Thursday
Oct212010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill UVa versus Cuccinelli redux
Oct 21, 2010 Climate: Mann The Madison Eagle is reporting that the University of Virginia has applied to have Ken Cuccinelli's demand for Michael Mann's emails thrown out again.
Cuccinelli sent a third, more limited subpoena — known as a civil investigative demand — to UVa on Sept. 29. Cuccinelli says he is investigating Mann for possibly violating Virginia’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act because Mann received a $214,700 university grant while he was employed at UVa between 1999 and 2005.
On Wednesday, UVa’s lawyers filed papers requesting that Cuccinelli’s latest demand be “set aside” as well.
Reader Comments (17)
off topic but tonight on Autumn Watch, the BBC once again displayed "sensivity" by using a 10:10 red button to indicate they were going to blow something up.
I am waiting to see the result later in the show.
Peter Walsh
Off topic, but wanted to thank you for the link in your blog roll. I drop by here everyday!
Cheers, AJStrata
re BBC red button on Autumn watch, they were using the "explosives" to cast a net over Brent Geese, Then they tagged the ONE they caught, sexed it, took blood samples etc before releasing it.
I still think a red button as shown is highly insensitive after the recent "snuff" video produced by the 10;10 environmental Group in their oh so humourous advert.
Peter Walsh
With respect, guys, the "big red button" was not a 10:10 invention and jumping up and down with feigned indignance every time someone uses this age-old cartoon prop does nothing but diminish sceptic credibility. One can protest too much. Please don't, for everyone's sake.
Simon Hopkinson
So, 10:10s little joke was just a little joke then?
Yes it was funny and quite hilarious in the cartoons featuring Wiley Coyote and the Road Runner.
It wasn't funny when people who seemed to disavow Global Warming were blown up for their failure to comply with the "Settled Science". Including kids (children) who should not have been videoed in such an advert. I wonder if it is illegal to include children of that age in a snuff video. Somehow, I doubt it.
Why did it BLOW UP IN 10:10 FACES THEN?
Did you actually see the snuff video that 10:10 produced?
If so, did you think it was funny?
Peter
Anyway, it is "Feigned Indignation"...!
True, the Obama administration used a big red button as a "Reset" prompt for Russian diplomacy when he took presidency... and it was equaly derided then too.
O/T again, but Jimmy Wales popped up whilst I was on Wikipedia reading about Blue Giants.
He's after money and his sales pitch is "No ads. No profits. No agenda." No ***king agenda, WTF Is William Connolley if not the agenda ***king king?
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Appeal18/en?utm_medium=sitenotice&utm_campaign=landingpage_testing1021&utm_source=2010_testing50
Steady guys/gals. Let the red 10:10 go, inconsequential and irrelevant really.
Cuccinelli and various other legal challenges are the only way that AGW will be discredited. The behaviour of every individual or institution when faced with a FOI request or equivalent is to obfuscate and avoid disclosure. This is not the response expected from innocent parties.
My real worry is why investigative journalists and the whole of the MSM are so reluctant to expose the 'dodgy' science behind the AGW scam.
What is going on? Can Chris Monckton be correct?
Cuccinelli may have to go after Bradley, over at CA Steve McIntyre has a email of Bradley showing the plagerism accusation against Wegman was not the real motive but a crude attempt to blackmail Wegman to pull his report discrediting the Hockey Stick. Bradley is based at a university in Virginia so Cuccinelli may get a better target.
g.watkins -
re the media - bish's HSI wasn't nominated, didn't win, and won't get another opportunity:
21 Oct: BBC: Rachael Buchanan: Royal Society's science book prize will be the last
Biochemist and author Nick Lane has won this year's Royal Society Science Book Prize for Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution...
However, Dr Lane will be the last to collect the Royal Society prize.
After more than two decades of sifting through the annual offerings of popular science publishing, the award is closing down due to lack of funding...
The prize has been limping on since losing the sponsorship of pharmaceutical company Aventis in 1997...
The idea of a Man Booker equivalent for science came from then editor of the popular science magazine New Scientist.
At the time, Michael Kenward sat on a committee tasked with improving the public's engagement with science.
He says popular science books are a good way of communicating science and it is vital for democracy that we improve everyone's scientific understanding.
"Science plays an important role in all our lives, from climate change to GM and cloning," he said...
"Championing book writing above all others is a very outdated model for promoting public engagement with science," suggests doctor, science writer and veteran blogger, Ben Goldacre.
His book Bad Science - an exploration of the crimes and misdemeanours of science communication - sold well, even before it was shortlisted for last year's award...
"There are a huge number of science bloggers of very high quality out there, writing for free, engaging large and diverse audiences, and doing everything that the 'public engagement with science' community have wanted to do for a very long time."...
However, there is more at stake than effective science communication, says Roland Jackson, chief executive of the British Science Association. He argues that it speaks to our core values...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11595847
at least the prize wasn't awarded to either of these nominations:
Royal Society 2010 Prize for Science Books Longlist Announced
Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen (Bloomsbury)
The judges said: “This book, from a key figure in climate science offers first hand insight into the politics and vested interest that surrounds the debate. An excellent, authoritative and important history of climate change research, written in an engaging way.”..
A World Without Ice by Henry Pollack (Avery Books, Penguin Group)
The judges said: “This book gives a clear historical picture of the relationship between ice and climate . A very accessible and powerful perspective on climate change...
http://royalsociety.org/2010-Science-Books-Prize-Longlist-Announced/
so who did bbc's rachael buchanan speak to?
2007: Michael Kenward: Religious right denies gory truth about climate change
Oh dear, the religious fundamentalists in the USA who don't believe in evolution are now using their "it is only a theory" argument to remove discussion of climate change from America's schoolrooms.
The Seattle Post Intelligencer (P-I) has a report Federal Way schools restrict Gore film with some depressing quotes from a parent objecting to classroom screenings of Al Gore's disaster flick An Inconvenient Truth...
The school's board wants any viewing of Gore's movie to run alongside something that can ensure that a "credible, legitimate opposing view will be presented". Anyone want to volunteer? Mel Gibson?
http://michaelkenward.blogspot.com/2007/01/federal-way-schools-restrict-gore-film.html
2008: ABC Australia: Science Show with Robyn Williams: Call for scientists to focus on big problems
Roland Jackson cites President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science Sir David King who calls for young scientists to focus on the big problems which confront the world such as climate change and disease rather than pursuing pure research...
(from Transcript)Roland Jackson: Yes, obviously he's not saying that we should stop fundamental blue skies research but I think he's calling for a culture, if you like, to say that all of us should be concentrating on these big issues of climate change, disease, and the rest, and that's where science can make a difference as part of the solution, and that's where we want some of our best brains to concentrate.
Robyn Williams: Yes, just as Martin Rees was saying, treating carbon capture and storage a bit like doing the Manhattan Project or indeed when Florey was working on penicillin to really solve a problem as a matter of international emergency in three, four, five years rather than at some time down the line...
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2008/2369398.htm
12 Dec 2009: Guardian Ben Goldacre: Climate change? Well, we'll be dead by then
So as we career towards a mediocre outcome in Copenhagen, why do roughly half the people in this country not believe in man-made climate change, when the overwhelming majority of scientists do?
Firstly we have the psychological issues. We're predisposed to undervalue adverse outcomes which are a long way off, especially if we might be old or dead soon...
This is exacerbated because climate science is difficult. We could discuss everything you needed to know about MMR and autism in an hour. Climate change will take two days of your life, for a relatively superficial understanding: if you're interested, I'd recommend the IPCC website....
We know that evidence-based policy is window dressing, so now, when they want us to believe them on climate science, we doubt.
Then, of course, the media privilege foolish contrarian views because they have novelty value, and also because "established" views get confused with "establishment" views, and anyone who comes along to have a pop at those gets David v Goliath swagger...
I am very happy to affirm that I am not a giant expert on climate change: I know a bit, and I know that there's not yet been a giant global conspiracy involving almost every scientist in the world (although I'd welcome examples).
More than all that, I can spot the same rhetorical themes re-emerging in climate change foolishness that you see in aids denialism, homeopathy, and anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists...
There's a huge list of them at realclimate.org, with refutations. ..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/12/bad-science-goldacre-climate-change
amusingly, the Guardian's Goldacre is the nephew of ABC Australia's science reporter & CAGW advocate, Robyn Williams, whose recent interview with Bob Ward was a shocker:
Wikipedia: Ben Goldacre
Goldacre is the son of Michael Goldacre, professor of public health at the University of Oxford,[4] the nephew of science journalist Robyn Williams, and the great-great-grandson of Sir Henry Parkes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Goldacre
bbc to improve its reporting on climate science? don't hold your co2 breath...
[BH adds: Pat - I was not eligible for this year. HSI was published in 2010]
Peter, did I say 10:10 was a joke? That it was funny? WTF man!? Geez, half the crap on TV would be a snuff movie with your definition.
Please try and get a bit of perspective here. A programme on TV using a big red button to fire a net to catch birds is not alluding to the murder of climate sceptics, for goodness sake! How ridiculous!
And calling me on the word "indignance"!? It's the same freakin' thing as "indignation". The words are synonymous!
Seriously, Peter, learn to pick your battles! Flogging the 10:10 imagery to death is stupid, and trying to pick a fight with me for calling for some common sense is no less so.
I'd ahve some sympathy for UVa if they hadn't handed over Pat Michaels emails to Greenpeace without a murmur. I am assuming there was nothing damning in Michaels' emails else it would have been in the MSM by now.
Simon, Peter, don't want to break into your spat, but it is off topic and you're both right, Peter has every right to be indignant about it and still upset, while you Simon have every right to move on.
JohnH: "Bradley is based at a university in Virginia so Cuccinelli may get a better target."
Actually Bradley is a professor at the University of Massachusetts which, not surprisingly, is in Massachusetts. See his page here.
JohnH: "Bradley is based at a university in Virginia so Cuccinelli may get a better target."
Actually Bradley is a professor at the University of Massachusetts which, not surprisingly, is in Massachusetts. See his page here.
Got it from Steve Moshers article on Watts Up, who looks to have got it wrong.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/21/blackmail-or-lets-make-a-deal/
JohnH --
It's Wegman who's in Virginia, at George Mason University. However, I wouldn't agree with Mosher that [Virginia Attorney General] Cuccinelli will get involved. While Bradley's behavior seems distasteful in this instance -- with regard to the report, a proper request would be that Wegman's report be re-filed with either correct attribution or elimination of any claimed plagiarism -- I don't think that it rises to the level of a crime.
However, as you mention, Mosher's post links to some discussion at Climate Audit that it is criminal. Disclaimer: my view is that of a layman, not a lawyer. The law works in a mysterious way.
[Perhaps I should attribute that last bit to avoid the plagiarism police? After William Cowper.]
geronimo,
Have you a link to the Michaels/Greenpeace/UVa email stuff?
I have read the story about UVA handing emails to Greenpeace, it seems to be untrue.
http://www.thegwpf.org/climategate/1050-us-university-at-center-of-battles-over-climate-change.html