Senator Inhofe's Goon Squad Attacks Eugene Wahl

The latest scientist to be attacked by global warming denialists is Dr. Eugene Wahl. On Tuesday, March 8, 2011, this illiterate comment appeared on my blog:

Looks like the Climate Gate thingy has a long tail as recently the Penn State white wash of Michael Mann's role in deleting email was exposed by deposition of his fellow warmist Eugen Wahl. Oh ne, Mann will next be exposed for his fraud @ the UVA...it is over for these fraud science tools and their media supporters!

Real Climate (3-9-11) has posted Dr. Wahl's side of the story and some further context:

Eugene Wahl asked us to post a statement related to some incorrect claims circulating in the blogosphere:

"The Daily Caller blog yesterday contained an inaccurate story regarding a correspondence that was part of the emails hacked from East Anglia University Climate Research Unit (CRU) in November 2009.

For the record, while I received the email from CRU as forwarded by Dr. Mann, the forwarded message came without any additional comment from Dr. Mann; there was no request from him to delete emails. At the time of the email in May 2008, I was employed by Alfred University, New York. I became a NOAA employee in August 2008.

The emails I deleted while a university employee are the correspondence I had with Dr. Briffa of CRU regarding the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, all of which have been in the public domain since the CRU hack in November 2009. This correspondence has been extensively examined and no misconduct found. As a NOAA employee, I follow agency record retention policies and associated guidance from information technology staff.

Dr. Eugene R. Wahl
March 9, 2011

Further questions can be addressed to Katy.G.Human -at- noaa.gov"

[Real Climate] comments

These claims are simply the latest attempt to try and manufacture scandals and smear scientists, particularly Mike Mann, based on the UEA emails. The story appears likely to have come from Senator Inhofe’s office who presumably had access to the transcripts taken by the NOAA Office of the Inspector General (whose investigation found no evidence of any wrongdoing by NOAA employees). The story was planted with Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts, and Chris Horner, and then linked to by Inhofe’s office to provide a little plausible denialability – a rather blatant media spin operation.

But the facts of the case do not support the narrative they are pushing at all. [See the full text of the Real Climate response.]