Bishop Hill The IPCC's private portals
Feb 25, 2012 Climate: IPCC FOI Readers may remember that several months ago, Chris Horner of the CEI reported that people working for the IPCC had set up private portals, apparently to allow them to communicate without being subject to FOI legislation. The original story at WUWT is here and Horner does not mince his words, noting the parallels with the Abramoff case.
Horner responded to this news by issuing a FOIA request for any related correspondence held by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and a partial response has now been received. Roughly two thirds of the responsive documents are being withheld.
The most interesting record released is the one extracted below:
From: (bl(6)
Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2011 10:56 AM
To: Duffy, Philip
Cc: (b)(6) (b)(6)
Subject: OSTP follow up
Follow Up Flag: Follow up
Flag Status: RedDear Phil -
Here' s the access credentials to both the ARS Author Portal and the SREX Author Portal. Yes, intentionally similar. They do the same thing!https : //www . ipcc-wg2 . gov/ARS/author/index .php
username (b)(6)
password ~ (b)(6)https://www . ipcc- wg2 .gov/e xtremes-sr/author/index . html
username (b)(6)
password ~ (b)(6)Yes , <ipcc-wg2 .gov> -- both public and password-protected pages -- reside on virtual machines on Carnegie VMWare physical hosts .
Sorry for the delay getting this info to you. Particularly busy time . And will remain this way through February of next year (SREX book launch) when we will get a very slight breather. It's worth reminding everyone that the TSU is a VERY SMALL operation ....
I 'cc' Chris only to make him aware of the request for info. Chris, no action required.
dave
P.S. You should read the status report for the AR5 prepared for IPCC-XXXIV for an overview of what is going on.
P.S.2. You should read the distributed cost proposals (FY10/FY11) and annual reports to see our work plan and deliverables (milestones).
> Hi Dave , Thanks for your time earlier this evening . In addition for
> asking for guest access to the portal , I want to confirm that you
> indicated that the portal resides at Stanford on hardware owned by
> Carnegie. Is that correct? Thanks again for your help. I'll see you in Kampala.
>
> Phil
>
> Philip B. Duffy
> Senior Policy Analyst
> Office of Science and Technology
> President Washington DC . 20502
> (b)(6)
>
The discussion of the ownership of the hardware makes it It hard to avoid the impression that this does indeed represent an attempt to bypass FOI legislation, although the OSTP has denied that it is a communication channel, suggesting that it is only a repository for documents. These claims appear among the other papers disclosed.
The other point of note is that David Appell appears to be dogging Horner's every footstep, asking for copies of anything released to the CEI man. Nothing wrong with that of course, but interesting nevertheless.
The full document release is below.
Reader Comments (40)
So presumably all work carried out for the IPCC is not within their norrmal working hours, otherwise they are still subject to FOI and possibly early retirement. Be interesting to find the date stamps on their moonlighting work
Slickgate
skilful and effective but with no sincerity or value
Trickgate.
Looks like a gate, feels like a gate but can't be opened
Slygate
deceiving people in a clever way in order to get what you want
This in reality is the beginning of Climategate III. Institutional attempts to avoid FOIA.
Funy how these very same scientists and bureaucrats are calling for complete openess on the part of climate sceptics but refuse to be open themselves about their own activities.
Creating back channels or private portals such as these is rank hypocrisy.
Since when was it legal to conspire to evade legal obligations?
[o/t]
[o/t]
Hi Bish
If this is an attempt to avoid FOI then it's a pretty amateurish one, because the WG2 TSU also gave us copies of the WG2 Zero Order Drafts and other information from the author portal on a USB stick, which then counts as "information held" which can therefore be requested through FOI (to the Met Office).
(Whether it is actually provided in response to the FOI request is a different issue of course - see David Holland's ongoing appeal to see what has and has not been provided, and reasons why).
Cheers
Richard
[O/T]
[o/t]
A further thought - the IPCC's USB sticks are not even password-protected, unlike Met Office ones which are not only password-protected but also destroy their contents if the password is entered incorrectly 10 times! (This is not an FOI-evasion tactic but a measure to protect sensitive information in response to too many MOD employees leaving laptops and USB sticks on trains!)
So if you ever find a USB stick with "IPCC" on it lying around, you're in..... :-)
That is why it is not in the least bit surprising to me that the ZODs got leaked. It would only take an author to leave the USB stick in his/her hotel room and a cleaner to find it, and Bob's your uncle!
Nevertheless the email looks decidedly fishy IMHO.
Dr Betts, I hope you are not fingering Bob Ward as the leaker of ZOD! :))
diogenes,
Ha, very good! :-)
The new US administration will have to apply RICO - Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act - to sort this out. This is the reason why the act was passed, to root out organized and institutionalized crime and the profiteering from it.
Pesadia,
Poxgate.
Don't go there!
All this back channels private portals and dead drop intrigue.
Perhaps they're all licenced to shill.
Since when was it legal to conspire to evade legal obligations?
Doesn't appear to matter, does it?
All of this intentional opaqueness by the IPCC contradicts their publicity statements about transparency and openness.
Their pretext of 'prepublication-work-in-progress' is no excuse for the opaqueness.
Then add the muzzling of reviews and reviewers to get a picture of controlled dialog within a closed intellectual/scientific environment.
John
OT, but on a visit to a local supermarket this morning I picked up a comic called 'New Scientist'. I think it was a comic....they seem to believe the fakegate documents are real....!
The first link doesn't work anymore. The second one does, but the username/password combo is now invalid.
NukemHill -
If you look at the original document, you'll see that the username/password were not provided -- they've been redacted pursuant to section (b)(6) of the Freedom of Information Act. [Although that may not be apparent by just looking at the extract in the main post.] The extract also contains a typo in the first link, likely created by an OCR error; if you just copied/pasted the link, I'm not surprised that it failed.
Am I the only one thinking anything done in the spare time outside of working hours by unpaid volunteers using small-operation systems, is obviously not going to produce the best science on any topic?
I just cant understand that these people still dont get it. The email address you use doesnt matter. Its the nature of the information that does. And so "back channels" are just as disclosable as others if the information is covered by FOI.
I never cease to be amazed that such, presumably, intelligent people as university professors, PhDs, etc., can be quite so thick.
Harold. Thanks. Hadn't realized that's what that referred to. In re-reading the snip, I see (b)(6) all over the place. Should have seen that the first time.
These missing emails are a travesty.
If the science is so compelling, so unequivocal, and backed up by the vast majority of the world's climate scientists, why do they need to circumvent FOIA laws?
RB
I never cease to be amazed that such, presumably, intelligent people as university professors, PhDs, etc., can be quite so thick.
Having a Ph.D. does not mean one has a lick of common sense. The extreme cases of this are technically known as idiot servant. The lesser form of the affliction is call "academic". These are people who can't make it in the work-a-day world and so go into academia.
[o/t]
[o/t]
[o/t]
Good grief, here we go again with the Eureka posse
Doug, if it was that easy mate we'd all be down the pub buying Richard Betts consolatory pints of Speckled Hen.
And
Shove the pomposity up your Gleick.
Radiative physics on the discussion board please.
Well done, your Grace. On a Sunday, too.
By the way, Happy Birthday Dr. Judith!
Only one part of that email worries me:
Yes , -- both public and password-protected pages -- reside on virtual machines on Carnegie VMWare physical hosts .
Why use a virtual machine? Because it's very easy to dispose of should the need arise. Essentially, this paragraph is saying "Don't worry about FOI, once we've finished we can delete everything in a few clicks of the mouse, 'as part of our routine housekeeping activities'."
@ Feb 26, 2012 at 1:04 AM | Unregistered CommenterDon Pablo de la Sierra: a bit of arrant pedantry.
It is "idiot savant" not "servant"
The IPCC models make use of absorptivity measurements for the Earth's surface which were measured using visible light. But they apply them to far-IR radiation from the atmosphere, even though it is well known that absorptivity reduces very significantly for much lower temperature radiation. This is obviously important when determining the assumed warming effect of radiation from the atmosphere - which, by the way, is assumed to help the Sun with its warming every sunny morning - all quite against the Second Law of Thermodynamics which they think it isn't because somewhere on the other side of the Earth at night some radiation is turning it all into totally unphysical "net" radiation which cannot be a physical entity. But, never mind, I diverge.
The question is Can someone link me to any empirical measurement of absorptivity by the surface of radiation in the IR bands emitted by the atmosphere?
You'd kinda think the IPCC would have got this part sorted out before spending all that money on the models. So show me where they did - anybody!
@Derek: you're probably worrying about nothing here; in all likeliehood everything they have in production is virtual machines, so this one is nothing special. It's helpful (to them) that it can be deleted at the flick of a switch, but I doubt that's the whole reason for doing it that way.
"idiot servant" sounds just right in the case of climate "science"
Name: www.ipcc-wg2.gov
Address: 171.66.68.141
IP Information for 171.66.68.141
IP Location: United States United States Palo Alto Stanford University
ASN: AS32
Resolve Host: ipcc.Stanford.EDU
IP Address: 171.66.68.141 [Whois] [Reverse-Ip] [Ping] [DNS Lookup] [Traceroute]
Reverse IP: 2 websites use this address. (examples: ipcc-wg2.gov srex.org)
NetRange: 171.64.0.0 - 171.67.255.255
CIDR: 171.64.0.0/14
OriginAS:
NetName: NETBLK-SUNET
NetHandle: NET-171-64-0-0-1
Parent: NET-171-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
RegDate: 1994-08-22
Updated: 2008-10-13
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-171-64-0-0-1
OrgName: Stanford University
OrgId: STANFO
Address: 241 Panama Street
Address: Pine Hall, room 125
City: Stanford
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 94305-4102
Country: US
RegDate:
Updated: 2011-09-24
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OrgTechHandle: RR959-ARIN
OrgTechName: Roberts, Rosalea
OrgTechPhone: +1-650-723-3352
OrgTechEmail:
OrgTechRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/RR959-ARIN
OrgAbuseHandle: RR959-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Roberts, Rosalea
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