It seems the process to get supporting evidence from University of Virginia has overcome a roadblock. From the Virginia Court System: h/t to WUWT reader Laws of Nature
Appeals Granted
Case
KENNETH T. CUCCINELLI, II, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF VIRGINIA v. RECTOR AND VISITORS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
(Record Number 102359)
From
The Circuit Court of Albemarle County; P.M. Peatross, Jr., Judge.
Counsel
Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, Wesley G. Russell, Jr., E. Duncan Getchell, Jr., Charles E. James, Jr., and Stephen R. McCullough (Office of the Attorney General) for appellant.
Chuck Rosenberg, Jessica Ellsworth, N Thomas Connally, Jon M. Talotta, Stephanie J. Gold, and Catherine E. Stetson (Hogan Lovells US LLP) for appellee.
Assignment of Error
- The circuit court erred in setting aside the CIDs based on the ground that the Attorney General lacked a “reason to believe” that UVa. may be in possession, custody, or control of any documentary material or information relevant to a FATA investigation because it is contrary to the statute and without support in the record.
- The circuit court erred in setting aside the CIDs based on the ground that the Attorney General’s “reason to believe” had to be stated on the face of the CIDs because it is contrary to the statute.
- The circuit court erred in setting aside the CIDs based on the ground that the CIDs failed to sufficiently state the “nature of the conduct” being investigated because that is contrary to the face of the CIDs.
- The circuit court erred in setting aside the CIDs based on the ground that FATA does not cover requests for payments made on the Commonwealth when the Commonwealth has been a recipient of a federal grant because that is an incorrect construction of FATA and ignores that money is fungible.
- The circuit court erred by limiting the remaining right of inquiry based upon the errors assigned above.
Assignment of Cross-Error
- Whether the circuit court erred in holding the University is a “person” subject to FATA’s CID provision, where the General Assembly specifically defined the term “person” in FATA not to include Commonwealth entities.
Date Granted
3-4-2011
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The blogosphere just created a lot more areas of follow-up for the AG.
Best remember how to spell Cuccinelli’s last name, he’s a “comer!”
George
Now some will awake at 3:00 A.M. with the night sweats. Some will have to have new sheets from time to time.
Please correct me if I am reading this correctly. The VSC is granting the appeal under “Appeals granted” including “Whether the circuit court erred in holding the University is a “person” subject to FATA’s CID provision”. This last grant seem to be the VAG can not issue the CIDs to the University. This would seem to be a big roadblock.
The cause grinds slowly, but it grinds. The warm worriers have had 5 years head start but they have hit a wall now. Good sense should always prevail.
All this means is that the Va Supreme Court has agreed to hear the matter. This does NOT say anything to the merits of the suit or of the appeal.
Both McIntyre and Christy oppose the type of efforts being pursued by Cuccinelli here. It smacks of auditing the taxes of your political opponents. Mann is being chased by Cuccinelli solely because Mann reached conclusions with which Cuccinelli does not agree. Spencer, Lindzen, et al better be ready to have their hard drives searched as well.
Buzz Belleville says:
“Mann is being chased by Cuccinelli solely because Mann reached conclusions with which Cuccinelli does not agree.”
Really? You don’t think an AG should investigate possible misappropriation of funds and defrauding of taxpayers? Cuccinelli just wants to ask Mann some questions. If Mann has done nothing wrong he should be happy to answer them.
No Buzz, it’s not Mann’s “conclusions” (actually, scientific fraud on a level to match Trofim Lysenko). It is that there is prima facia evidence that Mann engaged in financial fraud by taking taxpayer monies for studies that were based on cherry-picked data and phony-baloney statistics.
Where were you when the University handed over Pat Michael’s emails to Greenpeace without so much as a FOIA request? Your threat to Spencer and Lindzen is amusing, given that there is no evidence THEY have participated in financial fraud.
The attorney general’s office is engaged in a fishing expedition, and one based on flawed view of the case against climate scientists. They are acting based on mistaken press stories.
Buzz Belleville, if the hockey stick team made their whole research process transparent in the first place, there wouldn’t be any need for a freedom of information requests.
To bring up a previous chapter in this story, the University of Virginia were more than cordial with Green
peacecorp when a non-believer is involved.http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/06/yes-virginia-you-do-have-to-produce-those-global-warming-documents/
“Importantly, also under FOIA in late 2009, the pressure group Greenpeace sought, and was promised, e-mails and other materials of Patrick Michaels, who also formerly worked in the same university department.
While the university proceeded to compile the material for Greenpeace, one of us, Virginia Del. Bob Marshall, R-Prince William, thought to ask for records relating to Michaels’ former colleague, Mann. Oddly, the university informed Marshall that such records no longer existed because Mann had left the department.”
It seems as if Green
peacecorp chased the records of Dr. Michaels simply because they reached to their own conclusions in contrast to Dr. Michaels’ work.MikeN,
You don’t know that. You’re just making a baseless conjecture.
D Bonson,
Greenpeace is heavily funded by George Soros. There’s probably a reason that the university assisted Greenpeace with such alacrity.
“Spencer, Lindzen, et al better be ready to have their hard drives searched as well.”
Anyone that accepts public money should be required to make the work paid for by the public open for public inspection. With the internet there really is no excuse that “it is too much work to reply to requests”.
When scientists receive public money to conduct research, and then can withhold this from the public, we might as well just hand the money back to the taxpayers for all the good it is doing. Why should the public be asked to fund science if the science is not available to the public for inspection?
I have zero problem with scientists keeping their work secret if they want. Just don’t ask me as a taxpayer to:
1) have me pay you to do the work
2) have me pay for the findings
The problem that I have with climate science is that the underlying data has been largely kept secret. The results have not been independently confirmed. That the public is being asked to pay trillions of dollars based on results that cannot be scientifically verified as there is no agreed falsification method.
Without falsification climate science is not science. It is worse than useless. It is potentially extremely dangerous to the world’s economy.
The current course of the world’s economy has shown that industrialization, while it causes environmental harm, substantially improves the life of people on the planet. The fact that industrialization creates waste products that are harmful to life forms is the way of the world. Every life form on earth produces waste products that are harmful to other life forms in one way or another.
What industrialization has shown is that most of the environmental harm comes from early stage industrialization. That the later stages of industrialization are stable to declining populations, and reduced environmental damage due to increasing efficiencies.
Quite simply, industrial economies over time reduce their harm to the environment because it is cost effective to do so. Not because of taxes, but simply because of market pressure. The market is always seeking a less expensive way to do something. Over time industrial processes seek to reduce waste simply because waste reflects lost value.
For example, early mines created huge tailing piles. These same tailing piles are now the source of ore for more advanced mining technology. Now, we could have tried to make this happen by taxing tailings on early mines, trying to force them to do something uneconomical.
The problem is that you can’t force an economy to do something uneconomical for long. People quickly adjust their strategies to maximize their personal benefits, even in the face of strict state controls to the contrary. The net result on a tax on tailings would be a reduction in mining and higher prices for metals. The less efficient mines would go out of business and new mines would open in areas that did not have the tax. There would still be the same amount of tailings created, just that they would be created in different places. There might even be more tailings created if the new mines opened are less efficient.
This sort of approach can sometimes be used if your economy operates in isolation, with barriers to imports. However, in the case of CO2 there are no barriers to imports. CO2 is generally thought to be well mixed. Thus, using our example of mine tailings, a tax will move the tailings to another country, and the prevailing winds will bring them back. The amount paid in tax is therefore completely wasted. You might as well simply ship the tax money to the other countries. At least that way the mining jobs would remain in your own country.
The problem is that people don’t look beyond simple cause and effect when looking for solutions to problems. They forget that everything is interconnected, and the results of change are most often unexpected and unpredicted.
Smokey says:
March 10, 2011 at 9:36 am
If Mann has done nothing wrong he should be happy to answer them.
=================================================
Exactly, what’s the problem…
….If they really believed their science was so “robust”
they would have put it out there a long time ago and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation
Going through all these contortions, smoke and mirrors, and magic tricks…
…just tells everyone they don’t even believe in their own science either
Messrs Russell and Bronson — First off, if you believe any of the proxy information for Mann’s reconstructions are not available, you’re mistaken. How do you think M&M were able to attack the conclusions drawn from those proxies? If a reconstruction appears in a peer-reviewed journal, to my knowledge you can always access the underlying proxy info. Let me (or the owners of this blog) know if you can’t find any such information, and I’m sure you’ll get some help.
Moreover, there are big differences between Greenpeace’s FOIA request (relating to public documents generated by Singer and Michaels) and the AG’s subpoena (which is a “civil investigative demand,” meaning that it is not tied to even any alleged wrongdoing at this time). Exemptions under the state Freedom of Information Act protect certain documents that are being sought by the CIDs. In other words, the AG’s subpoena (have you seen it? if not, you should, then imagine the time and privacy concerns implicated with literally complying with all the requests) is seeking things that cannot be discovered by FOIA requests. FOIA requests only cover records and do not allow for the fact-finding “interrogatories” that Cuccinelli has imcluded in his subpoena. An official AG subpoena has absolutely no relation to a private group’s FOIA request … they’re simply not comparable.
Respectfully, I think you need to expand the bases of your knowledge beyond merely another WUWT article.
I get the logic of the beginning of your post Mr. Berple. And if all the subpoena sought was information relating to Mann’s use of state funds in conducting his research, Cuccinelli would be on better grounds (I still think there are academic freedom arguments that are troubling). But the subpoena seeks far more than just how Mann “spent” the grant money. You really should check out the breadth of the CID, then check out the NAS list of grant recipients, and imagine that every grant recipient has to turn over all of his or her e-mails to ideological opponents.
Seruios question Mr. Berple — What “underlying data” do you believe climate scientists have hidden that would change the basic premises of AGW theory?
Whatever his motives, my money is on Cuccinelli. Climate scientists will eventually convince the world, but it is Mr. Cuccinelli who will ring the scalawags necks.
Latitude says:
March 10, 2011 at 10:13 am
Well, you’re more generous than I am–I call it “climsci”, which is part “climate” and part “science”. Unfortunately, the combination doesn’t benefit from any synergism.
Buzz Belleville says:
March 10, 2011 at 10:50 am
For starters, I’d like to see all that data Phil Jones supposedly “lost”. And that’s just a start. Then I’d like to see EVERYTHING on the email servers involved in Climategate–you know, where everybody was blocking FOI requests, obstructing the peer review process, and stonewalling objective science. Then let’s find and interview Harry of the Harry Read Me file. I’d love to see what he says. Is that enough? If not, your question is useless obstruction.
“Buzz Belleville says:
March 10, 2011 at 10:50 am
Seruios question Mr. Berple — What “underlying data” do you believe climate scientists have hidden that would change the basic premises of AGW theory?”
I believe that the scientists who advance the AGW hypothesis have the burden of proven it to be correct. They have failed to do so completely to date.
Ken Harvey says:
March 10, 2011 at 11:18 am
As the result of Mr. Cuccinelli’s investigations and others like him, what I envision is “climate scientists” swinging figuratively from the yardarm. That image will certain dissuade most of the world from believing in their unsubstantiable theories.
MikeN says:
March 10, 2011 at 9:45 am
‘based on flawed view of the case against climate scientists. They are acting based on mistaken press stories.’
Only on your planet Mike, not this one.
Buzz Belleville says:
March 10, 2011 at 9:22 am
Both McIntyre and Christy oppose the type of efforts being pursued by Cuccinelli here. It smacks of auditing the taxes of your political opponents. Mann is being chased by Cuccinelli solely because Mann reached conclusions with which Cuccinelli does not agree. Spencer, Lindzen, et al better be ready to have their hard drives searched as well.
=======================================================
It hasn’t a thing to do with the conclusions Mann reached, but you probably know that already.
None of this occurs if the pinheads would stick with science and stay out of political and economic activism. If they wish to enter those worlds, they do it at their own peril. And they damn sure don’t need to be doing it on my dime. They are out of their depth. As far as Spencer, Lindzen and the rest, I’d be quite surprised if it were found that they engaged in the same behaviors that the “team” did. That said, let the chips fall where they lay.
FATA?
Joe Romm declares Fatwa in 10, 9, 8, 7,