I think it was Thomas Jefferson who first said ‘Laws are great, in theory, but…’

As his other project, the University of Virginia, gets further backed into a corner on the ‘Hockey Stick’ records it is spending upwards of a half a million dollars to keep from the public (even though the public paid for and has every right to them), we now see what Charlottesville radio host Joe Thomas of WCHV likes to note in this context as “UVA getting its Nixon on”. This time with a little help from its friends outraged that laws would be applied to the academic class:

Delegate David Toscano
211 East High Street
Charlottesville, VA 22902
434.220.1660 PHONE
434.220-1677 FAX
www.davidtoscano.com

******MEDIA ADVISORY******

Press Conference

Richmond –Senator A. Donald McEachin (D-Henrico), Senator J. Chapman Petersen (D-Fairfax) and Delegate David Toscano (D-Charlottesville) will hold a press conference on Tuesday, January 18, 2011, in Senate Room 1 at the Capitol at 10:45 am to discuss their proposed legislation that repeals and limits the authority of the Attorney General to issue civil investigative demands.

Who: Senators McEachin, Petersen and Delegate Toscano

What: Press Conference on CID authority

Where: Senate Room 1

When: 10:45 am

Why: Limit the Attorney General’s authority to issue CIDs

At this press conference someone in the press might ask (hey, stop laughing) why the legislators in unanimously passing this law in both chambers forgot to exempt the academic class when passing the law. Or, did they just think it would be applied to people doing things they didn’t approve of?

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As the anniversary of his Waterloo — ClimateGate — unfolds this week, Al Gore is back and in classic form. In yesterday’s HuffPo, he fulminates on his hobbyhorse, right from the title: The Media Has Failed in Covering the Climate Crisis.

Busted clock, meet correct time; blind pig, meet acorn. Gore is right. If not exactly as he intends, yet again (for example, as the UK High Court admonished him for fudging about, there is indeed a link between carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and temperature…the opposite of the one he claims that everyone not paid to lie by oil companies knows to be the case). The media haven’t said nearly enough about the UK High Court pantsing his movie with some pretty tough language from a guy wearing a powered wig, for one. Then there’s the strange U.S. media allergy to exploring, vs. trying to wave away, ClimateGate.

But consider also when Gore appeared on 60 Minutes a couple of years ago. After boasting that he was the recipient of a huge bag of money to re-brand as the ‘climate crisis’ what we had just gotten used to calling ‘climate change’ (which had already been rebranded from global cooling, then global warming and before that, I believe, weather), Lesley Stahl asked of his “huge, new $300 million advertising campaign“, “how are you paying for this?”.

Unaccustomed to challenge, this man who keeps the media away from him so he doesn’t have to answer such silly questions trotted out some weasel-wording about passing through profits from his movie to his new endeavor, which stumbling harkened back to his “no controlling legal authority” days (still lacking the dexterity of “I never inhaled” by Bill “Bring More of Those Funny Brownies!” Clinton).

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For nearly two decades now, people have been arguing about climate change and getting nowhere. Right-wingers argue that global warming is a hoax based on unsubstantiated science, while left-wingers insist that not only is it real but unless we spend everything we have and more trying to stop it, the world will end tomorrow.

To which I say, “Stop—you’re both wrong!”

This, in a nutshell, is the message of the new documentary about me and my work that opens nationwide on Nov. 12. It’s called “Cool It” and, yes, the title is meant to be clever. The idea is that we do need to cool down the planet, but in order to do it sensibly we first need to cool it ourselves. That is, we need to dispense with both the anti-scientific denialism and the Al Gore-ish fear-mongering. Instead, what we should be doing is facing facts—and responding to them not with rhetoric but with smarter, more rational policies.

The first fact we need to acknowledge is the reality of global warming. Like it or not, the data is abundantly clear that man-made greenhouse gases have been building up in the atmosphere for decades if not centuries, with the result that global temperatures are rising. Yes, the “Climate-gate” emails and the disclosure of funny business at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change exposed some deeply disturbing academic chicanery and prejudice at some supposedly prestigious institutions. However, these revelations did nothing to undermine the fundamental scientific basis of global warming. What they did call into question were many of the more extreme predictions about global warming’s likely impact—such as the idea that all the Himalayan glaciers were about to disappear (they’re not) or that half the Amazon rain forest would soon be destroyed (not likely).

Of course, these extreme predictions are at the heart of the mainstream environmental movement’s position on climate policy. And this brings us to another set of facts we need to face: that while global warming is real, it is not quite the imminent catastrophe so many climate activists would have us believe.

There may be some truth to the notion that in order to get people to focus on a problem, you need to scare the pants off them. But while worst-case scenarios may be a great way to get the public’s attention, they are a terrible basis for making public policy. If you believe that the southwest U.S. is about to become another dustbowl (as Paul Krugman has insisted) or that Greenland and Antarctica are on the verge of becoming huge piles of slush (as Al Gore would have us believe), of course you’re going to argue that we should do everything we can to eliminate carbon emissions as quickly as possible—even if that means amazingly costly and ineffective government policies. (more…)

As you can read here, retired Albemarle County (Virginia) Circuit Judge Paul Peatross has ruled that Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli may not have access to records under Virginia’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, as he seeks to determine the propriety of Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann’s claims made to obtain research funding. Judge Peatross’s ruling protects Mann, the University, and specifically the Department of Environmental Sciences, at least for now.

Here’s the rub, on which I will have more to say. I attended the hearing a week ago Friday at which the parties argued the University’s motion to dismiss. The Deputy AG Wesley Russell’s arguments dominated, so badly I almost felt sorry for the University. The judge’s queries were puzzling, as he pleaded with the University’s counsel to come up with some argument how he might rule in their favor, as were other comments (continue reading).

Before the hearing commenced Peatross, substituting for the vacationing chief judge, cited his wife’s 1982 degree in environmental science from UVA –  oddly, he then said “but not in global warming” — as part of a rather spare recitation of why he was hearing of this case (which he attested he had never heard about until reading the briefs that morning. A prominent case in the local, state and national news assigned to his old court! This man takes his retirement seriously…), and articulating his history so that counsel might decide whether he carried any conflict such that he should not hear the University’s motion.

That fact of her 1982 degree from Mann’s former Department, apparently, was relevant. Okay. But…

The fact that the judge’s wife had in fact previously worked in that Department of Environmental Sciences — the very Department that stands to suffer should he have ruled in favor of the Attorney General – was somehow not worth disclosing to counsel.

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This week, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, South Africa’s tourism minister, was nominated to head the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCC). Van Schalkwyk is a former apartheid operative who bartered his way into the black majority government by helping it smear its democratic opposition. He is a statist bureaucrat who is one of the most unpopular political figures in the new South Africa. He is just right for the job.

There is no one better to put in charge of the entire political enterprise of climate change as it is collapsing amidst failed negotiations and accusations of fraud. Van Schalkwyk will be sure to hasten the end. He did the same when he took over the rump of South Africa’s National Party, the party of apartheid, and led it to crushing defeat. He gave up and joined the African National Congress (ANC) government in return for his ministry.

That was bad news for South Africans, as Van Schalkwyk encouraged other politicians to defect from the country’s leading opposition parties to join the corrupt and hegemonic  ANC. (An angry public began referring to those who crossed the floor for political favors as “crosstitutes.”) But it is good news for critics of the UN climate change bureaucracy, who now have a target who personifies everything there is to dislike about the system.

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This week (March 3, 2010) was the deadline Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA) set for Mark Crisson, President and CEO of the American Public Power Association (APPA), to explain why APPA is urging Senators to support Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s Congressional Review Act resolution to veto the EPA’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. The Senate may vote on the Murkowski resolution as soon as next week.

Now, aside from the merits of the issue, which I’ll get into in a moment, Waxman and Markey’s behavior is out of line. Waxman and Markey (W/M) are Members of the House of Representatives. What business is it of theirs if the APPA lobbies Senators about a bill pending in the Senate? Senators can conduct their own inquiries without any assistance from W/M. And why didn’t W/M copy Sen. Murkowski or at least Senate Energy Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) on their Feb. 25 letter to Mr. Crisson? Failure to “cc” any of the principals in the Senate flouts one of the most basic rules of legislative courtesy.

Besides being busybodies, Waxman and Markey are bullies.

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Al Gore emerged from his undisclosed location and took to the op-ed page of the New York Times:

I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.

It is true that the climate panel published a flawed overestimate of the melting rate of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalayas, and used information about the Netherlands provided to it by the government, which was later found to be partly inaccurate. In addition, e-mail messages stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain showed that scientists besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skepticsmay not have adequately followed the requirements of the British freedom of information law.

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During his campaign for Attorney General of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli committed himself to acting with an aggressive conservative agenda. He promised voters that he would the office to aggressively fight governmental overregulation and interference wherever he could find it.

In other words, he pledged to use the office of Attorney General for good, rather than evil. After just over one month in office, he’s off to one hell of a start.

Last week, AG Cuccinelli boldly petitioned the EPA to convene a proceeding to reexamine their “Endangerment Finding” which claims that human activity has increased atmospheric greenhouse gases to a point that people’s lives are at risk. As such, they claim, the federal government must impose new caps on emissions and other climate protection policies in the energy sector.

Cuccinelli believes, rightly, that regulations based on the findings of the EPA in this sketchy case would be both legally questionable and detrimental to Virginia’s economy. (Much of the research that the EPA has based these findings upon has come from the questionable climate-gate materials). Accordingly, the AG also has petitioned a federal appeals court to review the EPA’s findings.

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The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (the Stimulus Bill) has been such an epic failure, that even the mainstream media has started to notice. The White House has tacitly acknowledged this and recently announced that it would no longer ‘count’ jobs ‘created or saved’ by the Stimulus. The basic problem is that the bulk of the spending went to programs or projects that have nothing to do with economic growth.

The latest example of this is a $500,000 grant to Michael Mann, Professor at Penn State University and unintended c0-star of the ClimateGate e-mail scandal. The leaked e-mails revealed collaboration among scientists to stifle dissenting views on the extent of man-made global warming.

Mann is also the creator of the “Hockey Stick” graph, which purported to show a sharp increase in recent temperatures. That work has been thoroughly discredited by researcher Stephen McIntyre. Yet, in June 2009, the National Science Foundation awarded Mann a three-year $500,000 to further study the climate’s response to human activity. According to the grant award:

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The United States government has shelled out huge sums of money to universities, think tanks, and businesses to study global warming climate change.  The government is poised to dole out even more money for climate-change “solutions” like the cap-and-trade scheme.  With the revelations about the lengths to which the leading group of global warming doomsayers went to “hide the decline” in temperatures in their seminal studies – studies that themselves spawned an avalanche of government spending – the world is seeing that the entire enterprise may be based on a fraud.

In a normal scandal where the government appears to have been ripped off, someone in the legislative or executive branch can usually be counted on to investigate the alleged fraud, if for no other reason than advancing their own political career.  In the case of this scandal, however, the Obama administration and congressional Democrats have calculated that their political interests are best served by ignoring ClimateGate.  This is sure to continue as new scandals emerge.

That leaves only the judicial branch as a place where climate change fraud can be unmasked in a government forum.

Individuals with inside knowledge about scientists, businesses, or any organization who knowingly used false statements to get (or keep) government money to perpetuate the “climate change” machine should consider a lawsuit under the federal False Claims Act.

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From Fox News’ Nine Big Stories the Mainstream Media Missed in 2009:

ACORN Tapes

Filmmakers James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, posing as a pimp and a prostitute, went undercover to the offices of the community organizing group ACORN in the summer. They secretly videotaped employees instructing them in how to falsify tax forms and seek illegal benefits for 13 “very young” girls from El Salvador whom the pair said they wanted to import to work as child prostitutes. New videos emerged daily, but the mainstream media ignored the growing scandal for days, even as federal agencies began severing their ties with the group and members of Congress cried for an investigation. (more…)

Believe it or not, the UN just whined that climategate is the Russian’s fault. It appears that the United Nation’s position is that the obvious cover-up of the false doctrine that is global warming perpetrated by global warming “scientists” is not the fault of the lying scientists, but that of the assumed “paid” Russian hacker that hacked the globaloney scientist’s emails and exposed the cover-up to the world. Convoluted reasoning, no?

Remember when you were a child and your Mother discovered through hearing about it from the neighbors that you were doing something you weren’t supposed to be doing? Remember how instead of taking responsibility for your actions you cried that it wasn’t right that someone narced on you? Well, that is the same sort of childish, facile reasoning that the UN has employed to explain away this climaegate scandal.

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), recently said that the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were obtained and hyped by Russia in order to “destroy public confidence” in the “science” of man-made global warming… or is it now “climate change”? It’s hard to keep up with their constant name changing as they look for more sellable rhetoric.

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A little known corollary of Copernican law tells us that, like the Earth, Big Media is also not, in fact, the center of the Universe. Just because the ‘journalists’ willfully choose to ignore ClimateGate–the proverbial tree falling in the enviro’s beloved rainforest–doesn’t mean the public and the political class aren’t paying attention. Of course, other than Barbara Boxer calling for criminal investigations into the hacked/leaked e-mails, it is mostly the political classes in other countries paying attention.  (If Boxer’s fantasy comes to pass and there are criminal charges pressed, how, pray tell, will Big Media report on it, since their readers presumably know nothing about the scandal.)

Fortunately, with the internet, we are no longer captive of Big Media for our news. The government-owned Canadian Broadcast Corporation, of all things, has been covering the controversy extensively. In this clip, noted commentator Rex Murphy lowers to guns to deck level on the scandal. It should be noted that Murphy is a former man of the left, having served in the leadership of the Liberal Party in Newfoundland.

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