Mark Steyn ordered to pay $1 million to deter climate deniers from criticizing sacred scientists

The “hockey stick” graph as published in IPCC TAR (Figure 2-20, 2001)

By Jo Nova

Climate deniers must be punished

For newcomers: Michael Mann’s hockeystick graph was wildly different from hundreds of studies of other studies and instantly became the pet graph of the IPCC. It used the wrong proxy, the wrong tree, and the wrong type of averaging. Whole books were written on how bad it was. But when Mark Steyn called it fraudulent Mann sued.

Twelve long years after the case was launched, the six person jury decided that Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg have defamed Michael Mann, but awarded Mann one whole dollar in damages, because he hadn’t been able to prove he suffered any damage at all. Remarkably, though, the jurors felt the skeptics had been so malicious they added punitive damages too. Usually these are limited to a mere four or five times the compensatory damage, but this time it was decided Simberg should pay $1,000 and Mark Steyn $1 million. It sets a new record.

According to Law.com punitive or exemplary damages are saved for truly dreadful acts:

exemplary damages n. often called punitive damages… are damages requested and/or awarded […]

Michael Mann — Climate Warlock downunder — coal mines cause wildfires 1,000 km away. Sees giant Petrostate Conspiracy

Rejoice Australia. The Star of Mann has crosseth The line of Capricorn. The great Prof has flown 10,000 miles to tell us “Australia is on fire”. Something only thirty million people knew already, including every Australian and the five million New Zealanders who can smell the smoke too.

According to Michael Mann, his plane causes bushfires, and he had to fly all the way to a nation on fire to tell them that.

Australia, your country is burning – dangerous climate change is here with you now

Michael Mann, The Guardian

Sadly, everything he knows about the Australian climate comes from a Midnight oil song:

When we mine for coal, like the controversial planned Adani coalmine, which would more than double Australia’s coal-based carbon emissions, we are literally mining away at our blue skies. The Adani coalmine could rightly be renamed the Blue Sky mine.

In Australia, beds are burning. …

Now we know why those models keep failing.

As he goes on to explain:

The songs of Peter Garrett and Midnight Oil I first enjoyed decades ago have taken on a whole new meaning for me now. They seem disturbingly […]

Curry, Christy, Pielke and Mann testify

Fantastic to finally see real scientists get a voice in a considered, official forum. This should have happened 20 years ago. I expect only climate-tragics will watch a 2 hour dry Congressional testimony, but it is so very rare that both sides of the debate get questioned in the same forum and almost never that skeptical scientists outnumber the unskeptical ones. Michael Mann has little more than namecalling, unscientific social speculation, allusions about “motivations” and political labels. Improbably, Mann the media-climate-celebrity tries to make out he is the victim of bullying and silencing. At 1:10 Mann twists, exaggerates and abuses like a Greenpeace activist and Congressman Lamar Smith pulls him up…

Judith Curry talks about why she changed her mind starting at 20 minutes, and why she resigned.

“… I realized the premature consensus was harming the progress of science”

“Scientists who demonize opponents are behaving in a way that is antithetical to the scientific process. These are the tactics for enforcing a premature theory for political purpose.”

8.9 out of 10 based on 169 ratings […]

Mark Steyn files to push Mann trial forward

The process is the punishment. Agents of the Big-government Blob have access to a bottomless pit of lawyers. They can not only afford endless trials, for them it’s an advantage. Drag it out, wear opponents down, exhaust their coffers. And while the case is ever-pending and never-ending it’s already a win for the accuser — silencing critics, and endorsing celebrity “victim-status”. When the defendants witnesses are older and wiser, there’s another dark advantage too — vale Bob Carter.

What they cannot afford though is discovery.

So they can’t afford to sue a guy like Mark Steyn.

This is about free speech and accountability of publicly funded scientists. Steyn could use your help. See also The criminalization of dissent.

As Steyn says: “It is particularly absurd that an interlocutory ruling on a piece of legislation intended to expedite cases has now taken over two years and counting.”

What is Mann hiding?

— Jo

Mark Steyn Files For Expedited Hearing in Mann v. Steyn, et al Washington, DC — Today, Mark Steyn requested that the Superior Court of the District of Columbia expedite the hearing and lift the […]

“Mike’s trick” to hide the decline — still shocking

Jean S revisited “Black Tuesday” with a post on Climate Audit. Even though I’ve seen these graphs before. It is still so arresting:

(Click to enlarge) Graphs from a Richard Muller presentation

People can debate the finer details of “splicing” but ultimately the second graph is deceptive. Do tree rings work, or don’t they?

When it comes to “tricks”, this is not like a trick to get the photocopier to work. It’s a trick to hide something (see that famous quote below). We don’t need a committee report to tell us whether it’s OK. It’s not science.

Climate Audit has well written a minute by minute breakdown of the emails at the time. (It was Barry Woods suggestion to add the graphs but they finish up at the end of the post.)

9.2 out of 10 based on 150 ratings […]

John O’Sullivan puts his house on the line — more than any skeptic ought to be asked to do

UPDATE 2014: Claims made that “Michael Mann Faces Bankruptcy as his Courtroom Climate Capers Collapse” on Feb 22, are incorrect. See here for more information. This post below is two years old, and many things have changed. — Jo

It’s slipped past most skeptics with all the action lately, but John O’Sullivan is putting in above and beyond what any single skeptical soul ought to.

He’s already been a key figure helping Tim Ball in the legal fight with the UVA establishment, which has spent over a million dollars helping Michael Mann to hide emails. The case was launched by Michael Mann, but could turn out to do a huge favor to skeptics — the discovery process is a powerful tool, and we all know who has been hiding their methods, their data, and their work-related correspondence.

Tim Ball and John O’Sullivan are helping all the free citizens of the West. The burden should not be theirs alone. There are many claims for help at the moment, but that is a sign that the grand scam is coming to a head.

— Jo ———————————————————————————— Official: I Just Bet My House on the Outcome of Science Trial of the […]

Zombie Hockey stick dies again

Just when you think it’s too dead to kill: along comes a new paper in a top ranking statistics journal by McShane and Wyner. It’s worth taking stock. It’s a damning paper:

…we conclude unequivocally that the evidence for a ”long-handled” hockey stick (where the shaft of the hockey stick extends to the year 1000 AD) is lacking in the data.

But in the big scheme of things the Hockey Stick Graph was already dead.

Each one of these points is enough to cast grave doubts on the Hockey Stick. The Hockey Stick uses the wrong type of proxy – tree rings. Trees grow faster when it’s warmer, and when it’s wetter, or when the tree next-door falls down and a herd of manure-making cows move in. Almost all other types of proxies disagree (like ice cores, ocean sediments, corals, and stalagmites). Over 6000 boreholes, hundreds of studies, as well as recorded history show the world was warmer 1,000 years ago. (See here for the refs.) Even among tree rings, the Hockey Stick uses the wrong type of tree – Bristlecone pines – which appear to grow faster as CO2 […]

Mann sues: Minnesotans say “Go ahead. Make my day”

A joint post with Baa Humbug

It’s all about audacity.

Michael Mann’s contribution to modern science may one day be remembered as the guy who made it statistically possible to get a thousand year temperature graph using any local telephone directory as a data source. (Who needs tree-rings?)

If you were a guy who’d been caught producing scientific work so inept that people could pour in random data and get the same “curve”, then you might take a satirical video on the chin (or crawl into a hole). But if you’re Michael Mann, and you also used the wrong proxy, you hid your data, used graphs upside down, and invented deceptive “tricks” to hide declines, then you might call your lawyers.

The Minnestoans for Global Warming (M4GW) made the hilariously popular Hide The Decline video, which has now been removed from YouTube. Mann claims they defamed him “by leaving viewers with the incorrect impression that he falsified data to generate desired results in connection with his research activities”. The Minnesotans said “please do”, and responded undaunted by producing a new version (see below).

10 out of 10 based on 4 ratings […]