A review of Steyn's scathing new book about Michael Mann: "A Disgrace To The Profession"

Wouldn’t Mann first have to be professional, before he can be said to be a member of any profession?

From personal experience, I know that you don’t even have to be a climate scientist to have your job ended because you dare to dispute the global warming gravy train.

***Mann gets corrected in The Guardian today – LOL:
11 Aug: Guardian: Scott Walker wants to fire academics with whom he disagrees politically
Universities are the latest target of conservative politicians with an agenda to push
by Michael Mann and Randi Weingarten
The work of scientists often produces facts that are uncomfortable and inconvenient to the interests of those in power…
In discussions about climate change, for example, ‘think tanks’ like Wisconsin’s Heartland Institute use their well-financed public relations machines to create the impression that the scientific evidence for human-caused climate change is still debated…
CORRECTION: The original version of this piece stated that the Heartland Institute is in Wisconsin. It is in Chicago. The piece has been amended to reflect this.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/11/scott-walker-wants-fire-academics-disagrees-politically

Please give these two men a break. Russell Seitz would never do such a thing. Look at all of the love that Russell has showered on Anthony and this site. You know he has the respect of the 97% for his idea of geoengineering the oceans with Lawrence Welk bubble machines. I just hope they play a little champagne music at the same time. As far as Mann goes, you must remember that he got his physics degree at Berkley. Berkeley, being a progressive school, must teach progressive physics. His heart, black as it may be, is in his work. Lighten up guys. Why worry about truth, honesty, and trillions of dollars.

Ha ha! “Volume 1” is a nice touch.

Steyn used three quotes by Scientists to promote his book: (for full text from my source, see link at the end)
1) “Do I expect you to publicly denounce the hockey stick as obvious drivel? Well, yes.”
-Jonathan Jones, Professor of Atomic and Laser Physics, University of Oxford
2) “Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf should be barred …because the scientific assessments in which they may take part are not credible anymore.”
-Eduardo Zorita, Senior Scientist at Germany’s Institute for Coastal Research
3) “Did Mann et al get it wrong? Yes, Mann et al got it wrong.”
-Simon Tett, Professor of Climate Science, University of Edinburgh
“…Simon Tett, a mainstream climate scientist, contributed to the Hockey Stick reconstruction by advancing research on the role of aerosols. Tett and Michael Mann published together on this issue.
Simon Tett said, “I think my criticism was that it was likely missing some variances. My view then and still is that recent warming is very likely outside the range of natural variability.” This is an argument over variability in Mann et al’s reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere temperatures over the last thousand years.”
“Tett’s contribution to climate science has been to address that variability. He has recently co-authored articles with Mike Mann that confirm the Hockey Stick pattern of temperature changes and seek to understand that pattern in terms of natural and human drives of climate. Clearly, he is one of the nearly 100 percent of scientists who view global warming as real and caused by human greenhouse gas pollution.”
So, Steyn got it wrong.
On Zorita: He said the quote is essentially accurate, and that he has put it on his personal web page several years ago. He was concerned about the perception of objectivity in the IPCC process, so perhaps these researchers should not be part of the process given the controversy at the time caused by the famous Climategate hacked emails.
However, he was careful to note that his statement was “not related to the quality of their scientific work. Actually, my statement was a suggestion to isolate the IPCC process from the credibility crisis linked to Climategate.”
So this is about perception, not about the quality of the science or the validity of the Hockey Stick.
He went on to say, “I feel that those political attacks, especially those against Michael Mann in the US, have no justification.”
Jonathan Jones, at Oxford, the third quoted scientist, is a physicist in an area of physics that has absolutely nothing to do with climate change. He published a few things many years ago then seems to have trailed off in academic activity, but nothing on climate science.
The original quote by Jones was a lengthy screed critical of the climate science and the scientists in which he explicitly implores Richard Betts to denounce the hockey stick. (Betts is a climate scientist at the UK’s Met Office, and a lead author for the IPCC 4th assessment report and other IPCC documents.)
Jones indicates that the whole global warming thing is pathological science, will eventually go away, and he hopes he can soon get back to his own research in an utterly unrelated field. Which, I think, he may have done. Maybe Jonathan Jones, as a non-climate scientist who is also a climate science denier, is an appropriate person to quote in Steyn’s book. One in three … not a very good result.
“I’m thinking this is not going to be a very big book. Certainly not a very good one. Maybe Steyn is counting on a lot of pre-orders.”
So two of the three quotes were taken out of context by Steyn, from Climate Scientists who supported and even worked on the hockey stick results. And the third is by a scientist who has done no work in Climate Science.
In other words, Steyn’s new book is a trashy screed, without the Scientific support he’s claimed.
full text here: http://www.desmog.uk/2015/06/24/mark-steyn-s-newest-attack-michael-mann-and-hockey-stick

Doesnt the USA have the category of “vexacious litigator” to protect again such as Mann?