Wow. In the middle of the battle, the warmists erroneously send up a flare from their position, drawing undue attention to the target. I rather expected a moribund outcome from this investigation, maybe a couple of embarrassing quotes, maybe a hotheaded Santeresque comment by Dr. Michael Mann about Dr. Pat Michaels, but that was about it.
Now, with them trying to retroactively change the law as a way to head off the investigation, it makes me wonder if maybe there’s really something profound there in those communications after all. Bad move fellas, you just made the Q Score for this story triple.
From the Daily Progress:
By Bryan McKenzie
Two Democratic state senators are proposing to change state law to thwart Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s efforts to investigate a former University of Virginia professor’s research on global warming.
The proposed legislation would repeal sections of Virginia law that give the state’s attorney general authority to issue civil investigative demands, similar to subpoenas, to gather documents in relation to a civil investigation conducted by the office.
The bill is in response to efforts by Cuccinelli, a Republican, to investigate possible fraud by former UVa professor Michael Mann in relation to five taxpayer-funded research grants between 1999 and 2005.
The senators, A. Donald McEachin and J. Chapman Petersen, will meet this morning with Del. David J. Toscano, D-Charlottesville, at the Capitol to discuss the legislation.
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Read the article in full here
h/t to Bishop Hill
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It’s hard to believe, but there are still those who insist on attempting political suicide.
Intervention, please. Call the crisis hotline.
Please, Senators, don’t jump. We can talk this over.
This reminds me of the way the Watergate coverup went down.
Nothing inspires confidence like hysterical rewrites of the law to prevent even a lawful review of the work one’s allies.
To say that the tax payer/citizen lawful representative cannot even review the work if it is scientific is so bizarre on its face as to leave reasonable people scratching their heads.
If ‘where there is smoke there is fire’ is even a little bit true, then climate science at U Va is smoking like a three alarm fire.
UVA gave up the same type of information requested by the AG without protest, when it was a former professor who was a skeptic. They applied a different standard in this case.
I don’t see how this is an academic freedom issue. There is no effort to silence Mann retrospectively; and he continues his research at Penn State, with the assistance of the University in covering up for him. The issue is to review whether Mann has conducted his research in a way that meets normal standards and to see what may be hidden beyond the decline. The research was paid for by the US and Virginia taxpayers, so the data and communications related to it (which used state-funded computer systems) are subject to review.
The past governor of North Carolina was disgraced by disclosure of e-mails which were generated on State computer systems, and the public nature of those communications was affirmed by courts. The notion that the public or its legal representative cannot review the information due to selectively applied academic freedom claims is suspect.
Look there is certainly nothing to see here, so then do please move on now, good people, move on along.
Look they had to change the peer review process to stop certain facts emerging.
Changing the law to hide the truth is such a small addition thing.
don’t you think?
Oh OK /sarc off
“Never interfere with your enemy while he is making a mistake”
-Napoleon Bonaparte….
Packman1,
While you did not mention Patrick Michaels by name it is only fair to note that the University of Virginia management made no attempt to withhold his emails.
@solrey:
It simply amazes me how little attention that email gets.
———————————————————–
Ninh
NOAA want to give us more money for the El Nino work with IGCN.
How much do we have left from the last budget? I reckon most has been spent but we need to show some left to cover the costs of the trip Roger didn’t make and also the fees/equipment/computer money we haven’t spent otherwise NOAA will be suspicious.
Politically this money may have to go through Simon’s institute but there overhead rate is high so maybe not!
Best wishes
Mick
———————————————————–
I wonder why you would “need to show some left”? You know what that means? It means that there should be something there that isn’t. And they are clearly talking about money. Big fat red flag for fraud. I give 100:1 odds that WikiLeaks puts something out about BofA that is a fraction as damaging, but gets 100,000:1 coverage in the press. Because scientists don’t cheat.
No smoke without fire.
There seem to be a lot of attempts to change the rules lately. Inverting the null hypothesis, sudden new ideas in academic freedom that never applied before, and never applied to Mann’s opponents.
Yeah, I’m sure they’re right, there’s nothing to hide.
Hey, if they paid for the research themselves and weren’t both using my money for it and demanding more of my money based on their conclusions, they could keep all the secrets they wanted.
John Kehr says:
“Mann is scum, I am not arguing that. He is a bad scientist, but Cuccinelli is a horrible Attorney General and he is abusing his position. Al Gore abused his power to turn climate science into a political machine. Cuccinelli is no better.”
John, it’s very clear the University released the same type of data when it just happened to be a global warming sceptic and the FOIA came from greenpeace.
But when it’s a global warmer somehow the FOIA law doesn’t apply to them.
Something very very odd is happening here – the best way to shut up Cuccinelli would be to comply with the FOIA as they complied with FOIA for the Greenpeace request – but for some reason they are treating an FOIA for sceptical information very differently from that for warmist information.
Unless anyone can come up with a viable reason to explain their compliance for one type of information and non-compliance for another, that would appear to be a prima facia for conspiracy by the University to defraud.
John Kehr says:
January 18, 2011 at 4:54 pm
I am opposed to this type of political inquiry into scientific institutions.
The problem is that many previously scientific institutions have morphed into government funded political institutions that generate and underpin government propaganda… calling these institutions scientific is stretching the imagination to the point of comedy.
This sort of ethical corruption is endemic whenever the government funds institutions… these institutions are now called Non Government Organisations – NGOs. NGOs are funded by politicians to produce political propaganda and to lobby the funding politicians … its a closed loop that is used to subvert democracy… NGOs have now become an oxymoron… as they say: follow the money.
If the law is retroactively changed, one could make the argument for green
peacecorp be retroactively charged for receiving records relating to Patrick Michaels.I vaguely recall they have spent $500,000 so far. What have they got to hide to go to such lengths including attempting to change the law?
natural trend and a weaker human CO2 effect than Ira claims.
John Kehr says:
January 18, 2011 at 4:54 pm
“I am opposed to this type of political inquiry into scientific institutions. Even if Mann did use the funds and misrepresent the data, that does not deserve this type of relentless investigation.”
What an incredible statement. If a misuse of funds and a misrepresentation of data does not justify investigation then what does? The investigation is relentless only because the university will not release the documents. Had they done so by now and proven they had nothing to hide then the matter would by now have been laid to rest
The tactic of flagging this desired law change has instead flagged that there is something other than the purity and freedom of UVa and its scientists at stake. The proposed law change is somewhat remeniscent of a small boy telling his teacher after a playground fist-fight “He hit my fist with his chin with no warning at all!”
It’s very simple.
As a lawyer, I adopt a rule of thumb:
the harder an opponent tries to avoid disclosing something to me, the more damaging it is likely to be to their position.
Seems to me they are trying very hard indeed to avoid disclosure here.
Are some emails deleted after a set period of time? 5 years, 10 years?
Could the university be using delaying tactics to ensure some emails can be deleted before they are finally required to release them?
AngusPangus says:
January 19, 2011 at 1:11 am
absolutely. They doth protest too much methinks
“with them trying to retroactively change the law as a way to head off the investigation, it makes me wonder if maybe there’s really something profound there in those communications after all.”
Don’t think that’s a necessary assumption. Seems more likely to me that this is motivated by the usual CliSci attitude: ‘But, but, but… We shouldn’t even have to aaaanswer* these sorts of questions!’
[*Can you hear the wail of anguished self-righteous frustration in that word? 😉 ]
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
January 18, 2011 at 6:30 pm
FOI is supposed to be enough. But that’s not enough according to these two. Not only is FOI being resisted by global warming scientists but now Democrat ‘lawmakers’ want to help the resisting.
It is becoming obvious that Dr. Michael Mann is not the one being defended here. There is some entity that has the clout to direct the University to spend tuition money on lawyers to defend this case. Failing with the lawyers, it has become necessary to expend not one, but two politicians embedded in the legislature.
The power and the money at stake here must be tremendous. Someone, or some organization, desperately wants this information to remain secret. They are willing to consume accumulated political capital at both the administrative level of the University and in the State Government to protect themselves.
Dr. Mann is expendable. The administration of the University is expendable. Two politicians are expendable. Whatever it is being defended here must be remarkably valuable indeed.
Actually, legislatures can pass laws to block on-going activities in many ways. Directly or indirectly by removing funding from any government entity. In lay terms, whoever has the gold rules – whence the “golden rule” of human governments.
Imho, I don’t see this protecting Mann so much as simply blocking any method(s) that government agencies/offices would have to shine light into the darkness of global warmists. This would allow the warmist’s narrative to continue without any challenge by an “official” government entity. I.E., only the kook deniars. Which, in turn, allows the politicians of the left to base climate bills using “not one government agency has determined that global warming has not occurred and that humans are, in part, responsible.” Then they jump to tax, spend, regulations, et al.
The Left is really good at these type of moves of taking a rather murky area (Mann emails) that on the surface seem like they’re somehow private, sorta, and use it to reverse story and lead to imposing all sorts of laws. They play chess while their opposites seem stuck in endless games of checkers.
To John Kehr,
I would disagree. Not that I think someone using public funds for a Hangoveresque night out is a good thing. I disagree because Mann and others have stepped over the line of science and become activists, and the proposed changes to our economy based in large part on the work of Mann et al is going to cost everyone a hell of a lot more than one night with some strippers. The potential consequences for allowing Mann to perpetuate fraud are enormous.
John Kehr:
Have you lost sight of what’s at stake for many countries and their populations?
A very good government has already fallen in 2007 in my country, because it took the realist view and wanted to have all scientific views available to it before putting the country’s economic future at risk.
It seems to me that your view allows suppression of information at the whim of this elite group of scientists and those who would protect them, if they so wish—when their actions and advice have the potential to destroy economies, livelihoods—-and to damage future trust in scientists.
Whether you recognise it or not, this is already political.
While the Democrats do control the Virginia State Senate, the Republicans control the house, and many of the ‘Democrats’ in the Senate are not traditional Democrats. I suspect this is just political grandstanding on the part of these two Senators as the real battles in the State assemblies will be over redistricting based on the 2010 Census results.
First here’s todays WashPost story on it:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/18/AR2011011806201.html
Second, 2011 is a state election year for virginia including all State Senators…I think the Dem senators are just trying to create an issue to begin rallying their base for November.
Just politics.