The
plan by climate alarmists to have other scientists imprisoned for their
‘global warming’ skepticism is backfiring horribly, and the chief
alarmist is now facing a House investigation into what has been called
“the largest science scandal in US history.”
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chairman of the House Committee on
Space,
Science and Technology, has written to Professor Jagadish Shukla of
George Mason University, in Virginia, requesting that he release all
relevant documents pertaining to his activities as head of a non-profit
organization called the Institute of Global Environment And Society.
Smith has two main areas of concern.
For
many readers, though, perhaps the biggest take-home message of this
extraordinary story is: Who do these climate alarmists think they are?
First, the apparent engagement by the institute in “partisan political
activity” – which, as a non-profit, it is forbidden by law from doing.
Second, what precisely has the IGES institute done with the $63 million
in taxpayer grants which it has received since 2001 and which appears
to have resulted in remarkably little published research?
For example, as
Watts
Up With That?
notes, a $4.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to one
of the institute’s offshoots appears to have resulted in just one
published paper.
But the amount which has gone into the pockets of Shukla and his
cronies runs into the many hundreds of thousands of dollars. In 2013
and 2014, for example, Shukla and his wife enjoyed a combined income in
excess of $800,000 a year.
Steve McIntyre, the investigator who shattered Michael Mann’s
global-warming ‘Hockey Stick’ claim, has done a detailed breakdown of
the sums involved. He calls it Shukla’s Gold.
In 2001, the earliest year thus far publicly available, in 2001, in
addition to his university salary (not yet available, but presumably
about $125,000), Shukla and his wife received a further $214,496
in
compensation from IGES (Shukla -$128,796; Anne Shukla – $85,700).
Their combined compensation from IGES doubled over the next two years
to approximately $400,000 (additional to Shukla’s university salary of
say $130,000), for combined compensation of about $530,000 by 2004.
(continue)
