On Wednesday I was honored to be a guest on Joyce Kaufman's special 24th anniversary show. One of her constant themes through this last almost-quarter-century has been illegal immigration, so she was eager to talk about Donald Trump and his plan to end "birthright citizenship". You can hear the interview here: I turn up halfway through the final hour at 30 minutes past.
~Alleged science journalist David Appell accuses me of "doctoring" a quote from Michael E Mann's colleague Phil Jones in my new book on Mann's cartoon climatology, "A Disgrace To The Profession". According to Appell:
Mark Steyn is doctoring words from Climategate emails... This is shocking for being so obvious.
Ooooooh! Sometimes I shock myself! Mr Appell says I deliberately left out the following passage highlighted in bold:
1) Keith didn't mention in his Science piece but both of us
think that you're on very dodgy ground with this long-term
decline in temperatures on the 1000 year timescale. What
the real world has done over the last 6000 years and what
it ought to have done given our understandding of Milankovic
forcing are two very different things. I don't think the
world was much warmer 6000 years ago - in a global sense
compared to the average of the last 1000 years, but this is
my opinion and I may change it given more evidence.
2) The errors don't include all the possible factors. Even
though the tree-ring chronologies used have robust rbar
statistics for the whole 1000 years ( ie they lose nothing
because core numbers stay high throughout), they have lost
low frequency because of standardization. We've all tried
with RCS/very stiff splines/hardly any detrending to keep
this to a minimum, but until we know it is minimal it is
still worth mentioning. It is better we ( I mean all of us
here) put the caveats in ourselves than let others put them
in for us.
Appell accuses me of not giving the full quote or putting in ellipses for all that text I left out. He says the quote "is simply wrong, and worse, it's dishonest".
Unfortunately, he has not, in fact, read my book - available here. Were he to trouble himself to procure a copy he would find on pages 105 and 106 the following passage:
1) Keith [Briffa] didn't mention in his Science piece but both of us think that you're on very dodgy ground with this long-term decline in temperatures on the thousand-year timescale. What the real world has done over the last 6,000 years and what it ought to have done given our understanding of Milankovic forcing are two very different things. I don't think the world was much warmer 6,000 years ago - in a global sense compared to the average of the last 1,000 years, but this is my opinion and I may change it given more evidence.
2) The errors don't include all the possible factors. Even though the tree-ring chronologies used have robust rbar statistics for the whole thousand years (ie they lose nothing because core numbers stay high throughout), they have lost low frequency because of standardization. We've all tried with RCS/very stiff splines/hardly any detrending to keep this to a minimum, but until we know it is minimal it is still worth mentioning. It is better we ( I mean all of us here) put the caveats in ourselves than let others put them in for us.
David Appell's somewhat pompous slogan on his website is:
Rule #1: You can never ask too many questions.
But apparently "Do I need to verify this accusation before I make an arse of myself by publishing it?" isn't one of them.
Nevertheless, Mr Appell strikes me as one of the less insane partisans on the climate front. In this case, he made the mistake of taking the word of a poisonous anonymous sock-puppet. It would perhaps be too much to expect him to correct his post - and in future to make sure he reads a book before he confidently announces its shortcomings. As I advise him in this comment:
"Doctor", heal thyself.
But, if he wants to find fault with my book and can't afford it even with the steep Amazon discounts, he can always write and ask for a review copy.
~Is there nothing the Jews can't weaponize? In my book After America (personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available, etc), I write on page 271:
In late 2010, there was a series of shark attacks in the Red Sea off the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. On an official Egyptian government news site, the Governor of South Sinai, Mohamed Abdul Fadil Shousha, speculated that the fatal attacks in the hitherto peaceful waters were due to "the Mossad throwing in the deadly shark to hit tourism in Egypt". Other sources wondered if the Mossad had gone further and equipped the aquatic predators with GPS. Could be. Governor Shousha has undoubtedly seen the famous Hollywood film about a killer shark terrorizing a beach resort - Jews. Oh, c'mon, you're not gonna let a one-vowel typing error in the poster throw you off what it's really about, are you?
But you would expect an insatiable blood-lusting killing machine to make common cause with the Zionists, wouldn't you? Who could have foreseen that they'd move on from sharks to recruit cute, cuddly dolphins?
The paper said that the Israeli dolphin had been captured off the shores of the Gaza Strip a few days ago.
The sources said Hamas naval commandos had noticed the dolphin making "suspicious movements." When they followed the mammal, they discovered that it was carrying a device to monitor underwater activities, they said.
They claimed that Hamas frogmen had managed to seize the dolphin and take it to the shore, and that the dolphin had been equipped with a remote control monitoring device and a camera.
According to the sources, the captured device can fire small arrows that could kill or seriously wound anyone who dove deep into the sea.
The report said Hamas believed Israel was planning to target or monitor the movement's naval commandos during their training in the sea.
The dolphin was originally a Hamas dolphin but was ensnared in a classic Zionist honey trap by a Mossad agent who specializes in spotting enemy dolphins who can be turned - or "Flippers", as they're known.
~The Washington Examiner reports on yet another green boondoggle, this one backed by wannabe planet-saver and plutocrat Tom Steyer:
The measure, created and backed by wealthy environmentalist Tom Steyer, sought to raise taxes on corporations and use the money to fund green energy projects in schools.
He promised it would create 11,000 new jobs each year. What could go wrong..?
On Monday, the Associated Press reported that the program has "created" just 1,700 jobs in three years — just under 600 jobs per year or roughly five percent of what was promised, at the cost of $175,000 per job. Even that paltry figure fails to account for opportunity costs — i.e. jobs lost statewide because of the forced diversion of economic resources away from productive industries and toward green energy...
That's not to say no one has benefited. More than half of the $297 million given to schools under the program so far, AP reports, has gone to "consultants and energy auditors."
Uh-huh. It's a solid report, but I confess I prefer Tim Blair's headline, which gets to the nub of the matter:
Everything Green is Stupid and Doesn't Work
~Unlike non-reader David Appell, reader John Lewis, a physicist by profession, is enjoying his copy of my new book:
The "Disgrace to the Profession" book has arrived in time enough that Doug (to whom you most kindly
inscribed it) will be able to take it with him when he returns to his drillship off Nigeria early next week."Disgrace to the Profession" is a great contribution to scientific integrity. We in physics are trained to
use Newman's "keen and delicate instruments" but indeed they are no match for "the passion and
the pride of Mann" [sorry]. Mann and his fellow bullyboys don't know how to use the tools proper
to the profession, and think that the cudgel is a substitute. However, you wield
the rapier, and with great skill, and "the vorpal blade went snicker-snack". Mann will realise soon
enough that he is dead, scientifically. If only the same could be said of his lawyers.
Thank you for that, Professor Lewis. Today, Thursday, I'll be talking about "A Disgrace to the Profession" on the radio bright and early with Michael Graham in Atlanta, and then in the afternoon Howie Carr across New England, and Hugh Hewitt coast to coast.
