I hope Judith Curry apologizes for this.

You are so brave, Greg!

Can we get a blog post on all of the rude things Mann has said about Judith Curry?

"Rush Limbaugh’s assertion that Sandra Fluke needs to keep an aspirin between her knees"

This, from a man who likes to keep an oxycontin between his own lips...

For my two cents favoriting doesn't count as endorsement, the user might just be bookmarking the tweet and it doesn't share it with other Twitter users. That said Steyn is defo a sleazeball and Judith Curry is letting her agenda trump any dispassionate search for truth.

jeff, has Mann called Curry, "the Jerry Sandusky of climate science", or anything like it, just out of interest?

When I favorite a tweet, it means its something that I would like to reread and perhaps comment on in my Week in Review blog post. It does not mean I endorse what I favorite. If I RT something without comment, then I am at least suggesting something is interesting.

I follow a broad range of people on twitter, to get a sense of the range of perspectives. I do not endorse everything that shows up on my twitter feed. I have only blocked one person.

So do not read too much into my twitter favorites and people who I follow, pay attention to what I tweet myself and write on my blog.

As for what Steyn wrote, Mann has brought this on with his big lawsuit and the derogatory things he says about other people (including myself). I have no idea why Steyn went after you.

This is a "science blog"? It looks to me like it's a "my ego is butt hurt" blog.

"As for what Steyn wrote, Mann has brought this on with his big lawsuit and the derogatory things he says about other people"

That's ludicrous. Why don't you read up on the matter without reminding people how clueless you are first?

How dare Steyn think he's allowed to have an opinion!

Down with speech!

"As for what Steyn wrote, Mann has brought this on with his big lawsuit and the derogatory things he says about other people (including myself)."

So, what Steyn said was caused by what Mann did after Steyn said it. Mann was asking for it, even though Steyn acted first. Apart from the impossibility of the effect causing the cause, do you not find it low even for you to be using the "he was asking for it" gambit. I mean as a woman do you not see where that argument comes from?

Judith Curry:

"When I favorite a tweet, it means its something that I would like to reread and perhaps comment on in my Week in Review blog post."

OK, why don't you re-read the bit where he calls Michael Mann "Dr. Fraudpants". Do you agree that Mann is guilty of scientific fraud and scientific misconduct, or not?

Explain your reasoning.

Judith Curry:

"“As for what Steyn wrote, Mann has brought this on with his big lawsuit and the derogatory things he says about other people”"

Given that Mann's lawsuit was in response to things Steyn wrote previously, that logic is ludicrous.

Then again, most everything you've written in the last three or so years has been ludicrous.

Curry #6

Sounds reasonable up until this:

"As for what Steyn wrote, Mann has brought this on with his big lawsuit and the derogatory things he says about other people (including myself)."

Lacking self awareness Curry reveals that, for her, tribe trumps science. There's a whole story of petulance, deflection and intransigent, political immaturity in that sentence.

Didn't Dr. Laden attempt to contact Dr. Curry & get an explanation before writing this? Even if not, it's common for people to use Twitter's Favorite button as a bookmarking tool. Many people explicitly say in their home page headers that retweets and favorites do not mean endorsement.

Wow, this guy went full retard!

An adult man getting angry at a fav'd tweet. You make climate scientists looks great. Keep up the good work.

"But I really didn’t think she was that kind of person. But maybe she is."
She is, perhaps was not - but then, this type always was.

What a fascinating nothing response from Aunt Judy.

You favorite something you want to re-read? It's not a bookmark. The button says "favorite." As in, "Hey everyone, here's something l like a lot."

It's not, "Hey everyone, here's something. I'm not sure what it means but I might go back and read it later so that I can write a blog post on it."

Talk about "not getting it." Sheesh!

JC Denton... "An adult man getting angry at a fav’d tweet."

You're reading your own message into Greg's post. Greg is saying that he hopes Judith doesn't really endorse positions that are consistent with those of the likes of Styen and Limbaugh.

That seems like a very reasonable thing, being how insanely unreasonable those two people are.

Greg, have you considered tossing Curry into a lake and then seeing if she floats? That's how scientists handle the heresy of bookmarking web pages, isn't it? How else are you going to figure out if she's really a witch?

Rob Honeycutt, awesome point. Nobody ever uses favorites to bookmark tweets/links on Twitter. You are a true Twitter expert. Literally no person on earth has ever used the favorite as a bookmark.

http://www.thewire.com/technology/2013/07/complete-guide-art-twitter-fa…

"The Practical Favorite: Some people use the favorite for its most practical purpose — to bookmark tweets for later."

"The Practical Hate-Fave: "I fave to remember to make fun of something later," explains The Atlantic Wire's Elspeth Reeve, who uses this hybrid of both the practical and hate-fave methods. She favorites something as a "hate-fave." This helps her remember to "hate-read" the article later or use the sentiment in an article of her own."

"The Hate-Fave: On the other, meaner end of the spectrum, we have the "hate-fave," which The Awl's Choire Sicha calls "the most perverse thing you can do" to someone totally awful, as he told The Journal's Rosman. Basically, it's just favoriting annoying or rude or hateful tweets — smiling at a person yelling in your face. Some might call it taking the high road, others passive aggressive. Either way, it works."

Greg, I also hope you explained to Curry that girls are not allowed to have opinions until white male science bloggers tell them what they're supposed to think or link. It's 2014! We can't have girls speaking without permission from their male superiors, right?

Why didn't anyone file a brief in support of Mann? Not even Greg? Why does Mann still call himself a Nobel laureate?

2 kinds of Yanks. Liberal right wing scum and conservative right wing scum . Liberals are actually more repulsive.

Walter Mathus... Well, I'm very happy that you are the self-proclaimed expert on the definition of the word "favorite." (sarc)

Favorite: adjective
preferred before all others of the same kind. "their favorite Italian restaurant"
synonyms: best-loved, most-liked, favored, dearest

To mark something as "favorite" to mean, "I'm going to figure this out later" makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

bradoplata... "Why does Mann still call himself a Nobel laureate?"

WTF does that have to do with anything at all? Are you going to bring up Al Gore next? You folks are so predictable.

Walter Mathus... "Greg, I also hope you explained to Curry that girls are not allowed to have opinions..."

If you hadn't noticed, that's the general position of Steyn and Limbaugh. That's exactly why Greg is questioning Curry favoriting one of Steyn's comments, because of a litany of insane socio-political positions they promote.

Judith Curry... "As for what Steyn wrote, Mann has brought this on with his big lawsuit and the derogatory things he says about other people (including myself)."

Ah, really? Has Mann ever accused you of fraud or of fraudulently torturing data for your presentation of well established research?

Rob, why did not one file a brief in support of Mann? The people he's suing had a diverse bunch file for them.

Yikes, Curry fanboys may be even dumber than McIntyre fanboys!

bradoplata... "Rob, why did not one file a brief in support of Mann?"

And this is material... how?

Have you even read what the blog post is commenting on?

Bit confused here since Dr. Laden seems to imply that favoriting a tweet somehow means approving of the content of the tweet.

The only way to save a link in a fast moving twitter feed is to favorite it. I favorite numerous links over the course of the day so I can find them again in the evening. Once read I unfavorite them. If Twitter offered a different function to remember a tweet that would be nice, but they don't so I, and apparently Dr, Curry, use the tools at hand.

Mr. Honeycutt suggests bookmarking but that ignores the fact that I, like many, work on more than one device. I favourite tweets on my work computer and then access the tweets and read them at home on the iPad or on my home computer. A bookmark sticks to electronic device where the bookmark was saved. Twitter, meanwhile, remembers things across different platforms. This is not rocket science folks.

bradoplata:

"Rob, why did not one file a brief in support of Mann? The people he’s suing had a diverse bunch file for them."

Mann's side only argues that Steyn defamed him. No need for amicus briefs regarding a ruling on the facts of the case.

Those filing for Steyn, including the ACLU, aren't arguing on the facts of the case. They are arguing that Steyn has a constitutional right to defame Mann.

See the difference?

I didn't think so. But I tried.

I'm sorry to see that Dr. Curry felt obliged to offer a comment here on this blog. She owes no one an apology. Her tireless work speaks for itself. Never have I heard her shut down or block an idea because it frightened her.

The folks here under Laden's influence seem to use name-calling more often than rational conversation. Anytime we see a post from Honeycutt we can just scroll right past it.

I think it may be time for those who have no personal investment in climatechange science to stop "casting pearls to swine." There are great blogs out there that allow free speech and exchange of ideas.

Is this blog supported with government dollars?

Rob, how Mann presents himself is important in a thread where your ilk are criticizing Curry about commenting on the suit.

On to the defamation. If he's a proven liar, which he proved due to having to refile his suit, it makes it just a bit harder to prove he was actually defamed.

bradoplata... Curry is ostensibly aligning herself with people who have made vociferous statements claiming scientific fraud. She's ostensibly aligning herself with people like Steyn and Limbaugh who have a long list of incredibly insane socio-political positions on a wide range of issues.

THAT is a pretty extraordinary thing for an active scientist to do!

Mann doesn't even come into the picture on this matter.

Kate U... "Anytime we see a post from Honeycutt we can just scroll right past it."

LOL! Keep right on scrolling. :-)

This post makes him look childish, petulant, and immature, middle school behavior. To demand an apology from Curry for favoriting the Steyn post makes him look oafish and controlling. The smart thing to do is to be cool and act like he didn't notice.

Re: Steyn, it would be extremely unwise to get into a war of words with him. He is a funny guy who has made a very good living writing funny, biting political commentary. There is no way that Laden can compete. Pick your fights wisely.

It just occurred to me why Steyn is ridiculing Laden, it must be about Laden's role in the financing of Mann's lawsuit against Steyn.

bradoplata:

"If he’s a proven liar, which he proved due to having to refile his suit, it makes it just a bit harder to prove he was actually defamed."

Not at all, because the defamation is in regard to Steyn accusing him of academic fraud.

But it doesn't matter. If Mann loses, I'm quite confident it will be on constitutional grounds, i.e. the press's right to slander and defame will be strengthened here in the US.

Kate U:

"Her tireless work speaks for itself."

I'm sure we all agree with you on this point … though we might disagree on what is being said.

Dhogaza, lol at being upset that someone might win a trial because they engaged in a constitutionally protected activity. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt because I'm new here, but unless you aren't from the US you have to admit that sounded pretty obtuse.

bradoplata... Sorry but libel is not a "constitutionally protected activity."

You haven't answered Judith Curry's question (on her blog). Do you or do you not support Mann's "scientific" behaviour?

After the above comment by Judith Curry and her new blog post, one can at least observe that she made quite an effort not to say that she did not like the Steyn post. Two missed opportunities.

When I look at twitter on my phone, I also sometimes use "favourite" to bookmark tweets with links to read later. I would nor read too much into that and hope that that will not be used against me.

If this would happen, then I see no reason, why I would not clearly state that although I used "favorite" function as bookmark, I did not like the particular link in question.

Curry manages to totally mangle reality once again...

"Attempts to thwart M&M in their efforts to reproduce MBH98, 99 (violates communalism)"

If M&M were trying to reproduce MBH98/99 that wouldn't have been a problem at all. In fact, they were able to replicate but came out with an answer that confirmed MBH, but didn't report that. They merely chose to try to find inconsequential niggling points that would undermine people's perception of MBH. Others did replicate and showed the M&M methods didn't change the conclusions. Thus, Curry is woefully uninformed on this topic.

"Helping Phil Jones et al. figure out how to circumvent FOIA requests (violates communalism)"

Does Curry understand how many FOIA requests Jones received? Does she realize that, if Jones had to respond to every request, given his available budget, pretty much all he'd have been doing was responding to FOIA requests and no scientific research? It was a paper version of a DOS attack.

"Attempts to dismiss M&M’s 2004 publication because McIntyre was a shill for fossil fuels (violates universalism)"

It's a true statement. Does Curry believe Mann shouldn't state his beliefs?

"Attacking the person not the argument: calling me ‘denier’, ‘anti-science’, ‘serial climate misinformer’ (violates universalism)"

I'd say that's attacking Curry's arguments.

"Advocacy related to his area of expertise (violates disinterestedness, although the norm of disinterestedness is contested)"

Dante said there is a special place reserved in hell for those who do nothing in a time of moral crisis.

Climate change is that crisis of our time.

Judith Curry owes neither you nor that fraudulent 'Nobel Laureate' you're attached to an apology.

In all honesty, you haven't gotten half the kicking around you deserve.

You look like a turtle.

Wow. Them's some top notch commenters that toddle along behind Curry and Steyn. (sarc)

Rob,

In light of the information that has come up over the course of the day, do you now acknowledge that using the favorite tool in Twitter does not indicate an endorsement any more than using a bookmark would do so?

Is a little constructive criticism welcomed here? This is my first visit to this blog and this is the first post I saw. I'm no fan of Dr. Curry's research but I won't be back to this blog if it is nothing but the usual churlish climate pissing match. With hurt egos as a topping. Doesn't everyone know that favorite is used as a pseudo bookmarking tool on twitter? Even if she meant to favorite that mentioned article, why should you expect an apology? So odd.

Utter rubbish, and mysoginistic rubbish to boot..

Professor Curry is worth an infinite number of know-nothing bloggers such as yourself.

If an apology is required, it is you that should be making it to her, you patronising little man.

bradoplata… Sorry but libel is not a “constitutionally protected activity.”

Sigh. I was commenting on why DHOGAZA thought Mann might lose. Is comprehension a skill you chose to lose, or are you just an attack chihuahua?

bradoplata... I know you were responding to dhogaza. Is there something about the fact that libel is not constitutionally protected that you don't understand?

Blair... "...do you now acknowledge that using the favorite tool in Twitter does not indicate an endorsement..."

Not so much. The word "favorite" has a pretty distinct meaning.

If Curry was suggesting that she liked the article, it would be appropriate in extreme cases like this to add a "RT" comment that indicated that she wasn't specifically endorsing the post.

Note that I have added the modifier "ostensibly" to my comments to indicate that there is a level of interpretation that can be applied to her comments that might be misleading if care isn't taken.

Curry does very little to allay one's concerns that she doesn't want to be associated with such extremist positions.

catweasle666... "Utter rubbish, and mysoginistic (sic) rubbish to boot."

I'll state again, part of the issue here is that she was "ostensibly" endorsing the positions of an individual (Steyn) who is well recognized for his misogynist positions.

Rob, I didn't have a position one way or another about libel. Dhogaza is the one who made an opinion about Mann possibly losing. I made a comment about that.

Mann's fight is against the Streisand effect, not anything some niche commentators preached to the choir. If he would have left well enough alone, it would have passed unnoticed. His egotism didn't allow that, and now he is just embarrassing himself and people like you.

bradoplata... Really? You "don't have a position" on whether libel is constitutionally protected?

Explain how that works.

bradoplata... "...now he is just embarrassing himself and people like you."

Is it embarrassing that Mike Mann produced a piece of research 15 years ago that has been confirmed by every single one of the two dozen multiproxy reconstruction that has come since?

What's embarrassing about that?

Rob H,

Libel is not constitutionally protected in the US, as you well know. You are either being purposefully obtuse or are just confused.

If Mann loses on constitutional grounds it will be because the standard of libel/defamation of a public figure is set much higher than it is in the case of a private citizen.

One cannot deny his public figure status, and the court is trying to eventually get to the issue of whether or not Mann's suit should be dismissed out of hand (after 2 years of legal wrangling) as a SLAPP.

The detailed case history and legal issues are extraordinarily boring and convoluted. However, Steyn had offered to Mann go straight to trial and leave all his other co-defendants behind. I think he figured they might be dead weight anyways. Mann declined.

Seems like Mann's interest lies more in dragging this case out than actually salvaging his reputation.

Caleb... "Libel is not constitutionally protected..."

Perhaps you can share this idea with bradoplata. He doesn't seem to hold a particular opinion on the matter and probably should.

"Seems like Mann’s interest lies more in dragging this case out than actually salvaging his reputation."

Unlikely. I think this case has specific merit with regards to the overall climate debate. One side (Steyn, CEI, NR and many others) seem to think they can say anything they like, regardless of any truth related to climate change, and get away with it because they consider it "free speech." This has clearly polluted the public discussion on this critical issue (to the overwhelming delight of the fossil fuel industry) and caused delays in taking important action.

Sending a clear message that such clear lies and deceit have consequences would be an important turning point in moving the discussion forward.

Steyn is clearly wrong in his statements. Steyn has clearly acted in reckless disregard for widely established facts. He and those who act similarly should have to answer for their actions.

I'd hate to interpret bradoplata's intent, but I think he simply meant it was constitutionally-protected speech in his opinion.

I'm not clear on whether or not you think constitutionally protected free speech is a problem itself or if Steyn's reference to "the fraudulent hockey stick" is just not an example of such? The ACLU seems to think the constitution is on Steyn's side, and they filed a brief saying as much.

The risk with protecting your favoured advocates from rough and ready political discourse is that the next case might involve a public figure you disagree with dragging some no-name blogger through the courts under the same pretense.

Your point about "Sending a clear message that such clear lies and deceit have consequences" was a route Steyn offered to Mann already. He declined. What do you make of that?

Steyn has offered to (in your words) "answer for (his) actions". Mann turned him down. Mann could have gone straight to the heart of the matter you seem to hold dear and get a judicial answer. Mann chose not to.

Again, it is clear to most that Mann's purpose is to drag the matter out in the courts, cost the defendants large amounts of money, and try to avoid any such resolution.

As I tell my children, actions speak louder than words, and Mann's actions speak pretty loudly for himself in this case.

"bradoplata… “…now he is just embarrassing himself and people like you.”

Is it embarrassing that Mike Mann produced a piece of research 15 years ago that has been confirmed by every single one of the two dozen multiproxy reconstruction that has come since?

What’s embarrassing about that?"

As I mentioned, you are just embarrassing yourself, and at this point it's unseemly.

Good day, enjoy your life as our conversation is done. Please don't hurt yourself when Mann drops the suit when discovery is compelled on him.

Rob,

The fact that it is called a "favorite" does not completely define how the tool is used. Were it the case then technically a "bookmark" wouldn't be appropriate because it is the internet and not a "book". As Dr. Curry clearly indicated, she favorited the post to be able to find it later.

As for your suggestion that she re-tweet the post, that ignores the whole point. You re-tweet a tweet if you find it interesting, provocative, strongly agree or strongly disagree with it. Twitter etiquette is not to re-tweet a link you have not yet read.

Caleb Lawrence, Mann / his lawyer don't want to break one case into two. Common legal practice when dealing with the same accusation. Ask yourself why NRO is fighting the case tooth-and-nail. *They* are the one's stalling the court case. If they would not file one motion after the other to stop the process, the case would be in court already.

Here is an official butthurt report form for Mr. Laden to fill out and submit.

http://www.wallchan.com/images/sandbox/73300-butthurt-report-form.png

Marco, NRO is appealing because the anti-slapp law wasn't written very well. From what I understand, the law isn't clear on when appeals can be made, so some judge has to figure it out. I'd bet a dollar that whomever loses the appeal appeals again because that is how lawyers make money.

There is a reason lawyers and politicians have such bad reps, an it's for things like this imo.

I don't live in America and I feel underqualified to judge the merits of the ACLU's amicus brief in support of Steyn, Simberg and co. It seems quite difficult to get a straight answer on this but could someone who knows the answer please tell me, once and for all: if a scientist is a public figure, is it Constitutionally protected speech to call his work fraudulent even when you know it's not (or you have no reason to think it is)?

Bradoplata, that may be a reason why NRO is appealing, but it also contradicts Caleb Lawrence's claim that Mann is trying to prevent the case from going to court. If NRO had not appealed, they'd be in court now.

Rob, This:
"Helping Phil Jones et al. figure out how to circumvent FOIA requests (violates communalism)”
appears to me to be a gross misrepresentations of the facts about what Jones and Mann may or may not have done, as well as a gross misrepresentation of what Merton and other philosophers meant with "communalism".
The latter means that "substantive findings of science are
a product of social collaboration and are assigned to the community." E-mails with scientific discussions are not substantive findings. And if Judith Curry thinks they are, she should publish all her e-mails with scientific discussions. Always. Not on request, but right as it happens. She hasn't done that, so clearly she doesn't quite feel it is her duty to share her discussions - which then makes it odd she essentially demands others do...

There's much more to say about Merton's norms and the (mis)use by Curry and others, as well as the known conflicts between reality and Merton's norms, or even the problem of what to do when you run into conflicting situations between the norms. For example, what to do if you run into someone who is clearly not "disinterested" (in the Mertonian sense) and demands your data. Do you share your data (communalism!) with someone who clearly violates the scientific norms? Communalism refers to the scientific community and by not being disinterested the person who asks is not a part of that community, and thus...well, you get my drift.

I do want to put a final comment here on disinterestedness: unlike what Curry suggests, it does *not* mean you cannot advocate for a specific policy. This is clearly not what Merton meant.

You should ignore the trolls Steyn and Curry. Her favoring of the tweet is not an endorsement. But her posting here and quasy defending Steyn is an endorsement of his tactic. Or she would heve posted that she does not approve his tactics.
But it is understandable. She tries so hard to get attention from the deniers and she just doesn't get so much attention. And in the scientific community she has lost more respect than she gained among deniers. Poor Curry. Fails at climatology and fails at trolling.

Caleb... "Your point about “Sending a clear message that such clear lies and deceit have consequences” was a route Steyn offered to Mann already. He declined. What do you make of that?"

Steyn offered to retract everything he said and make a public statement of apology? You're going to have to source this one. I've not seen this.

You have to understand, this is the very first step in the process of a libel suit. You make a formal request to have the person retract the material they've published before you even start any legal action. That was done and they (Steyn and NR) refused. In fact, they chose to double down on their statements at that time.

This is the Internet era. It's not hard to look up defamation in WIkipedia as a first step.

I accept Judith Curry's explanation for why she favorited a harassing tweet, because I have no choice but to believe that she is being straight forward when she says she uses "favoriting" to keep track of tweets regardless of their content or meaning.

I recommend that people who use "favoriting" to keep track of tweets, regardless of content or meaning, consider the possibility that labeling a tweet that may be offensive to some as a "favorite" will be taken as a signal that the favoriter favors the tweet. Because that is kinda what that means.

Everyone has their own methods. What I do is to actually click on the link of a tweet I may find interesting, and if on a quick inspection it turns out that the link is actually (even if only potentially) interesting (and it often isn't) then I toss the link into Evernote, which is better in my view than bookmarking. I recommend this sort of strategy because it is a way of privately filing away items to look at later, or find in a search. This way one can keep track of web pages, news stories, and blog posts better, and without accidentally sending out a signal of support that one may not want to indicate.

I was hoping that Curry would distance herself from Steyn, but she did not do so. Her comment in her blog post that notes the differences in standards of practice between scientists and shock jocks like Steyn is, I think, well considered and true, but the remarks she made about both Steyn and Mann, and their relationship and the various other issues, taken together, indicate that she is in Steyn's camp, and has fully joined the ranks of the anti-science denialist crowd.

Prior to recent days, when the incident discussed here and other events have occurred, it may have been difficult to decide if Judith Curry should be counted as a full-on global warming denialist. That was a bit uncomfortable. But that is no longer the case.

Brad (#70),

The answer to your question is part of the discussion, legal wranglings in the case. By making himself a "public figure" (through actions, speaking out, getting involved in politics) Dr. Mann lost a lot of protection under the libel law. Under the law the onus of proof is reversed and Dr. Mann has to prove that Mr. Steyn had malice in his use of the term "fraudulent".

Part of the malice defence is knowing that what you are saying is wrong. Mr. Steyn only has to demonstrate that he honestly believed the work was fraudulent, regardless of whether it was, to win the case. Dr. Mann has to prove that Mr. Steyn knew the work was not fraudulent and said so anyway as a sign of malice. As you can see, the reason Mr. Steyn feels relatively confident is that the law is heavily weighted in his favour on this count. Arguably Mr. Steyn could demonstrate an absence of malice simply calling himself a gullible fool and win.

So to summarize, in the US the law does a good job protecting private individuals from slander and libel but does a far less effective job for public figures.

Blair... "Mr. Steyn only has to demonstrate that he honestly believed the work was fraudulent, regardless of whether it was, to win the case."

That is incorrect.

The issue at hand, with regards to a public figure, revolves around whether Steyn et al acted with "reckless disregard for facts." Mann does not have to prove whether or not they believed what they said, he merely need to show that there is widely available evidence that the facts are different than their statements claiming fraud.

A claim of fraud is not a statement of opinion that is protected free speech. It is a matter of fact that can be proven or disproven. That is where Steyn stepped over a very clear line in libel law. He's allowed to express his opinion on any public figure in almost any other way he likes, but he chose to make a statement of fact that is demonstrably false and damaging to the plaintiff.

Here's a clip from wiki on defamation:

"The 1964 case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, however, dramatically altered the nature of libel law in the United States by elevating the fault element for public officials to actual malice—that is, public figures could win a libel suit only if they could demonstrate the publisher's "knowledge that the information was false" or that the information was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not"."

It is the reckless disregard for fact aspect that's being pursued in this case. There is overwhelming, publicly available evidence showing that Mann's work was clearly not fraudulent.

I am not too familiar with the history, but isn´t Michael Mann a pubic figure because of all the attacks on his results (hockey stick)? A normal professor is not a public figure.

It would be somewhat strange if after decades of verbal abuse, it would become okay to sprout even worse atrocities.

Blair… “Mr. Steyn only has to demonstrate that he honestly believed the work was fraudulent, regardless of whether it was, to win the case.”

Oh come on, that ship sailed months ago.

Dunning-Kruger: Greg recently posted on this.

a) Some people make clueless statements about defamation law in the US, easily disprovable by glancing at Wikipedia. ...
Of course it varies somewhat from state to state.

b) Other people study the laws and court cases, spend hours talking to relevant lawyers, read books like Canadian Libel and Slander Actions, etc. That's Canada, but oddly related.

"Arguably Mr. Steyn could demonstrate an absence of malice simply calling himself a gullible fool and win"

Do you seriously think he would do this? Well, then maybe he wins. So, what's NRO's excuse going to be? "gullible fools"? That's going to be tough for a media organization. Admitting you are "a gullible fool"...

Rob Honeycutt (#78) said "A claim of fraud is not a statement of opinion that is protected free speech."

This is correct.

However, Steyn did not claim Mann was a fraud.

Steyn said that Mann was the man behind the fraudulent hockey-stick graph (I paraphrased a little - doing the quote from memory).

There is a very large difference between calling a person a fraud and calling one graph of a person fraudulent.

The most important difference is that one is a statement of fact (calling a person a fraud) and the other is an opinion. Opinion is legally protected under our Constitution.

So wholly apart from Mann's burden of proof on actual malice (which will be impossible to meet in my opinion), Mann has a problem on the very basics of defamation - it doesn't apply to opinions.

So your whole argument is a strawman - because Steyn never called Mann a fraud in the opinion piece discussed in the complaint.

I don't know if Mann's lawyers need to prove malice, but I would think Steyn and Curry's blog and other denier blogs have provided plenty of evidence for them to use. These people simply do not have the sense to shut up when it would be to their own advantage.

I find the idea that "Mann has brought this on" to be questionable. Yes, he's suing the National Review and CEI, but they are the ones who labeled his work as fraudulent and compared him to a convicted pederast, respectively. If anything, political interests have brought this on by refusing to give up on their baseless attacks against scientists, especially Dr. Mann.

As near as I can make out, at issue is whether the accusations of fraud can be shone to be factual attacks on Mann's scientific integrity (i.e., not simple hypebole, and undermine him professionally); can be proven false; can be shone to be made with malice; and ultimately how a jury sees it.

For the first item there seems to be a consensus in the wingnut camp that the accusations are literally true. Steyn certainly seems to believe it.

The accusations can be proven untrue.

And, wow, I went and read some of Steyn's stuff. Can he even form a word that isn't dripping with malice?

What a jury will make of all this, time will tell. Mann is up against professionals in the art of b.s., pettifogging and obfuscation.

Obstreperous,

"For the first item there seems to be a consensus in the wingnut camp that the accusations are literally true. Steyn certainly seems to believe it."

I'd hardly call The Prussian at skepticink a "wingnut." The consensus you refer to doesn't exactly appear to be limited to one political orientation.

I'd hardly call Richard Muller a "wingnut" either, BTW.

This ship is still in dock:

Plotting "data A", skillfully combined with "data B", on the same graph labeled "data A" is misleading, and if done intentionally to cause another to give up something of value (eg taxes), then it is also fraudulent.

That is not in dispute. So at this point Mann is reduced to trying to convince the judge that someone else did that with his data. Good luck Warmists.

BK # 89

You said something pretty insightful at # 87, so I'm now inclined to think that resorting to petty word games is beneath you. Knock it off.

RickA... "There is a very large difference between calling a person a fraud and calling one graph of a person fraudulent."

This is one of the more far fetched ideas I've read yet.

Dr Mike Mann, PhD is a professor of meteorology whose work involves researching past climate. The man is his work. The potential damage is to his professional career and work. Calling his research fraudulent is, once again, a statement of fact (not opinion) that can be proven true or false. Steyn et al acted in "reckless disregard" for widely available facts related to Mann's work by stating his work was fraudulent.

Obstreperous,

I'm not trying to be pedantic—I'm just pointing out that you shouldn't minimise the problem by implying it's exclusive to the right. (I assume "wingnut" means, roughly, "conservative," correct?)

Folks,

I admit I was a bit slipshod in my language but as a matter of law I am correct. The legal term with respect to a public figure is "actual malice". As a now declared "public figure" Dr. Mann must show actual malice and not simply infer malice.

As for your comment Greg, parsing the language, while fine for scholars, once again misses the critical point. Legal precedents (as described in excruciating detail in the ACLU brief) protect Mr. Steyn and the law requires a demonstration of "actual malice" which almost literally means that the law must look into Mr. Steyn's head and pull out his inner thoughts. In the absence of a smoking gun, in the form of written communication showing otherwise, the courts are required to fall on the side of free speech rather than the side of impeding free speech.

Rob, your reading of Wikipedia misses an important point of law since the "reckless disregard" requirement is read narrowly in US libel law. Science had a good article on the subject in October 2012 that explains why it is so hard to demonstrate "reckless disregard" in this case.

The problem with the discussions on this thread is that many of you are incorrectly equating what is "good and decent" with what is legally defensible. Under the law folks are allowed to be nasty S.O.Bs towards public figures. They are allowed to use rhetoric like a sword with the law as their shield. Please understand, I am not saying what Mr. Steyn says is right or wrong, I am merely pointing out how case law makes this a very steep uphill run for Dr. Mann. Based on my reading of all the amici briefs, I do not believe it is a run he will win.

BK:

"I’d hardly call Richard Muller a “wingnut” either, BTW."

He used to play one quite effectively, but then his BEST project, meant to show that denialist claims of inflated temperature trends were right, showed them to be wrong after all. He's been a less effective wingnut since.

It's pretty clear listening to him rant about the hockey stick etc that he's relied on denialist sources for his information, just as he previously relied on Watts and RPSr for exposing the "truth" behind the "inflated" NH temperature trends …

Brad... "Are you willing to bet on it?"

My sense is, there are a large number of potential outcomes here, and I have no qualms in saying I'm not a legal expert by any stretch. It would be challenging to come up with all the outcomes and quantify how they relate to win or lose in order to even place a bet.

Brad... Oh, and yes. It is a very clear matter of fact that Steyn acted in reckless disregard for facts.

I will state again: There are now some two dozen millennial multiproxy temperature reconstructions which all confirm MBH's original conclusions from 15 years ago. Are they really going to try to go to court to make a case that Mann "fraudulently" came up with what is fully accepted as the correct answer?

You might be able to (falsely) say that in a blog post, but judges have very little patience for shenanigans like that.

"Prior to recent days, when the incident discussed here and other events have occurred, it may have been difficult to decide if Judith Curry should be counted as a full-on global warming denialist. That was a bit uncomfortable. But that is no longer the case." -Greg

Greg,

having interacted a lot at CE, I have to completely disagree.

Judith's approach has many, many problems; there's her pointless moralising about scientists 'behaviour', her weird take on advocacy that precludes pretty much everyone but herself, and her promoting of attacks on Mann which appear to be a personal vendetta.

But she's not a "full-on global warming denialist", more a "I hope near to medium term warming is less than projected, as I'm against mitigation as a policy". That isn't by any means unproblematic, but it's a different thing. It's also an example something she rails against in others - 'playing power politics with their science expertise' .

Judith is proving her-self to be adept at self-promotion, which is getting up some noses.

But that is what advocates do. That's probably the best way to think about JC - an advocate with a sprinkling of science.

Rob,

sorry, we cross-posted. My questions related to your second-last comment.

However:

"I will state again: There are now some two dozen millennial multiproxy temperature reconstructions which all confirm MBH’s original conclusions from 15 years ago."

Well, there's a vague similarity. But later analyses have never achieved anything like the pure, unwavering clarity of the immutable pre-1900 climate depicted in Mann's original and best Hockey Stick, have they? Seems there's no improving upon a classic.

And the vague similarity could (if I were to play devil's advocate here) rather easily be explained away as a function of the desire of the paleoclimate profession en bloc to emulate the classic HS, plus the fact that Mann himself had a hand in most of the better sequels, and his bosom buddy Phil Jones had a hand in most of the remainder.

"Are they really going to try to go to court to make a case that Mann “fraudulently” came up with what is fully accepted as the correct answer?"

But Rob, the alternative is that Mann got "what is fully accepted as the correct answer" by a series of accidental, innocent mistakes. You do accept, I take it, that the way Mann used PCA was inappropriate. Yet, mirabile dictu, he got the "right answer."

Brad... I certainly believe that Steyn, Simberg and 99% of the people who regularly comment at WUWT have fully allowed them to be convinced that Mann's work is fraudulent. It is very easy to isolate one's self in an echo chamber of rhetoric that suits whatever purposes you like. (And I believe that cuts across ideologies as well; witness much of the GMO issue).

I'm highly confident that Steyn believes what he says. He collects information that suits what he wants to write about and discards anything that might contradict those positions. This is exactly what the issue is about. Reckless disregard for facts.

I was just reading the ACLU brief and came upon something very telling. They pull some of Steyn's more absurd comments from the article that is the subject of the case and say that, "No one reading these pieces would reasonably understand them to be fact-based news reporting."

I can say with no hesitation, that is flatly wrong. If one goes through to read the comments at nearly any skeptic blog that has written about this case, you will clearly see that most everyone on Steyn's side believes those statements to be the absolute truth.

Again, I'm no legal expert but I believe the ACLU, quite literally, may have handed Mann a very strong tool to prosecute his case.

Brad... "But later analyses have never achieved anything like the pure, unwavering clarity of the...."

No?

http://climatestate.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/PAGES2k_MBH991.png

Or just look at AR5, Chap 5, Fig 5.8.

The more data we get, the straighter the handle gets.

Blair, most, possibly all, of your arguments speak to issues that probably would have derailed the suit by now.

Brad... "You do accept, I take it, that the way Mann used PCA was inappropriate."

The PCA issue has repeatedly shown to have no substantive impact on the conclusions of MBH. That discussion is immaterial.

Brad... "Yet, mirabile dictu, he got the “right answer.”"

He got the right answer because he was doing good science. Has subsequent research improved on his methods? Sure. That doesn't make MBH's methods bad or wrong.

Brad... If someone only reads the HSI and isolates themselves to climate "skeptic" blogs, they may very well believe they have all the facts they need.

The point is, it doesn't take a lot of searching to see that every reconstruction since MBH has shown a hockey stick. That is the reckless disregard for facts.

No one, least of all MBH, has ever argued that any reconstruction is a precise measure of past temperature. But the fact is, every reconstruction has shown that it is very like the case that modern temps are higher today than anytime in the past 1000+ years, and that temps have abruptly risen since the start of the industrial revolution.

Every reconstruction has supported this fundamental conclusion.

Greg,

Incorrect, the issues I raise have not yet come to the fore as the suit has not passed from the Anti-Slapp component to the actual discovery. Arguably in the next round of Anti-Slapp motions it could be addressed but most of these issues have not yet gone to a judge.

I'm pretty sure that is not correct, but I'm not inclined to reach so far outside my areas of expertise to counter argue.

Brad... You seem to be avoiding the point, here.

There is lots of material out there attacking the hockey stick. M&M's paper managed to get MBH investigated. The result of all that investigation (wasted tax dollars) showed that all the critiques amounted to pretty much nothing. They didn't change the results in any substantive way. Nor did the investigation show that MBH did anything "fraudulent" with their research.

To avoid the conclusions of the investigations is a reckless disregard for facts.

#110 Rob
Well, suppose Steyn read Is Nicotine 'Addictive' ?, or

Professor: Nicotine does not cause cigarette addiction (emeritus psychology prof)
or
The Myth of Nicotine Addiction (Encore) etc, etc.

Suppose a medical research paper on nicotine was incorporated into the Surgeon General reports, i.e., assessment reports like the IPCCs. I suppose some people might claim that Steyn had a perfect right to label the researchers as fraudulent if they said nicotine was addictive or harmful.

HSI of course is filled with problems, including "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:The_Hockey_Stick_Illusio…">quoting from a dog astrology journal, channeling McIntyre, who did it earlier.

Actually, now that I think of it, by reading JSE one can find support for almost any sort of belief and thus label as fraudulent any scientist who does not find ESP, or reincarnation or UFOs.

Oops, that was:
Montford quoting from dog astrology among other problems.

Look, I don't think there's anything wrong with M&M digging in and trying to find errors. Fine. Do that. Publish your results. The original authors then write a response.

That's how science works. But then you move on... Other researchers look at these, come up with improvements. They test the ideas with new methods and new data. And that's what has happened in the world of science. And every time the research has shown a hockey stick.

But what has happened in the world of "skeptics" is, you got stuck in a time warp. You found the conclusion you wanted with M&M and just can't let go.

Why, Brad?

How many hockey sticks do you need to see before accepting that the conclusions of MBH were correct 15 years ago?

Rob: it isn't that MM05 got MBH98 investigated, it's that the think tank machinery (Cei + GMII) was always looking for tools; CEI and Fred Singer got involved with McKtrick and Essex, brought them to Washington, and later added McIntyre in.
The got trips to Washington, got added as experts to GMI's list, got introduced to James Inhofe, gave talks where they were coached by Singer and Michaels, Inhofe's lawyer, etc.
Then Joe Barton got hooked in, and he arranged for the fraudulent (word used purposefully) Wegman Report. Of course, he went all-out for Big Tobacco in the 1990s.

It wasn't that MM05 caused an investigation, it simply was a pretext for a show-trial.

See Strange Scholarship...", section 3.

Rob,

"Look, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with M&M digging in and trying to find errors. Fine. Do that. Publish your results. The original authors then write a response. "

Why did the mundane process you describe, which is the backbone of everyday science, take 5 years in the case of MBH? Because the paleoclimate profession/field is deeply pathological.

"How many hockey sticks do you need to see before accepting that the conclusions of MBH were correct 15 years ago?"

They may well have been correct, for all I know. And if a non-pathological science asked us to believe in the hockey stick I'd be the first in line to agree.

John... That's fascinating. I'd thought it was the other way around, that M&M had done their research and then the think tanks picked up and ran with it. Good to know.

Brad... I think John just answered your question. And, how do you make this bizarre determination that paleoclimate is "pathological?"

Rob: WIllard reminded me of this chronology I'd done 2 years ago. One of these days, I'll do a proper blog post.

But this all goes back to the strategy laid out in GCSCT 1998, which encouraged recruiting.
That one is missing a few, like a slightly earlier relatonshipbetween CEI and McKitrick than SInger's.

Rob #93:

Calling a person a fraud is the same as saying everything they do is fraudulent.

A dictionary definition of fraud is: a person who acts in a false or deceitful way.

Calling a graph fraudulent does not imply that everything the person does is fraudulent - it merely accuses the person of a single act of fraud - the graph.

So I respectfully disagree with you.

By the way - Steyn did not call Mann's research fraudulent - merely his hockey-stick graph.

You should focus on the words Steyn used in his opinion piece - because that is what the Court and Jury will focus on.

Greg #86 says "Making a fraudulent graph is commuting an act of fraud."

I agree.

However committing one act of fraud is a very different thing than acting in a false or deceitful way (i.e. committing many acts of fraud).

Being a fraud is very different than committing one act of fraud. Being a fraud means many acts of fraud.

Just like being a thief is a very different thing than committing one act of theft. Being a thief means many acts of theft.

Brad #87:

I disagree.

Calling the graph fraudulent is the same as saying "in my opinion the graph is intentionally misleading" (or false or deceitful, to substitute words from my definition).

Many would say that substituting the actual temperature record for the proxy data over the period where the proxy data declined (rather than inclined) is misleading. In fact many have said this. That it was done intentionally for a political purpose is an opinion (Steyn's).

RickA @123... I can guarantee you that argument will not fly in a court of law.

@125... The graph didn't just pop into existence on its own. It was the research work of Dr. Mann.

You're really grasping at straws here.

The strange thing is that no one has ever accused the other two co-authors of the MBH papers, Ray Bradley and Malcolm Hughes, of the same fraud, Surely in any true investigation of fraud they too would be getting flak from the denier community, and be considered at least somewhat responsible for fraudulent work.

That they aren't tells me all of these attacks aren't about the work, they're about Mann.

Rob #126

I never guarantee anything when it comes to court. No matter how great your case is, when a jury is involved there is always the possibility of losing.

Sometimes, when a plaintiff unexpectedly loses their slam dunk case it is because the jury doesn't like the lawyer representing the plaintiff, or doesn't like the plaintiff - or sometimes the case just wasn't proven because it is a loser case.

The point is - with a jury involved you cannot guarantee a win.

We are talking 9 or maybe 12 (it depends on the state) people off the street - you never know who you are going to get.

"[Judith Curry]has fully joined the ranks of the anti-science denialist crowd." I don't believe that science has to resort to hiding inconvenient data; to keep data and methods used to derive published results secret; or splicing proxy data with measured data to create alarming impressions. How do you define an "anti-science denier"?

Look, the case law is clear. Mann has to prove that Steyn believed what he said was not true. That will be impossible to do. And even if there is a lesser threshhold, i.e. that he wrote what he did with reckless disregard for the facts, the truth is that there are now a lot of people who find the hockey stick graph if not fraudulent then certainly of dubious scientific value as an accurate characterization of what future temperatures will be like.

When Steyn referred to the "fraudulent hockey stick graph" it doesn't necessarily follow that he believed Mann committed academic fraud which is the story of Mann's supporters and they are sticking to it. He could have had any number of thoughts in his head. He could have been referring to the fact that the graph has been used fraudulently as if it is the whole truth about future temperatures. He could believe that Mann did not commit academic fraud in creating the graph, but that it is now apparent that it is fraudulent, which is arguably true. Semantically, Mann's lawyers are arguing that the only definition of "fraudelent" that exists is the one that relates to academic fraud.

To be honest, I've never seen a weaker libel case.

Judith's stimulus: one click- not even a whole word.
Targets' response: huge wall of butthurt text.

According to any reasonable measure of trollery, JC pwn3d you in epic fashion.
She ground you to powder and fed it to caterpillars
and then unraveled their cocoons to make really long socks.
And now she's STYLISH.
So where's your cheezewhiz now?
10+ best work I've seen since #ED disbanded.

Potter #130

I agree - this is the weakest libel case I have ever seen also.

A blog post by a shock jock is singled out for a libel suit because Mann is accused of "torturing" the data. Gee, like no scientist ever does that. Like torturing the data by selective reporting of results, running repeated trials till some positive publishable results emerges never happens in "science." Like "torturing the data till it confesses" is so common it's a joke. And the articles and books documenting all the published science studies that cannot be replicated don't exist. No, saying Mann "tortured the data" is an unimaginably serious and professionally damaging charge. It's beyond the pale and a horrific charge to make. Right. What was Mann thinking?

Potter... "Look, the case law is clear. Mann has to prove that Steyn believed what he said was not true."

You're completely making that up. Case law does not say that!

"To be honest, I’ve never seen a weaker libel case."

You've never even looked at a case of libel before this! Just admit it.

Think about it for just two seconds.

If this is the "weakest libel case" then why have two judges so far ruled that the case can proceed because it's "likely to succeed on its merits."

RickA... "I never guarantee anything when it comes to court."

I agree, but only in that no judge is ever going to hear the argument you're putting forth, because no lawyer is going to be dopey enough to present such an argument.

Potter... "...a lot of people who find the hockey stick graph if not fraudulent then certainly of dubious scientific value as an accurate characterization of what future temperatures will be like."

Whew! This is a good one!

Guess what, Potter. Mann's work is on "paleoclimate." Reconstructions of past temperature! Mann's work is not about temperature projections.

You've never even read Mann's work and yet you're willing to castigate it as fraudulent? You haven't a clue what you're talking about on climate science or libel law.

Ever heard of Dunning-Kruger?

Brad... So, are you saying if I haven't read it that my views are by default a product of "echo-chamberism?"

I have read parts of HSI but not that much of it. I do not believe this issue centers on the book. The book was a promotional piece for McIntyre's "story." Montford, in my interactions with him, actually does not seem very informed on the full breadth of the issue.

What I have read are all the research papers that this issue is about. I've read the investigation reports. Brad, I think it's pretty clear that I'm siding with the body of scientific research in the positions I'm putting forth. Are you saying that scientific research is an echo-chamber? Are the two dozen multiproxy reconstructions product of an echo-chamber? Is the radiative physics of man-made greenhouse gases the product of an echo-chamber?

The HSI is not about science. It's politics.

Rob Honeycutt, #134:

Read starting on page 17 in this case:

http://www.rcfp.org/sites/default/files/docs/20130627_130516_boley_opin…

You are presuming to know much more about the law than you do know.

Yeah that was a howler. I should have said “…a lot of people who find the hockey stick graph if not fraudulent then certainly of dubious scientific value as an accurate characterization of past temperatures and how they compare to the more recent thermometer record." I haven't looked at the issue in some time, although I've been trying to follow the more complicated analysis at ClimateAudit recently.

How come you don't post some of your howlers there, Rob Honeycutt? Greg Laden tried but he didn't last very long.

Potter... You don't seem to understand that the anti-SLAPP issue has already been decided now twice and the judge ruled that the case could proceed on its merits.

Posting a ruling on another, wholly different, case – where you haven't the slightest clue about the specific issues – doesn't add any credibility to your position.

Rob,

"Brad… So, are you saying if I haven’t read it that my views are by default a product of “echo-chamberism?”"

Not necessarily. Sorry if I implied that. You may have read other, equally incriminating texts about Mann. My point is that unless you know the sordid details of the episode—the kind of details with which "our" "side" is much more conversant than "your" "side"—you're in no position to say that the findings of the so-called investigations must necessarily make a reasonable person change his or her mind about accusing Mann of fraud. In other words, you have to be familiar with the reasons "our" "side" has for calling his work fraudulent before you can say the contrary reasons are adequate to countervail them.

From Reuber v. Food Chemical News:

"Actual malice is a subjective standard. Plaintiff must prove that the defendant made the statement "with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." New York Times v. Sullivan,376 U.S. at 280. Reckless disregard has in turn been defined as publishing with a "high degree of awareness of . . . probable falsity." Garrison v. Louisiana,379 U.S. 64, 74, 85 S. Ct. 209, 13 L. Ed. 2d 125 (1964)."

The idea that Steyn believed or knew what he said about Mann's hockey stick graph was false is ludicrous on its face.

Rob Honeycutt: I understand it fully. Me still has to prove malice in the actual trial. If you are saying that Mann doesn't have to prove actual malice as defined in the two cases I've cited, please cite a case to that effect.

Correction: "Mann still has to prove . . . "

DonB, # 146: Correct. The anti-SLAPP ruling by the trial judge is still in front of the Court of Appeals. I'm not sure it will be overturned although certainly it should be. This is precisely the kind of case for which the SLAPP law was written.

From popehat:
"Stand by while I put you in a coma with my lawsplaining."

Sounds about right. For better or worse, there's a reason we have courts and lawyers to sort this stuff out.

And I'm no lawyer, but from where I sit it looks like there's confusion about the principle of free speech and whose speech is compromised when it comes to how the law is applied, or even how it can be made to apply.

In the hall of mirrors that bores and propagandists have made of public discourse, the stock trope is that the poor yakking journalist is necessarily always being stifled by the relentless monsters of Dr. Frankensteins in white lab coats. And yet it is the fevered activity of AGW denialists who are attempting to chill speech. As one tough guy poser up thread put it, "In all honesty, you haven’t gotten half the kicking around you deserve."

Meanwhile the Overton window on what is considered productive speech quietly slips unnoticed into the infotainment trash heap.

How does anyone who promotes the view of the Hockey Stick Illusion know that it is accurate and truthful?

"This is precisely the kind of case for which the SLAPP law was written."

Uh, having been around when anti-SLAPP laws were being written, nothing could be further from the truth. Which is why the rulings thus far have dismissed the SLAPP claim. Of course, on appeal, anything could happen

Potter... "Me still has to prove malice in the actual trial."

You've clearly not read any of the rulings in this case so far. The two key elements are, first, the accusations of "fraud" which is not a matter of "opinion" but rather something that can be proven true or false. Second is that malice was in the form of "reckless disregard for facts."

Steyn can genuinely believe things that are completely wrong. It's when he accuses someone of something that is widely shown to be utterly wrong that malice comes into play.

Brad... "My point is that unless you know the sordid details of the episode—the kind of details with which “our” “side” is much more conversant than “your” “side”...."

This is exactly the problem, Brad! "Your" side is making up fictions about the science that just do not stand up to scrutiny.

Look, neither M&M nor the HSI would even exist if it were not for groups like CEI wanting to promote doubt and confusion about climate science. This is exactly the same as all the "tobacco scientists" who were telling everyone – as late as the fricking 1980's – that there was no link between smoking and cancer. It's identical. And, it's even the exact same people driving this. It was Singer and Seitz that brought M&M to Washington to coach them on this stuff! And the direct result was McIntyre's attack on MBH, which lead to the writing of the HSI.

None of this would even exist if not for the fact that the fossil fuel industry is playing the tobacco industry card of casting doubt on science.

There is functionally no doubt that man-made greenhouse gases are responsible for most or all of the warming we've seen in the past 50 years. There is functionally no doubt that the earth is warmer today than at anytime in the past 1000+ years. There is functionally no doubt that if we continue on the current emissions path we will warm the planet by ~4C by ~2100, and 4C would result in massive human suffering.

You understand why FF companies are doing this. Right? Their stock prices are based on being able to extract oil for the next 15+years at the same rate they have been. If you say, "Ah, guys. You're gonna need to ramp that down to zero very soon." That means the value of those companies drops very rapidly, even with small reductions in extraction rates.

There is so much more on the table here than upside down Tiljanders, PCA's, and other non-issues that don't change any of the fundamental understanding of the issue we face.

"Your" side of this issue, Brad, is playing right into the hands of the FF industry. Think about it. Do you want to be remembered as the guy who stood behind those "tobacco doctors" and advocated for something that was so clearly and obviously wrong? Right now that's exactly what you're doing.

Potter @147... "The idea that Steyn believed or knew what he said about Mann’s hockey stick graph was false is ludicrous on its face."

You're still avoiding the obvious, that you even quoted @147: "or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” New York Times v. Sullivan,376 U.S."

Reckless disregard would mean that he never bothered to try to ascertain whether or not there was any truth to what he was saying. Even a basic reading of the wiki page on "the Hockey Stick controversy" would tell Steyn that there was very likely no fraud involved regarding the hockey stick.

Making that simple assessment would take all of 90 seconds. Thus, he completely disregarded facts related to this matter, whether by avoiding those facts or blindly rejecting them without consideration that the opposite might, indeed, be correct.

DonB... "Rob, re-read the latest filing. Anti-slapp is still in play."

I realize that, Don. I didn't say it wasn't. There are three defendants in the case. Two anti-SLAPP filings have been rejected saying that the case can move forward on its merits. The latest one was only filed a week or so ago. We're now waiting on the ruling.

You guys have been erroneously stating that this libel case is weak. I was responding to say that twice the judge has said, in response to anti-SLAPP filings, that the case can proceed on its merits.

Rob,

"...tobacco industry card..."

with the additional twist that they've managed to tap into a ready supply of useful tools and mobilize a small dedicated army of hockey stick truthers.

Rob,

"“Your” side is making up fictions about the science that just do not stand up to scrutiny."

You keep on calling MBH98 "science." Why? The paper concealed its methods; Mann as lead author refused, for 7 years, to explain how to get from its data to its output; even if its methods had turned out to be unimpeachable (which of course they didn't) the paper itself would still be grey literature.

"Look, neither M&M nor the HSI would even exist if it were not for groups like CEI wanting to promote doubt and confusion about climate science."

Look, I find John Mashey's conspiracy theories just as entertaining as the next guy, but at the end of the day they don't explain anything.

McIntyre didn't need to be paid by some shady fossil-fuel front group to do basic due diligence on the HS. It was normal human curiosity. Someone else would eventually have wondered the same thing: how did they get from their data to that output? This question would have occurred to the paper's peer reviewers if they were competent, or to Mann's colleagues if they had more integrity, but it didn't—it occurred to a retired Canadian squash champion. Very well. Fine. But if McIntyre never existed it would've occurred to someone else.

"This is exactly the same as all the “tobacco scientists” who were telling everyone – as late as the fricking 1980′s – that there was no link between smoking and cancer. It’s identical."

False. Nothing could be less identical!

First, McIntyre has never told anyone there's no link between CO2 and temperature. (And if he did I wouldn't believe him, as he'd have no grounds to make that negative pronouncement.)

Second, the tobacco scientists didn't (as far as I can recall) try to audit lung cancer meta-analyses, only to find they were un-auditable. If that had happened, they would've had a legitimate beef with the medical literature. They didn't. Their objections were lies.

"And, it’s even the exact same people driving this. It was Singer and Seitz that brought M&M to Washington to coach them on this stuff!"

By what stretch of the imagination are they the exact same people?!

I don't know much about Seitz but I do know Fred Singer was never a lung-cancer denier, except in Naomi Oreskes' febrile and defamatory imagination.

I expected better from you, Rob. To quote Singer:

"The ultimate aim of these attacks, at least in my case, has been to discredit my work and publications on global warming. I am a nonsmoker, find SHS to be an irritant and unpleasant, have certainly not been paid by Philip Morris and the tobacco lobby, and have never joined any of their front organizations. And I serve on the advisory board of an anti-smoking organization. My father, who was a heavy smoker, died of emphysema while relatively young. I personally believe that SHS, in addition to being objectionable, cannot possibly be healthy. ....

" So what does it all mean? The issue is not whether SHS is healthy; it obviously is not. One issue is the use of the "tobacco weapon" to attack the credibility of climate scientists—in place of using scientific arguments. It bespeaks of the desperation of those who don't have any valid scientific arguments and wish to avoid public debate. (Imagine, if you will, Oreskes attacking the validity of the notorious "hockey stick" temperature curve by linking its author, Michael Mann, to tobacco company Philip Morris, instead of describing his faulty use of statistics.)"

Enough with these disgraceful ad hominem fibs, Rob. You can do better.

I had a real quarrel with Steyn's use of the term Dr. Fraudpants. My quarrel was that he failed to include the first name. Dr. Burning Fraudpants is the correct usage. (get it? pants on fire? huh? huh? clever, no?)

David Appel, I'll take your bait. Bradley and Hughes are also frauds for their participation in the hockey stick graphs. The WMO is a fraud, too. Jones is a fraud, Briffa is a fraud. Karoly and Gergis are frauds. Josh Wilhelm is a fraud, for deleting cold data that didn't match model expectations. Kevin Trenberth, too.

Are you starting to get the picture? Somewhere in that bunch of frauds, not one single "scientist" had enough integrity to say, hey, this proxy sucks. We can't use it. No, they all either started manufacturing rationalizations about how the proxy was working prior to the mid-1900s, then suddenly stopped working, or working on keeping their mouths shut. All except one, who released the climate gate e-mails in secret, because as a scientist, he couldn't risk losing his job and funding and pension by disagreeing openly and honestly with these frauds.

Speaking of the proxy fraud of Mann (et.al.) the almost exact king of magical thinking is displayed at RealClimate, which says ice cores, in which CO2 rises centuries after major climactic warming has occurred, does not disqualify the CO2 CAGW hypothesis. Climate scientists of Real Climate (the best in the world, in their own minds) tell us with a straight face that the unexplained thing which started the warming at the ends of previous ice ages suddenly turns off, somehow, and at that point, CO2 takes over as the explanation 6 to 8 hundred years into the warming period. Occam is rolling over in his grave.

Rob,

All Mark Steyn, clearly not a climate scientist, has to do to demonstrate his state of mind is to go into discovery and say under oath that he formed his belief that the hockey stick was "fraudulent" based on a reading of "The Hockey Stick Illusion" and spending time talking to the folks from the echo-chamber (he of course would not use those words he would cite a band of dissident scientists). Mr. Steyn would then submit a copy of the book in court and have chosen section read out for the record. By doing this simple thing he could demonstrate that he had a good faith belief in what he was saying.

The fact that what he is saying may be incorrect is completely beside the point. There is sufficient literature out there to allow a defence against the charge of "actual malice" against a "public figure". As I've said before, in this case the actual state of the science does not matter. What matters is that there exists a large subset of individuals who strongly hold that there is something fishy with the stick. Enough people so that Mr. Steyn can show that he is not alone and therefore was not pretending to disbelieve but was rather firmly of the belief that the stick hid the decline using "Mike's Trick"....yes I know that is not what they meant but a significant subset of the sceptical community does and that is all Mr. Steyn has to tie in to to win the case.

Mickey Reno... Congratulations! You have just very effectively proven that one of the ACLU's key points in the amici brief is wrong.

They state that "“No one reading [Steyn's] pieces would reasonably understand them to be fact-based news reporting.”

You, obviously do believe Steyn's pieces to be fact-based reporting. I would venture to suggest that nearly everyone who regularly reads anything by Steyn is similarly convinced.

Blair... You're still conveniently avoiding the "reckless disregard for facts" element.

All Mann's side has to do is show that there is a broad range of publicly available material showing that his echo-chamber is wrong and that Steyn "recklessly disregarded" this highly relevant information.

And that is exactly what truthfully happened.

Rob,

You once again read a legal term and try to parse it in dictionary English but that is not how it is done in a court of law. Throughout this discussion you keep talking about dictionary definitions when the legal system has its own way of looking at the information. Once you have read all the amici briefs you will better understand the complications with the whole concept of "facts" in this case. In a legal sense "reckless disregard of facts" is read very narrowly. There is sufficient contrary literature out there to allow Mr. Steyn to claim, completely legitimately, that what he said was defensible based on the facts available to him at the time. That other information was available elsewhere does not red into his state of mind for the "actual malice" test.

Brad...

"You keep on calling MBH98 “science.” Why?"

Because it is science, Brad. Just get used to it.

"McIntyre didn’t need to be paid by some shady fossil-fuel front group to do basic due diligence on the HS."

I didn't say that he was paid. I said he was coached, and then the material be produced was promoted by politically motivated think tanks that are funded by the fossil fuel industry.

"First, McIntyre has never told anyone there’s no link between CO2 and temperature."

Again, I didn't say that. I said the technique is that they attempt to create doubt related to the scientific research. That is what the tobacco industry did, that is what McI has engaged in.

"By what stretch of the imagination are they the exact same people?!"

Singer and Seitz, Brad. They're the exact same people who promoted the doubts about links between smoking and cancer. They are the same people who rejected the issue with ozone depletion and CFC's. They are the same people who rejected SO2 and acid rain issue. They are the same people who coached M&M on the climate issue.

All of this is extremely well documented.

"Fred Singer was never a lung-cancer denier, except in Naomi Oreskes’ febrile and defamatory imagination."

Hm. Struck a nerve there.

Oreskes happens to be very meticulous in her documenting of these facts. Singer has a long reputation of rejecting the link between tobacco smoke and lung cancer.

What is almost surreal is that, when confronted with this, Singer literally does exactly that – rejects the link between cigarette smoke and cancer – as a defense against the accusation that he rejects the link between cigarette smoke and cancer.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/12/second_hand_smoke_lung_cancer.ht…

Brad, he's clearly stating that there "is no statistical evidence" when, in fact, we all know the statistical evidence is overwhelming!

There is no nuance here, Brad. Singer says there is no link when there absolutely certainly is a link.

And again, this is the guy who has initiated and promoted the entire climate "skeptic" movement. This is the legacy you are leaving for your children and grandchildren. You were one of the people who defended Fred Singer and helped to delay action on the critical issue of man-made global warming.

Blair... "You once again read a legal term and try to parse it in dictionary English but that is not how it is done in a court of law."

Once again, I have read the briefs and am familiar with what Mann's side is advancing and what has been accepted by the judge. I'm not making this up. Go read the judge's responses to the previous anti-SLAPP filings!

Oh my God, you are an idiot.

Rob @ 163, you really suck at reading minds, or at least you do with my mind. Maybe your midichlorian count is down or something.

Rob Honeycutt: http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/09/30/i-hope-judith-curry-apolog…

In other words, Mann has to prove Steyn was reckless in his disregard of the truth. Given that Mann's submissions to the court themselves reveal a reckless disregard of the truth and that he has made false claims in them, we shall see who will be more guilty of "reckless disregard of the truth" once the trial begins. McIntyre has destroyed most of Mann's claims of exoneration and made his lawyers look incompetent in the extreme. Some people who are lawyers and commented at ClimateAudit think Mann's lawyers as officers of the court might be in trouble with the judge for statements made in those submissions, statements that were misleading at best. I will be very interested in how the judge reacts to some of the discoveries McIntyre and others have made.

Claiming that the hockey stick graph was fraudulent doesn't mean that Steyn believes Mann committed academic fraud in constructing the graph. It could mean he believes that he is using it fraudulently. Steyn could conceivably believe the graph was conceived in good faith, but once it's shortcomings were revealed and Mann refused to admit to them that he was acting fraudulently. There are several statements in the Climategate emails that show discomfort among climate scientists over that graph and Mann's methods. Mann is insisting on a very tight definition of "fraudulent" as if the word is only used in an academic or scientific context here and Steyn's lawyers will take that apart in court. What you are saying is that no one has the right to express the opinion that Mann's continuous use of the graph is fraudulent even if they have researched the subject and passionately believe it. I find that onerous. It's not like Mann doesn't have numerous venues in which to respond to such statements. `

Stop presuming you know the law. You don't. I've read most of the legal submissions in this case and I've read some of the case law that both sides are citing. What you are engaging in is wishful thinking which doesn't fly in court.

Which is not to say that Steyn might lose the case in the initial trial. But all the case law I've seen suggests that even if a jury is swayed by Mann's arguments, that appeals based on the first amendment will prevail based on Steyn's right to publish forceful opinions.

Mickey Reno wrote:
"David Appel, I’ll take your bait. Bradley and Hughes are also frauds for their participation in the hockey stick graphs."

It's too late -- my point has already been made. Why hasn't anyone been calling "fraud" on the coauthors? Why didn't you do it yesterday, before my promptiong? I've never seen anyone do that in all these years.

They haven't because these attacks aren't about the work, they're about Mann and about generating the appearance of controversy and fraud with AGW.

"Are you starting to get the picture? Somewhere in that bunch of frauds, not one single “scientist” had enough integrity to say, hey, this proxy sucks. We can’t use it. No, they all either started manufacturing rationalizations about how the proxy was working prior to the mid-1900s..."

They're not rationalizations. Do you even know how they determine the reliability of a proxy? Because so far you're just ranting.

"...the unexplained thing which started the warming at the ends of previous ice ages suddenly turns off, somehow, and at that point, CO2 takes over as the explanation 6 to 8 hundred years into the warming period. "

No one says that, and you clearly don't know the science or what it does say. That definitely puts you in Steyn's camp, who demonstrated he didn't even know what the hockey stick *is*.

I find it delightfully ironic when an white old angry man, bragging elsewhere about his fighting patriarchy by calling on other most likely also white old men (although, admittedly, there is a chance that the policy of those angry white old men is occasionally carried out by a token woman or a person of diversity) to discipline a young woman for daring to not only hold, but even publicly express, opinions different from his own, berates a woman essentially for employing e-messaging administrative methods slightly different from his own, and his diatribe attracts a slew of male chauvinist pigs spewing insults related not to the topic but purely to the gender of the object of their primal hatred.
One has to just love these torch bearers of enlightenment, reason and objectivity.

Re #156:
When I hear talking about people promoting doubt and confusion about Science, to my mind, it tends to bring up such subversives as Ignaz Semmelweis and the Wright brothers (and, after all, Giordano Bruno and Galilei, ...)

Ivan. I know, right? Because people who don't accept the consensus science related to anthropogenic global warming are Galileo! http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/03/25/climate-science-deniers-ar…

Rob,

"“You keep on calling MBH98 “science.” Why?”
Because it is science, Brad. Just get used to it."

Uh, no, Rob. I'm afraid not. I hate to break it to you, but scientific papers are by definition replicable. Not in the sense that other people can "get the same answer"—that's neither necessary nor sufficient—but in the sense that they can read them and retrace the steps taken by the original authors to see whether or not they do in fact "get the same answer." In the example of MBH98, that just wasn't the case—not even close. Seven years after publication its lead author was still saying making egregiously, bizarrely anti-scientific statements like, "Giving them the algorithm would be giving in to the intimidation these people are engaged in."

Methodological opacity disqualifies a paper from the genre "scientific document." That's just how science works, Rob. How it's defined. If it can't be "audited" it's not science. Get used to it.

"I didn’t say that he was paid. I said he was coached,"

McIntyre was "coached" in statistics at Oxford. Not by Seitz and Singer. His critique of MBH98/99 is founded firmly in statistics, which he learned at Oxford. Not from Seitz or Singer.

" and then the material be produced was promoted by politically motivated think tanks that are funded by the fossil fuel industry."

The "material he [and McKittrick] produced" was published in the peer-reviewed academic literature.

Who cares who "promoted" it, or what that verb even means? Not me.

"“First, McIntyre has never told anyone there’s no link between CO2 and temperature.”
Again, I didn’t say that. I said the technique is that they attempt to create doubt related to the scientific research."

You said their attempt was, and I quote, "identical" to that of the tobacco scientists—who denied the link between smoking and lung cancer. Don't try and backpedal from your claim now. Just admit it: McIntyre does NOT deny a link between CO2 emissions and temperature.

"That is what the tobacco industry did, that is what McI has engaged in."

Yawn.

"Singer and Seitz, Brad. They’re the exact same people who promoted the doubts about links between smoking and cancer."

Singer does NOT doubt, promote doubts about, deny or promote denial of the fact that smoking is linked to lung cancer. That is a disgusting allegation to make against someone whose own father died of emphysema secondary to a lifelong smoking habit. It ill behoves you to make such ugly claims. If you keep repeating Oreskes' lie it will become your lie too. Is that how you want to be remembered, Rob? As a liar? For lying?

Brad, that work has been replicated again and again.

Brad... "scientific papers are by definition replicable."

Not to repeat what Greg just said, but...

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/fig/figure-6-10.jpeg

The hockey stick has been replicated more times that... ah, you can shake a stick at.

It's science.

Brad... "Methodological opacity disqualifies a paper from the genre 'scientific document.'"

It seems that it wasn't so opaque that dozens of others couldn't figure it out. It was only opaque to "skeptics."

Go figure.

Brad... "McIntyre was “coached” in statistics at Oxford."

We've moved from "opaque" to "obtuse."

McI was brought to Washington and coached by Singer and Seitz on creating material to undermine published research.

Brad... "Singer does NOT doubt, promote doubts about, deny or promote denial of the fact that smoking is linked to lung cancer."

I gave you the link to where he absolutely does this already. He says there is no statistical link between the two, when there absolutely, most certainly, and clearly is.

Brad... "Is that how you want to be remembered, Rob? As a liar? For lying?"

I'm not lying, Brad. Read his article. In response to the accusation that he rejects the statistical link between smoking and cancer, what does he do? He goes on and on about the lack of a statistical link between smoking and cancer.

David Appell (@171) says a bunch of non-sequitur stuff I'll let slide, finishing big with “No one says that"

See, it's statements like this that make me think YOU don't read from your authority sources, or critically review what they say. Here is the exact statement from RealClimate:

"At least three careful ice core studies have shown that CO2 starts to rise about 800 years (600-1000 years) after Antarctic temperature during glacial terminations. These terminations are pronounced warming periods that mark the ends of the ice ages that happen every 100,000 years or so.

Does this prove that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming? The answer is no.

The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data. [snip]

How lame is that? Furthermore, I think that's pretty damn close to what I said, which you said nobody says.

David, Greg, Rob, the alarmists own logic and "science" like this. We use words like fraud not because we're being arbitrary, but because climate science of the past 25 years has been spinning evidence, claiming natural variation cannot explain large shifts, and ignoring the physical record, which in this case, I think dispositively removes CO2 as the primary driver of these large, completely natural warming periods. Large, natural, non-CO2 caused warming periods occur repeatedly in the ice core record. But modern climate alarmists ignore this fact.

Then, a nice, hard-working, honest guy like Svensmark comes along with a very simple and elegant hypothesis that certainly needs testing and criticism, but your side treats him with derision, disdain, ostracism, and the worst of you attack him like he's the devil or something.

David, listen carefully. Your side is turning quite cult-like in it's religious devotion to a narrative that has already been impugned if not disproved outright by actual physical evidence. So, until you can say how human caused CO2 emissions, or CO2 from any source drove natural climate warming 800 years after warming began at the end of ice ages hundreds of thousands of years ago, I'm sticking with my assessment of fraud. Now, does somebody want to tell me how Mark Steyn put all this into my head and screwed me up? Anyone? Beuhler?

Mickey Reno:

"How lame is that?"

About as lame as the rest of physics, which is clearly above your pay scale.

The physical argument is quite simple … for some of us.

As for you, well, it's a pity you can't understand it. If Flowers for Algernon weren't fiction, I'd hold out hope that you might come to understand, for awhile, at least ...

Mickey Reno:

"Then, a nice, hard-working, honest guy like Svensmark comes along with a very simple and elegant hypothesis that certainly needs testing and criticism, but your side treats him with derision, disdain, ostracism, and the worst of you attack him like he’s the devil or something."

With so much derision that CERN spent a large amount of money running experiments for some years that … that …

Found absolutely no evidence that would support Svensmark's claims.

Oh, well.

Brad... Singer's entire article that I linked to is rejecting the statistics related to the EPA's ruling on the statistical link between smoking and cancer!

He states in reference to the evidence that is the basis of the EPA ruling:

"...I can state with some assurance that the EPA analysis [...] is not only wrong but worthless."

He saying that the statistical data showing a link between smoking and cancer is "not only wrong, but worthless."

I do NOT know how this could be more clear.

The statistical evidence is not only correct it is absolutely overwhelming!

Brad @187...

Please don't tell me you're "+1"-ing the insane CO2 lag argument.

Mickey... It's the CO2 lag that informs researchers about the radiative forcing and climate sensitivity of atmospheric CO2.

This is really getting silly.

Rob,

In case I haven't been explicit enough, Singer even describes the link between smoking and lung cancer as "undisputed":

"Of course, there is no evidence cited to back up this wild claim -- just the usual and undisputed evidence about the health consequences to actual (primary) smokers."

Geddit? Nobody denies the link between smoking and lung cancer. The so-called tobacco scientists once did, but not Singer. Singer lost his father at a young age from emphysema due to smoking.

Do you think he mentions that fact for fun, Rob?!

BK:

"And another +1 for saintlike restraint and understatement."

So Brad Keyes is another who doesn't understand that the oceans can be a source or sink depending on conditions?

This gift keeps on giving...

Rob:

"Please don’t tell me you’re “+1″-ing the insane CO2 lag argument."

Oh, yes. You're not familiar with Brad Keyes from elsewhere, I guess?

You're just beginning to plumb the depths of Brad's ignorance of science …

Brad... "Time to retract and apologise so that we can move on."

HA!

Your inability to see the obvious is astounding.

The stats on SHS are just as compelling, so nothing to apologize for, bubba. The research on this is more than compelling.

Brad, Singer has been doing this work for decades.

Also, note the fixation on Singer's position regarding tobacco and lung cancer give Keyes a convenient base for ignoring everything else Singer has denied, which can't be dismissed.

You could simply focus on beating up Brad on these other issue (which will flush him into the open as denying that science, as well …)

Brad... "Do you think he mentions that fact for fun, Rob?!"

Insane. In one breath Singer says, smoking is "clearly unhealthy" but can't bring himself to say that there is a proven statistical link between smoking (and SHS) even though his father died from emphysema.

[Incidentally, I watched my grandfather succumb to emphysema and also watched another friend die of throat cancer, both of whom were smokers.]

Rob,

if you mentally got SHS and smoking mixed up through careless reading, then just admit it so we can move on.

Your current rationalisations for mistakenly accusing Singer of denying the link between smoking and lung cancer are unedifyingly desperate (to put it with saintlike restraint and understatement).

It's hard to believe you actually knew what an ugly falsehood you were perpetrating at the time. More likely, I suspect you were simply naive enough to take Oreskes' propaganda at face value.

Rob, this is so exciting. I just need the link to the unassailable scientific explanation of why the globe cyclically warmed during glacial terminations for about 800 years without higher CO2 concentrations and then how this mystery force suddenly stopped and CO2 took over for 4200 years. I have looked and searched and never found it.

Moreover, you should do a guest post for RealClimate so they can correct the record and update their horrible explanation.

Rob,

where are you even getting the "clearly unhealthy" quote from?

The closest phrase I can find is where Singer (repeatedly) says second hand smoke is unhealthy!

"The issue is not whether SHS is healthy; it obviously is not."

"I personally believe that SHS, in addition to being objectionable, cannot possibly be healthy."

Time to apologise for maligning a good scientist. You got mixed up; you assumed Naomi Oreskes was honest; whatever. It doesn't matter why, but you got it wrong so just retract your false claims and we can move on.

Brad... I'll say it again since you're clearly not getting the message.

Singer is rejecting well established science. He's done it with cigarette smoke. He's done it with SO2 emissions. He's done it with CFC's. He's done it with CO2.

When there is overwhelming scientific evidence, Singer is there to provide the material to use to reject it.

And YOU are defending him.

Rob:

"Singer is rejecting well established science. He’s done it with cigarette smoke. He’s done it with SO2 emissions. He’s done it with CFC’s. He’s done it with CO2."

That's better. Focus on Singer's overall denial of much of modern science regarding health and environmental risks.

Brad will dig himself deeper.

BK:

"If you can’t even bring yourself to admit a simple thing like that, why should I even bother looking into the other accusations?"

BK's willingness to investigate people with a critical eye apparently only extends to those whose positions and scientific work he doesn't like.

Much like The Auditor.

Tsk tsk.

Mickey Reno:

You're not worth the trouble. Again, physics appears to be above your pay grade. That's OK, you're probably a good person, regardless of how ignorant you are.

Mickey... Bag of hammers comes to mind here.

There are several dozen research papers you can pull up on this subject that explain it in detail. But I know you can't actually read (science) so I'm not going to link any of them.

Maybe you can watch pictures...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nrvrkVBt24

Rob,

this is Nuccitelli all over again. I forced the Guardian to retract a lie they allowed him to tell about Richard Lindzen (the same false meme you've repeated about Singer), but Dana has never been man enough to acknowledge the correction. Are you really happy to be written off as a graceless liar, like Dana? Surely you're better than that.

Brad... "You’re presumably lying about them too."

Looking for the exit, now?

Can say I blame you.

DonB... "Rob, so which way is it?"

It's both, Don. I know that means keeping two balls in the air at one time and that's difficult for you, but both statements are correct.

Here's a clue for you: There are three defendants. Steyn, CEI and NR.

DonB... I did answer your question @209.

DonB... It's going to be interesting, that's for sure.

I don't think Steyn has any clue what he's getting himself into. And I think CEI is likely very concerned that they may be forced into discovery. They likely have the most to hide here.

Rob,

"Looking for the exit, now?"

No, more like bending over backwards to give you a chance to prove you're not just another lying-to-save-the-planet fanatic. I'd be disappointed if you were. I've always thought you were one of the saner voices in the debate.

It's very, very simple. Admit that one of your accusations against Singer was incorrect, as anyone with two eyes can verify for themselves, or don't expect us to waste time checking into the other ones.

Rob, heh, heh, a video of a magic act. What a class act. I confess, I didn't expect jack from you, but I thought I'd at least give you a chance to actually say something meaningful. Dismiss all you like, but ice core CO2 lag is not a problem that can be easily blown off when your cherished CAGW hypothesis depends on CO2 causality.

I can't see any point to continue with you. Good night and have a great weekend.

"Dismiss all you like, but ice core CO2 lag is not a problem that can be easily blown off when your cherished CAGW hypothesis depends on CO2 causality"

Amazingly, that lag was predicted before it was observed...
a little fact most of the pseudoskeptics either are unaware of, or simply ignore:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v347/n6289/abs/347139a0.html
Full text here: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/2009Q1/111/Readings/Lorius1990_ice-core…
Actual science for you, Mickey Reno. Don't be afraid, it isn't too hard to read. The key section:
"changes in the CO2 and CH4 content have played a significant part in the glacial-interglacial climate changes by amplifying, together with the growth and decay of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets, the relatively weak orbital forcing".

As Jeff Severinghaus pointed out some ten years ago, 800 years is about the time frame for the deep ocean to warm and release its CO2...

Brad, Wahl & Ammann fully replicated MBH98/99. M&M could have done the same, if only they had not made a big statistical mistake by just retaining two PCs (which McIntyre, of course, blames on Mann, since there's just no way that he could ever be wrong...).

And Brad, whatever *you* call science we scientists can safely assume to be "science as someone who has little understanding of science would define it". Us scientists understand "replication" as investigating the same phenomenon using your own methods (and preferably also your own data). Using the exact same methods and exact same data at best shows whether the person who did the original analysis hit the right keys on his keyboard. It doesn't say a thing about whether the data or methods are right; this is not considered replication.

Also, >99% of all science cannot be replicated in the sense that you want it to be replicated. Just take 100 papers from the 1990s in any field (those with data and mathematical methods), and there will be very few where you can get the original data (problem 1), and even fewer where you can get the exact method that the scientists themselves used - remember that what is described in the paper may not be accurate enough (problem 2).

Problem 2 is very much related to the fact that we don't always know whether some specific step is important enough to mention explicitly, or just considered "standard", but not obvious to outsiders.

BK:

"God help the poor citizenry if “us scientists” consider it good enough to write non-auditable, and therefore non-scientific, papers."

Who appointed you God and in charge of defining science.

Marco's description is accurate.

Re-running someone's program[s] against their datafile[s] and the same parameterizations is boring and meaningless. And doing so is NOT science.

Nor, for that matter, is it auditing. I think it is safe to assume that you've never run an organization that's been audited, along with not having a clue about science.

I went out of my way to explain the sense in which I was using the verb “replicate,”

You did. You use the word in a non-standard way to support your agenda and deceptions. Don't feign shock for being called on it.

Wow. A whole blog post fulled with childish name calling while lecturing others about etiquette. What people like Mr. Laden are too stupid to comprehend is that their self-importance, hypocrisy, ultra-defensiveness and thin skin is what gets them targeted and what makes people suspicious. Just like the dumb Mann lawsuit.

As I had expected, Brad believes his opinion of what constitutes science is correct, and no matter what actual scientists say, his definition is the end-all of any discussion.

Unsurprisingly, Keyes also ignores the fact that Wahl & Ammann did exactly what Keyes claimed no one did, which makes Mann's work not even in Keyes' own warped view of what constitutes fraudulent science fraudulent.

Brad... "God help the poor citizenry if “us scientists” consider it good enough to write non-auditable, and therefore non-scientific, papers."

Why do you keep repeating this thing that is demonstrably wrong?

As Marco has pointed out several times, Wahl and Annan did replicate and showed that the PCA adjustments didn't make a difference in the conclusions. But then since then there have been another two dozen reconstructions that also show the same conclusions as the original MBH papers.

This is absolutely surreal! It really is.

What is it? I honestly do not understand. What makes it so utterly impossible for you to accept this astoundingly simple fact?

Mickey Reno @216... It seems you have a very very short attention span, as well.

You actually have to watch the video past the first 6 seconds. The video explains what is written in the published literature and explains how CO2 amplifies weak orbital forcing, and how the very research papers that "skeptics" use to trump up the CO2 lag actually state that man-made CO2 operates differently.

Maybe Brad can help you on this one.

"As Marco has pointed out several times, Wahl and Annan did replicate"

When—in 2005? After McIntyre had already done all the hard work of extorting the enabling detail from Mann? Seven years after the incredibly high-impact initial paper?

Yes, I must admit I forgot about that remarkable feat of bilateral scientific teamwork. Thank you to Marco for reminding me.

The damning fact remains, does it not?, that it took copious extra information for W&A to achieve it. And by "extra" I mean "not supplied by the authors in the first place."

Rob, speaking of surreal, how's that straightforward admission coming along? You know, the one you owe me about how, contrary to your repeated claims supra, Singer does NOT in fact deny the link between smoking and lung cancer?

Steyn isn't a credentialed man, that's true. But verbal facility is well established as a good general measure of native intelligence (that's why there's a verbal SAT and ACT component).

By the standard, Greg, its pretty rich for you to call Steyn stupid. He writes rings around you, both in the logical construction of his arguments and in the general reach of his vocabulary.

Surely, at some point, you've taken an IQ test. How about you publish your scores - I bet Steyn will publish his. And then we'll know.

Brad... "...lying-to-save-the-planet fanatic"

That's amazingly offensive given that I'm the one here presenting the position of the full body of scientific research.

You're completely missing the forest for the trees here. Singer is being entirely disingenuous, sort of as a profession. Look at how he states things. First, he avoids saying anything about the clear statistical connection showing that smoking causes cancer. The closest he can get on this is to state "smoking is not healthy."

Brad, you know that the statistical evidence showing a connection between smoking and cancer has been well established for more than 50 years. And yet Singer can't even bring himself to admit this fact. He falls short! He's obfuscating his position.

In the article he is talking about SHS, which is also extremely well proven to be harmful. And he just rejects that overwhelming body of research out of hand.

Feel free to look up Singer's position on all these other topics. He has done this work for a very very long time, along side Seitz. The provide a service to industries, whom they believe to be under attack from those who want to regulate them. And that's perfectly fine, but they are not being honest in their approach. They choose the path of creating doubt about the scientific research where there is none.

McIntyre et al were brought into the fold (so to speak) so to continue to these efforts, which are clearly very effective.

Brad... "Singer does NOT in fact deny the link between smoking and lung cancer."

Please show me ONE place on the internet where Singer clearly states that there is a direct statistical link between smoking and caner. If you can provide that I will apologize and say that I was wrong. Singer saying smoking is "not healthy" doesn't cut it.

Brad... Just to add: Potato chips are "not healthy" but there is no statistically proven link between potato chips and cancer.

Rob,

your test is unfair. You don't get to call someone a denier of something just because they haven't affirmed it.

Nevertheless, Singer has affirmed it:

"“Of course, there is no evidence cited to back up this wild claim — just the usual and undisputed evidence about the health consequences to actual (primary) smokers.”

He calls the link "undisputed."

What more do you want?

Brad... "Seven years after the incredibly high-impact initial paper?"

I'm sure Mike will appreciate you referring to his work as "incredibly high impact." That quite a compliment in science circles.

So, Brad. Care to guess how many other multiproxy reconstructions were done between 1998 and 2005? Lots of other researchers didn't seem to have a problem figuring this stuff out. It looks like McI was just out of his depth on this...

http://www.iapjournals.ac.cn/aas/article/2014/2014-31-765/130123fig1.jpg

Rob,

"So, Brad. Care to guess how many other multiproxy reconstructions were done between 1998 and 2005?"

No.

Unless they retraced MBH's steps—you know, the thing McIntyre, Wahl and Amman finally managed to do seven years later—they're irrelevant to the argument we're having.

Yawn.

Brad... "What more do you want?"

I want him to clearly state there is a link between smoking and cancer, not just a vague statement that smoking us unhealthy.

Again, can you not see what he's doing? He's avoiding making this statement merely because it implies that regulations are justified.

David #228

Speaking of verbal facility, 'stupid' is a colloquial word and can be applied to people of any IQ. Anyone can do stupid things or be willfully stupid.

That you don't comprehend this and offer it in a comment that is just so much schoolyard taunting and substance-free assertions speaks volumes to anyone who isn't irony challenged.

Brad... "Unless they retraced MBH’s steps..."

So, we're back to the point where you're claiming that Mann fraudulently came up with the correct answer?

This is clearly not about science. Science doesn't care about audits. Science cares that our understanding of natural systems becomes more clear. Bad science falls by the wayside while good science becomes reinforced by subsequent research that finds similar conclusions.

McIntyre is engaging in a Singer/Seitz-ian attack on science, and you are falling for it hook, line and sinker. What he's done has absolutely no bearing on anything. It's a political attack designed to delay regulatory actions on emissions of greenhouse gases.

So, any idea what "anti-smoking advisor board" this is?

Just curious.

"Unless they retraced MBH’s steps—you know, the thing McIntyre, Wahl and Amman finally managed to do seven years later—they’re irrelevant to the argument we’re having."

Actually, here's the problem, Brad. You are trying to have an argument that is not helpful, useful, interesting, fully honest, or addresses any real questions. So looking at a decade and a half of research and understanding the problem scientifically is not the argument you are having. But it is the argument people who are serious about the science and policy are having.

Rob,

"So, we’re back to the point where you’re claiming that Mann fraudulently came up with the correct answer?"

We can't be "back to" a point we were never at to begin with, so no.

I never claimed any such thing. All I pointed out was that passing off a non-auditable document—grey literature—as a scientific paper, and then spending seven years actively fighting the people who tried to audit it, was an act of unmitigated pseudoscience.

And, ipso facto, of fraud.

Where did I call Steyn stupid? I'm not saying I didn't, but I don't remember saying that.

As for my IQ, I have a very interesting story about that, but I don't write about it. That is in the category of "buy me a beer and I'll tell you" story. Only a handful of people know it.

Brad... "And, ipso facto, of fraud."

Why didn't any of the investigations come up with "ipso facto, fraud?"

And yes, we've been through this several times now. All the other reconstructions have shown the same conclusions of MBH. So what we're getting from you and McI is some odd notion that they fraudulently came up with the correct answer.

Greg,

I don't dispute that those other questions are also worth arguing about. One debate doesn't exclude the other. In fact if people would just stop denying the problem of methodological inscrutability in MBH98/99 I'd be happy to move on to what you describe as more important questions. "Understanding the problem scientifically" is something we're all interested in.

Brad... "the problem of methodological inscrutability in MBH98/99"

Have you considered the possibility that McI was just out of his depth in trying to replicate this? And that others have had no problem because they're actually working within their own field of research.

Clearly the investigations didn't come to the same conclusion that you are about "ipso facto."

Rob,

"So what we’re getting from you and McI is some odd notion that they fraudulently came up with the correct answer."

How many fracking times do I have to explain that I'm not making that claim?? You really need to get over your reflexive assumption that anyone who wants to check your working is accusing you of fraud!

That's absurd.

It's a literally quotidian, mundane, routine activity in every healthy field of science that has ever existed. Only in climate science is there suddenly paranoia associated with the idea of being "audited"!

It's quite comical, really. Or at least it was for the first hour of the first year.

"stop denying the problem of methodological inscrutability in MBH98/99 I’d be happy to move on"

Makes me laugh. My goal is actually not your happiness! There is no reason to deny the quality of MBH98/99. The paper was fine, and beyond that, groundbreaking and important.

So groundbreaking and important that those who for whatever reason need to deny the reality and importance of AGW have formed a cult around it.

Brad, the only reason Wahl & Ammann did their work was because of the ongoing claims made about the paper that were simply not true. Wahl & Ammann could have done it a lot earlier, but they didn't really have a reason. Better to bring science forward by doing something new. But since the pseudoskeptics kept on pushing, with even a congressional hearing, they took interest and decided to dig a little bit deeper.

"Surely, at some point, you’ve taken an IQ test. How about you publish your scores – I bet Steyn will publish his. And then we’ll know."

I wish an IQ test helped determine whether someone was stupid or not. It would make life so much simpler. Unfortunately, it doesn't. Loads of psychological research has shown that IQ isn't enough to determine this. The ideological bias in people can be extremely strong, such that it really is not problem to find high IQ people who believe in young-earth creationism. For example Ian Juby, a member of Mensa. Smarter than 98% of all people according to his IQ, but he's a frikkin' young earth creationist!

Greg 173:
So?

Greg #175:
Greg,
first of all - congratulations. I don't know if you're a natural, or it's the years of practice, but your demagoguery proficiency is top notch. It's more Pravda than NYT level, but you've mastered it.
Now, while of course, not everybody unpersuaded byt "consensus science" is another Galileo, pretty much every enforcer I've come across thus far was another Lysenko.

Brad.... "Only in climate science is there suddenly paranoia associated with the idea of being “audited”!"

Normal is a researcher publishing a response to a published paper challenging methods and/or conclusions. Then the original authors will either retract, if the comments is substantive enough to convince the original author they missed something important, but more often the original authors will publish a comment in response to better explain their methods or conclusions.

That's a very organized, respectful and fully sufficient process. After that other researchers can read the exchange and take it all into consideration with subsequent research. No one has a corner on the truth. The truth emerges from the data and research as it progresses.

But what McIntyre chose to do was something wholly different. He clearly was not interested in whether his concerns altered MBH's results. He was out for blood. Thus emerges his blog and a corresponding blog war. Thus emerges the HSI. Then you have McI out there whipping up public outrage over something that is best adjudicated through subsequent research.

McI knew (and withheld) the fact that his methods didn't actually show MBH's graphs would be any different based on anything he found. Any honest researcher would look at that and move on.

Again, Brad, McI is just like Singer and Seitz. He's motivated by political concerns over regulations and allows his opinions to be informed by that rather than actual research.

Greg #249:
One of the basic techniques in the Pravda manual: When stealing, yell “Thief! Thief!” to distract and deflect attention.
But to call the unpersuaded and skeptical a “cult” in the fresh wake of the big gathering of warmist faithfuls in NYC (who burned a lot of fossil fuels to attend), that’s really funny.
I wonder if you could name a few leaders of the unbeliever “cult” who got stinking rich promoting their viewpoint. (I am sure you don’t need me to name the warmmonger multi-millionaires and profiteers.)

Ivan... "pretty much every enforcer I’ve come across thus far was another Lysenko."

Interesting.

So, you're saying that every National Academy of Science on planet earth is "another Lysenko?" Or that every scientific organization on the planet who has a statement on climate change is "another Lysenko?" Or that the 30,000+ active researchers studying aspects of climate change are each "another Lysenko?"

I have to say, that's an astounding claim.

And people wonder why we call you deniers?

Ivan... "I wonder if you could name a few leaders of the unbeliever “cult” who got stinking rich promoting their viewpoint."

Each quarter that goes by without significant action on carbon emissions represents hundreds of millions of dollars in the pockets for the Koch brothers. Same with Gina Rinehart in Australia.

The return on their investments in funding the think tanks that promote doubt about climate change is nothing short of astounding.

You think Al Gore is rich? Ha! Think again. His net worth is a tiny fraction of the Koch's or Rinehart's.

Ivan #172: A "young woman"? Curry is probably over 60 since she completed her BSc in 1974, according to wiki.

DonB... "Or maybe you do, execute all that disagree with your warmist view point?"

Wow. Talk about jumping from "A" to "cornflakes" (non sequitur).

DonB... "And no temp increase. Correlation v causation?"

You have to look at the full climate system. No one expects surface temps to operate lockstep with radiative forcing (except deniers who don't understand the first thing about climate science).

"A guy that photo shops Nazi uniforms."

Dana didn't do the photoshopping. Someone else did, as a joke in reference to Monkton calling climate scientists Nazi's on his Australian tour.

Rob Honeycutt @254

All true, but I think McIntyre was after a bit more. This whole idea of an "audit" (with its assumptions of chicanery, incompetence and outright fraud) strikes me as an effort to import the norms of business and politics into science, and thus to hobble its autonomy. Scientists will have a harder time telling you things that you don't want to hear if they are vulnerable (or seen to be vulnerable, which is just as good) to the sorts of accusations any politician or lawyer can whip up without having to know anything about the subject in contention. The idea of a regular, skeptical citizen rubbing his chin doubtfully and then rolling up his sleeves and conducting an "audit" on these high-flying, double-talking scientists also undercuts the complex and time-consuming process that you've outlined, of peer-review and independent testing.

Rob,

"Someone else did, as a joke in reference to Monkton calling climate scientists Nazi’s on his Australian tour."

Monckton said climate scientists were Nazis??

Somehow I think not.

You're quite right to criticise the other commenter's non-sequitur about executing ppl for dissent, but try not to undermine your own credibility with distortions of historical facts.

Brad Keyes:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-06-22/monckton-compares-garnaut-to-hitl…

Yes, sure, only one...and he did apologize...and it wasn't in Australia but in the US...(more excuses you can come up with?)

If so, remember it is not the first time Monckton compared people with opinions opposite his own to the Nazis:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1235187/Former-Conservative-pee…

Lars, #263: McIntyre's work IS the very definition of "independent testing."

Completely independent of honesty, science, and integrity.

McIntyre's works hasn't even survived McIntyre-style auditing, so what's the point?

As I said before it should have been done in the context of how this is normally done. Publish a comment, and the comment usually gets a response. That's the end of it. Everyone moves on and does new work within the context of the two comments.

Problem for McI is, the standard scientific process like this doesn't have much political effect.

DonB @268... You clearly didn't understand what I was saying. The "climate system" includes oceans, land, ice, as well as atmosphere. You have to look at the heat content of ALL these in order to determine if there is a "pause" in heat accumulation resulting from increasing CO2 concentrations.

Can you should me a pause over the past 17 years in the ocean heat content?

http://static.skepticalscience.com/pics/1_heat_content2000m.png
No, you can't.

The climate system – on the whole – is continuing to accumulate heat in response to increasing atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases.

Brad... The Monckton/Garnaut incident was where Monckton equated this comment from Garnaut to Fascism: "..."on a balance of probabilities, the mainstream science is right [on human-caused climate change]."

He was not merely equating Garnaut to Nazi's. He was equating all of climate science to Naziism, saying, "fascist point of view."

BK:

"Only in climate science is there suddenly paranoia associated with the idea of being “audited”!"

Only climate science has been subjected to the dishonest witch-hunt of McI, the self-proclaimed "auditor" who doesn't seem to understand what auditing actually is.

I also suspect that climate science is the only scientific field where someone's PhD work has led to death threats from the general public.

Now, what does this say about climate science? Its results are unpopular in certain circles, nothing more.

DonB @278...

It's just a copy of the NOAA ocean heat content data to 2000m. Are you afraid to look at the information?

DonB... I already addressed Curry's errors on that issue up thread.

DonB... So, back to ocean heat content...

Don, on ocean heat content, I'm co-author of a paper just in the publication process that covers it pretty well. Watch this blog for coverage of that soon.

DonB... No, Greg was merely asking questions about why she would align herself with such a clearly despicable character as Steyn. Her diatribe on norms of behavior completely disregard the awfulness of people like Steyn and grossly misinterpret the meaning behind scientific norms of behavior.

But, if you'll please go back and look at the ocean heat content data we can get back to pointing out how you don't even understand the most basic aspects of climate science related to heat continuing to accumulate in the climate system.

DonB... "Call me a denier, but the science is not settled."

The science is settle enough to justify taking strong action on carbon emissions.

Greg... Did you see the Durack paper that just came out?

DonB... The problem with things "not being settled" is, that can actually mean one of two things. Either we are warming the planet less than we thought, or (a very big "or") we are actually warming the planet more than we thought.

Uncertainty cuts both ways. As with this Durack paper on ocean heat content suggesting that the southern ocean has been under measured, suggesting we're actually warming the planet faster!

Gavin Schmidt made a comment on twitter earlier saying that this puts ECS estimates closer to 1.1-6.1C rather than the stated 1.1-4.2C.

That is a scary thought.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29474646

Rob, I know about the paper, have not read it yet. Looks pretty interesting.

#283, Curry is simplistic if not simply wrong in saying that Steyn is subject to a [domestic or global] journalistic code of ethics. While he writes material for newspapers, he is not employed as a journalist.

Medical researchers seem to think that smoking increases the likelihood of certain diseases. Surgeon General reports discuss such things, using language parallel to that in IPCC assessment reports.

Is that:
a) settled science
or merely
b) settled enough to take action?

Greg –
Re. DonB #279
“Greg, do you think it is appropriate for an esteemed climate scientist and Nobel Laureate to retweet a bat shit crazy Ausie blogger?
https://twitter.com/SouBundanga/status/516296998513700865”

What we have here appears to be an actionable instance of libel. DonB states that an “Ausie (sic) blogger, easily identified as Sou from HotWhopper, is bat shit crazy. The assertion isn't qualified with legal safeguards such as “apparently” or “perhaps,” so unless DonB can offer proof, he's committing a crime.

You've written about Mann vs. CEI and the National Review, and Mann vs. Steyn, and you've made it quite clear that you oppose the libelous attacks against him. What's your policy concerning libel on your own blog?

Cosmic # 298

I didn't see the part where he posits a crime?

There's no law that I know of that makes it illegal for DonB to speak like a deluded, hyperbolic jackass. I suspect that if you saw him babbling on a street corner you'd simply cross to the other side and ignore him, not bother the cops about it.

The only reason DonB thinks Sou is "batshit crazy" is because she's critical of Watts and very very effective at it. And thus, when they can't argue their points they go on a personal attack.

Obstreperous Applesauce –
There are laws that "make it illegal for DonB to speak like a deluded, hyperbolic jackass." Both slander

"Law.
defamation by oral utterance rather than by writing, pictures, etc."
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/slander

and libel

" Law.
defamation by written or printed words, pictures, or in any form other than by spoken words or gestures.
the act or crime of publishing it."

are criminal acts.

Stating in print that someone is "bat shit crazy" is defamatory, and unless you can prove that the statement is true or that there are circumstances that absolve the person making the statement, the statement is libelous.

TL;DR, Judith Curry double plus ungood thought criminal.

Rob Honeycutt –
Yes. But note that you make a logical leap from DonB to "they." And the reason you do this is that defamation of climate scientists and prominent persons who advocate action are one of the few weapons the septics have. I think it's time to take that weapon from them and hold them accountable.

For the record, *Brad Keyes* was banned from HotWhopper. I've encountered his debating style on Grist, and I can understand why. He's not worth wasting time on.

Cosmic # 301

Well, OK. But defamation implies that what someone says carries enough weight to damage reputation, no?

If we sued people for every ad hominem attack, planet Earth would implode. Not that I don't think the intent is malicious. It's just that despite being legends in their own minds, the fly weight, denialist trolls on this thread are probably doing more damage to their own reputations than anything else.

Oops:
"...that defamation...is [not are]..."

Brad... Sou is, in fact, quite sane and intelligent. She does a great job of pointing out the complete absurdities that pass as "facts" on WUWT.

Just today, she points out how the throngs there are going on about an update in the HadCRU4 data. They utterly and completely fail to understand what the adjustments actually were and jump to conspiracy theories that it had something to do with McKitrick.

Sou rightful points to the fact that Hadley merely added additional cells to their data. Talk about a classic facepalm.

And Sou happens to be the one delivering the news of their abject stupidity. And for that she's labeled "batshit."

cosmicomics... I get the sense that is part of the issue with the Mann v. Steyn case. Free speech does come with responsibilities, ones that Steyn and a great many others have abdicated.

Mann winning this case would mean that high profile extremists, like Steyn, would have to be more careful in the future in the claims they make. They would have to actually try to assess the balance of information available to them.

I would add that, while the comment of an individual troll may not amount to much, the aggregate of denialists comments do point to a damaged reputation.

"Scientists are yet to find any evidence that batshit is, in fact, as crazy as Sou (Miriam O’Brien) from Bundanga."

Brad: Please do not make obnoxious statements like this.

Obstreperous Applesauce #306–
"But defamation implies that what someone says carries enough weight to damage reputation, no?"

I'm not so sure about that. In theory, we're equal before the law. I think the decisive factor would be malicious intent. And the single act of defamation is part of a larger effort.

We're not talking about a personal argument in which one person calls another an idiot. We're talking about (more or less) reflective public communication (that has significance for the future of life on this planet), in which a person maliciously disseminates false information about another. If this was merely about one person, I wouldn't be writing this, but as both you and Rob Honeycutt recognize, libel is a septic staple. We can't take action against the septics collectively, so the only way to counter their slanders and libels is to make enough septics accountable so that they learn that they can't defame others with impunity. They have to learn that slander and libel are not covered by free speech. Mann's suits are a necessary start. But they should not stand alone.

"We can’t take action against the septics collectively"

Are you sure?

Greg #313 –

If we're talking of septics in general, I don't see how it could be done. If Mann wins the case against Steyn, it would influence the behavior of some of the leading septics and cause them to be more circumspect, but it might at the same time confirm some of the less influential ones in their conspiratorial worldview, and cause them to persist more aggressively in their libels and assertions of fraud. I think we can set some examples with individual septics, even take action against specific groups of septics, but not against septics collectively. As the case against CEI indicated, it would be possible to take action against an organization. To combat the septic tag alongs, it might make more sense to focus on those who knowingly publish libels, rather than those who commit the discreet acts of libel. If the administrators of septic blogs were to be held legally accountable for the libels that appear, it would have a significant effect. If, in addition to that, the administrators of “our” blogs and publications saw to it that defamatory comments did not make it through moderation or were quickly deleted, then the spurious allegations would be far less frequent.

The key word we seem to be avoiding here is 'defamation', one of the elements of which is harm. It's not an issue of equality so much as injury. Maybe think of the difference between getting punched in the shin by a toddler and getting punched in the head by an MMA title holder while being mugged.

Seriously if you prosecuted every stupid thing an AGW denialist said, that alone would clog every court on the planet--not to mention all the ridiculous things idiots have to say on other topics. There are practical limits. OTOH, some of these jerks may come close to being stalkers or cyber-bullies.

As for the other thing, I don't know, but I'd guess legislation and the law will have to evolve some before denialists can be held accountable en masse.

Brad... That's hardly reason to call someone that. Do you consider everyone you disagree with to be "batshit crazy?"

Greg:

"“We can’t take action against the septics collectively”
Are you sure?"

Exactly. It seems needlessly defeatist to rule out such a possibility without first trying. I for one would welcome seeing an attempt made before simply giving up.

But Brad, that sounds a bit self justifying. She wasn't willing to agree that you were correct doesn't mean that you were right and she was wrong.

And, I'm going to have to agree with Sou on this one. You would expect, in a situation where there is a significant consensus that it's going to be a reflection of the level of evidence.

You're not going to get a consensus without compelling evidence, at least not on a scientific issue among scientists.

Brad... I would say that it greatly increased the likelihood that something is correct.

From the perspective of anyone outside the field of research, this should be equivalent to evidence that climate change is, in fact, real. (Supposing that you're discussing the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change.)

I would add that, last I looked Cook et al 2013 was something like either the 6th or 5th most cited IOP paper over the past two years.

It seems that researchers are using the findings of a scientific consensus on global warming as evidence.

And what's this thing about "double dipping?"

If you find multiple lines of evidence you're results are going to be more robust. The more "dips" the better!

"No, not if they’re willing to change their minds when corrected."

It possible that Sou was not taking you seriously.

With what is effectively 100% consensus the discussion of whether or not consensus is evidence that might be added to the evidence supporting the consensus is moot. The science is well established.

See, Brad, you have to understand that people who say that the jury is still out on climate change are operating on a different level than regular people. And not in a good way.

Brad... Come on, Brad. You can fill in the blank easy enough. We're discussing climate change of the past 50 years being primarily the result of human emissions of greenhouse gases.

It's just a bit of a mouthful to have to explain that each and every time the term "climate change" is used.

Double-dipping is a way of fooling yourself, which (if you ask a Feynmanite like myself) is rather a bad thing to do.

If the consensus is "a result of" the evidence, then you mustn't count it as evidence. You must only pay attention to the evidence.

Brad, just so you know, that makes you look like a moron and wastes everybody else's time. Please try to be more respectful to yourself and others in this discussion.

Nothing like the molasses of pedantry to slow down a discussion...

Brainstorms:

"Nothing like the molasses of pedantry to slow down a discussion…"

And there's nothing like vagueness to make scientific debate/discussion impossible.

The only science I know of that's devoid of vagueness is pure mathematics.

Do you ever take airline flights? Why are you not terrified of them failing while you're on-board, due to the "vagueness" of the sciences involved in designing, building, and operating such craft?

"The only science I know of that’s devoid of vagueness is pure mathematics."

Six of one, half dozen of the other.

Brad... Rather than me being vague I'd suggest that you're being deliberately obtuse. You knew what I was talking about and chose to derail the conversation instead.

Brad, the "Feynmanite", is incapable of understanding words in context but , "Feynmanically" waves around his tribalistic denialist "AGW" banner.

Isn't there a Social Science blog that will have him?

Is this a subvariant of the Dunning-Kruger effect?

And Brad, don't lie. #337 is bullshit.

Craig, I'm almost afraid to ask but WTH is a "tribalistic denialist “AGW” banner"?

Rob,

your summary of Monckton's Nazi gaffe is not accurate. It's clear that he was calling consensualism—not climate science—fascistic:

"Lord Monckton compared statements made by Adolf Hitler to Professor Garnaut's suggestion that people should accept the mainstream science of climate change.

""That again is a fascist point of view, that you merely accept authority without question. Heil Hitler, on we go," he said. "

More accuracy please.

"I’m almost afraid to ask but WTH is a “tribalistic denialist “AGW” banner”?"

You tell us: you're the one that waved it around.

And just to prove my point, you start waving around yet another banner belonging to the denialist tribe: the mistaken belief that being knowledgeable about expert opinion is relevant to the logical fallacy known as "appeal to authority".

Let's face it: denialists are good at chucking rocks around, but they *really* do not understand the first thing about logical fallacies.

Here's a video of Monckton expanding on his mindless gibberish from the swastika video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQttoMH9Fdg

Clearly, he is saying that climate science is fascism.

Bwahaha, just watched that video - there's the guy whose team Brad is playing on......%#$@ing hilarious, Brad.

Yeah, didn't think so.

Obstreperous Applesauce #315 –

“Seriously if you prosecuted every stupid thing an AGW denialist said, that alone would clog every court on the planet–not to mention all the ridiculous things idiots have to say on other topics. There are practical limits.”

This is a strawman. No one said anything about prosecuting every stupid thing AGW denialists say. I haven't written about “stupid things.” I've written about libel, which is a crime. Also, the persons who commit these crimes are adults, not toddlers, and they are legally responsible for their actions.

Furthermore, I haven't suggested charging every single septic who commits libel. I've rejected the idea of a “class action suit” because there's no class to take action against. I have instead suggested a limited number of actions that could have a far ranging effect. To make it clear, I am not advocating clogging American courts with petty lawsuits that have no value beyond themselves. (And don't conflate the U.S. with the planet. I don't know of any comparable society that's as litigious or that has as many lawyers per square meter.)

“The key word we seem to be avoiding here is ‘defamation’...”

I've written specifically about slander and libel, which are legal categories of defamation. I've quoted definitions that explicitly state this. In my reply to Rob Honeycutt I wrote, “defamation of climate scientists and prominent persons who advocate action are one of the few weapons the septics have.” Have I avoided the word defamation, or have you, for the sake of promoting your own argument, chosen to avoid seeing it?

“It’s not an issue of equality so much as injury. Maybe think of the difference between getting punched in the shin by a toddler and getting punched in the head by an MMA title holder while being mugged.”

Let's look at the case Michael Mann has brought against Mark Steyn. Mann is one of today's most prominent climate scientists. Steyn is...well, what? The two are hardly equal, and one could debate whether someone of Steyn's stature is capable of injuring Mann. Nonetheless, Mann has chosen to sue him. Do you disapprove of what Mann has done? That would be consistent with your argument.

Climate change presents a threat to life on Earth as we know it. The septics are trying to prevent action that limits the extent of this threat. Scientifically, they don't have a leg to stand on, and their obsession with the original hockey stick and the hacked emails clearly shows this. So instead of refuting the results of climate science, they envelop climate science in conspiracy theories and declare it to be illegitimate, a hoax. The fewer and farther between papers that are produced by “denier” scientists, who often seem to receive funding from the fossil fuel industry, are quickly debunked. The septics can't refute the science, so they grab whatever unknowns they can find, and present them as proof that the science isn't settled. They make things up: sometimes they misrepresent the science and sometimes they misrepresent what the scientists have said. Others can then use time correcting misinformation that gets repeated again and again. Beyond this they try to compromise the science with unsubstantiated attacks on the character of the scientists, and proponents of action, and this is illegal. Michael Mann has evidently decided that enough is enough. I agree with him. Do you?

Cosmicomics,

if you think obsession with the original Hockey Stick is diverting us from taking necessary action, then stop prolonging the inevitable—stop fighting for the scientific propriety of MBH98/99, a battle you can't win either in science or in the courts—stop defending the indefensible—so then we can all get on with solving more important questions, together.

BTW it's spelled "skeptics" or, if you're British, "sceptics."

Re. Monckton:

http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/lord-moncktons-rap-sheet/
Bickmore has pretty much everything. Below are some selected goodies.

From Peter Hadfield's illustrative and entertaining confrontation with the Lord (that Monckton ran away from):
References: (Hadfield’s own videos)
1 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbW-aHvjOgM
2 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTY3FnsFZ7Q
3 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpF48b6Lsbo
4 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3giRaGNTMA
5 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRCyctTvuCo
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/11/monckton-responds-to-potholer54/
(Greg – please look at the WUWT link before you delete it.)

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/09/24/rachel-pinker-on-moncktons-t…

http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/summary-doc…

(Didn't someone once suggest that Monckton was the unwanted love child of William F. Buckley and the British comedian Marty Feldman?)

Re. MBH:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/false-claims-by-m…

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-montford-delu…

http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/the-h…
(Contains several links.)

http://environmentalforest.blogspot.dk/2013/10/enough-hockey-sticks-for…

Cosmic,

Calm down, I get what you're saying.

Defamation has four elements, one of which is 'harm'.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation

Harm.

That is to say, injury to the person defamed.

Harm is an element of defamation. To have defamation you have to demonstrate harm. That's not always easy to prove.

Look it up. There are reasons the law is set up that way which will become apparent if you think about it.

However if you can show I'm wrong, I'll let it go. I promise. And I agree about deniers, but the law is the law, which is not to suggest that there aren't ways to get at them legally; perhaps by other routes than defamation.

This includes a discussion of the hockey stick paper/graph/research:

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/10/07/interview-with-michael-man…

Greg,

Is there a transcript of that? Just curious. Limited data plan here.

======

Cosmic,

Just for the record, I think Mann has a case and I hope he wins decisively.

If you recall we were talking generalities based on the snotty attack against Sou. Something completely different to my mind.

Obstreperous: No, there never is for that show. The file is 9 megabytes, but I suppose downloading that is not much more efficient than streaming it.

Often cases like this won't even get to a decision. They'll be settled along the way. With Steyn as a defendant, that may not be in the cards. I think he'll want to take it to the end.

That, in itself, I think is going to put the defendants at cross purposes, and since they're not keeping common counsel, that potentially means different results for each defendant. I'm really not sure how that works but it certainly makes the potential outcome(s) more complex.

My sense is, there's far more to this case than just Steyn's libelous statement. Otherwise why even bother with it? It's a solid enough case to successfully move forward through the courts, and with that there are I believe pretty serious implications for CEI in the discovery process.

My prediction is, as this moves forward, the central figure of this case is going to become CEI rather than Steyn.

This might be of interest: http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/10/07/what-is-the-role-of-the-de…

Obstreperous Applesauce #351 –

1. Avoid unnecessary irritation. When reproducing an argument, be accurate. Don't make the other person say: That's not what I/you said.
2. Avoid unnecessary misunderstandings. Be clear.

Thanks for the link. I think we can agree that a reputation is intangible and that any measure would be subjective. But if you could show that remarks designed to damage another's reputation had been accepted or acclaimed by a number of others, or given broad media exposure, I imagine you would win your case.

Re. Sou: DonB's statement was defamatory, but it may not be actionable. In any case, one possible response would be a consistent policy to ban such remarks from a website.

From Climate Science Watch:
"In January 2014 District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Weisberg found that Dr. Mann's lawsuit should not be dismissed pursuant to the District Of Columbia's Anti-SLAPP statute. Accusing a scientist of conducting his research fraudulently is a factual allegation that can be proven true or false, not mere hyperbolic opinionating. If it is false it is defamatory, and if it is made with actual malice it is actionable."

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2014/09/03/michael-mann-dc-appeals-c…

DonB,

You forgot to add, "so Sou me."

DonB,

good question. My (legally naïve/slash/idealistic) take on this would be that scientific fraud is a Boolean, true or false accusation. This is because science—perhaps uniquely among academic disciplines?—has a set of rules, often known as the scientific method, absolutely forbidding dishonesty. Mann either broke them or left them intact.

I would hope the judge sees it somewhat like a scientist would see it: id est, that dishonesty is as bad as anything a scientist could be accused of, and that such an accusation goes much further than a simple matter of disagreement or "getting the wrong answer." Being human, most scientists are wrong about most things, but they're also honest—and to allege otherwise is deeply injurious to a scientist's character, honor and legacy.

They say (at least if they're as legally-naïve as me) that truth is an absolute defense in libel cases. Ideal[istical]ly it should be the only defense Steyn, Simberg et al. are allowed to invoke in this particular case. Or if not truth, then at least their own perception of truth at the time of writing. The just-flamboyant-rhetoric defense would leave a bad taste in the mouth of all parties, I think.

Note that my twitter buddy Rand Simberg has scientific training himself, so he must be aware how serious it is to impute that a fellow scientist "molested and tortured data." Not the kind of thing one would say lightly.

Your feedback welcome!

PS I suspect you know a lot more than me about actual wars, so please excuse in advance any mangling of the metaphor on my part.

Catch up Don, that FUND model was as bent as a 3-bob note.

Here's a competent model, Don:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DICE_model

And here's a short summary of what Tol/Lomborg are trying to hide with their dodgy model:
http://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.43084.de/diw_wr_2…

"In Germany, a climate protection policy that immediately implements effective measures would cost 5.7 billion US dollars in 2050 and 40 billion US dollars in 2100. At the same time, however, climate change damages amounting to 33 billion US dollars in 2050 and 160 billion US dollars in 2100
would be avoided."

And here it is in pictures for the dumbulbs who might have been taken in by the dodgy dodgy dodgy Tol/Lomborg crapola:
http://static.skepticalscience.com/pics/Action_vs_Inaction_500.jpg

DonB... Actually, Carlin's view is certainly not scientifically based, but I think he's actually putting forth a position that is fairly consistent with the science. In essence, Carlin is saying we're too stupid to fix this and Nature will take care of the "human" problem in it's own way.

My problem is, that view suggests that there is going to be a massive amount of human suffering that occurs while nature fixes things. I have a hard time thinking it's okay to assume that outcome and do nothing to try to find an alternative path.

Carlin may be right. I hope that we will find the intelligence within ourselves to address the climate problem and avert the worst outcomes.

At very least I want to know that I tried my best to help future generations, rather than giving up while action could still be taken.

Well, I do have this PhD in science. So kiss my ass.

And, of course, DonB is nobody specific.

Don... You might take note of the fact that Dana actually has a growing list of published peer reviewed research on climate change issues.

Can you say the same?

DonB appears to discuss climate change much in the same way that a pigeon may wield a chess piece in its beak with absolutely no idea what it is for.

Time to move on and consign the Luddites and vandals to the trash can of history. We have work to do.

I am not your regular troll.

You certainly seem to be.

DonB,

You have apparently wandered into the wrong room. This is a science site. No doubt there are numerous "fucking ass kicking" sites you can visit where you'll be in your element.

Don... "I am not your regular troll."

Okay.

Anyway, let us know when you have something of substance to contribute.

But Rob, he did: #394, "let’s just delete [my DonB] comments!"

I'm a little late coming to this party, but I wanted to get this out there.

Laden's post here could be construed as rather misleading.

The tweet that Curry liked or favorited or whatever was to a post containing the material in a blurb about Laden and Mann. However, it also contained a sizeable blurb specifically dedicated to Curry and her dispute with Mann.

I would suspect it was THAT material at the link Curry was specifically favoriting. And, Laden, being a smart guy, would probably suspect this too. However, giving Curry a fair reading would result in the loss of an opportunity to break out the fainting couch and demand an apology.

Additionally, I've read Steyn for years. I have never seen him write ONE WORD on the "men's rights" movement. He has his hobby horses - global warming alarmism, muslim extremism, the regulatory state, government over-reach, demographics, and fiscal irresponsibility, but "men's rights" is no where on the list - at least as "men's rights" is commonly understood. Googling "Mark Steyn and men's rights" turned up zero hits for this, nor did "mark steyn and father's rights". At least on the first page.

Nor have I ever heard him reference "slyme pit" before. And googling Mark Steyn and slyme pit" or "mark steyn and slymepit" has this blog post, or others linking it, as three of the top four links, with the fourth being a comment on a page made by a reader containing a reference to Mark Steyn. I didn't see any type of direct listing of Steyn with Slyme Pit.

One would think that the blogger's actions here (making a gross misrepresentation of someone's actions, while peppering in some misleading cat nip for his readers) would cause some of his staunchest defenders to look again at defending him. The world, and our causes, would be better served by not equating defending our allies with defending our causes.

Greg, you're an Eco-Leftist. Judith Curry is an expert in her field and was regularly touted by Eco-Leftist warmunists like yourself when her work seemed to support your ideology.

The minute she began to question the ideology and to consider that the prevailing ideology/(lack of)wisdom is wrong, you Warmunists toss her to the curb and then lift your leg on her.

You're a loser, Eco-Leftist.

Serious scientists started to write odd Curry when her science went off the rails. But thank you for that new word, Warmunists.

With a few notable exceptions, I Have never seen a more immature group of supposed adults in my life. You people, with your cutesy monikers and self righteous indignation are the "scientists" we're supposed to trust with our research dollars? No wonder you don't use your real names.
Real science isn't "settled". Real scientists question the accepted orthodoxy and try and prove it wrong. Most of the climate "science" I read about is based on the tenuous hypothesis of AGW. Without this, where are you?
Whatever Mark Steyn said about Michael Mann will be settled in court, where adults go and use their real names, and stand behind their statements.
When all is said and done, will the church of climatology shift back to the cooling theory, espoused when I was a kid, if that's where the grant money is? I'm betting yes.

With a few notable exceptions, I Have never seen a more immature group of supposed adults in my life. You people, with your cutesy monikers and self righteous indignation are the “deniers” we’re supposed to trust instead of our research? No wonder you don’t use your real names.

Real science isn’t “settled”, but evolves as it reveals reality. Real scientists question the accepted orthodoxy and try and prove it wrong. Most of the deniers' “climate science” I read about is based on bogus hypotheses of CAGW charlatans. Without this, where are you?

Whatever Mark Steyn said about Michael Mann will be settled in court, where adults go and use their real names, and stand behind their statements.

When all is said and done, will the church of climate denierology shift back to yet another hairbrained “theory”, espoused just last week, if that’s where the denier donation money is? I’m betting yes.