Paul Chesser and his folks at ATI, or ATP, or WTP, whatever, are pretty busy on the climate science front:
That's why my organization, American Tradition Institute, initiated two public records requests (which have turned into Freedom of Information Act lawsuits) for the work of key figureheads in the government-funded global warming science realm. The first seeks the correspondence and supporting data from the University of Virginia from the work of Dr. Michael Mann, who while at the university (he's now at Penn State) developed the famous "Hockey Stick" temperature chart that cut off tree ring data after 1960. We also want to know how he eliminated the Medieval Warm Period that has been recognized widely as part of the historical record.
We also have asked NASA to provide the outside employment records of global warming activist Dr. James Hansen, who has earned into the millions of dollars in income additional to his taxpayer funded job as head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He has used that platform to get extra work as a highly compensated speaker, policy advocate, book writer, and legal adviser, among other opportunities. Both the University and NASA are resisting our inquiries, so we've had to sue them both.
Not content with sniffing the underwear of climate scientists, Chesser and his gang are branching out:
When the Montana Supreme Court upheld the state’s 1912 Corrupt Practices Act in December, the majority opinion described the lead plaintiff challenging the law, Western Tradition Partnership, as “a conduit of funds for persons and entities including corporations who want to spend money anonymously to influence Montana elections.” In upholding the law, the court ruled that the United States Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which struck down bans on campaign spending by corporations and unions, did not apply because the Montana law was tailored to meet a compelling state interest and any burden on speech was minimal.
The plaintiff, renamed American Tradition Partnership, has now asked the United States Supreme Court to summarily overturn the Montana ruling or, alternatively, to stay the ruling. It contends the state court decision is an “outright refusal of the majority to follow Citizens United.” Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the Citizens United opinion and also decides requests for stays from Montana as part of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, should deny the application to overturn the Montana ruling. He should also deny a stay, which would have the practical effect of an injunction against the anticorruption law, preventing it from being in force in Montana elections this year.
This is following along in the trail of the discredited
Climategate hackers who plundered the e-mails between scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the U.K.’s University of East Anglia.
It must also be noted that Paul Chesser, billed as a a "noted climate scholar" is none of that:
ATI's executive director is Paul Chesser, who WTP/ATP describes as a "noted climate scholar." But Chesser is not a scientist. According to his bio, Chesser edited two weekly conservative North Carolina Christian newspapers, Raleigh World and Triad World. His writing has appeared in many fundamentalist and anti-science websites including The Good Steward.com, Evangelical Press, the Christian Examiner, The Home School Legal Defense Association, and antiscience evolution denier Answers in Genesis.
Sue Sturgis of the Institute of Southern Studies (ISS) reported that Chesser then moved to edit the Carolina Journal, the monthly newsletter of the John Locke Foundation (JLF), a "free market" think tank in Raleigh, NC that has been a leading voice of climate denial in that state. This is ironic, since Locke is considered the father of empiricism, and defined how scientific knowledge is different from and superior to "but faith, or opinion," something the JLF seems to have missed. The JLF ignores empiricism in favor of publishing rhetorical arguments for a predetermined conclusion - the opposite of empiricism. An example is their Citizens Guide to Global Warming (pdf), which is an antiscience publication that attacks what the group calls "global warming alarmism" and promotes the views of climate deniers.
The Locke Foundation was founded - and is still funded in part - by Art Pope. Pope is a national director of the Koch brothers-founded Tea Party astroturfer Americans for Prosperity. The Kochs fund several climate denial groups. Their foundations contributed at least $70,000 to the Locke Foundation, according to the Institute of Southern Studies (ISS).
Sturgis says that Chesser also worked with Climate Strategies Watch, a joint project of the JLF and the Heartland Institute, that sought to discredit the Center for Climate Strategies, a nonprofit group that helps states figure out ways to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.
My God! Have these people no taboos against organizational incest?