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Mann vs. Steyn, the Trial of the Century

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  • Mann vs. Steyn, the Trial of the Century

    I am starting this thread to chronicle the progress of Michael Mann's lawsuit against Mark Steyn et al.
    Mann vs. Steyn: The Trial of the Century

    By Robert Tracinski - February 12, 2014

    The global warming hysteria is disastrous enough in its intended goal, which is to ban the use of our cheapest and most abundant fuels and force us to limp along on "alternative energy" sources that are insufficient to support an industrial civilization. But along the way, the global warming campaign is already wrecking our science and politics by seeking to establish a dogma that cannot legally be questioned.

    The critical point in this campaign is a defamation lawsuit by global warming promoter Michael Mann against Mark Steyn, National Review, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

    When the "Climategate" e-mails were leaked five years ago, a lot of us speculated that it could all end up in the courts, given the evidence that climate scientists were pocketing large sums of government money on the basis of a scientific consensus they were manipulating behind the scenes. But it's typical of our upside-down political and cultural environment that when this issue does reach the courts, it will be in the form of a lawsuit against the climate skeptics.

    Steyn and the others are being sued for criticizing Mann's scientific arguments. In the case of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, for example, they're being sued for Rand Simberg's complaint that Mann "has molested and tortured data." (See a summary of the case here.) .... [snip]

    There is more here.

  • #2
    We will settle this scientific question in the courts once and for all.
    Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

    Comment


    • #3
      Mark Steyn presents the progress of the litigation as of April 17, 2014 here.

      There are massive amounts of interesting information available in the red highlighted links.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by Jedidiah View Post
        We will settle this scientific question in the courts once and for all.
        One bright shiny internet. Jed wins it.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Jedediah
          We will settle this scientific question in the courts once and for all.
          Originally posted by lao tzu View Post
          One bright shiny internet. Jed wins it.
          It's not the bright and shiny corners of the Internet that have the right of it:

          If Science is sovereign, it is corrupted by power. We can see this because we can see that Science is sovereign, and we can see that it has become corrupt. But if Science be not sovereign, it must be subordinate to some other sovereign power. Mike and Phil must deliver their reports to this power. It must look down on them and say: "Mike and Phil: your data is crap, your code is crap, you are crap. You had sat too long for any good you have been doing lately! Security will be here in a minute to escort you out of the building." Of course this power, if corrupt, will have all the power it needs to corrupt Science. And of course, in 2009 no such thing can be imagined.

          This is an old problem and it has not changed, nor will it soon. But what did change on November 19th: it just became much, much easier to convince any reasonable person that there is something seriously wrong with government by university. Of course, most reasonable people are not even aware that this is the form of the New Deal state. These emails, however, cannot fail to attract unwanted attention to the uncomfortable reality of the matter.

          Because a fallible sovereign is a very different thing from an infallible one. It is easy to mistake an infallible sovereign for a vacuum of sovereignty, the perpetuum mobile of political engineering. If the University is infallible, its advice is the mere truth and not in any sense an action. Once the master's hand is seen to wobble, however -

          Let alone to delete emails. Ye gods! It's almost as if there was a person inside the machine. Indeed every sovereign in history has sought to stress this impersonal or superhuman character, though most have phrased it in more spiritual terms. If the peasants knew that mere men wore the sacred masks of the gods, they might have the impertinence to think we had mere necks...
          Of course, you liberals have never had a problem with government by legal decision when it comes to creationism, so I'm perfectly fine with deciding climate science via legal decision, especially when the scientists in public charge of the field resemble a hostile and alien religion.

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          • #6
            I really like Mark Steyn. He tells it like it is!


            Securely anchored to the Rock amid every storm of trial, testing or tribulation.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by firstfloor
              Or perhaps not.

              Wednesday's ruling affirms the thrust of Combs Greene's order, however. It also concludes that "a reasonable jury" may "find the statement that Dr. Mann 'molested and tortured data' was false, and published with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for whether it was false or not."
              You are way behind in terms of time and developments re the litigation. Judge Natalia Combs Greene is no longer on the case; she was removed for cause; therefore, her words that you quote above are now null and void.

              You are quoting from an article that appeared way back in January at the Mother Jones website, the subtitle of which is "As the judge green-lights his libel suit, the defendants' lawyers jump ship."

              Things have changed radically since January, quite much in favor of Mark Steyn, who says:
              I'm proud to say that I have Dan Kornstein, the man behind the single most important free-speech legislation this century, as my lawyer on this case. We're mounting a big-picture First Amendment pushback against Michael Mann, a thuggish enforcer whose only response to critics on at least three continents is to demand that they be silenced, banned or fired. It's enormously consuming of time and money, and I want to thank all those from Manhattan and Moose Jaw to Dublin and Delhi all the way to pinpricks of empire like Vanuatu and the Falkland Islands who've swung by the Steyn store to help support us by buying my free-speech book or our collector's-item Steyn vs the Stick merchandise. I'm enormously grateful. Whatever happens in the Virginia case, I can assure you we will win one for free speech in the DC courts.

              Following Ezra Marsh's befuddlement at the news that "Defendant Steyn opted not to appeal the denial of the motions to dismiss the amended complaint", some readers have asked for a precis of where the case is and how it got there. Okay. Previously on CSI District of Columbia:

              Two years ago, in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, former FBI Director Louis Freeh published a damning report on the Penn State administration's complicity in serial child rape. CEI's Rand Simberg wrote a post comparing Penn State's cover up for Sandusky with their cover up for climate scientist Michael E Mann after the leak of the "Climategate" emails. At National Review, I quoted Simberg and called Dr Mann "the man behind the fraudulent climate-change 'hockey-stick' graph".

              Shortly thereafter Mann sued me, National Review, Simberg and CEI for the hitherto unknown crime of "defamation of a Nobel prize recipient".

              Dr Mann is not a Nobel Prize recipient, and I am not a defamer. I believe his "hockey stick" is fraudulent as his self-conferred Nobel Prize, and I've said so around the world ever since the turn of the century when the IPCC and Al Gore made it the great iconic image of transnational climate alarmism. But apparently you can't say it in America.

              So off we went to the DC Superior Court and here we are two years later with no end in sight. In his latest ruling, our latest judge, Judge Weisberg, conceded that there had been "too much procedural delay" - which is a polite way of saying that in her year on the case his appallingly careless and slapdash predecessor, Judge Natalia Combs Greene, made a pig's ear of almost everything she touched. I could explain it all, but it makes my ears bleed.

              Mann's Big Tobacco lawyers rest their case on his claim that he has been "exonerated" by (at last count) nine transatlantic bodies. The lazy Combs Greene swallowed this argument. But the bodies he cites - NOAA, the University of East Anglia, the British House of Commons - not only did not "exonerate him", they never investigated him. The multiple transatlantic exonerations are as non-existent as Mann's Nobel Prize. That's why I called him (for Clinton-era nostalgics) the M Larry Lawrence of climate scientists: Michael E Mann is a Nobel Laureate who was exonerated by the British Government in the same sense that M Larry Lawrence was a vice-chair of the Nobel Prize nominating committee who was torpedoed off Murmansk.

              In fact, Mann has only been investigated by one institution: Penn State - ie, by Graham Spanier, the only college president in America currently facing 30 years in the slammer on charges of obstruction of justice, and his fellow Sandusky enablers among the senior administration. No wonder Mann would rather invent alternative exonerations.

              Mann has played fast and loose with the facts for years. Which is why so few of his fellow scientists are anxious to defend him, and why even the IPCC has climbed off the hockey stick. Nevertheless, his acolytes in a gullible, ideological media have tended to fall for his industrial-scale self-promotion campaign, and see him as an heroic figure. Consider Mann-child Richard Schiffman in The Guardian:
              Harassment of climate scientists needs to stop
              Climate change denialists are suing scientists...

              This too is false. At the time of publication, no "denialist" was suing Michael Mann. But he's suing everybody. He's the plaintiff - the guy who does the suing. In the District of Columbia, he's suing me. In British Columbia, he's suing Dr Tim Ball. And in Virginia, in a case he wasn't even a party to, he somehow managed to insert his stick and wind up as co-plaintiff before the Supreme Court. He's a serial litigant.

              So, given that a serial litigant was going around claiming that he's the guy being sued, I thought it was time he was. So I've countersued him. Anyone familiar with the way Mann has stalled and concealed and obfuscated over the release of his data will not be surprised to hear that his current court posture is that his discovery against me should proceed but my discovery against him should be put on hold.

              And that's where we are. This case is about the right of a free society to engage in robust debate on public policy. Because Dr Mann cannot withstand that level of scrutiny, he demands the courts protect him from it. He will not succeed.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by firstfloor
                Forget Michael Mann and Mark Steyn
                You may wish to forget Michael Mann and Mark Steyn; however they and their litigation happen to be the topic of this thread, which you are now spamming and hijacking with off-topic posts.

                I request that you not present another post in this thread that is not specifically related to the Mann vs. Steyn litigation.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by firstfloor
                  Mann said a couple of interesting things in a recent interview: The difference in global average temperature between the last ice age and now is only about 4 Centigrade degrees. Carbon was buried by the earth over a period of hundreds of millions of years. It is being released a million times faster.

                  This might mean that our entire biosphere will have to be re-engineered because nature will not be able to adapt quickly enough. In our grandchildren’s lifetime God will not look over His own creation; He will look over ours.


                  Comment


                  • #10
                    ff, please stick to the topic at hand, as John has requested.
                    Enter the Church and wash away your sins. For here there is a hospital and not a court of law. Do not be ashamed to enter the Church; be ashamed when you sin, but not when you repent. – St. John Chrysostom

                    Veritas vos Liberabit<>< Learn Greek <>< Look here for an Orthodox Church in America<><Ancient Faith Radio
                    sigpic
                    I recommend you do not try too hard and ...research as little as possible. Such weighty things give me a headache. - Shunyadragon, Baha'i apologist

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by firstfloor
                      There seems to be very little pro-Mann coverage in the news. I get the feeling that the scientific community are not that interested. They know this is a side show and the science anyway has moved further on.
                      Yes, the Permanent Revolution rolls on no matter how discredited the founders are:

                      So here is what will happen to climate science if Mann, Jones, et all go to jail: it will become stronger. Considerably stronger. At least, in the near and medium term.

                      What happens when you kill the top 20 members of al-Qaeda? Everyone in the top 200 joins the competition to replace them. Decapitation is not an effective attack against a disorganized institution. For every Mann or Jones, there are 10 or 20 ex-students trained by a Mann or Jones. Do not these disciples aspire to their mentors' positions? Damn tooting they do! Moreover, just because they lose their leader, does not mean that leader will be replaced by those who are the most disloyal to him....

                      The thing about paleoclimatology and climate modeling is that both are such marginal sciences, if they can even be considered scientific at all, that their results can be fudged without any of the embarrassing foibles revealed in the CRU emails. We do see a lot of what could almost be described as conscious bias in the CRU methodology - there are "good" data (warm) and "bad" data (not so warm). We also see that overall, the data set is a major dog's breakfast.

                      It is not necessary for climate science to be in the hands of these B- students. Their own students are not A+ men, because A+ men are too delicate to operate in this kind of sinister bureaucratic context - but they are A and A- men. Thus, we can expect that in the long run, climate science will repair itself and produce a new body of work, consisting as before largely of "good" data, but of "good" data composed with apparent professionalism and honesty...

                      ....one of the easiest, yet most important, observations to be had from these emails is that the climate-science community is entirely sincere. They are not a conspiracy. They are something much more dangerous: true believers.

                      In their minds, AGW is an entirely real phenomenon. There is not a particle of doubt. And since there is not a particle of doubt, Mann, Jones et all see their task not as one of teasing Nature's secrets from her, but as one of public communication. They take their roles in the Modern Structure with complete seriousness - like all those with actual power.

                      This is why "good" data is good, and "bad" data is bad. "Good" data is useful data. It is data that helps them in their task of saving the planet. Bad data interferes with this task. And furthermore, since they know that that the problem is real, bad data is just that - it is data that is obviously contaminated, incorrect, or otherwise corrupt. No shortage of that in paleoclimatology! In any real science, data selection is never entirely without art. (It is just not meant to be a secret art.)
                      Hey, just because the Dear Leader of the past is gone doesn't mean you can't squeeze out more grant money from the issue for the next couple years as long as there's plenty of suckers in Washington, right?

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by firstfloor
                        This case will decide nothing. Science is not done in the courtroom.
                        I see that went over your head. I should not be surprised.
                        Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          ****POST DELETED*****

                          ---
                          Your posts in this thread have been deleted. DO NOT POST IN THIS THREAD AGAIN. You were asked several times to stop posting off topic nonsense and then asked not to post at all here. This is your first and last warning
                          --Sparko
                          Last edited by Sparko; 05-29-2014, 09:11 AM.
                          “I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.” ― Oscar Wilde
                          “And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence” ― Bertrand Russell
                          “not all there” - you know who you are

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                          • #14
                            Mann vs. Steyn, the Trial of the Century

                            Mark's latest post referring to the pending trial is here.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              The latest of Mark Steyn's serial updates re the pending trial is here.

                              With regard to the graph showing no global warming for 17 years 9 months (click on the first link in Mark's update linked in the first paragraph above), perhaps I have been the only one too slow of mind to have understood it the first time I saw it; however, in case I am not alone in being slow to understand the illustration, note the explanation under the data graph:
                              Figure 1. RSS monthly global mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies (dark blue) and trend (thick bright blue line), September 1996 to May 2014, showing a trend of no warming for 17 years 9 months.

                              The up and down line shows RSS monthly global mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies (dark blue)"; the perfectly horizontal bar running straight through the graph represents the temperature trend throughout the time period from September 1996 to May 2014.

                              Judith Curry evidently references a different time of onset of the "pause" in global warming here and here

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