Cites nearly half a million dollars in state grant-funded climate research conducted while [Dr. Michael ] Mann— now director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State— was at UVA between 1999 and 2005.
From The Hook, it seems satirical YouTube videos will be the least of Dr. Mann’s worries now.
=================
No one can accuse Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli of shying from controversy. In his first four months in office, Cuccinelli directed public universities to remove sexual orientation from their anti-discrimination policies, attacked the Environmental Protection Agency, and filed a lawsuit challenging federal health care reform. Now, it appears, he may be preparing a legal assault on an embattled proponent of global warming theory who used to teach at the University of Virginia, Michael Mann.
In papers sent to UVA April 23, Cuccinelli’s office commands the university to produce a sweeping swath of documents relating to Mann’s receipt of nearly half a million dollars in state grant-funded climate research conducted while Mann— now director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State— was at UVA between 1999 and 2005.
If Cuccinelli succeeds in finding a smoking gun like the purloined emails that led to the international scandal dubbed Climategate, Cuccinelli could seek the return of all the research money, legal fees, and trebled damages.
“Since it’s public money, there’s enough controversy to look in to the possible manipulation of data,” says Dr. Charles Battig, president of the nonprofit Piedmont Chapter Virginia Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment, a group that doubts the underpinnings of climate change theory.
…
The Attorney General has the right to make such demands for documents under the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, a 2002 law designed to keep government workers honest.
=================
more at The Hook
h/t to Chip Knappenberger
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The more sunshine the better.
The head of the ccx said CO2 Cap and trade is worth 10 trillion dollars per year that’s a lot wealth distribution and I want to know who was cooking the books.
‘I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.” ‘
‘ “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” ‘
“Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.”
‘ “Proving bad behavior here is very difficult. If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted.” ‘
I don’t know what the AG’s problem with Mann is but I do see a proper course where the law should be involved. If the VA legislature has, as the US government has, a policy of releasing data and methods with research it funds and Mann has not followed that policy, the AG should go after Mann, personally and through his institution. Not following grant conditions is no more honorable than not following highway contracts.
Unfortunately, so called climate science and scientists of the AGW faith, became political a long time ago. In fact, most science is now dependent completely on public grants from taxpayers. As such, they bow to their politicians agenda. This will not be the last enquiry and will become a trend from both sides of politics when in power, in all areas of science that are used in formulating policy.
I see it as a welcome trend, mirroring reality in science nowadays. More universities will also come under attack and investigation. The playing of leftist politics has become an art form at many universities for many years.
My comment seems to have disappeared. Any reason?
REPLY: It’s there.
To paraphrase Mann’s oft-repeated answer to questions pertaining to his statistics and his methods to arrive at his hockey stick shaped bunk: “HOW DARE YOU!?”
Thank God someone has finally ‘dared’.
The world has NEVER seen his work, the work which is one of the main foundations of AGW. If the ‘hockey stick’ is fubar, so then is the career of Michael Mann as well as the careers of the whole ‘hockey stick’ team, so this will be a fight to the finish…
Let’s think of the harm that Mann’s bad math has already done to the world economy and society (nevermind history and science in general) and what it would have done if Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick had not shown how slanted it was.
Think of how many careers Mann has ruined like Sallie Baliunas etc. etc. etc.
The incentive system in climate science is backwards. Bad math and bad science is rewarded while objective science is punished. Toe the party line or be ostracized. We need something to start the balling rolling to reverse this backwards incentive system. For a short time, it looked as though Climategate would cause the field to right itself on its own. I’m not so sure anymore. This might be a good second start.
As a Virginia resident, I am all for this. They just had to raise my tuition due to budget cuts, so I am very unhappy that the State gave him money for his shoddy “research”. The less government funding for this, the better. I suspect that this was a slimy deal to begin with, a political payoff from someone well-connected. It certainly didn’t cost $500,000 to make a hockey stick.
There’s an object lesson for all climate scientists in this — transparency protects you from this outcome. Had Mann released all of his data, code and methods, then the debate would simply have been “are his findings correct”. But because he has stubbornly refused to release his data, code and methods and because he has refused to answer legitimate technical questions, and because he has conspired to deny his the ability to publish their criticism, he now faces a wrecked career, widespread public allegations of fraud and potential financial ruin.
His best defense at this point would be to publish *everything*. It’s not the mistake it’s the cover-up that leads to charges of fraud.
Generally I’m opposed to heavy-handed legal investigations, and particularly when they involve scholarly work. But given the heavy-handedness of the EPA in recent months and Mann’s part in providing the science to legitimize that autocratic behavior, I think his work needs to be investigated.
In fact, the federal government needs to form a high-level commission to investigate all aspects of climate science and its theories and do an engineering grade study on the claims that are being made.
To that end, this may be a step in the right direction.
As far as I am concerned…. If you are using taxpayer funds for research, or anything for that matter. You should be held to the utmost scrutiny and to the highest of possible standards… If you don’t want the scrutiny, don’t use government money. Use yer own.
If Mann has misused Taxpayer funds…. He should suffer the full consequences.
Burn down the ivory tower.
To all of you who want to protect this miscreant, I hope your taxes rise beyond your ability to pay them. They are already there for a substantial portion of the population.
Well apparently Michael likes to talk to lawyers. Why should we mind?
This is a terrible idea, and I hope that Mr. Cuccinelli reconsiders and withdraws the demand. One doesn’t have to agree with Dr. Mann to oppose this witchhunt. More intimidation is not going to help to resolve the scientific questions in dispute, and this is clearly an attempt to intimidate.
I can not imagine there is any real belief that Dr. Mann committed a legal fraud upon the Commonwealth of Va. Writing papers which do not agree with the DA’s perspective does not constitute fraud. Nor does emphasizing those pieces of evidence which support a particular point of view while de-emphasizing contradictory clues.
And as for finding “a smoking gun like … Climategate” — please. The Climategate papers did not show fraud. They showed collusion and intimidation, bias in presenting conclusions, and reluctance and/or inability to provide data and algorithms which would allow a fair criticism of their work, among other behaviors. While I would criticise this behavior as not professional, it falls well short of legal fraud.
The chilling effect of such investigations as Mr. Cuccinelli proposes (a) is not going to help free and open inquiry into the science; (b) is likely to be used against the open-minded as well as the closed-minded; and (c) can only distract attention from the real scientific issues involved. In addition, this will only tend to de-legitimize the skeptic approach to the topic, in public opinion, by associating this bad behavior with climate skeptics.
George E. Smith says:
April 29, 2010 at 4:17 pm
“In the long run; people such as Mann are going to be judged by their peers, in the light of history.”
George, love your stuff, but when have academics ever had to answer to their peers for bad science? Case in point: Paul Erlich. Here’s a man that has been wrong about just about everything idea he ever advanced. What’s his punishment? Department chairmanship, numerous awards and accolades, lifetime tenure. If anyone deserves public scorn and ridicule, it is he. And yet, he basks in the glow of academic awards and advancement.
Given the pattern of behavior over the years from Mann, and given what was revealed about him in Climategate, there is every reason to believe he has played fast and loose with the work he did at UVA. If not this AG, then exactly who is going to bring Mann and others like him to account? And why would anyone think this is illegal? Remember Elliot Sptizer in New York. He made a career out of going after political targets as the AG and rode it all the way to the governorship. Too bad about that pesky call girl thing. You can bet Mann will be lawyered up to the hilt, so if there is anything amiss in this, it will get knocked down quickly. It would be great if Mann had to lay out his research for everyone to see in a court of law — no tricks, no hiding.
I don’t think this is mere harassment or a fishing expedition. I suspect the AG has “got something” on Mann that will at least qualify as embarrassing.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick were called as expert witnesses? Or Prof Richard Lindzen?
I would enjoy seeing if a defense attorney could outsmart them regarding climate questions.
Not that I’m rooting for a full-blown trial. A good, thorough deposition would get the facts out… if there are real facts, and if Mann wasn’t making it up as he went along most of the time.
Now that the shoe is on the other foot, lots of folks are getting a little worried. Remember when Dr Wei-Chyung Wang was demanding in his Climategate emails that Tom Wigley should help push a lawsuit against Dr Keenan, for charging Wang with fraud? And folks at realclimate & tamino were cheering Wang on? The situation looks a little different now, doesn’t it?
Mann has put himself into the public sphere with his work and given what we know at this point it deserves a far greater degree of scrutiny than the ‘academic community’ has provided this far.
Irregardless of what anyone thinks about how right or how wrong the investigation might be, it’s the Atty. Gen. of Virginia’s ball game now. It’s his job, and that’s what he’s paid to do.
But I will say this: Making a lot of noise about political parody after that bunch of emails is bound to attract attention.
He did this to himself.
I agree entirely with Arn Riewe (April 29, 2010 at 5:36 pm)
This might even put some ethics in some of the other collaborators. This is not a witchhunt. This is justice.
Recall: “February 10, 2008: Canadian Environmentalist David Suzuki Calls for skeptical leaders to be thrown ‘into jail’ – Excerpt: At a Montreal conference last Thursday, the prominent scientist, broadcaster and Order of Canada recipient exhorted a packed house of 600 to hold politicians legally accountable for what he called an intergenerational crime. […] “What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there’s a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they’re doing is a criminal act,” said Dr. Suzuki, a former board member of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. “It’s an intergenerational crime in the face of all the knowledge and science from over 20 years.”
The whole DA crusading for election thing is just bizarre.
Only in the US.
My innate tendency to see conspiracies (from watching too many episodes of Boston Legal) brings to mind:
a) Only for $500,000? Yes it is a large sum, but what will the lawyers fees be on both sides? There is more to this than meets the eye.
b) The VA state charges might be bargained against Mann’s threatened litigation against the “Hide the Decline” video maker.
c) I would have thought cooperation with the AG would benefit UVA as a way of distancing the university from the machinations of its former employee and thereby preserving its reputation, without having to mount any internal investigation.
I cannot believe I am reading people here defending Mann. He is one the most unethical scientists in the debate who intentionally produced fraudulent works pawning them off as “new statistical methods” which is pure BS. He from the start was looking for anyway to manipulate the data to get the conclusions he wanted and here we have people complaining he may get what he deserves? Is this WUWT ot RealClimate?
PS: I also suspect the AG isn’t going after frauds in the science of CAGW, but something much more mundane, like expense account irregularities.
HR said:
“This is ugly!
You may not like him or the work he has done but using the minutiae of the law to bring the man down is going a bit far. I thought you freedom loving Americans wanted the State off peoples backs.”
@ur momisugly HR: One of the first jobs of state is to PROTECT its people and their freedoms. If there is a reasonable suspicion that certain bodies or individuals are involved in fraudulent or generally illegal activity that is intended to attack the freedoms of the people (not to mention using the people’s own money – i.e. tax money to do so) then I want the state ON those individuals’ backs.