UPDATE: Uh oh, looks like Mann will have to sue Investors Business Daily too, because they say that: It’s been the greatest fraud of all time, and Michael Mann has been at the heart of it.
UPDATE2: Climate Depot has an interesting editorial here
The bait. Popcorn futures just exploded.
From Michael E. Mann’s Facebook page:
People have been asking for my reaction to the recent response by the National Review. Here is a statement from my lawyer John B. Williams of Cozen O’Connor:
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The response of the National Review is telling with respect to the issues it did not address. It did not address, or even acknowledge, the fact that Dr. Mann’s research has been extensively reviewed by a number of independent parties, including the National Science Foundation, with never a suggestion of any fraud or research misconduct. It did not address, or even acknowledge, the fact that Dr. Mann’s conclusions have been replicated by no fewer than twelve independent studies. It did not deny the fact that it was aware that Dr. Mann has been repeatedly exonerated of any fraudulent conduct. It did not deny the fact that it knew its allegations of fraud were false. Rather, the National Review’s defense seems to be that it did not really mean what it said last month when it accused Dr. Mann of fraud. Beyond this, the response is little more than an invective filled personal attack on Dr. Mann. And further, this attack is coupled with the transparent threat that the National Review intends to undertake burdensome and abusive litigation tactics should Dr. Mann have the temerity to attempt to defend himself in court.
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We intend to file a lawsuit.
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Read it on Dr. Mann’s Facebook page.
Go for it Mike, we all look forward to the enlightenment of discovery!
Tom Nelson: Do NOT miss this: Look who’s representing Michael Mann
He successfully defended R.J. Reynolds in the commercial speech case filed by the Federal Trade Commission challenging the cartoon character, Joe Camel.
I think Steyn just went to COSTCO with the NRO credit card to get the industrial strength size can of whupass he’ll be opening:
I do not know about other states, but in the state of Georgia, it is illegal to threaten a lawsuit and not follow through. Because the person threatened has to begin taking action to defend themselves in such a suit, it is reasonable that harm is done if they do not follow through. This will be fun.
Mark Steyn is clearly an opinion columnist. Michael Mann is clearly a public figure. He has published books and articles for pay and accepted speaking fees for public appearances. I fail to see any grounds for this suit to be entertained past a first hearing.
==It did not deny the fact that it knew its allegations of fraud were false.==
I guess Mann’s lawyer read a different response than I did. From NRO’s lawyers:
==The statement identifying Dr. Mann as “the man behind the fraudulent climate-change ‘hockey-stick’ graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus,” is both substantially true and classic rhetorical hyperbole that is protected under the First Amendment.==
”The statement … is … substantially true.”
Sounds like a denial that “it knew its allegations of fraud were false” to me.
geran says:
August 23, 2012 at 2:50 pm
In general, yes, but libel suits are relatively easy to dodge, particularly in the case of public figures and very particularly in the US.
Note that the reply still seems to concentrate on some accusation of criminal fraud, which was completely missing the point of NRO’s reply. They are focusing on what NRO “didn’t say,” but fail to recognize that all the NRO needs to do (legally) is demonstrate the few points they “did say,” i.e., Mann is a public figure and it will be all but impossible for anyone to prove they (NRO/Steyn) knowingly, with malice, made a false claim.
Mark
I live on an isolated (ferry plus 50 miles to conventional civilization) and rural Island, ten years TV free. We say that the fox kits playing outside our DR window are “better’n TV.” This court case might be even more entertaining! Where can I send a soupcon of filthy lucre, maybe enough to buy a silver bullet or a sharpened mistletoe stake?
Priceless – a big oil, big tobacco attorney!!!
At first I thought there’s no way ‘they’ are this stupid.Then I remembered a melted streetlight by a burnt dumpster and several other things. Popcorn and beer has been ordered !!!
So… Mann’s lawyer defended the intersts of a tobacco giant AND big oil? Too much!
Niklas says:
August 23, 2012 at 2:53 pm
Wow, it really seems like he’s going to pick up the hockey stick and fight…
In hockey-speak, that would make him a ‘goon’,
“Burdensome and abusive litigation tactics”? Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but discovery is not abusive, it is a legal requirement. That it is burdensome is not NRO’s problem, it is Mann’s problem since he is choosing to take this path. Had Mann not wanted to undertake the burden, he could easily have just stood down. The courts certainly don’t care about the burden placed on a plaintiff by his own actions.
Mark
And Mann goes for the own goal!!!
Anthony Harmon: “Where do we give donations for the defense?”
What he said.
Perhaps algor will help out mann, via some of his own tobacco money?
I would also like to see several people called to the witness stand- namely, everyone in the Climategagte emails, who spoke about mann`s shoddy work.
Won’t happen
Mark T.—–
Please to understand, we all want Mann forced to face the TRUTH. But in many States, the “rules of evidence” are corrupted. I am not an attorney, but I know several (honest ones, if you can believe). In our modern court system, TRUTH is not the goal. A verdict can easily be decided by “legalites”.
Pride comes before a fall and fraud comes before a guilty verdict.
I can’t believe that I am saying this, but I actually feel sorry for Mr. Mann.
Go get’m NRO/Steyn !!!!
Is there a public record of Mann answering the question: Did you commit fraud in publishing the hockey stick graph?
Is there a public record of Mann answering the question: Did you choose not to show the forty years of declining tree ring data, choose to replace that data with temperature records, and choose not to inform readers of your hockey stick article about the substitution.
There will be.
I find the idea of using the National Science Foundation as part of the defense strategy to be genuinely naive and ludicrous. Why yes, let’s make the ascendance of the behavioral sciences and social sciences over the natural sciences as a legitimate part of the discovery. Inconsistency of the model with factual reality doesn’t matter if the whole purpose of the model was to change public policy.
Seriously? The day after the head of Australia’s Green Party, Christine Milne said “we should have been using the social sciences a lot sooner than we have been to work out ways of talking to people’s values systems rather than to their intellectual capacity.”
Why Mann seems to have the same approach. Just use the monopoly over education to deal with denialism. Change the nature of the hard sciences and the curriculum and insist on a learner-centered classroom instead of a content centered one.
No wonder systems theory around Sustainability is taking over classrooms all over the world.
And now we get to get into NSF’s records. That would include everything Holdren has been up to on the Belmont Challenge and the Future Earth Alliance since Mann’s models are relevant.
Oh and Holdren’s involvement with the Open Government Action Plan that suggests it is not in the least. Just a means of gathering intrusive data on people and businesses who are not playing ball with things like Senge’s SoL Sustainability Consortium.
“It’s not that complicated: Has Doctor Mann’s work been shown to be fraudulent either in the eyes of his peers”
Well let’s not forget that climate science peer review gave us, in the case of Gergis et al, a paper that had the longevity of a piece of fillet steak, balanced on the edge of a piranha tank, set in a locked room full of rabid wolverines.
…how do you spell megaloMANNiac
Please get Lord Monckton involved! I’d donate to any cause that will employ a British accent and a Canadian accent taking down Mr. Mann once and for all. Popcorn just won’t do. This will take popcorn with real butter and a Super Big Gulp, for sure. A good touch will be a whoopie cushion on the witness stand when Mr. Mann sits.
Like I said, it’s very different in a libel case (which is civil, not criminal). “Rules of evidence” actually work in favor of the defendant in the US, intentionally so. Add to that the “public figure” determination, the primary reason you almost never see “high profile” libel cases, and the concept of libel basically goes away.
Mark
Smokey: “Explain why Mann hid this data. Because if he had used it, there would be no hockey stick. So he buried it in an ftp file labeled ‘censored’. As a taxpayer, that appears to me to be fraud.”
Isn’t Mann risking being questioned about (and possibly arrested) for fraudulent use of Government Funds, given there will be a lot of information brought to light Mann has kept hidden?
If I were any of the members of the GW SCAM Cabal, I would be telling Mann to sit-down and shut-up before you put all of us under a government (DOJ) microscope. Granted the current administration won’t do much, but administrations change, and the next one could be very anti Global Warming SCAM.
Shaperoo:
Winning is not what Mann needs. I think his lawyer is irresponsible if he hasn’t pointed this out, so I find the decision to sue rather odd.
Plenty of people win libel cases, only to be awarded $1 in damages.
Mann needs a win so large that others are intimidated. Any other result will be a failure.
As observed above, he risks a repeat of Oscar Wilde’s libel case. Started by Wilde, having been provoked by the Marquis of Queensbury, he was forced to discuss matters in court that he would much rather have kept hidden.