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Dr. Michael Mann will be investigated by Penn State University
following the release of more than a thousand emails from the
world's top climate scientists. The university said it was "looking
into the matter" and "reviewing the concerns that have been
raised." (Penn State University)
The fallout from the Climategate event continues as one of its primary participants, Dr. Michael Mann, is to be investigated by his employer, Penn State University. Among the more than one thousand emails released on the Internet, Mann featured prominently in many of them oftentimes making rather controversial comments.
Mann serves as the director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State and has long been one of the more controversial figures in the debate about manmade climate change. He is the author of the infamous ‘hockey stick’ graph which was used by Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth” but later was proven to be inaccurate.
In a statement (below), the university heralded Mann’s accomplishments calling him “a highly regarded member of the Penn State faculty.” It said however that due to the questions raised by the release of the emails, it was going to investigate Mann’s research. “The University is looking into this matter further, following a well defined policy used in such cases. No public discussion of the matter will occur while the University is reviewing the concerns that have been raised,” the statement said.
The university cited a report from the National Academy of Sciences that determined his reconstruction of data was “sound.” As website Watts Up With That pointed out though, the release did not make mention of a report from Dr. Edward Wegman that provided a different opinion. Wegman’s report said, “Mann et al., misused certain statistical methods in their studies, which inappropriately produce hockey stick shapes in the temperature history. Wegman’s analysis concludes that Mann’s work cannot support claim that the1990s were the warmest decade of the millennium. “
The contents of the email and document archive have caused a furor with many calling for investigations into the scientists whose emails were released as well as the very science behind the anthropogenic global warming theory.
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Emails from Mann discuss his desire to withhold information from dissenters saying in one message “don’t pass it along where it may get into the hands of the wrong people.” In another he similarly asked the scientists not to share information saying, “So please don't pass this along to others without checking w/ me first. This is the sort of "dirty laundry" one doesn't want to fall into the hands of those who might potentially try to distort things.”
Mann seemed very preoccupied with ensuring no research from skeptics was included in scientific journals. He wrote that, “skeptics appear to have staged a 'coup' at "Climate Research"” and he felt they should discourage anyone from submitting research to the publication. He also was worried about Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) because they had dared to publish skeptical works saying, “I’m not sure that GRL can be seen as an honest broker in these debates anymore.”
Mann and a number of other scientists released a study last week seeking to explain the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age, two events that many believe show climate variability has always existed and man is not the primary driver behind them. In the study Mann demonstrates that the two events were regional in nature, not global. Mann discussed the Medieval Warm Period in one of the released emails in an interesting conversation saying that “it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”.”
Complete statement from Penn State University:
University Reviewing Recent Reports on Climate Information
Professor Michael Mann is a highly regarded member of the Penn State faculty conducting research on climate change. Professor Mann’s research papers have been published in well respected peer-reviewed scientific journals. In November 2005, Representative Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) requested that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) convene a panel of independent experts to investigate Professor Mann’s seminal 1999 reconstruction of the global surface temperature over the past 1,000 years. The resulting 2006 report of the NAS panel (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676) concluded that Mann’s results were sound and has been subsequently supported by an array of evidence that includes additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions.
In recent days a lengthy file of emails has been made public. Some of the questions raised through those emails may have been addressed already by the NAS investigation but others may not have been considered. The University is looking into this matter further, following a well defined policy used in such cases. No public discussion of the matter will occur while the University is reviewing the concerns that have been raised.
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Comments
This "scientist" is a stain on the profession and has no place in the discussion.
Time to prosicute Gore's prostitutes. The heads of this cult need to roll.
Great news about Mann's investigation.
-- Robert Moen, www.energyplanUSA.com
Mann wanted to restrict the MWP and produces a study which restricts the MWP. His study can't be trusted, it's too bad a more scientific paper didn't get that space in the journal.
Michael Mann has a big problem on his hands. His friend Phil Jones of the Climate Research Unit in East Anglia, England received a Freedom of Information Act ("FOI") demand for evidence related to the UN IPCC report on global warming, which both Jones and Mann worked on. Whatever they did behind the scenes of that report was presumably never meant to see the light of day and so Jones emailed Mann and said:
Subject "IPCC & FOI"
"Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise ... Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise."
Did Mann write back to say that this would be inapropriate and possibly even illegal?
No, here is what Michael Mann is reported to have responded a few hours later:
"I’ll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: generwahl@xxxxxxx"
No joy in glumville.. They will get ahead of this scandal and do what must be done.. Either we roast these con men alone or we roast them together.. Deep and long lasting lessons for liberals and leftists to come.. You do not own reality and spin it to suit your politics..
The deals that have been made (bribes) and the well being of the ever more hateful left.. couldn't matter less.. One of these days the MSM will have to report on the facts..
Its far far deeper than just Mr Mann.. What about the multi billion dollar infrastructure that sits catatonic behind him? Awww shucks we was just funning.. Doing our moral duty to commit fraud..
This con man needs to share a cell with Al Gore.
No comment while investigation is ongoing. Translation: nothing will happen. Investigation will go on until the issue dies down. This will be an open ended investigation with no results.
Dark forces are at work here.. What can we expect when the gestapo investigates the nazi's? This university had a full decade to pull its head out of its own rear end.. Bu they didn't because they loved what it was and where it was going.. The details were other peoples problems.. To trust political zealots in denial is the height of ignorance..
I'd be more comfortable with an INDEPENDENT investigation of this criminal pig-man but I guess that will never happen. Let's hope the Penn State investigators aren't as thoroughly corrupt as this group of inbred climate "scientists" at the IPCC.
Hopefully when Penn State University is done investigating the State attorney general will investigate and Mann will end up in the State pen for fraud.
Millions and Millions of dollars of future tax payer provided research grant money is the line for both Universities and "scientists". These self-serving little worms are simply
white lab coat wearing welfare recipients. Politicians love to give them the money so they can tell their constituants that their on board with "the global warming thing".
Climate change is a natural phenomenon and is not caused by humans, however our actions over the past one hundred years are accelerating the process in a very worrying way. But hey, why worry about a few Texan oil barons, industrialists and corrupt sheiks making billions from releasing carbon into the atmosphere while the earth suffers.
Follow the money:
I suppose that Michael Mann honors Penn State with a stream of grant money that fuels his research into tree rings and hockey stick graphs. As grant writer, I suppose he becomes the "principal investigator" and shepherd of grant funds, thereby setting his own salary. Below the emails and this academic's desire to direct the result is a real great gravytrain of public funding. Now, since PSU offers tenure to its esteemed research varsity, what becomes of an internal investigations by others who feed at the same trough? What is the political motivation of the federal bureaucrats that provide the grant money?
Well stated, Jim (in CO). "Follow the money" is clearly the best way to get at the truth here. Penn State has an obligation to get to the bottom of this Michael Mann mess. It taints all of us with degrees from PSU. Does this situation, however, really surprise anyone. Faculty members, everywhere, generally must raise grant money and publish to advance, regardless of the merit of the work. Peer review of publications...what a joke. The vast majority of published academic work is hardly worth the trees they cut down to get the paper to print it on.
Last night I was eating in a Chinese restaurant when I saw Michael Mann on a background TV with 'PSU' by his name. I actually asked the other customers to hold it down for a minute so I could hear this jerk. As a PSU graduate (BS, MS and PhD), I was stunned. There could be no better example of ... "We all know what BS is. MS is just 'more of the same' and PhD is just 'piled higher and deeper'.....
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