The Spectacle Blog
That’s what University of Virginia continues to do, as my colleague at American Tradition Institute Chris Horner explains today in Washington Examiner. Earlier this week UVA — as required by a court order — delivered records relating to Climategate “Hockey Stick” chart creator Michael Mann that ATI asked for in January under a Freedom of Information Act request. Except the records provided — less than half of the 9,000 or so records that UVA says are responsive to our request — were of minimal relevance to Mann’s research.
UVA has said it will claim exemptions to protect records of a “proprietary nature,” which is irrelevant here under Virginia’s FOIA law because all the research Mann did has been published, and therefore public. Obviously missing from the fluffy document dump this week were the already-publicized Climategate emails between Mann, East Anglia pals, and other alarmists. As Chris explains:
ClimateGate emails sent or received by Mann’s UVa email address include certain now-notorious, often nasty missives, many highly questionable from a legal or ethics perspective and most reflecting wagon-circling by alarmists discussing how to defeat substantive challenge and even requests for transparency involving an already published paper.
It is reasonable to surmise that these are among the 9,000 pages UVa finally identified as responsive to ATI. If so, each of them is being withheld on the remarkable claim that they are “Data, records or information of a proprietary nature produced or collected by or for faculty … in the conduct of or as a result of study or research on medical, scientific, technical or scholarly issues.” Really.
Excerpts of apparently scholarly research of commercial intent and value presumably include the ClimateGate gems “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”, and one gleefully noting the death of a skeptic who had dared correspond with them.
This is the sort of Top Secret “proprietary” emails UVa will risk fortune, reputation and sanction to keep from producing. A UVa official informed us on no less than three occasions that the school was, in effect, ignoring the law’s mandate to interpret exemptions narrowly.
Mann told Science magazine this week that UVA wasn’t providing anything to ATI other than “boilerplate:”
“U.Va has not turned over emails related to discussions of research, unpublished manuscripts, private discussions between scientists about science, etc.,—i.e., any of the materials that are exempt from release by state law,” Mann wrote in an e-mail message. “U.Va has simply turned over the non-exempt emails, and many of these were turned over to ATI months ago.”
Obviously Mann is not a lawyer, as there is no exemption in Virginia’s FOIA for “private discussions between scientists about science” under taxpayer-funded research and institutions.
As we expected, we will have to wait another month until UVA shows the records that they claim are exempt to Horner and to our Law Center director David Schnare, under a protective order, and then they will hash out their dispute over the remaining documents in front of a judge, who will make the final call as to their public release. As UVA conspirator Michael Halpern of Union of Concerned Scientists told the Washington Post, “The real test will be the second phase.”
Ben Blankenship| 8.27.11 @ 8:18PM
Say the Climate Gate crowd is not as crooked as a dog's hind leg. Suppose their research has substance. Suppose we actually can control global warming. But at what cost?
So, what if global warming were truly found to be human-caused? What to do about it? The bureaucratic solution would be, as many have recommended, to close down industries and go green totally. Just one problem: That would wreck the world economy. We've seen what a less ambitious government effort to get our economy going again did. It failed miserably at great cost. Also, the global-warming remedy is even more chancy: It may not have any climate effect at all. Who wants to risk our struggling economy on something so totally uncertain? Hmmmm?
Bob Grant| 8.27.11 @ 10:42PM
Ben,
Spain would be your example. At a cost of billions, their attempts to go green has irretrievably wrecked their economy.
And all for Nyet.
You might say tilting at windmills.
In the meantime the charlatan Al Gore became a billionaire off this scam.
He's 10X worse than the most crooked prosperity preacher.
Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 8.28.11 @ 6:23AM
The best way to perpetuate a lie is to hide the truth.
Solo| 8.28.11 @ 8:36AM
Yes...and in Michael Mann's case it was to "...hide the decline".
Mimi| 8.28.11 @ 9:28AM
The Democrats and the EPA and all the GREENIES from the 70's will not fair WELL if they are proven WRONG, after the destruction they caused to our Economy via decreased drilling, protection of smelt FISH, and lowerng our ability to supply ourselves with energy..on and on! It is to their survival this CHARADE is prolonged.
Who doesn;t want clean AIR & WATER ? They have overstepped to the country's detriment and Without adequate PROOF! PROVE IT GORE and NOW...."poop or get OFF the POT"
Wayne | 8.28.11 @ 1:01PM
Well According to Algore, this author is today's equivalent of a racist. Yep, it requires bigotry to not believe Michael Mann.
Ore Gone| 8.28.11 @ 4:01PM
This is all about lucrative Federal Grants. I don't care what field of endeavor you go into there is always unscrupulous people in it. I had a politician tell me that people take jobs for all the wrong reasons and if it is money then look out! The planet is a constantly changing orb hurtling through space and if we think we are so powerful that we somehow can change it in any meaningful way then I will be glad to leave this earth as their are no reasonable people left on it. The one answer to using this planet up is to get off it and move to another but we quit heading in that direction. Silly little greedy people.
Dacron Mather| 8.29.11 @ 5:34AM
In the interest of Transparency, Paul & Chris should turn the whole of ATI's e-mail correspondence with its sponsors over to Wikileaks .
MikeBee| 8.29.11 @ 8:39AM
Univ of Virginia should have its accreditation removed over this scandal, until they can prove conclusively that they were not participating in a fraud to the U.S. public. Certainly, any scientific accreditation should be removed; they could leave in place the accreditation for Creative Writing courses................
yisong| 10.27.11 @ 9:50PM
compact in design,and light in weight.The balls contact with the circular race at four points,via which the axial force,radial force and resultant moment may be born simultaneously. http://www.1stbearing.com