Mann overboard! Pot, kettle, conspiracy edition

And of course if he would like to reveal his earnings from speaking, book sales etc? All made on the back of CAGW.

In the process they have potentially mortgaged the futures of our children and grandchildren. You couldn’t invent villains like this if you tried.”
==================
“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.”
– Barack Obama
================
amen

Man has some data right. Skeptics have to get funds from somewhere, and that can mean a lot of small pockets (WUWT ad revenue) and/or a few big ones (Ive seen other Heartland climate notes, not just the specific one highlighted here).
Where he exposes himself as an a$$h0le is his gratuitous use of unnecessary adjectives like “single-handed” and “surreptitious”. It is not just Koch, nor is Koch secretive in any way about his opinion on climatology.
His pattern in public life seems to be wild extrapolations from insufficient analysis of incomplete data.

Latitude says: amen
Appropriate.
Mann: “American billionaires have been able to secretly finance the climate-sceptic organisations”
See? It’s a secret, that’s why there’s no proof, you must believe on faith.
Mann is one of the 97% whose reputation would be most damaged by the recognition that “climate science” jumped to the AGW conclusion and unsurprisingly believes (at least publically) the AGW conclusion was not arrived at from scant evidence and wild imaginations.

The Independent (not the Sunday edition) has a circulation of less than 85,000. Who else would listen to his ramblings and publish them but a dying newspaper.

Mann is nuts. I’ve learned that whenever left wing people say such things, it’s often the other way around. Nothing more than smoke and mirrors to distract us from what we should focus on the most – what is the ultimate goal by them when they have to go such extreme to try and discredit us based on lies? I’m afraid of what will happen the next 4 years with Obama seeking to gain more and more power and control over us. Billionaire Soros seems to have his dirty fingers in everything…

A sure fire sign that the “conspiracy” is working, is the complete lack of evidence about it.

“We will respond to the threat of “alien invasion”, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms created by these powerful beings.”
Ancient Alien theorists say the aliens are coming back and they probably have a peer-reviewed journal somewhere. How can we argue with peer-reviewed journals? The aliens could be coming and Obama should be saving us.
Not all arguments are valid, no matter how scientific sounding they may be. Climate change is just as probable as alien invasion or vice versa. Voting on accurate science is a really bad way to run a country.

A bit interesting (and ironic) that for AWG proponents the “settled science” need constant funding for more research…seems to me if settled there is nothing to research.

This a**clown is stealing our tax dollars. Liars, Thieves & Whores, all of them.

I see why Obama would rather talk about some nebulous climate problem that only bigger government can “solve” than out of control spending that raises our national debt by $1 trillion every 9 months.

To paraphrase Delingpole, Mann is plagued by imaginary Koch persecution.
Small man syndrome writ large.

So let me see if I have this right: the love of money can tempt humans to act without principle. Where there is a lot of money available, the temptation is higher. So if we follow the money, we should find people with questionable motives and credibility.
Remind me, please, where the big money is in this AGW / climate catastrophe debate?

[snip . . c’mon, you know how it works here, and we all prefer content to emotion. Really. . . mod]

Cliche yet apt: when you point your finger at someone, three more point back at you.
Villains indeed.

For $10,000, we could get him a speaking engagement with someone who could help him out with these … (fill in the blanks) It might take a team of … however.

I am stuck bewteen two posts , on one hand the idea of Mann letting his mouth run off over Koch and finding himself in court up against those with no shortage of funds would be delightful. On the other hand if it was to happen ,no matter the facts or result of the case, Mann and his followers would regarded it as confirming his ‘martyr’ status and that they were trying to shut him up . Something that it would actual take the crops of engineers to do.
Has I have said before what really marks Mann out is his attitude not to AGW sceptics, but to his own side should they ‘dare ‘ not offer their total and unquestioning support . And that is why , when he falls , we will surprised to find who lines up to kick him on the way down . A event that can not happen soon enough.

Mann’s only recourse against the CG1 & CG2 revelation of the sordid depth of his personal and scientific dishonesty is this,

The Independent reports,
“A climate scientist who says he has been subjected to a vitriolic hate campaign has denounced the way that American billionaires have been able to secretly finance the climate-sceptic organisations that have attacked him.”

Mann is – the pathetic spectacle of the fawning AGU leadership to the contrary not withstanding – now irrelevant to the growing open honesty in climate science.
Are there any bet takers that, if he keeps on acting like he is, he will make the list of history’s top ten abettors of scientific malfeasance.
John

Are we sure that Mann is not an invention of writers at ‘The Onion’?? Skeptics would not dare to invent a villain like Michael Mann, an alleged ‘climate scientist’ whose reckless ‘research’ and smears against critics are a shameful exhibition of how far standards have fallen.

$25,000 from the Koch Foundation to Heartland in 2011 versus the hundreds of thousands (presumably for 2011 alone) that Dr. Mann’s work received. But it’s the (almost laughable) funding of skeptics that we’re supposed to be alarmed about? Once again, an AGW proponent expects us to ignore the actual facts and data.
Bigger picture, how many more zeros (and commas!) does the figure for AGW funding have than the funding to skeptic research? And you don’t think you’re going to get the “right” answer (i.e., the one you want to hear) if you’re willing to pay for it???

For YOUR Information Dr. Mann: http://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/
“Since 1999, the Hewlett foundation and the Packard foundation have granted $90 million to environmental organizations in Canada. The top recipient, by far, was Tides Canada which received a total of $28 million.
As depicted in the diagram below, about 90 percent of the funds granted by the Hewlett and the Packard foundations were for projects to tackle the Canadian energy industry and to create a huge park right smack on the strategic, north coast of British Columbia – Canada’s gateway to Asia. The thing is, this park isn’t called the Hewlett-Packard park. Instead, its called the Great Bear Rainforest and its now used by the U.S.-funded Dogwood Initiative as a pretext for seeking a federal ban on oil tanker traffic. No oil tankers means no oil exports to Asia – and that the U.S. gets to keep its monopoly on Canadian oil exports.”
I guess there are US billionaires and US billionaires… Are these ones funding Penn State too?

Some of the $$$ in an academic researcher’s budget go to the institution to pay for things such as heat, lights, building upkeep, security, and everything else a university has to pay for. There are many different sorts of things a budget writer has to consider and lots of widely varying rates. You can get the sense of this from the pages provided by Harvard for their investigators (or those actually doing the number crunching). Go to the following link and (with some scroll down) read several pages.
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/research/faq.htm#fringe
Using easy numbers, say a person’s salary is $100,000 and the indirect rate is 70%. The proposed budget will then include $70,000 to cover the costs of things as mentioned above. There are also “fringe benefits” as described in the first table where the link takes you. These charges will be for things such as medical and dental, other insurance, retirement programs and all the taxes and fees that have to be paid by the university before the investigators get checks in the mail. As mentioned in the FAQ text, all these rates are “negotiated with the Department of Health and Human Services” and so the taxpayers are also paying for the folks at both entities doing the negotiating. This is one of the parasitic leakages that contribute to the negativity of government taking and “investing” your money.

@Denier666:
No, you can’t get a grant. To get a grant you need a bad spell of wether.

Reading Mann’s funding sources, it occurs to me that it might be time for an IRS audit to make sure all that money is being properly spent on science and not, for example, on frivolous lawsuits designed to intimidate anyone who might call attention to the veracity of his dubious scientific output.
Not while Obama is President. Not a chance.
theduke

The amounts really start to climb from 2006 onwards.

Does this include his royalties from M4GW?

John F. Hultquist says: January 26, 2013 at 10:22 am
Do the same percentages apply to Heartland?

John West says:
January 26, 2013 at 8:09 am
Mann: “American billionaires have been able to secretly finance the climate-sceptic organisations”
See? It’s a secret, that’s why there’s no proof, you must believe on faith.
============================================================================
Absence of evidence of the conspiracy is the proof of the conspiracy.

Anthony,
You are obviously quite busy, but is there any way you’d be interested in starting some sort of effort devoted exclusively to pressuring Mann to put up evidence for these claims? They’re annoying, but more importantly these types of insidious lies can affect those who pay less attention to the ins and outs of the climate change debate. Nothing major, maybe just a short, public letter signed by the relevant groups and scientists demanding that Mann present his evidence that billionaires are bankrolling the movement. He’s busy filing baseless lawsuits for defamation, yet throws malicious crap like this around constantly. It could be called “Mann Up.”

Those Koch Brothers must be mighty rich and powerful, they even control the global temperature.

Ill Tempered Klavier says:
January 26, 2013 at 11:31 am
Gary Pate said:
“This a**clown is stealing our tax dollars. Liars, Thieves & Whores, all of them.”
In all my time as a working girl, I was never so vilely insulted. I demand an immediate apology.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You got it right, sister!
Whores are honest and trade something of value for the money. They also do not hold entire nations for ransom and trash economies.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h6BJJe9JV_A
Exactly…

Brulle: “By becoming anonymous, they remove a political target. They can plausibly claim that they are not giving to these organisations, and there is no way to prove otherwise.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-billionaires-secretly-fund-attacks-on-climate-science-8466312.html
why did the much more widely read Daily Mail think it a good idea to report the Independent’s unsubstantiated claims?
25 Jan: UK Daily Mail: Meghan Keneally: Revealed: Secretive funding organisation ‘providing millions to climate change counter-movement on behalf of fossil fuel industry’
The Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund, both based in Alexandria, Virginia, have been funding the climate counter-movement which seeks to cast doubt on the climate change while keeping its wealthy backers anonymous, The Independent has said…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2268070/Billionaire-Charles-Koch-secretive-fund-casts-doubt-climate-change.html

I say we form a “Concerned Citizens Group” and raise the $10K to have him speak. We’ll advise that there will be a discussion panel afterward with local members from the Union of Concerned Scientists and that we’d like him to help them take questions from the audience.
Of course we will have to provide what we promised, but I think Kenji would be OK with this? Other concerned citizens on the panel might be Willis, rgbatduke, perhaps Monckton, Morano, richardscourtney…

On the Warmist side of course there is Soros, Gldsmith, Branson, Google etc etc…
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/1069/follow_the_money_the_morality_of_green_funding?

Could you list the source of each grant?
After all, it doesn’t matter how much, or what for, but who you got the grant from that makes it evil.

Skeptik says:
January 26, 2013 at 11:28 am
John F. Hultquist says: January 26, 2013 at 10:22 am
“Do the same percentages apply to Heartland?”
The only way the question makes sense is for me to assume Heartland might fund a project at an institution where these rates have been negotiated and accepted. So, my understanding (as it used to be) is that the rates would be the same. If the institution accepted less from a non-government source, then the government could claim the institution negotiated in bad faith and, thus, demand the excess be returned from past funding and all new contracts be entered into at the lower rate.
Going the other way, if Heartland is getting money from a funding source that is likely very open ended. For example, you could just send them $500 for purposes as they best see fit. You might send them a donation for “just a health care study” or maybe you dislike Connecticut and ask them not to spend any money there. If they agree, fine. If they don’t agree you can take your money someplace else. You could ask them, but, they still have to pay all their bills and will have to get money from someone to do so.

Message to Michael Mann….you were defeated by funding of around £500. It came out of the back pocket of a guy called Steve McIntyre who went into a store and bought a laptop. The rest as they say is history…..

I really hope Mann’s wrong, and it’s not a conspiracy funded by the Koch guys. Because if it is, and it turns out all you jerks are getting paid and nobody let me in on the secret but instead allowed me to be a skeptic minion for free, I’m going to be royally pissed at all of you.
I mean it. ALL of you. :/

It is ironic to see the press hyperventilating over an undergraduate football player who falsely claimed that he had a girlfriend who died while completely ignoring Mann’s bizarre claim (a full professor, mind you) that he won a Nobel Prize when he didn’t. At what point will the press wake up and realize that this guy has zero credibility.

Amongst the Ex Officio members of the Pennsylvania State University Board of Trustees is Thomas W Corbett, Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Gov. Corbett has given large grants and tax breaks to energy companies.
Since May 2012 he has given:
$30 million to Delta Airlines, for taking over ConocoPhillips’ Philadelphia refinery
$25 million to Sunoco and the Carlyle Group, for overhauling and expanding Sunoco’s Philadelphia refinery.
$15 million to chemical producer Braskem, which is purchasing Sunoco’s idled Marcus Hook location, and turning it into a natural gas-processer.
Gov. Corbett has proposed giving a long-term $1.7 billion state tax break to Shell Oil for a planned Marcellus Shale gas petrochemical refinery in southwestern Pennsylvania. The aim of the tax credit is to ensure that natural gas produced in Pennsylvania is used at the Shell cracker plant rather than bringing gas to the plant from other states.
Shell signed a land-option agreement in March 2012 to build a $4 billion “cracker” plant in Beaver County to convert ethane, a by-product of natural gas production, into ethylene to make a range of plastic products.
The cracker plant itself would need about 500 staff. But in addition Gov. Corbett and the American Chemical Council predict at least 10,000 new jobs from the off-shoot operations that would spring up alongside the ethane cracker and the increased economic activity in the area..
“If we used our imaginations and chose to partner with this industry, the wet gas harvested in Pennsylvania will be processed in Pennsylvania,” Corbett said. “The downstream jobs will be created here, and not in some other state or some other country.”
“What this does — it talks about whoever is governor after me, two or five governors after me,having an economy that is growing based on manufacturing that does not exist right now,” he said. “So they will have money for education, for social services.”
Shell has to decide by June this year whether or not to build a western Pennsylvania ethane cracker.
The governor also lashed out at drilling opponents, calling them “unreasoning.” After all the predictions of disaster and the fearful warnings of people with no understanding of the industry, Pennsylvania is reaping a bounty.”
Who would disapprove of this industrial activity and the immense economic benefits and jobs it would create in Pennsylvania? Many of the jobs at the plant, in the associated industries and other businesses created by the energy boom would go to Penn State graduates.
Mann must surely disagree with such industrial activity and would therefore deny the people of Pennsylvania and the students at his university a potential golden opportunity. Perhaps he should talk to the Governor of Pennsylvania and the Board of Trustees and If he wishes to stand by his righteous principles he should take his letter of resignation with him.
http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2012/09/20/corbett-kicks-off-philadelphia-drilling-conference/

Please don’t vilify the Koch brothers. Nova was the first science program I fell in love with!

Quick;
post more fawning friendliness on the Manns pages, we need him more than he needs critics, every word the mann speaks, produces more sceptics.
Where could sanity find a spokesman willing to demand of the public absolute belief or damnation?
This whole saga of Climatology, has taught me I lack imagination, when it comes to the folly of mann.

Looking at the sources of Mann’s funding, methinks he’s been bought and paid for by Big Gov.
-theduke

“American billionaires have been able to secretly finance the climate-sceptic organisations”
Perhaps it is time to consider paying a dividend, secretly, to all of us faithful bloggers, Anthony. When sending my cheque, please advise me whether I should declare it for tax purposes, possibly endangering the secret, or whether I must keep very strictly mum. The trouble is, if it is anything over $5 my mates down the pub will readily divine that I have new found wealth.

I ventured to the Independent climate page…still in shock.
Their attitude and those of their readers is unbelievable….we the sceptics have stifled debate…we the sceptics have huge financial backing…we the sceptics don’t care about the planet.
Stories already proved incorrect such as the Antarctic ice sheet melting still displayed, you could’nt make it up.
Mann looked on as a victim….no mention that Steve McItyre destroyed his theory on his laptop.
Religious idiots pontificating, you name it….so I decided against trying to post any sort of a comment, it would be wasted on them.
Whatever happens they will never change….they have no idea that the science has fallen apart, no idea that warming stopped 16 years ago, no idea that Antartica has increased in size, no idea about Holocene’s and previous high temperatures…..and certainly no idea of the tremendous damage that so called green policies have done to the environment.

Gee, 500.000 bucks a year for pushing Yamal? I have definitely missed my true profession.
If nothing else, Michael Mann is a financial genius: He is able to make money out of dead wood….
And hat tip to Anthony and all co-workers! Awesome website!

Jeff Mitchell says:
January 26, 2013 at 6:20 pm

I agree with his three points: Where’s our share of all the money from these ‘secret’ billionaires? What are the granting agencies getting for all they cash they’re spending on Mann’s little projects? And, what’s with all the vulgar name-calling in this thread?
As for the last, site policy explicitly states, “No vulgarities of any kind.” I was also under the impression that ad hominem attacks are routinely snipped, even if, in the opinion of the Moderators, they are richly deserved.
/Mr Lynn

Are you will thinking lister “opensecret.org” for paiements Greenpeace of WWF ? Exemple : http://soprweb.senate.gov/index.cfm?event=getFilingDetails&filingID=892AB94A-5843-4892-939A-02F44DC38CF9 Or :http://soprweb.senate.gov/index.cfm?event=getFilingDetails&filingID=FEA8CE2A-FD61-4423-ADFE-0B48E08E15A4 and etc…http://www.opensecret.org database for paiements lobbies and dons, buddies and agro-industries, laboratory chemical, Météo arent paids for climate-change. Seing the liste researching. I am sorry I am French and my english is bad. Salute and peace for you and kissing of France (TOULOUSE IN SOUTH WEST AND PYRENEES )

As for the “villains”, I’m reminded of this famous quote from Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.:
If Michael Mann did not exist, the skeptics would have to invent him.
———————————————
If CAGW didn’t exist the UN would have to invent it.
Oh that’s right.
They did.
To create CAGW is the IPCC’s reason for being, if I recall correctly.
cn

Someone tell James Delingpole and Guido Fawkes that Tim Yeo has competition !

I previously mentioned that my secret Institute deep in the bowels of Holyhead Mountain has adjusted the data. Mann is 2’8″ not 2’9″ even with his new ‘liftee’ cuban heels. He is still strutting about as if he owns the place. The little wanker.

wayne Job says:
January 27, 2013 at 6:19 pm
When all this global warming nonsense is done and dusted, the word mann will most likely live on in infamy in the english language. . .

Sort of like ‘gore’.
/Mr Lynn

Here is the legal description of *TERRORISM.*
Notice there it says “if it would otherwise be a crime”?
That’s what scamming up false research,
to TERRORIZE people.
TERRORIZE people into not buying energy. Your competitor’s energy.
You’re competitor who won the election and whose win stung so bad,
TERRORIZING the WORLD became the balm.
That’s what scamming up false research to TERRORIZE people so they install your policies, is.
TERRORISM.
Spreading rumor, backed by the full power of the Federal Government’s Climate Research and Executive arms – economic, punitive,
rumor * threatening mass destruction * if they don’t get their policies installed. *
No?
It’s not?
Here’s the definition.
<<<<<<<<<<<
I was gonna cut it down, and I will.
The "International Terrorism" subsections preceeding have elements regarding that, I'll paste in domestic terrorism's definition.
________________
18 USC § 2331 – Definitions
"…(5) the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that—
(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended—
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.
______________
Do you think when people utterly disregard law
and begin altering records upon which disaster mitigation,
emergency preparedness,
food planting schedules,
ENERGY AVAILABILITY in winter to entire civilian populations,
ENERGY AVAILABILITY for EMERGENCY SERVICES,
are available through political or economic activity,
that constitutes danger to human life and property, not just specifically but en masse, nation-wide? Affecting a civilian population?
It's intimidation and it's coercion.
When people INTENTIONALLY raise energy prices to MAKE YOU UNABLE to RESPOND to local, regional, or overall endangerment to human life –
it's coercion.
Do you think what was done in the name of THE WORLD ENDING if Al Gore and political ilk didn't have their policies installed in spite of losing an election,
were done to INTIMIDATE, or COERCE a civilian population,
when his allied friends still involved in government, criminal political hacks, staged publicity stunts in which they'd cry out 'when are we gonna start jailing these" ( people who denied his claim of civilization suffering massive destructions) "for crimes against humanity?"
That is attempt to intimidate. If you act reasonable and have a poltical opinion the government employee doesn't like, he will disrupt your life through taking to mass media to achieve that intimidation. You can't get on tv and scream that about him, and keep YOUR job with the government.
Using derogatory labels without basis in truth, to discourage participation in political process, hire, or social standing is violation of Federal Civil Rights laws.
Does it appear Al Gore or
Michael Mann or
Kevin Trenberth or
Phil Jones
intended to influence,
by intimidation or coercion,
by telling people if they didn't do what they said, there would be mass destruction?
It was intimidation and coercion for them to discuss publicly, setting up legal funds to defend each other against impending lawsuits that could come as result of their claim of massive destruction.
Mann and fellow political activist government employees are seen plotting on public government work email servers,
to intimidate and coerce a reporter – hence population through manipulation of press, with their own systematically arranged, false press releases, in Climate Gate;
as Mann suggests they all stage separate government-bureau and private NGO responses, to a reporter's story on their fraud.
The reporter didn't know it was fraud. He just knew certain people agreed, there might not be massive destruction as Mann, Hansen, Trenberth, Jones, Gore claimed.
They wanted to shut him up, so they could influence government policy, and lead a civilian population in England and worldwide that, massive destruction seemed likely to occur if their political framework for governance wasn't put in place by that civilian population.
This is CRIME.
It always WAS
It always WILL be.

Are the “donations” to Mann’s cause increasing? It would appear so. That’s interesting.
I would have thought that, after Climategate, etc., they would have tapered off. Who are the men behind the curtain?

So are we really watching a remake of the old TV show “The Six Million Dollar Mann”?

D.B. Stealey says:
January 26, 2013 at 3:38 pm

Mann rakes in $millions in payola grants. But what does he have to show for it?
I am still waiting to see his work product on the $1.8 million grant to study mosquito vectors. If the granting agency had wanted real answers abpout the spread of malaria, they would have made the grant to a biologist, or an epidemiologist. Instead, the loot went to Mann. It was always just payola.

It seems to be about mosquitos, although it doesn’t say so above
If we google “Quantifying the influence of environmental temperature on transmission of vector-borne diseases” we easily find
http://nsf.gov/awards/award_visualization_noscript.jsp?org=NSF&showARRAAwards=true&region=US-PA&instId=0033290000
which gives a link to
http://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0914384
Six papers so far, Mann is not an author on any of them.
The PI on this grant is Matthew Thomas at Penn State. Here’s his home page:
http://ento.psu.edu/directory/mbt13
He’s an Entomologist, which is a kind of biologist. As it happens, the most relevant kind. (His goatee and closely cropped head make him vaguely resemble Mann, although more so if you stretch the image horizontally.)
Mann did not get this grant; he was a co-PI. What that means for his funding is impossible to tell without more detail–it may mean a major role, but often it means that he signed on for a nominal time contribution, or none at all, to prove to the NSF that there was a climate scientist available to consult on that part. Certainly, he did not get 1.8 million to play with, very likely, less than 10% of that would go to bits of his salary, a student he supervised, etc. over the four-year grant period. But the 1.8 mil went to, and was administered by, a bug guy.
D.B., this stuff is not difficult. Why not try looking stuff up before drawing conclusions? You’ll like it, it’s fun.
Meanwhile, when you add up all of the grants for which Mann is listed as PI, the amounts come to about 2.1 million. (That includes the $78,000 that supported him for two years as a postdoc). As noted, he probably wouldn’t have gotten much of the 1.8 M disease vector study. This about 2 million of which about 1/4 million is directly assignable to Mann, and the rest, we can’t tell how much Mann got. With walterschneider’s update, there’s another $400k attributable to Mann. Add these up, and we get something like $2.75 million. Then there’s whatever his share was of the rest–we could generously give a total of 3.5 million.
$350,000 per year sounds like a lot. But if you pay for a prof to work full time on research in the summer and 20% during the academic year (buy out some of his time so he can spend it on research instead of teaching), then throw in a postdoc and three or four grad students, that leaves a reasonable but modest amount for equipment, supplies, travel if necessary. It’s far from extravagent. Nobody’s getting rich, and the students are really just barely getting by. As usual, Mann’s been getting more funding as his career advances, so his research group(s) would be smaller earlier on, and larger more recently.
I can’t help comparing this with a friend of mine, who, back in the ’90’s, received a single grant for five million dollars over five years. His one grant was undoubtedly for more than Mann ever got. But my friends was doing biomedical research, which is expensive. There’s a huge of money spent on climate studies, but university profs are not, by themselves, deploying phalanxes of robot buoys or purpose-built satellites. In biomedical research, the big-ticket items are purchased by the labs, with grant money (or else borrowed, shared, etc.).
People have found many ways of criticizing Mann. Pointing out that he has a successful, but unexceptional, track record, as a science prof, for external funding seems to be a way of belaboring him with a wet noodle, with occasional blows from a wilted celery stick.