Mann vs Steyn: Trial Of The Century Update

Written by Larry Bell on February 9, 2024. Posted in Current News

Following many trillions of dollars spent on “net carbon neutral” fantasies of “green energy” and “clean electric vehicles,” about 25 years too late we’re finally witnessing serious court challenges to the sort of “science” that spawned these costly and economically destructive climate alarm-premised boondoggles in the first place

In a costly case filed 12 years ago, a District of Columbia Superior Court Jury will determine if policy analyst Rand Simberg and conservative author Mark Steyn are guilty of defaming the personal and professional integrity of Michael Mann, a climate ‘scientist’ who arguably more than any other lit the inferno of human-caused global-warming hysteria.

In a 2012 post on the Competitive Enterprise Institute blog, Simberg likened Mann to a Penn State football coach just found guilty of having sexually abused boys:

“Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.”

Steyn then quoted Simberg in his own post for National Review Online, stating:

“Not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr. Simberg does, but he has a point.”

No ideological tool or tabloid in this regard is more iconic than the much-ballyhooed “hockey stick” graph promoted to indicate that the planet is doomed if we don’t allow the U.N. to globally redistribute ill-gotten America’s ‘fossil’-fueled “climate pollution” prosperity and forego decadent flatulence-producing diets of red meat.

That graph was also prominently featured by climate oracle Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” crusade to market carbon credit trading scams that exchanged hot air for enormous personal profits.

Created by Mann and some colleagues, the hockey stick graph depicted a sharp temperature rise in the 20th century that was highlighted in the 2001 U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report to support the urgency of a global cap on carbon dioxide through the Kyoto Protocol.

Cobbled together using various proxy data derived from ice cores, tree rings, and written records of growing seasons, the time chart supposedly proved that air temperatures had been stable for 900 years until the 20th century, and then suddenly rocketed upward — a change supposedly attributed to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

But there were some problems with that graph and the research behind it.  Some very big problems.

One was that the Medieval Warm Period that occurred between about A.D. 800 and 1100 along with the Little Ice Age which occurred between about A.D. 1350-1850 somehow turned up missing.

That wasn’t all.

Many scientists also noted that the upward temperature lurch on Mann’s 1,000-year-long graph, which applied anecdotal proxy data — those tree rings in particular — suddenly occurred in 1961 when it then applied surface ground station temperature data.

Why change in 1961?

Well, maybe as I previously reported in 2011 (Forbes), it’s because that’s when tree-ring proxy data calculations by Keith Briffa at the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Institute in the U.K. reportedly began to show earth temperatures going down.

According to an email revealed in scandalous Climategate revelations, this presented what Mann referred to as a “conundrum.”

Other Mann emails reveal that the late 20th-century decline indicated by Briffa would be perceived by IPCC as “diluting the message,” was a “problem,” and posed a “potential distraction/detraction.”

One aspect of Mike’s hockey stick “trick” referenced in colleague emails was reported to show all of the proxy and surface measurement chartings in different colors on a single graph but simply cut off Briffa’s in a spaghetti clutter of lines at the 1961 date.

This is indicative of the sort of “climate science” that we’re supposed to trust to guide U.S. energy regulatory policies and budgetary subsidies on penalty of being branded a “climate change denier.”

Some who have publicly railed against the chief hockey stick author have suffered costly lawfare intimidation consequences.

In 2011, Michael Mann sued my respected friend, the late geographer Tim Ball, in a Canadian court over a sarcastic interview quip stating that the former Penn State University researcher should rather be in a state pen.

Although a judge dismissed the charges in 2019 due to an “inexcusable trial delay” and ordered Mann to pay Ball’s legal costs, the repayment never occurred, and Tim died in 2022 with his life savings consequentially drained.

Simberg, Steyn, and the National Review Online have also shelled out huge legal defense costs whereas, in sharp contrast, Mann admitted in testimony that due to outside sponsors, his 12 years of litigation had cost him absolutely nothing.

As Wall Street Journal contributor William McGurn observes, the beauty of “bringing down” National Review or any of the other defendants is that Mr. Mann doesn’t have to prevail to do it; he just has to keep the suit going in hopes the legal fees bury them.

Whatever the final D.C. court outcome, the costs behind this to all of us have already been enormous.

The many billions of taxpayer money for such alarm-premised university and government climate research are a teensy pittance compared with far more costly junk-science consequences of burdensome environmental and energy policies set upon crumbling foundations of public trust.

See more here climatechangedispatch

Editor’s note: Tim Ball’s wife and son have confirmed to PSI that Mann never paid them a penny.

Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method

PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX. 

Trackback from your site.