They are ganging up against the SNP, poor old alex.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/news/Green-energy-target-ruining-Scotland39s.6759009.jp

“While the University is, of course, committed to comply with the requirements of law, I wish to reassure you that this commitment will be carried out to the fullest extent possible consistent with the interests of faculty in academic freedom and scholarship,”

This is from a letter from the office of the president of the U-VA, on complying with FOI requests for Mann's emails. (In other words: don't worry guys, while we are going to be pretending to obey the law, we fully intend to evade it as much as possible)

From earlier in the same letter comes this bit:

It is my understanding that all available exemptions in Virginia's Freedom of Information Act will be claimed in our response

One can only imagine that she (the university president) meant to say that the University would attempt to claim all applicable exemptions. You would be mistaken if you did though - it is clear that they have decided beforehand to deny FOI requests.

The letter itself, it appears, has been written responding to the following parties who have made exhortations that Michael Mann's emails not be released. These parties even appear to have provided helpful suggestions on how to go about doing so, like alerting the president that a certain 'Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act' might be cited to deny FOI requests. The organizations in question:

American Association of University Professors
The Alliance for Justice
The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia
Center for Inquiry
Climate Science Watch
The Council for Environmental Deans and Directors
The National Coalition Against Censorship
The National Council for Science and the Environment
People for the American Way
Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression
The Ornithological Council
Union of Concerned Scientists

I am really curious to know what is in those emails now. :)

Story here

Just listening to this excellent old Peter Gabriel song and the intro has some old professorial chap talking about The Coming Ice Age and how sea levels will rise etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I57Voojyao&feature=related

Does anyone recognise who the bloke talking is?

Also: so do both warming and cooling theories result in sea level rise then?

Recent research points to an increase in Agulhas leakage over the last few decades, caused primarily by human-induced climate change.

Where do they get this stuff from?

The study establishes the need for additional research in the region that focuses on Agulhas rings, as well as on the leakage, believes Beal.

But I thought they'd already determined the primary cause?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/27/climate-variability-leakage-around-the-cape-of-good-hope/#more-38838

ClimateDepot gives us this link:

From Penn State to State Pen? 'They've given us half a million reasons to believe there's something in Michael Mann's emails to hide'

Re frosty

"help us stop reckless oil companies from drilling in the pristine Arctic wilderness."

Oh yeh? Alternative explanation, someone at Greenpeace is a furry. If people don't know what furries are, googling may be NSFW. Alternative vision. Someone from Greenpeace wears this 'extraordinarily realistic' outfit near some ordinarily horny polar bears, and Greenpeace's PR team end up filming the first ecosnuff movie.

Seems Greenpeace have run out of real Pola Bears that need saving, so they're raising money to save a bear suit ... via email from greenpeace :^)

Hello friends,

I need your help to save the polar bear. Well, one polar bear in particular.

We have the opportunity to buy an astonishingly realistic polar bear costume to use in our work to tackle the causes of climate change, and help us stop reckless oil companies from drilling in the pristine Arctic wilderness.

This magnificent bear really is something else, and was until recently treading the boards at the National Theatre in London, starring in Greenland, a play about climate change.

To buy this bear, we need to raise £4,000 - please donate whatever you can now to help us reach this total.

Missing link from previous post

http://www.dracos.co.uk/play/locating-postboxes/

And a list of sorts (pun intended) is here

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/location_of_every_post_box_that

but the list is not much use so this site is where users add the proper locations

Ref Postboxes, what makes it even more idiotic is the data is available but at a price.

1. There are currently 668,430 common points of detail with the same map feature code as Royal Mail post boxes. Of these points, Royal Mail post boxes are annotated by the letters 'LB'(for Letter Box) within our large scale database, now OS MasterMap and not Land-Line. As this information is reasonably accessible to you by other means by using our Point X product, even though accessible only on payment, this part of your request is exempt under section 21 (2) (a) for the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/aboutus/foi/questions/2008/0023.html