The Ricochet Podcast - Mark Steyn

Episode Date: September 10, 2015

This week, our old friend and proto-podcaster Mark Steyn returns to the fold to discuss his terrific new book Disgrace to the Profession. In the addition to the book, we also cover Trump (of course), Mark’s neighbor, Bernie Sanders; the dissing of President McKinley, water levels in Alaska, and an update on Steyn vs. Mann. Yep, we got the band back together. Music from this week’s episode: Get... Source

Hello, everyone. I'm not going to get, I don't know what's going to happen here. I don't have any information on that. They don't understand what you're talking about. And that's going to prove to be disastrous. And what it means is that the people don't want socialism. They want more conservatism. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long, Troy Seneca sitting in for Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilacs, and our guest is the author of Disgrace to the Profession, Mark Stein. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Yes, welcome everybody to the Ricochet Podcast number 274. It's brought to you by The Great Courses. Now, for a limited time, The Great Courses has a special offer for you, the Ricochet listener. Order from four of the great master's lecture series.

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And, gosh, I do wonder what that could possibly be. And naturally, of course, we are brought to you by the edifice that is Ricochet. And here is one of the men who laid it out, marked it out, made it possible, ladies and gentlemen, Rob Long, to guilt you into handing over your hard-earned shekels for this, the prom. This won't be guilt. It's just sort of a joy. We have a very special guest today, Mark Stein. Mark Stein and Peter Robinson

and I, and I say, unfortunately, my co-founder Peter Robinson is not here today. He is taking one of his 27,000 children to college today. Mark lives, Peter lives in a shoe at this point. I think he has so many children.

But, you know, I remember years's so many children. But I remember years ago, Mark and Peter and I sat around and we were batting around this idea for Ricochet and Mark, of course, Ricochet Old Timers now is an early member of our podcast Superstardom and we're thrilled to have him back. If you

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chat with Ricochet members and contributors so you get to watch it with a bunch of people who are watching it at the same time, with the same perspective, who are also probably drinking heavily, trying to figure out what to make of it all. Once again, Ricochet.com, and we are pleased

to have back Mark Stein. Mark, how are you? Hey, I'm great, Rob. That's my professional intro compared to all that did they hear me say are we on yet type stuff I was doing earlier. Hey, fabulous to be with you. You're doing the George Clooney as he did on the Stephen Colbert's first late show. George Clooney kind of walked on in a cool Italian suit and just basically said,

hey, I got nothing to plug. I'm just here. But before we get started, there's lots to talk about. I just want to say we want to make sure everybody knows your new book is called A Disgrace to the Profession. It's a little bit different for you, this book, the way it's sort of laid out. I think it's really interesting, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But before we get to that, we have you on. We have to talk about everything. Please explain Donald Trump. Go.

Well, Donald Trump, I think, is a reflection of the fact that this country is a two-party, one-party state in which one of the parties doesn't really function as effectively as the other, particularly in the entirety of the 21st century, pretty much. After the debacle of 2008, the Tea Party movement agreed to work within the dead zombie husk of the Republican Party and got great victories in 2010 and 2014 and had nothing to show for it. And I think they basically concluded, as I have, I live in New Hampshire, which is ground zero, that the conventions of presidential politics don't work for one of the parties. And this guy is coming along like Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack, and he's not observing the etiquette. And I have no problem with that because I think the conventions don't work for one of the two parties. And in that sense, something needs to be done.

In most countries, you would have other parties. I mean, America has the same two parties it had during the Civil War. There's no precedent for that anywhere else. In the 1868 UK election, every single constituency in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales went to a liberal or conservative. Now in the election they had a Liberal or Conservative. Now, in the election they had a couple of months ago there, there's still the Liberals and the Conservatives, but there's the Labour Party, there's UKIP, there's all these Irish, Scottish, Welsh parties. I can't even remember the name. There's 11 parties in the House of Commons.

There's five parties competing in the current Canadian election. This is the only country in the world where the party system is a two-party cartel where only one party gets anything out of belonging to the cartel. Right. Yeah. I mean, a friend of mine who's in the financial markets once said that the financial system, monetary systems are like political systems. They don't last forever. Something comes along and busts them up and then they reform it as something else and people kind of freak out a little bit when these things happen. But they are natural.

I mean there has been this strange stability, as you say, these cartels. I mean I think years ago, Pat Buchanan put it that when he was arguing, when he was running a sort of insurgent campaign, a Republican campaign, he said that the parties have a message to working class Americans. One is the Democrats tell you – oh, the Republicans tell you we're going to sell your job to the Chinese overseas and there's not much you can do about it. And the Democrats say we're going to sell your job to the Chinese overseas and – but we're going to put you on welfare.

So two sort of grim choices, right? And then people sort of naturally reluctantly drag their feet and vote Democrat. We're not very enthusiastic about it. Do you think that – do you think that there's a chance that some – another candidate, a more mainstream candidate, a more sort of in-the-system candidate can capture that renegade spirit? A more mainstream candidate, a more sort of in the system candidate can capture that. Renegade spirit or is this sort of Trump's to, you know, is he going to romp his way to the 1600 Pennsylvania? Well, look, that's a better question than than most people have been asking for four months, because the moment Trump declared.

Right. Kind of rambling thing. People say, oh, this is ridiculous. He's going to he's going to all the all the consultants, he's going to implode. He's going to implode after, he'll be gone in two weeks. He'll be gone in a month. He'll be gone in six weeks. And you make the point that can anyone else, you know, what you're really saying is he's not going to implode. Someone's going to have to take him out. And, and, and the question is, which candidate is that going to be? But he isn't. He's too smart to implode. So one of these guys is going to have to figure out a way to put the silver bullet through him. Hey, Mark, this is Troy Sinek. I'm sitting in for Peter this week. So I've been spending the last 15 minutes just trying to get the knot on my Argyle sweater just right. If Rob's going to make you explain Donald Trump, I'm going to ask you about your neighbor in Vermont, Bernie Sanders.

What happened here? Has the Democratic Party let the mask slip? What is this phenomenon? Well, it may – I don't know that it's that much of a slipping mask. Socialism is supposed to be a toxic word in the United States, unlike, you know, France or Italy or wherever. But the fact is, when Bernie Sanders became mayor in Burlington, Vermont, which is when I first observed him, a long time ago now, Vermont was still within living memory, the supposed rock ribbed Republican state. And Bernie Sanders has done very well by by talking up sort of economic fairness, while at the same time actually being quite culturally conservative where it matters. I'm just across the river from what they call Vermont's northeast kingdom, hard by the Quebec border, which is the least Ben and Jerry-fied, Howard Dean-ified part of

Vermont that's still left. It's like the old Vermont, except it's rather more decrepit than it used to be because all the mills have closed and the farms have gone belly up. But he's very good at playing to economic resentments while saying, you know, you can still have your guns. So when you've got a socialist whose pitch is basically you'll get bigger welfare checks to spend at the gun store, he does very well in the Northeast. He does very well in the Northeast.

Sounds good to me, actually. Actually, yeah. Actually, there are worse ways to live. And and and I think I think that that mess I I think Hillary's going to he's in the lead by some distance now in New Hampshire. This is a state that knows him, that has watched him rise over the last quarter century. And I think he'll I think he can he can he can beat Hillary in Iowa and New Hampshire. The campaign's effectively conceded that, but says they've firewalled South Carolina, which sounds a lot to me like Rudy Giuliani's firewall in Florida was a few years ago.

I think if he wins Iowa and he wins New Hampshire, it's not altogether impossible that he can get the nomination. And actually, it's not altogether impossible that a socialist could be elected president of the United States. Well, socialism may indeed be a toxic word, which is probably why the networks don't use it when they're talking about Sanders. He's mentioning something that we've been trained to accept as part of the necessary conversation today, income inequality. We've got to talk about this. But as I was explaining to my daughter the other day, Trump is what happens when there are subjects that are just not allowed to be spoken about in public discourse, such as, for example, Carly Fiorina's looks and Ben Carson's ability as the doctor. To bring up two things that Trump has said. You mentioned before that people were waiting for him to implode. But after a day when he says what he says about Carly and then actually questions the medical bona fides of Ben Carson.

Of course, if you go to the websites today, everybody is defending him. And if you point these things out, you are, to use my favorite new word, a zio-cuck, which is a combination of Zionist and conservative. Is there anything actually that Donald Trump can say at this point that will turn off his deep, devout followers and perhaps make people rear back in a little bit of horror and say, I really don't want four years of that? Well, you know, that's a fascinating question because nothing he says doesn't work for him. I mean, he started the race by insulting Hispanics. This is if you take the view of what his critics say. He insulted Hispanics.

He insulted veterans. He insulted menstruating women. There's not really a lot left to insult other than disabled children. But every time he does something like this, people just shrug it off. And what's worth thinking about is I think there are phony arguments. So what? Nobody cares what he says about John McCain. If you're in some lousy town where nothing works, where your income's flatlined, where your father, who had a blue

collar job, but was able to live a nice middle class life in a four bedroom house on a nice size lot because he had a steady job, whereas your kid is going to college to do colonialism and transgender studies and has got a quarter million dollars worth of debt and is never going to live the life that your blue collar grandfather had, then nobody cares what Trump says about John McCain or Megyn Kelly. Now, I happen to disagree. I was I sat next to Carly Fiorina at some Republican event in New Hampshire. I found her a vibrant, sensual woman. She was I sat next to Carly Fiorina at some Republican event in New Hampshire. I found her a vibrant, sensual woman. She was wearing a fabulously she was wearing a fabulously sexy red dress. And if I'd if I'd run into I know, but I'm defending her honor. If I'd run into her in the,

you know, Republican candidate singles bar of the 17, she's the one I would have hit on. And I've got no... So on the merits of the argument, I side with Carly. But on the overall question of whether we should all have a fit about Trump shooting his mouth off, that's what people like about him. What they like about him is that some snot from ABC will interview him at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. And Trump, if it doesn't go well, Trump will stay up till 3 in the morning tweeting until he passes out what a loser the guy is. And actually, I think people quite like that. And even if they don't like that, it doesn't matter compared to the lack of economic opportunity that has descended on millions and millions of people in this country.

But if it is indeed some third rate to tweet from ABC who's asking a stupid question, yes, everybody is tired of having to bow and scrape to these people as though simply occupying a chair on television bestows gravitas that you obviously don't have. But when Hugh Hewitt finds himself in the crosshairs after many, many very nice interviews with Donald Trump, and then promptly starts to get edged out of the of the true conservative realm. Hugh Hewitt, for heaven's sakes, who's been talking about a wall a lot longer than Donald Trump. Then it's not just a question of people rejoicing that these people are getting put down. It's it's it's extirpating from the movement just about anybody who crosses his his Donald

this. Now, you'd mentioned before the two party system that we're stuck with and what they have in Europe. We got a question from the comments. Somebody was noting that conservatives have a much more difficult time in Europe. Does the multi-party system there actually advance conservative ideas or diffuse it? And let's use that to transition to talking about the wonderful crisis that they're now having with the immigrants slash refugees. Shall we?

Yeah, I'm happy to. So how does it work for them? And do they have a culture now in Europe that is conservative enough to be able to say we want to hold on to our culture and not perhaps be swamped, shall we say? Well, I think that does connect with the Donald Trump thing in a way. I'm speaking in Copenhagen on the 10th anniversary of the Mohammed cartoons. And I'm I'm kind of, you know, top of the bill, because basically all the other people who would have been ahead of me on that bill have been have either been killed or are in hiding. I mean, that's the brutal reality of it.

I hope to give you a little extra in your pay packet for that. Well, we're in – I'm speaking in the Danish parliament because apparently it's the only building or it's the building that they're least likely to be able to penetrate and kill everyone. So they said, don't worry. You're speaking in the parliament. I'm Canadian and I know what happened in the Canadian parliament about a year ago where some shooter was rampaging down the center block. You have a lot of books left to write. So I just – be careful. No. I have the – I'm a bit like – I'm a bit like Colonel Gaddafi when I appear in Copenhagen because they're these very nice, blonde, sweet Nordic ladies who accompany me everywhere.

So I'm like, you know, like when Gaddafi went everywhere with those Austin Powers fembots. Right. That's basically me. That makes me feel better, Mark. That makes me feel much better, much safer. Yeah, they'll take it. They'll take it. It's like a whole phalanx of Brit Eklund. So that's actually well, actually, if I put that to Donald Trump, he'd probably be up for it. Yeah. It's the next Mrs. Donald Trump. But but I think it's that's a free I'm of dishonesty that's going on about what this crisis in Europe is, that does tell you about the advantages of a Donald Trump. Because he just says what he thinks. modern refugees fleeing civil war, who can't understand why if they're refugee families

fleeing civil war, that when you look at the photographs, it's all young Muslim men. There are no, it's not like 1945. It's not like 1947 in India, where there are old people and there are children and there are women. It's just angry young men. And yet in Europe, if you read even supposedly right-wing papers, they seem constrained from addressing this honestly. And then you have Angela Merkel, who's supposedly conservative. And basically, it's like Camp of the Saints with the narcissism of the political class expanded exponentially to the point where they think the fact that they're letting these people into their country just says so much that's wonderful about them, the Germans, that the fact that it's going to destroy Germany doesn't bother them. It's fascinating.

What's fascinating is – not to bring it back to Trump, of course, but he was arguing last night and I think it was a bit of a flip from what he was saying before. But I think he was making a good argument last night that if you look at the Gulf states, the richest states in the region, they haven't taken any of these refugees. And one of the foreign ministers of one of the Emirates said today, well, we can't, you see, because of security issues. So even they know that there's – a lot of these Syrian refugees, there's going to be a lot of terrorists in this group, that there's absolutely no way to screen for these people, no way to know who they are, and they're just being sort of onboarded into new countries, Western countries, without a thought to the internal security of those countries. And now we are going to probably bring some to this country, which makes me sort of ask this other question.

I know we want to get to the book. I promise we will because I know that as an author, that's the important thing here. Is this sort of a general world movement? If we're reading the world history 50 years from now, assuming that there is such a thing as the world and there is such a thing as history, is this going to be the great immigration crisis where we have refugee migrants from failing states in the Middle East and refugee migrants from failing states or economically distressed states in the South moving up and into other countries? I mean, is that just happening now as a special thing or has it been happening all along? No, I think this is the world we're going to be living in. The emirate foreign ministers are not wrong. If you're in Qatar or Oman or Kuwait, you've got a nice little setup there. The last thing you want is being overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of people

who are going to wreck that. No one is as Arabophobic as the Arabs. And we've seen this for decades with the Palestinians. It's easy for a Palestinian to move to Toronto and become a subject to Queen Elizabeth than it is to move to Riyadh and become a subject of King Salman. They don't want to know about them. And they don't want to know about these guys. And the thing is, if it works, what's the future for Europe? If you can prove that the Mediterranean is just a slightly wider Rio Grande, Niger's population has doubled since 9-11. It's expected to increase by,

I think, 10 times before the end of the century. And this is a country that can't support its present population when it's got nine times as many people, are they going to stay in Yemen or are they going to figure out that it's easy to get across the Mediterranean? And when you're in Italy and Greece, it's easy to make your way to Germany and take advantage of Angela Merkel's hospitality. I mean, there is nothing, the scale of what's going on on America's southern border, where you're bordering essentially corrupt banana republics, but still just about functioning corrupt banana republics, doesn't compare to what Europe's bordering, where you're bordering an ideology that wants to supplant you and destroy you, and you're bordering some of the most dysfunctional societies on earth, like Niger and like all these failed, imploded states in North Africa that Obama's helped create over the last six years. Well, it brings to mind the book The Camp of the Saints. And speaking of books, of course, Disgrace to the Profession is Mark's latest, and we're going to get to that in just a second.

We'll be talking about hockey sticks, of course, Disgrace to the Profession is Mark's latest, and we're going to get to that in just a second. We'll be talking about hockey sticks, of course. I think at this point we were supposed to have world temperatures 19 degrees, but we have now. It didn't happen, but if you want a hockey stick-type learning increase in your own personal knowledge, you know exactly where to go. And, yes, that is the most inelegant transition I've done for weeks. Not at all. But we've got to move along. Do you really want me to sit and wax ophiuchus on these things when I can just hammer it? No.

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But be quick, because the 80% savings is only available for a limited time. Now, don't wait. Go to thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. That's thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. And speaking of books and knowledge and erudition and all the rest of it, a disgrace to the profession from its title might let you know that this is not exactly going to be a mild broadside, but rather takes on some issues that we've been all fulminating and marinating in for 15, back to when Ted Danson pronounced that we had but a decade to save this orb of ours.

Mark, tell us about the book, what provoked it, and what we should learn from it. Yeah, I think it's three years ago now, I wrote a short blog post at National Review and about the hockey stick, the most famous science graph of the 21st century, and the one that was used to justify the Kyoto Accord and was given a starring role in Al Gore's Oscar winning movie. And the guy who created it, the hockey stick, Michael Mann, sued me for defamation. And if you're a foreigner, the only two things you know about the American court system are that it takes forever

and it's incredibly expensive. But even expecting that, I didn't expect a 270-word blog post to take this long to litigate or to be this expensive. So I thought I'd, with all the case materials sitting around clogging up my rec room, I might as well shuffle some of it off into a book. And it's a kind of different book for me because it started with the actor Ed Begley, who's a big environmental activist. And I happened to catch him with Stuart Varney a few years ago at the time of Climategate. And he was poo-pooing all this stuff that Stuart was asking him and saying, he turned to the camera and he said, don't take it from guys like me.

And don't take it from fellas like Stuart. Pay no attention to what some news guy says to you. Listen to what the experts say. Check out what people with PhD after their name have to say. Now, that's an appeal to authority, which I've never been up for. I mean, you know, Rob's a Hollywood guy. And if you and if you were like, Oh, it comes down to me, doesn't it, Mark? Yeah. Well, no, I'm about to say something nice about your profession here so if you were like if you're like on a sitcom and uh and and it's uh ted danson say that james just mentioned it and ted danson delivers the line and you say i don't know i don't feel you got the full juice out of it out at that time and ted danson was to stand there with his hands on his hips and a pouty look and say, I'll have you know, I've got a PhD in comic timing. You wouldn't be impressed by it.

Well, then you must be right. That's right. But that's all. I mean, that's all these guys do. It's just appeal to it. So I thought as a guy with no letters after his name, I'd just find out what all these scientists actually thought about Michael Mann's hockey stick. And it turns out that hundreds and hundreds of scientists around the world are utterly contemptuous of this scaremongering cartoon climatology. And that's what the book is about. The book is what scientists, real scientists, have to say about the world's descent into this sky is falling cartoon climatology madness. So, Mark, so he sues you for defamation and you in turn do a, you, this is a report, that's what I thought, that's why I think this book is so different for you, but it's still very much a Mark Stein book, but it feels different. You did some reporting and you went out and you interviewed people, and this is an – this reads to me like a brief, like a very long brief in which you demolish the scientific reputation of this guy who insists that he's some exalted sort of figure or exalted authority on this.

I mean how on earth does anyone read this so long for someone like you or for anyone to write that book? How long have we been living with this sort of incredibly false and trumped-up notion of global warming or climate change, whatever they want to call it, without anyone actually calling it into question in as methodical a way as you do. Well, I think one of the problems was that he's played the legal system very well. I mean, one of the things that's striking to me about climate science is that there is a real genuine climate of fear throughout the whole field, that if you step out of line on this issue, you'll be basically hockey stick back into submission. Some 80-year-old Swedish climatologist, Lennart Benson, stepped out of line last year, and they all jumped on him. Michael Mann and his

associates jumped on him, basically to force him to issue this groveling apology. So if you're very old and you've got a genuine Nobel Prize, you're a fellow of the Royal Society, you got all the letters after your name and you're just winding down, you can maybe afford to stand up to the guy. But if you're one of the younger people or even late middle-aged people, they will club you back into following the party line. It's, again, in Hollywood terms, Rob, it's basically Johnny Friendly and on the waterfront. And as you see in the book, there's a lot of – what's the line they use about the union guys when the cops ask them anything?

Oh, I'm deaf and dumb. I'm deaf and dumb. And they were and and these guys. Yeah. Yeah. And these guys are expected to be deaf and dumb when any about all the flaws in the science, the attempts to to rig the peer review, and all the rest of it. These guys are all expected to fall into line, and increasingly some of them don't want to fall into line. They'd like climate science to recover its integrity. And I'm not really the first. A couple of guys in Toronto, Steve McIntyre, a retired mining engineer with an interest in statistics,

and an economics professor called Ross McKittrick. They basically demolished the hockey stick as a piece of science and then found that the peer review gang were determined to keep them out of the peer review publications. A fellow called A.W. Monford over in Britain wrote a book about the hockey stick illusion. But man likes to sue people into silence because the idea is when you're in litigation in the United States, that somebody sues you and then you go quiet on the subject for the seven years until the case is settled, you know, a couple of decades down the line. That's how it's meant to work. And I think that's ridiculous because that means the guy doesn't have to win or lose simply by actually filing the suit.

He takes you out of the game. The process of punishment there. That's right. That's right. And I didn't want to do it that way. So I've now got basically, you know, if Rob Long sues me for defamation, I'm going to write Rob Long a disgrace to his profession. Well, this is my new template.

It's a whole new genre. If I'd thought about it, I would have set up an imprint called Screw You Books because it's basically a way of saying when you've got a litigious society and a sclerotic court system, you've got to find some other way to get through this thing. Mark, throughout this process, have you heard at all from principled people on the other side who disagree with you on climate change, but agree with you on free speech grounds, who think that you're wrong on the substance, but Michael Mann is wrong to try to shut you down? Peter Robinson Yes. That's actually quite interesting. I mean several relatively eminent people who are on basically what you would call pro-global

warming, they believe in it and they're on board with it and they're in favor of government solutions to it. But they think that these arguments should be thrashed out in the public square. I mean, Michael Mann, this is a classic First Amendment case. Michael Mann is a public figure. He's also a political figure. He appeared in Democrat campaign ads for Terry McAuliffe in Virginia, for example. So he's someone who's an activist and a political activist, but he won't appear in any hostile forum. And by hostile forum, that means he won't even, not just that he won't appear on a stage with me or on a radio show or a podcast with me, but he won't appear even with

mildly critical fellow scientists who disagree with him. So he's someone who can't withstand public argument. And because of that, he thinks he has to sue his enemies into submission. But it's not going to work, and he shouldn't have done it. And even people who agree with him on the global warming and we're all going to die stuff, think he shouldn't have done it. And that's why, actually, they're not supporting him in court. I mean, the ACLU came out with an amicus brief against Michael Bannon. That's not because the ACLU are fans of me. The Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, they came out because they understand that if he were to win,

essentially any, it doesn't matter whether you're talking about gay marriage or Ferguson or whatever it might be, any, what are essentially political disputes and policy disputes, you'd be asking a jury to vote on, which would be madness. So the ACLU supports Mark Stein. What a rhino squish. You've lost your cred. No, I know. I'm calling. I said to Donald Trump, don't bother calling me a loser. I'm going to call myself a loser. You know, I remember in the 70s when the new ice age was the next thing and woolly mammoths were going to be coming down from Canada and stomping Fargo flat. But what I recall about that particular panic was that it wasn't spiritual in nature. And as you make the point in the book and others have as well, it seems as if environmentalism and in particular the end-of-the-world theology of climate change has filled that gap for people who found themselves unchurched but yet with a yearning for something divine that transcended them. That makes you the village freethinker now, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah, it does. I mean, I think this is like a, this is a religion for people who no longer have any other faith. Everybody wants some transcendental meaning to their life. And I think this gives meaning to a lot of people, particularly the fact that you can't actually do anything about it. I mean, I love the way politicians who can't do anything for which they are actually responsible. You had this with Schwarzenegger in California. Schwarzenegger can't do anything about the overwhelmed emergency rooms of California health care, or he can't do anything about illegal immigrants or all the rest of it, but he professed to be able to save the planet. Bloomberg, Mayor Bloomberg, when a storm strikes

New York, a snowstorm strikes New York, he can't get any snowplows onto Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan, but he claims to be able to save the planet. And that filters all the way down. So you go around this country, and this is Trump's point. This is the whole make America great again thing. You drive around this country and you go through decrepit counties and towns and school districts, and all the kids are saying, oh, I saw Al Gore's movie and I want to save the planet. Well, why not try saving your school district or your crummy town or your dying county? And if that works, then, you know, try saving the planet. But save your county first.

Save it. Obama, about a week after he took office, there was some school down in, I think it was North Carolina or somewhere, where they didn't have money to paint and the windows rattled because there was a train that went close by. So they wanted to get some money for paint and double glazed windows. And they wrote to Obama and he read it out in his first State of the Union saying, we just want to graduate from this school and then go and save the planet. But we'd like you to give us some paint and double glazed windows first. Oh, mighty sovereign King Barack in Barackingham Palace. And he read it out. And even conservatives like your friend and mine, Rob Long, Rich Lowry of National Review, applauded. And in fact, what he should be saying is, who the hell are you to think you can save the planet when you can't even, you know, organize a raffle or a fundraiser to get some pots of paint and then paint your school or to raise money for your double glazed windows? I don't want to have the planet saved by people who can't repaint a schoolhouse.

It's not likely to work out well. Well, that's the old argument people are making about education, education reform. It's like, well, how about just first do math, teach math, basic math. Then when we've accomplished that, then we can have a conversation about teaching all sorts of whatever the new thing is or being a good person or personhood or diversity or tolerance. But first, let's just get math done because math seems to be – math and basic science, they seem to be sort of the baffling school children across America. So let's just get that. That takes four years. Then we'll call that success. It takes two years. Then we'll spend the next two years.

We'll let you have a full year of nothing but diversity training and modern interpretive dance. But at least we'll get the math and the science down. So were there any moments when you interviewed these scientists where they felt to themselves that they were betraying? I mean, just to go back to the book for a minute, where they were betraying their, I don't know what the word would be. It's not their colleagues. It's almost like betraying their priesthood. Well, no, I didn't. I should say I didn't interview all of these scientists. Sometimes it's something that a guy from Finlandland or sweden said on finnish or swedish tv something like that a few years ago and what uh or sometimes indeed it's something that people have said in official testimony uh to congress or the house of commons in london uh but i contacted uh these some of these guys because of what you say whether there was pressure to

recount and whatever and it's interesting to me uh for example with jonathan jones who's an oxford physicist and has one of the most clear-eyed statements of this he he refers to people who believe in the hockey stick as this bizarre alternative universe full of people who think the medieval warm period never happened and uh he said, the hockey stick is obvious drivel. Everybody knows it's drivel. And do I expect you to denounce it as drivel? Yes, I do. For the integrity of science to show that you're not succumbing to pathological science. It's necessary as an act of hygiene to denounce this thing as drivel. Well, he said that in a rather obscure comment on a blog site buried deep down at comment number 375 or whatever. And when I gave it rather more prominence in this book,

he's been under quite a bit of pressure from the acolytes, from the sort of court eunuchs of the big climate establishment who've been kind of bombarding him with emails demanding to know what he means by this. And he's standing firm because he's that type. But as we saw with this guy, you remember that guy a couple of weeks ago who was at some science conference in Korea? He's a Nobel laureate. Professor Sir Tim Hunt, FRS, Nobel laureate, right? A brilliant man. And he stands up in Korea and he's got that book that you would recommend to me, Rob. It's like 101 icebreaking moments of levity for public speakers, right? Because, you know, if you're not a professional, you should take this book with you.

So he consulted that book, and it said, open up with something, a little light. It's self-deprecating, right. Yeah, yeah. So he said, oh, I always have a terrible problem with girls in the laboratory. They're such lovely girls, and I fall in love with them and then they fall in love with me and then when you say you don't like their science they burst into tears and that's like his he's a nobel laureate you know he's and to be fair just just for the background people don't know that is exactly how he met his wife they met in a lab she was a scientist they fell

in love they're still married so he and i think everybody in the audience except for the the the sort of three cretins who didn't know they all knew it right right but he gets on the the plane back to heathrow and by the time he lands in london his career is over it's like the nobel prize doesn't matter the fellowship of the royal society doesn't matter he's out he's done he's over and and you can see he's a he's a they don't always have the best social skills scientists because they're many they're brilliant people and brilliant people can be a a you know a bit odd about things like that uh and and they're not so they're not when they suddenly find themselves in the glare of the spotlights like that they can all just sort of crumple up into into a fetal position as he more

or less did and and you understand that they're not cut out. They don't have the temperament for entering into the sort of swaggering back and forth. They're not Donald Trump. You know, if it had been Professor Sir Donald Trump, he'd have said, you feminists are losers and you're ugly and you're menstruating. Get back to me when your time of the month is over and maybe then I'll listen to you. It would have been a very different world. It would have been, you know, and that's why these ones who have stood up to this pressure.

There's a lady called Judith Curry, who's a big climatologist at Georgia Tech. And she has withstood the most brutal, far more misogynist, by the way, than Donald Trump. She's the most brutal onslaught. She's the most eminent female climatologist on the planet. And they have made her their piñata, and they thwack at her and smash her every opportunity they get. And she's the last scientist I quote in the book in part because of my admiration for the way some of these people are like brave enough to stand up to this thuggery in climate science and resist it. And they're impressive people because it's not pretty when they go to town.

I was – this is to go back to the Trump – I was at an event a couple days ago, three days ago. And as happens, you get your coffee. People are talking about politics and it was the kind of group where everyone is rolling their eyes about Trump. But they would be rolling their eyes about whomever, whatever Republican was making news. And I said something mildly sort of, well, a lot of people seem to like him. And a lot of people seem to like certain parts of the message and they sort of stopped. And then we started talking about the sexism part. And I said, well, who do you think is – who do you think has personally treated women worse, Donald Trump or Bill Clinton? And it always stops them because

that's the one – they always forget that. They sort of conveniently forget that part. It's an amazing thing, this sort of collective amnesia about our standards and how quickly they've changed and how quickly they've been raised about some things and about other things. But before – I just want to remind people, the book is a disgrace to the profession. It's excellent. It's wonderful. It's a classic Mark Stein book. Wonderful. I mean, we got it, I think, not that long ago, four days ago, five days ago. And I've been on the road for a few days, but I read it. I sort of devoured it really. It's a great read. What's the status of the case right now just just so we can be brought up to speed well well the case is uh is kind of stalled uh on some on some kind of procedural thing that

if i were to explain it to you you you you would you would want to plunge needles into your eyeballs it would it's made i'm in the case and I can, I tend to, you know, the other thing, by the way, the other thing I like about Canada or Australia or whatever is that briefs tend to be brief. I think that's how they got their name, in fact, whereas here briefs are like, you know, you're not really serious unless it's a 400 page brief. And so I tend to, you know, I read the first three pages, I skim the next seven, and then I just sort of flip through the remaining 390. You're looking for the dirty pictures, I'm sure. Yeah. And so it's stalled in this procedural thing. I've said, I responded to his discovery requests a year and a half ago.

And he went to the judge to say he didn't have to respond to mine. And so we're stalled at that point. But I just want to get to, I'm not interested in playing procedural games because I think they sort of hand him a victory just in the time they take. So I want to go into court. You know, I like, speaking of climate change cases, Rajendra Pachauri had a bit of a Bill Clinton problem with the climate interns. He was the head of the IPCC, and he's now facing some sexual molestation charges in the High Court in Delhi. I would love to be on trial in the high court in Delhi. He will have been tried, convicted, sentenced, and out on parole by the time my little blog post eventually comes to trial. I would love, I mean, say what you like

about ISIS, but you know, their justice system does not... Yeah, you don't wind up with a seven-figure bill and ten years of appeals when ISIS are running the justice system. There are drawbacks, though. You recognize that, right, Mark? Yeah, no, I get that. It's a bit of an all-or-nothing deal, but the...

Well, it is amazing. When this whole thing started, we were talking about the German factory that Harry's uses as being 96 years old. And now I think it's almost 100 years old. But they're still turning out the best blades you're ever going to find. Sorry, Mark. I have to do this. And we want to do it because Harry's is one of the places that makes this podcast possible.

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Coupon code RICOSHAY at checkout for $5 off and start shaving smarter today. Of course, the climate scientists and Bill Clinton and the like will be absolved of any of their particular sins because they mean well. Because their ideas, have taken to the general fulfillment will result in a happier America and means be damned. Same thing with the president who was recently, of course, in Alaska, noting that the glaciers have been catastrophically receding at a brisk clip. Of course, they've been doing that for centuries and then they come back and then they go back and then they come back. I was in Alaska recently, too, and was pointing out to a friend who was very much worried about the climate that there's a water line on all the shores that we pass that's about three feet higher than the water actually is now,

which suggests, actually, that we might have had a period of climate different from ours now. But what people fear, though, is that Obama's going to go back to Washington, D.C., and simply, through executive order, make some EPA regulation that will cripple jobs, stun the economy, and result in a barely perceptible incremental increase in air quality that has nothing to do with Alaskan glaciers. What do you think the president's phase of the last two years is going to be like, Mark Stein? He seems to be not particularly caring about what his critics may think. No, I think there's going to be an awful lot of legacy by executive order. And he's demonstrated something which is kind of surprising to me from someone from the non-American part of the English speaking world, because you always learn that the difference between the English, for example,

and the United States is that you guys wrote it all down. So you have all these checks and balances. A Westminster constitution, nothing's written down. If you look at the constitution of Canada or Jamaica or Belize or wherever, it just says paragraph two, executive power shall be vested in her majesty. It doesn't mention a prime minister, doesn't mention a cabinet, doesn't mention any of that.

You're supposed to know that executive power shall be vested in her majesty means that a certain types of political arrangements will be understood by all. And what is interesting about Obama is that even though it's all written down, he's happy to drive a coach and horses through it, all the checks and balances when it suits him. And I think in part that explains, you know, the argument that, oh, Trump is just Obama for the right. He's someone who doesn't understand the U.S. Constitution either. And he's, you know, and I think I think Obama for the last for the last couple of years expansion of dependency programs, which has really been the hallmark of this administration. And I don't know. You know, I said earlier that I didn't entirely rule out the possibility that Bernie Sanders could get elected. This guy was elected, which is one thing, but he was reelected. And is it such a big reach after reelecting him then to elect Bernie Sanders? I don't know that it is. Well, and isn't it telling we've gotten to a point where the president of the United States

is renaming mountains by fiat? I mean, that does sort of seem like something like the inbred epaulette wearing monarch of some European micro state would do. Well, it's such a weird experience for the United States. Well, the other thing I thought was odd about that is he flew to Alaska to strip William McKinley of his mountain. So it is like it is like the guy being convicted of it. It's like in Malaysia, where Dr. Mahatcha had his deputy prime minister convicted of sodomy and fired and thrown in jail. It's like that. You strip the guy of his epaulets and pull the buttons off his uniform.

He flew to Alaska to remove McKinley from his mound. The guy took a bullet for his country. And I found that. I had this similar thing about 15 years ago when Pierre Trudeau died in Canada. And Jean Chrétien announced that Mount Logan, which is the second highest peak in North America after Mount McKinley, announced that it would be renamed for Trudeau. And it was named after Sir William Logan, who was one of the founders of one of the great pioneering Canadian geologists and scientists. But Sir William Logan, scientists and um and but he was sir william logan ah who cares so it was going to be renamed mount trudeau and given the number of women who actually did mount trudeau in his lifetime it

seemed to be uh it seemed to be about the most superfluous order you could confer on the guy so we pushed back and uh our pushback was successful and they kept the name Mount Logan. And I think it's actually, I think this is classic Banana Republic stuff. The renaming of streets and as people fall from political favor and the town has to be renamed and the streets have to be renamed. And I think this falls into a real banana republic category, particularly when he goes there, when he actually goes there to de-McKinley-fy the mountain himself. I thought that was what was weird about it. Hey, Mark, how would you appraise the broader

climate change movement right now? Is it losing steam in the United States? It seems to me anecdotally that this is increasingly becoming a boutique movement that doesn't have a lot of currency with the man on the street. Is that your read? Yeah, I think that's true. And I think when you look at George Clooney's attempt to do a movie sort of tapping into environmental idealism, it didn't work. James Cameron made that big TV series that Michael Mann was actually the consultant for. I think he was personal climatologist to Jessica Alba on that on that series. It's a much, much sort of where all the celebrities are flown to stand on some ice flow in Antarctica. Individual jets. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And that nobody watched that. I mean, basically, Jessica Alba's hairdresser and Jessica Alba's therapist and Jessica Alba's assistant Jessica Albers assistant deputy personal

climatologist sat around watching that that series. But nobody else did. And I do think I do think nobody really care. Nobody really cares about it. It's one of those things that's just a signifier that you're a good person. So, of course, you claim to be. I mean, I actually hate it. I hate environmentalism. I hate it when you travel because they've all got this ostentatious, if you go into the bathroom of any hotel, they've got this ostentatious thing now. Oh, doing our bit for an ecologically responsible planet.

And you toss the card out of the way and climb into the bathtub and don't bother to read it. And then you realize by your ninth day in the hotel when the bathroom smells foul and rank and every towel is disgusting. But what it means that what it means is you're staying in the Ritz Carlton and they don't change the towels except once a month right so i i absolutely i loathe that kind of you know uh that that kind of exhibitionist advice because it realistically it makes no difference giving me a clean towel every morning makes no difference to the planet the planet doesn't care the planet on balance mother earth is on balance more likely to be offended by my general malodorousness after a week in the Ritz-Carlton. She would prefer it if they changed the challenge. I'm sick of that.

Let's not use her as an excuse for the laziness, which is what it always is, right? It's just a matter of – it's convenient that this thing that I say that I'm doing for somebody else is actually a lot easier for me to do. Yes. Yes, exactly. That's right. I don't think it's going to catch. I seriously don't think it can catch on except by executive action, except by using the EPA just to regulate people into compliance.

The people are not on board with this. Doesn't matter whether it's here or in Australia or in Europe. They think this stuff is it's fine if you're a billionaire like Tom Steyer. It's fine if you're Barbara Streisand flying, jetting into Washington for your climate confab with Obama. But for real people getting on with their lives, it's a boutique issue for the elite. What if you're Pope Francis? What do you make of how he's positioned himself on this? Well, I rather regret that.

I was critical. My book – the day of my book launch, he called it the first day of international prayer for the stewardship of creation. And he claims that we are living in under an age of environmental devastation, of environmental catastrophe. I don't think that's true. If you look at most parts of Europe or Britain or North America, the parts of the industrial world are much cleaner than they were 200 years ago, that with wealth and comfort, you don't want to have the big smoking, belching smokestack next to your homes. You clean it up. You take care of the environment. So I found it a very curious priority. And I'm not Catholic. And I was a bit iffy about it. I like the Pope Emeritus, as we're expected to call him entirely seriously. I like the other guy, Benedict. being extinguished. And the church and the fellow Christians in the West are actually sitting by

silently as the birthplace, the cradle of Christianity, is being stomped into oblivion. And the idea that somehow we should all be, you know, we should be worrying about sea levels in the Maldives at the beginning of the 22nd century. I think it's crazy. Yeah, well, I'm just certainly glad that Peter's not here. He's taking care of his – putting a kid in college because any discussion of Catholicism ends up with another hour-long discussion of Catholicism. So we can't be glad about that. So can I ask you another – so you're on a book tour.

You're going to be doing a book tour for this book. I know you. You've got another book. What's the next book going to be? Are you going to start the next book? You've got to have 30 pages of the next book written. I've got like a couple of other projects that I've been sort of playing around on for a bit. And I've actually got – I promised myself that I would actually have a new CD out for this Christmas season.

Because I don't get – I made a Christmas album four years ago. It did very well. Glenn Beck played it. And my daughter was horrified. She was a big Jonas Brothers fan at the time. She was horrified that I was at number 41 and whatever the latest Jonas Brothers thing was at number 47. And my county in New Hampshire, by the way, Patti Page used to live here.

Oh, really? And just before, a couple of years before she died, she she moved. She got sick of the New Hampshire winters and moved to Southern California. And and so I was always like the second biggest pop star in this county in New Hampshire. And yeah, after Patty Page moved to San Diego, I said to my daughter, you know, face it, I'm the biggest pop star in the county. So, well, she was horrified when a couple of her friends went to iTunes and said, hey, I downloaded your dad's Christmas song. She just wanted to curl up with embarrassment. But I do, but so, you know,

I hate the way a court case consumes you and you become the case and you're so immersed in it. You become fascinated by little differences in the footnotes of the briefs of emerging differences between various of the council and things. And I hate all that. So one thing I quite like is, you know, I haven't figured out a way to turn the climate change case into, you know, climate change, the musical or anything yet. But I, well, I was just going to say, just as Lenny Bruce used to read transcripts of his trials in the Warren Commission report, perhaps you should set to music the various legal codicils and and warble them as best as you can. predicament but i always felt that was not his finest hour and i actually had nightmares that i was gonna you know that i'm i'm i was going to uh find myself on stage somewhere

playing to three people talking about tree rings in the early 15th century and i'm trying to avoid scenarios well just just just to just to clarify that, the comic who did that was actually Mort Sahl. Mort Sahl read the newspaper. Mort Sahl read out loud the Warren Commission and that killed his career for that period.

But Mort Sahl always said very clearly, just for the record, I got laughs. So, it could work. I don't know laughs. So it could work. I don't know, Mark. It could work. Well, one last question, as Peter Robinson is fond of saying before launching into three. Recently on Ricochet, we had a post about the Trump versus Hewitt dust-up that I was trying to make in that point was to point out that Andrew Breitbart's site seems to have fallen into the hands of people that Andrew himself might have been dismayed, not by their spirit and their energy, of course, but the fact that it just it doesn't seem to be carrying on his name as we might have wished.

I wonder if you go to that site and I wonder if you two have seen that there's there's a there's a part of the right which seems and I'm not saying that Breitbart.com is anti-Semitic. It's not. But in the comments, there is an extraordinary amount of, look, Jew. Look, oh, Jew. Zion cuck, as I pointed out before. That there's a – I won't say mainstreaming, but there is an elevation, a courage to be found in people who are now romping around the comments of some of these places, saying things that we thought we'd

pretty much gotten over or at least banished to the left, where they're more than happy to be anti-Semitic in the guise of anti-Zionism. I'm not sure what my question here is, either than we all miss Andrew, don't we? Yeah, I miss Andrew. And the last time I saw him, I think it was in Lisbon in a little coffee shop where he came in with his kid. And they had like all these laptops and other devices dangling from them but no portuguese plug and they were down to eight percent or whatever it was of uh of the battery life left and he had he had all these cords and he asked me if he could put the thing into my laptop and he recharged

about nine of the devices he needed uh to stay on top of things in the United States off my little laptop in this Portuguese coffee shop. And I and I when when Andrew died, I think it is difficult. I think it is genuinely difficult to to to retain the spirit of your creator or to determine what he might have done if he were faced with these particular circumstances. I think that's inevitable. I think that's true at National Review with Bill Buckley. I think that's often the case. But on the anti-Semitism thing, I think I would absolve them of that. I think anti-Semitism is becoming respectable again. And in part, it's becoming respectable because of what we see at university campuses and in part because of what we see in Europe, where the left has made common cause with a lot of explicitly Jew-hating Muslims.

And where Jewish life in continental Europe now takes place under armed guard. People don't want to go to the synagogue, even on the most sacred Jewish holidays, because it's actually dangerous. There's razor wire, there's security. In Copenhagen, which I mentioned earlier, one of the victims of that shooting in February was a security guard at a synagogue. And this is compounded by this fake distinction between raining down all kinds of horrors on the hideous apartheid state of Israel and then turning around and saying, oh, no, I'm not anti-Semitic, I'm just anti-Zionist. And I think that has infected college campuses here, and I think the danger is that there is a respectable,

an antipathy toward Jews in general. It's becoming safe not to be too coy about that anymore. And I think that's certain. I mean, anyone who seriously thinks that the problems with the Republican Party are to do with some, you know, the international Jewish conspiracy or whatever. I don't I think that's complete rubbish. But I don't I think that is part of a genuine uh disturb you when you have these israeli apartheid weeks when you have young people they were what the gays who mark there are anti-zionist gays who march in the toronto pride pride parade and they shout uh uh they go butch femme bottom top israeli apartheid has got to stop.

You know, to which I always respond, butch, femme, top, bottom, gay bars in Riyadh, it's hard to spot them. You know, if you're a, if you're, if you're, if you're concerned about gay rights, Jews are the last place you should be starting in on. And that kind of thing, I think that kind of thing is widespread and it's weird and it's disturbing and it's not going to end well. But it's certainly a more main, it's nothing to do with Donald Trump.

That's a main, who loves Jews. They're not losers. They're huge and classy. I'm going to make your head spin. I'll be Jewish. I'll be the more Jewish than the Jewish guys. Exactly. I'll be circumcised again.

Right. You'll buy the best foreskin money can buy. LBGQ. Their biggest problem is the Jew. And our biggest problem is that we're out of time. And we want to thank Mark Stein. Let's get you back here more often. We didn't even get to Iran, and I would like to discuss that with you before they actually have the bomb and irradiate half of the globe. Everyone's book that you should have on your shelf is A Disgrace to the Profession, Mark's latest in, of course, America.

The other tomes are back there on Amazon waiting for your enjoyment. And it's a laughing through tears experience in many of the chapters. But that's what Mark provides. The insight, the wit, the erudition, and all of the other things you've seen on display here for the last hour. We thank him, as ever, for coming back to the podcast. Mark Stein, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you.

Hey, thanks a lot, guys. Enjoyed it. Mark, talk to you soon. Thank you, Mark. And there are other things that we could discuss, but we'll leave them for another podcast as well. Gentlemen, unless Troy, you've got something burning to say. Rob, you've got something you want to get off your chest? No, I think that was a lot of fun. I haven't talked to Mark in a while. It was great. And the book is terrific, and we'll put a link for it in the notes and tweet it out.

I know it's been a gigantic ordeal for him too. I mean he is that kind of person. He just does immerse himself in stuff. And so I can imagine – I know he said that he doesn't – didn't read all 400 pages of every brief. But I'll bet you it was hard for him not to. Especially since it's the most stultifying prose around and to see every word, every phoneme, every adjective directly affecting your livelihood into the future. I can't imagine he put it down without – I think he probably wishes he didn't read

them all but I think he probably did read them all on Knowing Mark just to know. Well, we'll read all the comments. I'm still reading this stuff in the Andrew post on Ricochet and elsewhere. Because the comments, of course, are the great joy of Ricochet.com. Not just the post, but the civilized conversation that is contained underneath. And, of course, the podcast was brought to you by Ricochet. So you should go to the Ricochet store and get all kinds of Ricochet swag. Stock up on it.

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And now we stop. Thanks. Bye. Next week, fellas. See you, fellas. Forget your troubles and just get happy. You better chase all your cares away. Sing hallelujah.

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Sing hallelujah, come on get happy Get ready for the judgment day That sun is shining, come on get happy The Lord is waiting to take you by the hand Shout hallelujah, come on get happy