As reported last night, Michael Mann carelessly libeled Andrew Bolt Down Under - see Litigious Climate Change Cultist Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann Libels Sydney Herald Sun Columnist Andrew Bolt (actually, Melbourne, but let's not sue over it) - and was forced to issue a grudging apology, after which he spent the rest of the night Googling any goods he could get on Bolt and reTweeting it into the small hours. Did he have a class to teach this morning?
Richard K also notes:
Mann's puerile response to a recent editorial about climate change theory by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer is to advocate swigging alcohol every time he encounters an idea in it he finds offensive. It's an interesting approach and indeed suggests prolific drinking may account for Mann's "science" and public behavior.
"Drinking game" jokes, like "Knock knock" jokes, require a certain adherence to formula: You're supposed to take a drink every time a certain word is said. For example, the Michael Mann Drinking Game might require a chug at every mention of Denial Machine, Koch Machine, Murdoch, Denier, Scaife, Denier, Denial Machine, KochMurdochScaifeMachine, etc. If you're just draining your glass every time you disagree with something, it's not a drinking game, it's a drinking problem.
Meanwhile, Steve McIntyre presents Part Four of his series on Michael E Mann's serial misrepresentation of the various bodies he claims have exonerated him (see "Dr Mann is Exonerated", beginning on page 19). With the Oxburgh panel, the President of the Royal Statistical Society criticized him in no uncertain terms. With the Muir Russell report, Mann's lawyers doctored a quotation. With the House of Commons report, Mann took another quotation out of context and inverted its meaning.
In his latest analysis, Steve McIntyre turns his attention to the "Government Response to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee 8th Report of Session 2009-10: The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change by Command of Her Majesty". Which is a long title for a rather short document.
Mann presents it as his personal exoneration by the "government of the United Kingdom", and artfully sidesteps naming the particular "Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change". It's a chap called Chris Huhne, who subsequently was forced to resign and went to jail for obstruction of justice - which by happy coincidence is the same crime for which Mann's champion, the now disgraced Penn State president Graham Spanier (fulsomely thanked in Mann's book), has been charged with. British sentencing policy being somewhat more lenient than America's, Mr Huhne is no longer being detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure. But, had he found himself sharing a cell with President Spanier, I'm sure the two would have had plenty to talk about.
That's not the most basic issue with Mann's "exoneration" by the "government of the United Kingdom", however. As Mr McIntyre points out, the problem with citing this document under the title "Dr Mann is Exonerated" is that nowhere in its 13 pages does it even mention Michael E Mann. It refers only to British employees of a British university. In the movie playing on an endless loop in the canyons of his mind, Dr Mann is the heroic star of his own ongoing epic, but, in the actual pages of the investigations he claims have vindicated him, he's irrelevant and unmentioned.
As we've seen, Dr Mann is also a doctor of quotations. He doesn't actually doctor the quotation this time, but he misattributes it, reassigning the words of the Muir Russell report to "the government of the United Kingdom" - as Steve McIntyre spots:
As altered, the claims appear to be separate findings of the UK government, rather than them merely noting the prior findings of the Muir Russell panel.
The concluding sentence of this section is a doozy, even by Mann's standards:
Accordingly, as far as expressly determined by the government of the United Kingdom, there is no truth to any allegation of data manipulation, misconduct or fraud.
The Government of the United Kingdom "expressly determined" nothing. What's more, as Mr McIntyre writes:
Nor does the DECC document support the wildly exaggerated claim of the concluding sentence: none of the terms "manipulation", "misconduct" or "fraud" appear anywhere in the DECC response.
Indeed. I'm beginning to feel the same way about Dr Mann's prose that Mary McCarthy felt about Lillian Hellman. As noted in court, Dr Mann's entire argument is an appeal to authority. Why, he's a Nobel Laureate! And he's been exonerated by official government bodies! But he's not a Nobel Laureate. And the government bodies don't even mention him. And, when you read what they actually say about data disclosure and scientific transparency, they're entirely at odds with Michael Mann's modus operandi.
Steve McIntyre is doing sterling work here. It will be immensely useful in Dr Mann's deposition, which should come sooner rather than later.
~If you'd like to support Steyn's pushback against Mann and his enforcers, please see here.
