While the IPCC gets taken to the woodshed, Mannian methodology gets another free pass.
Cuccinelli left Credit: TIMES-DISPATCH, Dr. Mann, right
An Albemarle County judge has dismissed Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s demand that the University of Virginia turn over documents related to the research of a prominent climate change expert.
Cuccinelli, a vocal climate change skeptic, had been investigating the possibility that climatology professor Michael Mann fraudulently obtained five taxpayer-funded research grants while employed at UVa between 1999 and 2005.
In an opinion issued this morning, Judge Paul M. Peatross Jr. ruled that Cuccinelli failed to show a sufficient “reason to believe” that UVa possessed any documents related to Mann that suggested a fraud occurred.
…
Peatross added, however, that the attorney general is within his rights to issue CIDs — which carry the legal weight of subpoenas — to investigate taxpayer-funded research grants awarded to professors such as Mann.
Cuccinelli said in a statement that he will send a new CID to UVa to continue his hunt for proof that Mann defrauded Virginia’s taxpayers in obtaining grants that funded his climate change research.
More here at The Daily Progress (not to be confused with the ‘angry progress’ blogs)
h/t to WUWT reader AnonyMoose
Marco : Thank you.
Great summary of the events and finally a voice of reason in this blog.
Bishop Hill links to an article from Virginia Qui Tam Law.com:
Pick your own title: “Former UVa Scientist Michael Mann is Proven Correct, and Human Activity Really is Causing the Earth to Warm” or “Virginia Circuit Court Judge Sets Aside Portions of Civil Investigative Demand”
OK S.
Normally with such surveys they collect submissions over a period of time and publish a paper or report once they process the data. For the survey to work, they probably need a representative sample of contributors.
I hope the results of the survey show a balanced view of what people believe about science. It is important to stick to science in this debate and leave out politics and personal feuds/beliefs.
marco says:
August 31, 2010 at 2:55 pm
“…Then some emails were stolen or leaked which proved beyond measure that even climate scientists have bad hair days but really didn’t reveal anything more than bad tempered fraustration with unacustomed attention.
‘Hide the decline’ and ‘Michael’s nature trick’ became, in the eyes of many the wooden stake through the heart of AGW. Yet months down the track after several investigations or white washes (depending on your contact with reality) the physical evidence of AGW continues to be collated…”
Sorry Marco, but I think you have not grasped the issues at all. Your paranthetical comment concerning “depending on your contact with reality” is telling. Careful, your projection is showing.
Rob says:
August 31, 2010 at 5:24 pm
And Rob, if Marco is the voice of reason as you claim…well I just certainly hope you two will go back and do your homework. Have either of you actually read the Wegman Report to Congress? Have either of you actually read the Climategate emails, or the most recent M&W paper?
I would think not, else you would not be so blithe in your summary of the events.
I ve included a link (see bottom of post) through CA of the actual Wegman Report so you can brush up. Pay close attention to the graph’s plotting various allegiances of climate scientists, with Mann et al, starting on page 38 figures 5.1 and on. These pages explain the ‘why’ of all the frustration and agnst (as well as the “whitewash” comments by myself and others) some of us experience, knowing what ‘natural justice’ is and wanting to see it done.
And Climategate revealed to the world that the “Go-to” authority (vis-a-vis CRU/Mann), THE source for global temeratures that national governments worldwide have used to oppress many of their people with useless taxes (See the EPA Tesla thread on this site for a recent example) and fines, actually “made-up” (as in ‘out-of-thin-air’) data (see comments by ‘Harry the programer’ included with the Climategate emails). Read the emails.
Were/are you aware that the now defunct Waxman-Markey bill outlined carbon impact taxation on hot-tubs that contained 50 gallons of water or more? What next, the dishwasher? A shower? The toilet? YOUR tax dollars. Thank god it has been shelved…but for how long?
Only by attempting to maintain the momentum that was started, IMO, by the M&M papers, momentum that was fueled by the Wegman and North Reports to Congress, Climategate, and now the recent M&W paper we may be able to FINALLY expose these charlatans. I use the word may because with the current state of affairs: MSM ignorance of the facts and the clearly biased results of the various so-called “inquiries”.
This blog and others are attempting to: restore the scientific method, restore reason and objectivity to the peer-review process, restore some semblance of sanity to this debate, restore a sound perspective on what we actually know and don’t know about the climate, and to also stop oppressive taxation that has been shown, time and again, will not achieve any of the goals for their stated purpose.
BTW – “…even climate scientists have bad hair days”(???) Have you even seen a picture of M. Mann??! :>O Puhleeeze…
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/07142006_wegman_report.pdf
Hey ‘Rob’& ‘Marco’,
Here’s an example and link (there’s tons, just bling or google ‘climategate emails, harry the programmer’). Read carefully because this is what FRAUD looks like, sounds like, smells like, etc. I didn’t think you were serious about getting the facts so I thought I’d try and help you out in case you came back to follow-up.
Double quotation marks are ‘Harry’s’ actual notes released with the Climategate emails, single quotation marks are the ‘oneutah.org’ authors comments.
“Here is an example of actual code from the CRU. Try explaining this away warmers…”
;
; “”Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
(…)
;
; APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,x)
densall=densall+yearlyadj””
“‘valadj’ is an array that if we plug in the numbers we get Michael Mann’s hockeystick. The programmers have hard coded a predetermined result. So now when they plug the actual numbers in no matter what they are it will always result in the hockeystick even if temperatures remained the same.”
“For example. Just for the sake of arguement lets say the average temperature remained constant at 70 degrees last century. When you run the numbers through their “fudge factor” you still get a hockey stick. Even a decline in temperatures would still result in a hockeystick. Way to hide the decline!”
“Just imagine if there really was global warming and they ran those numbers through the magic global warming program then we would really be frying.”
Link:
http://oneutah.org/2009/11/28/climategate-source-code-more-damning-than-emails/
What do you think? Is it a duck or not? At the oneutah.org site they even have graphs illistrating the examples mentioned. Go see, read, and understand. It’s worse than you thought. 😉
Gaylon,
You threw in everything but the kitchen sink, so it’s kind of hard for me to address each issue you raised and put it into proper context in just a few paragraphs.
To answer your question about what I’ve read, yes. I read the Wegman report, the emails, the inquiry reports, and the recent McShane and Wyner paper.
And I read (and understand) a large number of peer-reviewed scientific papers on the subject, including the papers from skeptics (Lindzen, Spencer etc).
I also read the spin generated by Morano at climatedepot, Dellingpole at the Telegraph and further spinned by a spectrum of other blogs and Fox News.
We don’t get Limbaugh here in California, or else I would have also listened to what he had to say, if it were only to see how media egos misrepresent scientific findings and feel misinformation to the public.
Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your point of view), I’m not very sensitive to spin and politics and media ego’s. I was born in the low lands of Holland, face in the wind, two feet on the ground, two strong arms and a good head on the shoulders.
Where I come from, you can’t go running around blaming top notch scientists like Mann claiming “FRAUD” and “charlatans” and worse by taking snippets of text out of context.
Any public statement made by anyone in my view needs to be validated by real evidence.
For starters, did you not study the scientific responses (and the results of the inquiries) on each of the issues or do you simply ignore these to validate your own beliefs ?
Let’s take ONE example that you mentioned :
“‘Hide the decline’ and ‘Michael’s nature trick’ became, in the eyes of many the wooden stake through the heart of AGW”
As you very well should know, the ‘trick’ refers to NOT plotting treering data after 1960 in the Hockey Stick graph, because tree rings show a ‘decline’ in growth after 1960 and do not follow instrumental temperature data any more (most likely due to increased sulfur oxides and other air pollution since 1960).
Incidentally, if CO2 were so “good for plants” as is often claimed as an argument to increase CO2 emissions, then the only thing ‘hidden’ with this ‘trick’ is the fact that CO2 is not the only factor determining tree growth.
That ligit, and Mann/Briffa could have done a better job explaining exactly what they did, but it does not change one bit about the graph nor the temperature reconstruction.
What did you think it meant ?
Besides, where in Mann’s paper does the ‘trick’ to ‘hide the decline’ actually show up ? And which difference does it make ?
Overall, I think that too many people here draw too many conclusions from way too little evidence.
The real problem is the media egos and blogs that take tiny details way out of context and spin it into insane fiction stories.
All connection to science and facts and reason is lost in the process, to the point where the AG can’t even state the nature of his own allegations against our own scientists.
Stop your empty allegations, and let our scientists do their work.
Gaylon
Yes I have read the Wegman report and yes I read the network analysis. My ability in maths and statistics could be easily challanged by a kitten and so I found it a hard going read.
Though I do remember being struck by the idea that a network analysis seemed to be a very peculiar thing to do for if Mann’s statistical competence was so lacking then a demonstration of such incompetence would be sufficient. Why anyone would find it necessary to analyse his professional network to underscore his error struck me not only as irrelevant but bizarre. You are either wrong or right regardless.
Are we really surprised that specialist areas of study are not characterised by large groups of people and that these people are found in specialist centers of limited numbers. Think of the golden age of physics all the action was basically taking place at the Cavendish, in Copenhagen and in Gottingen.
However I digress a little, as I admitted before I’m no great shakes with the numbers and that’s why I have to really be careful. But may I ask why you give precedence to Wegman rather than to the National Academy of Sciences. You of course can ask me the same and I doubt either of us will convince the other as to the supremacy of our respective reasoning but we must at least allow that two competent authorities have come to two different conclusions and it is in that contradiction that the charge of fraud withers. What we have is a scientific dispute…no?
Have I read all the climate gate emails? What all 168 megabytes? No. But I have read many of them. I’ve also read the Russell report and perused the extensive archived submissions made to the enquiry by both antagonistic and supportive parties. But here’s the problem, according to your lights if I find the report credible then I’m a…warmist. Whereas I think we have a difference of opinion. What we don’t have is a fraud.
I am not a US citizen and so was unaware how a paper published in 1998 reconstructing past temperatures impacts upon your tax obligations. I only note that since the paper was published your tax freedom day now falls earlier in the year (1998 c May 2 – 2010 April 9). So when you talk about this paper being an element in supporting oppresive taxation you may want to hide this particular decline.
Thanks for the advice regarding harry the programmer. I googled the phrase ‘Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!’ and you’re right I couldn’t believe what I read. As quote mining goes if the oneutah boys and girls were after diamonds they’d be zillionares. But joking aside when somebody selectively quotes and through that selective quotation distorts the truth then that is a percursor to fraud if not fraud itself.
And by the way CRU is not ‘THE source for global temeratures…’ it is one of four bodies that measure the global temp the other three being GISS, RSS and Dr Roy’s UAH which all show basically the same thing…ahem…cough…warming. But again no sign of fraud.
Rob says:
First, Limbaugh is available in every location in the U.S. You won’t listen to contrary points of view, though, because your mind is already made up — as you clearly demonstrate in your baseless assumption: “media egos misrepresent scientific findings.” If you refuse to listen, how would you know if anything is “misinformation”?
In fact, far from being insensitive to “spin,” you are deliberately perpetuating it. You say, “I think that too many people here draw too many conclusions from way too little evidence.” You are clearly describing yourself. And as you are finding out, word games like that don’t get an easy pass on the internet’s “Best Science” site. Further, you state that correcting the hockey stick ‘mistakes’ do not “change one bit about the graph nor the temperature reconstruction.” Oh, really?
Marco,
Since you’re put off by mathematics, I suggest you read A.W. Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. There is no math involved. And you will come away understanding that the entire mainstream climate scam is based on dishonesty, from the IPCC, to Michael Mann, to Gavin Schmidt, to RealClimate, to every three comment warmist blog that censors contrary points of view — which includes almost all of them.
Montford documents his exposé of corruption and fraud with numerous emails written by many different individuals, whose obvious concern is keeping the taxpaying public ignorant, so they continue to shovel money into the pockets of those gaming the system.
Contrary to your belief, Montford doesn’t rely on ‘selective’ quotes; he shows conclusively that the IPCC’s and the climate journals’ written policies are routinely violated by the same bureaucrats, editors and referees who deviously shirk their obligation to abide by their own stated policies.
For a taste of The Hockey Stick Illusion, read Montford’s article here:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
It is short and damning. The official shenanigans exposed in his book are similar and far more numerous, including getting colleagues fired for the ‘crime’ of having a different opinion regarding AGW, and conniving to blackball journals that don’t toe the CAGW line.
Finally, your defense of the multiple whitewashes of Michael Mann all fail based on the same verifiable fact: none of those Potemkin Village-style cover-ups has ever allowed a critic of Mann to be a part of the proceedings. Not a single one. Every individual was selected based on their not rocking the boat. If that is your idea of an honest investigation, you are hopelessly naive; they were simply official cover-ups. Or maybe like Rob, your mind is already made up, and you refuse to let uncomfortable facts get in the way.
I’m sorry but America’s AGW congregation is grasping at straws. Anyone wanting to question “monies from criminals” only needs start with the current incarnation of POTUS to be overwhelmed. Anyone giving a pass to the way Mann was investigated “inhouse” by his own people can’t say a word about Enron, BP, Sunncor, Eon and every other component of their “Big Energy” boogeyman any more. Their “inhouse” investigations are as above board as anything Mann has been involved with.
Over the last 30 years I’ve been involved in scientific controversies as an author, peer reviewer, and editor. Sometimes scientists get angry and personal over disagreements. Sometimes new ideas about the best statistical approaches are important. Generally, scientists support their side of controversies by publishing peer reviewed articles. In no cases that I am aware of, have scientists suggested that other scientist’s publications were based fraudunlent grants or that scientific controversies should be settled by courts or politicians. In my view, the VA AG knows zero about science is just a political hack.
Rob says:
September 1, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Wow…
The context that you so adamantly state is taken out of context is right there in front of you. How can you (rhetorical question: we know how) look right into the face of Manns nature trick and not see it? Again, a rhetorical question: we know how. That is the code man! Any data, numbers, random noise, street addresses, or phone numbers punched into that code produces a hockey stick shape. That is a fact. That is the “trick”!
As you state it,
“As you very well should know, the ‘trick’ refers to NOT plotting treering data after 1960 in the Hockey Stick graph, because tree rings show a ‘decline’ in growth after 1960 and do not follow instrumental temperature data any more (most likely due to increased sulfur oxides and other air pollution since 1960).”
Apparently you have been on the recieving end of some “misinformation”, no one disputs that our climate had warmed in the late 20th century (0.7C), and it has nothing to do with what happened “after 1960”, as you say. It has to do with the disappearing of the MWP and LIA, hence the “magic” of the “trick” that produces the straight shaft on the hockey stick (see Smokey’s link above for the corrected version). (I won’t even start on the reasoning that if the recent proxies diverged from the temperature record how does it then validate the past proxies). Your comment above does not address the issue at all, it circumvents it as you digress into sophistry about C02 for plant food (?).
[snip]
Smokey
I’m not put off by maths I’m simply no good at it but nonetheless amuse myself endlessly by following any number of online maths courses and screwing them up royaly. I’m actually a maths wannabe. If there were maths bars I’d probably hang out at them and try and pick up…but that’s probably a little off topic.
You said:
‘Contrary to your belief, Montford doesn’t rely on ‘selective’ quotes;’
I haven’t mentioned Montford and didn’t know who he was until you posted the link. I’ll give it a read. However let me note that disgust with selective quotation is not a faith based system….I don’t belive something has been selsctively quoted I see the evidence by examining the original quote in its original context.
You gave me some reading homework so here’ s some in exchange:
http://www.cce-review.org/index.php
Read the submissions as well.
Describing the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Inquiry as Potemkin village…well not sure about that one. Your experience at different blogs is different to mine as I have seen any number of dissenting voices. And I have seen charge and counter charge of censorship but as most blog operators point out this is their virtual house and its their rules. Can you really claim that people opposed to the theroy of AGW are being shut out of the debate – when you see the way the polls are going I think the opposition to AGW is doing just dandy.
But please reread your first paragraph. That is quite a conspiracy you’ve described there. You accuse me of being naive, let me caution you against sheepish credulity. The conspiracy you describe is simply ridiculous it requires the complicity of thousands of different people across many different national boundaries all working to what end?
Ohh of course the great global tax eating conspiracy. Because it is axiomatic that a reconstruction of past temperatures leads inexorably to higher taxation and because it leads to higher taxation it must be a fraud. We have now entered the realm of Monty Python.
Let’s concede for the moment that AGW has been proven beyond doubt. Why is it that the only policy response is higher taxation? The first thing you’d might consider is to charge the full external cost of carbon production to both producers and consumers. This would stimulate investment in alternative production (and might even free up the green kneejerk reaction against nuclear). The point being that there are any number of market based instuments that could stimulate the desired out come of moving away from a carbon economy.
You don’t need a conspiracy to effect this you just need a policy debate. And in a policy debate a difference of perspective is not FRAUD no matter how offensive you find it.
Both you and Gaylon have made a big deal of the Mann case from the perspective of its impact on something wholly unrelated; tax burden. Who is allowing their ideological baggage to obscure a thoroughly skeptical response?
Skepticism cuts both ways. When it only cuts one way it’s not skepticism its special pleading.
However I am sure that I have tried everyone’s patience enough and wish you all the best.
Smokey,
The link you give to the ‘corrected’ version of the hockey stick graph is from McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) (M&M 2003). That paper has some very serious flaws, one of which is that they discarded 70% of the proxy data. I won’t call that ‘fraud’, just a misunderstanding, for which M&M were corrected by Rutherford et.al (2005). But flawed as it is, did you notice that M&M graph stops somewhere in around 1950 or 1960 or so ? The steep increase (0.4 C or so recorded with instrument data) over the past 50 years is simply absent from their graph.
So, even M&Ms fabricated MWP is thus cooler than the world is today. Whatsupwiththat ?
And Gaylon :
you think that the “hide the decline” trick refers to the MWP and LIA, but you give no reference or reasoning why that would be the case. Let me guess : McIntyre’s paper ?
Also : your charished Harry did not work for Mann’s project. The inquiry reports mention that he was working on a aerospace project IIRC.
Mann did not need to artificially create a hockey stick blade. The instrument data over the past 100 years provides that blade all by itself.
And for both of you : If you really feel that your references or knowledge provides any evidence of fraud, then by all means, tell Cuccinelli. He is desperate. Please help the guy out before he realizes what the rest of the nation already knew from the start : that Climategate was a big bubble of air…
I sincerely doubt that Cuccinelli is “deperate”, since he is just starting the process, Read some of the threads above for some other view points.
I do owe you an apoplgy however, I wrote my previos post in haste and largely from memory. When I re-read it this morning I was horrified. I typically proof read before hitting the ‘Post Comment’ and I didn’t.
Mod – Thanks for the snip.
On your the point of the divergence in 1960: you are correct, my point on the straight shaft was disjointed, at best.
On the point of ‘Harry’: he worked for the CRU and there is more than one example in his ‘Read Me’ files stating that he discussed specific programming issues with “Phil”, also recieving direction from him. I suppose that out of the 30 or so people working at the CRU there might have been another person named “Phil”, other than the one we all know, that might have given this programmer direction on how to “fix” the deplorable state of the CRU databases.
I also want to offer another agreement: we are free to disagree, and at what point do we find common ground? No need to answer, until our state of knowledge concerning the climate advances beyond its current level of relative infancy; contradictions will endure. There will always be people trying to seek advantage from one thing or another.
It is interesting to me the number of people willing to accept CAGW in spite of the evidence to the contrary. I am a worker, I pay taxes, have a family, etc, etc. So when I hear/read that AGW may/is not happening I get encouraged and hopeful. And yes: I get biased; I want to believe it’s not happening.
A part of me finds it difficlult to grasp that a trace gas in an atmosphere with around 7000 trillion tons of mass can boil the oceans and destroy life on the planet. Another part of me asserts that if CAGW were real, factual and “settled” that there would be no controversy. We would ALL hunker down and do what we could without hesitation. But you don’t see the CAGW crowd doing this. Mr. Gore buys a luxury condo in the SF Bay area, an area he says will soon be underwater(?). So, in my mind, something is afoot. People (Gore, Pachy, Oxburgh, the UN et al) have something to gain and they want it VERY badly. And what do people in places of power do when they want something, to what lengths will they go? I know you are aware of history.
I don’t want myself or my children (or anyone else for that matter) paying higher taxes for carbon based on a warming climate when GST’s are flat or declining (depending on start and end dates chosen), SST’s are dropping, la Nina is deepening and Sol is apparently in a Maunder type minimum. Just doesn’t make sense.
In closing let me ask that you, in the privacy of your mind, agree that there is contradictory evidence out there. The science is far from settled. I will concede that perhaps Mr. Mann did not commit outright fraud, by the legal definition. Perhaps this was all done in ignorance and he refused to release his methods and code for honorable reasons (what could those be after all this time and controversy?).
I would ask that you concede, or at least consider that this climate science debate is intimately tied to a political agenda: if AGW is passed off as real we will all pay through the nose. We, the taxpayers, are paying for the research and we, the taxpayers, will pay for mitigation, and we, the taxpayers will lose personal freedoms tied to our/your lifestyles.
Too much has been taken from us by governments already, when does it stop?
Moving on to another thread, see you guys later. Hope you stick around.
Gaylon
I don’t know if you’ll pop back on this thread but in any case I’ll post this.
I think what you said about the political agendas that arise from the science is for me the nub. Though I don’t see one amorphous agenda I see lots of competeing agendas. Sometimes well supported by the science and at times only scarcely.
For instance I really feel queasy when I look at the trumpeting of wind power. In Europe the wind power lobby has been massively successful in riding on the back of climate unease. The subsidies paid to make it appear ‘economic’ are extremely costly and yet its track record in abating emissions is simply piss poor. When you compare France (nuclear) and Denmark (wind), French emissions for energy production are roughly twice that of Denmark though France’s population is more than ten times greater. Have a peek at Scotland, its wind capacity exceeds that of its nuclear capacity and yet wind provides less than 7 percent of its electricity while nuclear bumps around 25 to 32 per cent.
Conversely I see all the energy the oil lobby expends in trying to diss the science. As a historically cheap high density fuel nobody is going to deny the massive importance of oil to the development of the western economies (and coal of course). But there are a suite of energy technologies that can deliver high density returns that would become reasonably attractive if the external cost of oil was charged. One way to keep that off the agenda is to throw up so much flack about the science pretty much the way our friends in tobacco did so many years ago (and yep I’m a hypocrite, I smoke and here in Italy I love nothing more than tearing down the autostrada tipping the clock at a 100 and still getting 35 -40 mpg).
So in short I more than appreciate your unease in seeing how one debate can get hijacked by another and how a vital clarity can be lost (in fact I more than appreciate it I share it). So I’ll always be happy to discuss the science but not what either of us might think or fear is the motive behind the science.
cheers
Marco
According to , Judge Peatross is hopelessly conflicted by the fact that his wife is an ex-employee of Mann’s department at the UVA. She has edited material published in the Climate Change arena for Mann’s colleagues.
Alan Drennan says:
September 4, 2010 at 7:44 am
According to , Judge Peatross is hopelessly conflicted by the fact that his wife is an ex-employee of Mann’s department at the UVA. She has edited material published in the Climate Change arena for Mann’s colleagues.
_____________________________________________
Thanks,
It shows just how corrupt our whole political system has become. Of course that is nothing new. The guy with the money and/or political pull always gets a get out of jail free card. Reminds me of Senator Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne The left lament that the events surrounding Kopechne’s death damaged Kennedy’s reputation. The rest of us just wish an autopsy had been performed.
If Cuccinelli believes there is/was a ‘conflict of interest’ with Judge Peatross then I’m sure he will know how to address that legally.
Until then, Judge Peatross’ judgement still stands and was rather clear :
– Cuccinelli should state the reason for his belief that Mann committed fraud.
– Only grant applications that involved state money are to be considered (which means the claim affects at most only one (1) of Mann’s research papers)
– The information that Cuccinelli can get is restricted to emails regarding the grant application, and NOT the entire email box from Mann as Cuccinelli demanded.
That known, I am not sure how anyone can claim ‘victory’ for Cuccinelli (as is suggested in some of the responses here), and I doubt there will be any more CIDs issued by Cuccinelli.
Either way, since an AG cannot simply demand a scientist’s email box without reason, this is a clear victory for conducting science without running a risk of being attacked by legal hawks that don’t agree with your scientific findings.
I did some research and learned that Cuccinelli’s father is a former marketing executive at the American Gas Association–the gas lobby. Now the elder Cuccinelli has an advertising/marketing company that probably also serves natural gas clients because the father’s expertise in that area is touted. It is even noted that Cuccinelli’s father has another business with clients in “Europe.” Maybe these “European” clients include natural gas companies such as the Russian Gazprom.
The father’s company gave Cuccinelli over 96,000 dollars for his campaign.
I am wondering if there is some conflict of interest here and if Cuccinelli has hijacked the AG office for the financial benefit of his family.
I remember that Congressman Weldon lobbied for the Russian-American gas company Itera, and his daughter got 500,000 dollars in “consulting fees.”
Sometimes professional services can be a way to disguise bribes, so the FBI raided Itera and investigated Weldon.
I think the federal authorities should investigate the possible conflict of interest as they did with Weldon.
Here are some details with links of what I found out.
http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2010/09/attorney-general-cuccinellis-daddy-and.html
The claim that US scientists are greedy and corrupt is a staple of Russian propaganda. Remember when the KGB finally admitted that they had spread the lie that the Pentagon scientists made AIDS to kill blacks?
Izvestiya (3-19-92) reported:
“[Russian intelligence chief Yevgeni Primakov] mentioned the well known articles printed a few years ago in our central newspapers about AIDS supposedly originating from secret Pentagon laboratories. According to Yevgeni Primakov, the articles exposing US scientists’ “crafty” plots were fabricated in KGB offices.”
The Kremlin-financed English-language propaganda channel Russia Today puts those Western global warming denialists on TV. The Russian natural gas business pays the bills for the Kremlin, so they are protecting their profits.
The Russian propaganda generally maintains that global warming is a plot to destroy Russia economically. Last fall, President Medvedev called the global-warming debate “some kind of tricky campaign made up by some commercial structures to promote their business projects.”
Since NASA scientists helped the Russians spot their forest fires this summer, the Russian media has pretty much stopped defaming our scientists as greedy people who tell lies to get government money. Medvedev now says that global warming is happening. One Russian conspiracist claimed there is global warming but our scientists are causing it by beaming “secret climate weapons” at “certain countries” (Russia).
First our scientists were accused in the Russian press of inventing nonexistent global warming and now they are accused of causing global warming, but evidently Cuccinelli didn’t get the memo.
I think if Dr. Mann gets his trigger finger on any Buck Rogers “secret climate weapons” his first target won’t be Russia.