Say you are a Republican Attorney General in Virginia by the name of Ken Cuccinelli who doesn’t like what your society’s scientists are publishing or teaching, such as the multitude of peer reviewed studies and research that support the view that human activities are accelerating global climate change.
Even more, let’s say that you, as a hot new Republican conservative politician on the rise, have objected to the EPA’s proposed regulations regarding the emissions of greenhouse gases and have sued the Federal Government for using “unreliable, unverifiable and doctored science in its bid to regulate greenhouse gases.”
Unfortunately for Ken, the number of peer reviewed papers, articles and research studies that support the scientific consensus that human activity is primarily responsible for the rapid changes to our climate has only increased in number since Science Magazine’s initial review of the literature in 2003. In short the science that supports the claim that most of the global warming and climate change we are observing is “very likely due” to human action is becoming more certain than the statements made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated in its Fouth Assessment report in 2007, not less:
Indeed, back in 2006, even before the latest IPCC report was complete, researchers in Britain were already planning to launch an update. Helmed by the U.K.’s Met Office (formerly known as the Meteorological Office), the update, published March 5 in the journal Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, is based on more than 100 peer-reviewed post-IPCC studies. The new data may shift the evidence for climate change, but none of it weakens what the IPCC said three years ago.
By looking at a wide range of observations from all over the world, the Met Office study concludes that the fingerprint of human influence on climate is stronger than ever. “We can say with a very high significance level that the effects we see in the climate cannot be attributed to any other forcings [factors that push the climate in one direction or another],” says study co-author Gabriele Hegerl of the University of Edinburgh.
Plenty of these climate effects had already been observed at the time of the 2007 IPCC report, including warming temperatures, shifts in rainfall (wet regions getting wetter, dry regions getting drier) and the increase in summer meltback of Arctic sea ice. Those patterns have continued, and in some cases gotten worse.
So the research results that the EPA is relying upon to regulate green house gases appear to be ever more certain that climate change is real and that human activity (such as burning fossil fuels like oil and coal) is the very likely the primary culprit. What can you, as someone determined to make a national name for himself as a conservative republican do in the face of that growing mountain of evidence? Why you plan to subpoena the records of those atheistic rat bastards potentially fraudulent scientists who used to work for Virginia universities, naturally, in the hopes of finding anything from which you can gin up a controversy and keep your frivolous lawsuit against the EPA alive. So that is what Ken Cuccinelli did:
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II is demanding that the University of Virginia turn over a broad range of documents from a former professor to determine whether he defrauded taxpayers as he sought grants for global warming research.
The civil investigative demand asks for all data and materials presented by former professor Michael Mann when he applied for five research grants from the university. It also gives the school until May 27 to produce all correspondence or e-mails between Mann and 39 other scientists since 1999.
No matter that Professor Mann and the East Anglia climate scientists have been absolved of any improper conduct with respect to the research they conducted on climate change by Penn State University’s investigation into the charges against Prof. Mann (his current employer) and by an independent international panel convened by the University of East Anglia, respectively.
First an excerpt from the investigation by Penn State’s “Inquiry Report: Concerning the Allegations of Research Misconduct Against Dr. Michael E. Mann:”
After careful consideration of all the evidence and relevant materials, the inquiry committee finding is that there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had or has ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with an intent to suppress or to falsify data. While a perception has been created in the weeks after the CRU emails were made public that Dr. Mann has engaged in the suppression or falsification of data, there is no credible evidence that he ever did so …
And now an excerpt from the international panel convened by East Anglia University to investigate the actions of the scientists at the Hadley Climate Research Unit located there:
We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it.
Not to mention the voluminous publicly available NASA data sets related to global temperatures that support the conclusions of Mann’s work.
Or that 255 scientists and members of the National Academy of Scientists signed a letter published in the May 7th issue of Science in which they had this to say regarding the actions of (among others) politicians like Virginia’s Attorney General, who seem more concerned with making headlines and creating the appearance of a controversy than in fulfilling their public duties for which they were elected:
We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet.
Not that this will convince any of the climate skeptic dead-enders and far right conservatives who seemingly oppose anything about humanity’s role in climate change simply because Al Gore has been a prominent messenger regarding the danger we face, of course. A fact that Virginia’s AG is counting on, no doubt.
But perhaps he should recall a little lesson from history. Once upon a time people who had a difficult time adjusting to the results and theories of the biological sciences brought to trial a teacher who had the audacity to inform his students about the theory of evolution, rather than just teach them the time honored biblical theory of creation which taught that the world was created in 6 days including all the plants, animals and two humans.
That trial against John Scopes was a victory in the short term for the forces of ignorance and stupidity among those who will never accept any truth other than the one indoctrinated into them from birth by their church. Scopes was found guilty of illegally teaching evolution and fined him $100.
However, in the larger court of public opinion the people who brought Scopes to the courthouse were made out to be fools. The reputation of William Jennings Bryan in particular suffered as a result of his prosecution of this case.
History has not treated this legal action to suppress legitimate scientific inquiry kindly. That is something an equally opportunistic and foolish ignoramus by the name of Ken Cuccinelli should consider before he continues down this path to infamy and ignominy. Attacking science always looks good to these political creatures in the short term if their supporters distrust science (regardless of the miraculous changes and technological advances it has engendered to benefit their lives). In the long term, however, they get will be the first people blamed for the consequences of their obstructionism.