Elisa de Ranieri, editor-in-chief, Nature Communications, David Gevaux, chief “physical-sciences” editor, Fiona Gillespie, managing editor, Jasper Franke, associate editor, “Earth team”, Alexander Michael Petersen, asst. professor, engineering, Emmanuel M. Vincent, “climate communications”, Anthony LeRoy Westerling
15 August 2019
Mesdames, gentlemen,
Fraud, breach of right of privacy and libel by Nature Communications
My attention has been drawn to a purported “peer-reviewed” “research” “study” for which the addressees hereof are jointly and severally responsible. Publication of the purported “study”, actively and widely marketed on the homepage of Nature Communications (http://www.nature.com/ncomms/index.html) as well as on the co-authors’ websites and curricula vitae, is unlawful at criminal as well as at civil law.
The purported “study”, entitled Discrepancy in scientific authority and media visibility of climate change scientists and contrarians was prominently posted online by Nature Communications at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09959-4.
The journal, its editors named supra and the three authors of the purported “study” are guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud by misrepresentation and by abuse of public trust on multiple counts evidenced later herein. Unless within seven days I shall have received from each of the addressees a written apology for their role in the fraud and an undertaking that the offending “study” has been removed permanently from all forms of circulation and will not be reissued under any circumstances or in any form, I shall report the fraud to the Serious Fraud Office, to the Chief Constable of South Gloucestershire, and to Interpol, and shall request that the addressees hereof be added to the list of those under investigation for scientific and financial fraud in connection with the systemic and profitable international over-promotion of the imagined problem of “global warming”.
The said defendants are guilty of breach of my right to privacy in terms of Art. 8, European Human Rights Convention in their widespread circulation without having obtained or even sought my consent (which is for the avoidance of doubt withheld) of a list, including my name, of those described on the Nature Communications homepage as “climate deniers” and in the offending “study” variously as “denialists”, “contrarians” and other derogatory terms calculated in context to lead readers to hold me in hatred, ridicule and contempt. I require within seven days a written undertaking from each addressee that the list will not be further circulated, that each addressee will at once contact all those into whose hands he or she has allowed it to fall and instruct them to destroy the list and to pass on the instruction to all to whom they may have distributed it.
The said defendants are guilty of libel calculated to be to my detriment on multiple counts evidenced later herein. Unless within seven days I shall have received from each of the addressees a written apology in terms entirely acceptable to me as well as an undertaking that the libels herein complained of will not be repeated, and unless within that time the apology and undertaking shall have replaced the offending “study” on the homepage of Nature Communications, I may without further notice institute proceedings for libel against the said defendants, with applications for service furth of the jurisdiction where necessary.
The rebarbative marketing blurb for the purported “study”, prominently accessible via a direct link from the homepage of Nature Communications, reads as follows:
“Climate deniers get more media play than scientists: study
“Climate deniers have garnered far more media attention than prominent climate scientists over the years, fuelling public confusion and slowing the response to global warming, researchers reported Tuesday.
“From 2000 through 2016, hundreds of academics, business people and politicians who doubted global warming or attributed rising temperatures to ‘natural’ causes got 50% more ink than an equal number of expert scientists, according to a study in Nature Communications, a peer-reviewed journal.
“In reality, there has long been overwhelming agreement among climate scientists that global warming – caused mainly by burning fossil fuels – poses a major threat to civilisation and much of life on Earth.
“An increase of only 1 C° had triggered rising seas and a crescendo of deadly extreme weather, and Earth is on track to heat up another three degrees by century’s end.
“‘Climate change contrarians have successfully organised a strong voice within politics and science communication,’ noted the authors, led by Alexander Petersen of the University of California at Merced.
“‘It also undermines the credible authority of career climate change scientists and reinforces the trend of climate change contrarians presiding over public scientific discourse.’
“Over the last year, public concern over global warming has grown dramatically, sparked in part by an October UN report warning that only a wholesale overhaul of the global economy and consumption patterns can forestall climate chaos.
“In Europe, green parties running on a platform of climate action gaining nearly two dozen seats in EU parliamentary elections. Climate protesters drawing from the civil disobedience playbook of Martin Luther King and Gandhi, meanwhile, have spilled into the streets.
“Sowing doubt
“In the United States, a call for climate action has become a litmus test among Democrat candidates for president, and many young people have rallied around the legislative initiative known as the Green New Deal.
“A handful of western governments have pledged to slash carbon emissions to ‘net zero’ by mid-century.
“But even today, established media continue to provide platforms for dubious or discredited assertions about global warming.
“Last week, for example, US business magazine Forbes published an article on its website entitled Global warming? An Israeli astrophysicist provides alternative view that is not easy to reject.
“The ‘alternative view’ – that warming is caused by the Sun and not CO2 emissions – is thoroughly discredited, and the magazine was compelled within hours to remove the piece.
“In testimony last month before the US Senate that took on confessional tones, long-time Republican Party strategist Frank Luntz revealed a key moment nearly 20 years ago in the campaign to blunt action against global warming.
“‘You need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate,’ he told party operatives in a memo during George W. Bush’s first term in office.
“The disquieting term ‘global warming’, he further suggested, should be replaced with ‘climate change’.
“‘I’m here before you to say that I was wrong in 2001,’ he told a Senate committee.
In the new study, Petersen and colleagues scanned 100,000 news items published from 2000 through 2016 for bylines, citations and mentions of 386 scientists, and 386 ‘contrarians’.
“‘Tallying across all media sources we find climate change contrarian media visibility to be 49% greater than climate change visibility,’ they wrote.
The imbalance was made worse by the amplifying effect of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, they added.”
The blurb gives rise to the following counts of fraud:
1. The defendants’ statement that “In reality, there has long been overwhelming agreement among climate scientists that global warming – caused mainly by burning fossil fuels – poses a major threat to civilisation and much of life on Earth” constitutes fraud by misrepresentation and fraud by abuse of public trust, contrary to the Fraud Act 2006, in that 1) the official “consensus” proposition as defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says no more than that recent global warming is chiefly anthropogenic, and says nothing about whether it is dangerous; and 2) of 11,944 peer-reviewed papers on global warming and related topics published after peer review in the learned journals of climate and related sciences during the 21 years 1991-2011, only 41 papers, or 0.3%, stated their agreement even to that milquetoast “consensus” proposition (Legates et al. 2015); and 3) the factually false notion of a “consensus” among “experts”, the notion that underlies, underpins and animates the entire fraud, is a conflation of the ancient logical fallacies of argumentum ad populum and argumentum ad verecundiam (the headcount and reputation fallacies); and 4) the imagined (and imaginary) “major threat to civilization and much of life on Earth” is not occurring, as the defendants well know, for the rate of global warming from 1850 to 2011, the year to which IPCC data were updated for the most recent Assessment Report, was only one-third of the medium-term rate originally predicted by IPCC in 1990; and 5) tens of millions die each year for lack of electrical power, because the World Bank in 2010, citing “global warming” as its pretext, ceased to lend to developing countries for the installation of coal-fired power, yet the defendants, in the offending blurb, made no mention of the fact that it is global-warming policy, not global warming itself, that is the real killer, and 6) the defendants made no mention of the numerous benefits of anthropogenic CO2 enrichment, not the least of which are the availability of life-saving electrical power and the 7-15% increase in net primary productivity of trees and plants worldwide thanks to CO2 fertilization.
2. The defendants’ statement that “An increase of only 1 C° had triggered rising seas and a crescendo of deadly extreme weather” constitutes fraud by misrepresentation and fraud by abuse of public trust, contrary to the Fraud Act 2006, in that 2) according to the Envisat satellite, the most capable sea-level monitoring satellite, which operated from 2004-2012, the rate of sea-level rise over the period of operation was equivalent to 1.5 inches/century, which, within the error margin, is no sea-level rise at all; 3) according to Cazenave et al. (2009), sea level actually fell between 2003 and 2008, but was reported as having risen on the basis of a “glacial isostatic adjustment” which, whether justified or not (probably not) does not and did not constitute an actual sea-level rise; 3) the intercalibration errors between the different laser-altimetry satellites are larger than the sea-level rise the satellites purport to measure; 4) careful comparison of tide-gauge and satellite-altimetry sea-level records worldwide has demonstrated that everywhere the true rate of eustatic sea-level rise, after careful correction for local isostatic displacements of the seabed, is only 1.1 mm/year, equivalent to just over 4 inches per century; 5) a sea-level rise of 4 inches per century is half the rate of rise observed in the 20th century.
3. The defendants’ statement that “An increase of only 1 C° had triggered … a crescendo of deadly extreme weather” constitutes fraud by misrepresentation and by abuse of public trust, contrary to the Fraud Act 2006, in that the defendants knew that 1) the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had stated repeatedly and explicitly in its 2013 Fifth Assessment Report and in its 2012 Special Report on Extreme Weather that there was little or no evidence for what the defendants chose to mischaracterize as a “crescendo of deadly extreme weather”; 2) the global land area under drought has fallen throughout the past 30 years (Hao et al. 2014); 3) the Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index shows a decline in the frequency, intensity and duration of hurricanes and of tropical storms worldwide (Dr Ryan Maue, Florida State University); 4) loss of life from weather-related events has plummeted throughout the recent decades; 5) the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its 2013 and 2012 reports cited at 1) supra, states that there is no evidence for a greater risk of flooding or rainstorms; 5) the acreages burned in forest fires have declined monotonically in each decade of the 20th century and in the first decade of the 21st; 6) ocean “acidification” is a scientific impossibility under anything like modern conditions, for the ocean is pronouncedly alkaline and dealkalinization, in the few locations where it has been measured, is proceeding at a hardly life-threatening 0.2 pH units per century.
4. The defendants’ statement that “Earth is on track to heat up another three degrees by century’s end” constitutes fraud by misrepresentation and by abuse of public trust, contrary to the Fraud Act 2006, in that the defendants knew that 1) the observed rate of global warming from 1850-2011 is one-third of the medium-term rate originally predicted by IPCC in 1990; 2) the observed period rate of global warming is well below half the expected rate consistent with official estimates of net anthropogenic radiative forcing and of radiative imbalance over the period; 3) the headline predicted global-warming rate of 3.35 K per CO2 doubling (based on data in Andrews et al. 2012) is almost two and a half times the rate deducible from the system-gain factors implicit in 21st-century projections even under the deliberately extreme RCP8.5 scenario.
5. The defendants’ statement that “The ‘alternative view’ – that warming is caused by the Sun and not CO2 emissions – is thoroughly discredited …” constitutes fraud by misrepresentation and by abuse of public trust, contrary to the Fraud Act 2006, in that the defendants knew that numerous papers on solar activity, such as Hathaway & Wilson 2004, show a very clear increase in solar activity from 1925-1995, to levels not seen in the past 300 years, and that this increase in solar activity is linked to an increase in total solar irradiance and hence in global temperatures, and that since 2004 the datasets of total solar irradiance have been altered with the effect of removing much of that increase in solar activity from the record, and that at least one of the handful of solar physicists responsible for the alterations said they had been made so as to prevent “deniers” from pointing out that much, if not all, of the global warming of recent decades was attributable to solar activity.
The blurb gives rise to at least the following counts of libel, given the widespread circulation of my name by the defendants on the list of those whom they describe as “deniers”, a term calculated to invite invidious comparison with Holocaust denial:
1. The defendants’ use of the word “denial” twice (once in the headline and once in the opening sentence of the blurb) – constitutes libel in its deliberately false implication that I and others on the list circulated by the defendants deny well-established scientific facts, when – as will be self-evident from the well-referenced paragraphs outlining the defendants’ frauds supra – my objections to the Party Line climate to which the defendants choose to adhere are not, as their adherence thereto is, merely political, but instead rigorously scientific.
2. The defendants’ use of the phrase “Sowing doubt” in a prominent subheading in the blurb constitutes libel in its deliberately false implication that I among others named on the list circulated by the defendants are adopting a political stance opposite to that of the defendants, and that we are dishonestly causing deliberate confusion in the public mind, when in fact my own work on climate, which includes numerous peer-reviewed publications in leading journals somehow not identified in the defendants’ careless purported “study”, raises genuine and profound scientific and economic concerns about the Party Line to which the defendants adhere.
3. The defendants’ use of the phrase “dubious or discredited assertions about global warming” in the blurb constitutes libel in its deliberately false implication that I among others named on the list circulated by the defendants are dishonestly attempting to mislead the public, and in its deliberately false implication that all of my published statements about the climate have been discredited. Let us take a single example: I am on record as having pointed out that, in control theory, the branch of engineering physics from which climatology borrows feedback method, such feedback processes as may subsist in a feedback-moderated dynamical system must perforce respond not only to any perturbations of the input signal but also to the entire reference signal, which is the sum of the input signal and any perturbations. However, it is not difficult to calculate that the 3.35 K official midrange estimate of Charney sensitivity in the CMIP5 models (Andrews op. cit.) is predicated on the assumption that, while the 10 K directly-forced or reference sensitivity to the preindustrial noncondensing greenhouse gases is imagined to engender a 22.5 K feedback response (i.e., a response more than twice itself), the 274 K emission temperature that would be present in the absence of any greenhouse gases would engender a feedback response of zero. That is a large and self-evident but hitherto overlooked contradiction within the Party Line to which the defendants inexpertly adhere. Resolving that contradiction constrains Charney sensitivity to between 1 and 1.4 K – an interval entirely below the [1.5, 4.7] K interval currently imagined by IPCC and the CMIP5 models. The corrected warming, therefore, will be small, slow, harmless and net-beneficial. Even if it were the fact that official climatology’s “consensus” of “experts” had hitherto considered [1.5, 4.7] K to be a reasonable interval, the “consensus” would be incorrect and the experts – to that extent, at any rate, inexpert. The defendants have carelessly – and, in the event, libellously – assumed that the Party Line is in all respects correct, when in fact, in at least the respects outlined herein, it is demonstrably incorrect. The defendants’ libel is thus fundamentally dishonest and deliberately so, in that none of them has sufficient expertise in climatology or in any related subject to pronounce as they have pronounced to the effect that the Party Line must be in all material respects correct, and yet they have seen fit to pontificate in a fashion calculated deliberately to damage the reputations of those on the list they have carelessly circulated, including my name.
4. The defendants’ telling of the story of a Republican who had at first opposed the Party Line on climate and has now changed his mind was calculated, in association with the list of names including mine that the defendants had widely circulated, to convey the false impression that we too ought to confess our past sins and toe the Party Line to which they so faithfully and yet so inexpertly adhere, and to leave readers with the notion that it was only wilful dishonesty on our part that was leading us to make the allegedly “dubious” (but carefully unspecified) statements of which the defendants accused us in their prominently-circulated blurb.
The purported “study” contrasted “386 prominent contrarians” with “386 expert scientists”, and concluded that “professional mainstream sources” of news had been subjected to “crowding out” by –
“the proliferation of new media sources, many of which contribute to the production and consumption of climate change disinformation at scale. These results demonstrate why climate scientists should increasingly exert their authority in scientific and public discourse, and why professional journalists and editors should adjust the disproportionate attention given to contrarians.”
The above passage constitutes libel of me as well as others named in the list circulated by the defendants, in that we are held to be guilty of deliberate “disinformation”. In fact, as the numerous references supra demonstrate, I have good scientific and economic reason to disagree with certain aspects of the Party Line to which the defendants adhere. What is more, the above passage constitutes evidence of malice, in that the defendants declare their determination to prevent those of us who have genuine scientific and economic doubts about the Party Line from gaining access to the news media in future. This and other evidences of malice on the part of the defendants, including the defendants’ circulation of the list of names including mine, removes the protection granted by Parliament to those who commit libels in “peer-reviewed” “studies”.
The “study” asserts that –
“Since the early 2000s there has been little disagreement among scientific experts over the fundamental evidence supporting the existence, origin and societal significance of anthropogenic climate change. Yet, while an anthropogenic cause is supported by an overwhelming majority of climate change scientists, climate change contrarians have successfully organized a strong voice within politics and science communication in the United States.
The above passage is further evidence of the fraud by which the defendants, in concert with others worldwide, have sought falsely to maintain that there is a “consensus” among scientists – a “consensus” that they know does not in fact exist and that they know would be meaningless even if it did exist, for science is not done by “consensus” among “experts”.
“Historians of science have detailed the political origins of the climate change contrarian movement, documenting how its strategic efforts succeeded in distorting the science-based narrative on multiple fronts, e.g., by promoting the idea that there is a lack of scientific consensus concerning anthropogenic climate change, despite the fact that objective research has found little evidence for such a claim.”
The above passage is a further instance of the defendants’ fraudulent statement to the effect that the actually non-existent scientific “consensus” on climate change exists. In fact, there are thousands upon thousands of peer-reviewed papers on climate and related topics that challenge various key aspects of the Party Line to which the defendants adhere. The defendants know these papers exist. Yet they have received financial grants to write their fraudulent paper suggesting that these papers do not exist. To take one example, the Party Line to which the defendants inexpertly adhere states that there was no mediaeval warm period. Yet on this topic alone the investigating authorities are already aware of more than 1000 papers demonstrating that the mediaeval warm period was real, was global and was warmer than the present. In many other subject areas related to climate change, thousands upon thousands of papers question every aspect of the Party Line. Indeed, in mitigation economics the overwhelming preponderance of papers – including papers by me – make it clear that the welfare loss from attempted mitigation of global warming exceeds by orders of magnitude the welfare benefit that might be expected.
The above cited passage also reinforces the libel of me and others named in the list circulated by the defendants, in that it accuses us of “distortion” of the “science-based narrative”, when in fact my disagreement with the Party Line to which the defendants adhere is scientific, and soundly-based at that, as the defendants well know.
The purported “study” goes on to assert that that –
“Public confusion over science affects various other domains, in addition to climate change communication, and requires a better understanding of the human, social, and technological factors that facilitate widespread disinformation efforts.”
Note how assiduously, deliberately, and, therefore, maliciously the defendants repeat the word “disinformation” in a manner calculated to act to the detriment of my reputation and of that of others on the list of names of “denialists / deniers / contrarians” widely circulated by the defendants.
The purported “study” also talks of –
“… media coverage that is disproportionate to the authority and number of scientists holding the consensus viewpoint. Recent research highlights the ramifications of this problem, finding that the acceptance of climate change increases (respectively decreases) with consumption of media content that acknowledges (respectively dismisses) climate-change realities, other factors being equal. Susceptibility to information manipulation may continue to be a serious problem until society fully adapts to managing the sheer range and volume of new media sources.”
The above passage compounds and deepens the defendants’ “consensus” fraud, and also compounds and deepens the libel to the effect that I and others on the list circulated by the defendants are dishonestly disseminating disinformation, in that the defendants here talk of the allegedly “serious problem” of “information manipulation” of which those they have named are supposedly guilty.
The purported “study” says –
“… contrarians have strategically shifted away from their external narrative – initially based upon challenging fundamental tenets of climate change science (e.g. its anthropogenic origins), thereby positioning themselves as skeptics with legitimate scientific motives for dissent – to instead challenging assessments of climate-change impacts in an effort to impede the development of proactive regulations. However, a separate large-scale analysis of internal documents from 19 contrarian organizations shows that the inward contrarian narrative is still rather focused on climate-change science, with the relative frequency of science-related topics increasing relative to policy-related topics over the period 2009-2013.”
Here, a new libel is introduced. This time, the defendants say that I and others on the list they have circulated are to some extent abandoning scientific opposition to the Party Line and retreating towards challenging the imagined (and, to a striking degree, actually imaginary) adverse impacts of global warming. They then retreat from their own position to some degree. Yet they suggest that I and others on the list are making “an effort to impede the development of proactive regulations”.
The purported “study” describes the 386 “prominent” “expert” “scientists” it has chosen as serving as –
“an objective measurement baseline for juxtaposing visibility in the media with authority in the scientific domain”.
Later, the “study” says –
“These prominent scientists, many are pre-eminent climate change experts with distinguished careers spanning several decades, serve as a size-balanced comparison group.”
Here, the defendants repeat and reinforce their libel to the effect that I and others on the list they have so widely circulated are mere “contrarians”, while their own “objective” list are “experts”. Yet the defendants know full well that many of those on the list they have circulated have considerable expertise that is the equal of that possessed by those on their favoured list of “scientific experts”.
The purported “study” says that the –
“disproportionate media visibility of contrarian arguments and actors not only misrepresents the distribution of expert-based beliefs, it also manifestly undermines the credible authority of career climate-change-science experts and reinforces the trend of climate-change contrarians presiding over public scientific discourse, which all together hinders prospects for rapid public action on climate change.”
Here the libel that the “contrarians”, such as me and other on the list circulated by the defendants, are inexpert is repeated, and the suggestion is made that we “hinder prospects for rapid public action on climate change”. Yet the defendants know full well that there is no scientific need for such action, and no economic case for it. They are pretending that the Party Line to which they adhere is the only permissible scientific and economic position.
The purported “study” then describes those with whom its authors disagree as represented by the term –
“… ‘climate skeptic’, a broad term that collectively refers to contrarians and denialists, and also conventional scientific skeptics who are driven by more legitimate motives for dissent. For this reason, we focus on a select set of contrarians who have publicly and repeatedly demonstrated their adamant counterposition on climate-change issues – as extensively documented by the DeSmog project, a long-standing effort to document climate disinformation efforts associated with numerous contrarian institutions and individual actors.”
Here, the defendants’ malice is again evident. They use the word “denialists”, just as they had used the word “deniers” in the heading and in the opening paragraph of their widely-circulated publicity blurb.
A further evidence of malice is the defendants’ choice of the “deSmog” project as though it were a reliable source of information about “denialists” such as me and others on the list the defendants have circulated so widely. The “deSmog” project was founded and funded by one Lefebvre, a convicted internet-gaming fraudster whom a court, some years ago, ordered to refund some $185 million in ill-gotten gains to the hapless gamblers upon whom he had preyed. It is, on any view, a disreputable and unreliable source, as is evidenced by the hate-filled, venomous tone of its attacks upon those of us who have dared to question the Party Line on climate.
The purported “study” complains that its methods –
“… cannot fully explain how non-scientific experts are able to compete with scientific experts in the attention economy facilitated by the media.”
The above statement is a further evidence of the defendants’ fraud. The defendants know perfectly well that scientific discourse is only discourse if both sides of the argument are permitted to put forward their case. They know perfectly well that journals such as Nature take an extremist political view on questions such as climate and have a policy of refusing either to entertain any papers questioning the Party Line in any fundamental degree or even to entertain pre-submission enquiries – such as the enquiry that I had myself submitted to Nature only a few weeks ago, asking whether the group would be interested in a paper from my team explaining that the predictions of global warming that had proven exaggerated when compared with observation or with expectation or even with one another were exaggerated because climatology had perpetrated a fundamental error of physics. They know, therefore, that those scientists willing to toe the Party Line can get their nonsense published much more easily than those of us who question the Party Line. That fact undermines the defendants’ entire case for the significance of the fact that their chosen “objective” list of “expert” “scientists” have published more papers than their chosen list of “deniers”, “denialists” and “contrarians”. Of course they have published more papers than we: for the journals – the Nature group being an example – will not even look at, let alone review, still less publish, papers that fundamentally question the Party Line to which the defendants adhere.
The purported “study” says –
“… disproportionate visibility – or false balancing – is likely to mislead public perception, suggesting falsely that within the scientific community there is parity in the number of scientists who do and do not agree on the fundamental issues of anthropogenic climate change.”
See how heavily the defendants lean, again and again, on their notion of “consensus”. In fact, the number of peer-reviewed scientific papers stating no position on the question whether recent warming is chiefly anthropogenic exceeds 30-fold the number of peer-reviewed papers stating that recent warming is chiefly anthropogenic. The defendants know this perfectly well. Yet they claim, falsely and fraudulently, that the “consensus” supports the Party Line to which they adhere, when it does not.
The “study” says –
“A common theme in the climate-change communication literature is false balance, representing how the journalists tradition of balancing sources across opposing views gives rise in the case of climate change to an inaccurate representation, one that falsely suggests that there is a balanced debate between equally-sized groups.
From the point of view of a plaintiff such as I, the above passage is further evidence of the defendants’ malice. The defendants are sullenly determined to prevent those who disagree with the Party Line from being allowed any access to the news media. They are wilfully, and fraudulently, attempting to choke off all dissent by deciding and declaring, aprioristically and contrary to what they know to be the truth, that to report anything but the Party Line to which they adhere is to be guilty of “false balance”. In fact, the group of peer-reviewed papers not endorsing the “consensus” position is far, far larger than the group endorsing it. But that mere fact does not stop the defendants from fraudulently demanding – in what purports to be a “peer-reviewed” “research” “study” but is in reality a party political broadcast for the defendants’ extremist, totalitarian viewpoint – that journalists and editors should censor what is, in the journals, the majority view to the effect that we cannot be sure that global warming is chiefly anthropogenic. The fact that that is the majority view, even though journals such as the Nature group have done their malevolent worst only to reflect the defendants’ Party Line in their pages, shows just how little true “consensus” there really is. Indeed, the notion that totalitarians should peddle the idea that there is a consensus, that the debate is over and that the West must be made to suffer for its imagined “climate debt” was first promulgated by a Communist front group in the United Kingdom in 2006. It was rapidly picked up by similar groups worldwide and has been the Party Line ever since.
The purported “study” discusses its “results” thus –
“Climate change is a wicked multidimensional problem, whereby individual dimensions – i.e., environmental, socio-economic, technological, science communication – while separately challenging, together pose the 21st century’s pre-eminent grand challenge. In this regard, a public that is unaware of the realities and risks associated with climate change poses a threat to society and planet by undercutting strenuous global efforts to rapidly mitigate threats to the planet’s biosphere.”
Climate change is actually a simple question, as the defendants well know, but they and many others in academe are fraudulently profiteering by pretending that the question is complex. The question is this: How much warming are we likely to cause? The answer, on the evidence to date, is “about a third of what had originally been predicted”. Given that the exaggerated predictions of global warming are based on a monstrous error of physics, there is no legitimate scientific cause for alarm. Given that most if not all of the warming is attributable to the Sun, and that the tampering with the irradiance record to suggest otherwise can be proven, and that the radiosonde data show none of the radiative imbalance that would suggest a large rather than a minuscule feedback response, the actual human contribution to global warming will not be more than one-third of current midrange estimates, and may be considerably less than that. Therefore, the defendants’ relentless and malevolent – though very profitable – insistence that global warming “poses a threat to society and planet” has no scientific foundation whatsoever, and they know it. Professor Mörner has rightly characterized the Party Line on climate as “the greatest fraud ever perpetrated”.
The purported “study” says –
“Indeed, communicating authoritative information about the risks of inaction is crucial for achieving global action.”
And here is an open admission on the part of the defendants that they are peddling a political Party Line rather than writing a legitimate scientific study. The economic consequences of the defendants’ implicit acceptance of global-warming projections that are now proven excessive are severe. Stern (2006) took 
mid-range estimated warming by 2100 as driving a welfare loss of 
–
of global GDP (cf. 
–
in IPCC (2013). The 
upper bound ibid., assuming a 
pure rate-of-time discount rate that gave “a 
chance of the planet not seeing out this century” (Dietz et al. 2007), drove a 
-of-GDP extinction-level loss. Adding 
per-capita consumption growth without climate change gave a 
mean social discount rate (cf. 
in Garnaut 2008), against a 
minimum market discount rate (Murphy 2008; Nordhaus 2008). Since the probability of extinction is actually nil, submarket discount rates are unjustifiable. Even before allowing for the scientific error identified supra, at the midrange 
discount rate applied over the 21st century, Stern’s ![clip_image006[1]](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/clip_image0061.png?quality=75&ssl=1 "clip_image006[1]"){kind=small}
-of-GDP welfare loss would become only 
(or ![clip_image014[1]](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/clip_image0141.png?quality=75&ssl=1 "clip_image014[1]"){kind=small}
for no net loss until preindustrial temperature is exceeded by 
), while his ![clip_image018[1]](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/clip_image0181.png?quality=75&ssl=1 "clip_image018[1]"){kind=small}
-of-GDP loss would fall to ![clip_image010[1]](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/clip_image0101.png?quality=75&ssl=1 "clip_image010[1]"){kind=small}
(
).
The World Bank cites global warming as its reason for refusing in principle to fund coal, oil and gas projects in developing countries, where denying electricity to 1.3 billion people shortens lifespans by 
years. After the corrections proposed here, anthropogenic warming will be small, slow and net-beneficial. Globally, a policy rethink is advisable. There is certainly no case whatsoever for the “global action” that the defendants profiteer by advocating.
The purported “study” describes those who disagree with it as follows –
“In particular, by contrarians we refer to individuals frequently sources by institutions denying the documented realities of climate change and its consequences and/or individuals who have personally expressed inaccurate statements.”
See how the defendants cannot conceal their malice. Yet again the word “denying” appears. Now they say that those who disagree with the Party Line to which they adhere, including me and others named in the list they have so widely circulated, are “denying the documented realities of climate change and its consequences”, when the defendants know full well that it is they who are denying the realities that global warming has been far slower than had been predicted, and that even if it were to occur at anything like the originally-predicted or currently-predicted rate any attempts to mitigate it would constitute a crippling, global net welfare loss.
The purported “study” concludes thus –
“Research shows that journalists often quote contrarians either to infuse objectivity or to dismiss their position outright. Yet these approaches also detract attention from the relevant climate-change narrative and provide the counterproductive impression that there is something substantial in contrarian arguments to be debated. Thus, the time has arrived for professional journalists and editors to ameliorate the disproportionate attention given to climate-change contrarians by focusing instead on career experts and relevant calls to action.”
Here, the defendants recite yet again what that Communist front group proclaimed as the Party Line well over a decade ago: the science is settled (when the defendants know it is not); the consensus is near-unanimous (when the defendants know that it is limited only to the question what fraction of global warming is anthropogenic, and that on that question the defendants are in a tiny, insignificant majority that they are fraudulently presenting as though it were an “overwhelming” majority); and we must act (when in fact we must not act, for if we act we cause needless economic and environmental damage).
With good reason, then, I reiterate the requests set forth at the beginning of this letter. I shall expect answers from each defendant within seven days of the date of this letter.
Yours faithfully,
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Sadly, judging from previous experience, this effort has no teeth and nothing will happen.
Whether something happens in the civil courts is in the hands of those defamed since they will need to issue actual proceedings. I have no doubt that those on the list have been defamed and that malice is self evident (but I am not a libel lawyer so this does not constitute legal advice). Defamatory statements are an exception to the right of free speech.
As regards criminal matters, it is not clear that those responsible for the ‘Nature’ piece do themselves benefit directly and financially from the incorrect assertions made in support of the AGW hypothesis and so any criminal case against them will need some additional evidence in support.
The authorities are likely to decline criminal action on the grounds that the statements in the article are within the realm of free speech.
I am not sure what qualifications, if any, Mr Svalgaard has, but he certainly has none in law. Mr Wilde, however, is a lawyer, and he reacts as a typical juror in a libel trial would react: those on the defendants’ hate-list have been defamed, and the defendants have repeatedly evidenced malice.
Mr Wilde is right that the public investigating and prosecuting authorities would – if this were an isolated case – be minded to use the free-speech cop-out. However, this is not an isolated case, and substantial files are building up in the offices of police forces worldwide about the frsaudulent promotion for financial and political advantage of a more extreme presentation of the climate question than objective science would justify.
Furthermore, in the United Kingdom we have the right to sue for fraud in a civil action. The case will be heard by a circuit judge, who will decide on such legal questions as whether the journal has profited by deception in misleading its readers in the claim on its website that it publishes quality science; whether the authors have profited by deception in lying to the effect that only the scientists who agree with the Party Line on climate are true scientists; whether they have profited by deception in falsely accusing those on the hate-list of taking the shilling of fossil-fuel corporations; whether they have profited by deception in falsely comparing us with Holocaust deniers; whether they have profited by deception in misrepresenting the imagined (and imaginary) “consensus” and in pretending that science is done by consensus when it is not; etc., etc.
It is when this case is taken with many others that have been reported to the authorities that matter become ever more interesting. Nor need we wait very much longer. Even if our own paper drawing attention to a large error of physics perpetrated by climatology does not find favor with the journals, there are two other papers in preparation by associates of ours. One will reveal (and Mr Svalgaard will not like this) that solar activity indeed increased significantly from about 1925-1995, accounting for much of the warming from the 1980s to the present, and that there is evidence that one or two members of the small community of solar physicists have deliberately altered the data to try to conceal this fact; another will reveal that the much-vaunted “radiative imbalance” contrived by the usual suspects as a device to try to bring observation into line with exaggerated prediction does not in fact exist. Either of these two papers is enough to bring the climate scam to an end. Once it is clear to all that those who have been trying to stifle debate on the climate question have no shred of scientific justification, expect the files to be dusted off and organized in the police offices, and prosecutions to begin in earnest. This is a long game, and I have worked at a high enough level in government to know exactly how it is played.
As much as I admire you, Christopher, the police will not involve themselves in scientific nor political spats.
Mr Fair is incorrect. Some weeks ago, on a visit to Scotland, I spent the weekend with an eminent lawyer who, among other things, advises HM Government. We sat under the south-facing portico of his Robert Adam country house, overlooking the rolling fields at the foot of the Highland Line, and I discussed with him the manner in which peer reviewers had treated our paper demonstrating the error of physics underlying the false case for large and dangerous (rather than small, slow, harmless and net-beneficial) global warming.
His eyes widened as I told him that not one of the reviewers had actually reviewed the paper; that one had reviewed only an ancillary document which he had not realized had been prepared by a leading government laboratory at my request; that another had written that he had found the conclusions of our paper uncongenial and had not read the equations that justified it; that an editor had refused the paper because he could not “find anyone competent to review it”; etc.
I told him of a number of other aspects of the climate fraud, including the “97% consensus” fraud, where Queensland Police had found that a deception had taken place, though on political grounds they had not prosecuted.
He thought for a few moments and said, “Come with me.” We went into his dining-room. There, at the center of a vast, mahogany dining table, stood a statue of a police officer. He said, “I’ve been raising money for police charities for 25 years. When you’re ready, send me everything and I’ll see to it that it gets taken seriously. What you have told me cannot be allowed to continue.”
No, it can’t. 1.3 billion worldwide have no access to electricity – “access” being defined by the International Energy Agency as no more than the capacity to switch on a single 60-Watt lightbulb for 4 hours a day. Tens of millions die each year for lack of electrical power. Life expectancy in countries with little or no electricity is 15 years less than in the well-lit West. Yet the World Bank refuses to lend for coal, oil or gas extraction, or for coal-fired power stations – the cheapest, cleanest and most reliable and most easily maintainable form of continuous, base-load power on Earth. And why? Because global warming.
Yet global warming is not occurring at even one-third of the originally predicted rate – and yet the self-appointed arbiters of what may and may not be discussed, researched or published say that those of us who ask questions about the gaping discrepancy between exaggerated prediction and harmless, beneficial reality should be shunned. It is time that someone spoke up for the dying millions.
I have recently prepared a paper aided by a modelling expert which shows clearly that a greenhouse effect can occur with no radiating gases present just from the mass of an atmosphere conducting and convecting.
It was rejected for publication without even a review and one of the grounds was that it did not accord with consensus science.
On that basis science would never progress.
It has however been published by several sceptic sites and is available on Researchgate.
There is a powerful lobby blocking new science on climate related matters whenever it does not fit the preferred narrative.
Mr Wilde is correct that the climate Communists have now realized they are scientifically incorrect, not least because the world is not warming at more than about a third of the originally-predicted rate, notwithstanding increases in CO2 concentration that exceed the originally-predicted business-as-usual rate. So they now shut down all science – however sound – that contradicts the Party Line. Governments are too scientifically illiterate to stop them, and the climate Communists have the backing of journalistic Communists who are incapable of questioning the Party Line, either ideologically or intellectually.
But we shall defeat them, and we shall do it by science.
A civil libel suit does not involve the police.
This clearly is libel, and the malice is there clearly, hence this suit can’t be tossed in UK courts.
Ergo, unless they bail, this will end up in UK courts and from what I have read I can only conclude that the defendants chances are quite poor.
Christopher,
Your above letter and subsequent responses to comments are excellent.
Sadly, as I think you know, there is little I can now do to help except to provide supporting information and evidence. However, I will do what I can if you tell me what you want.
For example, I note that you are thinking of taking action in Gloucestershire and I was resident in Cheltenham when I tried to publish the paper discussed in an email leaked by climategate and reported in Hansard here
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387b/387we02.htm
Richard
The increased solar radiation in the late 20th century was the reason that Skylab fell from Earth orbit 5 years before the planned date. It caused thermal expansion of the atmosphere, increasing the drag on the satellite. (By coincidence, my wife was watching a television item about it on the series “Great Engineering Mistakes’ while I read your excellent letter.) NASA was quite explicit about the causation; I can’t see how the Alarmists can possibly get away with rewriting that piece of history.
Moneys may not be the direct incentive, but it will be an indirect consequence.
But more importantly, they are indeed trying to defame these people on the list. A black list if you will. Malice, weather they recognize it or not, is the driving motive. They want to shut down the opposing view/voice, that is malice.
not much different to the purposeful intent by fkbk and youtube goog etc to either hide/ search results misdirect to “approved” sites and to add the ridiculous disclaimer to any skeptical clips or info on youtube.
and the implications with intent concerning anyone expressing any disagreement at all to be mentally inept or in need of “treatment BY pcsych docs ie Loowandowsky and his besties.
There is evidence that at least two of them benefited directly and financially since they were awarded US$ 10,000 from UC Merced in 2017 to conduct the project “Climate Skeptics – who are they and how are they connected” that resulted in this publication
https://ucmerced.app.box.com/s/fxwa7eidzc6qkgjygda3w26cunm5ar6o
The third author, Emmanuel Vincent, is a founder of climatefeedback.org, a website that provides a set of volunteer climate scientists to the opportunity to review news stories about climate science. It shouldn’t be difficult to determine if he benefits financially from the site, as the article could be construed as beneficial to his site.
Trenchant, as usual.
In UK law, a fraud is only a fraud if it causes profit to some or loss to other, profit or loss being measured in money or money’s worth. The receipt of a grant to carry out research and the diversion of that grant towards a blatantly political purpose that does not on any view constitute legitimate or properly-conducted research constitutes fraud. But there is a wider body of taxpayers and users of energy who are disadvantaged by this blatant attempt to interfere with legitimate scientific debate, research and publication on grounds that are manifestly dishonest. In UK law, there is no requirement that we should establish exactly how much every taxpayer has lost by this scam: it is necessary only to demonstrate that there was a double intent, first to deceive and secondly to profit or cause loss by the deception.
“Free speech” may not be a defense here. Note that the venue is the EU, and the EU (Great Britain included) has a much more restrictive view of free speech than is evident in the US.
In United States as in United Kingdom law, free speech is not a defense against libel. There is a fair-comment defense, but no libel jury in the UK would regard it as appropriate that we should be described as “denialists” or “climate change deniers”, with the deliberate overtones of comparison with Holocaust denial. Such hate speech goes well beyond fair comment, and is actionable. Damages would be extensive (though when I take cases to court I am more interested in an apology, retraction and undertaking of non-repetition than in going for money).
Monetary damages convince more people you are an injured party than insincere apologies do. It’s public opinion you’re looking for.
In response to Gary, I was once libeled in The Times. I wrote at once demanding an apology (of which I supplied a draft), and making it plain that if the apology were published I should not sue. The apology was promptly published and my reputation restored.
Stephen, I am a lawyer (although not one from the UK), and my understanding of UK libel law and American libel law (which have some common similarities) is such that I am inclined to agree with you that Monckton has stated a case for libel here. Now, good luck getting all of the defendants served, but it will be in the hands of the UK civil courts.
In response to Larry in Texas, we shall be applying to the U.K. courts for leave to serve the court papers furth of the jurisdiction. This is a normal procedure.
Sir, you need to hire a lawyer. You should not try to handle this yourself. Yes, you have a good case. No, you are not equipped to deal with lawyers and courts.
I see a double set of teeth. And every effort to expose the truth matters; without them the worst WILL happen.
Teeth means that somebody gets punished.
I don’t see that happen. Or even that the things gets tried.
The complainant has no standing (locus standi).
Leif,
I’m not sure about that. US, British and Continental law differs. But Chris and his fellows have clearly been libelled. To associate anyone with Holocaust deniers must be libellous.
Mr Svalgaard, who, whatever his qualifications may be, is evidently not a lawyer, seems unfamiliar even with the elements of jurisprudence. As to libel, Mr Tillman is correct: we have been libeled; we have been named; we have standing. In U.S. law, the question arises whether those of us who count as public figures and are thus normally debarred from suing for libel can assert that those libeling us have demonstrated malice. In U.K. law, the same question arises because the purported “study” in which we were libeled claims to have been “peer-reviewed”. However, just taking the voices here, a libel jury would have little difficulty in reaching the conclusion that the purported “study” contains plenty of evidence of malice.
As to breach of right of privacy, anyone who is named in a “research” “study” is entitled to be contacted first and a) invited to participate and b) invited to consent to have his identity revealed. Failure to do this is failure to comply with Art. 8, European Human Rights Convention, which gives any citizen the right of action to defend his privacy. Again, we have standing.
As to fraud, which is a criminal offense on both sides of the pond, any citizen has standing, whether or not he or she is a victim of the fraud, since a criminal offense is regarded in law as an offense against everyone. The courts are well used to assigning values in money’s worth to reputations in libel cases: there is, therefore, in principle no reason why we who have been named in the hate-list should not be able to argue that we have suffered a loss in money’s worth to our reputation, and that that loss has been brought about by a deliberate deception, in which the grant-funders (the University of California at Merced), the co-authors and the journal have conspired to pretend that the purported “research” “study” is a serious academic work rather when it is in fact a mere totalitarian political statement calculated to act greatly to the detriment of the named victims’ reputations, and of the bank-balances of taxpayers and users of energy.
We see that you are not practical.
I agree that Mr Svalgaard is not practical: but that should not be held against him. Some of us are men of affairs as much as men of science; others are men of science but not so much men of affairs. To each his own. Let us not be churlish.
There are no previous experiences like this one. In their study they published the real names of the subjects of the study without obtaining prior written consent. Over here in Europe that is illegal and Nature Communications could be in a serious trouble. The authors and UC Merced should be too. There is no legal difference between disclosing the names of the patients in a medical study or the names of the subjects in a social sciences study like this one. It is as illegal to make public the names of the contrarians as it is to make public the names of the party line scientists although I guess Ramhstorf will not be suing them. One thing is to criticize someone’s work as is usually done with skeptics and a very different one to make lists of names based on people’s ideas and make them public.
I am very much interested in seeing how this develops. The Netherlands could be a good place for suing, as Springer Nature is based there. The Dutch take individual rights and liberties very seriously.
My guess is that Springer-Nature will retract the paper when their legal department takes a good look at it.
Does it matter that they are already public figures?
In US law public figures have less protection. However many among the libelled in this paper don’t meet the US standard for public figures, in my inexpert opinion.
It is too late to withdraw the paper; its out there and can’t be retracted. The damage is done. Attempts at damage control will only deepen the crisis.
Mr Svalgaard is, as usual, proven wrong in his prediction that “nothing will happen”: already Nature Communications, in response to the numerous complaints directed to it, has removed from its website the link to the names of those of us whom its lamentably shonky purported “research” paper has libelled.
Editing the typo “editors”: should be in the possessive case, ie “editors'”.
Hope your letter leads to action by the constabulary.
Nature and Scientific American are published by Springer Nature:
https://www.springernature.com/gp
Mea culpa: “editors names” should read “editors named”: moderators, please fix!
Oh! That explains it.
Remarkably few typos in such a lengthy post, especially compared to my recent contribution, written on a relentlessly autofilling iPhone.
On that note there are a few places where close quote ” is missing at the end of a cited section.
According to some writing standards, if the quote finishes within the same line it doesn’t need an end quotation mark. Most people don’t do this as it adds difficulty to reading, but it is acceptable.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark
The convention in English is to put an opening quotation mark at the first and each subsequent paragraph, but use a closing quotation mark only for the final paragraph of the quotation…
I will have to return to this to finish reading it.
Nature’s editor-in-chief wants science to be “reproducible and robust”, but apparently reprehensible as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalena_Skipper
Mr Tillman is correct: the journal holds itself out as being a respectable and serious scientific journal. To stray thus far from respectability and seriousness, and to do so dishonestly under the cover of “peer review”, is to defraud those who subscribe to the journal. This is one of the numerous grounds on which fraud is present and demonstrable.
As a lawyer, professionally, I must say that Christopher has a point so this could be fun.
A shame that I didn’t make the list myself.
I’m in it, between Dr Sherwood Idso and Paul Chesser, but since what I write in the AGW issue has nothing to do with explaining the skeptic side of the science, it’s only further proof of the desperation of the paper’s authors to come up with a list that corroborates their pre-conceived conclusion, regarding a talking point originally invented by the late Stephen Schneider and perfected by one of Desmogblog’s self-described co-founders, Ross Gelbspan. I covered that talking point wipeout back in 2014:
” ‘Skeptic Climate Scientists Do Not Deserve Fair Media Balance.’ Spread This Line Widely; NEVER Check its Veracity and Don’t Examine its History.” http://gelbspanfiles.com/?p=1886
Verbose, but true. The “study” authors admit their aim is political; to get rapid and massive movement to rearrange our society, economy and energy systems.
Don’t confuse “verbose” with “comprehensive”. It is necessary to be able to show the court that the defalcations of the defendants have been explained to them in sufficient detail, so that, when they do not reply, I shall apply for default judgements against them, with orders for the removal of the offending “peer-reviewed” “research” “study”, for its replacement by a comprehensive apology drafted by me and approved by the judge; for an order requiring the defendants not to repeat their libels and not to intrude upon my privacy ever again; and for an order referring the papers to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service for criminal investigation.
I usually ask for costs alone, and I have won nearly every case in which I have had to defend my reputation against the likes of the defendants.
Dave Fair is quite right that the defendants have been incautious enough to reveal their political malice. That revelation, combined with the unjustifiable insults and the fraudulent science, will make things extremely difficult for them. In due course, I expect some of them to be sent to prison.
I’m glad I’m not in their shoes as I can’t think of a tenable argument they could use.
Looks like a very good call.
Attribute not to malice what stupidity alone would explain. Unfortunately in this case stupidity doesn’t suffice. The malice is plain to see in which several parties have had to conspire to bring about the publication.
Sit, I hope you win your case and win it decisively. It is unfortunate that papers like this one are published in a science journal, when it is evident that the motive for doing so is not to advance knowledge in a particular field or fields, but to politicize and propagandize for a particular set of policy solutions. A very bad set of policy solutions, I might add.
Wonderful detailing the science from which the libellous researchers make false claims of danger/destruction/loss of life. Along with listing the offenses and fraud/libel/lying the researchers committed.
May you have full success pursuing these slime mold researchers, Lord Monckton!
And all of this for a lousy $10,000 U.S. grant, Christopher. One is reminded of the assassination of a minor Archduke; this may lead to the major reordering of CliSci. Those two twit “researchers” may be forever vilified by the “Team.”
What surprises me the most about these instances where some member of the Climate Faithful goes off the deep end isn’t that they have allowed their hate and insanity to run rampant, it’s that no one on the ‘Teams’ side ever seems to think before hand that they might need to be reined in. Like with the 10/10 video, no one seems to have looked at this and said “That goes a bit too far”.
It says a lot about the Cult like nature of the Climate Faithful.
~¿~
I have been wondering for some time why the real science community hasn’t pushed back against these hucksters with libel, slander and defamation suits.
I understand that this whole social science alarmism is backed by agencies of every world government but when the Propaganda Ministry aka MSM began representing the hissy fits of the junk science community as personal attacks on the credentials and character of skeptics it crossed over into defamation.
Maybe it is best that those being libeled have waited until the level of alarmism has reached new levels of insanity. There can be no doubt that Nature deserves to be bankrupted by the malicious lies they have spread against honest scientists.
But what really needs to happen is for this to ride all the way to the Supreme court so that the world can see the absolute lack of substantive science/ integrity being brought into play by the UN, Government funded University studies, a rigged peer review process and the mainstream media marketing effort in order to advance worldwide totalitarian socialism on this hoax of CAGW.
Climate doom is awash with funding , so its a boat it does not pay to rock if you fancy doing some research which you can in anyway ‘link’ to climate doom.
The other factor is the habit of not criticising another area , even if practices are poor as they are in climate ‘science ‘ , partly out of fear of them returning the favour and partly because in doing so you may show your own ignorance.
Climate ‘science ‘ has pulled a further trick , it managed to get it accepted that areas such as statistics or computer modeling despite these being areas which can be a critical analyzed without being climate ‘doom’ expert’ , only its own people that can comment . Now just like catholic priests and their belief in gods exists we can see how being an ‘expert ‘ doe not guarantee of validity and how strong personal motivation may mean you no real interest in proving your faith wrong .
The trick is not to think in the terms of science but of religion, politicals or fanatical sport fans , then you could understand how this area works in practice.
“wondering for some time why the real science community hasn’t pushed back”
The process of getting a PhD and then tenure in academia ingrains the idea that it doesn’t pay to buck the system.
It takes an average of almost seven years to complete a PhD. Only half the people who start actually get the degree. During the dissertation phase, the candidate is at the mercy of their committee. Where I was, if one member dissented and wouldn’t relent, you didn’t get the degree.
For many fields, the number of tenure-track job openings is less than half the number of PhDs available. Even if you get a tenure track slot, it often takes four years for that to get converted to a permanent position. If someone in the department has some irrelevant reason for disliking you, they can fabricate more innocuous grounds for opposing granting tenure.
There are some people who can go through all that and retain their integrity. But a lot of academics decide it isn’t worth the grief.
PhDs employed outside of academia theoretically might not have some of the pressures of academia, but they don’t have the job security that tenure gives. That makes them vulnerable if the leadership of the corporations where they work is unsympathetic, as we have seen on numerous occasions.
In other words, gutless.
The academia game is rigged in the area of Climate “Science”.
Just look at the case of Peter Ridd at the James Cook University in Queensland, Australia.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-16/jcu-scientist-peter-ridd-sacking-unlawful-federal-court-judgment/11021554
And JCU is appealing the decision for unlawful dismissal to drive home the point of mandatory consensus in Climate “Science” even though it will ultimately fail since it the case was very clearly proven.
https://campusmorningmail.com.au/news/james-cook-u-set-to-appeal-ridd-unfair-dismissal-judgement/
Those with any doubts about CAGW have legitimate concern about publicly dissenting from the consensus.
Regretably, SCOTUS would just say “We don’t determine science.”
It is not a scientific dispute, it is just libel.
They just name, libel and defame people, and even the way they do it is laughable, if it were a science paper.
Mr Powers is right to express puzzlement that we have not used the courts as often as we should have done. The advantage of the disciplined forum of the court is that the usual suspects cannot get away with making their usual airy, unsupported assertions. They have to provide evidence.
Judge: Now, let me see, Mr Climate-Communist. Am I right in understanding that mathematics is the language of all the hard sciences, and particularly of physics?
CC: Yes, m’lud.
Judge: And am I right in understanding that mathematics is founded upon fewer than two dozen axioms, from which the entire edifice is developed by a series of arguments in formal logic?
CC: Yes, m’lud.
Judge: In that event, Mr Climate-Communist, would you care to explain what role your imagined “consensus” can possibly play in such an edifice? Is it not a fact that the founder of the science of logic, Aristotle, excoriated argument by headcount as a logical fallacy, from which no valid conclusion can be drawn except to the effect that the perpetrator of the fallacy is an ignoramus?
CC: Ergh, well, you see, m’lud, it’s a consensus of experts.
Judge: And am I not right in understanding that Aristotle excoriated argument from expertise as the reputation fallacy, from which no logical conclusion can be drawn except to the effect that the perpetrator of the fallacy is doubly an ignoramus?
CC: Ooof, er, ah, please can I have a glass of water?
Judge: And is it not a fact that science is advanced by the publication of papers in learned journals after peer review?
CC (brightening): Oh, yes, m’lud.
Judge: And is it not a fact that, of 11,944 papers on climate and related topics published after peer review in the learned journals of climate and related subjects over the 21 years 1991-2001, only 43, or 0.3%, would even go so far as to state that recent global warming was principally anthropogenic?
CC: Erm, yes, but the scientists were asked their personal opinion and 97% of them agreed with the consensus.
Judge: But a moment ago you agreed with me that science was done by peer review, not by scientists giving fashionable opinions off the top of their heads.
CC: Please can I go home now?
Judge: No, you can’t. You can go to prison, where you belong.
This would be a happy day, and one we should all be working towards.
Not simply a richly deserved comeuppance, but an hilariously funny one as well.
Actually, in 2008, Doran and Zimmerman sent their opinion survey to 10,257 academic and government Earth scientists, 3146 of whom responded, 90% from US institutions, 6% Canadian and 4% from 21 other nations. No the private sector scientists were considered worthy of polling.
The two key questions were:
1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
They didn’t dare include the necessary third question, asking whether changing mean global T was dangerous.
Not surprisingly, those respondents most dependent on “climate
change” research, ie who listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also had published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on that subject (79 individuals in total), answered yes at the highest rate.
“Of these specialists, 96.2% (76 of 79) answered “risen” to question 1
and 97.4% (75 of 77) answered yes to question 2.” Hence the vaunted 97%! In fact, only 75/79, or 94.9%. But the media ran with “97% of all scientists”, not of 75 most dependent on selling a false consensus.
“The two areas of expertise in the survey with the smallest percentage of participants answering yes to question 2 were economic geology with 47% (48 of 103) and meteorology with 64% (23 of 36).”
Bear in mind again that no private sector earth scientists were included, ie no energy industry geologists, no TV weather presenters, etc.
https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/testfolder/aa-migration-to-be-deleted/assets-delete-me/documents-delete-me/ssi-delete-me/ssi/DoranEOS09.pdf
That should read, “No private sector scientists”.
It should not be ‘Judge’ until the last line. Before that, it should be “Plaintiff’s Barrister” (if in the UK, Oz or NZ) or “Plaintiff’s Lawyer” just about everywhere else. Maybe ‘Advocat’ if in Holland.
In response to Dyspeptic Curmudgeon, judges in UK proceedings are entitled to ask questions if they wish to do so.
“why the real science community hasn’t pushed back against these hucksters with libel, slander and defamation suits.” … for one simple reason … we’re still waiting for the Big Oil corp cheques to arrive so we could afford to take them court.
Fortunately Lord Monckton has independent means and can afford to take the necessary court action that has been denied the rest of us.
Good on you Chris!
Yes; I read the first part of the article with agreement, then skipped to the end and saw Lord Monkton’s signature and burst out with a laugh of glee. Of all the people to rile up, it had to be this one.
Go you good thing…
Agree – Game On!
(SNIPPED) SUNMOD
Moderators, the comment from “chris” offends against site policy, in that the commenter does not furnish to the readers it full name and makes unsubstantiated insults from behind a cloak of anonymity. Please delete its posting.
Geoff Sherrington
Anyone can practise law, in fact, we all do it every day; or should.
What you’re getting confused with is someone calling themselves a lawyer, or solicitor, which is not legal and I’m not aware Chris Monckton ever presents himself as such.
[snip} David you slimeball, stop using other peoples ID’s or you’ll be the one on the end of a lawsuit – Anthony
Mr Sherrington does not suffer from the curse of being a public figure taking a stand on a viewpoint unpopular with the totalitarians who largely control the news media. I have been a particular target ever since it was discovered that the Republicans in Congress were listening to me on the climate question. To keep the hatred and vitriol down a bit, I growl occasionally and, still more occasionally, sue. I am usually successful.
As to the hapless Mr Bickmore, he lost a debate with me at his university and, as the vicious tone of his website attests, is not an independent, dispassionate or reliable witness. Just read his review at ratemyprofessor.com to see what his own hapless students think of him.
Geoff Sherrington
Whether or not Chris has been threatening lawsuits or not isn’t the question you asked.
You said “Isn’t practicing law without a license forbidden….”?
I answered you, then you decided on another line of attack against Chris.
Careful, though, he might turn his attention to you. Maybe you’ll be his first success.
Technically, writing a resignation letter is in fact a legal document and it is done every day.
Writing Resume or CV is a legal document. Filling out any sort of government paper is a legal document.
All can be consider practicing law.
Writing legislation is creating law; not every person elected is a lawyer.
To be clear I am not lawyer but your agreement seems illogical to me and is at odds with my own personal experiences.
Christopher, ctm, moderators in general.
Slug ALERT !!
Some slug has used my name (my proper name) to write about 5 comments on here, when I have made no comments at all.
Please treat all comments under my name as coming from a knowing imposter.
In some ways, there needs to be some legal redress available. I was one of the very early bloggers on WUWT. I have met both Viscount Monckton and Anthony Watts, in Melbourne. The attitudes indicated by this slug imposter have opposite intent to what I might have blogged. I have contributed occasional threads to WUWT, to Jo Nova, to Climate Etc. The contents of these are adequate to indicate my positions on this matter of global warming and derivatives.
So, to all concerned, I shall write no more on this page.
All that you read as under my name, harming my good name and reputation, is FAKE. Geoff S
(I have removed the imposters comments, thanks for the tip)
(This is the REAL Geoff Sherrington’s ONLY comment in the thread) SUNMOD
snowflake
“Moderators, the comment from “chris” offends against site policy, in that the commenter does not furnish to the readers it full name and makes unsubstantiated insults from behind a cloak of anonymity. Please delete its posting.”
huh, that is standard practice in the comments.
I agree with Christopher Monckton, that this comment from “chris” is an unprovoked smear, with no redeeming value.
It contains no actual information, and is not a cogent or pertinent response to the headline post.
Getting snippy in the midst of a contentious dialogue is one thing, but leading off with a vicious insult is another.
Moderators, please either remove the comment from “Chris”, which offends against site policy, or explain why you are not willing to do so. I had the policy changed when it was evident that anonymous contributors were making free with their anonymity to hurl gratuitous personal insults. If that policy has been changed again or will not be enforced any further, I shall cease to post here.
(I removed it, it is indeed against policy rules and stupid too) SUNMOD
A verbose way to say that this a is a breach of his right to privacy.
But I think he does have a case in there. At least in Europe this journal should be recalled, legally.
In response to Mr Courtney, do not confuse “verbose” with “comprehensive”. it is necessary to draw the defendants’ attention to their defalcations in sufficient detail to reassure the judge that they have been fully and fairly told the grounds of action on which they are to face both civil suit and, in due course, prosecution for fraud.
As I sit back and watch this nightmare unfold, I recall to my childhood dream of wanting to become an astronaut. I was on the path until a little detour called the “Vietnam War” diverted me….but I digress.
Fifty years ago this year I completed my Internship with NASA on the Apollo Program and received my undergraduate degree in Physics. We loaded some of our computer programs using IBM cards and paper tape, and many of our calculations were done using slide rules …I still have my K&E (Keuffel & Esser) Slide Rule in its leather case. The Lead for the project to which I was first assigned was 29 years old and had 3 PhDs. We put men on the moon. During the past 50 years, what happened to NASA and Academia and the Media and the other government agencies who formed an alliance to achieve that goal?
…btw, TEWS stands for Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron, the USAF unit in which I flew my 100+ missions during the Vietnam War. I will forever have affection for the Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, and Thai people I met and worked with in villages alongside our Chaplains and local missionaries…will never forget Reverend Hargrove and his mission just outside DaNang and his wife and little “Ollie.”
“Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron”
Sounds dangerous! I bet you spent most of your time flying over North Vietnam leading American aircraft into the danger zone, didn’t you? God Bless you. I was over there in 1968 and 1969 (in South Vietnam, that is:).
TEWSs operated over both the North and South, with various EW aircraft.
No, I only made two incursions into North Vietnam. Our aircraft was an EC-47 (military version of the DC-3), and we cruised at about 4500 feet AGL at 85 KIAS performing ARDF and communications intercept operations. Our missions were pretty much confined to South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Search on “Baron 52” for an unsolved mystery regarding the loss of one of our aircraft with 8 of my friends.
I could post a photo of my aircraft as another EC-47 and I were en route to our target area in Cambodia, but it might raise some eyebrows. It is titled “Moon Over Cambodia.” You wouldn’t be able to see me waving from the pilot’s window, but if you looked closely, you could probably see the “moon.” Of course, I wouldn’t post it here…OH, MY, I accidentally did!
….gulp….well, Colonel, honest, they were just goofing off….mind you, I HAD NO IDEA they were doing anything “unbecoming” back there….YES, SIR, as soon as I saw the photos, I gave them a thorough “Dressing Down” and…huh?….bad choice of words?…
C-47/DC-3 variants are arguably among the most important aircraft of all time.
Ike said that the war-winning Allied weapons were the C-47, jeep, bulldozer, deuce and a half truck and “duck” amphibious vehicle.
I was intransit one time (around June 1968) and was standing outside the “terminal” at Da Nang airbase, and a group of us were standing outside along the side of the runway waiting for our airplane to taxi over and pick us up and in the meantime, a DC-3 was taking off on the runway in front of us and as he went roaring by our position you could tell there was something bad wrong with one or more of the engines and it started smoking as soon as it cleared the runway and the pilot made a big u-turn and headed right back to the runway he took off from and the noise was really getting bad with one of his two engines out and he was wobbling as he came in for a landing and he touched down on one front wheel which caused the aircraft to swing towards us standing there and some of the group started running away but about that time that pilot managed to get his other front wheel on the ground and he straightened it out and went sailing past us down the runway. And I thought to myself, that is one of the greatest feats of flying/landing I have ever seen! I want to fly with that guy!!! 🙂
Yeah, it looked like he was gong to crash right into that terminal (a small building) and us standing outside it, but we dodged that bullet. A lot of people dodged a bullet that day thanks to the skill of that pilot.
Interesting that the plane is painted in camouflage. RAF reconnaissance planes were generally a sky-blue color. I suspect your commanders were more worried about mortar attack on the runway, than fighter attack, so long as you kept away from North Vietnam!
I hope that you warned the miscreants that they should apply sun screen to any exposed portions of the skin, since we know that the sun has a stronger effect at higher altitudes. And that you warned them sternly.
TEWS_Pilot: Thanks, Laughter to tears…
My Dad flew the first C47/DC3 in New Zealand on 4th April 1943. He did 13 hours in it before a Major Ross of the USMC checked him out on it.
Great aircraft.
A hand salute to your father. Somewhere in my stash of souvenirs from Vietnam I have an ID plate from one of our EC-47s, a 1943 vintage. Yes, that was one of my favorite aircraft even above the jets I have flown. I also flew the C-119 prior to going to Vietnam. It was part of the pipeline to Gunship C-119Ks, but the USAF gave them to the South Vietnamese before I departed for South Vietnam, so I was diverted to EC-47s, and I have never regretted that change. Not that it matters, but I still hold our CONUS squadron record for backing a C-119 the closest to the fence at Phoenix Sky Harbor airport….3 feet 4 inches….reversible propellers…DON’T hit the BRAKES to stop when backing up, just bring the props out of reverse smoothly.
After departing jungle survival in the Philippines, I arrived at Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon. As I walked into the Officers’ Club expecting to eat supper by myself, I heard my name called out. I looked around and saw a former USAF ROTC buddy. He was an O-2 Pilot. He said he had been shot down that day and had spent about 45 minutes on the ground doing a bit of “Escape and Evade” maneuvering before he was rescued. His squadron was throwing a party for him, and he invited me to join them, which I cheerfully did….I think we all had a good time….er, uh, well not because I had a bit too much… I mean my memory fades after all these years, yeah, memory fades….right?
WOW, someone with the money and guts to take them on. About time these fraudsters get nailed where it hurts.
Go get ’em, Christopher.
Also, I very much enjoyed your talk at ICCC#13. For those who haven’t seen it, here’s the YouTube link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-H_sf4WCtA
Regards,
Bob
Just so we are all clear, where was this filed?
In response to Mr Kiser, this is what is known in law as a letter before claim. It is a warning shot. If the defendants don’t reply (which is very likely, because any reply will dig them deeper into the cesspool of their own making), proceedings will be issued. If they still don’t reply, judgement in default will be entered against them.
And how many warning shots have You posted in Your career?
Sincerely yours.
Valaker of The Northern Hemisphere
In response to “Rune Valaker”, I have had to issue many warning shots, and a rather smaller number of actions in court, which are usually successful. The warning shots help to keep down the flow of hatred from the totalitarian extremists who are furious that I and a handful like me are daring to question the climate-Communist Party Line that “Rune Valaker” espouses.
Rune Valaker is my real name. What do You know about my climate views? You seem to have as little basis for your accusations as those you threaten to sue. Personally, I think the article in Nature Communications is a disaster for the publisher’s reputation and I hope Nature draws the entire article. I also believe that these 97% surveys and the like, are unscientific and only weakens scientific pluralism.
But as a trained lawyer I also hope that You do not take any center stage in any lawsuit, that will only weaken the cases of serious people like Curry, Tol and Pielke.
Sincerely yours.
Valaker of The Northern Hemisphere
“Rune Valaker” is the name of an advocate from Bergen who is well known to Norwegian climate realists (Klimarealistene) as a concern troll – one who pretends to view the climate debate objectively but is in reality a true-believer in the climate-Communist Party Line. He has had some of his posts at the Klimarealistene blog redacted by the moderators because, as here, he makes ad-hominem comments and otherwise interferes deliberately with the fair and reasonable conduct of scientific discussion.
From the sneering tone of his postings, he is concern-trolling here too. He thinks I am not a serious enough person to take part in a legal action. Well, Britain is not a Socialist country: therefore, anyone – serious or not – has the right to bring a legal case. I do so infrequently and, when I do, I usually win, because I try not to waste the court’s time with non-serious cases.
“Rune Valaker” should appreciate that the fraud being perpetrated by the climate Communists with whom he stands shoulder to shoulder is arousing increasing concern in official circles. It will not be long before the public authorities, both nationally and internationally, have accumulated enough evidence of fraudulent misconduct on the part of the likes of Nature Communications and the co-authors of its dismal purported “research” “study” to start prosecuting them.
One or two convictions for fraud will be enough. Then the rest of the climate-Communist rabbits will run for cover, “Rude Valaker” with them.
In your post below you give a false representation of my relationship with the Climate Realists. It is true that I got deleted posts on their website, but it was not because I was “trolling,” but because I revealed that the article I was commenting on had a number of factual errors. And it was the first and only time I commented on their website. My experience led to a chronicle on the Norwegian research blog Forskning.no where I among other things. revealed how they used censorship to withhold obviously correct information related to the development of the Norwegian glaciers.
https://forskning.no/kronikk-klima-media/kronikk-ikke-fri-og-apen-debatt-hos-klimarealistene/1171431
When it comes to my “sneering tone,” it is modest compared to your pompous and childish ad – hominem and interpretations of legal issues that you obviously have very limited insight into.
Sincerely yours.
Valaker of The Northern Hemisphere
Lawyer Valaker now realizes he was wrong to imagine I did not know of his climate-Communist propensities. He is also wrong about the grounds on which he was moderated by the Climate Realists in Norway. Be that as it may, his intervention here was neither constructive nor intended to be constructive: it was characteristic of the worst kind of shyster. I shall be writing to his company and to the regulators of lawyers in Norway.
>> I will be writing to his company and to the regulators of lawyers in Norway.
Please do so, no I demand you to do so, and unless my company and the Norwegian Bar Association have not received such a letter within 14 days, I will disclose you here at WUWT as an imposter and charlatan. If you need a longer deadline, I will be most accommodating.
Here is the mailing addresses;
Advokatcompagniet DA
PO Box 483, 5805 Bergen
Den Norske Advokatforening
Jurustenes Hus
Kristian Augusts gate 9, 0164 Oslo
Sincerely yours.
Valaker of The Northern Hemisphere
Written and sent. In Britain, a lawyer who announces he is a lawyer, behaves in a needlessly and calculatedly discourteous fashion in a public forum and lies not once, not twice but thrice would be struck off.
Oh my god, absolutely brilliant. I was thinking, this is what should be done as I was reading. Then Bang, the piece de resistance at the end. Viscount Monckton of Brenchley signature.
Absolutely F…ing brilliant. Well played Monckton.
Regards
Climate Heretic
I’d be proud to be on the list and have it framed so to show future generations that I was one of those not caught in modern mania and crowd madness.
“Deadly extreme weather”: Today is the 50th anniversary of Hurricane Camille, the highest wind hurricane event to hit the US mainland with winds 190 mph at landfall.
But this was not by far the worst Atlantic hurricane by any other measure. The deadliest and possibly strongest took place in 1780, killing over 25,000 people in the Caribbean, with wind speeds possibly reaching 200 mph. In fact, all of the most deadly storms took place well over 100 years ago, because weather forecasting (aka technology) has saved more lives than turning our backs on technology as the greens wish us to do.
They know storms aren’t getting stronger and now are trying to CYA by saying “but they have more rain!” Show me 25,000 people on the US mainland being killed by rain.
This would be a heck of a trial, I think.
What are the odds that Nature Communications will apologize?
Normally, I would say there is no chance, but this “study” was so botched up that I don’t see how the editors of Nature Communications can successfully defend it.
I agree with Mr Abbott that the defendants’ best course of action is to apologize and withdraw the purported “study”, which Judith Curry has rightly excoriated as the worst she has ever seen in a supposedly “scientific” journal.
You really ought to see if you could get a bunch of people who are also on the “contrarian” list, to join you as a Plaintiff. And you really should ask for a whack of money for damages sustained to your reputation *in the UK*.
Some of the Defendants likely live outside the UK, and you may need leave of the Court to serve them. If they do not acknowledge service, or file a defence, you will have to bring an application (motion) for judgment, as the injunctive relief you seek cannot be given on default.
You *will* need to retain lawyers as the procedural aspects are a dense thicket of obfuscation. (Did you expect any else from lawyers?) The Rules of Civil Procedure are at: https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules
In response to Dyspeptic Curmudgeon, of course there is merit in getting other victims of the libel, breach of right of privacy and fraud to join the action. I usually fight my own cases in court: the last one, some years ago, was against the BBC. It was a High Court case, and the cost to me was only £10,000. The cost to the BBC was that the judge found I had substantially won the action, and the BBC was compelled to cut a 90-minute personal attack on me down to 40 minutes. Since the ghastly programme-maker, a climate Communist, was paid by the minute broadcast, I expect he lost out quite badly. Certainly I have not seen his name on anything on the BBC since then.
This case, however, is much bigger. What has been done to us strikes right at the heart of academic freedom of research, speech, thought, inquiry and action. It is what happens only in totalitarian states. It must be stopped. So I shall indeed be engaging lawyers if the defendants do not back off – as they are showing some signs of doing. And I shall be inviting others to join me as plaintiffs.
“This case, however, is much bigger. What has been done to us strikes right at the heart of academic freedom of research, speech, thought, inquiry and action. It is what happens only in totalitarian states. It must be stopped.”
Absolutely right! And we couldn’t have a better person leading the charge!
My best wishes of success to you in this necessary effort, Lord Monckton of Brenchley!
On the whole I am in complete agreement with this lawsuit, and it is clear that each of the points raised is valid and meritorious.
I did find a few items that may have been mis-stated, including this passage:
““Historians of science have detailed the political origins of the climate change contrarian movement…”
This appears to be a reference to the political basis of the climate change “orthodoxy”, as represented by what we might call alarmists, warmies, etc. In other words, those who advocate for political control of energy and infrastructure related to anything producing and emitting CO2.
Should it not say “climate change orthodoxy”, or some other descriptor, perhaps “catastrophist”, in order to make it clear that the reference is to those who the Nature Communication study represents, and not those they oppose, given that the descriptor “contrarian” is the one those named in the suit chose to label those who are skeptical of the alarmism?
Please disregard this.
I should have been more careful in reading the whole thing before commenting.
This was a quote from the original paper, not past of the suit.
Greg Laden libelled Roger Tattersall of Tallbloke’s Talkshop a number of years ago and I managed to get a retraction:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/20/greg-laden-caves-makes-nice-with-tallbloke/
Christopher’s demands in that respect are fair and reasonable.
Sorry, but I don’t think that there has been a breach of the human rights act or the European Convention on Human rights as “Nature” is not an organ of the state. The ECHR is specifically between the state ( including associated organisations like the NHS) and the individual, it doesn’t apply between private parties.
If those involved were academics in a government funded institution then the FOI law applies, and therefore I think they would also be deemed to be the “State” in terms of human rights.
In response to Mr Collis, the entitlement to privacy in the European Human Rights Convention is enforceable by any citizen. The government is the defendant in any such action that reaches the Human Rights Court, but at all earlier stages the citizen has the right to cite breach of the right of privacy against any other person who acts in breach of that right. Otherwise it would be open to any State that wished to deny the right of privacy simply to act in the name of an individual.
I have no clue, but I strongly suspect, given the nature of EU regulations, that CM is on to something here. LOL
These gentlemen got into trouble.
They won’t come out well.
This is certain.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defendant