As I write, President-in-waiting Hillary Clinton is testifying in Congress. I expect Hugh Hewitt will want to ask me about that during our weekly radio chat this afternoon, live coast to coast at 6pm Eastern/3pm Pacific.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden seemingly ended his interminable will-he-won't-he routine by holding a Rose Garden ceremony with Barack Obama to announce that he, Joe, is not running for president. Has anyone ever done that before? And then followed it with what sounded like a campaign-launch speech?
Hmm. The event appeared to me to leave him with some wiggle room in the event of a sudden development - such as, say, Hillary's indictment.
Still, even by the standards of this extremely bizarre campaign season, the Biden bubble has been weird. Posing as his own "unnamed source", he disclosed to a newspaper columnist (Maureen Dowd) that the last words of his dying son were that his deathbed wish was for Dad to run for president. I don't really see how you can leak something like that, and then not run for president. But evidently it's now just another trial balloon to be run past the consultants and focus groups.
So, Hillary-wise, it's all down to Bernie.
~With the pre-Paris climate fever already gripping politicians, activists and media alike, there's never been a better time to buy my new book. Jay Lehr, PhD, director of science at the Heartland Institute, reviews "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 here:
The book, perfectly titled, is a wonderfully easy read. Steyn separates the scientists' comments into a dozen sections based on the focus of their critiques, such as tree rings, history, fraud, etc., and he opens each section with an essay of his own.
The book focuses on Mann's use of statistical manipulation to hide scientific realities by writing out of the geologic record natural climate variability.... Much of the material Steyn assembled to critique Mann comes from scientists who share Mann's view humans are warming the globe by producing unnatural levels of carbon dioxide emissions. They just don't condone fraudulent presentations to support their beliefs...
The U.S. National Research Council pointedly noted Mann's statistical method "tends to bias the shape of the reconstruction." The scientists who collected the tree ring data Mann misused insist the data primarily indicate the effect of carbon dioxide fertilization, not temperature, on trees.
Steyn leads off A Disgrace to the Profession with prominent Princeton University physics professor William Happer likening Mann's work to the government's rewriting of history in the novel 1984...
It amazes me how easy it was for Steyn to assemble more than 100 scientists to strongly criticize Mann's work, but perhaps it shouldn't be surprising to see the scientific method eventually win out over shoddy research.
On the other hand, Charmaine Chan in The South China Morning Post doesn't care for it:
The hockey stick claims the current phase of global warming is unprecedented. Steyn cherry-picks quotes from scientists and others to support his contention the model is flawed... Readers who started the book with an opinion about climate change will not change their minds simply by being hit over the head with a collection of opposing views.
You can decide for yourself whether Dr Lehr or Ms Chan has the better of it by checking the book out for yourself. It's called "A Disgrace to the Profession", and it's the story of the 21st century's most famous graph and the damage it has wrought. It's available in paperback, but, if you can't wait, it's available instantly in Kindle and Nook.
~For the moment what Ms Chan calls "opposing views" are still permitted. But let's not forget the global warm-mongers are anxious to criminalize any disagreement. The Mannatollah has been salivating about jail time for his opponents for over a decade, as David Appell helpfully reminded us:
I think their crimes will be obvious in about a decade.
When I profiled Michael Mann for Scientific American, he said he thought it would eventually be illegal to deny climate change. I had doubts about that, but maybe.
Appell wrote the above in September 2012 - or about six months after saying, in private, that Mann is "not honorable" and does not "fight fair", and has an "intolerance" of dissent. But apparently Mann's intolerance of dissent needs to be buttressed by criminal prosecution.
That's why "climate change" is a free-speech issue. On the subject of which, John Stossel's free-speech documentary, featuring yours truly, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Kirsten Powers, Bosch Fawstin and others, will be given another airing on the Fox Business Network, this Friday, October 23rd, at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific. It was well received on its first broadcast a week or so back, so, if you missed it then, I hope you'll catch it this time round. Here's a brief teaser:
~As jubilation over the Trudeaupian Restoration sweeps my native land, longtime reader Professor John K C Lewis writes from Newfoundland re my election-day elegy:
Good day, Mark!
Stephen Harper's greatest sin of omission in my eyes was to have done nothing about the High River Gun Grab. It has been try much on my mind, as my wife and I visited Calgary about two weeks after the flood of the Bow River subsided. We attended the Stampede, sitting on seats which a few days before had been under water. The cleanup was remarkable. Every able-bodied, decent man and woman in Calgary worked mightily to clean up the mess.
While they were doing so, the RCMP entered High River and broke into many houses and stole their guns. They did no such thing at a nearby Indian reservation. I have spoken to several Conservative organizers about this, but the government never said anything, and if they did anything it was done very quietly. I had been a fair donator to the Conservative party before this, and they liked the support from an academic. Well, their lack of response to the Gun Grab cost them about $2000 of my money.
My wife and I voted Conservative today, because the Conservatives still are preferable to the Trudeau-ites and the NDP. And the High River Gun Grab is very leftist.
You are right about the meanness and shabbiness of the expulsion of Conrad Black from the Privy Council. Mean spirited and ignorant as well, because Conrad Black is one of the very best of Canadian historians (and oh do the academic historians hate that fact!).
And now into the leftist darkness.
John K. C. Lewis
Professor Lewis adds a postscript re the accompanying image to my column:
The photo showing Stephen Harper in front of a portrait of Sir John A. Macdonald is a study in contrasts.
I have long thought that it was boozing in pubs that made Sir John A. the skilled politician that he was. I think that without alcohol and low company he probably would have been a cold detached politician, and a not very successful one at that. Rather, meeting and mixing with the earthier part of his electorate, on a level playing field so to say, while they enjoyed the same recreation, probably softened him and helped him to develop his common touch - rather a coarse common touch at that.
That was never, to put it mildly, Stephen Harper's strength.
~See you on the radio with Hugh this afternoon at 6pm Eastern. Speaking of the Heartland Institute, here's my speech to them from earlier this year. The video begins with a much deserved award for Anthony Watts, proprietor of the indispensable climate website WattsUpWithThat.com, and then Jim Lakely turns up to introduce me about 20 minutes in. After that, I let rip on Magna Carta, the warm bit of Canada, naked Nobel Laureates, Rajendra Pantsdowni jumping the tracks - and, of course, Doctor Fraudpants and his hockey stick. Sit back and enjoy - and do stay tuned for the q-&-a at the end:
