The War On Science, Part 3

Steven D has an excellent piece today on the continuing Wingnut War on Science, with Virginia's Republican AG Ken Cuccinelli going all Scopes Trial on climate scientist Michael Mann.  Mann used to be at the University of Virginia, and now this knucklehead AG thinks he can sue Mann for "fraud" for his global warming work while at UVA on a state grant.

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. 

It seems to me that Virginia's better served investigating why their AG is filing frivolous lawsuits with taxpayer money against scientists, the EPA, and the Obama administration over health care legislation, frivolous lawsuits that Virginia taxpayers are footing the bill for, and that the state has zero chance of winning.

But that's Republican "science" for you.  Willful ignorance to the point of absurdity.  Anything they can't control, like "facts", must be destroyed.