Virginia Attorney General Attacks Climate Scientist
Posted by Kelly Smith on Tue, Jun 15, 2010
The new attorney general in the state of Virginia is out to get scientists who have studied climate change using state tax dollars under the 2002 Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act. He alleges that research dollars used to study what he considers to be a false science have been spent in a fraudulent manner.
Former University of Virginia professor Michael Mann is being subpoenaed in regards to five university research grants. Mann, who now works at Penn State University, has drawn ire from the climate-change skeptic Cucinelli for being a “leading proponent of the theory” and using state money to further his research.
Cucinelli is a leading climate change skeptic who has gone so far as to sue the federal government over greenhouse gas regulations. Cucinelli is not the first person to target Mann and his scientific research.
According to a recent Washington Post article, Dr. Mann is one of the scientists who helped create a graph compiling different types of data to show a large recent change in the Earth’s climate. One of his emails to a professor in the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit was involved in the Climategate leak. In this email, Mann referred to a mathematical trick he used while creating his model, which climate change skeptics jumped all over as evidence of fraud.
Mann insists that “the email was taken out of context,” and he feels that he is being targeted solely as a means for fueling further skepticism of climate science. Penn State investigations have shown that they cannot find any evidence that Mann has been dishonest in his research.
Many people are concerned about Cucinelli’s attack on Mann. If the lawsuit is successful, it will likely set a legal precedent that is a danger to academic freedom in general and the study of climate change specifically.