From Jennifer Marohasy

January 27, 2024 By jennifer

They love to quote him, Edmund Burke, eighteenth-century Irish philosopher, and statesman, he apparently said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

And then they did nothing.

I forgive the Left, the Democrats, and the Australian Labor party, because they cannot know that human-caused climate change is a conspiracy. But Conservatives, and the right of politics more generally, they know.

And so, I cannot forgive the CEI (Competitive Enterprise Institute) for not standing with Mark Steyn and their former employee Rand Simberg against Michael Mann.

It is twelve years since Michael Mann began defamation proceedings against Steyn for insulting him, in particular, Steyn wrote that Mann’s last 1,000-year reconstruction of northern hemisphere temperatures is a fraud. Further, Steyn quoted from a Competitive Enterprise blog by Rand Simberg claiming:

Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.

As crude as these words are, they would appear to be accurate. It is well known that his infamous historical temperature reconstruction (the hockey stick) is a nonsense.

The Medieval Warm Period came before the 20th Century’s obsession with global warming and Al Gore’s movie and Mann’s hockey stick that literally flattened this history.

This single most influential chart (the hockey stick) in the history of 21st century climate science shows no warming through the 11th Century, or cooling in the 16th Century, which makes it inconsistent with everything we know about English history.

This absurd rewriting of history leapt onto the front cover of magazines and into newspapers and government reports beginning with the third United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment report in 2001. The hockey stick denies the Medieval Warm Period – it literally flattens it. Yet it is the accepted, popular, and consensus view, of our relatively recent climate history.

John Anderson, former Australian Deputy Prime Minister, and now a founding member of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), and purportedly a great champion of Western Civilization was compliant with this rewriting of history. As was every other member of John Howard’s cabinet because they sent Australian government officials to the IPCC meetings and signed off on the reports from 1996 through until 2007 when they were the government of Australia. Of course, Anderson could have objected to the Hockey Stick, to this rewriting of the history of Western Civilisation but he did nothing.

I cannot forgive him, and I cannot forgive the CEI for not standing by Rand Simberg.

The truth can sometimes offend – that does not make it wrong.

It is offensive, what former CEI employee Rand Simberg, wrote:

Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.

It is the case that Jerry Sandusky was finally convicted in 2011 of 52 counts of sexual abuse of young boys over a 15-year period from 1994 to 2009, with senior Penn State university staff failing to tell police of reported incidences of rape dating from 1998.

It is the case that those in positions of power have also repeatedly turned a blind eye to the molestation of boys in Australian institutions including the Brisbane schools my brothers and first boyfriend attended at these same times, through the 1970s and 1980s*.

Back before Rand Simberg wrote those offending words, and still now, the CEI employed senior staff who know the situation. They know the theory of catastrophic human-caused global warming to be a fraud. For example, another of their employees, Christopher C. Horner, wrote best-selling books including ‘Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed’ (Regnery Publishing, 2008). That is the title of the book by Horner, acknowledging and detailing a culture of fraud and deception.

The CEI knew that Rand Simberg was only writing the truth, but they did not, and they have not, stood by him.

In my experience, Conservative think tanks do not stand with their foot soldiers when the going gets tough, when there is an opportunity to take a stand. When it most counts.

To be continued.

We are now up to Day 7 of the defamation trial, I hope that you can start following along with Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer, click here for the page from which you can link to Apple, and other podcasts.

Part 1 is here

Part 2 is here

** ***********
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, is here and reported:

The Royal Commission’s Report into Case Study No. 34 – The response of Brisbane Grammar School and St Paul’s School to allegations of child sexual abuse, was released today.
The report follows a public hearing held in Brisbane in November 2015, which heard about the experiences of former students at Brisbane Grammar School at Spring Hill and St Paul’s School at Bald Hills. The public hearing also examined how the schools and others responded to allegations of child sexual abuse of former students.

At the public hearing a number of former students of the schools gave evidence of having been sexually abused by:
• Kevin Lynch (deceased) – a teacher and later counsellor at Brisbane Grammar between 1973 and 1988 and a counsellor at St Paul’s between 1989 and 1997
• Gregory Robert Knight – a teacher at St Paul’s between 1981 and 1984.

The Royal Commission heard evidence that, during the period of Kevin Lynch’s employment at Brisbane Grammar, he sexually abused a large number of students. There was evidence that a number of complaints against Kevin Lynch were made to senior staff at Brisbane Grammar and to the then headmaster, Dr Howell (now deceased).

The Royal Commission was satisfied that Dr Howell did not investigate an allegation brought to his attention and did not report the matter to the police or board of trustees, failing in his obligations to protect the safety and wellbeing of the students.

In 1989, after he left Brisbane Grammar, Kevin Lynch gained employment at St Paul’s as the school counsellor. He remained in that position until 1997. Former students of the school told the Royal Commission that Kevin Lynch had sexually abused them while he was employed at St Paul’s. The Royal Commission heard that the school was aware of complaints of sexual abuse of students by Kevin Lynch and took no action to deal with those complaints.
Ends.