Mark Steyn writes about this bit of an omen for the upcoming heated legal battle:
In other news, the DC Superior Court building – scene of the forthcoming Mann vs Steyn trial – caught fire today. Fortunately, I have a watertight alibi.
Wasn’t it Oliver Wendell Holmes who said there is no right to shout “Fire!” in a crowded courthouse?
D.C. Superior Court’s main courthouse is closed for the day after a small fire.
A court spokeswoman says the fire broke out in the Moultrie Courthouse on Indiana Avenue northwest on Tuesday morning and the building was evacuated. She says because of smoke in the building and water damage, proceedings set to be held in the building are postponed until Wednesday. Jurors involved in cases being heard in the main courthouse should not report.
Cases being heard in other buildings will proceed as scheduled Tuesday and officials expect to resume full operations in the main courthouse on Wednesday.
Source: http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/DC-Superior-Court-Closed-After-Small-Fire-244897501.html
Meanwhile, Michael Mann-wise, Brandon Shollenberger is attempting to catalogue “the most egregious Mann misstatements, incompetent work or deceptions“. Feel free to chip in: it’s a worthwhile project, and fun for all the family.
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Smokey the Bear’s plants on fire.
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Since global warming causes record breaking cold & snowfall, then surely the fire was caused by DC’s recent brutal winter weather.
One wonders if Mann was present and it caught from his pants.
Global warming again…
Does anyone have a clue why Steyn just doesn’t start a legal defense fund? Is there some kind of tax disincentive with that? Or tax incentive by collecting money through the sale of gift certificates?
I just assumed he’d start a legal defense fund. I’m sure Rush Limbaugh would give him a buck or two.
USA Today reports that some researchers believe they can predict El Niño much earlier. At the end of the article, there is a curious comment by Michael Mann. It sounds more like a statement from a propagandist than a scientist. First of all, no AGW skeptic (or climate change contrarian as he calls it) believes that climate change has “stopped” since it has been going on for eons.
Secondly, El Niño is a natural phenomenon and the warming it causes says nothing about the effect of CO2 emitted by humans. So Mann’s statement is a silly statement on all accounts.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/02/10/el-nino-prediction/5368631/
Quote from USA Today:
[Researchers also say that an El Niño event may form, with about a 75% likelihood, later this year. This goes along with a prediction made last week by the U.S. Climate Prediction Center.
“As the article notes, if this does happen, we will likely see a new global temperature record in 2015,” Mann said. “Perhaps that will put to rest once and for all the silly notion, promoted by climate change contrarians, that climate change has ‘stopped’.”
“It of course has not, but the prevalence of neutral and La Niña conditions in recent years has temporarily masked the ongoing global warming trend.”]
There is the scandal with the emails.
There is the VA attorney investigation.
There are the University hearings.
Seems there would be enough to have a reasonable doubt
The gods of global warming have a cruel sense of humor.
“It of course has not, but the prevalence of neutral and La Niña conditions in recent years has temporarily masked the ongoing global warming trend.”
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Wait just a minute. What happened to the Climate Science doctrine that El Niño and La Niña were the result, not the cause of temperature change?
How can the effect be masking the cause? Or has Climate Science now suddenly gone over to the Dark Side and accepts Bob Tisdale has been right all along?
Oh, it actually caught fire! I thought you were being metaphoric. ;->
Steyn has a very good piece at his website on Lysenko-Mann.
“Below, Scaramouche says that I’m Galileo. Robert Tracinski says Mann is Cardinal Bellarmine, but then hits on a better analogy:
Mann is attempting to install himself as a kind of American Lysenko. Trofim Lysenko was the Soviet scientist who ingratiated himself to Joseph Stalin and got his crackpot theories on genetics installed as official dogma, effectively killing the study of biology in the Soviet Union. Under Lysenko, the state had an established and official scientific doctrine, and you risked persecution if you questioned it. Mann’s libel suit is an attempt to establish that same principle here.
Mann has recently declared himself to be both a scientist and a political activist. But in attempting to intimidate his critics and suppress free debate on global warming, he is violating the fundamental rules of both science and politics. If it is a sin to doubt, then there is no science. If it is a crime to dissent, then there is no politics.
Just so.”
http://www.steynonline.com/6084/timing-is-everything
It would seem that Steve McIntyre is the best in the world at cataloging the many errors and flawed claims by Mann. Mr. McIntyre is brilliant at expressing these issues with extreme clarity and completeness. I would hope that some effort is being made to possibly engage him in this endeavor.
If you can’t take the heat, get out of the………. courthouse?
rk says:
February 11, 2014 at 5:47 pm
There’s an interesting link in that column, interesting in that it makes fun of Begley and Revkin, but more importantly because it may be the first instance of Steyn’s tree-ring circus pun and also uses the f-word. Turns out Steyn said essentially the same thing back in 2009 on the NRO web site. Makes me think that the only reason Mann is suing this time is because Simberg brought up Penn State’s other notable resident, Sandusky. Here and I thought he was being so noble defending the sanctity of the science. Is there a statute of limitations for libel? I mean, if someone calls you an idiot in 2009 and repeats it 3 years later, can you then decide to take offense? Couldn’t someone take your silence on the matter as tacit agreement?
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/228696/crus-tree-ring-circus/mark-steyn
Potter Eaton said:
February 11, 2014 at 5:26 pm
Does anyone have a clue why Steyn just doesn’t start a legal defense fund? Is there some kind of tax disincentive with that? Or tax incentive by collecting money through the sale of gift certificates?
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Tax disincentive : if Steyn were to start such a fund, obama would set the IRS on him.
Mann’s statement; “As the article notes, if this does happen, we will likely see a new global temperature record in 2015,” Mann said. “Perhaps that will put to rest once and for all the silly notion, promoted by climate change contrarians, that climate change has ‘stopped’.” may mean that he knows that NOAA/NASA are about to make even greater negative adjustments to historical temperature records.
In the “HarryReadme” file wasn’t there a line of code that produced a hockey stick even if random numbers were entered? (The fudge factor.) Was that Mann’s code or somebody elses?
@Potter Eaton
“Does anyone have a clue why Steyn just doesn’t start a legal defense fund? Is there some kind of tax disincentive with that? Or tax incentive by collecting money through the sale of gift certificates.”
I read it this way: there have been so many wretched things said about so many climate realists which were parroted in the media as truths that opening a legal defense fund could cause PR problems. I someone who is demonized in the press were to contribute, Mann’s attorneys would play up that fact, “So-and-so is paying this guy to blah-blah-blah…”
Having raised money through normal business ventures greatly weakens such specious arguments.
I like the Scopes Monkey Trial of the 21st Century moniker. Quite right. It has proven very difficult to get one of these guys into court.
Re the 2009 comment saying pretty much the same thing, the answer is sort of ‘yes’. If Mann was aware of it and Steyn can prove it, and nothing was done, at a minimum some explanation may be required.
What McIntyre wrote about the hockey stick chart and its provenance was of course far more damning than anything else said since as it demonstrated conclusively, scientifically, that the chart was created through deliberate subterfuge, how that subterfuge was achieved, what measures Mann took to hide it and, after exposure to the world of science, what measures he took to sustain the original fabricated claims. The suit against Steyn is not ‘out of the blue’ it is a continuation of the latter set of measures taken to sustain the original, disproven claims.
The Hockey Team predicted more fires as a result of global warming, doncha know.
Steyn has a very good piece at his website on Lysenko-Mann.
… and this quote from it blew me away:
http://www.steynonline.com/6084/timing-is-everything
Mann was the Team’s mouthpiece because he didn’t understand the words.
Rumour has it that Jim Hansen short circuited the heaters. He’s a smart guy, just not an electrician.
How did Mann’s “pants” get into the courtroom before the proceedings?
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He backed in?
Oh, so that’s what happened. I work right across the street and was wondering. But really, legions of cops, fire trucks, and ambulances at that court house isn’t all that uncommon.
Bill Illis says:
February 11, 2014 at 7:08 pm
How did Mann’s “pants” get into the courtroom before the proceedings?
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Teleportation just ask Scotty.