“Nowhere does Mr. Mann explain why a scientist might be more easily corrupted by a check from, say, a coal company than by one from a politically controlled institution.”
Anne Jolis closes her Wall Street Journal review of Michael Mann’s new book with:
… Yet for all his caviling about “smear campaigns,” “conspiracy theorists” and “character assassination,” Mr. Mann is happy to employ similar tactics against his opponents. Patrick Michaels, former president of the American Association of State Climatologists and a past program chair of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Applied Climatology, is introduced as “a prominent climate change contrarian at the University of Virginia primarily known for his advocacy for the fossil fuel industry.” (Nowhere does Mr. Mann explain why a scientist might be more easily corrupted by a check from, say, a coal company than by one from a politically controlled institution.)
Just this February, Mr. Mann took to the Daily Kos to praise the theft of internal documents from the free-market Heartland Institute for offering “a peek behind the curtain of industry-funded climate change denial.” It was revelatory, but not in the way he thought. Hours after Mr. Mann posted his online musings, the much-decorated hydroclimatologist Peter Gleick (2003 MacArthur fellow, adviser to the EPA and, until recently, chairman of the American Geophysical Union’s task force on scientific ethics) confessed to the Heartland theft. Apologizing for his actions, he wrote that he had been “blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts—often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated—to attack climate science and scientists.”
Mr. Mann closes “The Hockey Stick” with a passionate call for more scientists to join him “on the front lines of the climate wars.” “Scientific truth alone,” Mr. Mann writes, “is not enough to carry the day in the court of public opinion.” It would be “irresponsible,” he says, “for us to silently stand by while industry-funded climate change deniers succeed in confusing and distracting the public and dissuading our policy makers from taking appropriate actions.” These are unfortunate conclusions for a scientist-turned-climate-warrior whose greatest weakness has always been a low estimation of the public intellect.
The Old Grouch: It makes me laugh that he accuses each person who disagrees with him as being on industry payroll as if that is any different than being on the government gravy train.
Actually, there is a huge difference between being on an industry payroll and the government gravy train. The industry money came from people voluntarily purchasing the products of industry because the products were more valuable to them than the money they cost. The government money was extracted from the same people by extortion because the government was willing to initiate unlimited force upon them if they did not pay the demanded tribute (aka taxes).
If every transaction that led to the industry payroll is voluntary on the part of everyone involved, how can that be corrupt? Especially since any party in the set of transactions can refuse to be a party without consequence beyond not receiving the goods and services for sale. How can being on the government gravy train not be corrupt since the extorted parties cannot refuse to be to be a party to the transaction without having his wealth and freedom taken from him by force of arms?
It takes a monumental equivocation of terms and evasion of the reality to hold they are the same simply because money changed hands. One is a consequence of a free and voluntary trade while the other is indistinguishable from the operation of a gang of thugs enforcing a protection racket. That the gang of thugs have a piece of paper on which they wrote their acts are “legal” is irrelevant to the analysis. Especially with respect to the individuals who actually created the wealth behind the money in the first place.
Why, pray tell me, would one insult a Snake Oil Salesman by comparing this document thief enabler to a noble profession.
Sales that is.
Mann comes from a long and storied line of Snake Oil salesmen.
Mann is a man who is working to insure his government funding is maintained by continuing to state the global warming the Obama party line. It makes me laugh that he accuses each person who disagrees with him as being on industry payroll as if that is any different than being on the government gravy train.
Mann is so morally bankrupt that you have to question anything that he has to say.
Greed is a powerful curse that prompts many people to just fudge the facts a little or a lot.
Regarding what Ms Jolis calls Mann’s “similar tactics against his opponents”, he doesn’t simply get his material out of thin air. Mann says this about anti-skeptic book author Ross Gelbspan, while doing a brief review of the Hoggan/Littlemore “Climate Cover-Up” book at an October 2009 RealClimate blog: “Ross Gelbspan, who has set the standard for investigative reporting when it comes to the climate change denial campaign…” http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/climate-cover-up-a-brief-review/
Throw the name “Gelbspan” into a ClimateGate search window, and you’ll see how the results take you to Mann’s cc email address lists, and to a suggestion he made to Osborn, Briffa, Jones & Ray Bradley about sending material to sympathetic ‘outlets’.
I could go on for pages on these troubles concerning what has every appearance of being a literally unsupportable accusation against skeptic scientists stemming from a highly questionable single source…….. oh, wait, I already have, including right here at JunkScience. Click on my name above.