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Virginia AG Probing Michael Mann For Fraud
eldavojohn writes "Republican Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has requested receipts and research documents relating to nearly half a million dollars in state taxpayer money used to conduct climate change research at the University of Virginia while under direction of Michael Mann, originator of the famous 2001 IPCC Hockey Stick graph depicting rapid climate change. Mann appears to be a prime target for Cuccinelli — who has also requested hearings with the EPA to contest the grounds of their carbon dioxide studies. Mann's expenditures of taxpayer money may become problematic if Cuccinelli finds violations of Virginia's Fraud Against Taxpayers Act. Cuccinelli has been active in pushing conservative views in the past, including an effort to remove the titillating mammary from the beloved Great Seal of Virginia. No end in sight for the politicizing of the science and research surrounding climate change."
From his point of view, his state may have spent a large deal of money on something that may have given tainted results. How many pro-climate change supporters would act any different in the same position had Michael Mann brought proof against global warming?
Don't hold your breath: Persecution of scientists who support inconvenient ideas is a tried and true tradition of politicians who wish to maintain power. During the cold war, they would call you communist and wreck your career if you supported social reforms. They took away Linus Pauling's passport and only gave it back to him so he could travel to Stockholm to receive his Nobel Prize. Oppenheimer's reputation never did recover after his security clearance was revoked, even though everything they said about him was a complete lie. Before that, the church would try you for heresy if you were uppity. Also, every time a dictator or oligarchy takes power, they always kill the intellectuals first.
Mann did invite a lot of criticism by not opening his data when people asked him for it. I'm referring of course to the issues with the bristlecone pine and his convolution of several sets of temperature proxies. I haven't heard of any evidence that Mann is involved in any fraud though, but witch hunts by their very nature never come up empty-handed. This one won't either.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Can you envision any scenario where a republican calling for a fraud investigation related to climate research would not be criticized as "politicizing science"? I agree that's probably what's happening in this particular case, but it seems that any call for an investigation would end up being impugned as "politicizing science" regardless of the investigation's merits.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574438900830760842.html
Its better to test these claims in front of a court than to listen to the defamation of sciene much longer. Much easier to defend yourself there.
Being gay is probably genetic.There's physical differences in the brains of gays.
I've pointed this out before but was moderated into oblivion. What you're saying is true. These differences clearly show up in MRIs. They have different brain chemistry - just as normal males and females also differ; whereby gays match neither.
What's not commonly known and likely the reason I've always been moderated negatively is that many "gays" do not have different brain chemistry from other males which likely means for many "gays" it absolutely is a choice.
What I have done a poor job of explaining is, of those who call themselves gay, there is very likely those who are born gay, having different brain chemistry, and those who choose to act gay. And so it seems the truth is likely somewhere in the middle. For some its a choice. For others, not so much. At least, that's what science seems to be saying on the subject once you get past the political correctness BS.
Another tidbit is also likely explains why I get moderated to hell is that many mental illnesses also show up on MRIs. Which suggests diseases such as sociopaths and psychopaths, among many others, are not actually diseases. You can't have it both ways. If you follow the logical conclusion, either these are not diseases or they are. And if male and female is not a disease then it suggests that sociopaths, psychopaths, and homosexuality are also not a disease. But it also suggests that sociopaths and psychopaths are not wrongly persecuted and even worse, testing may be to the greater benefit of society. Sadly this means most CEOs would wind up the pariahs of society rather than the overly paid, valued members they current are.
Actually, Cuccinelli wasn't "appointed" as attorney general—he was elected. He defeated Democrat Steve Shannon by a huge margin. We chose to have this guy as AG, and it wasn't even close. Any informed voter should have known what they were getting into with Cuccinelli. He's really, really far right, and he's never hid it. It doesn't speak well of Virginia.
Washington Post article about it.
"U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said in a statement that Cuccinelli's advice would "damage the Commonwealth's reputation for academic excellence and diversity."
""What he's saying is reprehensible," said Vincent F. Callahan Jr., a former Republican member of the House of Delegates who serves on George Mason's board of visitors. "I don't know what he's doing, opening up this can of worms."
Total prick. He might as well of put out a press release that simply said "I hate fags." As a Virginia resident, and a friend to some of the few homosexual persons whom have managed to, and are somehow willing to stick it out in the state: We hate Ken Cuccinelli.
> The point is, I would highly doubt that a news periodical like Time would
> just pull a story out of their arses without any actual basis to them.
You do understand that even in their greatest era of actual news reporting, all news-providing entities are in the fundamental business of providing entertainment for their customers? And that newness, controversy, and oh-my-gawd-doom stories have been entertaining to the masses since, oh 30,000 BC? The idea that anything that appears in Time Magazine has a factual basis, or even a strong factual basis, can be easily refuted by scanning through a few issues from the 1930s.
sPh
My guess is this has little to do with Michael Mann or the University of Virginia. This has everything to do with the AG's petition to put the EPA's threatened regulation of carbon dioxide under review. The AG is seeking to undermine the EPA's grounds for action by showing that it is based on weak, missing, or faulty scientific evidence.
The law the AG is using is the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, a relatively new "whistleblower" law. The kinds of fraud this law attempts to cover are:
* Submitting false service records or samples in order to show better-than-actual performance.
* Falsifying natural resource production records -- Pumping, mining or harvesting more natural resources from public lands that is actually reported to the government.
* Billing for research that was never conducted; falsifying research data that was paid for by the U.S. government.
Arguably, if the AG can show that the climate science was cooked, he could have a case. If he wins it, he may have established a legal precedent for throwing out the climate data in the EPA case.
This sounds like a pretty smart legal move, if you are a Republican and you control the governorship of Virginia.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
The same AG who changed the Virginia state seal to cover up a breast. The same state seal designed by George Wythe, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. http://hamptonroads.com/2010/04/cuccinelli-opts-more-modest-state-seal
You seem to be missing some important parts of the climate theory, check out the milankovitch cycles. It's actually testable, identifiable, and is fairly well accepted. It explains why eventually there will be another ice age.
Qxe4
I've read a paper? where it was postulated that homosexuality in males was caused by / influenced by the same set of genes that increased the fertility in females. Therefore the gene set causes a detriment when in a male but a benefit when in a female. Given 50/50 distribution of sexes, as long as the penalty in males is less then the benefit in females its will spread. What you mention also plays into this as having only one set would basically give you all / most of the benefit with very little of the cost. Additionally keep in mind that having no children doesn't mean that you are a dead weight to your genes - you are free to help out others (who would likely be related and share a subset of genes) and possibly increase the overall percentage of those genes in the gene pool. However this only holds in species that operate in related groups, and the gay gene cannot be above some ratio to normals or it would become a detriment.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Another tidbit is also likely explains why I get moderated to hell is that many mental illnesses also show up on MRIs. Which suggests diseases such as sociopaths and psychopaths, among many others, are not actually diseases.
Yes, that *is* probably why you get moderated to hell, because you're *plainly wrong*. Sorry, but the idea of mind-body separation, originally championed by René Descartes in the first half of the *17th century*, was proven to be bullshit, along with most of Freudian psychoanalysis, a long time ago. And good riddance since these bodies of ideas have plagued the understanding and treatment of mental illness ever since.
Your *brain is an organ* and as such is subject to affliction by many and various disorders and *diseases* that interfere with its normal functioning.
And if you're wondering, yes I have a mental illness ( OCD ) and I know many others that do as well ( and have known, as some have taken their own lives ) as my family is heavily involved in NAMI. You're comment, which comes only a day after the Nami Metropolitan Houston Walk, is a testament to how far we still have to go as a society in ridding ourselves of destructive ignorance such as you possess. Welcome to the 21st century.
jdb2
There is a good summary of separated homosexual twin studies here. The conclusion is that, if one twin is gay, then the probability of the other being gay is around 55%. Many people misunderstand genetics and statistics, and think that this implies being gay is not genetic, since they expect there to be a 100% probability "because it's genetic and twins have the same genes". This is a incorrect view. Quote from a more detailed explanation of why:
"Assume that 5% of males have a homosexual orientation as adults. Consider two identical newborn twin boys who were separated at birth and raised in different homes without any contact with each other. If homosexuality were caused by something in the environment, then, if twin #1 turned out to be gay, the chances of the other twin becoming a gay adults would only be about 5%. That is because the second twin would have been exposed to a totally different environment during his upbringing. So his chances of being gay would be the same as for any other male -- about 5%. But, studies have reliably shown that if one twin is gay, there is about a 55% chance that the other twin will be gay."
and about 50% of studies find that genetics is a significant factor in homosexuality and 50% do not
If one identical twin develops schizophrenia, the other twin has "only" a 48% chance of also developing the disorder. This does not mean that genetics is not a significant factor.
Two people have responded with justifications for "hate crime" legislation. The problem is that those proposing these laws never try and prove that existing laws are insufficient detterent. For example, the argument was made in 2000 that hate crime legislation was needed in Texas because of the guys who drug a black man behind a pickup. Two of the three involved were sentenced to death. There was no evidence that the third was involved because of racism. Texas has no "hate crime" laws, yet this case was used to promote the idea of passing one. Exactly what greater penalty would a "hate crime" law have imposed on the men sentenced to death (note: there was no evidence that the one who was not sentenced to death had racial motivations in committing the crime).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison