Josh writes:
I thought the National Review article, The Climate Inquisitor posted on BishopHill, was worth a cartoon. H/t Rick Cina in the comments for the peer-reviewed critiques of Mann’s hockey sticks.
h/t to Monty Python for the title.
Josh writes:
I thought the National Review article, The Climate Inquisitor posted on BishopHill, was worth a cartoon. H/t Rick Cina in the comments for the peer-reviewed critiques of Mann’s hockey sticks.
h/t to Monty Python for the title.
Know that’s funny.
Wonder how long it’ll take Mann/Schmitt to sue for unauthorised use of their image and likeness.
ROFL
Best ever.
The ;left-wingers really like those kind of hockey sticks.
Josh, you must have enough CAGW cartoons to make a small book by now? They would make a nice “change of season” gift or greeting card when communicating with my dwindling band of faithful believer friends…
It needs a picture of the pile of discarded data that they threw away because it doesn’t fit the theory. But dang that is funny as spit.
That’s great!
Sadly, we who are paying for the global warming “cure” are suffering even more than that hockey stick.
🙁
Torture is what our courts are doing to our laws. Do researchers on the tax-payer dole have to reveal their emails from government owned (ie, public university) email systems? Nope. Do people like Michael Mann have to show their work? Nope. Can the EPA do whatever it wants? Yes.
Watching the Monty Python clip, its a great metaphor for how sureal the climate debate has become. The ridiculousness of many of the pro-AGW ‘scientific’ arguments is on a par with torturing an old lady with soft cushions. Anyone can see how laughable it is, except for those applying the torture/arguments.
The irony of attempting to make the angle of the blade less steep is almost lost in the cartoon. He is apparently trying to reshape the hockey stick to conform more closely to the revised CGMs, which are themselves being reshaped to conform more closely to the adjusted data, which are apparently also being reshaped to conform more closely to the revised GCMs as well.
What is definitely NOT funny is the excruciating waste of taxpayer mega-funds on these charlatans.
No comfy chair for the Mann!
dfbaskwill says:
April 30, 2014 at 7:04 am
No comfy chair for the Mann!
=========================
Too late. Penn State.
Thanks, Josh, for the cartoon. Thanks, Anthony, for presenting it with the Pythonesque post title. Both are still bringing a smile to my face as I write this.
Regards
Remember models are not designed to be predictive when social science takes the mantle. They are just an excuse for grant money to try to change reality going forward.
Mann simply does not want to admit that the behavioral and social sciences are the primary theories involved now with AGW and IPCC. It would hasten the demise and expose the Common Core K-12 juggernaut to appropriate ridicule before its true data gathering function kicks into high gear.
Penn State does not want that either, being in a state of declining population and industry. Regional equity and a planned economy benefit PA.
It’s actually the Critical Theory of Climate Inquisition?
Too funny. It kind of looks like he is trying to straighten it out though?
“If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.“
Ronald Coase, British economist. Nobel Prize in Economics, 1991.
Josh,
Your cartoon just inspired me to send this tweet a minute ago,
John
Hilarious.
Gives new meaning to the CACA rack(et).
How many deaths at the hands of the Inquisition that was supported by the Roman Catholic Church?
John
It’s a great cartoon as usual. I used to think people would see right through this end of the world nonsense but there have been too many calls for deaths or criminal charges for skeptics, made in all seriousness, and not rejected for them to be funny. I listened to a lawyer on a video this week who simultaneously agreed with others in the vid that there was some concern about the evidence for damage but still wanted to make CEO’s and other leaders criminally liable for “ecocide” based on CO2.
Nobody giggled or told her to go home so I suspect that some consider that very clear case of stupidity and self-superiority, somehow potentially rational.
Earth: Climate Wars, Episode 2, daff Brit goes gaga over the hockeystick, even driving it around London of a flat bed truck like it was the image of a saint! Starts at 33:00 min. Power of the hockeystick, and how publicly important it is. I still laugh at that.
Terrific Josh!
Though I kinda liked the ears National Review put on him.
Rack up a victory Josh, you’ve created a master piece! Of course it really helped that the subject matter created by the mann of the rack is so rich and rife for plunder. Excellent work!
Inquisition is a great, but imo, this is the greatest Python skit of all time. Maybe not appropriate to this topic – but it’s a World Cup year, so…
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur5fGSBsfq8?feature=player_detailpage&w=640&h=360%5D
Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!
Ahh, so that was the noise and smell of rending wood coming from that locked room beneath the Tower of London 🙂 Chamber of Horrors, indeed 🙂 One has to wonder of the role of Puck in all
this madness….
Great cartoon, Josh!
Thanks Josh and Anthony.
A great cartoon and a great post title!
The pragmatic engineer within me merely notes that while Josh has cleverly installed left-handed threads on the hockey-stick headscrew, the Mann operating it is clearly trying to pull the handles to rotate it clockwise. All the while, his last handle is firmly embedded through the handle – so as never to allow movement at all!
Wood the operator be upset to learn he is loosening the pressure on his shaft?
That’s my favorite Josh cartoon.
“How many deaths at the hands of the Inquisition that was supported by the Roman Catholic Church?
John”
The following is a summary of The Triumph of Christianity pgs 336 – 339, by Rodney Stark.
The last generation has seen much in-depth research on The Spanish Inquisition, which was made up of two groups: The Inquisition of Aragon and the Inquisition of Castile. Historians who are neither Catholic nor Spanish, have had access to the complete records of these two groups and even entered them into a database for statistical analysis. At the time, these proceedings were secret and so there was no reason for the clerks to have misrepresented them. In addition, historians have done more traditional research, pouring over diaries, document, letters, decrees etc. and the results are solid.
The data -which is what scientists go with, right? – reveals the following: in the period from between 1540 and 1700, 44,701 cases of “auto de fe” were adjudicated. The first decades of the Inquisition – before 1540 – were not fully documented, and were probably the bloodiest. There may have been as many as 1500 people executed which from the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition would mean about 30 people a year. Turning to the fully recorded period from 1540 on, of those 44,701 cases, only 826 people were executed, which would be 1.8 percent of those brought before the Inquisition. Thus it adds up to around 2300 deaths over a period of two centuries. That works out to around 10 per year. To our modern sensibilities that still seems like ten too many, but remember capital punishment was meted out for all manner of offenses, religious or otherwise.
As well, there was no religious toleration anywhere else in Europe. Consider that 3000 Huguenots were killed in the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre, or the number of Catholics Henry VIII is said to have offed by a plethora of methods. The Spanish Inquisition looks remarkably restrained and possibly even enlightened. Most of their punishments were meted out to ‘repeat offenders,’ and as for torture, every court in Europe used it. But by Church decree, there were limits to what the Inquisition could do. There could only be one “session,” it could only last fifteen minutes, and there could be no threat to life or limb nor even the shedding of blood. Of course, there’s a lot one could do even under those conditions, but the records show the method was rarely used, because they inquisitors themselves doubted the efficacy of torture. The data indicates that in only 2% of cases was it ever used. And Inquisitorial prisons were also widely considered the most comfortable and humane in all Europe. There are records of criminals intentionally blaspheming so they could be sent to an Inquisitorial prison.
So contrary to the standard myth the Inquisition made little use of the stake, seldom tortured any one, and maintained unusually decent prisons.
@T-Bird –
Compare the roughly 5,300 people (by your count) executed by the Catholic Inquisition to the:
* 33,000 people executed by carbon taxes in the UK in 2013 (dead of hypothermia, from being unable to afford to heat their homes during some of the worst winter weather in generations).
* ~2,000,000 executed by the ethanol program (starved because of the diversion of food grains to ethanol production)
Whose inquisition is the bloodier, the Catholic or the AGW alarmists’?
If T-bird’s cited tally of the Spanish Inquisition is correct, it then brings up the question:
Who then gave the Spanish Inquisition it’s bad name? Why does it have so poor an image compared to what else was going on around the world? Who rewrote the history?
If you torture the data long enough, you can get them to confess to anything.
I’ve read that this dissing came from England as a result of its rivalry with Spain — remember the Spanish armada, etc.
Stepen Rasey says:
Who gave the Spanish Inqusition it’s bad name. ?
A fairly large part of it’s ill reputation can be blamed /or explained by Gutenbergs invention of the movable type that also previously previously fuelled the Reformation .The mass circulation of cheap printed books was much more widespred in the Protestant countries when the religious wars that followed the break of those countries from under the papal authority, so the anti-papal powers really had a political propaganda monopoly that was used to paint the picture of the oppenent in the most horrible colors ( and to some of the writers and publishers there it was veritable mill og wealth, fictional that had contained a chapter or two about the horror inflicted upon people by the Spanish Inqusition were almost sure to sell well, probably for the same reasons as the CAWG propaganda has sold so well these past decades ), It also sure helped that the the first quarter of the century of the Inqusitions lifetime it was run/ruled by the mad and blodthirsty monk Torquemada, who did his best to make it truly deserve the image , in the mind of the populace , that the Protestants painted of it as can be inferred form the numbers cited almost two out of every three executions it dealt out happend in it’s first three decade,but the last third part spread out over almost a six times longer period. And when Toquemadas days at the rein came to end perghaps some softening or sanity took hold, or perhaps the powers that be decided that they only needed a minimum of real effort to maintain the populations fear of it , the threat alone of the Inqusition looking into ones affairs was really all that was needed to keep the high and the low in check and properly in the fold.
This is clearly off topic, and I agree with the owner of his site – his site, his rules – that it should be focused on science – but, given it has been brought up, Gutenberg was a Catholic, and the first thing off of his press – A Bible, in Latin, that contained the so-called apocryphal books,( that were not “included” by the Church but removed as a result of the protestant Reformation) – had the support of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church was never “anti-Bible” – Catholic Bishops defined the NT canon at the end of the 4thcentury, and Catholic monks – some of whom went blind in the process – preserved it free from corruption, making laborious, painstaking copies that were checked and rechecked, letter by letter – all through the Dark Ages.
The Church was against rogue translations by “not educated enough” people (that, for example, did not know the original Greek well enough) that contained numerous errors , or even worse – translators who decided to put their own “spin” on the original text. The Church, over time, commissioned various translations into “modern” languages, but it had to be done very carefully, and by people competent to the task. If anything was allowed by anyone, the Bible as we know it today would have become completely corrupted. As the link below states, “St. Thomas More commented that searching for errors in the Tyndale Bible was similar to searching for water in the sea”.
Anyone who is interested in the topic might want to read the link below…
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/resources/apologetics/controversies/bible-burning-and-other-allegations/
T-Bird says:
April 30, 2014 at 5:43 pm
Henry VIII burned about 50 heretics at the stake, but also killed other religious & political prisoners by hanging, drawing & quartering or beheading as well, to include both Catholics & Protestants. He & the other Tudors, especially his elder, Catholic daughter Bloody Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon & wife of Philip II of Spain, were tyrants, but their toll never approached those of Aragon & Castile. In her five-year reign, Mary executed 283 Protestants, mostly by burning. Hundreds of others who might have suffered a similar fate fled the country into exile.
But you’re right that torture & execution for religious faith wasn’t limited to Spain, of course. There were however pockets of relative religious liberty in Europe. The Netherlands for instance, at war with Spain & the Hapsburgs, welcomed Jews expelled from Spain by Isabella of Castile & Ferdinand of Aragon, parents of Queen Catherine of England & grandparents of Queen Mary of England & King Philip II of Spain. Isabella & Ferdinand of course also backed Columbus, thereby spreading the Inquisition to the New World.
Court developments…
Barristers, a translation por favor?
I’ll point out that a few minutes later in Climate Wars (which I posted above) the goofy Brit finds scientists calling the graph “a scandal” and states others have accused MM of “fraud.” Sounds just like an early version of this spat-lawsuit, but without the lawsuit and reference to third party reflections on PSU football.
BTW, he says Al Gore used it in his movie (i think he is mistaking hockey sticks.)
While the Spanish Inquisition is part and parcel of this post, it’s in a funny way, not a serious historical way. Continuing along this line is probably a bit off topic, but with the site owner’s indulgence …”
Stephen Rasey says:
April 30, 2014 at 8:31 pm
If T-bird’s cited tally of the Spanish Inquisition is correct, it then brings up the question:
Who then gave the Spanish Inquisition it’s bad name? Why does it have so poor an image compared to what else was going on around the world? Who rewrote the history?”
I wasn’t a question of rewritten history, just badly and tendentiously written first drafts of history – kind of like the Media today.- and it occured against the back drop of the on-going religious wars. There was clearly a lot of Protestant anti-Catholicism, fueled by lurid tales from Spanish “defectors” like “Reginaldus Montanus,” the pen name of a renegade Spanish Benedictine Monk who became a Lutheran and was only too ready to tell tales to an audience all-too-ready to believe them. His widely translated and circulated book became the go-to account. It should also be mentioned the anti-religious paladins of the so-called Enlightenment were also only too happy further exacerbate and pass on the misinformation.
The data I cited from Stark’s book is a very recent assessment, but it is based on solid historical research and analysis of the actual records of the Spanish Inquisition itself. Frankly, given the nature of the secular courts in Europe, and given the on-going religious wars in which Lutherans were persecuted even in ‘protestant’ England, the Spanish Inquisition looks like a model of due process and restraint. BTW, it should be noted, the Inquisition itself never killed anybody. Those few condemned were handed over to the secular authorities. A minor distinction with no real difference, but nonetheless accurate.
History is nothing if not fascinating.
To whomever brought up Torquemada, yeah, the guy was a fanatic, but he did not execute thousands as Encarta says. And least from our vantage point in history he can be something of a joke, like that internet page about famous people answering the question “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
Torquemada’s answer was “Give me ten minutes with that chicken, and I’ll find out.”
T-Bird says:
May 1, 2014 at 5:33 pm
As you say, we risk straying too far afield off-topic, but perhaps not given the modern CACA Inquisition which can ruin careers & take lives.
There is an entire historiographical industry around the Spanish Inquisition & its revisionists. It’s a topic I know a little about because of a college paper on the Albigensian heresy. The Wiki entry is pretty good in this case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_revision_of_the_Inquisition
Whether the Spanish Inquisition was worse than the Roman, which condemned Galileo to house arrest, or those of other jurisdictions, is debatable. Protestants too condemned heretics in various ways.
But of course few 16th century secular or religious institutions measured up to the highest standards of 21st century tolerance, still far from ideal.
You’re also right to put “Protestant” in quotes with reference to England. Many Protestants consider the Church of England to be neither Protestant nor Catholic, but something in between, which is after all what Henry VIII wanted, if not all his successors.
Some things need revising.
Blackadder’s Spanish Torturer (T) seems not to be on Youtube, but there is this dialogue from the “Chains” episode, complete with quasi-Castilian gibberish:
In a Prison
(Edmund wakes up; Melchett is with him. They are tied back-to-back.)
E: Oh, God, God, God. What on Earth was I drinking last night? My head feels
like there’s a Frenchman living in it. (looks around) Where am I?
M: (groans) Ooohhhh…
E: Who’s there?
M: It is I: Melchett.
E: Melchett! You really ought to get this house of yours cleaned up, you know.
It’s a real mess!
M: This is no time for jokes, Blackadder! We’ve been kidnapped!
E: Oh, God… How incredibly embarrassing!
M: As private parts to the gods are we! They play with us for their sport!
(insane laughter of Spanish Torturer)
E: (as though he’s about to meet someone stupid) Oh, God, who’s that?
T: (leans to Melchett, says something in Spanish)
E: Just wait a minute! If anyone is going to be spoken to around here, it’s
going to be me, alright? Tell him, Melchy.
M: Certainly. (points behind him, to Edmund, as he and Edmund wiggle around
so Edmund faces T) Parlo con lui — no mio (something) — parlo con lui.
T: Ah, bueno. (looks at Edmund) El Je’fe! (Says same thing he said to
Melchett)
E: Ah, that’s better. (pause) Now, what’s he saying?
M: He says he would like a word with you.
E: Uh huh. Anything else?
M: Yes. He says he would like to torture you as well.
Later. Edmund, in a small box with his head, arms and legs sticking out
(legs shackeled as well), is alone in the prison with T. T is turning
a key in the box presumably to move spikes into Edmund’s body.
E: Right. Now, am I, by any chance, addressing a senior dignitary of the
Spanish Inquisition?
T: Te gusta, la (??) de la Inquisicion!
E: (not understanding a word) Good… Because, if I am, I wish to make it
quite clear that I am prepared to tell you absolutely *anything*.
T: Habla puer(??)
E: No speako dago. I demand to see the British ambassador, *understand*?
T: (winding some more) Necesito silencio para comesa.
E: Oh for God’s sake! Look, how can you question me if you don’t speak English?
T: No! *Yo* pregunto las questionnes!
E: Alright, let’s start with the basics. English is a non-inflected
Indo-European language derived from dialects of….
…
In the Prison
(Edmund and Torturer play charades in an attempt to communicate)
T: Bastardo!
E: Baa-taar-do… Barrister.
T: Bastardo!
E: Embarrassing. You’re embarrassing. *I’m* embarrassing.
(T clenches his fist, and curls his left arm underneath his right, and
points it straight up in a familiar gesture.)
E: Er, er, rogering!
(T makes a very-fat gesture over his abdomen.)
E: Er, pregnant!
(T acts like he’s cradling a baby, and makes little baby noises.)
E: Baby! Baby!
(T acts like he has tossed the baby.)
E: Bathwater!
(T shakes his head, then holds his ear.)
E: Sounds like… oh! `Bastard’!
T: (excited at Edmund’s correct guess) Si’! Si’!! No este terminado. Hijo.
Hijo!
E: (not knowing that `hijo’ is a word, guesses by the sound of it) Donkey.
(T shakes his head, puts his head in his hand.)
T: (holds his hand horizontally above his head) Padre.
E: Big bastard…
T: (lowers the hand to a very short height) Hijo.
E: Little bastard.
T: (walking masculinely, speaks deeply) Padre…
E: Man…
T: (bends his knees as he walks and makes baby-like noises again) Hijo.
E: Boy. Man, father… Oh! `Son’! I’m a bastard’s son.
T: (gets on his hands and knees) Perra! (pants)
E: Thirsty… Thirsty bastard.
(T barks)
E: Thirsty barking bastard. Oh, `dog’! Dog. Right, dog.
(T, on his knees, moves his hands to indicate breasts.)
E: Woman.
(T goes back on his hands and knees.)
E: Dog.
(T does the breast gesture again.)
E: Woman, dog…*bitch*! I’m a bastard son of a bitch!
T: Si’!!! Si’!!! (shakes Edmund’s hand)
E: In that case, you are a fornicating babboon.
T: Que?
E: Oh dear. Er, *you*…
T: (points to Edmund) Tu? (sees Edmund is pointing at him, so he points
at himself) Yo…
E: You, er, fornicating… Yes… I can’t really do it in this box…
Later…
T: …tus testiculos.
E: My, um, ah yes, those, yes…
T: …sobre un fuego grande.
E: …over a large…
T: Fuego, fuego. (makes fire motion with his hands, then blows on the tips
of his fingers)
E: Oh, fire, fire. Ah good, so let’s recap. Um…if I admit that I’m in love–
T: (interjects) No! No! (rolls onto his back)
E: Sorry — head-over-heels in love — (T makes various motions to indicate
each thing) with Satan and all his little wizards, then you will remove my
testicles with a blunt instrument–
T: Una (polan~a?), una polan~a.
E: …resembling some kind of gardening tool but we can’t quite (obscured by
laughter). Um, and roast them over a large fire.
T: Si’, si’.
E: Whereas if I don’t admit that I’m in love with Satan and…and…all his…
his little wizards, (T again is making appropriate gestures for each item)
you will hold me upside down in a vat of warm marmalade.
T: (holds his hands out, expecting more) …*y*…
E: *And* remove my testicles with a blunt…oh I see. Well, well, in that case,
I love Satan.
T: (excited) Ohh ho ho! (produces instrument)
E: Oh, it’s a *scythe*…
…
In the Prison
(T is holding his scythe, ready to have a go at Edmund. Prince Ludwig
enters, shouts `Stop!’ and whips T down, who screams a bit and remains
cowering.)
Other bits from this episode are on Youtube.
T-Bird says:
May 1, 2014 at 6:03 pm
Some things need revising.
————–
True, but it’s also possible to carry revisionism too far. An example might be the Dominican Singing Nun’s Bowdlerization of her 1963 hit song in praise of St. Dominque, the English version of which changed from “fighting the Albigensians” in French to “fighting sin like everything”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singing_Nun
The crusade against Albigensian (Cathar) heretics in what is now the south of France led to the rise of both the Dominican Order & the Inquisition. Most famously, it featured the alleged original of the modern saying, “Kill them all; let God sort them out”. Abbot Amalric (d. 1225), a Cistercian prominent in the Albigensian Crusade, supposedly told a soldier concerned about massacring orthodox Catholics along with heretics during the sack of Béziers, a Cathar stronghold, “Kill them all; God will know His own”.