Michael Mann Helpfully Continues To Prove Just How Much “Climate Science” Is Warped By Partisan Agendas and Unprofessional Bias

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Climate change hysterics cannot discuss the basis for their passion without mentioning Michael Mann, who must be regarded as the face of whole climate change movement. Wikipedia makes him seem like a master of his domain:

Mann has contributed to the scientific understanding of historic climate change based on the temperature record of the past thousand years. He has pioneered techniques to find patterns in past climate change and to isolate climate signals from noisy data.

As lead author of a paper produced in 1998 with co-authors Raymond S. Bradley and Malcolm K. Hughes, Mann used advanced statistical techniques to find regional variations in a hemispherical climate reconstruction covering the past 600 years. In 1999 the same team used these techniques to produce a reconstruction over the past 1,000 years (MBH99), which was dubbed the “hockey stick graph” because of its shape. He was one of eight lead authors of the “Observed Climate Variability and Change” chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Scientific Assessment Report published in 2001. A graph based on the MBH99 paper was highlighted in several parts of the report and was given wide publicity. The IPCC acknowledged that his work, along with that of the many other lead authors and review editors, contributed to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which was won jointly by the IPCC and Al Gore.

Mann was organizing committee chair for the National Academy of Sciences Frontiers of Science in 2003 and has received a number of honors and awards including selection by Scientific American as one of the fifty leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002. In 2012 he was inducted as a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and was awarded the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union. In 2013, he was elected a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and awarded the status of distinguished professor in Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. In 2017, he was elected a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

Mann is author of more than 200 peer-reviewed and edited publications. He has also published six books: Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming (2008), The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars (2012), together with co-author Tom Toles, The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy (2016) with Megan Herbert, The Tantrum That Saved the World (2018), The New Climate War (2021), and Our Fragile Moment (2023). In 2012, the European Geosciences Union described his publication record as “outstanding for a scientist of his relatively young age”. Mann is a co-founder and contributor to the climatology blog RealClimate.

All the honors and accolades prove is how politicized the scientific community is, and how progressive bias has infected so many of the world’s institutions. His so-called “hockey stick graph,” supposedly a reconstruction of past climate temperatures, was shown to be the product of dishonest statistics methodology; for example, it conveniently ignored the Medieval Warm Period that continues to bedevil the climate change narrative.

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Oh Look! Another Alleged “Professional” Showing Disrespect For This President That He Would Never Show For Any Other…

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

…Or that any previous holder of his position would have ever dreamed of displaying to any previous President.

The White House, you see, asked the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home to turn over the Sword of Honor given to Ike in 1947 by the city of London for his role as Allied Supreme Commander during World War II, so President Trump could now give it to King Charles last month during the President Trump’s state visit to the United Kingdom. The gift would symbolize the continuing bond between the two nations that was most powerfully forged during that war, but never mind: Todd Arrington, a career historian who was director of the museum, refused to allow the President to use the sword as a weapon of diplomacy, insisting that it had been donated to the institution and “belonged to the American people.”

Oh. Well, anything the government uses for any purpose “belongs to the American people.” Trump was reduced to giving the King a replica of the sword, and was, justifiably, ticked off. Arrington was told he could resign or be fired. He resigned.

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A Popeye: A Trump Derangement Note That I Have to Mention…[Corrected and Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Several readers have sent me this insane, hysterical post by a guy who claims to be “middle of the road” and it caused me to pledge not to keep posting on Trump Deranged outbursts: there are too many of them, they are embarrassing, and it doesn’t change anything. Then I see a post by an old freind, a tenured history professor at a major U.S. university, in which he writes, “106 years ago today (i.e., 02 Oct 1919), President Woodrow Wilson suffered an incapacitating stroke. His wife Edith essentially took over running the White House for the rest of is term. The 25th Amendment was still 48 years away in the future. No particular reason for mentioning the 25th Amendment right now…”

You mean now as opposed to during the previous four years, when this same scholar saw no reason to make a comparison with Wilson when it was screamingly obvious that the President really was cognitively disabled and needed to be removed?

Of course this objective, trustworthy “expert” detected no parallels with Wilson while POTUS shambled around, got disoriented and had his wife handling him like a member of Visiting Angels, but now, as his successor displays staggering amounts of energy and purpose not just for a man his age but for anyone of any age (the correct parallel isn’t Wilson but Teddy Roosevelt), a credentialed historian thinks he can’t do the job, and that an elected President should be removed from office as “disabled.”

Translation: “Disabled”= “Not a Democrat.”

Trump won’t do the job the way that the batty American Left wants him to do it. That’s all.

I need some spinach…

Stop Making Me Defend Tilly Norwood!

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Hollywood actors are freaking out over fake actress “Tilly Norwood.” That’s already a plus to the AI-generated performer’s credit: Hollywood actors deserve to be freaked out as often possible (within the boundaries of law and ethics, of course). It gives them something to scream about other than how the President of the United States is a fascist, or how as more unborn babies should be killed. And cases like this one, where their freaking out reveals just how hypocritical and intellectually shallow they are, it’s a public service: NOW do you understand why you shouldn’t pay attention to these one-trick millionaires?

Tilly Norwood, in case you never watch E! or read Variety, is an AI-generated fake actress with about 40,000 Instagram followers who don’t have a life. Tilly was created by Xicoia, the AI division of the production company Particle6, from the rib of an AI-created actor. OK, I’m kidding about that.

Eline Van der Velden, the Dutch producer who founded Particle6, claims to be seeking an agent to represent Norwood to place her in real films, ads and TV shows, unlike the fake, AI created scenes in her videos.

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Ethics Heroes: Hundreds of Northwestern Students

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Northwestern University required mandatory viewing of an anti-Semitism training video to comply with President Trump’s crackdown on campus harassment and abuse of Jews. At least 300 of the school’s 22,000 students have boycotted the training, so the university barred them from registering for fall classes. Northwestern also requires students to watch anti-bias training regarding Muslims, and its email to the campus earlier this year announced that the new anti-Semitism training “will adhere to federal policy” in compliance with the President’s January executive order “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism.”

Indoctrination is indoctrination, and the subject of the indoctrination is irrelevant. The students who are refusing this abuse of education are right and principled, and I hope they refuse to fold.

The 17-minute video was produced by the Jewish United Fund and claims to teach students about “who Jews are, how Jews understand themselves, and how anti-Semitism has morphed throughout time.” The video defines anti-Zionism, which has gained popularity among radical anti-Israel protesters, as “the opposition to the Jewish right of self-determination,” warning that anti-Zionism “takes many forms, most of which are anti-Semitic because they work against Jewish human rights.”

Maybe it’s effective propaganda and maybe the video is generally or mostly true, but such a video is also an advocacy piece, and as with the Al Gore climate change hysteria film that my son was forced to watch at his over-priced private school where he attended 7th grade until we pulled him out of it, it is not the job or role of educational institutions to force their beliefs and political positions on their students.

“Sensitivity training,” “anti-bias training,” and any similar mandatory programs aimed at brainwashing attendees and eliminating “WrongThink” are unethical and abuses of power that are absolutely contrary to our nation’s values. The practice is indistinguishable from the “re-education camps” of the former Soviet Union. That current practitioners from the Left or the Right do not put cages with hungry rats in them on their victims’ faces doesn’t change the fact that the objective is the same: “Change how you think, or else.”

True: it would be nice if the boycotting students were also similarly sensitive to the unethical nature of indoctrination that aligns with their belief systems, in part the product of indoctrination.

But one has to start standing up for principles somewhere.

Ethics Hero: Animal Care Centers of New York City

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Finding its facilities with a surplus of pit bull breeds and pit bull mixes to find homes for, the Animal Care Centers of New York City hit on a creative solution. It released a video that opens with “We’ve never seen this many doodles at our shelter before.” What follows is a series of photos and video clips of “doodles” that are really obvious pit bull mixes wearing curly wigs.

“Doodles,” for the dog-challenged, refers to the popular designer breeds and other mixes of non-poodle dog breeds with poodles, usually creating digs with hypoallergenic coats. Labradoodles are poodles crossed with Labrador Retrievers, Sheepadoodles are English Sheep Dog-poodle mixes, and Golden Doodles, the most popular of all, are poodles bred with Golden Retrievers.

The video mocks the “doodles” craze while also placing their much maligned (and unjustly so) pit bulls and pit bull mixes in a benign light. And mirabale dictu, it worked! Families who never would have considered adopting a pit bull type dogs came to the shelter and did so, and the staff at the shelters believe that the video is being widely circulated, helping to dispel the wide-spread fear of and bias against these loving, sweet tempered dogs perpetuated by ignorant anti-pit bigots.

Spuds approves.

Ethics Quote of the Month: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“The journalists need to get in shape. Frankly, I’m getting tired of looking at their writing and seeing such shit. It’s completely unacceptable.”

—-Veteran bloggress Ann Althouse, an occasionally red-pilled liberal Democrat, expressing disgust in a pots yesterday with the state of American journalism after reviewing the (as usual) biased and partisan coverage of the Trump Administration, this time in reporting on Sec. of War Hegseth’s meeting yesterday with the Pentagon’s generals and admirals.

I was going to write about that meeting and President Trump’s characteristic stream-of consciousness speech that followed it, then saw Althouse’s piece this morning naming what she felt were the worst headlines about the “Hegsethathon.”

Ann has expressed annoyance with biased coverage of Trump and his administrations before, but I think this is the first time she condemned the entire Axis media, to which I say, 1) “Good!” and 2) “What took her so long?” American journalists have overwhelmingly been avoiding ethical journalism since at least 2008, and my blog, unlike hers, blew the whistle, loudly, beginning in 2010. I suppose, as a liberal, Democrat law professor living and working in the bubble of Madison, Wisconsin who voted for Obama, Hillary and Biden, she can be forgiven for being blinded by confirmation bias and denial. Her commentariate has become far more conservative than she is (or was) in the interim. Ann should have become “sick of seeing such shit” long ago.

Hegseth’s meeting was attacked by the mainstream media from the second that it was announced. Why? A leader seeking cultural and organizational change should gather his or her commanders to ensure they understand their mission, goals and objectives. Much of the criticism was over the meeting demanding live, in person attendance. This objection demonstrates generational ignorance. A live meeting with everyone present and sitting together is and always will be the most powerful way to build group bonds and common purpose. I know this as a live theater director and a public speaker, and also as someone who knows the visceral differences from watching a baseball game or a movie in a crowd and seeing them alone or with one or two companions on a TV screen. We have a whole Zoom-warped generation who can’t grasp that, and their institutions and organizations will suffer as a result, probably forever.

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Comment of the Day: “Unethical Quote of the Month: Georgia Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism”

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Tim Levier, by his own admission in a Devil’s Advocate mood, gifted Ethics Alarms readers with the a bold defense of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the anti-merit fad that has kept affirmative action on life support quite a bit after its expiration date. If EA had such a designation as “The Silk Purse” award, this would win it. I applaud the effort, so here it is, the Comment of the Day on the post about an absurd word salad extolling DEI in Georgia. I may be back after Tim has his say…I haven’t decided yet.

***

“Diversity involves recognizing, including, celebrating, rewarding and utilizing differences of gender, race, ethnicity, age and thought – sweetening and often strengthening the pot.”

I don’t know what mood I’m in but I’m up for a little “Devil’s Advocate” today. Let’s give it a go.

I have many thoughts regarding the DEI space – but one point I’d like to make clear is that the concensus often focuses on how to measure and demonstrate improvement on a quantitative scale when DEI often, in my opinion, is more important from a qualitative standpoint.

In the rush to “prove” and “show results”, the drivers of the movement are seeking and promoting changes in outcomes rather than the root causes related to opportunity. In so doing, they may “move the goalposts” to arrive at a certain outcome. Reasonable people know instinctively that this is bad, as articulated in Charlie Kirk’s hypotheticals about adding white Americans to the NBA or whether black commercial airline pilots demonstrated the same skill, knowledge, and experience as their peers or were they a beneficiary of reduced expectations. The “rigging” of the outcomes complicates perceptions of DEI and creates negative emotions among the opponents of the measures.

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Unethical Quote of the Month: Georgia Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

“Diversity involves recognizing, including, celebrating, rewarding and utilizing differences of gender, race, ethnicity, age and thought – sweetening and often strengthening the pot.”

—-The Georgia Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism in the document supposedly designed to give Continuing Legal Education trainers (like me) guidance in preparing seminars on “professionalism,” exemplary conduct that goes beyond the Rules of Professional Conduct to bolster public trust and the reputation of the legal profession.

What utter, illogical, embarrassing, unethical, woke garbage this is…and from a judicial commission no less! I dare anyone to defend it. The putative author is someone named Karlise Y. Grier, who is supposedly a lawyer, and lawyers are supposed to be trained in critical thought. Gee, I wonder if…[checking]….of course she is. Only the undeserved beneficiary of such nonsense could endorse it so fatuously.

I’m going to be teaching, not for the first time, a professionalism seminar for Georgia lawyers, who are among those in the few states that require special “professionalism” credits. I had to read, in due diligence, the guidelines for such programs in Georgia that almost took longer to read than the course will last (one hour) because it was full of bloated bureaucratic babble. It is a professional requirement for lawyers to write clearly, but most don’t, and this thing was a disgrace. Nothing was as bad as that paragraph above, though.

What does “recognizing” differences in gender mean, and what does it have to do with the ethical practice of law? (Hint: Nothing.) Lawyers should treat all clients and adversaries the same regardless of race, gender or other group characteristics. Is that paragraph saying that Georgia lawyers should be able to tell a man from a woman? Is this a problem in Georgia?

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J.K. Rowling Smacks Down “Hermione”: Is It Ethical To Attack The Person You Owe Your Wealth, Fame and Influence To?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

To be clear, the one attacking the person she owes her wealth, fame and influence to isn’t Rowling, the creator of the Harry Potter books and the billion dollar industry it spawned, but Emma Watson, the now grown child actress who played cute Hermione in the films. It is Watson who has been criticizing Rowling by name for years because the British author has openly challenged the whole concept of transsexual ideology: that people can change their sex by just deciding they are the opposite sex than their genes make them and have the law accede to their decision.

The ethics issue today is not whether Rowling is right or wrong. The question is whether Watson (along with her fellow Harry Potter child stars Rupert Grint and Daniel Radcliffe) has behaved with gratuitous disloyalty and ingratitude by attacking Rowling by name while she is being vilified and threatened by other celebrities and the woke news media.

Not to keep you in suspense, the answer is yes. Rowling finally had enough, and responded with the scathing social media take-down of Watson that the actress deserves.

What was apparently the magical straw for Rowling was Watson saying in a recent podcast that that their opposing views on trans rights do not mean she can’t or doesn’t “treasure” Rowling as a person. “I will never believe that one negates the other and that my experience of that person, I don’t get to keep and cherish,” the has-been star blathered. “I think it’s my deepest wish that I hope people who don’t agree with my opinion will love me, and I hope I can keep loving people who I don’t necessarily share the same opinion with.”

That hypocrisy, for that’s what it is, was too much for Rowling, who unleashed her considerable rhetorical talents on Watson, and brava to that. Rowling wrote in part,

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