Mark Steyn: Climate Hero

“The world is ****ed. What practical thing can I do to make any difference?”

It’s a question we’ve all asked ourselves at one time or another. And I don’t think that the answer is one that many of us would like to hear. Let me give you an example of the kind of tenacity, courage and self-sacrifice required if you really want to take on this ineffably corrupt system.

I give you: Mark Steyn v Michael Mann.

Michael Mann - as you’ll know if you’ve read my account of the climate wars Watermelons (now available in an even punchier updated edition - https://jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Shop/Products/Watermelons-2024.html) - is the creator of probably the most overrated and fraudulent artefact in the entire global warming scam: the infamous Hockey Stick chart.

In order to scare the world into believing that catastrophic, man-made ‘climate change’ is real and that we need to act now to avert disaster, the architects of the hoax needed some kind of experty expert to come up with some plausible-looking evidence.

Enter an up-and-coming American climate ‘scientist’ called Michael Mann who, in 1998 published in Nature (one of the house journals of Establishment climate alarmism) his soon-to-be-hugely-influential Hockey Stick graph.

The graph purported to show global temperatures for the last millennium, as reconstructed from tree rings and other ‘proxy’ data. It was known as the Hockey Stick because of its shape: a long, flat handle indicating fairly stable temperatures over most of the millennium, followed by a sharp uptick at the end (the hockey stick’s blade) which appeared to show a dramatic and unprecedented rise in temperatures as a result of industrialisation.

But let’s not get lost in the details. The key thing about the Hockey Stick was that it afforded clear visual proof, in a way that even idiots could understand, that global warming was happening now, it was very real and scary, and it was obviously man-made.

Except it wasn’t. It was only Mann-made. On closer examination by sundry independent reviewers it was demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that the Hockey Stick was bunk. The data on which it was based was unreliable and highly selective; its methodology was statistically invalid; and it was the result of an algorithm so biased that whatever information you fed into it - pot noodle consumption; prevalence of Hollywood movies involving stars undergoing humiliation rituals by appearing in drag; number of mentions of global warming in David Attenborough documentaries; these are not real examples, but you get the idea - you’d end up with the same hockey stick shape.

By then, though, the damage had been done. It didn’t matter what the sceptics said - didn’t then, still doesn’t today - because the Climate Industrial Complex is too big to care. The Hockey Stick was promoted everywhere - from Al Gore’s dismal powerpoint lecture An Inconvenient Truth to various Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports - and was instrumental in promoting the narrative that ‘the science’ was ‘settled.’ That’s how cocky the people behind this hoax are: even when the facts are totally against them they know they can still win the argument because they own all the institutions - from academe to the media to Hollywood and Big Tech - that control the messaging.

So how do you fight back against the Climate Industrial Complex behemoth? Well, you can do as I’ve done and fire a few pot shots at it by writing books and articles exposing its corruption and mendacity. But to be honest I’m not sure how much difference it makes, no more than a flea bite on an elephant probably.

If you’re really serious, though, you need to do what Mark Steyn has done.

The story is quite involved so you’re best off reading the full account at his website. It’s headlined ‘A Small Victory…’ https://www.steynonline.com/14902/a-small-victory

Background: Steyn has been defending himself in a long legal battle launched against him by Michael Mann. And finally he’s had some good news.

Between last night and today, the current DC Superior Court judge has made two orders:

The first, denied Mann's motion seeking attorney fees from Mark.

The second, ordered Mann to pay $530,820.21 in attorney fees and costs to National Review! As mentioned at the top, this will be the first time that Mann will be asked to contribute to the cost of his unending lawfare to silence criticism of his statistical model commonly referred to as a "hockey stick" due to its design.

More than a small victory, I’d say. But the price Steyn has paid for giving us all this satisfaction is enormous. Imagine spending thirteen years fighting a lawsuit in a courts system which is at best lazy, apathetic, uninterested and at worst actively hostile towards you.

That motion was denied by the first trial judge - Natalia Combs-Greene - who was mainly expert in managing landlord and tenant cases. It was all too much paper for her to handle (gave her a "headache") so a second judge was assigned to the case who simply rubber-stamped her decision.

And think of the eye-watering sums you must be prepared to risk if you’re involved in litigation, especially in the US. Sure, under anti-slapp rules - (see the Steyn article for explanation) - Steyn is theoretically indemnified against his costs. But only if the system works correctly and fairly, which is never guaranteed in the law, is it now?

What, I would imagine, has made this case even more gruelling and thankless for Steyn is when he was forced to go solo after his original co-defendant and former comrade in arms National Review cucked out and left Steyn (and writer Rand Simberg) to go it alone.

Meanwhile, National Review was able to have two charges against them specifically dismissed at the appeals court and the remainder dismissed after discovery. After having raised a significant amount of money from loyal National Review readers to stand by Mark - in the end, they said their "Happy Warrior", their keynote speaker at numerous conferences and fundraisers, had essentially busted into the cockpit and took control of the plane without their knowledge. (or, words to that effect...). So they, and CEI (using the same argument re their writer Rand Simberg), were able to get themselves out of the case.

I don’t think National Review’s and CEI’s cowardice will come as much of a surprise to anyone who appreciates what a bunch of pantywaist, Establishment suck-ups and sell-outs all members of Conservative Inc. actually are.

Maybe the most telling detail in the piece for Steyn Online, written by Steyn’s manager Melissa Howes, is that at no stage of this extended litigation fest has Michael Mann had to pay a penny of his own money towards his ongoing harassment of journalists trying to do actual journalism.

Think about the implications of this. (I have quite a lot over the last few years, as you can imagine). The crooks, liars and chancers at the heart of the climate scam - I’ll let you decide which of these applies to Michael Mann - have long been able to get away with murder because the vested interests backing them are so enormously rich that money is no object. “Truth will out”, most people naively assume. But no it won’t, necessarily. Not in the current system which is weighted in favour of the Climate Industrial Complex, not of ‘the Science’, let alone the truth.

That’s what is so heroic about what Steyn has done. He could have caved, he could have apologised, and everyone would have understood because who wants their life ruined battling for justice against hopeless odds, even if right is on your side?

But Steyn wasn’t having it. He fought on.

Of all the columnists I used to rub shoulders with in my days as a mainstream media commentator, Mark Steyn is one of the very few, perhaps even the only living one, for whom I retain any respect.

Whether this is an accolade he’ll find helpful I’m not altogether sure. Since the very-long-ago days when we used to appear in the same publications - the Telegraph and the Spectator - our world-views have diverged quite markedly. I’m now so far gone I’m one of those crazies who actually believes that 9/11 was an inside job. But I have a feeling that Steyn will never venture to explore even that fairly entry level rabbit hole, not because he lacks the courage or the tenacity or contra mundum spirit, but because he loves the old paradigm too much.

Steyn’s big radicalising moment, had he chosen to take it, would have been when he developed serious health problems as a result of the Covid vaccines he was semi-coerced into taking. He nearly died as a result and credits his survival to the fact that he was in France, not in the tender cares of the National Health Service, when his heart crisis reached its peak.

Despite all this, though, Steyn has kept his feet firmly in the mainstream. Perhaps he feels that he can be more useful with access to a much larger constituency than conspiracy nutters like myself tend to get. But I think also he is too wedded to the old world and the old traditions to consider cutting loose and joining the fully awake.

For example, Steyn loves classic popular songs of the early Twentieth century; he loves old movies; he probably still believes in the virtues of the British Empire, that there was a time not so long ago when politicians were men of character and probity rather than adrenochrome-fuelled, kompromat-controlled puppets of the shadowy One World Government cabal, that conservative ideas might yet make a difference…

When you go fully down the rabbit hole you have to bid farewell to these and similar trappings of the old world belief system because you realise that they are just another part of the deception.

It’s because Steyn hasn’t - and won’t - go all the way there that he tends to be treated a touch sniffily by the fully Awake.

But personally I think that Steyn is as good a man as any of us, and a better man than most of us. I pray for his continued success in his legal tussle with the slippery Mann; and I pray that he overcomes his health problems.

Viva Steyn! (Oh, and I quite understand, Mark, why you didn’t invite me to be a guest speaker on your Mediterranean cruise this April https://marksteyncruise.com/speakers.htm. I don’t think I would have been a very good fit, though I’m sure you’ll all have a lot of fun)