A guy can't sit around waiting for litigious fake Nobel Laureates to agree to discovery and deposition. So, with the Mann vs Steyn Trial of the Century currently stalled in the choked septic tank of the DC court system, I figured I might as well put some of the mountain of case research clogging up the office into a brand new book - all about the most famous "science" graph of the 21st century and the man who invented it.
Michael E Mann's defamation suit against me for a 270-word blog post is about to enter its fourth year in the District of Columbia Superior Court, so I'm confident this little tome should be good for at least a third of a century. Therefore, without further ado, I'm pleased to announce the summer beach read of 2015:
"A Disgrace To The Profession":
The World's Scientists - In Their Own Words - On
Michael E Mann, His Hockey Stick And Their Damage To Science
Volume One
It's a snappy title, I think you'll agree. Personally autographed copies are available right now at the SteynOnline bookstore, and profits therefrom help to prop up my end of the forthcoming trial.
As you know, Mann's plan was to sue me into silence. I leave it to legal scholars to assess whether that's working out quite as he intended. However, as Barack Obama likes to say, this isn't just about me. It's also about the perversion of science and the damage done by the climate wars in which Mann has played such an egregious part.
The "hockey stick" graph of global temperatures over the last bazillion years is the single most influential icon in the global-warming debate, gleefully seized on by the UN's transnational climate jet set, heavily promoted by Al Gore's Oscar-winning crockumentary, tirelessly used by governments around the world to sell the Kyoto Accord to their citizens, and taught as "incontrovertible" "settled science" to impressionable schoolchildren around the world from kindergarten to graduation. Mann's hockey stick told the simplest of stories: climate-wise nothing happened for nine hundred years until suddenly, in the 20th century, the mercury took off and shot up through the top right-hand corner of the graph - and now we're all gonna fry.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the global-warming "pause" is about to enter its third decade, which suggests it may all be a bit more complicated than that. And yet Mann's cartoon science was so effective as propaganda that the Big Climate enforcers cannot renounce it.
You'd never know from all the constant bleating about "the 97 per cent consensus" that Michael E Mann and his hockey stick are, in fact, held in very low regard by many of the world's most eminent scientists. I was a bit surprised myself - until I noticed how few scientists were prepared to support him and I started to dig around. And that's when I got the idea for this book: scientists from Canada to Finland, Scotland to China, Belgium to New Zealand, from venerable Nobel Laureates to energetic young researchers, all giving their view of Mann, his stick, and the wider climate wars they helped launch.
But don't take my word for it. The Mann-boys who dote on his every drooping stick haven't even read it, and already they love it! Leftie colossus website Daily Kos:
Most people would refrain from adding fuel to the fire if being sued by someone for attacking them. Steyn, however, is not most people.
Mann's own Mini-Me over at Science Blogs, Greg Mann-Laden:
I'm thinking this is not going to be a very big book. Certainly not a very good one.
And a guy last heard from indulging in strange fantasies about me giving him a lap dance, allegedly eminent climatologist Barry Bickmore:
Mark Steyn's genius legal gambit... Who's to say what's right or wrong, when your IQ could easily be the losing team's score in a baseball game?
That's what we call on Broadway a money quote.
This first volume in the series looks at Mann, the hockey stick's dramatic rise, its trashing of history, mishandling of data and risible statistical processes, and the bigger issues that arose in its wake: the politicization and then corruption of science, and the thuggish retaliation meted out to scientists brave enough to question it. But I wanted to be fair to Mann, so at the end I do find a couple of people willing to put in a good word for him, even if one of them is former IPCC honcho and disgraced sex fiend Dr Rajendra Pantsdowni.
If you'd like to support my end of this interminable case, then "A Disgrace To The Profession": The World's Scientists - In Their Own Words - On Michael E Mann, His Hockey Stick, and Their Damage To Science: Volume One is a great way to do it, and have a few laughs along the way (courtesy of Josh's cartoons). To order the book, simply click here.
There are many scientists from across the spectrum featured inside, but I would like to cite the two who got me started. The first is Dr Judith Curry from the Georgia Institute of Technology:
For the past decade, scientists have come to the defense of Michael Mann, somehow thinking that defending Michael Mann is fighting against the 'war on science' and is standing up for academic freedom. It's time to let Michael Mann sink or swim on his own. Michael Mann is having all these problems because he chooses to try to muzzle people that are critical of Mann's science, critical of Mann's professional and personal behavior, and critical of Mann's behavior as revealed in the climategate emails. All this has nothing to do with defending climate science.
The second is Professor Jonathan Jones of Oxford University:
The Hockey Stick is obviously wrong. Everybody knows it is obviously wrong. Climategate 2011 shows that even many of its most outspoken public defenders know it is obviously wrong. And yet it goes on being published and defended year after year.
Do I expect you to publicly denounce the Hockey Stick as obvious drivel? Well yes, that's what you should do. It is the job of scientists of integrity to expose pathological science... It is a litmus test of whether climate scientists are prepared to stand up against the bullying defenders of pathology in their midst.
As you can see, there's no shortage of material for this book. Only the other day, two German climatologists Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt said that "Michael Mann can no longer be taken seriously". So I hope you'll take a gander at "A Disgrace To The Profession": The world's scientists on Michael E Mann, his hockey stick, and their damage to science - Volume One. It will be out in print and eBook at Amazon and all the usual outlets next month but for the moment, as a special offer to SteynOnline readers, the paperback edition is exclusively available, personally autographed by yours truly, only from the Steyn store. So be the first on your block with a signed copy ...and the electric frisson of knowing that the proceeds are going towards the first ever cross-examination of Michael E Mann on a courtroom witness stand.
~There are other ways to support my pushback against Big Climate, if you're so inclined:
1) STEYNONLINE GIFT CERTIFICATES
We usually only offer these at Christmas time, but, by popular request, we've made them available for the non-holiday season, too. You can buy a gift certificate starting at $25 (and soaring way up from there), and let your friends and relatives load up with Steyn books and music and trial merchandise at their leisure. The gift certificates have no expiration date, so if, in ten years' time, your favorite nephew has a sudden burning desire for $100 worth of Clash of Sticks mugs, it'll still be valid. Alternatively, if you want to buy a certificate and sit on it until I win the case, that works, too.
The gift certificates are available online here. Alternatively, US and Canadian customers can make a telephone purchase by calling (866) 799-4500 toll free from 8am to 3pm Eastern time on weekdays.
Aside from my climatological offering, I've written lots of other books, too, including one on free speech, which is the heart of this case. They're available individually or as part of various special offers.
3) EXCLUSIVE STEYN vs THE STICK TRIAL MERCHANDISE
We've introduced two new designs, "Steyn vs the Stick" and "Clash of Sticks", that are now available both on mousepads and coffee mugs and as T-shirts and sweat shirts (for men and women). The latter are the only things to be seen in if you're thinking of swinging by the DC Superior Court.
This is an important case: If Mann were to prevail, it would be the worst setback for freedom of speech in this country in half-a-century - which is why, if he were to win in DC, we'd be going all the way to the Supreme Court. I'm grateful to all the readers around the world who understand that and have expressed their support over the last three years. As my new book indicates, I'm pushing back hard.
