https://www.facebook.com/MichaelMannScientist/posts/267470906700950
Now that Dr. Mann has drawn attention to it, even more people will want to read the National Review article “Football and Hockey” to find out what he’s so upset about. I didn’t even know about this article until Mann tweeted this demand announcement today. This announcement on Twitter Facebook is probably a bad move on Dr. Mann’s part. Here’s why:
From Wikipedia: The Streisand effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely. It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose attempt in 2003 to suppress photographs of her residence inadvertently generated further publicity.
Similar attempts have been made, for example, in cease-and-desist letters, to suppress numbers, files and websites. Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity and media extensions such as videos and spoof songs, often being widely mirrored across the Internet or distributed on file-sharing networks.
Mike Masnick of Techdirt coined the term after Streisand, citing privacy violations, unsuccessfully sued photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for US$50 million in an attempt to have an aerial photograph of her mansion removed from the publicly available collection of 12,000 California coastline photographs. Adelman said that he was photographing beachfront property to document coastal erosion as part of the government sanctioned and commissioned California Coastal Records Project. Before Streisand filed her lawsuit, “Image 3850” had been downloaded from Adelman’s website only six times; two of those downloads were by Streisand’s attorneys. As a result of the case, public knowledge of the picture increased substantially; more than 420,000 people visited the site over the following month.
You’d think after his botched attempt to get this video removed, Dr. Mann would have learned that lesson. For the record, I don’t agree with the article Steyn cites in the National Review, but I think Dr. Mann’s effort to get it removed will backfire on him.
h/t to Tom Nelson
UPDATE:
Letter from Dr. Mann’s lawyers to the National Review in three parts:
http://s14.postimage.org/7yv69pk9t/599812_401767993212742_781065817_n.jpg
http://s8.postimage.org/m9zsep2ol/531607_401768043212737_603000984_n.jpg
http://s13.postimage.org/n2q0sgihz/205403_401768099879398_275428058_n.jpg
Scanned images posted by Dr. Mann to his public FaceBook site. h/t to reader “Typhoon”.
NOTE TO COMMENTERS AND MODERATORS: I’m going to have a low tolerance for any comments that excerpt parts of the article, as well as other sorts of over the top comments – please be on your best behavior or such comments will be snipped/deleted – Anthony
One day Mann will over reach himself, thanks to his ego , and he will end up in court something we won’t enjoy at all.
For all the dersion around the hockey stick and it’s promotion, it’s not apparent the climate folks are ignorant OR dumb. As sunsettommy @ur momisugly July 20, 2012 at 7:00 pm stated, Mann is fighting the release of facts in one libel action. One surmises Mann is aware of the details of that case. Likely, even law school students have an inkling of the hurdels Mann would have in his pursuit of libel in this instance. A PhD bringing a libel action would likely know more about libel than those students.
The issue whether it’s a knee-jerk reation, mindlessly made or not. As a speculative thought, the best answer may just be to intentionally stir the “I’ll sue” pot. Politicians do the same thing when they want to head off a potentially damaging inquiry unkindly to them. Plenty of reasons. Not only may it give the prospective defedent pause but it does have the potential “chilling” effect on others. For Mann, it diverts attention away from the ongoing global warming/war on CO2, adds confusion and lets him show outrage at being linked to a pedopile.
Lawsuits are expensive,even if someone else is paying. Thus, iIt’s incredibly cheap, painless and easy to tweet a tweet knowing you’ll have your opponent almost go absolutely drooling mad responding. Think of the time spent on this by the “deniers”. Picking Steyn seems about the right one to promote all the above – not too big, not too small and guarunteed to stir things. It even burnishes Mann’s cocktail party creds about being aggressive against the “deniers”. How great is that?
Chances are you’ll not hear, maybe, one or two more tweets from Mann on this just to stir things a bit then it will fade off into the UVA sunset. Just remember, while your pursuing this one, they’re out spending their time doing things like passing carbon taxes.
I can’t see anything potentially libelous toward Mann in that article. It’s mostly aimed at PSU’s president, and rather badly aimed.
PSU’s president was simply doing what univ presidents do. They maximize contributions to the endowment fund.
He understood that Mann’s work is Cool and High-Status, strongly approved by All The Right People, and a good source of more funding and contributions. He understood that Sandusky’s extracurricular activities were Uncool and Low-Status. So he firmly defended Mann and covered up Sandusky. All normal bureaucratic behavior.
Interesting! I frequently invoke the name of _B_eelzebub _S_treisand as an dysphemism for male bovine feces, particularly when directed leftward.
No slander of Mann here, maybe a slander of PSU but that is also unlikely.
“Just remember, while your pursuing this one, they’re out spending their time doing things like passing carbon taxes.”
Who in the U.S. is talking carbon taxes? Not Obama and not anyone else of substance.
Skiphil says:
July 20, 2012 at 4:51 pm
or the “Napoleon Effect” — he doesn’t respect Russian winters
Oh, the humanity….
Thats funny 🙂
I almost fell of my chair laughing 🙂
1: I may now have carpal tunnel in my right index finger from scrolling down this far (because ‘CTRL – END’ was too much work 😉 )
2: I just read the article, and I have to say: that’s it? That’s all there was to the comment, and Dr. Mann want’s to unleash lawyers? I find that very interesting in and of itself. It looks like he’s trying to silence anyone who wishes to revisit the ‘investigation,’ wouldn’t you think?
Mann of thin skin.
Love the article.
Lotsa luck and best wishes trying to get it retracted (sarc).
Having thought about it a little more, I’ve realised that his posting on FB suggests he really wants everyone to know about this. Much as I don’t agree with his “science”, if that’s what he wants…..
Duly shared 🙂
@corio37
“Whitewashing is going to be THE growth industry for the 21st Century. Expect to see major institutions offering accredited courses in it soon. With their extensive experience, Penn State and East Anglia could be pioneers in this exciting new field!”
Umm… politicians and the police are already well established in this particular field – Climate Change specialists are just amateurs compared to them…
In fact, what you’re seeing is the result of politicians of all parties and from all countries indulging in immoral activity and whitewashing themselves. If your leaders keep doing it, sooner or later ALL the citizens will start doing it. It’s called ‘Leading by Example’….
Well at least one of his supporters enjoyed it, this from Mann’s Facebook page:
I wish UVA would sue somebody. One word reason: Discovery.
I haven’t re-read it, but I recall Steyn’s post as safe and ending with a valid point: With a history of cover-up, what about all the other “don’t see a problem here” self-examinations? But maybe NRO (it was online) can’t afford to pay lawyers and would pay $1 to Mann and he could announce it was settled in confidentiality.
I doubt that would shut Steyn up, though. You’d think he would have been forced to keep his mouth shut during the years of persecution – check that – prosecution – in Canada, but he wrote about it all the while. (That one also centered on quotes of others – he quoted Islamic figureheads – ayotollahs and scholars – verbatim and was charged with making anti-Islamic statements for doing so.) He’s kind of “into” free speech and Mann is desperately trying to shut people up. Just Steyn’s cup of tea.
Litigation seems to be an ever present threat from the Ayatollah of Climate Sharia. (Go ahead. Sue me for defamation. True believers will govern, others will be abused and tithed, they’re on a mission to save the world by converting it to their belief. Hey, it keeps going. And how dare he claim that ayatollah is a term of derision?) Can he sue for mockery and win? If so, he should start with himself.
It’s time he starts cutting some trees again. The mann doth protest too much.
So Mark Steyn writes on national review that openmarket.org has a story that in Mark Steyn’s opinion is perhaps over the top, but does have some good points. Michael Mann doesn’t like it and wants Mark Steyn’s report at nationalreview.com retracted. That’s just not going to happen. Mark Steyn is just reporting.
I agree with Anthony, Dr. Mann is just drawing attention to a story where he is wrong but not enough of the population care about the details for the media to really care about it and dig in to it. If Dr. Mann keeps jumping into the spotlight his mistakes are just going to get more air time.
Steve M pointed out the double fail at Penn State oversight when the Sandusky scandal first broke. No report of retained legal counsel for that though.
I can’t agree with the analogy – ad hom equating Mann with a child rapist – which detracts from the main point: poor quality internal investigation at the Institution.
I ask that he apologize – detracts from the debate.
For the lawyers out there, isn’t this like Larry Flynt saying that Jerry Fallwell had a fun time with with his mother in an outhouse, and it was ruled in Flynt’s favor because Falwell was a public figure, and that no reasonable person with half a brain would have ever thought he was serious much like no one in their right mind would actually believe the tasteless. but in no way liable joke made about Michael Mann
Nevermind my last comment, I see the quote referenced now in the National Review wasn’t saying that now so the comparison to the Larry Flynt case doesn’t make sense. i agree though with the above commenters that it may not have been a good comparison but that doesn’t take away from the author’s main point, which was that prohibiting development under the guise of protecting biodiversity over humans particularly in the 3rd world where razing entire villages and massive land-grabbing going on there so that they “leave space for nature”. Mother Earth and all the animals and insects have more natural rights in the eyes of the Eco-Authoritarians than do humans(who they view as trash) to this deranged anti-human cult.
The CO2 tax fraud that is disproportionately hurting the relatively low-income people who they always pay lip service to and pretend to care about about in developed (soon to be de-indstialized) nations. i think his larger point that was lost was that let’s quit letting these alarmists act as if they have any kind of moral high ground to stand on whatsoever when globalist funded NGOs they’ve been caught enforcing John P. Holdren’s eugenics programs in India and elsewhere with forced abortions and mandatory one-child policies, Ted Turner who has openly called for an over 95% human culling calls those of us who are against such policies “dumb-dumbs”, meanwhile most people still think of these people as the good guys?
Rand Simberg’s piece was the one mostly full of invective and Sandusky comparisons, but Steyn used the word ‘fraudulent’ regarding the Hockey Stick which I guess is what Mann would take objection to.
Mind you, I’d love to see him have to get up and prove it’s not in a court of law, when all the facts are laid out his only real claim would be that it wasn’t malice it was merely incompetence.
The only inflammatory comment that was not part of the Simberg quote was the use of the word ‘fraudulent’.
All of the other Penn State comparisons were Simberg’s – and yes, some of it goes over the top but “what wouldn’t a man like Spanier cover up?” is a perfectly fair question.
In case commenting has been turned off over at National Review…
I think a comparison IS appropriate…
But it’s the comparison between Michael Mann and Joe Paterno as it relates to Penn State — nothing to do with Sandusky…
Think about it… Two years ago, Penn State “investigates” Mann with regard to the stolen Climategate emails– and yet as a restriction on the ‘independent’ investigation, it was said that the emails themselves can not be used for content or evidence. The reason: Because it’s impossible to divine motive or action in any concrete form from a set of emails, incomplete or otherwise. They ended up being left with simply asking Mann if he did something wrong, and reporting what he said as conclusions.
Fast-forward to today… and Louis Freeh concludes that it is perfectly ascertainable to understand both motive and behavior of Joe Paterno throughout the Sandusky saga, particularly through received emails, all this despite Joe Paterno not ever using a computer much less email.
There clearly is a stark difference between how Penn State chose to “investigate” in each circumstance, despite each attempting to have an air of credibility.
No one asked Louis Freeh about this in the press conference, but it’s clear to me that even a cursory look at the Climategate emails with the same eye that poured over the PSU emails looking for Paterno’s behavior would have uncovered culpability on the part of Dr. Michael Mann in more than one arena of adacemic/professional irresponsibility.
Joe Paterno and Michael Mann should stand or fall together if their investigations were carried out with a similar level of credibility. Penn State has apparently made a decision to do things differently in each case. No one has called for the “death penalty” in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, and yet football is being blamed in Paterno’s case.
Repeated note: The above has nothing to do with Jerry Sandusky, but it is clear there is at least one comparison between this saga and a past one that deserves the light of day.
Salamano says:
July 21, 2012 at 8:38 am
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That’s an excellent point about the dramatic difference between allowing or disallowing the evidence of emails in the two inquiries. Of course the Freeh Report is based upon an external panel that had wide open powers (apparently), while the whitewash Mann report was based solely upon an internal panel carefully designed to get the desired result.
By the time the Freeh Report was commissioned PSU was far too embarrassed and disgraced to try to control the outcome the way they did in the Mann inquiries. For Mann, excluding the damning email evidence was a convenient way of shaping the agenda and then conclusions.
davidmhoffer says:
Then I wish Mann would set up a second Twitter account and a second email address and tweet and email himself to his heart’s content and leave the rest of humanity alone!
@Leardog- re analogy with childrapist- on one level I agree, it is a nasty ad hom.
On the otherhand “denier” = apologist for genocide. A nasty ad hom as well.
I’m afraid it is a case of Mann hoisted by his own petard.
I don’t see anything that could be proven libel by Mark Steyn.
Mann is such a clown.