Readers may recall Dr. Mann’s emotional hullabaloo over an NRO published Mark Steyn editorial here. NRO responded to Dr. Mann’s legal threat today, and the headline is priceless.
NRO’s headline is succinct and to the point, I like it. Here’s the response from NRO editor Rich Lowry:
And this is where you come in. If Mann goes through with it, we’re probably going to call on you to help fund our legal fight and our investigation of Mann through discovery. If it gets that far, we may eventually even want to hire a dedicated reporter to comb through the materials and regularly post stories on Mann.
My advice to poor Michael is to go away and bother someone else. If he doesn’t have the good sense to do that, we look forward to teaching him a thing or two about the law and about how free debate works in a free country.
He’s going to go to great trouble and expense to embark on a losing cause that will expose more of his methods and maneuverings to the world. In short, he risks making an ass of himself. But that hasn’t stopped him before.
Heh, how well can Mike pound sand? Read the whole thing here.
UPDATE: The response from NRO’s attorney to Dr. Mann’s attorney is here (PDF)
Best response since General Anthony McAuliffe (look it up if historically challenged). 🙂
Heh, heh, heh. Mann doesn’t know what he’s in for if he decides to file a defamation lawsuit. The man has defamed himself over and over again in public forums by his very deviousness and lack of scientific rigor. As such, truth is an absolute defense.
But it is worth a few laughs, anyway.
Wow. . . . .
Does Mann ever sit down and ponder just where some of his actions might lead?
Did it occur to him and his lawyer at all the possible consequences of such an action?
It’s nearly as good as the reply given in Arkell v. Pressdram (1971)
http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/the-fabulous-case-of-arkell-v-pressdram-private-eye.282747/
It a shame that the legal response to Mann from the NRO (see pdf linked to in article) is so strong that it seems very unlikely indeed that Mann’s lawyers will pursue the issue any further.
‘Cos it would be such fun if they did 😉
I hope Mann decides to poke the badger. I’d like to see that fight (mostly for the delicious fallout).
Even so, I think we should be prepared to contribute toward a fund for NRO – should that be necessary – for legal costs.
A courtroom visual aid that would be instantly accessible to a lay jury is the blown up Hockey Stick spaghetti graph, showing Mikey’s “hide the decline trick” of cutting off the line before it starts to descend.
Three cheers for NRO!
I wouldn’t be too eager for this to go to court. Isn’t that how CO2 became a pollutant subject to EPA regulations? If it does go to court, I hope discovery identifies who it is speaking on http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=Jcp40a6IYdY at 1:45 who says he received an email in 1995 from a prominent researcher in climate change saying “We have to get rid of the medieval warm period.” And who the email was from and what influence it had in the creation of the Hockey Stick graph.
Absolutely warms the cockles of my heart. May the farce be with him [Mann]
You see we Brits have more style…
http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/arkell.htm
Well, “get lost” wouldn’t be the two words I’d use, but I guess its a legal thing…
Mann doesn’t have the globes to sue. It would end badly for him and he knows it.
Proving once again that you don’t have to very bright to be a leader in Climate Scientology.
You just have to keep chugging the Kool-Aide.
The link to the whole article returns a 404 Error now…
REPLY: either an internal database error or it has been hacked. I’m guessing the former – Anthony
We all need to tweet him and encourage him to fight. Play to his poor-me personality. That would probably work.
Once our little Mickey
went to play hockey
suddenly our climate Mick
fell in love with his stick
his climate science
was declared fault free
as a penguin nesting
at the top of a Yamal tree.
…and NRO’s website is now down.
NRO has completely its marbles, the website that is. It is hosed! I’ve never seen so many drupal warnings – Warning: Table ‘./drupal/watchdog’ is marked as crashed and should be repaired query
“…we look forward to teaching him a thing or two about the law and about how free debate works in a free country.”
If someone ever needed to learn that lesson, that would be Mr. Mann.
Eric says:
August 22, 2012 at 11:27 am
The link to the whole article returns a 404 Error now…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Itz up right now, just tried it, but it is reporting a security certificate error.
I don’t want Michael Mann to “get lost”–I want him to trip over his ego into a court of law so he’s subjected to the discovery process. And that would truly be priceless.
It will never happen. NRO’s letter was too strong, Mann will back off
Good response, but I would have concluded with the address of the nearest court of proper jurisdiction in case they needed some help.
I hope the price of popcorn is not too high. We’d all be needing to buy large quantities.
I see: “If Mann goes through with it, we’re probably going to call on you to help fund our legal fight”
And I think…
Mann could win or lose this battle and walk away with a fat wallet either way. I’d like to be stupid like that.
“Go on, punk. Make my day.”
It seems to me that somebody has used those words before.
Hit him in the fist with your face,Michael. That’ll show them how tough you are.
The legal response is quite a sledgehammer. But – they misquoted Steyn: He wrote “… tree-ring circus …” – about as beautiful a pun as ever seen; the lawyers wrote “… three-ring circus…”.
Everybody is at it
http://tomnelson.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/fraudster-michael-mann-part-of-trend.html
I’d like to see Mann deposed by NRO lawyers in Yankee Stadium in front of 65,000 skeptics and a national TV audience.
“We call Dr. Steven McIntyre as an expert witness”
a General Anthony Clement “Nuts” McAuliffe response
Two points: 1) I like how when I click on comments on this blog, the link takes me to comments.
2) I had a thought, and now it”s gone,…. oh WAIT! Why isn’t there a constant refrain that Mann has not released his data? Has he?
We’re all in this together !
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/
I will do what I can to help National Review respond to any attempt to hide past deception and continued corruption of government science, as documented here since 1945:
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-818
Morph beat me to it:
“We refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v Pressdram.” ☺
True response to a UK legal challenge 🙂
http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/arkell.htm
Arkell v. Pressdram (1971) [unreported]
Solicitor (Goodman Derrick & Co.):
End of story 🙂
This could be fun!
We act for Mr Arkell who is Retail Credit Manager of Granada TV Rental Ltd. His attention has been drawn to an article appearing in the issue of Private Eye dated 9th April 1971 on page 4. The statements made about Mr Arkell are entirely untrue and clearly highly defamatory. We are therefore instructed to require from you immediately your proposals for dealing with the matter. Mr Arkell’s first concern is that there should be a full retraction at the earliest possible date in Private Eye and he will also want his costs paid. His attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of your reply.
Private Eye:
We acknowledge your letter of 29th April referring to Mr J. Arkell. We note that Mr Arkell’s attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of our reply and would therefore be grateful if you would inform us what his attitude to damages would be, were he to learn that the nature of our reply is as follows: fuck off.
[No further reply]
Smokey AND Morph beat me to it!
Great minds etc etc
Methinks you have the right of it temp. Failure to pursue his legal threat implies that Manniacal fears making a good faith attempt at defending himself from alleged defamation and slurs. Especially since he has chosen to sue others for similar statements. He’s got those globes (artificially enhanced through spurious statistics no doubt) stuck in a judicial wringer already and I doubt it will support his case there to back down in a different legal jurisdiction. Not that it will make any difference to the true believers, but I think the next public audience Manny addresses after dropping his legal threats against NRO are likely to laugh; loud and long.
Personally, I think the NRO should put a weekly status notice below any Steyn postings. Something like, Mann still lost, no lawsuit no legal sweat, this week. Stay tuned to this space for further news if the Mann lost in the climate wilderness situation changes.
The final court case referenced in the NRO response letter? Hustler vs. Falwell. Epic.
Wonderful! Bring it on Michael! Please!!
I stand corrected! And gladly so! Bravo. I thought the rag would fold and it did just the opposite.
Who’s paying Mann’s legal costs?
Anthony
“Here” link below broken
“Heh, how well can Mike pound sand? Read the whole thing .”
Error message suggests it may be at the requested site’s end.
National Review website has crashed.
Ty, part of the problem is that the science of AGW has never been in a US courtroom. It hit a British courtroom once over Al Gore’s movie, which was then clobbered mercilessly. The warmistas have generally been very careful never to let the science into a courtroom where it could be smacked around.
As far as the EPA ruling goes, I believe the only issue of the court was whether or not such regulations lay within the EPA’s jurisdiction. A procedural ruling primarily, the scientific basis was never on trial.
Now it will be. So perhaps the real question is which one of The Team cracks first and tries to get Mikey and his ego to withdraw? After all, a court of law is not someplace where you can flounce your way through the way they did with the Penn U and British government enquiries.
Gerard Harbison says:
August 22, 2012 at 12:08 pm
“We call Dr. Steven McIntyre as an expert witness”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Better still, all those warmist scientists who privately expressed their disbelief in Mann’s work and behaviour and got exposed in the ClimateGate emails. Can’t you just see the squirming on the witness stand when asked if they think his work is credible? They either have to diss him in court or suffer a grilling along the lines of “were you lying then, or are you lying now?”
Priceless. NRO’s response is heartening – it is always good to see a bully and buffoon stood up to.
Am I right? Mann already has two legal cases in process at the moment, both of which are stuck on his refusal to produce certain documents, and he’s now about to do it a third time. What was it Einstein said constituted madness?
I’m laughing. Long and loud alone in my classroom during lunch.
And it feels goooood. 🙂
I zipped the page and included a pdf print of it as well. Get it here:
http://www.bengtboysen.se/upload/getlostrichlowry.zip
“Get lost.”
Either NRO has evidence of fraud or famous last words I’m afraid.
If he sues, maybe we’ll finally get to see the UVa e-mails through discovery.
@ Jeremy Poynton 12:17 pm
You weren’t even on the podium.
Unfortunately this good news will never be reported by the MSM.
Mann’s fevered outpourings on the other hand…
KevinM says:
August 22, 2012 at 11:49 am
“Mann could win or lose this battle and walk away with a fat wallet either way. I’d like to be stupid like that.”
Mann made himself a national celebrity and quite consciously so. Maybe his books didn’t sell but he still might get a movie deal – Hollywood, ya know.
Has Mann sued Muller? Surely, no one has put down Mann more than Muller. So, why has he not sued Muller?
The lawyer’s letter is excellent. Our courts are the one remaining realm of free speech in the world. Sadly, they are also the one remaining realm of reason. And I do not mean to say that our courts are always supporters of free speech or that they are always reasonable.
In the old days, if you loved reason more than all else then philosophy was your discipline. Because the Leftists took over academia, the law, imperfect as it is, is all that remains to lovers of reason.
Get into a pissing match with the NRO? Dimwit.
NRO is fine as of 10 seconds ago.
NileQueen says:
August 22, 2012 at 12:28 pm
RE: National Review website has crashed.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/314680/get-lost-rich-lowry
Works for me. (unlimited security clearance… 🙂 )
Please, please, please, Mr. Steyn. Write another article. Please, please, please! And go a little bit closer to the line this time. Please, please please. I want Mr. Mann to sue so bad I can already taste the popcorn.
;-))
The trick is to get a counter claim rolling based on the costs he has put you to thus compelling the discovery process. He losses the power of withdrawal.
Advice to NRO’s attorney: take a screen dump or equivalent immediately, of every web page that you reference, especially if it is controlled by Mann or his mates, to protect yourselves against them being changed. (Hopefully you are smart enough to have done that already).
Dave says:
August 22, 2012 at 11:40 am
“…we look forward to teaching him a thing or two about the law and about how free debate works in a free country.”
If someone ever needed to learn that lesson, that would be Mr. Mann
Tis true, tis true. However, what immediately came to mind was the old saying: “Don’t waste time trying to teach a pig how to sing. After several lessons, all you’ll have is a nonsinging angry pig.”
“AnonyMoose says:
August 22, 2012 at 11:48 am
I hope the price of popcorn is not too high….”
Thanks to mother nature (drought) and the EPA (stupid use of what corn there is) the price of popcorn might become an issue.
Who will get to court first – NRO or Tim Ball ?
=========================================
Paul Homewood says:
August 22, 2012 at 12:22 pm
Who’s paying Mann’s legal costs?
Answer – We all are !!
NRO site is up. You guys must have swamped it.
A philanthropic person or foundation would provide an immense corrective boost to climate science by bankrolling Dr. Ball against Mann’s law suit, and any similar action. In which case,
in the interest of science, the blunt injunction would be:
“Do so!”
I encourage readers to donate to Dr. Ball’s legal fund where he is undertaking such discovery.
“… And the truth goes marching on …”
Another battalion repealing an assault in that army of independents?
Soldier on!
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
August 22, 2012 at 11:14 am
Even so, I think we should be prepared to contribute toward a fund for NRO – should that be necessary – for legal costs.
__________________________
My money’s safe.
Mann will never sue NRO over this matter and we all know why.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ATheoK says:
August 22, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Personally, I think the NRO should put a weekly status notice below any Steyn postings. Something like, Mann still lost, no lawsuit no legal sweat, this week. Stay tuned to this space for further news if the Mann lost in the climate wilderness situation changes.
_________________________
Brilliant!
Ali:
At August 22, 2012 at 12:49 pm you made a post which said in total
Please read the response of the lawyers acting for NRO. It is linked from the above article and clearly states that the accusation of fraud applies to the ‘hockey stick’ graph and not legal fraud. That is a ‘shot across the bows’ for Mann if he insists on going to court.
The disputed statement was “fraudulent graph”. The graph was and is fraudulent. If you do not know this then I suggest you google “hide the decline” and “Mike’s Nature trick”.
Indeed, this is why you see so much glee in this thread. There are still people who refuse to recognise the deliberate fraud of that graph, and they fail to disdain the abusive Michael Mann who (with Bradley and Hughes) concocted that fraudulent graph.
Sadly, it is almost certain that Mann will not go to court on this NRO article. He is already bogged-down in two similar silly legal cases he has presented. Those defending against his legal attacks are asking for documents he does not want to reveal, so the cases are stalled by him. And he intends another similar case? I fail to accept that even his immense arrogance is sufficient for such stupidity.
Richard
Rand Simberg wrote (originally):
Mark Steyn referenced that very sentence in his article but the editor ‘disappeared it’:
http://www.openmarket.org/2012/07/13/the-other-scandal-in-unhappy-valley/
C’mon Competitive Enterprise Institute – grow a pair.
Wow, if it encourages Mann to take legal action I think I will offer to chip in to HIS legal team.
Cost me a lot more money in popcorn though. 🙂
Luther Wu says: Something like, Mann still lost, no lawsuit no legal sweat, this week.
Ha! Kinda like, “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.”
Mann has sued Dr. Tim Ball. I’m not sure where the suit itself stands. It has a couple of interesting aspects:
Mann may have a problem with discovery. I’m not sure if he can save his bacon by dropping the case or not.
It looks like Mann and co. have tried a smear campaign against Tim Ball’s legal advisor.
In the above linked post, there is a strong implication that Mann is being accused of criminal fraud.
IANAL (I am not a lawyer) but that looks, to me, like the serious accusation of fraud has been leveled and that ‘they’ haven’t presented evidence to refute it. Perhaps someone more clueful than I can enlighten me about that.
I wouldn’t suppose that either of Mann’s cases has any chance of success. On the other hand, anyone who has followed the SCO cases on groklaw.net will tell you that crap can have a life of its own and go on for years in the courts. It isn’t necessary to win a case if your goal is just scorched earth.
For anyone from Rio Linda – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIQ70is-RPM&feature=player_embedded
Mike M:
re your post at August 22, 2012 at 1:51 pm.
It does not matter if the statement you quote has been redacted from the article because there is no dispute that it was in the article as originally published. The legal response (linked in the above article) addresses the redacted statement and seems (n.b. I am NOT a lawyer) to indicate there is no legal case to answer for the statement because it is justified in the article.
Anyway, discussion of that in court would provide much needed publicity about the nature of the so-called investigation into Mann by Penn State Uni..
Richard
NRO fine at 22:10 BST.
The first article about Mann, then his ridiculous response, and now NRO’s “Get Lost”! Priceless! It’s readily apparent that Mann hasn’t stayed in a Holiday Inn Express for years.
All things come to he who waits.
If this were to go to court, it might be a case where someone other than the lawyers win…
The hockey stick got the shaft. Priceless.
Three cheers for Rich Lowry.
I wasn’t expecting a “Dear John” letter, but there it is, “Dear John.” That would annoy someone too proud of his degree and station in life.
Apparently there is a missing parallel that could be drawn between the Mann and Sandusky affairs, I think it should be safe for me to utter this:
Coach Sandusky doesn’t belong at Penn State, he belongs in the State Pen.
Is this Mann the mouth? All mouth and no action, or mann of the month on an ego trip?
Well I like “Nuts!” myself. A lot more esoteric, than “what part of n o do you not understand?” and likely to bamboozle many more, who are just learning the four letter words for the first time.
People understand the word fraud in different ways. Fraud has a number of different meanings including a trick and something not fulfilling what is claimed of it (Oxford English Dictionary). Why Mann has found meaning in the article in the way that he claims is open to interpretation.
Most people understand words in context and would have seen the article for what it is, journalistic exaggeration for effect, with a dose of satirical humor, obviously not to be taken literally.
A good example of such hyperbole is: “Get Lost”.
Mann is all bluff, this won’t go anywhere. Love the response from NRO’s attorney, though, and I sure wish Mann would push it forward. It would be quite a show. 🙂
Excellent… I just subscribed to NRO’s digital edition and will be more than happy to contribute to the legal fund!
“Best response since General Anthony McAuliffe (look it up if historically challenged). :-)”
I prefer Surgeon Joe Johnstone’s of 55 field surgical teams response ,following the battle of Mirbat when he was told, while operating, that the local Wali had demanded that injured enemy be sent out for public execution. “Bill, will you go outside and tell them to f**k off”…
Michael Mann — insulated arrogance about to get bit. How can an ass possibly make an ass of itself?
“Never interrupt your enemy when they’re in the process of making a mistake”
They should have just kept razing him on until he sued, then hit with discovery by surprise. A perfect opportunity to get the evidence out in the open has been blown.
Google mark steyn, big city lib and shagged sheep. Long but worth it.
Early on as a skeptic with a serious science background, debate noise prevented me from personally making a judgement on the famous hockey stick. But delve into it I did, eventually, and I came away utterly shocked and disillusioned. It did not involve technical glitches but at its very heart was rotten in a way that strongly suggested small fry cunning rather than naïveté. A guote by Dali comes to mind that ties the AGW debate into the overall cultural one in which children are still being literally sold a bill of goods:
“Cézanne is the finest expressions of this decadence. He was truly unable to imitate the masterpieces and all of his admired technique is merely proof of his inability. His apples are made of cement. The paradox is that what is least admirable is most admired: nullity! What a symbol for a period! On the pretext of the academic being detestable, the worst in the class was made a hero! He opens the door to the ethics of sh*t! Newness at whatever costs and art becomes just a latrine! The logic of this search for newness leads to the gratification of total sh*t of which Cézanne is the high priest.” – Salvador Dali (“Dali on Modern Art” 1957)
Spanked!!
What did Jerry Sandusky say when he got out of prison? “Mann, it feels great to be out of there, I feel like a kid again.”
AnonyMoose says:
August 22, 2012 at 11:48 am
I hope the price of popcorn is not too high. We’d all be needing to buy large quantities.
————————–
I believe the price of corn is at an all time high at the moment. Something to do with fuel.
Although you might get a good discount for quantities of large bags.
I just want a jumbo bag to pop when FOIA releases climategate III.
cn
I have been sued by fools a couple of times. The discovery process opens up everything and in both cases the litigant ended up looking the fool. I have no doubt that experience will repeat itself. Lawsuits are usually files for emotional reasons, always a bad way to make a decision.
Also I bet this is just what Penn State needs right now, another botched internal “pal review” investigation and coverup brought into the light of day.
loser
If Mann does not proceed with his threatened case, then he is admitting that the NRO is right in characterizing his research as a fraud.
If he does proceed with the case, he will crash and burn.
Rock, meet hard place.
Hoisted on your own petard Mann. LOL
Personally, I’m not a fan of the Jerry Sandusky comparison. I think they should withdraw it voluntarily, upon mature consideration of their own historical standards, and not because of legal threat. National Review has a proud 60 year history of fighting hard, but clean, in the area of ideas –that one was a low blow.
But if this becomes a lawsuit, yes I will contribute to NRO’s defense fund.
Mann’s work has been proven time and time again to not be fraudulent.
Also it has been reproduced by others using other lines of evidence.
And your suggested response to him saying that you shouldn’t call it fraudulent, because its not is “If it gets that far, we may eventually even want to hire a dedicated reporter to comb through the materials and regularly post stories on Mann.”?
Brilliant. That will prove your point.
Reply: Posting under multiple identities is forbidden here, but this is so bad it almost looks like an honest mistake. Leaving in place for embarrassment factor. ~ ctm drive by.
Mann’s work has been proven time and time again to not be fraudulent.
Also it has been reproduced by others using other lines of evidence.
And your suggested response to him saying that you shouldn’t call it fraudulent, because its not is ”[i]f it gets that far, we may eventually even want to hire a dedicated reporter to comb through the materials and regularly post stories on Mann”?
That’s your best argument? If you try to protect your rights, we’ll bully you?
Reply: Posting under multiple identities is forbidden here, but this is so bad it almost looks like an honest mistake. Leaving in place for embarrassment factor. ~ ctm drive by.
Ali says:
August 22, 2012 at 12:49 pm
“Get lost.”
Either NRO has evidence of fraud or famous last words I’m afraid.
It really helps to actually read before commenting. Exaggeration is protected and has many court decisions to demonstrate it. In this case it is plain that the author of the NRO article was questioning the quality of Mann’s work, accusing him of illegality. The response from NRO actually quotes some relevant decisions. “Fraud” is not merely a “legal” term and was in use before lawyers became as popular as they are now. No where did the article accuse Mann of criminality.
The NRO lawyers are also telling Mann’s that if Mann persists they will insist on yanking his trowsers down in public. Mann has been fighting tooth and nail not to reveal material that might be problematic – or might simply be fighting because he is pig-headed, dogmatic and childish.
what the ABC in Australia are saying about Mann and this mate Muller sceptic reborn: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-15/phillips-climate-sceptic-reborn-a-believer/4199130
Are wombat and kiwrob the same troll or is someone writing lines for people to customize with a closing sentence?
Who are these clowns trying to kid?
Worthy of Twain, or Bierce. Well done, Rich Lowry!
/Mr Lynn
kiwirob says:
August 22, 2012 at 8:38 pm
Mann’s work has been proven time and time again to not be fraudulent.
——————–
Please tell me you forgot the /sarc tag. His work has been proven to be wrong time and time again. His claims are not reproducible and he refuses to provide any data. The investigations he had to “endure” were as simple as ” Mr. Mann do you think you did anything wrong? No sir my work is perfect because I said so.” No real investigation by an impartial party was ever undertaken.
Please read Climate Gate 1,and 2 emails. Hell don’t listen to the Skeptics do your own research and don’t be a sheep. The truth shall set you free.
@Jeremy Poynton says:
August 22, 2012 at 12:16 pm
Thank you so much for sharing. I have not laughed so hard in a long time.
Geo, they did.
“Wombat says:
August 22, 2012 at 8:36 pm
Mann’s work has been proven time and time again to not be fraudulent.”
If anyone has to have their work investigated so often then I rather think something is amiss. Don’t you?
@kiwirob says:
August 22, 2012 at 8:38 pm
aka “wombat”, which is Aussie, not Kiwi. Says it all right there.
Thanks, Rob.
By the way, the “bullying” was only an incidental to the extremely sound legal position adopted by National Review’s attorney. The “bullying” was simply a legally tenable argument that should this go public, we will make sure this goes public. Are you, Rob, gonna contribute to Mann’s legal fund? Muahahahaha!
Wombat and Kiwirob:
I assume your posts are intended to mislead ‘lurkers’ who are not familiar with the facts. You each assert that the ‘hockey stick’ graphs of Mann, Bradley and Hughes (MBH) are not “fraudulent”.
Therefore, I write to dispel any doubts about the fact of the fraud which your posts may have created.
The ‘hockey stick’ fraud has identical nature to the ‘Piltdown Man’ which is the most infamous scientific fraud in history.
It is necessary to know what MBH did in order to understand the ‘hockey stick’ fraud.
MBH obtained data on thicknesses of tree rings. They used that data to generate a graph of temperature of half the Earth (i.e. the northern hemisphere; NH) over centuries.
But their method did not work. Measurements showed the temperature rose rapidly after 1960 but their graph indicated the temperature falling rapidly after 1960. This fall in temperature indicated by their graph is known as ‘the decline’, and the difference between their graph and measurements is known as ‘the divergence problem’.
The divergence problem indicates that their graph does not indicate temperature of the northern hemisphere. Importantly, if the divergence problem exists after 1960 then it probably existed at other times for when measurements do not exist.
Undaunted, MBH published their graph in the journal Nature and pretended their method worked. The ‘climategate’ emails reveal that this deliberate pretense was achieved by using “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline”.
MBH did not publish the data plotted by the graph but did publish the graph. Importantly, they plotted the measured data as a thick line over the top of the portion of their graph for after 1960. Thus, the portion of their graph after 1960 was obscured by the plot of measured data. Thus, “Mike’s Nature trick” gave the impression that their method showed rising temperature after 1960 because “the decline” was hidden by the plot of measured data.
The result was the ‘hockey stick’ graph: it showed temperature flat for centuries (the ‘handle’ of the stick) with a recent up-turn in temperature (the ‘blade’ of the stick).
This misrepresentation of their findings was a risk. Clearly, a scientific paper should correctly report its findings. In this case ‘the divergence problem’ was the major finding of the work by MBH, but the papers published by MBH in Nature in1998 and 1999 presented the ‘hockey stick’ and did not mention ‘the decline’. Clearly, there was a possibility that this misrepresentation would soon be observed so Mann provided ‘damage limitation’ by mentioning ‘the decline’ as a minor point in another paper. Thus, if ‘the divergence problem’ were revealed then MBH could respond with a claim that they had reported it elsewhere.
Fortunately for MBH, “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline” was not exposed until ‘climategate’. Before then the ‘hockey stick’ was used as the poster around which the message of the IPCC AR3 Report was built.
“Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline” is one of the greatest scientific frauds in history. Indeed, its nature is identical to that of the ‘Piltdown Man’ which is the most infamous scientific fraud in history.
The ‘hockey stick’ and the ‘Piltdown Man’ are frauds where in each case
1. parts of two different items were selected,
2. the not-selected parts were not shown,
3. the selected parts were stitched together to form a constructed item, and
4. the constructed item was presented as being scientific evidence
5. with deliberate intent to mislead the scientific community.
I assume – and hope – NRO’s lawyers are aware of this.
Richard
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
“What did Jerry Sandusky say when he got out of prison? “Mann, it feels great to be out of there, I feel like a kid again.””
You are a very bad man….True irony is when Sandusky sues NRO for being compared to Mann..
/sarc
I live for the day Michael “Piltdown” Mann is put under oath by a prepared lawyer.
I am ready to contribute to preparing that lawyer.
Sorry Mr Mann, you can’t sue someone for valid criticism, even if it does say Mann is a douche.
Darn, now why would they warn him?? They should have taunted him a little and fed him some more rope….
Well Mr Michael Mann, if your snake oil graph isn’t fraudulent, give up science, it means your a poor scientist but get to advertising, that’s where your talents lay.
Baker and Hostetler (NRO’s attorneys) is big, well resourced, and does not take prisoners. I think Dr. Mann has bitten off more than he can chew.
Can someone better versed in the law tell me if Dr. Ball can use the NRO article as evidence if Mann does not sue NRO? I know the NRO article does not imply criminal fraud on the part of Mann, but his reluctance to allow any examination of his work should be a red flag that can be used as a defense against a suit by him.
Some commenters at the article are now suggesting that NRO file a suit requesting declatory relief. Based on Mann’s threat of action and NROs journalistic intent for continued criticism of Mann along the same lines as “master of the tree-ring circus,” it can be requested and would remove Mann’s ability to just drop it. At that point, he would be forced to cave or come up with the documents – eventually.
This would cost money and years – something Mann’s lawyers (and NRO) have already thought of. The strong response by NRO is not giving anything away legally. These public letters are for the public’s consumption. I’m in favor of everybody forcing the issue now, if only to run Mann out of money or find out who his sugar daddy is while getting him to cave and stop his jihad on everyone who questions him. Apparently, the FOI requests – even put into the form of a subpoena – will never be met although the information is available and we will have to take that for what it implies about the content.
BTW, I am free to think Mann is a fraud and say so. I just can’t publish a statment that he has been convicted of, or plead guilty to fraud or misrepresentation nor can I claim that he lost a lawsuit filed on those grounds until those things finally come to pass.
Also BTW, if I were Tim Ball and found myself the object of Dr. Mike’s unwanted attention and forced to spend a lot of time and possibly all of my money and distraction from my profession for honestly crticizing the guy, I could certainly see how it would feel like a humiliating and life-altering violation by someone looking to get their undeserved personal satisfaction in serial and near psychopathic disreagrd for others, notwithstanding dissimilarities to his Penn State colleagues like Sandusky. (Full disclaimer: Unlike the case of Harry Reid, I have not yet heard from anyone that Michael Mann is a pederast. And Harry Reid for sure isn’t about to sue anyone for that.)
The statement “he risks making an ass of himself” is technically incorrect. He risks *revealing* himself to be an ass. He already is what he has made himself to be – a true ‘self-made Mann’.
In the 1930’s James Hopwood Jeans, in his book The Mysterious Universe reasoned that God created the universe and was a pure mathemetician. Bertrand Russell, in his book, the scientific outlook challenged this hypothesis by stating that if He were a creator, science proves that something cannot be created from nothing, thus He is subject to th esecond law of thermodynamics and other laws of physics. If He were a metaphysical deity He would not be able to create anything, since science proves that something cannot be created from nothing.
Jeans did not take Russell to court.
Neither did the church take Darwin to court for stating that man evolves from apes, which was a difficult concept from the church since if Jesus dies to save man, he dies to save apes and their predecessors too.
Galileo on the other hand was taken to an inquisition and was forced to recant on pain of punishment for stating that the earth was not the centre of the universe which everything revolved around and in fact the earth revolves around the sun.
So much for the role of tribunals in matters of scientific debate, though i doubt that any court would prejudice in favour of a popular fiction thesedays
Don’t you people ever get tired of declaring victories that never materialize?
REPLY: Ah, the “you people” label, always a dead giveaway. Well, it is the best Mann headline evah, and I think you’ll like the next post coming up, in about an hour. – Anthony
Mark Steyn explains further in: Stick it where the global warming dont shine with links to numerous posts.
Dr. Mann: BRING. IT. ON.
Mark Steyn was hauled before the kangaroo kourt known as the human rights tribunal here in Canada. He prevailed against those anti-democratic bozos and will do the same if Mann has the walnuts to follow through.
In Mann’s mind he just KNOWS he can’t be wrong. And that sums up the entire AGW argument…
One of the many questions I have about this whole business is: how long will people be able to defend a curve that shows a breathtaking acceleration in temperature – and that ends in 1999? Or do they not notice the values on the x-axis? Or is the curve somehow transmogrified in their eyes so that the righthand side is forever at the present?
Richard Courtney @2.17am
That is a very good piece you have penned, thank you.
@stephenparrish
“Google mark steyn, big city lib and shagged sheep. Long but worth it.”
I really appreciated the link – absolutely classic example of the stark difference between schooling and education, between being an academic and a scholar. Mark is a well educated scholar who needed no brick and mortar achieve both. That means by a process of elimination, you can discover who is the academic with some schooling.
Those who underestimate the capabilities of the educated scholar and overestimate the skills and depth of a schooled academic will be backing Team Arrogant®.
As a founding member, one of Mann’s repeated acts is the underestimation of the capabilities of otherwise ordinary people who spot errors and home in on the root cause, in his case, deliberate misrepresentation of the facts in a printed article which after exposure, remains uncorrected.
We should not understate the complicity of Nature in this. By every possible interpretation, their silence means consent. They don’t seem to be even slightly perturbed that they have been ‘tricked’. If these gatekeepers to legitimacy are serially complicit in the misrepresentation they should share as much attention by investigators.
I just couldn’t let this go by. http://i47.tinypic.com/2i7mfex.jpg
Not Mark Steyn’s brightest choice of words ever, but he is no stranger to law suits. (“molested data” is silly use of words after mentioning a child molester – actually hurts acceptance of points in the article IMO, and poor writing (“molested” is a bad choice of word for “data”, “corrupted” might be better. – can Steyn actually write?).
Note there are two alleged defamatory statements, with somewhat different factors. One is false technical claims, the other is drawing a parallel to a particular criminal act that people abhor far more than financial fraud.
Note that the NRO’s lawyer’s response letter addresses makes points at length with citations of legal precedents and legalese. It seems to include these points:
– it is a public debate, which should not be censored as it is free speech
– Mann has thrust himself into that debate, publishing extensively and using strong wording himself (“McCarthyist tactics”).
– the parallel to Sandusky is a “highly rhetorical comparison” that no “reasonable individual” would take to mean that Mann did anything like what Sandusky did.
– threatens Mann with vigorous examination for discovery
It is not a “get lost” letter (that’s the publisher’s headline), but is firmly dismissive.
I have no sympathy for Mann, who has said things like “beetle larvae” about commenters on his Facebook blog, though I have not seen the comments that bothered him, and appears to have referred to Stephen McIntyre as a fraud (email of 30 Dec 2004 to Phil Jones). (There is much trash on Facebook and the Internet in general, such as “johnjohn”’s profanity in comments on Simberg’s article. sometimes worse (the Facebook entries I saw include a suggestion that Mann received threats of violence.)
I’ll cover the earlier Mann lawsuits in a later post.
No one ever put it better:
“We’ve learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature’s phenomena will agree or they’ll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it’s this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in Cargo Cult Science.”
-Richard Feynman
Great Feynman quote. For anyone with 10 or 15 minutes to spare, the speech that came from can be read here: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3043/1/CargoCult.pdf
It cites other examples of scientific integrity (or lack thereof), many of which have direct or inverse correlation to Mann’s Hockey Stick. An enjoyable read at any rate.
Trying to summarize the lawsuit scene:
TIM BALL:
Andrew Weaver sued Ball in early 2011 over something published on the Canada Free Press website, here’s something on that: http://www.desmogblog.com/canadafreepress-apology-weaver (the web site caved).
Michael Mann sued Ball for statements in an interview of him published on the Frontier Centre for Public Policy website, which publishes on climate, agriculture, tribal matters, and rights for the prairie provinces of Canada. That’s the “State Pen, not Penn State” remark. An Andrew A. Skolnick has made two affidavits to the court regarding qualifications of someone named John O’Sullivan who apparently co-authored a book with Ball and does some legal work though he may not be a full lawyer. Skolnick appears to have investigated O’Sullivan’s educational qualifications and licensing, and Internet activities of he and other names he believes O’Sullivan uses. (Skolnick’s affidavits are to help the plaintiff.) The “John Doe” in this lawsuit is somehow connected to FCPP, judging by Mann’s claim, so probably is not O’Sullivan – but I don’t understand how O’Sullivan is so relevance to this lawsuit that Skolnick made affidavits.
Ball sued a Dan Johnson and others over Johnson’s response to an article Ball had published in the Calgary Herald in 2006.
(Ball says Johnson attacked his credentials rather than try to address the issues raised by Balls’ article. There seems to be much confusion over Ball’s credentials, if you believe desmogblog claims but give Ball the benefit of doubt you’ll think that Ball or editors have been sloppy in describing them. Ball was probably studying climate before Weaver knew the word, starting with researching HBC post weather records, back then it was a specialty in “Geography”, which alarmists like to claim is not climatology. (Not the only subject in which they’ve tried to narrow definitions to claim they are the only experts. Weaver tried that in a letter to the JanFeb2010 issue issue of the professional engineer’s magazine Innovation (www.apeg.bc.ca, “consensus” is a regular attempt. Neo-Marxists, post-modernists and their ilk do like to think that words define reality, they reject concepts.)
continuing my attempt to summarize the law suits…
NATIONAL POST:
Weaver sued the National Post and some of its columnists, in April 2010, the concept of poisoning the Internet was thrown about in that case.
The suit names Financial Post Editor Terence Corcoran, columnist Peter Foster, reporter Kevin Libin and National Post publisher Gordon Fisher, as well as several still-unidentified editors and copy editors. It seeks general, aggravated damages, special and exemplary damages and legal costs in relation to articles by Foster on December 9, 2009 (“Weaver’s Web”), Corcoran on December 10, 2009 (“Weaver’s Web II”) and January 27, 2010 (“Climate Agency going up in flames”), and Libin on February 2, 2010 (“So much for pure science”).
The NP is probably no stranger to lawsuits. Terrance Corcoran and Peter Foster seem to do their research before writing something, and have much better thinking ability than other NP/FP writers (who aren’t bad by MSM standards, just not of the calibre of those two). I don’t know of the other defendants, sounds like Weaver named many NP staff including copy editors (probably as John Does). Corcoran dug extensively into the leaked CRU emails.
I doubt either Ball or the NP used the language of Mark Steyn, though they were blunt, but laws may differ between the two countries.
(Jeremy Poynton says Mann has two lawsuits in progress already, but they are stalled due Mann’s refusal to produce documents. Seems to me people should support the defence in those two to ensure the first to proceed gets rebuffed, noting that Mann against Ball seems to be the same subject as the fraud part of Mann against Steyn.)
Am I missing any?