"In my last post a couple of days ago, I referred to the defamation lawsuit brought by Michael Mann against Mark Steyn as an example of abusive litigation seeking to use the expense of the legal process to suppress public debate on an important subject.
...To refresh your recollection, here is the key quote from the Steyn 2012 blog post that Mann claims was defamatory:
'Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus. And, when the East Anglia emails came out, Penn State felt obliged to “investigate” Professor Mann. Graham Spanier, the Penn State president forced to resign over Sandusky, was the same cove who investigated Mann. And, as with Sandusky and Paterno, the college declined to find one of its star names guilty of any wrongdoing. If an institution is prepared to cover up systemic statutory rape of minors, what won’t it cover up? Whether or not he’s “the Jerry Sandusky of climate change”, he remains the Michael Mann of climate change, in part because his “investigation” by a deeply corrupt administration was a joke.'
Mann’s central allegation in his case against Steyn is that this passage is defamatory because the “hockey stick” graph is not “fraudulent”; and therefore Steyn’s statement that the graph is “fraudulent” is false.
...The Steyn motion papers point to three ways in which the Hockey Stick graph is fraudulent.
Of the three, the most compelling is the deletion by Mann of certain adverse data that would have destroyed the neat “hockey stick” shape of the graph.
The graph shows a reconstruction of world atmospheric temperatures from about the year 1050 to 2000, where the first 900 years have temperatures flat or slightly declining, followed by a sharp upward move in the last 50 or so years.
The 900 year flat period was derived from several collections of data from tree rings, one of which was provided by a Mann colleague named Keith Briffa.
However, in the most recent years (post-1960) the Briffa series showed a decline in temperatures — an inconvenient fact that would have greatly undermined the intended visual impact of the graphic.
Mann then decided simply to delete the portion of the Briffa data post-1960, while still using the rest...
...One would think that this is about as clear a demonstration of scientific fraud as it is possible to have. And as indicated, this is just one of three instances of fraud in the Hockey Stick graph that are set forth in detail in Steyn’s March 3 submission...Read all.
