Well, we knew it would happen, it was just a matter of when. Dr. Michael Mann is trying to weasel out of discovery in the Mann-Steyn Steamroller case.
Steyn reports on the latest: ==========================================================
You can read the whole thing here. But the takeaway is that, apparently, it’s all my fault:
On January 30, 2014, Plaintiff renewed his discovery requests against National Review. National Review responded by e-mail on February 7, reminding Plaintiff’s counsel that this Court had already ruled that discovery should be stayed until its Anti-SLAPP motion could be finally resolved in the Court of Appeals. In response, Plaintiff’s counsel indicated that while he did not agree with National Review’s position, he would not press the issue of discovery for the time being. A few weeks later, however, on March 6, Plaintiff’s counsel called National Review’s counsel to renew his discovery requests yet again. Plaintiff’s counsel explained that he felt obliged to renew discovery because National Review’s co-defendant, Mark Steyn, had decided not to pursue an appeal, and had instead indicated his desire to proceed with discovery against Plaintiff. Thus, according to Plaintiff’s counsel, it would be impracticable to proceed with discovery between himself and Steyn without the involvement of the other co-Defendants.
Putting aside the bizarre posture of National Review, now standing athwart the DC court calendar yelling “Stop!”, we should not overlook the real significance of this document. Ever since this wretched case began a year-and-a-half ago, those who know Dr Mann have been saying that he would obstruct discovery, as he’s currently doing in court in Vancouver and Virginia. Today’s filing marks the first confirmation that such is the case.
What is so “impracticable” about proceeding with discovery between me and him? There are four defendants, so Mann has served four separate requests for discovery. I’ve returned mine; National Review, CEI and Rand Simberg are sitting on theirs. The four defendants will in turn submit, collectively, four requests for discovery upon Dr Mann. Why is responding to mine ahead of NR’s any more “impracticable” than me responding to his ahead of NR’s response? What’s so difficult about that? Where, indeed, is there even a smidgeonette of “impracticability”?
There are four defendants and one plaintiff. Of the five of us, I seem to be the only one anxious to exercise his right to a speedy trial. Furthermore, NR’s pleadings make a basic error:
If National Review’s appeal succeeds, then the claims against Steyn will almost certainly need to be dismissed as well, thus vitiating the need for any discovery at all.
Not so. I’ve countersued Dr Mann for $30 million. So, even if NR’s appeal succeeds, Mann and I will still be headed to trial. He claimed to want his day in court, and I took him at his word and have determined to give him it.
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More here: http://www.steynonline.com/6184/oh-wont-you-stay-ay-ay-just-a-little-bit-longer
Bill H says:
March 20, 2014 at 8:36 pm
Not until a sudden surprise descent of decency magically turns Mann into a man & a Mensch.
dbstealey says:
March 20, 2014 at 2:23 pm
For shame, such ” name calling.” Don’t you see, …you called a spade a spade.
:=)
I re registered at SCIAM as Thomas Carlyle. Shortly after I sent the comment below it too disappeared. My original comment had nothing abusive about it. The comment from MARCHER remained.
I responded to the SciAm Admin post & asked about abusive posts calling sceptical bloggers deniers, shills etc. or if it would only apply to sceptical commenters. I got this response from a serial offender. His comment stands. My comment was deleted. My account was closed. I have had to re register under a new name. I do not really care if I am banned again. I will not try & sneak back in either. I will leave it to other commenters to judge whether they wish to have robust exchanges or simply be part of a mutual back slapping club.
MARCHER Carlyle March 18, 2014, 10:49 PM
No one uses pejorative terms against sceptical commenter.
Tin foil hat wearing acolytes in the holy church of denialism who blindly and unquestioningly believe in fossil fuel funded conspiracy theories are not, in any sense of the word, sceptics.
Now this appears below my comment box on another machine that I had remained logged in on: You are currently signed in as This user’s commenting privileges have been revoked for misuse. Please ignore/report all commentary by this user.. If this is incorrect, please sign out.
When I try to log in now I get this: There is no account with the Email address that was provided.
How do we nominate Mark Steyn and Lord Christopher Monckton for Nobel Prizes? Go get him, Mark!
“Why Global Warming Will Cross a Dangerous Threshold in 2036” I get flashback to people, 20 years ago or more, on my door claiming that the end is near and the only way to survive is to accept his idea and give him my money?
Scientific America? They better change it to Policy based America?
If you want an example of Michael Mann’s mathematical ability, the Scientific American article is a great example. He needs to double-check his basic math skills because …
The formula predicts that warming in the next 22 years will increase to 0.43C per decade (8 times faster than the long-term warming rate and infinitely faster than today’s current Zero warming rate) in order to reach +2.0C by 2036.
That rate is also 2 times higher than the IPCC models which means he did not use climate science formulae, or double-check what he produced. Something like the Hockey Stick in fact.
Charted here.
http://s28.postimg.org/c6vz5v2i5/Hadcrut4_versus_Something.png
bushbunny says:
March 20, 2014 at 8:45 pm
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I don’t see any valid reason for deleting the dbs post either. My only point of disagreement, really, is that the raw data won’t quite do. There are couple of necessary adjustments:
One has to prune the outliers. I assume (without specific knowledge, however) that they do that one correctly.
Then there is TOBS bias. Either those stations have to be adjusted or dropped. Those adjustments do not appear to be too far off the beam — I think. I drop them myself because it is a large adjustment with a large MoE. But Anthony and I are using only USHCN stations. There may not be sufficient coverage outside the US without those stations.
Finally, there is MMTS equipment bias. That is a step change of ~0.06, or ~0.02 per decade for the period covering 1979 – 2008 (our study period).
Those are the legit. adjustments. And TOBS-biased stations should really be dropped (or at least have their trends split and treated separately).
And finally, there is bad microsite. That is a bias effect as bad as TOBS (a warming bias) that is not corrected at all. NOAA, CRU, etc. do not concede that poor microsite increases trend results. But they do, demonstrably, bigtime. Either it should be heavily adjusted downward (increasing MoE badly) or those stations need to be dropped. But with 4/5 of US station poorly sited (and the RoW probably worse), is there sufficient coverage for a decent land surface temperature evaluation?
So if those scientists dbs refers to use raw data from all stations, they will still be getting much more warming than is actually occurring (though still considerably less than the official adjusted average).
The other adjustments (homogenization, FILNET, even SHAP, believe it or not) create spurious warming.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but Steyn is Canadian, right?
So if he has a judgment against him in US court it means what, in the real world? I’m thinking there are likely no repercussions to him.
Re; Bob Rogers, March 21, 2014 at 8:07 am
Bob,
Pretty sure Mark is a naturalized U.S. citizen from the U.K.
Second thought; check me on this, but wasn’t part of the climate-gate file a data set from Mann marked “censored” or some such thing.
This was data that ran contrary to what they were trying to show in MBH ’98 so they simply sat it aside, didn’t use it and failed to disclose it to anyone. Is that not clear and convincing evidence of scientific fraud? What more would someone have to show before being lawfully permitted to refer to Mann as a fraud?
I know that after Muller read up on the subject he had some very harsh comments for Mann, up until BEST mysteriously pulled him down the rabbit hole.
Bob,
Mann’s censored data.
Bill Illis,
Excellent chart as usual. Thanks for posting it.
Now, if someone can post it in the Scientific American article, it might stay there for a couple of hours. I would do it, but I’m banned…
…on second thought, the SciAm site is “down for maintenance”. I went there to get the link to the article.
First time I’ve seen that message. I wonder what’s really going on there?
“Not so. I’ve countersued Dr Mann for $30 million. So, even if NR’s appeal succeeds, Mann and I will still be headed to trial. He claimed to want his day in court, and I took him at his word and have determined to give him it.”
THAT MAKES ME SMILE! I HOPE YOU WIN EVERY PENNY AND MORE.
Bob Kutz says:
March 21, 2014 at 8:33 am
Steyn is a Canadian citizen but lives in the US.
I’m sorry I don’t have time to read the whole thread, so somebody may already have mentioned the point I am going to raise, re Carlyle’s comments on Scientific American. Namely: that Edward Teller once described it as “not scientific, and not American.” I know from personal knowledge that their corruption of purpose dates back at least to the 1980s, with their publication of bogus criticisms of the Strategic Defense Initiative.
Mr. Steyn,
As you well know the U.S. current is ruled by a two party evil money cult.
Both sides of the coin comes up heads for them and tails for you.
Beware of your back trail, put your best recon people out watching your back, they are at their best in ambushes from the rear.
Mark, look at it this way. Dr. Mann and the Climate Change fraud brings in taxes.
Both sides live and die by the tax amounts.
mpaul says:
March 20, 2014 at 2:40 pm
A few years ago there was a case SCO v IBM. SCO sued IBM over an intellectual property issue related to the Unix patents which SCO asserted they owned and to which IBM, they asserted, infringed. SCO then went on the sue Red Hat, Novell, DamlerChrysler, and Autozone. SCO masterfully worked each of the litigants off each other — doing things like filing a motion to stay the one pending the resolution of the other and then filing a motion to stay the other pending the resolution of the one! The litigation went on for 7 years. Theoretically, if Mann’s objective is to visit economic hardship of the defendants, then perusing a SCO-like strategy would be the way to do it.
===============
And ultimatley SCO got their *** handed to them amidst much revilement from the industry. When was the last time you even heard of SCO? Personally, even before the lidiotic lawduit I always charged a premium on my consulting rate when I had to deal with SCO.
A Mann, flim-flam, hot damn– when palindromes eat pigs, they bulge.
Carlysle they can track your IP address.
EvanMJones, you open with bushbunny says. However you blinded me with science.
First, let me tell you that I’m a lawyer. Second, let me tell you that even if Mann does drop his plaintiff’s suit against Steyn, Steyn still has his viable suit against Mann and can pursue it at his pleasure. Third, costs are recoverable to the successful party in an American case, but costs are filing fees, service fees , allowable subpoena fees and and some deposition fees. They don’t include attorneys fees. Some of the preceding trolls who have said otherwise are trying to throw everybody off track. Ignore them. Steyn seems to be doing fine representing himself, but I think he has competent legal advice hidden in the background. Steyn’s Answer to Discovery was probably a small packet, Mann’s will take at least a pickup truck to deliver. You have 30 days to answer discovery. You can ask the court for an extension of time, but the court will lose patience if you dally. Parties are encouraged to resolve differences among themselves, but the court will get testy if it sees a deliberate attempt to avoid obligations. The failure to tender the info after the court has ordered production can lead to sanctions which include involuntary dismissal of one’s suit. There are too many people posting on this thread that don’t know the law. Their names are unfamiliar here and I think they are trolls. Very Mannly and very unmanly.
mpaul says:
March 20, 2014 at 2:40 pm
Nolo Contendere says:
March 21, 2014 at 4:30 pm
IBM countersued. In the midst of those 7 years, SCO went belly up. After emerging from bankruptcy, various suits were re-established. SCO lost all at trial with Novell.
May not be quite the kind of result MM is looking for.
Maybe I watch too much Law and Order, but I thought damages can be awarded in a civil case.
One has to be a fly on the wall to know what Mann & cohorts are now plotting. What if he falls ill or worse? Not that I am wishing him that will happen. But if the AGW fraudsters are worried about the outcome, Maybe he will be pressured to drop the case. And then cop the 30 million. That’s what I would do in his position.
bushbunny says:
March 20, 2014 at 8:45 pm (Edit)
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I think the quote is “it is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them they have been fooled”.
Keitho, yeah you are right.
Bottomline, for a scientist Mann is not in a hurry to open the books. Funny why?