Investigating Dr. Michael Mann... a supplement

To supplement my previous post, here's a list of investigations into Dr. Mann and allegations stemming from the break in and hacking of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, courtesy of SkepticalScience.com.  I finish with a DeSmogBlog profile of the American Tradition Institute:

What do the 'Climategate' hacked CRU emails tell us?

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climategate-CRU-emails-hacked.htm

Climate Myth...

Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy
“[T]he 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the most prominent scientists pushing the man-made warming theory - a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science. […] emails suggesting conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.” (Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun)

In November 2009, the servers at the University of East Anglia in Britain were illegally hacked and emails were stolen. When a selection of emails between climate scientists were published on the internet, a few suggestive quotes were seized upon by many claiming global warming was all just a conspiracy. A number of independent enquiries have investigated the conduct of the scientists involved in the emails. All have cleared the scientists of any wrong doing:

1. In February 2010, the Pennsylvania State University released an Inquiry Report that investigated any 'Climategate' emails involving Dr Michael Mann, a Professor of Penn State's Department of Meteorology. They found that "there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had or has ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with an intent to suppress or to falsify data". On "Mike's Nature trick", they concluded "The so-called “trick”1 was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field."


2. In March 2010, the UK government's House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published a report finding that the criticisms of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) were misplaced and that CRU’s "Professor Jones’s actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community".


3. In April 2010, the University of East Anglia set up an international Scientific Assessment Panel, in consultation with the Royal Society and chaired by Professor Ron Oxburgh. The Report of the International Panel assessed the integrity of the research published by the CRU and found "no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit".


4. In June 2010, the Pennsylvania State University published their Final Investigation Report, determining "there is no substance to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann".


5. In July 2010, the University of East Anglia published the Independent Climate Change Email Review report. They examined the emails to assess whether manipulation or suppression of data occurred and concluded that "The scientists’ rigor and honesty are not in doubt".


6. In July 2010, the US Environmental Protection Agency investigated the emails and"found this was simply a candid discussion of scientists working through issues that arise in compiling and presenting large complex data sets."


7. In September 2010, the UK Government responded to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report, chaired by Sir Muir Russell. On the issue of releasing data, they found "In the instance of the CRU, the scientists were not legally allowed to give out the data". On the issue of attempting to corrupt the peer-review process, they found "The evidence that we have seen does not suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process. Academics should not be criticised for making informal comments on academic papers".


8. In February 2011, the Department of Commerce Inspector General conducted an independent review of the emails and found "no evidence in the CRU emails thatNOAA inappropriately manipulated data".


9. In August 2011, the National Science Foundation concluded "Finding no research misconduct or other matter raised by the various regulations and laws discussed above, this case is closed".

Just as there are many independent lines of evidence that humans are causing global warming, similarly a number of independent investigations have found no evidence of falsification or conspiracy by climate scientists.

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Here's a SkepticalScience.com article written by John Cook, "Hockey stick or hockey league" which delves into the science of global warming and what we've learned over the past thousand years.

Hockey stick or hockey league? (via Skeptical Science)

Posted on 31 October 2010 by John Cook When most people refer to the 'hockey stick', they refer to its earliest incarnation - a temperature proxy by Mann, Bradley and Hughes created back in 1998 (Mann et al 1998). But in the climate change experienced…

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Now for a look at folks pushing this lawsuit, first there is the Virginia state representative Del Marshall who seems to be a committed ideologue and the American Tradition Institute. Fortunately DeSmogblog has an informative write-up that is available for Reposting.  
With thanks to them, I share it with you:

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American Tradition Institute (via Desmogblog)

American Tradition Institute (ATI) Background The American Tradition Institute was launched in Colorado in February 2009 as the nonprofit Western Tradition Institute, later changing its name to ATI.  WTI, in turn, was a spinoff of the Western Tradition…

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