- Take it like a Mann. In addition to owing National Review over half a million bucks for a SLAPP lawsuit against them and the Competitive Enterprise Institute over a Mark Steyn blog post 13 years ago about a CEI article by Rand Simberg, a suit Mann openly hoped would “ruin” the magazine, he’s now been ordered to pay CEI and Simberg $477,350.80 in legal fees over proceedings in which the court found Mann and his lawyers deliberately deceptive. Roger Pielke Jr. points out “The fees were awarded under the Ani-SLAPP Act, which the court explains is, ‘to protect targets of meritless lawsuits’” while NR chortled that a piece by editor Rich Lowry warned Mann at the time to drop the suit and “go away and bother someone else.” Now he or his anonymous deep-pocketed legal backer (though we deniers have all the money and are the sinister and secretive ones) is on the hook for a million bucks and counting. And we are indeed counting.
- An increasingly popular alarmist claim is that human civilization, including agriculture, can only operate within a very narrow band of about one degree C. But as Matthew Wielicki complains, complete with typical diagram advancing that claim (and making absurd projections of dark red temperature increase by 2100), “you experience temperature changes far greater than this every day!” To which we add that people farm from Canada to Costa Rica, in temperatures whose average as well as highs and lows, daily and seasonal, vary enormously. But on climate you can say just anything.
- Including, and this one’s a real hoot, a guest post by Pav Penna on Parker Gallant’s “Energy Perspectives” blog starts by noting the Canadian government’s chronic misinformation on a point we’ve also raised. Specifically, he quotes the 2022 federal budget that “Canada is already experiencing an increase in heat waves, wildfires, and heavy storms” and retorts that “All three claims were demonstrably factually incorrect.” But here’s the fun part. He filed an Access to Information Act request for the scientific basis for this claim and it was turned down because of “Cabinet Confidences”. The rest of the post is also worth checking for the way he rubbishes those claims in detail.
- So about that Medieval Warm Period: From NoTricksZone (and h/t Climate Depot) a study of DNA from elephant seal breeding sites, an opening phrase as surprising as it is reflective of ingenuity, “suggests the limit of Antarctic sea ice was ~2000 kilometers farther south than it is today 2500 to 1000 years ago.” Oh yes? If that sounds like quite the span to you, it’s because this study takes in both the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods. And if you’re thinking the involvement of Antarctica means they weren’t regional, well, they were if the “region” is the Earth. Otherwise not so much… as we said. And as NTZ observes, it “means Antarctica’s sea ice limits were thousands of kilometers less extensive than today’s back when CO2 concentrations were at ‘safe’ pre-industrial levels (~265 ppm).” Even if the name of one of the sites, Inexpressible Island, suggests that it wouldn’t be safe there whether it was a howling Antarctic wasteland or full of romping elephant seals which are “very large” and for some reason “earless” seals weighing up to four tonnes.
- Oh, and from the “Would you shut up?” file, The Daily Digest recycles “The ‘Doomsday glacier’ is melting and we could all be in trouble”. Unless it isn’t and we’re not. Meanwhile Inside Climate News bores us with a report from the European Geosciences Union about “Two hot topics on the program: how climate change is increasing unexpected clear-air turbulence, and how the global science community is rallying around American colleagues in this anti-science moment.” An ironic juxtaposition, that one.
- Speaking of manipulation, Blacklock’s Reporter informs us that “The federal government in pre-election focus groups shopped various slogans to persuade Canadians to support a cap on oil and gas emissions, according to in-house research by the Privy Council Office. Depicting energy companies as hugely profitable corporations that could afford clean technology was most popular, said a report.” Perhaps we are naïve to expect politicians or bureaucrats to care what is true rather than what sounds good. Especially when they’re out there testing the waters with nuanced misrepresentations like “No sector of the economy should be allowed unlimited pollution.” Bold and controversial, that one. Interestingly they also tried “The world is increasingly moving away from fossil fuels” and found that “Very few participants agreed with this statement.” So clearly the public is better informed than the government. Though the ultimate irony in all of this manipulation is that it just turns people off: “Researchers noted most Canadians were unaware of the oil and gas emissions cap.”
- Meanwhile an alert reader sends us an item from, of all sources, the BBC, bearing the headline “Too hot? In 1858 a heatwave turned London into a stinking sewer”. Admittedly it’s archival in both senses because it dates to 2018; they almost certainly wouldn’t run it today. Especially as it contains forbidden thoughts like “Suffering in the hot weather? Spare a thought then for the population of London back in 1858, a year of sky-high temperatures and the Great Stink. That year, the London Standard reported temperatures of over 30C by the middle of June and the weather stayed hot for several weeks/ There was no air conditioning, no refrigeration, it was really hard to keep food fresh and there was no proper sewerage system, according to Museum of London curator Beverley Cook.” Rather underlining that there’s always been bad weather, even heatwaves at the tail-end of the Little Ice Age despite the usual “hottest ever” propaganda, and that the appropriate posture is resilience not running in circles screaming and shouting.
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Tidbits
28 May 2025 | News Roundup
The Northern Hemisphere's annual mean temperature is about 2C hotter than the Southern Hemisphere's. Agriculture is practiced in both hemispheres. Not only is the Northern Hemisphere average hotter, it has hotter summers and colder winters than the Southern Hemisphere (still talking about hemisphere averages). Yet agriculture manages to persist in Northern Hemisphere summer.
Did anyone else notice, in the hockey-stick diagram Wielicki criticised, that temperatures were plummeting before the Industrial Revolution and were very nearly BELOW the one degree safe band? If the claim that that band has any validity at all, doesn't it mean that Earth's natural climate variations were just about to smash civilisation to flinders, so HOORAY FOR CO2?