Category Archives: Media Criticism
The Commercial Space Race
Here’s a pretty good article on what’s going on, but I found this graf amusing:
The Antares rocket has been waiting patiently since last month in its processing facility at MARS.
My emphasis.
Don’t anthropomorphize rockets. They hate when you do that.
More Thoughts On Mann’s Quixotic Lawsuits
…from James Delingpole:
Mann is going to face similar problems in his legal action against NRO. (Not to mention the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which he is also now threatening to sue). NRO’s defence lawyers are going to demand full disclosure of any number of hitherto private documents which Mann would probably have preferred to remain private. Furthermore, they are going to have the fish-in-a-barrel-style target of Mann’s Hockey Stick which has been so thoroughly rebutted so many times that there is no way on God’s earth Mann will be able to claim, straightfaced, that it retains the merest scintilla of scientific credibility. Ditto the various sham enquiries supposedly clearing the Climategate scientists of wrong-doing: an even half-way decent lawyer is going to make mincemeat of their verdicts.
So why, against all logic and reason, is Mann planning to go ahead with his defamation action?
My bet is that he won’t. But in the unlikely event that he does it will be because:
1. As I argue in Watermelons, the climate alarmist industry is so richly funded that it can easily afford to pursue cases like this.
2. Because this is what happens when you live in a bubble. And the “Climate Science” community is a bubble in much the same way that the Westminster and Washington DC villages are bubbles: these people spend so little time living in the real world that they lose the plot completely. In the weird, weird world of Michael Mann and his fellow climate “scientists”, Climategate was just a case of ordinary decent scientists doing their job, the IPCC remains the gold standard of international climate science, the Hockey Stick is not a standing joke and man-made global warming remains the greatest threat to the planet ever. The facts speak otherwise. But when you’re working in a business as awash with cash as the Climate Change industry, why would you ever let facts get in the way of a good story?
Why indeed? The irony, as always, is that it is the climate scientists, not the skeptics, who are well endowed, financially, and engaged in internal discussions of how to fight their perceived enemies.
The Wages Of Leftism
Thoughts on the reality avoidance of the “elites,” from VDH:
…tokenism is not the only reaction when postmodern liberal dreaming ends up in concrete premodern catastrophe. Escapism is a related response. I don’t think Dream Act supporters in Santa Monica or Atherton wish to live in, or visit much, Parlier or Orange Cove. When CSU presidents retire from Central Valley campuses, they usually frown and head to Palm Springs or Monterey. Doctrinaire liberalism is predicated on the notion of escapism, that one has the means and know-how to ensure that children do not go to the schools whose curriculum and policies follow your own utopian thinking. Or that you make sure your “wind and solar and millions of green jobs” windmills are obstructing someone else’s view. Or that the first high-speed rail link connects Fresno with Charles Manson’s prison in Corcoran rather than cutting a wide swath through Bay Area suburbs.
Medieval exemption is yet another response to liberalism. As I wrote in 2008, I watched with curiosity as tony Palo Alto neighborhoods sprouted bigger Obama campaign signs on their lawns, even though the owners were by definition one-percenter segregationists (East Palo Alto and Redwood City are a mile — and a solar system — away). The mansions of an Al Gore, John Kerry, and John Edwards are expiated by their owners’ always louder liberal outrage. No one really wishes to live in a world governed by the laws of contemporary liberalism. So the architects escape it and justify their flight by finding a suitable token, a convenient scapegoat, a secular priest like Obama to offer them penance for their sins of enjoying elite privilege.
When we talk of tokenism, escapism, or penance, we are still in world of symptoms, not the etiology of the malady. All can understand the very human desire to support a liberal crusader like Barack Obama among those who pay no income tax, belong to the near 50% who receive some sort of government aid, or are part of the one-sixth of the population on food stamps. Self-interest is an understandable motivation. It explains why the public employee and teacher naturally worry more about pay increases than the tax wherewithal to pay for them.
But for the more elite and influential progressive, affluence has allowed liberal orthodoxy to evolve to its theoretical limitations. There is a reason why 90% of professors — life-long tenure, summers off, guaranteed pay raises — are liberal and 70% of small-business people are conservative. The more removed one becomes from the elemental struggle to eat one more day — and never in the history of civilization have so many been so exempt from such existential worries — the more one enjoys the luxury of pondering more cosmic issues such as extending Social Security disability payments to youths suffering from attention deficit disorder or mandating gay history in state public schools or saving the smelt.
California is on its way to becoming Greece.
Hopey Changey
You call this a recovery?
This is what happens when you put people in charge who not only don’t understand how economies work, but think that it’s more important to redistribute wealth than to create it.
Solyndra In Space?
Over at Open Market, I’ve roundly fisked the latest display of ignorance from a supposed conservative on the new space policy. It’s sad that one of Breitbart’s sites would publish such nonsense. The real “Solyndra in Space” is SLS.
[Update a few minutes later]
I see that Thomas James has shredded it as well.
How The Dems Will Deal With The Medicare Issue
They’ll just lie.
It’s actually how they deal with most issues. They don’t have much other choice if they want to win.
On The Mannsuits
Want to split a gut? Read this insane comment over at Judy Curry’s place:
Mann’s strategic rational for the parallel lawsuit is evident, and is based upon the observation CEI and NR published startlingly similar, startlingly abusive, startling ill-judged editorials.
——————-
Mann’s Objective Publicly expose the command-and-control structure of climate-change denialism.
Mann’s Strategy Call witnesses to testify, under oath, regarding the parallel origins of their libelous assertions.
Mann’s Tactics Offer each of CEI and NR a plea-bargain, providing each “peaches” upon the other, regarding denialist marching-orders and astro-turfing operations.
Mann’s Guidance The Code of Omertà is robust at the institutional level of climate-change denialism, yet notoriously flimsy at the individual level. To exploit this weak point, Mann’s legal team will therefore focus legal pressure upon the individuals under whose name the libels were published. In particular, what services has CEI’s staff of 40 provided to denialist bloggers, and to sister institutions such as Heartland?
——————-
Predictions (1) CEI and NR will do all they can to ensure that individuals named in Mann’s suit do not testify under oath … or if they do, that their testimonies are well-rehearsed and carefully coordinated. (2) Conversely, Mann’s team will do all they can to exert pressure upon individual witnesses, in particular by calling multiple witnesses to the stand, and by deposing CEI and NR employees in separate discovery processes.
Question What portion of climate-change denialist prose, nominally originating from private citizens, in fact originates from CEI professional operatives?
I can’t really comment, other than to wonder if Mann himself believes lunacy like this?
The Other Shoe Drops
A press release from CEI:
Penn State Climate Scientist Michael Mann Demands Apology From CEI CEI Refuses to Retract Commentary Washington, D.C., August 24, 2012 – The Competitive Enterprise Institute received a letter on August 21 from an attorney representing Penn State University Professor Michael E. Mann that demands that CEI retract and apologize for a post on CEI’s blog, Openmarket.org, written by CEI adjunct scholar Rand Simberg. The letter also threatens that they “intend to pursue all appropriate legal remedies on behalf of Dr. Mann.”
“The Other Scandal in Unhappy Valley,” the July 13, 2012 blog post at issue, criticized Professor Mann, a climate scientist who is recent years has become a leading advocate in the public debate for global warming alarmism. Mann was the lead author of research that fabricated the infamous hockey stick temperature graph. The hockey stick was featured in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Third Assessment Report (2001), but was dropped in its Fourth Assessment Report (2007). E-mails from and to Professor Mann featured prominently in what became known as the Climategate scandal.
In response to the letter from Mann’s attorney, CEI offered the following statements.
Statement by CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman:
This week CEI received a letter from Michael Mann’s attorney, John B. Williams of Cozen O’Connor, demanding that CEI fully retract and apologize for a July 13th OpenMarket blog post concerning Mann’s work. Shortly after that post was published in mid-July, CEI removed two sentences that it regarded as inappropriate. However, we view the post as a valid commentary on Michael Mann’s research. We reject the claim that this research was closely examined, let alone exonerated, by any of the proceedings listed in Mr. Williams’s letter.
National Review, which earlier got a similar letter from Mann’s attorney, has expertly summed up the matter in a response by the editor and the publication’s attorney.
And regardless of how one views Mann’s work, his threatened lawsuit is directly contrary to First Amendment law regarding public debate over controversial issues. Michael Mann may believe we face a global warming threat, but his actions represent an unfounded attempt to freeze discussion of his views.
In short, we’re not retracting the piece, and we’re not apologizing for it.
Statement by Myron Ebell, Director of CEI’s Center for Energy and Environment:
Penn State Professor Michael Mann’s lawyer claims that nine investigations of academic fraud have all exonerated Professor Mann. Most of these investigations did not examine Professor Mann’s conduct or even mention him, and Penn State University’s investigation was typical of that institution’s unfortunate tendencies.
The fact that Professor Mann’s hockey stick research is still taken seriously in the public debate is an indication that people haven’t read the Wegman Report to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the National Research Council’s report, or the analysis of Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick.
Professor Mann’s political advocacy is no more reliable than his scientific research. His recent book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, repeats numerous factual errors, some of them about CEI.
> View the Michael Mann attorney letter.pdf
CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. For more information about CEI, please visit our website, cei.org, and blogs, Globalwarming.org and OpenMarket.org. Follow CEI on Twitter! Twitter.com/ceidotorg.
As this is now a legal matter directly involving me, I will have no further comment.
An Initial Response To Mann’s Lawyer
From Mark Morano, over at Climate Depot:
Mann’s lawyer John B. Williams: “…Dr. Mann’s conclusions have been replicated by no fewer than twelve independent studies”
Climate Depot Response: Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick temperature claims have been demolished in the scientific literature. The latest research clearly reveals that the Medieval Warm Period (used to be referred to as the Medieval Climate Optimum) has been verified and was in fact global, not just confined to the Northern Hemisphere. The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change reported in 2009 that the “Medieval Warm Period was: (1) global in extent, (2) at least as warm as, but likely even warmer than, the Current Warm Period, and (3) of a duration significantly longer than that of the Current Warm Period to date.”
In addition, The Science and Public Policy Institute reported in May 2009: “More than 700 scientists from 400 institutions in 40 countries have contributed peer-reviewed papers providing evidence that the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was real, global, and warmer than the present. And the numbers grow larger daily.”
Climate Depot has assembled a small sampling of peer-reviewed studies, data and analyses that refute Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick temperature claims of unprecedented 20th century warmth.
That’s just a small sample. Mann will really regret this if he continues to move forward, but his ego may force him to regardless. It is the ultimate in hubris.
[Update a few minutes later]
And here is a report from an alternate universe, in which Mann is not going to get shredded on the stand:
The legal dismemberment of the Denial machine has begun. In a conversation thursday with a very senior scientist, I was updated on a number of actions slowly encircling the Denial industry. Think, – Tobacco lawsuits on stereo steroids, with extra secret sauce.
The “Denial industry.” A “very senior scientist.”
Top. Men.
Hilarious.
[Update a few more minutes later]
Stacy McCain wants in on the hot, hot lawsuit action.
[Another update]
Litigator Maxwell Kennerly thinks that Mann has a case. I think he’s dreaming.
What all of the Mann defenders ignore are the numerous accusations against his hockey stick and methods from within the “climate science” community itself, much of which views him as a preening embarrassment. And when the emails are exposed in court, “fraud” is likely to be one of the kinder terms that will be seen as applicable to him. The warm mongers are going to regret embracing him — it was unnecessary to do so in order to defend their “science,” and seems to have been done largely for emotional, but not rational reasons (it brings to mind the Democrats’ knee-jerk defense of Bill Clinton for his multiple felonies, simply because he was under attack by their perceived enemy).
And in doing so, they will end up doing great damage to their cause.
[Update a while later]
Link to Peter Sinclair’s lunacy was broken. Fixed now.