Even Climate Skeptics Think Virginia DA Ken Cuccinelli is Crazed
One critic of the investigation is the Canadian statistician Ross McKitrick, author of a scientific paper sharply critical of Dr. Mann’s historical climate reconstructions, which were responsible for the so-called “hockey stick” graph showing 20th-century temperatures spiking sharply above the average of the last millennium.
Mr. Cuccinelli simply did not have his facts right, Dr. McKitrick wrote in a comment last May at Watts Up With That, the popular climate-skeptic blog, pointing out misrepresentations of his work that appear in Virginia’s legal complaint against Dr. Mann.
“You have to be prepared to make the effort to go into the details and get them right,” Mr. McKitrick wrote. “Nothing I have seen yet suggests that Cucinelli has done so, and I have yet to see any credible basis for his inquiry.”
In October, Thomas Fuller, co-author of “Climategate,” a book highly critical of Dr. Mann and other climate scientists, also turned to Watts Up With That to denounce the investigation.