William Lau, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, T.N. Krishnamurti, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, Vasu Misra, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
Ben Kirtman, University of Miami, Miami, FL, Robert Dickinson, University of Texas, Austin, TX, Michela Biasutti, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY
Mark Cane, Columbia University, New York, NY, Lisa Goddard, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY, Alan Betts, Atmospheric Research, Pittsford, VT
From CEI’s web page:
CEI Defeats RICO-20 Ringleader In FOIA Lawsuit
George Mason University Must Release Documents Calling for Prosecution of Political Opponents
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) prevailed in a Virginia Freedom of Information Act (VFOIA) lawsuit against George Mason University (GMU). The VFOIA request sought public records showing how the “RICO-20” group of academics, using public funding, organized their call for a federal racketeering investigation of “corporations and other entities” who disagreed with them on climate policy.
The judge ruled for CEI on all counts in an April 22 ruling in Christopher Horner and CEI v. George Mason University that the court released today. The ruling concluded that by leaving it to faculty who simply told the school’s FOIA officer they had no responsive records, GMU failed to conduct an adequate search; the judge also ruled that documents including emails from GMU Professor Ed Maibach must be released to CEI.
“This victory puts on notice those academics who have increasingly inserted themselves into politics, that they cannot use taxpayer-funded positions to go after those who disagree with them and expect to hide it,” said Chris Horner, CEI fellow and co-plaintiff. “These records are highly relevant to the state attorneys general campaign that these academics hoped for, and will be of great assistance to the public in trying to understand how their tax dollars are being used for political fights.”
In 2015, George Mason University (GMU) faculty claimed “no records” existed in response to CEI VFOIA request for records regarding Professor Ed Maibach’s role as a ringleader of the RICO-20 campaign. Other universities provided proof that the “no records” claim was not true, which prompted CEI to sue GMU over the FOIA dispute.
The RICO-20, including six GMU faculty, wrote a September 1 letter from 20 climate scientists to President Barack Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and White House science adviser John Holdren requesting a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) investigation of “the fossil fuel industry and their supporters.” The scientists allege that the aforementioned interests “knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, in order to forestall America’s response to climate change.” CEI’s FOIA efforts extend to each public university represented in the letter. GMU is not the only school to falsely claim “no records” existed.
In May 2015, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) called for a RICO investigation of “fossil fuel companies and their allies.” The academics “strongly endorse” Sen. Whitehouse’s proposal. Documents provided by two universities suggest the RICO-20 recruited this support, not for any legislation, but for his call to prosecute political opponents, in consultation with Sen. Whitehouse.
In April, 2016, CEI was subpoenaed by the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands for a decade’s worth of climate policy related work. CEI is vigorously fighting the subpoena, which is an attack on its First Amendment rights.
Here is the order denying their appeal to the April 22nd decision:
The full court document: GMU-FOIA-Orders (PDF)
There’s quite a backstory to this, which we’ll cover later. -Anthony
UPDATE: Some emails are released in this document, they make for interesting reading: http://eelegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/img20160205_17361082.pdf
UPDATE2:
From EELegal
For Immediate Release:
May 13, 2016
Virginia Circuit Court Dissolves Protective Order on GMU Professor’s E-mail;
National Campaign led by AG’s to Use RICO Against ‘Climate Skeptics’ will be Revealed in Released E-mails
Washington, D.C. – Today the public came one big step closer to learning the truth behind how university professors launched “a national campaign” to have state attorneys general investigate and prosecute political opponents under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) — investigations which have now swept up think tanks and climate scientists who have dared challenge the climate agenda and claims made to force it into place.
Representing Christopher Horner and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, attorneys from the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic successfully argued that the public records of Professor Edward Maibach should now be disclosed to all, having previously been submitted to the court under a protective order. Having reviewed these emails under seal, we were aware of their connection and importance to the ongoing and expanding abuses by state AGs to use law enforcement powers to go after opponents.
On April 22, the Richmond (VA) Circuit Court held that the emails were public records, that they are not protected by any exemption and thus must be disclosed. Because they were being held secret under a protective order, and in light of the Court’s decision, today FME Law asked the court to dissolve the protective order and allow the records to be made public. The Virginia Assistant Attorney General, representing George Mason University, asked the protective order remain in place and that the ruling be stayed while it appealed the underlying decision to the Supreme Court. After extensive oral argument, the Court concluded that the appeal would most likely fail and thus it dissolved the protective order, allowing the public to view records about a disgraceful campaign that the public paid for.
Director of the FME Law Clinic, David W. Schnare, commented, “We need to protect the work of academics as set forth in Freedom of Information Acts, which laws make exception for information that should be legitimately protected, for example relating to research. But when professors voluntarily enter the policy arena, particularly in this case when they use their positions specifically to advance a political agenda, they are no different than any other government employee and the law treats them accordingly.”
FME Law, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, and others should now look forward to publicly discussing what this information reveals about the ongoing campaign by text pair funded academics, lawn force meant officials, and major political party donors to use the offices of attorney general to prosecute and silence political opponents.
A total of 5 PDFs, 190 pages
Here’s one:
Here’s another showing how they planned to use tobacco lawsuit tactics:
Here is the genesis of the whole affair. Shukla can’t believe the public remains mostly skeptical, therefore it must be a big oil conspiracy. Some scientist, op-eds replace factual research for him:
Here’s Shukla’s response to a tobacco lawyer meeting, seems his first effort into political lobbying turned into a disaster, as we see now:
“Don’t turn climate into God.”:
LOL! Union of Concerned Scientists bows out of climate circus they propose, doesn’t think it is a good idea to get involved:
Here’s the worst part – they knowingly tried to circumvent future FOIA requests:
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Good to see these “researchers” spending so much time “researching”.
They don’t have a choice, it’s mandatory to reply to FOIA.
…The PREVIOUS conversations in the Emails…D’oh !
“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”—Winston Churchill
Basically, the big money is to be made in the time differential. The same goes for policy over reach.
Resourceguy,
Wasn’t that Mark Twain? It doesn’t really sound like Churchill’s style.
Cyde @ur momisugly 5:03 pm, , I think Twain said ” boots on”, Churchill just changed it as far as I can remember.
All about manipulating people….nothing about the science
I smell personal liability coming soon to the cast of 20 and many others. What a bunch of arrogant, oppressive people.
They deserve what is coming for them.
The moral, ethical, social, and economic decay continues at a rapid pace in the USA via the current administration.This is just another example of what happens when you empower liberal progressives who think they are above the law. The next election cannot come soon enough!
Liberals have no morals or ethics…To them, the end justifies the means…no matter what !
Marcus15,
So I’m not the only person to have come to the conclusion that liberals feel that any and all means are justified by their ends.
“Progressives” too often see things as they think they should be, rather than how they are. And it pisses me off that classical liberalism has been hijacked by the looney left.
I spent four years from 2008 to 2012 looking forward with great expectations to the next election. Unfortunately, the forces of evil proved too powerful. I still have hope for 2016, but my faith in the American electorate has been shaken. I feel like I hardly know my country any more.
You are not alone, as evidenced by the actionable response of the populous and legal process to the continued assault on this great county’s earned rights and preferred way of life through a democratic process. Never give up, we are the vast majority that has been too quiet and is finally tired of it!
They are neither liberal nor progressive. They are regressive, totalitarian communists.
..Wow, liberals are having a really bad month ! LOL
Considering the sheer volume of advanced degrees among these individuals, there is an overwhelming naivete and sheer stupidity surrounding their words and actions.
Seriously…. these professors are freaking retards. Which goes a long way to explain people like Mann and Gleick and their ridiculous behavior.
Two aspects also jump out.
Absence of doubt. They truly believe that what they are doing is correct and right.
And assumption of immunity from their actions. They actually think they can get away with this bullshit, trying to lever their respective higher positions in academia to lend weight to their pontifications while doing all this on company time and company computers and using company email systems, then conveniently claiming it was all personal opinion done on personal time. Do they really think people are stupid enough to buy this crap?
In it’s simplest form, it’s called SOCIALISM !
you are spot on there. a high level education only proves capacity for memory, not how to use the information the memory stores. this is great news, it is about time someone put the reigns on these clowns.
all we need now is for the oil and energy companies to withdraw all fossil fuel based energy from every single state and country that are stupid enough to demonise the fossil fuel industry, starting with california (sorry anthony) to bring reality home in as harsh a way as possible to the people that continually vote the clowns into office that support this nonsense.
Terry @ur momisugly 2:07 pm, For a long time people were just told to believe and respect anyone with “authority” like the “copper”, the “doctor”, the “priest” the mailman and so on, I believe that meekness has finally come to an end, I just think many of those people in the establishment just haven’t realized it yet.
I may not be right on this but the NET has and is having a huge influence on how things are being perceived, things that used to take weeks if not months to get into the average guy’s living room now are there within hours if not minutes!
It’s the complete lack of doubt or any perspective that I find astonishing. Intelligent people I’m sure but utterly and willfully blind to the greater importance of open scientific debate. “Scientists” who are anti-science!
I’m a consultant and data provider in sports analytics. It’s not climate, but there are a lot of similar things in how data is collected asnd and analyzed. I have a couple friends who are brilliant in math. They are also liberals and seem to check their brain at the door when it comes to politics (and yes, global warming is politics). If they would do critical analysis of climate change to a fraction of a degree that they do with sports, they’d stop believing in a minute. But for them, it’s gospel.
So basically, it’s like a gang of thieves on their way to rob a bank getting stopped for speeding.
Nice mug shot, Anthony ; )
I suppose the answer to the question, “Who will protect us from our protectors?”
is, “The courts.”
The next question is then, “For how much longer?”
We are quickly coming to the brink of losing it all, when the Capital dictates acceptable dogma.
I don’t see anything in this that is surprising or damning in any way. I know this post says:
But seems an iffy description at best. Consider what Edward Maibach wrote:
Whether or not one agrees with his view on FOI law, it hardly seems appropriate to say people “knowingly tried to circumvent future FOIA requests” for trying to do their private activism on private accounts rather than involving their university.
that’s why we have the law courts Brandon. You have one opinion, others have a different opinion. I happen to disagree with you. so what.
Brandon, you missed the legal plot here. It was done on his GMU computer/server/ email account. He admits that. Does not matter legally whether at 2am on ‘his own time’. The law cares about where and how, not when. And whether he was ‘paid’ matters not. He used paid for by Virginia GMU resources for supposedly private purposes. In any company I have been associated with, the most polite term for that is ‘diversion’, and the most legally precise is ‘property theft’. There is literally no legal Maibach defense I can think of. And as a licensed lawyer, have been thinking for months on this with many previous comments around the blogosphere.
No. It is not “property theft” to use a work e-mail account for non-work purposes. That is done all the time. It isn’t anything, except perhaps unwise. Some organizations specifically instruct people not to do it, others happily allow it. There is no basis for creating some blanket statement implying criminal activity because someone chose to use a workplace e-mail for some personal matters.
Edward Maibach may be wrong about FOI law, but he didn’t commit a crime by sending these e-mails. And as far as anyone has shown, he didn’t do anything that should have been connected to his job. If he had used a private e-mail account from the start, this entire discussion fork would be non-existent.
…Brandon, it must be nice to live in a world full of Pixie Dust and Fairy Kisses, but in the real world…we have to live within the laws of reality !
Brandon, you are obviously missing Ristvan’s points.
Firstly, the emails are not his. Any work done for a university remains the property of the university, including intellectual property. As such, he has no basis for declaring that they are exempt from and FOI request. You note that he does not try to declare them private property? Because he knows that they are not.
Secondly, the emails in aggregate will potentially show a conspiracy was formed with an intent that may have led to a breach of other laws. That has yet to be judged in a court of law, so as yet, no criminal or civil violation has been found.
And to put a final nail in your argument, Edward Maibach’s day job is to communicate about climate change:
“His research – funded by NSF, NASA and private foundations – focuses on public understanding of climate change and clean energy; the psychology underlying public engagement; …” (see http://www.climatechangecommunication.org/portfolio-view/edward-maibach-4/)
I would like to see his explanation for how his “private” behaviour is not directly connected to his job. Even if he had used a private email account, his employer would be asking him to explain this serious conflict of interest. As it is, he and his colleagues have brought his employer into significant disrepute.
Brandon Shollenberger May 13, 2016 at 3:08 pm
Wrong Brandon you are missing the point. You can’t even charge your personal phone, Its called stealing.
Think I’m over harsh? These people were not working on sanctioned activities that the State and Granting organizations had agreed to. Game over.
michael
It might be better to differentiate between “property theft” and “theft of services”.
Many public employers have specific rules against employees using equipment,
systems, and services meant for institutional use and are NOT legally available to
the citizenry at large.
In public academic institutions such “rules” show up in civil service rules & regulations
for classified and unclassified employees, and are usually reflected in personal
service contracts for academic staff.
The use of “company” equipment to knowingly conspire to or actually violate the
civil rights of others opens a huge can of legal worms for both the conspirators AND
the institution. Generally, the institution will be prohibited from mounting legal
defenses for willful violators of civil rights laws… and most errors and omissions
policies covering academic folk are void in such instances.
Unbuttered salt on my popcorn, please.
Excuse me. If those people had been “trying to do their private activism etc.” there would have been no need for the Email, late in the day, to ask for their personal Email addresses – they would already be known.
No. People often use work e-mail accounts for things not related to work. When it occurs to them that might cause attention to be paid to those e-mails, with them even potentially being released to the public, they, it is natural they might chose to use different e-mail accounts.
Perhaps they should have thought of it sooner, but that hardly shows nefariousness. Unless these people actually thought their activism was tied to their job duties, them deciding not to have it subjected to the oversight of their employers is unremarkable.
@Brandon
The horse already left the barn. Too late.
Brandon – Generally, I believe you are correct that it’s not illegal to send personal emails from a work account. However, as I tell my coworkers, if you do, those emails are no longer private, and you must assume that other people in the company can and will read them.
Even if the messages were strictly personal, putting them on the university email made them fall under the scope of FOIA. The act of sending the email may not be criminal, but the contents of the emails may disclose criminal activity.
Brandon, “No. It is not “property theft” to use a work e-mail account for non-work purposes. That is done all the time.”
It is whatever you agreed to when you signed the paperwork for the job. Company I worked for said specifically that while email and internet were not provided for the personal use of employees innocuous and inconsequential uses, such as sending emails home for scheduling with the wife, etc. or browsing during lunch hour after work wouldn’t generally be audited unless the issue came up for some other reason such as an employee performance review. In any case the emails were company property and so were all uses of the equipment.
Such terms and conditions were almost certainly included in Mr. Maibach’s employment contract, also in the GMU ethics policies and other university policies and regulations. Not the least of which would be complying with regulations covering grant moneys, equipment, and actions done under them.
On the face of it he would be wise to consult appropriate attorneys on his own dime and time. GMU’s own attorneys will be looking out for the university, not Mr. Maibach’s best interest. It’s of no consequence that much personal use of email, company computers, and equipment is done. That doesn’t mean that employees can’t be misusing the privileges or liberties that are allowed by conspiring to commit crimes.
blcartwright:
Of course. I don’t disagree at all. I’ve said the same thing many times myself. The issue is people implied nefariousness over people sending personal e-mails from a work account then deciding to switch to personal accounts. That isn’t nefarious at all. It certainly isn’t reasonable to call that an evasion of FOI laws.
phil cartier:
That is true. It is certainly possible for employers to restrict how their employees use their work accounts. If someone could find an agreement regarding the use of the university e-mail accounts used here, it might turn out there was misuse. We can’t just assume there was misuse though. It’s quite possible (and I suspect even likely) this was within the accepted norms of university e-mail.
Brandon – also to the illegality of hiding from FOIA. That does not involve moving future conversation to private email accounts (as long as they are truly private, and not work-related conversations). The defendants knew the requested emails existed and were on the GMU system, but they lied and said the emails did not exist or could not be found. “There’s nothing here!” They can possibly be prosecuted for those lies.
Brandon Shollenberger May 13, 2016 at 3:03 pm
No. People often use work e-mail accounts for things not related to work.
“No. People often steal work e-mail accounts for things not related to work”.
whats the difference?
michael
blcartwright:
Er, sorry about that. I must have forgot to close a blockquote tag.
[It is not clear where the blcokquote html should be inserted. .mod]
Brandon, you might have a point there, OTOH, it seems they had a long history of emails on IGES and GMU account prior to that email. They made the letter with the 20 signatories public on Sept 1st, 2015, and then on October 2nd 2015 called for them to start using private accounts. In one of the emails shown above at the top on Sept 29th Maibach says: “The situation with the RICO letter continues to escalate rapidly” in response to the public pushback they were getting. Just three days later, he and Shukla are calling for the private email addresses.
It seems clear to me they wanted to “go dark” after realizing they have an uncomfortable situation on their hands. While you can certainly argue they may or may not have wanted to circumvent FOIA laws, the fact that this comes after they get a load of vocal public pushback suggests a wagon-circling exercise to me.
Maibach used his GMU email account many times prior to that to design, solicit, and promote this letter. His claim that it wasn’t done on the public dime really doesn’t hold up given he used the GMU email address for months for that purpose prior to asking for use of private email on October 2nd.
It shows how stupid these people are that the never considered that in the first place, so it also shows incompetence in planning.
Clowns, how many of these thieving idiots could you fit in a mini?
Oh, and let’s not forget, they lied about having these emails at all in response to early FOIA requests. If that’s not knowingly circumventing FOIA, I don’t know what is.
..Anthony, what you are forgetting is the difference between their Email having the “Letterhead” of an institution (work/GSU) or just their name( private).. They sullied the name of the GSU just by using GSU accounts …
they lied about having these emails at all…….
and that’s the nail
Anthony Watts:
Of course. They realized by using university accounts for their personal activism they created the potential for people to use things like FOI laws to examine aspects of that activism. That helped cause them to decide to stop using work accounts for their personal activism. But people deciding to stop using work accounts for personal activism cannot reasonably be described as conspiring to circumvent FOI requests. FOI requests should never have applied to this activism in the first place (as they should not have used work accounts for it).
There is nothing about using one’s work account to send e-mails which implies one is being paid to send those e-mails. All it says is that’s how they knew to get in touch with one another. There are tons of non-work e-mails in university mail servers. (Heck, just look at how many are in the ~200k Climategate e-mails.)
Where, exactly, did they lie about having these e-mails?
“The ruling concluded that by leaving it to faculty who simply told the school’s FOIA officer they had no responsive records,
In 2015, George Mason University (GMU) faculty claimed “no records” existed in response to CEI VFOIA request for records”
Brandon, per your comment, you really need to learn more law. A lot more.
I was hoping our host would respond to explain his serious accusation of lying, but since he didn’t, I’ll go with Latitude’s comment:
These are two quotes from a press release by CEI. They’re not a legal finding, and they don’t involve any quotes from anybody that could be labeled lies. The words “no records” placed in quotations are not a quote from any resonse, but rather a shorthand phrase CEI used in their lawsuit.
The reality is the released e-mails show no lying was involved. Edward Maibach clearly indicated he did not believe his e-mails were public records, and as such, provided none in response to the FOI request. He clearly spelled out his reasoning for this to the FOI officer.
His reasoning was absolutely wrong, and the FOI officer should never have allowed it. Quite frankly, she gave him bad instructions regarding the FOI requests which made his position tenable. Had she actually done her job well, she would have explained why his position was misguided and based upon confusion. She didn’t. Whether it was because of she misunderstood him, is incompetent, is lazy or is completely dishonest is impossible to know.
What we can know is the university’s method for handling FOI requests was bad, its FOI officer did not do her job properly, and these e-mails should have been released from the start. That doesn’t mean anybody lied though.
ristvan:
This sort of comment is useless. If you don’t have anything to contribute, plese just don’t respond to me. It wastes everybody’s time.
And of course it doesn’t matter where you work, the choice of out going email account* is up to the sender. It is a deliberate choice as far as I’m concerned and that is what has bitten them! They used the authority of their institutions to make an impression, a political and tactical decision that they latter regretted.
*The “send from” address. A choice of account is available from any email application and associated web interfaces are also always accessible.
Brandon’s first comment, “for trying to do their private activism on private accounts rather than involving their university.” No, not “rather than”, but “after”. You can’t dispute that they did involve GMU, can you? That the Comm. Director was, at the very least, indicating this conversation should not be on GMU’s system, for some reason? At which point, it had occurred on that very system? I don’t disagree private activism should be on private accounts, for more than one reason (at least two; the one you see and the one you refuse to see). To that point, it’s a routine FOIA request. Then, you recognize Maibach’s response is wrong, but Anthony shouldn’t call it a lie. Where to begin-let’s try the beginning. The letter itself calls for prosecution of opinion advocacy, which is to say, demanding gov’ts sworn to protect free speech investigate that which it’s supposed to protect. The letter itself was improper activism, agreed? Before you disagree, have you considered that your exposure of Mann’s fraud may mean the next VI (or NY) subpoena is coming your way? Because that’s what the letter demanded (indirectly). Anyway, in response to allegations by skeptics of improper activism and calls for FOIA requests (at this very site, did you comment there?), the Comm Dir. directs the conversation go private. Maybe for legitimate reason, maybe to hide, maybe both. Up to there, maybe you can give him the benefit of the doubt. But (here’s my point-sorry for the long but necessary buildup) Maibach’s written response that the background communications leading to a letter communicating climate change advocacy is not related to his job as CC Comm. Dir., communicated on GMU accounts, is a plain lie even if you are blind to it. Shukla saw it as Maibach’s job, does that count? Criminal convictions requiring a knowing lie are made on less circumstantial evidence than this. If gov’t atty decided to investigate the letter as a civ. rts violation of individual skeptics and this email was private from the jump, he or she could get it by subpoena, no?
Brandon,
You know that you write nonsense here.
Consider how hard it would be for a Maibach to pick up a phone and call any number of ‘important’ people, if he did not have the credentials associated with his university post.
When one takes a senior office, it is implicit in acceptance that there is duty to uphold several historical concepts like honesty. This is held so important that governments often require oaths as part of the administration.
Are you arguing in favour of universities being a new Wild West of lawlessness by force?
Geoff.
Geoff Sherrington:
Really? That’s the sort of response I’m going to get? Not only are you going to say I’m wrong, you’re going to claim I know it is wrong too… really? I hope you realize how silly that is. Not only is that rude, it’s demonstrably false as there is no chance I’d ever agree with the depiction you give. You say:
But the fact one’s job can increase their credibility does nothing to suggest any e-mail they send from a workplace account is part of their professional career. When somebody like James Hansen spent his personal time as a global warming activist, he wasn’t getting paid for it. When he e-mailed people from a private e-mail account to discuss his activism, he wasn’t trying to circumvent FOIA laws. That his activism was more successful because of his government position doesn’t somehow make his activism fall in the purview of laws designed to give people oversight of governmental operations.
Are you arguing Scottie Pippen couldn’t have a successful career without Michael Jordan on his team? That’s about as connected to anything I’ve said as your question is to anything I’ve said. And you probably know that. After all, you know what you’re writing is nonsense. I can tell because my ESP lets me read your mind and see all your nefarious thoughts.
Brandon: Any e-mail they send from a workplace account belongs to their employer. If that employer is the government or a state run school, they will fall under FOIA. These people don’t seem to have realized that everything they wrote on the university emails could one day be expected to become public knowledge, and expose their conversations to scrutiny. If, when the authorities examine the details of how the initial search at GMU turned up empty, find that people lied, then punishment for that may follow.
Falls under rules covering the “use of public resources and funds” as described in your state laws. Federal laws also apply if federal funds are involved, which is the case here.
“The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) prevailed in a Virginia Freedom of Information Act (VFOIA) lawsuit against George Mason University (GMU).”
“This victory puts on notice those academics who have increasingly inserted themselves into politics, that they cannot use taxpayer-funded positions to go after those who disagree with them and expect to hide it,” said Chris Horner, CEI fellow and co-plaintiff. ”
Don’t you just love the smell of science here! Scientists quacking in their boots when confronted with the all-compassionate power of the CEI! Oh dear, oh dear.
What are you babbling about? Scientists are ducks? And pray tell, what “science” were the Gang of 20 doing?
You dont want to discuss the contexts of the emails do you tho..
Can’t use #exxonknew now can you lol
I fail to remember any times you came here discussing science, copy paste merchant
You must be gutted Wagen, this essentially is the proof there is no line between activism politics ideology and science with these people
There was never any proof Exxon did anything, it was all started by Macarth.. I mean Whitehouse
political witch hunt.
Or are you going to go all denial on us
..Wagen is the Vanguard of the liberal desperation to come !
Quacking in their boots???. The girl in the orange sweater on the left side of the above photo seems to enjoy wearing boots…. As to weather she quacks or would quack when confronted with “compassionate power” (???) or any other type of power is something that remains as an unknown.
And is she a scientist? she doesn’t seem to be named and labeled like the others in the photo, so it is hard to tell fur sure.
Your sarcastic inference that they would not be concerned is a little silly. First they tried to hide, then they lied, then they got caught, then they tried to cover up, then they were exposed. All the while soliciting for (free?) legal advice, and wondering weather they they could make they light and attention go away by “retracting” the letter.
I do believe that a few of them are quitely quacking (boots or no); and if they are subject to/of reasonable and competent investigation then a few more will be very quietly singing to cover their assess.
Now that reminds me of this old Monty Python scene.
..If Trump gets elected, they won’t be “Quacking in their Boots”, they’ll be chitting in their pants ! ( I have to put nice words because I’ve been too aggressive against fools, so I’m sensored)
Where I live we have a lot of ducks in the streams that meander around our housing units but if I were one of the Rico 20, I might be quaking in my boots but leave the quacking to the ducks. I’ve heard doctors with PhD’s being called quacks before so I’m not sure if you thought quacks when you saw the PhD’s next to signers names.
This deserves a name. “ShuklaGate”?
(If those involved had the right names it could have been “ShuklaFranandOllieGate”!8-)
gunga, I feel that “Water Gate” covers it nicely, particularly regarding your moniker. Or course the more common name “Traitors Gate” applies as well.
Trenberth? Surely not the star of the “Climategate” email scandal way back then? He must be a slow learner.
OMG…London, Ontario in Southern Canada just got a Weather Warning of an approaching snowstorm….halfway through April !! Glo.Bull Warming is going to bring on the next Ice Age in Canada ! LOL
It’s May.
And we have a freeze warning.
People thought I was nuts to wait until Memorial Day to plant my veggie garden–they now know why I wait while they are covering their seedlings, mine are safe and sound inside.
…I knew dat..I was just testing ! LOL…Can I have your address so when the chit hits the fan , I will know where to go ? LOL
..It feels like February
no no no NO!
Cold weather is weather, warm weather is man made.
You’re doing it wrong :p
Hey, if they can exaggerate, so can I !!
http://www.am980.ca/2016/05/13/flurries-highlight-cold-weather-forecast-for-this-weekend/
Just my thoughts:
Alex Bozomski admits it’s all about hard-left politics and not science:
“..it’s just an impossible to not scream hard-core left. You’re talking about prosecuting Conservatives”
Ed Maibach pretty much confirms that it’s got a liberal agenda:
“I hope you will highlight any language that screams ‘liberal drivel’”
Edward Sarachik seem to be angling for going after individual sceptics:
“Does the RICO only apply to organizations or are individuals also liable?”
Shukla drafted in the help of his assistant Colin Nackerman who Shukla admits is a “dedicated activist.”
If you check out Nackerman’s Linkedin profile you can see he is linked to all the usual radical campus groups including 350org. https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinnackerman
Nackerman is a typical example of the kind of SJWs that Shukla is mixing with.
One of the correspondents Bob (?) talks about Prince Charles being included on a trip to Antarctica. “The Prince said he’d consider it, minding that he not get too far into policy and politics”
This will infuriate people in the UK, as Prince Charles should not be involved in politics AT ALL, but seems to be admitting that he IS in fact getting involved in political matters.
Shukla’s double-dipping has come to light in the media, but EM tries to maintain to Chris Mooney that Shukla is “…honest and honourable, and a dedicated servant to humanity”
It seems Maibach is prepared to defend the indefensible!
Amongst all the emails Barry Klinger (Assoc Prof at GMU) provides a link to an interesting web-page of his:
http://mason.gmu.edu/~bklinger/rico.html
I’ll let WUWT readers to give their opinions of what Barry has written.
i liked the effort to paint shukla as a sceptic at the end, using a paper he wrote on natural variability that states it cannot account for 0.8c warming of sea surface temps but can negate the lack of warming over the last decade. yet another “pause buster”. lmao.
I read the letter and in it was this:
“Humans only contribute to the “forced” variability, so the “Unforced Multidecadal” part is natural). Furthermore, how about if the Abstract of that paper said the following:
…internal multidecadal pattern (IMP) is stochastic… and is of sufficient amplitude to explain the acceleration in warming during 1977-2008 as compared to 1946-77.
Wasn’t there a pause that even the UN admitted? BTW that letter was a really obtuse piece of work IMHO. but hey I have been wrong before I just can’t remember when (sarc).
I am experiencing a little chuckly schadenfreude over the “please show me the parts where I read like an irrational ideologue” part.
The Climate racketeers have been caught with their pants down, now take them behind the woodshed for the coup de grâce take down!
Taking a page from John Grisham’s The Firm. If (a) “double dipping” as Shukla might have done is fraud in the legal sense, (b) and Shukla sent via the US mail documents that were a party to that fraud, does it then follow that Shukla is liable for Mail Fraud? Just asking.
In legal short hand, yup.
Union of concerned scientists involved in this nonsense, someone please sue Nye oh that would be sweet.
AGW not political huh ROFL
Given they looked for lots of scientist signatures it is pretty obvious lots of scientists declined to sign their letter
Oh the irony. Shukla has clearly become an activist. He can say that he has never been involved in politics, but he most certainly has been (IPCC). It wasn’t long ago when he was admitting problems with climate models that would garner labeling of “skeptic” or “denier.” Chairman of a panel on climate modeling that concluded regional climate change model predictions were “laughable?”
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/the_limits_of_climate_modeling/2028/
“…Many in the modeling community are growing wary of such spurious certainty. Last year, a panel on climate modeling assembled by the UN’s World Climate Research Program under the chairmanship of Jagadish Shukla of the George Mason University at Calverton, Maryland, concluded that current models “have serious limitations in simulating regional features, for example rainfall, mid-latitude storms, organized tropical convection, ocean mixing, and ecosystem dynamics.”
Regional projections, the panel said, “are sufficiently uncertain to compromise the goal of providing society with reliable predictions of regional climate change.” Many of the predictions were “laughable,” according to the panel. Concern is greatest about predicting climate in the tropics, including hurricane formation. This seriously undermines the credence that can be placed on a headline-grabbing prediction in May that the future might see fewer Atlantic hurricanes (albeit sometimes more intense)…”
I agree wholeheartedly. The problem for the models is the water cycle dominates, which is why all the warming of the past 150 years hasn’t have any detectable effect on water vapor.
The IPCC and NASA believe that without an atmosphere the earth would be -19c. They claim the earth is 15c because of the GHGs in the atmosphere, but the atmosphere is the hydrological cycle, and that cycle prevents the earth cooking. Otherwise if water did not evaporate the earth would be uninhabitable because it would be cooked. The temp would be closer to 50c+
Basically, add up all the heat in the oceans and atmosphere, and you have the heat the water cycle stores. This heat would otherwise be baking an arid rock floating in space.
The claim the atmosphere adds about 33c to temp is patently false, and only true if you consider one element, GHGs, but leave out the water cycle
and of all that heat in the water cycle, how much does 1c change impact that? One look at water vapor trends shows, it doesn’t have any meaningful effect at all
We have an entire generation that has the world backwards.
Progressive idiots think the atmosphere warms the earth when the reality is that the atmosphere cools it.
I also read countless threads claiming cold objects heat warmer ones.
Billions spent on an imaginary view of the world.
All the scientific data supports the basic laws of thermodynamics and the fundamental gas laws, yet we have this farce of “climate science” persisting.
P.T. Barnum has nothing on these guys.
Pretty sure Jagadish Shukla is not the guy in the center, but the guy in the blue blazer.
RICOgate?
Perfect
It’s not a political fight. It’s a political witch hunt. With a star chamber, Kangaroo Court and Inquisition tossed in.
My, my. And you think NY AG Schneiderman’s Martin Act subpoena is not?
So you do not like phase three (per Gandhi) return fire. Get used to it. Cause I assure you it is coming, hard and heavy and often.
Yep, 90% lawyers give the rest a bad name.
“The Germans held the childish belief that they were going to bomb everyone else, and no-one was going to bomb them in return …” W. Churchill (paraphrased)
try this –
http://freebeacon.com/politics/clinton-calls-for-exxon-probe-after-company-cuts-off-foundation-funding/
Thanks Bubba, interesting read, talk about biting the hand…
..If liberals think it’s bad now, wait until President Trump takes over !