Climate Expert In The Eye Of An Integrity Storm
PSU prof targeted for global-warning views
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Michael Mann switched from physics to climate science back in graduate school because he thought climate offered a better chance to work "on a frontier."
He got his wish, and now, as the director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center, he has experienced an aspect of frontier life more like the Wild West - a bounty on his head.
After dozens of Mann's personal e-mails were hacked in November, the tenured professor has been called a fraud, a clown, and worse by columnists and bloggers.
Irate citizens complained to a Pennsylvania state senator, who demanded that the university conduct a probe into Mann's scientific integrity. That inquiry is ongoing.
This is hardly Mann's first review. His work has been the subject of at least two major investigations by outside experts.
And last week, a message went around his department at the university, notifying everyone that a whistle-blower could make up to $12 million by uncovering fraudulent use of federal grants. One blogger gloated that the offer would lead to Mann's having "a very unhappy new year."
Click Here for complete Philadelphia Inquirer article by Faye Flam
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Geithner's Fed told AIG: Limit Disclosure
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer's payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between AIG and its regulator show.
AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc., 100 cents on the dollar for credit default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when the filing was made public Dec. 24, 2008.
Click Here for complete Bloomberg News report