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</div><div>6/28/2016</div><div>
</div><div>616 capt bad margins</div><div>
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</div><div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">320</font></div><div><a href="https://www.drillednews.com/post/fake-science-is-a-real-danger"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.drillednews.com/post/fake-science-is-a-real-danger</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p class="XzvDs 208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Back in the mid-aughts, I was an editor at Environmental Science & Technology</b>. It's the top peer-reviewed journal for researchers who study complex environmental problems and their impacts, including air, water, and toxic chemical pollution. I worked in the news section, making these studies understandable to average readers, as well as scientists and physicians who were unfamiliar with environmental research. </font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But over time, I noticed that much of the “new research” we published wasn’t terribly unique. If ES&T put out a study finding that a particular chemical seemed to be toxic to children, or <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/science/a-dogs-best-friend-in-stormy-weather.html" target="top" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="2qJYG blog-link-hashtag-color _3Sq3W" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;"><u class="sDZYg" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;">The New York Times covered</u></a> one of our “blockbuster” air pollution studies, I could search for 10 minutes and find multiple papers with similar findings. What was the point of spending all this time and money to study the environment and public health if nothing was being done to address the problems?</font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During this period, I started hearing complaints from some environmental scientists, that the industries whose products and technologies they studied were funding research to undermine findings that those products harmed public health. At first I thought this couldn’t be true. I had studied biology in college and believed that science was an objective process to reveal the world’s mysteries. </font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then I met Fred Vom Saal.</font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Around 2004, I’d been chosen to attend an exclusive science conference on toxic chemicals, along with Vom Saal, a University of Missouri professor of reproductive biology. Vom Saal studied a <b>chemical in plastics called bisphenol-A, or BPA.</b> In humans and other animals BPA mimics estrogen, meaning it can disrupt our body’s hormonal system. According to Vom Saal, industry-funded scientists were attacking his research by repeating his studies, but with slight changes in the protocols so that the problems he’d discovered with BPA wouldn’t turn up. With these studies in hand, companies then claimed that Vom Saal’s research was shoddy.</font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I listened to Vom Saal rant for about 30 minutes one summer afternoon during a break in the conference, then exited politely. Science, like every profession, attracts its share of crazies. It was easier for me to accept that Vom Saal was a tad delusional than to believe that industry scientists manipulated research.</font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But then I started hearing about Tyrone Haye</b>s, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Hayes was studying atrazine, a <a href="https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/" target="top" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="2qJYG blog-link-hashtag-color _3Sq3W" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;"><u class="sDZYg" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;">widely-applied herbicide</u></a> that controls weeds and increases crop yields in corn and sorghum. Scientists were discovering that this chemical was the most common pesticide contaminant of ground and surface waters, and finding it in some drinking water wells, too. Hayes’ research showed that atrazine interfered with testosterone, chemically castrating some animals and turning males into females.</font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The next question should have been: What was atrazine doing to humans?</font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But like Vom Saal, Hayes contended that corporate scientists were publishing studies that nearly mirrored his own, with slight changes in protocol to get results that found no problems with atrazine. According to Hayes, these studies <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/54/12/1138/330110" target="top" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="2qJYG blog-link-hashtag-color _3Sq3W" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;"><u class="sDZYg" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;">were part of an orchestrated campaign</u></a> to make him appear incompetent. But Hayes struck me as an odd fellow and a bit eccentric. As with Vom Saal, I had my doubts about him.</font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Then along came climate scientist Michael Mann.</b></font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the summer of 2005, Congressman Joe Barton, R-Texas, began investigating Mann, along with several other climate scientists, for allegedly making “methodological flaws and data errors.” <a href="http://www.realclimate.org/docs/thacker/wsj.pdf" target="top" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="2qJYG blog-link-hashtag-color _3Sq3W" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;"><u class="sDZYg" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;">Barton demanded information</u></a> on their financial backing from government agencies and access to their data and computer codes. He questioned their relationships to organizations studying climate change. It seemed like a juicy story that was right in line with ES&T's science news coverage, so I contacted sources to learn more and begin writing stories.</font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Because ES&T didn’t cover climate change, I knew little to nothing about climate science. What I did know came from reading the mainstream news, which put across climate science as controversial, and climate researchers' many troubling claims about global warming as overblown. But I also knew that these outlets were probably getting the story wrong, because of an interaction I’d had the year before with some fellow reporters at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists. </font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One day at the conference, while six or seven of us were standing in a circle during a break, the conversation shifted to climate change. Because I didn’t know much about the subject, I kept asking the others questions, trying to understand whether the research was any good. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A woman who covered the environment for a newspaper out west began laughing, saying that there were about a dozen scientists who said that climate science was nonsense. She kept contact information around for all 12 of them, she told us, because<b> her editors required her to put one of these doubters in every story to provide journalistic “balance." </b></span></font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Several reporters in the circle giggled. This was my first hint that what I was reading in the media on climate science might be overemphasizing contrarian opinions. </b>Because what everyone in that circle already knew, and I was learning, was that by 2004 thousands of climate experts around the world had published research showing global warming was real, and mostly caused by carbon dioxide pollution from burning oil, coal, and gas.</font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">My article about Barton’s investigation of Michael Mann quoted several experts who told me the affair was a “witch hunt.” But a question kept nagging at me: Why had Barton started this investigation in the first place? It didn’t make any sense. So I began looking at the entire sequence of events that led up to it.</font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In his letter demanding information and records, <a href="http://www.realclimate.org/docs/thacker/wsj.pdf" target="top" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="2qJYG blog-link-hashtag-color _3Sq3W" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;"><u class="sDZYg" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;">Barton had referenced a front-page article</u></a> in The Wall Street Journal that discussed research published by <b>Stephen McIntyre</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>, </b>a retired mining consultant. In several of these papers, </span><a href="http://www.realclimate.org/docs/thacker/wsj.pdf" target="top" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="2qJYG blog-link-hashtag-color _3Sq3W" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;"><u class="sDZYg" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;">McIntyre had poked holes in Mann’s</u></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> research. At this point in time, some journalists and activists were beginning to expose many of the scientists questioning climate science as industry lackeys. But McIntyre was retired, creating the appearance of independence from any extraction industry and greater credibility.</span></font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On a lark, I called up McIntyre’s former employer. Surprise! I caught him still working for industry.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Then I looked into the</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">journal Energy & Environment</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">where McIntyre had published some studies. It turned out to be </span><a href="http://www.realclimate.org/docs/thacker/skeptics.pdf" target="top" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="2qJYG blog-link-hashtag-color _3Sq3W" style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 102); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;"><u class="sDZYg" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;">a sad publication</u></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> without any substantive peer review process, and operated by an editor without any science credentials — but who assured me that while she didn’t have any training in science, </span><a href="http://www.realclimate.org/docs/thacker/skeptics.pdf" target="top" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="2qJYG blog-link-hashtag-color _3Sq3W" style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 102); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;"><u class="sDZYg" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;">her husband had</u></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> a doctorate in physics.</span></font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In short, Barton had launched an investigation based on a Wall Street Journal article with some pretty flimsy reporting. Commenting on this article, former Journal editor <a href="http://www.realclimate.org/docs/thacker/wsj.pdf" target="top" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="2qJYG blog-link-hashtag-color _3Sq3W" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;"><u class="sDZYg" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;">Frank Allen told me</u></a>, “It was a strange story ’cause it had this bizarre undertone of being investigative but it didn’t investigate. And this piece — what I thought was bothersome about it — it purported to be authoritative, and it’s just full of holes.”</font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fred Vom Saal, Tyrone Hayes, and Michael Mann: Three different academics, working in different fields, who didn’t know each other, but who each had a story about industry campaigns to undermine their research. Was I a magnet for paranoid fringe voices in science, or were they telling the truth?</font></p><div class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></b></font></div><p class="XzvDs _208Ie tFDi5 blog-post-text-font blog-post-text-color _2QAo- _25MYV _6RI6N tFDi5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Then I began noticing a link between climate change and smoking.</b> Whenever a group or public expert said that climate change isn’t real, it turned out that about 10 years prior, in the mid-’90s, they were likely to have said that smoking isn’t harmful. I found this out by going through a new archive that the University of California, San Francisco had put online, called <a href="https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco/" target="top" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="_2qJYG blog-link-hashtag-color _3Sq3W" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;"><u class="sDZYg" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;">the Tobacco Archives</u></a>.</font></p></div></div><div>
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</div><div>2x</div><div>
</div><div>We continue our DeSmog UK epic history series with the sceptics’ endless search for any evidence that Mann had manipulated science in producing his hockey stick graph.</div><div>
</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>The climate deniers' hunt for any shred of evidence that Michael Mann had manipulated science in producing his hockey stick graph went unabated, and in the mid-2000s started to interest the media.</div><div>
</div><div>Ross McKitrick, senior fellow at Vancouver-based libertarian think tank the Fraser Institute, his collaborator, Steve McIntyre, a mining executive and author of the sceptic blog Climate Audit, and a senator named Joe Barton were unrelenting in their pursuit.</div><div>
</div><div>Their strategy was to find any mathematical or methodological flaws in the hockey stick graph, despite the fact the main findings of the study had been replicated by independent scientists and Mann was moving on to other research.</div><div>
</div><div>McKitrick was accused of living in a glass house when the computer scientist Tim Lambert discovered he had, in fact, mixed up degrees and radians in a study he claimed proved climate change was not caused by humans.</div><div>
</div><div>Science Journals</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre and McKitrick submitted a paper to Nature in January 2004 but the respected peer-reviewed journal refused to publish their critique.</div><div>
</div><div>So instead, the two published the article online along with correspondence between themselves, the journal and Mann. And, in February the following year their paper was accepted and published by Geophysical Research Letters.</div><div>
</div><div>At last, they had a major breakthrough to celebrate: the first time a “real science journal” had lent credence to a sceptic attack on the hockey stick.</div><div>
</div><div>The paper was picked up by Antonio Regalado at the Wall Street Journal which ran an attention-grabbing front page storywith a cartoon illustration on Valentine's Day 2005 presenting McIntyre, the minerals consultant, as a David successfully delivering a knockout blow to the Goliath of climate science.</div><div>
</div><div>Mann later complained: “The major deficiency in Regalado’s article was that it conveyed the highly misleading impression that McIntyre had invalidated our work. He hadn’t.”</div><div>
</div><div>Barton's Inspiration</div><div>
</div><div>The splash did, however, catch the eye of Joe Barton, the Republican member of the House of Representatives for Texas and a Tea Party supporter.</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre’s work had inspired Barton, the chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, to investigate Mann, and the following June, he wrote to the scientist and demanded the raw data behind the hockey stick.</div><div>
</div><div>“Questions have been raised,” the letter stated, “about the significance of methodological flaws and data errors in your studies of the historical records of temperatures and climate change.”</div><div>
</div><div>A similar letter was also sent to Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Mann handed over the data, but this did nothing to stop Barton’s charge.</div><div>
</div><div>The following month, McIntyre’s paper attacking Mann was being championed by dean of deniers Senator Jim Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.</div><div>
</div><div>Industry Influence</div><div>
</div><div>Environmentalists were furious that the attack on Mann gained significant attention in the media and in American democratic institutions. They pointed to the fact McIntyre was a mining consultant who worked closely with the energy industry and who had served as a former president of Northwest Exploration Co Ltd, and as a “strategic advisor” to the same oil and gas exploration company after it became CGX Energy. </div><div>
</div><div>They also pointed to the huge financial contributions from oil that the men had enjoyed.</div><div>
</div><div>Barton, for example, received $426,000 from electricity companies and a further $247,600 from the gas and oil industry during the same period, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics' analysis of published campaign funds.</div><div>
</div><div>Years later, McIntyre said: “I had no idea that there would be any interest in my work, and the fact that some people have found it interesting, I find very flattering.”</div><div>
</div><div>Next time, the DeSmog UK epic history series will introduce you to an environmental journalist who later took money from ExxonMobil, placing blame on consumers rather than fossil fuels for causing climate change.</div><div>
</div><div>TAGS: </div><div>
</div><div>michael mann ross mckitrick</div><div> </div><div>
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</div><div> reposted by curry</div><div>
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</div><div>Funding issues</div><div>
</div><div>https://climateaudit.org/2015/09/25/disinformation-from-barry-klinger-and-the-rico-20/</div><div>
</div><div>he RICO-20 gang of climate academics commenced its supposed campaign against misinformation with false information about skeptic reactions to the Cuccinelli investigation. Barry Klinger, one of Shukla’s hangers-on at George Mason University,  stated:</div><div>However, I don’t recall climate contrarians coming to the defense of Michael Mann when he was subject to ideologically-based legal harrassment from then-Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli as well as from Republicans in Congress.</div><div>Klinger’s statement is completely untrue, as he could have discovered with a moment’s investigation. I, Ross McKitrick, Tom Fuller, Chip Knappenberger, Pielke Jr and John Christy, among others, all forcefully criticized the Cuccinelli investigation. In today’s post, I’ll rebut Klinger’s false information.</div><div>To be clear – and this nuance was not recognized by all readers – I did not challenge Cuccinelli’s right to investigate financial impropriety; my argument was against what I saw as an abuse of administrative authority – a topic on which I had strong opinions long before I had ever heard of climate.   Had Mann’s name emerged from financial warning-flags, I would have taken a different position.  Had there been evidence that Mann had, for example, funnelled NSF grants through a personal corporation and that Mann had double-dipped by paying himself and his wife through the personal corporation as well as his university salary, I would have had a different attitude.  As many readers are aware, Roger Pielke Jr has identified apparent evidence of this sort of double-dipping by the leader of the RICO-20, Jagadish Shukla of George Mason University.</div><div>In a follow-up post, I’ll review this evidence. In today’s post, I will limit myself to refuting Klinger’s false claim.</div><div>When I learned of Cuccinelli’s attempted use of Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (FATA),  I immediately (May 2, 2010) spoke out against it as an abuse of process.   In fact, I spoke out against it even before the Union of Concerned Scientists (May 7) or any of the critics credited in Mann’s book.  Here’s what I said:</div><div>This is a repugnant piece of over-zealousness by the Virginia Attorney General, that I condemn.</div><div>Obviously, I think that Mannian effusions have negligible scientific value. However, the people in the field think otherwise and organizations like NSF seem ready and willing to lavishly fund analysis that seems to me to be little more than paleo-phrenology. Cuccinelli’s complaint lies with NSF rather than Mann.   To the extent that Virginia citizens are concerned about public money being misappropriated, Cuccinelli’s own expenditures on this adventure should be under equal scrutiny. There will be no value for dollar in this enterprise.</div><div>…</div><div>To the extent that there are issues with Mann or Jones or any of these guys, they are at most academic misconduct and should be dealt with under those regimes. It is unfortunate that the inquiries at Penn State and UEA have not been even minimally diligent, but complaints on that account rest with the universities or their supervising institutions and the substitution of inappropriate investigations by zealots like Cuccinelli are not an alternative.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>In a presentation at Heartland on May 16, 2010 a couple of weeks later, I re-iterated this objection to Cuccinelli (receiving a tepid response to such moderation, as several observers noted at the time):</div><div>Despite the failures of the inquiries to do their job, I strongly disagree with Cuccinelli’s recent investigation of potential financial abuse. Regardless of what one may think of the quality of Mann’s work, he has published diligently. In my opinion, Cuccinelli’s actions are an abuse of administrative prerogative that on the one hand is unfair to Mann and on the other provides an easy out for people to avoid dealing with the real issues.</div><div>
</div><div>On May 2, Tom Fuller published an open letter to Cuccinelli:</div><div>As co-author of a book (Climategate: The CRUtape Letters) that was harshly critical of the performance of Michael Mann and his colleagues, I write in criticism of your decision to investigate Mr. Mann for potential violations of state laws on fraudulent payment of claims.</div><div>Mr. Mann has been extensively investigated regarding his work product, and although I consider his actions to be often unprofessional and politically oriented, neither I nor any of the people interviewed for our book have any doubt whatsoever that Mann performed the scientific work he has been commissioned to do, or that he engaged in any fraudulent actions.</div><div>No matter what has prompted your investigation, there is no doubt that it will be interpreted as a witch hunt. If you are in fact investigating a credentialed scientist for results that do not suit your political opinion, that interpretation is correct. Unless you can reveal to the public prima facie evidence that shows cause for this investigation, I beg you to reconsider. There are ample avenues of professional and academic recourse for people like me who think he has done something wrong. But being wrong is not a crime, and intimidating scientists not a path that this country, including I presume Virginians, should ever pursue. You may consult with colleagues in Salem to determine how long it takes to live this type of thing down.</div><div>
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</div><div>On May 7, 2010, Chip Knappenberg spoke out strongly (published by Andy Revkin), including the following:</div><div>I am not alone in thinking Mr. Cuccinelli’s investigation of Dr. Mann is unacceptable.  His actions are being widely condemned across the blogosphere, including by some of Dr. Mann’s harshest critics (and no doubt the very people whose work has inspired Mr. Cuccinelli’s ill-advised actions).</div><div>See, for example, the reactions of Steve McIntyre and Thomas Fuller.</div><div>They agree that this is not the correct way for Mr. Cuccinelli to handle his discontent. The potential harm to Science, with a capital “S”, greatly exceeds any potential gain. There are many arenas where science can be properly debated. The courtroom is not one of them.</div><div>
</div><div>Pielke Jr wrote several posts on the matter, including the following critique of Cuccinelli:</div><div>Cucinnelli has not, in my inexpert opinion, established a “prima facie case of reasonable cause” — far from it. Cuccinelli argues that his lack of proof is what justifies the investigation. Good luck getting that bizzaro logic and misleading application of case law past a judge!  What more do you need to know to see that this is pure and simple a fishing expedition?</div><div>
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</div><div>The opposition to Cuccinelli by Mann’s opponents was widely acknowledged at the time, even by anti-skeptics e.g. here:</div><div>McIntyre, by contrast, doesn’t let in even a bit of  “Mann got what he deserved.”  He appears to be following a principle–a principle that stands athwart politics-as-usual and leads him to a temporary alliance with a man he otherwise batters vigorously.  He has even surprised some among his blog’s community, who complained about being “confused” by the “cognitive dissonance” he was showing in his defense of Mann. Several even make a sort of inverse Golden Rule argument:</div><div>“I’m sure that if the situation was reversed, and you were under investigation for the actions you took in order to expose the fraud of Mann et al, Michael Mann would encourage such an investigation and complain that it is not harsh enough. So let’s all wait and see what comes out of this and then comment based on facts not speculation (“Gad Levin“)”</div><div>To which McIntyre replies:</div><div>“I’ve taken a consistent position that the ends don’t justify the means. I don’t agree that you can justify withholding adverse verification r2 because you think that your cause is righteous or that you should exercise executive power capriciously or vindictively because you think that your cause is righteous. Both are slippery slopes. This is bedrock in our civil society.”</div><div>
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</div><div>In a story on the affair in the New York Times, John Rudolf Collins reported, cited myself, McKitrick, Fuller and John Christy:</div><div>One might expect that his [Cuccinelli’s] efforts would find support among climate-change contrarians…</div><div>But in reporting the story, I found the opposite to be true: as it turns out, even many of Dr. Mann’s chief scientific foes are strongly opposed to Mr. Cuccinelli’s fraud investigation.</div><div>
</div><div>Even Treehugger recognized the pushback against Cuccinelli from “skeptics”:</div><div>The only thing Cuccinelli could accomplish here is kick-starting another political witch-hunt — at the expense of the scientific process.  I don’t often offer kudos to climate skeptics, but in this case I’ll make an exception — thank you for honorably drawing a line in the sand to prevent this foolish, reckless piece of political theater from gaining traction.</div><div>
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</div><div>As I explained to readers at the time of the eventual decision on the Cuccinelli CID, concern about abuse of administrative law is part of my family history – something that long precedes any interest in climate.   I certainly thought that there were issues that warranted examination by a Penn State academic misconduct committee and have consistently taken the position that the Penn State committee failed to do its job, but that did not justify Cuccinelli abusing his authority. I tried to explain this nuance as follows:</div><div>I have a long-standing though passing interest in the topic of abuse of administrative law. My grandfather McRuer was a prominent judge in Canada and led a major Royal Commission that pointed to accretion of administrative authority without avenues for citizens to appeal. His commission led to measures in Ontario against abuse of administrative authority. My objection to Cuccinnelli’s CID was as an apparent abuse of administrative authority. I did not doubt his jurisdiction over the University of Virginia and other public agencies and, if Mann’s name had popped up on a short list using financial criteria under the Act, I would not opposed his CID. I thought that there were (and are) valid reasons why the University of Virginia should have carried out a misconduct investigation; indeed, Ross and I filed a formal complaint with the University of Virginia in 2005 which they refused to investigate. I spoke out against Cuccinnelli’s CID because he had provided inadequate evidence of an offence under FATA to justify the demand.</div><div>
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</div><div>The above excerpts and links convincingly show that the Cuccinelli investigation was unequivocally opposed by Mann’s opponents as an abuse of administrative authority, precisely the sort of abuse that Klinger is now advocating. Klinger’s tit-for-tat rationalization is completely bogus.   While Klinger may not now “recall” these widely publicized oppositions, the opposition would have been readily identified with a moment’s research. It appears that Klinger made these allegations without any due diligence to verify whether the allegations were true and that Klinger’s false allegations were made recklessly.</div><div>
</div><div>Ironically, Cuccinelli’s authority to investigate financial abuse was not contested if there was evidence of such abuse.  Pielke’s revelations about Shukla’s double-dipping have taken this topic in a very different direction (more on this in a forthcoming post) and it will be interesting to see if Klinger and the RICO-20 will support a thorough investigation by George Mason University and NSF of Shukla’s handling of federal funds.</div><div>
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</div><div></div><div>9/28</div><div>
</div><div>roger Pielke Jr recently made the remarkable discovery that, in addition to his university salary from George Mason University (reported by Pielke as $250,000), Jagadish Shukla, the leader of the #RICO20, together with his wife, had received a further $500,000 more in 2014 alone from federal climate grants funnelled through a Shukla-controlled “non-profit” (Institute for Global Environment and Security, Inc.), yielding total income in 2014 of approximately $750,000.</div><div>Actually, the numbers are even worse than Pielke thought.</div><div>Pielke had quoted Shukla’s 2013 university salary, but his university salary had increased more than 25% between 2013 and 2014: from $250,816 in 2013 to $314,000 in 2014.</div><div>In addition, the “non-profit” organization had also employed one of Shukla’s children (not reported, but say $90,000); and,</div><div>IGES transferred $100,000 from its climate grants to a second corporation controlled by the Shukla family (the Institute for Global Education Equality of Opportunity and Prosperity, Inc.), which in turn transferred $100,000 to an educational charity in Shukla’s home town in India, doubtless a worthy charity, but one that Shukla could have supported from his own already generous stipend.</div><div>Over a million dollars in total in 2014 alone.</div><div>In addition, Shukla’s long-time associate, James Kinter, participated in the same double dip, though on a less grandiose scale. Kinter, also a Professor at George Mason, doubled his 2014 university salary of $180,038 with $171,320 from IGES, for a total 2014 income of $351,358.</div><div>In today’s post, I’ll make an attempt to follow the money.  This analysis is not an audit as I obviously do not have access to original documents – only public information and, for the purposes of this note, only online research.  In addition, the history is quite complicated,as the institutions reach back over 30 years and have changed relationships over time.  I’ve examined NSF, NOAA and NASA online grant information, which covers only part of the period (NOAA to 2001; NASA to 2006) and placed a summary spreadsheet online here.</div><div>Because “warmists” regularly re-assure skeptics that income from research is strictly regulated under federal policies (e,g. Andrew Dessler here), the parties who ought to have the most interest in the structure are warmists, rather than skeptics, though the opposite seems to be the case thus far.</div><div>NSF Policy</div><div>Before discussing Shukla’s structure, I’ll first quickly comment on institutional policies, as both the federal agencies (NSF, NOAA, NASA) and the university (George Mason) purport to have policies that prevent double-dipping.</div><div>NSF policies purportedly regulate research compensation for members of university faculties by limiting their compensation in the academic year to their university salary, while permitting them to top up their university salary in summer months, but set their compensation at the monthly rate of their university salary (the “two-ninths rule”, as follows:</div><div> 611.1 Salaries and Wages</div><div>All Grantees. All remuneration paid currently or accrued by the organization for employees working on the NSF-supported project during the grant period is allowable to the extent that:</div><div>total compensation to individual employees is reasonable for the work performed and conforms to the established policy of the organization consistently applied to both government and non-government activities; and</div><div>the charges for work performed directly under NSF grants and for other work allocable as indirect costs are determined and documented as provided in the applicable Federal cost principles.</div><div>Colleges and Universities. Section J.10 of OMB Circular A-21 establishes criteria for compensation work performed on government projects by faculty members during and outside the academic year.</div><div>NSF’s policy is:</div><div>Academic Year Salaries. To be based on the individual faculty member’s regular compensation for the continuous period which, under the policy of the institution concerned, constitutes the basis of his/her salary. Except as provided in GPM 616.2, “Intra-University Consulting,” charges to Federal grants, irrespective of the basis of computation, will not exceed the proportionate share of the base salary for that period.</div><div>Periods Outside the Academic Year. During the summer months or other periods not included in the period for which the base salary is paid, salary is to be paid at a monthly rate not in excess of the base salary divided by the number of months in the period for which the base salary is paid. NSF policy on funding of summer salaries (known as NSF’s two-ninths rule) remains unchanged: proposal budgets submitted should not request, and NSF-approved budgets will not include, funding for an individual investigator which exceeds two-ninths of the academic year salary. This limit includes summer salary received from all NSF-funded grants.</div><div>
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</div><div>Andrew Dessler, who, like most climate academics, has consistently denied that research funding has any impact on alarmism, summarized the above policy as follows:</div><div>Texas A&M pays 10 months of my salary to teach. The other two months of my salary are paid out of grants for doing research, but the University sets the amount I receive during those two months equal to the m$158.06onthly rate that the University pays me the other 10 months. Thus, the vast majority of my salary is completely disconnected with research.</div><div>
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</div><div>There are many other obligations on recipients of federal research grants, many of which are summarized in the NSF Grants Manual.</div><div>George Mason University Policy</div><div>Shukla has been on the faculty of George Mason University since 1993 (1984-1992 University of Maryland) and, during that time, has obtained federal grants both in the name of George Mason University and the Institute for Global Environment and Security Inc. discussed below).</div><div>George Mason, like  most universities, has a policy on conflict of interest,  including a detailed policy on conflict of interest in federally funded research.   Under such policies, “non-profits” are classified as “business”, a protocol that seems very apt when large salaries are withdrawn by insiders from a closely-held “non-profit”:</div><div>“Business” means a corporation, partnership, sole proprietorship, firm, enterprise, franchise, association, trust or foundation, or any other individual or entity carrying on a business or profession, whether or not for profit.</div><div>The University conflict of interest policies require comprehensive and formal disclosure of personal and family financial interests to the Office of Sponsored Programs.</div><div>This policy applies to any person who is responsible for the design, conduct, or reporting of any research funded by a Federal agency.  The responsible parties listed in this policy act as institutional officials for purposes of policy implementation, enforcement, and reporting.</div><div>Financial Conflict of interest” (FCOI) means a significant financial interest (SFI) directly and significantly affecting the design, conduct, or reporting of the federally funded research.</div><div>“Significant financial interest” means a financial interest consisting of one or more of the following interests of the investigator (and/or those of the investigator’s spouse and dependent children) that reasonably appears to be related to the investigator’s institutional responsibilities:</div><div>Investigators who apply for any federally funded research must disclose certain financial interests related to that research.  Specifically, each investigator must provide a list of his or her known SFIs (and those of his or her spouse and/or dependent children) related to the investigator’s institutional responsibilities.</div><div>As a part of the university’s application for federal funds, each investigator must certify (1) that he or she has no such interests or (2) that he or she has such interests and has disclosed them through the institution’s disclosure process.  The Office of Sponsored Programs maintains custody of the investigator’s certification.</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>I have not attempted to make a comprehensive summary of obligations under George Mason University policy.</div><div>University of Maryland</div><div>Shukla worked at the University of Maryland from 1984-1992 as Professor, Department of Meteorology.  While at the University of Maryland,  Shukla established the “Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Interactions”  (University of Maryland, Dept. of Meteorology).</div><div>Nearly all of Shukla’s key associates at George Mason date back to the University of Maryland in the 1980s.  Edwin Schneider was a Research Scientist at the “Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Interactions, University of Maryland, Dept. of Meteorology” from 1984-1993,   James Kinter was Assistant Professor, Department of Meteorology, University of Maryland from 1984-87, subsequently becoming Research Scientist with “COLA, Univ. MD, College Park, MD” from 1987-1993. Daniel Straus was a Research Scientist at the “Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Interactions, University of Maryland, Dept. of Meteorology” from 1988-1993.  Paul Dirmeyer was a Graduate Fellow and Graduate Research Assistant at University of Maryland from 1986-92 before becoming a Research Scientist at “Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Interactions, Department of Meteorology, University of Maryland at College Park” in 1993.</div><div>NOAA and NASA online grant information does not go back that far (NOAA only to 2001; NASA only to 2007), but NSF grant data shows two almost simultaneous grants to the University of Maryland entitled “Predictability of Monthly and Seasonal Average Circulation of the Atmosphere”, totalling $2.9 million.  Shukla is PI for both grants, but there are different NSF officers for some reason.</div><div>Shukla and associates (with Schneider also appearing as PI) received a new round of NSF grants in 1991, again in the name of the University of Maryland.</div><div>
</div><div>Institute for Global Environment and Security, Inc. (IGES)</div><div>In 1992, Shukla, Kinter and Schneider, while still presumably employees of the University of Maryland, appear to have submitted a proposal to NSF for funding via a private Maryland non-profit corporation, then recently incorporated by Shukla (the Institute for Global Environment and Security, Inc.), as, on January 6, 1993, NSF awarded three grants to IGES totalling $1.7 million, with Shukla, Kinter and Schneider all acting as PIs or co-PIs.  Shukla named himself President.  The present outside directors are an artist (Nora Rosenbaum) and a photographic artist (Patricia Peck) – both of whom were related to Jule Charney –  and long-time friend of Shukla’s from Brazil (Antonio Moura).</div><div>With the funding, Shukla established the “Center of Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies” as a unit of the Institute for Global Environment and Security, Inc.  Kinter, Schneider, Straus and Dirmeyer all moved from the University of Maryland in 1993 to join the new enterprise.</div><div>In 1994, Shukla was appointed as Professor of Earth Sciences and Global Change at George Mason University.  Most of his COLA associates would subsequently obtain appointments, but, in the mid-1990s, Shukla appears to have been the only one. In 1994, IGES obtained its first five-year block grant ( a joint grant from NSF, NOAA and NASA) in the amount of $2.25 million/year for 1994-1998.  Over the years, IGES obtained increasingly larger five-year block grants in 1999, 2004 and 2009. IGES appears to have obtained additional special grants from time to time.</div><div>Concurrent with awards to IGES, Shukla also obtained NSF grants in the name of George Mason, sometimes with identical titles.  The first such award to George Mason came in 1995 with an award from NSF (Jay Fein once again, PI – Shukla) of $1.1 million entitled “Predictability of Short Term Climate Variations” – a very similar title to the IGES grant.</div><div>In the 1999 funding cycle, NSF awarded funds under the title “Predictability and Variability of the Present Climate” to both IGES and George Mason ($4.7 million and $1.25 million, respectively).  It is unclear from this limited record what the respective responsibilities of each institution were: whether the funds were all used for the ongoing research at the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (IGES) or whether there was a separate program at George Mason at the time.</div><div>Over time, the base block funding increased: from $2.25 million/year in 1994-98 to $2.75 million/year in 1999-2004, $3.25 million in 2004-2009 and $3,6 million/year in 2009-2014.  In addition to block funds, IGES also received special funds.  Total funding to IGES appears to be at least $75 million: online grant archives at NSF and NOAA show a total of over $28 million and $22 million respectively, but NOAA information is unavailable prior to 2001 and NASA does not provide information on amounts (or at least I have not located it).</div><div>Concurrently, George Mason University received at least $17.5 million (the total shown in the online NSF and NOAA archives).</div><div>IGES has filed 990 forms over the years, as first brought to light by Roger Pielke Jr.  and is online here as follows: 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2001-2010.</div><div>
</div><div>Migration to George Mason</div><div>Over the years, functions and personnel of COLA (IGES) have migrated to George Mason, intensifying in recent years. The most recent grants to IGES Inc. appear to have been made in 2009-2010, though funding under these grants seems to have continued until 2014-2015. In recent years, George Mason University has made a number of announcements on the transiation of COLA (IGES) to George Mason, but the precise terms of each agreement are hard to figure out from the public record available thus far.</div><div>In 2002 (eight years after Shukla), Kinter, Schneider and Straus were all appointed to the staff of the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciencesdepartment, George Mason University in 2002, coinciding with expansion of their climate program. All three continued their employment with IGES (COLA), where Kinter became Director in 2004.</div><div>George Mason’s webpage includes a lengthy list of university centers and institutions and, by January 2012 (the earliest web archived version), the Center for Land-Ocean-Atmosphere Studies was  included in the list (January 2012).</div><div>On May 10, 2013, George Mason University announced that IGES and COLA(IGES), organizations with “long-standing partnerships” with the University, were “joining” the University and would be “located within” the College of Science:</div><div>The Institute of Global Environment and Society (IGES) and the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA), independent nonprofit research entities established in Maryland with long-standing partnerships with George Mason University, are joining Mason’s College of Science. An event celebrating these new groups will take place at 2 p.m. Monday, May 13, in Mason Hall, Rooms D3A and B.</div><div>IGES was established in Maryland in 1993 as a nonprofit to improve understanding and prediction of the variations of the Earth’s climate through scientific research on climate variability and climate predictability, and to share both the results of this research and the tools necessary to carry out this research with society as a whole.</div><div>As part of IGES, the world-renowned Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere-Studies (COLA) will also be at Mason. COLA is dedicated to understanding climate fluctuations on short- and long-term scales, with special emphasis on the interactions between Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, and land surfaces.</div><div>The institute and center will be initially located within the College of Science. All IGES and COLA staff supported by research grants will move from Maryland to Mason, and the staff will teach and conduct their ongoing research projects at Mason.</div><div>For the past 20 years, the National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and National Aeronautics and Space Administration have supported IGES and COLA research with an annual funding of about $4 million.</div><div>
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</div><div>Once again, the university’s list of its centers in July 2013 includes the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies.</div><div>A year later (May 3, 2014), the University announced that Kinter and associates had been awarded $10.5 million from the NSF-NOAA-NASA group for continuation of the COLA work, now titled “Predictability and Prediction of Climate from Days to Decades.”:</div><div>Kinter and his team were awarded $4.5 million by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, $2.5 million by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and $3.5 million by the National Science Foundation to work on a five-year project called “Predictability and Prediction of Climate from Days to Decades.”</div><div>Kinter leads the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies based at George Mason University.</div><div>The NSF grants archive shows a grant (1338427) bearing this title in the amount of $4.2 million with start date of Jan 1, 2014 in the name of George Mason University, while the NOAA grant archive shows a grant  (NA04OAR4310160) of $1.8 million with start date of January 2014 also in the name of George Mason, while I have been unable thus far to locate the corresponding grant in the NASA archive.</div><div>Shukla Compensation</div><div>Despite the various changes in grant structure, one constant (or rather steadily increasing amount) has been the several sources of compensation to Shukla and his wife.</div><div>In 2001, the earliest year thus far publicly available, in 2001, in addition to his university salary (not yet available, but presumably about $125,000), Shukla and his wife received a further $214,496  in compensation from IGES (Shukla -$128,796; Anne Shukla – $85,700).  Their combined compensation from IGES doubled over the next two years to approximately $400,000 (additional to Shukla’s university salary of say $130,000), for combined compensation of about $530,000 by 2004.</div><div>Shukla’s university salary increased dramatically over the decade reaching $250,866 by 2013 and $314,000 by 2014.  (In this latter year, Shukla was paid much more than Ed Wegman, [who lied/plagiarized?]</div><div>a George Mason professor of similar seniority). Meanwhile, despite the apparent transition of IGES to George Mason, the income of the Shuklas from IGES continued to increase, reaching $547,000 by 2013.  Combined with Shukla’s university salary,  the total compensation of Shukla and his wife exceeded $800,000 in both 2013 and 2014.  In addition, as noted above, Shukla’s daughter continued to be employed by IGES in 2014; IGES also distributed $100,000 from its climate grant revenue to support an educational charity in India which Shukla had founded.</div><div>Discussion</div><div>There is a surprising link between the George Mason department and one of my earliest adversaries at NSF, David Verardo, Mann’s handler at NSF, who told him in 2003 that he didn’t have to provide data to me – that Mann was entitled to his view of climate and I was entitled to mine. Verardo’s wife, Stacey Verardo, is a colleague of Shukla, Kinter, Klinger and the others in the AOES department at George Mason, while Verardo himself is a member of the Adjunct Faculty at George Mason. (Update: David Verardo has commented below that his “wife is a geologist who has worked in the department long before climate dynamics was a part of the department” and “has no professional relationship with the climate dynamics group beyond serving in the same department and working on instructional issues that arise at the university” and that he himself “do not handle proposals from GMU because of obvious conflicts of interest but even more practical, the awards to climate dynamic research are not in my NSF program.”)</div><div>Shukla attracted attention as the lead author of the RICO20 letter, which was originally posted at the website of the Institute of Global Environment and Society Inc, though the professors all listed George Mason University as their affiliation.  Pielke Jr became curious about the institution that had chosen to initiate this offensive letter and had the bright idea of looking up their 990 filings, thus discovering Shukla’s double dip.</div><div>Five other George Mason employees were RICO20 signatories, four of whom are long-time Shukla associates: Dirmeyer, Straus, Paul Schopf and Barry Klinger. (It’s interesting that James Kinter didn’t sign it.)  The other George Mason RICO 20 signatory, Edward Maibach, is in some sort of climate communications and, together with Heidi Cullen, holds a $2,998,178 grant from NSF.  Many of the other RICO20 signatories had previous associations with IGES. Kevin Trenberth and Mike Wallace had both been on its “Science Advisory Committee” in the past.  Nearly all of the RICO20 signatories, including Trenbeth andWallace, attended alarge symposium in April 2015 to honor Shukla – see picture at link.</div><div>IGES’ webpage says that its corporate objective was to share “the fruits” of its research “with society as a whole”, though, in practice, an equally important objective seems to have been to share the fruits of its research funding with Shukla (and Kinter). The sheer lucrativeness of Shukla’s deal raised some eyebrows in skeptic blogs, but none so far at warmist blogs, not even at Michael Tobis’ aptly named Only In It for the Gold or among Barry Klinger and the RICO20.</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>curry</div><div>
</div><div>Other articles that I’ve spotted focus on the government funding going to IGES, particularly what is being paid to Shukla and members of his family:</div><div>
</div><div>Climate Scientists Asking Obama to Prosecute Skeptics Got Millions From US Taxpayers</div><div>Silence of the scientists: how the global warming RICO letter backfired</div><div>The lead scientist behind the Obama RICO letter has some serious questions to answer</div><div>Warmists’ golden fleece</div><div>From the Examiner article:</div><div>
</div><div>What is not criminal is having an opposing scientific opinion. What is not criminal is pursuing the science and extending the debate on climate. To call such science as criminal without a crime having been committed is a political witch hunt without a broomstick to stand on.</div><div>
</div><div>This topic is receiving much discussion in academic circles – astonishment at the amount of government funding Shukla has been pulling in and the large double salary he is paying himself.  Based on conflict of interest guidelines at Georgia Tech and University of Colorado, there is no way that I can see that this would have been legal/allowed.  I know of several people investigating this issue informally; I assume someone will pick up this investigation in a more formal way.</div><div>
</div><div>All this makes Willie Soon’s $1.2 M  over 10+ years from energy companies, all of which went to the Harvard Smithsonian, look virtuous (not to mention paltry).</div><div>
</div><div>BREAKING:  Steve McIntyre has a thorough expose Shukla’s Gold.  Must read.</div><div>
</div><div>JC reflections</div><div>
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</div><div>desmog 6/29/15</div><div>
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</div><div>We continue our DeSmog UK epic history series with the sceptics’ endless search for any evidence that Mann had manipulated science in producing his hockey stick graph.</div><div>
</div><div>The climate deniers' hunt for any shred of evidence that Michael Mann had manipulated science in producing his hockey stick graph went unabated, and in the mid-2000s started to interest the media.</div><div>
</div><div>Ross McKitrick, senior fellow at Vancouver-based libertarian think tank theFraser Institute, his collaborator, Steve McIntyre, a mining executive and author of the sceptic blog Climate Audit, and a senator named Joe Barton were unrelenting in their pursuit.</div><div>
</div><div>Their strategy was to find any mathematical or methodological flaws in the hockey stick graph, despite the fact the main findings of the study had been replicated by independent scientists and Mann was moving on to other research.</div><div>
</div><div>McKitrick was accused of living in a glass house when the computer scientist Tim Lambert discovered he had, in fact, mixed up degrees and radians in a study he claimed proved climate change was not caused by humans.</div><div>
</div><div>Science Journals</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre and McKitrick submitted a paper to Nature in January 2004 but the respected peer-reviewed journal refused to publish their critique.</div><div>
</div><div>So instead, the two published the article online along with correspondence between themselves, the journal and Mann. And, in February the following year their paper was accepted and published by Geophysical Research Letters.</div><div>
</div><div>At last, they had a major breakthrough to celebrate: the first time a “real science journal” had lent credence to a sceptic attack on the hockey stick.</div><div>
</div><div>The paper was picked up by Antonio Regalado at the Wall Street Journal which ran an attention-grabbing front page storywith a cartoon illustration on Valentine's Day 2005 presenting McIntyre, the minerals consultant, as a David successfully delivering a knockout blow to the Goliath of climate science.</div><div>
</div><div>Mann later complained: “The major deficiency in Regalado’s article was that it conveyed the highly misleading impression that McIntyre had invalidated our work. He hadn’t.”</div><div>
</div><div>Barton's Inspiration</div><div>
</div><div>The splash did, however, catch the eye of Joe Barton, the Republican member of the House of Representatives for Texas and a Tea Party supporter.</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre’s work had inspired Barton, the chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, to investigate Mann, and the following June, he wrote to the scientist and demanded the raw data behind the hockey stick.</div><div>
</div><div>“Questions have been raised,” the letter stated, “about the significance of methodological flaws and data errors in your studies of the historical records of temperatures and climate change.”</div><div>
</div><div>A similar letter was also sent to Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Mann handed over the data, but this did nothing to stop Barton’s charge.</div><div>
</div><div>The following month, McIntyre’s paper attacking Mann was being championed by dean of deniers Senator Jim Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.</div><div>
</div><div>Industry Influence</div><div>
</div><div>Environmentalists were furious that the attack on Mann gained significant attention in the media and in American democratic institutions. They pointed to the fact McIntyre was a mining consultant who worked closely with the energy industry and who had served as a former president of Northwest Exploration Co Ltd, and as a “strategic advisor” to the same oil and gas exploration company after it became CGX Energy. </div><div>
</div><div>They also pointed to the huge financial contributions from oil that the men had enjoyed.</div><div>
</div><div>Barton, for example, received $426,000 from electricity companies and a further $247,600 from the gas and oil industry during the same period, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics' analysis of published campaign funds.</div><div>
</div><div>Years later, McIntyre said: “I had no idea that there would be any interest in my work, and the fact that some people have found it interesting, I find very flattering.”</div><div>
</div><div>Next time, the DeSmog UK epic history series will introduce you to an environmental journalist who later took money from ExxonMobil, placing blame on consumers rather than fossil fuels for causing climate change.</div><div>
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</div><div>TAGS:  michael mann ross mckitrick</div><div> </div><div>
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</div><div>http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Steve_McIntyre</div><div>
</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>Steve McIntyre</div><div>
</div><div>From SourceWatch</div><div>
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</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>Stephen McIntyre is the primary author of the blog Climate Audit, noted for its many articles skeptical of climate change. He is a prominent critic of scientific studies of temperature records of the past 1000 years that show increasing global temperatures. Stephen McIntyre has worked in mineral exploration for 30 years, much of that time as an officer or director of several public mineral exploration companies. "I've spent most of my life in business, mostly on the stock market side of mining exploration deals," he said in 2009.[1]</div><div>
</div><div>He has also been a policy analyst for both the governments of Ontario and of Canada.[2] McIntyre was also a headliner at the International Conference on Climate Change (2009), a gathering of climate change skeptics in New York from March 8th-10th, 2009.</div><div>
</div><div>Contents</div><div>
</div><div>[hide]</div><div>1 Biography</div><div>2 The Hockey Stick Study Controversy</div><div>3 Contact details</div><div>4 Articles and resources</div><div>4.1 Related SourceWatch articles</div><div>4.2 References</div><div>4.3 External resources</div><div>4.4 External articles</div><div>4.4.1 By McIntyre</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>Biography</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre is, according to the Wall Street Journal, a "semiretired Toronto minerals consultant" who has spent "two years and about $5,000 of his own money trying to double-check the influential graphic" known as the "hockey stick" that illustrates a reconstruction of average surface temperatures in the Northern hemisphere, created by University of Virginia climatologist Michael Mann. He does not have an advanced degree and has published two articles in the journal Energy and Environment, which has become a venue for skeptics and is not carried in the ISI listing of peer-reviewed journals.[3]</div><div>
</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre was also exposed for having unreported ties to CGX Energy, Inc., an oil and gas exploration company, which listed McIntyre as a "strategic advisor." [4] He is the former President of Dumont Nickel Inc., and was President of Northwest Exploration Company Limited, the predecessor company to CGX Energy Inc. As of 2003, he was the strategic advisor of CGX Energy Inc. He has also been a policy analyst at both the governments of Ontario and of Canada. [5]</div><div>
</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>At the 2007 Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, McIntyre gave a joint presentation on hurricanes and climate change with Roger Pielke Jr.[6]</div><div>
</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>The Hockey Stick Study Controversy</div><div>
</div><div>Stephen McIntyre is especially known for his critique of Michael E. Mann's hockey stick study, a "reconstruction of temperatures over the past 1,000 years based on records captured in tree rings, corals and other markers," which shows temperatures swinging sharply upward in the 20th century.[7] Articles written by McIntyre, along with colleague Ross McKitrick, critical of Mann's hockey stick study led to congressional inquiry into the scientific methods of the studies. Independent research has found that McIntyre's critique may have "limited significance." Researchers at the GKSS Research Center in Geesthacht, Germany, confirmed "a glitch" in Dr. Mann's work but "found this glitch to be of very minor significance."[8] The (USA) National Research Council responded to a request from Congress and concluded after a thorough study that the scientific evidence then available generally supported Mann's analysis, noting in particular that the global warming of the last few decades exceeded that of any comparable period in the past 400 years, although less confidence could be placed on earlier periods [9]. The issue was addressed in the Fourth IPPC Report which also concluded that Mann's analysis was essentially valid and substantiated by more recent work. [10]</div><div>
</div><div>In recent years, McIntyre has extended his criticisms to also address the "spaghetti chart"; McIntyre argues that all the new reconstructions which confirmed Mann's earlier results shared some common proxies and that minor changes/updates with regard to proxy selection completely changed the results, again casting doubt on the conclusion that modern-era temperatures are unusual.[1]. McIntyre criticised a more recent paper by Mann et al. to which Mann responded, finally concluding that the " criticisms have no merit" [11]</div><div>
</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>Contact details</div><div>
</div><div>ClimateAudit.org - weblog associated with McIntyre and McKitrick that seems primarily focused on debunking the "hockey stick" graph. Steve McIntyre is the primary contributor to the site.</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>Articles and resources</div><div>
</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>Related SourceWatch articles</div><div>
</div><div>think tanks</div><div>Global warming skeptics</div><div>Climate change</div><div>Climate change skeptics</div><div>Ross McKitrick</div><div>Energy and Environment</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>References</div><div>
</div><div>â?? 1.0 1.1 Stephen McIntyre, "How do we know that 1998 was the warmest year of the millennium?", Presentation to Ohio State University, May 2008</div><div>â?? "CGX Energy Inc. Investors", 2003 Annual CGX Report, accessed February 2009.</div><div>â?? Paul D. Thacker, "Skeptics get a journal", Environmental Science & Technology, August 31, 2005.</div><div>â?? Paul D. Thacker, "How the Wall Street Journal and Rep. Barton Celebrated a Global Warming Skeptic", Environmental Science & Technology, August 31, 2005.</div><div>â?? "CGX Energy Inc. Investors", 2003 Annual CGX Report, accessed February 2009.</div><div>â?? Roger Pielke Jr. "AGU Powerpoint with Steve McIntyre", Prometheus (blog), December 10, 2007.</div><div>â?? Anthony Regalado, "In Climate Debate, "The 'Hockey Stick' Leads to a Face-Off", The Wall Street Journal, February 2005.</div><div>â?? Antonio Regalado, "Global Warming Skeptics Under Fire", The Wall Street Journal Online, October 2005.</div><div>â?? National Research Council "Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years", The National Academies Press 2006.</div><div>â?? Jansen, et al. Palaeoclimate, Chapter 6 of Fourth Assessment Report of IPPC, 2007.</div><div>â?? Mann et al. "Proxy-based reconstructions...."Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2009</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>External resources</div><div>
</div><div>Tim Lambert's posts about McIntyre at Deltoid</div><div>RealClimate.org on McIntyre. RealClimate is a climate science weblog by working climate scientists, among them Michael Mann.</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>External articles</div><div>
</div><div>Deep Climate's Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, Part I and Part 2; February 2010. ("McIntyre and McKitrick have published exactly one â?? thatâ??s right, uno â?? peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal.")</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>By McIntyre</div><div>
</div><div>Steve McIntyre, " Do We Know that the 1990s Were the Warmest Decade of the Millennium?", Presentation to the Heartland Institute's International Conference on Climate Change (2009), March 9, 2009. (PowerPoint)</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>---</div><div>
</div><div> mojo on climategate:</div><div>
</div><div>The immediate impact on public opinion was dramatic. A poll by Yale and George Mason University [31] (GMU) found that in November 2008, 71 percent of respondents agreed that the planet is warming (PDF). Five weeks after Climategate, only 57 percent believed it. The emails, said a Yale report [32] (PDF), had "a significant effect on public beliefs in global warming and trust in scientists."</div><div>
</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>IF A SINGLE PERSON CAN BE credited with setting the stage for Climategate, it's Stephen McIntyre, the retired mining consultant behind the popular skeptic blog Climate Audit [33]. Over the past decade, McIntyre has built a reputation for finding methodological errors—some real, some perceived—in climate studies. The Wall Street Journal heralded McIntyre [34] as "global warming's most dangerous apostate."</div><div>
</div><div>Indeed, McIntyre has made goading scientists—particularly Mann—close to a full-time job. Like Mann, McIntyre is genial in interviews, but on his blog, his tone toward the scientists targeted by his audits ranges from inquisitive to openly hostile.</div><div>
</div><div>The 63-year-old squash enthusiast from Toronto made his money in mining. He has also consulted for the Canadian oil and gas exploration company CGX Energy [35]. He says his mining ties don't affect his views on climate change and insists that his prolific blogging on the topic has not benefited him financially—rather, it's taken time away from more profitable business.</div><div>
</div><div>* Correction: An earlier version of this piece stated that the graph featured in the film showed temperature rise. It actually shows rise in CO2 levels. We regret the error.</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre belongs to the school of skeptics known as "lukewarmers"—those who believe the planet is warming and humans are playing a role (see our Field Guide to Climate Change Skeptics [36]), but don't think this is as much of a problem as it has been made out to be.</div><div>
</div><div>"I'm not particularly comfortable with either side of the US debate," McIntyre told me. "There are obviously competent and intelligent people that view it as a serious problem. That doesn't mean that they're right, but it's not a hoax." Nor does he oppose government regulations on principle, as do some of the free-market think tanks that regularly invite him to DC for speaking engagements. "I'm a Canadian," says McIntyre. "I think governments can do things."</div><div>
</div><div> [36]Click here to see our field guide to climate change skeptics [36].</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre's entrée into the climate debate came with a paper he coauthored with economist Ross McKitrick that critiqued an earlier version of Mann's [37] (PDF) hockey-stick graph. The paper was published in the November 2003 issue of Energy and Environment [38]. It's a publication known for providing a platform to skeptics—which is why, among the trove of hacked emails, there's one from Mann urging [39] colleagues to "dismiss this as [a] stunt, appearing in a so-called 'journal' which is already known to have defied standard practices of peer-review." Mann predicted that "the usual suspects are going to try to peddle this crap."</div><div>
</div><div>Sure enough, McIntyre and McKitrick were soon invited to Washington for a briefing [40] (PDF) arranged by the George C. Marshall Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), both free-market think tanks that have been heavily funded by ExxonMobil and other oil interests. They were also asked to meet with Sen. James Inhofe [41] (R-Okla.), who has called climate change [42] "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."</div><div>
</div><div>The targets of McIntyre's audits were less enthralled. "I wouldn't send him anything," Mann emailed CRU head Phil Jones [43] in February 2004. "I have no idea what he's up to, but you can be sure it falls into the 'no good' category...There is no reason to give them any data, in my opinion, and I think we do so at our own peril!"</div><div>
</div><div>In February 2005, McIntyre and McKitrick published [44] (PDF) another critique of the hockey-stick chart in the more-respected Geophysical Research Letters. They argued, essentially, that the chart underestimates the uncertainties about historical temperatures and relies on proxy data that they believe are "no more informative about the distant past than a table of random numbers."</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre isn't alone in his skepticism about proxy data—in fact, it's at the heart of the climate debate. Recorded temperature measurements only go back about 160 years [45], so scientists use data from tree rings, ice cores, and coral [46] to reconstruct what the climate was like [47] before that. For two millennia, those data sets align to show swings of about one degree Fahrenheit in either direction. But then, in the 1960s, some tree-ring data diverge [48] (PDF) and suggest declining temperatures—even as actual temperatures show a dramatic rise. No one knows quite why this is; some researchers suggest the trees may actually be showing the stress from human activities. This divergence is one reason that many skeptics argue against using temperature reconstructions in climate change research.</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre's paper made headlines. A few days after publication, he was featured in a front-page piece in the Wall Street Journal that pitted [49] (PDF) his hockey-stick critique against the whole of global warming science, saying he had "helped to reopen the debate."</div><div>
</div><div>Few scientists will ever get that kind of coverage for their life's work, let alone for a single article on someone else's research. But McIntyre's critique came at a time when those seeking to block action on climate change were on the defensive—many had been pilloried for their ties to industry (PDF [50]) and right-wing think tanks, and public opinion was turning toward action on climate change. At this pivotal moment, reopening the debate was just what the skeptics, and their industry backers, needed. McIntyre and McKitrick were flown to Washington for another briefing with the Marshall Institute and CEI [51] (PDF).</div><div>
</div><div>Congressional conservatives swung into action. Rep. "Smokey" Joe Barton [52] (R-Texas), then the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, launched a formal inquiry into the work of Mann and other climate scientists in June 2005. As part of the inquiry, Barton—who believes acting on global warming is "absolute nonsense [53]" and said in a hearing that "when it's hot, we find shade [54]"—enlisted George Mason University statistician Edward Wegman [55] to produce a report on the hockey stick. (In doing so, Barton eschewed [56] (PDF) the more traditional route of requesting [57] (PDF) a report from the National Research Council, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences.)...</div><div>
</div><div>In a slideshow meant to highlight GMU's investigations for Congress (PDF [58]), a Wegman staffer noted that Barton's office warned Wegman's group to expect criticism and told them to have "thick skins." Barton's staff also provided the group with reams of reading material—particularly troubling, considering that none of the statisticians, she said, had "any real expertise in paleoclimate reconstruction." Wegman's group also consulted McIntyre in its evaluation of Mann's study, but it never reached out to Mann.</div><div>
</div><div>When it was released in July 2006, the Wegman report [59] (PDF) essentially agreed with McIntyre, citing statistical problems with the hockey stick and accusing climate scientists of uncritically reinforcing each other's work. Years later, Barton [60] and other skeptics [61] still tout the document as proof that the hockey stick is broken (even though GMU is currently investigating allegations that Wegman [62] may have lifted portions of the report from a previously published book).</div><div>
</div><div>Meanwhile, about five months after Barton commissioned Wegman for the report, the House Committee on Science asked [63] (PDF) the National Academy of Sciences to prepare a formal report on the hockey stick. The review concluded [64] (PDF) that while some uncertainties "have been underestimated," there was nevertheless "an array of evidence" supporting the main conclusion of Mann's work.</div><div>
</div><div> Clarification: The original Wall Street Journal article referred to a report by researcher Hans von Storch, not McIntyre’s specifically: "Reports such as [von Storch's] helped to reopen the debate, even to outsiders."</div><div>
</div><div>The fights over the hockey stick eventually faded from the headlines, but the data war raged on. McIntyre turned his attention to pursuing the data that climate scientists had drawn from to conclude that the planet is drastically warming. He was particularly interested in East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, keepers of one of the most complete sets of temperature records in the world. He asked the unit for raw data, but was rebuffed. "If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone," CRU head Phil Jones wrote to Mann [65] in February 2005. He believed that if McIntyre found an error, no matter how minor, the skeptics would have a field day.</div><div>
</div><div>Jones' fears were not off-base. In August 2007, McIntyre discovered an error [66] in NASA's calculation of how the average temperature for a given year varies from the historical average: US temperatures between 2000 and 2006 had been reported [67] (PDF) as roughly a sixth of a degree higher than they actually were. Separately, NASA found during its regular [68] updating that 1934 had pulled slightly ahead of 1998 as the hottest year on record to that point (2005 and 2010 [69] have since superseded them). The story was all over the right-wing talk circuit. "The man-made global warming is inside NASA," Rush Limbaugh declared [70]. "The man-made global warming is in the scientific community with false data."</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre and others kept at it. In 2008, he sought raw data and email correspondence from Benjamin Santer [71], a scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory [72]. Santer refused, arguing that the data were already publicly available. In a letter to a fellow scientist he vented that [73] the time-consuming request was part of "a calculated strategy to divert my attention and focus away from research." He called McIntyre "the self-appointed Joe McCarthy of climate science," continuing, "We should be able to conduct our scientific research without constant fear of an 'audit' by Steven [sic] McIntyre; without having to weigh every word we write in every email we send to our scientific colleagues."</div><div>
</div><div>In September 2009, RealClimate [74], a blog launched by Mann and other scientists to fight back against skeptics, weighed in. Several of the blog's contributors drafted a public statement [75] about what they saw as a pattern: "An unverified accusation of malfeasance is made based on nothing, and it is instantly 'telegraphed' across the denial-o-sphere while being embellished along the way to apply to anything 'hockey-stick' shaped and any and all scientists, even those not even tangentially related. The usual suspects become hysterical with glee that finally the 'hoax' has been revealed and congratulations are handed out all round...Net effect on lay people? Confusion. Net effect on science? Zip."</div><div>
</div><div>Emails show scientists lashing out against McIntyre as a "bozo" and "a playground bully." "I think it was a mistake for them to in effect adopt a fatwa against Climate Audit," says McIntyre.</div><div>So how much of a nuisance was McIntyre? Consider his attempts to procure the crucial global temperature data sets that are jointly held by the CRU and the UK's Met Office Hadley Centre [76]. McIntyre dogged the CRU for access to them for years, a campaign that escalated over the course of 2009. The CRU repeatedly turned down these requests, arguing that granting them would violate agreements over data its partners had collected. Then, in June 2009, McIntyre found out that the CRU had provided the very information he had been requesting to a scientist at Georgia Institute of Technology [77]. In response, McIntyre penned [78] an angry screed on Climate Audit. In just the last week of July 2009, CRU received [79] 58 FOIA requests from McIntyre and others [80] (PDF) affiliated with Climate Audit. CRU head Phil Jones argued that responding to these requests was creating an unmanageable burden.</div><div>
</div><div>Emails from this period show the scientists lashing out against McIntyre. He is referred to as a "bozo [81]" and "a playground bully [82]." McIntyre clearly gets a rise out of irking scientists, whom he frequently refers to as "the Team [83]"—another play on the hockey-stick metaphor. He likes to "tease these guys and kind of make fun of them," he says, and their evident aggravation at his inquiries only egged him on. "I think it was a mistake for them to in effect adopt a fatwa against Climate Audit," says McIntyre.</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre's latest requests for both the raw CRU data and the email correspondence between scientists about those data were formally denied on November 13, 2009. Four days later, a massive bundle of files named FOIA.zip was anonymously posted on several prominent skeptic blogs and RealClimate. In it were years' worth of the climate scientists' email exchanges. McIntyre says he doesn't know who posted the file but adds that the timing is one of several "really strange coincidences" surrounding the emails, "if it is a coincidence." It was also, notably, just days before the start of the Copenhagen climate talks, which many hoped would result in a new global deal for regulating greenhouse gas emissions.</div><div>---</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>spoke at </div><div>
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</div><div>Funding the Conference</div><div>
</div><div>On its conference website, the Heartland Institute states that "all of the eventâ??s expenses will be covered by admission fees and individual and foundation donors to Heartland. No corporate sponsorships or dollars earmarked for the event were solicited or accepted."[2] However, it does not disclose which foundations are contributing to the conference.</div><div>
</div><div>While the admission fees are quite high, the Heartland Institute appears to be willing to subsidize the fees of anyone who signs their global warming petition. As described in the Guardian, "the generous souls at the Heartland Institute are offering a special 20% discount on the $720 registration fee. All you have to do to qualify is put your name to the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine's Global Warming Petition, which to date has been signed by 31,072 American scientists, 'including 9,021 with PhDs.'" [3]</div><div>
</div><div>Ahead of the conference DeSmog Blog compiled a tally on the funding sources of the Heartland Institute and all the groups listed as co-sponsors of the conference. They found that "over $47 million from energy companies and right-wing foundations, with 78% of that total coming from the Scaife Family of foundations" in the period between 1985 and 2006. In their calculations, the contributors were[4]:</div><div>
</div><div>ExxonMobil (1998-2006): $6,199,000</div><div>Koch Foundations (1986-2006): $4,438,920</div><div>Scaife Foundations (1985-2006): $36,868,640</div><div></div><div>
</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>Steve McIntyre: Getting Back Into the Mining Business</div><div>
</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>Tags: apco worldwide, Canada, CEI, CGX Energy, climateaudit.org, Dumont Nickel, ExxonMobil, Fraser Institute, george c marshall institute, George C Marshall Institute, mining, Noranda mining company, Northwest Explorations, ross mckitrick, Steve McIntyre</div><div>Steve McIntyre</div><div>
</div><div>Steve McIntyre recently announced to his readers at ClimateAudit.org that he's "been doing some mining business in the past few weeks and itâ??s taken time. Iâ??ll likely do more this year for a variety of obvious reasons."</div><div>
</div><div>He will doubtless resurface at some point to continue his attacks on climate science, so there's no time like the present to review McIntyre's role as a climate skeptic over the years.</div><div>
</div><div>Steve McIntyre's ClimateAudit blog</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre maintains the blog climateaudit.org which documents his attempts to find statistical mistakes in peer-reviewed scientific literature.</div><div>
</div><div>Steve McIntyre and Fraser Institute Senior Fellow Ross McKitrick (together referred to as M & M) have co-authored two papers claiming to debunk the 'hockey stick' graph.  The first was published in Energy and Environment which is not carried in the ISI listing of peer-reviewed journals and whose "peer review process has been widely criticised for allowing the publication of substandard papers". </div><div>
</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>Their second paper was published in Geophysical Research Letters after an unsuccesful process of trying to publish in the highly-regarded journal Nature.  The first paper recieved very little attention outside of climate denier circles and the GRL paper made a minor correction to what was, by then, peripheral to climate science.  However, a high-level PR campaign helped place M&M on the front-page in the National Post followed by a front page story in the Wall Street Journal.</div><div>
</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre and Tom Harris</div><div>
</div><div>In 2004, Tom Harris produced a film called Climate Catastrophe which featured interviews with McIntyre and McKitrick.  At the time, Harris was working for tobacco-industry PR firm APCO Worldwide.</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre and the George Marshall Institute</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre's two papers have been re-published and distributed by the George C. Marshall Institute â?? a right wing thing tank that has received $715,000 from Exxon Mobil since 1998.  McIntyre is listed on GMI's website as a round-table speaker.  The usual list of Exxon-funded hacks have also been involved with the Marshall Institute, including Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon, and Patrick J. Michaels.</div><div>
</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>Additionally, GMI and Competitive Enterprise Institute have invited and arranged for McIntyre and McKitrick to do speaking events in Washington DC and arranged meetings for the pair with legislators.  In November 2003, the CEI and GMI invited M&M to speak at a Round-Table on Science and Public Policy series where they were introduced by Jeff Kueter of the Marshall Institute and Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.  Then in May 2005 the two were brought to DC to speak at the National Press Club, again introduced by Kueter and Ebell (full transcipt here.) That afternoon the pair went to Capitol Hill for a 3pm meeting with undisclosed congressional staffers.</div><div>
</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre and the Canadian Mining Industry</div><div>
</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre worked for 30 years in the mining business. He left the mining company Noranda around 1988 to help found Timmons Nickel.  He describes his role in Timmins in his testimony to Canadian Parliment against environmental regulations.  Mcintyre then became president of Northwest Explorations which was taken over by CGX Energy in 1998.  He also became president of Dumont Nickel, but left Dumont in 2002 to 'pursue other interests.'  In 2003, CGX Enegy's annual report listed McIntyre as a "Strategic Advisor," the same year he first published an article with McKitrick.</div><div>
</div><div>According a bio listed on the University of Guelph website, this period involved, among other things, "general corporate management, including specific oversight of company audited financial statements, annual reports, numerous corporate disclosure documents; oversight of exploration programs; direction of several corporate re-organizations."</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre says he missed out on a lucrative mining boom due to his climate blogging, and recently says he has been getting back into the mining sector.</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre as a Policy Advisor to the Canadian Government</div><div>
</div><div>Several descriptions of McIntyre portray him as an advisor to both the Ontario and Canadian governments, including the Marshall Institute, Wikipedia and interviews.  Other than his testimony to Canadian Parliment in 1991, we have been unable to find any reference to his role as a policy advisor.</div><div>
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</div><div>http://www.desmogblog.com/steve-mcintyre</div><div> </div><div>
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</div><div>Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, part 2: The story behind the Barton-Whitfield investigation and the Wegman Panel</div><div>Posted on February 8, 2010 | 155 Comments</div><div>[Updated Feb. 8: (editing and extension of summary and document list update)]</div><div>
</div><div>Perhaps the most disturbing episode in the “hockey stick” controversy was the investigation of climate scientists by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee under Republican representatives Joe Barton and Ed Whitfield, and a subsequent report for that same committee  by an “independent” panel led by George Mason University statistics professor Edward Wegman. In light of various renewed “skeptic” allegations of scientific misconduct against Michael Mann and Phil Jones, and my recent revelation of possible plagiarism and other questionable scholarship in the Wegman report, a complete review of the events of 2005-2006 would seem to be in order.</div><div>
</div><div>In short, the Energy and Commerce Committee refused the offer of a proper scientific review from the National Academy of Sciences in favour of an investigative process that was ad hoc, biased and unscientific. And the report resulting from that process  is tainted with highly questionable scholarship.</div><div>
</div><div>I can now fill in important gaps in the timelines of the initial investigation and the Wegman panel. But more importantly my review has led to some startling conclusions:</div><div>
</div><div>Not only was the original Barton-Whitfield investigation (in the form of intimidating letters) inspired by the allegations of “climate science auditor”  Steve McIntyre, but the defining impetus seems to have been a little known Cooler Heads Coalition-Marshall Institute sponsored presentation by McIntyre and sidekick economist Ross McKitrick in Washington barely a month beforehand.</div><div>Energy and Commerce Committee Republican staffer Peter Spencer played a key but hitherto undisclosed role in the investigation and the subsequent Wegman panel report, and  apparently acted as the main source and gatekeeper of climate science information for the panel.</div><div>Steve McIntyre was in communication with the Wegman panel, at least concerning technical questions around replication of his work. The full extent of McIntyre’s communications or meetings with Spencer or other staffers, as well as Wegman panelists, is still unknown. However, the record shows there were at least two intriguing opportunities for face-to-face meetings in Washington during the Wegman panel’s mandate.</div><div>All this, along with new information about the circumstances of the Wegman panel’s formation and mandate, raises serious doubts about the supposed independence of the Wegman panel.</div><div>
</div><div>In my last post, I laid out some inconvenient facts about McIntyre’s fellow travellers on his way to taking his place in the pantheon of climate skeptics. As noted there, McIntyre (and McKitrick) had achieved some measure of fame with their lionization by the Wall Street Journal in early 2005. In the received wisdom about the subsequent Barton-Whitfield investigation, Antonio Regalado’s front page article is seen as its prime impetus.</div><div>
</div><div>However, although the WSJ undoubtedly raised awareness of McIntyre’s work, there are compelling reasons to consider that explanation incomplete. The letters are considerably more detailed and raise additional issues from those discussed in the WSJ article. Did something happen in the four-month gap between the time the article appeared in February 2005 and the issuance of the Barton-Whitfield letters in late June 2005?</div><div>
</div><div>M&M go to Washington – again</div><div>
</div><div>A careful search of McIntyre’s blog ClimateAudit provided at least part of the answer to both concerns, as seen in this brief post from May 7, 2005:</div><div>
</div><div>Ross McKitrick and I will be making two presentations in Washington on May 11 sponsored by Cooler Heads Coalition/George Marshall Institute: 12.20 at the National Press Club and 3 pm somewhere on Capitol Hill.</div><div>
</div><div>This was to be the duo’s second trip for the Washington think tanks; the first had taken place in November 2003, as discussed in M&M, part 1.</div><div>
</div><div>The afternoon Capitol Hill meeting remains somewhat mysterious, but M&M’s presentation and the Press Club discussion transcript are both available.  Once again, Jeff Keuter of the Marshall Institute and Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute  were on hand with an effusive welcome; Ebell noted that McKitrick had appeared more often for such presentations than anyone else.</div><div>
</div><div>In his portion of the Press Club discussion, McIntyre laid out his complaints concerning access to Mann’s data and computer code, as previously aired inAntonio Regalado’s  Wall Street Journal article.</div><div>
</div><div>But he also had some new issues to raise. Presaging Wegman’s later “social network” analysis, McIntyre expanded his comments to the whole “hockey team” and laid out a list of studies he claimed could not be considered “independent” because of overlapping authorship (p. 17). (He also boasted that he thought taking on the team was an “even match”).</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre went on to complain that the IPCC had failed to do “due diligence” in “checking” the data or constituent studies and claimed that the National Science Foundation, funder of much of Mann’s work, had failed to enforce disclosure rules that, in McIntyre’s opinion, compelled Mann to release his computer code.</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre also presented some dubious technical analysis, purporting to show various techniques of “cherrypicking” among paleoclimatologists, and even spliced the UAH satellite temperature  data onto the Moberg reconstruction to show that recent temperatures were not much warmer than the medieval warm period and that recent trends were modest (remember this was early 2005, before application of important corrections later that year).</div><div>
</div><div>As for the genesis of his interest in the “hockey stick”, McIntyre compared it to a mining promotion. This echoed his invocation of the Bre-X scandal in the WSJ article. But then he went even further.</div><div>
</div><div>There is no magic bullet for it, but it is astonishing to me how little due diligence there is in this, compared to the due diligence in a prospectus or any kind of public offering of stock, even by cruddy little mining companies. Peer reviewers merely give advice to the editor as to whether a paper should be published.</div><div>
</div><div>This betrays an utter lack of comprehension of how science actually works. But McIntyre was not done – he even invoked the Enron scandal and described his “epiphany” of a simlar lack of due diligence in climate science.</div><div>
</div><div>Epiphany indeed. It so happened that the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee had investigated one aspect of the  Enron  scandal in 2002. But  the Enron comparison was perhaps unnecessary, as that same Subcommittee had looked at climate issues once before, as we shall see.</div><div>
</div><div>In any event, with McIntyre’s analysis in hand and with the impetus of the May 2005 roundtable, committee chair “Smokey” Joe Barton and subcommittee chair Ed Whitfield swung into action.  They tapped staffer Peter Spencer to help organize an investigation of  “hockey stick” authors Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes, and to serve as committee contact.</div><div>
</div><div>Spencer, a staffer attached to the Republican cohort of the  Energy and Commerce Committee, was an obvious choice. Under previous chairman Billy Tauzin, he had been instrumental in organizing an Oversight and Investigations subcommittee hearing on the use of climate models in the U.S. National Assessment in 2002. That session heard from a “balanced” panel of five scientists that included climate science critics Patrick Michaels and Roger Pielke, Sr.  (Spencer has kept up his interest in climate science; he accepted atrip to the 2009 Heartland Institute International Conference on Climate Change in New York, with Barton’s approval).</div><div>
</div><div>The Barton investigation began with a set of detailed letters of inquiry sent to the three authors, Mann, Bradley and Hughes, that focused not only on data and computer code, but details of funding and past research associations.  The letter sent to Mann asked for details on all research and funding thereof. A couple of specific requests invoked Regalado’s Wall Street Journal article and the Energy and Environment article, but in line with McIntyre’s more recent concerns, Mann was also asked to elucidate his IPCC role.</div><div>
</div><div>Again, following McIntyre’s newly raised concerns, letters were also sent toRajenda  Pachauri, IPCC chair, and Arden Bement, director of the National Science Foundation.</div><div>
</div><div>Each letter to the scientists started out identically:</div><div>
</div><div>Questions have been raised, according to a February 14, 2005 article in The Wall Street Journal, about the significance of methodological flaws and data errors in your studies of the historical record of temperatures and climate change.</div><div>
</div><div>Here’s how McIntyre announced the letters on his website:</div><div>
</div><div>Several people have drawn attention to letters from the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee to Mann, Bradley, Hughes, the director of the U.S. National Science Foundation and the chairman of the IPCC, which were posted up at the Committee website on Friday here. </div><div>
</div><div>The letters refer to the Wall Street Journal [this would presumably be the article of Feb. 14, 2005, in which Mann said that he would not be "intimidated" into releasing his algorithm, rather than the recent editorial], as well as to our articles.</div><div>
</div><div>The only hint that McIntyre has ever given of any contact with Barton’s committee staff was in Paul Thacker’s analysis of the WSJ article, published inEnvironmental Science and Technology.</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre says that after he was profiled in the Wall Street Journal, he received a phone call from the congressional staff of Rep. Barton. ”They wanted to know if I had spoken to the Wall Street Journal and if the article was true,” McIntyre tells ES&T.</div><div>
</div><div>Even here, McIntyre appeared to be suggesting that his only role was the confirmation of the WSJ article contents. But McIntyre has never mentioned the May 11 sessions, a notable departure from his usual practice of breathlessly blogging about every trip in glorious detail. Indeed, everyone involved appears to have gone to great pains to cover up the full story behind the Barton investigation, and the role of McKitrick and McIntyre’s sponsors, the  Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Marshall Institute.</div><div>
</div><div>Everyone, that is, except CEI head Myron Ebell, who openly boasted at the time to the BBC:</div><div>
</div><div>Myron Ebell, of the Competitiveness Enterprise Institute and a prominent global warming sceptic, told BBC News: “We’ve always wanted to get the science on trial,” and “we would like to figure out a way to get this into a court of law,” adding “this could work.”</div><div>
</div><div>That same article quotes shocked reaction from scientists. Raymond Bradley, thought the letters were meant to “undermine confidence in the IPCC,” while paleoclimatologist Thomas Crowley discerned a “more general intent to intimidate climate researchers.”</div><div>
</div><div>On July 15, 2005, National Academy of Sciences president Ralph Ciccerone sent Barton a letter that noted scientists’ concerns along with a better way forward:</div><div>
</div><div>A Congressional investigation, based on the authority of the House Commerce Committee is probably not the best way to resolve a scientific issue, and a focus on individual scientists can be intimidating.</div><div>
</div><div>If the House Commerce Committee would like to have additional information regarding the state of scientific knowledge in the area of research being conducted by Drs. Mann, Hughes, and Bradley, the National Academy of Sciences would be willing to create an independent expert panel (according to our standard rigorous study process) to assess the state of scientific knowledge in this area, or perhaps one of the professional scientific societies could take on this task for you.</div><div>
</div><div>But, as Thacker noted, there was no interest from Barton:</div><div>
</div><div>Attempting to resolve the issue, The National Research Council [operational arm of the joint National Academies] has even offered to perform an independent review of the controversy for Barton. Bill Colglazier, the council’s executive director, declares, ”It was a sincere good-faith offer, but [the congressman] didn’t seem too positive on this”.</div><div>
</div><div>At the same time, Representative Sherwood Boehlert, chairman of the House Science Committee, issued an opening salvo in what was to become a running war between the two committees.  He expressed his “strenuous objections” to Barton’s “misguided and illegitimate investigation,”  and stated that Barton’s unprecedented approach raised “the specter of politicians opening investigations against any scientist who reaches a conclusion that makes the political elite uncomfortable.”</div><div>
</div><div>Nevertheless, Mann and the others all furnished formal detailed replies to Barton (you can read them, along with other reaction from scientists, at theRealClimate post “Scientists respond to Barton”).</div><div>
</div><div>And then, on the surface at least, things became very quiet and were not to heat up until 2006, with its duel of competing reports and hearings. The Science Committee hearings (and National Academy of Sciences report) would come in March 2006, while Barton shot back with a report by a panel led by Edward Wegman and his own set of hearings in July 2006.</div><div>
</div><div>An “independent” panel</div><div>
</div><div>When I first started re-examining the Wegman report, I was struck by the paucity of information about its mandate, formation and operation. The report itself seemed to describe a highly informal process, to put it mildly.</div><div>
</div><div>The Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce along with Chairman of the Subcommittee of Oversight and Investigations have been interested in discovering whether or not the criticisms of Mann et al. are valid and if so, what are the implications. To this end, Committee staff asked for advice as to the validity of the complaints of McIntyre and McKitrick [MM] and related implications. Dr. Wegman formed an ad hoc Committee (Drs. Edward J. Wegman – George Mason University, David W. Scott – Rice University, and Yasmin H. Said – The Johns Hopkins University). The Committee was organized with our own initiative as a pro bono committee. [p. 2]</div><div>
</div><div>Although there appeared to be no official information beyond this, I wondered if the reference to Barton’s staff might hold a clue to missing details. I had discovered Peter Spencer’s involvement by noticing his name as the contact in the Barton-Whitfield letters; now, I decided to see if there might be evidence of his involvement in the Wegman panel. And that’s how I found a hithertounnoticed 2007 symposium presentation by Wegman co-panelist (and protege) Yasmin Said, which was considerably more forthcoming. Said gave crucial – and in my opinion, shocking – details about the inception and process of the Wegman panel. [The presentation has since been removed from the GMU website, but it is available here.]</div><div>
</div><div>Here’s Said on the background of the Wegman panel:</div><div>
</div><div>Dr. Edward Wegman was approached by Dr. Jerry Coffey on 1 September 2005 concerning possible testimony in Congress about a statistical issue associated with paleoclimate reconstruction.</div><div>– This approach was based on independent recommendations from Dr. Fritz Scheuren, ASA 100th President and from the National Academy of Science where Dr. Wegman chaired CATS.</div><div>
</div><div>It turns out that go-between Coffey is a statistical expert who worked in government for most of his career. Wegman and Coffey have likely known each other a long time; they are both active members of the Washington branch of the American Statistical Society.</div><div>
</div><div>But Coffey is also a dyed-in-the-wool “Tea Party” Republican and gun nut, as his page at the Republican Party Virginia Network makes clear. A recent comment for the Virginia Republican Defenders of the Second Amendment group reads:</div><div>
</div><div>The place for ammunition shoppers to be Saturday was the Gun Show at the Showplace in Richmond. Everybody had ammunition and there were even some bargains.</div><div>
</div><div>Said left unexplained the supposed “recommendations” and their context. Were these recommendations made in the specific context of a study on paleoclimatology? Did Coffey ask for these recommendations or did someone else?</div><div>
</div><div>Also unexplained was the necessity of a preliminary approach to Wegman by a third party.  But Coffey’s qualifications for the job are evident in comments at PersonalLiberty.com, with his reference to the  “Gore global warming boondoggle” and his recommendations of climate science reading material:</div><div>
</div><div>My favorite short read on global warming is Lawrence Solomon’s “The Deniers.” I particularly enjoyed the chapter on Ed Wegman since I had a ringside seat when Ed’s analysis got started. Others [sic] books you might enjoy are the last couple by Patrick Michaels; Fred Singer and Dennis Avery on the 1500 year cycle; and [Roy] Spencer’s latest.</div><div>
</div><div>Said goes on:</div><div>
</div><div>After the initial contact, Dr. Wegman received materials and a visit from Congressional Staffer Peter Spencer.</div><div>
</div><div>Peter Spencer explained that the House Committee on Oversight and Investigations was interested in understanding whether the criticism of the paleoclimate temperature reconstruction</div><div>published by Dr. Michael Mann and his associates was meritorious.</div><div>• This curve was used in the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to reinforce concerns about global warming.</div><div>• There had been some criticism of the statistical methodology, but this was not being taken seriously within the climate change community.</div><div>
</div><div>– Because of the public policy implications, the House Committee wanted an independent expert opinion.</div><div>• Dr. Wegman was asked if he would be willing to take on this task and would he form a small team to look into the issue.</div><div>• He agreed and recruited Dr. David W. Scott and me as well as one other participant, who later dropped out.</div><div>• We were warned that we should be prepared for criticism and that we should have thick skins.</div><div>• Peter Spencer began sending us a daunting amount of material for us to review over the next 9 months. [Emphasis added]</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>So there you have it.  This supposedly “independent” panel began with a sounding out by a rabid Republican partisan and convinced climate “skeptic”. And Wegman agreed to a process that not only excluded climate scientists, but also involved Peter Spencer as a key conduit and gatekeeper providing climate science documentation and commentary. And all this was done by a House committee that had refused to even acknowledge the offer of a proper scientific review from the National Academy of Sciences.</div><div>
</div><div>Nevertheless, Said insisted that the approach of the panel was one of an “honest broker” (where have I heard that one before?) and that it had an “unbiased perspective.”  She admitted that none of her team had “any real expertise in paleoclimate reconstruction, but were arguably pretty good statisticians.” As if that could repair the lack of domain knowledge, so painfully obvious in the panel’s report.</div><div>
</div><div>Said also opined that the panelists saw themselves as “referees” in the “hockey game,” which she characterized as a “debate” going on in “weblogs.” Well, certainly one side of the debate was; the other (scientific) side was also producing more and more corroborating and refining evidence with each passing year. But maybe Spencer was not passing that along.</div><div>
</div><div>Perhaps the most unintentionally humorous statement (among many others) was this:</div><div>
</div><div>[Mann's] main adversaries were Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, both Canadian citizens, who were usually unkindly referred to as the “Canadians.”</div><div>
</div><div>Gee, thanks for that. I didn’t know my nationality considered a term of opprobrium in Washington, DC.</div><div>
</div><div>The conduct of the Wegman panel also casts doubt on their independence and impartiality.</div><div>
</div><div>We have been to Michael Mann’s University of Virginia website and downloaded the materials there. Unfortunately, we did not find adequate material to reproduce the MBH98 materials.</div><div>
</div><div>We have been able to reproduce the results of McIntyre and McKitrick (2005b). While at first the McIntyre code was specific to the file structure of his computer, with his assistance we were able to run the code on our own machines and reproduce and extend some of his results.</div><div>
</div><div>By all accounts, Wegman did not even bother to contact Mann, and yet worked directly with McIntyre in order to “reproduce” his results.</div><div>
</div><div>Hail, hail the gang’s all here</div><div>
</div><div>The extent of McIntyre’s communication with the Wegman panel, or indeed with Peter Spencer and other Republican staffers, is not known (although it should certainly be ascertained). However, it is worth noting that on at least two occasions all of the principals were together at events in the Washington area.</div><div>
</div><div>The U.S. Climate Change Program workshop in November 2005 was one such meeting. The list of participants includes both McIntyre and staffer Spencer. George Mason University was well represented; Wegman and Said were only two of several professors from that institution. Another George Mason-connected personage was none other than climate skeptic and Science & Environment Policy Project head Fred Singer, who was  Distinguished Research Professor at George Mason’s Institute for Humane Studies from 1994 on. (Indeed, theInstitute is only one of 40 libertarian research centres and affiliates hosted at George Mason).</div><div>
</div><div>Also present were two staffers from the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology, Christopher King and James Paul. Perhaps, then, this is the occasion where word of the Wegman panel first got out. Be that as it may, in that same month Science  Committee chair Sherwood Boehlert requested that the National Academy of Science review the matter. This led to the  comprehensive National Academy of Sciences report Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years by a distinguished panel led by Gerald North.</div><div>
</div><div>That led to competing sets of hearings in 2006 – and another “hail-hail-the-gang’s-all-here” moment in Washington at the Science Committee hearings. That was reported by a ClimateAudit fan in a post that is the only one ever to  mention Peter Spencer.</div><div>
</div><div>First of all, having followed the global warming controversy for the last five years, I was thrilled to meet many of the heavyweight skeptics: Fred Singer, Myron Ebell, Willie Soon, John Christy, Steve and Ross. I also enjoyed chatting with various staffers from the hill (Peter Spencer – House Energy & Commerce Committee …)</div><div>
</div><div>The subsequent House Energy and Commerce Committee hearings in July 2006 provided another round in the political debate. As related in the Government Accountability Project report Redacting the Science of ClimateChange [p. 62, See full 1.5 MB PDF]:</div><div>
</div><div>According to Lauren Morello of the Environment and Energy Daily, the hearing was scheduled for a time when the committee knew that Mann could not attend. [Environment and Energy Daily (July 20, 2006)]</div><div>
</div><div>All these various indications of a biased process and the apparent role of Peter Spencer,  entirely support Sherwood Boehlert’s characterization of the Barton investigation as  “misguided and illegitimate.” And this new information may go some way towards resolving some of the enduring mysteries about the whole affair.</div><div>
</div><div>For one thing, new light is cast on a key Wegman et al section on tree-ring proxies I discussed in Wegman and Rapp on Tree-Rings: A Divergence Problem, part 1. There I showed that the section was largely derived, without attribution, from “hockey stick” co-author Raymond Bradley’s paleoclimatology text book, but with significant errors and distortions interspersed in the text (see also this side-by-side comparison of the two texts).</div><div>
</div><div>Ascertaining the exact process whereby this occurred may require close questioning of the responsible author, along with careful examination of earlier drafts. But it is also clear that all documentation supplied by Spencer, whether or not  included the Wegman bibliography, should be identified and then carefully checked and reviewed. It may well be that one of these contains a previously undiscovered main intermediate antecedent for the section in question.</div><div>
</div><div>And to come full circle, one of the entries in Wegman’s bibliography turns out to be none other than McIntyre and McKitrick’s May 2005 presentation. Although McIntyre is not cited, it is reasonable to infer that McIntyre’s discussion of co-authorship in climate science may have inspired Wegman’s social network analysis. (A bizarre footnote: for some reason, Wegman’s bibliographic entry lists the incorrect date of September 7, not May 11).</div><div>
</div><div>In coming months, I’ll examine in detail various aspects of the Wegman Report,  its antecedents (whether attributed or not), and update  other  developments.</div><div>
</div><div>Meanwhile, there is now ample evidence to suggest that the so-called climate science “auditors” and “investigators,” along with their hidden sponsors, should themselves be thoroughly investigated.  And high time too.</div><div>
</div><div>[Updated Feb. 8: (editing and extension of summary and document list update)]</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>Key documents:</div><div>
</div><div>The Hockey Stick Debate: Lessons in Disclosure and Due Diligence, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, Marshall Institute, May 11, 2005. [Presentation:PDF, Roundtable transcript: PDF]</div><div>
</div><div>Ad Hoc Committee Report on the ‘Hockey Stick’ Global Climate Reconstruction, Edward J. Wegman, David W. Scott and Yasmin H. Said. [PDF]</div><div>
</div><div>Experiences with Congressional Testimony: Statistics and The Hockey Stick,Yasmin Said, September, 2007. [PDF]</div><div>
</div><div>Wegman-Bradley Tree Ring Comparison [PDF]</div><div>
</div><div>RELATED</div><div>Contrarian scholarship: Revisiting the Wegman report</div><div>In "Climate science disinformation"</div><div>Wegman and Said on social networks: More dubious scholarship</div><div>In "Climate science disinformation"</div><div>David Ritson speaks out</div><div>In "Climate science disinformation"</div><div>This entry was posted in Climate science disinformation and tagged Competitive Enterprise Institute, Ed Whitfield, Edward Wegman, Joe Barton, Marsall Institute, Michael Mann, Peter Spencer, Ross McKitrick, Steve McIntyre, Yasmin Said. Bookmark the permalink.</div><div> </div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div> eSmog UK will endeavour to publish profiles of the back-room influencers who have promoted climate denial in Britain and around the world each Tuesday. Today we begin with Ned Flanders. Sorry, Ross McKitrick. And his Celtic carol band. Seriously. </div><div>
</div><div>“Dude is a shoo-in for Ned Flanders from The Simpsons.” Well, at least according to one student’s view on Rate my Professors of Ross McKitrick, economics professor at Guelph University in Ontario, Canada.</div><div>
</div><div>“He teaches environmental economics in a very right wing perspective. He really teaches you his point of view and not much of the course material,” reads another review from this October.</div><div>
</div><div>McKitrick has been a professor at the university since 1996, but his “right wing perspective” on climate change extends well beyond the campus and the some 115,000 people residing in Guelph, where he lives with his wife and two children.</div><div>
</div><div>No Convincing Evidence</div><div>
</div><div>In a very ‘Ned Flanders’ fashion, the professor – who has been known to don a sweater-vest or two – endorsed “An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming” issued in 2009 by the conservative Christian public policy group, the Cornwall Alliance.</div><div>
</div><div>The Declaration states that “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming”. It also denies that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and that renewable energy can replace fossil fuels.</div><div>
</div><div>McKitrick also co-authored the Alliance’s 2006 “A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming”, the predecessor to “A Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor” upon which the 2009 Declaration is based.</div><div>
</div><div>Cooler Heads</div><div>
</div><div>But this was not the first time he called climate science into question. It was during the early 2000s that McKitrick would solidify his position as a key player in stimulating climate denial.</div><div>
</div><div>It all began in 2001, when McKitrick participated in a briefing attacking the UNIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Kyoto Protocol. The briefing was sponsored by the Cooler Heads Coalition, a climate denial organisation run by theKoch-funded Competitive Enterprises Institute (CEI).</div><div>
</div><div>McKitrick is known for being staunchly anti-Kyoto. Writing in Canada’s centre-right newspaper, The National Post, in February 2002, he states: “If global warming is going to happen, Kyoto will do nothing whatsoever to prevent it or even slow it down. Why are we still considering it?”</div><div>
</div><div>It was at this time that he became a Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Institute is partly funded by theAtlas Economic Research Foundation – one of Antony Fisher’s neoliberal think tanks.</div><div>
</div><div>Coincidentally, 2002 was the same year that McKitrick released Taken By Storm, co-authored by fellow climate sceptic Christopher Essex. A press conference to promote the book was organised shortly after, in 2003, by McKitrick and Essex with the Cooler Heads Coalition; unsurprisingly, copies were provided “with compliments” by the CEI.</div><div>
</div><div>The Hockey Stick</div><div>
</div><div>This was also the fateful year that McKitrick met fellow Canadian and climate scepticSteve McIntyre, who lives about an hour’s drive from Guelph. McKitrick, who was already plugged into the fossil fuel-funded PR world, would help McIntyre finalise his analysis of Michael Mann’s hockey stick graph.</div><div>
</div><div>Their hockey stick critique claimed there were ‘fundamental flaws’ with the graph used by the IPCC to show that the ‘90s was the hottest decade of the century; they argued that the way the data is handled ensures that whatever data gets input, it will always produce a hockey stick shape.</div><div>
</div><div>The critique would go on to form the basis of McIntyre’s quest to debunk Mann on his sceptic blog, Climate Audit, and later inspire an unknown individual to hack into the emails of the University of East Anglia in 2009 and steal emails and data shared between the world’s leading global warming scientists.</div><div>
</div><div>The hockey stick critique was first published in 2003 by Energy & Environment, a journal which avoids standard peer review. McIntyre and McKitrick also tried, without success, to get their findings published in the highly regarded Nature magazine. But finally, in 2005, they managed to publish their second critique – and only peer-reviewed work – on the hockey stick in Geophysical Research Letters.</div><div>
</div><div>Powerful PR</div><div>
</div><div>Initially, their papers received very little attention outside climate-sceptic circles. But thanks to a powerful PR campaign and strategic timing ahead of the COP 9 climate talks in Milan, their unsubstantiated criticisms landed on the front page of the National Post and the Wall Street Journal.</div><div>
</div><div>Off the back of the first paper, the two were invited to Washington for a briefing arranged by the George C. Marshall Institute and the CEI, both free market think tanks funded by ExxonMobil and other oil interests. While in Washington, they met with Republican Senator and staunch climate denier James Inhofe, who has called climate change “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”.</div><div>
</div><div>Following their critique in Geophysical Research Letters, the ‘M&M duo’ were flown to Washington once again for a second briefing with the Marshall Institute and the CEI.</div><div>
</div><div>McKitrick’s travels would also take him overseas. He happened to be in London in November 2009 at the private free market Buckingham University. This meant he was on hand should Lord Lawson have needed assistance in launching his climate denying charity, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). </div><div>
</div><div>And it also meant, entirely fortuitously, that he was in England when Climategate broke. The criminal hacking of private emails sent by the world’s leading climate scientists was spun as ‘smoking gun’ evidence of attacks that McKitrick and other oil-promoted sceptics had been making for years. </div><div>
</div><div>The GWPF has praised McKitrick for being “instrumental in exposing the fatal flaws of the so-called Hockey Stick”. Curiously, McKitrick didn’t blog on climategate. He did confirm that he had been questioned by police during a Canadian senate committee hearing in December 2011.</div><div>
</div><div>New Endeavours</div><div>
</div><div>In the years following the scandal, McKitrick – a member of the GWPF’s academic advisory council since 2010 and chairman as of 1 January this year – would submit a 49-page report to the GWPF calling for ‘radical reform’ of the IPCC. He has also gone on to become a regular speaker at the Koch-connected Heartland Institute’s annual International Conference on Climate Change.</div><div>
</div><div>Clearly, McKitrick’s work at the centre of the hockey stick ‘controversy’ cleared the way for many new endeavours to blossom.</div><div>
</div><div>Not only did it help forge the path for the debunked climategate, but it also inspired McKitrick’s love of Celtic music and eventually led to him start a band, The Wild Oats, where he plays the bagpipes, penny whistle and bodhrán, an Irish frame drum.</div><div>
</div><div>“I did find that music was a great way of staying sane,” McKitrick recently told the localGuelph Mercury newspaper. “It’s just a great way of relaxing with people and doing something fun. I found it a great diversion from all the controversies at work.”</div><div>
</div><div>The band’s two albums, featuring Christmas carols and “beloved hymn tunes … [that] come alive in their alter ego as reels, jigs, waltzes and airs”, would surely have prime-time’s Ned Flanders jumping and jiving: “Hi-diddly-ho-ho-ho let’s have a sing-a-long-a-roony folks!”</div><div>
</div><div>@Kylamandel</div><div>
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</div><div>http://www.desmog.uk/2014/11/30/mcintyre-mission-obsessive-quest-disprove-michael-mann-hockey-stick</div><div>
</div><div>here is no better way to describe self-appointed climate auditor Steve McIntyre than ‘determined’. Highly determined even.</div><div>
</div><div>And you would have to be pretty obstinate to try and poke holes in peer-reviewed climate science given that McIntyre claims he does not receive a salary signed by Big Oil. As author of the sceptic blogClimate Audit, all of McIntyre’s work is funded on his own dime.</div><div>
</div><div>Of course, his hotel accommodation while in London this August, where our interview was conducted, was paid for by Lord Lawson’sGlobal Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).</div><div>
</div><div>“I don’t have a big objection to think tanks sponsoring things … I don’t think there’s enough support for sceptics or critics as it is,” says the Ontario-based retired mining consultant whose blog inspired a hacker to break into servers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and steal emails and data shared between the world’s leading global warming scientists.</div><div>
</div><div>“If I wanted to make money, I’d have stayed in the mining business, rather than try to get money from Climategate,” he adds.</div><div>
</div><div>“I’m much more effective [on my own] than if I was depending on them,” McIntyre, 67, tells us. “I think that’s actually been important to my staying power in this.”</div><div>
</div><div>In an ironic twist, McIntyre actually lost out on millions of dollars because his almost obsessive pursuit of climate researcher Professor Michael Mann meant he missed out on “the deal of a lifetime” when his old company literally struck gold.</div><div>
</div><div>For most, this would be a powerful dissuasion. But not for McIntyre.</div><div>
</div><div>While he obsessively continues to try and find mistakes in Mann’s work, he is unwittingly providing new—free—material for the oil-funded neoliberal think tanks to spin into a substantive attack on climate science.</div><div>
</div><div>So deep is McIntyre in his mission to audit Mann’s climate data that it’s unclear whether he truly understands his role in this bigger attack on climate science.</div><div>
</div><div>The Hockey Stick</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre’s quest began in 2002 when he started questioning Mann’s ‘hockey stick graph’. It was during this time that the Canadian Government was promoting the Kyoto Protocol, claiming 1990 was the hottest year of the decade. And, in fact, it was. The following year, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) featured the graph prominently in its report.</div><div>
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</div><div>Mann’s Hockey Stick graph (Mann 1999)</div><div>
</div><div>Sceptical of the graph’s conclusions, McIntyre felt he had adequate mathematical skills to audit the graph himself, having studied Mathematics at the University of Toronto. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1969. McIntyre then went on to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, graduating in 1971.</div><div>
</div><div>However, McIntyre—a surgeon’s son who grew up among Canada’s Liberal elite—turned down a graduate scholarship to study Mathematical Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) due to his parents’ ugly divorce, and so returned home to become a businessman.</div><div>
</div><div>For the next 30 years McIntyre worked in the mineral business. He was the president and founder of Northwest Exploration Company Limited and a director of its parent company, Northwest Explorations Inc. This was taken over in 1998 by CGX Resources to form CGWEnergy, an oil and gas exploration company. McIntyre was no longer a director but remained a strategic advisor from 2000 to 2003, when his obsession over climate data began.</div><div>
</div><div>Shifting gears from mining minerals to data mining, his initial inquiry into climate change required “little more than free time, effort, knowledge of some statistics and linear algebra, and some software,” Macleans Magazine has previously described.</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre meets McKitrick</div><div>
</div><div>As McIntyre investigated the hockey stick graph, he posted comments criticising Mann’s data on internet discussion group climateskeptics. These comments were subsequently picked up in 2003 by the climate sceptic editor of a little known social science journal,Energy & Environment. It was at this time that McIntyre joined up with Canadian Economics professor Ross McKitrick.</div><div>
</div><div>A senior fellow of the Fraser Institute, a Canadian free-market public policy think tank, and a member of the GWPF’s academic advisory board, McKitrick proved integral to McIntyre’s mission.</div><div>
</div><div>The two drafted an article critiquing Mann’s hockey stick graph, claiming that the way the data was handled ensured that whatever data gets input, it will always produce a hockey stick shape.</div><div>
</div><div>Their article was published in Energy & Environment, which avoids standard peer review.</div><div>
</div><div>The two also tried, without success, to get their findings published in the highly regardedNature magazine, so they decided to publish a second piece in Geophysical Research Letters. Initially, both of their papers received very little attention outside climate-sceptic circles.</div><div>
</div><div>But thanks to a powerful PR campaign and strategic timing, their unsubstantiated criticisms landed on the front page of the Canadian newspaper the National Post and theWall Street Journal.</div><div>
</div><div>As it turns out, Energy & Environment editor Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen had rushed their first paper into publication for “policy impact reasons” prior to the COP9 climate talks in Milan. McIntyre was then flown to Washington D.C. to brief US business leaders and the staff of well-known climate denier Senator James Inhofe, who was at that time—and is once again current frontrunner choice—chair of the Environment and Public Works committee.</div><div>
</div><div>Adding more fodder to the pseudo-fire, McIntyre also later presented his findings to the Marshall Institute—an organisation with ties to the oil industry and whose board of directors includes William O’Keefe, a registered ExxonMobil lobbyist.</div><div>
</div><div>This is all despite the fact that Mann’s original hockey stick was never scientifically disproven.</div><div>
</div><div>It’s all about the tree rings. Or is it?</div><div>
</div><div>Then in February 2004, a person known only as ‘John A’ offered to help McIntyre set up his Climate Audit blog where McIntyre continues to question Mann’s data. John’s identity remains a mystery to this day; McIntyre refused to give his real name, simply stating “he is a computer scientist”.</div><div>
</div><div>Among other types of data, tree rings feature prominently throughout Climate Audit. This stems from McIntyre and McKitrick’s original hockey stick critique which looked at its temperature reconstructions dating before 1600. The two claimed this data was flawed due to problems with dendrochronology, the use of tree rings to estimate past temperatures, and issues with statistical calculations.</div><div>
</div><div>However, these claims have since been disproven. In 2008, Mann showed you don’t even need to use tree-ring data. This has resulted in many joking that climate scientists have more hockey sticks than an NHL locker room.</div><div>
</div><div>Using historical data—or proxy records—from ice cores, coral, lake sediments, glaciers, boreholes and stalagmites, it is possible to reconstruct the same hockey stick curve for Northern Hemisphere temperatures going back 1,300 years. If you add the tree-ring data, the same result holds for the past 1,700 years.</div><div>
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</div><div>(Mann 2008)</div><div>
</div><div>It is fair to say then, that if Mann’s hockey stick was wrong, the world would know by now. Twelve years later, McIntyre still has not disproved it. Yet, climate sceptics continue to focus their crosshairs on Mann.</div><div>
</div><div>“From an intellectual point of view, these contrarians are pathetic, because there’s no scientific validity to their arguments whatsoever,” Mann told the Scientific American. “But they’re very skilled at deducing what sorts of disingenuous arguments and untruths are likely to be believable to the public that doesn’t know better.”</div><div>
</div><div>And it was exactly this scrupulous and targeted criticism of temperature data and statistical analysis by McIntyre that inspired one Climate Audit reader to hack the emails of climate scientists at the UEA in 2009.</div><div>
</div><div>It began with McIntyre asking readers to submit FOI requests for information on the university’s confidentiality agreements in a sideways attempt to get his hands on the researchers’ climate data. The logic was that “if they’d sent it to other people… they had waived any confidentiality rights and on several counts they could not selectively send it to their pals and not send it to me,” McIntyre explains.</div><div>
</div><div>A few days later, McIntyre revisited the university’s website only to discover the very data he was after: “I noticed a file that was about the right size of a tree ring data set… so I opened it up and read it and thought ‘this is funny, this is the same data they’re refusing’.”</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre’s miracle mole</div><div>
</div><div>So McIntyre downloaded the data and decided to have some fun.</div><div>
</div><div>“I then wrote a post at Climate Audit where I had some fun with it… a mole, I didn’t actually say a mole [provided] this data but I kind of made it. I edited a mole and then I announced that I was in possession of the version that they wouldn’t send to me,” he explains.</div><div>
</div><div>“It caused quite a commotion,” McIntyre recalls. Dozens of readers started looking through the website themselves, some of them even discovering exposed passwords.</div><div>
</div><div>Then, around midnight on 17 November, McIntyre’s phone rang.</div><div>
</div><div>At the time, McIntyre was in his study next to the bedroom in his detached Toronto townhouse where he lives with wife Nola. Still in his jeans, he sat by the PC, surrounded by pictures of his children, Geoffrey, Emily and Graham, as well as his four grandchildren.</div><div>
</div><div>“I don’t get a lot of calls at midnight, except when one of the kids calls. Usually, calls at midnight are not something I welcome,” McIntyre says.</div><div>
</div><div>The call came from Steven Mosher—an open-source software developer, crucial in the initial dissemination of the leaked climate data—asking him about a series of leaked emails from UEA which contained McIntyre’s name more than 100 times. It was only a couple of days later that anyone noticed the now-infamous comment “a miracle has happened”.</div><div>
</div><div>“My first reaction [to the leaked files] was one of shock,” McIntyre describes. “I felt no vindication, [but] tremendous disappointment, and I thought it upsetting that people had acted this way.”</div><div>
</div><div>“I felt that I had tried to behave politely. I’d done things the right way, and to have caused this, you know, intense animosity was much worse than I thought, you know, and the coarseness of language and conduct I found appalling,” he continues. “And I just kind of lost, my interest sagged and I didn’t comment on the blog very much.”</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre has been known for his more measured take to the climate change debate. Speaking at the Heartland Institute’s fourth international conference on climate change in 2010—probably much to the dismay of conference attendees hoping for something more spirited—he said:</div><div>
</div><div>“There is far too much angriness in my opinion on both sides of the debate. People are far too quick to yell ‘fraud’ at the other side. I think such language is self-indulgent and counterproductive.”</div><div>
</div><div>McIntyre tells us he doesn’t like to use the word conspiracy on his blog because he doesn’t find it “conducive to a polite discussion, and most of the people who use those words are too angry”.</div><div>
</div><div>So, rather than responding immediately to the leaked information, McIntyre went to play squash the next day at the Badminton Racquet Club for some tension relief.</div><div>
</div><div>The pursuit continues</div><div>
</div><div>But his interest was not lost for long. Almost 10 years later, his relentless pursuit continues. He says he doesn’t have much animosity towards Mann, but this doesn’t mean McIntyre will stop.</div><div>
</div><div>“I think it’s entirely possible for somebody to be right about the big picture and wrong about the tree rings,” he argues.</div><div>
</div><div>This is despite nine separate investigations vindicating the climate science and climate scientists on the hacked UEA emails and the UK Government formally stating “the information contained in the illegally disclosed emails does not provide any evidence to discredit… anthropogenic climate change.”</div><div>
</div><div>Yet, five years on, McIntyre and the climate denial community continue to harp on about tree rings and the debunked hacking scandal.</div><div>
</div><div>With reporting by Brendan Montague</div><div>
</div><div>Photos: Michael Mann</div><div>
</div><div>Tags:  Steve McIntyre Climategate ross mckitrick John A GWPF michael mann</div><div></div><div></div><div>
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