From Mark Steyn’s web page

Mann-made climate change turns up the heat on Steyn

Michael Mann, the professor who created the climate-change “hockey stick”, announced over the weekend his intention to sue National Review over Mark’s Corner post “Football and Hockey“.

You can see the letter from Professor Mann’s lawyer here.

You can see various reactions here, here, here, here and here.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg responds here, as do Discover Magazine, David Appell, Instapundit, the author of The Hockey Stick Illusion, the Lesbian Conservative, the Pundette, and the excitable lads at Daily Kos. Kathy Shaidle is looking forward to it.

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Rand Simberg says what we all know here at WUWT:

But does he really want to litigate the hockey stick in a court of law? Does he in fact want to dig into any of his unscientific behavior in a venue in which he will be under oath, and he won’t have sympathetic colleagues covering for him? Does he really want those emails to be read aloud in court? And has he talked to the University of Virginia? Even if they continue to fight the FOIA, how will they fight a subpoena for the missing emails in a civil lawsuit? If this goes forward, discovery will be very interesting, and very entertaining. I suspect that Peter Sinclair will end up choking on his popcorn.

As predicted, now the Streisand effect is kicking in. I think the message being sent from Steyn and Simberg to Mann is: bring it.

Andrew Montford points out this hilarious Twitter exchange:

[In related news, this Twitter exchange between Mann and Ryan Radia of CEI was interesting

RyanRadia .@MichaelEMann Why did you delete my comment on your FB page re: defamation of public figures and the actual malice standard?

@MichaelEMann You are with *CEI*, front group dedicated to dishonest smears & promotion of disinformation. That’s why. Take it elsewhere.

RyanRadia .@MichaelEMann By your logic re: CEI, wouldn’t I be justified in ignoring anything from Penn State academics because of the Freeh Report?]

Bazinga! It looks like Dr. Mann is already in over his head when it comes to logical arguments. I predict he’ll back down from this and start stonewalling much like he has reportedly already done related to his lawsuit with Tim Ball, which was asking for certain documents in discovery that Mann doesn’t want to give up. It seems Dr. Mann just doesn’t want those UVa emails to come to light.

Dr. Scott Mandia, aka “Supermandia”, leader of Mann’s legal offense defense fund, may have to wade into this morass and rescue Dr. Mann from himself.

From Scott Mandia’s blog he captions this photo: The Caped Climate Crusader: Battling the evil forces of global warming deniers. “Faster than global T rise, more powerful than a stranded polar bear, able to leap over rising seas in a single bound.”

If he can leap over rising seas, why the hip waders? Must be for wading through something deep, but what could it be?

Best advice I’ve seen so far: Don’t tug on Superman’s cape