There’s a saying “Strike while the iron is hot.” There’s also a saying “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” In this case, I think the latter applies.
Serial climate litigator Michael E. Mann, has come up with a new angle; he’s calling Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick to produce some “evidence” via sending a superfluous and harassing legal notice. Apparently, he’s sending them to others as well, including Lindzen, Christy and Wegman.
This could be construed as witness tampering. Essentially, Mann’s legal team is sending legal malarkey to anyone who might conceivably be an expert witness for the defense. It appears the goal is to intimidate them with far-reaching document production requests.
Steve McIntyre has this to say on Twitter:
I have a nominee for most absurdly venal activity during COVID lockdown.
Michael Mann has ramped up his vanity libel lawsuit. Last Friday, McKitrick and I (who are non-parties in lawsuit) were notified by a Washington lawyer for one of the defendants that Mann’s lawyer had requested that he (the defendant’s lawyer) accept service of (separate) subpoenas to McKitrick and myself for documents.To be clear, McKitrick and I are not only not defendants in Mann’s stupid lawsuit, but, in one of his pleadings, Mann offered up that we had never accused him of fraud. Mann asked the lawyer to accept service, presumably because we’re Canadian. It was explained to us that, if we didn’t authorize the Washington lawyer to accept the subpoenas, Mann would have to initiate proceedings in a Canadian court in which he would have to justify his subpoena. It’s hard to picture a Canadian court being interested in breaking our coronavirus lockdown in order to accommodate Mann’s vanity litigation. But it proceeds onward in the fetid swamp of D.C. courts.
Also, if Mann is interested in what I’ve said about his work, he ought to start with the many posts and comments at Climate Audit, all of which are publicly available. He can collate them to his heart’s content on his own time and his own nickel.
Josh and I collaborated on an appropriate response.
UPDATE: Mark Steyn (an actual defendant) also weighs in here:
The two most non-essential professions on the planet right now are that of Big Climate alarmist and his attorney in a vanity lawsuit. Yet Michael E Mann, inventor of the global-warming “hockey stick”, and his counsel John Williams are disinclined to let their lousy eight-year-old defamation suit against me shelter in place for a couple of months, and the other day they made a surprise move. By which I mean a deranged and desperate move.
Before we get to that, let me make a general observation: You’ll have noticed that millions of people around the world are what one might call Coronaskeptics and pop up on TV and radio pooh-poohing the pandemic models. One reason they do that is because Mann’s we’re-all-gonna-die school of data analysis did immense damage to modeling in general – to the point where large numbers of persons simply dismiss all models as being a crap shoot of bollocks …because, as I heard a radio host say yesterday, they’d seen all the climate alarmist models fail to pan out. That’s on Mann and his chums.
Read it all here:
https://www.steynonline.com/10175/the-two-most-non-essential-professions-on
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M Mann has that counter suit by Steyn to worry about. (30M?).
If M Mann can ultimately get attestations from SM etc., that the word “fraud” is not appropriate, then he stands a decent chance of success. SM in particular admonished people not to use the F word. That should work to help M Mann.
Also keep in mind that Dr. Mann appears to be climate science’s most distinguished transitory Nobel-laureate, and that climate science has more transitory Nobel-laureates than all other fields combined.
“Transitory,” is that anything like suppository?
it looks like science! But what’s that smell?
For anyone who believes that both have the same type of end in mind, and neither pass the sniff test… I suppose so.
EdB: Not how it works. What if these attestations show they personally agree it’s fraud, but don’t want it published (or they might get sued)? Or their attestation reveals they don’t understand the legal term “fraud” (they’re not “climate scientists”, after all)? No, their opinion would not be relevant. This is an attempt by Mann’s big-time attorneys to bully M&M and any other expert Steyn might call, by demanding far more info than they are allowed to request. They just took a scolding from the (oh, happy day) new judge on the case (who appears to have a clue) for trying to do the same thing to Steyn.
Michael Mann – The only recipient for the past 20+ years of the annual Michael Mann Award.
Stay safe and healthy, all,
Bob
Great cartoon. Thanks Josh
Who on Planet Earth is funding Mann? Where does all the green come from?
Its from the soylent green factory. Maurice Strong’s solution to a growing and more prosperous World. Run by the UN IPCC.
Filing this kind of garbage isn’t all that expensive. The guy’s just playing for time and hoping something happens to make it all go away – the counter-suit that is. Plus, since there is a counter-suit, Penn State’s insurance policy may have kicked in. Or alternatively, some sociopaths on the gravy train may have funded the peanuts for it.
Other than the fact this cretin is a worthless, all-world-POS, it’s hardly important now is it? Does anyone, other than the current and dwindling band of rabid kleptomaniacs actually believe that stupid bogus curve?
Penn state taxpayers.
The subpoena may be an inventive legal maneuver on Mann’s attorney’s part to establish grounds to disqualify (non-responding) M&M as potential expert witnesses should this dumpster fire of a case ever proceed to trial.
That’s an interesting idea. So is Anthony’s speculation that this could constitute witness tampering. I’m close friends with another defendant in Mann’s suit, Rand Simberg. I’ll alert him to this.
I’m not an attorney but I was the corporate representative in a bogus lawsuit that lasted 10 years and covered 5 different US States. When they deposed me, they had to fly to me and, of course, subpoenaing for a deposition is privileged and in no way witness tampering.
My Company had $5 Million in insurance so we really messed with them, as one does.
I would guess they would have to fly to Canada (or bicycle, ha ha) to depose Steve and Ross. Rud Istvan will know.
Strike while the iron is cold in PIltdown Mann’s case.
LOL
Where is Mann getting all the money to hire all these attorneys? His lawsuits have been ongoing for years and increasing in scope all the time. Where is the money coming from?
The enviro-industrial complex and you seriously believe you can dissect and untangle that infernal global machine? Don’t be silly or you’ll start believing you can get a handle on global climate with tree rings and other tea leaf readings- https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data
You just have to accept some things are simply unknown knowns.
Unfortunately I think the doomers will use the corona response as a blueprint for the “climate crisis”When this is through. They’ll trot out that the air was “so clean” and Co2 emissions were so low to leverage driving and flying restrictions along with a huge crackdown on the oil/gas industry. My2cts
Clean air has nothing to do with CO2 which is invisible, odorless and beneficial to the biosphere.
Visible air pollution is not CO2.
CO2 Emissions will have dropped but whether that has any observable effect on the atmospheric CO2 concentration remains to be seen.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
I know that. There is visibly less particulates in the atmosphere via satellite imaging! One of the doomer arguments is transportation particulates cause asthma etc….and they now call Co2 “carbon pollution”. You’re preaching to the choir here.
Mann’s foot dragging may have cost him and his attorney(ies) their case. To wit:
“Your honor, gentle men and women of the jury, the COVID-19 pandemic caused global emissions from burning fossil fuels to be reduced by 35% in a period of three months, and yet it has been another three months since then and we cannot detect ANY change in the slightly-exponentially increasing curve of atmospheric CO2 as measured at NOAA’s Mauna Loa observatory.
“We therefore ask for immediate dismissal of this lawsuit for cause.”
Is there any evidence that there has been any measurable decrease in CO2 production? Much less 35%.
MarkW,
Instead of asking questions, gather your own data for CO2 in air from the major stations of Barrow Alaska, Mauna Loa, Cape Grim Tasmania and South Pole.
You will likely find that daily data for the month of March 2020 are not available to the public or are ncertified as yet or have important gaps of missing data. You will likely find that such an analysis by an “outsider” is not possible at this time. Geoff S
Gee . . . it wasn’t obvious my scenario was a projection to a future court pleading? Three months plus another three months would be six months from the beginning of significant world-wide fossil fuel cutbacks, which likely began early-February 2020 . . . only TWO months ago.
And, to directly answer your question, assuming it relates solely to man-made CO2 emissions . . . ummm . . . let’s consider:
— air travel to/from major industrial nations down by about 90%,
— ocean cruises being cancelled,
— citizens in almost all “first world” nations being ordered/requested to shelter at home and not commute to work,
— major industries and small business going dormant for lack of customers and/or lack of product demand as people cut discretionary spending, particularly as the result of being laid off from work (e.g. look at the actions of automobile manufacturers),
— why is the price of gasoline falling so precipitously if not for lack of demand (= lack of consumption)? . . . answer: people aren’t driving as much (aka “social distancing”),
— etc., etc.
So, yeah, I can easily estimate 35% reduction in world-wide fossil fuel consumption will occur by the end of the next month . . . on this, I don’t really need to wait for the data.
OK . . . OK . . . I understand, one really does need hard data to support one’s assertion.
So, towards this end, this article in the news just today:
“Coronavirus shutdowns idle 29% of U.S. economy”. Link: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coronavirus-shutdowns-idle-29-of-us-economy-2020-04-05?mod=home-page
Still most of the month of April yet to go for the CO2 reduction scenario in my postulated court pleading . . .
I wonder what his employer Penn State Uni, or is it State Penn, think of this. Perhaps WUWT can find out?
Has anybody every found out who is funding Mann’s lawsuit? Scorched-earth tactics like his lawyers employ are usually used by giant corporations like Microsoft or General Electric to harry smaller litigants to death. Mann can’t be funding this nonsense all by his lonesome. Somebody else has to be ponying up a lot of money.
Model and model again, but don’t involve nature. Nature has other ideas that we mere mortals don’t all too often understand.
“To be clear, McKitrick and I are not only not defendants in Mann’s stupid lawsuit, but, in one of his pleadings, Mann offered up that we had never accused him of fraud.”
Judge: Does that mean you pair of statistical experts can vouch for the fact Mike is not a fraud?
Ans: No yeronner we’re statistical experts and adjudicating between fraud, ignorance, sheer incompetence, delusional or what is he smoking isn’t exactly our field of technical expertise so we’ll let the facts and statistical analyses speak for themselves.
“…Last Friday, McKitrick and I (who are non-parties in lawsuit) were notified by a Washington lawyer for one of the defendants that Mann’s lawyer had requested that he (the defendant’s lawyer) accept service of (separate) subpoenas to McKitrick and myself for documents. ”
In the immortal words of Capt.Barbosa…
“I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request.”
Rule 45. Subpoena
https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_45
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/1783
https://www.haguelawblog.com/2016/04/serving-a-subpoena-abroad-not-so-fast-counsel/
“If it crosses state lines, say from Florida or Georgia to New York or Minnesota, domestication is fairly pro forma. But when it crosses an international boundary, it cannot regain its coercive effect.* It becomes a simple piece of paper and, legally speaking, is reduced to a mere request.”
Court does not have authority to issue subpoena’s to a foreign national–who is not a U.S. national or resident of the United States–in a foreign country.
When I read stories like this I always kind of wonder if they weren’t onto something back in the days when dueling was legal and an accepted norm.
I find this lawsuit to be an absurd exercise for many reasons, the main one being that Steyn did not call Mann a fraud. He said Mann was behind the fraudulent hockey-stick. “Fraudulent” is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as being characterised, based on, or done by fraud. “Fraud” has more than one specific meaning. From Merriam-Webster again, we get the following: (1) intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right; (2) an act of deceiving or misrepresenting; (3) a person who is not what he or she pretends to be, and (4) one that is not what it seems or is represented to be.
Thanks to the groundbreaking efforts of Steve & Ross, we all now know that the hockey-stick is not, as claimed by Mann, a “robust”, “spatially-diverse” representation of past northern hemisphere temperatures that is “insensitive to the presence or absence of dendro”. Far from it. It would be better characterised as the history of trunk deformation in a clump of trees from a small site in the American South-West, but that’s by the by.
Therefore the hockey-stick is not what it seems or is represented to be. Therefore it is fraudulent. End of argument, or it should be.
Computer models are not science.
From the article: “Before we get to that, let me make a general observation: You’ll have noticed that millions of people around the world are what one might call Coronaskeptics and pop up on TV and radio pooh-poohing the pandemic models. One reason they do that is because Mann’s we’re-all-gonna-die school of data analysis did immense damage to modeling in general – to the point where large numbers of persons simply dismiss all models as being a crap shoot of bollocks …because, as I heard a radio host say yesterday, they’d seen all the climate alarmist models fail to pan out. That’s on Mann and his chums.”
I think I know which radio host Mark Steyn is talking about. Mark will be guest-hosting that person’s radio show on Monday.
I wouldn’t characterize Rush as a “Coronaskeptic”, though (not that anybody did). His skepticism is aimed at the computer models. Unfortunately, Rush is conflating the fraud incorporated into the surface temperature computer models with the virus computer models, thinking the virus computer models are just as fraudulent as the climate computer models.
Rush ought to sue Mann for misleading him into thinking all computer models are science fiction.