Gary in better times.
Here's hoping for a full recovery.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
UVA Tells Cuccinelli to Show His Cards
The University of Virgina has petitioned a court to set aside the request of Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli to Michael Mann, a former professor at UVA, for disclosure of a large amount of material related to his research while a faculty member by invoking a statute focused on rooting out fraud in the use of public funds.The petition (here in PDF) basically calls Cuccinelli's bluff. I wrote about this earlier this month, arguing that "I'm no lawyer, but the chances of Mann being found guilty of violating this statute are precisely zero." The petition explains that Cuccinelli's request fails on both procedural and substantive grounds - the two Aces in the hole.
However, since this is a public relations stunt by the Attorney General, he could still win in the court of public opinion, even if the petition were to be granted on procedural grounds, by showing evidence of the fraudulent use of taxpayer money by Mann. On the other hand, if he cannot show such substance, he will be the one that looks like a fraud on a fishing expedition. As I wrote this month, I don't think that the AG has the evidence, because there is no such evidence to have.
What about Michael Mann and climate science? As I wrote earlier this month:
The worst that can be said about Mann is that he may have done sloppy research using poor methods that won't stand the test of time, and when challenged he tends to act petulant and nasty. Let's just accept this as true for the purposes of discussion. OK, so what? None of this rises to scientific misconduct or fraud, not even close, and no one has even made such a case, despite the ample noise in the blogosphere.If this plays out as I anticipate, with the petition granted and the AG coming up with nothing, then Mann and his supporters would do well not to confuse this legal victory with evidence for scientific accuracy and integrity -- a conflation that has been too often made in the aftermath of the recent UK reviews of the UEA situation, which simply adds to the partisan flames.
Mann's opponents will continue to shout "fraud" but until they can match the talk with evidence, they should probably stay silent. If Mann is confident that his files show no wrongdoing, he might consider just releasing them after the petition is granted as a gesture of his confidence. I doubt that would happen, but it would be quite powerful if it was done by choice, not by coercion.
However, after this episode is over, I expect fault lines to remain pretty much as they were before and the battle will simply shift to new turf in the never-ending climate wars.
Lagan
This morning his temperature is at 40.4 and his nose is bleeding again. Tomorrow we start him on oral antibiotics. He is still standing and eating although his appetite has diminished somewhat. He seems happy to see me when I visit and definitely loves his carrots but I am finding it incredibly hard watching him deteriorate. I've ridden this roller coaster before and I really hate the ride. I know that I can't give up on him yet as we could still win this but the longer it goes on and the worse he gets, little by little, the more I have to question if he is suffering more than is acceptable. My vet thinks we should keep going so keep going we will ...
New Sports Illustrated Column on Implications of Floyd Landis' Allegations against Lance Armstrong
I have a new column on SI.com on the potential legal impact of allegations by Floyd Landis that Lance Armstrong engaged in doping and possibly encouraged and facilitated other riders to dope. Here's an excerpt:To read the rest, click here. For an excellent commentary by Alan Milstein on Landis' allegations, see On Floyd Landis: What Makes Sports and Sports Law Interesting.Why would law enforcement authorities listen to someone of questionable character like Landis?
For one, Landis would be breaking the law by knowingly lying to federal government officials.
Second, sometimes persons with checkered pasts and suspicious motivations are telling the truth and sometimes they are the only persons willing to tell the truth. Just recall when Jose Canseco was widely ridiculed for claims in his book, Juiced Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big, that Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi and other players used steroids. While Canseco's colorful past and financial motivations for book sales gave legitimate reason to question the accusations, he appears to have been telling the truth. Perhaps if he had been taken more seriously earlier in time, the steroid scandal could have been addressed more effectively.
In addition, it is the job of law enforcement and other investigatory officials, including special agent Jeff Novitzky, to assess the credibility of Landis and how well his claims would withstand courtroom scrutiny. Clearly, if Landis is the central accuser of Armstrong, Armstrong could attack Landis on multiple grounds. But should the government conclude that Armstrong broke the law, it will try to find additional sources of evidence and testimony that support Landis's claims but lack his vulnerabilities.
* * *What is the legal significance of USPS sponsoring Armstrong's team?
In all likelihood, the sponsorship by USPS, an independent agency within the Executive Branch of the federal government, will not impact the legal duties of Armstrong or the team. Sponsorship of a racing team probably does not convert the team into an entity that acts on behalf of the government, nor is it likely to turn decision-makers of the team into government agents. Therefore, even though Armstrong was a part-owner and principal decision-maker for Tailwind Sports, which managed the USPS team and received the sponsorship money, his main legal concerns probably center on accusations of illegal distribution.
It is worth noting, however, the possibility that Armstrong's treatment of USPS sponsorship money could bring legal scrutiny, particularly under the federal statute for the misuse of public funds and embezzlement, 18 U.S.C. §§ 648. The statute prohibits custodians of public funds from misusing those funds and carries up to a 10-year prison sentence. The fact that USPS does not draw from taxpayer funds may not help Armstrong, since the statute does not distinguish taxpayer public funds from non-taxpayer public funds.
Still, whether Armstrong's individual control of the funds would be sufficient to trigger scrutiny, and whether promotional public funds fall within the purview of the statute are complicating factors. At this stage, therefore, it seems unlikely that the USPS sponsorship will impact the legal analysis.
The Significance of Climate Model Agreement: A Guest Post by Ryan Meyer
Ryan Meyer is a PhD student at ASU's School of Life Sciences where he is writing a dissertation about US federal climate science research and its relationship to policy making. He is spending a yer in Australia on a Fulbright and he blogs at Adapt Already.
If four out of five global climate models (GCMs) agree on a result, should we feel more confident about that result? Does agreement among models constitute increased certainty about the models’ basis in reality? My colleagues and I wondered about this a few years ago when we started noticing that many climate scientists seem to adopt this logic without any explanation or justification. They claim, for example, that we should be more worried about drought in the southwestern US because 18 out of 19 models predict a transition to a more arid climate over the next 50 years. Or they pick a subset of models to represent a particular process such as the Asian monsoon, and then point to agreement among those models as significant.
If 18 models get the same result, is that better than just one? Why? Climate science should provide a thorough explanation for this, especially if climate models are to begin informing policy decisions.
We argue in a paper now available in Environmental Science and Policy (PDF here) that agreement is only significant if the models are sufficiently independent from one another. The climate science community has mostly ignored the crucial problem of model independence while taking advantage of a tacit belief in the force of model agreement. To quote from our introduction:
GCMs are commonly treated as independent from one another, when in fact there are many reasons to believe otherwise. The assumption of independence leads to increased confidence in the ‘‘robustness’’ of model results when multiple models agree. But GCM independence has not been evaluated by model builders and others in the climate science community. Until now the climate science literature has given only passing attention to this problem, and the field has not developed systematic approaches for assessing model independence.To some these arguments may seem like nitpicking. Or they might seem better suited to the pages of some technical journal where modelers work these things out for themselves. But we strongly believe that this extends beyond methodology, and is in fact a policy question. It relates to the kind of investments we can and should be making in climate science.
The question of independence is one small piece of a much needed broad discussion about climate science policy. What kinds of knowledge are most helpful in crafting a response to climate change? What institutions, disciplines, and tools are best suited to deliver such knowledge? Such crucial questions of science policy tend to be ignored. We argue about what "the science" says, rather than how it works and how it could work better for the needs of decision makers.
In our paper, we take it as a given that governments will continue to fund large and complex models of the climate and related systems. (A broader discussion about the merits of this investment is important, but we do not directly address it). But how should they be funded? Who should decide the most important questions to pursue? In the past, we have tended to let climate scientists sort that one out. They are, after all, the experts. But they are certainly not unbiased participants in this discussion. Are they asking the most important questions, or just the ones they find most interesting?
It is important to recognize that there are many possible trajectories for our climate science knowledge. We may not know exactly where each one leads, but we can still make wise, informed choices. This is why the independence problem is important, not just for climate modelers, but for science policy makers, potential users of climate science, and advocates for climate change adaptation.
We have three basic recommendations related to the independence problem:
- Climate modelers should be wary of overselling results based on model agreement.
- The climate science community should begin to better address the independence problem.
- Science policy decision makers should take this problem into account when building strategies for climate modeling, and climate science more broadly.
Political Realities
Yesterday, I discussed a proposal from the European Commission to increase the unilateral target for the bloc's emissions reductions to 30% from 20% by 2020. Since the proposal involves costs measured in the hundreds of billions of Euros (of which the exact amount seems to be reported differently), I argued yesterday that it is not going to happen.EurActiv reports today that Connie Hedegaard, the EU's Climate Action Commissioner and person responsible for the proposal, has stepped back:
Are the conditions right now? Would it make sense at this moment? My answer would be 'no'These comments raise the question of when it would be appropriate to increase costs to European businesses. Certainly no time soon, maybe never.
The point here is not about Europeans specifically, who have certainly shown the most leadership on climate policies over recent decades, but about a general principle of policy design: People are willing to accept some costs for decarbonization policies, but this willingness has limits, even in Europe. In this regard, Europeans, North Americans, Asians and everyone else are much the same. This is an argument discussed in some depth in The Climate Fix. There is no point is complaining about this reality -- and little point in trying to change it -- rather, it needs to be accepted as a boundary condition for climate policy design.
