ONCE UPON A TIME there was a thing called "geologic time". It was a hell of a ride, as Professor Robert Laughlin of Stanford, summarizes:
Six million years ago the Mediterranean Sea dried up. Ninety million years ago alligators and turtles . . .
. . . cavorted in the Arctic. One hundred million years ago the oceans flooded the middle of North America and preserved dinosaur bones. Three hundred million years ago, northern Europe burned to a desert and coal formed in Antarctica.
No humans were involved, nor a single SUV or air conditioner. There was no caveman Al Gore to distribute an awareness-raising poster of the last 'gator plashing merrily around the North Pole as the ice closes in. Hasta la vista, Arctic turtle! See you later, alligator!
Climate change . . . is a matter of geologic time, something that the earth routinely does on its own without asking anyone's permission or explaining itself. The earth doesn't include the potentially catastrophic effects on civilization in its planning . . . Were the earth to determine to freeze Canada again, for example, it's difficult to imagine doing anything except selling your real estate in Canada.
I doubt even Michael E. Mann, the subject of this book and a man ever ready to pin the scarlet "D" to your chest, could get away with labeling Robert Laughlin a "climate denier". Professor Laughlin is a Nobel Laureate -- a genuine on, that is, not a fake, self-conferred one like Mann. Professor Laughlin is less a climate denier than a climate insouciant: If God or Gaia decides to reset the global thermostat, you might as well relax, because there's not much you can do about it. . . .
. . . .
Then came the "hockey stick".
It was the single most influential graph in the history of climate science. It leapt from the pages of a scientific journal to the posters and slides of the transnational summits, to official government pamphlets selling the Kyoto Protocol, to a starring role on the big screen in an Oscar-winning movie, to the classrooms of every schoolhouse throughout the western world. At the turn of the 21st century it sold the simplest of propositions: This is the hottest year of the hottest decade of the hottest century of the millennium -- which is, like, forever.
And suddenly no one remembered "geologic time" or "natural climate variability" anymore. In the history of Mann-made climate change, "nothing happened in the work before the 20th century" (as Oxford physicist Jonathan Jones put it) after which the mercury shot up and straight through the top of the thermometer: in other words, it's all your fault. As MIT's Richard Lindzen observed:
This is the problem. These guys think saying 'climate change', saying it gets warmer or colder by a few tenths of a degree, should be taken as evidence that the end of the world is coming. And it completely ignores the fact that until this hysteria, climate scientists used to refer to the warm period in our history as 'optima'.
. . . .
In 2012 Michael E. Mann sued me and various other parties in the District of Columbia Superior Court for "defamation of a Nobel Prize recipient". He was obliged to withdraw the false claim to be a Nobel Prize recipient, but not the defamation charge -- over my description of his hockey stick as "fraudulent". I'll stand by that. It does not prove what it purports to prove. . . . I wonder how many of those who regard it as an authoritative graph of global science across the centuries are aware that its hockey-stick for the entire hemisphere depends on two clumps of trees: some California bristlecones, and some cedars from the Gaspe Peninsula -- or rather, for the years up to 1421, just one cedar from the Graspe Peninsula. . . . How many of us, on being assured that "the science is settled", are aware that its been settled on the basis of one Quebecois tree?
. . . . The American Civil Liberties Union, The Washington Post, NBC News, The Lost Angeles Times and various other notorious right-wing climate deniers all filed amici briefs opposed to Michael Mann and his assault on free speech. They did this not because they have any great love for me or any of the other parties, but because their antipathy was outweighed by their appreciation of the First Amendment -- and an understanding of the damage a Mann victory would inflict on it.
. . . . In court his argument was a straightforward appeal to authority: Why, all those eminent acronymic bodies, from the EPA and NSF and NOAA even unto HMG in London, have proved that all criticisms of Mann are false and without merit. So I certainly expected them to file briefs on his behalf -- and, given that Mann sees this as part of a broader "war on science" by well-funded "deniers", I also expected briefs from the various professional bodies: the National Academy of Sciences, the American Physical Society, the Royal Society, etc.
And yet the deadline came and passed, and not a single amicus brief was filed on behalf of Mann. Not one.
So Michael Mann is taking a stand for science. But evidently science is disinclined to take a stand for Michael Mann.
Mark Steyn, Editor, "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 1," Stockade Books (2015)
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