Long time WUWT readers may remember that a defender of “the cause”, Professor Scott Mandia, donned a Halloween costume and professed his love of defending Michael Mann and others who have had to suffer the terrible, terrible, tragedy of people asking Climategate related questions about validity of science, peer review gatekeeping, and funding.
Mike likes the idea:
CSLDF was started when Scott Mandia posted a “Dear Colleagues” letter on his blog in September 2011. He wrote, “Climate researchers are in need of immediate legal assistance to prevent their private correspondence from being exposed” via misuse of open records laws. The outpouring of support was overwhelming, and helped pay for climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann’s legal defense against a massive and invasive records request. But scientists’ legal bills continued to mount, and Scott Mandia paired with Joshua Wolfe to create CSLDF. Source: http://climatesciencedefensefund.org/about-us/
Today, I got into an unexpected exchange over the word “denialist” with Professor Mandia, and I asked him a question. He responded almost immediately. Here is the exchange:
The reason I thought to ask this was because the recent Shukla debacle was highlighted by Representative Lamar Smith in his preservation letter as:
“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.
I recalled a comment made at Scott Mandia’s blog by the professor himself that stuck with me all these years. Given the RICO20 and Shukla mess, I thought it worth mentioning again. Here it is (highlight mine):
It seems to me that second “settled fact” might very well become unsettled as the Shukla Congressional investigation saga unravels. And with all that NSF largess in Shukla’s hands, and with the RICO20 letter he spearheaded looking to investigate climate skeptics, I naturally wondered if Shukla had given Mandia’s Climate Science Legal Defense Fund some money. It seemed like a valid question to ask.
Later in the Twitter thread, after Mandia threw out the Lewandowsky style “conspiracy” grenade, I asked again:
The last two questions were over a space of about 40 minutes, so it seems like he doesn’t wish to answer whether the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund has been the recipient of any money from Shukla and/or his IGES/COLA enterprise.
Now in fairness, he may just be pissed off that I asked such a question, and there may be nothing there at all. But I have to wonder why he wouldn’t at least address the question, because to not do so only invites more questions IMHO. It’s a curiosity.
If professor Mandia does respond here, I’ll elevate his comments to the body of the post to clear up any and all questions. I just checked Twitter feed again (now 4 hours later) and still no response.
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I do not like Scott Mandia not liking questions about Shukla’s PrisonGate!
No answer?….. off cleaning his servers and accounts?? allegedly!!
and cleaning out his “draws”..and I don’t mean “desk”
michael
With a dust cloth or something?
Some kind of wipe
In the revealingly costumed Dr. Mandia we have the Social Justice Warrior (SJW) mentality rampant.
Keep trying for a reasoned exchange with Dr. Mandia, Anthony.
But don’t hold your breath.
I can imagine on the day of the RICO20 plus Shukla testimony before the congressional committee their defense attorney will say for the record, “Dear Mr. Chairman. My clients wish to claim their 5th Amendment protection and not testify”, while on the steps of Congress the Shukla Family Choir gives a rendition of ‘Edelweiss’ for the press.
Ha ha
One would expect that the grant makers will exact accountability and producibles as detailed and agreed to in the grant contract. Publicly funded grants are subject to accounting rules and IRS oversight. With tens of millions allocated to Shukla et al, the auditing of said funding would be / should be very thorough. Unless of course there is a directive from on high to not exercise such auditing. As with any crime, follow the money.
please keep the pressure on, on all fronts. many are watching, but we need many more. it is time to blow the cover off these “scientists”. keep the moral high ground! post if you need support.
This is curious.
http://climatesciencedefensefund.org has a button marked “donate.” It leaves the site and goes to http://www.lcatrust.org/fsp/csldf/ . That is owned by a group called Land Conservation and Advocacy Trust. They appear to offer to maintain funding accounts, http://www.lcatrust.org/fs/ says:
Their current Sponsored Projects include:
Note that none of this implies that the CSLDF is not a 501(c)3 organization, but it does suggest that any funds would show up on their IRS 990. Lo and behold, there are some. Lo and behold, they only post them for 2009 and 2010. The 2010 filing shows only $16K in income and 4 unpaid officers. That’s before the CSLDF was formed. I’ll poke around some for later 990s, and post back if I find any.
http://www.lcatrust.org/about-lcat/facts-and-figures/financial-information/
Good Job Ric Werme. I went through the 501c3’s @ur momisugly IRS and could not locate the CSLDF which, it seems is not the legal entity claiming 501C status. It was a hurried effort but I will try again. (I did find some real gems though… for another time) So you say that CSLDF is a branch of LCAT Legal? Ok.
I’d like to see the payroll at LCAT and their filings/donors.
Am I reading the LCAtrust site wrong or are they advocating legal action to preserve open land as a means to increase real estate value?
http://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/ePostSearch.do?searchChoice=ePostcard&dispatchMethod=navigateSearch&pathName=forwardToEpostSearch&submitName=Return+to+Search
“Land Conservation and Advocacy Trust”
Less than $50,000 per year.
I didn’t know about that service. $50K or less for all the years. At this point I think it’s safe to say that both the LCA Land Trust and CSLDF are insignificant entities compared to Jagdish Shukla.
Anthony – someone that has access to the IRS Form 990s may want to check the Grant Schedule to see if the Defense fund is listed as a recipient of any Grants made by IGES. If IGES paid legal fees, one would probably have to examine the books and records to make that determination.
Hey Ric Werme… check this out…..
The CSLDF has not submitted anything to the IRS.
Per Guidestar.org
“Legitimacy Information
This organization is not registered with the IRS.
This organization is required to file an IRS Form 990-N.
This organization does not appear in the IRS’s most recent list of tax-exempt organizations. IRS records do not, however, indicate that the organization’s tax-exempt status has been revoked. Contact the organization for more information.”
A couple of posts have noted they probably have little income. Even if they had less than $50k annual income they would still need to report a 990-N
I think there’s something up here.
The have an announcement about the hiring of their first Executive Director
http://web.law.columbia.edu/climate-change/about-center/staff-and-affiliates/lauren-kurtz
NO WAY the cost of this hire is less than $150k so they have well over $50k in revenues and are not filing required returns.
One of the great ironies of this entire situation is that those who use the word “D**ier” are, in fact, the ones who are denying facts and data.
Like most of us here, I also believed in the great AGW hypothesis. Unlike those who are making their living from it, I was unable to find credible evidence that it was true. In fact, within a day or two of looking around (and this was more than 10 years ago, when ALL the internet stuff was pro-AGW) I soon realized that the reason I could not find credible evidence is that there IS no credible evidence.
I keep looking for credible evidence. I keep not finding any. The obvious conclusion is that there is no credible evidence to be found, just a lot of people who believe with religious fervor and refuse to recognize that what “evidence” they see is not even remotely credible.
+1
“Like most of us here, I also believed in the great AGW hypothesis.”
I’m not sure I agree with your assertion. I tend to think that “most of us here” never believed in it at all, or at least to any serious degree. I mean, Al Gore’s movie came out about 10 years ago and I remember thinking what a load of crap it sounded like, and so did most of the people I know. Just sayin…
I never bought it for a second.
It seemed pretty believable in 98 and 99, when we had that warm surge. However, by 9/11 I was already fully aware of the fakeness of it all. I was emailing with John Daly and had ditched the tree-planting business before I moved into my house, which I bought when the prices dipped after 9/11.
So, instead of “most of us”, I’ll say “many of us”. It was AFTER my epiphany that the politicians started jumping on the bandwagon.
Watching from that perspective, these last 14 years have been like watching a circus.
Aphan,
You are describing the CAGW hypothesis. He only claimed to believe the AGW i.e. that human activities cause the temperature to rise some. I am not convinced the “some” is at all significant compared to natural variability, but that was not the issue he raised. That catastrophic “C” makes a great deal of difference. I think most of us thought Al Gore was (and still is to this day) full of anti-scientific nonsense.
I once believed that a doubling ofCO2 might be able temperature by about 2C. The recent science has convinced me that the correct number is more like 0.2C.
well even i did believe in the possibility of the AGW hypothesis. But that was before the Al gore movie.
then one logical question came up “what did climate do in the past?” and read the GISP and GISP2 ice core report (oh yes the full 300+ boringly written pages paper) and even if the writing style was boring, the info was very eye opening.
Since reading that report i understood that glaciations and interstadials are more volatile then first thought etc etc and realized that this whole debate is handling about a fractio of what climate really can throw at us without the need of that molecule called CO2.
Since then i don’t buy the IPCC and all the alarmist stuff anymore knowing that in earth’s history climate has been ways warmer then now (and any of the IPCC models) and ways colder and nobody will be able to tell which way it will go. All i know is that a next period of glaciation will take place somewhere in the future millenia like it did before and that afterwards it will warm up again… etc untill the earth will come out of this ice episode like it did before. And so on…..
now they changed it into “climate change” Well i understood one thing: the only constant of our climate is….
that it changes
now i do believe that we contribute to “some” of that change, but that most of this “some” is mainly due to land use. and that CO2 is just a tiny fraction that is negligeable
Not me. The moment AGW was grabbed and parroted about by politicians I knew it was BS.
Well the was right on about one thing, as he says in his remarks to Kelly: (last paragraph)
“Solving the climate change problem offers tremendous economic opportunity”
Sure does, if you are on the good side of those handing out our tax payer dollars.
should be
Well, he was right…
We all knew what you meant, don’t ya hate it when a really good comment includes a typo.
Any waves coming from the Atlantic side ?
u.k.(us) October 2, 2015 at 5:25 pm
“Any waves coming from the Atlantic side ?”
No they don’t come over here. However, the wind is blowing around 20 mph towards Joaquin and that caused some rough surf in the Gulf. Good enough to body surf which is where I was earlier this afternoon.
Only very slightly OT. Google J. Shukla photo gallery. or go to http://www.iges.org/people/shukla_gallery.html. Site is still up. Sixth photo down is his “award” of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Same fraud as Mann.
I am making a screen capture to send along.
See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/01/uh-oh-jagdish-shukla-and-the-rico20-has-captured-the-attention-of-congress-and-foia-documents-are-coming-out/#comment-2039728
There’s a screen capture from https://www2.gmu.edu/about-mason/featured-faculty there of:
Jagadish Shukla
As a renowned climate scientist and director of Mason’s Institute of Global Environment and Society, Jagadish Shukla was instrumental in developing the doctoral program in climate dynamics in Mason’s College of Science. He is a member of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a lead author on a chapter of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, which was recognized when IPCC shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with former Vice President Al Gore.
Thanks for those pics, I am no annalist but looking at this mans eyes, his facial expressions ( mouth down turned) I would not give him a wooden nickle!
An interesting question is that when all these fake Nobel laureates (Mann included) apply for federal grants, are they stating that they are Nobel Prize recipients?
Jees I miss a ThumbUp button on here . Says a lot with a click .
I went on Twitter to see what that Denial101x graphic really says . It’s astoundingly stupid : the 31,000 quants who signed the Oregon Global Warming petition is a small fraction of the 12,700,000 graduates in those fields .
Who knew !!
Do these people think that they think ?
And the “warmers” are even smaller!
That is 31,000 more then have ever signed a petition saying human emissions of CO2 will cause catastrophic T rise, catastrophic SL rise, catastrophic increase in extreme weather, catastrophic increase in droughts, catastrophic increase in floods, catastrophic increase in the dozens of everything as claimed by CAGW proponents.
BTW, the facts support the skeptical scientist who signed the petition, as ZERO of the alarmist predictions have manifested. Bottom line; 31,000 correct skeptics, Over 30,000 wrong predictions by CAGW proponents.
“But scientists’ legal bills continued to mount, and Scott Mandia paired with Joshua Wolfe to create CSLDF. Source: http://climatesciencedefensefund.org/about-us/”
The fund looks like it’s about to be tapped out if Shukla is only the small part of the iceberg sticking out. Thinking that one would need such a fund says plenty about climate scientists annointed by the Bishopric of CliSci.
The irony of the juxtaposition of a graph showing 97% support for CAGW science and the dreadful measures proposed by them for the other 3% is also very telling. Why would one worry about a meagre 3% of dissent? Has this so-called 3% struck terror into the hearts and minds of the faithful with mere words?
No, what has happened is the 20yr ‘pause’ (I homogenized the length of the period by adding a year and a half to account for the bias in temperature records) has caused their own minds to have the thinnest edges of skeptical thoughts trying to push through. The mind is a wonderful thing. If you reject the hints of truth it is trying to give you, by (I can’t use the D word here) ah…disavowal, it will literally make you sick – hence, the birth of the climate science blues (I can hear a nice minor pentatonic base run here). Those with more cement in their heads began to worry about an epidemic so they held their noses and yanked an upslope into the pause to get rid of this threat. This desperate measure won’t work, of course, but it will carry them through Paris, I guess. Next, I guess they will correct the record by taking temperatures of the spray from whale blowholes when the ships start taking in cold water.
I find it fascinating that they are willing to spend so much of their own money to make sure the public is not able to see their work, and their conversations about their work.
Wow! “Denial” in the truest psychological sense of the word from Mandia. It’s creepy to the max.
It’s also pathetic that those of his ilk have yet to figure out that virtually no one denies there is a climate and that they sound intellectually disabled and stuck at a developmental level of about 12 years old..
I’m eating my popcorn while reading this thread and wondering how many warmers are also reading it and starting to get VERY nervous. All of the information being gathered here is readily available on the internet, and there are some very clever participants on WUWT, so it doesn’t take a genius to realize that connections are being made, discovery is taking place, and people with just basic access are beginning to form a very interesting picture. In panic, will they remove information that has already been screen capped or way backed? That would be fun to watch. Will they remain silent and hope that the S.S. Shukla et al sinks quietly without being tied to them? That Disappearing Defense Fund is going to need a lot more donations.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m imagining an inordinate number of hairy little vermin plopping into the water and trying to swim to the closest patch of sea ice they can find. Good thing there’s lot of it now. *grin*
some may recall Nuccitelli’s Guardian piece directed readers to a petition:
29 Sept: Guardian: Dana Nuccitelli: Is the fossil fuel industry, like the tobacco industry, guilty of racketeering?
Journalists investigated Exxon’s rejection of its own science to deceive the public. Scientists call for the Justice Department to investigate
Climate Hawks Vote has created a petition asking the Attorney General to launch a RICO investigation of Exxon and other fossil fuel companies.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/sep/29/is-the-fossil-fuel-industry-like-the-tobacco-industry-guilty-of-racketeering
929 signatures, and counting. doubt anyone signing has a clue about the Shukla/GMU revelations:
ClimateHawksVote Petition
Tell U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch:
Launch a RICO prosecution of Exxon and its fellow fossil-fuel companies for deliberate and malicious climate deception.
http://www.climatehawksvote.com/prosecute_exxon
Wikipedia: Climate Hawks Vote
Co-founder and chair RL Miller is an activist, blogger, and chair of the California Democratic Party’s environmental caucus. The other founder is Hunter Cutting, Director of Strategic Communications at Climate Nexus…
As a skeptic I sometimes wonder if I am part of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTFVMMCwsss
When I was your Superman(n) by the late great Dave Shelley:
tou·ché
I clicked your David Shelley link and also listened to “Soul Shine” and “Too Far Gone” while browsing the comments. It struck me that the climate change profiteers and swindlers have no soul and are too far gone for redemption. They would rather pimp themselves out for the public dole.
Tom Cochrane (singer) is from Snow Lake, Manitoba!!!
Ahhh…my Canadian heroes !!!!! Much better than Stinky !! LOL..
The problem (beyond climate) is that the best professors now are really really good salespeople, not so much scientists. I’ve worked with high level sales executives in big pharma that aren’t nearly as skilled as some of these university professors. A quick perusal of Shukla’s CV gives me bad vibes. Every good sales person or politician has a underlying story.
As an example,
Carly Fiorina – she went from secretary to CEO of HP in her own words. She is an example how the little gal can succeed. Sounds good doesn’t it. Another rags to riches story through perseverance and overcoming the odds. Except she was never a secretary at HP. Maybe a secretary in HS/College before going to UCLA law school or UMD b-school but who hasn’t had a menial job in HS or college.
Now back to Shukla, from his own resume and background.
Primary School (1953) – Under a banyan tree; village – Mirdha, Ballia, U.P., India
Yes, this is on his professional resume, his primary school education. He actually had to read by candlelight just like Abraham Lincoln too.
The sheer fact this line item is even on his resume should set off the bullshit detector.
J. Shukla was born in 1944 in a small village (Mirdha) in the Ballia district of Uttar Pradesh, India. This village had no electricity, no roads or transportation, and no primary school building. Most of his primary school education was received under a large banyan tree.
Here are a couple of the institutions that he founded that we should look into as well.
National Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), New Delhi, India
Physics of Weather and Climate, ICTP, Trieste, Italy
CPTEC, Brazil, Organizer training of Brazilian scientists at COLA
International Pacific Research Center (IPRC), U. Of Hawaii, Co-author, Initial Science Plan.
International Research Institute for Climate Prediction
This is going to be like pulling on a roll of toilet paper.
Anyone else notice a pattern with the current US administration and cronyism/favoritism, to the point of the FBI investigating and raiding the offices of US Fed government’s “CTO” friends’ businesses and offices?
Criminal nepotism?
Does the US Fed government really need a politicized office of the “CTO”?
I’m “with” the comments above, on US government-preferred immigrant classes and political pandering. To add specific names and organizations:
Search for yourselves:
Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
Vivek Kundra
Sushal Bansal
FBI
Optimal Solutions and Technologies
GRPA
Ballia district in India. This is where Shukla has bout his community college. There are links in the IGES webpage to this college, http://www.iges.org/gandhicollege/. Look at the ABOUT page and the links in the side bar as well. Be sure to use http:// not https://
You need to find a better example.
can’t find this posted.
Homewood has another signatory in his sights:
1 Oct: notalotofpeopleknowthat: RicoGate
By Paul Homewood
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/10/01/ricogate/
“CSLDF was started when Scott Mandia posted a “Dear Colleagues” letter on his blog in September 2011. He wrote, “Climate researchers are in need of immediate legal assistance to prevent their private correspondence from being exposed” via misuse of open records laws. The outpouring of support was overwhelming, and helped pay for climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann’s legal defense against a massive and invasive records request. But scientists’ legal bills continued to mount, and Scott Mandia paired with Joshua Wolfe to create CSLDF.”
“However, the IRS has no filings of 990 on file. it was launched in Sept 2011.
The 2010 filing shows only $16K in income and 4 unpaid officers. That’s before the CSLDF was formed.”
“The outpouring of support was overwhelming,”
but as usual probably raised very few actual dollars.
No requests for further donations by Prof Mandia so probably a very small amount of money with no activity hence no pressure to fill in forms.
Unless some money has “disappeared” there is probably nothing to see here.
How many other ethical scientists are using similar structures to cover their incomes is the real question.
Buckets should be the answer.
If Trenberth did have ties with Shukla he is one who might have learnt about it.
Is it Scott Mandia,
or Ozymandias?
Tom J. I could not find any evidence that Scott Mandia is from Oz, neither the one in the Antipodes or in Kansas.
George E. Smith October 2, 2015 at 3:17 pm
Well Supermandia put his foot in it right away, in stating that the USA is primarily responsible for the CO2 that is in the air.
Sorry Scott, you couldn’t be more wrong.
The USA is a net carbon SINK, not a SOURCE, and what’s more it is the ONLY land based NET CARBON SINK on the planet; of any size.
There are others of course like New Zealand, which is also a heavily agricultural and tree farming country, but it is very small compared to the USA.
So we in America, are more of the solution (to a non-problem) than the principal source of that non problem.
////////////////////////////////////////
Earlier this year (or at any rate sometime after OCO-2 released its first data presentation), Willis did an article on net sinks. Australia was by far the largest net carbon sink. Land area may be slightly less, but net figures as a CO2 sink put it way ahead of the United States.
But what is clear that despite having not implemented Kyoto, due to fracking and the switch to gas, the US has reduced its CO2 emissions more than any other developed country these past 10 or so years. It is the world leader in reducing CO2 emissions (not that I consider that there is any evidence that withstands scientific scrutiny that suggests that it is necessary to reduce CO2 emissions)..
is the massive decline IN manufacturing and production a goodly part of that?
and cheap? fuel is only good if you have a job to travel to and can afford it at whatever price.
looking at the jobs/production/massive stock inventory over at Zero Hedge
methinks any lowering isnt due to bummer n epa as much as depression hitting.
The OCO-2 just takes a snapshot. What was being referred to was the 20th century reforestation of north America (Canada and the US, really) which has been dramatic and calculated the region to have been a net sink for the century as a whole – and during the time of the recent rise of CO2 levels claimed as the cause of the most recent global temperature increase.
Of course, this is based on a large number of estimates which people can reasonably disagree over, but Prof. Mandia’s claim that the US is primarily responsible for the CO2 is demonstrably not true: There are a great many more nations with a much larger net CO2 balance during the second half of the 20th century, chiefly the USSR and the rapidly industrialising nations of SE Asia all of which not only massively increased energy production, but this was accompanied with harvest and utilisation of large areas of forest which have not yet been replaced.
I reached the conclusion a few weeks ago that anyone who types out sigh in a forum or chat, directed at another person, is a total douchebag. Prof Mandia’s tweet lives down to my expectations.
chugiaktinkerer
I use it often. I hope that doesn’t mean I’m a …… sigh.
michael 🙂
“Shut Up!!!”, he explained.
ahh, a follower of Andrew Klavan. I loved that bit he did on this subject
I also like his bit on the whole global warming “crisis”:
Or this bit of nonsense that encapsulates most of the CAGW argument:
A serious problem of any scientist calling other scientists “deniers” is that the accusation means that the person making it is not respecting the scientific method itself where others are actually required to question your assertions. To claim another scientist is a “denier” is to assert that you are not a scientist yourself as you are asserting that the scientific method is not to be followed.
This is an excellent point that everyone should take note of.
I would like to borrow this, for use as rebuttal, when I hear the phrase bandied about.