Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

A Chink In Hansen’s Armor?

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The Competitive Enterprise Institute is taking advantage of the scandal to sue NASA and Goddard:

CEI seeks the following documents, among others — NASA’s failure to provide which within 30 days will prompt CEI to file suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia:

— internal discussions about NASA’s quiet correction of its false historical U.S. temperature records after two Canadian researchers discovered a key statistical error, specifically discussion about whether and why to correct certain records, how to do so, the impact or wisdom or potential (or real) fallout therefrom or reaction to doing so (requested August 2007);

— internal discussions relating to the emails sent to James Hansen and/or Reto A. Ruedy from Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre calling their attention to the errors in NASA/GISS online temperature data (August 2007);

— internal discussions relating to the content, importance, or propriety of workday-hour posts or entries by GISS/NASA employee Gavin A. Schmidt on the weblog or “blog” RealClimate, which is owned by the advocacy Environmental Media Services and was started as an effort to defend the debunked “Hockey Stick” that is so central to the CRU files. RealClimate.org is implicated in the leaked files, expressly offered as a tool to be used “in any way you think would be helpful” to a certain advocacy campaign, including an assertion of Schmidt’s active involvement in, e.g., delaying and/or screening out unhelpful input by “skeptics” attempting to comment on claims made on the website. This and the related political activism engaged in are inappropriate behavior for a taxpayer-funded employee, particularly on taxpayer time. These documents were requested in January 2007 and NASA/GISS have refused to date to comply with their legal obligation to produce responsive documents.

We’ll see if it gets anywhere. And if anyone in the media pays any attention. Have any emails from Hansen turned up in the document release?

[Early afternoon update]

An interview with CEI’s Myron Ebell.

5 thoughts on “A Chink In Hansen’s Armor?”

  2. Eh, the loyal opposition is shooting in the dark with this one. They might turn something up, they might not. That’s generally been the problem with FOIA requests. Still maybe this will mean more action on the NASA FOIA requests.

  3. There might be some other interesting figures in there. Holdren was mentioned a couple of times (he passed on to Mann an email exchange where he defended in 2003 the Mann/Jones stuff from a couple of Harvard astrophysicists) and he was CC’d on a concern by Mike MacCracken that sulfur oxides from Chinese coal burning would mask global warming. Holdren isn’t CC’d in any of the further discussion listed from the hack.

    I don’t really see anything significant in those emails (Holdren isn’t threatened in my view by this at all), but it is interesting how there seems to be a widespread obsession with “skeptics”. The latter thread starts with MacCracken’s concern that unexpected cooling due to sulfur oxides could give ammunition to the skeptics. Later in that thread Jones writes a paper solely to debunk a claim that urban heat islands were “getting worse” and (earlier) that he wishes to “wear their [skeptic’s] smug grins away”.

    Who wouldn’t want that, right? Anyway, just nosing around um, “randomly”, it does seem that there is something of a siege mentality going on here. That’s pretty unhealthy and I wouldn’t be surprised that it contributed to the problems that we’re seeing in the emails and code.

  4. I don’t really see anything significant in those emails (Holdren isn’t threatened in my view by this at all), but it is interesting how there seems to be a widespread obsession with “skeptics”.

    Replace the word “skeptics” with “heretics,” and it all makes sense.

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