Michael Mann Lawsuit To Continue

[Cheerful Charlie]

Climate scientist Michael Mann's lawsuit against libellers to continue.

https://thehill.com/regulation/cour...uses-to-hear-appeal-in-case-involving-climate

...
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up an appeal involving a prominent climate scientist who sued an iconic conservative magazine and libertarian think tank for defamation. In a closely watched request to the Supreme Court, the National Review and Competitive Enterprise Institute asked the justices to intervene in a suit brought against them by scientist Michael Mann. The case, which pits climate scientists against the free speech rights of global warming skeptics, drew interest from lawmakers, interest groups, academics and media.
...
He later came under fire from skeptics after leaked emails with colleagues fueled accusations of misconduct, in a controversy dubbed “Climategate.” But Mann was ultimately cleared by multiple investigations, including a 2010 review by his employer, Penn State University.
The National Review questioned the university’s findings, however. The magazine accused the school of a whitewash, and Mann of scientific fraud. Writers likened Mann to “the Jerry Sandusky of climate science,” a reference to the then-recently convicted serial pedophile and former football coach at Penn State.
“Instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data,” Mark Steyn wrote for the magazine, quoting the work of a blogger at the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, another party to the suit.

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Numerous scientific studies have since upheld Mann's original findings. This lawsuit has been an important part of climate change denialists' mythology. That Mann is a liar and fraud.

 

[steve_bank]

People who are public figures are open to mockery and attack.

In Larry Flynt (Hunter Magazine) vs Jerry Fsallwell (Moral Majority) SCOTUS ruled public figures have no protection against criticism and attack in general. Fallwell sued Flynt over an obscene cartoon about him.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Mockery is one thing, libel is another kettle of fish. Michael Mann was stated to have scientific fraud, of having falsified his data. That is not mockery. It is libel. A libel that has been demonstrated again and again to be false by numerous studies that have supported Mann's claims. Now after years of dilatory legal tactics, the final obstacle to a trial on the issues has been knocked down by the Supreme Court.

Michael Mann's thesis has withstood all real scientific challenges and the overwhelming scientific consensus is that global warming is real and caused by mankind's burning massive quantities of fossil fuel. The other legal issue is whether Mark Steyn, the original libeller was malicious and malevolent in intent. Steyn's original screed seems to pass that legal standard, as have his many writings about Mann after the original article was published and Steyn was sued. Steyn repeatedly doubled down on his vituperative attacks on Mann.

 

[barbos]

Just because GW is real and proven does not mean every study which agrees with it is cosher
Emails which were leaked clearly show he had bias bordering on scientific fraud.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Just because GW is real and proven does not mean every study which agrees with it is cosher
Emails which were leaked clearly show he had bias bordering on scientific fraud.

No, that is not true. There were several studies by experts on this issue and the e-mails in question did no such thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy
...
Because of the timing, scientists, policy makers and public relations experts said that the release of emails was a smear campaign intended to undermine the climate conference.^[13] In response to the controversy, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released statements supporting the scientific consensus that the Earth's mean surface temperature had been rising for decades, with the AAAS concluding: "based on multiple lines of scientific evidence that global climate change caused by human activities is now underway... it is a growing threat to society".^[14] Eight committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct.^[15] The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged throughout the investigations.^[16]
...

Like smear campaigns everywhere, sometimes the facts never seem to catch up with the false charges.

 

[barbos]

Cheerful Charlie, I can read and make my own conclusion, I don't need 8 committees.

 

[blastula]

Steyn and the other guy are horrible, cretinous hacks, but they should win. Their statements are smears, but they are typical of so much political speech, that if they lost, then I'm sure I would be open to being sued for the shit I say. So I hope they win. If they were more specific, like saying "the Penn State report said Mann committed fraud" then he would have a better case. The words they used are too open to interpretation.

 

[blastula]

Just because GW is real and proven does not mean every study which agrees with it is cosher
Emails which were leaked clearly show he had bias bordering on scientific fraud.

Which emails were those?

 

[barbos]

Just because GW is real and proven does not mean every study which agrees with it is cosher
Emails which were leaked clearly show he had bias bordering on scientific fraud.

Which emails were those?

The ones which show clear bias.

 

[blastula]

Yes, you already said that. But specifically, which ones?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Again, from Wikipedia

...
[h=3]United States Environmental Protection Agency report[/h]The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had issued an "endangerment finding" in 2009 in preparation for climate regulations on excessive greenhouse gases. Petitions to reconsider this were raised by the states of Virginia and Texas, conservative activists and business groups including the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the coal company Peabody Energy, making claims that the CRU emails undermined the science.^[112]
The EPA examined every email and concluded that there was no merit to the claims in the petitions, which "routinely misunderstood the scientific issues", reached "faulty scientific conclusions", "resorted to hyperbole", and "often cherry-pick language that creates the suggestion or appearance of impropriety, without looking deeper into the issues."
...

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The hacked emails showed no such bias or false data. Mann's original hickey stick claims have repeatedly been demonstrated to be confirmed by other researchers. The fact is, these smears against Mann have been used by powerful anti-scientific interests to try to derail action against global warming and climate change. This is not just a case about Mann's hurt feelings or free speech rights of Steyn and National Review and Competitive Enterprise Institute.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Steyn and the other guy are horrible, cretinous hacks, but they should win. Their statements are smears, but they are typical of so much political speech, that if they lost, then I'm sure I would be open to being sued for the shit I say. So I hope they win. If they were more specific, like saying "the Penn State report said Mann committed fraud" then he would have a better case. The words they used are too open to interpretation.

What Steyn wrote was not just hyperbole or opinion. It was a set of libellous claims that were false. Free speech cannot become a fig leaf for rank libel. Especially when these claims were used by powerful organizations to attack the bona fides of climate research. These libels had very real consequences.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/coal-industry-climate-change_n_5dd6bbebe4b0e29d7280984f

...
In August, Chris Cherry, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, salvaged a large volume from a stack of vintage journals that a fellow faculty member was about to toss out. He was drawn to a 1966 copy of the industry publication Mining Congress Journal; his father-in-law had been in the industry and he thought it might be an interesting memento.

Cherry flipped it open to a passage from James R. Garvey, who was the president of Bituminous Coal Research Inc., a now-defunct coal mining and processing research organization.

“There is evidence that the amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is increasing rapidly as a result of the combustion of fossil fuels,” wrote Garvey. “If the future rate of increase continues as it is at the present, it has been predicted that, because the CO2 envelope reduces radiation, the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere will increase and that vast changes in the climates of the earth will result.”

“Such changes in temperature will cause melting of the polar icecaps, which, in turn, would result in the inundation of many coastal cities, including New York and London,” he continued.

Cherry was floored.

“It pretty well described a version of what we know today as climate change,” said Cherry. “Increases in average air temperatures, melting of polar ice caps, rising of sea levels. It’s all in there.”


....

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This article is a bit of a long read, but it is well worth the trouble. The energy Industry knew as far back as 1966 that climate change was a problem. The rest of this article lays out the energy industry's efforts to peddle disinformation to the public all these years. The front groups, the efforts to try to pretend more CO2 was a good thing, not a dangerous issue. Steyn and friends didn't just invent climate change denial out of thin air, but had bought into a decades old, well heeled climate change denial effort.

Mann had to be attacked because his work moved the issue out of the realm of mere opinion to credible scientific evidence. Steyn and crew were just the fools who decided to attack Mann publicly.


...
At the heart of big coal’s denial campaign was Fred Palmer, who served as Peabody’s senior vice president of government relations from 2001 to 2015. In 1997, Palmer founded the Greening Earth Society, a now-defunct industry front group that argued that burning fossil fuels was good for the planet. The group was based in the same office as the Western Fuels Association, a consortium of coal suppliers and coal-fired utilities that Palmer also ran.

“Every time you turn your car on and you burn fossil fuels and you put CO2 into the air, you’re doing the work of the Lord,” Palmer told a Danish documentary team in 1997. “That’s the ecological system we live in.”
...

 

[bigfield]

Just because GW is real and proven does not mean every study which agrees with it is cosher
Emails which were leaked clearly show he had bias bordering on scientific fraud.

Go on, then: show us your work.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Just because GW is real and proven does not mean every study which agrees with it is cosher
Emails which were leaked clearly show he had bias bordering on scientific fraud.

They only show misdeeds when taken out of context.

 

[barbos]

Just because GW is real and proven does not mean every study which agrees with it is cosher
Emails which were leaked clearly show he had bias bordering on scientific fraud.

Go on, then: show us your work.

I have shown it in the original thread long long time ago.

 

[barbos]

Just because GW is real and proven does not mean every study which agrees with it is cosher
Emails which were leaked clearly show he had bias bordering on scientific fraud.

They only show misdeeds when taken out of context.

That's ironic coming from a guy who thinks that russians are coming based on stock photo used.

 

[steve_bank]

With public figures libel is hard to prove, or so say the CNN pundits. Cases against media are rarely won.

 

[barbos]

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[Gun Nut]

Just because GW is real and proven does not mean every study which agrees with it is cosher
Emails which were leaked clearly show he had bias bordering on scientific fraud.

Go on, then: show us your work.

I have shown it in the original thread long long time ago.

You quoted the original libelous lie in the original thread, and it was debunked for you there then. The claim is not evidence of the claim being true.