The 21st Century Scopes Monkey trial

[twobits]

You could pay attention to satirists and bloggers or you could pay attention to scientists.

And you will blindly believe a scientist who won't show his data huh? Just answer this Jenny. Why won't Mann or Weaver show their work in litigation they initiated? For lords sake, even in school we didn't get marks for answering a math question without showing our work.

[Urbane]

There are so many examples of "settled science" that weren't settled at all. "Coffee causes pancreatic cancer," "the continents are stationary and incapable of movement," and "the universe is static and not able to expand or contract," are just a few quick examples of "settled science." It seems rather anti-science to say that the science is settled when it comes to "climate change" because we should be looking at evidence as time goes on. I do believe we have a lot of "confirmation bias" going on here as the warming models haven't turned out as predicted. So we're told that the warmer temperatures perhaps are being stored in the oceans or maybe it's something funny with the jet stream, or ?? Who knows? Call me a "denier" but until I see evidence that actually proves these "climate change" theories I'll remain skeptical. That doesn't mean I'm not in favour of doing everything reasonable to protect our environment but the key word is "reasonable." Above all, though, we should be protecting free speech and not be trying to silence anyone who is not on any particular bandwagon. Here's a column on this issue with some good points:

Charles Krauthammer
Opinion Writer

The myth of ‘settled science’
By Charles Krauthammer

I repeat: I’m not a global warming believer. I’m not a global warming denier. I’ve long believed that it cannot be good for humanity to be spewing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. I also believe that those scientists who pretend to know exactly what this will cause in 20, 30 or 50 years are white-coated propagandists.

“The debate is settled,” asserted propagandist in chief Barack Obama in his latest State of the Union address. “Climate change is a fact.” Really? There is nothing more anti-scientific than the very idea that science is settled, static, impervious to challenge. Take a non-climate example. It was long assumed that mammograms help reduce breast cancer deaths. This fact was so settled that Obamacare requires every insurance plan to offer mammograms (for free, no less) or be subject to termination.

Now we learn from a massive randomized study — 90,000 women followed for 25 years — that mammograms may have no effect on breast cancer deaths. Indeed, one out of five of those diagnosed by mammogram receives unnecessary radiation, chemo or surgery.

So much for settledness. And climate is less well understood than breast cancer. If climate science is settled, why do its predictions keep changing? And how is it that the great physicist Freeman Dyson, who did some climate research in the late 1970s, thinks today’s climate-change Cassandras are hopelessly mistaken?

They deal with the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere and oceans, argues Dyson, ignoring the effect of biology, i.e., vegetation and topsoil. Further, their predictions rest on models they fall in love with: “You sit in front of a computer screen for 10 years and you start to think of your model as being real.” Not surprisingly, these models have been “consistently and spectacularly wrong” in their predictions, write atmospheric scientists Richard McNider and John Christy — and always, amazingly, in the same direction.

Settled? Even Britain’s national weather service concedes there’s been no change — delicately called a “pause” — in global temperature in 15 years. If even the raw data is recalcitrant, let alone the assumptions and underlying models, how settled is the science?

But even worse than the pretense of settledness is the cynical attribution of any politically convenient natural disaster to climate change, a clever term that allows you to attribute anything — warming and cooling, drought and flood — to man’s sinful carbon burning.

Accordingly, Obama ostentatiously visited drought-stricken California last Friday. Surprise! He blamed climate change. Here even the New York Times gagged, pointing out that far from being supported by the evidence, “the most recent computer projections suggest that as the world warms, California should get wetter, not drier, in the winter.”

How inconvenient. But we’ve been here before. Hurricane Sandy was made the poster child for the alleged increased frequency and strength of “extreme weather events” like hurricanes.

Nonsense. Sandy wasn’t even a hurricane when it hit the United States. Indeed, in all of 2012, only a single hurricane made U.S. landfall . And 2013 saw the fewest Atlantic hurricanes in 30 years. In fact, in the last half-century, one-third fewer major hurricanes have hit the United States than in the previous half-century.

Similarly tornadoes. Every time one hits, the climate-change commentary begins. Yet last year saw the fewest in a quarter-century. And the last 30 years — of presumed global warming — has seen a 30 percent decrease in extreme tornado activity (F3 and above) versus the previous 30 years.

None of this is dispositive. It doesn’t settle the issue. But that’s the point. It mocks the very notion of settled science, which is nothing but a crude attempt to silence critics and delegitimize debate. As does the term “denier” — an echo of Holocaust denial, contemptibly suggesting the malevolent rejection of an established historical truth.

Climate-change proponents have made their cause a matter of fealty and faith. For folks who pretend to be brave carriers of the scientific ethic, there’s more than a tinge of religion in their jeremiads. If you *bleep* after other gods, the Bible tells us, “the Lord’s wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit” (Deuteronomy 11).

Sounds like California. Except that today there’s a new god, the Earth Mother. And a new set of sins — burning coal and driving a fully equipped F-150.

But whoring is whoring, and the gods must be appeased. So if California burns, you send your high priest (in carbon -belching Air Force One, but never mind) to the bone-dry land to offer up, on behalf of the repentant congregation, a $1 billion burnt offering called a “climate resilience fund.”

Ah, settled science in action.

[logicalview]

Great post Urbane. With the zealots on the "believer" side of the equation unfortunately, there is no middle ground. Either you accept every prediction of Armageddon and every hysterical claim no matter how crazy or you are a "flat earther" and "denier". And if you have the audacity to question any of their prophets in the Church of Global Warming, like Michael Mann for instance, you can find yourself a defendant in a SLAPP lawsuit. Even though these "scientists" have never produced any evidence or show any of their metadata. What the hell is wrong with this picture? It's because for a lot of the "believers" the entire environmental movement has become a quasi-religion, replete with followers who have all the attributes of religious fervor ahead of rational logical thought. Because so many now have put fervor and fear in place of rationality, opportunists and politicians have seized on this fear and zealotry to introduce new taxes and have seen a way to justify robbing people of many freedoms. What's the most sad is how easy this was to accomplish, but when you have two generations now that know nothing about what it's like to actually fight for your freedom, you take it for granted, and give it away piece-meal, as you don't understand its true value until it is gone.

Free Speech for Mann, But Not for Thee

Feature Article by Robert Tracinski, February 19, 2014

Every side in the political debate has a natural tendency to appeal to freedom of speech when they feel threatened—but to ignore (or initiate) threats to the free speech of the other side. My favorite example is from the early 1990s, when the Yeltsin government dispossessed Russia’s Communist Party of the vast holdings it had amassed in the decades when it controlled the state. The Communist Party screamed in protest, denouncing the supposed attack on its “property rights and freedom of speech.” Which was pretty rich, considering that the Communists had just spent 70 years ruthlessly stamping out everyone else’s property rights and freedom of speech.

This tendency is captured in an old expression popularized by Nat Hentoff: free speech for me, but not for thee.

I was reminded of this in coming across a little sidelight to Mann vs. Steyn, the defamation lawsuit filed by scientist-turned-activist Michael Mann in an attempt to suppress the speech of global warming skeptics, starting with conservative writer Mark Steyn.

As I have explained elsewhere Mann is attempting to legally punish any attempt to “question his intellect and reasoning”—that’s from the DC Superior Court, which preposterously backed his argument—on the grounds that Mann’s scientific claims have been investigated by multiple government panels, which have exonerated him.

This claim, by the way, is already falling apart. As Steven McIntyre explains, one of the examples Mann cites is a British panel that did not actually investigate Mann—its focus was on the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, the epicenter of “Climategate”—and in its announcement of its results criticized Mann’s methods as “inappropriate” and his results as “exaggerated.” At the time, Mann felt so exonerated that he sent harassing e-mails to the scientist who made that remark, demanding a retraction and an apology. Mann then went on to tell the BBC that such a retraction was forthcoming. It wasn’t. All of which tells you a great deal about Professor Mann’s credibility.

But that’s not the main issue. The main issue in the suit is Mann’s appeal to authority in the first place. He cites the various government investigations as reasons why, as the DC Superior Court put it, “to question [Mann's] intellect and reasoning is tantamount to a [libelous] accusation of fraud.” Mann’s goal is to make it a legally punishable offense to question a scientist’s honesty or even his thinking method.

If you are criticizing Professor Mann, that is. But if he is criticizing you—well, then, that’s a different story.

Mann, it turns out, routinely criticizes his own opponents in the harshest terms. And not just journalists like Steyn. Take Judith Curry, the chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. As Curry wrote on her blog:


You would think that someone who is so sensitive about people criticizing or defaming himself, that he would be very careful about defaming and insulting others. Sometimes it seems like Mann spends half his day suing people for defaming him, and then the other half of his day defaming others on Twitter.

I’ve written previously about Mann’s defaming me as a “serial climate misinformer” and “anti-science.” In recent weeks he has gone after Anthony Watts, Patrick Moore (founder of Greenpeace), and Bill Gates….

Mann’s defamation of me (a climate scientist) is of particular relevance in context of Mann’s case against Steyn, in light of the recent ruling:

“Accusing a scientist of conducting his research fraudulently, manipulating his data to achieve a predetermined or political outcome, or purposefully distorting the scientific truth are factual allegations. They go to the heart of scientific integrity. They can be proven true or false. If false, they are defamatory. If made with actual malice, they are actionable.”

Seems to me that “serial climate misinformer” and “anti-science” qualify as defamatory, and it’s difficult to imagine that the statements were not made with malice.

Indeed, Mann’s recent New York Times op-ed begins with a blanket defamation of anyone who has ever questioned his global warming orthodoxy, people he describes as a “a fringe minority” which “clings to an irrational rejection of well-established science,” promoting a “virulent strain of anti-science.”

So basically, Mann wants a legal guarantee that he can dish it out, but he doesn’t have to take it. What a jerk.

To Judith Curry’s credit, she is not eager to sue.


Many people have urged me to sue Mann; I can’t be bothered and I don’t have money to throw away on such stuff…. Further, I would like to stand up for Michael Mann’s right to make insulting and defamatory tweets, statements in op-eds, etc. As an American, I am pretty attached to the right to free speech.

I appreciate that attitude—but I’m wondering whether filing suit might actually accomplish a great deal more for the cause of free speech. Maybe what we need is precisely Curry vs. Mann.

Mark Steyn notes that the leftists are on to his cunning plan to crowdsource his legal defense to bloggers—which strikes me as an excellent strategy, likely to be both cheaper and more effective than a traditional law firm. So consider this my contribution to that crowdsourced defense of free speech.

Think about what Curry vs. Mann would accomplish. As Curry admits, “I have at least as good a case against Michael Mann for defamation as he has against Steyn.” So this would put Mann is a bind: if he wins against Steyn, he establishes a precedent for his own loss to Curry. If no one can criticize him under the Bill Murray rule—”Back off, man, I’m a scientist”—then he can’t criticize others.

Now, I know that Curry doesn’t want to win against Mann. She doesn’t want to set the precedent that thin-skinned scientists can run around bullying their critics. So she should sue with the goal of making a settlement: that she will drop Curry vs. Mann—if he drops Mann vs. Steyn. It’s a kind of mutually assured destruction for censorship.

Whether she can be prevailed upon or not, Professor Curry’s case highlights the importance of this battle and the need to make sure that free speech is not just for members of the global warming establishment, but also for the rest of us.

http://www.tracinskiletter.com/2014/02/ ... -not-thee/

[logicalview]

The Compliance of Science

by Mark Steyn
February 23, 2014


Last year I wrote in Canada's National Post:


Dr Mann, whatever his other gifts, is an inveterate name-caller. Consider his recent Guardian column defending his "hockey stick" from the bad case of brewer's droop it's acquired over the last 15 years of non-warming: Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish professor named (unlike Mann) by Foreign Policy as one of the "Top 100 Global Thinkers", is dismissed as "career fossil fuel industry apologist Bjorn Lomborg"; Judith Curry, a member of the National Research Council's climate research committee, winner of awards from the American Meteorological Society, and co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences, is billed by Dr Mann as "serial climate disinformer Judith Curry..."

Today Dr Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, acknowledges something really quite extraordinary:


With regards to climate science, IMO the key issue regarding academic freedom is this: no scientist should have to fall on their sword to follow the science where they see it leading or to challenge the consensus. I've fallen on my dagger (not the full sword), in that my challenge to the consensus has precluded any further professional recognition and a career as a university administrator. That said, I have tenure, and am senior enough to be able retire if things genuinely were to get awful for me. I am very very worried about younger scientists, and I hear from a number of them that have these concerns.

So do I. There is, in fact, a pervasive climate of fear about what will happen if one "challenges the consensus". Meanwhile, the Big Climate enforcers - including the special interests funding Mann's quintet of white-shoe lawyers - are going to extraordinary lengths to insulate that "consensus":


Tenure is an amazing privilege for academics. And now we see in the Mann/UVa case, that the establishment academics are worried about fear of embarrassment by public disclosure and fear that those who dislike their findings will conduct invasive fishing expeditions in search of a pretext to discredit them. Come on, big boy pants please. We are talking about publicly funded research, and a primary concern is supposed to be avoiding embarrassing the scientists?

And here, courtesy of Dr Curry, is our Thought for the Day:


For the past decade, scientists have come to the defense of Michael Mann, somehow thinking that defending Michael Mann is fighting against the 'war on science' and is standing up for academic freedom. It's time to let Michael Mann sink or swim on his own. Michael Mann is having all these problems because he chooses to try to muzzle people that are critical of Mann's science, critical of Mann's professional and personal behavior, and critical of Mann's behavior as revealed in the climategate emails. All this has nothing to do with defending climate science or academic freedom.

The climate science field, and the broader community of academics, have received an enormous black eye as a result of defending the hockey stick and his behavior.

When I went to war against Canada's disgusting "human rights" commissions in 2008, I was astonished to discover, very quickly, that the outrageous censorship law, Section 13, was in effect a personal law for one man. As I testified at the Parliament of Canada:


Section 13 is deeply destructive. There are some 33 million people in Canada, yet as Ezra pointed out, one individual citizen has his name on every Section 13 prosecution since 2002. I'm sure some of you are familiar with Matthew Hopkins, who in 1645 appointed himself England's Witchfinder General and went around the country hunting down witches and turning them in for the price of one pound per witch. In 2002 Richard Warman appointed himself Canada's Hatefinder General and went around the Internet hunting down so-called haters and turning them in for lucrative tax-free sums amounting to many thousands of dollars. Hatefinder Warman and his enablers at the Commission abused the extremely narrow constitutional approval given to Section 13 by the Supreme Court in the Taylor decision and instead turned it into a personal inquisition for himself and his pals.

Abolish Section 13, and life in Canada would be affected not one jot.... Its effect is entirely irrelevant to the Queen's Peace.

Parliament took my advice and abolished Section 13. Now it's déjà vu all over again: Michael Mann turns out to be the Richard Warman of climate science, a man who believes l'état du climat, c'est moi; a man who has appointed himself Denierfinder-General with the powers to determine whether Judith Curry is an "#antiscience" witch or not. In my responses to his discovery requests a week or so back, I politely pointed out that Dr Mann is not sole proprietor of Global Warming, Inc and that (anticipating Dr Curry) this case is only about him, his stick and his corrupt employer.

It's clear that many scientists and statisticians are not comfortable defending the hockey stick, as one can well understand. But they seem to think they have to do so in order to defend "science". They don't. Richard Muller and others are right about that. Just as Canada's self-appointed Hatefinder-General was entirely irrelevant to the Queen's Peace, so the planet's self-appointed Denierfinder-General is entirely irrelevant to the cause of science. Let Michael Mann speak for Michael Mann, and scientists speak for science, wherever (as Judith Curry says) it leads them.

Read Dr Curry's whole piece, and ponder the world Mann hath made. Global Warman.

http://www.steynonline.com/6120/the-com ... of-science

Link to Judith Curry's article: http://judithcurry.com/2014/02/22/steyn ... rsus-mann/

This is going to get much more interesting, and for the "Mann-made belivers", the news is going to be nothing but bad.

[logicalview]

Michael Mann is in hot water again, this time over a tweet he made about Australian columnist Andrew Bolt. You have to wonder, if the science is so solid, and a leading warmist on this forum keeps saying that she thinks everyone should just pay attention to the science and not to "bloggers" and "deniers", why is Michael Mann so interested in disparaging all of these skeptics? What is he so scared about?

Here's his tweet earlier today:



And here's Bolt's reply:

You have published an outright lie that defames me.

I do not lie and am not paid by Rupert Murdoch to lie. You have not identified in your tweet a single example of an alleged lie, which suggests you simply made up this defamatory claim.

Indeed, you were so reckless with the facts that your tweet links to an obvious parody Twitter account run by one of my critics which you have clearly believed is mine.

Your other link is to the website of a warmist journalist who for years was a Murdoch columnist, too, writing on climate change. Was he, too, paid by “villainous” Rupert Murdoch to “lie to public”?

I’ve since learned that you last year retweeted another defamatory comment: “No other media organisation in any other civilised nation would employ #AndrewBolt as a journalist”.

As it turns out, that, too, is incorrect. I am not only employed by News Corp but by Australia’s Network 10 and Macquarie Radio Network, where I host a weekly television show and co-host a daily radio show respectively. I have also appeared as a commentator on other media outlets, including the state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Al Jazeera, the BBC and Canadian radio stations. I am very confident I would be able to find work as a journalist in another “civilised nation”.

I note this because repeated defamations under Australia’s law is evidence of malice – and your history of defaming me shows a complete disregard for the facts.

It is appalling that you could be so reckless, so spiteful, so destructive and so ill-informed. I have long doubted the rigor and the conclusions of your work as a climate scientist and often deplored the way you conduct debate, but even I had never before today considered publically calling you a liar.

I demand you delete your tweet and issue a public apology on the same Twitter account within 24 hours. Failure to do so will not only cast doubt on your commitment to truth in debates on global warming, but expose you to legal action.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andr ... _me_what_/

When the bully Mann saw what he had done, he apologized, sort of, with these two tweets:



It's good to see people standing up to this "climate" bully.

[Atomoa]

*removed*

[logicalview]

Michael E Mann "Sloppy and Unethical"

by Mark Steyn
February 26, 2014

You don't have to be sued by Michael E Mann to have a certain antipathy toward him. It's been fascinating to discover how many people there are who believe in "anthropogenic global warming" and believe in climate science but really, strongly dislike Mann, his methods, and his promotion of himself as sole proprietor of Global Warming, Inc. I quoted a few of them the other day, but you have to be both secure in your career and have a certain toughness to come out against him in public. Here's a small case study.

Michael Liebrich lives in London. He's a visiting professor at Imperial College and advisory board chairman of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, whose broad disposition you can adduce from its name. He's also on the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on the New Energy Architecture and the UN Secretary General's High Level Group on Sustainable Energy for All. He was also on the Clinton Global Initiative's Energy and Climate Change working group. Get the picture? He believes in global warming. But he doesn't believe in Michael Mann.

On Tuesday, a Mann-child called Christian Thalacker was Tweeting fellow climate cultists with his petition against a notorious member of the #DenialMachineKochMachineMurdochScaifeToxicDenialist conspiracy. Who was it? Stephen McIntyre? Nigel Lawson? No, it was that notorious right-wing denier and Big Oil shill, NPR's Diane Rehm. Apparently, Ms Rehm is guilty of "Giving Toxic Front Groups Unlimited Hall-Passes", so MoveOn.Org has got up a petition to force her to stop. Naturally, as it involves banning people, Michael E Mann supported it.

So Christian Thalacker then forwarded Mann's endorsement to a zillion other climate bigshots, including Mr Liebreich:

@MLiebreich MoveOn petition! Help Science Heroes like Professor Michael Mann

Mr Liebreich replied:

The @MichaelEMann who withheld data and conspired to exclude competing authors from journals is no science hero of mine.

This was not the response Christian Thalacker expected to receive. He was outraged, and Tweeted back:

Fyi: i'm letting Mike Bloomberg know IDENTITY FRAUD-Twitter at Bloomberg New Energy Finance

And he did:

@MikeBloomberg@BloombergLP Michael Liebreich, NEF Chairman AGAINST climate science?

Get that? If you're against Michael Mann you're against climate science. As we know, Mann's view (as expressed in his absurd legal filings) is that le climat, c'est moi. And he means it. Nevertheless, Mr Liebreich pushed back at the charge that he was "AGAINST climate science":

Nope. I'm against abuse of academic power just as I am against abuse of any power. No exceptions, for any cause.

Christian Thalacker was having none of it, and spent the next few hours furiously Tweeting not only Michael Bloomberg but everyone whose Twitter handle he had, including Vice-President Joe Biden and the TV series House of Cards to protest this fellow Liebreich having the effrontery to be "anti-climate scientist @MichaelEMann".

What Joe Biden and Kevin Spacey and Michelle Obama and Stephen Colbert and Hillary Clinton and all the other people Mr Thalacker Tweeted made of this outrageous behavior is unknown. But Mann himself decided to weigh in at this point and took time off from whining about all the one-star reviews of his lousy book to recommend that Liebreich "should read my book".

Mr Liebreich responded that he'd read it - and more:

@MichaelEMann I've read #HSCW, #WUWT, #McIntyre and #Climategate emails. I think you were sloppy and unethical. I also think #AGW is real.

Michael Liebreich believes in anthropogenic global warming, but he also believes Michael Mann is "sloppy and unethical", "no science hero", "withheld data" and is guilty of "abuse of academic power". These two positions are not inconsistent, as will become plain in the upcoming trial. But, for Mann and his Mann-child Thalacker, Liebreich and his "Toxic Front Group" Bloomberg are just another two names to add to the conspiracy. We're gonna need a longer hashtag! #KochMurdochScaifeBloombergNPRDenialMachine.

To reprise Judith Curry yet again:

Michael Mann is having all these problems because he chooses to try to muzzle people that are critical of Mann's science, critical of Mann's professional and personal behavior, and critical of Mann's behavior as revealed in the climategate emails. All this has nothing to do with defending climate science or academic freedom.

http://www.steynonline.com/6131/michael ... -unethical

[logicalview]

Jenkins: Personal Score-Settling Is the New Climate Agenda

The cause of global carbon regulation may be lost, but enemies still can be punished.

Surely, some kind of ending is upon us. Last week climate protesters demanded the silencing of Charles Krauthammer for a Washington Post column that notices uncertainties in the global warming hypothesis. In coming weeks a libel trial gets under way brought by Penn State's Michael Mann, author of the famed hockey stick, against National Review, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, writer Rand Simberg and roving commentator Mark Steyn for making wisecracks about his climate work. The New York Times runs a cartoon of a climate "denier" being stabbed with an icicle.

These are indications of a political movement turned to defending its self-image as its cause goes down the drain. That's how thoroughly defunct, dead, expired is the idea that humanity might take charge of earth's atmosphere through some supreme triumph of the global regulatory state over democracy, sovereignty, nationalism and political self-interest, the very facts of political human nature.

Let's restate more accurately a plan recently announced by Thomas Steyer, a California hedge-fund billionaire whose idea is to make the coming midterms about climate change: He would spend $100 million to flog an issue voters don't care about, to defeat Republicans whose defeat would have no impact on climate change, in order to replace them with Democrats whose election would have no impact on climate change.

Mr. Steyer's thinking is puzzling unless his goal is to make $100 million disappear. If his purpose were to elect Democrats, wouldn't his money go further attacking Republicans on matters of interest to voters? If he wants to move the ball on climate change, wouldn't a better place to start be undoing the damage his fellow climate lobbyists have done to the cause with their hysterical exaggerations, false statements and moral bullying?

He could begin by running ads leveling with Americans about climate science. We know with comfortable certainty that human industry is adding to carbon dioxide, a so-called greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere. An insoluble noise-to-signal problem, though, is how much the human component may have influenced climate change already. And forecasts of future warming depend on theoretical models that are highly speculative and necessarily suspect.

Then there's the political problem: Nothing America could do by itself would make a significant difference. Anything agreed with other countries, given diplomatic incentives, would be an empty gesture designed mainly to benefit incumbent politicians.

Indeed, a rational case for action on cost-benefit grounds is challenging to make at all. Even if it weren't, the nature of human power games, which advocates are powerless to change, means the effort could easily degenerate into a corrupt scramble for climate pork (see America's ethanol and Germany's solar subsidies).

If this sounds like a counsel of despair, think again. The counsel of despair was to rest mankind's hopes on a colossal pipedream. A world-wide social engineering project was never going to happen—luckily, since its results would have been less charming than activists imagine.

After 35 years, it's time to accept that adaptation is the way ahead. The problems of climate change, whatever its causes, are the same old human problems of poverty, disease and natural hazards like floods, storms and droughts. The best hope on offer is the continued accumulation of human wealth and knowledge.

Those who wish to slit their wrists at this point, feel free. But think about this: When human knowhow produces new energy technologies to replace current energy technologies, as it eventually will, we know the new technologies will be lower carbon. Why? Because extracting and distributing fossil fuels is fantastically expensive and becoming more so.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... 1545493020?

[logicalview]

Wow, even MSM reporters want to see Michael Mann’s UVa emails now

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Anthony Watts

Here’s something out of left field (literally) and almost too good to be true, but it really is. Get this: 17 news organizations, including NPR, WaPo, AP, now have grown a spine and filed an amicus brief (see download below) to OPPOSE in court Michael Mann’s effort to keep his UVa CLIMATEGATE-related e-mails secret.

Basically, Mann’s attempt at hiding his emails of work done on public funds and time from public view has backfired, and now is a story that has “legs” in reporter parlance. From Columbia Journalism Review:

Strange bedfellows: ‘Climate change deniers, newspapers partner in a FOIA fight’

Public information laws have forged an unlikely team in Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann’s quest to keep his emails private.

‘Organized by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 17 news organizations, including National Public Radio, Dow Jones, and The Washington Post, submitted an amicus brief in November, supporting the group’s rights to Mann’s emails.

A verdict is expected soon in one of Mann’s cases, a trial winding through the Virginia courts that, oddly, pits him against the interests of the press. Mann is challenging the American Traditions Institute in court—it has since changed its name to the less charged “Energy & Environment Legal Institute”—after the group attempted to obtain access to his email through a FOIA request. Mann argues that his emails constitute “proprietary information,” a special exemption granted to research institutions under Virginia state law. But after an appellate court issued a strong finding, broadly defining “proprietary information” in a way that would make almost any university document—and potentially government documents—exempt from public release, the press took notice.

“By defining an exemption to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (‘VFOIA’) as broadly as the lower court has done, this Court Would be, in effect, removing almost all public documents from the ambit of the records law,” reads the brief. By exempting Mann’s emails from public release, the group argues, the court is setting what journalists see as a dangerous precedent—making it much more difficult to gain access to public records.’

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/17/w ... mails-now/

Good to see that the press is finally waking up here. Perhaps they finally smell are rat in the AGW movement after years of being their unquestioning cheerleaders. About time! I also would love to hear all of the hypocrites blather out of one side of their mouth that FOIA requests are sacred, UNLESS they are demanded of the AGW perpetrators. That would be hypocrisy of the highest order, and yet par for the course.

[logicalview]

Defaming for Beginners

by Mark Steyn
March 17, 2014

A heartfelt thank you to everyone who's helped support my legal pushback against a lavishly funded campaign by fake Nobel Laureate Michael E Mann to put his shoddy science beyond criticism. I'm very grateful to those who've bought our Steyn vs the Stick products, our new SteynOnline gift certificates, my free-speech book Lights Out or one of our many other products. We have had generous supporters from across the globe, from some of the most populous nations on earth (India, Indonesia) and from some of the smallest imperial pinpricks (the Falkland Islands and the Cook Islands).

There are some developments in the case that I hope to be at liberty to discuss in the days ahead. In the meantime, how about a little Mann-related linkage? Dr Mann himself links approvingly to this characteristically somnolent piece from The Columbia Journalism Review:

Strange Bedfellows: Climate Change Deniers, Newspapers Partner In A FOIA Fight

The bedfellows are only "strange" if you think the press should have no principled position, which seems an odd view for a self-aggrandizing guild bible like the CJR to take. The reason NPR, The Washington Post et al are opposing Mann in Virginia is because they grasp that were he to prevail it would not merely be a victory for him but a massive defeat for freedom of information that would more or less gut the law in that state. Likewise, were he to prevail in my own case, it would be the biggest setback for the First Amendment in three decades (since Hustler vs Falwell). But you gotta love assistant editor Alexis Sobel Fitts and the fact-checking ethics bores at The Columbia Journalism Review, who seem reluctant to check anything:

But in recent years Mann has become known for his public battles against climate change-denial interest groups seeking opportunities to discredit his research. When the National Review called him "the Jerry Sandusky of climate science" he took them to court for defamation.

Er, no. It was Rand Simberg at CEI who called Mann "the Jerry Sandusky of climate science". National Review merely quoted his words, much like The Columbia Journalism Review did. So maybe Mann should sue you guys, too. Or maybe you could try looking it up next time. The alleged "defamatory publication" is only 270 words long. The distinctive CJR style of sludge-like pomposity requires a certain basic competence to be tenable.

In not unrelated news, it turns out that large slabs of American journalism are being written by robots. Has someone checked in the back to see whether Alexis Sobel Fitts' battery needs charging?

Cory Franklin, who is so non-robotic that the Harrison Ford role in The Fugitive was partially based on him, provides a somewhat more reliable overview of the case so far:

Mann subsequently went on the offensive by suing Simberg, Steyn, CEI and National Review for defamation. When the defendants tried to have the lawsuit dismissed by claiming they had a First Amendment right to criticize Mann publicly, a Washington superior court judge allowed the suit to go forward. The judge wrote, 'accusing a scientist of conducting his research fraudulently, manipulating his data to achieve a predetermined or political outcome, or purposefully distorting the scientific truth are factual allegations. They go to the heart of scientific integrity. They can be proven true or false. If false, they are defamatory. If made with actual malice, they are actionable.'

So Mann's lawsuit now proceeds and unless a settlement is reached, pre-trial discovery will make public both the critics' motivations and the details of Mann's research. (In a related development, Steyn launched a countersuit against Mann accusing him of violation of freedom of speech).

But by pursuing a lawsuit, Michael Mann is wrong. As are the judge and prestigious scientists who support him.

Mr Franklin is speaking in both a philosophical sense and a practical one, as the inept jurist Natalia Combs Greene (now gone from the case) never gave the slightest indication that her courtroom was competent to adjudicate the hockey stick.

American law is complicated, especially for us poor little foreigners, for whom the leisurely procedural torture of US "justice" would count as cruel and unusual punishment in most other systems. So I was interested to read this lawyer boiling down the legal issues to the essence. First, defamation law:

Defamation per se—Essential Factual Elements (Public Officer/Figure and Limited Public Figure)

Michael Mann claims that Mark Steyn harmed him by making the following statement: "Michael Mann's hockey stick is fraudulent."

To establish this claim, Michael Mann must prove that all of the following are more likely true than not true:

That Mark Steyn made the statement to a person other than Michael Mann;

That this person reasonably understood that the statement was about Michael Mann;

That this person reasonably understood the statement to mean that Michael Mann had used falsified or improperly selected data and computer programs in creating his hockey stick graph;

In addition, Michael Mann must prove by clear and convincing evidence that Mark Steyn knew the statement was false or had serious doubts about the truth of the statement.

So Michael Mann has a heavy burden to shoulder in order to win. He (not Mark Steyn) has the burden of proving that the statements are false AND he has to prove that Mark Steyn, at the time Steyn made the statements, believed them to be false or entertained serious doubts about the truth of the statement.

She also chews over the ruling of Combs Greene's successor judge with regards to the anti-SLAPP motion:

What Judge Weisberg should have done in writing his decision was address the following questions in the following order. First, is this a case arising from an act in furtherance of the right of advocacy on issues of public interest? If the answer to the first question is yes, he should have proceeded to the second question, has the plaintiff (Michael Mann) demonstrated that his claim is likely to succeed on the merits. Proving that your claim is likely to succeed on the merits is a question of both fact and law. Questions of fact are decided based on evidence. Such evidence can be submitted in the form of sworn declarations as CBS did in the case I described above.

Judge Weisberg, in his decision denying Steyn's Anti-Slapp motion, based his conclusions entirely on the allegations of the complaint. You can read Judge Weisber's order here. No evidence was cited in his decision showing that the allegations of the complaint were true other than a reference to the fact that many people agree with Michael Mann about global warning. None. He did not even address the intent issue which is critical in a defamation claim against a public figure. He did not decide whether Michael Mann is a public figure. He did not decide whether Michael Mann had any evidence to support his claim that Steyn acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

What he did was a major error, in my view. He decided the motion as if it were a motion to dismiss for failure to state a cause of action. He stated explicitly in his order that he was assuming that all of the facts alleged by the plaintiff were true... He mistook an Anti-Slapp motion to dismiss for an ordinary motion to dismiss.

That is a basic and egregious error. If Anti-Slapp motions are judged on the same basis as ordinary motions to dimiss, what is the point of having an Anti-Slapp statute?

The Weisberg order does not point to a shred of evidence that Steyn did not believe what he said was true.

Hmm. I'm not sure I should comment on that. In late-breaking news, Dr Mann today filed a motion to dismiss my counterclaims with prejudice. You can read his motion here with the proposed order here. My favorite bits are on page four:

Steyn filed a motion to vacate the Court's July 19 orders - which was nothing other than an extended diatribe against this Court, accusing it of 'improper', 'grotesque', and 'zombie-like' behavior.

So stipulated. What's your point?

This conduct should not be sanctioned, and attorneys' fees should be awarded.

I would have thought that, if the Court is as insulted as Dr Mann purports to be on the Court's behalf, then it's for the Court to seek compensation. Nevertheless on page 11 Mann returns to the theme:

By filing his counterclaims in the wake of multiple rulings by this Court that Mann's lawsuit is likely to succeed, not to mention the stream of invective that he has hurled at this Court, Steyn has shown a disrespect for this Court and the governing law. The Court should grant Mann the costs and attorneys' fees incurred filing this motion.

He hasn't actually incurred any costs because his unending litigation is being bankrolled by others, but let that pass. Let's also let that "multiple rulings" bit pass: The only reason there are multiple rulings is because, under the procedurally malodorous route this case has taken through DC Superior Court, we have had multiple judges. That's why I'm not a party to National Review's appeal. Only in the diseased bedlam of American "justice" does one get "multiple rulings" on whether a suit is "likely to succeed". In any civilized court system, it would either have succeeded or failed by now. So I'd just as soon be done with all this "likely to" bollocks. If it's that "likely to succeed", let's get it to trial.

~If you'd like to help support Mark's end of the upcoming Mann vs Steyn trial of the century, please see here.

[logicalview]

The Counterclaim of Monte Cristo

by Mark Steyn
March 18, 2014

For those following the Mann vs Steyn upcoming trial of the century, yesterday Dr Mann filed a motion to dismiss with prejudice my counterclaims against him. The reaction from the experts has been swift and merciless. Left and right, academics and attorneys, all agree that Steyn has flown the shark, jumped the coop.

The "Peanuts" cartoon at right provided Professor Eli Rabett with his headline: "All of a Sudden the World Famous Attorney May Realize He Is In Over His Head." Very droll. But let's start with the dullard Mann-child over at Climate Science Watch:

In the Michael Mann v. National Review et al. defamation lawsuit, Mann has filed a "Motion to Dismiss Counterclaims of Counter-Plaintiff Mark Steyn Pursuant to the D.C. Anti-SLAPP Act". A memorandum in support of Mann's motion says: "Steyn's counterclaims lack any merit whatsoever, and his assertion of these claims in the face of the Court's previous rulings is yet another manifestation of his disdain for this Court and its processes. ... not to mention the stream of invective that he has hurled at this Court..."

Can one hurl a stream? Ah, well:

Mann's filing of this motion is understandable.

- although the anonymous Mann-child doesn't appear to understand it. Ken White, on the other hand, is an actual lawyer. Over at Popehat, he's fighting the temptation to rename the site Gloat-hat:

Last month I critiqued Mark Steyn's counter-claims against Michael Mann in Mann's defamation suit, and predicted that Steyn may have subjected himself to an anti-SLAPP motion.

Yesterday Steyn revealed that Mann has, indeed, filed such a motion...

Do not misconstrue this as bragging that I was particularly insightful or clever. I wasn't. This was a consequence of Steyn's counterclaims that anyone reasonably acquainted with First Amendment law and anti-SLAPP statutes predicted.

Steyn's complaint seems to be that the anti-SLAPP statute hasn't protected him effectively even though his speech is protected by the First Amendment, that even with the statute the litigation has been lengthy and extremely expensive, and that the system is broken. I believe all those things are true. But I don't see that Steyn's approach of going pro se, railing against the court, and raising questionable claims is one that is rationally calculated to produce a better result.


On the other hand, despite the hideous twisted wreckage, Professor Rabett can't resist rubbernecking:

It is a bit cruel watching someone demonstrate how unclear on the concept he is as Mark Steyn, but what the hey... Eli and the bunnies have quite enjoyed Steyn's full bore crazy act. Almost as good as Richard Tol on Frank Ackerman, but there are other styles and Mann's lawyers prefer the drier way.

~By the way, I was rereading, as one does, the careless hack Natalia Combs Greene's slapdash July 19th ruling - the one in which she mixed up the defendants throughout:

Also in 2010, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (the "EPA") investigated Plaintiff as a result of constant pressure from Defendant The National Review, Defendant Steyn (collectively the "NR Defendants") and others. (Pl. Mtn at 22.) The EPA concluded there was "no evidence of scientific misconduct." Id.


Actually, no. That was not me and NR that "constantly" "pressured" the EPA, but CEI. At any rate, Combs Greene's crappy ruling set great stock on the authority of the EPA, to the point where she seems to believe that, if the EPA so pronounces, the rest of us should just shut up.

So I was interested to read in The Washingtonian this account of the career of John Beale, "a towering figure within the agency" and winner of the "EPA Gold Medal for Exceptional Service—its highest honor", who was also a covert agent for the CIA.

Except he wasn't. For years, he claimed to be jetting overseas to rescue fellow agents in Pakistan and whatnot, when in reality he was at home in Arlington with his feet up, bunking off from the office. And yet for a decade no one at the EPA thought to call him on it. He's currently serving 32 months in jail.

I don't know whether Mr Beale was involved in "exonerating" Dr Mann, but getting a fake CIA agent to investigate a fake Nobel Laureate does have a certain appealing symmetry to it. If nothing else, it suggests that the lazy Combs Greene's touching faith in the keen eye of the EPA is not entirely warranted.

~If, like Professor Rabett et al, you too are enjoying "Steyn's full-bore crazy act", why not consider supporting it via our soon-to-be-collectors'-items Steyn vs the Stick merchandise or our SteynOnline gift certificates? The full-frothing-loon act's harder to keep up than you might imagine.

http://www.steynonline.com/6180/the-cou ... nte-cristo