According to the National Center for Public Policy Research, Penn State professor Michael Mann, under investigation by the university for his leading role in the Climategate scandal, received more than a half-million dollars in economic-stimulus funds last year to conduct climate-change research. In a press release, the NCPPR’s Tom Borelli has called on Mann to immediately return these funds to the U.S. Treasury.
Potentially adding grist for the mill, Noel Sheppard reports at NewsBusters that Penn State recently received a nearly $1.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate the impact of climate change.
At one level the fuss about these moneys has to do with agenda-guided science. You’ll recall that
emails and documents mysteriously released from the previously-prestigious Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom revealed discussions [by a closed circle of climate scientists] of manipulation and destruction of research data, as well as efforts to interfere with the peer review process to stifle opposing views. The motivation underlying these efforts appears to be a coordinated strategy to support the belief that mankind’s activities are causing global warming.
And then there’s the matter of our hard-earned tax dollars. In these crushing economic times, is it too much to ask that university authorities, our political leaders, and the press jump on this case with a bit more rigor?