A Washington Times column by Steve Milloy, publisher of JunkScience.com, concludes that there is probable cause for Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's investigation of global warming scientist, Michael Mann. Mann is the creator of the infamous hockey stick graph, which purported to show average global temperatures starting a dramatic rise only late in the 20th century, thus proving that human activity is the cause of a supposedly catastrophic global warming trend. But the hockey stick graph was shown to a fraud.
Skeptics first became suspicious because the hockey stick failed to show two well-known periods of dramatic swings in global temperature - the so-called Medieval Optimum and the Little Ice Age. Mr. Mann's indignant refusal to share his data and methods with skeptics only added fuel to the fire. Eventually, skeptics discovered that the hockey stick's computer model would produce a hockey-stick graph regardless of what data was input. But it gets worse.Mr. Mann apparently created the hockey stick by cherry-picking data he liked and deleting data he didn't like. While the vast majority of the hockey stick is based on temperature data extrapolated from tree rings going back hundreds of years, the tip of the blade (representing the late 20th century) was temperature data taken from thermometers. Beyond the obvious apples-and-oranges problem, Mr. Mann appended the thermometer data to the hockey stick at a point at which the tree-ring data actually shows cooling. This cooling trend data was then deleted. This is what is referred to by the now-famous "Climategate" phrase "Mike's Nature trick to ... hide the decline."
So Mr. Cuccinelli has decided to see if other fraud was perpetrated, such as when Mann hired on at the University of Virginia or when he got his government grants. Mr. Cuccinelli has demanded the university hand over all e-mails and other documents related to Mr. Mann. Push back from the global warming crowd verges on hysteria.
Left-leaning academics, global-warming alarmists and the ACLU object to Mr. Cuccinelli's probe. They cast aspersions such as "witch hunt," "McCarthyism" and "abuse of office." In their less hysterical moments, they claim Mr. Cuccinelli threatens academic freedom. This is all so much rot.
Lefties are about as interested in an honest investigation of Mann as they are of an honest investigation into global warming itself. Maybe they think they know something. Maybe they think there is no way for Mann to survive such a probe.
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