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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."
There should be a law against misappropriating funds for political witch-hunts, but somehow I don't think that it's fit relative to the selective pressures that act upon laws.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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.
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
"implementation cost of the policy [Mann] advocates"
I've read a lot of stuff from Mann but I'm unaware of any particular policy he is advocating other than the general "we need to cut emmissions". Can you provide a link to the "policy Mann advocates", and please no hearsay from the usual suspects, I want it in his own words.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
OK, lets say if someone rips you off for half a million, you decide not to pursue them because it will cost nearly that much again. So, someone else sees that you don't pursue cases like this, and rips you off for another half a million. You don't pursue them because of the cost, so someone else does it as well. Better to spend a million chasing the first guy, so the second (and third, and subsequent) know that you are not someone to fuck with.
Now of course this may be a politically motivated witch hunt, I don't know, but I'm making a general point that deterrent actions might not be cost-effective in the short term but might still pay off in the long term.
This. It's so obvious when you follow the money and motives on each side.
Take the profit motive out of everything, invest in education and diversify your political electoral system and reform campaign finance....would be a start
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
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.
"Researchers like Mann (as opposed to scientists who develop logical theories based on science)"
You have got to be fucking kidding, Mann is at the top of his field and lists well over 100 papers in his CV, many of them in journals such as Nature and Science. The only reason this crooked AG can get away with resurecting McCarthyisim is because useful idiots like you allow him to do so.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The Nine built themself an internet stronghold? They should've called it Minas Morgul to fit their intentions better.
As much as I personally agree with the finding of human-induced global warming, your statistics only show what people who work in the field believe, not what ground truth is. If you surveyed the members of a homeopathic society they would probably believe in overwhelming numbers that homeopathy works, but that doesn't constitute proof that it does. Ditto for astrology.
The strength of science is its openness, but the drawback is that understanding it takes more work than most people are willing to invest. From my perspective, who is better equipped to deal with scientific questions than somebody who has spent their whole life studying those questions? On the other hand, people who don't like the answers can always claim that the scientists have a vested interest in certain answers, or have bought into group think. And sometimes that's true, as with homeopaths and astrologers. The scientific method deals with this - it's perfectly okay to question anything as long as you're willing to use data and evidence to judge the validity. However, the religious right and other anti-intellectuals have learned to use this to their advantage by doing the questioning but ignoring the validation side.
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
"Surveys" and "Consensus" sound science indeed you fucking ninny
No, but they are useful to people who are *not* scientists, and therefore don't know how to parse the kind of nuanced,carefully caveated statements scientists are trained to make when they speak in public. When a scientist is saying something is a slam-dunk, it sounds like a member of the general public saying he's almost 50% sure the thing is bunk. People expect public statements to be couched in hyperbole, the way marketers and politicians do it. Understatement is a foreign concept to them.
So maybe it's not science *itself*, but it helps the public's understanding of science to sit a scientist down and force him to answer yes or no questions.
I say this as somebody who is married to a geophysicist. Privately, she'll admit that the evidence for global temperature increases is overwhelming. Consequently, her knee-jerk reaction is to *attack* it. That's how you win glory in science: overturning the consensus. On the other hand, if somebody *else* attacks the scientific consensus, the *other* knee jerk reaction is to throw that guy's work on the ground and kick it to an inglorious death.
No wonder people are confused.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
As a Virginia native, as well as UVA alumni, I really don't care about UVA's cost here.
The whole point of this "crusade" is to try and discover whether the GW scientists are burning through money in a ruse simply to get more money. If it's basically a pyramid scheme, where each scientist forms new, unrealistic (statistically untrue), yet make scary-world-ending theories that then require further study, then good for Cuccinelli.
The whole email shenanigans that the UK swept under the rug really brought some of this too light. I'd love to see if it actually was a big fraud, or if these people honestly believe what they are spouting. From the looks of the emails, it certainly appears to be a big scheme to keep the pot boiling for more money.
Oh good god do me a favour. If Mann is at the top of his field, then I think the field must be full of fucking retards. You only have to look at McIntyre & McIntrick's generation of hockey-sticks with red noise to see that Mann doesn't have a fucking clue what he's doing (or if he's so clever, perhaps he does - which is even more worrying). Mann is very good a soliciting grant money. That's about the only thing I would say in his favour. Otherwise, history will remember him only for his infamous "hide the decline" comment.
Yeah, the challenge with that would be to differentiate the times when those efforts actually turn up legitimate witches, which unfortunately happens all too often.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Excuse me? I quote "the deluded SUV drivers of the world" unquote? Maybe if somebody was proposing REAL solutions instead of cap and trade, which BTW just FYI the big spokesman pushing for cap and trade is a hypocrite who will make out like a robber baron if crap and trade is passed.
Let me enlighten you as to what will happen if crap and trade is passed: The USA, which has already lost 42 THOUSAND factories since 2001, and that ain't a typo folks, that's not factory jobs, that is total FACTORIES just since 2001, will have NO way at all to compete in a global market because India and China, and rightly so, will tell you where to stick your credits and thus what few jobs not being a CEO, lawyer, or working at MickyD, will be gone. Now is Rev Al demanding we close off trade with India and China? Nope because he and his pals are making out like robber barons on cheap labor, not to mention taking bribes in the past from China. Meanwhile the "green economy" they keep blowing up our collective butts? That will be in ASIA, NOT the USA. The #1 selling low power computing device is the smart phone, which looks to replace the PC for many. Guess how many of those are made in the USA? Why zero of course!
So when I see some REAL solutions proposed, ones that will actually allow us to have a functional industry and not hamstring the USA or turn us into a third world hellhole, well then I'll be happy to sign up. More nuclear, solar and wind powerplants? ALL for it. But cap and trade is a scam, being run by the the same group that destroyed our economy. I'm sure I'll be modded to hell for daring to say anything other than "go green" but I frankly don't care. I can see first hand what these same bozo the clowns have done to our economy by simply looking out my window at the boarded up store fronts. And whether those here at /. care to admit it or not AGW has become political, with those that dare to say anything other than "the consensus agrees" getting treated like a nut.
If all the AGWers supported REAL change, like refusing to trade with massive polluters like India and China until they cleaned up their acts? Like putting Americans to work building new nuclear plants so we can kill the coal ones? Again ALL for it. Instead what we get is BS like "clean coal" and "green economy" with no actual numbers to back them up. If you support real change then it is time to put our foot down. Demand nuclear plants replace the coal plants, demand we stop trading with countries that poison the air and water, demand realistic caps NOT cap and trade BS. Because frankly all we are getting from the self appointed "guardians of the planet" is a ponzi scheme which will make them billions off the poor. Oh and if you think cap and trade will get rid of coal plants? Think Again.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Mr. Mann was given that a grant, which was only $214,700, to investigate, and I quote, 'the interaction of the land, atmosphere and vegetation in the African savannah.' (The rest of the $500,000 went to other researchers.)
Which, of course, has nothing to do with climate change at all, and as far as anyone can tell he's actually done the work he was given the grant to do.
He's being investigated because he previously wrote an other page, not using Virginia funds, and the Virginia AG claims he got the savannah grant because he listed the climate change paper in his list of credentials.
In other words, this isn't even about the rather idiotic thing you claim it's about, it's about something even dumber. He wrote a paper, which he actually did, listed it, quite correctly, as one of the papers he wrote when he got hired for some other work, did that other work, and is now being sued for 'fraud' because someone asserts that other paper is somehow not true.
This isn't just a 'witch hunt', this is an EPIC WITCH HUNT. It's the idea that if you don't like what someone else wrote, and they at any time took any money, from someone they've mentioned that paper to, you can sue them for fraud.
Do you see how batshit insane this is? This is suing someone for fraud for lying on their resume (Which is crazy in the first place), except the 'lie' isn't even an actual lie or even a careful 'not lie' that's still misleading...he did write the paper.
This is like suing someone for fraud because they put on their resume 'Worked at Joe's Car Wash', and you claim they didn't work very hard at Joe's Car Wash, so collecting their salary from their new employer was 'fraud'. WTF? That's not any workable legal theory of 'fraud'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I wonder if the Virginia AG has broken any Federal laws with this witch hunt? Maybe the US DOJ should investigate him.
Free Martian Whores!
And what if the scientist IS committing fraud? It's not as if it never happened before:
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/55383/
(humor)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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
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!
Ad hominem hostile logical fallacy.
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
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.
I have to disagree with your logic. OK, so the Slashdot consensus is that Mann is on the right side of things and this is a witch hunt. Suppose that he wasn't, though. Should the AG ignore the matter just because it might be expensive to prosecute or defend against? And what if there was a hive of scum and villainy that the AG was trying to browbeat into legality by setting an example against one particular actor - surely that's justifiable up to a point?
Don't interpret this to mean that I'm supporting the AG, because I'm not. I just don't think you can use "it's expensive" as a reason not to enforce the law, if in fact that was actually the AG's goal.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I wouldn't believe in nuclear power either if we didn't have several examples of working reactors.
Thank god Einstein, Fermi, Szilard and Co believed in math and science enough to not need working reactors.
Newsflash: EVERYTHING is a mathematical model. Some theories are based on algebraic equations, some on non-linear equations, some on a set of iterative equations, but they are all "just" equations that model reality.
Computer models are just a fancy way of doing the same calculations that would be done by hand otherwise.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
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.