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see main (NRO sued by Mann w /simberg) LOST 2 24

TWO is current

seems to have migrated from climate to islamophobe?

GONE? NO PENSION? 12 22 2 heart attacks on air

this has baK (also txt bak) html: now-greatly-diminished

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cbc 2024

Canadian writer Mark Steyn ordered to pay climate scientist $1M US after defamation trial

Steyn, who represented himself at trial, plans to appeal jury award to Michael Mann

:{The Associated Press · Posted: Feb 09, 2024

Mark Steyn is shown in an undated appearance on CBC's Power & Politics. (CBC)

A jury on Thursday awarded $1 million US to climate scientist Michael Mann, who sued a pair of conservative writers 12 years ago after they compared his depictions of global warming to a convicted child molester.

Mann, a professor of climate science at the University of Pennsylvania, rose to fame for a graph first published in 1998 in the journal Nature that was dubbed the "hockey stick" for its dramatic illustration of a warming planet.

The work brought Mann wide exposure but also many skeptics, including the two writers Mann took to court for comments that he said affected his career and reputation in the U.S. and internationally.

"It feels great," Mann said Thursday after the six-person jury delivered its verdict. "It's a good day for us, it's a good day for science."

In 2012, a libertarian think-tank named the Competitive Enterprise Institute published a blog post by Rand Simberg, then a fellow at the organization, that compared investigations into Mann's work to the case of Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach at Penn State University who was convicted of sexually assaulting multiple children. At the time, Mann also worked at Penn State.

*WATCH l Academic research often no match for virality of social media climate claims:

Climate Misinformation: are you immune?

March 14, 2023|

Duration7:08

Despite the growing number of extreme weather events-- Climate change denial is still very much out there-- particularly on social media While a lot of people may ignore it, that doesn't mean it doesn't make a lasting impact. Jaela Bernstien looks into the issue.

Mann's research was investigated after his and other scientists' emails were leaked in 2009 in an incident that brought further scrutiny of the "hockey stick" graph, with skeptics claiming Mann manipulated data. Investigations by Penn State and others found no misuse of data by Mann, but his work continued to draw attacks, particularly from conservatives.

"Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data," Simberg wrote.

Canadian writer Mark Steyn later referenced Simberg's article in his own piece in National Review, where he referred to Mann as "the man behind the fraudulent climate-change 'hockey-stick' graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus."

"Not sure I'd have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr. Simberg does, but he has a point," Steyn wrote.

Huge disparity in compensatory, punitive awards

The jury in Superior Court of the District of Columbia found that Simberg and Steyn made false statements, awarding Mann $1 in compensatory damages from each writer. It awarded punitive damages of $1,000 from Simberg and $1 million from Steyn, after finding that the pair made their statements with "maliciousness, spite, ill will, vengeance or deliberate intent to harm."

During the trial, Steyn represented himself, but said through his manager Melissa Howes that he would be appealing the $1-million award in punitive damages, saying it would have to face "due process scrutiny."

Scientist Michael Mann is shown on June 21, 2016, attending a screening of the HBO documentary How to Let Go of the World and All the Things Climate Can't Change. (Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for HBO)

Mann argued that he had lost grant funding as a result of the blog posts — an assertion for which both defendants said Mann did not provide sufficient evidence. The writers countered during the trial that Mann instead became one of the world's most well-known climate scientists in the years after their comments.

"We always said that Mann never suffered any actual injury from the statement at issue," Steyn said on Thursday through his manager. "And today, after 12 years, the jury awarded him one dollar in compensatory damages."

Simberg's attorney Mark DeLaquil said his client was "disappointed in the verdict" and would appeal the jury's decision.

*LISTEN l Some YouTube users find a way around climate denial ban:

Day 610:27A new kind of climate change denialism has taken hold on YouTube, says research group

Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, says the center's new report shows that climate misinformation has evolved in ways that make it possible for a lot of it to evade YouTube’s advertising ban on content that denies climate change while generating millions of dollars of revenue in the process.

Jury given specific instructions

Steyn, who has authored several books and written columns for the National Post and Maclean's, has provoked strong reactions with his writing before. The Canadian Islamic Congress launched complaints with the Canadian Human Rights Commission and B.C. Human Rights Tribunal over a series of articles wrote for Maclean's about Islam, though the complaints were dismissed.

In the Mann case, both writers argued that they were merely stating opinions.

Lyrissa Lidsky, a constitutional law professor at the University of Florida, said it was clear the jurors found that Steyn and Simberg had "recklessly disregarded the falsity of their statements."

Lidsky added that the discrepancy between what the jury awarded in compensatory and punitive damages could result in the judge reducing the punitive damages.

*WATCH l RCMP, government officials push back on false wildfire claims:

Who's fuelling the wild theories about Canada’s wildfires

June 14, 2023|

Duration5:44

False claims about the origins of Canada’s wildfires have been getting millions of views online. The National’s Adrienne Arsenault talks with investigative reporter Justin Ling about who’s behind the disinformation and why they’re pushing it.

Many scientists have followed Mann's case for years as misinformation about climate change has grown on some social media platforms.

"I hope people think twice before they lie and defame scientists," said Kate Cell of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "We are so far outside the bounds of a civil conversation about facts that I hope this verdict can help us find our way back."

In 2021, the D.C. Superior Court held that the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute were not liable for defamation in the matter. Mann said Thursday he still plans to appeal that ruling.

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win defam

On February 8, climate scientist Michael Mann won a defamation lawsuit against two conservative writers Rand Simberg and National Review contributor Mark Steyn. Steyn was once a regular presence on Fox News where he appeared more than 300 times between 2017 and 2021, both as a guest and a guest host.

According to The New York Times, in addition to finding them guilty of defaming Mann, “The jury also found the writers had made their statements with ‘maliciousness, spite, ill will, vengeance or deliberate intent to harm,’ and levied punitive damages of $1,000 against Mr. Simberg and $1 million against Mr. Steyn in order to deter others from doing the same.”

On February 9, Mann appeared on CNN News Central to discuss the outcome of the trial. During his interview Mann explained how these ideological and politically motivated attacks "chill the discourse” and discourage scientists from sharing their findings. Mann said he hoped the verdict will “create some space where scientists feel a little bit more … comfortable in leaving the laboratory, in communicating their findings to the public.”

Video

CitationFrom the February 9, 2024, edition of CNN News Central

BRIANNA KEILAR (ANCHOR) Michael, what do you worry is the effect on whether it's public health, or even global health, the health of our planet, which affects us all, when you have people making bogeymen out of scientists like yourself?

MICHAEL MANN: Well, I really worry about that, right? Especially young scientists, who see the attacks on scientists like myself, scientists like Anthony Fauci and my good friend Peter Hotez. They look at that, and that chills the discourse. That potentially leads them to sort of withdraw into their laboratories. They don't want to get involved, get into the fray, and to be part of the effort to communicate their scientific findings to the public, out of fear that they will be attacked, that they will be viciously attacked, again, by those who have vested interest in discrediting science that's inconvenient to their economic interests or their political viewpoints. And so this is a message to my fellow scientists, that, you know, that it is not OK for people to attack you, to make false allegations against you, to defame you.

And hopefully, that will create some space where scientists feel a little bit more, you know, that they're more comfortable in leaving the laboratory, in communicating their findings to the public, because we rely upon the best available science, as you said, both when it comes to our own health and the health of this planet. What could be more important than the health of our -- of us and, and our fellow human beings, and the planet that we live on? That's -- those are really the stakes here.

KEILAR: Yeah. We don't want there to be that chilling effect. Michael, great to have you.

While Mann is certainly one of the most prominent climate scientists to be in the crosshairs of right-wing media, he is far from alone. Attacks against climate scientists have been on the rise the last few years, especially on Elon Musk’s Twitter/X where many scientists have left the platform due to harassment.

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says sold out but date also past?

bachman is draw?

3 24

Mark Steyn - Host

Introducing him at the United States Senate in 2015, Ted Cruz called Mark Steyn "an international bestselling author, a Top Five jazz recording artist, and a leading Canadian human rights activist"

All of which happens to be true.

Mark is the author of After America, which was a Top Five bestseller in the United States and a Number One bestseller in Canada; America Alone: The End Of The World As We Know It, a New York Times bestseller in the United States and a Number One bestseller in Canada; and his most recent bestseller, The [Un]documented Mark Steyn.

"A Marshmallow World", his Christmas single with Jessica Martin, reached Number Seven on Amazon's easy listening bestsellers, and Number 41 on their main pop chart. Their subsequent full-length Christmas album, Making Spirits Bright, reached Number Four on the jazz chart. Mark's latest CD is his cat album, dedicated to his own beloved cat Marvin: Feline Groovy: Songs for Swingin' Cats was a Number One jazz bestseller, a Top 20 album on the Billboard chart, and a Top 30 album on Amazon's pop chart.

Steyn's human rights campaign to restore free speech to Canada led to the repeal by Parliament of the notorious "Section 13" hate-speech law, a battle he recounts in his book Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech And The Twilight Of The West.

Mark is a presenter on GB News and Serenade Radio and was a popular guest host of The Rush Limbaugh Program, and of America's Number One cable news show Tucker Carlson Tonight. He can be heard weekly on James Golden's WABC show in New York.

With fans around the world, Steyn has appeared on stages across the planet from Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. His 2016 nationwide tour of Australia was sold out coast to coast. He has spoken in the Canadian Parliament, the Danish Parliament, and the Australian Parliament, where he was introduced by the Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop

Over the years, Mark's writing on politics, arts and culture has been published in almost every major newspaper around the English-speaking world, including Britain's The Daily Telegraph, Canada's National Post, The Australian, The Irish Times, The Jerusalem Post, The Wall Street Journal, and many more.

Mark's other books include A Song For The Season, Mark Steyn's Passing Parade, Mark Steyn From Head To Toe and The Face Of The Tiger. His personal view of musical theatre, Broadway Babies Say Goodnight, was published to critical acclaim in London, and to somewhat sniffier notices in New York.

If you Click Here, you can find the answers to several FAQs about Mark. You can learn more about him in this interview by Simon Mann from The Age in Australia and in this appreciation by Robert Fulford in Canada's National Post. For more on his approach to the writing life, read this interview with Michele Kirsch of Britain's Channel 4, and enjoy the end result in these quotable barbs as collected by Brian McDermott in Dublin, in John Hawkins' Best of Steyn from recent columns, or in Greg Ransom's Quotable Steyn.

Conrad Black

Conrad Black is a Canadian-born British peer, and former publisher of The London Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Jerusalem Post, and founder of Canada's National Post.

He is a columnist and regular contributor to several publications, including the National Review Online, The New Criterion, The National Interest, American Greatness, The New York Sun, and the National Post.

Lord Black is an experienced financier, was the head of the Argus and Hollinger corporate groups for many years, and remains active in this field in a number of private companies.

He is a graduate of Carleton (Ottawa), Laval (Quebec), and McGill (Montreal) universities, and is an accomplished historian with a prolific body of work.

As an acclaimed author and biographer, Lord Black has published comprehensive histories of both Canada and the United States, as well as authoritative biographies of Maurice Duplessis, and presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump.

Lord Black is also a television and radio commentator and a sporadic participant in the current affairs programming of CNN, Fox News, CTV, CBC, BBC, and Radio Canada.

Michele Bachmann

In 2006, Michele Bachmann emerged from state politics to become the first Republican woman from Minnesota elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. By the time she won a third term in the House, she had become a national figure in the Republican Party and a founding member of the congressional Tea Party Caucus. Despite a limited legislative record, Bachmann's ambitious conservative agenda made her one of the most prominent opponents of the Barack Obama administration during her time in Congress and propelled her candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

Leilani Dowding

Leilani Dowding is a broadcaster, campaigner and regular contributor to The Mark Steyn Show.

Born in the Bournemouth, Leilani later moved to London to study economics at Royal Holloway, University of London. She dropped out after only one semester after being spotted and winning Miss Great Britain 98 and going on to represent Great Britain at Miss Universe 98.

Leilani continued to model and took part in various reality shows in the UK and the USA, including Tough Love Miami and The Real Housewives of Cheshire.

Leilani has always been very outspoken on topics that people are often afraid to touch, and communicates in a no-nonsense, down-to-earth way, which led to her becoming a regular and favourite commentator on GB News (or so she says).

Andrew Lawton

Andrew Lawton is a Canadian radio broadcaster, columnist and commentator. Most recently, Andrew hosted a daily talk radio show on Canada’s Global News radio network, and also, on occasion, guest hosted the nationally syndicated Roy Green Show. His columns have been published in the National Post, the Washington Post, the Toronto Sun, and on Global News. Andrew has appeared as a commentator on BBC, CBC, CTV, TVO

In 2018, Andrew was a candidate for the Progressive Conservative Party in the provincial elections of Canada’s largest province, Ontario.

Tal Bachman

The son of BTO and Guess Who founder Randy Bachman, Tal is a singer, songwriter and performer best known for his 1999 hit "She's So High", the critically acclaimed ballad "If You Sleep", and "Aeroplane", around which the movie "American Pie: Bandcamp" was written. Winner of two Juno Awards (Canada's Grammys), a BMI Song of the Year Award, the SOCAN Classic Award and others, Tal has also been featured in publications as diverse as Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Billboard, Q and the Times of London. Despite these successes and guest appearances on "Melrose Place" and "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno", Tal cites as his biggest professional thrill being parodied by Will Ferrell on "Saturday Night Live". He is currently writing a soon-to-be-announced musical comedy-drama for cable TV.

A university graduate in political science with a keen interest in world events, Tal joins the Mark Steyn Tour to lend insights into the world of the arts, culture, and politics, as well as perform a few numbers.

Phelim McAleer

Phelim McAleer is an award-winning journalist, filmmaker, public speaker, and podcaster. He is a New York Times best-selling author and one of the most successful crowdfunders in the world. Together with his wife, Ann McElhinney, he has raised $6m in 8 separate crowdfunding campaigns. Their movie Gosnell – The Trial of America's Biggest Serial Killer was the most successful film project ever on Indiegogo. It raised $2.3 million in just 45 days.

McAleer produced and co-wrote the movie Gosnell - The Trial of America's Biggest Serial Killer. He co-wrote the NYT Best Seller Gosnell – The Untold Story of America's Most Prolific Serial Killer. The book debuted at #3 Amazon Best Seller and sold out in 3 days after publication.

His most recent movie My Son Hunter (2022), starring Laurence Fox and Gina Carano, has been a massive media event with The Daily Kos and the Guardian writing 5,000 words about the movie before they had even seen it. The New Yorker devoted 2,000 words to their coverage of the movie. Newsweek wrote about it five times - the Guardian twice. It was also covered in the Washington Post, Politico, LA Magazine and the Daily Mail.

McAleer also wrote and produced the play FBI Lovebirds: UNDERCOVERS based on the text messages of Lisa Page and Peter Strzok and their subsequent closed door congressional questioning. HBO's VICE News called it "The most dangerous play in Washington."

McAleer has produced and written several podcasts with his wife Ann McElhinney, including The Ann & Phelim Scoop Podcast, The Harvey Weinstein Trial: Unfiltered Podcast and Serial Killer: A True Crime Podcast, which reached the top 10 in all true crime podcasts worldwide.

McAleer has produced documentaries for the BBC, CBC (Canada) and RTE (Ireland), as well as two independent feature-length documentaries. Before becoming a filmmaker, Phelim was a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times in Eastern Europe, and he covered Romania and Bulgaria for The Economist.

He directed and produced FrackNation - A Journalist's Search for the Fracking Truth, a documentary on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and the natural gas boom in the US and abroad. Variety said it was a "briskly paced…mischievous pic."

He also produced and directed Not Evil Just Wrong (2009), a film which examines the devastating consequences of global warming hysteria. And Mine Your Own Business - the first documentary that asks difficult questions of the environmental movement. Canada's The National Post said "Mine Your Own Business is devastating because it combats prejudices and fantasies with pictures that refute thousands of weasel words."

Before that, he covered Ireland for the UK Sunday Times. McAleer began his career in journalism covering the Northern Ireland troubles first as a reporter in Crossmaglen (known as Bandit Country) and then for The Irish News in Belfast.

He produces and directs with his wife Ann McElhinney. They live in Venice, California, with their two cats Mr. Top Cat and Mr. Scaredy Cat.

Ann McElhinney

Ann McElhinney is a New York Times best-selling author, journalist, podcaster, film producer and director and one of the most successful crowdfunders in the world. Together with her husband, Phelim McAleer, she has raised $6m in 8 separate crowdfunding campaigns. Their movie Gosnell – The Trial of America's Biggest Serial Killer was the most successful film project ever on Indiegogo. It raised $2.3m in just 45 days. She is a producer on the My Son Hunter movie (2022), starring Laurence Fox and Gina Carano.

McElhinney produced the play FBI Lovebirds: UNDERCOVERS based on the text messages of Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. Other plays produced by McElhinney include Ferguson, Obamagate, Oh Gosnell: A Play About The Truth and Mermaids Vs. The Alliance.

She produced and co-wrote the movie Gosnell - The Trial of America's Biggest Serial Killer. She and her husband, journalist Phelim McAleer wrote the NYT Best Seller Gosnell – The Untold Story of America's Most Prolific Serial Killer. The book debuted at #3 Amazon Best Seller and sold out in 3 days after publication.

The Gosnell project has attracted an enormous amount of media coverage on television, radio and with hundreds of articles written about the book, film and the historic crowdfunding.

McElhinney directed and produced FrackNation - A Journalist's Search for the Fracking Truth, a documentary on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and the natural gas boom in the US and abroad. Variety said it was a "briskly paced…mischievous pic."

She produced and wrote several podcasts including The Ann & Phelim Scoop, The Climate Change on Trial, The Harvey Weinstein Trial: Unfiltered and Serial Killer: A True CrimePodcast which reached the top 10 in all true crime podcasts worldwide.

She also produced and directed Not Evil Just Wrong (2009), a film which examines the devastating consequences of global warming hysteria. And Mine Your Own Business - the first documentary that asks difficult questions of the environmental movement. Canada's The National Post said "Mine Your Own Business is devastating because it combats prejudices and fantasies with pictures that refute thousands of weasel words."

McElhinney has made documentaries for the BBC, CBC (Canada) and RTE (Ireland). The Search for Tristan's Mum concerned the case of Tristan Dowse, a baby who was adopted and later abandoned by an Irish man and his wife in Indonesia.

McElhinney was featured in and was the Associate Producer of the highly controversial documentary Return to Sender (2005) for CBC about the adoption of a Romanian child by a rich Canadian couple who years later sent the child back.

McElhinney has also written for or appeared on FOX News, CNN, BBC, CBC (Canada), ABC (Australia), RTE (Ireland), The Sunday Times and The Irish Times. She has worked as a journalist and filmmaker in the US, Canada, Romania, Bulgaria, Chile, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Ghana and Uganda.

She is an entertaining and sought-after public speaker. McElhinney produces and directs with her husband Phelim McAleer. They live in Venice, California, with their two cats Mr. Top Cat and Mr. Scaredy Cat.

Samantha Smith

Samantha Smith is a British columnist and commentator. She has been published in the Spectator, the Daily Mail, and the Telegraph and has appeared on Sky News, ITV, BBC, and the Mark Steyn Show.

holland am cruise

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foxic public cit

:{:{Mark Steyn is a Canadian author and columnist of SteynOnline.com. Steyn attended the King Edward’s School in Birmingham, U.K., leaving in 1978 when he was 18 years old. Steyn is often a featured speaker at climate denial conferences hosted by groups such as the CO2 Coalition, The New Criterion and the Heartland Institute.}:

These events, with titles such as The Climate Surprise: Why CO2 Is Good for the Earth and the Tenth International Conference on Climate Change, are funded by Exxon Mobil, DonorsTrust and the Koch Brothers. He is infamously known for attacking Michael Mann’s “Hockey Stick” graph, which predicted a sharp rise in global temperatures as carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere increased. He went on to call Mann “the Jerry Sandusky of climate science” and claim he “has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and the planet.” }:

While a guest on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” on April 22, Steyn deflected the climate crisis while claiming Democrats merely use it as a platform to appeal to voters. “Climate change is essentially a boutique issue, it’s almost like an accessory for Western liberal politicians to flaunt how much they care while actually doing nothing about the people and the jurisdictions for which they’re actually responsible.”

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/2021-fox-news-still-spreading-dangerous-climate-denial

no vids

on a near-daily basis, Fox News hosts, anchors, and guests spew misinformation and false narratives aimed at tanking efforts to address the climate crisis. These tactics to delay climate action or downplay the seriousness of our warming planet have often been referred to as the new climate denial -- since the actual denial of the scientific consensus that climate change is happening has mostly been pushed to the fringes of both politics and the traditional media landscape.

Fox deploys the new denial so often, it’s easy to forget that the network is one of the few highly influential media outlets that still promote one of the most dangerous lies of our time: Human activity is not overheating our climate.

This lie has existed for over five decades and for five decades has been repeatedly debunked. Its origins and merchants have been exposed; those who have continued to perpetuate it have been discredited; and our own experience during each unprecedented storm, historical heat wave, and apocalyptic wildfire has proven again and again what science has told us to expect from a warming world.

But in 2021, you can turn on Fox News and watch prime-time host Tucker Carlson quip that “not even climate experts understand the climate” or watchFox contributor Dagen MacDowell suggest that climate change is a hoax because it is cold in April.

And in 2021, there is still no federal response to the climate crisis on the books, despite decades of warnings from scientists and with mounting support for climate action even among the largest companies and businesses in the U.S.

Fox is still fueling the lie that our planet is not warming

From insisting the science on climate change is not settled to deliberately misconstruing weather with climate, Fox News is still pushing the idea that human-made climate change is not real, despite overwhelming evidence and consensus in the scientific community.

In a segment on the April 28 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, host Tucker Carlson and Fox News contributor Sean Duffy discussed how the “critical environmental movement has infiltrated” schools and colleges, is scaring children about the climate crisis, and is convincing them to not have children. At the end of the segment, Duffy claimed that climate change is a “political movement, not a scientific movement” and that it is wrong to assume “the science is settled in climate”.

the segment aired just a week after Carlson and ultra-conservative political commentator and Fox contributor Mark Steyn mocked comments made by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) linking climate change and racism. (For the record, experts say the two are “inexorably” linked.) Steyn, not satisfied with mocking the relationship between climate and racism, went on to attack the scientific consensus that warming is human-made, by invoking a defamation suit filed against him by climate scientist Michael Mann:

MARK STEYN (GUEST): This is supposed to be science. I've been in a 10-year lawsuit in Washington, D.C., up against the guy who invented the climate change hockey stick, and he is a scientist and his position is that in the last millennium -- nothing happened for nine centuries and then you, Tucker, got into your SUV and fried the planet. And that is a completely idiotic theory. But at least he's not trying to sell the world on the idea that somehow climate change correlates to racism.

[vid]

not to be outdone, the following night, prime-time hostLaura Ingraham focused her April 22 monologue on “the big climate con.” Ingraham’s “climate con” list included misleading arguments against the benefits of climate action like job creation; attempts to discredit the role of -- and the need for -- global cooperation in dealing with the crisis; and false claims that the scientific warnings on climate are not sound or well understood. For good measure, Ingraham closed her monologue by mocking and attacking young climate activists.

in back-to-back shows on April 29 and April 30, Ingraham suggested that the climate crisis along with other pressing issues have been manufactured to “justify the left’s brazen efforts to take more of our money and more of our liberty” and they “only exist in the minds of leftists ideologues who hate America anyway.”

Denial paired with fear-mongering about the “left’s radical agenda” exemplifies the brand of climate denial Fox has peddled for years, and some network figures disingenuously equate weather with climate to push that narrative.

On the April 21 edition ofThe Five, Fox News contributor Dagen McDowell ended a rant against the Paris Climate Agreement by suggesting that abnormally cold April weather from Texas to the Great Lakes somehow disproves that global warming is occurring.

DAGEN MCDOWELL (CO-HOST): Here is your forecast today and why they stopped calling it global warming. April 21, 2021: Freeze warnings from Texas to the Great Lakes. Record low temperatures engulfing the heartland. Oh, and Indians/White Sox game in Cleveland had to be postponed for snow and cold.

This bit by MacDowell is both painfully stupid and reminiscent of a body of tweets by then-President Donald Trump, who conflated weather with global warming while suggesting that the term “climate change” was adopted by scientists and advocates to hide the incongruity between major winter storms and the idea of warming.

Interestingly, the term “climate change” was promoted by the Republican strategist Frank Luntz as part of the infamous 2002 memo advising the GOP on how to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that human activity was warming the planet.

Fox Nation host Lara Logan made the same inane claim on the February 19 edition of :{Outnumbered:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, in a segment about the winter storm that caused the deadly power failure in Texas:

“It's time for us to have an honest conversation about renewable energy and about global warming, climate change, whatever you want to call it,” said Logan. “This is the first time in Texas’ history that it has had a winter storm warning. So this is — this means that it is not getting warmer and warmer and warmer, simply.”

Fox has long been a platform for climate deniers

Fox News hosts and contributors not only push climate denial but regularly feature discredited deniers on their programs. Notorious climate denier Marc Morano -- who has no scientific background -- and Bjorn Lomborg -- whose spiel is dangerously claiming that climate change is happening, but not a big deal -- have both appeared on Fox for more than a decade. Just this year, both have appeared across Fox programming at least six times from January through April. Notably, Fox hosted both the day after President Joe Biden took office to attack his agenda on climate change.

Larry Kudlow, a long-time climate denier who formerly served as economic adviser to Trump and now hosts a show on Fox Business, has also been one of Fox’s go-to commentators on policies related to climate change across both the network’s so-called “news” and “opinion” programs.

But Morano, Lomborg, and Kudlow are far from the only climate deniers and contrarians on Fox’s roster. Over the past several yearsRush Limbaugh, Joe Bastardi, Steve Milloy, and Patrick Moore all appeared regularly on Fox to push climate denial and misinformation. (In 2019, Moore said on Fox & Friends that “the climate crisis ... is not only fake news, it’s fake science”, and the line was picked up by Trump and tweeted to his millions of followers.)

Importantly, like Morano and Lomborg, none of these commentators are climate scientists, many have strong financial ties to the fossil fuel industry, and all have made a living out of obstructing efforts to address the climate crisis. With the exception of the late Rush Limbaugh, none would have had a megaphone to spread their lies absent Fox News.

Supported by advertisers, Fox runs cover for climate inaction

Climate scientists have repeatedly warned that if immediate and bold actions are not taken, then we will face dire climate disruption -- ever-increasing extreme and abnormal weather that threatens our homes, our food, our livelihoods, our economy, and our lives.

The stakes could not be higher.

The purpose of Fox hosts’ and contributors’ climate denial is to maintain an air of doubt about the existence and reality of our dangerously changing climate to provide cover for Republicans, who actively work to do nothing to stop the climate crisis, and the Big Polluters that bankroll their campaigns. This climate denial is also the foundation of the network’s persistent attacks -- across “opinion” and “straight news” programming -- on any proposed actions to reduce our carbon emissions and transition to a clean-energy economy. By extension, companies that advertise on Fox are party to climate inaction.

Publicly, many of these companies that run ads on Fox, including big insurers Allstate and Liberty Mutual have acknowledged the severe threat of the climate crisis. While others like General Motors, which is also among the network’s biggest advertisers, are actively calling for significant reduction in climate pollution. On the same day Dagen McDowell mocked global warming because it was cold in Texas, General Motors, along with 407 other corporations and businesses, issued a press release for an open letter to Biden supporting his goal of reducing carbon emissions by 50% by 2030. By continuing to sponsor Fox, these brands expose the cavern between their words and actions and associate themselves with a dangerous hostility to facts and science.

To be sure, Fox News is an accomplice to the impending climate emergency we face as a country and as part of the global community -- and so are those that support its programming with ads.

mma

How broadcast TV news covered environmental justice over the past four years

05/06/21 11:10 AM EDT

Buoyed by Biden’s climate summit, broadcast and cable TV networks provided strong Earth Day coverage

04/28/21 12:24 PM EDT

How broadcast TV networks covered climate change in 2020

https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/right-wing-media-are-having-field-day-physicist-steve-koonins-new-book-climate

on May 6, theoretical physicist and former Obama administration energy official Steve Koonin appeared on two Fox programs to discuss his recently released book Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters.

In a nearly 13-minute appearance on Fox Business’ Kudlow, Koonin pushed a number of claims from his book that contradict the established scientific consensus on climate change. Among other things, he stated that “we've seen hardly any change in most severe weather events”; that “in the U.S., the highest temperatures haven't gone up in 60 years and are the same as they were in 1900”; and that there’s been “no detectable human influences on hurricanes over the last many decades.” He also questioned why “somehow people don’t want to use” fracking and said the current situation around climate change is “misleading panic.”

Later that evening on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight,Koonin repeated the same statement on humans and hurricanes, and on hotter temperatures, he stated that “the incidence of heat waves across the 48 states is no greater now than it was in 1900, and the highest temperatures haven’t gone up in 60 years.” He also called climate models uncertain and claimed that climate science has become “immoral,” as “it's being used as a tool to scare young people, create depression.”

Koonin, who is not a climate scientist, has a controversial history within the scientific and political climate change community. He formerly served as chief scientist for BP (a company that has played an outsized role in both worsening climate change and delaying climate action). In 2017, he advocated for a “red team-blue team” approach to climate science, which would “put the ‘consensus’ to a test” and illuminate “differing perceptions of climate science.” This idea apparently caught the attention of then-EPA Administrator (and notorious climate change denier) Scott Pruitt. And in 2019, he reportedly tried to help former President Donald Trump create a “climate contrarians” panel with longtime climate denier Will Happer.

Given the content of his new book, it’s no surprise that Koonin appeared on Fox to discuss its key points. While those points are wrong and easily debunkable, they have been spreading across the vast right-wing media ecosystem.

Real climate scientists and experts have lambasted Koonin’s book

Some of the major claims Koonin made in his May 6 Fox appearances came directly from his book, which was reviewed in an April 25 Wall Street Journal piece that repeated a number of its claims. Climate Feedback, a website featuring climate scientists who review dubious climate pieces in the media, reviewed the article and estimated “its overall scientific credibility to be very low.”

Regarding Koonin’s misleading statement on human impacts on hurricanes, MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel said the “most up-to-date research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrates an increase in the proportion of hurricanes that become major hurricanes (Category 3-5) globally, supporting theoretical predictions that date back to 1987.” University of California, Los Angeles climate scientist Daniel Swain echoed this point, noting that “the most intense tropical cyclones are indeed becoming stronger in terms of maximum wind speeds and minimum central pressure and are producing more extreme rainfall.”

In his Kudlow interview, Koonin also downplayed the threat of melting ice and rising sea levels, stating that “people worry about the melting of the ice sheets, but that’s gonna take hundreds of years, if it happens.” This statement is remarkably wrong. Twila Moon of the University of Colorado stated that “over the last 20 years, ice loss has been rapid and large, creating measurable sea level rise.” Postdoctoral researcher Thomas Frederikse agreed, saying that “tide-gauge observations show that sea levels are persistently accelerating since the 1960s, and overall, the observed sea-level rise during the 20th century is higher than during any other century over the last 3000 years.”

Koonin’s claims downplaying the effectiveness of climate models are also wrong. Climate scientist Zeke Hausfather states that Koonin’s criticism “ignores the fact that climate models published since the 1970s were quite accurate in projecting the warming that actually occurred in the years after they were published, as we discuss in our recent paper.” (In fact, climate models have been so correct that even fossil-fuel giant Exxon’s own scientists accurately predicted the rate of global warming in the 1980s.)

The Climate Feedback piece also addressed other misleading claims from Koonin’s book that he did not repeat in his Fox interviews, including misleading statements on global wildfires, the severity of droughts, global crop yields, and the economic impact of climate change. Overall, says Twila Moon, “many conclusions highlighted in this article are examples of cherry-picking information and failing to provide the context of change. In other instances, statements are fully wrong and unsupported by scientific research.”

Marianna Lavelle of Inside Climate News also addressed some of the claims Koonin made in his new book, including rebutting the statement he made on his Fox appearances about hot temperatures and heat waves in the U.S.:

The average annual temperature in the contiguous U.S. has increased from 0.7 degrees to 1.0 degrees Celsius (1.2 to 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since the start of the 20th century. The year 2020 was the fifth-warmest year in the 126-year record for the contiguous U.S. And the five warmest years on record have occurred since 2012, NOAA reports. There is a more marked increase in nighttime lows than in daytime highs (the “warmest” temperatures) because of factors like the cooling effect of daytime aerosol pollution and soil moisture evaporation.

She also countered his claim about a future minimal economic impact of climate change by noting 2019 research that found that “global warming has very likely exacerbated global economic inequality, including ∼25% increase in population-weighted between-country inequality over the past half century.”Multiple scientific studies have showed that the cost of climate inaction far outweighs the cost of climate action. Indeed, one analysis finds that climate change could cost nearly $70 trillion by 2100.

In the past several weeks, Koonin has been featured in numerous right-wing media outlets

In addition to his May 6 appearances on Kudlow and Tucker Carlson Tonight, Koonin has made a number of other television appearances, written op-eds, and given interviews promoting his book. The vast majority of these have been with right-wing media outlets, including sources that are climate deniers.

He appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s The First on May 6, Andrew Bolt’s show on Australia’s Sky News on May 5, CNBC’s *Squawk Box* on May 4, and Kudlow on March 19. O’Reilly, Bolt, Kudlow, and Squawk Box’s Joe Kernan are all climate deniers. He also appeared on the * program on Sky News Australia on May 8. Here, he claimed that “modest” global warming will be beneficial for the planet, without noting that the negative impacts of climate change will far outweigh any positive ones. Sky News Australia, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, has a history of climate denial.

He has written pieces promoting his book for The National Review and the New York Post, given a print interview to The Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins (who has a history of being wrong about climate issues), given interviews to conservative radio personalities John Gormley and Ross Kaminsky, and spoken to fossil fuel industry shill Alex Epstein, climate misinformer Rich Lowry of The National Review, and conservative Daily Beast writer Matt Lewis. His book and its climate misinformation have also been the basis of articles in Townhall and The Federalist. And along the way, he’s been promoted by notorious climate deniers Marc Morano and Steve Milloy.

Right-wing media propping up books that are skeptical of climate change is an all-too-familiar occurrence

If this all sounds familiar, that’s because it is -- this sort of thing happened just last summer, when climate contrarians Bjorn Lomborg and Michael Shellenberger both released books downplaying the seriousness of climate change within a month of each other. Like Koonin, they both appeared across the right-wing media ecosystem to promote their books. There are other similarities between these individuals as well -- all are highly controversial within the climate science community, while their major works have been fact-checked and discredited by actual climate scientists and experts. Additionally, none of them are climate scientists.

As the realities of worsening climate change become more and more apparent, it’s become more difficult for right-wing media outlets to continue unequivocally denying that climate change is even happening. This new type of climate denial espoused by people like Koonin -- who say climate change is happening but it’s not that big of a problem -- provides perfect cover for right-wing media outlets to act like they care about the issue while they continue helping polluting companies kick climate action down the road.

Koonin’s misinformation-filled book won’t be the last one to downplay the threat of climate change, but it’s becoming easier to spot books like these when right-wing media take an exclusive interest in promoting their false claims.

https://www.citizen.org/article/foxic-fox-news-networks-dangerous-climate-denial-2019/

really good sum analysis:

belated post 2x?

Foxic:

in 2018,myriad extreme weather events wreaked havoc across the globe. Dire, authoritative reports were released, confirming unequivocally that the climate crisis is happening, that it’s driven by the burning of fossil fuels and that it requires immediate and bold action.

The first half of 2019 has already delivered more of the same undeniable climate chaos.

But dangerous climate denial still persists in our political institutions, funded by Big Polluters and fed to large parts of the populace by right-wing media, further contributing to ongoing and deadly inaction.

In the face of a crisis that threatens our very existence, the :{most watched cable news network in the country:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: — the Fox News Network — is still promoting climate misinformation and deploying tactics to distract from the urgency of the climate crisis, ensuring that its viewers’ understanding of the issue is based on deliberately distorted facts and distractions.

The millions of Americans who tune into Fox News are regularly bombarded with messages intended to undermine climate science, cast climate advocates as hysterical and frame climate policy as dangerous and un-American.

A review of Fox News programs for the first half of 2019 reveals that the network continues to give ample airtime to long debunked climate myths and fringe deniers. Among Fox’s roster of contributors on climate issues, not one is a climate scientist, and none has appeared on any other major network to talk about climate during the period reviewed.

Methodology

For this analysis, we searched Fox News Network television transcripts from the first six months of 2019 that mentions of “climate change” or “global warming.”

...

Key Findings

From January through June 2019, Fox News Network programs mentioned climate change or global warming 391 times, which amounts to roughly 65 mentions per month.
Of those mentions, 247 involved considerable discussion of the issue. The remaining 144 mentions were brief.
Of the 247 segments, 212 or 86% were dismissive of the climate crisis, cast warming and its consequences in doubt or employed fear mongering when discussing climate solutions.
Two programs, “Special Report With Bret Baier” and “Fox News @ Night” together accounted for 24 of the 35 segments that were neutral when mentioning climate change or discussion of climate solutions. And four of the five segments on “Fox News Sunday” with host Chris Wallace were neutral.
Fox News’s three top-rated programs for the first quarter of 2019 account for 35% of segments. They are “Hannity” (3.12 million total viewers on average), “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (2.98 million viewers) and “The Ingraham Angle” (2.43 million viewers).
Fox News’s three top-rated programs ran 25 more segments, or four more per month, than MSNBC’s three top-rated programs. “The Rachel Maddow Show” ran 15 segments, “The Final Word With Lawrence O’Donnell” ran 10 and “All In With Chris Hayes” ran 36.
In absolute terms, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” ran the most climate denial segments with 41 or approximately seven per month, followed by “Hannity” with 32 and “The Five” with 29.
Fox News programs had 10 contributors who commented on climate related issues at least twice during the six-month period. None of these contributors is a climate scientist and none has appeared on another network.
The Green New Deal, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and the Democratic primary were the main drivers prompting discussion of the climate crisis on Fox programs in the first six months of 2019. Combined, they provide the context for 62% of the 247 segments.
:{

Denial Is Alive and Deadly on Fox News

With 391 mentions of climate change or global warming on programs airing from January to June, Fox News Network is far from silent on climate.

In fact, Fox News three most-viewed programs are discussing climate more than their liberal counterparts at MSNBC. From January through June 2019, “Hannity,” “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” and “The Ingraham Angle” collectively mentioned climate change or global warming in 86 different segments. During the same period, “The Rachel Maddow Show,” “The Final Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,” and “All In With Chris Hayes” ran a combined 61 segments discussing the climate crisis.

Overall, the right-wing network ran 247 segments. The vast majority — 212 or 86% — were dismissive of the climate crisis, cast its consequences in doubt or employed fear mongering when discussing climate solutions. A mere 35 segments were neutral on the issue or represented straight reporting on the climate crisis or solutions absent editorializing.

Two programs, “Special Report With Bret Baier” and “Fox News @ Night,” accounted for 71% of segments that were neutral when mentioning climate change or global warming.

Fox Whistles: Top Three Messages Used by Fox News to Undermine Climate Action

A common tactic Fox News uses to undermine climate science, action and advocacy is to frame the climate crisis as a political construct. In these cases, the host or guest assigns values to climate that are misaligned with the network’s largest demographic — those who identify as conservative and Republican. These commentators rarely, if ever, address the body of scientific evidence or climate events directly, but rather project the issue through a political lens. Viewers are left to form opinions about the issues in the absence of facts and evidence.

In the past six months, the following three messages have been invoked repeatedly, in some form, across the majority of Fox News programs, but were highly concentrated in the network’s most popular opinion programs. They are intended to elicit a negative response to the climate crisis and those who advocate the changes needed to address it.

Message 1: Climate Change Is a Vehicle for the Democrats’ Radical Big-Government Agenda

Seventy-two segments discussing the climate crisis (34%) suggested that responding to climate change, especially through policies like a Green New Deal, will result in government control over our lives.

“Hannity” had the most segments featuring this message with 18, or 56% of total segments, followed by “Tucker Carlson Tonight” with 13 (32%) and “The Five” with 12 (41%).

Message 2: Responding to the Climate Crisis would Kill Our Economy and Send Us Back to the Stone Age

Closely associated with the “Big Government” message and often used in the same breath is the suggestion that climate action would mean extreme individual sacrifice and the demise of prosperity. Fifty-five segments (26%) equate climate action, including the transition to a clean-energy economy, with economic collapse.

“Hannity” leads again, using this message 11 times (in 34% of segments on climate), followed by “The Five” using the message 10 times (34% of climate segments). “Fox News @ Night” uses the message six times (26% of climate segments).

Message 3: Concern About the Climate Crisis Is Liberal Hysteria

Rounding out the top three messages is one intended to undermine the urgency of the climate crisis by painting climate advocates or climate scientists as “alarmists”, “hysterical”, “chicken littles” and a “doomsday climate cult.” These labels not only deepen the political divide; they send a clear message to viewers to interpret the latest science on climate as exaggerated and to view scientists and advocates with distrust. Twenty-six segments, or 12% of discussions on the climate crisis used this form of name calling or used the terms “hysteria” or “alarmism” when referring to climate science.

“Hannity” used these labels eight times or during 25% of segments on climate. “Tucker Carlson Tonight” used them six times or during 15% of segments and “Fox News @ Night” used them five times or during 22% of segments.

Fox Fallacies and Tricks

In addition to these partisan signals, Fox News Network employed a number of other false arguments and tricks to keep climate denial and doubt alive during an era when climate catastrophe is becoming increasingly apparent to Americans.

Ad Hominem Attacks

In the past six months, those who advocate climate action have been subjected to personal attack by Fox News hosts.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) has served as a regular punching bag for Fox News hosts and their guests. In one exchange between Sean Hannity and former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile, she jabs the network for its obsession with AOC, joking that programs have mentioned ”AOC well over 3,000 times.” For Ocasio-Cortez’s acknowledgment of the climate crisis and support for the Green New Deal, Fox News has accused her of “capitalizing on a fear” and “pushing doom and gloom day and night.” She’s been called a “radical nut job”, “Scary-o-Cortez” and “dumb and totally ignorant of everything.”

While Ocasio-Cortez is by far the most vilified and attacked climate advocate, she is not the only one. Another example is provided by science communicator Bill Nye. After appearing on John Oliver’s HBO program, “Last Week Tonight,” Nye was Hannity’s “Villain of the Day.” A guest on “The Ingraham Angle” suggested that calling Bill Nye a scientist was akin to referring to “George Clooney as a doctor or Harrison Ford as an archaeologist.” Tucker Carlson suggested that Nye’s appearance was just a stunt to get his own Netflix series.

Red Herring

A favorite distraction tactic used by Fox News hosts is to pivot any discussion about warming to the “hypocrisy” of “elites” and “liberals” who advocate climate solutions. The argument is that, if climate change is an existential crisis, then climate advocates would reduce their own carbon footprints to zero. But because climate champions like U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) fly on private jets and Ocasio-Cortez uses Uber instead of public transportation, the crisis must not be real or very urgent.

The hypocrisy argument takes many forms, but on at least 11 occasions in the past six months, Fox News hosts have referenced the use of air travel to discredit those concerned about climate or to question the reality of human-induced warming, like this example from Tucker Carlson on January 14:

Elites love to impose gas taxes on everyone else while flying private to conferences in Switzerland, where they worry about melting ice caps. That’s obviously a scam. Let’s just be honest about it.

Whether or not driving or using other forms of private transportation is hypocrisy is not the point. In reality, while individual action on climate is important, it is wholly inadequate for addressing the scale of the climate crisis. The crisis requires, above all, systemic policy responses that can be implemented only by governments.

Slippery Slope

Another oft-repeated argument directed at climate scientists is that “they have been wrong before, so they must be wrong now.” The most common version of this argument is the myth that climate scientists predicted in the 1970s that there would be a dramatic period of global cooling. As Sean Hannity said in a typical segment, “Look at that, the big freeze, the next Ice Age is coming.” That’s what they told us in the ’70s. That then evolved into, uh-oh, the world has a fever, as Al Gore said and scaring people.” The reality is that a small pocket of scientists suggested the Earth could enter a new ice age in the next few centuries.:{ At the time, 62% of climate scientists predicted warming.:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: Forty years of observation and analysis have brought that number up to :{97% of climate scientists agreeing that human beings are causing global warming.:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:

In the past six months, Fox News has not once referenced the scientific consensus around the climate crisis. :{According to recent polling:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:, one in four Americans (25%) think there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening, and a mere 17% understand that there is a scientific consensus that human-caused global warming is happening. This lack of public understanding cannot be pinned solely on Fox News, but the media plays a role in public perception and understanding of issues. And no other major media outlet is pushing out climate doubt, to so many viewers, as often as Fox News.

Cherry-picking

Frequently during the first half of 2019, Fox News hosts latched on to singular comments by Democratic politicians and what they deemed to be extreme responses to the climate crisis. These topics were brought up and mocked repeatedly in an attempt to deny the climate crisis, discredit policymakers and vilify climate policy.

The most common use of this tactic is the repetitive mention and mocking of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that “:{the world is going to end in 12 years if we do not address climate change:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:” (a claim she later deemed “:{dry humor + sarcasm:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:”). The comment was made in reference to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) :{Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:, which asserts that global temperature warming will likely reach 1.5°C by the year 2030.

Fox News hosts referenced Ocasio-Cortez’s world-ending comment 56 times in the first six months of 2019. Out of 56 references, the IPCC report was mentioned only five times. On only two occasions did the network discuss the staggering conclusions of the report that informed Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks. A premade video segment from correspondent Peter Doocy identified that the report “doesn’t call for the end of the world in 12 years, but rather irreversible damage to the planet in a decade if emissions aren’t quickly curbed” and was aired on two seperate programs immediately following Ocasio-Cortez’s comment.

The video clip of Ocasio-Cortez’s claim was played eight times during the remainder of January and continued to be replayed 12 more times, with the last showing on June 4.

Sixteen references to the world ending in 12 years did not reference Ocasio-Cortez. These mentions were used to mock advocates of climate policy, deny the climate crisis and criticize Democrats’ attempts to enact climate policy.

Fox News Climate “CON”tributors

Assisting Fox News Network in climate denial and misinformation is a roster of long discredited climate contrarians whose views are solicited only by Fox News. None of the following men have appeared on other major television news networks to speak on matters related to climate.

When discussing climate change in the first half of 2019, the Fox News Network repeatedly featured and legitimized contributors whose climate views contradict the consensus of the climate science community. Many of these contributors have ties to the fossil fuel industry and have been criticized for spreading misinformation about climate change. Notably, none are climate scientists. The following contributors each appeared on the Fox News Network to discuss climate change at least twice in the first six months of 2019.

Joe Bastardi is a meteorologist and :{a climate skeptic:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:. He is currently the chief forecaster for :{WeatherBell Analytics LLC:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:. He also works as a senior advisor at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (formerly known as American Tradition Institute), a group :{denounced:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for contributing to an “environment that inhibits the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas.” Bastardi insists that carbon dioxide is not a major player in determining global temperatures: :{“I believe the sun, ocean cycles and stochastic events play a much more significant role.:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}::{”:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: He has been a contributor on Fox News Network for more than a decade.

In March, while appearing on “Hannity,” he suggested that human activity is not “controlling the climate,” which is effectively contrary to the conclusion of n:{early 200 worldwide scientific organizations:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: and the :{UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:.

Justin Haskins is an editorial director and a research fellow at the Exxon Mobil and Koch Foundation-funded:{ Heartland Institute:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:. With a background in communication and political science, Haskins is largely involved in publications and productions by Heartland. In 2017, he published a piece detailing six reasons he was a climate skeptic and was :{criticized for the falsehoods:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: they presented.

In April 2019, :{Haskins told a Fox Business:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: reporter that he saw “no evidence that modest warming is creating any sort of a [sic] environmental crisis.”

Chris Horner is a :{senior legal fellow:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: for the:{Energy and Environment Legal Institute:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: (E&E Legal). Horner formerly served as a senior fellow for :{Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI):(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:, one of Washington, D.C.’s top conservative think tanks. CEI has received at least $2.1 million from fossil fuel giant Exxon Mobil. :{Bankruptcy filings for Alpha Natural Resources in 2015:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: exposed Horner’s deep financial ties to the coal industry and work he has done on behalf of big polluters.

In March, he went on “Hannity” to revive the debunked argument, intended to discredit climate scientists, that the same scientific community that is predicting warming :{predicted global cooling in the 1970s:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:.

Rush Limbaugh is a conservative political commentator and host of the radio talk show “:{The Rush Limbaugh Show:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:.” He does :{frequent segments:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: on his radio show pushing his conspiracy theory that climate change is the creation of agenda-driven scientists who develop computer models that exaggerate scientific findings in efforts to prove climate change. He has proclaimed himself as “an expert in debunking this whole leftist political argument in man-made climate change.”

In February, he appeared on “Fox News Sunday” again asserting that climate change is a hoax. “Climate change is nothing but a bunch of computer models that attempt to tell us what’s going to happen in 50 years or 30,” Limbaugh stated. “Notice the predictions are never for next year or the next ten years. They’re always for way, way, way, way out there, when none of us are going to be around or alive to know whether or not they were true.”

Bjorn Lomborg is a political scientist, author, and the founder and president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. Lomborg has published three books that downplay the risk of climate change, despite having no background in climate science. Lomborg has frequently asserted that the risks of climate change are :{not great enough to justify:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: large-scale policies to reduce carbon emissions, instead :{arguing:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: that “drastic carbon cuts would be the poorest way to respond to global warming.” Claims made by Lomborg in his books have been frequently criticized. His first book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” drew criticism for failing to “:{meet basic standards of credible scientific analysis:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:” and his second book, “Cool It,” for being “:{riddled with small inaccuracies:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:” and “displaying a pervasive bias in its coverage and evaluations of climate issues.” Lomberg has ties to both the Heartland Institute and CEI and received an award from CEI in 2003.

In April, Lomborg appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show and stated, “They’re telling us global warming is a problem. But it’s also a moderate one…”

Steve Milloy is the founder and publisher of junkscience.com and self-described as exposing “faulty scientific data and analysis used to advance special interests and hidden agendas.” In addition to spreading doubt about the science of the climate crisis, he is a senior policy fellow at the :{Energy & Environment Legal Institute:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: and :{former director:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: of internal policy and strategy at Murray Energy, the largest privately held coal producer in the U.S., and the co-founder of :{“Burn More Coal.”:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: Milloy has financial ties to the tobacco, chemical and oil and gas industries, having gotten his :{start as a denialist:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: for the tobacco and chemical industries in the 1990s. In 1998, he helped write the American Petroleum Institute’s strategy to challenge climate science. Milloy previously served as an adjunct scholar at both the :{Cato Institute:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: and the :{Competitive Enterprise Institute:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: (CEI) and currently serves as a policy advisor to the :{Heartland Institute:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:.

In February 2019, Milloy appeared on “Special Report with Bret Baier” and claimed that climate change was just the Democrats’ pretext for advancing radical political agendas. “We always knew climate was a stalking horse for socialism, communism, totalitarianism, whatever you want to call it,” Milloy said.

Patrick Moore is a nuclear energy advocate and the founder of Greenspirit Strategies, a :{PR company:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: that works “with many leading organizations in forestry, biotechnology, aquaculture and plastics, developing solutions in the areas of natural resources, biodiversity, energy and climate change.” Moore self-identifies as a founding member of Greenpeace, but the organization has :{denied this claim:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:, stating that Moore “often misrepresents himself in the media as an environmental ‘expert’ or even an ‘environmentalist,’ while offering anti-environmental opinions on a wide range of issues and taking a distinctly anti-environmental stance.” Greenpeace also identified him as “a paid spokesman for a variety of polluting industries for more than 30 years.” Moore denies the role of carbon dioxide in climate change and has previously :{encouraged the celebration:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: of carbon, stating, “carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is the stuff of life, the currency of life, indeed the backbone of life on Earth.”

While a guest on “Fox News @ Night” in March, Moore claimed a lack of evidence that carbon dioxide in contributing to climate change, stating “the climate crisis is not just fake news, it’s fake science.”

In May he appeared on “Special Report With Bret Baier” attempting to discredit the United Nations’ climate reports, claiming their sole interests reside in politics and not science. He called the U.N. “a self-interested lobbying organization.”

Mark Steyn is a Canadian author and columnist of SteynOnline.com. Steyn attended the :{King Edward’s School in Birmingham:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:, U.K., leaving in 1978 when he was 18 years old. Steyn is often a featured speaker at climate denial conferences hosted by groups such as the CO2 Coalition, The New Criterion and the Heartland Institute. These events, with titles such as :{The Climate Surprise: Why CO2 Is Good for the Earth and the Tenth International Conference on Climate Change:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:, are funded by :{Exxon Mobil, DonorsTrust and the Koch Brothers:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:.

He is infamously known for attacking Michael Mann’s “Hockey Stick” graph,which predicted a sharp rise in global temperatures as carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere increased. He went on to call Mann :{“the Jerry Sandusky of climate science”:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: and claim he “has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and the planet.”

While a guest on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” on April 22, Steyn deflected the climate crisis while claiming Democrats merely use it as a platform to appeal to voters. “Climate change is essentially a boutique issue, it’s almost like an accessory for Western liberal politicians to flaunt how much they care while actually doing nothing about the people and the jurisdictions for which they’re actually responsible.”

Daniel Turner is the founder and executive director of :{Power the Future:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:, an energy advocacy organization that supports the fossil fuel industry. Despite its focus on energy, the nonprofit has no official stance on climate change. However, Turner previously told climate change campaigners in a blog post that if they :{“are so anti-energy, don’t use it.”:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: Turner is an :{alumnus:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}: of the Charles Koch Institute and previously worked for the Koch-tied non-profit, Generation Opportunity. After earning a degree in Philosophy, he went on to specialize in :{communications and public affairs:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:. He is also an affiliate of the Heartland Institute.

During a June appearance on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Turner criticized Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden’s announced climate plan which aims to achieve :{net-zero emissions by 2050:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:, calling it “nonsensical.” He went on to claim that “every proposal that involves climate change, usually enriches their donors and their donor base, or it takes away individual rights and individual liberty.”

Conclusion

This year we experienced the :{hottest June ever recorded:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:. In India, deadly temperatures reached and stayed :{above 120 degrees for days:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:. France experienced its most brutally hot day in recorded history, :{at nearly 115 degrees:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;transition-property:var(--t8n_p1), color;cursor:pointer;box-sizing:border-box"):}:.

The rapid overheating of our planet from the burning of fossil fuels is a clear and present threat. There is no debate that the climate crisis is now.

One should be hard pressed, in this era of climate catastrophe, to find climate denial in legitimate media sources. In fact, the presence of regular deniers and dissemination of misinformation about the climate crisis should disqualify a news outlet as a fair and balanced source of information – and most importantly, should not be trusted.

The Fox News Network and its hosts, with few exceptions, are peddling climate denial to millions of Americans on a regular basis.

This review began with the hypothesis that Fox News Network might be using newer, more nuanced and sophisticated forms of climate denial to keep audiences doubting the reality playing out before their eyes. This hypothesis was wrong. This review shows that Fox News’ denial handbook has not been updated. The misinformation the network is pushing out and the deniers it gives a platform to are long debunked and well exposed. The tactics they use, from naming calling to mockery, are transparent and inflammatory.

More than that, denial, like our rapidly warming climate, is becoming increasingly dangerous. By keeping doubt alive and deniers in business, Fox New Network is contributing to U.S. climate inaction.

https://www.mediamatters.org/trump-impeachment-inquiry/right-wing-radio-hosts-side-trump-calling-republicans-who-support

Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft told Alex Jones that coronavirus in the U.S. is “the deep state” trying to take out Trump.
Fox News and right-wing media have seized on coronavirus crisis to attack abortion.
Erick Erickson tweeted and then deleted a celebration of an Asian American reporter's offense at racist coronavirus comment.
Fox’s Dan Bongino said that you can’t be racist about China because “China is not a race.”
Rush Limbaugh guest host Mark Steyn said that San Francisco faces a COVID-19 shutdown because it's “a big gay town.” (In case you are wondering, Limbaugh was off all week.)

new

https://yyy.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/16/the-myth-of-eurabia-how-a-far-right-conspiracy-theory-went-mainstream

guk no lnx

The long read

The myth of Eurabia: how a far-right conspiracy theory went mainstream

Once an obscure idea confined to the darker corners of the internet, the anti-Islam ideology is now visible in the everyday politics of the west. How did this happen? By Andrew Brown

Fri 16 Aug 2019 01.00 EDT Last modified on Fri 16 Aug 2019 07.48 EDT

In July 2011, a quiet European capital was shaken by a terrorist car bomb, followed by confused reports suggesting many deaths. When the first news of the murders came through, one small group of online commentators reacted immediately, even though the media had cautiously declined to identify the attackers. They knew at once what had happened – and who was to blame.

“This was inevitable,” explained one of the anonymous commenters. And it was just the beginning: “Only a matter of time before other European nations get a taste of their multicultural tolerance that they’ve been cooking for decades.”

“Europe has been infested with venomous parasitic vermin,” explained another. “Anything and everything is fine as long as they rape the natives and destroy the country, which they do,” said a third.

As the news grew worse, the group became more joyful and confident. The car bomb had been followed by reports of a mass shooting at a nearby camp for teenagers. One commenter was “almost crying of happiness” to be proved right about the dangers of Islam. “The massacre at the children’s camp,” another noted, “is a sickening reminder of just how evil and satanic the cult of Islam is.”

A couple of hours after the first reports of the bomb explosion in central Oslo, a few doubts emerged to cloud the picture: “Because the targets in the shooting were all good little leftists, won’t the shooter be played up as a rightwing extremist, whatever his actual motives?” one person asked.

When information emerged to suggest that the attacker might be a “tall Nordic guy”, one of the commenters, who called himself “Fjordman”, realised the true nature of the disaster: “Judging from some of the recent information, it must be treated as a serious possibility that this is actually some Timothy McVeigh, not a Muslim. It is too early to tell. If that is indeed the case … it would practically destroy my country, and make the working conditions for people like myself incredibly difficult for a long time to come, I’m afraid.”

The truth turned out to be worse than Fjordman feared. The massacre in Oslo had not been committed by Muslims. It was the work of a white supremacist, Anders Behring Breivik, who had detonated a bomb in Oslo, killing eight people, and then shot dead 69 others, many of them teenagers, at a youth camp run by Norway’s Labour party. And, according to the manifesto he published online, Breivik had been directly inspired by Gates of Vienna – the blog where all these comments appeared on the day of his massacre. Breivik called the ideology that justified his murders “The Vienna school”, after the blog.

Fjordman, whose real name is Peder Are Nøstvold Jensen, now lives in obscurity in provincial Norway. He outed himself as the man behind the pseudonym to a Norwegian tabloid in the weeks following the massacre – butmanaged to avoid testifying at Breivik’s trial, thanks to the intervention of high-powered lawyers paid for by the Middle East Forum, a rightwing American group that would later sponsor Tommy Robinson– real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – in Britain. Nonetheless, Jensen’s influence on Breivik, however indirect, had been considerable.

Breivik borrowed part of the title of his manifesto, A European Declaration of Independence, from one of Fjordman’s blog posts, and many of the chapters in it were simply reprintings of Fjordman’s postings on various blogs, mostly Gates of Vienna, but also a far-right and passionately anti-EU site called the Brussels Journal.

Gates of Vienna was, and still is, run by Edward “Ned” May, an American computer programmer from Washington DC. It was among the first in a wave of blogs that urged the US to war after the shock of 9/11, and almost certainly the most fanatically anti-Muslim. It takes its name from the siege of Vienna in 1683, when an Ottoman Turkish army was defeated by a Polish-led one. Its essential thesis is that this was only one battle in a long war and that Europe and its civilisation are constantly threatened by a Muslim invasion.

On these varied online forums, the narrative was always the same: a liberal cabal was conspiring with hostile Muslim powers to hand over the decent working people to Islam. This was the animating myth of the bloggers, calling themselves the “counter-jihad”, who congregated at Gates of Vienna and other like-minded sites – and inspired both the violence of Breivik and the message of the racist far-right parties that have transformed European politics in the past decade.

But all of these later conspiracy theories took inspiration from a founding myth of contemporary Islamophobia: an invented plot, known as “Eurabia”, to destroy European civilisation. This is the doctrine that Jensen promoted and Breivik acted on, a hidden underpinning of a movement that has changed the world.

Once an ideology confined to the kookier corners of the internet, the idea of Eurabia is now visible in the everyday politics of the US, Australia and most of Europe: when Trump tweets about stabbings in London and falsely claims that crime in Germany is “way up”, he is invoking the Eurabian myth, taken as fact on Fox News, that European liberals have surrendered their cities to Muslim criminals.

The spread of the belief that elites conspired to push Muslim immigration on their native populations is also the story of a conspiracy theory that was nourished on some of the very first blogs and message boards, started appearing in mainstream discourse after 9/11, and thentook on a life of its own, even while the supposed facts behind it were exposed as ridiculous. It is a lesson in the danger of half-truths, which are not only more powerful than truths but often more powerful than lies.

Eurabia is a term coined in the 70s that was resurfaced byGisèle Littman, an Egyptian-born Jewish woman who fled Cairo for Britain after the Suez crisis, and then moved to Switzerland in 1960 with her English husband. She wrote under the name of Bat Ye’or (Hebrew for “Daughter of the Nile”). In a series of books, originally written in French and published from the 1990s onward, she developed a grand conspiracy theory in which the EU, led by French elites, implemented a secret plan to sell out Europe to the Muslims in exchange for oil.

The original villain of Littman’s story was General Charles de Gaulle. It is difficult for an outsider to understand how De Gaulle, who led the French resistance to the Nazis and was probably the greatest conservative statesman in French history, could be reinvented as the man who betrayed western civilisation for money. But Littman had lived many years in France, and the French far right hated De Gaulle, and indeed tried several times to assassinate him. Not only had De Gaulle fought the Vichy government, he had also admitted defeat in the long and hideously bloody war of Algerian independence – granting an Arab Muslim country its freedom at the expense of the French-Christian settler population, who had to retreat to France (and whose descendants formed the backbone of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front).

Agreeing to Algerian independence was understood by the French far right as a betrayal. De Gaulle had been brought out of retirement and restored to power in 1958 because he was believed to be on the side of the settlers in their war, which was opposed by much of the left. And so, to the far right, the Mediterranean came to seem like the frontline in a long, shifting struggle between rival colonialisms, Christian and Muslim, in which the Muslims had won a great victory in Algeria. Where would their new advance stop?

Littman’s argument, framed by her experience in Egypt (which a French force had invaded, along with the British and Israelis, in 1956), was that Islam imposed a second-class status on all non-Muslims, whom they ruled. This status of “dhimmitude” – a coinage of Littman’s, meaning subjection to Islamic rule on pain of “forced conversion, slavery or death” – was now to be extended to Europe.

According to Littman, her books describe “Europe’s evolution from a Judeo-Christian civilisation, with important post-Enlightenment secular elements, into a post-Judeo-Christian civilisation that is subservient to the ideology of jihad and the Islamic powers that propagate it.”

She saw tentacles of the great conspiracy in committees of blameless tedium and obscurity, such as the Euro-Arab Dialogue, an institution set up by the European Economic Community and the Arab League in the 70s to promote greater discussion between the regions. Her conspiracy theory was dismissed in 2006 by the Israeli historian Robert Wistrich as “the protocols of the elders of Brussels”, but what mattered more was the place he chose to challenge her ideas: a conference in Jerusalem on antisemitism to which she had been invited despite her lack of academic status. September 11 had changed everything for Littman, she told Haaretz after the conference: “In the United States, I am certain that the September 11 attacks woke people up, including the Jewish community that had previously ignored me, because it belongs more to the left.”

She explained to Haaretz the future she saw for Europe. “We are now heading towards a total change in Europe, which will be more and more Islamicised and will become a political satellite of the Arab and Muslim world.”

This was the idea that the Norwegian Jensen was enchanted by, and which, as Fjordman, he transmitted to Anders Breivik.

[Marine Le Pen, president of France’s far-right National Rally (formerly National Front) party, applauds the former US presidential adviser Steve Bannon after his speech at the party’s annual congress in March 2018.]

Jensen is unusual among Eurabia believers in that he has actually had some experience of the Muslim world and even speaks Arabic. He is the son of a socialist politician in Norway and studied Arabic in Cairo – his earlier university studies in Bergen had included English (which he writes fluently), Russian, Arabic and Middle Eastern history. In 2000, he had been interviewed by the local paper back in Norway, and spoke enthusiastically about his hosts in Egypt: “Outside the tourist areas, you meet friendly, hospitable, curious and open people who want to get to know you. I have been part of their daily lives. We’ve been invited to their homes, and talked and smoked shisha together.”

That was Jensen’s first encounter with Islam, and he was still in Cairo at the time of the 9/11 attacks. He says he saw then that there were some Muslims who celebrated the slaughter, and he also saw that this wasn’t reported in the Norwegian papers. The next year, he worked for the Norwegian Refugee Council in the disputed city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.Unusually among Scandinavians who have worked with Palestinians in Israel, he identified with the Israelis.He narrowly escaped a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, at a bar where two of his colleagues had been killed in another attack the previous year. The experience cemented his growing fear and loathing of Islam.

The fact that the Norwegian press took a generally pro-Palestinian line while he and his friends had been the victims of Palestinian terrorism helped to convince Jensen that Islam was an existential threat to European civilisation which the politically correct establishment was wilfully ignoring. Like Littman, he seems not to acknowledge any element of nationalism in Palestinian consciousness: it is all either Arab or Muslim. In fact, the belief that Islam is hostile to national consciousness is quite widely held on the right: the philosopher Roger Scruton brought it up in a controversial speech on nationality in Hungary in 2013, in which he contrasted European Christian nations with Islamic empires.

In 2003, Jensen returned to Norway, where he attempted to make a name for himself as a public intellectual. At first, he was hostile to feminism, accusing feminists of destroying Norwegian manhood. But the focus of his concerns soon switched to Islam. He started writing under the pseudonym “Norwegian Kafir” on an American blog calledLittle Green Footballs, which loudly and fervently supported the invasion of Iraq. From then on, his writing appeared in English, on American-hosted blogs. There, he hammered into shape the narrative of elites, specially identified with the EU, who are destroying and betraying Europe by the deliberate encouragement of mass immigration.

At this point in time, the Eurabian conspiracy appealed largely to those who had long perceived a conflict between Islam and the Judeo-Christian west – with Israel as a beleaguered and persecuted outpost of western values. These people, largely on the American right, were among the earliest exponents of Eurabia – but as they never ceased to complain, theirs was not an attitude very widely shared in Europe. What would soon supply the emotional force of the fantasy was another set of ideas about global migration, less conspiratorial in their essence, but much more widely accepted among generally apolitical Europeans. These, also, originated in France, where they were known as the“great replacement”.

The idea of the great replacement had its origin in a blatantly racist French novel of the 1970s, The Camp of the Saints, in which France is overthrown by an unarmed invasion of starving, sex-crazed Indian refugees when the French army is not prepared to fire on them. Themoral of the book is that western civilisation can only be saved by a willingness to slaughter poor brown people. Steve Bannon, among the founders of the rightwing news site Breitbart and a former adviser to President Trump, has referred to it repeatedly.

Throughout the 80s and 90s, the naked racism of The Camp of the Saints kept it largely out of public debate. But the rise of Islam as a global force allowed the question to be recast. If the threatening masses were defined by religion rather than by skin colour, then hating them could be presented as an intellectual commitment rather than a racist one.

And the paranoid did have a large, shadowy half-truth to fall back on. The demographic shrinkagefacing Europe is real and undeniable, and it was obvious in the early years of this century, too. So are the much greater birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. In 2002, Russia and Pakistan both had populations of about 145 million; by 2017, Russia’s population was 144 million while Pakistan’s was 200 million.

The next stage in the development of a xenophobic populist worldview was for the two narratives to merge, so that Islam and Muslims became both a conspiracy and a demographic threat.

The 9/11 attacks changed attitudes to Islam in much of Europe and the US. Israel and the US now shared a sense of being under attack from Muslims. Without 9/11, Littman would have remained an obscure crank, and Jensen more obscure still. But the assault on the twin towers unleashed an immense backlash of wounded American pride and nationalism that led to the devastation of two whole countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, and countless deaths. It also fuelled a demand for explanations. Theories about the unique malevolence and danger of Islam answered a popular hunger. George W Bush declared at the time that the US had no quarrel with Islam, but many of his compatriots disagreed.

One of the many bad fruits of 9/11 was the new atheist movement, a phenomenon marked by mutual self-praise and undeviating hostility to Islam. Even if the ostensible target of much of the hostility was Christianity, the new atheists tend to consider Islam far worse and more “religious” a religion. The American writer Sam Harris’s breakthrough book The End of Faith from 2004 now reads like Bat Ye’or without the inconvenient scaffolding of easily disproved facts. “We are at war with Islam,” he writes. “It may not serve our immediate foreign policy objectives for our political leaders to openly acknowledge this fact, but it is unambiguously so. It is not merely that we are at war with an otherwise peaceful religion that has been ‘hijacked’ by extremists … Armed conflict ‘in the defence of Islam’ is a religious obligation for every Muslim man ... Islam, more than any religion humans have ever devised, has the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death.”

In the run-up to the Iraq war, and after the invasion, coverage in American newspapers and on television was, to a European eye, jingoistic in the extreme. The possibility of defeat was unthinkable. Nonetheless, a new wave of bloggers began using the term “MSM” for “mainstream media” as a disparaging reference to the large media organisations’ pretended neutrality. One of the earliest and most influential of these was Little Green Footballs, founded and run by Charles Johnson, a Los Angeles-based former session guitarist with an interest in web design. It was typical of the moment that he was an opinionated amateur with no credentials, whose real advantage was that he could build websites at a time when this required some programming skill.

Jensen, commenting on Little Green Footballs as Norwegian Kafir, made it a distribution point for Eurabian ideas. Another was Gates of Vienna itself, run by Ned May under the moniker Baron Bodissey after a sage in the sci-fi novels of Jack Vance. Then there was Jihad Watch, run by the American author Robert Spencer. Both Spencer and his frequent collaborator Pam Geller were banned from the UK in 2013 for making statements likely to foster hatred and violence between communities.

The only European blog of note in this constellation was the fanatically anti-EU site the Brussels Journal, where the Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan was a contributor. The Brussels Journal was run by Paul Beliën, a far-right Belgian journalist and author. Jensen was active on all these sites, taking part in discussions in which the Eurabian beliefs gave rise to something that called itself the counter-jihad movement.

Nowadays, when Facebook effortlessly spreads disinformation around the world, it is difficult to recapture the sense of revelation, and of belonging, that once accompanied the discovery of a new blog. The cramped but, to its adherents, strangely comforting thought world of the counter-jihad blogs turned politics into a gigantic online game. Anyone could play and everyone could find in it their inner child: “Some people think I’m weird; some think I am exceptionally intelligent,” Jensen had told a reporter when he was still a student in Cairo.

The boundaries between these blogs and the “MSM” they affected to despise were porous. Some writers aimed for a high-minded tone about the dangers of Muslim immigration: the former Financial Times columnist Christopher Caldwell published in 2009 a book, Reflections on a Revolution in Europe, that recapitulates the idea of a slow-moving Muslim barbarian invasion from a position of Olympian disdain: “Immigrants also bring a lot of disorder, penury and crime … Muslim culture is unusually full of messages laying out the practical advantages of procreation … If you walk north across the Piazza Della Repubblica in Turin, you see, mutatis mutandis, what the Romans saw. To the east, two well-preserved Roman towers remain, and so do the walls built to separate citizens from barbarians. Today, in the space of about 60 seconds on foot, you pass from chic shops and wine bars through a lively multiethnic market into one of Europe’s more menacing north African slums.”

Some were less highbrow. In 2004, the Daily Telegraph gave a column to the Canadian prophet of American greatness Mark Steyn, who had originally made his name as a witty critic of musical theatre. Doom and horror was all he saw in Europe’s future. As early as 2002, he said: “I find it easier to be optimistic about the futures of Iraq and Pakistan than, say, Holland or Denmark” – a remark he was still proudly quoting for Telegraph readers in 2005, when Iraq had become a slaughterhouse.

In terms that anticipated Jensen, Breivik and the alleged manifesto of the man charged with the Christchurch massacre, Steyn wrote (and the Telegraph published) this prophecy: “In a democratic age, you can’t buck demography – except through civil war. The Yugoslavs figured that out. In the 30 years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43% to 31% of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26% to 44%.”

[painting naked white? woman sucks finger, others gawk; ‘Europeans, vote for AfD, so that Europe will never become ‘Eurabia’!’ reads a campaign poster in Berlin for the far-right party during this year’s European elections.

Compare Steyn in 2005 with the manifesto of Patrick Crusius, who confessed to murdering 22 people in El Paso earlier this month: “This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion ... America is rotting from the inside out, and peaceful means to stop this seem to be nearly impossible.”

In 2007, the believers in a counter-jihad began to meet up in the real world. After a preliminary meeting of bloggers, commentators and Danish and Norwegian sympathisers in Copenhagen, attended by Jensen, a conference was arranged by May and the far-right Flemish party Vlaams Belang, in Brussels in 2007. This brought together most of the ideologues of Eurabia, as they attempted to transform it from an idea into a movement. Littman was the keynote speaker. Others present were Geller and Robert Spencer from the US, and Gerard Batten, later briefly the leader of Ukip in Britain. Ted Ekeroth, of the nationalist, rightwing Sweden Democrats, also attended.

As both Ukip and the Sweden Democrats rose to become powerful political forces, anxieties about terrorism were subsumed into much wider anxieties about demography, and about status within the old order. The American anthropologist Scott Atran has carried out extensive research into the mindset of the young men who become Islamic terrorists: the combination of wounded pride with the delight of belonging to a movement which has both global, apocalyptic significance and a living presence in a friendship group is tremendously important in recruiting jihadis. The same dynamic operates among their enemies: Breivik was remarkable chiefly in that he was so solipsistic that he could radicalise himself without the aid of any friends in real life, only those he imagined on the internet. He had at one stage approached his intellectual idol, Jensen, via email, who brushed him off as “boring as a vacuum cleaner salesman”.

You do not have to be a jihadi to feel the tug of these compulsions. The counter-jihadis, just as much as their enemies, believed they were entering an apocalyptic battle between good and evil. This is a century of wounded pride and anxieties about status for almost everyone.

Despite all this, there were some signs, even before the Breivik killings, that the original Eurabian front would break up. Those who were opposed to immigrants in general began to separate from those who hated Muslims in particular.Johnson, the founder of Little Green Footballs, excommunicated most of his followers in 2010 because of their increasing closeness to parties of western Europe that he regarded as being descended from fascists – the Vlaams Belang in Belgium and the Sweden Democrats, although he also denounced the English Defence League. Johnson was a genuine philosemite, who could not forgive the taint of antisemitism.

The anti-immigrant right had good reasons for separating itself from the anti-Muslim right. If the logic of the “Vienna school” – Jensen, Spencer and Geller, May and Littman – led inexorably to civil war and the righteous slaughter of Muslims and their leftie enablers, then most of the right shrank back from it. Commenters such as Douglas Murray and Caldwell quite genuinely believed that Breivik was insane, and that his actions had no relation to the ideas that he espoused. There may in this have been an element of self-deception, but it is also a testimony to the sort of instinctive, unthinking decency we all need sometimes to rescue us from the consequences of our ideas. It seemed that some kind of pragmatism would prevail.

The hope now seems deceptive. What changed this was above all the election of the US president, Donald Trump, whose then adviser Bannon was a believer in a “brutal, bloody ... global war” against “Islamic fascism”. They showed that there was a huge constituency for racialised hatred and despair and – for them – no real negative consequences, electoral or otherwise, in pandering to it.

Since Breivik’s massacre, his own beliefs have only become more widespread.They have spread into the politics of all European countries. In the campaign for the European elections this May, the German far-right party AfD ran posters showing a naked white woman being pawed by dark-skinned men in Arab headgear. One had stuck his fingers in her unresisting mouth. “Europeans, vote for AfD, so that Europe will never become ‘Eurabia’,” said the caption. Millions of people who have never heard of Bat Ye’or, of Fjordman, or even of Breivik and Bannon, now understand that poster at a glance, and no amount of evidence will shake their certainty. They now believe all politics comes down to the words of one of Trump’s more recent tweets: “The losers all want what you have, don’t give it to them … Be strong & prosper, be weak & die!”

But who, in this situation, are the losers, and who are the strong? Last week, in an apparent attempt to emulate Breivik, a rich, disaffected young Norwegian, Philip Manshaus, shot his way through the entrance gates to a mosque in the upmarket suburb of Oslo where he lived and started firing at the congregation. He was wrestled to the ground by an unarmed 65-year-old Muslim, Mohammed Rafiq, who then held him down, with the help of another man, until the police arrived. On the Gates of Vienna blog, this episode was not deemed worthy of mention. Instead, its devoted readers were told that Muslims had been responsible for a recent outbreak of animal cruelty in Sweden.

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NEW

FLUFF? see also bk entry

Mark Steyn (/:{staɪn:(style="border-bottom:1px dotted"):}:/; born December 8, 1959) is a Canadian author and cultural commentator.^[2] He has written numerous books, including the New York Times bestsellers America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It and After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. Steyn has been published by magazines and newspapers around the world, and is a regular guest host of the nationally syndicated Rush Limbaugh Show. He also guest hosts Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News, on which he regularly appears as a guest.

Life and career

Steyn was born in Toronto on December 8, 1959.^[citation ^needed] He was baptized a Catholic and later confirmed in the Anglican Church;.^[3] He has stated that "the last Jewish female in my line was one of my paternal great-grandmothers" and that "both my grandmothers were Catholic".^[4] Steyn's great-aunt was artist Stella Steyn.^[5] His mother's family was Belgian.^[6]

Steyn was educated at the King Edward's School, Birmingham, in the United Kingdom, the same school that author J. R. R. Tolkien attended and where Steyn was assigned a Greek dictionary that had also been used by Tolkien.^[7] Steyn left school at age 16^[8] and worked as a disc jockey before becoming musical theatre critic at the newly established The Independent in 1986.^[9] He was appointed film critic for The Spectator in 1992. After writing predominantly about the arts, Steyn shifted his focus to political commentary and wrote a column for The Daily Telegraph, a conservative broadsheet, until 2006.

He has written for a wide range of publications, including the Jerusalem Post, Orange County Register, Chicago Sun-Times, National Review, The New York Sun, The Australian, Maclean's, The Irish Times, National Post, The Atlantic, Western Standard, and The New Criterion.

Steyn's books include Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now (a history of the musical theatre) and America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, a *New York Times* bestseller. He has also published collections of his columns and his celebrity obituaries and profiles from The Atlantic.

Steyn held a Eugene C. Pulliam Visiting Fellowship in Journalism at Hillsdale College in spring 2013.^[10] As of 2010, Steyn was no longer the back-page columnist for the print edition of National Review, conservative writer James Lileks having taken over that space in the print edition. Steyn's back-page column for National Review, "Happy Warrior", resumed with the March 21, 2011 issue.

Steyn also has contributed to the center-right blog Ricochet.com and recorded numerous podcasts with the organization.^[11]

Steyn is also a guest host of The Rush Limbaugh Show.^[12]

From December 2016 to February 2017, Steyn hosted "The Mark Steyn Show" on the CRTV Digital Network.^[13] Following the cancellation of the show, CRTV sued Mark Steyn who countersued. CRTV lost completely and Steyn prevailed in a judgment that was originally ordered by Judge Elaine Gordon and later confirmed by Judge Eileen Bransten in New York Supreme Court ^[14][15]

Positions

Criticism of news media

In a May 2004 column Steyn commented that editors were encouraging anti-Bush sentiments after the Daily Mirror and The Boston Globe had published faked pictures, originating from American and Hungarian pornographic Web sites,^[16] of British and American soldiers supposedly sexually abusing Iraqis.^[17] Steyn argues that media only wanted to show images to Westerners "that will shame and demoralize them."^[18]

In a July 2005 column for National Review, Steyn criticized Andrew Jaspan, then the editor of The Age, an Australian newspaper. Jaspan was offended by Douglas Wood, an Australian kidnapped and held hostage in Iraq, who after his rescue referred to his captors as "arseholes." Jaspan claimed that "the issue is really largely, speaking as I understand it, he was treated well there. He says he was fed every day, and as such to turn around and use that kind of language I think is just insensitive." Steyn argued that there is nothing at all wrong with insensitivity toward murderous captors, and that it was Jaspan, not Wood, who suffered from Stockholm syndrome. He said further, "A blindfolded Mr. Wood had to listen to his captors murder two of his colleagues a few inches away, but how crude and boorish would one have to be to hold that against one's hosts?"^[19]

Conrad Black trial

Steyn wrote articles and maintained a blog^[20] for Maclean's covering the 2007 business fraud trial of his friend Conrad Black in Chicago, from the point of view of one who was never convinced Black committed any crime. Doing this, he later wrote, "cost me my gig at the [Chicago] Sun-Times" and "took me away from more lucrative duties such as book promotion".^[21] Steyn expressed dismay at "the procedural advantages the prosecution enjoys—the inducements it's able to dangle in order to turn witnesses that, if offered by the defence, would be regarded as the suborning of perjury; or the confiscation of assets intended to prevent an accused person from being able to mount a defence; or the piling on of multiple charges which virtually guarantees that a jury will seek to demonstrate its balanced judgment by convicting on something. All that speaks very poorly for the federal justice system."

After Black's conviction, Steyn published a long essay in Maclean's about the case, strongly criticizing Black's defense team.^[22]

Eurabia

Criticism of multiculturalism

Support of Iraq invasion

Steyn was an early proponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2007 he reiterated his support while attacking Democrat John Murtha, stating that Murtha's plan for military action in Iraq was designed "to deny the president the possibility of victory while making sure Democrats don't have to share the blame for the defeat. ... [Murtha] doesn't support them in the mission, but he'd like them to continue failing at it for a couple more years".^[29]

In 2013 Steyn blamed the United State's lack of success in Iraq on "geopolitical ADHD," writing "the unceasing drumbeat of 'quagmire' and 'exit strategy' communicated to the world an emptiness at the heart of American power...An awareness that America lacks "credibility" and "will" is what caused crowds to attack U.S. embassies and the consulate in Benghazi."^[30] Steyn's column prompted The Atlantic to call Steyn an "unapologetic hawk," noting how Steyn's column failed to take account his own declarations of victory in Iraq in 2004 when Steyn wrote: "After 15 months of running Iraq, the Americans are out...the Americans have bequeathed them a better Iraq than the one the British invented for them eight decades ago...So I'm relaxed about Iraq: its future lies somewhere between good enough and great."^[31]

Books

America Alone

Main article: America Alone

Steyn's work America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It is a New York Times bestselling nonfiction book published in 2006. It deals with the global war on terror and wider issues of demographics in Muslim and non-Muslim populations. It has been widely praised by conservative commentators,^[32] and recommended by George W. Bush.^[33] The paperback edition, released in April 2008 with a new introduction, was labeled "Soon to Be Banned in Canada", alluding to a possible result that Steyn then anticipated from the Canadian Islamic Congress' human rights complaints against Maclean's magazine.

Response to America Alone

In an essay about America Alone,^[34] Christopher Hitchens wrote that "Mark Steyn believes that demography is destiny, and he makes an immensely convincing case," then went on to detail many points at which he disagreed with Steyn. For instance, Hitchens believed that Steyn erred by "considering European Muslim populations as one. Islam is as fissile as any other religion, and considerable friction exists among immigrant Muslim groups in many European countries. Moreover, many Muslims actually have come to Europe for the advertised purposes; seeking asylum and to build a better life." Nevertheless, Hitchens expressed strong agreement with some of Steyn's points, calling the book "admirably tough-minded."

After America

In 2011, Steyn published After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, a followup to America Alone. In it, he argues that the United States is now on the same trajectory towards decline and fall as the rest of the West, due to unsustainable national spending and borrowing.^[35] While America Alone concentrated on demography and the rise of Islamic extremism, After America concentrates on Federal debt and the growth of government and bureaucracy.

After America peaked at number 4 on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list.^[36]

Climate Change: The Facts

In early 2015, Steyn together with the Institute of Public Affairs published Climate Change: The Facts, a collection of 21 essays by what Steyn describes as "leading scientists and commentators" on the science, politics and economics of the climate change debate. The book is written from the perspective of a climate change skeptic.^[37]

Legal issues

Canadian Islamic Congress human rights complaint

Main article: Human rights complaints against Maclean's magazine

In 2007, a complaint was filed with the Ontario Human Rights Commission related to an article "The Future Belongs to Islam",^[38] written by Mark Steyn, published in Maclean's magazine. The complainants alleged that the article and the refusal of Maclean's to provide space for a rebuttal violated their human rights. The complainants also claimed that the article was one of twenty-two (22) Maclean's articles, many written by Steyn, about Muslims.^[39] Further complaints were filed with the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission refused in April 2008 to proceed, saying it lacked jurisdiction to deal with magazine content. However, the Commission stated that it, "strongly condemns the Islamophobic portrayal of Muslims ... Media has a responsibility to engage in fair and unbiased journalism."^[40] Critics of the Commission claimed that Maclean's and Steyn had been found guilty without a hearing. John Martin of The Province wrote, "There was no hearing, no evidence presented and no opportunity to offer a defence—just a pronouncement of wrongdoing."^[41]

The OHRC defended its right to comment by stating, "Like racial profiling and other types of discrimination, ascribing the behaviour of individuals to a group damages everyone in that group. We have always spoken out on such issues. Maclean's and its writers are free to express their opinions. The OHRC is mandated to express what it sees as unfair and harmful comment or conduct that may lead to discrimination."^[42]

Steyn subsequently criticized the Commission, commenting that "Even though they (the OHRC) don't have the guts to hear the case, they might as well find us guilty. Ingenious!"^[43]

Soon afterwards, the head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission issued a public letter to the editor of Maclean's magazine. In it, Jennifer Lynch said, "Mr. Steyn would have us believe that words, however hateful, should be given free reign *[sic]. History has shown us that hateful words sometimes lead to hurtful actions that undermine freedom and have led to unspeakable crimes. That is why Canada and most other democracies have enacted legislation to place reasonable limits on the expression of hatred."^[44] The *National Post subsequently defended Steyn and sharply criticized Lynch, stating that Lynch has "no clear understanding of free speech or the value of protecting it" and that "No human right is more basic than freedom of expression, not even the "right" to live one's life free from offence by remarks about one's ethnicity, gender, culture or orientation."^[45]

The federal Canadian Human Rights Commission dismissed the Canadian Islamic Congress' complaint against Maclean's in June 2008. The CHRC's ruling said of the article that, "the writing is polemical, colourful and emphatic, and was obviously calculated to excite discussion and even offend certain readers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike." However, the Commission ruled that overall, "the views expressed in the Steyn article, when considered as a whole and in context, are not of an extreme nature, as defined by the Supreme Court."^[46]

Steyn later wrote a lengthy reflection of his turmoil with the commissions and the tribunals. The reflection appears as the introduction to The Tyranny of Nice,^[47] a book authored by Kathy Shaidle and Pete Vere on Canada's human rights commissions.

Defamation lawsuit

In July 2012,^[48] Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) blogger Rand Simberg accused American climatologist Michael E. Mann of "deception" and "engaging in data manipulation" and alleged that the Penn State investigation that had cleared Mann was a "cover-up and whitewash" comparable to the recent Jerry Sandusky sex scandal, "except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data." The CEI blog editor then removed the sentence as "inappropriate", but a National Review blog post by Steyn cited it and alleged that Mann's hockey stick graph was "fraudulent".^[49][50]

Mann asked CEI and National Review to remove the allegations and apologize, or he would take action.^[48] The CEI published further insults, and National Review Editor Rich Lowry responded in an article headed "Get Lost" with a declaration that, should Mann sue, the discovery process would be used to reveal and publish Mann's emails. Mann's lawyer filed the defamation lawsuit in October 2012.^[49]

Before the case could go to discovery, CEI and National Review filed a court motion to dismiss it under anti-SLAPP legislation, with the claim that they had merely been using exaggerated language which was acceptable against a public figure. In July 2013 the judge ruled against this motion,^[51][52] and when the defendants took this to appeal a new judge also denied their motion to dismiss, in January 2014.National Reviewchanged its lawyers, and Steyn decided to represent himself in court.^[48][53] Journalist Seth Shulman, at the Union of Concerned Scientists, welcomed the judge's statement that accusations of fraud "go to the heart of scientific integrity. They can be proven true or false. If false, they are defamatory. If made with actual malice, they are actionable."^[54]

The defendants again appealed against the decision, and on 11 August 2014 the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press with 26 other organizations, including the ACLU, Bloomberg, Gannet (USA Today), Comcast (NBC), Time, Fox News and the Seattle Times, filed an amicus brief arguing that the comments at issue were Constitutionally protected as opinion.^[55][56] Steyn chose to be represented by attorney Daniel J. Kornstein.^[57]

An appeal to get the lawsuit thrown out, filed by Steyn's co-defendants (National Review, CEI and Simberg), was heard in the D.C. Court of Appeals on 25 November 2014.^[58] Steyn was present for oral arguments but did not join in the appeal, preferring to go to trial.^[59] On 22 December 2016 the D.C. appeals court ruled that Mann's case against Simberg and Steyn could go ahead. A "reasonable jury" could find against the defendants, and though the context should be considered, "if the statements assert or imply false facts that defame the individual, they do not find shelter under the First Amendment simply because they are embedded in a larger policy debate.".^[60]

Critical reception

Steyn's writing draws supporters and detractors for both content and style. Martin Amis, who was harshly criticized in America Alone yet nevertheless gave it a positive review, says of his style: "Mark Steyn is an oddity: his thoughts and themes are sane and serious—but he writes like a maniac." ^[61][62] His style was described by Robert Fulford as "bring[ing] to public affairs the dark comedy developed in the Theatre of the Absurd."^[63]Longtime editor and admirer Fulford also wrote, "Steyn, a self-styled 'right-wing bastard,' violates everyone's sense of good taste."^[63] According to Simon Mann, Steyn "gives succour to the maxim the pen is mightier than the sword, though he is not averse to employing the former to advocate use of the latter."^[9]

Susan Catto in Time noted his interest in controversy, "Instead of shying away from the appearance of conflict, Steyn positively revels in it."^[64] Canadian journalist Steve Burgess wrote "Steyn wields his rhetorical rapier with genuine skill" and that national disasters tended to cause Steyn "to display his inner wingnut."^[65]

In 2009, Canadian journalist Paul Wells accused Steyn of dramatically exaggerating the rise of fascist political parties in Europe. Wells also accused Steyn of repeatedly "shrieking" about Islam in his political writings.^[66]

Awards

In 2005, Mark Steyn received the Henry Salvatori Prize in the American Founding at the Claremont Institute established by philanthropist and conservative leader Henry Salvatori. It is awarded in honour of those who "distinguish themselves by an understanding of, and actions taken to preserve and foster the principles upon which the United States was built".^[67]

Mark Steyn was awarded the 2006 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism for writing which "best reflects love of this country and its democratic institutions".^[68][69]

Roger Ailes of Fox News Channel presented the prize, which included a check for $20,000.

Steyn received the Center for Security Policy's "Mightier Pen" award in 2007, receiving it at an event that featured a convocation by Jewish scholar and rabbi Yitz Greenberg and remarks by Board of Regents Honorary Chairman Bruce Gelb.^[70] In 2010, Steyn was presented the Sappho Award from the International Free Press Society in Copenhagen, Denmark for what was described as both "his ample contributions as a cultural critic" and "his success in influencing the debate on Islam, the disastrous ideology of multiculturalism and the crisis of the Western civilization."^[71]

Steyn received the inaugural George Jonas Freedom Award at a gala hosted by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms in Toronto in 2018.^[72]

Personal life

Steyn lives and works mainly in Woodsville, New Hampshire.^[73][74] He is married, and has three children.^[3]

Bibliography

The Story of Miss Saigon (by Edward Behr and Steyn; 1991, ISBN 1-55970-124-2)
Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now (1997, ISBN 0-415-92286-0)
The Face of the Tiger (2002, ISBN 0-9731570-0-3; collected columns)
Mark Steyn From Head To Toe: An Anatomical Anthology (2004, ISBN 0-9731570-2-X; collected columns)
America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It (2006, ISBN 0-89526-078-6)
Mark Steyn's Passing Parade (2006, ISBN 0-9731570-1-1; collected obituaries)
The Tyranny of Nice (2008, ISBN 978-0-9780490-1-0; introduction)
A Song for the Season (2008, A Musical Calendar)
Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech And The Twilight Of The West (2009) ISBN 0-9731570-5-4
After America: Get Ready for Armageddon (2011) ISBN 1-59698-100-8
The Undocumented Mark Steyn: Don't Say You Weren't Warned (2014) ISBN 1-62157-318-4
Climate Change: The Facts (2015) ISBN 0-98639-830-6
"A Disgrace To The Profession" ~ The World's Scientists, In Their Own Words, On Michael E Mann, His Hockey Stick And Their Damage To Science ~ Volume I (2015) ISBN 978-0986398339

Reference

steyn419

see fox tucker carlson, morph from denier to trump islamophobe

fail up? early phase of pension plan (safety net like james o'keefe gets free lawyer)

12/15 promoted to primary, cruz sci comm testimony

capt 914

gone for a while?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/far-right-tucker-carlson-guest-given-airtime-to-rage-against-godless-and-post-christian-france-after-notre-dame-fire/

After surviving everything from two world wars to the French Revolution to the Black Plague of the 1340s-1350s, the historic Medieval cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris, was rocked by a major blaze on Monday. The fire has been extinguished, although the building suffered extensive damage and will need to be rebuilt. And when he appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News on Monday night, far-right pundit Mark Steyn used the fire as an opportunity to insult France as a “godless” and “post-Christian” society that is being overtaken by Muslims.

Steyn, who has guest-hosted “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News as well as Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, told Carlson, “Christendom is in retreat in Europe, and in France particularly. France has actually quite an aggressive belief in secularism, and according to some polls, the French are—even by the standards of the modern Western world—among the most godless people.”

Steyn went on to describe the Basilica of St. Denis north of Paris as “a Christian museum in the heart of what is now a Muslim suburb, in effect.” And he claimed that at Notre Dame Cathedral, Christianity is not a “living, breathing faith” but rather, “is just becoming, actually, a museum, an art gallery, a storage facility.”

Speaking to Carlson, Steyn had a hard time pinpointing exactly why France is mourning the damage at Notre Dame. Steyn told Carlson, “The French who were on the streets in tears this evening on the streets of Paris—I don’t think they’re mourning just history or architecture or art or culture. They are mourning something else. But what that something else, post-Christian France—can’t quite identify it. That’s really the conundrum.”

Steyn added that when French President Emmanuel Macron “says we’re going to rebuild it—rebuild it for what? When people talk about, ‘Oh, the heart of France has died’—what is in the soul of France? What is this? Is it just the building or something more?”

The notion that Muslims are overrunning western countries with the help of secular liberals has been a recurring theme in Steyn’s books, which include 2006’s “America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It” and 2011’s “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon.”

Watch the video below:

omg wiki chris hitchens?!

America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It is a 2006 non-fiction book by the Canadian newspaper columnist and writer Mark Steyn. It forecasts the downfall of Western civilization due to internal weaknesses and Muslim population growth in Western countries and the world generally.

1 Overview

2 Critical reception

3 Human rights complaints

4 See also

5 Notes

6 References

7 External links

Overview[edit]

America Alone is set in the context of the global war on terror. Steyn argues that "much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive the twenty-first century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most European countries."[1]

Steyn attributes the forecast fall of the Western world to three factors:

Demographic decline, based on the observation that European nations have low birth rates while Muslim nations have higher birth rates. Specifically, in recent years the population of the developed world declined from about 30% of world population to around 20%, while the population of Muslim nations increased from about 15% to 20%.[2]

The unsustainability of the advanced Western social-democratic state, based on the thesis that the responsibilities of normal adults, such as care of the elderly, childcare, health care and insurance, have been slowly taken over by the state. Steyn argues that these programs erode humanity's basic sense of self-reliance to a point at which a more resilient group of people — Muslims in his view — will take control.

The exhaustion of civilization. Steyn argues that Western nations are so focused on moral and cultural relativism—with "diversity" and "racism" as their new favorite words—that they are unable to see that their existence is threatened. Specifically, he argues that European nations have given up defending themselves and rely on America for their defense. He views anti-Americanism as a symptom of civilizational exhaustion, whether manifested by Muslims (to whom America symbolizes gay porn, children born out of wedlock, immodest women, and immorality) or by Europeans (to whom America symbolises a crude and radical Christianity, fat rednecks and uncontrolled firearms). However, in his view America is the most benign hegemonic power the world has ever seen. According to Steyn, America will be the last and only country—as all others will be taken over by Muslims—that will retain its sense of self-preservation, but this is not a given, as America's enemies know that it ran from Vietnam and they hope that America will continue to flee when faced with a challenge.

Steyn's final argument is that the Muslim world will not need to carry out an outright attack. Instead, Europe will collapse from "wimpiness" or "multicultural 'sensitivity,'" leading to betrayal of the state's core values. Thus, during the Danish 'cartoon jihad' of 2006, Jack Straw, then British foreign secretary, hailed the 'sensitivity' of Fleet Street in not reprinting the offending representations of the Prophet."[3]

Steyn dismisses the danger of climate change, The Population Bomb, The Limits to Growth, and nuclear winter.[citation needed]

Critical reception[edit]

Christopher Hitchens reviewed the book with praise, and describes it as "an admirably tough-minded book."[4] Hitchens goes on in his review and states:

Mark Steyn's book is essentially a challenge to the bien-pensants among us: an insistence that we recognize an extraordinary threat and thus the possible need for extraordinary responses. He need not pose as if he were the only one with the courage to think in this way.

"Facing the Islamist Menace". city-journal.org. City Journal (New York City). 2015-12-23. Winter 2007

The British novelist Martin Amis also reviewed the book in The Times and hailed Steyn as the "great sayer of the unsayable" but goes on to state:

I continue to hope that his admonitions will gain some momentum, despite the efforts of his prose style to impede it.[5]

The book was read by President of the United States George W. Bush who also gave copies to his White House staff.[6] According to Steyn it was also read by Democrat vice-presidential nominee Joe Lieberman, Spanish prime minister José Maria Aznar, British politician and prominent Brexit campaigner Michael Gove who also reviewed the book for The Spectator:

That many of Steyn's conclusions will be unpalatable to the European consensus only underlines how much a failure to face harsh truths has characterised the European response to the scale of the terrorist threat we face.[7]

Daniel Johnson in his criticism of the theory of the West's decline referred to America Alone stating:

On Europe, Steyn is as damning as he is persuasive: from demographic suicide to the abdication of self-defence, he conducts a forensic analysis of the hollowing out of the high culture for which the Continent was still respected a generation ago.[8]

Canadian newspaper publisher and author, Conrad Black in his review of Steyn's follow-up book After America: Get Ready for Armageddon referred to America Alone as extolling

...America’s heroic status as the chief and only plausible resister to the degeneration of the West and the endless primitive depredations of militant Islam, carried out with the mischievous connivance of a greedy and malevolent China.[9]

Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting criticized the book as "inarguably Islamophobic," [10] and author Suhayl Saadi in the Independent referred to it as "hysterical".[11] Academic, Nasar Meer wrote that the book was, "Remarkably similar to anxieties over western decline in the late 19th century."[12]

Steyn himself has written on the tenth anniversary of its publication writing: "This is the biggest story of our time, and, ten years on, the west's leaders still can't talk about it, not to their own peoples, not honestly....I'm glad I brought up the subject. And it's well past time for others to speak out".[13]

Human rights complaints[edit]

Human rights complaints against Maclean's magazine were filed in December 2007 by Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal and the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Maclean's magazine was accused of publishing eighteen Islamophobic articles between January 2005 and July 2007. The articles in question included a column by Mark Steyn titled "The Future Belongs to Islam", an excerpt from America Alone[14].The Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) called the piece "flagrantly Islamophobic", stating that it subjected Canadian Muslims to "hatred and contempt".[15]

The CIC approached Macleans and asked for "equal space" to publish a response, specifically "not a little letter to the editor". Macleans refused.

The CIC responded by filing a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission. It brought an ally, the Ontario Federation of Labour, with its 700,000 members, to put pressure on all relevant parties, including Macleans' parent company.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission ruled that it did not have the jurisdiction to hear the complaint. The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal heard the complaint in June 2008 and issued a ruling on October 10, 2008 dismissing the complaint. The Canadian Human Rights Commission dismissed the federal complaint on June 26, 2008 without referring the matter to a tribunal.

The case has been cited as a motivating factor in the repeal of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

See also[edit]

icon Books portal

Conservatism portal

The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?

We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism

The Death of the West

Eurabia

Danish cartoon controversy

Jack Straw

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe

Niall Ferguson

Christopher Caldwell

Londonistan: How Britain is Creating a Terror State Within

While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West From Within

Human rights complaints against Maclean's magazine

Note

After America: Get Ready For Armageddon] | C-SPAN.org

https://www.c-span.org/video/?301129-1/after-america-ready-armageddon

Aug 21, 2011 - Mark Steyn argued that the United States is destined for financial collapse and a decline in its role as a world leader if current political and ...

https://www.alternet.org/tucker-carlson-e-pluribus-unum-diversity

Friday, Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson provoked outrage with a segment in which he questioned the value of diversity as a "strength" in American society.

On Monday, Carlson doubled down, and inexplicably, he chose to cite "E Pluribus Unum," the original de facto motto of the United States, as proof of his thesis thatdiversity is bad.

"'Out of many, one,' a country in which our differences mean less than our common identity as Americans," Carlson said. "For centuries, this was the source of our national strength. Then, a few decades ago, that changed. With no vote or even an acknowledgement, our elites jettisoned the old motto and adopted a new one: 'Diversity is our strength.'"

"The new slogan seemed to have the opposite meaning from the ones the founders wrote," he continued. "Our differences, they begin telling us, are now the single most important thing about us. The less alike we are, the better. Now, it's possible that is true, that disunity somehow makes us stronger. What's striking is that nobody has ever bothered to explain exactly how." [vid?] Carlson's argument makes no sense whatsoever. For one thing, "E Pluribus Unum" has nothing to do with our racial or ethnic identity; it simply means that from the original thirteen states, one nation is forged. This is driven home by the fact that the motto is thirteen characters long.

For another, Carlson can't seem to provide a source for when exactly America changed its motto to "diversity is our strength," because it never did (Congress did, however, establish "In God We Trust" as the official motto during the second Red Scare).

On the other hand, America has always been a nation of immigrants, and the obsessive desire of certain elements of the population to keep the nation as homogenous as possible has lead to far more misery, public strife, and violence than anyone arguing we should all simply coexist.

Carlson has increasingly used his time slot to express overt racism. His show has promoted white nationalist conspiracy theories about South African farm attacks, and his frequent guest Mark Steyn has argued that Hispanic schoolchildren aren't American because "the border has moved north."

https://www.mediamatters.org/people/mark-steyn

mma tag

Fox guest Mark Steyn suggests that people with disabilities who are "a cost on the public purse" shouldn't be able to immigrate

August 8, 2018 10:03 AM EDT

Tucker Carlson joins guest in slut-shaming Stormy Daniels, defending Rudy Giuliani's comments denigrating porn stars

Video ››› June 7, 2018 9:10 PM EDT ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

720

Tucker Carlson and guest complain that you can “unleash the blizzard of ‘F’ and ‘C’ words” on conservatives but not minorities

Video ››› May 31, 2018 9:09 PM EDT ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

1181

Tucker Carlson guest calls the White House Correspondents' Dinner "the death of comedy"

Video ››› April 30, 2018 9:04 PM EDT ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

497

Tucker Carlson guest: "Multiculturalism lets you decide which side of the war you want to be on, whether you want to be on the home team, or the away team"

Video ››› April 23, 2018 8:43 PM EDT ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAF

Tucker Carlson Tonight guest on Muslim immigrants: "You can't take Mohammed, stick a blond wig on him ... and turn him into a Swede"

Video ››› April 18, 2018 8:45 PM EDT ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

On Fox News, Mark Steyn promotes “stunningly racist” anti-immigrant French novel

Blog ››› April 2, 2018 10:23 PM EDT ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

228

In his April 2 appearance on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, Mark Steyn praised Jean Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints, a novel described by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a “favorite racist fantasy of the anti-immigrant movement” and “revered by American white supremacists.” Steyn claimed the novel “actually predicted what is happening before our eyes.” The novel describes “an invasion of France and the white Western world by a fleet of starving, dark-skinned refugees.”

Steyn previously cited the racist novel in a prior appearance on Fox News, when he asked if The Camp of the Saints was “playing out simply incrementally with smaller boats” across Europe.

MARK STEYN: There was a French novel published 45 years ago --

TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): Yeah.

STEYN: -- by Jean Raspail, “The Camp of the Saints.” A lot of people on the left don't like it, but it actually predicted what is happening before our eyes. A bunch of people got in a ship in India and sailed for the south of France in this novel, and all of the media commented, like the CNN guy you just quoted, ‘what is the big deal about this? We are the ones -- we are the sinful ones. We are the ones who have the stain of all of the wicked ‘-isms’ on our past, imperialism, colonialism, racism, these people are the virtuous ones, let them in and they will redeem us.’

CARLSON: Do you ever get the impression you’ve been softened up for this exact moment? That people have been telling you to shut up and obey, and that you have no moral standard, and you’re not allowed to give your opinion -- basically, so we get to the moment where you can just be told to step aside, and let people come in, in your place?

From the SPLC summary of The Camp of the Saints (emphasis added):

A French novel, The Camp of the Saints, has become the favorite racist fantasy of the anti-immigrant movement in the US. Published by The Social Contract Press, the book is revered by American white supremacists.

Le Camp des Saints, a 1973 novel by Frenchman Jean Raspail, was first translated into English as The Camp of the Saints in 1975. It has been published a total of five times in the United States, most recently by The Social Contract Press (TSCP), an outfit that specializes in hard-line anti-immigration propaganda.

The book is a racist fantasy about an invasion of France and the white Western world by a fleet of starving, dark-skinned refugees, "a haunting and prophetic vision," TSCP says, "of Western Civilization overrun by a burgeoning Third World population."

The book characterizes non-whites as horrific and uncivilized "monsters" who will stop at nothing to greedily and violently seize what rightfully belongs to the white man.

HuffPo: This Stunningly Racist French Novel Is How Steve Bannon Explains The World

Previously:

Fox News guest host on refugees: "Life's a beach and then the people that are going to kill your civilization wash up on it"

Radio Host Mark Steyn: "The More Muslims You Have, The More Terrorism You Have"

Tucker Carlson guest defends white supremacists and claims that Hispanics in Arizona represent the end of American society

Tucker Carlson joins smear campaign attacking Obama portrait artist

Video ››› February 12, 2018 9:40 PM EST ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

319

Tucker Carlson guest defends white supremacists and claims that Hispanics in Arizona represent the end of American society

Video ››› January 18, 2018 8:53 PM EST ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

789

For months, pundits have called Trump a populist, but his policies have been about giveaways to the rich

Research ››› August 31, 2017 3:30 PM EDT ››› JULIE ALDERMAN

260

Several media outlets are suggesting that President Donald Trump’s August 30 speech calling for tax reform was a “populist pitch,” and dozens of media figures and outlets have been calling the president a “populist” since his inauguration. A closer examination of Trump’s policies, however, show a pattern of decisions that will create devastating impacts on Americans, particularly low-income residents, while providing handouts to corporations and the wealthiest citizens.

Fox News guest host on refugees: "Life's a beach and then the people that are going to kill your civilization wash up on it"

Video ››› August 10, 2017 9:08 PM EDT ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

764

Right-wing media figures and online bots are going after “weak, spineless” Mitch McConnell

Research ››› August 9, 2017 8:49 PM EDT ››› DINA RADTKE & NICK FERNANDEZ

103

Right-wing media condemnation reached a fever pitch on August 9 after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) commented that President Donald Trump had “excessive expectations” for health care reform, which many Trump loyalists in the conservative mediasphere interpreted as an attack on the president. In response, Trump sycophants along with online bots and trolls used their platforms to besmirch McConnell’s character, call for him to retire, and popularize the hashtag #DitchMitch on Twitter.

Fringe media and Fox News push conspiracy theories regarding arrested former House IT staffer

Research ››› July 28, 2017 12:18 PM EDT ››› ALEX KAPLAN & BRENDAN KARET

467

Following the arrest of former Democratic information technology staffer Imran Awan, far-right media and Fox News pushed multiple conspiracy theories about him, suggesting he was behind WikiLeaks getting hacked Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails, that he had damaging information on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and that the Clintons were somehow involved in the situation.

Fox News Guest Criticizes 9/11 Hijacking Victims: “They Did Not Act As Freethinking Individuals”

Video ››› May 4, 2017 9:34 PM EDT ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

216

Media Praise Trump For Ordering Missile Attack On Syrian Airbase

Research ››› April 7, 2017 3:01 PM EDT ››› JARED HOLT

1356

Media figures and pundits celebrated President Donald Trump’s “swift, decisive” order to destroy a Syrian airbase in retaliation for what is believed to be a chemical warfare attack against Syrian rebels that killed dozens of people, including children. Pundits praised Trump’s “readiness to act on instinct” and declared that Trump “made Americans proud.”

Radio Host Mark Steyn: "The More Muslims You Have, The More Terrorism You Have"

Video ››› September 19, 2016 9:36 PM EDT ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/04/02/fox-news-mark-steyn-promotes-stunningly-racist-anti-immigrant-french-novel/219824

his April 2 appearance on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, Mark Steyn praised Jean Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints, a novel described by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a “favorite racist fantasy of the anti-immigrant movement” and “revered by American white supremacists.” Steyn claimed the novel “actually predicted what is happening before our eyes.” The novel describes “an invasion of France and the white Western world by a fleet of starving, dark-skinned refugees.”

Steyn previously cited the racist novel in a prior appearance on Fox News, when he asked if The Camp of the Saints was “playing out simply incrementally with smaller boats” across Europe.

[vid]

MARK STEYN: There was a French novel published 45 years ago --

TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): Yeah.

From the SPLC summary of The Camp of the Saints (emphasis added):

The book characterizes non-whites as horrific and uncivilized "monsters" who will stop at nothing to greedily and violently seize what rightfully belongs to the white man.

HuffPo: This Stunningly Racist French Novel Is How Steve Bannon Explains The World

Previously:

Fox News guest host on refugees: "Life's a beach and then the people that are going to kill your civilization wash up on it"

Radio Host Mark Steyn: "The More Muslims You Have, The More Terrorism You Have"

Tucker Carlson guest defends white supremacists and claims that Hispanics in Arizona represent the end of American society

OMG CRUZ SCI COMM

Climate-denying arguments by Ted Cruz at a Senate committee hearing last year have been soundly debunked by a new study published in the Journal of Climate. Testimony at the hearing attacked climate change by using cherry-picked satellite temperature data allegedly inconsistent with global warming. The paper found errors in this analysis that refutes the bogus claims.

In the midst of the Texas senator's stillborn run for nomination as the Republican presidential candidate, he used his position as chairman of the Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness to convene a hearing entitled, "Data or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate over the Magnitude of Human Impact on Earth's Climate."Hand-picked witnesses included noted climate skeptics John Christy, Judith Curry, conservative author Mark Steyn and Princeton University's William Harper. Harper was caught up in a sting operation by Greenpeace last year when he agreed to write a paper that, he was told, would be paid for by an unnamed Middle Eastern oil and gas company that wanted the payments to remain undisclosed.

liar for steyn: grossman and rivkin

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Mark Steyn Invokes Image Of Terrorists “Sawing Bernie Sanders’ Head Off” To Attack Sanders For Linking Climate Change To Terrorism. On the November 16 edition of Fox Business’ Varney & Co., conservative pundit Mark Steyn mocked Sen. Bernie Sanders’ broadly accurate comments linking climate change to the rise of ISIS by declaring: “[ISIS leader] al-Baghdadi will be sawing Bernie Sanders’ head off, and he’ll be saying as his neck is being sliced, ‘If only we’d had an emissions trading scheme.'”

While the eyes of the world are on Paris, where nations are hammering out an agreement to do something about the reality of climate change, the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness once again held a hearing on Tuesday to debate whether climate change is for real. Subcommittee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who is running for his party’s presidential nomination, convened the hearing titled “Data or dogma? Promoting open inquiry in the debate over the magnitude of human impact on Earth’s climate.”

Senator Cruz opened the hearing with some ironic remarks. “This is a hearing on the science behind the claims of global warming. Now, this is the Science Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, and we’re hearing from distinguished scientists, sharing their views, their interpretations, their analysis of the data and the evidence. Now, I am the son of two mathematicians—two computer programmers and scientists—and I believe that public policy should follow the actual science, and the actual data and evidence, and not political and partisan claims that run contrary to the science and data and evidence.”Senator Cruz brought in four witnesses to testify, mostly chosen from the usual suspects that have participated in similar hearings in the past. There were two of the very small handful of climate scientists who express doubts about human responsibility for climate change—Georgia Tech professor and blogger Judith Curry and John Christy from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. William Happer, a retired Princeton physicist and chairman of the George C. Marshall Institute, a conservative think-tank, was also invited to speak. The fourth person brought in to talk climate science was conservative radio host and columnist Mark Steyn. (The last two were keynote speakers at this year’s Heartland Institute conference for climate “skeptics.”)

John Christy, who has helped develop the UAH satellite temperature dataset favored by climate “skeptics” because it shows slower warming in portions of the troposphere than we see in surface records, made his pitch for why we just don’t know what has caused recent warming. That explanation involved highlighting his graph of tropical mid-troposphere (rather than global surface) model projections and observations that frequently appears in the comments on stories like this one—a graph other climate scientists take issue with—and claiming that emissions cuts would have a minimal impact on climate change. While claiming that research funding is biased, he proposed setting aside five to 10 percent of federal climate research funding for a “Red Team” like the CIA section tasked with outside-the-box analyses that challenge the status quo. This Red Team would “produce an assessment that expresses legitimate, alternative hypotheses” for climate change.

Judith Curry echoed Christy’s complaints, claiming that climate science has fallen victim to “groupthink”—a conclusion she says she reached after reading the quote-mined “Climategate” e-mails between scientists in 2009. (A pile of subsequent independent investigations found no evidence of scientific misconduct.) The rest of Curry’s testimony entailed claims that the science of anthropogenic climate change is unsettled, which she has spoken and written about at length over the years.

Mark Steyn’s testimony focused on his accusations that climate science is fraudulent and oppresses contrarians. Steyn’s claim to climate fame is that he’s being sued for defamation by Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann, whom Steyn has repeatedly accused of fraud.

William Happer used most of his time to argue that rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are good for the planet, claiming that there is “not much dispute” that there is too little CO2 and too much oxygen for plants right now. He also seemed to like Christy’s “Red Team” idea, as he said climate science lacks an “adversarial process” to check if the science is right. (Of course, “an adversarial process” isn’t a bad description of peer review or the work of thousands of independent researchers.) “I would like to argue very strongly that we set aside some fraction of funding for climate research that is designed to be for the other side,” Happer said. That would run counter to the way funding is granted today, which is based on the hypothesis and the quality of the test rather than what the resulting conclusion is going to be.

Happer became a story in his own right earlier in the day, when Greenpeace released e-mails with Happer in which they had pretended to represent a foreign energy company. They asked Happer if he would produce a report extolling the virtues of CO2 but without disclosing their financial support, and Happer agreed this was something he could do. Happer explained that Peabody Coal Company had paid him $8,000 to testify at regulatory hearings in Minnesota. That fee went to the tax-exemptCO2 Coalition, which he said pays his travel expenses but no salary. Just before Tuesday’s hearing, someone from Greenpeace filmed a heated exchange with Happer asking whether he had been paid to testify. Happer seemed to indicate that the CO2 Coalition “took some of my fee” before rising out of his chair and angrily replying, “I haven’t taken a dime, you son of a bitch.”

Finally, there was testimony from a witness invited by committee Democrats—former Navy Rear Admiral and current Penn State meteorology professor David Titley. Titley calmly attempted to explain the basics of climate science, highlighting the fact that nothing is ever 100 percent certain in science, yet we understand how to act on risks despite imperfect knowledge.

A question-and-answer portion followed this testimony, which at one point devolved to Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Steyn, and Curry pretty much shouting at each other. But there was also some discussion about satellite temperature data sets. (Curiously, this involved no questions for John Christy, who helps run one.) Senator Cruz is fond of claiming that one of the satellite data sets shows “no warming for 18 years” while ignoring longer-term trends and the fact that all surface temperature data sets show warming over that period.

After Senator Cruz pushed Titley to answer a question about the satellite records, which he claimed “the global warming alarmists don’t want to talk about,” Titley let loose. “Let’s talk about the satellite measurements,” Titley said. “Let’s talk about orbital decay. Let’s talk about overlapping satellite records. Let’s talk about stratospheric temperature contamination. I think Dr. Christy and Dr. [Roy] Spencer, when they’ve put this out, they have been wrong, I think, at least four consecutive times. Each time the data record has had to be adjusted upward. There have been several sign errors. So, with all due respect, sir, I don’t know which data, exactly, your staff has, whether it’s the first or second or third or fourth correction to Dr. Christy’s data. We used to have a negative trend, and then we had no trend, and now we begrudgingly have an upward trend.”

To be fair, Senator Cruz was pointing to a competing data set run by Remote Sensing Systems in California that, until recently, showed an even smaller 18-year warming trend than the University of Alabama in Huntsville data set. And the latest version of that UAH data set, which is in beta, reduces that trend once again.

In a curious moment, William Happer chimed in to state that these satellites measure temperatures “the same way as hospitals do today,” with devices that measure infrared radiation. In fact, these satellites measure microwave radiation, and doctors aren’t trying to simultaneously determine temperatures of various layers inside you when they pop a thermometer in your ear.

Senator Cruz also accused scientists of deliberately manipulating land surface temperature data to create the appearance of warming over the 20th Century. (Quality-control adjustments to sea surface temperature data, which obviously involve a much larger portion of the globe, actually make the overall effect a decrease in global 20th Century warming.) When asked about this, Judith Curry didn’t quite support Senator Cruz’s accusation but did comment, “To me, the error bars should really be much bigger if they’re making such a large adjustment, so we really don’t know too much about what’s going on.”

In contrast to this talk of uncertainty and scientific skullduggery, Senator Gary Peters (D-Mich.) opted for some remedial physics in his opening comments. “By burning fossil fuels, humans are releasing carbon into the atmosphere that would have otherwise remained locked away. This process creates carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat that otherwise would have been radiated off into space. We know that by the law of conservation of energy, that additional heat can’t just magically disappear. Instead, it causes our planet to get warmer.”

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/12/senate-science-committee-hearing-challenges-dogma-of-climate-science/

ICCC 10

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/07/i-rejoice-that-it-is-warm-ars-attends-a-climate-contrarian-conference/

“I accept that the planet has warmed,” said conservative columnist Mark Steyn from the podium. “And I rejoice that it is warm.”

Steyn was one of many speakers at the libertarian Heartland Institute's 10th “International Conference on Climate Change,” a major event for climate science contrarians. The two-day conference, held in mid-June at the classy Washington Court Hotel just a few blocks from the US Capitol, had all the trappings of an academic conference, but you wouldn’t mistake it for a Geological Society of America meeting. Tables set up outside the hotel’s main ballroom hosted conservative advocacy groups and think tanks like CFACT, the Ayn Rand Institute, and the Heritage Foundation (which attracted visitors with a life-size cardboard cut-out of Ronald Reagan). The audience contained some meteorologists but seemed mostly composed of retired couples with an interest in politics, along with a handful of state legislators.

The goal was to gather speakers—who, organizers frequently reminded the audience, were some of the most famous and well-respected experts in the world—who could arm attendees with the information they needed to take the Good Fight back out to the streets. A small number of the talks presented research into climate science, but most were arguments against climate policy based on economic impacts. In other words, imagine the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal plus a podium.

As for the speakers, they viewed themselves as voices of reason speaking truth to power—all of them trying desperately to keep the Western world from slipping over the precipice to certain economic ruin. And to hear them tell it, Heartland and its allies were winning the battle against the "climate alarmists." The public remains divided on the issue of climate change, with some recent polling placing it low on the priority list of concerns. Attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through legislation have been stymied. International negotiations have been arduous.

I went to Heartland’s conference expecting a series of detailed critiques of climate studies, much like the sort of posts that populate contrarian blogs after a new paper makes headlines. What I experienced instead was significantly less wonky—a cathartic echo chamber of outrage.

Serious scientific argument was thin on the ground. For instance, in a breakfast keynote on the second day, Mark Steyn simply made fun of well-known Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann for 30 minutes. (Steyn has written that Mann's research was fraudulent, resulting in a defamation lawsuit from Mann. Steyn is also the editor of a forthcoming book called A Disgrace to the Profession—you can guess who it’s about.) Red meat

Steyn wasn’t subtle, reiterating his accusation that Mann’s famous “hockey stick” tree ring temperature reconstruction was “fraudulent in every sense,” which resulted in hearty applause from the audience. Steyn also worked in references to the supposedly scandalous “Climategate” e-mails from 2007, describing University of East Anglia researchers corresponding with Michael Mann as “four schlubs who sound like Mann’s battered wives.”

During the audience Q&A that followed, Steyn found another target in former Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Chair Rajendra Pachauri, who resigned earlier this year after sexual harassment accusations. Steyn referred to Pachauri as “Rajendra Pants-downee,” commenting that the former railway engineer’s “choo-choo jumped the tracks.” The jokes got huge laughs.

This is, it probably goes without saying, not the kind of thing you hear at an academic conference. Nearly every presentation referenced both Obama and Al Gore so frequently that a drinking game would have resulted in serious liver damage. References to studies published in peer-reviewed journals, on the other hand, were almost completely absent. Clever insults ruled the day; belly laughs were far more common than the curious "hmms" that usually dot the audience of a research talk.

The conference speakers did refer to science in passing—usually through sardonic quips about “alarmist” or "falsified" science—but their references gave me the feeling of being stuck in a time warp. There was an obsession with Al Gore and his 2007 film, An Inconvenient Truth, particularly the imagery of desperate polar bears. (“There is a problem with polar bears right now,” said Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe while receiving an award for political leadership. “It’s overpopulation.”)

Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” temperature reconstruction, first published in 1998, also remained a common punch line. Attendees seemed blissfully unaware of the pile of subsequent studies that have yielded the same result. To them, the hockey stick remains the emblem of debunked, fraudulent climate science—their enemy’s shattered sword.

The bugbear of land temperature records distorted by the urban heat island effect, too, is still being slain. The idea here is that as cities grew up around weather stations, all that concrete heats up in the midday sun, pushing thermometer readings higher and artificially creating the appearance of a warming trend. This does happen, as does the opposite. Speakers claimed repeatedly that researchers ignore this effect.

Though this sounds good, it's not true. (And the fact that there are no urban heat islands on the ocean, which covers most of the Earth’s surface, appears to be under-appreciated.) For instance, the Berkeley Earth project, led by then-climate skeptic Richard Muller, was a privately funded effort purporting to address such warming biases in the temperature record. The project's record turned out to look just like all the others, and the team behind it concluded that the impact of the urban heat island effect was “indistinguishable from zero." That work was promptly discounted by groups like Heartland. When contrarian blogger Anthony Watts was asked during the conference about the Berkeley Earth project, he dismissed it by saying that the project hadn’t excluded “what I consider all of the bad data.”

NRO blogger, sued by mann, slammed judge, in der bunker

he's baaaaaa-aack

links in mann2

http://www.desmogblog.com/mark-steyn

Steyn attended the King Edward’s School in Birmingham, U.K., leaving in 1978, at the age of 18. Steyn does not appear to have a college education or any background in climate science.

Source: [1] , [2]

Background

Mark Steyn is the author and columnist of SteynOnline.com, where he writes “Steynposts”—commentary on current events—Monday through Friday, columns on politics and war, arts and culture, and on free-speech issues in the “Defend Free Speech! section” of his website. [3] Steyn regularly appears on The Rush Limbaugh Program and The Sean Hannity Show, in addition to a weekly appearance on The Hugh Hewitt Radio Show. [4]

Mark Steyn claims he “is an international bestselling author … and a leading Canadian human rights activist.” [4] Steyn’s writing “has been published in almost every major newspaper around the English-speaking world, including Britain's Daily Telegraph, Canada's National Post, The Australian, The Irish Times, The Jerusalem Post, The Wall Street Journal, and many more.” [4]

However, a 2004 profile of Steyn in the Boston Phoenix described him as “the most toxic right-wing pundit you’ve never heard of” and “a pungent columnist, essayist, and critic who’s not well known in the United States, but whose political screeds are published in English-speaking countries around the world. A native of Canada who divides his time among New Hampshire, Quebec, and London, Steyn is a self-described right-wing warmonger.” The Phoenix compared him to Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, writing that Steyn possesses “a shrill, mocking tone of moral certainty that consigns those who disagree with him to the status of appeasers or even terrorists; and a willingness to distort, misrepresent, and omit facts in order to advance his argument.” [21]

Stance on Climate Change

“For the last century, we’ve had ever-so-slight warming trends and ever-so-slight cooling trends every 30 years or so, and I don’t think either are anything worth collapsing the global economy over.” [5]

“Now I don't consider myself a big credentialed expert or anything. I simply looked at a graph Michael E Mann hadn't been anywhere near and drew the obvious conclusion. Gave it two minutes' thought, if that. The reason it's taking climate science so much longer to draw that obvious conclusion is because ideology and the ideological enforcers like Mann got in the way.”[6]

Key Quotes

“Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus.” [7]

“Antarctic ice is now at a 35-year high. But scientists are “baffled” by the planet’s stubborn refusal to submit to their climate models … Global warming will kill us. Global cooling will kill us. And if it’s 54 and partly cloudy, you should probably flee for your life right now. Maybe scientists might usefully consider moving to being less hung up on “consensus” – a most unscientific and, in this context, profoundly corrupting concept.” [8]

“I want to get to court as soon as possible, and put Michael E Mann, PhD (Doctor of Phraudology) on the stand under oath. I haven't wasted two years on this guy to be denied my moment in court. That's one reason I've countersued Mann. He thinks the DC Superior Court is competent to litigate his fraudulent 'hockey stick'. Fine, let's get it to a jury - before the sclerotic DC 'justice' system's procedural delays go on as long as the global-warming 'pause'.” [12]

“There are all kinds of distinguished experts, including nobel prize winners all over the world who think that climate alarmism is a complete crock.” [16]

Key Deeds

June 11-12, 2015

Mark Steyn was a speaker at the Heartland Institute’s Tenth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC10) in Washington, D.C. [22]

View Mark Steyn’s Breakfast Keynote presentation at the Heartland Institute’s ICCC10, below: [23]

April, 2015

Mark Steyn spoke about Climate Change: The Facts on the inaugural “Lawton Online” podcast for TheRebel.Media (see below, starting at time 43:15). According to Steyn, “We have now been 18 years without global warming.” He says is is proud to be among some of “the world's most eminent scientists” as well as “the fellows who are there for a cheap knockabout like me” who appear in the book.

Steyn describes Donna Laframboise as a “old colleague of mine from the National Post days.” Steyn also makes an unoffical challenge to David Suzuki to debate him on live television, saying that while he is not a climate change expert, he is “far more of an expert than [Suzuki] is.” [16]

December, 2014

Mark Steyn is a contributor to the book Climate Change: The Facts published by the Institute of Public Affairs and featuring “22 essays on the science, politics and economics of the climate change debate.” The Institute of Public Affairs, while not revealing most of its funders, is known to have received funding from mining magnate Gina Rinehart and at least one major tobacco company. [18]

The book includes essays and articles from a range of climate change skeptics, with contributors including the following:

Alan Moran

Andrew Bolt

Anthony Watts

Bernard Lewin

Christopher Essex

Donna Laframboise

Garth W. Paltridge

Ian Plimer

J. Scott Armstrong

James Delingpole

Jennifer Marohasy

Joanne Nova

John Abbot

Kesten Green

Mark Steyn

Nigel Lawson

Patrick J. Michaels

Richard S. Lindzen

Robert M. Carter

Ross McKitrick

Rupert Darwall

Stewart Franks

Willie Soon

Editor Alan Moran summarized Steyn's contribution as follows:

Mark Steyn’s essay ‘Ship of Fools’ demonstrates how environmental activist, Professor Chris Turney inadvertently parodied Douglas Mawson’s Antarctic expedition. Turney had expected to see a path to the Pole cleared for his ship by global warming. After all, Al Gore had predicted an ice free Arctic by now. Instead, Turney’s Guardian backed expedition had to be rescued from expanding ice. A genuine scientist, as Turney claims to be, should have realised that Antarctic ice is expanding not increasing. [17]

As reported by DeSmogBlog, just as Steyn did in his article in The Spectator, Moran failed to point out that Turney’s expedition did know about recent sea ice trends in Antarctica because they explicitly identified this as something to study before they set off. [19], [20]

November 25, 2014

Mark Steyn was called to the D.C. Court of Appeals over the defamation suit originally filed by Michael Mann in 2012 in response to Steyn's July 2012 piece in the National Review titled “Football and Hockey.” The case has gone back and forth since 2012, with Steyn suggesting that Mann has extended the proceedings to make it more costly for the participants. Steyn had said he would represent himself, however later chose representation from Yale-Educated Dan Kornstein. [13],[14]

In his amicus brief (PDF), Steyn states that “The audacity of the falsehoods in Mann’s court pleadings is breathtaking” and claims that Mann has “manipulated” the anti-SLAPP process in order to slow proceedings for the purpose of “protracted and inevitably expensive litigation.” [15]

The blog Popehat reported in detail on the legal proceedings, going back to the start of the suit in 2012.

July 15, 2012

Mark Steyn publishes a piece in the National Review Online titled, “Football and Hockey.” [7] The piece resulted in Dr. Michael Mann, of Penn State University, suing Mark Steyn, National Review Online, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), and CEI analyst Randy Simberg for “defamatory articles accusing him [Mann] of academic fraud and comparing him to a convicted child molester, former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky,” on July 23, 2012. [9] , [10] Steyn’s article “claimed Mann had ‘molested and tortured data,’ and described Mann’s famous ‘hockey stick’ graph as ‘fraudulent’.”[9]

Affiliations

SteynOnline.com [1]

Publications

According to a search of Google Scholar, Mark Steyn has not published any research in peer-reviewed journals. The search does list that he has published numerous books including America alone: The end of the world as we know it, After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, and Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now. [11]

Resources

“Mark Steyn,” Wikipedia.

“Top American Conservative Mark Steyn Didn't Go to College,” Edbasic, July 9, 2012. Archived September 2, 2014.

“FAQs,” SteynOnline.com. Archived September 2, 2014.

“Mark's bio,” SteynOnline.com. Archived September 2, 2014.

Mark Steyn. “Climate Change You Can Believe In,” National Review Online, July 25, 2009. Archived September 3, 2014.

Mark Steyn. “Settled Science Catches Up with Steyn,” SteynOnline.com, August 27, 2014.

Mark Steyn. ”Football and Hockey,” National Review Online, July 15, 2012. Archived September 3, 2014.

Mark Steyn. ”Ice Everywhere, But No Hockey Sticks,” National Review Online, December 2, 2013. Archived September 3, 2014.

“Could A Climate Scientist's Defamation Suit Shut Down The Nation's Leading Conservative Magazine?,” Climate Progress, February 3, 2014. Archived September 3, 2014.

Mark Steyn. ”Mann-made climate change turns up the heat on Steyn,” SteynOnline.com, July 23, 2012.

“Mark Steyn,” Google Scholar.

Mark Steyn. “I'm Gonna Quash That Mann Right Out Of My Hair,” SteynOnline.Com. June 7, 2014.

Betsy Rothstein.”Mark Steyn To D.C. Court For Defamation Hearing (You Won’t Want To Miss This),” The Daily Caller, November 24, 2014.

Jonathan H. Adler. “Mann v. Steyn — Steyn goes his own way,” The Washington Post, June 9, 2014.

“BRIEF OF AMICUS CURIAE MARK STEYN IN SUPPORT OF NEITHER PARTY,” Retrieved from Steynonline.com. Archived May 27, 2015 with WebCite.

“Lawton Online: Special guest Mark Steyn & more,” Rebel Media, April 16, 2015. [YouTube Video].

Alan Moran. “Climate Change: the facts 2014,” Catallaxy Files (blog), December 16, 2014.

“Institute of Public Affairs,” SourceWatch. Accessed May 27, 2015.

Graham Readfearn. “Australian Tax Breaks Help Fund Climate Science Denier Mark Steyn's Libel Defense in theUS,” DeSmogBlog, May 14, 2015.

Graham Readfearn. “What's going on with global warming and Antarctica's growing sea ice?” The Guardian, March 11, 2014.

Dan Kennedy. “Steyn’s way: Write, twist, smear, and sneer. Repeat!” Boston Phoenix, June 18, 2004.

“Speakers,” Heartland Institute. Archived June 30, 2015.

“Breakfast Keynote with Mark Steyn,” Heartland Institute, June 12, 2015. Archived July 14, 2015.

TAGS: mark steynsteyn onlinesteynonline.comClimate Denierglobal warming disinformation databasemann hockey stick

http://mediamatters.org/tags/mark-steyn

http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/11/16/on-fox-business-mark-steyn-invokes-image-of-ter/206859

On Fox Business, Mark Steyn Invokes Image Of Terrorists "Sawing Bernie Sanders' Head Off" To Mock Him For Accurately Linking Climate Change To Terrorism

Steyn: The Leader Of ISIS "Would Be Sawing Bernie Sanders' Head Off, And He'll Be Saying As His Neck Is Being Sliced, If Only We'd Had An Emissions Trading Scheme"

Mark Steyn’s Newest Attack On Michael Mann And The Hockey Stick

By Guest • Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - 00:01

DeSmog UK visited Washington DC earlier this month to check out the Heartland Institute's annual climate denial conference. There, amongst the conference's hand-outs, we discovered a promotional bookmark advertising a new book attacking Michael Mann's hockey stick as “a disgrace to the profession”. Greg Laden, biological anthropologist and science communicator, takes a closer look.

There is a new attack by an anti-science and anti-environment talking head on a well-respected climate scientist and his work. Mark Steyn is self-publishing a book of quotes by scientists that allegedly disparage Dr. Michael Mann and the “Hockey Stick.”

If the three examples Steyn provides to advertise his book are representative, Steyn’s book is unlikely to impress.

Like previous attempts to separate a key individual from the herd, Steyn’s latest money making scheme could make him a few bucks (his fans seem gullible) but in the end will destroy anything that happens to be left of his credibility and, possibly, his legal argument that he is not actively and maliciously attempting to defame an individual.

Here’s The Story

Conservative political commentator Mark Steyn has a new book coming out. I haven’t seen it yet, but looking at the publicity material provided by Steyn (the book is self-published) it appears to be a collection of scientist’s comments disparaging the work of Michael Mann and criticizing the famous “Hockey Stick” research.

This is a bit odd because Steyn is currently being sued by Mann for defamation, and this book looks like it could be more defamation. It would appear he has not consulted his lawyers!

The Hockey Stick is a concept, and a graphic, that arose as the result of a paper produced in 1999 by Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes. The researchers constructed a proxy northern hemisphere temperature curve, from ice cores and tree rings, which showed temperature variability over the previous 1,000 years.

This curve was matched with direct temperature measurements from the previous century, and ultimately played an important role in demonstrating the effects of human greenhouse gas pollution on the global surface heat balance. The graph showed the dramatic change in surface temperature after industrialization, indicates a steady increase in temperature, and showed how dramatic this change is in relation to previous time periods.

This and other related research, by the same group and others, also showed that previous known historical climate swings such as the so-called “Medieval Warm Period” and “Little Ice Age” were minor compared to recent warming (and also relatively regional, not global).

An example of the Hockey Stick Graph.

As with all important scientific work, there was some controversy but the work was good and over subsequent years it was verified by other research.

PAGES 2K

Indeed, during the several years that have passed since the publication of that study, the global surface temperature has continued to rise, as expected. A post at Climate Progress, written in 2013 by Stefan Rahmstorf, “Most Comprehensive Paleoclimate Reconstruction Confirms Hockey Stick,”, summarizes the confirmation of the “Hockey Stick” in a landmark study known as the PAGES 2K project. Of the confirmation of the Hockey Stick results by PAGES 2K, Rahmstorf writes (the graph he refers to is the one I placed above):

The first comparable hockey stick curve was published in 1998 and 1999 by Mann et al. – at that time based on data only from the northern hemisphere. …

For the scientific community, the confirmation of the old hockey stick is no surprise (except perhaps for the closeness of the match); many other climate reconstructions with a similar time evolution have already appeared since. Mann et al. at the time cautiously assumed a wide margin of uncertainty (light blue) because of their limited data base and a possible underestimation of the variance by their method; later reconstructions run largely within this margin. The work of Mann and colleagues has gained the highest recognition. For example, Bradley was honoured in 2007 with the Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union and Mann likewise in 2012, and both were (as well as Hughes) elected as fellows of the American Geophysical Union. Politically motivated attacks on their work were immense, however – both Bradley and Mann have published books about that experience.

The books are here and here.

The PAGES 2K work was published in Nature Geoscience as “Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia” authored by the “PAGES 2K Consortium,” a long list of authors ranging across the entire alphabet from A (Moinuddin Ahmed) to Z (Eduardo Zorita).

In essence, these authors found that Michael Mann and his colleagues were right, and the Hockey Stick configuration of global temperature change is correct.

A Disgrace

Now, back to Mark Steyn’s forthcoming work. The book is, “‘A Disgrace To The Profession’ The World’s Scientists, In Their Own Words, On Michael E Mann, His Hockey Stick And Their Damage To Science: Volume I” Compiled and edited by Mark Steyn

Steyn provides three quotes that he implies are representative of the statements of “World’s Scientists” criticizing Mann and the Hockey Stick research. They are:

“Do I expect you to publicly denounce the hockey stick as obvious drivel? Well, yes.”

-Jonathan Jones, Professor of Atomic and Laser Physics, University of Oxford

“Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf should be barred …because the scientific assessments in which they may take part are not credible anymore.”

-Eduardo Zorita, Senior Scientist at Germany’s Institute for Coastal Research

“Did Mann et al get it wrong? Yes, Mann et al got it wrong.”

-Simon Tett, Professor of Climate Science, University of Edinburgh

Now, if I was writing a book that mainly included quotes by experts on something, then picked out three quotes from the entire book to be representative, there are two things I would do.

First, I would make sure the quotes were from credible experts. Second, I would make sure that the quotes are key indisputable examples of what those experts think.

So, I asked myself, does it make sense that Jonathan Jones, Eduardo Zorita, and Simon Tett think Michael Mann got it all wrong, and the Hockey Stick concept is bunk?

I contacted all three of these individuals to see what they thought about this. Let’s start with Simon Tett.

Frankly, I was very surprised to see his quote used by Steyn, because as far as I know, Dr. Tett is a mainstream climate scientist who has made important contributions to understanding variability in the climate record.

Indeed, he has contributed to the Hockey Stick reconstruction by advancing research on the role of aerosols. Tett and Michael Mann have published together on this issue. It made no sense that Tett would be bashing Mann and his work, because some of that is his own work.

I wondered if the quote is taken out of context. Would Mark Steyn take a scholar’s quote out of context, totally changing the meaning, in order to associate that scholar with discredited ideas, or maybe turn one scholar against another?

Of course he would. That is his modus operendi. Maybe he likes getting sued?

Simon Tett

Anyway, when I asked Simon Tett about this, he told me that he does not recall the quote, though perhaps it was from a private email (like this) and has all the context removed. Note that the quote is supposed to have come from 2001, so Tett assumes it would have been, had he actually said it, a criticism of the hockey stick paper.

He told me, “I think my criticism was that it was likely missing some variances. My view then and still is that recent warming is very likely outside the range of natural variability.”

I have not seen Tett’s quote in its original exact context, but I think it is part of a larger bit of text that makes up part of the so-called Climategate 2.0 emails. If so, Tett said:

I think there are issues in Mann et al’s approach -- recall the Esper et al paper which produced a reconstruction with lots more low frequency variability than others. From the comment on the paper by Keith Briffa and Tim Osborn (attached) you can see that Mann’s reconstruction had the least variability of any of the reconstructions. Did Mann et al get it wrong? Yes Mann et al got it wrong. How wrong is still under debate and the ECHO-G/HadCM3 results may be over-exaggerating the variance loss for some model-specific reasons.

This provides more context to Tett’s quote, indicating that this is an argument over variability in Mann et al’s reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere temperatures over the last thousand years.

But there is even more to it than that.

Climate Variability

There was vigorous argument over which models should ultimately be used in the IPCC report that included the Hockey Stick, including one (or two) by Tett that show a similar pattern to Mann et al’s original findings.

In asking around about what was happening in those days I learned a lot more than needed for this humble blog post. Suffice it to say, there was arguing about important details, but not about the basic reality of climate change and recent warming.

All of the discussion had to do with how much variation there was in the older record, and most of that uncertainty has been addressed over the subsequent decade.

Tett’s contribution to climate science has been to address that variability. He has recently co-authored articles with Mike Mann that confirm the Hockey Stick pattern of temperature changes and seek to understand that pattern in terms of natural and human drives of climate. Clearly, he is one of the nearly 100 percent of scientists who view global warming as real and caused by human greenhouse gas pollution.

So. That’s settled. Steyn got it wrong.

Eduardo Zorita

Then I looked at Eduardo Zorita.

He is a paleoclimatologist, so he’s in the game and may have expertise that matters. He has contributed to one IPCC report. He is famous for having suggested that climate scientists adjust their findings under political pressure. From Wikipedia:

Zorita was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying that the “scientific debate [on climate change] has been in many instances hijacked to advance other agendas”, and that climate science students are “often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the ‘politically correct picture’.” Zorita continued, “some, or many issues, about climate change are still not well known. Policy makers should be aware of the attempts to hide these uncertainties ….”

That was in 2009.

So, Zorita is a real climate scientist who has concerns about the way some of the research is conducted. That’s good. Scientists should always be concerned about how the research is conducted, and it is healthy to have such conversations.

But is Zorita a Hockey Stick denier like Mark Steyn implies he is? No.

I gave you a clue to this earlier in the post when I mentioned the PAGES 2K study. Did you notice that Zorita is an author of that major paper, known, among other things, for confirming the Hockey Stick?

Personally I can’t think of a worse choice to list as a person criticizing the hockey stick than an author of the largest effort by scientists that confirmed the hockey stick. Maybe Steyn didn’t know. Maybe he should know stuff before he writes a book about it.

Perception of Objectivity

Zorita did get back to me about Steyn’s use of his quote. He told me that the quote is essentially accurate, and that he has put it on his personal web page several years ago. He was concerned about the perception of objectivity in the IPCC process, so perhaps these researchers should not be part of the process given the controversy at the time caused by the famous Climategate hacked emails.

However, he was careful to note that his statement was “not related to the quality of their scientific work. Actually, my statement was a suggestion to isolate the IPCC process from the credibility crisis linked to Climategate.”

So this is about perception, not about the quality of the science or the validity of the Hockey Stick.

He went on to say, “I feel that those political attacks, especially those against Michael Mann in the US, have no justification.”

Zorita told me that he felt the Hockey Stick was something of a public relations mistake.

“The irony is that the hockey-stick is not a proof and not a disproof of anthropogenic climate change. As Stefan Rahmstorf correctly wrote, if the hockey-stick had not existed the case for [anthropogenic global warming] AGW would not be stronger or weaker. But the hockey-stick had become its symbol and the subject of political manoeuvring.”

Interesting idea. Zorita also indicated that he is in the camp of seeing much more variability in the older surface temperature record than the original Mann Et Al research indicated, adding “this has had no relevance for the case of AGW.”

So, just as with the case of Tett, Zorita is a bad choice for Steyn to use in criticizing the scientists or the science, unless his book is going to support the current science of global warming, but with a detailed look at pre-industrial climate variation. I doubt that is the case.

Jonathan Jones

Jonathan Jones, at Oxford, the third quoted scientist, is a physicist in an area of physics that has absolutely nothing to do with climate change. I think he is a tutor there, but I’m not sure. He published a few things many years ago then seems to have trailed off in academic activity, but nothing on climate science.

Back in the day, he went after the “Hockey Stick” and actually did one of those “Freedom of Information” requests to obtain some data he thought was being kept from him, in order to strike a blow for freedom. (That data was already being shared among various collaborators, but apparently not among random people who demanded it … this is a huge data base and not something you pop in an email and send off to someone.)

He got the data, but never did anything with it as far as I can tell. The rapidly growing consensus on human caused climate change did not fall to some insightful analysis by Jonathan Jones.

Jones responded to my question by simply sending the link to his original quote. The context turns out to be interesting.

The original quote by Jones was a lengthy screed critical of the climate science and the scientists in which he explicitly implores Richard Betts to denounce the hockey stick. (Betts is a climate scientist at the UK’s Met Office, and a lead author for the IPCC 4th assessment report and other IPCC documents.)

Jones indicates that the whole global warming thing is pathological science, will eventually go away, and he hopes he can soon get back to his own research in an utterly unrelated field. Which, I think, he may have done.

Maybe Jonathan Jones, as a non-climate scientist who is also a climate science denier, is an appropriate person to quote in Steyn’s book. One in three … not a very good result.

I’m thinking this is not going to be a very big book. Certainly not a very good one. Maybe Steyn is counting on a lot of pre-orders.

This article has been cross posted from Science Blogs.

TAGS: mark steynmichael mannHockey Stick Controversy

The National Review is a political magazine, and Mark Steyn, I think, writes for them (I really don’t keep track). A while back Steyn and/or the National Review made some seemingly very defamatory statements about Michael Mann, the climate scientist. Career-damaging really icky accusations of fraud and such. They were bogus accusations, but they were also not just trollish yammering of the type we see all the time from the science denialist gaggle. So, Mann sued them.

NationalReviewHyperboleMemeI prefer the Law and Order version of law. Something happens on Monday, on Tuesday everything is confusing, on Wednesday there is a car chase or something, on Thursday everyone is in court and on Friday the whole maneno is done with and everyone is back to eating donuts. Real legal stuff drags on forever. If you want to catch up, here are a few blog posts and other items that might help. (That was a search using the Climate Science Search Engine, which is on the right side bar of my blog!)

Anyway, there is a new development. National Review has filed a long and boring legal document that appears to be some kind of whinging about how the case against them should go away. Eli Rabbit has made two comments about it that I agree with. First, he notes that the document states that the prior yammering by National Review is not officially “malice” because they really believe the things they say. But, in the same document, they claim that “Read in context, Steyn’s commentary was protected rhetorical hyperbole, not a literal accusation of fraud or data falsification.” See meme.

The second point also stuck out as a sore thumb when I looked at it, and it is so obvious that I assumed I was reading the legal document incorrectly. But Eli confirms. From the legal document:

…critics have argued that the hockey stick is misleading because it splices together two different types of data without highlighting the change: For roughly the first nine centuries after the year 1000 A.D., the graph shows temperature levels that have been inferred solely from tree-ring samples and other “proxy” data. But from about 1900 onward, the graph relies on readings from modern instruments such as thermometers.

I’m pretty sure the technical legal term for this is taurus craps puris*. The hockey stick graph in its original form and most early incarnations has color coding or other appropriate line style differences to distinguish between the records. Some people have taken both the hockey stick graph and other similar graphics and merged the data into a single squiggle for presentation purposes, an acceptable if not always wise method. The National Review legal document also makes mention of shifting between proxies and instrumental data. They suggest that a broken instrumental record should have been used instead of simple temperature measurements with thermometers and stuff. This harks back to the time the climate science denialists stole a bunch of scientists’ email and made stuff up about it (a complicated story but one you can read about in detail in Mann’s book).

This filing by the National Review is a lame defense against a very well argued and appropriate law suit. I’m sure this won’t last until Wednesday in court. (Law and Order time.) Not only are their claims wrong, but they have been known to be long for a very long time.

*Translates roughly as Complete and Utter Bullshit.

m blake

Mother Jones

A Win for the Climate Scientist Who Skeptics Compared to Jerry Sandusky

As the judge green-lights his libel suit, the defendants' lawyers jump ship.

By Mariah Blake | Fri Jan. 24, 2014 7:00 AM EST

Social Title:

A win for the climate scientist who skeptics compared to Jerry Sandusky

A judge green-lights his libel suit, the defendants' lawyers jump ship.

In 2012—after writers for National Review and a prominent conservative think tank accused him of fraud and compared him to serial child molester Jerry Sandusky—climate scientist Michael Mann took the bold step of filing a defamation suit. The defendants moved to have the case thrown out, citing a Washington, DC, law that shields journalists from frivolous litigation. But on Wednesday, DC Superior Court Judge Frederick Weisberg rejected the motion, opening the way for a trial.

Although public figures like Mann have to clear a high bar to prove defamation, Weisberg argued [1] that the scientist's complaint may pass the test. And he brushed aside the defendants' claims that the fraud allegations were "pure opinion," which is protected by the First Amendment:

Accusing a scientist of conducting his research fraudulently, manipulating his data to achieve a predetermined or political outcome, or purposefully distorting the scientific truth are factual allegations. They go to the heart of scientific integrity. They can be proven true or false. If false, they are defamatory. If made with actual malice, they are actionable.

Weisberg's order is just the latest in a string of setbacks that have left the climate change skeptics' case in disarray. Earlier this month, Steptoe & Johnson, the law firm representing National Review and its writer, Mark Steyn, withdrew as Steyn's counsel. According to two sources with inside knowledge, it also plans to drop National Review as a client.

The lawyers' withdrawal came shortly after Steyn—a prominent conservative pundit who regularly fills in as host of Rush Limbaugh's radio show—publicly attacked the former judge in the case, Natalia Combs Greene, accusing her of "stupidity" and "staggering" incompetence. [proto trump] Mann's attorney, John B. Williams, suspects this is no coincidence. "Any lawyer would be taken aback if their client said such things about the judge," he says. "That may well be why Steptoe withdrew."

Steyn's manager, Melissa Howes, acknowledged that his commentary "did not go over well."* But Steyn maintains it was his decision to part ways with his attorneys.

The lawsuit centers on Mann's famous "hockey stick" graph. In 1999, Mann and two colleagues charted 1,000 years worth of climate data, and found a steep uptick in global temperatures beginning in the 20th century. The graph, named for its iconic shape, became a potent, easy-to-grasp symbol of global warming. And it was featured prominently in the landmark 2001 report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which concluded [2] that "the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years."

The chart also made Mann a target for climate change skeptics. This was especially true beginning in 2009, when more than 1,000 emails were stolen from Britain's University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU), one of the world’s leading climate research institutions. In one message, CRU’s director, Phil Jones, famously described using Mann's "Nature trick" to "hide the decline." He was referring to a technique that Mann had used to control for variations in tree-ring data [4] in a paper for the journal Nature. But Skeptics—among them the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a free-market think tank that has received funding from the Koch bothers and Exxon Mobil—seized on this revelation as evidence that scientists were conspiring to cover up a decline in global temperatures.

Soon, climate researchers found themselves under siege. Mann's inbox was flooded with death threats and messages calling him a "fraud," a "fucking terrorist," and a "one-world-government socialist.” As Mother Jones reported in 2011 [5], "Images of Mann and other scientists were posted on neo-Nazi sites. The CRU's Jones temporarily stepped down from his post; he later said he contemplated suicide."

Pennsylvania State University, where Mann works, and at least six other institutions conducted separate investigations into the allegations of scientific misconduct. An independent probe [6] commissioned by the University of East Anglia faulted the researchers for their bunker mentality, and found their responses "to reasonable requests for information were unhelpful and defensive." But none of the investigations turned up evidence of malfeasance or data manipulation. After completing its inquiry, the US Environmental Protection Agency posted a fact sheet [7] on its website stating:

The CRU emails do not show either that the science is flawed or that the scientific process has been compromised. EPA carefully reviewed the CRU emails and found no indication of improper data manipulation or misrepresentation of results…Some people have "cherry-picked" a limited selection of CRU email statements to draw broad, unsubstantiated conclusions about the validity of all climate science.

Still, the emails remained a rallying cry for skeptics, some of whom turned their ire on Penn State, which allegedly declined to interview Mann's critics during its probe. In 2012, it came to light that Penn State officials had ignored or concealed evidence that former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was molesting children, including in the university's locker room. That July, CEI scholar Rand Simberg wrote a post [8] for the organization's blog likening the situation to "another cover up," the "Michael Mann affair." Simberg also called Mann "the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data."

Several days later, CEI deleted the passage, which it admitted was "inappropriate." But Steyn, a regular National Review contributor, quoted it on the magazine's blog [9]. He added:

Not sure I'd have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr. Simberg does, but he has a point. Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change "hockey-stick" graph.

Mann's attorney fired off letters to CEI and the National Review, calling the fraud allegations "defamatory" and demanding apologies and full retractions. National Review Editor Richard Lowry responded with another post, which dismissed the defamation claims as "transparent nonsense." "In common polemical usage, 'fraudulent' doesn’t mean honest-to-goodness criminal fraud," he wrote. "It means intellectually bogus."[cooch sued for fraud?] At that point, Mann filed his defamation suit against CEI, Simberg, National Review, and Steyn. In July 2013, Judge Combs Greene of the DC Superior Court rejected the defendants' motion to dismiss. The defendants appealed the decision. But that December, the appeals court, which was concerned that Mann had filed an amended complaint shortly before Combs Greene's ruling, sent it back to the Superior Court for further review. Judge Weissman took on the case, following Combs Greene's retirement.

Finally, on Christmas Eve, Steyn published his blog post [10], railing against Combs Greene and her ruling, which contained typographical errors and mixed up the defendants:

Among her many staggering incompetences, DC Superior Court judge Natalia Combs-Greene…denied NR's motion to dismiss the fraudulent complaint while simultaneously permitting Mann’s lawyers to file an amended complaint.

The appellate judges have now tossed out anything relating to Mann's original fraudulent complaint, including Judge Combs-Greene's unbelievably careless ruling in which the obtuse jurist managed to confuse the defendants, and her subsequent ruling in which she chose to double-down on her own stupidity. Anything with Combs-Greene's name on it has now been flushed down the toilet of history."

When asked about these comments, Steyn made no apologies. "I spent the first months attempting to conceal my contempt for Judge Combs Greene's court," he said in an email to Mother Jones. "But really, it's not worth the effort." Wednesday's ruling affirms the thrust of Combs Greene's order, however. It also concludes that "a reasonable jury" may "find the statement that Dr. Mann 'molested and tortured data' was false, and published with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for whether it was false or not."

Steyn, meanwhile, appears to be paying a price for his brazenness. He still has no legal representation. ("My check from the Koch brothers seems to have been lost in the mail or intercepted by the NSA," he wrote. "So for the moment I am representing myself.") And since his Christmas Eve diatribe, the conservative pundit—who had been writing near-daily posts for National Review Online—hasn't written a single item. Neither he nor the magazine's publisher, Jack Fowler, would say why. But Steyn hinted at the reasons in a post on his website: "As readers may have deduced from my absence at National Review Online and my termination of our joint representation, there have been a few differences between me and the rest of the team."....

milloy

http://junkscience.com/2016/06/update-on-mann-v-free-speech-defendant-mark-steyn-requests-expedited-hearing/

Update on Mann v. Free Speech — Defendant Mark Steyn requests expedited hearing

The case is taking so long that defense witnesses are starting to die.

The media release is below.

###

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 1, 2016

CONTACT: Amy K. Mitchell amy@ajpromos.com

Mark Steyn Files For Expedited Hearing in Mann v. Steyn, et al

Washington, DC — Today, Mark Steyn requested that the Superior Court of the District of Columbia expedite the hearing and lift the stay of discovery in the case of Michael Mann v. Steyn, et al. It has been two years since the case was referred to the Appellate Court, where it is remains in limbo.

Mr. Steyn has asked the court to move forward with the case as material witnesses for the defense have passed away since the referral.

“Something needed to be done to jumpstart this case, a case that threatens the most fundamental First Amendment freedoms. The case was brought in mid-2012. It is now four years later and the appeals from defendants’ special motions to dismiss have not been decided, nor has discovery proceeded,” stated Dan Kornstein, Steyn’s lawyer. “The passage of time since the appeal was argued in this case a year and a half ago while a stay of proceedings was in effect at the trial level has stalled a case whose very existence chills freedom of speech. To correct this situation and get the case moving, Mark Steyn filed this request to ask the trial court to lift the stay of proceedings even while the appeal is pending. We hope the trial judge grants the request.”

Mr. Steyn’s request is in line with case law, as cited in the amicus brief filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the defendants, stating that SLAPP laws exist “to remedy the ‘nationally recognized problem’ of abusive lawsuits against speech on public issues by providing defendants ‘with substantive rights to expeditiously and economically dispense of litigation’ that qualified as a SLAPP – in other words, to nip such lawsuits in the bud.” Furthermore, “[T]he special motion to dismiss must generally be granted prior to discovery, D.C. Code § 16-5502(c)(1), ‘[t]o ensure [that] a defendant is not subject to the expensive and time consuming discovery that is often used in a SLAPP as a means to prevent or punish.’”

The defense of this case, due to its First Amendment implications, is supported by: The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Advance Publications, Inc., Alibritton Communications Company, American Society of News Editors, Association of Alternative Newsmedia, The Association of American Publishers, Inc., Dow Jones & Company, Inc., First Amendment Coalition, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Gannett Co., Inc., Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, The McClatchy Company, MediaNews Group. Inc., d/b/a Digital First Media. The National Press Club, National Press Photographers Association. National Public Radio, Inc., NBCUniversal Media. LLC, The New York Times Company, News Corp. Newspaper Association of America. North Jersey Media Group Inc.. Online News Association, POLITICO LLC, Reuters America LLC, The Seattle Times Company, Society of Professional Journalists, Students Press Law Center, Time Inc., The Washington Post.