Pennsylvania State University today issued its final report thoroughly exonerating climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann of any wrongdoing in the wake of the "Climategate" myth that emerged late last year when thousands of emails and documents were stolen from a computer server at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in the UK.
In the days following the posting of the stolen material onto the Internet, right-wing bloggers and media outlets loudly issued allegations of misconduct among climate scientists mentioned in the giant trove of emails. Conspiracy theorists on the right cherry-picked flagrantly out-of-context portions of the email collection in order to gin up a grand tale suggesting that man-made climate change is a fraud concocted by all of the world's leading climate scientists, the much-despised United Nations IPCC, and, of course, Al Gore.
Despite their success in elevating this nontroversy to the national level via Fox News and other right wing media, every single independent investigation of the climate scientists involved has since cleared them of any misconduct and verified the science underpinning the IPCC's consensus position that manmade climate change is real.
In February, Penn State officials concluded the first round of inquiry into Professor Mann's conduct, finding no evidence to support the accusations against him.
That did not stop the right-wing attacks on Professor Mann or Penn State, with some notorious climate skeptics attempting to spin the exoneration as a whitewash. (True to form, skeptics repeated the ridiculous 'whitewash' allegations again today upon hearing of the final report clearing Mann.)
In order to thoroughly extinguish any lingering doubts about the panel's findings, school administrators decided to convene a separate Investigatory Committee of Dr. Mann's faculty peers and distinguished scientists to continue to investigate the allegation that Dr. Mann "engaged in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities."
Today, that committee issued its final report clearing Mann of any wrongdoing on the final issue, and found "no substance to the allegation."
The committee's report concludes:
"The Investigatory Committee, after careful review of all available evidence, determined that there is no substance to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann, Professor, Department of Meteorology, The Pennsylvania State University.More specifically, the Investigatory Committee determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities.

The decision of the Investigatory Committee was unanimous."
Dr. Mann welcomed the news of the final report:
"I'm pleased that the last phase of Penn State's investigation has now been concluded, and that it has cleared me of any wrongdoing. These latest findings should finally put to rest the baseless allegations against me and my research."
Additional excerpts from the committee's report:
"A particularly telling indicator of a scientist's standing within the research community is the recognition that is bestowed by other scientists. Judged by that indicator, Dr. Mann's work, from the beginning of his career, has been recognized as outstanding."...
"All of these awards and recognitions, as well as others not specifically cited here, serve as evidence that his scientific work, especially the conduct of his research, has from the beginning of his career been judged to be outstanding by a broad spectrum of scientists. Had Dr. Mann's conduct of his research been outside the range of accepted practices, it would have been impossible for him to receive so many awards and recognitions, which typically involve intense scrutiny from scientists who may or may not agree with his scientific conclusions." (pg. 18)
...
"To date, Dr. Mann is the lead author of 39 scientific publications and he is listed as co-author on an additional 55 publications. The majority of these publications appeared in the most highly respected scientific journals, i.e., journals that have the most rigorous editorial and peer reviews in the field. In practical terms, this means that literally dozens of the most highly qualified scientists in the world scrutinized and examined every detail of the scientific work done by Dr. Mann and his colleagues and judged it to meet the high standards necessary for publication." (pg. 18)
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I'm thinking of a one-stop shop type page.
http://www.thescienceisstillsettled.com/climategate/all-innocent
I'm still considering the reverse chronological order, but I like that it emphasizes the total exoneration of everybody, better than starting with the partial exoneration of each, especially because of the weaselly innuendo in the British House of Commons' deferral of some questions to Oxburgh's science inquiry. Yes, the first committee was not qualified to judge matters of science. NO! That does NOT imply anybody else's guilt. It implies only the committee members' own ignorance of science, a fact which the first Penn State committee was much more forthright about.
Reed, if that's your work, good job! This sort of page that puts together the accusations and the exonerations along with what (if anything) is still pending is exactly the sort of thing needed here.
I have feedback, if you are interested.
http://www.capanddividend.org/?q=node/257
"Revenue from Cantwell and Collins’ auctions would be split two ways: 75% would be returned to the American people to compensate for higher energy prices, and 25% would be used for transition assistance and public investments, subject to annual appropriations."
Cap and Dividend charges the corporatists who have profiteered on our dependence on petroleum after rigging that dependence in the first place in collusion with our Senators, House "Representatives" and Presidents for 90 years, and it uses the proceeds to ease the burden on you and me AND to fight climate change and our dependence on fuel sources that both fund and recruit terrorists (we would have NO military presence in the Middle East if it wasn't for oil).
The economic frameworks for analyzing the merits of any climate policy:
Risk Analysis
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch2s2-2-6.html
&
Cost Benefit Analysis
http://climateprogress.org/2009/03/30/global-warming-economics-low-cost-high-benefit/
The adults would like to discuss these things, uninterrupted by lying trolls, repeating the same accusations that are now ALL found false, officially. Moderators, please wake up.
That his main critic, Fox news, known for its sensationalism, broke the story hasta cast doubt because Fox has been so obviously partisan. They are all, after all, in business to make money, and as we see in the 1976 classic film "Network", distorting the truth builds ratings and thereby ad revenues. Tell people what you know they want to hear to build a fan base.
"We Alaskans are living with the changes that you are observing in Washington. The dramatic decreases in the extent of summer sea ice, increased coastal erosion, melting of permafrost, decrease in alpine glaciers and overall ecosystem changes are very real to us."
She made it clear that she recognizes the problem of global warming, and she cast energy development as part of the answer. "Stopping domestic energy production of preferred fuels does not solve the issues associated with global warming and threatened or endangered species, but it can make them worse," she said.
Palin acknowledged that a global effort to reduce greenhouse gases is needed.
"Simply waiting for low-carbon-emitting renewable capacity to be large enough will mean that it will be too late to meet the mitigation goals for reducing [carbon dioxide] that will be required under most credible climate-change models," she warned.
In other words, she's pandering to her base.
I'm fascinated (and saddened), for example, by the insistence that academics would li.e to cover a colleague. This says more about the people insisting this than it does academia -- obviously, the people accusing WOULD li.e to cover up something that they wanted to be true, and they simply can't understand that other people are wired differently.
Tragic, really.
2) Mann was cleared of knowingly violating the accepted scientific methods. This is not the same as saying that the AGW theory he champions is valid.
Climate change is real. It has been changing since the earth was formed and will continue to change forever. Climate change is the natural state of the climate. We should be looking at how we adapt to these changes instead of spending trillions to try and stop them.
"Mann was reviewed by his colleagues at Penn State. This is like the police investigating one of their own for wrong doing."
Really? What would be Mann's colleagues' incentive to exonerate him if any real evidence exists that an honest person could use to really show he's guilty of anything?
Secondly, in a peer review, looking at methodology is EXACTLY what should happen -- he was accused of having falsified or misrepresented scientific data. That's what this process examined and what he was exonerated for. They didn't walk in the door looking to prove or disprove any of his theories (which, BTW, is yet another reason why the attack on the ethics of the review committee as lying cronies is such nonsense).
Lastly, of course climate change is something that is natural and has happened since the birth of the planet. The issue is the speed at which it's changing right now and what human beings have done that has precipitated it. Bottom line, we're running out of fossil fuel anyway, which is the greatest issue -- why on earth shouldn't we be looking for better technology that doesn't promise to do global damage? What possibly makes insisting this isn't a problem a better solution?
Sorry that your whipping boy isn't whippable any more, which I guess is why it's important to accuse everyone who doesn't insist he's lying with collusion.
=^..^=
"I'm mad as hell and am not going to take this any more!" Which was the complaint of a real newsman rather than the spin artists we see on the tube now.
But then, ironically, it is FOX TV that brought us "Lie to me", about the rapidly developing lie detection technology that could so easily be applied to the elites- such as testimony in congressional hearings.
It reminds me of another:"you want the truth? You cant handle the truth." Yeah. How much truth can we handle? The political spin that works so well on TV gets parsed out here line by line. While whether hominid activity is significantly driving global warming may be moot, the Greenland ice cores show its been going on for over 10,000 years, and in fact is responsible for the development of agriculture and thus civilization, that needed more reliable weather for crops.
That so many posters are irrational is even more alarming than global warming because rational people can adapt to changes.
Ask them about energy independence.
They say exactly the same things about global warming though.
Why?
For example:
"Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by a mini ice-age, known by scientists as the Younger Dryas, and nicknamed the 'Big Freeze', which lasted around 1300 years. Geological evidence shows that the Big Freeze was brought about by a sudden influx of freshwater, when the glacial Lake Agassiz in North America burst its banks and poured into the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. This vast pulse, a greater volume than all of North America's Great Lakes combined, diluted the North Atlantic conveyor belt and brought it to a halt.
Without the warming influence of this ocean circulation temperatures across the Northern hemisphere plummeted, ice sheets grew and human civilisation fell apart.
Previous evidence from Greenland ice cores has indicated that this sudden change in climate occurred over the space of a decade or so. Now new data shows that the change was amazingly abrupt, taking place over the course of a few months, or a year or two at most."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091130112421.htm
The planet plunged into a 1300 year mini-ice age because a lake blew its banks. This is far less extreme than the levels of CO2 that are going into the atmosphere right now.
You have inadvertently made the point of those you despise -- we could be literally a couple of years from a global climate shift of devastating proportions.
A longer view helps. I knew about the Younger Dryas. But going back over 100,000 years, we see the climate changed abruptly as you note... several times. Hominids've interacted with plants trending twards domestication, but after a few hundred years the climate shifted, they hadda move on, leaving the mutants behind to die out.
But about 10,000 BP, Hodder reporting on the dig at Chatal Hoyuk, "The Leopard's Tale" shows us a whole set of a dozen Anatolian cities. Since he published they discovered wheat evolved out of einkorn 10,000 BP, still growing in the nearby Taurus mtns. Maize in America and Rice in East Asia all emerged in this same era, and did so only because the climates stabilized enuf that new varieties had the time to be dramatically better and then taken with as conditions change.
which they did in Anatolia at the end of the 7th mil. But by then, people already had pottery, oxen, plows, weaving, and other technologies they took into SE Europe. Hodder shows continuous occupation of Chatal Hoyuk for 1500 years, and a chart showing how most of the other Anatolian cities were abandoned at the same time.
Interestingly, he finds no evidence of violence or warfare going down thru 1500 years.
I dont deny we could see another severe climate change; The computer models dont have all the relevant inputs. But the trend line has been warmer.
always knew this climategate was a faux news story played up by the deniers, birthers and neocons!
Good to see that Penn State is still pushing the global warming hoax. These hoaxes never die. You can still find some that believe that diapers are filling up our land fills and are evil even though it's long been discredited. Who knows, there may even still be some who believe that pollution is causing the planet to go into another ICE age.
The sultan of bogus facts for climate change is now up on assault charges, my how Gore's star is falling. But I see some still pay him to show up and pretend Man is melting the earth.
Complaining about it now, but not when the panel was formed, is obviously dishonest and reveals a demand for a particular OUTCOME from the panel and NOT FOR THE TRUTH.
http://aweo.org/problemwithwind.html
http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/RecipientReportedData/pages/RecipientProjectSummary508.aspx?AwardIdSur=50597&AwardType=Grants
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/01/climategate-michael-mann-cleared_n_633207.html?show_comment_id=52611874#comment_52611874
For our innumerate (mathematically illiterate) adversary allegedly from SoCal:
$2.8 billion = $2,800,000,000
½ million dollars = $500,000
∴
$2.8 billion ÷ ½ million dollars =
$2,800,000,000 ÷ $500,000 = 5,600
SoCal alleges that to protect $500,000, Penn State put its entire $2.8 Billion budget on the line, risking 5,600 times as much as the grant for Dr. Mann's research which it would presumably lose if they found Dr. Mann guilty. The motive SoCal proposes -- for actions of which she is totally unable to cite ANY evidence -- is ridiculous and she is absolutely not to be taken seriously.
We all use slang about what we do, often in ways that are self-effacing.
It is, however, to persist in uninformed, stubborn folly not to find out what "peer review" means and how it is done.
Seems difficult for Beckerwoods, Randroids, and the Rush-ing lock-step stampeders to understand how to access information independently. Or to grasp how to evaluate claims.
"To state" a falsehood repeatedly does not make it true. To use the words "friends and colleagues" does not mean they are.
Other than just saying so, where is the evidence?
I also appreciate how to think logically; how to apply the rules of scientific nethodology where appropriate. Appalling that an argument purportedly over the validity (or in this case, falsity) of scientific data was so blatantly based on such limited sources. A clear signal that the issue wasn't science, but rather the distortion of information in order to justify political and economic beliefs.
After hearing about so-called "Climategate" from a conservative cousin, I had doubts. So I did the reseach. Found that the thousands and thousands of references basically could be traced back to either the Mann e-mails or East Anglia. Almost all those "references" were at best limited, and at worst obviously edited. And of course posted on various extreme right-wing websites. To be re-posted by the Faux popuLie as if gospel truth.
Repeat, repeat, repeat. The sheer numbers make the claim seem true. If that isn't enough, claim that limiting ecological impacts will make for even fewer jobs. Then assert a "moderate" position, often using the false "Climategate" material, that there are various scientific views and to accept that climate change is real is premature. A clever use of the Big Lie.
As an alumnus of Bell Labs, the Jan Schon matter is a case in point. It is far better to expose scientific misconduct, take a short-term PR hit, than cover it over and risk losing your own and your institution's reputation forever.
This arena is not Congress, the media, or Hollywood where any press is good press.