If you try to sweep your problems under the rug, they'll go away, right? Michael Mann, a Penn State professor and a central figure in the Climategate scandal and best known for his "hockey stick graph" hopes so.
On Fox News Channel's April 28 broadcast of "Your World with Neil Cavuto," Elmer Beauregard of Minnesotans for Global Warming appeared to explain the reasoning behind a video that drew the ire Mann. The video mocked the Penn State professor's alleged attempt to cover up data from tree rings that would indicate there was no global warming.
"Well, I don't know if you remember, but last fall, Obama was pushing the no cap-and-trade to go through the Senate because he wanted to have something to bring to Copenhagen," Beauregard said. "And just then Climategate broke and the mainstream press really wasn't covering it, so the coalition got together and we tried to think of a way to kind of bring this into the forefront of the American public. And I said I could make a funny YouTube video. And so, I did it to the tune of ‘Draggin' the Line' by Tommy James and The Shondells and put it up on YouTube and it went viral. And then Rush [Limbaugh] played it on his show and it went supernova."
Original "Hide the Decline" Video Below Fold
Jeff Davis of the No Cap & Trade Coalition, an organization that partnered Minnesotans for Global Warming, explained they created a second version of the video to appease Mann for the time being.
"We started a coalition, a national coalition to fight cap and trade back last fall," Davis said. "Minnesotans for Global Warming is part of that coalition. In order to kind of comply with Dr. Mann's letter, what we did is introduced a new version of ‘Hide the Decline,' ‘Hide the Decline, II,' which removes his imagine from the Penn State Web site, which he was so concerned about."
Cavuto asked Beauregard if he expected this sort of response, which he didn't. However, Beauregard explained he thought this was instead part of the cover up to downplay the Climategate scandal.
"No, not really. I just -- well, it was -- it's a little YouTube video," Beauregard said. "But I think what it did actually help is bring the Climategate scandal into the forefront and I think that now that Michael Mann has been exonerated they did an internal investigation at Penn State and I think that they're trying to cleanup the Climategate mess and they're just scouring the Internet. There's this little pesky video on YouTube and I think that's the reason he wanted to get rid of it."
And as Davis explained, although they used Mann's image in the original video, they also used his own data to mock him.
"I mean the whole video is based upon a -- a statement out of one of the e-mails in Climategate, which is hiding decline," Davis said. "You know, I mean we're using their own data to basically mock their findings. So, I think Neil that the key question that's at the heart of this controversy is whether this video defines or defames Dr. Mann. And on our Web site at NoCapAndTrade.com, we've got a white paper that addresses that question and readers can decide for themselves."
