The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Dear Ben Santer: Resign

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Dr. Ben Santer, another one of the fake climate model citizens who works on the public dime at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has called all his comrades to join him in a weep-fest over the "crime" of Climategate.

Dr. Ben Santer, one of the climate modelers who works on the public dime at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has called all his comrades to join him in a weep-fest over the "crime" of Climategate. Of course this bully who wanted to "beat the crap out of" former Virginia state climatologist Pat Michaels thinks he's the victim, as he explains in a letter to "colleagues and friends:"

I am sure that by now, all of you are aware of the hacking incident which recently took place at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU). This was a criminal act. Over 3,000 emails and documents were stolen. The identity of the hacker or hackers is still unknown.

The emails represented private correspondence between CRU scientists and scientists at climate research centers around the world. Dozens of the stolen emails are from over a decade of my own personal correspondence with Professor Phil Jones, the Director of CRU.

How the Climategate emails were extracted from the UEA CRUnit may or may not have been a "criminal act" -- that has still not been determined. But Dr. Thug clearly doesn't understand how this whole public/private nature of correspondence is categorized. Let me explain.

Private emails between two or more parties: These are sent and delivered between personal email accounts such as those set up for individuals and private businesses on services like Google and Yahoo! You know, like the personal accounts that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin utilized last year that were illegally hacked.

Public emails subject to open scrutiny and broad dissemination: These only need to be sent by, or delivered to, at least one email address that is a public, government institution funded by taxpayers. An example in Great Britain would be the University of East Anglia, where Phil Jones was once director of the CRU. Another example, in the U.S., would be the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where every employee has a "llnl.gov" email address. That "dot-gov" suffix is a dead giveaway.

I suppose there are exceptions in the law for LLNL and other government agencies to withhold documents and emails from the public for national security purposes. Much as Santer might like to think global warming is one of those exemptions, I doubt he could successfully make a legal case for that.

So Santer's messages to Jones and others at UEA were not "private" or "personal" correspondence. If he wanted them to be, he should not have used his llnl.gov email account with his official LLNL affiliation in the signature line. He should know better, since LLNL makes clear those distinctions. But if he did want to communicate with Jones on that level, I doubt he could have conducted official government business -- such as discussion of climate data -- on a Google account. That would have been evading public scrutiny. A Santer-Jones Google exchange would have had to been about the merits of U.S. vs. European football or something like that.

One last thing about Santer: he might want to review LLNL's "Mission, Vision and Values" statement "that guides the way we accomplish our work and the way we interact with each other, our colleagues, sponsors and stakeholders, and the public." Included among the values:

Integrity and responsible stewardship of the public trust
Intense competition of ideas with respect for individuals
Treating each other with dignity
A high-quality, motivated workforce with diverse ideas, skills, and backgrounds

How the desire to "beat the crap out of" someone who is a fellow scientist, and who is also a taxpayer who helps pay his salary, is in accord with these above values is something I'd love to hear Santer explain.

But from the looks of his whiny letter, he's of a completely different mindset. He thinks that while he's on the public payroll that he has the right to intimidate dissenters, and to keep everything he writes in his LLNL role a secret. Clearly he hates accountability to his bosses.

Looks like there's no other choice for him, then, but to quit.

topics:
Global Warming, Environmentalism, Climate Change, Climategate

View all comments (8) | Leave a comment

boballab| 12.3.09 @ 1:24PM

That whiny letter has been taken out of context so I'll help fill that in. Ben Santer is the IPCC Scientist that on his own changed an offical IPCC assement chapter to match the pre determined conclusions in the Summary for Policymakers. The Summary for Policymakers was written before the Assement chapters were even written by the scietists. Then when the scientists that contributed to that IPCC chapter finished producing their report, there was Good ol Honest Ben changing it without any input from those Scientists. Just go check out the IPCC reports from 2001 and what the scientists really said not just the SUmmary for Policymakers.

Ed Gagnon| 12.3.09 @ 3:34PM

The Value of Values
www.strategicpublishinggroup.c.....alues.html

An individual’s values are established in childhood and serve as filters when determining right from wrong throughout the person’s life. In today’s society, the process of establishing values within children is given little concern. People place greater emphasis on day to day activities and personal ambitions, than they do on the establishment of values within their children. By default, parents are teaching their children that values such as integrity, respect for life, courage of conviction, a purposeful life and generosity, are secondary to making a living.

In truth, there is nothing preventing us from being true to good and meaningful values, nor is anything preventing us from teaching our values to our children. It is a matter of priorities; a matter of choice.

In the “The Value of Values” you will learn why a transition to a more values-conscious society is important. You will learn exactly what is needed from each individual and the activities that will sustain the drive. “The Value of Values” is a must read for every parent that is concerned about our society and the challenges our children will be facing.

We have three possible choices:
1) Do nothing different than that which we have been doing. Complacently accept things as they are and will be.
2) Hope that someone else will make the needed changes within our society, despite the fact it has yet to be done, and no one displays the integrity needed to influence an entire society.
3) Accept our personal responsibility to our children. Accept that real change is not passed down from leaders, but rather, it is driven up from the people. Accept the fact that we each have within us the ability and incentive to make things different for our children and grand children.

The choice we make today will determine the society of tomorrow.

ggoblue| 12.3.09 @ 7:40PM

these criminals need to be put in jail. millions of people have lost their jobs over this.

RationalAmerica| 12.4.09 @ 12:39AM

Ben's own contributions to Climategate are priceless:

"One of the problems is that I'm caught in a real Catch-22 situation. At present, I'm damned and publicly vilified because I refused to provide McIntyre with the data he requested."

"I'd like to dictate my own research agenda. I don't want that agenda driven by the constant need to respond to Christy, Douglass, and Singer. And I certainly don't want to spend years of my life interacting with the likes of Steven McIntyre.

I hope LLNL management will provide me with their full support. If they do not, I'm fully prepared to seek employment elsewhere."

It is my most sincere hope as an American taxpayer that LLNL management provide Bennie the opportunity to indeed seek employment elsewhere. Ben should further face criminal prosecution for his avoidance of the FOI request.

JP| 12.4.09 @ 9:20AM

The emails in question were not hacked from gmail or yahoo mail. Someone at CRU oflloaded them from the CRU email system and saved them as text files. All of the information including the emails were organized in a single folder and then zipped. At somepoint this year, someone at CRU sent the emails to the BBC (perhaps other news organizations as well). When the BBC failed to publish the information, said person copied the zipped file to a Russian FTP server via the internet.

This entire affair (CRUgate) was probably the work of a CRU whistleblower. I seriously doubt that UEA sys admins had network audits in place that can track who is copying files on and off their file system. The whistleblower will probably remain secret until he/she decides to come clean.