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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."
Hmmmmmm.... Haaaaaahummmmmm...... What could it be? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm......... Huuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmm.....
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm........ Huhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... Ummmmmm.... Hmmmm.... Huuuuuuuummmmm...
newspaper
newspaper
newspaper
NEWSPAPER
WAIT, I think I've got it! It's a NEWSPAPER!
Oh looky here, they have a website too! http://www.nationalpost.com/index.html
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.
WTF is the National Post?
Anyway the people that need to be sued over climate change are the fossil fuel companies.
Yeah, sort of.
But I look at this as a shot across the bow. If denialists want to lie about the research, or misrepresent scientists, they can do so at their own risk. Because the science is a bit harder to get through some folks heads, but duplicity and personal attacks against scientists isn't. And since denialist cherry picking tends to end up in lies, I say speak to them in their own language - money.
50 K against an obscure newspaper isn't much money. But its just showing the end of passivity in the face of duplicity.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Also, the green companies and scientists that distort the facts to make it sound like apocolypse is coming, that the earth will be under water in 50 years, yada yada yada, when really the worst that will happen is the earth gets a tiny bit warmer and oceans are a lttle bit higher. And it can't even be proven that it has anything to do with anthropogenic cause.
Become a president.
Saying "Its a newspaper" is inadequate - the National Enquirer qualifies, so does the New York Times.
Conrad Black founded the National Post (while in charge of Hollinger) and writes for it now. He appears to have been in prison when the offending articles were published.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
WTF is the National Post?
Anyway the people that need to be sued over climate change are the fossil fuel companies.
The National Post is Canada's right wing national newspaper. The left leaning one being The Globe and Mail.
No one should be sued.
How can we have an open debate when one side censors the other, through lawsuits, censorship, or even making discussion outright illegal (see Holocaust denial)?
It doesn't matter how ridiculously wrong the other side is. Doesn't matter if they are NAMBLA, Neo-Nazis, ISIS, whoever. Let them speak their mind and let the people figure out that their arguments are largely full of shit and let the people reject them on merit. Or, if they choose to, accept them.
Of course, I do agree that global warming is happening, and is at least somewhat a result of human activities. However, this constant censoring of the skeptics gets me angry. Let them present their data and let me research and determine who is right. Rather than just have scientists tell me their stuff is a bunch of baloney and must be censored or it will cause harm.
idk, when you have partisan media spreading actual defamation of people rather than debating on facts, then lawsuits are basically the only way to rein them in. It's especially a problem when the same large corporations have a stake in ALL your countries media, it's rare that you will get the "basic facts" in the first place.
Even with the shady journalism discussed in this story, I think The National Post would have better judgement than to publish anything said by Ezra Levant for example.
Ezra Isaac Levant (born 1972) is a Canadian media personality, conservative political activist, writer and broadcaster. He is the founder and former publisher of the Western Standard, is a broadcaster and columnist for Sun Media tabloids and television, and has written several books on politics and public policy. He has become involved in several legal and other controversies on free speech issues. Other issues that he has dealt with include multiculturalism, immigration, and economic deregulation. He published the book Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada's Oil Sands in 2010 and Groundswell: The Case for Fracking in 2014 through McClelland & Stewart. Levant has been successfully sued for libel on two separate occasions.
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.
Okay. So what do you do when you already have shown the opposing arguments to be false, and they keep making them. And then they resort to defaming your character, since they can't really counter your science. Some societies will go for a strict free speech approach that allows the liar to keep on lying and hopes that the effects won't be too bad. Other societies decide to put limits on how long you can keep spreading lies publicly. You may decide to think of this as censorship, but certainly there are degrees. Canada's certainly not coming down on the side of suppressing facts here... The US errs on the side of letting rich guys pay to spread lies. Which is the better approach?
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Libel isn't dissent. That's not a particularly difficult concept to grasp.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
[...] and hurricanes will become more frequent along with droughts, and flooding, as rainfall will go up [...]
"...and the wolf will shack up with the lamb, the leopard will go down on the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together, in the climacticus, calamitous tumult of the wicked Anthropocene, and acne, AIDS, poppy/opium genocide, elder death, the end of Africa, hostile weed takeovers, airplane crashes, more Al Qaeda/Taliban, allergies, alligator migration and sex-ratio disruption, anxiety, asteroid strikes, jellyfish attacks, worse beer, brain shrinkage, brothel shortages, return of the black plague, cannibalism, cataracts, cat love, reduction in circumcisions, cougar attacks, thin and healthy rich people, gingerbread house apocalypse, end of golf, no more outdoor ice hockey, no more pasta, maple syrup shortages, pirates, rapes, redhead extinction, sea snot, sexual dysfunction, pug and other short-nosed animals' extinction, new shrimp sex patterns ever weirder than before, giant spiders, alarmingly small spiders, murders, fewer truffles, UFO sightings, noisier oceans, violin extinction, drop in GDP..."
SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
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. . . .
"I initiated the lawsuit in 2010 after the National Post refused to retract a number of articles that attributed to me statements I never made, accused me of things I never did, and attacked me for views I never held,"
That's is different than attacking someone's faulty science. (If you've looked at the hockey stick "science" you'd be laughing at it too.)
This is a libel case, not an academic discussion.
The National Post made scurrilous and untrue statements against Andrew Weaver.
The man has a right to protect his personal reputation.
The problem is that there is no data for faulty arguments. In fact, there were no arguments to be faulty. The claim is that the paper just completely made up bullshit and lies.
From the article: Weaver said, "I initiated the lawsuit in 2010 after the National Post refused to retract a number of articles that attributed to me statements I never made, accused me of things I never did, and attacked me for views I never held."
How can we have an open debate when one side censors the other, through lawsuits, censorship, or even making discussion outright illegal (see Holocaust denial)?
How can you have an open debate when one side uses lies and personal attacks instead of facts?
It doesn't matter how ridiculously wrong the other side is. Doesn't matter if they are NAMBLA, Neo-Nazis, ISIS, whoever. Let them speak their mind and let the people figure out that their arguments are largely full of shit and let the people reject them on merit. Or, if they choose to, accept them.
It DOES matter how ridiculously wrong one side is when their goal is not to win a debate but to DELAY ACTION. By manufacturing controversy where there is none, one side wins.
So a public court of law weighs the evidence and agrees that the paper had been careless and indifferent to the facts and in your mind that makes the paper MORE credible?
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.
The National Post is hardly an obscure newspaper. It is one of two national newspapers in Canada, and the one decidedly on the right. Basically it is the Fox News of Newspapers in Canada.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Can you provide links to the stories of these "skeptic scientists" (isn't that redundant?) Are you talking about people with peer-reviewed papers being fired because their boss didn't like the results of the work? Or are you talking about people who couldn't get properly-done science published because a peer-reviewed journal had it in for them?
Or are you talking about "scientists" that had strong opinions NOT backed up by science of the kind that can pass peer review?
Even that is fine; firing people for opinions, even ones they cannot prove scientifically, is pretty bad - but I'd like to see the cases, see if they have merit.
I mean, thanks for your link to "climate audit" - the middle of a mathematically-complex *criticism* of a scientific paper; but I know I'm not competent to adjudicate that dispute. Peer-reviewed journals *ARE* able to, generally, and if this criticism could only get published at "climateaudit.org", and not the Journal of Climate or any of 21 other climate-related peer-reviewed journals, then I'm sorry, but I have to assume it's not very good.
My reliance on peer-reviewed journals is not the logical fallacy of "Argument by Authority"; that refers to statements like "Penicillin works because the King has proclaimed it". The statement "Penicillin works because 35 careful studies of infection outcomes showed positive and repeatable results" is another kind of authority altogether.
It is one thing to refute someone's research with other information that contradicts it, comes to a different conclusion or simply represents a different point of view.
It is a completely different thing if you can't refute someone's research and resort to slander and character assassination to keep him from being listened to.
I hope you can see the difference.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Orthodoxy of any sort is inherently joke-worthy, even if the orthodoxy is correct in its tenets.
Hottest by 0.02C (Globally) with an error possibility of about 0.1C.
Also the only truly global data sets (satellites) do not rank it as the hottest.
And finally, with a temperature difference of barely 0.05 on average for the last 18 years, the warming is basically nonexistent.
Canadian columnist Alan Fotheringham (aka "Dr. Foth") refers to it as The National Pest.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
We either see the change over a generation or two and watch the rich lose some land or we take action right now to ptotect the mega corporate farms and the rich's land holding and see the costs increase in a decade of less.
While the Dutch people may be on the rich side world-wide (and by median maybe even by US standards), I'm no so sure about the Bangladeshi. But hey, there only 150000000 of them, and most of them are on the brown side...
Stephan
"Passivity"... REALLY!?!?!?!?\
Alarmists and green organisations are DOWN RIGHT AGGRESSIVE. They always have been.
They call for no less than:
- The death penalty
- Jail time for people expressing their opinions
- Murder
- Exploding heads of those who dont tow the line (look at the propaganda video)
Citations please. Especially the alleged "propaganda video."
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
The National Post isn't an obscure paper though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The National Post is a Canadian paper based out of Toronto, and was the flagship paper of PostMedia, one of Canada's major media conglomerates. It is in direct competition with The Globe and Mail (the other major paper title). It used to be a major National title, but its readership dropped off about the same time it started doing strong "partisan" editorials on topics with strong pro-Israeli/anti-muslim content (including the 2006 Iran controversy). In the past decade, they have not been strangers to coloring their reporting, sometimes past the line of believability.
The "National Joke" is a heavily slanted and biased Israeli-Canadian newspaper, based in Canada.
This is isn't the first time that they have blatantly printed false information.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
The Video in question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Jail for deniers:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p...
http://dailycaller.com/2014/03...
Murder:
Comment by Bluecloud
https://twitter.com/RichardTol...
There are many more... some directly from Greenpeace. But I'll let you do your own research.
Death penalty:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.co...
Michael Mann has sued columnist Mark Steyn for mocking the hockey-stick curve.
Wrong. If that were the case, the judge wouldn't have said the following when denying Steyn's motion to dismiss:
For the record, I'm neutral on climate. I trust the scientific method to come up with the truth.
What do you think they've been working on for the past decade and a half (or longer)?
Are you also neutral on quantum mechanics? Gravity? Germ theory? Tell us, oh wise one, what other fields of science do you feel neutral about?
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.
Mark Steyn didn't mock the hockey-stick curve, he called it fraudulent. That's pretty clearly defamation.
Now in both cases it was more a case of the publishers implying that they thought there was malfeasance, rather than implying something had been proven, though I still think there's a case to be made for the lawsuits. In neither case was there any actual evidence of the wrongdoing that was implied, the articles were simply published with the intention of character assassination.
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.
This has nothing to do with the scientific method. This is about protecting debate in the public sphere and I do think it protects it. Consider if you were a climate scientist with a completely impeccable record. How willing would you be to make some high profile statements on your research, knowing that powerful media interests would immediately start dragging your name through the mud and trying to turn you into a pariah and a magnet for crazies?
I stole this Sig
You cite the words of a judge
Of course, who else is better suited to demolishing your bullshit allegation of Mann filing suit over "mocking the hockey-stick curve"?
not a scientist, a person more used to evaluating arguments among celebrities than deciding the value of opposing scientific hypotheses.
Shifting the goal posts after an own-goal isn't going to help you.
Scientists accuse each other of manipulating data all the time,
[Citation Needed]
Challenging interpretation of data, methodology, etc. is not the same as allegations of fraud. Anyone with a basic understanding of either science or ethics is aware of this. You seem to lack either.
This is traditionally handled by applying the scientific method to marshal facts and test contending hypotheses. If Mann is confident of having science on his side, why should he be afraid of a lowly editorialist?
He's suing over allegations of fraud. He's done the science, it's been reviewed and corroborated, but the fraud allegations continue. Filing suit is only logical.
And yes, I'm proudly neutral on all scientific questions, meaning that the scientific method, not my political opinions, is the fitting arbiter of truth in this area.
And yet I doubt you pollute cosmology articles with comments about how you're "neutral on the size of the galaxy, age of the sun, properties of the Standard Model", etc.
You people have chosen to contaminate climate research with your political bullying.
You're confused - I'm not a denialist, so it's not "my people" doing that.
Now that this no longer seems to be working, you're rollling in the lawyers. Good luck with that.
The denialist side is finding it untenable to challenge the science and is now attacking the scientists. Good luck with that.
It might work for Mann too.:
Saying "Its a newspaper" is inadequate - the National Enquirer qualifies, so does the New York Times.
Why is it inadequate? The New York Times has been known -- and not infrequently, I might add -- to publish stories of a quality similar to the National Enquirer. Especially when it comes to climate change, I might also add.
Also, libel and defamation laws in Canada and the UK are very different from those here in the U.S.
How quick they say "Citations please. " then the silence is deafening when you do.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
oceans are a lttle bit higher.
If you take a boat out into the Gulf of Mexico, you can float over sites that used to be Indian villages and that's pre-AGW. More than a "little bit".
And it can't even be proven that it has anything to do with anthropogenic cause
Nor can it be proven that smoking causes cancer. Some things have so many roots that a single cause simply cannot be laid straight to an effect. Just that when the statistics begin to line up, it might be prudent to act like there is such a relationship. Instead of, say, standing on a small island and pretending that the water isn't going to keep rising because there's no "proof".
Oh, I agree that green groups are annoying in their tactics. I decry the uncivilized tone of all of it. Now, if you want to know who started it, then you have to read some history, and I assure you, there is a lifetime worth of references to read there. (Personally, I spot check about one in every 100 references -- and check more regularly if one fails the sniff test. I find this effective.)
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Can you provide links to the stories of these "skeptic scientists"
Canada does not now support science, or at least only a conservative politically correct version of it
http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read...
http://hour.ca/2006/04/20/catc...
http://ottawariverkeeper.ca/ne...
http://scienceblogs.com/confes...
http://www.thestar.com/opinion...
And in a happy flashback to the KGB monitoring it's people The Government actually sent people to MONITOR Canadian Scientists at an international polar conference!
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technol...
http://ottawariverkeeper.ca/ne...
That is just about as creepy as it gets. A gulag for the evil scientists is next?
Any questions comrade?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Which is why real estate in New York and Miami is at an all time low...
Oh wait, that's what my model said. I checked it against reality and it appears there may be a flaw somewhere.
No, he informed people about what other people already knew.
He does not have the superpowers some people seem to think he has.
I'm going to steal that list. It's spot on.
Are you trying to associate me to the anti-vaccine movement?
To an outside observer there isn't much difference between you two. Both groups seem to believe that an evil cabal of scientists is trying to trick them. Why should we can which paranoid delusion you believe in?
Fanatically anti-fanatical