More on Climategate

Sent: Monday, December 07, 2009 9:54 PM
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The Obama administration might think Climategate is a nonevent, but
on Monday, Pennsylvania State University announced it was launching
an investigation into the academic conduct of Michael Mann, director
of the school's Earth System Science Center. Yesterday, it was
announced that Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit
(CRU) at the University of East Anglia, would step aside while his
university conducts an investigation. With so much fraud being
exposed in the academic community that studies and promotes
global-warming theories, an example has to be made of someone.

There are dozens of researchers at other institutions involved in
this scandal surrounding leaked e-mails that discuss covering up
evidence of global cooling and destroying research that discounts
global warming. For example, in the United States, the National
Center for Atmospheric Research is in the thick of the e-mail chain.
 

Mr. Mann is front and center in the debate over what constitutes
unethical research. In the current controversy, he is named in about
270 of the more than 1,000 leaked e-mails, many of which detail
disturbing and improper academic behavior. On Monday, he told the
Penn State student newspaper that the controversy over the leaked
e-mails was simply part of a systematic smear campaign to prevent
climate researchers from doing their work and that the leaks were
timed to derail next week's climate summit.

The evidence suggests that his troubles were not created by a smear
campaign but are the result of his own shenanigans. In an e-mail
titled "IPCC & FOI" (referring to the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Freedom of
Information Act), Mr. Jones wrote to Mr. Mann, asking: "Mike: Can
you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re [the
IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report]? Keith will do likewise. ... Can
you also email Gene [Wahl] and get him to do the same? I don't have
his new email address. We will be getting Caspar [Amman] to do
likewise."

Although Mr. Mann acknowledges that he received this message, he
claims that neither he nor anyone else actually deleted any e-mails
to hide information from a Freedom of Information request on how the
United Nation's IPCC report was written. His e-mail response at the
time, however, is quite damning because the language makes it seem
that he went along with Mr. Jones' proposed initiative to destroy
evidence. Far from criticizing the request, Mr. Mann wrote back:
I'll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is:
generwahl@yahoo.com. Talk to you later, Mike."

This disturbing willingness to participate in skullduggery is
consistent with other leaked communications with Mr. Mann, including
his now notorious e-mail about how "to hide the decline [in
temperature]," which demolishes leftist claims that global
temperatures are increasing.

Untold millions in federal funds have been granted to American
academics and institutions ensnared in Climategate. Congress and the
administration should be investigating the charges of destroyed
documents and data as well as the general unwillingness to share
data funded by taxpayers. An academic investigation is a start, but
it's not enough, considering the role of many institutions in this
cover-up. With so much federal money for academic  research involved,
trusting universities to get to the bottom of this scandal is akin
to leaving a fox in charge of the henhouse.