If Man Caused Global Warming Is Beyond Debate Then Why Won't U.VA. Release Michael Mann's Paper's?

The lengths to which the Univ of Va has gone in order to deny the request by the attorney general might well point to wrong doing by those powerful enough to orchestrate that kind of stone walling, but there are other issues:

1) The University has a moral responsibility to protect the privacy of its employees. Some of the documents requested may be private emails. http://email.about.com/od/staysecureandprivate/qt/...

2) The University has a business incentive to not become known as an employer that throws her employees to government wolves.

3) The University has a legal incentive to wait for a judge to order it to release the documents in order to avoid liability for doing so. http://www.policypatrol.com/internalmailpr.htm

At issue is not so much whether global warming is caused by humans, but whether Michael Mann committed fraud using taxpayer funds to promote that idea http://politics.slashdot.org/story/10/05/02/202724...

by publishing a paper http://www.geo.utexas.edu/courses/387h/PAPERS/conf...

declaring that the current warming http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html#...

is unprecedented despite that fact that he evidently knew before he submitted his paper for publication that his data was false.

The accusation is based on 2 known facts:

1) Michael Mann used Graybill's tree ring data to calibrate the 20th century even though he had to know that the widening of the rings were not caused by warming, but rather by CO2 fertilization since the paper he got the data from was entitled "Detecting the aerial fertilization effect of atmospheric CO2 enrichment in tree-ring chronologies". http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/1993/92GB02533.sht...

2) Without Graybill's data, no such result could be had, and Michael Mann knew it since he tried the data before publishing it, and placed it in a directory that he named "Censored". He failed to delete that directory before it was discovered. (page 10 of the geo.utexas link)

There are, other serious errors showing either fraudulent intent, or possibly just gross incompetence.

Edit @Gary:

"his work has been replicated numerous times."

That is exactly the problem. It is only replicated using the fraudulent means listed above and below under the link entitled "Other Errors". Even Michael Mann has not replicated it. His latest works, unlike the one in question, show both a Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and a Little Ice Age (LIA). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temper...

His original work did not show them, and demonstrated that the temperature fluctuations we see today are unprecedented, (Check out the geo.texas.edu link above.) which they are not. Most studies show that the MWP was warmer than the current warm period. http://co2science.org/data/mwp/qualitative.php

Edit @Al:

"mann's papers don't make greenland and glaciers melt or sea level rise."

The issue is that Mann's paper claimed that they have not been doing that since the end of the Little ice age. In fact, Mann's paper denied that the Little Ice Age ever happened!

Edit @Pegminer:

"failing to demonstrate that any investigation of Mann was warranted"

The justification for the investigation in listed in the 2 points above, and also, in the Other Errors under Sources.

Edit2@Pegminer:

Yes, I would be the last person to deny that politics are involved. Likewise, politics seemed to be involved in Mann's attempt to write the MWP and the LIA out of history, and possibly with the judge's dismissal (now under appeal) as well. To successfully carry out this prosecution, Cuccinelli will have to convince the court that not only was Mann wrong, but also that he published knowing that he was wrong with intent to commit fraud. This case will not be decided impartially without considering politics.

Edit2 @Gary:

Mann's hockey stick appeared in the 2003 assessment report 7 times sometimes taking up a full page. If "everyone knew what he was doing", then you indite both the IPCC and Nature for much worse than sloppy review. The hockey stick is the foundation for why people erroneously think that current warming is unprecedented. This has been such an embarrassment to the IPCC that they now only post the latest TAR on their site.

Edit3 @Gary:

Using data that is known to be wrong to publish a paper is not a "cool little experiment". Saying that everybody else knew what Mann did at the time suggests that Nature publishes bogus pseudo science papers knowingly (page 10 of the geo.utexas link). There are many proxy records for temperature. All of them have problems, but tree-rings are notorious for their responses to signals that have little to do with temperature. (See Phenological link below) The hockey stick starred in the IPCC TAR, major news shows, documentaries, and was circulated to virtually every English speaking student on the planet.

Everything necessary to replicate Mann's research is already available and his work has been replicated numerous times.

The only thing "fishy" is why someone would keep going after something that can only hurt their position. The answer, of course, is that the Republican politicians behind the witch hunt are so scientifically illiterate and poorly informed on climate change science that they think there is something hidden that the rest of us do not already know.

They funniest thing is that Mann's research is a not a necessary element of the anthropogenic theory. All he did was combine some proxy records, generate a regression equation, and produce a temperature reconstruction - a reconstruction that has been analyzed to death and replicated a dozen times.

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NW Jack ---

It was not "fraudulent" because everyone knew what he was doing. I admit it was not the data I would have used, but the study was just a little experiment in reconstruction. Briffa was doing the same thing at the same time with a different dataset.

In any case, AGW is in no way dependent on Mann's paper. It is what it is. Deniers have wasted their their time attacking it as if it were the cornerstone of climate science. If the paper had never been written, it would make no difference - except Mann and a few others would have experienced less grief.

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Jack --

It is no indictment against Nature. The paper was a cool little experiment - the first of its kind. And, in fact, it does nothing to detract from AGW. In a sense, Mann's hands were tied. In order to build the regression equation he needed annual resolution, and tree-rings are the only proxy record that provides reliable dates at that scale.

The bottom line is that the Hockey Stick presents a generally accurate picture of global temperature over the last thousand years - there have been legitimate contradictory arguments - and the energy deniers have invested in attacking it is just a waste. If not for deniers, Mann's little paper would have come and gone with little fanfare outside of the dendrochronological community.

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Jack --

The data are not - and are not known to be - "wrong." The entire bristlecone issue involves a small amplitude adjustment from 1400-1450. Omitting or including the data does not significantly change that small segment and has no effect on the remainder of the time series because of the robustness of the data. Further confirmation has been demonstrated by studies that replicate the results reasonably well and the fact that the Hockey Stick curve is, in fact, an accurate representation of temperature variability over that time period.

I don't deny that the IPCC made more out of it than it should have, but it is not as if they chose to make a big deal out of something that is "wrong."

Actually, if you read the article (even considering it's from one of the most biased newspapers in the country), you'll find that UVA has already turned over about 2000 pages of the requested documents, but the requesters are balking at paying for their request, instead expecting taxpayers to foot the bill for what undoubtedly is a huge waste of time. Don't you just love it when supposed conservative organizations like ATI don't mind wasting taxpayer money if it serves their own purposes?

A better question is why Ken Cuccinelli hasn't been indicted yet for abuse of power. It's very clear that everything he does is with political grandstanding in mind. If I still lived in Virginia I would be embarrassed to have this political hack as attorney general. Don't they have any real crime in Virginia? Cuccinelli keeps pursuing an award winning academic who doesn't even work in the state anymore, even after Cuccinnelli had his hands slapped by the courts for failing to demonstrate that any investigation of Mann was warranted. Cuccinelli is another example of a conservative that has no problem wasting taxpayer money for his own political ends.

EDIT for NW Jack: Why are you arguing with me? It was the courts that told Cuccinelli that his investigation was unwarranted, not me. It appears that Cuccinelli is as incompetent at law as he is at climate science. Face it, the ONLY reason that Cuccinelli is going after Mann is because of Cuccinelli's politics. I don't see him going after string theorists or mathematicians, or astronomers, or anyone that is unconnected with his conservative politics. If you can't see that Cuccinelli's motives are purely political then you are naive in the extreme.

If you were part of the biggest scam in history wouldn't you want to keep the evidence out of site as long as possible.

it's also very fishy how NASA hid all these cameras in hollywood while they faked the moon landings.

mann's papers don't make greenland and glaciers melt or sea level rise.

Global Warming is FAKE

Since it is accepted beyond doubt worldwide by genuine scientists, why would anybody want to simply hand over their hard work to a bunch of crackpots.

He cooked the books well done with bad science and math.