RICHMOND, Va. — For nearly a year, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, Virginia’s crusading Republican attorney general, has waged a one-man war on the theory of man-made global warming.

Invoking his subpoena powers, he has sought to force the University of Virginia to turn over the files of a prominent climatology professor, asserting that his research may be marred by fraud. The university is battling the move in the courts.

At the same time, Mr. Cuccinelli is suing the Environmental Protection Agency over its ruling that carbon dioxide and other global warming gases pose a threat to human health and welfare, describing the science behind the agency’s decision as “unreliable, unverifiable and doctored.”

Now his allegations of manipulated data and scientific fraud are resonating in Congress, where Republican leaders face an influx of new members, many of them Tea Party stalwarts like Mr. Cuccinelli, eager to inveigh against the body of research linking man-made emissions to warming.

“There’s a huge appetite among the rank-and-file to raise fundamental questions about the underlying science,” said Michael McKenna, a Republican strategist and energy lobbyist.

Responding to those concerns, the new Republican majority has introduced legislation that would strip federal regulators of their power to police the industrial emissions that contribute to climate change. But party leaders, treading warily, have cast their arguments against regulation largely in terms of economic consequences, playing down the prospect of major hearings to examine the scientific basis of human-caused warming.

Even dedicated opponents of climate action concede that hauling climate scientists before Congress and challenging their findings could easily backfire, as many representatives lack a sophisticated grasp of climatology and run the risk of making embarrassing errors.

“It’s a trap for a lot of members,” said Marc Morano, a former Republican staff member on the Senate Environment and Public Works committee and publisher of Climate Depot, a Web site that advances the arguments of climate skeptics. “They’re apt to make mistakes.”

Meanwhile, a planned investigation by Representative Darrell Issa of California into alleged instances of manipulation and fraud by climate scientists — broadly similar to those cited by Mr. Cuccinelli in his legal complaints — has been indefinitely postponed.

Yet as the Republican leadership puts the brakes on a climate science confrontation, Mr. Cuccinelli has forged ahead.

In the process, his critics say, he has not only made mistakes, but also twisted facts to bolster his case against the climatologist, Michael E. Mann, now a professor at Pennsylvania State University.

Sherwood L. Boehlert, a retired Republican congressman from New York and a former chairman of the House Science Committee, is among those who have sharply criticized Mr. Cuccinelli’s tactics.

“I find no logical explanation for spending taxpayer dollars on this politically designed, headline-grabbing pursuit of his,” said Mr. Boehlert, whose panel in 2006 investigated nearly identical charges by climate skeptics that Dr. Mann had falsified results but found no evidence of wrongdoing.

More than 800 professors and scientists in Virginia have petitioned the attorney general to abandon his pursuit of Dr. Mann. As the university fights the investigation, a state judge has ruled substantially in its favor although a final decision has yet to be made.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/science/earth/23virginia.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

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Gus: as I have mentioned before, it is FRAUDULENT to believe that adding 2 ppm of CO2 per year into the atmosphere from human activity — THIS process CAN BE (and is) QUANTIFIED — is not going to have an effect... Totally irresponsible!

This lunatic young idiot, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II [born July 30, 1968, still in nappies as far as I am concerned], who may have got his lawyer's degree at a fundamentalist christian school-fete lucky-dip, SHOULD actually be charged of crime against the future of this planet — and of making himself and his Republican colleagues a deathly nuisance to those who will (and are) suffer(ing) from climate change. These silly republicans in the wonderland of glorified ignorance are elephants in the china shop. They are despicable.

As I have mentioned before, this is not a question of belief or faith. It is a question of knowledge. The knowledge of global warming is correct, though presently too conservative in its estimates of the next.

picture by Gus.