and a matter of money. Lots and lots of money.
Warming is what people like him say it is. People who look at the actual temps readings are to be subjected to RICO prosecution.
Since they disturb the order of things. The order in which Shukla is at the top.
That total loss of any sense of reality is why the second in command at the EPA thought he was James Bond…
But somewhere, somewhere deep, they have a bit of awareness left.
That it could all come down crumbling upon their heads.
Which, hopefully, is what happens as we speak.
+1
Amen.
I may be wrong, but didn’t Michael Mann get in trouble for making this same claim?
http://s13.postimg.org/v26egbpnr/shukla.png
Source link:
https://www2.gmu.edu/about-mason/featured-faculty
IPCC Statement:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/02/the-ipcc-weighs-in-on-the-mann-nobel-dilema-and-throws-him-under-the-bus/
One more:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/14/michael-mann-loses-the-nobel-prize-again/
Just sayin’
If I vote for Trump will he send this guy packing to India?
Mark Steyn doesn’t seem to have picked up on this story yet. Assuming that he does, he will (one hopes) bring it to the attention of his friends in the right-wing media, like Fox (and I expect that there are plenty of others). Those people make enough noise that it could become a topic of national discussion. That also means broad international attention because the media everywhere I’ve been always tend to report the bigger american stories. Particularly in Canada because we do love to read and hear about American stuff so we can feel smugly superior (or hopelessly outclassed – often simultaneously and in a single brain).
My point is, there’s enough sympathetic media outlets that this thing is very probably going to get an airing. Everybody loves a scandal. Here, you can actually see a guy getting rich off the warming industry – and with public money!! Climategate never had that, it was all about intellectual dishonesty, and people are so used to that in politicians, that only among reasonably well educated people would there have been much sense of outrage. Yes, public money drove it, but none of the head warmists were seen to be overtly skimming, and I don’t recall any of the emails talking about money.
As Winston Churchill said in 1941, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it might, just possibly, be the end of the beginning”. (quoting from memory so it might not be 100% accurate and it might have been 1940 or 1942).
Here’s a link to “A Speech at the Lord Mayor’s Day Luncheon at the Mansion House, London, 10 November 1942”. The speech was about a major Allied victory in North Africa.
The speech is interesting in one remarkable aspect. There was no mention of the USSR which Germany had invaded in June of 1941. By the time of Churchill’s speech the Germans had been throwing men and material into the mire for nearly a year and a half. The Nazis underestimated the Americans and the Soviets.
“But then when to ends begin?”
If you delivered HD video of Dr. Hoodoo bouncing naked hookers on both knees sitting on a bed of taxpayer money YOU would be persecuted for being a voyeur and not having 60 frame 4k.
At best he will be sufficiently finger wagged in congress to be “investigated”, only to be exonerated by some federal district court. The wolves are truly in every corner of the hen house (media, education, government, etc.). Even if you hit the power ball and he was convicted of something – one bad apple would not be allowed to expose the spoil in the whole bunch.
My wife is a liberal with a handful of (non-technical) degrees and believes every word of AGW uttered. Why? She doesn’t question authority. If I ask her how much has the earth’s average temperature is reported to have raised in 100 years she doesn’t have a clue… and doesn’t want to know!
Please don’t get me wrong, I really respect all the hard work put into all these blogs (I lurk 4 or 5) by all the rational professionals involved. At this point though I’m sure the choir is convinced.
Somebody take all this evidence, hire a professional (technical) host and create a feature length documentary that states our case factually without boring the average sports fan (and do it without Koch bros funding). If Michael Moore can do the opposite, why not?
Hammer some nails in this coffin and maybe Steve McIntyre could go fishing for a month.