People send me stuff. Earlier today, we saw that Ed Maibach himself hired an attorney to file an emergency stay of release of FOIA documents that George Mason University had planned to release, along with the retroactive removal of the previous tranche of GMU documents from last week that were quite damning in their illustration that Maibach and Shukla not only used their position at GMU to pursue and ask for punishment of climate skeptics and corporations, they were trying to cover it up late in the game by asking to switch to private emails once they started getting some serious public blowback.
There actions are so transparent as to their motive, that many WUWT commenters, including Steve McIntyre were able to see that the legal argument presented by Maibach was full of holes. Most importantly, it seems that GMU is not defending Maibach either with legal counsel or by issuing any statement, suggesting to observers that they have cut him loose from their compliance arguments and he is on his own. For that reason, I think he’s going to be toast.
Some of the very same arguments showing why Maibach’s position is untenable seen in comments from our previous story today, are in the legal response from CEI, which I have a few excerpts of below:
The full legal response is here, well worth a read:
CEI-response-to-maibach-FOI-stay
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Anthony:
I am not sure it is going to be physically possible for Wagen to insert his opinion about your website into the location you have in mind for him. I submit that something else is already there…
https://www.fugly.com/pictures/16208/head_up_ass.html.
You have a point; but I imagine there’s plenty of room.
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1120693
Haha
Founded in 1984, CEI is a Washington – based conservative think tank.
CEI is at the center of the global warming misinformation campaign.
With more than a $3 million annual budget, CEI is supported by both conservative foundations and corporate funding. Known corporate funders in addition to ExxonMobil include the American Petroleum Institute, Cigna Corporation, Dow Chemical, EBCO Corp, General Motors, and IBM. One of CEI’s prominent funders is conservative Richard Scaife who has provided money through the Carthage and Sara Scaife Foundations. CEI is also heavily supported by the various Koch brother foundations.
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Competitive_Enterprise_Institute
[and none of this matters, its what is being done in court that matters, but go ahead, spout hate -mod]
CEI is at the center of the global warming misinformation campaign.
Could you provide examples of the CEI misinformation of which you speak?
You’re off your snack mate. Genetic fallacy.
Disinfo wiki baaaahahahahahahahaha
Disinfowiki lol, you might as well have gotten a link from DesMog or RationalWiki
A source it is not, try harder you must
3m annual budget eh, Joel Schwartz who co authors a nice paper praising the EPA gets over 30 MILLION from the EPA.
One man gets over 10 years of CEI budget from the EPA. Baaahahahahaha
I pointed this out, with hard evidence to Oreskes on Twitter on her meltdown about soon getting 65k from an anonymous donor, and the loon had no response, because there was no possible primitive response she could provide, some of her followers asked for evidence, and I gave it and BOOM silence.
These folks just cant stand up in public open debate. Only within the circle of followers can their arguments survive
Yeh, they need to circle the Wagens…
(hope this comment appears after the comment to which it is addressed…)
With more than a $3 million annual budget
Absolutely peanuts compared to the tsunami of cash being directed at global warming shill non-profits.
spaatch is an unusual name and I remember this from http://www.ski.com.au forums discussion on global warming. http://forums.ski.com.au/xf/members/spaatch.65951/
Staunch CAGW fanatic who often quotes out of date data like the Mann Hockeystick.
Nothing you can say will alter his views.
To a troll, anything that runs counter to what they are paid to propagate is “mis-information”.
Only a small portion of CEI’s budget goes towards global warming issues.
The organizations you mention are just a few of many organizations that fund CEI.
It really is sad the way trolls actually believe that who funds you automatically discredits what you say.
Do you have any idea how tiny a 3 million dollar a year budget is? It will cover maybe 20 staff, rent on a building, insurance, consumables, reasonable travel. Oh, I forgot journal subscriptions, which are not cheap. Those corporate sponsors are contributing out of petty cash.
The only question, really, is whether CEI did anything wrong, and clearly they deserve to be burned at the stake for not lying about their heresy. Most people who believe in CAGW only do so because they think others believe. The 97% is a powerful persuader. If the heretics start whining about facts the whole thing could fall apart and then what would happen? No, burning’s too good for the CEI, send in the attack AsG! /sarc.
Lol Oreskes has removed the tweets showing Schwartz funding and the link to his paper about the EPA
https://twitter.com/naomioreskes/status/560125875556208641
Nothing to see here folks.
Talk about “denial”
After making these comments and one on Mann’s Twitter, no abuse no harassment, no insults nothing, I was locked out of twitter and over a week later my appeal has not been dealt with, still locked out.
Twitter is a liberal attack vector, entirely political, just like facebook
that is why i take part in neither . waste of time.
“Edward Maibach is a University Professor and Director of Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication”
Attention all institutions of higher learning: Is it prudent to allow faculty to extend your credibility in order to raise funds to sway opinion on political hot-topics? How about: The University X Center for Communication of Right to Life, or: The University Y Institute for Handgun Communication? So you think it is possible for you to hold at arm’s length your faculty who are executive directors of these centers simply because they raise external funds?
He can always say it was an experiment in climate communication to see how fraud affects public perception and what it takes to recover from getting busted.
Given that CSLDF is associated with Spiggle Law Firm to provide attorney assistance to Shukla, then Maibach’s very recent use of Spiggle to file the emergency stay (on production of additional emails) does give credence to the idea that CSLDF is also helping Maibach with attorney aid/assistance.
** http://climatesciencedefensefund.org/2015/10/10/climate-scientist-threatened-with-investigation-by-congress/
John
PS – this comment was inadvertently posted on a previous WUWT story about Maibach
A legal comment. The CEI brief linked in the post is not a response either to Mainach’s stay motion or his intervention motion. It was the brief that persuaded the judge to release the in camera documents Maibach/GMU provided the judge for the purpose of deciding whether they were public (subject to VFIOA) or private. One also must presume these put the best face on things from GMU’s perspective. The stay motion is about the rest of the emails discovered, that GMU was going to release to CEI, until the intervention motion can be heard. Fairly amateurish, the intervention. Maibach has already lost on the public/private issue. His argument that the VFIOA research exception applies fails on its face. This was advocacy, not research.
One is forced to conclude he would not still be fighting unless there is some ugly stuff in the rest of the emails.
That is a reasonable conclusion.
John
ristvan,
There is another possible story behind Maibach filing a last moment emergency stay (on the production of the remainder of the GMU emails).
Maibach’s filing could also just be an emotional angst type of knee jerk behavior with nothing to do with any attempt at either a plausible strategy or consistent logic.
John
What is this reporting? I’ll leave aside that nobody seems to mind, or at least notice, CEI cherry-picking quotes and getting facts. That’s at least errors originating in the underlying documents. I just want to know what this is:
I don’t believe those e-mails “quite were damning,” as I’ve explained before, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important can be seen in the headline of a previous post here:
I genuinely want to know what this “reporting” is because there is absolutely nothing in any of these motions calling for the “retroactive removal of the previous tranche of GMU documents.” The type of motion he filed isn’t even capable of calling for such. There is absolutely nothing on which to base this sort of “reporting.”
Thanks for your commentary. I made the headline based on the interpretation
of a legal expert who emailed me with the information and attachments.
While I can’t give the entire email I can provide this part:
“The attached filings show that this morning [Maibach’s attorney] rushed to
Richmond seeking an emergency stay of the GMU production of everything —
what we already have, and what we do not yet have — which we are owed today
under court order. ”
This is from the email sent to me by an attorney working on the GMU FOI
case.
I’m not a legal expert, nor am I privy to internal working details of the
case, so I believed this statement in the email sent to me. When my expert
source says “…emergency stay of the GMU production of everything — what
we already have…” That “what we already have” says “retroactive” to me.
I certainly didn’t make anything up, I relied on advice from an attorney
with inside knowledge of the case., and I defer to that person’s statements
over others who aren’t attorneys and who aren’t working on the case. The
attorney that sent me the email has not asked for a correction related to
the “retroactive” part.
Also, I’ve had no request for correction from anyone at GMU. In fact, there
has been no complaint about that from anyone but you. That’s not a slam,
just a statement of what I observed this week.
It is possible the attorney misspoke the opinion to me, or maybe there is
more to the story that neither of us is yet privy to. I would appreciate
amending/correcting your own headline which accuses me of “making things up”
when In fact I had a reference from an insider expert. If the reference from
the attorney is wrong (and I’ll ask) or somehow what he previewed and what
was actually filed with the court (maybe somebody caught the retroactive
part before final submission and removed it) I certainly have no problem
amending or correcting mine.
Anthony Watts
Here is the section of Maibach’s petition that Brandon Schollenberger apparently missed, that give a request to the court that is clearly retroactive, arguing that the April 22nd and May 13th court rulings be reversed. The May 13th court ruling was the one that release the first tranche of emails.
Maibach clearly was trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
This legal opinion (prepared by two attorneys working on the GMU/Maibach case) of Brandon’s recent blog post where he claims we “make things up” here shows why in fact there’s nothing wrong with my reporting.
Brandon is simply wrong.
Law is a lot more bridge than poker. Usually, not always, but usually “everything comes out in the wash.”
oops “a lot more like bridge”