Bishop Hill Legal education for climate scientists
Sep 16, 2012 Climate: other The AGU is getting together with green activists the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund to organise a series of webinars:
In recent years, an increasing number of scientists have found themselves involved in legal discussions about their work, their correspondence, and their public statements. To better prepare the scientific community for these challenges, AGU and CSLDF have put together a legal education program for the scientific community. The goal is to both give a primer on the legal issues facing scientists and update them on legal situations currently making their way through the courts.
The legal education program will start with a series of webinars featuring some of the lawyers on the front lines of climate science litigation. These webinars will be followed by a series of legal education events at AGU’s 2012 Fall Meeting.
The first seminars look pretty interesting. The first is on document retention, a subject that someone more cynical than me might characterise as "what can safely be deleted". The second is "an inside look at the Michael Mann case" and seems to have evasion of FOI as its focus.
Reader Comments (22)
The "Climate Science Legal Defense Fund" shouldn't need to exist. Climate scientists should behave honestly, with integrity and within the law; if they did, they wouldn't need any legal defence.
They seem determined to show climate scientists as crooks and liars. No wonder they liked Gleick so much...
You don't have to be cynical to define document retention as "what can safely be deleted" - that is exactly what it is. Someone should tell them to have an ethics component to counterbalance what the lawyers say, or at the least a lawyer representing FOIA applicants to give a second opinion, otherwise it will turn into the usual circle-jerk.
It's worse than that David. Any scientist or member of whatever profession who would answer a reasonable request by invoking the lawyers, MUST OBVIOUSLY BE CONSIDERED a crook.
Likewise for everybody else above in the hierarchy.
This risks destroying much more than the reputation of a few egotistic publicly-paid socially-disordered idiots.
If it was me organizing the seminars, I would use them to explain all the things that leave telling evidence even after you hit delete. The importance of not putting certain sort of statements in writing. For example, I was GC of a publicly held company in the early days of email. I knew email was discoverable and that I would never be able to stop silly people from confessing all in print. So I asked that I not be available by email. Best to call me or come chat in person. No records.
Now telling someone to get rid of evidence makes the lawyer complicit. Explaining in advance what are good things to know to make the odds of any damning paper trail remote are perfectly legit.
As we saw with ClimateGate these clowns behaved like no one would ever read those emails.
Number 1 lesson then on the first minute is do not put things in an email you would not want others to read.
Emails and telling even lawyers to be more careful were a big part of Continuing Legal Ed ethics hours last year
If the science is good, it will stand any test, then - what are they worried about?
It's nice to see them confess that they need lawyers.
I assume the lawyers "the lawyers on the front lines of climate science litigation" are all ultimately paid by us.
Yet another misdirection, based upon the false assumption that the consensus climate science is correct, and needs to be protected from evil "cranks". In reality, this is just a hands-on example of how the subornation of every institution to a false consensus is done. It demonstrates a governing process gone fundamentally wrong, and "interesting" is hardly the word I would use to describe any part of it. Where the lawmakers themselves have been suborned, there is no law. News such as this should come with a flashing "WARNING" sign -- since so many are unable to see the danger themselves, as they carelessly imbibe it. "Oh what a tangled web we weave,..." -- sounds quaint, but the reality is vicious (as in, "Woe unto you, you generation of liars and vipers, avoiders of truth").
Don't forget Number 3 ... with Jeff Ruch of PEER, (in?)famous for defending PolarBearGate's Charles Monnett whose wife ‘peer-reviewed’ his polar bear paper.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/39372
This meeting sound like fun, so many famous people and names :-)
I am sure Lewandosky will soon make himself available to demonstrate, mangled statistics and silly surveys in hand, that climate scientists need lawyers because of evil, co-ordinate attacks by skeptic conspirators.
All funded by the taxpayer...great.
I sympathise with poor, downtrodden climate scientists. It's because they aren't to blame for the basic mistakes in heat transfer made in the early 1980s which, because they create high, imaginary warming, led politicians and emissions' traders to push this pseudo-science so hard, none can easily back down.
This whole thing smacks of "ambulance chasing".
Lawyers have just spotted a new route to making money.
I would hope any institution holding itself out to be acting as a "defense" organization will be very very careful about funding lawyers acting on behalf of a plaintiff.
Just for example, if Michael Mann were -- entirely hypothetically -- decide to file a defamation lawsuit against a disk jockey who mouths off and calls him -- for instance -- a "nappy headed whore" or something comparably offensive; and were Mr Mann to obtain institutional funds devoted to DEFENDING climate scientists to pay the lawyer to INITIATE the complaint -- I'd think the donors to such institution might have standing for a class action suit against that institution.
The very thought makes me want to donate a small amount, and save my receipt...
"Document retention". Says it all. How to continue hiding data from potential critics.
What we need then, is to establish the idea that the conclusions in papers that have "retained" documents are inherently unsafe, and should therefore be excluded from consideration by the IPCC and others.
"Someone should tell them to have an ethics component..." --David S
Ethics? What are these ethics of which you speak? Can you purchase one at a chemists? What have they got to do with climate science? Not much, I'd guess. I think a component on the penalties and statutes of limitation for fraud might be more apropos.
I think that a society that has to rely TOTALLY on punishment (for breaking the law) is doomed. We must have standards and the government must lead by example. Right now the government is heading South instead of North but how to fix it?
"Ethics? What are these ethics of which you speak?"
I believe you'll find that the Team and and their legal advisers believe that "Ethics" is the county next to "Thuffolk".
After the problems with Peter Gleick, I would have thought they really should be focussing legal advice on procurement and synthesis of documents, not how to dispose of them.
What may not be illegal may certainaly be unethical - if not ouright immoral. What binds us together as scientists is adherence to our guiding Khunian code of conduct - if not those ethics promulgated by professional socirties and / or organizations by which we're employed and funded.
But once FOI'd things can't be deleted. One cannot disobey the Law even ifone is a scientist with a 'cause'. It might be good thing, overall.