…from Conrad Black, including commentary on the current sad state of the American legal profession:
…the American legal profession is a suffocating cartel that saps 10 percent of American GDP and through its members in legislatures and regulatory authorities adds 4,000 statutes and regulations a year to the law books, steadily tightening its strangulation of American life, all and always in the name of a society of laws and the ever more equitable refinement of civilization. It would have been impossible and unreasonable to anticipate that so perceptive and spontaneous and fearless an observer as Steyn would not steadily broaden his range of fire, as he has. At one point Steyn began filing motions on his own behalf—the best written court documents you may ever read—that drip with disdain for the judicial process. He quotes Lady MacBeth and describes various pieces of the case using phrases such as “multi-car pileup,” “zombie-like,” “Potemkin hearing” and “meretricious folderol.” It would have been equally unreasonable not to foresee that the authorities upon whom his withering fire descended would not resent this deserved if unaccustomed hostility, and whatever one may think of Mann, he cannot be faulted tactically for trying to tuck himself under the wing of an affronted legal establishment. That does not justify Mann’s infliction of the hockey stick upon the world (like the great Montreal Canadiens point-man Bernard “Boom Boom” Geoffrion lowering—with considerable but probably not sufficient provocation—the real article onto the cranium of a New York Ranger forward sixty years ago) any more than it whitewashes Mann’s own insults. He has dismissed the immensely respected Danish scientist and intellectual Bjorn Lomborg as “a career fossil fuel industry apologist”; Judith Curry, co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences and an honored member of the National Research Council’s climate research committee, as a “serial climate disinformer”; Australian journalist Andrew Bolt as a “villainous” threat to the planet who is paid by Rupert Murdoch “to lie to the public” (Mann apologized for this one after Bolt — in solidarity with Steyn — threatened a lawsuit); and the rest of us as mere “climate change deniers.”
The latest on campaign laws, The Columbia “Journalism” Review, and freedom of speech, from Mark Steyn:
That “chill” is not just an incoming ice age but the chill of free speech and vigorous debate, too. My comment – on the “fraudulence” of Mann’s hockey stick – was not “deplorable”, but necessary. The stick is, indeed, fraudulent: It does not prove what it purports to, and Dr Mann well knows that, which is why in East Anglia, in Virginia, in British Columbia, and now in the District of Columbia he refuses and obstructs proper scientific disclosure. So my comment is truthful, as I will be happy to demonstrate at trial. And there is something very strange (and actually almost Pravda-like) about a “journalism review” that finds alternative viewpoints “deplorable”. It’s because so many others – from planet-saving narcissists like James Cameron and transnational opportunists like Rajendra Pachauri all the way down to the boobs and saps of The Columbia Journalism Review – insist that the cartoon alarmism of the hockey stick cannot be questioned that it becomes not just non-deplorable but highly necessary to question it.
And of course, questioning is what science is all about.
Ken White has looked at the amicus briefs (I think), and explains, as entertainingly as possible, what the current status of the case is:
So: here we are. Mr. Mann has filed a motion to dismiss the appeal on the theory that the denial of an anti-SLAPP statute is not immediately appealable and on the theory that the defendants are all awful haterz who think Waterworld is a feel-good movie. That motion and the Court of Appeals’ order for the parties to brief the issue apparently crossed in the mail. If the District of Columbia Court of Appeals had a docket accessible online, or gave electronic notice of orders, that would not have happened, but since it is 1986 and the District of Columbia is an obscure jurisdiction, it is understandable they do not. National Review et al. has filed response to the order saying they are entitled to an immediate appeal and that, in so many words, Mann is a butthurt censorious twit. Defendants are supported by amicus briefs on the appealability issue from the ACLU, a conglomerate of media companies, and the District of Columbia itself, whose amicus ought to say “lol we suxxors at drafting statutes plz fx k thx bye,” but in fact does not.
Next up, unless it finds another procedural dodge, the Court of Appeals will decide whether the DC Anti-SLAPP statute allows an immediate appeal. If the answer is no, it goes back to trial court for discovery and motions and possibly trial; if the answer is yes, then the Court of Appeals addresses the merits of the anti-SLAPP motions — which, in my opinion, are meritorious.
“It’s a bit tricky to put an exact price tag on how much money all that unexcavated carbon would be worth, but one financial analyst puts the price at somewhere in the ballpark of $20 trillion,” Hayes writes. “So in order to preserve a roughly habitable planet, we somehow need to convince or coerce the world’s most profitable corporations and the nations that partner with them to walk away from $20 trillion of wealth.”
Note the phrase: “convince or coerce.” If persuasion were to fail, coercion — presumably by the federal government or some very, very powerful entity — could be pretty rough. Certainly by writing that the “climate justice movement” should be known as the “new abolitionism,” Hayes makes an uneasy comparison to a 19th century conflict over slavery that was settled only by a huge and costly war — a real war, not a metaphorical one. Is that how environmentalists plan to save the planet from warming?
The District of Columbia and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press have also filed amicus briefs on our behalf. None of them address the merits of the case, but at this point they probably see no need to, since it shouldn’t even go to trial.
The point deserves emphasis. The advent of higher carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere has been a great boon for the terrestrial biosphere, accelerating the rate of growth of both wild and domestic plants and thereby expanding the food base supporting humans and land animals of every type. Ignoring this, the carbophobes point to the ocean instead, saying that increased levels of carbon dioxide not exploited by biology could lead to acidification. By making the currently barren oceans fertile, however, mariculture would transform this putative problem into an extraordinary opportunity.
Which is precisely why those demanding restraints on carbon emissions and restrictions on fisheries hate mariculture. They hate it for the same reason those demanding constraints in the name of allegedly limited energy resources hate nuclear power. They hate it because it solves a problem they need unsolved.
I hope this means a lot of cheap fresh wild salmon in the stores this summer.