Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Climate Scientist Wins Defamation Suit Against National Post
Layzej writes A leading Canadian climate scientist has been awarded $50,000 in a defamation suit against The National Post newspaper. Andrew Weaver sued the Post over four articles published between December 2009 and February 2010. The articles contain "grossly irresponsible falsehoods that have gone viral on the Internet," and they "poison" the debate over climate change, Weaver asserted in a statement at the time the suit was filed. The judge agreed, concluding "the defendants have been careless or indifferent to the accuracy of the facts. As evident from the testimony of the defendants, they were more interested in espousing a particular view than assessing the accuracy of the facts."
This is the first of several law suits launched by climate scientists against journalists who have published alleged libels and falsehoods. Climate scientist Ben Santer suggests the following explanation for these types of defamations: "if you can't attack the underlying science, you go after the scientist."
This is the first of several law suits launched by climate scientists against journalists who have published alleged libels and falsehoods. Climate scientist Ben Santer suggests the following explanation for these types of defamations: "if you can't attack the underlying science, you go after the scientist."
WTF is the National Post?
Anyway the people that need to be sued over climate change are the fossil fuel companies.
The denialists do not understand science, but they damn well do understand money and lawyers. It's a pity that in this day and age we have to cater to those who are either still thinking in the stone age, or have pecuniary interests in reality being suppressed, but when the lies they spout are easily provable, it's time to see you in court, denialists, not to prove or disprove the science, but to expose your duplicity.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Unfortunately the damage is already done. The general public has sopped up the National Post's bullshit and lies, and now considers that reeking pile of crap to be true.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
In the new World, with a few exceptions, information is freely available to an average World citizen. It would be difficult to bottleneck the pipeline without appearing to be despotic these days.
What's a person or group with an agenda to do? Flood the places people develop their opinions with facts that are friendlier to their goals. Shitty, clever, malevolent bastards.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Patening climate change, inventing the Internet, is there anything he CAN'T do??
(besides practicing what he preaches and cutting his own electricity bill, lol)
Right wing "news" outfits always get away with lying. Contrast the complete lack of coverage for this issue to the ridiculous overblown coverage that Dan Rather and now Brian Williams have gotten. The mainstream media may once have leaned left, but it now leans far far right.
I suppose that once you allow scientists to stand trial for their inability to predict earthquakes, the slippery slope logic kicks in. It seems witches have legal status as do witch hunts.
Since this occurred in Canaduh, can we conclude that no animals were harmed in the fictional display of logic?
I don't know who this rag is, or who this scientist is. But when you turn to the courts to cut off dissent, it makes me doubt the validity of what you are saying.
I thought this was settled science. Now not only are you trying to tell us that there is debate but also you're making money off of it? What kind of climate scientist are you, anyway?
No, there's no debate.
Lies are something different.
You're upping the bid to lawsuits. You must realize that a the court process can be a painful and expensive procedure even for the innocent.
Consider that these same scientists could be sucked into serial lawsuits regarding undisclosed emails, methodology of data filtration/smoothing, disclosure of raw unmodified data which in some cases doesn't exist anymore, detailed explanations of climate models, etc.
Look... you really don't want to open this book. The legal system especially in the US has been successfully used as a bludgeon against people for over a generation. You open this door and lawyers are going to be knocking on the doors of both sides begging them to let their law firm represent them in one lawsuit or another.
Turn on American TV and you'll see all sorts of ads for various lawyers... they say "SUE YOUR BOSS!"... they'll say "were you injured EVER, sue the other guy! FUCK HIM!" They'll say, did you ever use this product? Call us so we can send you a check for 2 dollars, your share of a class action lawsuit that netted our firm a hundred million dollars!" They'll say "Are you the member of any politically advantageous minority? Black, Hispanic, female, gay, transgender? Call us and we'll help you sue people for being bigots!"
And some bright spark thought it would be a good idea to bring the trial lawyers into this shit storm? Okay. *gets more popcorn*
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The leftists love to cover themselves in the mantle of science. Science demands that theory account for the facts. The fact is there has been no warming in the past 18 years, while the breathless predictions of politicized scientists were predicting large increases. Climate science is the most corrupt branch of science of all time.
an ill wind that blows no good
The judge agreed, concluding "the defendants have been careless or indifferent to the accuracy of the facts. As evident from the testimony of the defendants, they were more interested in espousing a particular view than assessing the accuracy of the facts."
And now that is sorted out, just like when Dr. Andrew Wakefield was discredited for his fraudulent research that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine caused autism, rational thinking can now prevail and we can all get back to ... oh wait.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
"Settled Science"? Is that some new religion? It certainly has little in common with the falsifiable research basis of the science I used in school..
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous...
OF course there's a debate! There are gaps in the science that scientists refuse to acknowledge!
Some celebrity told me that AGW causes autism, and I for one won't stand for it!
Both brook no dissent, both have used the courts to silence critics, or at least to embroil them in interminable legal battles, and both seem curiously lacking of any sense of humor. One individual who prevailed against a spurious lawsuit by Muslims in Canada and has pointed out this parallel is Mark Steyn. He's currently being sued by Michael Mann in the Washington DC court system. The fireworks have been exciting thus far, at least for people who are into that sort of thing, as Steyn not only has a legally reasonable position in my opinion, but is also one of the best writers of his generation in satire and political humor. It would be unwise to bet against him.
Introduction of the lawsuit as an element of the scientific method is underway in the Land of the Formerly Free also. Michael Mann has sued columnist Mark Steyn for mocking the hockey-stick curve. I'm looking forward to passage of an amendment to the square-cube law that will allow a concrete block to fly.
For the record, I'm neutral on climate. I trust the scientific method to come up with the truth. Greens, go ahead and force us to "believe" (another newly introduced element of the scientific method) in apocalyptic warming. Just don't get in our way when we build the new reactor fleet it will take to replace fossil fuels.
Both brook no dissent, both have used the courts to silence critics, or at least to embroil them in interminable legal battles, and both seem curiously lacking of any sense of humor.
Ha. Sense of humor. Right. Because denialists are just plucky comedians cracking jokes about those silly 'warmists'.
Nothing like a little slander by association, eh.
At least in the UK, the discrediting of Andrew Wakefield does seem to have worked. MMR vaccination rates have recovered, and are now at their highest ever level. Of course some people still believe him or have other reasons to continue the fraud, but the decisive judgments and associated publicity have changed public opinion back.
I knew when I clicked on "Read Comments" that some of them would be stupid enough to make my head explode.
If you can't refute the facts such as we haven't had any global warming in 18+ years, you sue them into oblivion to shut them up.
Orthodoxy of any sort is inherently joke-worthy, even if the orthodoxy is correct in its tenets.
"denialists" indeed. You fucking idiot.
www.climatedepot.com
www.wattsupwiththat.com
And here are some other 'denialists' to scare you:
www.nazigassings.com
It looks like good science can be thrown out the window if it doesn't fit the Church of Environmentalism.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
It's settled in the same way that it is settled that gravity is a universally attractive force. There's lots we don't understand about how gravity works, especially at the extreme cases, but you don't hear anybody calling it a religion.
we will have successivly replace freedom
This shit is barely readable pap and gets modded up? I weep.
I just have too many anti-vaxxers to yell at today.
That only works if you ignore the ocean. Word of advice: never ignore the ocean.
Could you clarify your comment? Are you trying to say that the newspaper was promoting good science? Who is the Church of Environmentalism?
Open debate does not include the fallacy of ad hominem. It does not include defmation. In fact ad hominem and defamation are attempt to torpedoe the open debate and attempt to deflect the thematic away from science toward the persona of the people doing the debate. If you value open debate then you value stopping ad hominem and defemation.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Not really the same thing. Gravity's effects are well known but the causes are not understood, yet you don't see masses of people pretending to understand it demanding that obscene amounts of money be spent in an effort to counter the effects. Then again, if that were the case, we might have flying cars by now or easy access to outer space.
Orthodoxy of any sort is inherently joke-worthy, even if the orthodoxy is correct in its tenets.
That's no more an excuse to imply that climate scientists are 'Teh Islamists", than it is to imply that deniers are pedophiles.
Both are fucking ridiculous things to say.
Fighting climate change does not require much of money at GDP scales. What is DOES require is a bunch of industries either reduce profits or radically change processes. Disruption is always a dice-roll, so the most successful capitalists in a post-carbon world will most likely be a different bunch than the current ones, but the economy as a whole doesn't need to take a bath.
Al Gore, the Sierra Club, and various other interests that push global warming and environmentalism where belief takes precedence over facts and science.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Well, I'm neutral about neutrons, fairly positive for protons, but highly negative about electrons. I get just sick over germs and am a bit attracted to gravity, but just explode if introduced to someone who's ideas are too petty. (Anti-matter.)
I'm shocked at times over the abundance of electromagnetism and find astrophysics rarely smashing, while thermodynamics leaves me lukewarm. I'm still all tangled up over string theory and hot then cold on Global Warming.
My ideas on evolution change over time but my religious ideas are absolutely static. Psychology is just nuts. I'm a bit wish-washy on politics -- or is it the other way? -- but terrorism just makes me blow my stack. I'm not sure I even believe in metaphysics while philosophy just seems to be all talk, and the occult really gives me the creeps. (Spirits belong in their bottles, not evaporated and floating around in the air.)
I first started thinking about the Big Bang, but finally, the expected Big Crunch far, far in the future leaves me
PS -- Oh, and I'm Cuckoo for Cooko-Puffs!
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
Do you have examples where Al Gore and the Sierra club are promoting belief over science?
Sun 2/08/2015 8:47 am. And that's the way science works! You sue the guy you disagree with, and make his articles and even *name* disappear from the internet. Kuel....
Phantom, you could be the ONLY poster on this website who will admit when he is wrong, will not double down on the derp, and will take his berating without being a total assburger about it. I applaud your self restraint and humility.
An Australian "journalist" that continually distorts the facts about climate change ...
He went after an obscure Canadian newspaper and not big ones like the NYT to establish legal precedent for when he goes after the big guys. The big news outlets are lawyered up to the hilt so best to go after the small fish first and use the.legal precedent to beat the others around the ears when you go after them.
Don't you know how satellite data becomes a temperature reading? "tweaked six ways from Sunday" doesn't even cover it. It requires a model to be run to turn radiance figures into a temperature profile. And then there are tweaks "six ways from Sunday" to apply then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAH_satellite_temperature_dataset
It's definitely right of centre, but is hardly Fox News. It is right of centre for Canada for sure, but that of course isn't the same thing as down in the US.
Good on the suit however. It wouldn't be the first of last time journalists have gotten science wrong from any news service left or right, though the right does seem to play a bit looser with the truth with "opinion" pieces. Much of it can be attributed to laziness and poor research or lack of understanding than any sort of malice. Or at least the willingness to be lazy and stupid because it supports whatever opinion you want to write about. 50,000$ isn't a lot of money for the National Post, but it is more symbolic than anything else, as it goes against whatever credibility they might have if any... There is a certain amount of trust required for any news service, and once you lose that, it is not long for this world.
If you were to the foremost of your time in philosophy, you wouldn't have any need to site other peoples works in a thinking session. This statement generally applies to the climate change "debate". Muhahaha, and the actual sound of gunfire rings out as if change wasn't so elusive after all..
He is crazy if you think about it; I am not.