Mann vs. Steyn: Heresy Shall Be Crushed

American Thinker ^ | July 26, 2013 | Daren Jonescu

[neverdem]

Remember when scientists and other truth-seekers used to get all riled up about the way the Catholic Church treated Galileo? The outcry was not over the fact that Galileo was a "peer-reviewed" researcher, and therefore beyond question. Quite the contrary: the argument was that, from the point of view of the quest for truth, no one, including the representatives of official orthodoxy and authority, ought to be regarded as beyond question. In the Michael Mann lawsuit against Mark Steyn and National Review, it is the "award-winning researcher" who is joining the fight for Church orthodoxy, while the defendants are the persecuted Galileos.

Mann, of course, is the creator of the famous "hockey stick graph" that has been employed doggedly throughout the doctrinaire climate science community and the mainstream media as proof that the Earth has shown a marked and unprecedented increase in global mean temperature during the brief period of industrial society's extreme CO2 production, which increase is consequently cited as proof that man's industrial activity is causing the temperature rise. Let us leave aside the climate religion's little logical problem, namely the contradiction between (a) its complete dependence on the premise that rising CO2 levels can and do have an immediate and substantial effect on global temperature, and (b) its attempts to dismiss the significance of the fact that global temperature has not increased significantly since 1995 while CO2 emissions have continued to rise, on the grounds that this is supposedly too short a period to prove anything.

The concern in this context is not so much the truth or falsity of the global warming theory, but the implications of this lawsuit, and its social importance, should Mann actually win.

Steyn, along with many researchers on whom he has leaned in developing his critique, have questioned both the methods...

[o2bfree]

Hi. Do you still have a copy of this. Where can I find the FORTRAN code written by Mann?

It would be great to see this. There are lots of folks on FR who understand FORTRAN, C, Objective C, Java, all sorts of stuff really.

It would be great to see Mann’s code.

[nathanbedford]

We are at cross purposes because I am thinking of one phase of the trial and I think you are considering a different phase.

As I indicated, in the motion stage before plenary hearing the burden for the plaintiff is only to express or articulate a legal case, to put it into jargon, to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.

The defendants came in and said, (I am presuming here because the report that were discussing is so bad) yes I said it, but it's true. The plaintiff then says, "no it ain't." The judge says, I can't tell from the papers whether it's true or not, we need to have a regular hearing, with real witnesses and real evidence.

This result is no surprise but the usual course in most of these motions and it simply means that the case moves on to trial. It does not mean that defendant has met any burden, it does not mean that the plaintiff has met any burden apart from articulating a case which, if true, means the plaintiff would prevail. The court makes no conclusion about whether the plaintiff's case is true or the defendant's defense is true. It merely assumes truth of the plaintiff's case for the purposes of applying the law and withdraws that assumption as the matter moves onto trial when the court puts the parties to their proofs.

The legalese is necessary as a shorthand to avoid paragraph after paragraph of explanations to avoid false impressions.

[JLS]

Article about Mark Steyn ping.

Freepmail me, if you want on or off the Mark Steyn ping list.

Thanks for the ping Slings and Arrows.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"I am also really unsure why anybody in his right mind would intentionally start a war of words with Mark Steyn. The last group to try it not only lost their case, they lost the law and kangaroo court system that was their ideal."

Well-said, sir.

[Cyber Liberty]

Did you see her ratings when you searched the name? I did. My eyes are rolling to the next continent. Average rating: 1 of a scale of 1-10.

That’s the Judicial equivalent of Bluto’s GPA in Animal House.

[dfwgator]

[Flavious_Maximus]

I no longer have the files. I had downloaded then from a website that had the original Climategate email dump. It should not be hard to find on the Internet unless the website has been shutdown. Here is a link that describes the data.

http://www.livescience.com/17151-climategate-emails-michael-mann.html

You will notice that Micheal Mann is the one complaining the most about the security breach.

[American in Israel]

Then his comments in the code will kill him in court. If the data is lost, then it is not data, replacing it with numbers you wish is not research, its fiction.

Good, Mark should tear him a new one and it will be a good thing for mankind.

[American in Israel]

Thank you for your explanation, without it I would have completely missed what actually happened. Posters like you are the reason I love Free Republic.

[Flavious_Maximus]

I found another link that lets you download a pdf file of a bunch of the emails.

http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/climate-change/climategate-emails.pdf

Micheal Mann is indeed a total fraud. He and his agenda driven cohorts should be in jail.

[maica]

6. All of the atoms and molecules that make up the earth and its atmosphere travel around that sun, at an amazing speed, spinning at the same time. And we don’t lose an atom or a molecule. How can that be???

[abclily]

Gravity.

There is nothing new under the sun.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

Given how much the corrupt tend to go with what worked before, would you be surprised to find simiilarities to the schemes C_O exposed years ago in Energy Racketeering: The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

...she literally says that "Plaintiff has determined that Plaintiff's research is sound" -- notice that she singles out the EPA as a particularly reputable independent investigator in defense of Mann's research. Given that the EPA is a federal agency led by appointees of a U.S. administration thoroughly invested in the climate change narrative, and currently moving to take drastic economic steps on the issue through the agency of the EPA itself, and that the EPA's own website declares its adherence to the climate change science and has made climate change-based regulation and activism its primary mission for the coming years, the judge's particular reliance on the EPA's judgment of Mann as evidence against the defendants' harsh criticisms reveals the court's disingenuousness...

I don't really know how much is the same, and have no idea if some of the same players are involved, but it this story did remind me of that earlier work. However, I have experienced that some of the worst players in other schemes will stick to what they got away with before. Like it was a kind of dare to the rest of us; an "in your face."

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem.

[maica]

There is nothing new under the sun.

Precisely, and mother earth is more in control of everything in, on and around it, than any East Anglia prof.

[dennisw]

I saw that “judge” in the movie Idiocracy

[EDINVA]

The article refers to Combs-Greene as a “U.S.District Court judge” which she is not(Para 5). She is a D.C. Superior Court judge as the “Final Note” states. Those are two entirely different judicial systems, one federal, the other “state” although the District of Columbia is not a ‘state.’

She IS a wretched judge in any case. Good luck finding a non-liberal judge in that court.

[AmericanVictory]

The criticisms in the Robing Room are quite accurate, speaking from experience.

[AmericanVictory]

It is not clear that the judge gave the defendants an opportunitiy to raise the issue. She seems to have jumped the gun before they could respond.

[Sherman Logan]

Since “down” in our solar system is towards the sun, how can anything be “under the sun?” :)