At this point, I would say there is nothing to defend. If UVA is confident that it has done nothing wrong and stands by its scientists, I would agree the best course of action is not to respond defensively too soon. If Cuccinelli’s investigation is probably meant to intimidate, provoke a heated response to use in the media, or to “chill” scientific research, it would play into his hands to have UVA defend itself even before the AG’s office has made a formal charge. It makes UVA look like it has something to hide. However, by acting as if the investigation does not faze them, UVA looks confident yet law-abiding in its position. I like the phrase “Blood in the Water” because defensiveness and fear are exactly what would spur an aggressive guy like Cuccinelli on. It would make him even more intense in combing through the volumes of documents he’s requesting and might lend some weight to any argument he might make on academic dishonesty misleading the public.

I’d say UVA’s wait-and-see tactic is pretty good. When and if he does find anything, then I’m sure UVA has a plan in place to circle the wagons and to vigorously defend its scientists. Right now, however, I think playing it cool shouldn’t be seen as a lack of commitment but possibly as a well-thought out response to a difficult situation.

As a little context, why not read what GM said in a recent thread, then wonder where I am getting this stuff from.

“If we are to avoid overshoot and collapse, we need to restrain ourselves. The current version of democracy we have is incompatible with such a goal” – GM

Getting back the original point, What I was saying was that there are possible bad motives on both sides, greed on one, machlust on the other. Examining motives will get you no closer to the truth. Your side is the one that believes that motives are dispositive of the science of AGW, not me. It is certainly possible that bad actors in the quest for power could be using a factually true AGW scenario, just as it is possible that the status quo rich who control fossil fuel resources and are defending their interests also speak the truth. Motives do not prove anything; despite what, for example, Guy thinks about McIntyre.

And, by the way, plutocracy has absolutely nothing to do with Pluto, which is not longer even considered to be a planet. Its mass is only 1.3e22 kg, less than 20% of our own moon’s mass. I’d like to know who you can cite who thinks otherwise.

re plutocracy.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2010/05/02/attack-on-climate-scientists/#comment-57285

re the relevance of my replies. I stand by them.

I think the “plutocracy” generalisation originated on your side.

“i>”That’s odd coming from the camp of denial and outright fraud. You need only to dig a little deeper into the denial industry to find a whole slew of shenanigans by some of scummiest people on Earth. Some of it is for political reasons to preserve the plutocracy. Mostly it is about greed to preserve the fossil fuel industry, at all cost. “

There are a few people who do it for or against a perceived plutocracy; or indeed the oil industry. But unless the word “all” is explicitly used, it can’t be assumed. Some do, some don’t, on both sides.

I can tell you, I’m generally against plutocracies, and I’ve no more interest in the welfare of the fossil fuel industry than anyone else. (Which ought to be everyone, of course, considering the improvement in lifestyle and life expectancy that cheap energy gives us.) I also live on this planet, and I’m not about to advocate destroying it for short term profit. Nobody sane would.

If you were willing to admit honest intentions on the part of your opponents, I think you would find us more willing to reciprocate. But so long as the rhetoric of ‘evil deniers in it for the oil money’ persists, this sort of conflict is going to continue.

Are you saying all AGW overthrowers plutocracy defenders? No? Then don’t go assuming that we mean that all AGW defenders should be assumed to be plutocracy-overthrowers. I’m pretty certain that some are, because they’ve said so, but most are not. The world is more complicated than that.

More avoidance maneuvers. You won’t defend your claim about AGW proponents being would-be plutocracy overthrowers.

As for 5C

This is like playing tennis with a blind man (I read that somewhere). The 5°C is completely irrelevant. My comment related to your post about plutocracy-overthrowing-AGW-proponents. There was nothing in either your post or my response about 5°C or any other number. You have produced this number as if by magic, but it has no relevance to your post or to my response. You’re trying to make smoke.

What I won’t do, and why the hockey stick is so important and my comments are relevant, is commit huge resources to a non problem, that is, the temperature staying within the bounds of natural variability. Possibly it is even keeping us out of an otherwise inevitable ice age. Ever think of that? How catastrophic would that be? How do you know it would be far worse to not act? Economic depressions have a way of leading to major wars, for one. That is a risk of action, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. Massive starvation due to loss of production is another, whether you acknowledge it or not. You can say that there is no risk of that happening, but you can’t know it.

As for 5C

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article694819.ece
London ‘under water by 2100′ as Antarctica crumbles into the sea

If the science is wrong, it will be a huge blunder to act on it.

And if the science is right, it would be a far, far greater blunder to not act on it.

As to the rest of your post, you’re changing the rules. You said, without qualification, that it was possible that “proponents of AGW” are in it to overthrow the plutocracy. Now you’re waving your hands and adding a couple hundred words of irrelvancies about degrees per doubling and worst case scenarios.

I’m calling BS. You’re backing off an extravagant claim that you can’t possibly support.

If you think that 97% of climate scientists believe that it is going to be 5C warmer at the end of the century, I would like to know where you get that figure.

This is exactly what I’m talking about. This 5C number suddenly appeared out of nowhere. It wasn’t in your original post, nor was it in mine. So why is it here?

For the record, 97% is the percentage of publishing climate scientists who answered “Yes” to this question:

Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

If you doubt that this kind of machinations went on, you should read them discuss them in the emails. It is not like one or two emails were embarrassing, almost every one of them was. I can’t imagine what kind of context explains getting a journal editor fired because he let through a paper that you didn’t agree with, rather than just publishing a refutation. Yet that is exactly what they claim in the emails that they did.

There are several that purport to, although when you examine the details they don’t.

I’ve already cited one of them: Wahl and Ammann 2007. This was supposed to be a rapid takedown of MM05 submitted in 2005, reproducing Mann’s reconstruction. McIntyre was a reviewer, and generated such a long list of faults, omissions, and misrepresentations that it got rejected. In particular, McIntyre asked that the verification R2 statistics be published, which he already knew from his analysis of Mann’s data showed no correlation between the observed and reconstructed temperature in the verification period. Ammann refused, and the paper sat in limbo for a year. Then with the next IPCC report coming round they desperately needed something in the peer-reviewed literature to use as an excuse for not mentioning McIntyre and McKittrick’s results. So Ammann and Wahl was revived, and a deal done with the journal editor to formally accept it, so the draft could go forward to the IPCC, but after the IPCC had met the R2 statistics that showed Ammann’s (and hence Mann’s) reconstruction were bunk were inserted as a condition of publication.

The IPCC had their “refutation”, and the journal had their fig leaf of respectability.

There are also Von Storch and Zorita, Huybers, Ritson, and Rutherford. Extended details on all of these in that book, which I’m sure you’re all rushing out now to buy.

Moptop,

“I am betting that includes NIV.”

Yep.

One minor point – current warming should be about 40-50% of doubling, not 60%. 390/280 is a 40% increase over pre-industrial, and the logarithm of 1.4 (to base 2) is just short of 0.5.

If CO2 rise is exponential (warning! economic modelling here), we ought to expect another 40% over the coming century.
(Barring some speculative aerosol masking effects and a ‘pipeline’ full of heat, of course.)