Climategate Showdown!

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, my colleague Chris Horner and “hockey stick” fabricator Michael Mann are engaged in a highly charged debate on Climategate.

It started with this post by Horner at the Daily Caller. The intro aptly sums his argument:

A federal government inspector general has revealed prima facie proof that the so-called independent inquiries widely if implausibly described as clearing the ClimateGate principals of wrongdoing were, in fact, whitewashes. This has been confirmed to Senate offices. It will not be released to the public for some time because the investigation is ongoing.

At the Climate Progress blog, a project of the liberal Center for American Progress, Mann responded:

The claim by fossil fuel industry lobbyist Chris Horner in his “Daily Caller” piece that I told Eugene Wahl to delete emails is a fabrication–a lie, and a libelous allegation. My only involvement in the episode in question is that I forwarded Wahl an email that Phil Jones had sent me, which I felt Wahl needed to see. There was no accompanying commentary by me or additional correspondence from me regarding the matter, nor did I speak to Wahl about the matter.  This is, in short, a despicable smear that, more than anything else, speaks to the depths of dishonesty of professional climate change deniers like Chris Horner, Marc Morano, Stephen McIntyre, and Anthony Watts.

To which Horner responded, also at the Daily Caller:

Your allegation is false until you somehow demonstrate otherwise, and your problem lies with the NOAA inspector general whose transcript indicates these events transpired.

A guy who has clearly lawyered up probably ought to call his lawyer to see what libel means before accusing someone of it. It actually doesn’t mean accurately using someone’s name in a way that makes them uncomfortable.

The crux of the matter seems to be whether Mann’s having forwarded a request to delete emails from one colleague to another colleague amounts to Mann having “asked” for the latter colleague to delete the missives (which he did).

What seems to be beyond dispute is that (1) deleting emails to circumvent a possible Freedom of Information request is bad form; (2) emails were deleted by one climate scientist; (3) the only reason that said scientist deleted these emails is because Mann forwarded him an email asking him to do so.

Tagged as: chris horner, Climategate, Daily Caller, Michael Mann