Gas tax, and Hide the decline

15-Cent Gas Tax Could Become Part of Senate's 'Climate Bill'

latimes.com — Senators are considering a new tax on gasoline as part of an effort to win Republican and oil industry support for the energy and climate bill now idling in Congress. The tax, which would be in the range of 15 cents a gallon, was conceived with the input of several oil companies and is being championed by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

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Mann sues: Minnesotans say "Go ahead. Make my day"

It's all about audacity.

Michael Mann's contribution to modern science may one day be remembered as the guy who made it statistically possible to get  a thousand year temperature graph using any local telephone directory as a data source. (Who needs tree-rings?)

If you were a guy who'd been caught producing scientific work so inept that people could pour in random data and get the same "curve", then you might take a satirical video on the chin (or crawl into a hole). But if you're Michael Mann, and you also used the wrong proxy, you hid your data, used graphs upside down, and invented deceptive "tricks" to hide declines, then you might call your lawyers.

The Minnestoans for Global Warming (M4GW) made the hilariously popular Hide The Declinevideo, which has now been removed from YouTube. Mann claims they defamed him "by leaving viewers with the incorrect impression that he falsified data to generate desired results in connection with his research activities". The Minnesotans said "please do", and responded undaunted by producing a new version (see link).