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/
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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.
From F. Ross on March 27, 2013 at 3:30 pm:
My opinion is your opinion of his opinion is insulting of tripe. Likely also of haggis, and hot dogs.
Really, his opinion is so much lower in value than something I’d consider eating, if it was in a form I could feed my animals I’d expect to be arrested for animal cruelty for the attempt.
Although going by the reports, much like the rennet in tripe, Prof Mann’s attitude to those even slightly critical also seems able to curdle fresh milk.
Jimbo says:
March 27, 2013 at 3:37 pm
…………….”Al Gore is not a climate scientist but a theologian and failed presidential candidate and successful hypocrite and brazen liar of the highest order.”
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I went back to the most trusted source on the web – Wikipedia – *sarc* to re-check Gore’s credentials…he also happens to be a failed theology AND failed law school student. He appears to have started several academic endeavors and completed none.
It’s amazing how much notoriety and money he has accumulated based solely on his father’s success that placed him right in the middle of the most powerful “old-boys” club – Washington politics. With his formal education, had Al Gore been the offspring of some middle-class Tennessee family, he’d be lucky to be parking cars at the Grand Old Opry.
in the eyes of the real scientific community – did Mann ever have any legal standing?? just sayin……
A Mann whose only claim to fame is a broken hockey stick? No wonder he’s beside himself with post-normal dysfunction.
😉
Given the comments of Amy Ridenour at 11:43, I realized — more definitively than before, — that Mann is a pathological liar/exaggerator.
@kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
March 27, 2013 at 4:42 pm
You are right, my apologies to tripe!
Actually I should have compared his opinion to an organ a bit further down the alimentary canal [ like the end of it]
“Attacks on my work aimed at undermining climate change science have turned me into a public figure.”
Actually his, and the Team’s, failure to be open and transparent about their work is what turned him (them) into a public figure.
Steven Mosher says: March 27, 2013 at 11:44 am
Send this to Dr. Loo.
Mann is exhibiting conspiratorial ideation.
Ha ha! Mosher said it best.
That one made me chuckle!
Mr. Mann,
You state to have evidence of a federal offense, i.e. “by congressman in the pay of the fossil fuel industry”; A congressman in the pay of anyone, who then creates law based on that pay is, by definition, accepting a bribe, which is a felony. Failure to report a felony is a felony. So please Mr. McCarthy, err sorry Mr. Mann name the congressman(s) who are in the pay of the fossil fuel industry. Either put up or shut up.
You either have names or you don’t. I realize insulting congressman is a national pastime in the USA, but it is rather uncouth to at once complain of being the victim of smears and smear others.
ironargonaut,
Surely you are not that naive. Numerous Congressmen, many of them Democrats, accept money from fossil fuel interests.
I will do the research — if you will admit in advance that by providing the names, that Lord Monckton is not ‘smearing’ them, but simply stating facts. So either put up, as you say, or shut up.
“I’ve been subjected to congressional investigations by congressman in the pay of the fossil fuel industry…”
Is that not defamatory, i.e. an accusation of corruption?
“In a graph featured in our manuscript, the last century sticks out like the blade of an upturned hockey stick.”
Sure it does…if you leave out data, and use his formulae…you can put in the IQs of everyone associated with Climategate, and end up with a hockey stick – except the blade will point DOWN.
Phyrric. His legal crap is still a pain in the arse to everybody.
I wont be happy with his news appearances until the one that says hes lost his job. A “public figure” can find their circumstances change very rapidly. Look up Gerard Ratner.
…lets wait to see (eventually) NASA sue him for mis-allocation of resources, unprofessional conduct, unethical conduct, bringing his employer into disrepute and any number of other things they’ll need to adduce to distance themselves from their having given that scumbag his soap-box all these years.
Peter Miller says:
March 27, 2013 at 12:32 pm
But the real question is:
Why was this rubbish published in The Scientist?
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Because most science reporters and even scientists outside of meteorology/climatology view the whole CAGW debate as ‘scientists vs. the great unwashed horde.’ They don’t get into the nitty gritty of reading the papers involved or understanding the reasons to doubt CAGW theory, they only look from the outside and feel they have to defend the elite, educated scientist from attack by the yahoos and rubes. That’s why we often see references to the cigarette/cancer dust up or Darwinist vs. creationist dispute come up regarding the CAGW debate. It is a trope they’ve learned in the past and hold dear, rather than looking at the details and trying to understand what’s really going on.
BTW, Genghis Khan was not a right winger. He didn’t advocate limited government nor free markets. Instead he brutally imposed his will on conquered people. In this he had much in common with such left wingers as Adolf Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, and Uncle Joe Stalin. In the future, when we want to emphasize a person is moderately to the right, can we say that so-and-so is to the left of, say, Milton Friedman?
“put oil firm chiefs on trial”
What a great idea. They would knock the legs out from under the CAGW industry in the process of successfully defending themselves.
It would be interesting to have an analysis of Dr. Mann by a psychologist. Delusions of grandeur, a self importance that correlates with his incompetence, blaming phantoms and conspiracies for all his problems. At this point, he will do and say anything he feels is necessary to defend his work, which by now even he knows is full of mistakes and confirmation bias. If I was concerned about him, I would worry that he is nearing an emotional breakdown.
What sympathy can Mann receive?
Mann volunteered to provide research on temperature reconstructions for the past millennia; his research task informed by the IPCC’s bias toward any story that shows the 20th century as alarmingly unprecedented.
The IPCC since has backed away from the publically exposed inneptness of Mann’s subservient research.
No path to sympathy there.
John
That is total nonsense.
Michael Mann is simply a well-paid huckster for the paleoclimate studies market segment within the climate change industrial complex.
His behavior is perfectly rational given that there is no such thing as a truth in advertising law within the climate change marketplace.
He is merely doing whatever he needs to do to maintain his brand position inside his market segment; and so far, his promotional strategy is working quite successfully.
Michael Mann is a canny businessman and product marketeer serving a set of well-defined, well-heeled customers inside a growing industry.
That’s all there is to him, nothing more, nothing less.
Donna Laframboise says:
March 27, 2013 at 11:35 am
I, too, have written about Michael Mann today. “How We Know the ‘Climate Crisis’ Isn’t Real”
Those who believe there’s an urgent problem behave accordingly. Mann doesn’t act as if he fears for the future.
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Donna I couldn’t agree more.
Dr. Mann won’t debate but he’ll lecture for money.
It’s not CAGW it’s $AGW.
The problem I see is this. He doesn’t say “This is what I think happened, what say you?” “Let’s talk about it.” He says “This is what happened and to hell with you!”
The other thing I would like to know is how these people live.
I know they jet set all over at our expense, but do they walk the walk otherwise?
Like Al Gore with multiple large homes and SUV limos.
This is how I know Al Gore doesn’t believe his $AGW story line.
Anthony’s reasons may differ but how do their actions compare to his?
btw
Love the ebook.
cn
How many of these traits of NPD do you see in Dr. Mann?
1) Grandiosity.
2) Arrogant & domineering.
3) Preoccupation with success & power.
4) Lack of empathy.
5) Belief of being unique.
6) Sense of entitlement.
7) Requires excessive admiration.
8) Exploitative.
9) Envious of others.
DaveE.
Does anyone have info about whether Mann is still on sabbatical from PSU? He was on sabbatical in 2011.
John
I am always very skeptical of psychological or psychiatric evaluation of without first-hand observation or interviews, but IMHO this man is delusional, has paranoid tendencies and suffers from megalomania.
And his science is junk, too.
Actually, Mike Mann sued in Canada where his case against Tim Ball is on stronger ground. Mr Ball chose to use truth as a defense, so he can’t claim satire.
For me, the Canada case puts Mann on weaker ground, not stronger…because ‘the truth as defense’ demands solid evidence from Mann to refute Ball’s alleged defamation…rather than merely revolve around a more fuzzier legal discussion relating to satire, public figure, malice, etc.
Mann’s apparent and continuing reticence/reluctance to respond to discovery requests for such ‘hockey stick’ evidence suggests to me that this case will be dismissed. My hope is that Ball will counter-sue for damages when this frivolous lawsuit is dismissed.
Moreover, Mann’s reliance upon affidavits by individuals such as a minor-league, disgraced former journalist (Andrew Skolnick), relating to legal counsel peripherally connected to this case (John O’Sullivan), suggests to me that Mann is really grasping at straws.
Ironically, Skolnick’s credentials are just as disingeneous as Mann’s (cf: Nobel prize winner)…currently working as a ‘pet photographer’, the egomaniac Skolnick has even claimed to have been ‘nominated’ for a Pulitzer Prize. Not by the Pulitzer Prize Committee of course, but such minor details don’t appear to be important for either Skolnick or Mann.
Let’s hope the legal process exposes these hypocritical egomaniacs.