The UVA emails are a key part of a history that taxpayers are trying to piece together to place the early climate alarmism, and taxpayer financing of it, in context, said Dr. David Schnare, Director of the ATI Environmental Law Center. The alarmist professors who in some of these emails speak about the cause have complained that their emails have been taken out of context. Release of the full UVA email collection, all sent or received by Mann after expressly agreeing he had no ownership of or expectation of privacy about them, will provide that context. Considering the behavior of this former UVA professor as documented in many emails already available to the public, these emails are the only means he has to claim exoneration without being accused of a whitewash.
The selected emails include graphic descriptions of the contempt a small circle of largely taxpayer-funded alarmists held for anyone who followed scientific principles and ended up disagreeing with them. For example, in the fifteenth Petitioners Exemplar (PE-15), Mann encourages a boycott of one climate journal and a direct appeal to his friends on the editorial board to have one of the journals editors fired for accepting papers that were carefully peer-reviewed and recommended for publication on the basis that the papers dispute Manns own work. In PE-38, he states that another well respected journal is being run by the baddies, calling them shills for industry. In PE-39 Mann calls U.S. Congressmen concerned about how he spent taxpayer money thugs.
Legal exemplars cited in Michael Mann's UVA E-mail case