Ken Cuccinelli v. Climate Skeptics

[The Night Owl]

Apparently, even some of the scientists critical of Michael Mann's work are uncomfortable with Ken Cuccinelli's vindictive and baseless crusade against Mann:

Ken Cuccinelli v. Climate Skeptics

By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF

As I wrote in Wednesday’s Times, for nearly a year, Virginia’s attorney general, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, has tried to force the University of Virginia to turn over the files of Michael Mann, a climatologist, as part of a broader crusade against the scientific basis of man-made global warming.

One might expect that his efforts would find support among climate-change contrarians, the small but vocal community of scientists and independent researchers who aggressively challenge the mainstream consensus that emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide threaten to dangerously warm the planet.

But in reporting the story, I found the opposite to be true: as it turns out, even many of Dr. Mann’s chief scientific foes are strongly opposed to Mr. Cuccinelli’s fraud investigation.

One critic of the investigation is the Canadian statistician Ross McKitrick, author of a scientific paper sharply critical of Dr. Mann’s historical climate reconstructions, which were responsible for the so-called “hockey stick” graph showing 20th-century temperatures spiking sharply above the average of the last millennium.

Mr. Cuccinelli simply did not have his facts right, Dr. McKitrick wrote in a comment last May at Watts Up With That, the popular climate-skeptic blog, pointing out misrepresentations of his work that appear in Virginia’s legal complaint against Dr. Mann.

“You have to be prepared to make the effort to go into the details and get them right,” Mr. McKitrick wrote. “Nothing I have seen yet suggests that Cucinelli has done so, and I have yet to see any credible basis for his inquiry.”

...

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/ken-cuccinelli-v-climate-skeptics/?partner=rss&emc=rss

So, to the climate change deniers who think that Ken Cuccinelli is doing something great, I would say know that the more serious people on your side of the climate debate are not with you.