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"Hockey Stick Warfare"
Steyn On-line ^ | February 5, 2024 | Amy K. Mitchell

Posted on 02/06/2024 4:50:22 AM PST by Twotone

There was a reason that Dante consigned hypocrites to one of the deepest, darkest reaches of hell in the Inferno. Hypocrites and hypocrisy writ large have, throughout history, caused more damage than almost all others. They believe they have carte blanche to do or say whatever they want — for fame, money, power, name the vice — but those same rules don't apply to their own lives. History has tried to educate the present with the thousands upon thousands of essays, books, and profiles dedicated to the subject, but those who have the most to gain ignore the wise counsel and advice of the past.

Which brings us to today in court. The Plaintiff has tried to argue that his reputation and income was, if not ruined, significantly impacted by the "statements at issue." The last three weeks have borne out the opposite, with the latest salvo resulting in the Defendants' counsel filing for a Rule 50 judgement which would have the case dismissed before it gets to the jury as a matter of law.

Pending that ruling, what happened today? Two witnesses for the Defense took the stand to testify how the good doctor knowingly spread rumors, attacked critics, and publicly, dare we say, defamed both fellow scientists and public figures. The Plaintiff's counsel had no choice but to try to convince the jury, during cross examination, that Dr. Judith Curry had succumbed to big oil to make a living post-academia (the horror) and that Steve McIntyre had never requested the one specific spreadsheet that held all of the hockey stick data that makes everything make sense (not that we the audience, or more importantly, the jury, has seen it either).

(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: defamation; hockeystick; marksteyn; michaelmann
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For those following the Steyn vs Mann defamation trial.
1 posted on 02/06/2024 4:50:22 AM PST by Twotone
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To: Twotone

Michael Mann’s harassment lawsuit against Mark Steyn has been going on for 12 years. Ridiculous.


2 posted on 02/06/2024 4:55:27 AM PST by tlozo ( Better to Die on Your Feet than Live on Your Knees )
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To: Twotone

Just heard this discussed on the radio the other day.It seems like he’s been taken through the ringer by this filthy punk. I also heard that Mark’s had three heart attacks recently and is confined to a wheelchair. He and Walter Williams were my two favorite guest hosts on Rush’s show.


3 posted on 02/06/2024 4:56:10 AM PST by Gay State Conservative (Proudly Clinging To My Guns And My Religion)
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To: tlozo

And Mann has stated he will appeal the verdict REGARDLESS of the result. He & his deep-pocketed friends want to drag National Review back into court. Basically he’s trying to bankrupt any conservative entity that dares to criticize him.


4 posted on 02/06/2024 5:02:04 AM PST by Twotone (We have to stop punishing ourselves for considering things that once seemed crazy. - B. Weinstein)
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To: Twotone

My wife wanted to watch the “Yellowstone” series, so I agreed to watch it with her.

At some point, they introduce a lesbian couple into the plot.

No valid reason. Doesn’t bear on the plot. But they introduce them.

Strike One.

Then, one of the lesbians is a New York Reporter...in Montana. And when trying to pry information from the main character’s son, she says something like “I find that truth in the West is a scarce commodity...”

This coming from ANY New York reporter. I groaned aloud and said “Oh, for Pete’s sake!” and my wife promptly said “You don’t have to watch it with me.”

That line had no effect on her, because she isn’t paying attention to the world today in the way I do. Hypocrisy is one of the most galling transgressions of the Left (in all areas, politics, media, education) that they ferociously project onto Conservatives.

That line in the movie should have counted for at least two strikes for me, but I want to make the effort to spend time with her on these kinds of things this winter.


5 posted on 02/06/2024 5:09:03 AM PST by rlmorel ("The stigma for being wrong is gone, as long as you're wrong for the right side." (Clarice Feldman))
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To: Twotone

I’m still wondering why Mann left PSU for Penn.

Would love to hear the skinny on that....


6 posted on 02/06/2024 5:18:51 AM PST by mewzilla (Never give up; never surrender!)
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To: rlmorel

This is why women gravitate left. I say this as a 63 yr old woman. I would never trust women in politics outside of Margaret Thatcher.


7 posted on 02/06/2024 5:20:46 AM PST by AbolishCSEU (Amount of "child" support paid is inversely proportionate to mother's actual parenting of children)
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To: Twotone; tlozo; Gay State Conservative; mewzilla

I hold nothing but abject contempt for Michael Mann.

His non-rejection by the “scientific community” (large parts of it) says all you need to know about science today, which is on par with Dr. Floyd Ferris and Dr. Robert Statler at the “State Science Institute” in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”. For those who understand that reference, nothing further needs to be said. It symbolizes the fascist coordination between a tyrannical government and a compliant and cooperative ostensible “scientific community” to achieve the goals of a tyrannical government.

That is symbolized not only in the climate alarmism that is being codified in the State, the Media, and Educational entities, but in what we saw with COVID and the willing compliance of the medical community to go along with it at best, and at worst, to militantly embrace the fraudulent “science” in order to line their pockets. It is also what is seen with the transgenderism scam.

As for Michael Mann and his faux “science”, I followed this closely when I heard that the source code for the climate models that predicted doom for civilization had been hacked and inspected by people who knew how to do it, and they actually found comments in the model’s computer code (for those who don’t know, “Comments” in computer code are a form of documentation so that people understand what the computer code is actually doing.) that spelled out how it was meant to manipulate the code to achieve a deceitful and intentionally flawed result.

That is, it was meant to modify the output in order to get rid of uncomfortable or inconvenient data that Climate Alarmists like Michael Mann would have a hard time explaining without exposing their advocacy not of Science with a capital “S”, but instead, Climate Alarmism.

It has been some years since I examined the code and the analysis done by the people who got their hands on it, but that is how I remember it.


8 posted on 02/06/2024 5:27:29 AM PST by rlmorel ("The stigma for being wrong is gone, as long as you're wrong for the right side." (Clarice Feldman))
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To: AbolishCSEU

It is a source of pain to me, but I have to rationalize it by seeing her as apolitical, which she is.

She is no Leftist or even a Liberal, which I know from in depth discussion in which she participates and reveals her underlying stances, but her non-interest in what is going on nationally is a disappointment to me.

She is not alone in this, but I suspect she feels it is “all politics” and won’t affect her or us as individuals, and I am past the point of trying to explain to her that her fastidiousness at finding the cheapest prices for gasoline, groceries, or even investing our money, is all like spitting into a hurricane if your government works to make all the effort completely worthless by raising your taxes and devaluing your income.

Sigh. But she is my wife, and I have to accept this.


9 posted on 02/06/2024 5:32:41 AM PST by rlmorel ("The stigma for being wrong is gone, as long as you're wrong for the right side." (Clarice Feldman))
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To: mewzilla

“I’m still wondering why Mann left PSU for Penn.

Would love to hear the skinny on that....”


No skinny needed.

U Penn is Ivy League — Mann wants Ivy League on his 62 page CV.


10 posted on 02/06/2024 5:37:05 AM PST by BBB333 (The Power Of Trump Compels You!)
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To: Gay State Conservative

I also heard that Mark’s had three heart attacks recently and is confined to a wheelchair.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJLhwQmjJZY
It has been an extremely interesting trial to watch and to then watch the daily commentary by the folks from The Heartland Institute. On Friday, Heartland had Ann McElhinney on for most of their one hour show... McElhinney and her husband Phelim McAleer are at the trial every day and then post re-enactments of the courtroom dialogue... these are all posted on the Steynonline homepage.

I mention this because on the Friday Heartland program, McElhinney made mention of all the health problems that Steyn has had and it certainly seems that all these have stemmed from the stress of the court case. We can only pray that this all does not have the same outcome of the case where Mann sued Dr. Timothy Ball...The case was thrown out, Ball was awarded costs, he never collected on those costs and he died bankrupt shortly thereafter.

https://www.steynonline.com/12840/ball-bearing Here is the column that Steyn wrote right after Dr. Ball died.....as he said, it was written in ‘cold rage’.

https://andrewlawton.ca/like-the-sword-of-damocles-judge-dismisses-michael-manns-lawsuit-against-tim-ball/

https://financialpost.com/opinion/inside-litigious-world-climate-hockey-sticks By the way, here’s a good piece in the Financial Post that touches on the history of all this over the last 20 years including the current trial.


11 posted on 02/06/2024 5:40:30 AM PST by hecticskeptic
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To: rlmorel

I wonder if Steyn or his co-defenndent knew about this. He certainly had the emails where they discussed Mann’s “trick” to adjust the output.


12 posted on 02/06/2024 5:49:25 AM PST by Twotone (We have to stop punishing ourselves for considering things that once seemed crazy. - B. Weinstein)
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To: rlmorel
My wife wanted to watch the “Yellowstone” series, so I agreed to watch it with her.

Later in your post, you claim "Strike One" but this line is "Strike Three".

Your viewing with her is not welcome, and for sure, she doesn't want to hear any negative comments.

Go for a walk, get a sammich, drink a beer, anything that is not in the same room as she who wants no critique.

13 posted on 02/06/2024 6:12:27 AM PST by USS Alaska (NUKE ALL MOOSELIMB TERRORISTS, NOW.)
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To: rlmorel

It’s cheaper to keep her. My current husband just ended 19.5 years of indentured servitude to his leftist ex. “Child” support goes automatically to age 21 here yet “children” can vote starting at age 18.


14 posted on 02/06/2024 6:57:39 AM PST by AbolishCSEU (Amount of "child" support paid is inversely proportionate to mother's actual parenting of children)
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To: rlmorel

My wife stopped watching Yellowstone. I never watched it.
I watch reality and science almost exclusively.


15 posted on 02/06/2024 7:02:26 AM PST by TStro (God made all men equal Sam Colt made them polite.)
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To: rlmorel

I saw the computer code.
Lines of code that were written to produce the “Hockey Stick” data and nothing else.


16 posted on 02/06/2024 7:04:31 AM PST by TStro (God made all men equal Sam Colt made them polite.)
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To: mewzilla

Why? Penn is an Ivy League school therefore more prestige and friendlier ideologically.


17 posted on 02/06/2024 7:11:39 AM PST by Reily (!!)
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To: USS Alaska

I know what you mean, but I have to find a way to spend time with her.

At this stage of our lives, she is retired younger than me, and I am still working, so she spends a lot of time on her own, and I am still working up to 60 hours a weeks and am pretty wrung out when I get home, so I am trying like mad to find things were we can hang out, even if it is just to watch a movie or something.

If it gets bad enough, I will bring my laptop out and Freep during the watching.


18 posted on 02/06/2024 7:16:10 AM PST by rlmorel ("The stigma for being wrong is gone, as long as you're wrong for the right side." (Clarice Feldman))
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To: AbolishCSEU

Heck, that isn’t an issue with us. It isn’t a thing about keeping her or not (that is not even in question) but it is a question of finding reasons to spend time together, even if just to yak about some thing we are watching.

I don’t watch television at all, not even sports anymore, but I do watch movies. I find I am plumbing old movies from the 30’s to the 2000’s, but every once in a while she gets something from the library and pleasantly surprises me.

We just watched a new movie, which I never in a million years would have pulled off the rack called “The Holdovers”, and was completely charmed by a feel-good movie with zero woke-political correctness BS in it. Loved it.

I’ve decided to be a curmudgeon. It is easier to embrace it. But that also means I shut out new music and new movies...:)

I can live with that!


19 posted on 02/06/2024 7:24:40 AM PST by rlmorel ("The stigma for being wrong is gone, as long as you're wrong for the right side." (Clarice Feldman))
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To: TStro

Yes. I had the same viewpoint after seeing the code. I didn’t understand the code itself, but I sure did understand what the “comments” were there for, and in reading them, what they were meant to “explain”.

Fraud. Pure and simple.

So, when I went to Wikipedia to update myself on the names and time frames involved (because dates like birth/death dates are the only reliable thing there) I found it both amusing and irritating to see how they address this kind of subject with outright lies, and if it isn’t an outright lie, it is an obfuscation or a slant via specific language.

I despise them, but find an odd enjoyment in using their bandwidth without giving them a cent for it.


20 posted on 02/06/2024 7:28:47 AM PST by rlmorel ("The stigma for being wrong is gone, as long as you're wrong for the right side." (Clarice Feldman))
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