Ken Cuccinelli Gets a Science Lesson

If VA Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli was featured on the TV show, Are you smarter than a 5th grader, he would have been out before the first commercial.

In his new book, “The Last Line of Defense,” Cuccinelli has a chapter called “Weird Science” dedicated to his qualms with climate science and his use of taxpayer dollars for lawsuits to fight it. As highlighted in Beth’s blog post last week, among other things, the chapter quips that perhaps 97% of the world’s climate scientists are confusing the ‘supposedly dangerous’ greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, with the deadly household gas, carbon monoxide.

Feel free to check out the book yourself for a play by play of his losing lawsuit against the EPA, but for now, it’ll suffice to say that on a basic level, our Attorney General doesn’t understand why carbon dioxide is so dangerous–after all, it’s in our soda!

So what did I do about it? Last Friday during his book signing in Fredericksburg, I gave our Attorney General a 2nd grade science lesson to catch him up with the majority of elementary school students who understand the Carbon Cycle.

And thanks to stretchy yoga pants and my cell phone, I was able to catch the action on film.

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Destroying a clean-energy law

The Virginian-Pilot
By Beth Kemler
Sneak attack, dirty trick, underhanded. Those are some of the terms used to describe Senate Republicans’ move to exploit the absence of one Democrat to pass an off-year redistricting bill – a story that became one of the hottest of this year’s Virginia General Assembly session.
Those terms also apply to one of the least covered stories of the session – a move by climate change-denying Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and electric utilities, including Dominion Power, to effectively repeal one of the state’s core clean energy laws.
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Drought Disaster

Governor McDonnell and Attorney General Cuccinelli are making a name for themselves on the national climate denier scene. They’ve engaged Virginia in a lawsuit against the EPA and have gone as far as accusing leading scientist Michael Mann of fraud by seeking public funding for his research. So the irony was not lost when Gov. McDonnell yesterday announced that the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture has designated 59 counties as primary natural disaster areas because of the excessive heat we’ve seen in 2010. Farms in this area Continue reading

Virginia's AG's already making headlines!

Today was another day for Virginia to make headlines. Like most headlines of late, this wasn’t a good one either. Our new Attorney General has made the environment one of his top priorities. Shouldn’t this be a GOOD thing you ask? In some instances, yes, but not when his goal is to make every federal law regulating greenhouse gas emissions illegal in our state.

After sending out an email to his listserv last week disputing global warming all together, our AG, Ken Cuccinelli held a press conference today, announcing his petition to the EPA to reconsider its finding that global warming threatens our livelihood. His reasoning for this petition? Climategate. Remember that little mole hill climate deniers successfully made into a mountain? Our state government has decided this is such an important issue that we should spend staff time and taxpayer money on it. Meanwhile, we’re looking at a $1.2 billion budget shortfall. Great idea guys. Let’s spend money on this.

So let’s recap here. While our new Governor is backroom wheeling and dealing over serious budget cuts, including a $730 million cut to K-12 education programs over 2 years, and more Virginians are out of work and without health care, the new AG is spending money on frivolous lawsuits against the EPA because he is concerned that the EPA is finally going to do its job. Whew, we are not off to a good start.