February 02, 2024

Trial Of Mann v. Steyn, Part III: More On Damages; Simberg And Steyn's First Witness

February 02, 2024/ Francis Menton

Readers seem to be enjoying my posts on the Mann v. Steyn trial, so I’m going to continue with one more today.
Meanwhile, the court does not hold trials on Fridays, so the proceeding has recessed for the weekend, to resume Monday morning.
It’s likely that the trial will get very interesting next week, as the defendants present the heart of their case and as things wrap up. In the interim, I’ll provide some comments on the events yesterday, which was the 11th day of the trial.

January 31, 2024

Further Notes On Mann v. Steyn: The Plaintiff Rests

January 31, 2024/ Francis Menton

The Mann v. Steyn trial in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia is now in the middle of its third week. For more background on the case, see my post from a few days ago here.
I have been watching some substantial chunks of the trial on the court’s livestream, although unfortunately several other matters have prevented me from watching the entirety. Today at the lunch break, the plaintiff Michael Mann concluded the presentation of his case. The technical term is that the plaintiff “rested.” So I thought a short update would be timely.
Because I haven’t seen the whole thing, I’ll just cover some aspects that I find interesting.

January 27, 2024

January 27, 2024/ Francis Menton

Way back in October 2012, climate alarmist and activist Michael Mann brought a libel suit against Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg for allegedly defamatory blog posts that the two had written a few months previously.
The case has gone through an incredible history of procedural twists and turns since then, a few of which I have covered in prior blog posts, for example here on March 20, 2014, and here on March 26, 2021. The trial finally started on January 16.
Probably most readers here are familiar with the case to at least some degree, and many may even be following the trial. (The court has a live feed available to the public. Follow this link at WattsUpWithThat if you want to tune in during the coming week.). I have watched some substantial chunks of the trial during its first two weeks.
So what have they been talking about all that time without ever getting to the Hockey Stick?

January 07, 2024

January 07, 2024/ Francis Menton

It’s been almost two years (February 20, 2022) since I added a post to this series. The reason is that global surface temperatures, as measured by NOAA and NASA, had decreased somewhat from 2020 highs, bringing about a hiatus in the otherwise endless drumbeat of propaganda from those agencies claiming “hottest month ever” or “hottest year ever.”
But then a strong El Niño early last year induced a small temperature increase several months later, picked up by the NOAA/NASA thermometer network. Result: From NOAA, October 16, 2023 (“Globally, September 2023 was the warmest September in the 174-year NOAA record. The year-to-date (January–September) global surface temperature ranked as the warmest such period on record.”); NOAA, November 15 (“The planet added another record-breaking month to 2023, with October ranking as the warmest October in the 174-year global climate record.”); Axios, December 14 (“With November ranking as the warmest such month on record, NOAA is projecting greater than 99.5% odds that this year will be the world's warmest since instrument records began in the 19th century.”). Expect the official announcement that 2023 was the “hottest year ever” to come out some time around the middle of this month.
But do the data really establish that the most recent months and year are the hottest?

February 11, 2023

February 11, 2023/ Francis Menton

The briefing is now complete in Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council v. EPA. That is the case, currently pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where a small and brave band of electricity consumers, CHECC, challenges the “science” behind EPA’s 2009 finding that CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” constitute a danger to human health and welfare. I am one of the attorneys for CHECC.
In the case, we ask the court to compel EPA to go back and re-assess the “science” of greenhouse gas “endangerment.” The briefing process gave EPA the chance to put its best foot forward as to the scientific basis underlying the finding of endangerment.
What is truly remarkable is the extent to which EPA, not to mention the entire government-backed scientific establishment, completely lack any real scientific basis for the claim of great “danger.”

September 26, 2022

September 26, 2022/ Francis Menton

Canadian climate scientist Dr. Tim Ball passed away on Saturday, September 24. A brief obituary has been posted at the Watts Up With That website.
Ball had a long career as a professor at the University of Winnipeg, although he had been retired for a number of years, and was 83 when he died. Regular readers of this blog will likely recognize Ball as someone who commented here from time to time. I also had sporadic email correspondence from Ball, which was always respectful and informative.
Ball was that rarity of a climate scientist in the world of academia with the temerity and courage to say and repeat that CO2 is a beneficial gas. He would not back down, in a world that rapidly went insane and became increasingly intolerant and hostile to his position.
Notably, Ball did not shy away from calling out the biggest scamsters of the climate hustle, most particularly one Michael Mann. Mann is the professor at Penn State who was the lead creator of the IPCC’s iconic “hockey stick” graph that has been used to sell global warming hysteria to the world for the last 20+ years.
For today I’d like to review the disparate treatments accorded to Ball and Mann by various institutions.