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Judge Preserves Privacy of Climate Scientist's Emails
ananyo writes "Climate scientist Michael Mann reported Monday that he and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville have prevailed in a court case against the conservative American Tradition Institute (ATI), which had sought access to emails he wrote while serving as a professor at the school from 1999-2005. Now at the Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Mann says the ruling supports the University of Virginia's argument than an exemption to the state's freedom-of-information law 'applies to faculty communications in furtherance of their work.' The Prince William County Circuit Court ruling came directly from the bench in and was not immediately available online. The Virgina Supreme Court tossed out a case against Mann in March. The state's conservative attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, had, among other things, demanded access to the climatologist's emails, arguing that Mann might have manipulated data and thus defrauded the government in applying for scientific grants."
"Hide the decline"
The UN-IPCC Hockey Stick graph made from a knowingly BS formula.
The blind sheep in Patagonia
The seas will rise by X-feet in the next 20-50 years
etc...
What is that saying about outrageous claims? I guess that rule does not apply if your position matches a certain political platform.
Let me start out by saying that I don't have any dog in the global warming fight, whatsoever (don't own any stock/have no affiliation with big oil OR big green). I think that, as a whole, people need to conserve resources and embrace new technologies to make the world a cleaner place. But I won't take it as far as the anti-human agenda of many of the fundie AGW supporters. That being said, why would you NOT want to release emails/research? It just gives the conspiracy theorists more fuel for their fires! It's things like this that make those who are not in the know skeptical about the things we say.
If anything, I say release all the emails, release all the data, be as open and transparent as possible. Funny how the people who scream about openness the most are the first to hide when the request comes their way.
One thing you're missing is the condition of the data. Unfortunately, it's not very good, especially temperature data. There are gaps, there are insturmentation issues, there are siting issues, and, the 800lb gorilla in the room, there's just the simple fact that climate changes happen in geologic time frames, and we literally don't have any direct measurements of that scale.
So we must proxy, and normalize, and adjust, and model. Really, I don't think anyone can definitively prove anything one way or the other yet. It's not like people have no legitimate reason for doubting claims on either side.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I think you've placed the jackboots on the wrong feet. Freedom of information request denied, and I'll paraphrase here, "because he was just doing his job." The argument didn't stand at Nuremberg, and I hope it won't stand today. And WHO gets to say if he WAS doing his job? If there is an exemption to the freedom-of-information law that 'applies to faculty communications in furtherance of their work' then the only emails we could see would be the personal communications unrelated to work? What possible value would such a law have? We have freedom of information laws to guarantee the public's right to examine the actions of those who (are supposed to) work for us. I don't like Cuccinella's tactics one bit, but the court action defies common sense, and both the letter of the law and the intent of the law.
I do not believe Mr. Jefferson would be proud of his University for its actions in this case.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Mann is paid with public funds. All of his work is public record. The FOIA request should have been granted. It will be granted in an appeal. We will get further evidence that Mann intentionally lies and manipulates data. He won't be punsihed for it.
1850? Call me when you have records going back to 10,000.
Then go suck an egg because your records are inaccurate, imprecise, unreliable, etc.