Cub Scouts v Marines
My all-time favorite quote from Professor Michael Mann - the guy who invented the notoriously inaccurate and much-mocked Hockey Stick - is this:
It’s literally like a battle between a Marine and a Cub Scout when it comes to the scientists defending themselves. We obviously don’t have the resources, we don’t have the experience, we haven’t been trained, we’re not public relations experts like they are, we’re not lawyers and lobbyists like they are – we’re scientists, we’re trained to do science. So it’s like a classic example of asymmetric warfare, and that’s really the way we should think about this.
Do you see what Mikey is doing here? He's creating a false picture in the unwitting listener's head of a world dominated by two factions: on the one hand, the noble, pitifully underfunded, plucky, doughty, Luke'n'Chewbacca'n'Han'n'PrincessLeia-like scientific freedom fighters who believe in Man(-n) Made Global Warming; on the other, the evil, Big-Oil, Big-Carbon, Big-Koch, all-powerful, Death-Star-like denialist lobby which at every turn seeks to frustrate the hard work brave men like Michael Mann in their quest to save the planet from the Greatest Threat It Has Ever Known.
Read my book Watermelons and you'll find out why this is bunk.
And then read this to see how shamelessly the Warmist lobby continues to spread this ludicrous meme.
Briefly, it's about how environmental activists - cheerled by a newspaper which need not detain you, the Guardian - have been harassing a small pressure group the Global Warming Policy Foundation with FOI requests to make it reveal its funding sources.
But here's the thing: the amount spent by government agencies, by the UN, by the EU and by green activist groups such as the WWF, the Sierra Club and Greenpeace funding environmental propaganda is vastly greater than the paltry sums spent supporting the case for climate realism, scientific integrity and considered cost benefit analysis. According to Australian blogger Jo Nova, the differential is about 3,500 to 1 in favor of the eco-alarmists.
Cub Scouts v Marines? Mann was right enough about that one. Except it's guys like me who are the Cub Scouts, more's the pity.
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Comments:
Jun '10
Re: Cub Scouts v Marines
With the IPCCC, all of NGOs who have bought into this pseudo-sophisticated strain of voodoo, and the media, what is it that the warmists are lacking? If they could just get Delingpole.
I remember now what they lack: a story that makes any sense.
Edited on January 25, 2012 at 3:54pmApr '11
Re: Cub Scouts v Marines
Michael Mann engaged in secret science. He refused to reveal his data, his statistical algorithms, the source code for those algorithms. Michael Mann's secret science is just plain old quackery.
But some people fall for the quacks. What do you think about Newt Gingrich's views on global warming, Mr. Delingpole? Here he calls for action to stop "carbon loading" of the atmosphere and the creation of a "green conservatism". Here he explains himself.
Is this genuine change or pandering? What do you think?
May '11
Re: Cub Scouts v Marines
"It’s literally like a battle..."
Gotta love that turn of phrase. Can anyone think of a sentence where "literally like" makes sense?
Other than, "I literally like peanut M&Ms."
Oct '11
Re: Cub Scouts v Marines
James Delingpole:
But here's the thing: the amount spent by government agencies, by the UN, by the EU and by green activist groups such as the WWF, the Sierra Club and Greenpeace funding environmental propaganda is vastly greater than the paltry sums spent supporting the case for climate realism, scientific integrity and considered cost benefit analysis. According to Australian blogger Jo Nova, the differential is about 3,500 to 1 in favor of the eco-alarmists.· · 24 minutes ago
I think Mr Delingpole excluded the ''free'' press Global Warmongering get in school and universities, to which I can attest because I get hammered 4 hours per week with it since last semester.
Oct '10
Re: Cub Scouts v Marines
Personally, I love his fascination with the word "charlatans" for anyone who disagrees with him.
"This is cherry-picking at its worst, the sort of thing we have of course learned to expect from charlatans like McIntyre. I guess its the flavor of the day in their desperate ongoing disinformation campaign." - Mann
"I can't believe the nonsense you are spouting, and I furthermore cannot imagine why you would be so presumptuous as to entrain me into an exchange with these charlatans." - Mann
Jun '11
Re: Cub Scouts v Marines
Most of my Scout leaders were Marines.
Jun '10
Re: Cub Scouts v Marines
Paul Erickson: "It’s literally like a battle..."
Gotta love that turn of phrase. Can anyone think of a sentence where "literally like" makes sense?
Other than, "I literally like peanut M&Ms." · 23 minutes ago
Get Mollie on the case. I think she has a special aversion to the misuse of the word "literally."
Jun '10
Re: Cub Scouts v Marines
I was a Webelo leader for a few years. I'd put twelve of them up against a platoon of Marines. Mann has obviously not spent much time with Cub Scouts.
Edited on January 25, 2012 at 4:58pmRe: Cub Scouts v Marines
tabula rasa
Paul Erickson: "It’s literally like a battle..."
Gotta love that turn of phrase. Can anyone think of a sentence where "literally like" makes sense?
Other than, "I literally like peanut M&Ms." · 23 minutes ago
Get Mollie on the case. I think she has a special aversion to the misuse of the word "literally." · 18 minutes ago
And yet I just used the word in an arguably questionable way in my latest post.
Jul '11
Re: Cub Scouts v Marines
That's OK Molly, we won't take it....at face value. This dude Mann is a genius and yet you folks mock him. Off to the reeducation camps.
Sep '10
Re: Cub Scouts v Marines
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.
tabula rasa
Paul Erickson: "It’s literally like a battle..."
Gotta love that turn of phrase. Can anyone think of a sentence where "literally like" makes sense?
Other than, "I literally like peanut M&Ms." · 23 minutes ago
Get Mollie on the case. I think she has a special aversion to the misuse of the word "literally." · 18 minutes ago
And yet I just used the word in an arguably questionable way in my latest post. · 7 minutes ago
Actually,....
Apr '11
Re: Cub Scouts v Marines
Everyone wants to be the victim in this backwards world we live in. Everyone wants to be David even if they really are Goliath. So if your opponents are actually a small bunch of naysayers than you are now on the poor footing of being the big bad guy who in out popular mythology is never right.
Aug '11
Re: Cub Scouts v Marines
Can it be Marines against Girl Scouts instead? At least that way there would be cookies.