Climate of smear - Josh 229

Story on BH here, at WUWT here, with a response from the University here. Jo Nova has similar posts here and here too. 

Cartoons by Josh

Comments

[diogenes]

afaik all labour disputes have 2 sides. Such that a persuasive unofficial "affidavit" from one side, seeming to bypass the legalities, does not imply that that person is in the right.. in this case, the laws of immigration, residence and employment will out. My guess is that Salby is playing with a Yorkshire bat....over-weighted to one side.

[Ecclesiastical Uncle]

From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.

IMHO many here make too much of legal nicities.

My experience:

Years back, I applied for and got a one year's contract with a US company trading, inter alia, in locations where the framework of employment law either did not exist or was not enforced. Their representative was a Pakistani who evidently came from a background in the slave trade, and very good too he was at it. I was located elsewhere when I was recruited and was offered and signed a one year contract while there, on the verbal assurance that the work would likely last for five (which was very easily believable - one year for the sort of work would be strange). I worked my year and my money was paid direct to my bank - all I saw were incomprehensible automated US pay slips. After the year, my money continued to be paid and I made a few desultory enquiries about renewal/extension of the contract, which were either not answered or briefly fobbed off. And so I served on without one, actually more or less for the anticipated five years. And this was not unique. During that employment, I recall another wage slave coming to me, very and in my view quite unnecessarily disturbed, to complain about the absence of a contract for his employment. I advised him not too fuss so long as his money was paid but have no idea what, if anything, happened. (I forget whether his services had been sold by the same company as had sold mine.)

Mind you, things didn't always end so nicely. I recall traveling from one country to another for an interview and gaining the impression, after a furious row about payment of termination fares, that I was appointed to a job that was, in my judgment, quite impossible. (A hot flush during the interview!) So I resigned and travelled to my new location only to be told to go to a hotel and wait. After a couple of weeks they said they wouldn't give me a contract. Consternation! But actually, no sweat - my hot flush had been appropriate - funding was withdrawn three months later and the work folded.

I've never been to Oz but I have worked with many Aussies. I doubt they are the sort of people who would fuss about a contract of employment if they got the money.

However, I would expect Oz immigration to be fairly rigorous but maybe they would not see the contract -maybe only a note -we used our standard employment contract etc.

And wouldn't any contract include a possibly final clause directing the employee to anything the employer directed? Certainly, employment contracts I wrote did.

And employers can be reasonably certain that there won't be any subsequent litigation post dismissal as few dismissed persons would have the resources to sue in locations where a word in the ear of the right person could see the luckless ex-employee expelled the country for undertaking activities not mentioned in his contract of employment.

So, I'm not surprised at what's reported. Isn't it the way most of the world works?

[John in France]

Johanna,
My point is that the "strained relations" followed directly on from the Hamburg lecture in question and led to Salby's return ticket being cancelled and his being stranded in Paris plus all the rest of the hassle. The content of the lecture (have you watched it?) inclines me, like Dung to trust the Salby version rather than the Macquarie one until further notice and to support those who do.

[TheBigYinJames]

Like the climate debate itself, trust shouldn't really come into it. This is just a mini Argument From Authority.... we 'like' Salby, so we 'trust' Salby. We 'dislike' Macquarie, so we 'distrust' them.

it's human nature, but it's not logical (captain)

[Jiminy Cricket]

A few weeks back I had a chat with a HR Director. She said she had resigned.

The official line was "mutual agreement".

The unofficial line? She was pushed.

I went around various parties and worked out what had happened. No one party told me the full picture - it was not even a case that they were lying, just their view on situation was from their own eyes.

However, the simple reality is that she was high maintenance and not adding PERCEIVED value. And this is usually the matrix used when removing people: high/low in maintenance/value.

I have done project reviews and audits. The reason being that there are problems between teams, people effecting delivery. Only after doing the rounds do you get a picture. And for every meeting I sat there and asked myself: "Why are you telling me this?".

I cannot believe people are jumping in here and taking sides.

Why am I being told this? Sorry, you never take this type of issue on the words of one party. Never.

If you take the reasoning employed here, do public divorce hearings actually show people in their true light?

[TheBigYinJames]

Jiminy, agree totally.

Some people think that if I don't embrace Salby's account then I am somehow calling him a liar, or that you should trust him on this because he's been truthful in the past about other things. I would point anyone to a few episodes of Judge Judy to observe people who are honest, truthful and absolutely convinced they are legally in the right who are totally mistaken.

[shub]

TBY
You are trying to rescue people from the embarrassment of having supported a guy who might have a few skeletons in his closet?

[Marion]

Although very disappointed I can't say I'm overly surprised but would wish to see the details before passing judgement.

One wonders, where public funds are involved, who doesn't "have a few skeletons in the closet".
Here in the UK many of our MPs were notoriously embroiled in ludicrously inappropriate expenses claims, including a government minister who had insisted that her sister's spare bedroom was her "main home" so that she could claim expenses for her actual main home. And allowed to get away with it!!!

I'd refer to one of my earlier comments

"How long before we begin to see a pattern here - the pro CAGW side get funding, support, plaudits and any protection they require whereas the non-pro CAGW side gets the exact opposite."

So where was the investigation into Mann's misuse of public funds - Cuccinelli was hampered at every turn.

How about the Climategate mails - where was the thorough investigation there. Simply there wasn't!!! Indeed it was notable how supposedly 'independent' inquiries turned out to be not so 'independent' after all. And wasn't there mention in the mails between Jones and the Russians the misapplication of public funds. Where was the thorough investigation of this?

Again it seems if they're 'on message' they can exprect protection, plaudits, funding and the reverse if their research leads elsewhere. It's very very sad that this has sent out a very strong message to other scientists should their research take them 'off story'.

Meanwhile more and more 'subsidies' are being ploughed into useless technologies, and our current energy policies are totally insane,

(just one example - we plough huge subsidies into wind turbines which are notoriously inefficient and then invest further subsidies into back up diesel generators to provide energy when the wind doesn't blow futher impoverishing the people with unaffordable energy bills

http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=84147 )

Western goverments are further impoverishing their populations by massive spending in 'stimulation packages'. So instead of the democratic system whereby the consumer is allowed to decide where his money is best spent it gets taken off him via taxation and the government decides where the money is spent with a massive increase in the state to administer it all. Which leads to gross inefficiencies and corruption.

We get 'crony capitalism' the worst of all worlds and people enslaved to government dependency.

CAGW is nought to do with 'science' but all about politics.

[Entropic Man]

Salby would seem to have had a chequered career.

http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/07/12/murry-salby-galileo-bozo-or-p-t-barnum

[Szilard]

Entropic Man: Any chance of a Josh cartoon on that? Or an "Oopsie sorry; maybe too hasty" to the Uni ?

I doubt it.

These propaganda sites are pretty much worthless, beyond alerting that something-or-other is going on. Which is a pity, particularly for this site, because some of Montford's writing is good.

[Entropic man]

These propaganda sites are pretty much worthless, beyond alerting that something-or-other is going on. Jul 14, 2013 at 1:48 AM | Szilard

It's curious, but I think the same about sites such as GWPF and WUWT. Aint confirmation bias fun!

[Russell]

Point to the Big Yin : As a matter of record, Salby is a serial offender This has surfaced from the NSF review of what got Salby fired from his previous professorship:

"<p>An OIG investigation into an allegation that a former professor (Salby) at a Colorado university submitted a proposal to NSF that overlapped with an undisclosed proposal from an external non-profit research company (ASA) founded by the subject, resulted in a recommendation of debarment. The university and our office both conducted investigations into improper award management and conflicts of interests. NSF had concurrent awards to the subject at the university and the first company, but more recently only to the company.

Our investigation revealed that the subject, consistently and over a period of many years, violated or disregarded various federal and NSF award administration requirements, violated university policies related to conflicts and outside compensation, and repeatedly misled both NSF and the university as to material facts about his outside companies and other matters relating to NSF awards. After many years of operation of the first company, the subject created a second, for-profit company (ASMP) that acted as a subcontractor to the first company. The subject was the sole owner and employee of the second company, which existed solely to receive grant funds from the first company and pay them to the subject as salary. The subject failed to notify NSF of the subcontracting relationship with the second company, and improperly failed to limit indirect charges for the subcontract costs to the first $25,000 as required.

The university repeatedly asked the subject to disclose all outside financial interests, and he repeatedly withheld information about the funds he re-ceived from his companies; when the university learned the truth, it severely restricted his access to its research facilities. The professor then resigned from his tenured faculty position.

When we asked him to supply supporting documentation for the salary payments, the subject provided timesheets reflecting highly implausible work hours—for example, the subject claimed effort averaging nearly 14 hours a day for 98 continuous days between May and August 2002 (including weekends and holidays), and in other instances claimed to have devoted as much as 21 hours per day to the project. We recommended that NSF debar the subject for five years, and NSF’s decision is pending.'

[TheBigYinJames]

My point in a nutshell Russell. We don't KNOW what happened.
So let's keep calm and not go off like a pack of hounds.
We don't need to give them ammo.