The other day the National Science Foundation issued a report clearing Michael Mann of misconduct. To global-warming deniers, this will prove only that the NSF is part of the diabolical plot. Facts have never been their strong suit.
We've lost track of how many inquiries have reached the same conclusion by now. At this point, the decent thing for Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to do would be to drop his own inquiry, apologize to Mann and then apologize to the taxpayers.
Cuccinelli is stretching the state's Fraud Against Taxpayers Act to allege that Mann, a former UVa employee, obtained grants under false pretenses. The AG claims merely to be asking questions. But as any good lawyer knows, the sort of questions he is asking fall under the category of "At what point, sir, did you stop beating your wife?" There's no good answer, and the point has been made to the jury.
In this case the jury is the Republican base, which has taken to arguing backward from an ideological conclusion — government regulation is bad — to a factual finding: therefore, climate change isn't happening. And anyone who says so must be lying.
Government regulation certainly ought to be kept to a minimum. But conservatives' pigheaded resistance to scientific consensus looks remarkably like the American left's denial of Soviet atrocities once upon a time: They don't want it to be true, therefore it isn't.
In support of that wishful thinking, the denialist camp also employs two sharply divergent standards: Anything that undermines the case for concern about climate change — such as the recent investigation of a scientist who had made startling claims about polar bears — immediately becomes ironclad proof that the whole notion is a scam, but even the strongest evidence supporting climate change is and always will be pure speculation. It is a shame to watch Cuccinelli — who has a background in engineering and a keen mind — encourage rather than correct such shoddy thinking.
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