https://www.facebook.com/MichaelMannScientist/posts/267470906700950
Now that Dr. Mann has drawn attention to it, even more people will want to read the National Review article “Football and Hockey” to find out what he’s so upset about. I didn’t even know about this article until Mann tweeted this demand announcement today. This announcement on Twitter Facebook is probably a bad move on Dr. Mann’s part. Here’s why:
From Wikipedia: The Streisand effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely. It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose attempt in 2003 to suppress photographs of her residence inadvertently generated further publicity.
Similar attempts have been made, for example, in cease-and-desist letters, to suppress numbers, files and websites. Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity and media extensions such as videos and spoof songs, often being widely mirrored across the Internet or distributed on file-sharing networks.
Mike Masnick of Techdirt coined the term after Streisand, citing privacy violations, unsuccessfully sued photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for US$50 million in an attempt to have an aerial photograph of her mansion removed from the publicly available collection of 12,000 California coastline photographs. Adelman said that he was photographing beachfront property to document coastal erosion as part of the government sanctioned and commissioned California Coastal Records Project. Before Streisand filed her lawsuit, “Image 3850” had been downloaded from Adelman’s website only six times; two of those downloads were by Streisand’s attorneys. As a result of the case, public knowledge of the picture increased substantially; more than 420,000 people visited the site over the following month.
You’d think after his botched attempt to get this video removed, Dr. Mann would have learned that lesson. For the record, I don’t agree with the article Steyn cites in the National Review, but I think Dr. Mann’s effort to get it removed will backfire on him.
h/t to Tom Nelson
UPDATE:
Letter from Dr. Mann’s lawyers to the National Review in three parts:
http://s14.postimage.org/7yv69pk9t/599812_401767993212742_781065817_n.jpg
http://s8.postimage.org/m9zsep2ol/531607_401768043212737_603000984_n.jpg
http://s13.postimage.org/n2q0sgihz/205403_401768099879398_275428058_n.jpg
Scanned images posted by Dr. Mann to his public FaceBook site. h/t to reader “Typhoon”.
NOTE TO COMMENTERS AND MODERATORS: I’m going to have a low tolerance for any comments that excerpt parts of the article, as well as other sorts of over the top comments – please be on your best behavior or such comments will be snipped/deleted – Anthony
Mann deserves a special award, if only someone could come up with a name for it that would aptly describe his tiresome … oh, I dunno … Mannuer.
It would have been worse on the front page of the NY Times, NBC, ABC, or CBS news. Maybe a hundred or more people would have seen it.
[OK, I don’t like Dr. Mann’s practices in science either, but that’s a bit over the top – Anthony]
Heh, the Piltdown Mann thinks he was cleared. Oh, shine in, light, shine in.
================
May mann Keep taking steps in the wrong direction, Manny, manny, MANNY steps.
As far as I ascertain from the video, there is no actualy libel or defamation. Its a satirical song, which I would have thought Mr Mann would have taken with some humour.
A sense of humour is the first sign of intelligence
THE HOCKEY STICK
There was a crooked Mann
Who played a crooked trick
And had a crooked plan
To make a crooked stick
By using crooked math
That favored crooked lines
Lysenko’s crooked path
Led thru the crooked pines
And all his crooked friends
Applaud what crooked seems
But all that crooked ends
Derives from crooked means
Hey Mann! Sue me too! You will make me the most famous poet in America!
Eugene WR Gallun
While we’re at it, let’s all tip our hats to Tom Nelson, who doesn’t get enough credit.
==============
Mark Steyn is a force to deal with in debate..
re: “Streisand Effect”
Mann is more like the “Hindenberg Effect” — in danger because he is so full of combustible gases
or maybe the “Titanic Effect” …. over-hyped performance heading straight at an iceberg but too self-important to pay attention
or the “Napoleon Effect” — he doesn’t respect Russian winters
Oh, the humanity….
Scientists have held off on libel suits and generally do not want to spend their time in court. However, this post goes so far that I expect that it will be settled out of court rather quickly in Mann’s favor. Truely a disgusting analogy.
Sorry but what Dr.Michael Mann has done to help make energy more expensive in the world (let alone the United States) is much worse for the children of the world [snip – please lets not go there – Anthony]. The magnitude of what will happen to all children of the world because of expensive, or no energy, results in the killing of many people (including children).
It has to suck for Mikey that he can’t just get the editor fired if the content of the magazine displeases him, unlike with scientific journals.
The tab on Chrome which is showing Mann’s Facebook page is entitled
“I have form…”
Quite so, Mr. Mann. Quite so.
Okay Mike, “if you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen,” is famous quote attributed to H. S. Truman. It matters not if you agreed with H. S. or not. All I know agree on one thing, he was a statesmen who, right, wrong or indifferent made the tough ones and took both credit and lumps as the case was. Man up Mike and do the right thing.
[snip – sorry, let’s leave quotes from the article in the article – Anthony]
Yes, he has a point there……
BillD, Steyn was quoting someone else on the [snip – sorry, let’s leave quotes from the article in the article – Anthony] remark. I doubt a penny will go his way. He also cached the statement in a “I don’t know if I’d go that far” type of statement so saying he has defamed may be a little hard to prove. Now if it is found to be defamation to quote someone who may be defaming, he may have trouble, but I don’t think the law actually goes that far.
One difference is that the Streisand story is just a photo of physical property, whereas the National Review story is a piece of libel. Now promoted on the front page of WUWT.
REPLY: It’s an opinion, whether it is libelous or not is for the court to decide. My point is that Dr. Mann Tweeted/Facebooked this publicly, and he knows full well that thousands of people follow his twitter feed on both sides of the argument. If he didn’t want anyone to bring attention to it, and he truly was libeled by it, he certainly didn’t help his case by digitally zapping his announcement (with a link to the article he’s claiming is libelous) into cyberspace for the world to read. That’s a mistake on his part I think. – Anthony
If I were at a dinner party and given the option to sit beside Michael Mann, Barbara Streisand or Mark Steyn I would have to chose Streisand. Mann is way too easily angered, Steyn could eat me alive on any point and Streisand…Well, I could ignore what she said and simply have a fantasy.
What I believe is it’s entirely possible that because Penn State overlooks / (hides its head in the sand) / in favor of a pedophile at the expense of several children in order to avoid scandal and maintain it’s football cash cow. Therefore it’s not implausible that they would overlook / perform dishonest internal investigation in favor of a scientific Mannipulator in order to avoid scandal and maintain its governmental cash cow.
Ron:
how about Manniacal Mannialism?
Great little poem but watch out for that hockey stick, Eugene! (apologies to Pink Floyd)
Mann is a public figure. It will take much more that this to libel him.
REPLY: Yes, and so am I, which is why I decided not to sue that little twerp in Buffalo and Joe Romm’s pet, Mike Roddy, for libel, for saying I have sex with farm animals. Scroll down to the “corrections” at the end. – Anthony
Jeez, Mike, if you want to be a political advocate and a public figure, expect to be treated as such. If you expect to be treated like a serious scientist, then act like one. It isn’t complicated.
The former Penn St. admin. proved to all (cf. Freeh Report) that they would go to great lengths to condone and cover up some of the worst behaviors in order to protect a “star” program (football) with a lot of revenue.
ergo, what would they do (and not do) to protect a “star” professor bringing in grants and prestige?
for serious academics Mann is an embarrassment but to some he is a “star” who must be protected.
I think Mann has bitten off a bit more than he will be able to chew this time around. Steyn has been sued for years by Canadian Muslims and the various Canadian speech control panels for his comments on Islam, yet he continues to speak and hold them all up to ridicule. The only thing worse for Mann at this time would be a full public endorsement by ManBearPig himself. Cheers –
Mann the lifeboats. His ship is sinking
I think Mark Steyn makes an excellent point. Any organization willing to cover-up such a heinous crime as what Sandusky perpetrated, is fully capable of covering up/white-washing erroneous and irresponsible research. Mann can retain all the lawyers he wants, NRO nor Steyn will not apologize for what was written as he wrote nothing that was lawsuit worthy. The article that Steyn quotes, that is another issue. If Mark Steyn wouldn’t retract what he wrote about in the link below, what makes Mann think he can make Steyn quiver in his boots.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-sheffield/2008/06/28/mark-steyn-cleared-human-rights-panel
perhaps National Review should put up a page of parodies of Mann and the Team since they will be receiving a lot of web visitors for this…..
oh, and also a page with serious links for all the visitors who want to learn more!
My nickname for white-coated wiseguy Michael is “The Mangler”, for we all know he “mangles” empirical data. We now know The Mangler and his Mob (aka, the “Team”) are running a global warming and climate scam and a shaking down gutless governments for billions.
Doesn’t this sound really cool: Michael “The Mangler” Mann!
The article seems to be rather kind to Mann. If Mann was in a business and fabricated critical business data he would likely be in jail by now.
The point about institutional cover up is a good one as it seems that the captain of the good ship Penn State wasn’t making decisions with all thrusters operational – poor judgement begets further poor judgement in many cases.
[snip -over the top- Anthony]
But if Steyn’s piece was in the Nat. Rev. it would have been seen already by 50,000 (??) subscribers, plus many online readers, some of whom in turn would have posted links to it elsewhere online. And he might well have figured that the scepto-sphere might have amplified it from there. So I don’t think the Streisand analogy holds up. News of the Streisand photo wasn’t in the mainstream until the suit was filed. But the National Review is a mainstream magazine and site.
Also, Mann may have figured, after he had his lawyers send a letter, that it was going to become news in a couple of days anyway, if NR mentioned it, as it might. Plus some of his followers no doubt inquired about it on his twitter-stream, so all his followers may have been wondering about his response, and he may have figured he owed them a response.
I don’t think Mann knows who he’s going up against here. Mark Steyn was tried in Canada for defamation and hate speech, and ended up getting the statute under which he was tried revoked by Parliament. The guy is a master of political commentary. Here he quoted another person’s article to raise the issue, then made the point that the same guy who covered up one scandal involving a highly visible member of the Penn State faculty was in charge of the investigation of another highly visible member accused of wrongdoing.
The “hockey stick” is a fraud, as everyone knows the observed temperature record was tacked onto the end of the proxy-generated record to “hide the decline,” so I don’t think there’s much there to go on either.
Steyn is no shoot-from-the-hip blogger who types faster than he thinks. He knows that if Mann comes after him, he’ll drag the whole shebang into open court, where Mann won’t get the kid glove treatment he got from Penn State.
The difference for Spanier with Mann is that these universities not only hire various professors, but what they do attracts big US Government funding, and money from energy and finance companies. Plus you protect your own.
But what the heck Spanier is doing keeping Sandusky around is just mindboggling. I once suspected they were keeping Sandusky around because he was continuing to help the team. It is undisputed that he is one of the big brains on college gridiron football defenses. There are NCAA rules that would be at issue regarding disclosure and the amount of coaches one can have that may have been broken. But Joe’s getting old and needing help…
But I read the Freeh report and I think it might just be sheer idiocy mixed with the idea of the “football family.” It could be argued that the 1998 event was dropped by law enforcement, but how do you after the 2001 event, witnessed by a former Penn State QB and current Asst. Coach, not take the keys away from Sandusky? And how do you continue to let him to run childrens’ events through Second Mile on Penn State Grounds??
The Freeh Report specifically noted that Sandusky’s retirement package specifically gave him access to football training facilities, not just athletic facilities generally accessible to faculty. The Report also verified Sandusky regularly worked out at the football facility. That’s the nail in Penn State football. The football facilities are NCAA turf. That is, there will be an outside review by an outside institution on the conduct as it relates to NCAA administrative rules.
The trustees took immediate charge of the matter, and the Freeh Report is complete free of any cover up or glossing in favor of the Report’s hirer–Penn State. I’m sure Mann is outraged over the incident and I feel the faculty, maybe including Mann, want to see PS football taken down a notch, or deleted altogether with the NCAA “Death Penalty.” I think Mann has good reason to be outraged, but I will point out that a lot of the outrageous humor about Sandusky comes from the fact that Penn State held itself out to be a pure and shining program. It’s like when a moralizing teleevangelist gets caught with a hooker–that’s funny. Actually, their football program is truly very clean–if you exclude the fact they were harboring and sustaining the most evil man in American sports history. I also read that Spanier is not just your average college president, but one very involved with the NCAA, one writer observing:
“”In the interim, let him serve as the prime example of NCAA hypocrisy, arguably the single worst administrator to ever try to control, shape and domineer intercollegiate athletics. Spanier was the ultimate NCAA busybody. He sat on and later chaired the organization’s Board of Directors, a position arguably more powerful than NCAA president. He was on the high-level NCAA management council. He chaired the BCS Oversight Committee.”
So maybe Spanier was too busy for the Mann-related issues??
“It’s an opinion, whether it is libelous or not is for the court to decide. My point is that Dr. Mann Tweeted/Facebooked this publicly, and he knows full well that thousands of people follow his twitter feed on both sides of the argument. If he didn’t want anyone to bring attention to it, and he truly was libeled by it, he certainly didn’t help his case by digitally zapping his announcement (with a link to the article he’s claiming is libelous) into cyberspace for the world to read. That’s a mistake on his part I think. – Anthony”
But honestly, if a national magazine compared you to a pedophile, would you laugh it off? Would you admire someone who retells the story and then writes that “whether it is libelous or not is for the court to decide”? And would you follow your own advice to avoid the “Streisand effect,” and write nothing about it yourself?
Would you think it OK if some blogger who disliked you made a headline of this story in his blog, using exactly the words you’ve written above?
REPLY: Like Mann, I’m a public figure, meaning you have to have greater tolerance, which is why I decided not to sue that little twerp in Buffalo and Joe Romm’s pet, Mike Roddy, for libel, for saying I have sex with farm animals. Scroll down to the “corrections” at the end. I wrote about this several times on WUWT, and decided that it stood as an example of the hateful vitriol from the climate left.
Mann needs to know how to pick his battles. His battle should be with the original author, not Steyn. – Anthony
I see nothing wrong with the National Review article. It was accurate when published on the 15th.
Steyn made no comparison between the sexual proclivities of Sandusky and Mann’s climate work. Openmarket did. Google cache still has the original Openmarket article as it read on the 15th. They have since altered the article and noted their late alteration. Steyn’s quotes were accurate when written.
Since Penn State so readily covered up for Sandusky, why should anyone have any confidence in any inside investigation conducted by them?
IANAL, but I don’t think Mann has any legal case against NR or Steyn. Mann is just shooting himself in the foot by drawing attention to it. I wonder if he will reload and do it again with any other sites?
Not only is he publicizing the article, if he goes through with his threat the discovery for the lawsuit might get a little dicey for Mann.
The elite at Penn State have proven themselves to be an untrustworthy lot… and Mann apparently has no qualms with being associated with these people. While the the metaphor in the the article was over the top I think the point remains that Mann associates with people proven to be liars and are complicit in covering up abhorrent activities and he relies upon an “investigation” performed by them as proof he’s done nothing wrong. You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t believe a word the man says…
Mann, demands a retraction or an apology. He would have better luck just putting NR on double secret probation.
This is a fairly innocuous Steyn piece. He hardly got started. Steyn’s words are no worse than those found here on WUWT. So Mann would need to go after the quoted Simberg to get traction. And of course, Simberg quotes Lindzen The editor of the Simberg piece indicates two inappropriate sentences were removed. Wow!
Only two comments to make:
1) I’m both a frequent climate change commentator and an avid Steyn reader, and I had no idea this piece existed until Mann complained about it. Streisand effect indeed!
2) I’ve also closely followed Steyn’s career as a columnist, including his knock-down, drag-out fight with the various Canadian Federal and Provincial human rights commissions that have taken him on in legal and extralegal fora over the past few years. Here’s a hint about how well these things have gone: not only has he never once been “convicted” of anything, the Canadian government just repealed the internet hate speech provision (Section 13.1) of the Canada Human Rights Act.
Steyn also regularly gets into verbal scuffles with third-rate academic hacks, and the hacks rarely come off well. Doubt me? Google “The Shagged Sheep”…and enjoy.
Advice to Dr. Mann: intellectually speaking, it’s never wise to bring a broken hockey stick to a nuke fight.
Whitewashing is going to be THE growth industry for the 21st Century. Expect to see major institutions offering accredited courses in it soon. With their extensive experience, Penn State and East Anglia could be pioneers in this exciting new field!
It has to get a lot worse for Mann before I’ll waste any time reading about him–even by someone as accomplished in skewering buffoons and the skag organizations they belong to as Mark Steyn.
Oh, was that a show of disrespect?
I am not going to comment on Michael Mann, but I would like to share with WUWT the following Barbra Streisand hits!
Evergreen,
Enough is Enough,
Happy Days Are Here Again,
Guilty,
What Kind of Fool Am I
Anthony, I promise not to say another word!!
If the devil himself sat as judge and jury you would have to take his verdicts with a grain of salt.
Mann brought this criticism on himself by going to great lengths to say he was “exonerated” by the Penn State review. Implied is his peers were above reproach. Turns out they weren’t.
J. Philip Peterson says:
July 20, 2012 at 4:52 pm
Sorry but what Dr.Michael Mann has done to help make energy more expensive in the world (let alone the United States) is much worse for the children of the world [snip – please lets not go there – Anthony].
Sorry, I apologize Anthony, but I was just trying to point out the magnitude of each
egregious act. -Phil
It seems puzzling that climate scientists claim to have little time to archive data or respond to FOIA requests but the good Dr. Mann has sufficient time to participate in multiple court cases.
“A mann’s got to know his limitations.” (apologies to H. Callahan)
I am by no means a lawyer, but attempting a legal recourse to this would appear to me to open all sorts of discovery avenues to the person sued. Dr. Mann may wish that he never took this course before it is all over.
1. Mann is [unfortunately] a “public figure” making it much harder to prove libel.
2. The truth is an absolute defense to libel.
3. Opinion is not libel.
4. Actual harm.
First, Steyn was quoting another story by Rand Simberg – he did NOT make the comment. He explicitly said he would not go as far as Simberg, but agreed the point was well made. It IS entirely relevant to question the leadership of Penn State regarding their review complaints of Mann’s improprieties considering their complete failure regarding complaints about Sandusky.
Second – Steyn’s comment is accurate. In the clear context of his comments, and considering the likelihood of an equally flawed review of the complaint, it is not remotely untruthful to say Mann could be considered the “Sandusky of climate change” as it pertains to Penn State.
Any reasonable, rational, even marginally intelligent person reading either Steyn’s or Simbergs comments can clearly see and understand. there was no attempt to accuse Mann of anything related to Sandusky’s actions – the comment was solely related to the Penn State response to complaints.
So go ahead Mr. Mann – litigate to your hearts content. Please sue me as well while you are at it. I think your actions, lies and distortions show you to be a crook and a fraud – and one causing untold harm to others. Feel free to ask for my legal service address – I’ll gladly provide it.
Sorry Anthony, I have to agree with J. Philip Peterson (July 20, 2012 at 4:52 pm). Mann and friends have done great harm to humanity with their questionable “science”, costing hundreds of billions of dollars and causing much suffering. They deserve all the skewering they get. I only wish I was as good as Elmer, Mark Steyn and Eugene WR Gallun.
Jay Davis
Mann doesn’t like the fact that some people may believe that Steyn is comparing Mann to a pedophile, even though this is not what Steyn is doing. However, Mann calls people who disagree with his unique manner of conducting science, deniers.
“Bob Johnston says: The elite at Penn State have proven themselves to be an untrustworthy lot…”
Certainly the president and A.D were bad. But note that the Freeh Report was hired by Penn State itself. I recommend reading it. One curious thing was there seemingly was no push to retirement due to the 1998 allegations (which the State did not pursue). Joe Paterno was otherwise unhappy with Sandusky because Sandusky spent to much time on Second Mile. For one, there is a letter from Joe telling Sandusky to dedicate his life to the team and his own family if he wanted a chance to become head coach. I, and everyone else I think, first thought the 1999 retirement was some kind of way to handle the 1998 sex accusations against Sandusky. Freeh Report looked at that and said “no evidence” of that.
…and the snarky remarks authored by the esteemed professor in the climate emails towards those who would challenge his work were not “defamatory?” Methinks the pot doth protest to the kettle just a bit too much!
Hockey long enough….ya’ll get a puck in the kisser….[just sayin]….
LMAO….. Mann has retained council to halt the internets! Sorry sis, the very same thing which brought you fame and fortune is the very same thing which will bring you down.
BillD says:
Scientists have held off on libel suits and generally do not want to spend their time in court. However, this post goes so far that I expect that it will be settled out of court rather quickly in Mann’s favor. Truely a disgusting analogy.
How about the analogy that Mann is happy to use between people who do not agree with him and Holocaust deniers? He deliberately entered this political fight, fought nasty himself, and then doesn’t like it when others turn it back on him. Sauce for the goose, methinks.
Has anyone noticed that while Karoly and his ilk cry about being legally intimidated, the only actual law-suits appear to be from Mann?
I have followed Mark Steyn’s writing for years on the internet. He is brilliant and often very funny:
http://www.steynonline.com/
I usually catch Mark’s articles at the Orange County Register online:
http://www.ocregister.com/common/archives/?catID=18845
I think its wrong, on many levels, to compare Mann to Sandusky. But I do think its reasonable to compare PSU’s investigation of Sandusky to their investigation of Mann. In both cases they were dealing with a powerful; university celebrity who brought large amounts of cash to the university. In both cases they conducted cursory and inadequate investigations under the direction of University President Graham Spanier. In both cases, the university seemed primarily concerned with clearing the reputation of the university and seemed willing to turn a blind eye to any suggestion of wrong-doing.
Given these facts, I think its reasonable to call for PSU to re-open the Mann investigation.
Is it a ‘fact’ that Mann was cleared of malpractice by the same person who cleared Jerry Sandusky and then was forced to resign? If it is a ‘fact’ then people will inveitably draw their own conclusions.
And forget the ‘Streisand effect’…I were Mann I’d be more worried about the ‘Wilde Effect’ namely…committing the awesome folly of initiating legal proceedings when you have much that you want to hide. (see Oscar Wilde Vs The Marquess of Queensbury.)
Let’s hope he follows through on his ‘threat’.
Politics/ media relations are best left to pro’s.
Amatuer hour is over.
It is serious now.
Discovery could be very interesting in this case.
All of this speaks to Penn State’s organizational standards, which certainly appear to be quite low.
Dittos to that prior comment about discovery at 6:05. Did not see it before I made my comment.
BillD says:
July 20, 2012 at 4:52 pm
Scientists have held off on libel suits and generally do not want to spend their time in court. However, this post goes so far that I expect that it will be settled out of court rather quickly in Mann’s favor. Truely a disgusting analogy.
______________________________________________
I doubt this will be settled in court, or out of court for that matter. I don’t think Mann wants his scientific abilities to be placed on public display (like his hokey schtick). Furthermore, I doubt that he wants to subject the college, which whitewashed his investigation, to be subjected to reopening and scrutiny. Given their failures in the Sanduski control, manipulation, and hiding of facts, the folks in control have wasted any credibility they had in Mann’s investigation as well.
Re-Openeing this wound is going to force a wide open, in-the-light exposure of his investigation if he chooses to push this…
Heh. Mann hires lawyer firm that represented RJ Reynolds in the Joe Camel case…
https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/226430658027872256
Info on Cozen O’Conner…
http://www.cozen.com/attorney_detail.asp?d=1&atid=1406
H/T Tom Nelson
Re: Comments on libel and proving it.
Nonetheless we owe it to the eminent scientist and scholar to support him in all ways possible to determinae the true facts. I just posted my support on his page and shared it on mine. And asked all 14 of my FB friends to encourage him to take them all to court.
Dr. Mann appears to be a person who forgets that his very irritable behavior and arrogance of his words and deeds brings out strong criticism. He is in a libel lawsuit with Dr. Ball and appears to be losing that because he is very reluctant to provide certain documents as requested in court among other things.
Maybe he needs to cool down and take a vacation instead.
Anthony,
Forgetting the Streisand effect, I don’t think an analogy like [snip -let’s leave that phrase out please-A] is libel, even if the analogy isn’t perfect. I don’t know if this is the kind of quote out of the article you are talking about and you are certainly free to have your standards for your site, but I don’t get the touchiness on this. One could say they think it impolite or, on par with calling skeptics Deniers and I think you fall into that polite discussion camp, but libel and incivility are two different things.
You don’t really say what you don’t agree with in the either the National Review piece or the underlying one at openmarket.org. Are you just saying you don’t agree with the tone or rhetoric or are you saying you think they got something wrong? Of course Mann doesn’t say what he thinks is libelous about either Steyn’s piece or the underlying piece.
I would think the attacks on Penn State’s investigation might have a few more legs, not because it was a good investigation, but because it has at least the institutional trappings. But I think a public university is probably the quintessential example of a public figure and whether the motives guessed at our correct, it certainly seems that speculation of the sort engaged is reasonable in light of the Sandusky scandal. I can’t see where they have been libeled.
My only criticisms of the underlying article are that I think the link to “shown to have been behaving in a most unscientific manner” is pretty weak, or maybe incomplete is what I mean to say (and sock puppetry at that).
But generally I can’t find what there is in the articles to take issue with vs. much else written on the subject.
Brian
I forgot to include this about his libel suit with Dr. Ball:
This is a selected excerpt,
“But while arguments over PSU’s hidden “Climategate” emails will rage anew in the U.S., across the Canadian border in the Supreme Court of British Columbia Mann is close to losing another
legal battle on this issue. Mann is yet again stonewalling a court over showing his hidden “dirty laundry” of dodgy data.
But such incessant secrecy won’t save Mann. Judge Freeh’s damning report may persuade his Canadian counterpart that Mann’s libel suit against Canadian climatologist, Dr. Tim Ball is likely vexatious and premised on a cover up. Freeh’s findings will thus make it harder for Mann to dodge a Canadian Supreme Court requirement to hand over all his disputed “dirty laundry”. If Mann won’t comply he faces punitive legal sanctions.”
http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/official-probe-shows-climategate-whitewash-link-to-sandusky-child-sex-case/
If Mann had any guts or native intelligence, he’d have complained to his friends over a cocktail or two, then forgotten about it and moved on. After all, it’s not science, is it? So why does he keep sticking his oar in like this, I wonder? Does he really have to take things so damned personally? He needs to grow up and grow a set.
To quote the late, great Frank Zappa:
In a petulant frenzy!
(A petulant frenzy, this is a petulant frenzy.
I’m petulant, and I’m having a frenzy)
This bit is interesting.
“I have retained counsel to pursue my legal rights.”
Mann has talked a good game over the years, but there’s one thing that has become overwhelmingly obvious. He never puts himself in a situation where he has to put himself under oath in a court of law.
So, I’m taking bets. If Mark Steyn tells Michael Mann to go pound sand, my wager is that’s the last we’ll ever hear of Mikey on this one. As for Steyn? He’s combative as hell and would love the chance for a dustup with someone he despises. He certainly didn’t hesitate to take on the Canadian Human Rights Commission or the Ontario Human Rights Commission over similar issues on freedom of speech.
And as for Penn State U, that’s another bet I’ll make. Regardless of how this goes, Penn State will stay as far from it as they can. If their review processes truly are corrupt the last thing they want is a defence forcing disclosure in a court of law.
“The wicked flee where no man pursueth.”
Does this mean that PSU will be tearing down the Michael Mann statue that stands at the entrance to to the Nittany Lions Ice Hockey Arena?
The fall from grace is well under way. Dr Mann could participate as the control group in a controlled trial of the following intervention couched by the null hypothesis: Parachute deployment does not prevent one from hitting the ground.
Steyn is one of those guys who buys ink by the barrel, Mann should walk away from this one.
Well. Shucks. My encouraging words only lasted about ten minutes on there before Mann canned them. Maybe I shouldnt have said “Discovery should be entertaining” or maybe it was the snarky ‘heh’ in closing.
Must control myself.. At any rate Mann notes:
“….just cleaned a half dozen trolls from this thread. got to wonder who is sending them this way 😉 ”
Rats.. the jig is up!
If Mark Steyn gets taken to court by Michael Mann, it’s going to be highly entertaining. During Mr. Steyn’s Canadian ‘hate speech’ case, his regular updates of the goings-on in the case were delightfully snarky. Mr. Mann had better do a little research into Mr. Steyn… he is a brilliant writer and will make Mr. Mann look like a chump on a regular basis. And then there’s the discovery… on second thought, Mr. Mann, please do it!
It appears that someone is unhappy with the content of the Wikipedia: “The Streisand effect” as it is up for “being considered for deletion.” It’s been a few years since I was in Malibu- a lovely place with a year round climate that has almost no need for heating or cooling (HVAC). Those 5 chimneys so prominently featured on Ms Streisand’s home must only be used to provide ambiance for the home vs. making it habitable for living.
I wonder if the designer of the home had the foresight to have the second story rooms tie into the first story fireplaces flues. If recollection severs me this is how the designers of the mansions, ex- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Hywet , designed homes for the the wealthy back in the early 1900’s.
…….hard.
I’m really not sure why this particular article caused Mann to draw his line in the sand.
The National Review article by Mark Steyn points to, and reiterates, but doesn’t particularly add to, an openmarket.org article by Rand Simberg. Simberg, in turn, points to several sources including a climatedepot.com article by Marc Morano. There are lots of people and organizations that Mann should be threatening or actually suing. Again, my question is: Why this particular article?
While I was connecting the dots, it occurred to me to wonder how Mann’s action against Tim Ball was going. John O’Sullivan has an article (link) which covers the same material as the National Review article, but more thoroughly. He speculates that things are going poorly for Mann in his suit against Tim Ball and further speculates that Mann will go to jail as a result. He points to a Wall Street Journal article (link). (That article is behind a paywall so I can’t confirm that O’Sullivan is interpreting it correctly.) The lawsuit will require that Mann file documents, that he would not like to be public, with the court. If only for that, it is important that Tim Ball should have the wherewithall to defend himself. Here’s a link to Tim’s website: link
Earlier today, I was reading an article about the Penn State decision to remove the campus memorial statue of Paterno. Immediately observing the scientific principle on how nature abhors a vacuum, the question of how long it might take for Mann and/or his cronies to lobby for a replacement statue of Mann to commemorate his rainmaker grants for Penn State came to mind in a flash. Nah…they wouldn’t, would they?
REPLY: … “If he didn’t want anyone to bring attention to it, and he truly was libeled by it, he certainly didn’t help his case by digitally zapping his announcement (with a link to the article he’s claiming is libelous) into cyberspace for the world to read. That’s a mistake on his part I think. – Anthony”
You (Anthony) have a valid point. I am not a lawyer, but I can comment as what I would think if I were on a jury in the case. If Mann truly considered the statements Libelous he should have silently taken the case to court. By making his proclamation and advertising the article, Mann has greatly contributed to spreading what he wants to claim is Libel. One could argue, Mann was seeking publicity and used controversy. As such, I would have a very hard time finding in favor of Mann.
Read & PDF’ed. Mann just can’t leave well enough alone.
So long as National Review doesn’t get any cold feet I think that Michael Mann will discover that Mark Steyn is a brilliant lion who is going to have the zebra Mann wailing and flailing in pitiful desperation on the Serengeti.
Mann on Mann offense, see twit on the hour….
There is also the Mecha-Streisand effect. Just watch 10 seconds or so. The resemblance is uncanny. They must be related.
JamesS says:
July 20, 2012 at 5:37 pm
Steyn is no shoot-from-the-hip blogger who types faster than he thinks. He knows that if Mann comes after him, he’ll drag the whole shebang into open court, where Mann won’t get the kid glove treatment he got from Penn State.
I don’t believe Mann thought this one through by half, and he doesn’t do outraged innocence well (outrage, yeah; outraged innocence, noooo). Look for future tweetzenpostings hinting that Steyn is a PR guy for “Canadian Tar Sands” — unless his lawyer has already told him to keep his fingers away from the keyboard…
Indeed, you have to ask where is the legally required mitigation of damages when Mann explodes the incident into the widest possible publicity?
Mann needs to know how to pick his battles. His battle should be with the original author, not Steyn. – Anthony
Mann is fully backed by a duplicitous mainstream media, all governments interested in further taxation, billions of tax dollars dedicated to extend said taxation, their appointed judges and the reputations of every ‘scientist’, ‘scientific organization’ and politician who signed on to this scam in the first place in the interest of pure self preservation, promotion and power.
How many suits is he involved with already? I seriously doubt Mann is concerned about funds or fallout in what amounts to a microscopic proportion of public awareness (20% Americans think the Sun rotates the Earth and 40% of the remainder do not know that it takes a year for the Earth to rotate the Sun but they do have the right to vote).
With that said, I do have tremendous respect for you, Anthony, and so many others in this relatively small circle, just not the funds to support you folks as you should be- and it’s a travesty.
Simberg makes a valid point but his language is way too strong. Steyn admits as much when he says “Not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into…”
The language uses metaphor. I very much doubt that Mann has a case for defamation.
X is the Y of Z is a common construct.
There is even a blog dedicated to collecting them:
http://rosaparksofblogs.blogspot.co.uk/
Here are some recent examples:
The Winston Churchill of diplomatic sexy time
The King Kong Bundy of electoral politics
The Burt Reynolds of hippies
The Stan Lee of the ancient world
The Marie Antoinette of transit spokespeople
The Vlade Divac of space
The George Costanza of library associations in the…
The Robert Altman movie of comics
The Kal-El of sperm
The Walter White of cookies and cakes
The Shaun White of dark alley neck stabbing
The Batman and Robin of owner’s suite egomania
The Vic Mackey of French child services
The Jenna Maroney of rap music
The LeBron of musical chairs
Inserting “could be said to be” distances the writer even more.
The two words used in relation to data are too vague and no-where near as specific as, for example, “falsifying”.
I don’t usually miss a Steyn article, but I missed that one. Thanks, Dr. Mann!
Mann: “I have retained counsel to pursue my legal rights”
Meaningless. Mann’s attorney could right now be snickering at Mann, while counting $2,000.00 for legal advice that amounted to: “You got nothing”.
And Mann will cover leagal costs by selling these
http://www.mwahproducts.com.au/thumbnaillarge/l_PD8628-00.png
poor Mann. he has no choice but to keep up the charade for the sake of the carbon cowboys –
20 July: Reuters: Barbara Lewis: EU Commission to publish ETS rescue plan next week
(Additional reporting by Jeffrey Coelho in London and Francesco Guarascio in Brussels; Editing by Luke Baker and David Goodman)
It has decided on a two-step process to reinforce the legality of what is meant to be a relatively quick fix to the market’s weakness…
At a meeting on July 25, the EU’s executive will adopt a proposal clarifying an article of the ETS law on the timing of auctions of permits.
Commission spokeswoman Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen said the Commission would also “transmit to member states a draft for a future adaptation of the timing when emissions allowances would be auctioned”.
She added that all interested parties would be able to express their views on the proposal for the delaying of carbon allowance auctions, referred to as backloading.
The Commission would not say how long the process will take, but EU sources said that it hopes the use of a streamlined EU procedure — known as comitology — for the backloading proposal will allow it to be completed within months. Other methods of passing EU legislation can take substantially longer…
Fears about a delay to the Commission’s effort to support the carbon market pushed it down to a low of 6.67 euros per tonne on Thursday. On Friday it rose by about 4 percent to more than 7 euros, but this is still far below the level of 20 to 50 euros that analysts say is necessary to support low-carbon investment…
Most member states are also said to back the idea of a fix, and an Energy Efficiency Directive agreed in June was accompanied by a declaration of intent that there was a need to support the carbon market.
***Poland, however, which is heavily dependent on carbon-intensive coal, has said there is no justification for meddling. It says that the ETS was set up to cut emissions, rather than establish a carbon price, and that a weak market is helpful in difficult economic times.
From the business sector, oil and gas companies including Royal Dutch Shell have called for intervention because carbon prices are too low to drive technologies, such as carbon capture and storage…
Heavy industry is resistant to intervention and some have questioned the legality of the Commission’s proposal; doubts that the legal clarification is designed to quash.
Even if the Commission succeeds with its proposal to delay the auction of some permits, many analysts say that the real need is to remove allowances permanently, which would require a much more detailed EU process.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/07/20/uk-eu-ets-idUKBRE86J11L20120720
——————————————————————————–
We schlep, schlep, have formally demanded a [snip] of, and [snip] [snip]of [snippity snip] #yourdaddypennstatefootball #shutupandtakeit
I predict that well before this defamation suit goes to court, EPA will have made plenty of threats to scientists to yank their grants and kill their careers if they testify for the defense.
Let us make as public as possible the names of those who make the threats, and of anybody who knuckles under.
In order to avoid getting snipped – I understand Anthony doesn’t want the legal hassle – I’ll resist the temptation to rewrite some of what Steyn wrote using a common UK/Australian term that is generally used to refer to someone making a hash of something, largely through incompetence, but also has a meaning appropriate to the Sandusky case.
Graham Spanier, disgraced ex-Penn State president, epitomized NCAA hypocrisy
Here’s the article I quoted from above, but failed to link to. It is very interesting.
elftone says: “…To quote the late…Frank Zappa: ‘In a petulant frenzy! (A petulant frenzy, this is a petulant frenzy. I’m petulant, and I’m having a frenzy)'”
Or perhaps a rit of fealous jage.
And here’s the crux of the matter, the raison d’être for the whitewashing of both Mannian academics and Sanduskian jocks:
Actung! Achtung! Mann is predicting there was a Medieval Warming Period.
So,
it looks like the offending phrase may need to be re-reviewed in private star chamber reviews of the crappy original, as would have been directly expected. Any chance for a different result? Likely not, Mann is not Sandusky. Though it doesn’t take much to cross the gap.
For anyone with more energy than me right now (I’m going to bed), there are lots of good pieces of info to be culled from some Climate Audit threads I started reviewing on Mann, Penn State, and some other issues pertaining to Mann’s credibility and character. Perhaps someone with a blog could start crowd sourcing summary info on Mannian science and character in one location. Here are some links:
http://climateaudit.org/2011/11/10/penn-state-president-fired/
http://climateaudit.org/2011/03/10/what-did-penn-state-know/
http://climateaudit.org/2011/10/04/seminar-on-penn-state-inquiry/
http://climateaudit.org/2011/11/13/the-epa-and-upside-down-mann/
http://climateaudit.org/2011/05/23/climategate-documents-confirm-wegmans-hypothesis/
http://climateaudit.org/2010/07/25/the-team-defends-paleo-phrenology/
http://climateaudit.org/2011/11/28/direct-action-at-harvard/
http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/20/hide-the-decline-ii/
http://climateaudit.org/2010/01/07/team-responses-to-mm2003/
Mark Steyn can be wickedly funny. I’d pay money to watch him debate Michael Mann.
re the new State Govt in Queensland Australia. wouldn’t it be nice if this is more than political rhetoric?
13 July: Daniel Hurst: Climate ‘propaganda’ on LNP summit hit list
A push to ban “environmental propaganda” from schools and teach “normal science” about climate change is among motions set to be discussed at the Liberal National Party convention beginning today…
For example, the LNP’s Noosa State Electorate Council says the LNP should call on Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek to “require Queensland government schools to remove environmental propaganda material [and] in particular post normal science about ‘climate change’”.
At last year’s conference, LNP president Bruce McIver questioned the role of humans in driving climate change, arguing the climate was always changing and children were being “brainwashed” in the way climate science was taught…
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/climate-propaganda-on-lnp-summit-hit-list-20120712-21ygz.html#ixzz21DyBXibW
You’re right. He just drew attention. But, after reading it I can see how Mann isn’t going to just sit down for this…
Back to the farm animal issue. The “corrections” on The Beast article are sick and disgusting. They’re probably not libelous as they aren’t intended to be taken seriously. But those corrections do not appear on the original Alternet version of the article. Now, the article was co-authored by Roddy and Murphy. It is Murphy who works for The Beast and who reposted the article there. So,it seems plausible that it is Murphy that is responsible for the farm animal cracks rather than Roddy.
On the Steyn piece, comparing Mann to a pedophile is sick and disgusting but not likely libelous. However, claiming Mann committed fraud may well be libelous. It is one thing to say “I do not have solid evidence but it is my gut feeling that Mann committed fraud” and another to say he did commit fraud without presenting any evidence.
The National Review and The Beast should both be held in contempt by the reading public for poor editorial judgement.
This could be fun. Especially if, as part of discovery, the court orders Mann to turn over his UVA emails as well. If he’s smart, he’ll leave this one alone. JRRTolkien: Oft evil will shall evil mar.
mpaul says:
July 20, 2012 at 6:32 pm
I think its wrong, on many levels, to compare Mann to Sandusky. But I do think its reasonable to compare PSU’s investigation of Sandusky to their investigation of Mann.
==============================================================
Yes, the context is clear that a University that would protect a child molestor for cash and reputation, would certainly protect a CAGW proponent for continuing grants. And, on that broadest level only, Mann and Sandusky can be compared; both mann and Sandusky, PSU employees, protected from proper investigation of suspected crimes. In the case of Sandusky, great harm done to individuals and famlies, in the case of Mann, IMV, great harm done to society and economic prosperity.
I do not think Stein conveyed any more then the above.
Mann is looking for rock star notoriety with this decision to litigate. He’s going after the oldest and most revered conservative opinion magazine and also one of its best and most brilliant writers. This is the beginning of a huge public relations thrust by the AGW left of which Mann is a most prominent member. I’m wondering where his funding is coming from. I’m sure he didn’t make that much on his pathetic book. There are probably some high profile financiers in the background. This is going to be an expensive trial and it sure looks like a loser to me.
When you go to the original column that Steyn cited, you now see this at the bottom: “Two inappropriate sentences that originally appeared in this post have been removed by the editor.”
I am so reminded of a great Peachy Carnehan line when the SHTF, the facade has fallen away, and the power of the people is withdrawn by those people. Nothing remains but pride which fuels the final vainglory act of artifice.
“The Man Who Would Be King” – Rudyard Kipling
This is wonderful for Mr Mann. I’m pretty sure he has been aching to actually debate this issue in a court of law.. afterall, he KNOWS he is right.
So , congratulations MM, I wish you great success in bringing this to trial.. and remember.. please bring all your data. codes etc with you as proof of your work, grind them nasty skeptics into the dirt. !!
.
.
.
.
.
/s !!
So this is surprising?
Mann gets a rise out of tree rings and goes ballistic over what he “finds”.
Mann gets compared to a problematic figure and goes ballistic over what others “find”.
At least Mann’s consitent.
Consistently wrong.
The NRO article was slightly noticed at Fark.com
I see only one potentially defamatory statement in Steyn’s piece: “Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus.”
That’s pretty weak tea. Mann’s pissing into the wind.
Philip Bradley wrote:
“I understand Anthony doesn’t want the legal hassle”
I think it’s more an issue of decorum. If Mann had had not tweeted about it we would not be discussing it, even if Anthony or a WUWT reader had noticed the article.
Folks, you have this all wrong. Dr Mann has already explained that the only person who can understand his emails is himself. By extension, the only person who can understand his tweets….
The mind simply boggles. As I have noted elsewhere the author of a creative writing exercise that should have been entitled “Portrait of the Artist as an Aggrieved Mann: A novel” is proving himself to be the David [I see you, I sue you] Irving of climate science.
As Steve McIntyre recently asked regarding the mandate of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLD):
Seems to me that Mann has made Steyn an eligible recipient of funding from CSLD. Unless, of course, the CSLD fund-founders – in tried ‘n true climatalogical tradition – have redefined “defense/defend/defendants”
Boom. We got him. Now *we* are the one-too-many mosquitoes on a camping trip gone bad. Zzzzzt!
The clean-up operation of this war against anti-science forces continues, post Climategate, the utterly novel episode that allowed the mass media to finally have *fun* with the story of principled old school seniors harking back to classical and disciplined science, Feynman style.
Popcorn is passé. Reach for the beef jerky, boys.
At some point in human affairs, the gloves come off and debate oddly transforms into war, and war is about winning. Once it’s war, brother must really fight brother, going right back to the Bhagavad Gita, which in our era glosses over this family feud.
Occupy Wall Street is liberal losers vs. science/engineering kids.
Global Warming is elite early retirees vs. soft science majors.
Due to Bucky Fuller based “more with less” socioeconomic factors that few these days talk about in a foo foo era of Facebook wannabee bubble venture capital, we are all sitting pretty, bored out of our skulls, longing for a Spy Vs. Spy mystery adventure engage us.
But all that medical breakthrough bannerism amounts merely to an extra 3-8 years of very old age drooling.
Welcome to the future.
Breaking Bad is no substitute for the Beat generation and its dreams of Better Living Through Chemistry.
But nobody says anything about it.
We need better drugs.
-=NikFromNYC=-
Aaack … sorry mods .. could you pls correct my (or WP’s) mess-up of the closure of my last link.
Thanks,
Hilary
still awake here…. and I just found an “interesting” (scary) sidelight from the Freeh Report which recalls an outrageous forum at the Durban fiasco last Nov. 2011. The guy who was discussed here on WUWT because he advocates making climate skepticism a “crime against humanity” — Prof. Donald Brown — could be right in the spotlight of one of the Freeh Report’s recommended reforms.
The Freeh Report tells Penn State they should introduce ethics training modules for “all areas of the university” — to be developed and conducted, apparently, under the guidance of the Rock Ethics Center….. where the Director is Prof. Donald Brown!! So now one of the more propagandistic of the CAGW advocates is to be involved with training all of the Penn Staters in his brand of ethics??
[my emphasis below]
“1.2 Appoint a University Ethics Officer to provide advice and counsel to the President and the Board of Trustees on ethics issues and adherence to Penn State Principles; develop and provide, in conjunction with the Rock Ethics Center, leadership and ethics training modules for all areas of the University; and coordinate ethics initiatives with the University’s Chief Compliance Officer.”
Freeh Report
Donald Brown of Penn State’s Rock Ethics Center
“One, an ethical analysis of the climate change disinformation campaign. We will examine whether this is a new kind of crime against humanity?”
“Second, we will look at the piratical significance for negotiations in Durban if climate change is understood to create human rights violations.”
@ DN
July 20, 2012 at 5:52 pm
Googled “The Shagged Sheep”…thoroughly enjoyed.
don’t get all excited guys. Dr Mann is bluffing if you ask me.
My god it’s like he was just born stupid. What on earth motivated him to make a big deal about this?
I love how everyone calls Mike “Mr.”. I’m amazed he hasn’t thrown a hissy fit over that, as well! Call me “Dr.” or I’ll….[snip]
J. Philip Peterson says:
July 20, 2012 at 4:52 pm
Sorry but what Dr.Michael Mann has done to help make energy more expensive in the world (let alone the United States) is much worse for the children of the world [snip – please lets not go there – Anthony]. The magnitude of what will happen to all children of the world because of expensive, or no energy, results in the killing of many people (including children).
Someone agreed with me on this post, but it was removed. WUWT??
Ok, Penn State may be spared from campus-wide indoctrination by Donald Brown, although his ideas may be ingrained in the Rock Ethics Center which lists “Climate” as one of its main areas of concern on the home page.
It appears that Donald Brown has departed the sunny climes of PSU in just the recent weeks (but of course his brand of eco-fanaticism may well be continued at the Rock Institute of Ethics, one will have to see:
Donald Brown leaves Penn State for Widener U. School of Law
…. where he is already pushing eco-fanaticism ala Bill McKibben:
Donald Brown pumps Bill McKibben’s Rolling Stone article
“…A new article by Bill McKibben is a must read in this regard for US citizens who are working to turn up the volume on the ethical dimensions of climate change. It is: Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math: Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe – and that make clear who the real enemy is.”
“This article will greatly enhance both any reader’s sense of the urgency of the need to respond to climate change and their understanding of why global warming must be understood essentially as an ethical problem.”
I really should of went to grad school and became an academid scientist. Who knew one can strike out every time and still get grant money.
I became an lowly civil engineer. I have a license to practice, so I can’t say the world will end in 20xx. When that doesn’t happen, I lose my license.
I really shoulda got my pHd, and then get grants whether I am right or wrong. I can lie, cheat and steal and be wrong on all the science, and still publish and travel the globe.
I also could of got a free ride…..
EJ
“You don’t tug on Superman’s cape.”
Joy, joy, happy happy! I’ve always thought Mann was a tone-deaf idiot but never in my wildest dreams did I think he’d be dumb enough to sue, or even threaten to sue, a guy as bright as Steyn.
And, on balance, I rather suspect that Mann has absolutely no clue just how clever Mark actually is. We Canadians have had a ring side seat to Mark destroying the whole edifice of “speech regulation” in Canada. He didn’t just win, he and a few other people are directly responsible for the repeal of Canada’s anti-free speech laws.
But the best part is that Mark is wickedly funny. As we have learned, the “climate concerned community” has no sense of humour at all. Long before this goes to Court (as if) Mark will have a jolly excuse to make fun of Mikey.
It will not be pretty. But, Dear Lord, it will be fun.
Sue Mikey, sue!
Consensus promoters like Mann are a laugh a minute.
The Daily Onion could do no better.
As someone pointed out above, possibly the best term for what Mann produces is “Mannure”.
I was going to show my friend in Western Washington University, a math PHD, how truthful is. Whats up with that? He is a pier of Don Easterbrook. You removed some important posts.
[Well since we have no idea what the missing post might have been, nor where it is now or where it might have been moved in the in the past, I’d recommend re-writing it rather than asking numerous times. It is not in spam nor deleted items. Robt]
Shoe…meet other foot.
The problem is that Mann is no worse than many people working in Science nowadays who regularly adjust data to fit the needs of the client. I have done it but I have always declared exactly what I did and the data are all available for independent verification.
Mann’s apparent mistake was not to declare the biases he was introducing.
Oops I think the post has been there. Is it replaced or just always there?
jayhd says:
July 20, 2012 at 6:11 pm
Sorry Anthony, I have to agree with J. Philip Peterson (July 20, 2012 at 4:52 pm). Mann and friends have done great harm to humanity with their questionable “science”, costing hundreds of billions of dollars and causing much suffering. They deserve all the skewering they get. I only wish I was as good as Elmer, Mark Steyn and Eugene WR Gallun.
Jay Davis
Is Sandusky going to sue ?
I’m beginning to think this Mann only opens his mouth to change feet.
Skiphil says:
July 20, 2012 at 10:28 pm
Ref: Donald Brown of Penn State’s Rock Ethics Center
“One, an ethical analysis of the climate change disinformation campaign. We will examine whether this is a new kind of crime against humanity?”
“Second, we will look at the piratical significance for negotiations in Durban if climate change is understood to create human rights violations.”
“…the piratical significance for negotiations…”? Unless he meant “practical” or “political” and mistyped, Brown is two suits short of a full deck…
The only line that seems a direct attack that he could sue about is : Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph
Now if he would care to sue someone for saying that , I think it will be what we have all been waiting for since Climategate but have been denied.
If he really is that stupid, bring it on !
Having invoked the Streissand effect, and got maximum attention to an article most people would have missed , he is going to look even more stupid (and guilty) if he does not go ahead.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t Mikey.
I am not a lawyer but I know enough to know the National Review article was very carefully written (or edited) to deny any basis for legal action. Mann may well have hired a lawyer but his suit is going nowhere. And even if it was a slam-dunk I have to wonder what sort of overweening ego could trick a person into drawing attention to what he claims is a defamation.
Why is Mann demanding a retraction from The National Review? All that Mark Styen did was repeat a statement from the OpenMarket.org and say that he wouldn’t have gone as far as Rand Simberg. Mann should be sueing Rand.
http://grammarist.com/usage/evoke-invoke/
Evoke vs. invoke
Evoke means (1) to summon or call forth, (2) to call to mind, and (3) to call up a memory from the past. Invoke means, primarily, to call upon, especially in reference to aid, assistance, or a higher power. Less common definitions include to cite for justification (as, for example, when a lawyer invokes a precedent to make an argument), to conjure, and to resort to.
The words are similar, and in some senses they can be interchangeable. But think of it this way: Invocation involves making a plea, and evocation involves summoning something.
From Bishop Hill…
“There once was a group called the Team,
Who invented the climate change meme,
But the data didn’t work,
So they made it all up,
And flatlined the whole Holocene.”
M4GW kept my spirit high during many dark cold days around Climategate time. Thanks Elmer!
Never knew about the Streisand effect… but if its WP page is “up for deletion” this really is a way to cool the knowledge of the Streisand effect… for this reason Tim Ball’s WP page was deleted… but at least now exists on my own user pages, thanks to a tip here.
For all the support we see here, with reason, against Mann, I cannot forget that in conventional circles he and his BS HS still rule. See the Amazon reviews of Mann’s book that win out numerically by a long way.
‘There’s no such thing as bad publicity’ is said to be a quote of Phineas T. Barnum, the 19th century American who ran a circus. But then he ran a circus. Ah,um,er.
Another sterling effort from Bishop Hill:
“Who made the Maldives founder?
Who made the oceans boil?
Who made the coral crumble?
T’was us bad boys and goils.”
Mark Stein:
“If an institution is prepared to cover up systemic statutory rape of minors, what won’t it cover up?”
—
seems a very good question to me.
How bizarre. Mann provides a link to what he claims to be defamation thereby drawing attention to it. And how can someone who already has a reputation for his hockey stick be defamed? The “libel-proof plaintiff doctrine” should bar relief to such plaintiffs. In any case it is for Mann to prove that he has been defamed. He can’t do that by linking to the article himself.
In the famous case of New York Times Co v Sullivan, Justice Black said, “Malice, even as defined by the Court, is an elusive, abstract concept, hard to prove and hard to disprove. The requirement that malice be proved provides at best an evanescent protection for the right critically to discuss public affairs and certainly does not measure up to the sturdy safeguard embodied in the First Amendment.”
Everyone knows that Mann had nothing whatsoever to do with the football scandal at Penn State. I can’t see any defamation in the articles, simply the press freely expressing their First Amendment opinion of Mann and Penn State in a robust manner by comparing the way investigations into two entirely seperate matters were conducted.
That’s not even a National Review article, but a blog post about an article at openmarket.org.
Surely, if you believe you’ve been libelled (and this jury’s still out on that in this case) the LAST thing you should do is spread awareness of that libel by tweeting it or posting on any other social network???
Doing so is, at best, foolish and, at worst, the mark of a complete attention whore – the sort of thing you expect from forum Trolls but not from intelligent people who are considered leaders in their field!
Mikey-boy, even us nobodies who haven’t single handedly unravelled the meaning of Life, The Universe, and Everything using nothing but sports equipment can become embarassingly notorious with a poorly judged internet post. Given your relative fame, what on EARTH were you thinking here?
Now I’m not saying that WUWT has done any wrong here, but I think it’s important to stress that we cannot lose our decency just because our enemies are indecent. Actually one of the reasons I came to trust the anti-AGW side was that this side seemed to amass the more humble, intelligent, curious and decent people. When I decided to research AGW to form my own opinion I of course arrived at RealClimate real soon, and was hastily driven away by the amount of [self-snip] people I found there. Fundamentally nasty and intellectually dishonest people, and those can impossibly be trusted in an argument, even when being right — you will need humble sceptics to keep them in their place.
So, I don’t think this smearing approach is needed (this also applies to the Ted K poster). Let our enemies provide the wickedness, we are better off by it.
Maybe Mark Steyn is WANTING Mann to sue for defamation. As others have said, he just quotes from Rand Simberg’s article, which references PJ Media, which pulls from several sources (including Bishop Hill)…
The court documents will be amazing – Mann et al vs. Steyn et al.
Just think of the papers his lawyer will have to produce as part of discovery. It will probably include some of the emails he’s been trying to keep covered.
Mann doesn’t want his actions to be seen in an open court. All we want is the truth – but he can’t handle the truth…
One day Mann will over reach himself, thanks to his ego , and he will end up in court something we won’t enjoy at all.
For all the dersion around the hockey stick and it’s promotion, it’s not apparent the climate folks are ignorant OR dumb. As sunsettommy @ July 20, 2012 at 7:00 pm stated, Mann is fighting the release of facts in one libel action. One surmises Mann is aware of the details of that case. Likely, even law school students have an inkling of the hurdels Mann would have in his pursuit of libel in this instance. A PhD bringing a libel action would likely know more about libel than those students.
The issue whether it’s a knee-jerk reation, mindlessly made or not. As a speculative thought, the best answer may just be to intentionally stir the “I’ll sue” pot. Politicians do the same thing when they want to head off a potentially damaging inquiry unkindly to them. Plenty of reasons. Not only may it give the prospective defedent pause but it does have the potential “chilling” effect on others. For Mann, it diverts attention away from the ongoing global warming/war on CO2, adds confusion and lets him show outrage at being linked to a pedopile.
Lawsuits are expensive,even if someone else is paying. Thus, iIt’s incredibly cheap, painless and easy to tweet a tweet knowing you’ll have your opponent almost go absolutely drooling mad responding. Think of the time spent on this by the “deniers”. Picking Steyn seems about the right one to promote all the above – not too big, not too small and guarunteed to stir things. It even burnishes Mann’s cocktail party creds about being aggressive against the “deniers”. How great is that?
Chances are you’ll not hear, maybe, one or two more tweets from Mann on this just to stir things a bit then it will fade off into the UVA sunset. Just remember, while your pursuing this one, they’re out spending their time doing things like passing carbon taxes.
I can’t see anything potentially libelous toward Mann in that article. It’s mostly aimed at PSU’s president, and rather badly aimed.
PSU’s president was simply doing what univ presidents do. They maximize contributions to the endowment fund.
He understood that Mann’s work is Cool and High-Status, strongly approved by All The Right People, and a good source of more funding and contributions. He understood that Sandusky’s extracurricular activities were Uncool and Low-Status. So he firmly defended Mann and covered up Sandusky. All normal bureaucratic behavior.
Interesting! I frequently invoke the name of _B_eelzebub _S_treisand as an dysphemism for male bovine feces, particularly when directed leftward.
No slander of Mann here, maybe a slander of PSU but that is also unlikely.
“Just remember, while your pursuing this one, they’re out spending their time doing things like passing carbon taxes.”
Who in the U.S. is talking carbon taxes? Not Obama and not anyone else of substance.
Skiphil says:
July 20, 2012 at 4:51 pm
or the “Napoleon Effect” — he doesn’t respect Russian winters
Oh, the humanity….
Thats funny 🙂
I almost fell of my chair laughing 🙂
1: I may now have carpal tunnel in my right index finger from scrolling down this far (because ‘CTRL – END’ was too much work 😉 )
2: I just read the article, and I have to say: that’s it? That’s all there was to the comment, and Dr. Mann want’s to unleash lawyers? I find that very interesting in and of itself. It looks like he’s trying to silence anyone who wishes to revisit the ‘investigation,’ wouldn’t you think?
Mann of thin skin.
Love the article.
Lotsa luck and best wishes trying to get it retracted (sarc).
Having thought about it a little more, I’ve realised that his posting on FB suggests he really wants everyone to know about this. Much as I don’t agree with his “science”, if that’s what he wants…..
Duly shared 🙂
@corio37
“Whitewashing is going to be THE growth industry for the 21st Century. Expect to see major institutions offering accredited courses in it soon. With their extensive experience, Penn State and East Anglia could be pioneers in this exciting new field!”
Umm… politicians and the police are already well established in this particular field – Climate Change specialists are just amateurs compared to them…
In fact, what you’re seeing is the result of politicians of all parties and from all countries indulging in immoral activity and whitewashing themselves. If your leaders keep doing it, sooner or later ALL the citizens will start doing it. It’s called ‘Leading by Example’….
Well at least one of his supporters enjoyed it, this from Mann’s Facebook page:
I wish UVA would sue somebody. One word reason: Discovery.
I haven’t re-read it, but I recall Steyn’s post as safe and ending with a valid point: With a history of cover-up, what about all the other “don’t see a problem here” self-examinations? But maybe NRO (it was online) can’t afford to pay lawyers and would pay $1 to Mann and he could announce it was settled in confidentiality.
I doubt that would shut Steyn up, though. You’d think he would have been forced to keep his mouth shut during the years of persecution – check that – prosecution – in Canada, but he wrote about it all the while. (That one also centered on quotes of others – he quoted Islamic figureheads – ayotollahs and scholars – verbatim and was charged with making anti-Islamic statements for doing so.) He’s kind of “into” free speech and Mann is desperately trying to shut people up. Just Steyn’s cup of tea.
Litigation seems to be an ever present threat from the Ayatollah of Climate Sharia. (Go ahead. Sue me for defamation. True believers will govern, others will be abused and tithed, they’re on a mission to save the world by converting it to their belief. Hey, it keeps going. And how dare he claim that ayatollah is a term of derision?) Can he sue for mockery and win? If so, he should start with himself.
It’s time he starts cutting some trees again. The mann doth protest too much.
So Mark Steyn writes on national review that openmarket.org has a story that in Mark Steyn’s opinion is perhaps over the top, but does have some good points. Michael Mann doesn’t like it and wants Mark Steyn’s report at nationalreview.com retracted. That’s just not going to happen. Mark Steyn is just reporting.
I agree with Anthony, Dr. Mann is just drawing attention to a story where he is wrong but not enough of the population care about the details for the media to really care about it and dig in to it. If Dr. Mann keeps jumping into the spotlight his mistakes are just going to get more air time.
Steve M pointed out the double fail at Penn State oversight when the Sandusky scandal first broke. No report of retained legal counsel for that though.
I can’t agree with the analogy – ad hom equating Mann with a child rapist – which detracts from the main point: poor quality internal investigation at the Institution.
I ask that he apologize – detracts from the debate.
For the lawyers out there, isn’t this like Larry Flynt saying that Jerry Fallwell had a fun time with with his mother in an outhouse, and it was ruled in Flynt’s favor because Falwell was a public figure, and that no reasonable person with half a brain would have ever thought he was serious much like no one in their right mind would actually believe the tasteless. but in no way liable joke made about Michael Mann
Nevermind my last comment, I see the quote referenced now in the National Review wasn’t saying that now so the comparison to the Larry Flynt case doesn’t make sense. i agree though with the above commenters that it may not have been a good comparison but that doesn’t take away from the author’s main point, which was that prohibiting development under the guise of protecting biodiversity over humans particularly in the 3rd world where razing entire villages and massive land-grabbing going on there so that they “leave space for nature”. Mother Earth and all the animals and insects have more natural rights in the eyes of the Eco-Authoritarians than do humans(who they view as trash) to this deranged anti-human cult.
The CO2 tax fraud that is disproportionately hurting the relatively low-income people who they always pay lip service to and pretend to care about about in developed (soon to be de-indstialized) nations. i think his larger point that was lost was that let’s quit letting these alarmists act as if they have any kind of moral high ground to stand on whatsoever when globalist funded NGOs they’ve been caught enforcing John P. Holdren’s eugenics programs in India and elsewhere with forced abortions and mandatory one-child policies, Ted Turner who has openly called for an over 95% human culling calls those of us who are against such policies “dumb-dumbs”, meanwhile most people still think of these people as the good guys?
Rand Simberg’s piece was the one mostly full of invective and Sandusky comparisons, but Steyn used the word ‘fraudulent’ regarding the Hockey Stick which I guess is what Mann would take objection to.
Mind you, I’d love to see him have to get up and prove it’s not in a court of law, when all the facts are laid out his only real claim would be that it wasn’t malice it was merely incompetence.
The only inflammatory comment that was not part of the Simberg quote was the use of the word ‘fraudulent’.
All of the other Penn State comparisons were Simberg’s – and yes, some of it goes over the top but “what wouldn’t a man like Spanier cover up?” is a perfectly fair question.
In case commenting has been turned off over at National Review…
I think a comparison IS appropriate…
But it’s the comparison between Michael Mann and Joe Paterno as it relates to Penn State — nothing to do with Sandusky…
Think about it… Two years ago, Penn State “investigates” Mann with regard to the stolen Climategate emails– and yet as a restriction on the ‘independent’ investigation, it was said that the emails themselves can not be used for content or evidence. The reason: Because it’s impossible to divine motive or action in any concrete form from a set of emails, incomplete or otherwise. They ended up being left with simply asking Mann if he did something wrong, and reporting what he said as conclusions.
Fast-forward to today… and Louis Freeh concludes that it is perfectly ascertainable to understand both motive and behavior of Joe Paterno throughout the Sandusky saga, particularly through received emails, all this despite Joe Paterno not ever using a computer much less email.
There clearly is a stark difference between how Penn State chose to “investigate” in each circumstance, despite each attempting to have an air of credibility.
No one asked Louis Freeh about this in the press conference, but it’s clear to me that even a cursory look at the Climategate emails with the same eye that poured over the PSU emails looking for Paterno’s behavior would have uncovered culpability on the part of Dr. Michael Mann in more than one arena of adacemic/professional irresponsibility.
Joe Paterno and Michael Mann should stand or fall together if their investigations were carried out with a similar level of credibility. Penn State has apparently made a decision to do things differently in each case. No one has called for the “death penalty” in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, and yet football is being blamed in Paterno’s case.
Repeated note: The above has nothing to do with Jerry Sandusky, but it is clear there is at least one comparison between this saga and a past one that deserves the light of day.
Salamano says:
July 21, 2012 at 8:38 am
======================================
That’s an excellent point about the dramatic difference between allowing or disallowing the evidence of emails in the two inquiries. Of course the Freeh Report is based upon an external panel that had wide open powers (apparently), while the whitewash Mann report was based solely upon an internal panel carefully designed to get the desired result.
By the time the Freeh Report was commissioned PSU was far too embarrassed and disgraced to try to control the outcome the way they did in the Mann inquiries. For Mann, excluding the damning email evidence was a convenient way of shaping the agenda and then conclusions.
davidmhoffer says:
Then I wish Mann would set up a second Twitter account and a second email address and tweet and email himself to his heart’s content and leave the rest of humanity alone!
@Leardog- re analogy with childrapist- on one level I agree, it is a nasty ad hom.
On the otherhand “denier” = apologist for genocide. A nasty ad hom as well.
I’m afraid it is a case of Mann hoisted by his own petard.
I don’t see anything that could be proven libel by Mark Steyn.
Mann is such a clown.
Penn State probably performed better in the Sandusky case. In 1998, Sandusky was reported to both university and local police, AND investigations were done by the local and state child welfare agencies. No prosecution was brought despite police having a confession on tape with the mother of a victim on the phone, and the higherups sent Sandusky into retirement.
The Mark Steyn piece is straight from the gutter. He tries to avoid responsibility by using a quote from Louis Freeh, but Mr Steyn has propagated the story and is just as guilty as Mr Freeh is.
I’m no fan of Dr Mann, but we are much better off sticking to facts than producing slime like that. This is exactly the sort of thing that so disgusts us when produced by the green left.
We can do better.
Slightly off-topic
But I love the idea of the ‘Streisand effect’
(trying to suppress image #### leads to many more viewings)
Maybe we could have some ideas for ‘The Watts Effect’
‘The Mann Effect’
or
‘The Trenberth effect’
Assuming Mann goes through with this, which I believe is (or should be) unlikely, we should all be grateful for his choice of an opponent. I think he will, however, rue the day he stuck a stick in the hornet’s nest known as Mark Steyn. Steyn is also a very able and competent radio talkshow personality as witnessed by the fact that he sits in on occasion for the best in the business, Rush Limbaugh. I’m guessing Limbaugh will contribute generously to his defense fund, should there be a need.
I don’t wish a lawsuit on anybody, but Steyn, as noted above, is practiced in freedom of speech litigation, and there is no one who can defend himself on those grounds more passionately and eloquently.
How can an academic like Dr Michael Mann afford to have what would appear to amount to continual legal representation? This is not the first time that he has said his legal people are dealing with it. Who pays for his lawyers? Himself?
“Every time I look around, it’s in my face”
@thinking scientist: there is a wide array of individuals and groups who would have a strong interest in the outcome of a Mann v. Steyn case– most of the governments in the Western world, in fact, as well as the legion of extremely wealthy and influential individuals who are aligned with them. He won’t lack for financial support. And I’m thinking Steyn won’t either.
If it happens, it will be ideological theatre on a world-wide stage. From what I can see, that is Mann’s goal. His problem is that this time his supporters won’t be able to pick the judge and jury.
I read everything Mark Steyn writes, I read nothing that Michael Mann writes. One deals with facts and opinions and the other with questionable data and fantasy.
Michael J says:
July 21, 2012 at 9:32 am
The Mark Steyn piece is straight from the gutter. He tries to avoid responsibility by using a quote from Louis Freeh, but Mr Steyn has propagated the story and is just as guilty as Mr Freeh is.
Agreed the Freeh comment is a little unsavoury (though I don’t personally believe libelous) but if Steyn is “as guilty” for propagating it then so is Mann himself.
He’s posted if to his open facebook page and allowed people to share it – which several of his supporters and at least one non-supporter have done. Not sure how it would work as a defence for Steyn, seeing as he posted it before Mann allowed “sharing”, but he’s effectively given consent for propagation since.
I believe in US law consent is available as a (rarely used) defence against libel?
‘Hide the Malign’
I see that reading comprehension is lacking in some of the respondents here. Michael Mann is not in any way being compared to Jerry Sandusky. Not by Steyn, and not by Rand Simberg.What is being compared is the institutional reaction of PSU to acts committed by those two individuals working under its umbrella.
Lear Dog says:
That’s because you, along with many others, don’t understand the concept of an analogy. A is to B as C is to D does not compare, equate, or imply, any specific relationship between A/B and C/D. The “analogy” is defined as a comparison of the “is to” portion, i.e., the relationship between A/B is being compared to the relationship between C/D. Indeed, analogy is even stronger when A/B and C/D have absolutely no other connection. That simple minds think the elements of the analogy are themselves being compared is testament to the lack of proper education in society.
Mark
Good question. I’m also curious what sorts of lawyers would even take such an obviously flawed case. In Tim Ball’s case, it was less obvious due to differences in defamation law (between the US and the Canada). In this case, things could turn out even worse than they seem to be in the Tim Ball case. Maybe they’re just happy draining whatever legal fund Mann has access to not caring about the outcome?
Mark
Please God, let him sue.
It appears that Penn State has a serious “ethics” problem. From the president all the way down to the janitors. All that read this should review Donald Browns discussion “Disinformation, Social Stability and Moral Outrage” on the Penn State ethics web site http://rockblogs.psu.edu/climate/ defending Peter Gleick. This coupled with their defense of Michael Mann designed and implemented as a whitewashing of Mann’s unethical actions further illustrates the sorry state of “ethics” at Penn State. It appears that in all things “ethical” at Penn State their “ethics” follow the civil disobedient motto of “the ends justify the means.” A review of their main “ethics” web site, http://www.rockethics.psu.edu/ reinforces this warped sense of “ethics.” I can no longer proudly show my Penn State decal on my car, and have scraped it off the window.
If Mann goes after Steyn and NRO others will most probably get involved. After-all, Steyn quoted Rand Symberg, who in-turn quotes people like Dr Lindzen in his opinion piece. Dr Mann would have to prove that the Climategate scandals were in fact a big Right Wing conspiracy; otherwise, he has no case. Private law suits are messy, and there is no telling what a judge will allow. I am not a lawyer,but I heard plenty of lawyers opine that much of what would never be admissable in a criminal court is admissable in civil court. And I don’t think Mann wants to re-visit what he considers “closed matters”.
Styen and Symberg’s point is simple: The same college president who covered up the crimes of Sandusky for a decade also found Mann free of any academic fraud while at Penn St. One can argue that that NRO’s point is absurd if not irresponsible. But, to sue over whether Steyn and NRO defamed Mann will probably cause more problems for Mann than he wants. He certainly doesn’t want to re-hash things like the Hockey Stick, his PCAs, etc… All Steyn and NRO have to do is convince the court that Mann’s past actions were not only questionable but also controversial. They certainly do not have to prove Mann’s HS was right/wrong – only controversial. Mann could also be forced to come clean about his comments in every single Climategate email he sent, not to mention other correspondence he has had in his career. East Coast law firms have plenty of resources at their disposal. Just ask any celeb who has sued over defamation.
I’m sure Mann’s lawyers will give him good counsel, and if he truly believes that NRO defamed him and wants his pound of flesh by all means he should sue. But he should be warned, Steyn and NRO are represented by very shrewd lawyers (most media outlets are).
Michael J says:
July 21, 2012 at 9:32 am
“The Mark Steyn piece is straight from the gutter. He tries to avoid responsibility by . . . .”
“Responsibility” for what, pray tell?
Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science.
Contrived Statistics + Confirmation Bias = F——— Science
michael J sez:
“The Mark Steyn piece is straight from the gutter. He tries to avoid responsibility by using a quote from Louis Freeh, but Mr Steyn has propagated the story and is just as guilty as Mr Freeh is.”
h/t to Michael J
You heard it here first: Former FBI Director Louis Freeh revealed as the guilty party.
“Former FBI director Louis Freeh’s 267-page report detailing the institutional responsibility of Penn State and its senior administrators criticized the university for the continued climate of sexual predation that was allowed to fester…”
Read more: Richard Meehan: Freeh report will be crucial to civil suits – Norwich, CT – The Bulletin
Yes, and so am I, which is why I decided not to sue that little twerp in Buffalo and Joe Romm’s pet, Mike Roddy, for libel, for saying I have sex with farm animals. Scroll down to the “corrections” at the end. – Anthony
——————————
Public figure or not that’s a clear case of liable IMO. I’m guessing you didn’t send him the “correction” that you make sweet consensual love to farm animals. He says “brought to our attention by Mr. Watts.” If you said that to him or on your blog then your case IMO would be weak. The big questions are – Is it worth the money & time you will have to spend in court? If you win will the guy have the money to pay you? I’m guessing you can find a lawyer to take the case on getting a percentage of the damages you receive.
“Discovery could be very interesting in this case.”
That was my point stated above. And who knows who will be required to give deposition.
Have read a bit from Mark Steyn when he fills in for Rush Limbaugh. He’s a very intelligent man, and seems like he would be a warrior in a debate.
I kind of hope Mann keeps up the “pressure”. Steyn would tear Mann a new A.
In my opinion, Mann is like the kid on the schoolground saying “My daddy is bigger then your daddy”, whenever another kid says something he doesn’t like. And we all know how that ususally ends.
UzUrBrain says:
July 21, 2012 at 11:24 am
It appears that Penn State has a serious “ethics” problem. From the president all the way down to the janitors. All that read this should review Donald Browns discussion “Disinformation, Social Stability and Moral Outrage” on the Penn State ethics web site http://rockblogs.psu.edu/climate/ defending Peter Gleick…
http://www.lies.com/wp/2012/03/14/the-imaginary-trial-of-peter-gleick-%E2%80%93-part-4-prosecution-witness-donna-laframboise/
It’s a bluff. Mann would perish in open court. A jury sees the hockey stick with and without the instrumental data “hiding the decline.” Then they get climategate e-mails talking about “Mike’s nature trick…to hide the decline.” Then they see expert witnesses presenting Monte Carlo tests of Mann’s code – which he refused for so long to provide to McIntyre and others. Then they hear about UVa providing e-mails for Wegner, Michaels and others in response to FOIA requests, but going to court to avoid revealing Mann’s e-mails. And what does UVa do when the defense subpoenas those e-mails?
It’s more than the Streisand Effect; Steyn and NRO should respond by repeating their claims that Mann’s work is fraudulent and that UVa is protecting him, and openly challenge Mann and/or UVa to sue. Too bad it didn’t come before the 4th of July; the fireworks would be spectacular!
I particularly enjoyed this post on Michael E. Mann’s (public figure, please note) Facebook page:
Funny how the professional climate change denial machine (e.g. Anthony Watts and his ilk, presumably in coordination w/ the other usual suspects) has somewhat predictably unleashed their attack dogs over the latest developments w/ National Review. Somebody appears to be worried…
Transference, anybody? The phraseology alone tells you a great deal more about the mind than the threat of legal action. “It’s a conspiracy, I tell you! They’re all out to get me!”.
Or is it more like this:
As we used to say in Boston, after one of one Mr. Ramirez’s ‘unfathomable’ utterings or actions: “Thats just Manny (Man-Child) Being Manny”.
Don Brown – now there is yet another fraud – and one of the worst kind. He use the shroud of writing about ethics to promote that it is acceptable to ignore ethics when it comes to climate.
In addition to his illogical and ridiculous defense of Gleick – whose behavior cannot be deemed ethical by even the widest stretch of the imagination – here is another grand example:
“Why Ethics Requires Acknowledging Links Between Tornadoes and Climate Change Despite Scientific Uncertainty.”
http://rockblogs.psu.edu/climate/2011/05/why-ethics-requires-acknowledging-links-between-tornadoes-and-climate-change-despite-scientific-unce.html
Never mind there is no scientific proof – just a mere inconvenience – he absurdly claims ethics REQUIRES – the reporting of a link that does not exists.
Awww whats a matter Mikey,not been getting any publicity lately…… didums
As any good lawyer will tell you, “put up or shut up”…….
….popcorn come and get yor popcorn…. show time
Not too many weeks ago Michael Mann and Donald Brown joined forces in a forum aimed at tarring “skeptics” as enemies of humanity:
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/15861/Penn-State-Climate-Ethics-Prof-Donald-Brown-says-skeptics-are-guilty-of-a-new-crime-against-humanity-for-delaying-action-on-global-warming–It-is-really-evil-stuff-It-is-nasty
Although I doubt that the NRO piece was actually intended to lure Mann into a legal attack, if Mr. Steyn has read any comment threads like this one, the idea would certainly have occurred to him by now.
I suppose it’s even possible that, just as members of the fraternity have managed to produce the spectacles of Climategate and Fakegate, Dr. Mann may yet enthrall us with Litigate.
Well, one can always dream …
@keithkloor is charging defamation against Anthony on Twitter.
theduke says:
Responsibility for repeating Louis Freeh’s offensive rhetoric.
By all means criticise Dr Mann’s “science” or his ethics. But Mr Freeh’s accusation is simple ad-hominum slime.
I repeat: we can do better.
This may sound a bit strained as I don’t list exactly what I object to. I’m honouring Anthony’s request not to “excerpt parts of the article”, however a quick read of Mr Steyn’s piece should make the context obvious.
Now it appears that Dr. Mann is on the road to self destruction with his absurd announced intention of a new defamation lawsuit against Mark Steyn and National Review:
Breaking: Climate Scientist Michael Mann Lawyers Up after Penn State Child Sex Link
http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/07/21/breaking-climate-scientist-michael-mann-lawyers-up-after-penn-state-child-sex-link/
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings and commented:
“Funny how the professional climate change denial machine (e.g. Anthony Watts and his ilk, presumably in coordination w/ the other usual suspects) has somewhat predictably unleashed their attack dogs over the latest developments w/ National Review. Somebody appears to be worried…”- M.Mann
Not in the least!
READ THE COMMENTS – SweetPea…most hope you do end-up in court. ‘)
Michael Mann and Donald Brown doing the “crimes against humanity” schtick against all “skeptics” is pure defamation on a vast scale, just as with the “deniers” label…. trying to delegitimize all dissenters as supportive of “crimes against humanity.”
“@keithkloor is charging defamation against Anthony on Twitter.”
No, he isn’t.
[snip – over the top]
I see that Don Brown has left Penn State and is now at Widener University School of Law, with his same warped ethics. He has a blog, Ethics and Climate – http://blogs.law.widener.edu/climate/ espousing why it is alright to use civil disobedience to reduce CO2.
@Michael J
Setting aside the merits of the issues for a moment, you are confused about who is the author of what you object to…. Louis Freeh did not write the passage quoted by Mark Steyn, that was the writer Rand Simberg. The reference to Louis Freeh is about the independent investigative report on the Sandusky case, which severely criticizes Penn State’s former administrators and Paterno for a cover-up there. But it is others who have made the comparison of administrative cover-ups, not Freeh.
http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/21/the-questions-that-were-never-asked/
How quick he is to retain a lawyer. If only he had retained a statistician with that same gusto.
“[snip – over the top]”
True, though. A shame you don’t call out these smears for being waaaayyyyyy OTT.
Michael Jankowski says:
July 21, 2012 at 5:29 pm
How quick he is to retain a lawyer. If only he had retained a statistician with that same gusto.”
0——————-
+10
That rattling sound you hear is michael mann’s baby rattle trying to imitate the rattle of a snake in order to intimidate NRO. It looked like it would work too after he ran it through his algorithm. Someone put his pacifier back in and wind back up the baby mobile.
@ Michael J re
July 21, 2012 at 4:07 pm
You’ve completely misread the column. Freeh didn’t say what you are saying he said. Maybe he should sue you for defamation.
Mann’s lawyers letter to the NR
http://postimage.org/%5D%5Bimg%5Dhttp://s14.postimage.org/7yv69pk9t/599812_401767993212742_781065817_n.jpg
http://postimage.org/%5D%5Bimg%5Dhttp://s8.postimage.org/m9zsep2ol/531607_401768043212737_603000984_n.jpg
http://postimage.org/%5D%5Bimg%5Dhttp://s13.postimage.org/n2q0sgihz/205403_401768099879398_275428058_n.jpg
Scanned images posted by Mann to his public FB site.
With the ‘hockey stick’ Mann achieved the opposite of the Snowflake Effect.
h/t Typhoon, here are clickable links to the 3 pages of the letter of Mann’s attorney to National Review:
Mann’s attorney’s letter p.1
attorney letter p.2
attorney letter p.3
His attempt to suppress this is just Manna from heaven for sceptics….
(Pun intended)
“NOTE TO COMMENTERS AND MODERATORS: I’m going to have a low tolerance for any comments that excerpt parts of the article, as well as other sorts of over the top comments – please be on your best behavior or such comments will be snipped/deleted – Anthony”
LOL. I guess people can’t help themselves getting fired up when they see the bald-faced liar Mann in the media, using legal threats and intimidation which by now is par for the course.
So the WUWT takeaway is that no crime is committed if only a handful of people witness it? That is, had Mann just shut up about it, the calumnious National Review article would have just faded away on its own?
Er, no.
The NR isn’t some small, one-off blog full of vile; it’s a (once) respected, widely read magazine. But that’s almost beside the point; NR’s editors decided to publish a hatchet job they knew to be libelous. That’s illegal, and that’s actionable. I think Dr. Mann deserves more than just a retraction and an apology; I think he deserves monetary damages–and I hope he wins.
That would be full of *bile*. In political terms, you could be right about Mann having been wronged. In scientific terms, um, it doesn’t look so good. I’m with the NR.
JIm Pettit,
It’s a mystery to me how you arrived at your inference.
“So the WUWT takeaway is that no crime is committed if only a handful of people witness it? That is, had Mann just shut up about it, the calumnious National Review article would have just faded away on its own?”
Looking over the scan of the letter from Mann’s attorney to the publisher of National Review, it appears to me to be a bluff. All the references to “independent investigations” are those of academic review, not a legal investigation. Since Steyn’s primary accusation is that the academic reviews were a whitewash in the first place, I don’t see how bringing them up again is relevant.
I don’t know if the “discoverers” of Piltdown Man ever tried to sue those who proved it a forgery, but the similarity of the cases seems apparent. G. S. Miller’s comment that, “deliberate malice could hardly have been more successful than the hazards of deposition in so breaking the fossils as to give free scope to individual judgment in fitting the parts together,” sounds pretty “defamatory” to me.
I think there’s been enough information released on the creation of the “hockey stick” regarding the tacking on of the instrument record to the end of the proxy results to make a good leagal case for fraud. In addition, there’s the evidence that even noise generates a hockey stick when Mann’s statistical analysis is applied, to further make the case. The accusation comparing Mann to Sandusky was not even made by Steyn, but was a quote by another writer, and so not even attributable to Steyn.
At the bottom line, if Steyn wasn’t afraid of the Canadian government, he’s not going to be impressed by Mann’s threats.
The interesting thing about the ‘hockey stick’ is that it has become proof that global warming is a hoax and a scare tactic and that the AGW hypothesis is all about politics not science, right?
To say hide the decline refers to temperatures not tree is fatuous. The purpose of the hockey stick studies by Mann was to equate tree rings with temperature. The methods employed were statistically invalid as perform the same method on times series of noise produces a hockey.
But the hockey stick study is bogus on an even deeper level.
I will assume for a moment that the study is correct and global temperatures were stable for 1000 years until they began to rise shortly before CO2 concentrations began to rise significantly. And since then they have risen together for 80 years or so. But what makes the last 1000 years of stability the perfect climate set point? Even Mann, Phil Jones and Al Gore will agree that the climate has been getting colder and hotter for millions of years. Under much of the polar ice whose predicted melting so terrifies them there is evidence of trees and plants. The hockey stick graph is important to many people as an religious icon that underscores a very biblical theme. We were pure and without sin and then by burning fossil fuels we fell from grace! The people who hold this belief will scorn creationists, but the hockey stick is exactly as valid as creationism.
Still, it’s more about politics than religeon. The Left was not opposed to George Bush because their religeon drove them. Nor is the Left opposed to capitalism on religeous grounds any more than Sandusky was opposed to decency on religeous grounds.
theduke says: @ July 20, 2012 at 9:26 pm
…This is the beginning of a huge public relations thrust by the AGW left of which Mann is a most prominent member. I’m wondering where his funding is coming from. I’m sure he didn’t make that much on his pathetic book. There are probably some high profile financiers in the background. This is going to be an expensive trial and it sure looks like a loser to me….
_______________________________
Real Science blog => Fenton Communications => George Soros, graduate of the London School of Economics => Fabian Society if I recall correctly.
Also do not forget Royal Dutch Shell Oil and BP funding of CRU. There is very big money behind CAGW
Skiphil says:
I stand corrected.
I still believe that the essence of what I wrote is correct, but I did misattribute the quote. Rand Simberg wrote the offensive piece and Mark Steyn propagated it further. Louis Freeh was not involved.
As has been pointed out, the comparison is between the university blind eye treatments for it’s top producing stars.
More on Penn State “ethics” from ABC news.
The NCAA had been awaiting the school’s response to four key questions pertaining to the sex abuse scandal, including issues involving institutional control and ethics. … Will anounce “unprecedented” penalties against both the Penn State University football team and the school. (from ABC news)
Perhaps Don Brown will be put in charge of theis “ethics” overhaul? I hope not.
No longer proud graduate of Penn State.
Re the letter from Mann’s attorney: no mention of malice, which will need to be proved in this case since Mann is a controversial figure. They contend that Steyn knew the charges of fraud were untrue, which is obviously not the case.
Also, they assume that Steyn was referring to academic fraud when he used the term “fraudulent.” I think the definition of “fraudulent” can be more general than that and to prove Steyn was being specific to academic fraud could be difficult. One might say, for example, that Mann is guilty of political fraud for encouraging the IPCC to unquestioningly accept his study as definitive when it clearly was not. In other words, the paper as conceived may not have been fraudulent in it’s creation, i.e. Mann and his co-authors may have believed it was scientifically valid, but once it’s obvious errors were understood, it was fraudulent to defend it and insist on its use as a factual basis for policy makers in nations around the world.
This is an action designed to thrust Mann and his lawyer into the spotlight as well as the issue of AGW and the scientific process that supposedly confirms the consensus view. The letter, dated July 20th, also demands that the offending blog post be removed. That has not happened, so I’m assuming NR is not going to be bullied into bowing to self-appointed censors with thin skin.
@Michael J says:
July 22, 2012 at 8:31 am
———————————–
Skiphil did not write: …. Louis Freeh did not write the passage quoted by Mark Steyn, that was the writer Rand Simberg.
This is becoming a habit with you.
Micheal Mann is a very busy guy on his FB page. He’s been deleting comments like crazy and I managed to get banned from posting there. Gee, what an Honor!
Thanks for the h/t. However, I think that the preamble
http://postimage.org/%5D%5Bimg%5D
should be removed from the 3 links if they are to work.
[NOTE- it always helps if you submit them correctly in the first place, your image tags had to be removed too. Just submit the links as they appear in your browser address bar, don’t add code. WP will auto-link for you ~mod]
Correction, the duke, those are indeed my words….
lurker passing through, laughing says:
July 20, 2012 at 11:46 pm
Consensus promoters like Mann are a laugh a minute.
The Daily Onion could do no better.
As someone pointed out above, possibly the best term for what Mann produces is “Mannure”.
___________________
You are defaming manure, it at least is quite useful as a major component of compost. (but I like the connection any way)
J. Philip Peterson says:
July 20, 2012 at 11:55 pm
….. You removed some important posts.
[Well since we have no idea what the missing post might have been, nor where it is now or where it might have been moved in the in the past, I’d recommend re-writing it rather than asking numerous times. It is not in spam nor deleted items. Robt]
____________________
Some of my posts disappeared too but it seems our internet connection is dropping a significant number of packets and that is the problem according to my husband. Will not be fixed for a couple more days.
the duke,
Yes, it stands out, that Mann’s lawyers are willing to immediately alter words/meanings, adding “academic”, straight out of the blue. They are attempting to make it out as not an opinion, by giving it the additional word. It now has connotation of having being a non-subjective remark, thrusting it into objective status , hence requiring measurable evidences.
That’s their untruthful and weak attempt right out of the gate.
Fred says:
July 21, 2012 at 4:49 am
“Just remember, while your pursuing this one, they’re out spending their time doing things like passing carbon taxes.”
Who in the U.S. is talking carbon taxes? Not Obama and not anyone else of substance.
_____________________________________
From the point of view of the consumer/wage earner the EPA shutting down all Coal fired Electric plants with no hope of replacement is a major “Tax” it will cause your electric bill to go from ~ $100/month to perhaps ~$1000/month. On top of that every single US business will have to pass on that tenfold increase to consumers. Thus the likelihood of businesses moving to China, Mexico, Brazil, India or just closing become very great. Essentially Obama and the US EPA just wiped out the USA as an economically viable country. Meanwhile we ship our coal and technology to China whether we want to or not.
SEE:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/28/new-epa-rule-will-block-all-new-coal-electric-generation/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/28/the-epa-wrecking-ball/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/31/the-epas-mercurial-madness/
Pull down the Mann statue in the minds of the biased media.
@Gail Combs says:
July 22, 2012 at 8:20 am
———————————-
Of course you mean RealClimate and not “Real Science,” but point taken. They will not be wanting for money, but I don’t think NR or Steyn will be either.
NR hasn’t taken the offending blog post down, which means they are saying, in effect, “Your move, Dr. Mann.”
@Skiphil says:
July 22, 2012 at 9:24 am
———————————
Noted. My mistake.
Jim Pettit says:
July 22, 2012 at 4:59 am
NR’s editors decided to publish a hatchet job they knew to be libelous. That’s illegal, and that’s actionable.
How is it libelous? What is untrue about Steyn’s article?
I think Dr. Mann deserves more than just a retraction and an apology; I think he deserves monetary damages–and I hope he wins.
I think you’re in for a disappointment. If it goes to court, Mikey’s going to get the damage he deserves, but it sure won’t be monetary…
thisisnotgoodtogo says:
July 22, 2012 at 9:39 am: “It now has connotation of having being a non-subjective remark, thrusting it into objective status , hence requiring measurable evidences.”
——————————————
Exactly. I’m no expert on defamation law, but this appears to be very weak tea. There will be a paucity of “measurable evidences” in Mann’s legal arguments. I’m thinking they are looking at it as a fund-raising tool for all manner of AGW nonsense. They can easily raise copious amounts of money for a defense fund. These types of cases have the potential to take on a life of their own. Mann appears to be welcoming that. Since his reputation as a scientist is tarnished in most respectable establishments, he might as well use his modest notoriety (or infamy depending on how you look at it) to become an A-list celebrity with all the benefits that begets.
I like Mark Steyns writing, he speaks his mind and sometimes gets himself into trouble. He is a great defender of free speech, especially in Canada where free speech is not as free as it is in the USA. But I think he overdid it with this short article in the National Review. We’ll see how this progresses.
End the football program at PSU along with the tainted climate research program.
Isn’t the “hockey stick” an actual fraud though? Wasn’t the instrumental record tacked onto the proxy results because they took a big dip at the end of the series while the instruments showed the rise? isn’t that the meaning of “hide the decline”? I write under possibility of correction, of course.
Perhaps in the Ivory Tower such things are just overlooked and not spoken of again; however, if true, it is academic fraud, and should be called out just as Piltdown Man was.
I find it hard to believe that Steyn didn’t think long and deeply about what he was writing in that post, given the inflammable nature of the case and the original article’s insinuation. I’d bet that legal at NR had a long talk with Steyn before that went out onto the blog, and that the ducks are already in a row.
Time will tell.
Another apologist for Mann (AGU):
Climate Expert Dr. Michael Mann Plans Libel Suit Against The National Review
http://blogs.agu.org/wildwildscience/2012/07/22/slandering-someone-because-of-their-scientific-findings-can-be-very-costly/
OK S,
Your link to Michael Mann’s apologist shows that they do not understand the issue: Mann’s original hokey stick chart was thoroughly falsified by McIntyre & McKittrick. McIntyre also destroyed Mann08, in which the devious Michael Mann used a known corrupted proxy [Tiljander] to construct yet another fake hockey stick chart. Mann has much ‘splainin’ to do.
JoNova wrote an article covering the basics of Mann’s original deception here.
IMHO, the National Review should give Mann’s lawyers the same reply that was given in the case of Arkell v Pressdram.
ThinkingScientist says:
July 21, 2012 at 9:42 am
“How can an academic like Dr Michael Mann afford to have what would appear to amount to continual legal representation? This is not the first time that he has said his legal people are dealing with it. Who pays for his lawyers?”
Good question. From his attorney’s CV:
He represented G. Gordon Liddy in his 10-year lawsuit against John W. Dean and Ida Maxie Wells arising from Liddy’s endorsement of a revisionist theory of Watergate.
Ten years of billing clients, in one case! Someone has very deep pockets, because Michael Mann would never write an open-ended check over such a weak case. What do lawyers cost these days? $400 an hour and up?
I smell a Grantham or a Soros, protecting their pseudo-science narrative. It takes big bucks to keep the lie going.
So if Jo Nova’s blog called the Hockey Stick “a fraud,” “how brazen a fraud,” and “an audacious fraud,” in 2009, how come Mann is just now so upset as to threaten a lawsuit for what didn’t seem defamatory three years ago?
JamesS
To take a wild guess, it is convenient for this Soros-puppet of RealClimate and Fenton Communications to take on a leading US conservative publication and make it a politicized issue. He and his allies and rouse the troops, raise funds, maybe not even do anything much on the legal front, who knows? But it is very useful to “the cause” whereas going after a blogger in Oz would not be so exciting to him and his minions.
Skiphil: yes, and it also serves to warn other publications that they could face similar proceedings. He’s trying to intimidate everyone who might say such things. Witness Anthony’s nervousness at the beginning of this thread.
He keeps making the same mistake. His threatening to sue over the ‘Hide The Decline’ video, totally backfired.
The last time Mark Steyn was sued, it led to the destruction of the entire Canadian Human Rights Council charade.
No such luck:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-23/penn-state-is-fined-60-million-avoids-football-death-penalty-.html
klem says:
July 22, 2012 at 11:34 am
But I think he overdid it with this short article in the National Review.
Nah, he didn’t even break a sweat writing it — and he took the proper tone, stating that he disagreed with Simberg’s metaphor while agreeing with his point.
theduke</b? says:
July 22, 2012 at 11:08 pm
Skiphil: yes, and it also serves to warn other publications that they could face similar proceedings.
One good counter to that would be keeping a spotlight on the less-than-stellar results — for him — of Mann’s litigations thus far.
He’s trying to intimidate everyone who might say such things. Witness Anthony’s nervousness at the beginning of this thread.
Indeed. I am fearful that a fit of trembling may o’erwhelm him as he’s schlepping those panels up the ladder!
For some reason it seems Canucks have often gotten under Mikey’s skin ?
hmmm Steve McIntyre, Tim Ball, Mark Steyn….. maybe Mikie Mann feels like he’s at war with Canada … ?? Hope he doesn’t try to get the US govt involved….
Smokey says: @ July 22, 2012 at 6:21 pm
….Ten years of billing clients, in one case! Someone has very deep pockets, because Michael Mann would never write an open-ended check over such a weak case. What do lawyers cost these days? $400 an hour and up?
_____________________________
The $300 to $400/hour is for a run of the mill lawyer and they charge by ten minute increments, so yes some one has VERY DEEP pockets.
Most lawyers would look at this and tell you not to waste your money.
elmer says:
July 23, 2012 at 7:18 am
He keeps making the same mistake. His threatening to sue over the ‘Hide The Decline’ video, totally backfired.
___________________________
Yes it did and I love that video. Thank you elmer.
Nearly 270 comments is a statement in and of itself.
The most disheartening (for me) of the actions of Michael Mann and is closely associated colleagues is that everything they do seems to be done for their own recognition and not for the benefit of the entire population of the earth.
Regardless of whatever the degree of AGW may be scientists with integrity would have sought out the expertise of the likes of Steve McIntyre. Their actions to me make them seem small and child like. I have seen people of very small acclaim in life whose character would stand tall above ‘the team’.
One sad outcome is that the general public may eventually be much less willing to believe the scientific community.
Bishop Hill tweets a link to one of Michael Mann’s more vicious and dishonest Climategate emails, where he is nastily attacking Steve McIntyre for exposing his ineptitude (don’t miss the email at link):
Bishop Hill @aDissentient
@robinince Mind you, Mann does a pretty mean ad-hom attack himself. http://www.di2.nu/foia/1104855751.txt …
The question of who pays for Michael Mann’s lawyers is a good one and makes me wonder if there is something else going on….like maybe Mann is actually hurting for cash. The lawyer’s letter is obviously a bluff and is not going anywhere. However, taking this step might get Mann a bunch of airtime and facetime and the publicity might actually be beneficial to him i.e. What I’m saying is that all this is a perverted scheme to sells some books. National Review will call the bluff, Mann has no intention to actually pursue any of this further anyway and so the legal part of this dies. In the meantime, for a few thousand dollars, he might have accomplished a goal of convincing some people to wander into a bookstore.
Thisisnotgoodtogo: Mann pursues actions against Canadians because plaintiffs have it easier there than in the US. Discovery here would kill him.
Mark
V Martin
I seriously doubt that Mann pays anything toward legal fees. The Real Climate website was founded by Soros-backed Fenton Communications, lurking in the background while climate scientists act as the public face. It is highly likely that some Soros entity or affiliate simply writes checks for anything Mann wants/needs in the legal dept, so long as they still consider him useful.
Data being Mannipulated? No don’t say it isn’t so.
V.Martin: Who pays? Let me surmise: The Nature Conservancy. Some Sierra Club agency. Moore, Hewlett, Packard, Pugh, Tides etc. Pity we can’t FOI his personal tax returns.
1. This article is not “about me” as Mann says, the topic is the endemic coverups at Penn State. This is a serious problem that needs exposure. By complaining about how he is being represented, Mann is in a round about way trying to protect himself.
2. There is nothing at all incorrect in the National Review article: note, no lines quoted anywhere. They are all accurate and humorous too. Show me a bad line.
3. The Corner is a how-to on writing a brief, humorous anecdote.
4. So please, quote me something from this very brief humorous brief: Where is there any false statement? No false statement means no defamation. Period.
“h/t Typhoon, here are clickable links to the 3 pages of the letter of Mann’s attorney to National Review:”
So they’ve gone for the suggestion of professional misconduct, probably because it is assumed to be actionable, and left the unfortunate parallel as sauce for calculating damages. On re-reading the Steyn article I’d doubt that a US case will ever be filed. The purpose of the Sullivan decision is so that ones Political opponents can be subjected to wild hyperbole and blatantly untrue metaphors. You can accuse your congressman of being a bigger barbarian than Attila the hun, a bigger thief than John Dillinger, dumber than Norm Coleman, and more disingenuous than Noam Chomsky. Without providing evidence of Rape and Pillage in Central Europe; video of them going over the pavement tooled up and mob-handed; prime time TV coverage of them being intellectually bitch-slapped by our own political clown George Galloway; our documenting a whole career devoted to ignoring Stalin’s massacres. To get any kind of a result Libel Tourism will have to be resorted to.
So
Most Likely: After a few bouts of lawyerly dick measuring, Nothing Happens. Mann continues to be an obnoxious twerp.
Slim to Moderate: Case is moved to a foreign jurisdiction, Mann continues to be an obnoxious twerp
Slim : A US Writ is filed and the case is killed by the Judge during pre-trial phase. Mann continues to be an obnoxious twerp
Slight A US case proceeds to trial, defendants enter truth and fair comment defenses, we break out the beer and popcorn, Mann continues to be an obnoxious twerp.
Michael Mann
Director of Earth System Science
Pennsylvania State University.
[open letter]
Communicating climate science to the general public can be difficult. Perhaps you are just misunderstood by all those who have branded you and your hockey stick “fraudulent”. Let’s use an analogy.
It’s 1998. Your chairman of a pension fund. A stockbroker tries to sell you some new-fangled derivatives. Let’s call them climate futures. He tells you that the government’s stimulus package is driving this segment of the market ever higher. To convince you, he shows you a graph that looks like a hockey stick, and points out that for a long time this market was relatively flat (the handle), but after the stimulus kicked in it shot up (the blade).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hockey_stick_chart_ipcc_large.jpg
He predicts sustained long term growth based on complex computer models devised by Nobel laureate economists. You point out that the hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management, run by two other Nobel laureates, Myron Scholes and Robert C. Merton, which used complex computer models based on the algorithm for which they won their prize, has just crashed spectacularly, losing $4.6 billion in less than four months.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management
He tells you this is different.
He tells you to invest all your money and all the pensioners’ money in this market. Sell the house, the college fund, mortgage your kids’ future, bet everything. You’re still a bit skeptical but you take his advice.
Fourteen years later, the value of your investment has essentially flatlined. In fact, you point out to the stockbroker that it is slightly lower than the peak value on his graph.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/global-temperature/
He points out, that the endpoint of his graph was the climax of a particularly big bubble. That this market regularly experiences these bubbles. The other stockbrokers call them El Ninos. He chides you for comparing the value of this market now to the value it had at the height of an El Nino. Everybody knows the market crashes after an El Nino.
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/eln/rcnt.rxml/
You point out that the value of your investment is lower than the lowest of his projections based on the worst market conditions. He assures you that the last fourteen years are just a temporary halt in a long term upward trend.
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/pdf/WG1_TAR-FRONT.pdf [page 14]
The handle and blade of the stockbroker’s hockey stick are each based on two different sets of data. You find out that data from other sources indicate that this market had been higher in the past without any stimulus and was in general more volatile than you had been led to believe.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
If the same data set had been used throughout there would have no blade to the stockbroker’s hockey stick in fact the graph would have declined at the end. This demolishes the stockbroker’s claim that his graph shows the effect of the government stimulus. Emails from your stockbroker then come to light showing the stockbroker conspiring to “hide the decline” and much else besides.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?search=hide+the+decline&word=y
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?search=medieval
If you’re not a fraud Mr. Mann then neither is this stockbroker.
Note:
Scholes and Merton’s hedge fund bet on arbitrage deals called “convergence trades”. In the Climategate emails, the difference between late 20th century thermometer records and tree-ring proxies is usually referred to as the “divergence”.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?search=divergence&word=y
Michael Mann
Director of Earth System Science
Pennsylvania State University.
[open letter]
Communicating climate science to the general public can be difficult. Perhaps you are just misunderstood by all those who have branded you and your hockey stick “fraudulent”. Let’s use an analogy.
It’s 1998. Your chairman of a pension fund. A stockbroker tries to sell you some new fangled derivatives. Let’s call them climate futures. He tells you that the government’s stimulus package is driving this segment of the market ever higher. To convince you, he shows you a graph that looks like a hockey stick, and points out that for a long time this market was relatively flat (the handle), but after the stimulus kicked in it shot up (the blade).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hockey_stick_chart_ipcc_large.jpg
He predicts sustained long term growth based on complex computer models devised by Nobel laureate economists. You point out that the hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management, run by two other Nobel laureates, Myron Scholes and Robert C. Merton, which used complex computer models based on the algorithm for which they won their prize, has just crashed spectacularly, losing $4.6 billion in less than four months.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management
He tells you this is different.
He tells you to invest all your money and all the pensioners’ money in this market. Sell the house, the college fund, mortgage your kids’ future, bet everything. You’re still a bit skeptical but you take his advice.
Fourteen years later, the value of your investment has essentially flatlined. In fact, you point out to the stockbroker that it is slightly lower than the peak value on his graph.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/global-temperature/
He points out, that the endpoint of his graph was the climax of a particularly big bubble. That this market regularly experiences these bubbles. The other stockbrokers call them El Ninos. He chides you for comparing the value of this market now to the value it had at the height of an El Nino. Everybody knows the market crashes after an El Nino.
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/eln/rcnt.rxml/
You point out that the value of your investment is lower than the lowest of his projections based on the worst market conditions. He assures you that the last fourteen years are just a temporary halt in a long term upward trend.
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/pdf/WG1_TAR-FRONT.pdf [page 14]
The handle and blade of the stockbroker’s hockey stick are each based on two different sets of data. You find out that data from other sources indicate that this market had been higher in the past without any stimulus and was in general more volatile than you had been led to believe.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
If the same data set had been used throughout there would have no blade to the stockbroker’s hockey stick in fact the graph would have declined at the end. This demolishes the stockbroker’s claim that his graph shows the effect of the government stimulus. Emails from your stockbroker then come to light showing the stockbroker conspiring to “hide the decline” and much else besides.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?search=hide+the+decline&word=y
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?search=medieval
If you’re not a fraud Mr. Mann then neither is this stockbroker.
Note:
Scholes and Merton’s hedge fund bet on arbitrage deals called “convergence trades”. In the Climategate emails, the difference between late 20th century thermometer records and tree-ring proxies is usually referred to as the “divergence”.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?search=divergence&word=y
For those who were wondering where the money came from
The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund
http://climatesciencedefensefund.org/
Mann needs to grow a pair and get over it. Why does he even bother to take himself seriously when no one else does?
Smokey says: @ July 22, 2012 at 6:21 pm
….Ten years of billing clients, in one case! Someone has very deep pockets, because Michael Mann would never write an open-ended check over such a weak case. What do lawyers cost these days? $400 an hour and up?
_____________________________
The $300 to $400/hour is for a run of the mill lawyer and they charge by ten minute increments, so yes some one has VERY DEEP pockets.
Most lawyers would look at this and tell you not to waste your money.
**************************************************************
If you skim through last month’s instapundit (Glen Reynolds) blog, you will find several references to the way the law market has collapsed, with many law-school graduates unable to find jobs. (There is even, I believe, references to these graduates suing the law schools for misrepresenting the state of the legal market to potential students, although that particular set of posts may have been in the month before.) Hence it is conceivable that Mann’s lawyers are charging little or nothing, being faced with the choice of no work at all or working on spec.
I post on Dr. Mann’s wall, My comment was topical, I was respectfull, not sarcastic or snarky, and he or one of his people (See I could have said toadies instead of people but I didn’t) deleted my comment and then they blocked me! Now I’m tying to figure out if I shopuld feel insulted or complimented.
It’s depressingly hilarious that one of the loudest-mouthed hitmen “linking” Prof. Mann to “pedophiles” is a former school teacher whose career ended in scandal almost a decade ago following his arrest and trial for sending dozens of obscene text messages to a 16-y-o school girl. Former high school art teacher John O’Sullivan was acquitted after his step-daughter testified she had sent the obscene messages — testimony that the judge said he did not find entirely credible. O’Sullivan then published an autobiographical novel (titled “Vanilla Girl”) in which he defends what he called “kiddie fiddling” — I kid you not.*
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/SIR+CLEARED+OF+SEX+TXTS.-a0113713467
Two days ago, John O’Sullivan, the leader of a group of global warming denier wackos called the Sky Dragon Slayers (which includes Tim Ball), published an even more rabid diatribe than Steyn’s in which he claims Prof. Mann is “linked to” the pedophile Sandusky and that he has “lawyered Up after Penn State Child Sex Link.” That’s followed by his usual libelous accusations of “scientific misconduct,” “criminal fraud, etc,”
http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/07/21/breaking-climate-scientist-michael-mann-lawyers-up-after-penn-state-child-sex-link/
O’Sullivan claims to be legal scholar and a lawyer with a law degree from University of Surrey and that he has “successfully litigated for 13 years in New York and Federal 2nd District courts.” He claims to be a science writer with major articles published around the world including in National Review and Forbes magazines. He also claimed to be employed as a legal consultant by Pearlman Lindholm, the law firm defending Tim Ball in the matter of Mann vs. Ball, et al. before the Supreme Court of British Columbia. None of that is true. He is an utterly shameless humbug. In 2010, he purchased his “law degree” from the online diploma mill “Hill University” that sells any degree in any field with a “promised delivery in just 14 days!”
But this time, Mr. O’Sullivan may have stuck his big foot so deeply into his mouth, it may emerge out his backside and kick him in the butt. For example, he says in the article published Saturday that the “case isn’t going well for Mann because he appears to be stalling about complying with a court motion to hand over his hidden ‘dirty laundry’ metadata to [the Supreme Court of British Columbia]… If Mann persists in failing to comply the court may find him in contempt and dismiss his case and award substantial damages in favor of Ball.”
Once again, this defender of “kiddie-fiddlers” is just making it up. The Supreme Court of BC has issued no such order. It will be interesting to see what Prof. Mann’s attorneys will do with this.
*– The following quotes are from O’Sullivan’s self-published autobiographical novel “Vanilla Girl,” which he describes as a “fact-based crime story of a teacher’s struggle to control his erotic obsession with a schoolgirl”:
“I tell my online friends that the age of consent varies widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The median seems to range from fourteen to sixteen years, but globally ages can range anything from nine to twenty-one. It sickens me that people, so-called civilized, intelligent people can’t see it. Their clinical, sanitized attitudes toward the appropriate age of consent have drifted upwards in modern times-Ignorant people rally against me-against us-us free thinkers.”
“Too many fools still believe and need to believe that children are ‘innocent’ and ‘pure’, that is, asexual, untainted by sexual thoughts, feelings or urges. But, you see, Leo, you and me know this is not true even of very young children, and it is certainly not true of children much past the age of ten or eleven.”
“By looking at the female waist to hip ratio, you know when a female is of the right age for reproduction. At that time, and if the mind is mature enough you can argue that you are dealing with a woman and not a child. If nature says she a woman then she is a woman-it’s not arbitrary like the age of consent laws that vary so wildly throughout the world from country to country, jurisdiction to jurisdiction.”
http://cupboard55vanillagirl.blogspot.com/
As a lawyer friend likes to say: “Discovery can be a bitch, my friend.”
Darrylb says:
July 23, 2012 at 6:22 pm
…. One sad outcome is that the general public may eventually be much less willing to believe the scientific community.
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It is already happening. You even have a website called Retraction Watch and Rasmussen poll: 69% Say It’s Likely Scientists Have Falsified Global Warming Research
I have a simple solution to one of the Penn State problems: Put Michael Mann in charge of the football program! Then he wouldn’t have the time to fabricate any more hockey sticks. But Mann would probably not consider it sporting to use the actual scores of football games.
What would he use as proxies? Chicken entrails?
jabali316 – better yet, put him on a football team where he can really get – oh, sorry, self-snip.
OpenMarket.org has now edited the original article and removed the two offensive sentences comparing Mr. Mann’s actions to those of Mr. Sandusky.
It’s worth noting that THAT’S ALL THEY REMOVED. The rest of their opinion and statements of fact, remain.
I think that’s telling since they most likely saw the storm coming or got a letter but they only removed the pedophile related opinion. (which, personally, I thought were not that egregious as they did not make a direct equivalency nor did they accuse Mr. Mann of similar acts that Mr. Sandusky committed.)
As noted elsewhere Mr. Mann seems to have taken actions which bring/brought discredit to Science and the research to which he was dedicated. If I were him, it might have been best to keep a low profile given the now proven lack of University probity and oversight of it’s programs.
You should consider what the Butts/Bryant Effect did to the Saturday Evening Post. Losing a libel suit to Wally Butts put an end to that famous mag. Accusations of fixing games are similar to accusations of fixing climate science. Conflating Mann with Sandusky just raises the damage amount beyond infinity.
jakee308 says: @ July 27, 2012 at 6:41 pm
………..As noted elsewhere Mr. Mann seems to have taken actions which bring/brought discredit to Science and the research to which he was dedicated. If I were him, it might have been best to keep a low profile given the now proven lack of University probity and oversight of it’s programs.
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I am sure at this point Penn State wishes he would shut up and quit bring attention to their less than stellar honesty. If any of the three lawsuits actually manage “discover” or FOIA is kind to us and releases another cash of goodies with lots of Mikey M. e-mails, Penn State is going to take another big hit to their reputation.
If I was a parent I sure as heck would be looking into another school for this fall.