Story submitted by Rob Ricket
Mann plays the victim in article from “The Scientist”
Opinion: Life as a Target
Attacks on my work aimed at undermining climate change science have turned me into a public figure. I have come to embrace that role.
By Michael E. Mann| March 27, 2013
As a climate scientist, I have seen my integrity perniciously attacked. Politicians have demanded I be fired from my job because of my work demonstrating the reality and threat of human-caused climate change. I’ve been subjected to congressional investigations by congressman in the pay of the fossil fuel industry and was the target of what The Washington Post referred to as a “witch hunt” by Virginia’s reactionary Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. I have even received a number of anonymous death threats.
My plight is dramatic, but unfortunately, it is not unique; climate scientists are regularly the subject of such attacks.
This cynicism is part of a destructive public-relations campaign being waged by fossil fuel companies, front groups, and individuals aligned with them in an effort to discredit the science linking the burning of fossil fuels with potentially dangerous climate change.
My work first appeared on the world stage in the late 1990s with the publication of a series of articles estimating past temperature trends. Using information gathered from records in nature, like tree rings, corals, and ice cores, my two coauthors and I had pieced together variations in the Earth’s temperature over the past 1,000 years. What we found was that the recent warming, which coincides with the burning of fossil fuels during the Industrial Revolution, is an unprecedented aberration in this period of documented temperature changes, and recent work published in the journal Science suggests that the recent warming trend has no counterpart for at least the past 11,000 years, and likely longer. In a graph featured in our manuscript, the last century sticks out like the blade of an upturned hockey stick.
Source:
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34853/title/Opinion–Life-as-a-Target/
========================================================
This header from Dr. Mann has some important legal value:
Attacks on my work aimed at undermining climate change science have turned me into a public figure. I have come to embrace that role.
A public figure has a higher burden of proof in defamation cases, such as the one where Dr. Mann is suing Dr. Tim Ball and Mark Steyn at The National Review. For example:
According to the public figure doctrine, prominent public persons must prove actual malice on the part of the news media in order to prevail in a libel lawsuit. Actual malice is the knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard of whether a statement is true or false. The public figure doctrine makes it possible for publishers to provide information on public issues to the debating public, undeterred by the threat of liability.
Source: http://definitions.uslegal.com/p/public-figure-doctrine/
Further, Dr. Mann is going to have to prove that the statements by Tim Ball and NRO weren’t parody or satire:
Whether parodies should be potentially actionable as defamation depends on whether the statement is deemed factual and thus potentially actionable, or is a matter of protected opinion and not actionable.
Although plagued by confusion and lack of consensus, under the prevailing trends of constitutional law and/or state substantive defamation law principles, four core bases have emerged for classifying a statement as protected opinion:
(a) it did “not contain a provably false factual connotation;”
(b) it “cannot ‘reasonably [be] interpreted as stating actual facts;’”
(c) it consists merely of “rhetorical hyperbole, a vigorous epithet,” or “imaginative expression;”
(d) it does not state or imply undisclosed, unassumed, or unknown defamatory facts.
Source: http://epubs.utah.edu/index.php/ulr/article/viewFile/74/66
I think with his public figure admission, combined with the recognized first amendment right to satire and parody of public figures, he just took his two legal cases out back and shot them dead.
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,,, have mouth, will comment
… have ego, MUST comment
… have brains .. . have brains .. . hello … hello brains?
All a fanatic ever needs is time to expose themselves. Add in a martyr-messianic complex, and it’s inevitible.
Pointman
If this mann was left in a police interviewing room alone, he would rat himself out.
Seems the main attraction is attention, any attention, so the mann just lacked the nerve to be an actor or a politician.
He is right though, his career of undermining climate science has made a public figure of him.
Typo….I tweeted to M. Mamm for the first time ever.
Darren Potter says:
March 27, 2013 at 11:25 am
“What we found was that the recent warming, which coincides with the burning of fossil fuels during the Industrial Revolution, is an unprecedented aberration in this period of documented temperature changes …”
Multiple Misleading statements by the Mann.
1) Coincidence is not science. Coincidence is not cause. Coincidence happens.
2) Recent temperatures are not warming. Selective charting of data doesn’t count.
3) No evidence of unprecented aberration.
4) Documenting temperature changes by way of bias and lemon picking is creation, not finding.
***********************************************************************************************************************
The Industrial Revolution began in Britain around 1760, about a century before the end of the Little Ice Age, in no small part because coal replaced wood as fuel, in the absence of previous forests.
That’s quite a time lag for its effects to show up. Isn’t the 280 ppm “pre-industrial” concentration of CO2 measured from c. 1850?
Admittedly, most of the world wasn’t industrialized that early, but copious amounts of fossil fuel were burned in dark, Satanic mills & to heat homes during the century after 1760, enough to make parts of England’s formerly green & pleasant land sootier than the most polluted city in China today.
Direct measurements of CO2 in 19th century Europe found “industrial” levels of CO2, ie in the 400s ppm of dry air, higher than Mauna Loa readings now (taken downwind from continuously erupting volcanism).
You’ve got to feel sorry for the chap. He’s lost all credibility as a scientist. He’s useless as any kind of respected figure. The only way he has left to make a way in the world is as a clown.
Mrs. Do-as-you-would-be-done-by is a character in “The Water Babies”.
If he feels the way he says he feels, maybe he should stop being nasty about other people, start being polite and look at the latest data.
A comparative analysis:
Global warming, regardless of the cause, is beneficial to mankind and would, under normal circumstances, give us a fuller, more beneficial, extended life.
Yet global warming has been distorted to the point that life has become more difficult and shorter for the majority of earth’s human inhabitants.
Only evil people–those who profit from their abuse of power–do such a thing.
Open mouth, insert foot, use gold-plated Nobel-brand shoehorn (“participation award” from IPCC) to move the previous foot around as needed…
A bit off the topic of Mann as a public figure, but his description of his “science” reveals something that seems to be generally un-remarked.
The “science” that brought him fame was NOT actually science. All he did was selectively compile other people’s observations, string them together chronologically, manipulate them with secret computer formulas, draw a graph, and then speculate wildly about the meaning of his graph.
One of the earliest lessons taught in real science is “Correlation does NOT prove causation.”
Mann did NOT perform experiments that provided evidence that man-made CO2 causes temperatures to rise. That would be actual science.
Mann’s “science” would appear to be simple conjecture and manipulation, combined with faulty logic. Or DOES corrleation actually prove causation?
Bob Koss, Mann’s a “climate scientist” not an English professor. He has enough trouble trying to do “climate science” correctly.
I’ve just been hit by a stroke of genius. Now, it’s not my genius, mind you. I’ve been hit by it. It’s from my sister. My older sister.
So, we’re riding along and she tells me she really loves the “F” word. We all know what that four letter word is. But this is a family site so I can’t use the full word. Now I’m part of her family (reluctantly I must add) but different rules apply so she can use the full word that she expresses love for. Then, ok, ready for this: this approaching 70 year old grandmother immediately proceeds to tell me, virtually in the same breath, that she doesn’t swear.
This really happened. Recently. Just about as I’m typing this out. She inquires of me what I’m typing. I show her. She repeats herself, “Well, I don’t think saying F… Is swearing.” Incredible.
Now, I ask you. Has Michael Mann’s spirit departed his body (an act that might be mutually agreeable to both parties) and proceeded to inhabit my sister’s body (an act that is doubtlessly disagreeable to her; oh, and definitely to me). Because that is the only way I can describe the other worldly ludicrous nonsense I’ve just been subjected to.
Mike Haseler says:
March 27, 2013 at 11:55 am
You’ve got to feel sorry for the chap. He’s lost all credibility as a scientist. He’s useless as any kind of respected figure. The only way he has left to make a way in the world is as a clown.
————————————————————————————————————–
No I don’t. We’re currently dealing with a very sad (and, I’m afraid, rather shameful) matter concerning our daughter keeping dogs that have savaged an 80 year old’s pet – despite repeated warnings from us that she wasn’t responsible with them.
She also has an uncanny knack for playing the victim. Her attitude, even after this, is much like Mr Manns and can be summed up in 2 sentences:
“It wasn’t my fault. Everyone’s out to get me”.
The difference with Mann is that he’s playing with the wellbeing of millions of people worldwide, not just one old man’s pet terrier in a corner of Wales.
So no, no sympathy or sorrow for the narcisists of this world!
“in the pay of”
“witch hunt”
“reactionary”
“destructive”
I love objective science. Is that redundant?
I am not clear if Manns claims of victimhood end in 2005, or if he has updated them to include recent developments
jeff 5778 says:
March 27, 2013 at 12:18 pm
Not in Mann’s world. His “science” is devoid of objectivity.
But the real question is:
Why was this rubbish published in The Scientist?
Mr. Mann isn’t even a smart Mann. He didn’t just take his lawsuits out back to shoot them, he shot himself in the foot at the same time. He really does need a job. “Do you want fries with that” or janitorial services come to my mind.
Although the science behind AGW is greatly flawed due to their adherence to an orthodoxy instead of a scientific method, Mann demonstrates you do not need to be intelligent to be a acolyte. Most people are not lawyers, but most people at least know that when you have a case pending, you do not open your mouth to support the opposition. This simple rule seems to be beyond the capacity of Mann to grasp. Either that or his narcissism is bigger than his brain.
Steven Mosher says:
March 27, 2013 at 11:44 am
Send this to Dr. Loo.
Mann is exhibiting conspiratorial ideation.
————————————————————————————————————————
But I too revel in “conspiratorial ideation”. Not only is it fun and entertaining but such practices can occasionally bring forth a good idea or two. The MannOligist not only has fun with it but makes big bucks (books/lectures/grants etc.). Reminds me a bit of Coulter who really knows how to work up the masses for the money. So no incentive to quit there.
well…….I guess you play to your crowd
All he had to do was show the data. That’s what scientists do. So, he’s a victim now for not doing what scientists do? That just makes him a bad scientist, doesn’t it?
The Tim Ball action is in the British Columbia supreme court. Not subject to US law.
“More fool me” says Dr, Mann.
With every tweet, interview, column, or blog, he increases his entertainment quotient and his value to skeptics – this is the poster boy for obective climate science? Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Foot, meet bullet!
Mann has a hearing in the NRO case coming up in early April. I suspect he is planning to withdraw from the case prior to the hearing and is trying to create a narrative as to why he withdrew. He doesn’t want the headline to be “Mann withdraws from lawsuit amid claims that he lied about Nobel Prize”.