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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YOU FAILED. AGAIN.
Yes, failed to get through to you again. Temperatures are MEASURED.
What was your question again? Gas … thermodynamics … calculating something … irrelevant …
Oh, never mind.
In the Delingpole thread Horne posts about “the difficulty of measurement, not surprising giving the complexity.”
But now he says it’s very simple: “Temperatures are MEASURED.”
Horne is just another “Say Anything” troller, contradicting himself when it’s convenient.
But, of course, for the most part, they are NOT measured – they are GUESSED.
Hansen was guessing temperatures at distances up to 1200km away from any measurements.
Schmitt just ignores real temperature measurements and uses “estimates” instead.
BEST can tell you temperatures 100 years prior to the thermometer being installed.
And so on.
okay, but that still does not explain the record breaking 2016 warmth posted by both UAH and RSS.
What explains the warmth is ENSO, the El Niño Southern Oscillator, combined with “The Blob” in the north central Pacific. At this point, ENSO is cycling into La Niña.
But why is each El Nino (and La Nina) warmer than the ones before it? Your reply does not explain why they are record breaking warm temps now in 2016?
dbstealey. I didn’t say the measurements were simple, I said the temperatures were measured.
Sorry for the confusion. I assumed you could read simple English.
Sorry for the confusion.
That’s OK, you can’t help it.
Ha ha ha … laughing at yourself is good. Keep it up!
Anthony, you cannot be thanked enough. The collection of hard scientists, dreamers, realists, jokers, punsters, and (mostly) combinations of the above that can be read and seen in the above comments is a testament to why your site is so consistently highly rated. I’m a professional engineer, and cannot over-state the amount of information from outside my field that I have learned here. I was sceptical of CAGW because of a professional knowledge of geology, and the variations of global climate in the past that have lead to current coal seams. I have learned at least 2 years worth of university level information in reading posts and the subsequent discussions. Wow.
Thank you, sir.
The gathering place you have created should serve as a light to future generations. Though I suspect the two of us would disagree on a lot of public policy (and political) items, I have felt welcome here though I am one of many who rarely adds to the discussion. The long-suffering moderators must have full hands (and seldom enough the full glasses that would make the job easier) keeping the discussion civil, (mostly) on-point, and free flowing. When I saw the “Connections” columns and TV shows I imagined that places like your website are where ideas come to mingle and breed. I can only imagine where this will lead us in 20 to 2000 years. I think that there is too much total knowledge now for a proper polymath. But a place where erstwhile jacks-of-all-trades can learn from masters? Priceless.
God bless you, sir.
Here is a good first course for engineers. Free. University.
[Link DELETED. Any “course” that denigrates skeptics of catastrophic AGW with the pejorative “climate change deniers” in the title is propaganda. It isn’t science. -mod]
Dennis,
I did not see a single engineer in the faculty list. This is very odd, since you suggest that this is a course for engineers.
The course description’s lead paragraph spoke of a 97% consensus of scientists. Whenever I read this, my first thought is that no one involved in this is a scientist, since consensus means absolutely nothing in science. Scientific theories are proven by collection and unbiased analyses of experimental data which can be replicated by anyone with a desire to do so.
Whatever scientists (or anyone else) believes without proof is irrelevant. If consensus “proved” anything, then the sun would be revolving around a flat earth that is 4,500 years old. These were consensus opinions in the past. Each was proved to be false, not once, but many times until the consensus was finally changed to accept scientific proof. More recently, the consensus was against Albert Einstein, Louis Pasteur, Alfred Wegener (plate tectonics), Girolamo Fracastoro (germ theory) and many, many others who were responsible for what we now know to be scientific breakthroughs.
Well then Dennis, since you mention introductory courses, here’s a great ~1 minute course by Richard Feynman on when a scientific hypothesis is “wrong”. That determination has nothing to do with “on authority” claims such as Royal Decrees and Theological Interpretations, or with any simple Dogmatic pronouncement about reality. And the determination has nothing to do with “Consensus” – because the basic principles of empirical science were developed during the Enlightenment to specifically avoid all other competitors in the determination of what is real. Any verbiage that results solely from Consensus does not become scientifically meaningful per se. It must still be tested against empirical reality by the Enlightenment’s science. Thus, it must also be potentially falsifiable in principle by empirical reality. It doesn’t and can’t prove itself.
In the Enlightenment’s Science, only the Earth’s own empirical reality – as validly measured technically and within meaningful limits – counts toward the always-unfinished, and always-subject-to-revision process of the Enlightenment science’s objective method of determining what’s real. Merely proclaimed, acclaimed, “repeated everywhere!” ad nauseam, voted-upon or otherwise “found to be agreed upon or ‘accepted’ verbiage” does not count. And simple Pre-Enlightenment ad hominems or ad hoc punishments against scientists, as alleged proxies against the soundness of their science are only just that, logical fallacies.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=richard+feynman+scientific+method&view=detail&mid=3E42F83570A3E8D106643E42F83570A3E8D10664&FORM=VIRE
In other words, the predictions made from a “Law” or hypothesis are then compared against empirical reality by a laboratory experiment producing its results, or otherwise by an experiment using the Earth’s “nature” and our ~”experience or observation” of it in its method and the Earth’s subsequent nature as its results, which are then compared to what the hypothesis predicted.
The latter non-laboratory method is what is taking place in regard to the hypotheses involved with “mainstream” Climate Science’s Catastrophic CO2-Climate Change. What its hypotheses predict about the Earth’s “mean” temperature – allegedly it is increasing in a certain way and specifically as a result of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations, along with the allegedly catastrophic results of this increase in temperature [regardless of its cause] are compared to the Earth’s “nature” as defined by ongoing measureable, observational results on the Earth, including their effects on the Earth and its inhabitants.
What this method has found empirically, Dennis, is that the hypotheses involved with Catastrophic CO2-Climate Change are “wrong” because their own stated predictions are [100%] wrong. Its hypotheses are therefore Scientifically Falsified – according to the self-evident rule that a scientific hypothesis claiming or predicting an empirical result must be in principle falsifiable by empirical observation. Otherwise it doesn’t assert anything of empirical, scientific value to begin with, because it is compatible or consistent with everything that subsequently happens to happen in empirical reality, and thus it asserts nothing about what empirical reality will be except for that triviality. Barking like a dog would be just as good. Moreover, the Catastrophic CO2-Climate Change hypotheses can’t even replicate or reproduce the record of what has already happened in the past climate by employing “mainstream” Climate Science’s own Models. It and they are not “real”.
It’s up to those who still want to claim an empirical role for currently increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations as a significant cause for climate change to try to find out why their hypotheses are completely wrong and to prove any of their modified beliefs or conjectures by making predictions which prove to be empirically correct – such that perhaps only one or maybe two out of many others suggested as CO2-specific are not wrong? At least that would be a much better start in heeling to the principles of the Enlightenment’s science than they’ve made up to now, since they haven’t made any correct predictions yet. Not one!
And certainly, the poorly functioning scientists who’ve failed to produce any correct predictions by using their Models and have resisted the obvious scientific need and responsibility to revisit what has instead essentially become only their own version of completely unhinged-from-reality Pre-Enlightenment Dogmatic Verbiage, should not be funded by our Government – especially since it has increasingly proven that it is also unable to distinguish reality from its own purely political needs, which are increasingly directed toward crass ends and psychopathological needs.
Dennis, whoever subscribes to the Pre-Enlightenment methods as above does not subscribe to the Enlightenment’s science. They are stuck somewhere back in the 1700’s, at best.
Thanks for the offer Dennis but I’m far too busy assisting to make inexpensive iron and steel (to improve millions of lives) to take time off to teach junior engineers what “empirical evidence” means. Engineering depends on recognizing patterns, determining causality, and recognizing what your variables are. Natural climate variation is glaciation cycles, 10 degree “average” swings, and 130 metre sea level change. Since the theoretical feedbacks that would result in catastrophic warming have never been observed in nature, that means that they don’t exist. Or at least, they don’t exist on Earth.
My training includes geology. For most of the earth’s history it has been warmer on land than it is today. I am willing to learn though, if you have something to teach. Not click-bait, your words. Why is the last 50 years different than the 50 million years?
Take your time, when an incorrect guess can kill people you should be sure you’re getting it right. I don’t mean theoretical people 100 years from now, I mean real poor people who are denied clean cooking fuel and refrigeration today because the policies you appear to support raise prices beyond what they can afford. If you don’t know then don’t fake it: claiming expertise you don’t have can be criminal.
Michael Doll, ‘isthatright’, and JPeden,
Thanks for your considered and well thought out responses to Dennis Horne.
Unfortunately, they will be wasted on Mr Horne, who has repeatedly shown that he is incapable of learning anything. He is the antithesis of a scientific skeptic; he is a closed-minded believer in the ‘carbon’ scare and in catastrophic AGW — but with no credible facts, or evidence, or measurements to support his belief. His arguments consist almost exclusively of appeals to questionable authorities, and baseless assertions. Facts roll off him like a rainstorm off a duck.
You can always tell a climate alarmist by the one thing they all have in common: zero skepticism. They are all alike in that respect. None of them are Feynman-type scientific skeptics. Alarmists believe, and no facts, measurements (or lack of measurements), or observations, or contrary evidence can ever change their belief.
It is obvious that Horne is no skeptic. His belief is no less intense than that of a Jehovah’s Witness, and you will get no farther in convincing him than you would with any similar religious cult member.
But thanks for at least trying. I’ve tried by posting dozens of links to data-based charts, and peer reviewed publications, and universally accepted empirical observations, and endless comparisons with the planet’s past temperature record. None of it has had the slightest effect. Horne argues his eco-religion incessantly. I don’t think he is capable of overcoming his belief system.
If you want to see/engage a liberal or two DETERMINED to believe in CAGW– https://forums.teslamotors.com/node/55374. Amazing.
Every scientist on the planet hopes his or her work will be important and accepted by other scientists.
Consensus.
Our Reality.
Dennis,
Acceptance of a paper by others is not proof of one’s hypothesis. Only experimental data and replication using that data are steps of the scientific method leading to a proven hypothesis.
“Every scientist on the planet hopes his or her work will be important and accepted by other scientists.
Consensus.”
A number of them also hope to go beyond “important and accepted”. The need for “important and accepted” alone, and without accurate, honest, & moral, created quite a bit of confusion in the late ’30’s & throughout the ’40’s. Consensus alone just helps you get your way … that’s all it does.
If a person feels a need to exaggerate or lie through omission to make their point, then deep down (or even at the surface) they must realize that there is something wrong with their point.
CONSENSUS: general agreement: agreement, harmony, concurrence, accord, unity, unanimity, solidarity.
If there truly were a consensus then you wouldn’t be here blithering on about “consensus”.
DonM,
The “consensus” canard was thoroughly demolished here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/09/aliens-cause-global-warming-a-caltech-lecture-by-michael-crichton
But like the Hydra, it keeps raising its ugly head. As Crichton says, ‘consensus’ is an extremely pernicious development that has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.
‘Consensus’ is used as an argument by people who have no other arguments. In the case of D. Horne, his pseudo-science arguments have all been destroyed with facts and evidence. ‘Consensus’, and his ridiculous appeals to authorities like Veterinarians and Pediatricians, are the only arguments he has left, because skeptics have won the science debate.
I happened to come across a HotWhopper post on this. It was fascinating to see a seemingly intelligent person be so far from reality.
She writes this:
“The emails contain nothing that shows anything more than the very real concern by scientists that there are wicked people who are trying to thwart efforts to mitigate global warming.”
I certainly believe that this is exactly what Shukla himself believed. Early in the email exchange Shukla receives this information: “He (David Michaels, expert in the case against the tobacco industry) feels the odds of the DOJ pursuing this case against industry are slim to none…” and chooses to ignore it. HotWhopper ignores it as well.
“very real concern” = “odds are slim to none”
In their world everybody else is wrong, therefore they are right and this is not email showing the underlying process that is at the root of alarmism at all, but simply bad advice from an expert in the tobacco case.
Yes, Miriam O’Brien aka Sou/hotwhopper lives in her own customized bubble of alternate reality. She’s really a sad person with a one-track closed mind. Most people eventually see her for what she is.
[snip – fake commenter name, fake email, fake question, fake everything. -mod]
It’s not logical to believe the oil companies don’t know the world is warming. It’s accepted by 97% of all scientists, that climate change is real, that it is man made, and that it is happening now.
The nerve of you people trying to claim scientists would mislead someone must take some kind of mental profile I don’t want to know more about.
Scientists don’t lie.
[??? .mod]
“….that climate change is real, that it is man made, and that it is happening now. ”
Yes, climate change is happening now, just as it has been changing for the past 4.3 billion years on our planet.
Please provide the empirical data which proves that all climate change is man-made.
I applaud the observations that our Earth is getting warmer and greener.
From what I know of conditions in the Ice Ages, I think we are very lucky not to be living in one.
Warmer is better.
Dan,
Bring it on, tool.
The EPA findings about CO2 being as it has been described will absolutely fail if tried in a fair and open court.
The RICO action should be against those who have convinced weak minded fools into believing the world is facing a CO2 caused climate crisis.
The last thing the climate kooks want is an open discussion of the issue.