Virginia Attorney General Issues Subpoena For Climate "Hockey Stick"Files

Last week we reported that Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is investing the Penn State professor for Micheal Mann for fraud. Much of Mann's work on the hockey stick was completed when he was working at the University of Virginia. Helping to fund Mann's work was almost a half of a million dollars of grants from the State of Virginia. Cuccinelli is investigating Mann under the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, a 2002 law designed to keep government workers honest. 

Now, according to the Washington Post the AG has found it necessary to issue a subpoena for the information. If Cuccinelli succeeds in finding a smoking gun like the purloined emails that led to the international scandal dubbed Climategate, Cuccinelli could seek the return of all the research money, legal fees, and damages.

According to the report:

The civil investigative demand asks for all data and materials presented by former professor Michael Mann when he applied for five research grants from the university. It also gives the school until May 27 to produce all correspondence or e-mails between Mann and 39 other scientists since 1999. 

As you might expect Mann decried Cuccinelli's subpoena as an unprecedented inquisition that could threaten academic freedom. 

"I think he's simply trying to smear me as part of a larger campaign to discredit my science," said Mann, who left the University of Virginia in 2005. 

Mann has discredited his own science.  Mann's most famous work has been revealed to be truth deficient many times. There was the study that showed Mann cherry-picked the trees that he used in for the study, they cherry-picked the weather stations to use in Russia, and the revelation that even the home of Climategate, the CRU, didn't want to use the hockey stick because they suspected that it was bogus.

Rachel Levinson, senior counsel with the American Association of University Professors, said Cuccinelli's request had "echoes of McCarthyism." 

"It would be incredibly chilling to anyone else practicing in either the same area or in any politically sensitive area," she said. 

There is certainly enough evidence of a fraud for an inquiry, McCarthyism? I don't think so, nor would anybody who has read many of the climategate emails, especially the one that talks about "Michael's trick"

From: Phil Jones

To: ray bradley ,mann@XXXX, mhughes@XXXX 

Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement 

Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000 

Cc: k.briffa@XXX.osborn@XXXX 

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm, 

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

Thanks for the comments, Ray. 

Cheers 

Phil 

Prof. Phil Jones 

Climatic Research Unit Telephone XXXX 

School of Environmental Sciences Fax XXXX 

University of East Anglia 

Norwich 

 That certainty raised enough eyebrows to cause an independent investigation.

In an interview, Cuccinelli said the request is part of an "open inquiry" into whether there were "knowing inconsistencies" made by Mann as he sought taxpayer dollars to fund research. 

"In light of the Climategate e-mails, there does seem to at least be an argument to be made that a course was undertaken by some of the individuals involved, including potentially Michael Mann, where they were steering a course to reach a conclusion," he said. "Our act, frankly, just requires honesty." 

Carol Wood, a spokesman for the University of Virginia, confirmed that the school had received the April 23 request. She said that it will take time for the university to decide how to proceed but that "the university has a legal obligation to answer this request and it is our intention to respond to the extent required by law." 

According to the document, the demand was issued under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, a 2002 law that gives the attorney general the right to demand documents and testimony in cases in which tax dollars have allegedly been obtained falsely by state employees. The document indicates that Cuccinelli is investigating possible violations of sections of the act forbidding employees from making false claims for payment, submitting false records for payment or conspiring to defraud the state. 

Many people are saying that this is an attack on "scientific investigation." They don't understand that the issue is not necessarily whether Mann's hypothesis is fraudulent,or was wrong to conduct the study,  but the way he conducted his research and "fudged" the numbers was not honest. If anyone was retarding the development of science, it is the "global warming" scientists that have been objecting to any peer reviewed studies that do not agree with their hypothesis.