Mann Vs. Steyn: Who Is The Dead Denier?

Mark Steyn is complaining that the defamation case launched against him by climate scientist Mike Mann has taken forever.  Well, on the face of it, the first response must be that he should suck it up. In Canada, at least, waiting four years for a defamation case to unfold is pretty standard;  I doubt the U.S. court system is significantly less clogged.  And of course much of the delay is a result Mark's various stalling tactics after the initial judgements went against him, tactics which included the promotion of arguments so novel as to be, as they say, "unknown to law".

Also, there's this from his request for an expedited hearing:

Many of Steyn's expert witnesses are emeritus professors and comparatively advanced in years, being of an age and eminence that enables them to stand against the bullying and intimidation that prevails in climate science. Therefore, the passage of time is not an unimportant thing. Indeed, one of Steyn's proposed witnesses has, in fact, died while this interlocutory appeal has been with the appellate court. 

I've been trying to figure out who the old dead scientist might be.  Maybe Bob Carter or Bill Gray. If anyone knows for sure, please say in the comments. In any case, Steyn only confirms what John Mashey showed several years back, which is that deniers with scientific credentials tend to skew towards the elderly end of the demographic scale.

Finally, you don't have to read Mark's brief if you don't want to, but it sounds as though he wrote it himself, or took a draft from his lawyer and spiced it up with Steyn-style rhetorical flourishes.  Its best to look at it as a fund-raising tool more than a legal document.  And its worth noting that judges typically don't approve when you use the legal system to win in the court of public opinion. Sometimes they make this fact known in their judgements against you.

Who Will Be Mark Steyn's Witnesses?

Just noticed another piece on Steyn's website re the defamation case climatologist Mike Mann has brought against him.  Its largely the same old same old, but then there is this bit towards the end:

I have a great legal team headed by Dan Kornstein, the man behind the most consequential piece of free-speech legislation enacted this century, and we've been interviewing prominent scientific witnesses tired of the climate of fear that Mann and his Clime Syndicate have imposed on their field.

Be interesting to see who he finds who can pass muster as an expert witness.  We are talking a very, very short list of possibles.  Also, Steyn references a recent post by Steve McI at Climate Audit.

Steve quotes par 2 of Mann's statement of claim:

And comments thusly:

But, needless to say, Mann had nothing to do with the development of the instrumental temperature data showing 20th century temperature increases.... 

And thusly:

Mann’s (false) claim to have been “one of the first” to document 20th century temperature increase was apparently based on MBH98 and MBH99, which he described later in the pleadings (paragraph 15) as “two research papers showing a steady rise in surface temperature during the 20th Century and a steep increase in measured temperatures since the 1950s”. Needless to say, these papers showed 20th century temperature data in key graphics, but the papers themselves were obviously about the proxy reconstructions, not the instrumental record.

Well, note the qualifier "apparently".  Maybe the claim is not based on these two papers.  Maybe its based on this 1994 publication, for example, in which Mann and his co-author write thusly:

 ...and conclude thusly:

Or maybe not, but its clear that Mann's work from the early 1990s (pre hockey-stick graph) dealt with the instrumental record.   At least so says his wiki entry:

Mann then joined the Yale Department of Geology and Geophysics, obtaining an MPhil in geology and geophysics in 1993. His research focused on natural variability and climate oscillations. He worked with the seismologist Jeffrey Park, and their joint research adapted a statistical method developed for identifying seismological oscillations to find various periodicities in the instrumental temperature record, the longest being about 60 to 80 years.

So his claim seems sound.  Steyn is flailing.  And McI....god his stuff is boring these days.  He needs to find another hobby.

Mark Steyn Hires A Spy

As my readers may know, conservative political commentator Mark Steyn is in some legal trouble, having gotten himself sued by climate scientist Mike Mann.  While we should be careful to judge these things before they are done, it is fair to say that things are not going well for Mr. Steyn.  His legal arguments have been shot down at every turn; one team of lawyers have already abandoned him suspecting, perhaps, madness.

Certainly, Mark's latest activity on this file has the stench of lunacy about it.  He has hired a private investigator to follow Mike Mann around and collect "evidence" of something or other:

I'm happy to announce we're now taking it to another level. As you know, legal maneuvering and the usual procedural folderol of the sclerotic US "justice" system has delayed my efforts to get Mann deposed, discovered, and for the first time in his life up on the witness stand, testifying about the "hockey stick" under oath. So it seems to me this is an excellent time to get on with the broader campaign against the climate mullahs. Aside from the best free-speech legal team in the land, we've now taken on someone to direct this side of the investigation against Mann. He's already working full-time on the case - he was in Washington yesterday for the Congressional hearings on the IPCC, and meeting with climate scientists and others. He'll also be heading to Penn State and other places hither and yon. I've been very grateful for your suggestions since I struck out on my own five months ago, and if you've any more I hope you'll continue to send them our team...

I don't know what Mark expects to find:  Dr. Mann handing off attache cases to Russia assasins, or maybe lunching with an agent from Hydra.  But it is particularly noteworthy that he's making public the fact that he has hired someone to tail the good doc. It smacks of an attempt to intimidate. When his case finally does get to trial, I imagine this will be useful in proving malice.

Is Mark Steyn Doing A Slo-Mo Double Endo Into The Snow Fence Of Failure?

Is he crashing and burning, in other words?  Getting involved in a potentially ruinious lawsuit must be bad enough; representing yourself must surely make it worse.  Witness this, from The Orange County Register, one of the papers that publishes Mr. Steyn's work:

Editor's note: Syndicated columnist Mark Steyn has not filed a column with the Register since Dec. 20. While Mark has not notified our editors why he has gone on hiatus, we note that, according to several posts on his own site, steynonline.com, he is involved in the trial of a defamation lawsuit filed against him and others by a climate scientist.

Maybe the guy's hiding under his bed, wishing that the world will just go away.  Maybe's he's wearing nothing but his "legal briefs", clutching his head in his hands and crying for Mama.

Is it too much to ask?