There’s a lovely article in The Telegraph in which James Delingpole encourages Michael Mann to sue Mark Steyn for defamation and even encourages people to send money to the Michael Mann defence fund. Of course, for Steyn the argument would come down to whether in fact Steyn or Mann were telling the truth, so we would have the global warming trial of the century. James doesn’t, in my view, seem much worried about any such lawsuit himself:
From obscure beginnings and with little discernible talent, Michael Mann has risen to become arguably the best loved comedy figure in the entire field of climate science, like Fatty Arbuckle, Pee Wee Herman and Coco the Clown rolled into one.
He singlehandedly invented Mann-made global warming using his amazing Hockey Stick curve – the one programmed using the ingenious algorithm whereby, whatever information you fed into it – fudged paleoclimatological reconstructions, the latest football scores, tofu futures – it always came out in the same, scary-looking This Is The End Of The World And We’ve Got To Act Now By Pumping Gazillions More Money Into Climate Research shape.
He gave us the phrase ‘Hide The Decline’ – and starred in the hilarious song and video written in homage by a fan club called Minnesotans For Global Warming.
He described the battle between (apparently) well-funded ‘sceptics’ like myself and ‘scientists’ – ahem – like Michael Mann as ‘literally like a marine in battle against a cub scout.’
But of all the comedic pleasure this veritable Mickey Mouse among ‘climatologists’ has given us so far, none comes even close to matching the joy and entertainment he will surely give us if he goes ahead with his court action against NRO and Steyn.
If you ask me, James is showing a touch of envy here. He wants to be sued himself. Why should Mark Steyn have all the fun? But, alas, cooler heads will prevail since there is little likelihood that such a show trial would be allowed to go ahead. Meantime, if James sets this fund up, I’ll let you know where to send the money.
Dellers is clearly envious of Steyn attracting Mann’s legal fire. Mann is yet to decide whether he proceeds with the Ball defamation case, knowing that the judge will want to see the “dirty laundry” of climategate email fame. And the dingbat commences another case?
Well, it’s his money.
Oh wait.
Keith
28 Aug 12 at 6:13 pm
“the best loved comedy figure in the entire field of climate science”
Flannery would give him a run for his money, or maybe he doesn’t count, not being a climate scientist. And Gore, on the back of that unreal video presentation.
Poor Old Rafe
28 Aug 12 at 6:18 pm
Surely James is not suggesting that Michael Mann is a better comedian that the climate industry’s sycophants in clown pants who hang around here peddling evidence-free political theses about why they should be allowed an endless supply of government armageddon stick-up money?
Tom
28 Aug 12 at 6:38 pm
Almost worth the effort to open a cheque account in whichever country has the least valuable currency and write a cheque for the smallest denomination so as to show your support for Dr (? professor?) Mann.
WhaleHunt Fun
28 Aug 12 at 6:39 pm
Pure Boney:
I admit to salivating to see all those emails he’s been protecting. Sorry, science should not be personal but Mann is such a self promoter I will allow myself a little drooling just this once.
Bruce of Newcastle
28 Aug 12 at 6:52 pm
Any sanctimonious leftist tosser who is stupid enough to mess with Steyn inevitably comes off second best.
Google “the shagged sheep” for confirmation.
As much as I would lerve to see that arrogant fraud mann cop a right pasting, I can’t see him going through with it.
There’s too much to lose, literally.
Rabz
28 Aug 12 at 7:03 pm
Rabz you are forgetting one important thing – and that is pompous and delusional fuckwits like Mann actually believe the shit they spout. He will go ahead with the case because in his twisted little slice or reality he thinks he is right.
Old Fridgie
28 Aug 12 at 7:22 pm
No they don’t. They know they’ve cheated and that what they have done is unethical and probably criminal and illegal, IMO.
Tom
28 Aug 12 at 7:44 pm
When it ‘sounds too good to be true’ it probably isn’t.
Michael Mann was always the key person in this whole thing and not just because his hockey stick threw him from obscurity to fame. Climategate emails clearly show this and if only Lewandowsky used his psychology skills to examine these emails, he would win a medal for the revelations he would discover for small group psychology/ pressure annals.
He was always the expert publicist, always the leader on countering the ’opposition’ – pressure on the early doubters, getting media releases out just prior to congressional hearings when a Steve McIntyre was to appear for just one example. Another was when it got to the stage when an inconvenient paper was about to be published to direct an immediate PR response to actually say ‘its all wrong’ and then get something out when they had worked out what to do to try and counter it.
Mann’s show of false bravado when seemingly rejecting the National Review ‘Get Lost’ letter about Mark Steyn is revealing. He is relying on the supposed enquiries which ‘cleared’ him and other members of the ‘team’ supposedly ‘checked and validated’ his hockey stick. If he is foolish enough to rely on those enquiries, he doesn’t seem to realise that the enquiries will go on trial too and hundreds of experts would love to expose the laughable Muir Russell and Oxburgh Panel enquiries to scrutiny. As for Penn State, the ‘Mann gets funding so he couldn’t have done anything wrong’ is one for the ages! As for hockey stick confirmations, Mann specifically mentions the Amman and Wahl paper!! Anyone who has read Casper and the Jesus Paper (http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html) knows that this is a scab they dare not irritate in public. Imagine the IPCC being dragged down again, Steve McIntyre’s latest FOI fob-off on that very paper, the actual ’deleted emails’ relating to Amman/Wahl material?
So, with all this most wonderful stuff out there for ‘discovery’ I think that it IS actually ‘too good to be true’. Wiser heads will prevail upon Mann to cop this one.
M Ryutin
28 Aug 12 at 7:57 pm
Rabz
Thanks man. I had not read The Shagged Sheep before.
Steyn eviscerated Miller with a blunt butterknife and then got nasty.
Awesome
Mk50 of Brisbane
28 Aug 12 at 8:01 pm
I must quibble with Delingpole here: a climate scientist like Mann is not a climatologist.
entropy
28 Aug 12 at 8:06 pm
Mann to the rescue at ABC Science Blog:
“I think, unfortunately, this is an example that points more to the worst-case scenario side of things,” says Professor Michael E. Mann, of Penn State University, who was a lead author of a major UN report in 2001 on climate change.
“There are a number of areas where in fact climate change seems to be proceeding faster and with a greater magnitude than what the models predicted.”
“The sea ice decline is perhaps the most profound of those cautionary tales because the models have basically predicted that we shouldn’t see what we’re seeing now for several decades,” adds Mann.
Doubts are still well and truly “on ice” at the ABC.
blogstrop
28 Aug 12 at 8:12 pm
Yeah Mann, a blot, is suing everyone; how come noone is suing him?
cohenite
28 Aug 12 at 8:23 pm
Thanks Mark,
Glad you enjoyed it. Incredibly, there was an earlier version of that almighty evisceration that was even more powerful than the final one.
It is also, in it’s own special way, a very touching tribute to the work of the late, great Oriana Fallaci. Goodness knows we miss her.
But yes, an ill advised foray by the Prof into the ayatollah’s barnyard, indeed.
Rabz
28 Aug 12 at 8:49 pm
To the alarmists, the threat of a pack ice free Arctic in late summer seems to have assumed the status of an irrevocable tipping point.
Goodness knows what they think will happen.
manalive
28 Aug 12 at 9:00 pm
Rabz/ Mk50:
“Big city lib” – if you’ve been around the climate blogs this name will cause hoots of laughter of which he is the butt of.
dover_beach
28 Aug 12 at 9:04 pm
Very aware of the name, Dover.
Rabz
28 Aug 12 at 9:13 pm
you know, if an account is to be set up to collect funds, I know a good(?) left wing lawyer (expired licence) that could help set it up.
Steve
steve
28 Aug 12 at 9:47 pm
More a climber-tologist
WhaleHunt Fun
28 Aug 12 at 10:42 pm
It’s not possible that Mann actually believes the crud he puts out, I mean the entire hypothesis fails basic math well before you get into the nitty-gritty.
He is just bluffing again but this time its like peeing into the wind, the outcome will not be sweet for him.
Chris M
28 Aug 12 at 11:03 pm
Dear Sir,
I believe a correction is in order. Michael Mann did not give us the phrase “hide the decline”. This was coined by Phil Jones from the University of Easy Access. However Jones was referring to “Mike’s Nature trick”, which was a piece of creative climatology used previously by Mann.
The “trick”, confirmed by on-the-record emails, consisted simply of omitting several years’ worth of data from a graphical presentation of recent temperature reconstruction which Mann considered inconvenient. This did indeed “hide the decline” in recent temperature, which was inconsistent with another Mann invention known as the “Hockey Stick”.
Nonetheless, hiding the decline was necessary to support what Mann calls “the cause”.
Yours sincerely,
Lazlo Goulash
Lazlo
28 Aug 12 at 11:24 pm
For Climate Change, a Possible Trial Could Echo the Scopes Monkey Case…
Rabz
29 Aug 12 at 8:45 am
/
Gab
29 Aug 12 at 9:38 am
test
Gab
29 Aug 12 at 10:19 am
Meanwhile in a real court case on AGW things are becoming fraught.
cohenite
29 Aug 12 at 10:45 am
Unrelated to this post but thought this article on Say v. Keynes might interest Dr Kates:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2012/08/economists-debate-keynes-v-say.html
AndrewR
29 Aug 12 at 10:56 am
I don’t know what you’ve done to the site but I can’t see any comments on my tablet.
DrBeauGan
29 Aug 12 at 1:05 pm
Unless he has diabetes.
That was the old way to tell.
WhaleHunt Fun
29 Aug 12 at 5:35 pm
That was the old way to tell.
It was, but it depended on pouring the piss on the ground to see if the ants got interested. If you deigned to drink it yourself, well… one or two tiny sips in the name of science back in the day is fine, but after that I think you’ve got serious issues.
perturbed
30 Aug 12 at 2:17 am
Menawhile Stephan Lewandowsky is set to publish a paper that claims “skeptics” are also ‘conspiracy nutters’..
The source of data for this claim? Answers to a survey he posted to Warmist blogs.
No skeptics were questioned in the collection of his data, despite claims from Lewandowsky that he sent requests to “5 of the top skeptical blogs” (see responses from those blogs at link to Jo Nova’s article above).
Is this what the CAGW believers have to now stoop to in their vain attempt to ‘win the debate’? Fudge (more) data through a one-sided survey so they can wave it around as ‘proof’?
Even sadder that there are those out there who are already defending Lewandowsky’s paper with the same “Yes it’s fake, but it’s still true” defence they used for Gleick’s ‘Heartland-gate’…..
Brian of Moorabbin
30 Aug 12 at 10:49 am
The University of Western Australia must be so proud of this piece of junk science.
Lazlo
30 Aug 12 at 12:43 pm
Lewandowsky is a fuckwit; and the more dangerous for being one. There already exists a criminal offence for ecocide. Criminalising “Denialism” can’t be far behind.
I mean, these people are serious dickheads.
cohenite
30 Aug 12 at 1:29 pm
Laz,
He’s known as “Loondowsky”, BTW…
Rabz
30 Aug 12 at 1:30 pm
Ecocide – coming to a jurisdiction near you! Bob Brown’s New World Order coming to fruition, revelation by revelation.
Define “mass environmental destruction”. Mowing the lawn? Picking fruit? Clearing a paddock for grazing? I had no idea Bill Oddie was so ahead of his time, sticking up for vegetable rights!!
Twodogs
30 Aug 12 at 1:54 pm
The University of Western Australia was once amongst the “ivy league” Australian universities, on par with the Melbourne and Sydney universities. With Loondowski at the helm, mixing his religious beliefs with science, the UWA has joined the ranks of the outer suburban former technical colleges. What is a UWA degree worth these days?
Old bloke
31 Aug 12 at 1:13 pm