The publication in the New Haven Register of one of my
columns produced a letter of protest on 4/12/17 from climate scientist Michael
Mann. Both the original column and Mann’s response may be found in Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes From A
Blue State here “The
Curse Of Victimology.”
The gravamen of the column
and blog, put in a single sentence, is this: Scientific matters in dispute
should not, and perhaps cannot, be decided by courts. The blog and column also
touches on victimology. Corollary: Courts should not be used by “scientists” as
a thumbscrew to silence legitimate scientific inquiry.
In academia, I wrote
… the victimization scam may end in the
destruction of the liberties of scientists.
Among the most oppressed victims in the 21st century,
we discover, is tortured Penn State University climatologist Michael Mann, who
appeared before U.S. Congress at the end of March to declare himself
victimized. Consider his bleeding wounds.
Before Mr. Mann put before the Congress his
statement, he supplied the members of the House Science Committee – is anyone
wondering: does the Congress really need a Science Committee? -- with his curriculum vitae. Mr. Mann
is the author of a number of books, none of them suppressed by a Stalinist
government. During his hearing, Mr. Mann unreeled “a prodigious list of
awards,” according to National Review magazine.
Mr. Mann is suing the magazine, Mark Steyn, Rand Simberg and the Competitive
Enterprise Institute for defamation, a judicial action for which Mr. Mann
doubtless will receive from his persecuted colleagues yet another award, more
plentiful in academia than snowflakes in a blizzard. Incredibly, the
non-Stalinist D.C. Court of Appeals has not spiked the case and sent Mr. Mann
to a frozen Gulag for gross impertinence.
Mr. Mann regaled the members of the House
Science Committee with a story concerning false science. In Stalinist Russia,
the crackpot theories of Trofim Lysenko concerning heredity and agronomy were
embraced first by Vladimir Lenin and later by Lenin’s St. Paul, Stalin. In
practice, the theories were ruinous, Russian agriculture suffered a setback,
and real scientists who took issue with Lysenko’s theories were imprisoned,
many of them dying in their cells. Mr. Mann’s reference to the evils of the Stalinist
state were intended to indicate that science, even here in the good old USA,
might suffer setbacks under an oppressive governmental regime and
anti-scientific culture.
Stalin’s agricultural and industrial
policies did produce real victims:
five million Ukrainians suffered and died under a Stalin administered famine in
1933-34. Intellectuals and school teachers were shot or sent to the Gulag, and
eventually Ukraine and the rebellious Caucasus were brought under Stalin’s
hobnailed boot. “If you want a vision of the future,” said George Orwell, who
was familiar with Stalinist regimes, “imagine a boot stamping on a human face -
forever.”
If you want a vision of our future in the new
century, try to imagine a distinguished professor of climatology, the author of
numerous books, who claims that climate change (AKA global warming) is “settled
science,” that 90 percent of scientists in the United States agree with him on
the point, and that he is being oppressed by Stalinists because other reputable
scientists, a slender 10 percent, and commentators have had the temerity to
disagree with him on the point. Furthermore, Mr. Mann is the one using the
organs of the state to sue his detractors for slander, hoping perhaps to shut
down disagreeable commentators and bloggers who have poked fun at his
“scientific” pretensions. Whose face is being smashed here? Is science, the
lifeblood of which is controversion and disputation, the victim, or is the
victim the tenured, much published, much honored, suit-prone but thin-skinned
professor, who appears to be unwilling to brook controversy without taking to
court his disputants?
Mann’s letter of
protest to the New Haven Register is here included in full:
Letter to the
Editor: Don Pesci misleads readers about climate change
POSTED: 04/12/17, 1:21 PM EDT |
Don Pesci chooses to engage in childish attacks against both the science of climate change, and me personally in his recent letter (“The curse of victimology,” April 6) in the online edition of your paper.
Despite his insistence that climate change is
not “settled science,” the scientific community has concluded otherwise. The
U.S. National Academy of Sciences — created in the 19th century by Republican
president Abraham Lincoln and hardly a den of political activists — has
concluded that “most of the recent change is almost certainly due to emissions
of greenhouse gases caused by human activities.” In the modern era of
“alternative facts,” Pesci would like us to believe a handful of fossil fuel
industry advocates, and right-wing commentators like himself, over the
overwhelming consensus of the world’s scientists. For readers interested in the
truth about climate change, I recommend my recent book, “The Madhouse Effect:
How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics,
and Driving Us Crazy.”
Pesci gets the facts similarly wrong when he
refers to my libel lawsuit against the National Review and Competitive Enterprise
Institute. This case is not about scientific orthodoxy or freedom of speech.
Just as the First Amendment does not permit one to falsely shout “fire” in a
crowded theater, one may not falsely accuse a scientist of fraud in their
professional work, which is precisely what the defendants did. Five judges and
two courts have already rejected Pesci’s assertions. In fact, the latest
ruling, from the highest court in the District of Columbia, dismissed the
positions of the defendants that they were simply expressing their legitimate
opinions about climate change, characterizing their statements as “noxious.”
Now, it is time for a jury to decide.
— Michael E. Mann
Pennsylvania
Michael Mann is
distinguished professor of atmospheric science and director of the Penn State
Earth System Science Center at Penn State University.
My response to Mann’s protest letter – I do not know if it had been
printed in New Haven Register -- was as follows.
Mr. Mann is incorrect on two points: 1) his
court case [there are more than one] does affect freedom of expression, and 2)
the column to which he has taken exception is not about climate change, as any
perceptive reader may discover by reading it. The courts Mr. Mann
mentions ruled on procedural not substantive grounds;
so, we'll see. Courts, in any case, are not well positioned to settle
"scientific" questions. The criticism directed at him in particular
concerned his own hockey-stick "theory," which has not yet been
declared a "scientific law" by the "scientific community"
-- which, by the way, supported the notion that the earth was flat and silenced
Galileo on the point. The point of the column above was not to decide the
issue of climate change, but to question whether legal suits may suppress
scientific inquiry. And Mr. Pesci, consulting the history of science, needs no
community of like souls to assert positively that it does. All science is
settled until it is unsettled by further scientific inquiry. A solution to
carbon emission, when it does arrive, may be technological in nature. There can
be no legal or political solution to carbon emissions short of outlawing CO2
the world over, which will not have a beneficial effect of vegetation in
Pennsylvania, where Mr. Mann lives and breathes. Readers of this blog should
pause and ask themselves what effect a libel suit pressed against Mr. Pesci for
his “childish attacks against both the science of climate change, and
(Mr. Mann) personally” might have on free inquiry in the New Haven
Register. I am assuming Mr. Mann’s letter is not a prelude to a suit. The
District of Columbia court decision may be found here: http://www.dccourts.gov/internet/documents/14-CV-101_14-CV-126.pdf
Mann’s ardent wish, “Now
it is time for a jury to decide,” has been granted, at long last -- the wheels
of justice grind exceedingly slowly, impoverishing those they roll over, as
noted in my New Haven Resister column --according to a piece in Principia Scientific International, “Breaking News: Dr. Tim Ball Defeats Michael
Mann’s Climate Lawsuit!” Published on August 23, 2019, Written
by John O'Sullivan.
Supreme Court of British Columbia dismisses Dr Michael Mann’s defamation lawsuit versus
Canadian skeptic climatologist, Dr. Tim Ball. Full legal costs are awarded to
Dr. Ball, the defendant in the case.
The Canadian
court issued its final ruling in favor of the Dismissal motion that was filed
in May 2019 by Dr. Tim Ball’s libel lawyers.
The plaintiff
Mann’s “hockey stick” graph, first published in 1998, was featured prominently in
the U.N. 2001 climate report. The graph showed an “unprecedented”
spike in global average
temperature in the 20th Century after about 500 years of stability.
Skeptics have
long claimed Mann’s graph was fraudulent.
“Michael Mann’s Case Against Me Was Dismissed This
Morning By The BC Supreme Court And They Awarded Me [Court] Costs.”
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