I wouldn't want to let the week end, without admitting that, alas, self-garlanded Nobel Laureate Michael E Mann is on to me. He writes in The Huffington Post:
The Kochs, Scaifes & others have used their billions to construct a vast "Potemkin Village" (in the words of science historian Naomi Oreskes) of denialism, by funding groups like "Americans For Prosperity", the "Heartland Institute", the "Competitive Enterprise Institute" and a whole cadre of other front groups, organizations, and hired guns implicated in the campaign to discredit climate science and climate scientists. I should know since, as I describe in my book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, I found myself at the center of that campaign more than a decade ago because of my scientific work establishing the unprecedented nature of recent global warming.
This network of front groups, organizations, and paid advocates is sometimes referred to as the "Climate Denial Machine" or just "CDM"...
Gosh, those scary scare quotes around "Competitive Enterprise Institute" are terrifying!
Sadly, many hired guns of the CDM pretended not to take Dr Mann's revelation of their vast Potemkin Greater Metropolitan Area of Denialism seriously. Bishop Hill:
Is the tale of sceptics feeding off Exxon's millions any more credible than green lizards from Alpha Centauri taking over Michael Mann's brain?
Isn't it lizards from Alpha Draconis? It came up in my "human rights" battles in Canada, after Richard Warman got David Icke banned, because David believes in a secret world government run by pedophile Satanist Illuminati controlled by the Queen and the Bush family who are, he says, reptilian humanoids descended from the blood-drinking space lizards of the star system Alpha Draconis. He claims that the late Princess of Wales confirmed to him that the Royal Family are shape-shifting space reptiles. He wrote in 2001 that the dear old Queen Mum was quote "seriously reptilian". According to Icke, all 44 American presidents have apparently been space lizards, as was Bob Hope, Lady Gaga and the country singers Kris Kristofferson and Boxcar Willie.
Is Michael Mann a blood-drinking shape-shifting space lizard? It might explain why his scaly reptilian claws are so bad at handling data. And why he's able to shape-shift himself into a Nobel Laureate, and a man who's been exonerated by NOAA and the British Government. Just a thought.
As for the vast Koch-Scaife CDM (Cabal of Disparagers of Mann), Dr Mann is right. The untold billions from the Koch Brothers, the Scaife Brothers and the Koch-Scaife Brothers have funded all kinds of sinister "front groups" and "hired guns" to discredit Mann. One thinks of hired gun "Hendrik Tennekes" of the obvious Potemkin organization "the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute" and former member of the notorious front group "the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences", who attacked Dr Mann as "a disgrace to the profession".
Or paid hitman "John Christy", frontman "lead author" of the transnational Potemkin village "the IPCC", who said Mann "misrepresented the temperature record of the past 1,000 years".
Or hired assassin "I T Jolliffe" of the Koch-funded Potemkin tract "Principal Component Analysis" in the Scaife-funded Potemkin reference work "The International Encyclopedia of Statistical Science", who said Mann's science is "a piece of dubious statistics".
Or lavishly remunerated covert operative "Hans von Storch" of the Potemkin-peer-reviewed Potemkin journal "Annals of Geophysics" and winner of the Potemkin prize "the IMSC Achievement Award" awarded by the Potemkin judges of the totally bogus "International Meetings on Statistical Climatology", who described Mann's hockey stick as "rubbish".
Or hired sniper "Ulrich Cubasch", a Potemkin professor of Potemkin meteorology at the Potemkin Meteorological Institute of the Potemkin Free University of the vast Potemkin village of Berlin, who said "the real problem in this case, in my view, is that Michael Mann does not disclose his data".
Or crack terror cell "David S Chapman", "Marshall G Bartlett", and "Robert N Harris" of the Koch Industries in-house staff newsletter "Geophysical Research Letters", who called Mann's work "just bad science".
Or hired double-agent "John Cook" of the Koch-Scaife Climate Denial Machine undercover website "Skeptical Science" and front man of the denialist tract "Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand", who wrote, "Stay away from Mann's 2008 paper... It has actually been invalidated."
Or Koch-funded infiltrator "Wallace Smith Broecker", who in 1975 was given untold billions by the Scaife Brothers to invent the Potemkin term "global warming". Following further billions from the Koch Brothers Fund for Mild Disparagement, "Broecker" dismissed Mann's data as "sh*tty".
As you can tell from the above list, the vast Potemkin Village of Denialism is growing faster than the almost as vast Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Because it takes a Potemkin village to raze a Mann-child. Remember anyone who says anything mildly critical of Michael E Mann is only doing it because he or she is in the pay of the Denial Machine. Matter of fact, just to be on the safe side, assume that everyone is in the pay of the Koch-Scaife Brothers except Dr Mann, the Queen, both presidents Bush, Lady Gaga and the other blood-drinking shape-shifting space lizards.
~By the way, because they're so busy funding "the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute" and other Potemkin front groups, my own check from the Koch Brothers seems to have got lost in the mail. So, as the only non-hired gun, I'm having to savage Dr Mann on my own dime. If you're minded to support that effort by buying my free-speech book or our Steyn vs the Stick exclusive trial merchandise or a SteynOnline gift certificate, I'd be awfully grateful.
~Meanwhile, back in the real world, you'll recall the Big Climate enforcers had to take the hockey stick to climatologist Lennart Bengtsson when he wandered off the reservation.
Even so, some fellows just don't get the message. On May 4th Dr Caleb Rossiter wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on the damage the climate alarmists are doing to real life for real Africans. On May 7th, the Institute for Policy Studies sent him an email terminating him because of his deviation from Mann-style climate orthodoxy.
Golly, it's almost like these climate guys operate like a ruthless machine or something.
