NA SA climatologist Jim Hansen writes:
Somehow we have to do a better job of communicating. The tricks being used by people supporting denial and business-as-usual are recognizably dirty, yet effective. We are continually burdened by sweeping FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, which reduce our ability to do science and write it up (perhaps this is their main objective), a waste of tax-payer money. Our analyses are freely available on the GISS web site as is the computer program used to carry out the analysis and the data sets that go into the program.
The material that we supplied to some recent FOIA requests was promptly posted on a website, and within minutes after that posting someone found that one of the e-mails included information about how to access Makiko Sato's password-protected research directory on the GISS website (we had not noticed this due to the volume of material). Within 90 minutes, and before anyone else who saw this password information thought it worth reporting to GISS staff, most if not all of the material in Makiko's directory was purloined by someone using automated "web harvesting" software and re-posted elsewhere on the web. The primary material consisted of numerous drafts of webpage graphics and article figures made in recent years.
It seems that a primary objective of the FOIA requestors and the "harvesters" is discussions that they can snip and quote out of context.
H/T
Hansen nailed it. "Dirty but effective." They can't win on the science but they know they can buy a lot of time by sowing suspicion, confusion and outright deceit.
ReplyDeleteAh, poor babies, frightened of the sunlight, are they?
ReplyDeleteDavid Duff
duffandnonsense, I'd like to hear you give an excuse for breaking into Skeptical Science, It's not a government agency and so isn't subject to FOI laws, so let's hear what crazed legal rationale you can give, shall we?
ReplyDelete* * *
bigcitylib:
I seem to have detected spyware on one of the CRU machines.
-- frankbi
Now that duff has demonstrated that his wingnut ethics don't proscibe break and enter or theft, we just need to find out where he lives.
ReplyDeleteMr. Duff seems to have gone a little soft on crime.
ReplyDeleteAh, poor babies, frightened of the sunlight, are they?
ReplyDeleteDavid Duff
Oh grow up, you silly ponce. We're not in kindergarten here.
Tell me again how you believe the self-organising properies of matter are a persuasive alternative to the biological theory of evolution.
*chortle*