Slashdot Mirror
Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli's AGW Witch Hunt Continues
eldavojohn writes "A letter from Representative Edward Markey outlines Ken Cuccinelli's latest civil investigative demand targeting 39 people instead of just Michael Mann. You may recall that the original investigation was quashed by a judge, but the latest request demands records from people seemingly unrelated to Mann, including an Indian glaciologist. The Bad Astronomer calls Cuccinelli out in a similar manner and lists Cuccinelli's doubts about Mann's papers, including, 'Specifically, but without limitation, some of the conclusions of the papers demonstrate a complete lack of rigor regarding the statistical analysis of the alleged data, meaning that the result reported lacked statistical significance without a specific statement to that effect.' The school that hosted the research announced the new investigation, and the Union of Concerned Scientists accuses him of harassing scientists."
The litigation has so far cost the university $352,874.76, Wood said, adding that the fees have been paid for from private funds.
And that's just legal fees from the university's side of things, the state itself has its own costs to look at for the first investigation and I'm sure many people are spending hours handling this. So you might be wondering what the original research that Mann did cost the university? Answer: under $500,000. So with this latest round of litigation, the Attorney General -- who is championing this effort under the guise of protecting tax payer dollars -- will force the state of Virginia to pay up again.
When I submitted this, I was hoping to find some news of this latest round from the more conservative press (Fox News, Washington Times) instead of the more liberal (New York Times, Washington Post) but there's nothing from that side of the spectrum. I think a local paper put it best in an editorial entitled Cuccinelli Needs to Cut Our Losses.
My work here is dung.
Link to M. Mann's blog
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
...the Bad Astronomer is a complete badass and needs to have a bronze statue of himself placed in front of every educational institution across the country. Wearing a cape, and a bazooka, but loaded with knowledge instead of rockets.
As much as I want to free the climate science from biases and dishonesty, this is not the way to do it.
That said, that 10:10 movie aired by the proponents of catastrophic global warming was a thousands times worse than this misguided lawsuit.
How about just the slightest hint saying what this is about. Is that so hard?
Like what the fuck is AGW, etc... What is this in reference to? I mean just one simple sentence would tell me whether I care about this article or not.
Here's Rule 3.1 of Virginia's Rules of Professional Conduct:
ADVOCATE
RULE 3.1 Meritorious Claims And Contentions
A lawyer shall not bring or defend a proceeding, or assert or controvert an issue therein, unless there is a basis for
doing so that is not frivolous, which includes a good faith argument for an extension, modification or reversal of
existing law. A lawyer for the defendant in a criminal proceeding, or the respondent in a proceeding that could
result in incarceration, may nevertheless so defend the proceeding as to require that every element of the case be
established.
(emphasis mine)
Let's hope the judge, knowing Cuccinelli's previous attempt was unfounded and this being a wild fishing expedition, would actually enforce the rules and sanction him with the State Bar association.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
STATS, 2007 (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change )
In 2007, Harris Interactive surveyed 489 randomly selected members of either the American Meteorological Society or the American Geophysical Union for the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at George Mason University. The survey found 97% agreed that global temperatures have increased during the past 100 years; 84% say they personally believe human-induced warming is occurring, and 74% agree that “currently available scientific evidence” substantiates its occurrence. Only 5% believe that that human activity does not contribute to greenhouse warming; and 84% believe global climate change poses a moderate to very great danger.[98] [99]
Any questions?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I wasn't sure what the heck this article was talking about, so I had to read the start of TFA.
So, the Virginia Attorney General is trying to pull in records related to a climate researcher to demonstrate that he has "fraudulently" used his grant money to arrive at conclusions the AG doesn't like, but other scientists agree with his basic methodology?
WTF is an Attorney General doing investigating scientists. He's not qualified, and it's not within his mandate.
Am I missing something? The 50's called, they want their McCarthyism back.
This whole story reads like a witch hunt -- America, you are in decline, and about two elections from being ran by drooling idealogues with no interest in facts. Between the Tea Party and the Social Conservatives, you are being controlled by people who are too fucking stupid to do anything but shout louder than anybody they disagree with.
Washington Post: "Ken Cuccinelli seems determined to embarrass Virginia":
What's particularly astonishing, though, is that Mr. Cuccinelli's legal case against Mr. Mann seems unrelated to any of the controversial research the attorney general spends so much time attacking. Mr. Cuccinelli is supposedly investigating whether Mr. Mann committed fraud when the scientist applied for and received a state-funded research grant -- to study what Mr. Mann describes as "the interaction of the land, atmosphere and vegetation in the African savannah." The topic "has nothing to do with climate change or paleoclimate," Mann says. The attorney general appears to argue that, since Mr. Mann listed his controversial papers on his curriculum vitae when he and two other scientists applied for the savannah research grant, he may have committed some kind of fraud.
The attorney general's logic is so tenuous as to leave only one plausible explanation: that he is on a fishing expedition designed to intimidate and suppress honest research and the free exchange of ideas upon which science and academia both depend -- all because he does not like what science says about climate change. "
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I voted straight up republican(except cooconelli) because I was sick of the dems. Fuck them. Fuck them all.
What the hell is wrong with this idiot
You're right in that the research of MMann didn't cost the university more than $500k but if you do a google search you'll find a WSJ article stating that he recived $541k dollars in stimulus funds in june 2009, so his drain on taxpayers money directly is still greater than the litigation costs, and of course the implementation cost of the policy he advocates and do research to support would have a pricetag several magnitudes higher.
I believe this is the article you're talking about. And I believe it's referring to 'last June' when Michael Mann was teaching at Penn State. Mann only taught at UVA from 1999 to 2005. Here's the paragraph:
According to the conservative think tank the National Center for Public Policy Research, Mann received $541,184 in economic stimulus funds last June to conduct climate change research.
Emphasis mine. So he received another half a million to continue his research this year? And that's wrong because? Also, Ken Cuccinelli holds no domain over Pennsylvania State University. See, when a university is given the authority to decide where its funds go, you usually don't spend twice that much money investigating whether or not the research done meets your statistical muster or political goals -- especially when you're not an expert in that field!
... so his drain on taxpayers money directly is still greater than the litigation costs ...
Yeah, you could look at Mann's whole life and his health insurance and everything but we're not. We're focusing on one particular study done by Mann for half a million dollars carried out at UVA.
Have fun tracking down every climate scientist gathering funds for any kind of climate research and charging them with wasting taxpayers dollars. By the time you're done, it will be impossible to draw any scientific conclusion about climate change because any indication that you construe to be economically painful will be met with lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit.
My work here is dung.
The man's a brilliant lawyer. I've read a number of opinions he offered as AG. They are uniformly well argued, even when I wish the conclusions were otherwise. Worse, from the perspective of those who support Mann, Cuccinelli thoroughly analyzes the relevant law and doesn't misinterpret it to fit his preconceptions. Unlike former Virginia AG's, I didn't find a single example where I said, "No, that's obviously not what the law you just quoted means."
If Mann cut any corners, Cuccinelli will crucify him.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
This situation is becoming increasingly dire as we see prosecutors and AGs abuse their position by using the weight of their office against their political opponents. As most are elected positions, it is expected to see their personal motivations in which cases they pursue more vigoursly. However the 'fair' amount you would expect would be measured in slight percentage shifts in caseloads (10% more of this type of case prosecuted under so and so vs the previous AG).
However, this is a serious problem as we now have people with the weight of the state at their disposal (and therefore effectively unlimited time and money). I've long had issue with the fact that the state can weild disproportionate power in our legal system. My issue stems from the fact that our system is an adversarial system. It works well when both opponents are equally matched in capability and means, but when you allow the state side to fund their case in volumes orders of magnitude greater than what their opponent could expect to literally earn in their lifetime, it breaks and it doesn't fail gracefully like a pair of shoes wearing out, it fails like shattering a plate glass window with your bare hand.
Back on the main topic of prosecutors using the state as their personal weapons, these sorts of actions need to be stopped NOW and with sufficient force because this is only going to undermine our legal system and eventually put innocent people's lives in danger.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Have you actually seen the 10:10 mini movie? It's typical UK style black humour, written by the same guy who wrote Blackadder, it's style is reminicent of Monty Python's "Holy Grail". It was withdrawn due to complaints about violence from people like you who didn't get the joke.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Virginia is an armed state, with a rich history. I'm sure you can figure out something to remedy the situation.
Has he tried looking in Delaware?
Ah yes, the "he's so good and respected he couldn't *possibly* have done anything wrong!"
http://www.thegwpf.org/gwpf-reports/1531-the-climategate-inquries.html
"The way in which Mann was exonerated proved extremely controversial and even neutral commentators appeared to be taken aback by some of the panel’s reasoning. Writing in The Atlantic, Clive Crook, widely seen as a neutral on the question of global warming, said:"
“The report...says, in effect, that Mann is a distinguished scholar, a successful raiser of research funding, a man admired by his peers – so any allegation of academic impropriety must be false...
Mann is asked if the allegations (well, one them) are true, and says no. His record is swooned over. Verdict: case dismissed with apologies that Mann has been put to such trouble.”"
McIntyre & McIntrick objections to Mann have been fully documented and responded to in the academic discourse. However, McIntyre & McIntrick have been unable to respond to the objections. Their argument as been reduced to vapor.
So... how do you know what is real?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
If 97% of those scientists had facts, they should've polled them for citations of those facts, not their opinions. You make it sound like the 3% of scientists couldn't possibly have had facts to back up what they say, leading us to essentially judge this as a popularity contest, or a statistical guess that 97% of people will always be more right than 3% of people.
If we're going to do science in the strictest sense, what the survey should've asked was "what observations would falsify your hypothesis"? The "heads I win, tails you lose" of AGW "predictions" doesn't count as science until it can be stated as a falsifiable hypothesis, and scientists aren't doing science unless they're actively trying to falsify their own closely held beliefs as best as they can.
A very truthy screed there, with quite a few discredited claims and false characterizations. You should be proud!
I guess you drive an SUV since it seems the "deluded SUV drivers" jab is what set you off. I drive one too, but I'm not... how can I put this delicately? um, I don't have great cause to assume that deluded SUV drivers includes me.
At least you realize Cap and Trade is a conservative, capitalist approach to reduce pollution which does not "feed the beast" like the other option (Ban and Fine). You got that one right, so you are a hell of a lot smarter than the Teabaggers, who generally think cap and trade is a socialist or communist plot! It's a plutocrat plot perhaps, or a green libertarian conspiracy, but sure as hell not communist.
The Attorney General's investigation is pursuant to the work of Michael Mann on the "hockey stick" graph (of temperatures over the last millennium). For a detailed presentation of the evidence that the work was probably bogus, see the book Hockey Stick Illusion by Andrew Montford. There is more than enough evidence to justify investigation of Mann's work. And the attempt by Mann's colleagues to cover up for one of their own is shameful.
Why the appeal to consensus? This is something I see all the time when it comes to global warming, and it is something that sets off a warning bell. The reasons is that, as Feynman noted, consensus is what salesmen and charlatans use. "4 out of 5 dentists agree that using toothpaste X results in less cavities." Well that is marketing, not science, and in fact doesn't mean much. While it might mean that 20% of dentists are dumb, it might mean to opposite: It might mean 80% of dentists are basing their opinion on something other than the pure facts, while the top 20%, those around a standard deviation or more above the mean, evaluated the facts and found that type of toothpaste was irrelevant.
Good science arguments are not what percentage of people think something they are, well, science. They are the theories, and the facts that back up those theories. In particular they are all the things you've done to try and prove the theory wrong that have failed. A strong theory is strong when you've tried to find alternative explanations and they fail. You have a theory that says X causes Y, and there's evidence that X and Y are found in close proximity. Good start. Then you say "Well Z is found a lot too, what if it is actually Z that causes Y?" So you tests and you find evidence that no, Z doesn't cause Y. You also say "Well maybe there is another factor A, that we haven't seen yet, that actually causes both X and Y," so you search for that, but no evidence of A is found. Each time you do this, each time you come up with an alternate theory (a sane, logical theory) that would fit the evidence, and you test it and it turns out to be wrong, you are more sure you are right with your theory.
Basically you keep trying to falsify your theory, keep trying to prove it wrong. The more times you fail to prove it wrong, the more likely it is right. You try alternate explanations, and when yours is the only one that fits, well that means good chance it is the right one.
So I am given to wonder why so often this theory is sold in terms of percentage of believers. It really does seem like it is being sold like a product, or a political process. "Well enough people have voted this is right, so that's the situation. Can't argue, we have a consensus." While that doesn't make it wrong, it sure does set off a warning bell. So why is it done that way?
Please note before you go off on me, I am deliberately not stating my views on the matter of global warming. Don't think you can correctly infer them.
Cuccinelli is the modern Republican. If you're planning to vote Republican next month, you're planning to throw states and the Congress into nothing but witch hunts like these when Republicans have more power. They refuse to govern, and are interested in only witch hunts for more power to protect their cronies. They will impeach Obama for Clinton's blowjob if you elect them.
--
make install -not war
I misread the title of your post as "Cuccinelli makes me embarrassed to be a Virgin."
No offense intended, of course. I just felt I should contribute some observations to this debate.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
So you value "evidence that the work was probably bogus" from an Accountant who majored in Chemistry over every professional climate science association on the planet? That the UN IPCC is defrauding the world for the sake of "covering up for one of their own"?
> There is more than enough evidence to justify investigation of Mann's work
So investigate it. That's what scientists do, that's what peer review is for. The criminal justice system is for murderers and robbers, not scientists with unpopular conclusions.
Unless ...
nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
I worked in a research lab, mostly as a software engineer, and was put as an author on a paper for which I did about 1,000 pages worth of reading, and even then, that's considered a minor contribution to the lab's research. This paper was submitted to several minor conferences, and even then, it wasn't accepted until about a year's worth of refinement and criticism from reviewers.
If there was any attempt of committing fraud, it would have been discovered by other researchers aiming to get a piece of the action as soon as it was published, especially in a controversial field like climatology.
The statistical predictor used being possibly erroneous does not mean that fraud was committed. Correction of previous research is what research is all about. Tell me, did Cuccinelli ever go after any other researcher who was proven wrong after further research? Should we go back in time and accuse Stephen Hawking for fraud for being wrong about some behavior's of black-holes? Obviously he fraudulently came to his ideas and certainly didn't form his explanations off of the most relevant available data at the time.
Oh, but wait, of course climatologists are committing fraud because a bunch of nobody's, who can hack into email accounts, but otherwise could not list the steps of the scientific method without first doing a google search or asking a 3rd grader, said so.
Your first point seems to be an adhominem argument. I will not dignify it by saying more about it.
Regarding your last point, peer review is not intended to catch fraud; for some discussion, see e.g. here. The criminal justice system is for people who have committed criminal acts: committing fraud with taxpayers' money, as Mann has been alleged to have done, is such an act.
> Your first point seems to be an adhominem argument.
No, it is an "appeal to authority" argument. If I maligned the author's character while avoiding the actual issue, that would be an ad hominem argument.
>> So investigate it. That's what scientists do, that's what peer review is for.
> peer review is not intended to catch fraud
But it often does. And you ignored half the sentence - competing scientists are definitely out to disprove each other. That's the whole point of being a scientist, discovering things nobody else understood.
Considering that Cuccinelli has also covered up the naked breast on the Virgina State Seal (ala John Ashcroft) maybe there's some truth in your misreading.
Actually I'd say it's much closer that the IPCC is trying to set agenda which will cover it's own, as well as make specific individuals an ass tone of money.
If you've been paying attention to the news or your papers the last while, you'd find that the majority of what the IPCC writes is junk full of factual and scientific errors. And shouldn't be used for anything but bird droppings. Take, leave, I couldn't care. But the second that the guys in climate research start going 'lulul sun has nothing to do with global warming,' I just want to start beating my head against the wall.
Oh and recent paper came along "sun has major impact on climate" ah whatever.
Om, nomnomnom...
Get you facts straight. Christine O'Donnell is running in Delaware, not Virginia.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Well... you have to read and understand for yourself. There is no way around it. I encourage you to actually *look* at the arguments and the rebuttal. After a while you will notice a predictable pattern -- where one side actually responds to criticisms, and the other side clutches at straws, and brings up the same tired arguments over and over again, all the while never responding to criticism.
Unfortunately it takes time and patient, but if you have both, you can easily get to the bottom of this nonsense. Assertions based solely on motivations are too vapid to make a discourse. You must to the work yourself.
btw, you should know that in tearing down science, market researchers discovered (using science) that people are much more comfortable impugning motives then talking about the actual issues. The effects of marketing are pernicious. So if you find yourself solely basing your opinions on the motivations of others (and not the content or their arguments, or the content of their actions), then you may well have fallen prey to a well orchestrated misinformation campaign.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
And the left has The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from My Father, so what is your point?
Both sides have anti-science members, look at the anti-vax movement in the left pushed on Huffington Post.
He disagrees with something said on FOX News, therefore he is doing this solely to promote a socialist agenda designed to turn America into a communist-fascist atheist-Muslim nightmare in which everyone is forced to become gay and burn all the Bibles. How can you possibly defend someone like that? [/rightwingstrawman]
When somebody at the university level gets a grant, part of that money goes straight to the university, some of it is used for equipment, and the rest of it goes towards paying grad students.
On top of that, if a professor wants to go to a conference to present a paper, the university most likely isn't going to pay for it. The cost of the air fare, the hotel, and the conference admission fee (which can cost over $1000 in some cases) are paid for out of pocket.
The people making money off of climatologists work are individuals not affiliated with research, usually they are con artists who sell "carbon credits" and "green" toilet paper and the likes.
What matters is what the public sees, and most of those FOX News zombies will look at all of this and see the Noble Attorney General defending them from the vast international conspiracy consisting of 90% of the planet's scientists and being run from Al Gore's house (oops, I mean run from an obscure school in the UK, I forgot about the emails), which is of course in turn part of a much larger 4 decade old conspiracy by Kenyan goat herders to install a secret Muslim terrorist agent in the White House, who would destroy America by creating Death Panels that execute all the elderly white people so that undeserving black people can buy Rolls Royces with food stamps.
Did I mention that millions of stupid people are allowed to vote in my country?
And in related news George Mason University opens an investigation into professional misconduct and plagiarism by Ed Wegman. Wegman, you may remember, prepared a hit piece on Michael Mann for Rep Joe Barton, but was a wee bit careless as have been his students and collaborators
My agenda is to find the truth.
The marginal cost of accommodating some information is too great, because it challenges deep structures in cognitive models, or schemata. This is the same for every human being, and is the reason why we can become psychotic. We all experience this to a certain degree, which Eysenck made a big deal about in his personality models.
It is the human condition it believe that we are searching for truth - but we will always have an agenda in creatively processing certain types of information, no matter who we are.
Only a buddha has no agenda.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
They are only good models if they accurately model what they are supposed to. I can make a computer model that says anything I want. I can make a computer model that says the sun will explode tomorrow. However that doesn't mean it is the case, it just means I've made a bad model.
So for a model to have any validity, any use, it has to be predictive. You have to be able to state a few things about it as well. You have to be able to say what it will predict, with what resolution it can make those predictions, and with what accuracy. If you don't know all of those three things then you don't understand your own model. You have to be able to say something like "This models temperature as a global average, it can model changes month by month, but no smaller, and it is accurate to withing 10%," or something like that.
Then, the model has to be tested. You have the model generate its predictions, and you wait, you watch what really happens. If the models predictions match reality within the bounds of the error most or all of the time, you've got a good model. If it doesn't your model is a bad one. The longer your model is capable of doing this, the more sure you can be that it is indeed a good model and can be used for future predictions. However if it consistently makes errors, then you need to throw it out. You aren't modeling what is actually happening.
So while models are useful, people need to note that they are only useful is they accurately model what they claim to (and by extension that they can make claims as to what the model and how accurate). This is also difficult, as applied to climate science, because you are talking about people modeling something as complex as the climate on a laptop computer, often with only a bit of CPU time to calculate the results. That's fine, but it just means it is an extreme simplification. Simplifications are ok, we use them all the time, even something extremely low level like a Spice circuit simulation is a simplification. However that means you have to get the simplification right. You have to make sure you aren't excluding important things, that things you simplify are accurate simplifications and so on. That's tough. Not impossible, just tough. It means that you have to also be very honest in testing and making sure your model indeed does predict what it claims, to the accuracy it should and that you state that accuracy.
That is the final important part, is that you have to state the accuracy, and it has to be reasonably accurate to be useful. For example I could develop a temperature model that would give you by the minute temperature predictions and hit them within its parameters basically all the time... It would just have an accuracy of about +-1000%. In other words, I'd just make median temperature guesses and set the error bars so big they were always inside. However that wouldn't tell you anything that was useful.
Don't worry, almost everyone on slashdot...oh, Virginian.
The war on science probably has better funding now than the war on drugs.
It's called getting a username and logging in - that gives you +1 to start. Then over time after writing a lot of comments that get modded up (~50 mod points?) you start at +2 for any new comment.
No conspiracy theory is involved and nobody is out to get you, it's just a system making it easier to send trolls to -1 where they won't scare the horses in the street while making it so a single disagreement won't hide the comments of a frequent poster.
In the editorial Mann says even if you ignore his work and the whole field of paleoclimate it doesn't change the climatologists conclusions on global warming.
So Mann doesn't really matter that much, he's just a convenient boogy man that people have heard about.