Grist commenter incites violence against CEOs, corporations

The leaders of Greenpeace, 350.org and the Rainforest Action Network published an article today on Grist.org entitled, “A call for direct action in the climate movement: we need your ideas” — and boy did they get one.

Less than one week after Discovery Channel gunman James J. Lee went down in a blaze of violent ignominy, one commenter wrote,

… When someone is proud of taking advantage of another human being shoot the bastard. John Brown would have killed everybody who thought slavery was boss, or groovy, well we feel the same way, pollute and die, its that easy especially for Corporations and their laziest of all people CEOs. We declare war on CEOs and corporations that kill our brothers and sisters. Don’t need courts or judges, we got ropes. Scare the crap out of those who pollute, hang a few and our air will improve. Bill is that what you had in mind, the Crystalline Matrix has formed like a giant spider’s web, who will understand the “burning bright.” This is the year of the Tigeress.
the Director [Emphasis added]

The radical green management can call for non-violence all it wants — the zombies it has created seem poised to achieve their ends by other means.

BTW Grist, incitement to violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment.

Beware of Greens Bearing Gifts

By Steve Milloy
September 3, 2010, Charleston Daily Mail

Energy Secretary Steven Chu visits the University of Charleston on Sept. 8 to resurrect cap-and-trade via the Trojan Horse of carbon capture and sequestration.

President Obama’s radical agenda to destroy the coal industry is on the ropes in Congress.

Since the House passed the Waxman-Markey bill in June 2009, it’s been all downhill for cap-and-trade – done in by the Climategate exposure of global warming’s fraudulent science, and the anticipated job losses and higher energy costs associated with cap-and-trade, all amid the worst economic downturn in 70 years.

The Obama administration’s gambit for getting West Virginians on the cap-and-trade bandwagon is to buy the state off with carbon capture and storage.

Why shouldn’t West Virginia just make the cap-and-trade deal and take the CCS money and run?

Because the exchange means the end of the West Virginia’s golden goose – the coal industry.

The administration is holding out the promise of perhaps billions of dollars for utilities to develop practical technologies for capturing carbon dioxide emissions from coal-burning power plants, injecting the emissions underground, and hoping they stay there safely.

It’s a win-win, according to the Obama administration. The coal industry remains alive as the state gets extra money and jobs to bury coal-related emissions.

This may sound like a good, if not great, deal, but it’s really the classic sucker’s bet.

The reality is that carbon capture and storage is physically, financially and politically impractical, not to mention futile in terms of avoiding global warming.

University of Houston petroleum engineer Michael Economides estimates that it would take a land mass the size of the state of Maryland to store the CO2 emissions from a single 500-megawatt power plant – and there are more than 200 plants of that size in the U.S.

The costs of carbon capture and storage are budget-busting, especially for a cash-strapped federal government.

It would cost billions of dollars per power plant to install the equipment to capture CO2 emissions, and billions more to drill the numerous injection wells needed to get it underground.

Untold billions of dollars will be needed to purchase rights of way for pipelines.

Still billions more would be required to build and maintain the pipelines from power plants to geographically suitable areas for storing CO2.

Carbon capture and storage requires about 30 percent more energy to capture CO2. Even more energy will be required to pump the CO2 hundreds of miles through pipelines.

Beyond the physical and financial hurdles, there are the local politics, including the debate surrounding the risks of underground CO2 storage. Stored CO2 may leak and acidify groundwater.

Underground CO2 exploded in Cameroon in 1986, asphyxiating people and cattle.

Keep in mind, too, that environmental activists have blocked the storage of spent nuclear fuel one mile underground in an isolated section of the Nevada desert at Yucca Mountain.

Does anyone really believe people will allow pressurized CO2 to be stored under wide swaths of populated areas?

Carbon capture and storage has already given rise to its own slang – NUMBY-ism or “not-under my backyard.”

The futility of carbon capture and storage is best considered in light of the fact that capturing all the CO2 emissions emitted by every coal-burning power plant in the U.S. would make precious little difference to atmospheric CO2 levels.

Over the course of 100 years, it would reduce atmospheric CO2 levels by less than 3 percent. Compare that with the fact that mankind has added about 10 percent to CO2 levels just in the past 15 years with no discernible impact on global climate.

Cap-and-trade’s anti-coal carbon caps will be a certainty, while capture and storage is anything but.

In the end, West Virginia will likely be stuck with coal-killing policies even as carbon capture and storage goes the way of the Jimmy Carter-era synfuels boondoggle.

Coal provides West Virginia with 90,000 direct and indirect jobs and $6 billion in annual economic value. Carbon capture and storage will never come close to approaching the value of coal to West Virginia.

A word to the West Virginia-wise: Beware of Greens bearing gifts.

Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.”

Simpson right on Agent Orange

By Steve Milloy
September 2, 2010, The Hill

White House fiscal commission member Sen. Alan Simpson is drawing fire from veterans groups for objecting to the Obama administration decision to expand Agent Orange benefits to Vietnam vets. Simpson is right and the vets wrong.

The Obama administration wants to expand medical benefits for Vietnam vets by $42 billion over the next 10 years by permitting disability awards to vets who contract heart disease. The underlying assumption is that Agent Orange causes all heart disease in Vietnam vets.

The problem, though, is that assumption is not supported by any available facts and science.

As pointed out by Dr. Michael Gough, the chairman of the federal panel charged with investigating the potential health impacts of Agent Orange use, “[The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] found that few, if any, ground troops in Vietnam had been exposed to Agent Orange. The Air Force’s Operation Ranch Hand sprayed 90 percent of the Agent Orange used in Vietnam. There is no difference in the health of the Ranch Hands, the only veterans known to have been exposed, and that of other veterans who served in Southeast Asia at the same time and flew the same kinds of airplanes but were not exposed to Agent Orange.”

Sen. Simpson, of course, already knows this since Dr. Gough made the foregoing statement before the Senator in 1996 when he chaired the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs.

More recently, Air Force researchers concluded in 2006 in the journal Organohalogen Compounds that “cardiovascular disease [among the Air Force personnel] does not appear to be associated with [Agent Orange] exposure.”

Accordingly, it is absurd to expect taxpayers to shell out so much money without giving them facts that justify the expense.

Americans, including Sen. Simpson, honor the service of veterans and are willing to go to extended lengths to help them — that’s why the vets get any compensation for Agent Orange at all. There really is no firm science indicating that any vet has ever suffered from Agent Orange exposure; yet we have historically given vets the benefit of the doubt because we honor their service.

But a cash-strapped government can no longer afford to be so generous without good reason.

Our commitment to veterans is sacred, but it is not a suicide pact to open the floodgates of the nation’s coffers indefinitely.

Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.”

Discovery Gunman: The Green Frankenstein

The radical green movement is rapidly trying to distance itself from Discovery Channel gunman James J. Lee. That will be difficult to do.

Wednesday afternoon, an armed Lee walked into the offices of the Discovery Channel, took hostages and demanded that the TV network alter its programming to suit his demands as laid out in an 11-point manifesto. The incident ended when police shot him dead.

Lee called for saving the Earth by getting rid of people, whom he referred to as “filth,” and stopping global warming. He called for TV programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility, and exposing civilization’s “disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed.” “All human procreation and farming must cease,” he raved, because “the planet does not need humans.”

Curious to see how the greens would react to the incident, I visited the Grist.org web site, perhaps the most popular green website, where I found an article by Grist senior editor Lisa Hymas entitled, “Discovery hostage taker is a population-obsessed eco-wacko.” [Suggested link is http://www.grist.org/article/2010-09-01-discovery-hostage-taker-population-obsessed-kid-hating-eco-wacko]. I read on as I had never seen one green refer to another as an “eco-wacko.”

Although Hymas wrote that, “Lee is giving us sane and humane enviros and childfree people a bad name,” her effort to distance her cause from Lee was soon challenged. The first comment following her post stated, “So, what is wrong with [Lee’s] logic that he deserved to be shot? He wasn’t wrong.” Two comments later, a commenter stated, “I pretty much agree with what he said… In reality, at this point, the human race is like a growing fungus covering and consuming a grapefruit…”

Like Dr., Frankenstein tying to escape the reputational stain of his eponymous monster, the radical green movement cannot runaway so easily from Lee.

While Lee clearly popped his cork, the comments to Hymas’ article indicate there are apparently others out there whose corks are under similar pressure — thanks to green publications like Grist and green personalities like Al Gore, whose movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” Lee reportedly credited for “awakening” him to global warming.

Gore, Grist.org and others have urged their followers to civil disobedience. Grist staff write Jonathan Hiskes says he’s all for the easy stuff first (like weatherization and energy efficiency), but if that doesn’t work, Hiskes calls for civil disobedience and ensuing prison, if need be. Ironically, Lee tried civil disobedience with the Discovery Channel in 2008 and wound up in prison. His probation from that incident ended just two weeks ago.

Greens have tried using civil disobedience (even if it involves criminal trespass) to shut down coal mining, coal-fired power plants and gas stations. None of these efforts have succeeded. So what’s next when civil disobedience fails? More James Lees?

Some greens have already leap-frogged over civil disobedience and moved straight into terrorism. In the wake of fire bombings at new housing developments, car dealerships and a ski lodge, the FBI has labeled the Earth Liberation front as a domestic terrorist group. Then there’s sawmill worker George Alexander who was almost decapitated in 1987 when his saw blade hit a tree spike embedded by the California chapter of Earth First!

The greens would also like to harness the power of the state to do violence to their opponents. About so-called global warming “deniers,” Grist writer Dave Roberts wrote in 2006, “we should have war crimes trials for these bastards — some sort of climate Nuremberg.”

It’s true that James Lee was a psycho, but he was just taking radical environmentalism to its logical conclusion. People threaten planet and, if they won’t stop voluntarily, then they must be made to stop. Lee believed that because he steeped himself in today’s radical environmental movement.

Speak of the devil: Alarmist scientists issue call for scary scenarios at AGU conference

Global warming alarmist scientists Steve Sherwood (University of New South Wales) and Matthew Huber (Purdue University) have asked colleagues to develop scary scenarios for their session at the December 13-14, 2010 meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

Here’s the e-mail that Huber sent out to his list earlier today:

X-Sieve: CMU Sieve 2.2
X-AuditID: 12074f13-b7baaae000000a09-0c-4c7e6a09c911
To: undisclosed-recipients:;@XXXXX.EDU
From: Matthew Huber
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2010 10:56:29 -0400
Subject: agu
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1081)
X-PMX-Version: 5.5.9.388399
X-PerlMx-Virus-Scanned: Yes
X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAARXch2M=

hi,
I wanted to bring to your attention an AGU session that Steve Sherwood and I are co-convening. I wanted to encourage you to submit results to this session if have something relevant. we’re looking simulations or theory or data that push the envelope what we think of as Earth’s climate. [Emphasis added]

-matthew huber

GC44: Undiscovered Climates of Earth

Past and future climates changes could conceivably be large enough to engender unforeseen qualitative alterations in the functioning of the climate system . Exploring the largest climate changes can verge into speculation, but can also help discover general, novel insights into climate dynamics with major biospheric implications. This session aims to explore or document qualitative or unexpected climate change mechanisms and impacts in significantly warmer or cooler climates. We welcome model or observational studies on changes in climate feedback strength or the emergence of new feedbacks; changes in modes of variability; new climate nonlinearities; fundamental climate zone shifts; and qualitatively new impacts on to life emerging in hot or cold climates.

The emphasized option of the e-mail is obviously a clarion call for more ammunition for alarmist fearmongering.

As I coincidentally pointed out in my Human Events column today, “Desperate Greens Make Desperate Claims”:

As the chances of a cap-and-trade bill recede in the 111th Congress, expect the increasingly desperate greens to amp up their gloom-and-doom rhetoric—as they already have… reality will matter less and less to climate alarmists as their visions of cap-and-trade in this Congress, once a sure bet, fade away. Keep that in mind as you read the climate-related news this fall.

Given the house-of-cards-like collapse of global warming alarmism over the past year — as well as the sort of ongoing self-inflicted harm described above— I’m hoping that Tom Wolfe will recount the spectacle in a new book, perhaps called “The Bonfire of the Credibilities.”

Desperate Greens Make Desperate Claims

by Steven Milloy
September 1, 2010, Human Events

As the chances of a cap-and-trade bill recede in the 111th Congress, expect the increasingly desperate greens to amp up their gloom-and-doom rhetoric—as they already have.

Amid Al Gore’s recent concession speech to his zombie followers, for example, he apparently couldn’t help himself from linking every recent bad weather event he could think of with global warming—from floods in Nashville and Pakistan to the recent heat wave and forest fires in Russia.

Before that, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) took the opportunity of an ongoing East Coast heat wave to proclaim the current decade to be the hottest on record and to proclaim that global warming is “undeniable.”

Then there was the recent Environmental Defense Fund claim that global warming is going to wreck Mexican agriculture and increase illegal immigration by almost 7 million by 2070.
No doubt before this Congress is over, we will be subjected to even more extreme claims, although I can’t imagine what scary scenario the greens could conjure up that they haven’t tried before.

One would have thought that Al Gore had learned his lesson about blaming bad weather on climate change when a British judge ruled in 2007 that his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, couldn’t be shown to British school children without a disclaimer about its many egregious errors (amounting to about 99% of the science presented in the film). One of the judicially noticed errors that Gore made was attributing individual weather events and natural disasters (like Hurricane Katrina) to climate change.

Regardless of how climate changes—and it will continue change even if humans magically vanished from the planet and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels return to the alarmist ideal of 350 parts per million—there will always be bad weather and natural disasters in whatever unpredictable proportion and frequency nature dictates.

As to the NOAA claim that now is the hottest era since recordkeeping began, let’s first keep in mind that both nature and humans began recordkeeping long before NOAA and we know that the period known as the Medieval Optimum (about 1,000 years ago when the Vikings tilled Greenland without the help of John Deere) was as warm if not warmer than today.

Moreover, even NOAA should know that the Northern Hemisphere has been warming (thankfully) for about 200 years since the end of a very cold 400-year period in history known as the Little Ice Age. Yes, so it’s been almost continually warming since the early 1800s—and the early 2000’s are the warmest decade? NOAA has a tremendous grasp on the obvious.

The agency, of course, would have us believe that this warming trend is due to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. The problem with that notion is that it’s not clear in any record anywhere that manmade CO2 emissions correlate with global temperature change. Since 1995, in fact, there has been no significant warming of average global temperature while atmospheric CO2 levels have increased by more than 10%.

Not only has there been no warming since 1995, but it’s likely the alarmist-made temperature record is actually showing more warming than is actually occurring. Between temperature measurement stations being located on heat-retaining airport runways and other urban heat islands, and the Climate-gate mafia gradually removing cooler, rural weather stations from their data gathering, it must be really embarrassing for the alarmists to have to lie and cheat to keep the data from showing the real-life slight cooling that in all likelihood is actually occurring.

What about the supposed global warming-induced wave of Mexican illegals? Let’s just say that warming temperatures have tended to increase agricultural productivity by lengthening growing seasons. Moreover, any potential warming caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations would likely happen in drier, northern latitudes rather than wetter, more temperate zones where the greater presence of water vapor tends to rob CO2 of the opportunity to cause any warming.

Finally, the greens typically assume that any change in climate is necessarily bad. So far, we only know that cooling is potentially problematic for agricultural production. Climatic warming has yet to be anything but a boon to mankind.

But reality will matter less and less to climate alarmists as their visions of cap-and-trade in this Congress, once a sure bet, fade away. Keep that in mind as you read the climate-related news this fall.

Mr. Milloy is the founder and publisher of JunkScience.com. His columns and op-ed pieces have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Financial Times, and Los Angeles Times. He is the author of “Green Hell,” a new book from Regnery Publishing.

Gore concedes on climate this year

By Steve Milloy
GreenHellBlog, August 10, 2010

Speaking about the likelihood of climate bill being passed by Congress in 2010, Al Gore told a conference call of supporters tonight that, “this battle has not been successful and is pretty much over for this year.” Gore bitterly denounced the Senate and federal government stating several times, “The U.S. Senate has failed us” and “The federal government has failed us.” Gore even seemed to blame President Obama by emphasizing that “the government as a whole has failed us… although the House did its job. [emphasis added]”

Gored urged his listeners to take the “realistic view that they had failed badly.” Gore said that “Comprehensive legislation is not likely to be debated” and that a “lame duck debate” is a “very slim possibility indeed.” (N.B. We thought, because Gore told us, that “the debate” was over.)

Gore said “the government was not working “as our founders intended it to” and laid more blame at the feet of fossil fuel interests who conducted a “cynical coordinated campaign” with “unprecedented funding” and “who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars just on lobbying.” He criticized “polluters” for “dumping global warming pollution into the atmosphere like it was an open sewer.”

Gore blamed the skeptics for “attacking science and scientists.” “They [the skeptics] did damage and cast doubt,” Gore said.

Asked why the alarmists were ineffective in addressing Climategate, Gore bitterly blamed a “biased right-wing media… bolstered by professional deniers.” Gore claimed the Wall Street Journal published 30 editorial and news articles about Climategate and “not a single one presented [his] side of the science.”

Speaking about the post-2010 prospects for a climate bill, Gore tried to boost morale by stating that “the battle is not over” and that “we [alarmists] have no choice but to win the battle.” Gore said that “reality is [the alarmists] ally” and then, among other things, blamed recent flooding in Nashville and the Russian heatwave/forest fires on global warming.

He concluded by observing that “it is darkest before dawn” and “we have not yet begun to fight.”

In a warm-up discussion before Gore addressed the call, National Wildlife Federation chief Larry Schweiger referred to the skeptics as “enemies” and that he hoped the alarmists would “outlive the bastards.”

Best Buy, Worst Thinking

By Steve Milloy
July 30, 2010, Worthington Daily Globe (Minnesota)

When it comes to energy policy, no one can accuse Best Buy’s management of best thinking.

As Sen. Harry Reid scrambles to pull together some sort of energy bill before time runs out in this Congress, the cap-and-trade advocacy group Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy (BICEP) is lobbying Reid to include in the bill an “energy efficiency resource standard” (EERS) that would reduce electricity use by one percent in 2012 and more by 2020.

Although EERS is a dubious proposition for all BICEP’s members — including the Aspen Skiing Company, eBay, Levi Strauss, Nike and Target — Best Buy’s support makes one wonder what’s in the air at corporate headquarters.

As a retailer of electronics and appliances, every Best Buy product depends on the use of electricity. While electronics and appliances are continually becoming more energy efficient, that doesn’t mean they (or those who use them) use less electricity.

When television sets were upgraded from old tube technology to larger LCD and plasma models, for example, TV energy use increased by anywhere from 100 to 500 percent. Even if newer LCD and plasma models meet government Energy Star standards of using 30 percent less energy than standard units, they still will use substantially more electricity than the older technology.

Similarly, a new refrigerator may be more efficient than an older model, but if it’s larger and has more bells and whistles, then it’s more probably using more energy. Moreover, the American lifestyle is becoming more, not less, dependent on electricity. Past the proliferation and increased use of all sorts of devices from cell phones to personal computers to electronic games, Americans are now turning to electronic book readers like the Kindle and iPad.

Add into the mix the push for electric vehicles, and the notion that there’ll be less need for electricity becomes even more absurd. The only way to use less electricity is to buy and use fewer and smaller gadgets, appliances and other consumer goods. It’s hard to see how these trends will bring any benefits to Best Buy’s bottom line.

Additionally, the question must be asked: Why should Americans want to use less electricity? What would be the economic impact of reduced electricity use?

As the National Academy of Sciences pointed out in its landmark report, “Electricity in Economic Growth (1986), “Electricity use and gross national product have been, and will probably continue to be, strongly correlated.” This truth of this relationship continues to exist — the economy is struggling and electricity use is down. More generally, there probably never has been a time in human history when social and economic advancement has occurred without increased use of energy.

In other words — and for the benefit of Best Buy’s management — if the goal is to have consumers that can continually afford to indulge in the latest electronic gadgetry, two things must happen — increased economic growth and available and affordable electricity.

Best Buy and the BICEP coalition, however, seem to be in favor of neither scenario — not so surprising given BICEP’s provenance. BICEP is the brainchild of Ceres, a environmental activist organization dedicated to co-opting business to the political left’s fight against capitalism and free enterprise. BICEP’s mission is to provide Congress and the public with the impression that U.S. business is demanding cap-and-trade and its corollary, renewable energy welfare programs.

For a company like Best Buy, BICEP is the old morally superior public relations ploy. Unlike, in their estimation, those they preach to, the BICEP companies care about the planet. In the end, BICEP’s precepts are simply bone-headed. Poor people can’t afford plasmas or (pay attention NIKE) $140 LeBron VIIs.

Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them” (Regnery 2009).

Daily Kos Editor Says Skeptics Should Commit Suicide

A Daily Kos contributing editor has suggested that “Steve Milloy and his buddies” commit suicide or be euthanized apparently for the crime of opposing global warming alarmism.

Amid a rant on his Examiner.com blog about skeptics “carpet-bomb[ing] newspaper editorial pages with climate change disinformation…], Steven Alexander, who writes for Daily Kos under the nom-de-plume “Darksyde,” wrote that,

… if only Milloy and his buddies could check into one of the [Soylent Corporation’s] lovely medical suites for a short nature movie and a glass of wine…

The reference is to the assisted suicide scene in the 1973 movie Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston.

The Clarity Digital Group, which owns Examiner.com, removed the offensive posting immediately upon notification.

Former Washington Post reporter David Weigel was recently fired from the paper for privately writing on the Journolist listserv that Matt Drudge should “… set himself on fire.”

Now Alexander has publicly wished a similar fate for climate skeptics.

If you wonder why the skeptics fight so vigorously against the greenshirts, the sort of intolerance exhibited by Alexander over a mere difference in opinion is one reason. God help us all, if they prevail.

Penn State’s Integrity Crisis

by Steve Milloy
July 14, 2010, The Daily Caller

Penn State University just exonerated Professor Michael Mann for wrongdoing related to Climategate. While that good news for Mann is no surprise, it came at a dear cost to Penn State – its integrity.

Soon after Climategate broke last November, Penn State convened an internal committee to investigate Mann, the primary author of the now-infamous and discredited “hockey stick” global warming graph.

Hopes for a bona fide investigation were dashed when the preliminary results were released in February. To the joy of climate alarmists, Penn State announced via press release that Mann was cleared of three of the four allegations against him (regarding falsification/suppression of data, deletion of e-mails/data and misuse of confidential information). But if one looks past the release and reads the committee’s report, it becomes obvious the fix was in.

The preliminary review included the Climategate e-mails themselves, an interview with Mann, and documents submitted by Mann. While one committee member did informally endeavor to get external views on Mann, they only came from Texas A&M’s Gerald North and Stanford University’s Donald Kennedy.

North had earlier dismissed Climategate in a Washington Post interview only a few days after the scandal broke. He also assisted with a futile 2006 effort to rehabilitate Mann’s debunked hockey stick. As editor of Science magazine, Kennedy was an outspoken advocate of climate alarmism.

The committee went to great lengths to defuse the money line from the Climategate e-mails – i.e., “Mike’s Nature trick… to hide the decline.” While explaining how “trick” could merely refer to a “clever device,” the committee failed to even mention “hide the decline,” a phrase referring to Mann’s still-unexplained deletion of temperature data contradicting the climate alarmism hypothesis.

Based on Mann’s denial, the preliminary report concluded that there was no evidence to indicate that Mann intended to delete e-mails – even though that conclusion is contradicted by the plain language and circumstances of the relevant e-mail exchange. No inquiry beyond Mann’s denial was made.

Finally, the preliminary report dismissed the accusation that Mann conspired to silence skeptics by stating, “one finds enormous confusion has been caused by interpretations of the e-mails and their content” – but shouldn’t the committee have attempted to eliminate that confusion?

It’s unclear why the committee didn’t immediately exonerate Mann of the fourth allegation — seriously deviating from accepted practices within the academic community — except that by leaving it open, the committee apparently hoped to rebuild “public trust in science in general and climate science specifically.”

Four months later, the committee’s investigation charade has concluded. Most shocking, however, is that Penn State remains openly unabashed by the investigation’s shoddiness.

As before, a media release clearing Mann of “any wrongdoing” is making alarmists giddy. But once again, the investigation’s disturbing reality is revealed in the report.

The committee again excluded from consideration any document or point of view that might incriminate Mann’s conduct.

Other than the Climategate e-mails, the committee only examined:

(1) undescribed “documents collected by the [committee];” (2) “documents provided by Dr. Mann…”; (3) the committee’s preliminary report; (4) a May British House of Commons whitewash of Climategate; (5) a recent letter published in Science magazine deploring climate skepticism from 255 climate alarmists; (6) a document about the National Science Foundation peer review process; (7) the Department of Energy Guide to Financial Assistance; (8) information on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s peer review process; (9) information regarding the percentage of NSF proposals funded; and (10) Mann’s curriculum vitae.

The committee apparently made no effort to obtain, much less consider, the volumes of available news reports, analyses (including from Congress) and commentary about Mann, the hockey stick and/or Climategate.

More than see no evil, the committee maintained its policy of hear no evil. Of the five additional interviews conducted, four were of Mann’s fellow alarmists. The lone climate skeptic interviewed was MIT professor Richard Lindzen. But the report makes clear that the committee conducted Lindzen’s interview in the finest traditions of a kangaroo court.

Here’s how the report describes the interview:

… When told that the first three allegations against Dr. Mann were dismissed at the inquiry stage… Dr. Lindzen’s response was: ‘It’s thoroughly amazing. I mean these issues that he explicitly stated in the e-mails. I’m wondering what’s going on?’ The Investigatory Committee members did not respond to Dr. Lindzen’s statement. Instead, Dr. Lindzen’s attention was directed to the fourth allegation, and it was explained to him that this is the allegation which the Investigatory Committee is charged to address…

Amazed that the committee would treat a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT and an IPCC lead author with such disrespect and disregard, I contacted Dr. Lindzen. He told me, “They also basically ignored what I said. I suppose they interviewed me in order to say that they had interviewed someone who was skeptical of warming alarm.”

The committee asked Mann about e-mails that mention Dr. Stephen McIntyre, one of the scientists credited with debunking Mann’s hockey stick. While Mann told the committee that there was “no merit whatsoever to Mr. [sic] McIntyre’s claims here…,” the committee didn’t interview McIntyre.

The committee also pointed to several awards given to Mann for his research including Scientific American’s naming Mann as one of the “50 leading visionaries in science and technology” and its selection of a web site co-founded by Mann as one of the top 25 “science and technology” web sites in 2005. The committee then wrote, “had Dr. Mann’s conduct of his research been outside the respected practices, it would have been impossible for him to receive so many awards and recognitions…”

The Committee also credited Mann with the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore. “This would have been impossible had his activities in reporting his work been outside accepted practices in his field,” the committee observed. MIT’s Lindzen was also a co-Nobelist, but apparently the award didn’t help his credibility.

Global warming and Mann have been worth millions of grant dollars and lots of publicity for Penn State. But one would think the institution’s integrity is worth more.

Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them” (Regnery 2009).

Penn State's Integrity Crisis

By Steve Milloy
July 14, 2010, The Daily Caller

Penn State University just exonerated Professor Michael Mann for wrongdoing related to Climategate. While that good news for Mann is no surprise, it came at a dear cost to Penn State – its integrity.

Soon after Climategate broke last November, Penn State convened an internal committee to investigate Mann, the primary author of the now-infamous and discredited “hockey stick” global warming graph.

Hopes for a bona fide investigation were dashed when the preliminary results were released in February. To the joy of climate alarmists, Penn State announced via press release that Mann was cleared of three of the four allegations against him (regarding falsification/suppression of data, deletion of e-mails/data and misuse of confidential information). But if one looks past the release and reads the committee’s report, it becomes obvious the fix was in.

The preliminary review included the Climategate e-mails themselves, an interview with Mann, and documents submitted by Mann. While one committee member did informally endeavor to get external views on Mann, they only came from Texas A&M’s Gerald North and Stanford University’s Donald Kennedy.

North had earlier dismissed Climategate in a Washington Post interview only a few days after the scandal broke. He also assisted with a futile 2006 effort to rehabilitate Mann’s debunked hockey stick. As editor of Science magazine, Kennedy was an outspoken advocate of climate alarmism.

The committee went to great lengths to defuse the money line from the Climategate e-mails – i.e., “Mike’s Nature trick… to hide the decline.” While explaining how “trick” could merely refer to a “clever device,” the committee failed to even mention “hide the decline,” a phrase referring to Mann’s still-unexplained deletion of temperature data contradicting the climate alarmism hypothesis.

Based on Mann’s denial, the preliminary report concluded that there was no evidence to indicate that Mann intended to delete e-mails – even though that conclusion is contradicted by the plain language and circumstances of the relevant e-mail exchange. No inquiry beyond Mann’s denial was made.

Finally, the preliminary report dismissed the accusation that Mann conspired to silence skeptics by stating, “one finds enormous confusion has been caused by interpretations of the e-mails and their content” – but shouldn’t the committee have attempted to eliminate that confusion?

It’s unclear why the committee didn’t immediately exonerate Mann of the fourth allegation — seriously deviating from accepted practices within the academic community — except that by leaving it open, the committee apparently hoped to rebuild “public trust in science in general and climate science specifically.”

Four months later, the committee’s investigation charade has concluded. Most shocking, however, is that Penn State remains openly unabashed by the investigation’s shoddiness.

As before, a media release clearing Mann of “any wrongdoing” is making alarmists giddy. But once again, the investigation’s disturbing reality is revealed in the report.

The committee again excluded from consideration any document or point of view that might incriminate Mann’s conduct.

Other than the Climategate e-mails, the committee only examined:

(1) undescribed “documents collected by the [committee];” (2) “documents provided by Dr. Mann…”; (3) the committee’s preliminary report; (4) a May British House of Commons whitewash of Climategate; (5) a recent letter published in Science magazine deploring climate skepticism from 255 climate alarmists; (6) a document about the National Science Foundation peer review process; (7) the Department of Energy Guide to Financial Assistance; (8) information on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s peer review process; (9) information regarding the percentage of NSF proposals funded; and (10) Mann’s curriculum vitae.

The committee apparently made no effort to obtain, much less consider, the volumes of available news reports, analyses (including from Congress) and commentary about Mann, the hockey stick and/or Climategate.

More than see no evil, the committee maintained its policy of hear no evil. Of the five additional interviews conducted, four were of Mann’s fellow alarmists. The lone climate skeptic interviewed was MIT professor Richard Lindzen. But the report makes clear that the committee conducted Lindzen’s interview in the finest traditions of a kangaroo court.

Here’s how the report describes the interview:

… When told that the first three allegations against Dr. Mann were dismissed at the inquiry stage… Dr. Lindzen’s response was: ‘It’s thoroughly amazing. I mean these issues that he explicitly stated in the e-mails. I’m wondering what’s going on?’ The Investigatory Committee members did not respond to Dr. Lindzen’s statement. Instead, Dr. Lindzen’s attention was directed to the fourth allegation, and it was explained to him that this is the allegation which the Investigatory Committee is charged to address…

Amazed that the committee would treat a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT and an IPCC lead author with such disrespect and disregard, I contacted Dr. Lindzen. He told me, “They also basically ignored what I said. I suppose they interviewed me in order to say that they had interviewed someone who was skeptical of warming alarm.”

The committee asked Mann about e-mails that mention Dr. Stephen McIntyre, one of the scientists credited with debunking Mann’s hockey stick. While Mann told the committee that there was “no merit whatsoever to Mr. [sic] McIntyre’s claims here…,” the committee didn’t interview McIntyre.

The committee also pointed to several awards given to Mann for his research including Scientific American’s naming Mann as one of the “50 leading visionaries in science and technology” and its selection of a web site co-founded by Mann as one of the top 25 “science and technology” web sites in 2005. The committee then wrote, “had Dr. Mann’s conduct of his research been outside the respected practices, it would have been impossible for him to receive so many awards and recognitions…”

The Committee also credited Mann with the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore. “This would have been impossible had his activities in reporting his work been outside accepted practices in his field,” the committee observed. MIT’s Lindzen was also a co-Nobelist, but apparently the award didn’t help his credibility.

Global warming and Mann have been worth millions of grant dollars and lots of publicity for Penn State. But one would think the institution’s integrity is worth more.

Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them” (Regnery 2009).