Penn State and PennFuture: Two Peas in a Pod

While PennFuture’s Jan Jarrett whines about alleged Commonwealth Foundation smears of themselves and of Climategate scientist Michael Mann, The Atlantic‘s Clive Crook — a global warming believer — says Penn State’s investigation of Mann (as well as a British inquiry into the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit) was a joke:

I had hoped, not very confidently, that the various Climategate inquiries would be severe. This would have been a first step towards restoring confidence in the scientific consensus. But no, the reports make things worse. At best they are mealy-mouthed apologies; at worst they are patently incompetent and even wilfully wrong. The climate-science establishment, of which these inquiries have chosen to make themselves a part, seems entirely incapable of understanding, let alone repairing, the harm it has done to its own cause.

The Penn State inquiry exonerating Michael Mann — the paleoclimatologist who came up with “the hockey stick” — would be difficult to parody. Three of four allegations are dismissed out of hand at the outset: the inquiry announces that, for “lack of credible evidence”, it will not even investigate them. (At this, MIT’s Richard Lindzen tells the committee, “It’s thoroughly amazing. I mean these issues are explicitly stated in the emails. I’m wondering what’s going on?” The report continues: “The Investigatory Committee did not respond to Dr Lindzen’s statement. Instead, [his] attention was directed to the fourth allegation.”) Moving on, the report then says, in effect, that Mann is a distinguished scholar, a successful raiser of research funding, a man admired by his peers — so any allegation of academic impropriety must be false….

In short, the case for the prosecution is never heard. Mann is asked if the allegations (well, one of them) are true, and says no. His record is swooned over. Verdict: case dismissed, with apologies that Mann has been put to such trouble.

Nice to know that a least one alarmist understands why an independent investigation was needed, rather than an in-house Wite-Out job. It’s easy to see why Jarrett sympathizes with Penn State and Mann, since she favors concealment tactics herself as illustrated by PennFuture’s blank spaces on its IRS tax returns for grassroots lobbying expenditures. While we were happy to inform the public that PennFuture hides the fact that they are shills for alternative energy rent seekers at the same time they point fingers at the fossil fuel industry, Jarrett — like Mann — was angry that her organization’s transgressions were discovered:

“This so-called report by CF comes just as its smear campaign on Dr. Michael Mann, one of the world’s premier climate scientists, was found baseless, and PennFuture demanded that CF ‘man up’ and apologize. We will not back down from that demand, nor our fight to stop the right-wing’s campaign of Smeargate to protect the oil-gas-coal interests from action to reverse climate change.”

Amazing how a little “so-called” report could spur Jarrett into such a tizzy. Here’s a suggestion to clear things up, Jan: ask Penn State to investigate you!