The sad Michael Mann defamation case against Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg ended last week in the even sadder confines of the Washington D.C. Superior Court. The verdict was awful for those believing in free speech and the right to engage in public criticism of public figures like Mann. And, of more concern, subtly continues the bashing of the scientific method that has become a feature of the last 20 years or so.
The trial showed that climate scientist Mann had no damages to his career or reputation – in fact, quite the reverse as he has become the darling of Leftie Hollywood stars and D.C. Politicians. However, the jury awarded excessive punitive damages against Steyn of $1 million. The reason for this was provided in the Plaintiff’s lawyer summing up for the jury: “The jury should award punitive damages so that in future no one will dare engage in ‘climate denialism’ just as Trump’s ‘election denialism’ needs to be suppressed.” Washington D.C. is one of the most far Left Democrat-leaning areas, and a D.C. jury is all in for a bit of Right-wing bashing, no matter how thin the excuse, and so delivered on the punitive damages. These damages cannot be awarded on their own hence the derisory award of $1 for actual damages.
The damages are likely to be overturned either at the Appeal Court in D.C. or the Supreme Court due to the excessive ratio between the two sets of damages. However, Mann can now claim vindication for himself and his peculiar, yet increasingly popular, belief that any challenge to orthodox climate science is a form of ‘denialism’.
We have come a long way from old school liberal scientists and thinkers such as Carl Sagan, who said in his last interview in 1996: “If we are not able to ask sceptical questions to interrogate those who tell us something is true, to be sceptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan – political or religious – who comes ambling along.” This belief in scientists as folks who fearlessly question everything, even their own work, as part of a method for understanding the natural world, is foreign to the climate fundamentalists. Rather, they seem to believe scientists should develop a hypothesis, smear or sue anyone who disagrees – or tie them up in endless complaints to press regulators – and enforce fealty to it.
But what of the actual science and the scientific method? Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ itself was not on trial, but was central to Mann’s defamation case in that Steyn said it was fraudulent. The hockey stick purports to show temperatures over the last 1,000 years. The graph produced for the temperature shows a flat stick through most of the timeframe with an upturned blade at the end representing the last 60 years or so. At a stroke it eliminated the natural variability that had long been the bedrock of climate science and replaced it with a long period of similar temperatures rudely interrupted by a huge spike coinciding with the world’s industrialisation. When it was first published at the turn of the millennium it immediately became iconic – oft-cited and revered. It was central to the IPCC’s Assessment Report 3 back in 2001 and slithered into the popular consciousness by being a huge part of Al Gore’s global warming movie, An Inconvenient Truth.
The beauty of the hockey stick was that it was a wonderful image to use to capture the emerging political view that those pesky humans were once again ruining the world, only this time with fossil fuels. ‘Global warming’ or ‘climate change’ cannot stir folks to action as they are by nature very complex, operate on very long timeframes and are riddled with uncertainty. But show a balmy period of little climate change destroyed by a terrifying massive uptick in average global temperatures caused by fossil fuels and you’ve really got something. It made Mann famous and for 20 years he has been accumulating friends in high places and all kinds of academic positions.
The hockey stick’s appealing simplicity, especially to the young, disguised its complicated birth. It was controversial among climate scientists who disagreed with Mann’s methods but its ascendance as the premier climate change symbol soon pulled everyone onside. Criticisms have been constant for 20 years coming mostly from Mann’s use of proxy data. In 2003, Stephen McIntyre and Roger McKittrick tore apart the underlying data and statistical methods: “The data set of proxies of past climate used in Mann, Bradley and Hughes… for the estimation of temperatures from 1400 to 1980 contains collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects.” In addition, as Judith Curry points out in a comprehensive overview of the issues developed for the trial: “Mann’s efforts to conceal the so-called ‘divergence problem’ by deleting downward-trending post-1960 data and also by splicing earlier proxy data with later instrumental data is consistent with most standards of image fraud.”
A casual observer will also have noticed that plenty of historical records refute the hockey stick. From the well-known (Viking agriculture in Greenland) to the obscure (medieval Chinese annual citrus crop records), historical records describe a Medieval Warming Period from 900 to 1400 warmer than today, followed by a cooling period of the Little Ice Age from 1400 to 1850. Rather than being a relatively flat 1,000 years of temperature, the straight Hockey Stick shaft should really resemble a crooked stick. Mann dismisses this by stating that the Medieval Warming Period was only in the northern hemisphere. And yet it seems every time someone collects proxy records from the southern hemisphere they seem to show the same warming and cooling in the last 1,000 years as in the north, e.g. sediment cores from a lake in Chile or lakes on Signy Island, Antarctica.
Whether discredited or just ignored, the hockey stick went into limbo for a few years. But its appeal is so powerful it has emerged once more ready to hook, slash and high stick any and all ‘climate deniers’. Mann was at it again in 2021 with a brand-new stick (yet more proxies!) not much different from the first except an even bigger spike upwards on the blade. And then the IPCC popped up with its own hockey stick in its AR 6. Stephen McIntyre describes it succinctly: “If you thought Michael Mann’s hockey stick was bad, imagine a woke hockey stick by woke climate scientists. As the climate scientists say, it’s even worse that we thought.” The Hockey Stick is so powerful an image it lives on, despite its problems, and now, at least in D.C., woe to anyone who wishes to challenge its provenance.
So are we doomed to have an important piece of ‘climate science’ that underpins massive changes in energy policy across the world remain in place never to be challenged? I hope not, but after the Mann verdict I fear it will be harder to challenge the famous hockey stick.
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“In science scepticism is the highest calling and blind faith the one unpardonable sin”.———————–In “The Hockey Stick Illusion” by Andrew Montford, the Hockey Stick Graph was obliterated by Steve McIntyre. The graph is based on proxy data from one tree in particular in one area of the world (The Bristlecone Pine). But wait a second isn’t it supposed to be global warming?. So how can data from one tree represent the globe? For anyone who wants there to be integrity in science and for it not to turned into a dictatorship, the exposure of the Hockey Stick Graph is of vital importance. It is quite bizarre that this individual (Mann) who point blank refused to provide his data, computer code and methodology to McIntyre so he could check the work for himself has the audacity to claim harm to his reputation and career, especially as anyone who dares question climate change orthodoxy is swiftly removed from tenure or hounded from their position and named called as “science deniers”. ———In science results have to be reproducible, or unfortunately we are not really dealing with science. If Mann is concerned with his reputation he should realise it enters the gutter when you do not provide all of your data, and for that reason alone Mann is an imposter. But he was exposed further by McIntyre who eventually like a dog with a bone showed the graph to be “flawed”, and that is putting it politely. It is clearly NOT a true representation of temperature over the last thousand years, and you can be sure that if McIntyre had not shown it to be wrong that it would still be appearing in IPCC reports and on BBC News every night of the week.
An absolutely top class post.
xxx
We should not over-egg the pudding in that the problematic word was “fraudulent” – bearing the meaning Mann intentionally published his graph knowing it was false. Had that word not been used there would have been no case.
If Mann published the graph and did not retract it or agree it is wrong when found to be false how is that then not fraudulent? Has Mann agreed his graph is wrong or not?
And this part quoted from this DS article if true is problematic:
“The reason for this was provided in the Plaintiff’s lawyer summing up for the jury: “The jury should award punitive damages so that in future no one will dare engage in ‘climate denialism’ just as Trump’s ‘election denialism’ needs to be suppressed.””
Most confusing. What of the First Amendment protecting free speech?
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
……
Mann of course is not government or a public official, but:
“To the contention that the First Amendment did not protect libelous publications, the Court replied that constitutional scrutiny could not be completely foreclosed by the “label” attached to something. The Court said libel could “claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations,” and the standards for proving defamation must “satisfy the First Amendment.”2 The Court considered the case “against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”3 Because the advertisement was “an expression of grievance and protest on one of the major public issues of our time, [it] would seem clearly to qualify for the constitutional protection [unless] it forfeits that protection by the falsity of some of its factual statements and by its alleged defamation of respondent.”4″
“Mann is not Government or public official” ——But where does his funding come from? —–Almost all climate change is funded by government. People often claim that those who question the “official science” regarding climate are protectors of the fossil fuel industry and have an agenda. But what makes them think government don’t have an agenda? —–They most certainly do. “Sustainable Development”. A world run by unaccountable technocrats controlling every aspect of our lives. —–So technically climate scientists are not government officials, but they are in a symbiotic relationship with government.——-PS That was a very good reply to my comment.
How can Mann claim what he does is “science“.
Watch out for the terms “science” and “scientific method“. Both are highly misleading.
When anyone uses the word “science”, there are so many different conflicting meanings that no one can tell which meaning is intended. There is no such singular “science” nor “the science”. There are only sciences and they are all very different and the vast majority do not provide reliable information.
For more information see these DS comments:
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/12/27/how-much-of-science-is-reproducible/#comment-850494
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/10/20/the-double-standard-applied-by-the-covid-inquiry-when-taking-evidence-from-john-edmunds-and-carl-heneghan-yesterday-reveals-its-bias/#comment-911537
And this DS article here:
Experts Are Worse Than Non-experts at Forecasting Cases and Deaths, Study Finds
BY NOAH CARL 27 OCTOBER 2021
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/10/11/the-ukhsas-evidence-for-covid-restrictions-is-a-complete-mess/#comment-908864
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/10/11/the-ukhsas-evidence-for-covid-restrictions-is-a-complete-mess/#comment-908965
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/10/11/the-ukhsas-evidence-for-covid-restrictions-is-a-complete-mess/#comment-908969
Good comments and well researched. ——If it is science about black holes or something similar that isn’t politicised and for which government policy does not depend I am happy to accept there is probably no shenanigans going on. Once government get involved it isn’t “science” any longer. It is “Official Science” all in support of public policy and political agenda’s.
Not to mention the p hacking use to get the result. Of the 20 or so parameters Mann could have chosen from his data only 3 showed the trend he desired, a flat temperature history. Even with his dodgy data there were parameters he could have chosen to show the warm medieval period. The purpose of his analysis was to delete the warm medieval period in order to make current warming appear more alarming. Mann is a total mediocrity academically as well as being a loathsome human.
Yep —Cheers.
No.
We have never been saddled with the fraud.
3 tree ring circus.
A complete sham.
He won’t submit to an IT audit of the code, database or schemas.
That is all I need to know.
Along with the reality that the medieval warm and cold epochs did exist and were more severe than what we currently experience.
Case closed. Consensus reality.
I know of another fraudulent scientist who refuses to submit his computer code and database. Although I’m sure this revolting creature would struggle to sleep with other mens wives.
All true but the Marxist achieved his aim, to delete climate history in the public sphere/discourse allowing politicians to pretend the world is boiling. Anyone pointing out the actual temperature history is now cast as a tin foil hat climate denier. Think of Mann as the current regimes Mengele, he has done their bidding and been handsomely rewarded.
Yep —true. —–It is the same with NET ZERO. -They know it is impossible, but it will achieve a lot of the other things they want, like “climate justice”, “wealth redistribution”, “gender equality” and all the other anti human, anti capitalist agenda’s. The use of fossil fuels is directly tied to Industrial capitalism and that is really what all of this is about——-Basically climate change is about everything except the climate.
Yep it’s about implementation of the Marx communist party manifesto by saddos like Blair, Starmer and useful idiots like Cameron/Johnson/May. Socialists hate that capitalism frees the poor so obviously must destroy it.
You know that and I know that, but fraud is all about “perception”, and all that is required to pull the wool over the eyes of the public is for there to be a “perception” that there is this dangerous climate crisis and warming has all shot up in the 20the century. As long as 9 out of 10 believe something they get away with it, and most people are too busy with work and family life to investigate every issue, so they see what is on their 6 O’clock news and blindly accept it. ——-They don’t all have the time to subscribe to the DS. I feel sorry for them as they are being seriously misinformed on a gigantic scale.
Please allow some licence here…
Google:
What outer space movie came out in 1992?
Just wondering where all these temperature measurements where taken? A met installation surrounded by concrete and tarmac? or halfway up a runway where tornado jets take off?
“The agenda is strong with this one”
“The hockey stick must not fail luke”
I’m going to buy a dart board just so I can put a picture of Michael Mann on it!
Now they have pivoted to the impending collapse of the AMOC ocean current, which is even scarier still:
https://www.sciencealert.com/its-confirmed-a-major-atlantic-ocean-current-is-verging-on-collapse
What does everyone think about this? Something to worry about, or not?
Something not to worry about. I’ll worry about it when it happens which it won’t. Panorama did something on this 20 years ago, everyone at my work was terrified by it.
Let’s not forget the case this ******* lost.
And his reaction to it: just refusing to pay.
How is that even possible?! https://heartland.org/opinion/in-memoriam-timothy-ball-phd-fierce-defender-of-science/
Many thanks for the link. What a truly sad story and one which compounds the injustice served on Mark Steyn.
It’s an ideological religion so facts do not matter.
It’s about feelings and emotions.