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."

Comments

I Left Out The Best Part

[eldavojohn]

From the UVA article:

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.

Re:I Left Out The Best Part

[TapeCutter]

"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.

Re:I Left Out The Best Part

[Anonymous Coward]

He wants us to revert to stone age tools and pray to the Dark Lord and eat our babies and top-post on Internet forums! I heard it on the Interwebs from someone with no expertise in any field relevant to global warming so it must be true.

Re:I Left Out The Best Part

[DavidTC]

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'.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rub it in why don't you.

Re:Back to the actual Science...

[Frequency Domain]

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.

Increasingly dire problem with prosecutors

[IndustrialComplex]

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.