Bishop Hill Outlook bad for Shukla
Mar 2, 2016 Academia Climate: other Ethics 
Remember Jagadish Shukla, the American professor who called for racketeering laws to be used against sceptics? There was considerable interest when it was revealed that Prof Shukla appeared to be working full time for a charity he ran, as well as taking his university salary. This "double dipping" seems to have been brought to the attention of US lawmakers, who have asked auditors to investigate. It's not looking good for Prof Shukla:
According to [House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith]’s letter, the audit “appears to reveal that Dr. Shukla engaged in what is referred to as ‘double dipping.’ In other words, he received his full salary at GMU, while working full time at IGES and receiving a full salary there.”
Mr. Smith cites a memo from the school’s internal auditor in claiming that Mr. Shukla appeared to violate the university’s policy on outside employment and paid consulting. The professor received $511,410 in combined compensation from the school and IGES in 2014, according to Mr. Smith, “without ever receiving the appropriate permission from GMU officials.”
Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
Reader Comments (79)
Meanwhile in India Dr Pachauri has finally been charged :
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/01/former-un-climate-chief-rajendra-k-pachauri-charged-sexual-harassment
“A charge sheet was filed today in the Metropolitan magistrate court of Shivani Chauhan in Saket,” said a senior Delhi police official connected to the investigation. “Dr Pachauri has been charged with various misconduct and offences.”
The official, who declined to be named, said the charges included stalking, sexual harassment, “outraging the modesty of a woman” and criminal intimidation.
The most serious charges – sexual harassment and stalking – carry a maximum jail term of three years under Indian law.
There's a lot of corruption in climate "science". When Governments give lots of taxpayers money out to do their bidding, this is what you expect to get. It could be financial, it could be data-fiddling, it could be lying etc.
The poor quality of the people attracted to prominence in the CO2 Scaremongering Business is a source of both dismay and consolation to me - the consolation being that their cause is both scientifically feeble and championed by the morally and/or intellectually feeble, and so surely it must fail.
John: It must eventually fail, but it is the irreparable damage that is being done in the meantime that is the major concern.
I do hope Shukla and the odious Pachauri end up doing jail time. Troffa is also under investigation....
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/police-assessing-perjury-complaint-against-tim-yeo-after-sunday-times-lobbying-sting-libel-defeat
What is it with climate "science" that attracts such nasty pieces of work?
Could it be the easy money?
Surely not?!
As Dr. Lindzen did point out, man made warmistas aka 'climate scientists' are hardly the sharpest tools in the box.
Prof. Sukla was out of order, is a purblind dupe and prejudiced beyond human reason but all he did was to bring into sharp focus - he has two jobs as climate bodger at Mason and in the IGES and both paid for by the US taxpayer, very handsomely it should be said.
When you open your gob, first things first - before one proceeds, you must ensure to put the brain into first gear.
John: It must eventually fail, but it is the irreparable damage that is being done in the meantime that is the major concern.
Mar 2, 2016 at 9:30 AM | Registered CommenterPhillip Bratby
A huge amount of damage has already been done. It will be repairable but will take at least a generation of pure scientific reports, peer reviews etc
If real science were easy there would be no need to create fake climate science, based as it is on a monumental error from 40 years ago. It was then legitimised by GISS modellers invoking fake 'negative convection' to offset the imaginary >50% extra energy from the initial mistake.
The next few years is the equivalent of the end of the 'Phlogiston Hoax', also destroyed by real science. No wonder Nurse is throwing his toys out of his pram: http://thebrexitdoor.com/2016/02/28/nurse-scentist-loses-cool-over-the-eu/
Stephen: I wasn't just talking about the damage to science.
"John: It must eventually fail, but it is the irreparable damage that is being done in the meantime that is the major concern."
Indeed, the second part of that, exercises me and muchly. All of it done, on the back of a most egregious lie. In fact, the western world is paying for it - the great green myth, the damage is unquantifiable, as it is irreparable.
I am not sure that, the west can recover from the damage wrought, even if, at some juncture future historians are able to recount the ills the west and at that, all self inflicted. Just maybe, a future historian they would point at the UN and record the mindboggling insanity of the 1992 conference and subsequently the horlicks of Kyoto.
Is is idle speculation?
Who knows but I've a very bad feeling that, any future history will be recited by a creed which installed by force, a way of life which will be totally alien to the one we are familiar with today.
It would seem that the next (hopefully Rep) President will have an Augean stable of AGW cr*p to clear out.
BTW: Speaking of new Presidents, Piers Morgan (of all people) was being asked this morning, on Today, what he thought of the Super Tuesday polls. While having a go at Trump, he admitted that he can't be all bad as he runs some large, successful companies and is wealthy enough to fund his own campaign, however, he (Morgan) said, in 'shock-horror' tones, Trump thinks that Climate Change is a hoax!! And the intake of breath from Humphries was audible!
"End of the phlogiston hoax" ?
http://www.thegwpf.com/its-all-over-yale-university-shuts-down-climate-change-institute/
I have been expecting that the climate alarmism bubble will burst for so long now that I have started to doubt that I will live to see it happen. It just seems to run and run. I think that when it started, many people sincerely believed it and acted in good faith. Now though, so much money and so many reputations and careers are dependent upon perpetuating the scare that I don't think that the powers that be can contemplate that it might not be true. I'm at a loss to think of a way that the whole thing could collapse or even slowly fade away like so many previous scares did.
@Hanwell: next stop Tyndall and the other faux science groups without a grounding in real Meteorology or Atmospheric Physics? As for the UEA's CRU, they need a new Hubert Lamb pronto, otherwise it's curtains, justifiably so.
Harry Passfield
The very fact that John Humphries and Piers Morgan were talking on the 'flagship' BBC current affairs programme tells you everything you need to know about why Trump is being so successful. It's a bit like asking two Spanish football fans to comment on a cricket match. They don't understand what they're talking about and can't see why anyone else would.
The media correction loop is broken. It is a leftist echo chamber.
I stopped listening 10 years ago and have never looked back.
There's a big dose of nepotism there too of course.
Will there be an investigation into the people who approved all this money that Shukla received? The UK and EU (for example) have similar problems, with officials who may not be elected, only too happy to authorise payments to the politically correct people, and not ask any questions.
Green Blob Corruption always seems to involve taxpayer funds, yet taxpayers also have to pay for the consequences of the corruption and fraud, and are never compensated.
Not just him , it was a family business , sadly given that epic levels of poor professional and personal practice seem to be 'no bad thing ' for those working in climate science . What difference this is make is a good question , but a tap on the hand would not be entirely unexpected .
In other words,
heKen Rice received his full salary atGMUEdinburgh Uni, while working full timeat IGESon his blog and receivinga full salary there.fawning adulation from his rather misguided groupies.Fixed it for ya.
@Martin
Nice to read how Mr Justice Warby was not fooled by Troffa for a moment:
"Experience suggests that in general those who are not interested in money tend not to get much. I can think of none who convincingly claim to have no interest in money, yet end up with an annual income in excess of £200,000. I do not consider that Yeo is such a person."
@ Athelstan
"As Dr. Lindzen did point out, man made warmistas aka 'climate scientists' are hardly the sharpest tools in the box.
When you open your gob, first things first - before one proceeds, you must ensure to put the brain into first gear.
Mar 2, 2016 at 9:39 AM | Athelstan."
My first experience of your first point was hearing "science" excruciatingly murdered by 'Dr' Caroline Lucas - self styled Climate Expert whose PhD is in Romantic Elizabethan Literature. There have been a huge number of further examples but this was the one that got me questioning the data.
So from my viewpoint - I do not knock the idiotic utterances of the truly ignorant - I feel it best to let them hang themselves with their own petard.
As for your totally correct advice re "engaging brain before opening gob" - surely the issue here is that those who exist in a world of double standards see nothing wrong in being paid for Standard 1 as well as Standard 2.
There is a delightful "poetic justice" that is being applied here to Shukla - though I suspect Shukla will see nothing wrong with what he is doing. And that makes him a very dull blade indeed.
To my knowledge, Shukla has committed no crime. Drawing two full time salaries is not illegal.
'Mr. Shukla appeared to violate the university’s policy'
So they fire him or make him quit the other job. Yawn.
Shukla amply demonstrates the culture of greed, hypocrisy and "the law doesn't apply to us" attitude that is prevalent amongst all climate extremists. They bribe, they cheat, they fly all over the world and preach to others to stop flying. They attack the very society and economies that gave them the education and means to get their views heard.
Everyone has a right to their own views, and everyone has the right to free speech. But when your nose is so deep in the trough of public money that you cannot and will not see the truth ... and then you viciously, hypocritically and immorally attack others who are being entirely altruistic like the vast majority of Sceptics ... then people like Shukla deserve the full weight of the law to come down on them like a tonne of bricks.
@ DougUK "...let them hang themselves with their own petard."
A bit difficult to achieve given that a petard is an explosive device! Hoist is the word you were looking for, I think.
@JamessP
Mr. Justice Warby has my respect.
@davechappell: I wasn't going to be so pedantic because I knew what he meant!
@Anthony Hanwell: It may be all over where th USA is concerend, but we are still deeply entrenched/buried under piles of EU greeny legislation, & the Civil Service is full of it, as the EU was a gift from whatever deity they worshipped , because it enabled them to create laws & general hoops for Joe Public to have to leap through! I still maintain that the floods in Somerset were an indirect result of EU legislation, the Habitats Directive & the Water Directive. A classic case of unintended consequences of possibly well-intentioned rules. We haven't seen any significant flood defence works constructed in years, when in the 1970s & early 80s there was loads being designed & financed & built. Of course, London got its oar in first, & the Thames second along its reach!
A full blown criminal case against Shukla would of course be far too damaging. Expect a massive fudge. A Jedi Mind trick that only actually works in the mind of the one performing it and the one determined to be taken in by it.
These people are pretty much untouchable.
Pachauri will escape through the unbelievable delays it is possible to impose on the Indian legal system.
http://thediplomat.com/2013/12/justice-delayed-is-justice-denied-indias-30-million-case-judicial-backlog/
@ Jack Savage: I don't know what they do in America, but usually in the UK someone who becomes a liability & or an embarrassment is kicked into touch by being promoted where they can do as little harm as possible, probably given a gong into the bargain! However, I doubt whether a full blown criminal fraud case would get far on the grounds that he will claim simply, "I was working on the basis that this was the best available science at the time!" One would have to show beyond a reasonable doubt that that was in fact not the case, & would be tricky in the presence of "overwhlming" volumes of data supporting that position! They do have over 30 years worth of it after all, whether it's worth anything or not!
'I feel it best to let them hang themselves with their own petard.'
Leave him alone, Chappell. I love mixed metaphors!
Shukla's double dipping of NSF grant monies (gross violation of the 9+2 salary rules) is a federal criminal offense. Wire fraud, etc. A Penn State prof recently convicted of similar actions concerning an NIH research grant received 41 months in prison plus $640k restitution. Shukla as a Virginia state employee (GMU is a state owned university) also repeatedly violated the mandatory written conflict of interest/outside interest annual disclosure concerning these matters, a state criminal offense.
Jack Savage & Alan the Brit, after Peter Gleick got upto some particularly naughty misdeeds, with entirely accidental consequences of deliberate deceit, many might have wondered how his credibility in climate science could ever be restored.
Suzanne Goldenberg, writing in the Guardian, headed her article " Peter Gleick reinstated by Pacific Institute following Heartland expose". This explanation was more than sufficient for Gleick's career in climate science lies and fraud to continue, with no loss of AirMiles.
Climate science does not consider evidence, no matter how overwhelming, if it might derail the vegetarian gravy train.
It seems unbelievable that in the only field of science such behaviour can go unpunished! They did for that Korean "scientist" who faked his data a few years back, but it wasn't Climate Science!
Rud Istvan, any chance that Shukla may plead the Nuremberg defence that he was acting under orders from on high, or at least with their tacit approval? He obviously has GMU, Virginia State, US President, and the UN's IPCC, to drag into the mire if he wants to portray himself as the victim.
In the run up to US Presidential elections, that would be the last thing the Democrats would want to happen, but Shukla has his own selfish agenda of greed to protect.
GolfCharlie, don't think so. The warmunists will simply cast Shukla out as a bad apple. In essence, the double dipping was stealing government grant funds, the failure to disclose to Virginia a coverup of that theft, and the gift to a family operation in India more theft (misuse) of US grant monies.
Shukla's RICO letter was merely a request to act on what Senator Whitehouse of RI has publically advocated. The NY SG announced an investigation of Exxon in consequence. It was the RICO letter that led Pielke Sr., McIntyre, and others including myself in re Virginia disclosure law violations to start taking Shukla down. I wrote Smith's committee at the time about the 'teams' findings.
There are a number of ejournal sites carrying the full text of Smiths letter yesterday to the IG, which lays the sordid details out. Everthing in the letter was uncovered by 'our side' at the time of the RICO letter. What Smith's congressional staffers have done is confirm everything we found before yeterdays referral to the NSF IG for legal action.
Rud Istvan, thanks for the explanation. Is this likely to be progressed towards a conclusion within this year or could it drag on a decade or more?
If no one else has a vested interest in delaying this, is Shukla going to stand alone in court, or will he receive immoral support from any of the other RICO letter authors?
"There is a delightful "poetic justice" that is being applied here to Shukla - though I suspect Shukla will see nothing wrong with what he is doing. And that makes him a very dull blade indeed."
"dull blade indeed"
DougUK; I think that, you put that very well.
@ davidchappell
@ DougUK "...let them hang themselves with their own petard."
A bit difficult to achieve given that a petard is an explosive device! Hoist is the word you were looking for, I think.
Mar 2, 2016 at 1:36 PM | davidchappell
Many thanks David - I stand corrected
"...epic levels of poor professional and personal practice seem to be 'no bad thing ' for those working in climate science..." --knr
Yes, indeed! When one believes (a) that he is saving the world, and (b) that the end justifies the means, there is no limit to the evil he can do. You already know that, but many have forgotten..
Once they catch a pawn, they'll squeeze till the pawn starts squeaking.
Faced with paying back full restitution plus penalties on top of years in prison, turning state's evidence will look mighty tempting. Especially if Shukla can cut a deal where he throws everybody he knows under a bus in exchange for deportation.
The University is likely on the financial mishandling hook too as they were overseeing the contract and payments. There might be quite a few squeaky pawns caught dipping into the trough.
@Harry Passfield, Mar 2, 2016 at 10:01 AM
Speaking of a new POTUS induced a a repulsive premonition: Obama will do a Clinton and pardon Prof. Sukla and a host of other Democrat cronies. One difference with Clinton is we haven't heard of Obama sexually assaulting female aides/employees. Perhaps that is due to a preference for alternative pleasures as Joan Rivers mentioned before she died on the operating table.
@Stuck-Record, Mar 2, 2016 at 10:29 AM
I went off the Today programme when the Saturday Essay slot was axed because Frederick Forsyth was too good compared to anyone from the left they tried.
Gamecock 3.52pm You like mixed metaphors? My wife murders rather than mixes them e.g " I have many strings to my elbow!" and " I would give my right arm to play the piano like that!"
AtheoK, you might be right. Shukla is not a pawn, he is a pretty big fish to have garnered $63 million in federal research grants since 2001 for his IGES. He probably knows a lot about climate science malfeasance.
As for GMU, my understanding is there is an NSF 'death penalty' for failure to properly supervise grants when charging 40% overhead. (Complicated, but Shukla put most of the grant funded research work into affiliated GMU research orgs. Thats why his university salary was so high- reward for fund raising. IGES was mostly just the financial skimming device for him, his wife, and his daughter.) That is, the entire University receives NO NSF grants for a period of time determined by NSF. This was applied to Duke some years back, IIRC for 2 or 3 years. Brought Duke to its knees. Maybe the GMU internal audit finding violation of University policies was an attempt to avoid that possible NSF sanction.
He'll get a rap on the knuckles, just like our ever-so honest MPs with their expenses fiddles, you know, "Honest mistakes", so no need to pay it back.
This might have come to light years ago had ad Virginia Attorney General Cucccinelli focused on his state's university's rather than Pennsylvania's
Since climategate it astonishes me how soundproof the climate science/academia/liberal media echo chamber is. Shukla, Oerkes, Lewandowski and all the others are clearly preaching to the choir, thinking skeptics are a mere handful of dishonest crazies financed by big oil who can be safely ignored and are shocked when they find their work being scrutinized by many, many smarter, more honest people who rankle at their poor work and exorbitant public-money salaries. I suspect each thinks (and has been told countless times) they are worth more than they are getting, thus the hubris in their public statements.
'Shukla's double dipping of NSF grant monies (gross violation of the 9+2 salary rules) is a federal criminal offense.' - Rud
Then hoist him on his own horse!
Surely some engineers in history were hung on their own petards! Maybe the petard caught their collar. They wore a lot of constricting clothing back in the day, what with neckties and cravats and all. Hey, it could happen!
Hi Dean,
Suggest you look at the definition of petard.