Remarkable public comment by fraudster/hockey team captain Michael E. Mann

Tabloid fossil-fuel shill - FP Comment

Fossil fuel industry shill Solomon continues to lie to public
...
In his latest piece in the tabloid the National Post, Mr. Lawrence Solomon, a widely recognized purveyor of fossil fuel-funded disinformation, continues to use the forum provided to him by the Post to spread lies about scientists and scientific research in the area of global climate change.

Doing the bidding of the fossil fuel industry that financially supports his disinformation efforts, Mr. Lawrence repeatedly lies about my work, the work of my colleagues, the findings of the scientific community, and even the judgments of the world’s leading scientific organizations and journals.Mr Lawrence full well knows, for example, that my own work on paleoclimate reconstructions from more than a decade ago has been reproduced by many groups, and vindicated in a report by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and even more recently, in the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (for a lay-person’s guide to this report, you might check out my recent book Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming published by DK/Pearson). Mr. Lawrence disingenuously implies otherwise by citing a partisan attack several years ago by Joe Barton, the leading recipient of fossil fuel industry money in the U.S. House of Representatives (and who is often referred to as “smokey Joe Barton” for his support of industry’s right to pollute our environment).

Barton’s attacks were decried by newspapers editorials around the world, which likened it to a modern-day McCarthyism, using word’s like “witch hunt” and “inquisition.” The discredited Barton attacks were dismissed by organizations like the American Association of the Advancement of Science, which dismissed the attacks as an attempt to intimidate scientists whose findings may prove troublesome to industry special interests.

The National Academy of Sciences responded by performing a legitimate scientific review of my findings and similar work by others in the scientific community, and the academy endorsed or key findings, noting that a host of additional studies since have confirmed them. The media reported the NAS findings as “Science Panel Backs Study on Warming Climate” (New York Times), “Backing for Hockey Stick Graph (BBC), and so on.

Mr Solomon of course knows about all of this, but still chooses to mislead and lie to his readers. His statements about our current study in ‘Nature’ (which from his article you’d think I was the sole author -- in fact, I was only the 4th in a team of 6 co-authors) which studies the long-term warming of Antarctica and its causes, are unusually disingenuous and specious.

As described in detail elsewhere (e.g. the website “RealClimate.org” which I co-founded), our latest study is not contradicted by weather records at all, despite Mr. Solomon’s dishonest attempt to imply otherwise by misrepresenting and cherry-picking anecdotal observations.

Our study reproduces the well known cooling of the Antarctic interior which took place during the 1970s through 1990s (and is believed to be, as confirmed by our study, due to stratospheric ozone depletion which was greatest over that particular time interval). However, by combining the available temperature observations, we show that the longer-term pattern for Antarctica on the whole is one of warming, and this is consistent with the expected response to the long-term increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. Finally, Mr Lawrence goes on to attack the journal Nature.

Gee, who should we trust here? The most dishonest industry advocate in the climate change debate, or the world’s most prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal. You be the judge.

How ironic that Mr Lawrence uses the word “shame” in his disinformation piece. For he is perhaps the most shameful and dishonest actors in the climate change disinformation machine. Some people indeed have no shame. Nonetheless, in Mr Solomon’s case, the judgment of history will be his condemnation.

(Solomon's response is here.)

As Mann goes completely unhinged, I'm reminded of fraudster Jeff Skilling completely losing his composure as Enron started to crumble in 2001

The court also heard a tape of the infamous April 2001 conference call in which Skilling lost his composure:

"You know, you are the only financial institution that can't produce a balance sheet or a cash flow statement with their earnings," [stock analyst Richard] Grubman said. Skilling, laughing, shot back, "Thank you very much, we appreciate it ... a$$hole."