Another Investigation Clears Mann

I fully realize that facts don’t stop AG Ken Cuccinelli when he is on one of his politically motivated attacks, but there have now been at least five investigations so far of what the corporate media termed “climategate” and global warming deniers, including Cooch, jumped all over as proving that climate scientists manipulated their data. All of them have found that the scientists who had their emails hacked into and published did not use methods that were not scientifically sound and did not manipulate data.

Do I think that these investigations will cause Cooch to withdraw his over-reaching subpoena to the University of Virginia for everything produced by Dr. Michael Mann when he was employed there? Of course not. That would be a rational act.

The latest investigation is one commissioned by the University of East Anglia. The outside panel of scientists looked at more than two decades of research produced by researchers at East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. It followed an earlier investigation at East Anglia that also cleared the unit. That panel, which issued its report in April, was headed by Ron Oxburgh, the former chair of the House of Lords science and technology committee.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the latest investigative panel said that the university researchers “didn’t skew science to inflate evidence of man-made global warming, but it criticized them for not sharing data and, in one instance, for presenting information in a ‘misleading’ way.”

Both of these reports follow an investigation by a House of Commons committee which reaffirmed the consensus that has emerged within the scientific community that human activity is a major cause of climate change.

Penn State University has also conducted two investigations.

Penn State, the present employer of Dr. Mann, both times concluded that Dr. Mann did nothing wrong or scientifically improper in his research.

A Penn State inquiry in February dismissed three allegations that had been made and recommended further investigation on a fourth one. A five-member panel of professors dismissed that last allegation last week, saying, Professor Michael Mann “did not seriously deviate from accepted academic practices for proposing, conducting or reporting research,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Climate crisis deniers used stolen emails exchanged by climate scientists, including Dr. Mann, to attack the conclusion that links global warming to human activity, specifically carbon releases into the atmosphere. Those emails were hacked from computers at the University of East Anglia and their contents selectively used to charge that scientists had hidden evidence and overstated the case for man-made global warming.

Since Dr. Mann is the person who came up wih the so-called “hockey stick” graph of the effect of human activity on climate change, he has been the target of attacks, including the subpoena issued by Ken Cuccinelli.

Any rational person would accept these multiple sources of evidence, all stating that there was no manipulation of data to reach a pre-determined result, as proof that there WAS no such manipulation. Then, there is Cuccinelli, who has his own pre-determined idea and who is manipulating the power of his office to harrass a legitimate scientist and “Mr. Jefferson’s University.” Enough is enough, Cooch.