Michael Mann Embarrasses Himself before Congress

Loading

Julie Kelly:

In his testimony to the House Science Committee on Wednesday, Michael Mann, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, told the story of Trofim Lysenko, a plant scientist who worked for Stalinist Russia:

Lysenko was a Russian agronomist and it became Leninist doctrine to impose his views about heredity, which were crackpot theories, completely at odds with the world’s scientists. Under Stalin, scientists were being jailed if they disagreed with his theories about agriculture. And Russian agriculture actually suffered, scientists were jailed, many died in their jail cells and potentially millions of people suffered from the disastrous agriculture policies that followed from that.

The gist of Mann’s anecdote was that scientists who challenge the ruling government’s diktat on any given scientific issue are demonized and punished while innocent bystanders suffer. In the here and now, this would seemingly apply to the minority of scientists brave enough to question the reigning dogma of climate science. After all, these are the folks who have been threatened by top law-enforcement officials, personally and professionally attacked by their peers, and even driven out of their academic positions due to the harassment.

But astonishingly, Mann was not talking about those scientists: He was talking about himself. In his alternative universe, he and other climate scientists are the martyrs, oppressed and silenced by the Politburo. Never mind that Mann — a tenured professor at one of the country’s top public universities — opened his testimony by reciting a prodigious list of awards he has won, books he has authored, scientific organizations he leads. He is celebrated by the media and environmental groups around the world, and yet in front of Congress he talked like a guy on his way to the Gulag. It takes a special blend of hubris, juvenility, and dishonesty to portray yourself as a victim when you are really the bully.

It was quite a spectacle. Mann was joined on the panel by Judith Curry, John Christy, and Roger Pielke, Jr. — three scientists who have actually endured the kind of political witch-hunts Mann referred to. Rather than present data or debate the science, Mann mostly engaged in the sophistry that has gradually undermined the credibility of climate science. He repeatedly referred to a bogus “97 percent consensus” about man-made climate change, and accused the Heartland Institute of being a “climate-change denying, Koch brothers–funded outlet.” He engaged in one ad hominem attack after another against his fellow panelists and the committee’s chairman, Representative Lamar Smith. He questioned whether Smith really understood the scientific method and read a nasty quote about Smith from a smear piece in Science magazine

Mann’s rhetoric became so inflamed that he was finally upbraided by Representative Dana Rohrabacher. “From the get go, we have heard personal attack after personal attack coming from those claiming to represent the mainstream of science,” Rohrabacher said to Mann. “Call people ‘deniers’ all you want, use any kind of name you want . . . when we talk about Mr. Lysenko, that’s the kind of thing they did to the scientists in Russia. Try to call people names and beat them into submission, that’s a Stalinist tactic.”

Mann’s name-calling prompted Representative Darin LaHood (R., Ill.) to bring up his defamation lawsuit against National Review. After getting confirmation from Curry and Pielke that they had been subjected to attacks by Mann — Pielke said he couldn’t “keep up with all of Dr. Mann’s epithets” — LaHood called Mann on his hypocrisy: “You mention in your opening statement about staying away from that and yet we have a suit that’s been filed based on those exact same things. There’s a real disconnect between a defamation suit that does the exact same thing you’re engaged in that in this public forum.”

Turns out Mann appears to be a bit of a denier himself. Under questioning, Mann denied being involved with the Climate Accountability Institute even though he is featured on its website as a board member. CAI is one of the groups pushing a scorched-earth approach to climate deniers, urging lawmakers to employ the RICO statute against fossil-fuel corporations. When asked directly if he was either affiliated or associated with CAI, Mann answered “no.”

Read more

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
4 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Kind of like that David Suzuki pinhead trying to push Global Warming at Al Gore pushing Global Warming and hollywood airhead Leonardo DiCaprio pushing this Global Warming while traveling all over the world or flying from paris to New York and back to paris in his private jet while lecuring everyone to live a more simple life and live as one with the earth real reasons not to take these wanks seriiously and in other news the Standing Rock bunch are wanting gasoline money to travel to Kansas TELL THEM THEY CAN WALK or SADDLE UP THEIR UNICORNS

Piltdown Mann has never been a scientist.
None of his work is science, its all statistical manipulation of someone else’s data.
He is a researcher at best, a con man at worst, a fraud.
Pielky, the tree ring researcher, saw all his best and most time-consuming work thrown out by Mann because real weather, as reflected in tree ring widths, didn’t coincide with the “hockey stick,”Mann had created out of falsified data, like temperature/weather stations too close to air conditioners, asphalt, parking lots, BBQs, etc.
http://www.surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm
Note the graphs with each station?

Here is a good rendition of Michael Mann!

Mann is a “scientist” to the same extent that Bruce Jenner is a “woman.”

True scientists welcome the scrutiny of their theories/experiments/findings by other scientists because true scientists want to find TRUTH. Scam artists like Mann want opposing views and critics of their theories to be blackballed, isolated and shouted down because the scam artist wants to protect his source of income. That is why the scam artist hides behind bogus “consensus”, and hypocritically shrieks about his critics supposedly being funded by Big Oil as he hides his funding by Big Government.