Over the weekend on “The Score” radio show, we followed-up on the story of how Chris Horner, working with the American Tradition Institute, had filed a freedom of information request with the University of Virginia for emails and materials former UVA Prof. Michael Mann generated during his time at the school. What we learned from our interview with Horner is jaw-dropping.

When what Horner termed “a gaggle of pressure groups” got wind of people lurking around Mann’s emails, they descended on UVA stating, in effect “don’t you dare co-operate with law enforcement to release the records the taxpayer paid for in a fraud pre-investigation under a statute that passed unanimously [in the Virginia General Assembly],” that nowhere provides an exemption for academics.

Horner says that once these groups made their displeasure known, UVA “reversed course” and decided to fight, spending “$500,000 with [former U.S. Senator] John Warner’s law firm in Washington, D.C. to keep the taxpayer from seeing the records.”

He recounts how he discovered UVA had a FOIA compliance officer - the same office that was eager to turn over the emails of former university climate scientist Pat Michaels to Greenpeace (once the group paid the appropriate fee) - and decided to file his own FOIA request for Mann’s emails.

But we know all this. UVA and the interest groups have been in Mann’s corner, fighting Ken Cuccinelli’s request for documents for months.  But it was that Greenpeace request of UVA for Pat Michaels’ work product that has legs. The environmental group filed similar requests with other institutions seeking the records of climate skeptics, and in a couple of cases, mounted campaigns to have those skeptics fired from their positions. Where were the voices of academic freedom of expression during those campaigns? Sitting on their hands.

Now, though, they have sprung into action because Michael Mann, who shares their climate change beliefs, is under what they deem to be attack.  Horner says these groups are “a little bit late to the party,” because, as noted above, UVA has already said it’s willing to release an academic’s emails, “so long as he’s a climate skeptic.”

Horner noted that the first of several installments of Mann’s records were supposed to be delivered by now. But he is concerned that this latest intervention by Mann’s supporters will convince UVA’s leadership to decline to provide them. He views this as a disturbing possibility.

So why are they fighting so hard? Horner said, referring to UVA’s legal bill, “they’ve given us half a million reasons to believe there’s something [in Mann’s emails] to hide.” Horner has been told that Mann’s own lawyer has contacted UVA asking whether the school intended to release the records, indicating that he is worried about what they may reveal if they are made public.

We may know soon enough.

OSU tries to expel PhD candidate children of scientist who ran against Cong. Peter DeFazio

Confused visitors will be forgiven for thinking Oregon State University is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Congressman Pete DeFazio and the “progressive-socialist” wing of the Democratic Party. Or for likening what’s going on there to political retribution as practiced in Third World thugocracies.

The idea that three outstanding students - PhD candidates at OSU - could face dismissal, and worse, shortly before receiving their degrees, is simply shocking. That this could be happening because their father had the temerity to challenge an entrenched 12-term Democratic congressman (and OSU earmark purveyor) could make people think the university is in Zimbabwe, not America.

Dr. Art Robinson is president of the nonprofit Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, on the family farm in southwestern Oregon, 180 miles from Corvallis. OISM focuses on biochemistry, diagnostic medicine, nutrition, preventive medicine and aging - and improving emergency preparedness and basic education.

After his wife died in 1988, Robinson raised and home-schooled his six children - all of whom became remarkable scholars, collaborating on research and a popular DVD series on math and science for home-schooled students and their parents. Five of the children have BS degrees in chemistry; one a degree in mathematics. Two earned doctorates in veterinary medicine; one a PhD in chemistry.

The three youngest are all at OSU, working on PhDs in nuclear engineering. They entered the field at a young age, helping their father write and publish the pro-science, pro-technology, pro-free enterprise” newsletter, Access to Energy, which explains and advocates nuclear energy.

Dr. Robinson is well known for the Oregon Petition Project, which says “there is no convincing scientific evidence” that humans are causing “catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere” or disruption of its climate. It urges Congress to reject the Kyoto global warming agreement - and has been signed by more than 32,000 Americans with university degrees in physical sciences (including yours truly and over 9,000 PhDs).

The petition, and Robinson’s support for DDT in combating the malaria pandemic, drew anger and outrage from the political Left, climate chaos industry and “mainstream media,” giving him his first brush with the politics of personal destruction. But it did not prepare him for the lengths and depths his opponents would go to “discourage” his political activities.

With our nation drowning in debt, energy prices skyrocketing, and unaccountable pseudo-scientific agencies like EPA and Interior hobbling economic growth with endless delays and red tape, Dr. Robinson decided to run for Congress. As a scientist and thoughtful, Christian family man, with proven math and budgetary skills - he felt he could bring much needed expertise and perspectives to the House of Representatives.

He challenged DeFazio, who initially figured he would have a cakewalk against this political neophyte. But Robinson raised $1.3 million from over 5,000 individual donors (against DeFazio’s $1.5 million from special interests, MoveOn.org and other contributors), gave numerous speeches and ran a highly effective campaign. With polls showing his lead narrowing, an increasingly desperate DeFazio struck back.

Bristling with a sense of entitlement, the congressman ran print, television and radio ads, painting Robinson as a nutcase who would promote racism, put radioactive wastes in drinking water, end Social Security and Medicare, close schools, repeal taxation of oil companies and destroy Oregon jobs. With help from Rachel Madow and MSNBC, DeFazio claimed Robinson lived off Social Security in a survivalist compound and was funding his campaign with cash from money launderers and drug dealers.

Despite the libelous attacks, Robinson garnered a very respectable 44% of the vote - and promptly announced that he would run for DeFazio’s seat again in 2012. If the soft-spoken father of six thought DeFazio’s campaign had been in the sewers, what happened next beggared belief. Now the targets became Robinson’s three youngest children.

During the election campaign, OSU President Edward Ray and other faculty and administrators improperly used the campus to campaign for DeFazio and against Robinson. Then, almost immediately after the 2010 election, they launched a series of despicable and unprincipled actions designed to ensure that Joshua, Bethany, and Matthew never receive their degrees - regardless of their outstanding academics, examinations and research, or the thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars they had invested.

Even though they have been working on their PhDs for almost five years at OSU, and have about a year to go, Joshua has been forbidden access to the equipment he built for his PhD work, while Bethany has been told she will be dismissed from school. Matthew, who turned down a nearly “full ride” from MIT to go to OSU, has been there for two years - but now is waiting for the ax to fall on his work, and on his thesis professor, Dr. Jack Higginbotham, who came to the students’ defense.

Nuclear engineering professor Higginbotham has been at OSU 24 years; he is president of the OSU Faculty Senate and director of a large NASA program on the campus. His inside knowledge of what the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics deans and certain faculty were doing to railroad the Robinson children made him Public Enemy Number One to the department Torquemadas who are trying to destroy his career and get him fired for his impertinence.

Right now, Higginbotham’s salary and career hang by a thread, preserved only by attorneys he has hired to protect himself from OSU attacks. The Robinsons’ studies have been severely disrupted. Meanwhile, however, public outcry in favor of Higginbotham and the students has grown in intensity, especially in Oregon, and a group of prominent alumni donors has offered to pay for the student’s remaining PhD work and legal costs to settle the dispute. (Higginbotham is a nuclear power guy; the culprits are in “nuclear medicine” and generally anti-nuclear power.)

Rather than being chastened, though, President Ray and his staff have refused even to speak with the alumni group. University administrators have become incensed that their actions are now public knowledge, and that alumni and other donors are vocally supporting Higginbotham and the children. Ray and his entourage have circled the academic wagons, stonewalled public inquiries and refused to talk to the Robinsons

They appear to think they own the university, and “academic freedom” means they are entitled to deny academic degrees to children of parents whose politics differ from their own. As more alumni join this effort, however, and the university’s reputation becomes increasingly radioactive, OSU appears to be wavering. Perhaps a dose of sanity may yet take center stage.

Oregon State is a prime example of what happens when educational institutions fall under progressive-socialist control, and dependency on taxpayer handouts from political overseers in Washington. DeFazio and his fellow congressional Democrats gave OSU a reported $27 million in earmark funding during the last legislative cycle alone. That’s $9 million per Robinson student denied a PhD.

No wonder President Ray and the Nuclear Engineering deans have given new meaning to “payback,” while DeFazio smirks in silence in the congressional office that he seems convinced should be his for life.

In depressing testimony to how far America has strayed from its Constitution and founding principles, we have reached the point where congressmen can lavish key supporters with tax dollars - and in return get votes, campaign contributions, rallies and volunteers on our campuses ...and be assured of vicious retribution against the families of anyone rash enough to run against them.

If you want to read all the gory details in this sordid case, visits www.OregonStateOutrage.com. If you want to tell OSU what you think of its actions, send a message to President Ray at pres.office@oregonstate.edu and todd.simmons@oregonstate.edu in the OSU press office. Or contact Rep DeFazio’s office to express your opinion.

If you thought the last Robinson-DeFazio bout was a humdinger, stick around. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

In honor of Earth Day 2011, here are the Top 10 Environmental Scams:

1.  Global warming alarmism:  Predictions from the early global warming alarmists that the Earth was rapidly heating, and would suffer untold damage as this trend continued, have already failed to come true.  There has been no discernible warming since the mid-1990s.  Coupled with Climategate’s disclosures showing bias among key scientists, and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s laughable report predicting melting Himalayan glaciers, with no evidence to back it up, it is hard to accept the global warming alarmists’ constantly changing theories as anything other than hysteria.

2.  Earth Day:  Earth Day’s solutions to save the planet often include calls for stricter government environmental regulations that would strangle the economy.  The Washington Times was right when it editorialized several years ago that Earth Day has “anti-business overtones and [a] message of guilt and limits....Earth Day is a global guilt-fest that views the future with a sense of dread....Rather than increasing their productivity, people are told to decrease their carbon footprints.”

3.  Cap and trade:  The cap-and-trade legislation that failed last year in a Democratic-controlled Congress was a maze of environmental regulations that would have resulted in lost jobs and an energy tax for the American people.  The Heritage Foundation estimated the cap-and-trade bill would cost the economy $161 billion in 2020 - $1,870 for a family of four, rising to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035.

4.  Green jobs:  By giving czar status to Van Jones, Obama chose an ex-Communist to come up with a plan to create green jobs.  That pretty much tells you all you need to know about the economic viability of such a government-subsidized enterprise.  Spain’s attempt at actualizing a green jobs revolution ended up costing the country more than $774,000 for each green job created, according to a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid.

5.  Environment activism:  Many environmental activists are as eager to denounce capitalism as they are to save the planet.  Their activities are often aimed at preventing the development of abundant energy resources in the United States that would help the nation move toward energy independence.

6.  Hollywood hypocrisy:  The Lords of Malibu love to preach about saving Planet Earth from the evils of corporate America even while they dump tons of pollutants into the atmosphere from their high-octane cars and opulent mansions.  Memo to Leonardo DiCaprio, Harrison Ford, and James Cameron:  No more lectures about reducing our carbon footprint until you ground your private jets.

7.  Wind power hypocrisy:  Wind power is another environmental dream that has proven to be too expensive to be effective on a massive scale.  And even environmentalists can’t agree on where wind projects should be located when it soils a pristine scene.  Members of the Kennedy clan opposed Cape Wind, a wind energy project in Massachusetts, because it threatens the view of Nantucket Sound.

8.  Carbon trading:  The attempt to set up a system for trading carbon emission allowances to thwart global warming gave purveyors of alarmism a way to cash in on their hysterical ranting.  Former Vice President and global warming guru Al Gore founded a private equity firm, Generation Investment Management, which trades in carbon offsets, and he made a fortune.  He even purchases carbon credits from the company for his own personal use, which comes to $30,000 a year just for his posh Belle Meade mansion in Nashville, Tenn.

9.  Greenwashing:  Greenwashing is a term used to describe companies that use marketing to portray false claims that they are turning green.  Usually these companies spend more on advertising than any real effort to save energy.  The next time you see a hotel room sign promoting the reuse of towels to save the environment, recognize that it is just spin.

10.  Al Gore:  Al Gore transformed his movie An Inconvenient Truth into a mega-money maker (see No. 8).  What is truly inconvenient about his Nobel Prize-winning film were the 11 falsehoods that it contained, as determined by a British court, including the misleading suggestion that Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming.

See the report. In this analysis we take a look at the failings of IPCC based science.

On his blog, Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. writes:

A new analysis of floods around the world has been called to my attention. The new analysis is contrary to conventional wisdom but consistent with the scientific literature on global trends in peak streamflows. Is it possible that floods are not increasing or even in decline while most people have come to believe the opposite?

Bouziotas et al. presented a paper at the EGU a few weeks ago (PDF) and concluded:

“Analysis of trends and of aggregated time series on climatic (30-year) scale does not indicate consistent trends worldwide. Despite common perception, in general, the detected trends are more negative (less intense floods in most recent years) than positive. Similarly, Svensson et al. (2005) and Di Baldassarre et al. (2010) did not find systematical change neither in flood increasing or decreasing numbers nor change in flood magnitudes in their analysis.”

Note the phrase “despite common perception.” I was very pleased to see that in context with a conclusion from real data.

That “common perception” is central to the theme of “global climate disruption,” started by John P. Holdren in this presentation, which is one of the new buzzword phrases being used in the place of “global warming” and “climate change” to convey alarm.

Like Holdren, many people who ascribe to doomsday scenarios related to AGW seem to think that severe weather is happening more frequently. From a perception not steeped in the history of television technology, web technology, and mass media, which has been my domain of avocation and business, I can see how some people might think this. I’ve touched on this subject before, but it bears repeating again.

In recent years, the reach of communications technology has expanded and the speed with which natural disasters are reported has increased. With global news coverage, instant messaging, and Internet-enabled phones with cameras, is it any wonder that nothing related to severe weather or disaster escapes our notice anymore? This improved reporting makes it seem as if severe weather events and disasters are becoming much more frequent.

Using this Wikipedia timeline as a start, I created a timeline that tracks the earliest communications to the present, adding severe weather events of note and weather and news technology improvements for context. Here’s an excerpt of it (to see the full timeline, click here).

1450 - Johannes Gutenberg finishes a printing press with metal movable type.

1812 - The Aug. 19, 1812 New Orleans hurricane that didn’t appear in Washington, D.C.’s Daily National Intelligencer until September 22.

1876 - Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson exhibit an electric telephone in Boston.

1914 - Teletype introduced as a news tool. The Associated Press introduced the “telegraph typewriter” into newsrooms in 1914, making transmission of entire ready-to-read news stories available worldwide.

1946 - The DuMont Television Network, which had begun experimental broadcasts before the war, launched what Newsweek called “the country’s first permanent commercial television network” on August 15, 1946.

1963 - First geosynchronous communications satellite is launched.

1982 - The Weather Channel (TWC) is launched by John Coleman and Joe D’Aleo with 24-hour broadcasts of computerized weather forecasts and weather-related news.

1992 - Hurricane Andrew, spotted at sea with weather satellites, is given nearly continuous coverage on CNN and other network news outlets as it approaches Florida. Live TV news via satellite coverage as well as some Internet coverage is offered. It was the first Category 5 hurricane imaged on NEXRAD.

2011 - Notice of an earthquake off the coast of Japan was blogged near real-time thanks to a USGS email message alert before TV news media picked up the story, followed by a tsunami warning. A Japanese TV news helicopter with live feed was dispatched and showed the tsunami live as it approached the coast of Japan and hit the beaches. Carried by every major global news outlet and live-streamed on the Internet, it was the first time a tsunami of this magnitude was seen live on global television before it impacted land.

To borrow and modify a famous phrase from James Carville: It’s the technology, stupid.

Here’s the truth:

1. There have been relatively few tornadoes in the USA in recent years:

Source: National Climatic Data Center (enlarged)

2. Global tropical cyclone activity, as measured by frequency and ACE, is at the lowest level in 30 years, despite 2010 being claimed as the warmest year ever:

Global Tropical Cyclone ACE (Dr. Ryan N. Maue, FSU) (enlarged)

3. And there is no evidence that the frequency of flooding has increased in recent years:

Destructive floods observed in the last decade all over the world have led to record high material damage. The conventional belief is that the increasing cost of floods is associated with increasing human development on flood plains (Pielke & Downton, 2000). However, the question remains as to whether or not the frequency and/or magnitude of flooding is also increasing and, if so, whether it is in response to climate variability and change.

Several scenarios of future climate indicate a likelihood of increased intense precipitation and flood hazard. However, observations to date provide no conclusive and general proof as to how climate change affects flood behavior.

Finally, this parting note: While our world has seen the explosion of TV news networks, Internet news websites, personal cameras and recording technology, smartphones with cameras, and the ability to submit a photo or movie or live video feed virtually anywhere, anytime, giving us instant reporting of disasters, there’s one set of elusive phenomena that still hasn’t seen an increase in credible reporting and documentation: UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, and Bigfoot.

We still haven’t seen anything credible from the millions of extra electronic eyes and ears out there, and people still marvel over old, grainy images. You’d think that if they were on the increase, we’d know about it.

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Editorial: Don’t Look Now, But C02 Output Is Falling
IBD Editorial

Environment: Two years ago, greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. fell to their lowest levels since 1995. The list of reasons carbon dioxide emissions should not be regulated continues to grow.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s data show that emissions of what are considered the six main greenhouses gases fell 6.1% in 2009 from their 2008 levels.

Yes, levels increased by 7.3% from 1990 to 2009. But the average annual rate of increase since 1990 has been a mere 0.4%, a data point that doesn’t seem worthy of the high-intensity hysteria that’s been spread by the alarmists.

In the same year greenhouse emissions fell, the EPA, which should be an acronym for Eternally Panicked and Alarmed, determined “that climate change caused by emissions of greenhouse gases threatens the public’s health and the environment.” Regarding politics to be more important than science, it has taken it upon itself to regulate carbon dioxide as a “pollutant.”

“Climate change is happening now,” the EPA has claimed, “and humans are contributing to it.”

This is the same EPA, it was revealed in congressional testimony last week, that ignores the negative impact its regulations have on jobs, even though an executive order requires EPA rule makers to protect job creation. And it’s the same EPA that plans to regulate CO2 without congressional approval.

If the agency is so keen on regulating carbon dioxide, maybe it should turn its attention to China, which has surpassed the U.S. in CO2 emissions. While U.S. greenhouse gas emissions increased 7.3% from 1990 to 2009, China’s carbon dioxide emissions have soared roughly 175% since 1999. If CO2 emissions must be cut, then China is where the cutting has to start.

If not, it doesn’t matter what the U.S. does. For every part per million of carbon dioxide that Americans cut, China, and its ever-burgeoning population and growing economy, will be pumping out even more.

Fortunately, there’s no reason for any nation to cut its carbon dioxide emissions. CO2 is not a pollutant in the usual sense. It is, in the words of John R. Christy, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Alabama, “a plant food.”

“The green world we see around us would disappear if not for atmospheric CO2,” Christy says.

“These plants largely evolved at a time when the atmospheric CO2 concentration was many times what it is today,” he adds. “Indeed, numerous studies indicate the present biosphere is being invigorated by the human-induced rise of CO2.”

It is because of its presence in everything from breathing to driving to manufacturing to reading at home under the lights that CO2 makes a strong leverage point for those who want bureaucratic control over the rest of us, says Richard S. Lindzen, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

And if CO2 continues to fall, or remains nearly flat, what will the alarmists do? Will environmentalists find a new bogeyman? They will. But they better hurry. The time they have left to demonize CO2 is running short.

This is an interesting article. The gist of it is that ‘recent’ warming in the 20th century was not out of range of normal as compared to other times. Has a couple of nice graphs, too:

The claim is often made that the rate of temperature change the Earth has experienced over the last 40 years is ‘unprecedented’, and is therefore likely to be man-made.

A quick look at the Vostok[1], EPICA[2] and GISP2[3] ice core records do not appear to support this claim, even within the stable part of the Holocene:

At that point there are some nice graphs showing trendless jiggly wigglies. Well worth hitting the link to take a look.

Then in a comment:

Juraj V. says:

This is the rate of warming/cooling calculated between the individual decades from the CET record.