But there is one thing that is found common to most scientific endeavors, and without this thing science would not progress very quickly or very far:

The honest conversation.

Scientist talk to each other about their work. You see it best in lab meetings or seminars. Perhaps a visitor comes to a lab and presents on his or her research, research of interest to the lab group hosting the talk. Everybody listens. Everybody hears the scientists questions and concerns, and maybe finds problems of their own in the research being presented. Then they sit down for a meeting and talk. Turns out the magnetics expert has something to say about the sampling procedure, the the isotope person has some as yet unpublished insight on fractionation, the taphonomist knows of an old and nearly forgotten study of pollen rain dynamics in the tundra. Next think you know, the visiting scientist has a list of things to do with their lake cores that will help make sense of the as yet enigmatic results showing an increase in salinity as the lake level goes up (it should decrease) or some other thing.

A lot of these conversations happen by email these days. That is why email exists. The Internet was invented to extend the conversation among scientists across time and space, to fill in the gaps between visits and conferences. Email emerged as one of the better ways to use that resource. A great deal of science advances at the leading edge of wave after wave of emails.

Several years ago, nefarious science deniers intent on stopping action on climate change, presumably funded by the Koch Brothers or the likes, got their hands on a bunch of emails sent back and forth among climate scientists. They took lines out of the emails, and thus out of context, and made up fake stories about what the scientists were actually communicating about. You can read about that event and all that accompanied it in Michael Mann’s book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines. Professor Mann was one of the victims of that attack on science. (See also: The Serengeti Strategy.)

More recently, David Schnare, a science denier who gets paid to do this sort of thing, running a fossil fuel funded anti-science group, attempted to get even more emails out of Michael Mann, but lost in that effort in the Virginia Supreme Court. After losing that battle, Schnare went after other emails, in Arizona. According to scientist and anti-science victim Michael Mann, he

…targeted two other prominent climate scientists at the University of Arizona, Jonathan Overpeck and Malcolm Hughes (the latter being one of my longtime co-authors), seeking a total of 13 years of emails from them, including correspondence with or about me or my research.

…

I have spent much effort in the years since “Climategate” explaining why scientists’ research correspondence needs to be protected from legal bullying. Anyone who truly cares about the research can and should review the published papers and underlying data, directly evaluating a study’s methodologies, analyses, and conclusions. But seeking thousands of emails serves only to stifle collaboration and discourage the frank, creative exchange of ideas, and chill the candor needed during the confidential peer review process.

…

E&E Legal will no doubt post the Arizona emails once they receive them, distributing them online with a series of misleading and disingenuous mischaracterizations, choosing a few phrases here and there to misrepresent me and other scientists and to falsely accuse us of all manner of misdeeds.

Consequently, I am sharing my emails here (enter “mail_guest” for both username and password). Moreover, a group of independent climate science experts have gone through the emails providing context for interpreting the exchanges and discussions contained within.

So, at least some of the emails currently under attack are now available. Some of these emails, released by Michael Mann preemptively, have notes added to them to provide context. Some time later today (Friday) Schnare is expected to do his own release of all of the Arizona emails.

Do read his biographical notes at DeSmogBlog. And stay tuned.

See also: “But their emails!” by David Kirtley.

More details and links HERE.

Michael Mann is a good scientist who has done honest, important, and high quality work, but there are those who don’t want to hear about the results he and other climate scientists have come up with. So, they hate him. And by “hate” I don’t mean that they sit there not liking him. I mean, they actively hate him. They wake up every morning and try to think of things to do to ruin his life, and they conspire with each other to carry out these nefarious acts, and in some cases, they are paid by special interests to do these things.

We all get this hate, to one level or another. I was amused the other day when one of the haters, someone who had made death threats against me, had apparently pressed the button on his Linked In account to “find people to link to” and thus accidentally sent me an invitation to “Link In.” I get an email that says “I want to kill you” then I get an invitation to link up. Made me laugh.

But in reality this is no laughing matter. Even though we all take a certain amount of crap for either being a climate scientist or a person who teaches about climate change or a blogger or journalist who covers these issues honestly and critically, no one has taken the crap that Michael Mann has had to take. I don’t know how he does it.

Anyway, Michael has written a commentary for CNN that covers not so much the attacks on him, but rather, the attacks on climate science more generally. He talks about the theft of emails and subsequent dissemination and misuse of their contents and related events:

In the most infamous episode, somebody stole thousands of e-mails and documents from leading climate researchers, including me. They cherry picked key phrases from the e-mails and published them out of context, like a black-and-white political attack ad with ominous music. Fossil fuel industry-funded groups gleefully spread the e-mails online and badgered the mainstream media into covering the “controversy” they had manufactured.

It was no accident that this happened on the eve of a major international climate change meeting. … The dozen independent investigations that did follow — all of which exonerated the scientists — got much less media coverage than the original nonscandal.

Go read his essay. Also, please, please check out the comment section and say something not horrible there to help diffuse the crap that I’m sure is going to appear there over the next few days!

Michael Mann is the author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines.

Well, just a few hours ago, members of the climate change science, journalism, and blogging community received an interesting Valentine’s Day gift from someone who must be a Heartland Institute insider: The institute’s budget, fundraising plan, climate related strategy, and numerous other things. The story broke here on Desmog Blog.

Here’s the details:

The 2012 fundraising plan ((1-15-2012) 2012 Fundraising Plan.pdf) claims that Heartland will raise $7.7 million in 2012, up by 70% from 2011. One of the most interesting revelations of this document is an “anonymous donor” who gave just under one million in 2011 and who plans to give 1.25 million for 2012.

The budget ((1-15-2012) 2012 Heartland Budget (2).pdf) gives an idea of the institute’s activities (lots of communications and lobbying). Most interesting are the funds that will be spent on fighting science in schools and other venues. $75,000 is set aside for:

K-12 Climate Education Project
Payments to David Wojick for K-12 Global Warming Lesson Plan modules plus a Website featuring the same. Estimate quarterly payments of $25,000 in June, September, and December.

We know this to be an effort to fight the teaching of good climate science in schools, much like efforts we’ve seen before to force creationism into science classes in order to damage science teaching. It is probably in the interest of those who donate to Heartland to have a poorly informed populace when it comes to science.

The documents include an agenda for a January 17th 2012 meeting of the directors of the Heartland Institute (2 Agenda for January 17 Meeting.pdf), a 2010 Federal IRS Form 990 (2010_IRS_Form_990 (2).pdf) and a Janurary 2012 document addressing the 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy (2012 Climate Strategy (3).pdf)

In that document we learn about efforts to increase climate related fundraising, noting the “key Anonymous Donor” and additional support from the Charles G. Koch Foundation. The afore mentioned K-12 Classrooms project is outlined. Specifically, the document states:

Development of our “Global Warming Cirriculum for K-12 Classrooms” project.
Principals and teachers are heavily biased towards the alarmist perspective. To counter this we are considering launching an effort to develop alternative materials for K-12 classrooms. We are pursuing a proposal from Dr. David Wojick to produce a global warming cirriculum for K-12 schools. Dr. Wojick is a consultant with the Office of Scientific and Technical Information at the U.S. Department of Energy in the area of information and communication science. His effort wil focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain — two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science. We tentatively plan to pay Dr. Wojick $100,000 for 20 modules in 2012, with funding pledged by the Anonymous Donor.

There is a larger document that appears to be supporting materials for the January 17th meeting (Binder1 (2).pdf). One of the more interesting parts of this document is the discussion of decreased funding to the institute (on page 15 of the PDF file).

The details of the board of directors of the Heartland Institute are provided in one document (Board Directory 01-18-12.pdf). That includes their emails and phone numbers in case you want to contact any of them and ask why they hate the Planet Earth or something. And finally, a cover memo for the entire package for the January 17th meeting (Board Meeting Package January 17.pdf)

(And, yes, I did just give you all these links is approximate reverse order that the documents were probably originally passed out originally.)

I have no idea who the individual is who passed these documents on, nor do I have an idea who the Anonymous Donor with all the money to spend on ruining the planet and messing with the education of our children. The former is something of a hero, the later, a villain.

Here are a few other blog posts on the material:

• Heartland Institute Exposed: Internal Documents Unmask Heart of Climate Denial Machine
• INTERNAL DOCUMENTS: The Secret, Corporate-Funded Plan To Teach Children That Climate Change Is A Hoax
• Heartland Institute budget and strategy revealed
• How is Joe Bast Like Joe Camel? Looks Like We’re Going To Find Out..
• Is Turnabout Fair Play?
• Leaked insider docs from Heartland Institute goal: “dissuading teachers from teaching science” #climate #Heartland #ScholarlyKitchen
• Leaked Heartland Institute documents pull back curtain on climate scepticism
• Leak exposes how Heartland Institute works to undermine climate science
• Heartland?
• The Heart(land) of the Denial Campaign
• Zachary Shanan, Fossil-Fuel-Funded Think Tank, Heartland Institute, Exposed (Deniergate? Heartlandgate? Pick a Name), Clean Technica
• Phil Plait, Breaking news: A look behind the curtain of the Heartland Institute’s climate change spin, Bad Astronomy
• Christian Hunt, Undermining the IPCC, keeping opposing voices out, dissuading the teaching of science – Heartland in its own words?, The Carbon Brief
• Canucks On Heartland Institute Payroll

I’m have a hard time stifling the “bwahahaha.”

Disclaimer: The Heartland Institute is now claiming that these documents have likely been altered or faked, and are threatening to pursue criminal and civil charges against all bloggers who posted comments on them or links to them.

I can not prove that these documents are real or fake. I will certainly pass on to you any information that comes along about this. Have a look at the documents and make up your own mind (before I am forced by guys in suits to take down the links).

.

In 2010 newly-elected Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a climate change denier, sued the University of Virginia to get Mann’s private papers. Cuccinelli wanted to sift through them in the wake of “climategate” to see if he could find anything he could spin into a case under the state’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, arguing that while an employee of UVA, Mann’s work on climate change may have used public money to perpetrate a fraud.*

This initial attempt failed. Then, a group called the Western Tradition Partnership, backed by the energy industry and the Republican Party, which later changed its name to the American Tradition Partnership (ATP), initiated a suit against the University of Virginia to gain access to the same private information.

Michael Mann, one of the top climate scientists in the world and creator of the so-called “Hockey Stick Graph” would be one of the main targets of this vigilante investigation, but was not part of the suit. So, he went to court to make a motion that he be allowed to intervene in the suit in order to protect his own interests. One might expect that an institution like UVA would have a different point of view regarding access to private information than the person who’s information is being pillaged, so this seemed a reasonable request.

Yesterday a hearing was held to determine the outcome of Mann’s motion.

At Tuesday’s hearing, attorneys representing Mann and UVA went on the offensive. Mann’s attorney, Peter Fontaine of the firm Cozen O’Connor, called ATI an extreme right-wing group bent on attacking climate scientists and preventing any kind of action on global warming. After documenting links to various conservative organizations, Fontaine said ATI is part of a “shadowy political network that is largely funded by petroleum companies.”

My colleague John Abraham has been in touch with Mike Mann, and relayed this information yesterday:

ATI could not convince the court that he (Mike Mann) did not have legal standing. The court has allowed him legal standing so he can be a party in the settlement.

Second, the court allowed that there was reason for UVA to reopen the protective order before the court. The original protective order would have allowed ATI to review the emails themselves. That court order is now invalid. ATI will not see the exempt emails.

The only matter to be resolved is the process by which ATI can challenge the exempt emails. Now, a neutral party will be able to see the emails, not ATI. The neutral party must be agreed upon by all parties in the good.

The broader message is that this is a major victory and a huge setback for ATI. ATI might appeal this to the Supreme Court.

A small but important victory for science. And the planet, actually.

My summary of this situation lacks many important details, but several other people have written extensively and intensively about this over the last 12 hours or so. Here is a set of links to those reports:

Shawn Lawrence Otto, author of Fool Me Twice, wirting for the Huffington Post: Climate Scientist Wins A Round for America:

What is at stake in Mann’s case is something much larger and more precious than papers and emails, or partisan politics — what is at stake is Americans’ freedom to investigate, debate and express ideas that run counter to those of corporations. Attacks on this basic freedom are a step away from democracy and toward tyranny.

Jeff Tollefson writing for Nature:

Initially worried when UVA granted ATI access to his emails, Mann says he is pleased that he and the university are now on the same legal page. But he nonetheless wants to maintain his own representation going forward – along with some funding from a new organization called the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. “Universities are often quite limited in what they can do when academics are under attack,” Mann says. “These skeptic groups are trying to exploit that.”

Chris Mooney, writing for DeSmogBlog:

Yesterday in a Virginia courtroom, Michael Mann–who is quickly becoming the Galileo of climate science–triumphed over the conservative American Tradition Institute, and ongoing attempts at scientist-harassment.

Global Warming: Man or Myth has this summary and a list of links to prior writing on this topic.

Suzanne Goldenberg writes at The Guardian:

Mann has been repeatedly cleared of any scientific misconduct. But Cuccinelli, and more recently the ATI, launched their own investigations, alleging Mann may have manipulated data to help get government research grants. Cuccinelli lost his case but it is under appeal.

Deep Climate has an open thread on which this topic has come up.