By Brian McNeill

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said Tuesday that his investigation into the research activities of a former University of Virginia climate change scientist is about rooting out possible fraud and does not infringe upon academic freedom.

“The same legal standards for fraud apply to the academic setting that apply elsewhere,” said Cuccinelli, who on Tuesday attended a fundraiser barbecue in Ivy for an abstinence-only education group. “The same rule of law, the same objective fact-finding process will take place.”

Cuccinelli sent a Civil Investigative Demand to UVa to obtain documents related to the work of Michael Mann, a leading researcher in climate change who was part of UVa’s faculty between 1999 and 2005.

UVa has hired a law firm to explore its options, possibly signaling that the university will fight Cuccinelli’s demand.

According to Cuccinelli’s CID - which is the equivalent of a subpoena - the attorney general is investigating the possibility that Mann violated the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act by presenting false or misleading data related to climate change when seeking state-funded research grants. Cuccinelli is a vocal skeptic of global warming and is challenging in court the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Cuccinelli’s investigation into Mann has drawn pointed criticism from the academic and scientific communities.

On Tuesday, 810 Virginia scientists and academics sent a letter to Cuccinelli urging him to back off his investigation of Mann. The letter, organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, includes signatures from some 300 faculty members of UVa.

“I signed the petition because I think that scientific debates should be played out in the academic arena. If Michael Mann’s conclusions are unsupported by his data, his scientific critics will eventually demonstrate this, said David Carr, a professor in UVa’s department of environmental sciences. “I do not have any special knowledge about Mr. Cuccinelli’s motives, but this CID seems to be an attempt to create noise for the purpose of drowning out a critical scientific debate.” Carr noted that he was speaking for himself, not the university or his department.

Amato Evan, another professor in the UVa’s department of environmental sciences, said in a Union of Concerned Scientists news release that he is worried about who might be targeted next.

“As long as Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is in office, in the back of my head I’ll be wondering if my work on global climate change is going to fall under the same senseless attacks as Dr. Mann’s has,” he said. “This feels like harassment, plain and simple, and is wasting the time of the other faculty and staff members in my department. I sincerely hope enough pressure is put on the Virginia attorney general to halt this absurd inquisition.”

The American Association for the Advancement of Science, meanwhile, announced Tuesday that its Board of Directors is asking Cuccinelli to justify his probe into Mann’s work or end it, saying Cuccinelli’s investigation is a political action that could have a chilling effect on cutting-edge scientific research.

“[Cuccinelli’s investigation] is making many, many scientists nervous,” said Alan Leshner, chief executive officer of the association. “The purpose of science is to tell us about the natural world, whether we like the answer or not.”

Cuccinelli said Tuesday that concerned scientists and others should have no fear.

“They need not worry, but I doubt anybody screaming about it will take that from me,” he said. “We’re going to work our way through the process in a professional way.”

Cuccinelli was the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for Worth Your Wait, an abstinence-based education group that offers its programming in the public school systems of Greene, Madison, Fluvanna, Louisa and elsewhere. Each year, organizers say, the group presents its message to an estimated 6,000 students in Central Virginia.

Worth Your Wait is seeking donations because its $500,000 in annual federal support will be ending in September. “All that money across the country has been zeroed out,” said Kristie Shifflett, the group’s community outreach official. Cuccinelli praised Worth Your Wait and said abstinence-based education teaches young people to respect themselves and make healthy choices about their sexuality. Pre-marital sex among young people, he said, is “not positive, it’s self destructive in many respects. It’s out of control.” See Daily Progress report here.

By Viv Forbes, Carbon Sense Coalition

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called for an investigation into the IPCC/CSIRO computer models relied on for the scare forecasts of drought, floods and rising sea levels.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, challenged the IPCC claims that their computer forecasts have a 90% probability of being correct.

The World Bank computers did not forecast the Global Financial Crisis.

The British Met computers failed to forecast Europe’s frigid winter.

Computers were unable to forecast the spread of swine flu or volcanic ash clouds.

Since the introduction of its new computer program Queensland Health has been unable to pay their own employees properly.

And the Australian Weather Bureau cannot forecast next month’s weather.

Yet we are asked to believe that the IPCC computers are able to forecast global temperature, sea levels, hurricanes, droughts and diseases for a century ahead. They promise that, if we just stop using coal and oil, everything will be rosy.

That is like betting our jobs, our industry and our energy and food supplies on a roll of the dice in the casino.

There are about 20 Global Circulation Models using variable assumptions that claim to represent climate processes. Every model uses suspect or manipulated data and disputed processes, is fudged to fit past data and its forecasts reflect the biases of the builder.

In twenty or so years of forecasting, not one has yet made a forecast that has proven to be correct.  Moreover, no two forecasts agree. But we hope one gets it right soon so we can scrap the other 19 and so save a lot of money.

Until then, all IPCC forecasts should be written in pencil. And we should ignore them. See more here.

Note: this was a forecast from 3 years ago, before cold weather of the three harsh winters including the last winter coldest ever in Siberia. The two prior winters were brutal and long in Canada. You can’t fool mother nature.

Compiled by John Stokes, the Canadian

A recent scientific theory called the “hydrate hypothesis” says that historical global warming cycles have been caused by a feedback loop, where melting permafrost methane clathrates (also known as “hydrates") spur local global warming, leading to further melting of clathrates and bacterial growth.

In other words, like western Siberia, the 400 billion tons of methane in permafrost hydrate will gradually melt, and the released methane will speed the melting. The effect of even a couple of billion tons of methane being emitted into the atmosphere each year would be catastrophic.

The “hydrate hypothesis” (if validated) spells the rapid onset of runaway catastrophic global warming. In fact, you should remember this moment when you learned about this feedback loop-it is an existencial turning point in your life.

By the way, the “hydrate hypothesis” is a weeks old scientific theory, and is only now being discussed by global warming scientists. I suggest you Google the term.

Now that most scientists agree human activity is causing the Earth to warm, the central debate has shifted to when we will pass the tipping point and be helpless to stop the runaway Global Warming.

There are enormous quantities of methane trapped in permafrost and under the oceans in ice-like structures called clathrates. The methane in Arctic permafrost clathrates is estimated at 400 billion tons.

Methane is more than 20 times as strong a greenhouse gas as CO2, and the atmosphere currently contains about 3.5 billion tons of the gas.

The highest temperature increase from global warming is occurring in the arctic regions-an area rich in these unstable clathrates. Simulations from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) show that over half the permafrost will thaw by 2050, and as much as 90 percent by 2100.

Peat deposits may be a comparable methane source to melting permafrost. When peat that has been frozen for thousands of years thaws, it still contains viable populations of bacteria that begin to convert the peat into methane and CO2.

Western Siberia is heating up faster than anywhere else in the world, having experienced a rise of some 3C in the past 40 years. The west Siberian peat bog could hold some 70 billion tonnes of methane. Local atmospheric levels of methane on the Siberian shelf are now 25 times higher than global concentrations.

By the way, warmer temperatures and longer growing seasons have caused microbial activity to increase dramatically in the soil around the world. This, in turn, means that much of the carbon long stored in the soil is now being released into the atmosphere.

Releases of methane from melting oceanic clathrates have caused severe environmental impacts in the past. The methane in oceanic clathrates has been estimated at 10,000 billion tons.

55 million years ago a global warming chain reaction (probably started by volcanic activity) melted oceanic clathrates. It was one of the most rapid and extreme global warming events in geologic history.

Humans appear to be capable of emitting CO2 in quantities comparable to the volcanic activity that started these chain reactions. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, burning fossil fuels releases more than 150 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes.

Methane in the atmosphere does not remain long, persisting for about 10 years before being oxidized to CO2 (a greenhouse gas that lasts for hundreds of thousands of years). Chronic methane releases oxidizing into CO2 contribute as much to warming as does the transient methane concentrations.

To summarize, human activity is causing the Earth to warm. Bacteria converts carbon in the soil into greenhouse gasses, and enormous quantities are trapped in unstable clathrates. As the earth continues to warm, permafrost clathrates will thaw; peat and soil microbial activity will dramatically increase; and, finally, vast oceanic clathrates will melt. This global warming chain reaction has happened in the past.

Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 rose by a record amount over the past year. It is the third successive year in which they have increased sharply. Scientists are at a loss to explain why the rapid rise has taken place, but fear the trend could be the first sign of runaway global warming.

Runaway Global Warming promises to literally burn-up agricultural areas into dust worldwide by 2012, causing global famine, anarchy, diseases, and war on a global scale as military powers including the U.S., Russia, and China, fight for control of the Earth’s remaining resources.

Over 4.5 billion people could die from Global Warming related causes by 2012, as planet Earth accelarates into a greed-driven horrific catastrophe.

Bibliographic reference courtesy of Brad Arnold who has an extensive resrarch background on Global Warming.

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