Maryland's Masters of Obstruction

There is no truth to the rumor that Eugene Levy will play UMCES's Dave Nemazie (click above) in the sequel to "The Day After Tomorrow."

Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch

Apparently I have made a few enemies (surprise!) after my "Axis of Weasels" comment a few weeks ago about the University-Environmentalist-Media complex that disregards a measured, realistic approach to science and economics, especially when it comes to the global warming issue. First the president of the Society of Environmental Journalists accused me of slandering his organization's members (scroll to comments), and now Dave Nemazie of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science wants me to pay an exorbitant amount to obtain documents that pertain to UMCES's collaboration with left-wing activist foundations.

How much? Try somewhere between $11,900 and $14,677 (PDF). How he narrowed it to those precise figures, I don't know. What I asked for were copies (electronically) of all correspondence between UMCES and the four environmental activist groups who either did work on, or paid for, the alarmist report (PDF) that UMCES did for the Maryland Commission on Climate Change. The charges are supposed to represent "a reasonable fee related to the recovery of actual costs that will be incurred in responding to the [records] request." I've been down this road before with the Free (but don't call us Open) State, when I sought records from the Maryland Department of the Environment many months ago.

So, what can we assume about the relationship between UMCES and these environmental activists, based upon the five-figure blockade Nemazie has thrown up? Either:

1. This is a cozy relationship beyond anything we can imagine. That this public institution is influenced by an extremist group like the Town Creek Foundation ("Global climate change may be the most important challenge of our time. Twenty years from now our children and grandchildren will find it hard to understand how we fiddled away a half trillion dollars (and counting) in Iraq as the planet burned") is undoubtedly an embarrassment, thus making it necessary to prevent details of the relationship from becoming public.

Or:

2. That there really is up to $14,677-worth of paper that addresses my inquiry, and it can be presumed that all four activist groups (the others being the World Wildlife Fund, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment) had pretty much total control over the report's contents.

Sometimes it's just more fun to speculate about what the truth is, given limited evidence, than it is to get what you ask for.

UPDATE 4:30 p.m., Oct. 13:

Just received this response from Dave Nemazie after asking how many pages he said were responsive to my request:

Your Maryland PIA request to UMCES dated 11 September 2008 basically seeks nearly all, if not all, communications of the Science and Technical Working Group of the Maryland Commission on Climate Change since its members include representatives from the World Wildlife Fund and National Wildlife Federation. The Science and Technical Working Group of the Maryland Commission on Climate Change had multiple meetings over several months in which comprehensive information including various publications, websites, and drafts were exchanged between members. I estimate that this portion of the request would make up the vast bulk of the response requiring approximately 30,000 pages to fully respond to your request.
 
Please let me know if you would like to narrow your request and I would re-estimate the costs.