NOAA told Nature it has no plans to hand over the documents that Rep. Lamar Smith demanded in connection to the pause-busting Karl et al. paper (discussed in the CDR earlier this week). NOAA's spokeswoman, Ciaran Clayton, made it clear that the organization has "provided all of the information the [House Committee on Science, Space and Technology] needs to understand the issue." Andrew Rosenberg of the Union of Concerned Scientists says even more plainly that, "there's absolutely no implication that there is malfeasance of any kind" and adjustments like the ones that spurred Smith's inquisition happen all the time. Smith, according to Rosenberg, is "picking the [analyses] where [he] really [doesn't] like the answer."
On a similar front, the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund has submitted a legal brief on behalf of two Arizona researchers who are being targeted for FOIA harassment by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (EELI). Coal-funded Chris Horner, a legal fellow at EELI, is orchestrating the affair.
The legal brief offers a history of this sort of harassment—including the stories of Dr. Michael Mann and Dr. Ben Santer—and describes the FOIA requests as "part of a systemic campaign" spearheaded by fossil fuel funded groups "to create doubt" about climate science. The brief also says the requests are obvious attempts to recreate the debunked Climategate narrative (just in time for Paris).
What stands out is that even though EELI has so far been unsuccessful in its mission to uncover some grand climate conspiracy, it has managed to waste significant amounts of scientists' time. The brief describes the efforts of Dr. Jonathan Overpeck and Dr. Malcolm Hughes, who had to read 90,000 pages of documents in just a few weeks. It's such a time-consuming task because EELI requested 13 years worth of emails and documents.
It's obvious that EELI—with similarly overreaching, broad and obviously harassing FOIA requests in to researchers in Alabama, Delaware, Illinois, Texas, Virgnia and DC—clearly has no qualms about abusing open records laws.
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