Like Shooting Fish In A Barrel

Some days two wingnut narratives overlap over there at Richard Mellon Scaife's Tribune-Review. Today, my friends, is just such a day.

Here's the editorial:

The longer NASA resists releasing its climate researchers' e-mails, the stronger suspicions become about what those e-mails say and why it's stonewalling.

Nearly three years after filing his first Freedom of Information Act request, Christopher C. Horner, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is suing NASA to obtain documents promised but never delivered.

Mr. Horner expects the e-mails, mainly from scientists working with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, to further discredit the blame-mankind-for-global-warming crowd -- much like the Climategate e-mails leaked from Britain's Climatic Research Unit that showed data manipulation to conform to climate-change orthodoxy. He says NASA might be stalling to keep embarrassing information out of upcoming Senate debate on climate-change legislation.

NASA says Horner's inquiry is just one of many it's fielding and the volume of information he's seeking poses "just a herculean task." But it's had years to complete that task, begging the question of just what it's hiding -- and why.

Clearly, NASA is siding with the sort of suspect "science" that rightly has undermined climate alarmists' credibility -- and against the taxpaying public's right to know about work it paid for.

First things first, as my dad always used to say. While we're discussing "credibility" shouldn't we point out how much Scaife cash is used to support the Competitive Enterprise Institute? Recently there's been:

• $300,000 from the Richard Mellon Scaife controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2008.
• $300,000 from the Richard Mellon Scaife controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2007.
• $350,000 from the Richard Mellon Scaife controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2006.

Additionally, Mediamatters reports that about $2.25 million flowed from Richard Mellon Scaife controlled foundations to the CEI over the last few decades.

n a piece about how an organization is (supposedly) withholding information it's almost too delicious to see what the Trib withholds - you know, if we're talking about "credibility" and everything.

Next stop on the "credibility train" is this. Newsmax is another Scaife-owned "news" source. Take a look at these two paragraphs:

Nearly three years after his first Freedom of Information Act request, Christopher C. Horner, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said he will file a lawsuit Thursday to force NASA to turn over documents the agency has promised but has never delivered.

Mr. Horner said he expects the documents, primarily e-mails from scientists involved with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), will be yet another blow to the science behind global warming, which has come under fire in recent months after e-mails from a leading British research unit indicated scientists had manipulated some data.

Notice anything? Notice how similar they are (point for point) with the second and third paragraphs from the Trib's editorial?

Can't these guys write anything original? Or since Scaife owns both "news" sources is it OK to plagiarize? You know, if we're talking "credibility" and everything.

Now onto the incredible core of the piece:

...much like the Climategate e-mails leaked from Britain's Climatic Research Unit that showed data manipulation to conform to climate-change orthodoxy.

Actually they didn't show anything of the sort. From the Science and Technology Committee from the House of Parliament:

In addition, insofar as we have been able to consider accusations of dishonesty—for example, Professor Jones’s alleged attempt to “hide the decline”—we consider that there is no case to answer. Within our limited inquiry and the evidence we took, the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact. We have found no reason in this unfortunate episode to challenge the scientific consensus as expressed by Professor Beddington, that “global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity”. It was not our purpose to examine, nor did we seek evidence on, the science produced by CRU. It will be for the Scientific Appraisal Panel to look in detail into all the evidence to determine whether or not the consensus view remains valid.

Um, and that Scientific Appraisal Panel?

We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it.

So the core of the Trib's piece it's just, like so much else on the editorial page, empty spin.

Some days it's just too easy.