Earlier this month, Steptoe & Johnson, the law firm representing the National Review and its writer, Mark Steyn, withdrew as Steyn’s counsel. According to two sources with inside knowledge, it also plans to drop the National Review as a client.Steyn says his manager was misquoted., that it was his decision to fire his lawyers, that he's still banking on the notion that claims of fraud are "free speech," and that he isn't very impressed with the American justice system, all in your typical Steynese.
The lawyers’ withdrawal came shortly after Steyn—a prominent conservative pundit, who regularly fills in as host of Rush Limbaugh's radio show—publicly attacked the former judge in the case, Natalia Combs Greene, accusing her of "stupidity" and "staggering" incompetence. Mann’s attorney, John B. Williams, suspects this is no coincidence. "Any lawyer would be taken aback if their client said such things about the judge," he says. "That may well be why Steptoe withdrew."
Steyn's manager, Melissa Howes, acknowledged that his commentary "did not go over well with the judge." But Steyn maintains it was his decision to part ways with his attorneys.
Do you ever get the impression that the biggest fan of Mark Steyn's verbiage is Mark Steyn? Like for a lot of political writers, especially on (but not limited to) the right, his work seems mostly a matter of how many people he can insult, and how clever he can be while doing it. Like this -- which demonstrates not an iota of understanding about climate science, the Climate Research scandal, or the Climategate emails.
At this rate, all Steyn has to do it keep commenting on the case, and it will be over in short-order. It would save everyone money on lawyer's fees....
It's a far bigger insult to the judge for you to imply they are not impartial - letting some perceived insult influence the case - that anything Steyn has said.
ReplyDeletePerhaps they do things differently down your way, HM, but as I understand it, officials of the judiciary get exercised about litigants displaying disrespect to the office, not its occupant.
ReplyDeleteLaw firms might be expected to be leery of clients who have such a weak grasp of this, if it makes them look bad by association. Or possibly such clients are generally more trouble than they're worth.
However, your main point - that David Appel has insultingly cast the judge as a vengeful martinet - is not supported by a closer reading of the posting. It was a quote from Mann's lawyer, who would be expected to know more about judges than we laymen. And to know what can be said about them and their ways in public. On the face of it, all competent to comment did think in fact think that what Steyn had to say about the judge in his case was worse than any implications of bias on her, or any other judge's, parts.
Lars: The MJ reporter said it was a quote from Steyn's manager.
ReplyDeleteDavid - I was referring to the quote from Mann's attorney - it's at the end of the preceding paragraph.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, it wasn't you.
Check. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteWell, I am a scientist, a paleogeneticist in fact. So as a consumer of climate modelling, I know not only that Mann's hockey stick was wrong, but also why it was wrong (Mann made some bad statistics mistakes, to add to the poor quality of the proxies that he used and the failure of his proxies to track temperature since 1960 --- which is why he had to use his "trick" to "hide the decline"). As a fact (one that is really not disputed by anyone in my community), our best current metrics show that the Medieval, Roman, and Minoan warm periods were all warmer than today; the Pliocene was much warmer. We really do not know why, nor how today's temperatures relate to current high levels of carbon dioxide. And, as was pointed out in the Climategate emails, we are really perplexed that Hanson, Mann, Metropolitan (everyone's) predicted (in the 1990's) so wrongly the 2013 temperature, given the continued increase in CO2. Negative feedbacks that we do not understand must be operating, as 2013 is no where near as hot as it should have been if Al Gore were correct.
ReplyDeleteSo to have the "political class" declaring the science "settled" rubs me (and everyone else in my field) the wrong way.
Further as a scientist, I found reprehensible the behaviour of "scientists" as revealed in Climategate (although I realize that this type of malfeasance goes on all of the time, especially after science has become politicized); if I had had the opportunity, I too would have "whistle blown". We went through their computer programs that East Anglia used line-by-line. I do not think there was proof of fraud, but anyone who understands the approximations that their model made would never base public policy on their climate models. And yet people are.
I am now trying to figure out how to send money to Steyn. Mann has been especially annoying by refusing to do what all of the rest of us scientists must do ("show our work"). He is even moving in court to block discovery of what (in an unpoliticized science) would be public as a matter of course. To date, outsiders have had to "reverse engineer" Mann's output to discover all of the ways he screwed up his data analysis. I will pay $1000 for the privilege of having access (via this trial) ti see Mann's screw ups directly.
Unknown: There is by now a lot of other work that essentially replicates MBH98, some using completely different mathematical techniques:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/mann2008/mann2008.html
“A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years,” Marcott et al, Science v339 n6124 pp 1198-1201, March 8, 2013
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6124/1198.abstract
"Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia," PAGES 2k Consortium, Nature Geosciences, April 21, 2013
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n5/abs/ngeo1797.html
A confirmation using a different statistical technique was Tingley and Huybers, reported on here:
"Novel Analysis Confirms Climate "Hockey Stick" Graph," Scientific American, November 2009, pp 21-22.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=still-hotter-than-ever
The PAGES 2k article does not find a global Medievel Warm Period.
No. Read the papers, David. All of them. Especially those in peer reviewed journals, which Scientific American is not. They do not "replicate" the hockey stick. Even in Mann's, the Medieval warming period is creeping back in.
DeleteAnd the Roman, Minoan, and Pliocene Warm Periods remain.
Since it is now clear that temperature is not historically high (on any paleo scale), the new effort is to find “temperature variability” (“climate weirding”, or some such).
Unknown wrote:
ReplyDeletewhich is why he had to use his "trick" to "hide the decline"
You clearly don't understand the context of that phrase at all, or the meaning there of "decline." It refers to a specific problem with tree ring density proxies in northern latitudes in recent decades -- what's called the "divergence problem" -- not any decline in global temperatures
Unknown wrote:
ReplyDeleteSo to have the "political class" declaring the science "settled"
Then take it up with the political class, including those who deny all of climate change. Scientists aren't saying the science is settled -- simply read the IPCC 5AR and you'll see their judgements of how well they know each major issue.
We don't even need climate models to know we have a big CO2 problem -- only to study past episodes of climate change, which all give a climate sensitivity of about 3 +/- 1 C. At the rate we're emitting CO2, it's not going to matter a lot whether that's 2 C or 4 C.
Having to reverse engineer Mann's code? It's been available for as long as I can remember:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/shared/research/MANNETAL98/
Mann superimposed multiple graphs. The graph based on tree ring proxies stopped ca. 1960. The "decline" that needed to be "hidden" was the fact that the proxies failed afterwards. They had the temperature declining when it was, in fact, increasing. The "trick" to "hide the decline" was to stop the line recording proxy data, and to add a line reporting thermometric data. Only the shrewdest observer saw the switch. Before ClimateGate, we wondered whether Mann did this "trick" to deliberately deceive. After Climategate, we know that others of his ilk did.
ReplyDeleteDid Mann commit fraud? Good question. But we now know from Climategate that others did, and we know their names.
Remarkably, Mother Jones yesterday published the same graph, with the same "trick", without pointing out (we doubt that they even know) that they are perpetuating the fraud.
I've read the papers. PAGES 2k does not find a global MWP, Marcott et al find an earlier warm period, and nothing I've seen doubts that the mid-Pliocene was warmer.
ReplyDeleteThe Sci Am piece reports on Tingley and Huybers.
Since it is now clear that temperature is not historically high (on any paleo scale), the new effort is to find “temperature variability” (“climate weirding”, or some such).
ReplyDeleteThat's ridiculous. It doesn't matter whether our temperature is historically high or historically low -- it matters that it's changing, rapidly.
The existence of a global MWP would make our current situation WORSE, since in addition to greenhouse warming we'd have a higher risk from a natural warming that could add to it.
As for the last comment ("we don't need climate models to know that we have a big CO2 problem").
ReplyDeleteLook. I am a scientist. I worry about whether models that say that CO2 causes climate change are supported or not. In glacial cores, CO2 mostly lags temperature rise; nothing in the historical record says that CO2 is a problem with respect to temperature. Maybe ocean acidification. Different question.
If you are worried about policy, fine. Not my bag. However, on the 10,000 year time scale, the science says that the natural threat is cooling. After all, Long Island is a glacial morraine. Glaciers covered Boston many times in the past; they will again.
We really do not know why. And we will not, now that the political class has destroyed climate science, not for a generation. And don't claim innocence, asking me to "take it up with the political class". You vote for these people. With Al Gore, we might have spent the last 20 years actually learning what the problems are, not attempting to manage people who use "tricks" to "hide" things.
David, I said read ALL of the papers. Not just the ones you agree with. And remember, with the politicization of the science, NONE of them can be trusted, on either side.
ReplyDeleteAnd no, the record does NOT say that temperature is changing "rapidly" now, and more than in the past. The glacial record shows climate change far more dramatic than what we have seen from 1700-present in 50 years.
In fact, the science says that we are in a remarkably stable period of global temperature.
I need to go get dinner. Either you want to learn the facts, and (more importantly) to know what you do not know, you need to do it on your own.
Remember, science is not about facts and numbers. It is an intellectual process that embodies a mechanism that prevents the scientist from always reaching the conclusion (s)he set out to reach.
They superimposed graphs. Big deal! Their graphs are very clear about what is instrument data, and what is reconstructed, in both MBH98 and MBH99. Since these have a common, pre-divergence period of overlap, they can be compared.
ReplyDeleteWould you like to also criticize their choice of font? People like you are so desparate to deny climate change you gloom onto the smallest of things and try to manufacture doubt out of them. And even that doesn't work.
Don't lecture me unless you use your real name -- doing so while anonymous is cowardly.
ReplyDeleteI do read all the papers, and nothing you've written here is in any way convincing -- it's all the same old crap that deniers have been flinging for a decade.
In fact, the science says that we are in a remarkably stable period of global temperature.
ReplyDeleteRidiculous. Global change of 0.1-0.2 C/decade is hardly stable in any sense, and it's large compared to almost all the Holocene. Sure, there have been occasional noninear sudden changes on millennial+ time scales. What's happening now is clearly different.
CO2 lags temperature for natural change, when it then amplifies the warming. Anthropogenic emissions are obviously a completely different situation.
ReplyDeleteCO2 is a strong greenhouse gas. It causes warming -- nothing makes sense in the history of climate without that fact. And all the Mark Steyns in the world are never going to change that.
we might have spent the last 20 years actually learning what the problems are, not attempting to manage people who use "tricks" to "hide" things.
ReplyDeleteThis is just an ignorant thing to write, especially if you are a scientist, which I doubt. Science has learned a huge amount in the last 20 years; sorry that's not up to your personal standards. But then, maybe if you were doing more and better science instead of trolling the Internet we'd know the answers to all the questions Al Gore is suppressing, right?
David, the issue clearly is that the models don't work. They haven't predicted temperature with any accuracy since their inception, and their creators can't explain why. The real ignorance is NOT being skeptical. I'm frankly stunned that people go around shouting about how the "science is settled" when climate scientists don't even know what they don't know yet.
ReplyDeleteDavid, I
ReplyDeleteI have my doubts that anonymous is a scientist. or if he is he is a very bad example of one.
his distortion of the science , especially , as you pointed out, regarding the "hide the decline, as well as the distortion of the climategte emails, indicates an ideological rigidity.
He also makes absolute assertions that no climate scientist I know makes "negative feedbacks that we don't understand MUST be happening."
If he was a real scientist I don;t see him using denier talking points like the CO2 lags warming" silliness. I almost expected him to say something that passes for being witty about dinosaurs driving SUV's.
I am all for being open to the possibility of negative feedbacks or other mitigating factors, and I do think that the general plateau of surface temps might be evidence for that, but since there are quite reasonable explanations that explain this fact without inventing unknown causes I find it ludicrous to dismiss all the huge diversity of evidence that there is no real pause or significant mitigation,.
As you point out and Brad admitted in a previous post, M&M never accused Mann of fraud, and here this guy (? Aren't they almost all middle aged white men) is insisting that Mann's work is just horrific, the way Muller did before verifying Mann's hockey stick.
Zach.
ReplyDeleteThe models don't predict temperatures they model likely trends. They are not designed to take into account natural variation or things that are unpredictable like volcanoes or changes in spar radiation etc.
The surface temps are now toward the low end of uncertainty, but in 1998 they were at the high end.
and as David has pointed out recent ocean temps are supporting the idea that current heat increase is in the oceans and not yet on the surface
David, the issue clearly is that the models don't work. They haven't predicted temperature with any accuracy since their inception....
ReplyDeleteThese are categorical statements that aren't scientifically meaningful.
Obviously models have SOME degree of accuracy:
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-useful-paper-on-one-models-results.html
so what does "models don't work" even mean? What does "accuracy" mean -- accuracy of what, and how good is there accuracy?
How "accurate" do models have to be?
How would you estimate future temperatures *without* a model?
PS: Models project, they don't predict.