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
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…