(Tom Jackman)
Unpublished research by university scientists is exempt from the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Thursday, rejecting an attempt by skeptics of global warming to view the work of a prominent climate researcher during his years at the University of Virginia.
The ruling is the latest turn in the FOIA request filed in 2011 by Del. Robert Marshall (R-Prince William) and the American Tradition Institute to obtain research and e-mails of former U-Va. professor Michael Mann.
Mann left the university in 2005 and now works at Penn State University, where he published his book “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars” about his theories on global warming and those who would deny it. Lawyers for U-Va. turned over about 1,000 documents to Marshall and ATI, led by former EPA attorney David Schnare, but withheld another 12,000 papers and e-mails, saying that work “of a propriety nature” was exempt under the state’s FOIA law.
In 2012, Circuit Judge Paul Sheridan sided with U-Va., saying that Mann’s work was exempt and that the FOIA exemption arose “from the concept of academic freedom and from the interest in protecting research.” Marshall and ATI appealed.
the nay-sayers and deniers seem to want to stomp out all mention of global warming. This is not how we treat scientific study. We live in the 21st century for heavens sake. We don’t put people under house arrest like was done to Galileo and we don’t hound people to death by exposing their scientific work. We don’t FOIA their emails to death.
No one says anyone must “believe in” global warming. However, that does not give anyone the right to stomp out scientific thought just because it doesn’t coincide with their political beliefs. Good for the Virginia Supreme Court.
That’s ok. His work will be the subject of discovery in his lawsuit against Mark Steyn. He’s fighting discovery….I wonder what he has to hide. He’s even tried to dismiss it. But Mark Steyn has countersued for 10 million dollars.
His fraud WILL be revealed.
Its not just Bob that lost out.
“Today, a decision is expected from the Virginia Supreme Court re “hockey stick” climate alarmist Michael E Mann’s continued attempts to obstruct access to his data. A bunch of big media – NPR, The Washington Post et al – have filed briefs opposing Mann and the University of Virginia because they understand that a victory for him would be a massive defeat for freedom of information that would more or less gut the law in that state.”
http://www.steynonline.com/6270/the-clash-of-sticks
http://www.steynonline.com/6273/dont-start-deleting-those-emails-just-yet
Or it could be that Mann will prevail. Ooops, then what will you say and do?
Would the Marshall lawsuit have happened if UVA were a private university?
The glaciers are melting, the oceans are warming, the oceans are rising, the currents are changing. Nothing going on here, move along.
Back to the topic. The ATI was after unpublished works and information about unpublished works. This could have had a very chilling effect on academic freedom – which could have stifled all scientific research at State affiliated Universities. Imagine if Freedom of Speech were being attacked at these same Universities. It could have stifled such innovations as the polio vaccine or pasteurization discovery.
@Moon-howler
I will say that the Justice system is flawed and that a fraud got away with wasting tax money, smearing a good man, and that we need to fix our laws.
@Pat.Herve
You might want to research those “facts” at places other than global warming sites.
The ocean has been rising since the last ice age. The current rate is, at most, 3mm per year and that has not changed in thousands of years.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/03/new-study-using-grace-data-shows-global-sea-levels-rising-less-than-7-inches-per-century/
The oceans are not statistically warming.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/19/if-manmade-greenhouse-gases-are-responsible-for-the-warming-of-the-global-oceans/
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/17/a-different-perspective-on-trenberths-missing-heat-the-warming-of-the-global-oceans-0-to-2000-meters-in-deg-c/
I don’t understand how work done at the expense of the taxpayer is not public information and available for peer review. Even if you argue that it was not final research (a FOIA exemption) why would it be protected once a book is published?
It isn’t all work done at the expense of the taxpayers. Don’t forget how much research is conducted using various grants.
Mann was paid to teach at UVA. How much UVA money was provided by the state? How much war provided by prvate donors?
Why on earth do people think they have the right to have their nose in everything?
@Cargosquid
you might want to check the facts at sites that are not anti-climate sites. Anthony of WUWT is not even a scientist.
http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-sea-level-rise/
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html
and they are warming. And the glaciers are melting.
@Pat.Herve
The people at WUWT that present these are scientists….you know…like Roy Spencer. He’s the owner of the site.
rate of 0.04 to 0.1 inches per year since 1900.
Um….that MATCHES what WUWT states. 3mm equals 0.118 inches.
And your link presents no evidence of an increase in rate with that statement. Furthermore, NOAA has stated that the satellite measurements are flawed.
The second link shows different rate. Funny…how can that be. They also show debunked “causes” of the rise.
Melting of glaciers and polar ice caps: Then North polar ice cap can completely melt without raising the ocean one mm. And the idea of the glaciers being the cause is ludicrous. The Antarctic is not melting, but gaining mass.
Ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica: Then they mention Greenland. Still not enough “melt” and the West Antarctic “loss” is the Pine Island glacier that a) is affected by volcanism and b) has been revealed to be moving faster due to undersea erosion of a blocking ice shelf.
This statement is ludicrous on its face: “Scientists also believe meltwater from above and seawater from below is seeping beneath Greenland’s and West Antarctica’s ice sheets,”
Sea water is not getting beneath Greenland’s nor Antarctica’s ice sheets. Impossible.
“we can expect the oceans to rise between 2.5 and 6.5 feet (0.8 and 2 meters) by 2100, ”
2.5 to 6.5 feet? That is quite a range. Nor is there evidence of that being possible. At their stated rate of 3.5mm per year….. that correlates to only 13+ inches. To get even their low estimate of 2.5 feet you would have to be seeing a rate of 1.6 inches PER YEAR CURRENTLY. In other words, you would have to see a rise greater than a factor of 10 of the current exaggerated claim. 40 mm.
So, you as I said, you might want to check those claims. That is what WUWT does…and the AGW claims keep getting debunked.
@Moon-howler
Because Mann has proven himself to be deceptive and his science is flawed. Thus, we want to make sure that our tax money was not wasted.
Geez. How do you feel about McDonnell and his wife? Think any tax money was being wasted.
Let’s see, when you were in the military, did we have the right to look at your email to make sure money wasn’t being wasted? I mean your private email.
No, he hasn’t proven himself to be deceptive. I don’t believe you are in the position to determine if his science is flawed or not.
I welcome an investigation into them.
You had the right to look at any emails that concerned gov’t business. His science work is not personal.
Actually he has proven himself to be deceptive in some of his claims and his emails. These things have been shown elsewhere.
Cargo, here’s info on Anthony Watts, the principle author on the site you supplied the links for: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Anthony_Watts
Mr. Watts is not a scientist, he’s a TV weatherman and a paid climate denier (by the Heartland Institute).
Garbage in, garbage out, as they say…
Wow…did it take you any effort to find that?
Watts isn’t a scientist….but he’s a meterologist….which is more than can be said for Mann as a “climatologist.” Furthermore, you might have noticed that his site has actual climate scientists involved.
As for being paid by the Heartland Institute…..Oh NO! You mean..unlike the millions granted to the supposedly non-biased AGW scientists……
You might want to do MORE research about that Heartland Institute instead of trying to imply some sort of nefarious plot.
Documents obtained from the Heartland Institute and made public in February 2012 reveal that the Institute had agreed to help Watts raise $88,000 to set up a website, “devoted to accessing the new temperature data from NOAA’s web site and converting them into easy-to-understand graphs that can be easily found and understood by weathermen and the general interested public.”[56][57][58] The documents state that $44,000 had already been pledged by an anonymous donor, and the Institute would seek to raise the rest.[55] Watts explained the funding by stating, “Heartland simply helped me find a donor for funding a special project having to do with presenting some new NOAA surface data in a public friendly graphical form, something NOAA themselves is not doing, but should be. I approached them in the fall of 2011 asking for help, on this project not the other way around.”[59][60] and added, “They do not regularly fund me nor my WUWT website, I take no salary from them of any kind.”[59][61]
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/15/some-notes-on-the-heartland-leak/
“Because of Watts’ past work exposing flaws in the current network of temperature stations (work that The Heartland Institute supported and promoted), the National Aeronautics and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government agency responsible for maintaining temperature stations in the U.S., has designated a new network of higher-quality temperature stations that meet its citing specifications.”
For the record, and as previously cited on WUWT, NCDC started on the new network in 2003 http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/annual-reports.html Heartland may have confused the Climate Reference Network with the updated COOP/USHCN modernization network which did indeed start after my surfacestations project: What the modernized USHCN will look like (April 29, 2008)
They then asked for 100 million to update it NOAA/NCDC – USHCN is broken please send 100 million dollars (Sept 21, 2010)
Oh look….SCIENCE!
If you are so concerned about outside sourcing, perhaps you should look at Dr. James Hansen, the notorious climate alarmist: NASA records released to resolve litigation filed by the American Tradition Institute reveal that Dr. James E. Hansen, an astronomer, received approximately $1.6 million in outside, direct cash income in the past five years for work related to — and, according to his benefactors, often expressly for — his public service as a global warming activist within NASA.
This does not include six-figure income over that period in travel expenses to fly around the world to receive money from outside interests. As specifically detailed below, Hansen failed to report tens of thousands of dollars in global travel provided to him by outside parties — including to London, Paris, Rome, Oslo, Tokyo, the Austrian Alps, Bilbao, California, Australia and elsewhere, often business or first-class and also often paying for his wife as well — to receive honoraria to speak about the topic of his taxpayer-funded employment, or get cash awards for his activism and even for his past testimony and other work for NASA.
No….there’s no profit motive there to push HIS AGW agenda……
So…try again Middleman….so far you’re pushing garbage….
@Cargo, and you are pushing wisdom and truth or your own political agenda?
Everyone knows that glaciers are melting and the growing seasons on the east coast are longer. Storms are more ferocious.
Why? Many scientists feel it is a climate issue. Are you willing to bet the so called ranch on your opposition?
@middleman
You might actually want to visit the site before commenting on it.
Watts isn’t the primary author of the posts. A quick visit just on the main topics today show that 7 of 10 of the articles are not by him. Those that are written by him concern more politics and presentation of another’s articles.
He OWNS and RUNS the site.
You might also notice that he has won the “Best Science Blog” in the last 3 years. This is in competition with the assorted AGW sites.
Those sites failed. Those sites get no traffic. Those sites moderate comments and brook little disagreement. Doesn’t look like science when you do that.
Maybe there is more traffic because there is more fighting. Scientific blogs aren’t usually a place to find fighting.
I’m not pushing garbage or anything else, Cargo, I merely sent a link that identifies the nature of Wattsup. if you’ll calm down and actually read the info on the link I sent under “actions”, it will be clear that Mr. Watt’s site is a shill.
If site traffic determines the accuracy of the site, we’re all in trouble!
Cargo, I’m curious- what, in your opinion, is the motivation of all the actual scientists who have studied this phenomenon for 30-40 years and written numerous peer-reviewed papers and come to the conclusion that global climate change is happening and at least partially caused by human activity to skew the science and lie about the true situation?
What a great question–just what is their motivation? Crickets….
cargo – who owns the site??
Post 11 – Roy Spencer? or Post 18 Anthony Watts?? You seem to indicate both are the owners. I know it is Watts as I had indicated.
What is clear – oceans are rising at an increasing rate. Oceans are warming. Current patterns are changing. And, I am not sure why because when anyone tries to bring up the topic, the room needs to split into two political partisan sides who shout across each without listening. All because it was Al Gore who took a stance – and tried to get people to listen.
@middleman
I read the link.
I’ve also read the Watts site.
And I’ve read the other info on Watts.
My info is accurate. Your description of his as a “shill” is what is considered GIGO. You brought it up. Just using your phrase. Sorry that my post shows the actual evidence of where Heartland paid him….for work that NOAA is still using.
The motivation of some of them, like Hansen, is a belief in AGW. So much so that they refuse to adjust their theory when the facts prove them wrong. Some are motivated by politics. Some are motivated by the fact that AGW gets grants. And some of them use climate change to promote socialist policies. And then, like Al Gore, some just want to get rich.
@Pat.Herve
Anthony Watts owns it.
The problem is that Al Gore LIED. Repeatedly.
Current patterns are changing…..they ALWAYS CHANGE. That’s the point.
And
And while oceans may be warming….. its not AGW.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/03/ocean-heat-content-0-to-2000-meters-why-arent-northern-hemisphere-oceans-warming-during-the-argo-era/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/03/ocean-heat-content-0-to-2000-meters-why-arent-northern-hemisphere-oceans-warming-during-the-argo-era/
…then why do the vertical mean temperature anomalies (NODC 0-2000 meter data) of the Pacific Ocean as a whole and of the North Atlantic fail to show any warming over the past decade, a period when ARGO floats have measured subsurface temperatures, providing reasonably complete coverage of the global oceans? See Figure 1. Or, in other words, why is the warming of the global oceans (0-2000 meters) over the past 10 years limited to the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans, when carbon dioxide is said to be a well-mixed greenhouse gas, meaning all ocean basins should be warming?
THIS is why you have warming:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/06/el-nino-residuals-cause-the-c-shaped-warming-pattern-in-the-pacific/
So Cargo, you are dismissing any scientific evidence from the past 40 or 50 years, and you are right and most of the reputable scientists in the world are wrong?
Ooooookaaaaaaaay
Sorry about the double link….
@Moon-howler
“Everyone knows that glaciers are melting and the growing seasons on the east coast are longer. Storms are more ferocious.
Why? Many scientists feel it is a climate issue. Are you willing to bet the so called ranch on your opposition?”
Everyone knows? Really? So all those competing scientists point out the holes in UN statements about glacier melt are …what? Yes…there is glacier melt. But its not causing the seas to rise. I can provide links to back up the statements.
Perspective is needed. All of this was being worried about almost 100 years ago:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/02/catastrophic-retreat-of-glaciers-in-spitsbergen/
Storms are not more ferocious and there are fewer of them.
Extended growing seasons are good.
There has been no statistical warming for over 17 years now. I am perfectly willing to bet the ranch because if we followed the doomsayers of the Kyoto treaty and such…..we’d be freezing in the dark. Kyoto wanted to return our energy output to lower carbon output to the output of the 90’s….. and keep it there. That would doom millions in reality. And all it would have done, in their BEST models was to lower projected temperature raises by ONE degree.
The problem with the AGW scientists is that they have been found to be fudging data, repeatedly using models that fail, and making repeatedly failed predictions. NONE of their projections have succeeded. Gov’t policy should not be made because of failed climate models and bad science.
No one is talking about Kyoto nor has anyone mentioned that glacier melt is making the seas rise.
Yes, there are more ferocious storms in recent years. Tell the people in the wake of Katrina, Sandy and the Phillipines that.
Your people have a political agenda. Not sure what it is but mine has nothing to do with the UN.
Look, common sense and being alive tells you things are changing. I don’t have to face the end of the world to know we are trashing the planet.
@Moon-howler
I am dismissing science that is being disproved by OTHER SCIENTISTS. There is no consensus. THAT was a lie.
The AGW scientists have failed to prove their theory. It is up to them to do so.
The UN IPCC sought climate change policy that gave them more power. And money.
Their reports have been found to be falsified, bad science, and breaking their own reporting rules.
The preponderance of scientific evidence points towards climate change with fossil fuels as a root cause.
@Moon-howler
No, it doesn’t. THAT is the point.
There has been no warming for over 17 years, all the while CO2 has gone past the “critical” 400ppm. There are NO AGW models that are accurate or predicted the current climate. They keep making failed predictions. They keep blaming AGW for climate or glacier or arctic activity and then get proved wrong.
These are the same people that promised that there would be no more snow in Europe, that the Arctic would now be ice free, that the Antarctic would be melting, and that islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans would now be underwater.
They LIED about the “97% consensus.” It was a lie, flat out.
Was there warming? Yep. And now there isn’t. Was it caused by CO2? Apparently not.
Cargo, there is climate change going on. You can deny it until the cows come home. I don’t know why you want to deny it. You seem to have affliliated yourself with a bunch of deniers. I don’t know what’s in it for them.
From a contrarian point of view….do you think its good for the earth to dump emissions into the atmosphere? Do you think fossil fuels help the planet in any way? If so, please enumerate them.
The debate over climate change bores the crap out of me and that wasn’t what this thread is really about. It really is laughing at Bob Marshall for once again failing to get the courts on his side. Just call him side-show bobby.
@Moon-howler
“No one is talking about Kyoto nor has anyone mentioned that glacier melt is making the seas rise.
Yes, there are more ferocious storms in recent years. Tell the people in the wake of Katrina, Sandy and the Phillipines that.”
See this:
The glaciers are melting, the oceans are warming, the oceans are rising, the currents are changing. Nothing going on here, move along.
Pat Herve
No..there are not more ferocious storms. Was Katrina stronger than Camille? Nope. There have been a couple of storms that hit. Katrina was a large hurricane. Sandy Hook was NOT that unusual. The problem was that it hit an unprepared New York and New Jersey. And the Philippines have been hit by Typhoons before. In the mean time….there is a total LACK of storms. You cannot have worse storms if you don’t have any.
Camille is hardly ancient history. Total lack of storms? What on earth are you talking about?
Tacloban was an exceptionally huge typhoon, according to the people who lived through it. Sandy was pretty damn huge also, from a meteorological point of view. Those cities and towns haven’t just arrived. They have been there for centuries. Your attempts to minimize what happened really don’t even make sense.
All around us we see the signs. Yet you deny.
@Moon-howler
Btw….I’m entering moderation even without links and I don’t know what word is doing that.
@Moon-howler
You are making it sound like these are common storms. The fact that A strong typhoon hit is not evidence of anything. Sandy Hook’s strength was normal. Large, but normal.
As for more hurricanes, let’s Mother Jones talk about it…you know that horrible right wing, skeptic….oh. Wait….its not.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/09/hurricane-season-ipcc-sandy
“Meanwhile, a new scientific paper suggests that climate change will decrease, rather than increase, the likelihood that Superstorm Sandy-like storms—atmospheric black swans that take left turns towards the US East Coast—will strike in the future. And a leaked draft of the UN’s forthcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report has significantly downgraded our confidence in the idea that global warming will lead to more intense hurricanes (or, is already doing so).”
Interesting read.
Apparently the science is NOT settled.
As for no storms, I just mention this: From Wiki
The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season was the first Atlantic hurricane season since 1994 to feature no major hurricanes,[nb 1] and the first since 1968 to feature no storms of at least Category 2 intensity.
There has been fewer storms than before. While 2011 and 2012 had some, earlier years have been quieter.
But if CO2 is the cause of global warming, and global warming is the reason we have more storms….where were they? OR, why was 2011 and 2012 so busy even though there HASN’T been any warming for years?
Yes, the Oceans ARE rising. The Glaciers ARE melting.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level-rise.htm
Why is it political – only because Al Gore took it up as a cause.
@Pat.Herve
The glaciers have ALWAYS melted.
The oceans have been rising since the end of the last ice age.
The problem with Skeptical Science is that they stop looking at it as soon as “global warming” is mentioned.
Of course glaciers have always melted. That’s the reason we aren’t still living in an ice age.
Do you think what you just said disproves that there is climate change?
You are just arguing now because your conservatism is on auto-pilot. Let’s go back to the original premise. Bob Marshall crashed and burned, again, because UVA didn’t have to turn over a former professor’s email.
The climate change argument is one we are simply never going to agree on. That should not be allowed to divert every conversation.
@Moon-howler
I didn’t say that there was no climate change. I’m saying the evidence for CO2 based global warming is faulty and that there are scientists that can show where the theories and predictions are wrong.
I stated that because the implication was that glaciers were melting at unprecedented rates because of global warming.
I’m not arguing because of auto-pilot conservatism. I’m arguing because people here are blindly following the AGW theories and making statements from sources that are showing obviously incorrect statements….like NOAA saying that we’re going to have 2.5 to 6.5 feet of sea level rise by 2100…all the while stating that sea level rise is unprecedented at 3.5 mm per year. The math does not add up. Nor is it unprecedented.
Didn’t try to “divert” anything. People made statements. I replied with evidence.
Marshall did fail. And that decision harms freedom of the press and the free examination of science.
I think people are free to examine science. I don’t think that they are free to FOIA someone’s unpublished scientific work or have access to their emails.
Furthermore, Mann is no longer at the University of Virginia.
No one here has mentioned those initials that land one in moderation. I don’t follow it or argue from that standpoint. It is fairly accepted science that carbon emissions screw up the atmosphere. I will leave the evidence to those that understand it far better than I do.
I haven’t had time to blog for a while, but my friend Cargo certainly has!
The subject of all the fuss at UVA, Mr. Mann’s research, was re-scrutinized in response to the controversy and found to be sound by the scientific peer-review process. I think that says it all.
Agreed.
As for motivation, on the one side you have academic scientists that are motivated by scientific achievement, and on the other you have mostly non-scientists motivated for the most part by funding from those most interested in the status quo energy-wise. The funders are hiding it better these days, but the linkage is clear.
“The subject of all the fuss at UVA, Mr. Mann’s research, was re-scrutinized in response to the controversy”
Re-scrutinized….. by the very same people that already support it. Its time to show the rest of the world this “science.” Mann is against any sort of discovery concerning his work.
Cargo, the peer review of Mann’s work is available. His private correspondence is not, as of now.
@middleman
Right…. we know that the peer review is available. And we know that peer review of his work is worthless. His correspondence concerning his science is not.
His PRIVATE correspondence does not concern work that he was paid for by Virginia taxes, whether directly or indirectly. If his emails concerned his work..they should not be considered private.
No where else do people get to micro-manage an employee of the state. Do you think public school instructors get micromanaged like this? Do you think their emails are inspected or open to inspection like that? They aren’t.
Get over the taxpayers. Everyone is a taxpayer. Mann was paid for instruction and his status. I seriously doubt UVA paid for any of his research. Wasn’t he a visiting professor? At the same time, people’s work is not open to casual inspection on a whim. It has something to do with intellectual property.
What micromanage an employee of the state?
He is even in a lawsuit concerning his work. Work emails should be open to examination. Nor is this casual inspection. Even NPR is against this decision. He is suspected of fraud.
Just out of curiosity, Cargo, why do you consider the scientific peer-review process “worthless?”
I consider the peer review process for Mann to be worthless. It was conducted by people with a stake in AGW. The reviews that “cleared” him in Climategate were whitewashes conducted by the same agencies that supported them.
I can’t decide if you irrationally hate Michael Mann or are just closed minded to the concept of climate change having anything to do with fossil fuels.
You have pretty much declared most of the scientific community worthless.
Why are you anti science?
@Moon-howler
Anti science?
Why are you using that insulting canard? Point out ONE thing that I’ve stated that is “anti-science.” I provide links to the evidence backing my statements.
I don’t hate Mann. I’m commenting on his hypocritical stance on discovery and his efforts to hide his science from scrutiny.
I have “declared” that the climate science community has failed to meet ANY of their predictions and pointed out where they have been wrong. I have done this using the efforts of OTHER climate scientists. The AGW crowd has proven itself to be corrupt and has failed to prove their theory. In fact their theory has been disproven, repeatedly.
I am “close minded” to the idea that global warming is happening the way the AGW crowd is professing….by CO2 pollution. I am so…because the evidence does not support the theory.
The biggest example: No global warming for over 17 years. All the while CO2 has grown and reached what they called a critical point of 400 ppm.
Based upon the blanket acceptance of the “writ from on high,” it seems that you are the one that is anti-science.
Pro-science people actually investigate claims and theories.
What are your personal qualifications to do peer review on Mann?
Moon….
What terms are in the above article that put it into moderation. Email me. I seem to keep using them.
@Moon-howler
I’m not the one doing the peer review. But I read the reports of those that are.
@Moon-howler
Here’s a article of the lawsuits that Mann is involved with.
http://spectator.org/articles/58774/gospel-according-mark-steyn
Notice, even other global warming advocates state that Mann is wrong and hides his data so that other scientists cannot test it.
Steyn has countersued for about $20 million. So Mann CANNOT hide from discovery.