Climategate Fallout: VA Court Orders University to Unbury "Research"

The University of Virginia sure doesn't want to reveal what Michael Mann was up to while he was at their institution collecting beaucoup Federal dollars to show policymakers everywhere that Planet Earth is experiencing unprecedented catastrophic warming caused by human activities, such as using Edison light bulbs, driving motor vehicles, heating water for coffee and bathing, etc., etc., etc. Mann, the author of the notorious hockey-stick temperature graph that conveniently ignored previous global warming episodes caused entirely by Nature, used science fiction instead of hard science to fuel global warming hysteria.

The University has used standard ploys to subvert attempts by law enforcement and private citizens to access the taxpayer-supported research materials that constitute the history of Mann's development of the hockey stick graph, including court appeals to stop Virginia's Attorney General, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, from seeing Mann's research; failing to respond to Freedom of Information requests by investigative researchers; supplying unrelated materials or materials in indecipherable formats; erecting bogus financial barriers; etc., etc. The university claims that it doesn't want to "chill" academic research by permitting taxpayers and law enforcers to get a glimpse of the stuff we paid these academics to do. The university doesn't want to get chilly, but if the rest of us carbon-based life forms freeze our buns off next winter because we can't afford fuel because of policies based on fraudulent research findings, well, that's our problem.

On May 16, the Environmental Law Center of a new think tank, the American Tradition Institute:

asked a Prince William County judge, under the Commonwealth’s Freedom of Information Act, to expedite the release of documents withheld by the University of Virginia that pertain to the work of its former environmental sciences assistant professor Dr. Michael Mann.

The judge gave the university until September 21st to show the American Tradition Institute Michael Mann's global warming correspondence and other information. Meanwhile, Virginia's Attorney General awaits a decision by Virginia's Supreme Court on whether he will be permitted to subpoena Mann's research materials to determine whether Mann "violated Virginia’s fraud laws in seeking state funding for research."

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