Oh dear, it seems the US house Science, Space, and Technology Committee takes a dim view of partisan scientists publicly funded with $63million since 2001 trying to get climate sceptics imprisoned under the RICO act…
Space Ref, 1 October 2015
Washington, D.C. – Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today sent a letter to Dr. Jagadish Shukla, a professor of climate dynamics at George Mason University who founded the Institute of Global Environment and Society (IGES).
IGES is a non-profit organization that has received millions of dollars in federal grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA.
According to media reports, IGES is responsible for circulating a letter to the president and senior White House officials requesting a criminal investigation of organizations who question the risks of climate change. Specifically, the letter seeks a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) investigation that would allow the government to impose criminal penalties. The letter was posted to the IGES website and later removed and replaced with a note saying it had been “inadvertently posted.”
Chairman Smith: “IGES appears to be almost fully funded by taxpayer money while simultaneously participating in partisan political activity by requesting a RICO investigation of companies and organizations that disagree with the Obama administration on climate change. In fact, IGES has reportedly received $63 million from taxpayers since 2001, comprising over 98 percent of its total revenue during that time.”
In light of the non-profit’s decision to remove the controversial letter from its website, Smith directs IGES to preserve “all e-mail, electronic documents, and data created since January 1, 2009, that can be reasonably anticipated to be subject to a request for production by the Committee.”
The full letter from the committee to Shukla can be found here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
I wonder if and when we’ll see the BBC reporting on this one.
$63 Million dollars!
Serious moolah. I expect we’ll see evidence of piles of brilliant science that all that cash has bought. /sarc
Wattsup has a detailed post on this:
Just the one science paper for a $4 million dollar grant, as Watts notes. Nice work if you can get it.
Hilarious that Shukla has his own apparent blunders. But guys! Forget for a moment who wrote the paper, and instead focus on what it said in just its second paragraph, basically that it’s been “well documented” that some corrupt conspiracy exists between industry & skeptic climate scientists. The moment I read that, I saw how I could use what I’ve already written in my blogs and online articles to blow that assertion out of the water. And I did, yesterday. Please see: “Those scientists who want to use RICO to prosecute AGW ‘deniers’ have a big problem” http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/those_scientists_who_want_to_use_rico_to_prosecute_agw_deniers_have_a_big_problem.html
Russell, superb, may I reblog please?
Right now you can expect IGES to be contacting the Australian CMFEU for advice in the preservation of office records.
I would like to know where the oversight of these contracts was? In my days we used to have monthly progress reports and meetings to ensure that contracts were being done to time and budget and meeting the deliverables of the contracts.
@tallbloke, by all means, please do. Be sure to include the original link to A.T., of course. I remain indebted to you for your previous reproductions of my work. I have no science expertise, but if there is one think I want to get across to all the other average citizens out there, we can readily question the assertion that ‘skeptics are crooks’. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or climatologist to do that.
tallbloke says: October 2, 2015 at 5:02 pm
“Russell, superb, may I reblog please?”
Careful!! Russell works for Heartland. That’s fine someone has to help the sceptics, just careful.
“…. Russell works for Heartland. …”
I just shared a humorous bit in a tweet to commenter “wolsten” above, but it’s too precious not to share wider. I’ve lost track of how many critics I’ve accumulated who claim ‘I work for Heartland’ that I’ve challenged to prove the accusation to be true (e.g. this guy among ’em http://gelbspanfiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Paid-Heartland-propagandist.jpg ). One critic who I’ve had the most fun with a person with the user name of “dumb old guy” at ClimateCrocks, whose enslavement to conspiracy theory has run so far overboard that he believes the thing on my head seen in my Desmog profile ( http://www.desmogblog.com/russell-cook ) is a baseball cap, based entirely on that photo alone, despite clear evidence of it being a visor, as seen in my ICCC9 Youtube video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6OhfbGHJqo ). No joke, you can see my reply to his conspiracy theory on that here: http://climatecrocks.com/2015/09/22/rico-suave/comment-page-1/#comment-76724
For the record, I’m not in any pay-for-performance arrangement with anybody, nobody pays me what to say, do or think. I plowed through my own savings to pay for food and lodging from 2008 to 2013, and just at the time when I thought I’d have to take a part-time job, Heartland came through with the gift of a strings-free grant enabling me to keep on doing exactly what I had already been doing previously. As I pointed out most recently ( http://gelbspanfiles.com/?p=2951 ), the grant level is still a figure which far-left zealots consider inadequate to live comfortably on.
Russell, thanks for the full disclosure. I have no problem anyway, because your work stands up for itself. If anyone has evidence that disagrees with what you say, they are welcome to (politely) post that evidence on this forum.