![dsc02295-kijong-dong[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/dsc02295-kijong-dong1.jpg)
The Kochs, Scaifes & others have used their billions to construct a vast “Potemkin Village” (in the words of science historian Naomi Oreskes) of denialism, by funding groups like “Americans For Prosperity”, the “Heartland Institute”, the “Competitive Enterprise Institute” and a whole cadre of other front groups, organizations, and hired guns implicated in the campaign to discredit climate science and climate scientists. I should know since, as I describe in my book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, I found myself at the center of that campaign more than a decade ago because of my scientific work establishing the unprecedented nature of recent global warming.
Source: Huffington Post
Billions? Where? I gotta get me some of that. Meh, it’s the same conspiracy theory polka Mann and Oreskes have been doing for years, disguised as a book promotion. Mann doesn’t even have the mental cognizance to separate his imagined #Kochmachine funding from a free Christmas Calendar sent as a gift, printed at COSTCO, using my own credit card.
As far as I can tell, Mann has never actually done any real work like real people do, he’s always been the recipient of some grant, or been attached to some part of the public teat. So it really isn’t any surprise to me that he can’t fathom that somebody might use their own money to send a free calendar, no, in his world that sort of stuff is what you use other people’s money for.
Bishop Hill posits that Mann’s latest entertaining rant is a lot like Green Lizards from Alpha Centauri:
You wonder whether more level-headed upholders of the global consensus are at all embarrassed by this sort of thing. The “big oil conspiracy” theory of global warming scepticism seems to thrive among people like Mann, seemingly requiring absolutely no evidence to sustain it. The left-wing media seems to lap it up without question. But is the tale of sceptics feeding off Exxon’s millions any more credible than green lizards from Alpha Centauri taking over Michael Mann’s brain?
If it is a Green Lizard invasion, I’ll bet their home planet looks a lot like the DPRK from Space, energy for me, but not for thee:
As Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. once quipped:
If Michael Mann did not exist, the skeptics would have to invent him.
Keep ’em coming Mike! With your help, we are winning the Climate Wars.
I’ve had fun with Michael “Piltdown” Mann.
I’m going to have more fun with “Mannure.”
LOL – does anyone take Mann seriously these days?
Good ol’ Mann, a legend in his own mind.
Lets hear it for North Korea, fighting C-AGW since 1950!, showcase for the rest of the world.
Just waiting for the other shoe to drop… he usually releases one of his “poor, poor pitiful me” screeds a few days before the next PR shift. Or maybe he’s trying to distract attention from the possible magma heating of the WAIS.
Either way, it’s his usual formulaic crap, the self-aggrandising little pillock. In my humble opinion, of course ;).
“… a whole cadre of other front groups, organizations, and hired guns implicated in the campaign to discredit climate science and climate scientists …”
Ah, yes, if only Mann could actually prove that to be true. His notion about this is arguably traceable to AGW alarmist book author Ross Gelbspan, who declared on several occasions that the Western Fuels Association had created a front group to follow up with WFA’s stated goal of “launching a direct attack on mainstream science.” Problem is, as I detailed in a post at my blog, Western Fuels never stated any such thing. Please see, “Why Say Sinister Plans are in a Coal Association’s Annual Report… when they aren’t?” http://gelbspanfiles.com/?p=491
“in the words of science historian Naomi Oreskes”
Science historian???? I think my opinion would be more as a fabulator. But little Michael Mann would know truth from fantasy.
Kijong-dong “The official position of the North Korean government is that the village contains a 200-family collective farm, serviced by a childcare center, kindergarten, primary and secondary schools, and a hospital.”
Hubba hubba, free healthcare, state education, state childcare for babies, and a farm for sustainable jobs!
The idea that the Koch brother have nothing better to do with their billions than build a vast nexus of organisations to refute climate change, presumably in order to make themselves richer, doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, since spending money on this scale is likely to have the opposite effect.
Maybe Mann has missed the fact that it isn’t these organisations that are refuting climate change so much as mother nature herself. Oh, that’s gotta hurt.
Another mardy scientist because his work is not believed anymore. Shame.
Such a wee little Mann – and in it so far over his wee little head!
“Michael Mann is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Pennsylvania State University” and yet Canada has said “meteorologists are not climate experts” and should not make public comments about it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2646897/Canada-bans-government-meteorologists-talking-climate-change.html
Dr. Mann does not appreciate the whole influence of the Big Oil. They enlisted the help of Mother Nature and made her disrespect even the best climate models.
Since the original Potemkin Villages are a myth, are they secretly admitting to their own deception (playing the role of Von Helbig promulgating rumors) or are they merely ignorant of the truth and too lazy to research whether their perceptions of reality actually match reality?
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2479/did-potemkin-villages-really-exist
The Carry On gag “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!” has been voted the funniest film one-liner.
Kenneth Williams uttered the words as Julius Caesar in 1964 romp Carry On Cleo.
It was named the best one-liner in a poll of 1,000 comedians, industry figures and film fans by Sky Movies Comedy.
Bob McCabe, author of The Rough Guide To Comedy, said: “It’s great to see two British movies in the top three and well-established classics with great lasting power.
The rest of the top Top 10 was made up of:
He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.
Terry Jones as Brian’s mother – Life Of Brian (1979)
Surely you can’t be serious?” I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley.
Leslie Nielsen as Dr Rumack – Airplane! (1980)
Daily Telegraph April 4th, 2007
I make that three out of three to MM.
So, the keeper of the numbers…is a loon
Who’da thunk it
Michael Mann is a secret denier who has successfully infiltrated the alarmist camp to discredit them with his ridiculous utterances.
Because it’s citizen live in poverty, North Korean can sell you carbon credits, so you can live your rich opulent western lifestyle. Worth reading for the academic gobbledegook.
North Korea: an unlikely champion in the fight against climate change
Pyongyang is cooperating with global strategy on climate change, writes Dr Benjamin Habib. The question is, why?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/20/north-korea-unlikely-champion-fight-against-climate-change
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php
Heavy Hitters: Top All-Time Donors, 1989-2014
The Koch brothers are down at no. 59, Strong and Steyer have shielded their efforts so well that they don’t even appear. WWF, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, NRDC, etc. completely dwarf any efforts to spread a realistic climate message and overwhelming all of that is the $billions of free propaganda from news flunkies, TV shows and movies, and all the other celebutard generated nonsense that makes forwarding an argument on the “scientific” basis of this BS nearly impossible.
I can’t wait for Mark Steyn to comment on this latest rant by the reluctant public figure. Somehow I feel the good(?) professor is a “Marked Mann.”
You can laugh at the absurdity of Mann but the stories they tell are used to justify real action. Its the big lie thing. Just stick to it. See the President of the United States….
Notice that his only ‘source’ is his own book. What do the shrinks call that? A self fulfilling delusional obsession?
Because of the likes of Mann and Oreskes, Science is truly History…….
Okay, I’ve seen enough. The guy is an idiot and so is his employer for taking him on board.
Mann is just mimicking Oreskes’ vile name calling and hate of all critics of her climate dogma posed as science.
Oreskes comes off in public as having quirky emotional and subjective rants against her imagined climate skeptic ‘enemies’.
Mann is foolishly trying to repackage Oreskes’ old and silly stuff. He needs a professional mentor to help him see Oreskes based inconvincibleness is useless on the skeptical public.
John
Mann’s original work was REGIONAL rather than GLOBAL. So how exactly does he think he “established the unprecedented nature of recent global warming”? And can’t we now say that his work applied to PAST global warming since those same proxies today would show NO global warming for 17 years?
I was gonna cut down a tree but it screamed I lied about Global warming at me.
Mann is a one-trick, one-time pony. He reminds me of the Big Man on Campus when he is 45, still talking about his days on the gridiron, while he spends his days stocking shelves and helping customers at a Staples store.
Mann exhibits every single one of the characteristics of the classic paranoid. The victim of dark, powerful, sinister forces (who apparently don’t know enough to take out a simple contract with some hired killer). If those forces were even 1/1,000,000th as sinister as he imagines, he would have been dead decades ago. Can an institution or org like the Heartland sue someone for libel?
If so, Mann’s your guy. Notice Mann’s complete inability to admit being wrong, probably instilled by his Mom at an early age. Say Mikey,whatever happened to that unprecedented warming you discovered all by yourself? Where did it go, Mann?
Mann overboard!, someone throw him a hockey stick.
Just when you think they can’t do even more crazy, they prove you wrong. For instance, did you know glowball warming will prevent contact with extraterrestrials?
http://phys.org/news/2014-06-climate-contact-alien-civilisations.html
Thats our Mann.
Singlehandedly destroying the “cause”.
Relentless and merciless in his mockery of the Cult of Calamitous Climate.
My Hero.
Sarc? I am no longer so sure.
Aphan;
And can’t we now say that his work applied to PAST global warming since those same proxies today would show NO global warming for 17 years?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually, the proxies show a decline in temps since the 1960’s. A fact that calls the proxy record in its entirety into question and which sadly has faded from visibility in this debate.
Michael Mann is making up data against the Koch brothers and skeptics in general to convince people that he didn’t make up his hockey stick data. Does he even realize the irony in that?
“Meh” = Michael E Ham (Gord bless ‘im – and all who fail in him)
Observation based climate science indicates that Oreskes now represents inconvincibleness.
So her star disciple Mann also does.
John
Any pundit or opinion-monger can be professionally defamed and damaged by a claim that he or she shapes his opinion to the demands of a hidden client. The accusation is damaging even if the pundit has, in the past and will again later, issue similar opinions. The classic example is Armstrong Williams, a US newspaper columnist, who was accused of shaping his pronouncements on GW Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” efforts to suit the demands of the US Department of Education, the then-secretary Rod Paige, and the department’s P.R. firm Ketchum Inc. Even though Williams rountinely advocated for programs targeting the educatioinal needs of black and other minority students in US public schools, he advocacy for the NCLB program, under the paid behest of hidden sponsored, made his opinions less trustworthy.
If Michael Mann directly accuses opinion-meister Mark Steyn of being a paid “shill” for the Koch companies, Mann defames Steyn, and damages Steyn’s ability to sell his product, witty opinion.
Steyn, however, has NOT sued Mann for such defamation, whether Mann has offered such insult directly or by innuendo. Steyn’s counter-suit against Mann is against Mann’s abuse of legal process.
If Mann wins his defamation suit, however, the precedent set in that jurisdiction would set up Steyn to file exactly the sort of defamation claim I describe by reference to Williams. Mann can’t call pundits “shills” without either: reasonable grounds of proof or a willingness to subject his claims to the courts’ review.
davidmhoffer says June 10, 2014 at 11:32 am: (my bold)
Well said, David! That should be Mann’s epitaph – and the end to the AGW scam.
“The “big oil conspiracy” theory of global warming scepticism seems to thrive among people like Mann, seemingly requiring absolutely no evidence to sustain it.” As is with their theories as well.
And people keep saying that so called scientists never make things up, fudge the data, or are ever in it for the grant money and prestige. Well, for you folks, this is PROOF.
This is what I have to say to the Koch dogs:
The worst of it is people and not dumb people lap his rants up via the media. It is sad to listen to people who are smart talk about the great big funding of the skeptic world. The propagandists are winning that battle. They are telling the lies so often many are believing them.
“LOL – does anyone take Mann seriously these days?” Frozenohio asks
The answer is yes, he does, and therein lies the problem.
Anthony writes, “Billions? Where? I gotta get me some of that.”
As soon as you do, please let me know. As you’ll recall, I posted an open letter to the Koch Brothers last October.
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/open-letter-to-the-koch-brothers/
Sadly for me, I still haven’t received a gazillion-dollar donation from them.
@Bob Tisdale
Lower your request to maybe just a gajeelion dollars. You know how tightwad those conservatives can be. 😉
Mother Nature hates Michael Mann.
I’m thinkin’ bumper sticker.
If it takes a village to raise a child, and if every village has its idiot, then Michael Mann is playing that role in worldclass fashion.
He is actually asserting that the scientists who disagree with his extreme views on climate are simply mercenaries of the most cynical sort. He is actually asserting, apparently, that only his perspective is acceptable and that it is immoral to disagree with him.
He is not a mere idiot. He is a pathetic, dangerous idiot.
John W. Garrett says (June 10, 2014 at 8:59 am): ‘I’ve had fun with Michael “Piltdown” Mann.’
In view of his upside down interpretation of the Tiljander sediment data…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/22/manns-inverted-tiljander-data-survives-another-round-of-peer-review/
…I think a better name is “Siltdown Mann”. IIRC it was first coined by Steve Mosher.
Attn: protesters from Sierra Club needed. Russian natural gas pipeline in North Korea. Apply within.
“Putin tries his own Asian pivot — toward North Korea
TAKAYUKI TANAKA, Nikkei staff writer
MOSCOW — Russia is seeking closer economic ties with North Korea in an effort to develop its backward Far East and counter America’s strategic shift toward Asia.
Deputy Prime Minister Yury Trutnev traveled to Pyongyang last week, becoming the highest-ranking Russian official to visit since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un succeeded his late father.
Trutnev, a confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin, serves as presidential envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District. While in North Korea, he met with Kim Yong Nam, the nominal head of state, and Premier Pak Pong Ju, the Itar-Tass news agency reported. They discussed plans for a pipeline through the country to carry Russian natural gas to South Korea and a rail corridor spanning the Korean Peninsula, as well as Russian investment in North Korean mining.”
Maybe he’s doing another paper.
He might need to say he’s being picked so’s to put off his critics.
cn
“The Kochs, Scaifes & others have used their billions to construct a vast “Potemkin Village”… of denialism”
—
It is very instructive to see Mann willing to publish statements of “fact” based on little or no evidence. It is also instructive to see him make huge upward “adjustments” to what little data he thinks he does have to support his narrative. If he’s willing to do all that just to spite his enemies, what is he willing to do to support his livelihood? And why should we believe any statements he makes about global warming when he is unwilling to release his data so other scientists can reproduce his work?
TomB says:
June 10, 2014 at 11:28 am
OMG, Tom. I laughed until my sides ached. Then, I cried.
Plus ca change. It’s the old “we’ve been cut off from God by our sin” message in a new package.
God help us.
Those lights off the east coast of Korea are the fishing fleet. How sad that a bunch of boats are brighter than the entire
concentration campcountry of North Korea.Vince Causey says:
June 10, 2014 at 9:24 am
……
Maybe Mann has missed the fact that it isn’t these organisations that are refuting climate change so much as mother nature herself. Oh, that’s gotta hurt.
——————————
Yes, it is a known fact that Mother Nature is in the pay of big oil and sits on the board at the Heartland Institute as proven during the Gleik Heist.
/sarc
You can’t trust anyone.
Mann hasn’t had an accident yet. These Koch brothers don’t know how to run a business.
F##king commies everywhere!
“Okay, I’ve seen enough. The guy is an idiot and so is his employer for taking him on board.”
………………
Oh, puhleeze stop. It hurts too much. Just a couple of years ago my beloved alma mater, Penn State, was the greatest at both football AND meteorology. Now look at us. No wait, don’t look at us.
I guess we still have Accu-Wx. Aghaaaaaaaaaa !!!
@Mary Brown – I sympathize with you. I have no association with PSU, but have always respected Joe Paterno. I still do. He is a casualty of the situation, as are so many Alumni of that institution.
Where’s Josh????
I want a T-shirt cartoon with a depiction of Mother Nature with a scoreboard behind her and a pile of scientists she’s so far defeated-Mann, Cook, Trenberth etc and hash marks next to Mother nature’s score and big old ZERO’s next to theirs.
“Mother Nature vs Team Consensus” as the caption.
Maybe have her sitting in a beach chair, sipping a cold drink, very relaxed, and them all piled up with those dizzy spirals coming up from their heads. Or even better…a LINE of opponents waiting to have at her with a pile of past scientists being in the pile…like Hansen and the Global cooling guys from the 70′s. Put their names on jerseys so we’ll know who they are. Mann can be wearing nothing but a loin cloth and carrying a hockey stick. Trenberth can be wearning a suba suit and tank. Cook can be carrying a bag of “widgets” as his weapon of choice (make him out like a Pokemon trainer!) and maybe have Dana on a leash beside him. Lewandowsky can be on the sidelines yelling propaganda instructions to his teammates with a megaphone as their coach! ( Or maybe stuff like…”Mike! You’re stick is upside down!” “John, use the Hiroshima bombs one first!” “Dana, remember…BE the message…BE the message”) Dress the IPCC up as cheerleaders.
Maybe have the audience/spectators leaving in droves or asleep in the emptying stands.
Oh..Cook’s jersey number should be 97.
And put the Koch brothers in a private box eating popcorn with one of them saying “And they think she works for US!” laughing their asses off.
“LOL – does anyone take Mann seriously these days?”
Some still take Ehrlich seriously; that’s sad. The US govt. takes Holdren seriously; that’s scary.
It’s OK. According to the next post, there should be a psychologist coming along to see him any moment. 😉
With Gavin Schmidt taking over at NASA while Mann barks at the moon and chases mail trucks, just how much more wonderfuckle can things get in the rubber room of science?
Michael Mann and Paul Krugman in WUWT the same week. Oh, please be still my convulsing stomach.
Wow. I guess Mr Mann never heard the old saying, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”
This just in:
Green lizards from Alpha Centauri are protesting the implied association with Mann.
Does that include the BEST climate project? Haaaa haaa.
Very interesting indeed. It really is worse than we thought.
On that thread I said:
There is a lot more and not just to Penn State. Oil money is EVERYWHERE!!!!
SORRY mods. Delete this if you need to but I think it needs showing right here.
And EVERY SINGLE TIME I have asked for evidence for this massive funding of sceptics I hear crickets. Why? Chirp, chirp. You CANNOT produce evidence of something that does not exist. Of course some institutes get some funding but it is not massive. It is not even well funded. It is tiny, if it is MASSIVE then show me. Where is the mass?
Mann is living in a dreamworld of his own making. I think he needs urgent psychological help, ASAP. He is living in a fantasy world and it’s worse than we thought. Doe he not have a brain? Can he not see the ads on the right side of WUWT? Sheeeesh!
Mann has specifically named Watts as a shill, so I think Watts has grounds for a libel suit–or at least for a cease and desist letter, plus a retraction demand. A published retraction would dramatically diminish the frequency of the “oil-funded” claim about the contrarian blogosphere, and Watts in particular. And it would dramatically diminish Mann’s credibility. So I hope Anthony gives it serious thought.
About a month ago I commented thusly, here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/10/open-thread-weekend-20/#comment-1633276
That last sentence plainly implies that Watts was “[an]other cash recipient” like Carter, who was therefore also being paid on an ongoing basis to “regularly and publicly counter the alarmist [anthropogenic global warming] message.” I.e., that he was being paid for his blogging.
This was wrong in two ways. The Heartland document stated (IIRC) that he was getting a one-time fee, not for expressing opinions countering the alarmist message, but to provide a user-friendly front-end for a government-run website containing data about its high-quality weather station network.)
So (if I am right about what the Heartland documents said about Watt’s project), the quotes from the WATODAY website were knowingly false and malicious.
The Sourcewatch site tried to distance itself from making this libelous claim by citing WATODAY as its source. But it included no qualifying phrase like “According to WATODAY.” It simply made a bald assertion. And it went beyond WATODAY, which didn’t explicitly claim that Watts was being continually paid for blogging.
But Sourcewatch should know better by now, and so should Mann (who similarly hides behind his citation of Sourcewatch), since Watts’s rebuttals have been posted on his site, as I cited above (there are probably more, which a little Googling would turn up), which site alarmists like them monitor. So I suspect that they are on thin ice, legally.
OTOH, I suspect that they could defend themselves by saying that Watts hadn’t contacted them directly with a lawyer’s letter presenting evidence to the contrary. That should probably be Anthony’s next step: or at least see a lawyer.
If there are any legal beagles reading this, please weigh in with your opinions.
For a list of 20-plus things that would be happening (but aren’t) if climate contrarians were actually well-organized and well-funded, see my WUWT guest-thread, “Notes from Skull Island” at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/16/notes-from-skull-island-why-skeptics-arent-well-funded-and-well-organized/
Feel free to share this image- 🙂
http://momanomaly.wordpress.com/2014/06/11/earth-defying-the-consensus/
[Link is marked as a private wordpress site. 8<( .mad]
Big Oil has paid off the Sun.
Must be true.
I read it on the internet.
But we’re losing the climate as politics war, and badly. We should all have notices by now that the science reality does not matter. It is the political “truth” that matters. The solution is to change who owns that “truth”.
Birthers, Truthers and Kochers
Soooo, Mann is accusing some Capitalist Running-Dog Billionaires of spending their vast fortunes in CAGW denialism, and most potent form of denialism is pointing to the fact that the global temperature hasn’t shifted upwards in almost 18 years. Therefore these Evil people must be deliberately keeping the temperature from rising just to spite the models. They must be stopped from doing so!!
Oh, wait, hang on…
Greenpeace are vocal on the Koch bros fueling climate change denial debate. So – what’s wrong in the way they want to spend their money. It’s not as if oil is going to disappear from our daily lives soon. Just Google Greenpeace and Koch bros. This Mann generated abuse to protect his arse is getting to the point that his science is becoming a hidden argument and he is trying to demonize those that not only prove his science is wrong but those who are prepared to take him on have hidden agendas like supporting coal and oil, rather than physics. If he thinks that is fair comment, well it will fall on deaf ears.
The Huffington Post is funded by a multi billionaire. But that’s clean money of course.
Not long ago the Guardian reported on environmental groups investing BIG money in fossil fuel companies. More money than is required to gain a seat on the AGM I vaguely recall.
More on BIG GREEN investing in fossil fuel companies. It’s worse than we thought.
2013
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/10/naomi-klein-green-groups-climate-deniers
http://www.thenation.com/article/174149/why-arent-environmental-groups-divesting-fossil-fuels
“— a whole cadre of other front groups, organizations, and hired guns implicated in the campaign to discredit climate science and climate scientists.”
Of course, the above doesn’t apply to the largest political PR machine ever assembled in the history of science I guess.
So true. Many times at the Guardian comments people asked me what was my motivation. They also cannot fathom that someone in a democracy might disagree with them for genuine reasons – WITHOUT being fossil fuel funded. They are the conspiracy theorists.
TIP for Warmists. Look at the numerous sceptical bloggers and look at their side-bars. You will often see ‘donate’, adverts, books leading to Amazon etc. Why do they need these funds when they get it from big oil, coal or gas? Fossil fuel companies give away hundreds of millions a year. They can easily get together $10 million a year to fund just 4 powerful and climate dedicated organisations as well as fund the top 10 sceptic bloggers.
” I have no association with PSU, but have always respected Joe Paterno. I still do.”
Me too. I think history will be favorable on JoePa when the hysteria is gone. Not so for Dr. Mann.
I still have many friends in the Meteorology Dept. Let’s just say that the folks that say “All scientists agree” haven’t hung out much in Walker Building. Many of the faculty and staff are dismayed at Dr. Mann’s behavior and reject his science. There is a changing of the guard at Dept Head. The outgoing dept head is a good guy but a devoted warmist. The new dept head is much more involved in weather and forecast modelling. I don’t know what he will do but I just hope that he will urge Dr. Mann to behave in a more professional manner that is becoming of a scientist. Name calling, rampant advocacy, litigious attacks, and science with an agenda have no place at my school. I expect large universities to have tenured profs practicing bad science. That is reality. But the I have no tolerance for Dr. Mann’s lack of professionalism.
Jimbo says:
“You CANNOT produce evidence of something that does not exist.”
Of course you can, just ask Gleick.
I guess mother nature is for sale after all , and it took Koch’s billions and billions to buy her off.
He’s even more desperate than David Suzuki, both throwing bad analogies around in their scramble to find connections to persuade fools.
Jimbo,
In reply to your list of universities that the Koch’s support – what’s wrong with supporting universities? You don’t like education? Low information voters is your goal?
It seems you are trying to insinuate that the Kochs are trying to institute science denialism in their donations. But where are the facts?
Picking one entry at random: Azusa Pacific University
(Ok, it wasn’t random, it had a funny name near the top of the list, so I looked there first)
http://www.apu.edu/articles/18696/
“Eight APU students emerged from a competitive scholarship process as Koch Fellows in fall 2011, each receiving a $1,000 scholarship. The program supports students entering their sophomore or junior year who express a keen interest in understanding and promoting political and economic freedom.”
This is a student scholarship program that has been going on since 2010, giving freedom-oriented students money.
Oh the horror! Such blatant anti-science bias!
Of course the “big oil conspiracy” theory is credible. It just doesn’t happen to be true.
As far as I can make out, the oil companies long ago figured out that
a) They didn’t have to fund sceptics, because they fund themselves
b) It wasn’t in their interests to do so, anyway.
With almost perfect symmetry, the alarmists seem to have decided
a) It’s too much trouble to manufacture evidence of a “big oil conspiracy”
b) They don’t have to, because people will believe it anyway.
Increasingly it is clear that a Koch Derangement Syndrome (KDS) is developing in the US and probably elsewhere. Seems to be taking over from the Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Here’s part of an email I received today from MoveOn.org. It’s those Koch Brother again…..
“Dear MoveOn member,
America has a Koch problem—and it’s coming to a head this November.
Right-wing oil billionaires Charles and David Koch are two of the wealthiest people in the world. They don’t hesitate to buy politicians and policies that advance their own business interests. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United and recent McCutcheon decisions, there’s virtually no limit on what they can spend.
The Koch brothers are gearing up to pour at least $125 million into November’s elections—backing candidates who’ll vote to decimate Social Security, overturn voting rights, block any shot at curbing global warming, and make it impossible for people to get health care or earn a decent wage.2
In order to neutralize the Koch brother’s pernicious impact on our democracy, we must first understand it. That’s why MoveOn members are gathering on Saturday, June 28 and Sunday, June 29 at hundreds of “America Has a Koch Problem” movie parties to watch Koch Brothers Exposed: 2014 Edition, the critically-acclaimed new release from our friends at Brave New Films. After the film, we’ll begin planning a powerful nation-wide campaign to end the Koch brothers’ toxic influence on our democracy.”
They are right, of course, America has a Koch problem – a KDS problem – from Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi through MoveOn through Michael Mann……they all see the Koch’s as THE cause of all their problems.
Tom Z,
Jimbo is pointing out the hypocrisy of the greens skrilling from rooftops about evil oil funding when they are the recipients of the vast majority of it. He did not include the $100 million ‘stipend’ to Stanford to start up their Green Climate Change Depts. Nor did he list the vast $ sent to other countries for their Climate change studies and depts.
I believe that Jimbo supports endowments as do the rest of us.
But to claim that a $25,000 donation is paying for people to argue the climate warmists is extreme defensiveness…either trying to hype up support or pity.
Since low info voters are ginned up for evil oil, they swallow it.
I noticed the night satellite photo of North Korea still has a couple of spots of light. Maybe Meltdown Mann will move there to stamp them out?
V.UIL said:”they all see the Koch’s as THE cause of all their problems.”
Do they? Or do they just see the Koch’s as the perfect target to demonize? Gotta give this “evil” a face right? You see, they think that the majority of Americans view “the rich” as “evil” and therefore putting the Koch’s face on everything should make us automatically equate them with evil too.
But they don’t UNDERSTAND how normal, regular people think. The majority of American’s don’t hate the rich. They don’t buy into the message that the rich are stealing all the wealth from everyone else. And they don’t buy this “Koch” message either. In fact, every time we hear it, it’s like one of Pavlov’s bells….we automatically know the person saying it is part of the Propaganda Group. And we ignore them.
They are so pathetically out of touch with the vast majority of the American people, it’s almost hilarious. Just look at DC and the media reeling from Eric Cantor’s loss this morning! They are predictable. We can use that to our advantage when the time comes.
Joe Change at 9:09am nails it. Maybe this will be the impetus that brings North Korea back into the global fold. tee hee
This is a bit off topic, but I’m reading “The Lysenko Affair” by David Joravsky. It’s about the corruption of science under the Soviet Union. But there’s not an absolute division between the USSR and the USA. It’s just that in the former, there was more government-sponsored pseudo-science. One interesting point about pseudo-scientist Trofim Lysenko is his persuasive power with journalists. He persuaded the media, the media persuaded the public, and to some extent, the Russia government had to take notice. There’s not a complete dichotomy between this story and how Western society works.
Does Dr. Mann have any toes left…he’s shot himself in the foot so many times, he may only have ankles remaining.
Mann v. Steyn is crow soup. Here’s why:
In public figure defamation,the plaintiff must show that the accused author published derogatory statements that he knew to be false, or published with reckless disregard of their truth or falsity, with the effect of harming a public figure’s reputation.
The first Judge read the plaintiff’s complaint. Acting on the principle of accepting the pleadings as true, she denied defendants’ (then 4) motion for dismissal.
Two assertions mad by plaintiff would have gotten any (new to the) facts-ignorant but competent judge’s attention:
(#17, p. 6)
In 2007 Dr. Mann shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the other IPCC authors for their work in climate change, including the development of the Hockey Stick Graph.”
(#21, p. 8)
“The Exoneration of Dr. Mann” [sic]
I can’t copy and paste parts of PDF, so to summarize, Mann asserted that no fewer than 7 respected agencies/ persons: Penn State U, U East Anglia, UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the US EPA, and NSF ALL conducted investigations into allegations of scientific misconduct against Dr. Mann and colleagues, and found no basis to the allegations of scientific misconduct or manipulation of data.
Now if you were a Superior Court judge, and if these assertions were true, would you not have decent reason to allow the case to proceed, in order to find out, did Steyn and Simberg know these facts, especially exoneration of the good doctor, by no fewer than seven investigating bodies,and then willfully ignore these facts in his possession, before vilifying The Hockey Stick as fraudulent. A competent jury could examine this, and make conclusions of defendant’s “malice”.
But Steyn et al. DID NOT KNOW THESE “FACTS”. No one could have, because they were utterly false assertions.
“Dr. Mann shared the Nobel Peace Prize.” Every scientist knows what sharing the Nobel Prize means. In sciences (Physics, Chem, Med or Physiology), the committee names 2-3 Prize winners more often than it awards a single person the prize. “Sharing the Prize” means you are invited to Sweden (or Norway), to attend the awarding ceremony, all expenses paid by the Nobel Foundation, the King of Sweden (or Norway) hangs a medal on your chest, it’s yours to keep, you give a talk, usually an autobiographical memoir, and you get a check, ca. $1M, OR its fraction according to the number of your co-winners (no more than 3).
Did Dr. Mann get an all expenses trip to Oslo (paid by the Nobel Foundation, or Peace Prize Committee?) Did he get a medal that he proudly displays in his office? Did he receive any fraction of ca. $500,000 (IPCC share, AlGore pocketing an identical amount)?
No, no, and no. He did get a nice full-color replica of the Nobel certificate, along with 2000 other IPCC participants, bonded to a larger piece of paper, with his name on it, SENT TO HIM by the IPCC. But no replica medal of the actual Nobel Medal, no check from IPCC, let alone the Nobel Foundation, for $250.
Did Mann lie to the court in his initial pleadings? Lie is a strong word. Maybe he suffered a delusion of grandeur, not a crime, but a mental disorder.
On the “exoneration” assertion, the pleading was weasel-worded to conflate Mann with “colleagues”. Six of the seven investigating bodies were only looking at “colleagues”. Penn State alone “exonerated”, in an investigation chaired by PSU press Graham Spanier, who also “cleared” Jerry Sandusky. Sandusky is now in prison, and Spanier was forced to resign (or be fired), and under indictment for perjury, child endangerment and obstruction of justice. Simberg and Steyn lampooned this.
In summary, had the judge known that Mann’s original assertions as to his stature, were false fabrications, she might have granted defendants’ motion to dismiss. In any case, Mann’s attorneys presented these falsities to the court in order to evade an immediate dismissal. If a reasonable judge knew that keystone points of a plaintiff’s complaint, directly going to the heart of whether an accused libelist knew or should have known that the plaintiff won the Nobel Peace Prize (a humanity saver!), and had been exonerated by no fewer than 7 august investigatory panels, were utter fabrications, that reasonable judge would have dismissed the case. “Don’t bring me utterly false allegations again, in order to establish grounds for a lawsuit!”
Mann and his masters (remember somebody chose him to be an IPCC SAR Lead Author when he was still a grad student, or just graduated and his concocted “temp record” done in graduate school was shown 5+ times in the summary report.)
Dr. Mann is a set-up. He graduated “with honors” from Berkeley. This is one step above “No Distinction”. He took 5 years to graduate. Then at Yale, took 9 years to earn a PhD. Normal-good students take 4 years for bachelor’s, 5 years for PhD. 14 years age 32 vs. 9 years. age 27.
But Berkeley’s brilliant students enter at age 16-17, earn their AB’s in 3-4 years, and earn their PhD’s in 3-4 years. for PhD years, becoming doctors at ages 22-25, not 32.
Firthermore Berkeley’s High Honors and Highest Honors physics students go to Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Princeton, Chicago, Cornell, and Columbia. Yale was second-rate in physics.. No Physics Nobel prizes, only 4 NAS Physics members (now down to 2). Somebodies at Berkeley down tracked Mr. Mann. For example, his Berkeley profs who apparently didn’t say, “Mr. Mann is one of the best students my class.”
I worked with a lot of second and third-tier scientists. They couldn’t win a nobel Prize,or be elected to NAS. They published, and made refreee status, but couldn’t make Editor(s) page. They did honest work. That would have been Dr. Mann’s legacy, until he was enticed by someone to become “very important.”
When he goes down, he could blow the whistle, but he won’t., because blabbers get killed along with their families. He’ll just sink quietly into the sunset.
chicagoansyorkers and new Here’s an interesting fact:: New Yorkers, hicagoans, and Minneapolists keep migrating to the South and Southwest. “Too hot”? They don’t think so. /to cold where they wre born, yes they think so.
Lemmings or smart people. You decide.
It might be the flying bullets and progressive cronies as much as the temperatures that causes them to flee.
I guess that anti science name caller, hockey stick make-up artist, runaway debater, Koch-Exxon Mobil skeptic organization funding conspiracy theorist Michael Mann is an interesting man to analyze for a professional psychologist.
The rest of us just laugh.
O/T During the cold war, my ex was a captain on the V Force, Vulcans. He said that Russian technology on their planes was woeful. Mind you it was OK to bring down the U2 spy plane, eh?
@Bushbunny – the U2 was downed, but so far Russia is not saying it was a war plane or a ground to air missile that did it.
O/T Seems our press is possibly exaggerating by stating ‘Obama says climate denialists are ignoring science..’ Not very nice is he?
Perstrandberg, if it was a missile that high he would not have survived. Garry Powers was actually stood trail for espionage and was released eventually.
No it was a surface to air missile. He was jailed and sentenced but released on prisoner exchange in 1962 for another Russian spy. But initially came under flack for not destroying his plane before parachuting out. Although working for the CIA, at the time, this incident was not good for the summit between Krushcek, Macmillan and Eisenhower. I remember reading about it and wondering if we would have a nuclear war, that hung over our heads at the time.