Following the Mann/Steyn lawsuit, my contempt for the Mann has increased to levels I had not thought possible. Throughout this, however, I have insisted that whatever megalomanias float through the Mann’s head, whatever his weird and insular insistences on being a multiply exonerated Nobel laureate, I was not about to accuse a scientist of fraud until I had good evidence. Such is scientific ethics and I insist on sticking to it.
Now, however, I find that I have been relieved of that weighty responsibility by Dr John Christy, climate scientist and contributor to the IPCC, who testified to the United States congress in the following manner:
Regarding the Hockey Stick of IPCC 2001 evidence now indicates, in my view, that an IPCC Lead Author [Michael Mann] working with a small cohort of scientists, misrepresented the temperature record of the past 1000 years by (a) promoting his own result as the best estimate, (b) neglecting studies that contradicted his, and (c) amputating another’s result so as to eliminate conflicting data and limit any serious attempt to expose the real uncertainties of these data.
So, one of these two men is lying. Both cannot be telling the truth. So, is the fraud a) the serially dishonest, bullying, thuggish, delusional Michael Mann, or b) a contributing author to the IPCC who pioneered the development of the satellite temperature record?
Decisions, decisions…
One bit from the steynpost sticks with me:
I’ve been shocked to learn of the young scientists who are sick of living under the suffocating orthodoxy the climate mullahs enforce. My initial free-speech interest in this case was a personal one: I have the right to say what I said about Mann, because it happens to be true. But it’s broadened since then: climate science itself desperately needs free speech – which is to say the right to counter the Mann orthodoxy without having one’s career cut off as crudely as Briffa’s poor tree rings were when they had the impertinence to disagree with Mann.
I can sympathize there; he’s quite right about the fear of rocking the boat and the horrible antics that Mann and his goonsquad get up to.
In his previous tussles with enforces of orthodoxy, Mark Steyn, with his chum Ezra Levant, became one of the few people to successfully roll back Islamic imperialism by taking on the Islamic supreme council of Canada (seriously) and their tinhorn state enforcers and making life too hot for them to handle. In doing so, Steyn & Levant did a real service for secularism in the modern world. There’s an irony there, since Steyn doesn’t seem to be the biggest fan of it (“in Europe and elsewhere, liberal secularism is not the solution to the problem but the vacuum in which a resurgent globalized Islam has incubated.”) but so what? It was the fanatical Martin Luther who broke the Church’s monopoly and opened the door for true liberty.
In a repeat of history, if he manages to put the boot into Mann’s backside, Steyn will have done a real service to climate science. Not what he set out to do, but that’s his problem not ours.
It’s time to lash tree-rings to Mann’s feet and toss him into the nearest melted ice sheet (Yes, I know they float. Think about it).
