"Climate Scientists Have a Technical Term for This Phenomenon: It's Called Winter"

Watch climate scientist Michael Mann talk to MSNBC's Chris Hayes on "All In" about how snow at Fox headquarters doesn't mean climate change isn't happening:

Mann Fights Back, Sues Climate Science Slimers

The Republican war on science faces a new counterattack - a libel lawsuit filed by climate scientist Michael Mann against the National Review and Competitive Enterprise Institute.

From Mann's Facebook page:

Dr. Mann, a Professor and Director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, has instituted this lawsuit against the two organizations, along with two of their authors, based upon their false and defamatory statements accusing him of academic fraud and comparing him to a convicted child molester, Jerry Sandusky. [...]

In response to these types of accusations, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation and seven other organizations have conducted investigations into Dr. Mann’s work, finding any and all allegations of academic fraud to be baseless. Every investigation—and every replication of Mann’s work—has concluded that his research and conclusions were properly conducted and fairly presented.

Despite their knowledge of the results of these many investigations, the defendants have nevertheless accused Dr. Mann of academic fraud and have maliciously attacked his personal reputation with the knowingly false comparison to a child molester. The conduct of the defendants is outrageous, and Dr. Mann will be seeking judgment for both compensatory and punitive damages.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli clumsy attempt at "investigating" Dr. Mann's work was laughed out of court. Mann has been contemplating a lawsuit for months and is now moving forward, so he must feel he has a much stronger legal case than science's hapless enemies.

Ken Cuccinelli Has the Solution to All Your Problems: Ken Cuccinelli

Ken Cuccinelli has quite the televangelist-style pyramid scheme going. He's always so close to stopping those evil moderates ... if only you'll give him a little more money, and ask your friends to do the same.

He was pitching the Cuccinelli brand Monday night at Virginia's Christendom College:

Programs like health care reform threaten to give the government, specifically Congress, the ability to order citizens to do anything it wants, including what kinds of food to eat and what kinds of cars to buy, Cuccinelli said.

Cuccinelli also warned of scientific discoveries and groundbreaking technology that threaten to undermine society's ethical foundations. He accused climate scientists, almost all of whom have asserted that human activity is the primary cause of a dangerous worldwide warming of temperatures, of contaminating their research with a political agenda.

"This kind of politicized science and world view drives their research," he said. He made no direct mention of a recent ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court that halted his investigation into the work of climate scientist Michael E. Mann, a former member of the University of Virginia faculty.

Ken Cuccinelli lies like this as a political technique: Throw out lies in such volume & frequency that no one can ever hope to refute them all. And if reporters DO point out how much he's lying, Cuccinelli will just say they're part of the liberal media.

Cuccinelli uses the lies to connect with his Tea Party supporters. No matter what's in the news that day - health insurance reform, fuel efficiency standards, climate science - Cuccinelli frames it as part of the culture war. They're all out to get you, and the only one who can save you is, of course, Ken Cuccinelli:

Cuccinelli ended his speech with an appeal to students in the audience to volunteer for his campaign which, he said, will swing into full gear next year after this fall's elections.

Cuccinelli does this constantly and shamelessly - emails to supporters that detail some existential threat, followed by Cuccinelli asking for more money, more email subscribers, more volunteers, etc.

Progressives can be too quick to categorize people like Ken Cuccinelli, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin as nutty or crazy. That's completely wrong. They're using a tried and true method of building a following and milking that following for money & power. And by the time people realize they've been lied to, Sylvester McMonkey McBean has skipped town with their money.

Ken Cuccinelli's Quixotic War on Climate Science Finally Ends

How much damage has Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli done with his baseless legal attacks on climate science? The Washington Post editorial board surveys the damage done by Cuccinelli's climate witch hunt:

This month, after nearly two years of legal proceedings, the Virginia Supreme Court halted the attorney general’s investigation of Mr. Mann, who used to teach at the University of Virginia. Twisting a law designed to root out embezzlement of state funds and the like, the attorney general had demanded oceans of documents — including Mr. Mann’s e-mail correspondence — from U-Va. But, along with some technical legal problems with his demand, Mr. Cuccinelli didn’t offer any reasonable suspicion that Mr. Mann had committed anything resembling fraud — even as the attorney general proposed violating scientists’ sacrosanct freedom to conduct research without political pressure. Multiple independent reviews of Mr. Mann’s record have found that the professor did little more than participate in the normal push-and-pull of scientific inquiry. [...]

Now that the Supreme Court has shut Mr. Cuccinelli down, what’s left is a range of consequences that can only hurt the commonwealth. The university had to raise nearly $600,000 for legal fees — money the cash-strapped university should have been able to use for something productive. On top of that are the public resources of the attorney general’s office that Mr. Cuccinelli wasted. Scientists in Virginia now have reason to wonder whether they will suffer similar pressure if they publish research government officials don’t like. And, because of some of the Supreme Court’s legal findings, the powers of the attorney general to pursue actual fraud have been clipped.

Tea Party activists claim to stand for fiscal restraint - then waste huge piles of taxpayer money on political witch hunts. Tea Party activists claim to stand for freedom - then bully scientists whose research contradicts Tea Party political beliefs. Tea Party activists claim to stand for limited government - then work to pass laws mandating the invasion of women's bodies.

Fraud like Cuccinelli's is exactly what they demand. If GOP activists continue to let the Tea Party inmates run the asylum, we should only expect more of it.

Another Climate Denier Scandal: Will Media Ever Treat Them Skeptically?

A paper came out a couple of months ago questioning climate science. It quickly became the great shining hope of the climate science denial crowd. An actual scientific paper! Accepted by an actual scientific editor! And published in an actual scientific journal!

But a review of the paper by Roy Spencer and William Braswell published in Remote Sensing is dashing the hopes of climate deniers on the rocks of reality:

• The paper itself? "Fundamentally flawed" and contains "false claims."
• The editor? Apologized for accepting the paper and resigned.
• The journal? Editorialized that the paper "should not have been published."

The question has become, how many scandals will it take for the media to apply any degree of skepticism to what climate science deniers say? Deniers hype "Climategate" - independent investigation finds no wrongdoing. Deniers attack Michael Mann - independent investigation vindicates Mann. Deniers tout work of Edward Wegman - independent investigation finds Wegman's work riddled with plagiarism & inaccuracies.

Instead, the media breathlessly hypes whatever lies the deniers push, but barely mentions the independent investigations that reveal the truth. And the scientific consensus on climate change remains as inconvenient as ever - Earth is warming, man-made carbon pollution is to blame, and we're running out of time to make the switch to clean energy as climate disasters multiply.

Time For Ken Cuccinelli To Mann Up & Apologize

Remember Edward Wegman, the George Mason University statistician whose climate denial was repeatedly cited by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli? The one who was under investigation on charges of plagiarism & inaccuracy?

The GMU investigation is still dragging on, but USA Today asked several scientists to review the allegations. Their analysis was damning:

The plagiarism experts queried by USA TODAY disagree after viewing the Wegman report:

• "Actually fairly shocking," says Cornell physicist Paul Ginsparg by e-mail. "My own preliminary appraisal would be 'guilty as charged.'" 

• "If I was a peer reviewer of this report and I was to observe the paragraphs they have taken, then I would be obligated to report them," says Garner of Virginia Tech, who heads a copying detection effort. "There are a lot of things in the report that rise to the level of inappropriate."  

• "The plagiarism is fairly obvious when you compare things side-by-side," says Ohio State's Robert Coleman, who chairs OSU's misconduct committee.

If Ken Cuccinelli was a man, he'd apologize. To Michael Mann, the respected climate scientist whose work Cuccinelli has quixotically targeted. To Virginia taxpayers, for wasting their money on a political witch hunt. And to his own supporters for feeding them a steady stream of complete horseshit.

But Ken Cuccinelli doesn't have a shred of honor or dignity in his body. I expect him to continue to ignore reality & continue flaunting the truth.

For all of Republicans' ranting against fraud & abuse, Ken Cuccinelli has no problem using your tax dollars to campaign for Sarah Palin's affection on the 2012 Crazy Train Ticket.

Cuccinelli Fine With Fraud If It Backs His Political Views

The people who squawk the loudest about "scientific integrity" & "sound science" often have absolutely no problem with outright scientific fraud, as long as it supports their pre-existing political opinions.

Just take the example of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (and speaking volumes by their silence, Gov. Bob McDonnell & Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling). Rather than accept the simple, straightforward, proven proposition that the planet is warming & manmade emissions are to blame, Cuccinelli instead conjures a world ruled by a vast conspiracy by thousands of unrelated climate scientists, including former University of Virginia Professor Michael Mann.

But even the little actual proof Cuccinelli claims to cite is now in doubt:

A leading skeptic of climate change science whose work was cited last week by Virginia Attorney Gen. Ken Cuccinelli is himself under investigation on charges that his work contained plagiarism and inaccuracies, a George Mason University spokesman confirmed Friday.

What's Edward Wegman accused of? As DeSmogBlog reports:

Wegman, who was chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, was tapped in '06 by Republican representatives Joe Barton and Ed Whitfield to assemble a so-called "expert panel" to critique the famous hockey stick, a graph illustrating a thousand-year temperature record as reconstructed by climate scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes. But Silicon Valley entrepreneur John Mashey has since demonstrated that, rather than convene a group of experts, Wegman tapped a couple of grad students and together they produced a report that was generously plagiarized from Bradley's own work and then twisted - or just misrepresented - to appear to undermine the hockey stick and its creators.

Will the loss of credibility of a prominent climate denier prompt the slightest change in the stances of McDonnell, Bolling & Cuccinelli? I'm skeptical.