“Virginia Attorney General goes after Mann and UVA“. Anthony Watts is pleased that Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a denialist right-wing nutter and Tea Party supporter, is moving on from encouraging discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, attacking the Environmental Protection Agency and fighting against federal health care reform.
Now he wants the University of Virginia to produce documents relating to Dr. Michael Mann’s state funding while he was at UVA between 1999 and 2005. Seems every posturing right-wing politician wants to go on a bullying Climategate-style fishin’ trip these days. I predict he’ll return with nothing more than the bait he set out with.
Let’s just say it: this is an ignorant McCarthy-style witch hunt.
Wott's Up With That? 
Prediction: Cuccinelli will find a math error in one of Mann’s papers and will call it “fraud.”
[I’m not taking that bet… – Ben]
Some facts are coming to light:
[These little denialist excursions are always ill-conceived and ill-considered. -Ben]
To their credit, some posters, maybe 25% were against the idea of the state government interfering with science and going after a then assistant professor. Most didn’t realize that the university has no direct interest or control over the data and research conclusions of their faculty. The university would only keep an accounting of how the money was spent. Can’t imagine that the budget of the projects involving Mann were much different than other research projects.
[This is a tough one for the denialist crowd. Many of them are libertarian and opposed to “oppressive government” on principle. You know a tactic is dodgy when even Steve McIntyre feels he’d better come out against it!. -Ben]
Pingback: Mann’s old University gets another subpoena « Wott's Up With That?
Pingback: UVA to supply Mann emails/documents but you can’t look (yet) « Wott's Up With That?