Following Eli noting that Pat Michaels let one of the Denialists cats out of the bag over at Willard Tony's there has been a bit of tweeting going on trying to tease out who drew up the hit list Michaels purportedly saved Tom Karl from in the Bush administration. Now some, Eli to be sure, fully intend to keep on pointing to Pat's faux pas here, and indeed Pat'swhole thing is a piece of self puffery as Michael McCracken, who was there, pointed out in the comments to Eli's post. At base Michaels claim to have "corrected" Karl wrt the 2000 National (US) assessment is the "hiatus" thing, evaluate any climate data over a short time period and you get drivel. McCracken concludes that
Those of us involved in the meteorological aspects of the National Assessment wrote a peer-reviewed BAMS article to explain all of this (MacCracken, M. C., E. Barron, D. Easterling, B. Felzer, and T. Karl, 2003: Climate change scenarios for the U. S. National Assessment, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 84, 1711-1723). That Pat still fails to understand this is pretty pathetic. Tom Karl has done a very commendable job and deserves our gratitude.Magma snuck one in at WTs
A hit list, you say? More details please. This window into potential corruption and undue influence on the careers of federal public servants on the part of ‘skeptics’ and contrarians with ties to right-wing lobby groups and Republican politicians could be very interesting.There is, however, a human need to dig deeper holes, something well illustrated, so, on the Twitter, Chip Knappenberger appears. Chip is the one that Pat sends onto the field when it gets sticky because somebunnies still view him as more credible than Pat, lat least nicer and not so devious. YMMV Anyhow Chip tweeted and Eli replied:
As fate would have it, such tweets can lead to interesting things, so Eli did the Google thing and came up with a news article in Nature from the distant past, 2002, about how when everybunny thought that Bob Watson was a cinch to be renominated for chair of the IPCC, the US administration (e.g. the Bushies) would not renominate him but left that for Portugal. In the knife fight that followed Rajendra Pachauri won by 76 to 49 votes.@PCKnappenberger @ClimateOfGavin Keep in mind that incompetence is not a recommendation amongst assasins— eli rabett (@EthonRaptor) August 8, 2016
What is interesting in that article, especially in view recent revelations are two paragraphs. Eli will give a helping hand with the bolds
Watson's former role as associate director for environment at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Bill Clinton is thought to have deterred the Bush administration from putting him forward. But evidence has also emerged that ExxonMobil, the US oil company, lobbied the administration not to renominate Watson.
The campaign against him continued at the election meeting in Geneva. "Oil-industry representatives were there lobbying for Pachauri," says Bert Metz, a climate-policy expert at the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment in Bilthoven, the Netherlands, and co-chair of the IPCC working group on mitigating climate change.Eli don't think Chip wants to go there but there is always new hope.
ExxonMobil did indeed lobby the Bush Administration to oust Robert T. Watson as head of the IPCC. It came in a memo sent to the White House on Feb. 6, 2001 by Arthur G. Randol III, senior environmental adviser for ExxonMobil. In that memo, Randol asked: ”Can Watson be replaced now at the request of the U.S.?” As we know, the administration did not wind up supporting Watson for the IPCC chairmanship. Instead, it supported Rajendra K. Pachauri, who went on to become chairman.
ReplyDeleteHere is a copy of the ExxonMobil/Randol memo: http://bit.ly/1MbZpWT And here's a story about the whole affair in Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2002/04/did_exxon_mobil_get_bush_to_oust_the_global_warming_chief.html
As I wrote in my own post about this at Discover http://bit.ly/2b95l69):
"Does this episode have any connection to the hit list described by Michaels? Both occurred toward the start of the Bush Administration. But there is no real evidence for any connection right now. All we have is what Michaels wrote on the Wattsupwiththat website. Even so, this episode does provide a glimpse at an effort by an industry that has supported Michaels (see below) to have a prominent climate scientist ousted from his position — and a positive response from the administration at the time."
Great! Somebunny noted that Pat is pathetic!
ReplyDeleteIt is rather ironic how WUWT & Co likes do demonize Pachauri although he is their man.
ReplyDeleteA change in administrations, this fall, a Clinton administration, mind you, is just one prerequisite, the other is the D's regaining control of at least the Senate.
ReplyDeleteAccess to the Bush EO emails would be something I'd expect a Clinton DOJ AG to go after in quick order, same goes for the current state AG efforts. XOM with their hand in the cookie jar, so to speak, IMHO would be such a coup de grâce.
As to a hit list with Tom Karl's name on it, he would have been a careerist or civil servant, not an appointment via the Executive Branch. Forty-one years, all of them, as a career civil servant, SES level even, it's way easier then getting academic tenure, but just as difficult to remove such people, if not more so.
Anyone making such a 'claim' as PM suggests would have to be more of the type of Serengeti Strategy to discredit those individuals in the public domain. Witless Watts, et. al. have been doing this type of work for decades now.
SES is interesting, they can't fire you but they can offer you a position in East Bumfuck, and your choice is move or leave. Eli knows some idiots who moved.
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ReplyDeleteSly Eli. No hope for New Hope ... but someday, maybe we will learn more of he $ through it.
ReplyDeleteNice cartoon, Eli !
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