https://principia-scientific.org/breaking-news-dr-tim-ball-defeats-michael-manns-climate-lawsuit/
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 it’s final ruling in favor of the Dismissal motion that was filed in May 2019 by Dr Tim Ball’s libel lawyers.
Mann’s “hockey stick” graph, first published in 1998, was featured prominently in the U.N. 2001 climate report. The graph showed a spike in global average temperature in the 20th Century after about 500 years of stability. Skeptics have claimed Mann’s graph was fraudulent.
On Friday morning (August 23, 2019) Dr Ball sent an email to WUWT revealing:
“Michael Mann’s Case Against Me Was Dismissed This Morning By The BC Supreme Court And They Awarded Me [Court] Costs.”
Mann filed his action in 2010 for Ball’s allegedly libelous statement that Mann “belongs in the state pen, not Penn State.” The final court ruling, in effect, vindicates Ball’s criticisms.
Not only did the B.C. Supreme Court grant Ball’s application for dismissal of the nine-year, multi-million dollar lawsuit, it also took the additional step of awarding full legal costs to Ball.
A more detailed public statement from the world-renowned skeptical climatologist is expected in due course.
This extraordinary outcome will likely trigger severe legal repercussions for Dr Mann in the U.S. and may prove fatal to alarmist climate science claims that modern temperatures are “unprecedented.”
According the leftist The Guardian newspaper (Feb, 09, 2010), the wider importance of Mann’s graph over the last 20 years is massive:
“Although it was intended as an icon of global warming, the hockey stick has become something else – a symbol of the conflict between mainstream climate scientists and their critics.”
Under court rules, Mann’s legal team have up to 30 days to file an appeal. For readers interested in accessing the court website directly for verification, use this link.
‘Hockey Stick’ Discredited by Statisticians in 2003
In 2003 a Canadian study showed the “hockey stick” curve “is primarily an artefact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components.” When the data was corrected it showed a warm period in the 15th Century that exceed warmth of the 20th Century.
Dr Ball’s legal team adroitly pursued the ‘truth defense’ such that the case boiled down to whether Mann knowingly misrepresented his claims by using fakery (see: ‘Mike’s trick‘ below).
Dr Mann lost his case because he refused to honor the “concessions” he made to Ball in 2018 to finally show in open court his R2 regression numbers (Mann’s math ‘working out’) for his graph.
Dr. Ball has always argued that those numbers, if examined in open court, would prove Mann was motivated to commit a criminal fraud.
The graph first appeared in the UN IPCC 2001 Third Assessment Report (TAR) and has been an iconic image used ever since by environmentalists clamoring for urgent action on man-made global warming.
The mainstream media has long acclaimed Mann as “a world-leading climate scientist” and last year was heralded as their champion to help dethrone “climate denier” President Trump.
Indeed, not just a fawning msm, but many hundreds of subsequent climate studies have relied on Mann’s findings. Mann’s reputation was such, that most climate researchers merely accepted his graph, a typical example of groupthink.
Dr Ball has long warned that if the world was permitted to see behind the secrecy they would be shocked at just how corrupt and self-serving are those ‘scientists’ at the forefront of man-made global warming propaganda.
As anyone can tell by contrasting and comparing the graphs below (Ball’s version top, Mann’s below) it is obvious there exists a massive discrepancy in the findings.
Above: contrast and compare Dr Mann’s dodgy graph with Dr Ball’s more reliable version and see how Mann fraudulently altered the proxy climate date with a ‘hockey stick’ shape to falsely show the dramatic uptick with modern temperatures rising ‘catastrophically’ to fit the fake UN IPCC doomsaying narrative.
Did Skeptics Prove that Mann’s Graph was Deliberately Faked?
Answer: No. This is because Mann has always refused to release the R2 regression numbers for independent examination. He claimed he had “proprietary rights” over them (i.e. personally valuable intellectual work product). So “valuable” it was worth losing a multi-million dollar lawsuit and his reputation to keep them hidden.
Statistical experts, deprived by the secretive Mann of the conclusive proof of intent, have nonetheless established that the hockey stick graph uptick relies on the proxy evidence from the tree rings of a single Yamal larch tree!
Putting Mann’s Fraudulent Graph Under the Microscope
Mann’s goal was to make the Little Ice Age (LIA) disappear, as we explained in our previous article on this issue. The LIA was an especially cold era that ended around 1840 and since then global temperatures have gradually risen. But government ‘experts’ like Mann have sought to use statistical trickery to make such natural variation appear as ‘man-made’ warming.
Apart from playing with statistics Mann made his proxy fit the thermometer data by adding thermometer values to the proxy values known as “mikes trick” in the climate gate email scandal. In them Professor Phil Jones, Britain’s top climate scientist at the University of East Anglia wrote to his alarmist colleagues (some analysis here).
The email, sent by Prof Phil Jones of the CRU in 1999, states:
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers
Phil
This has the Hockey Stick Graph showing the same cooling from 1942 to 1975 as the HadCRUT3 data as posted in the IPCC 2001 AR3
In 1942 there was just 4.0Gt of emissions increasing to 17.1Gt by 1975 but since this 425% increase in CO2 emissions didn’t cause any global warming during this 33 year period; the conjecture of CO2 emissions induced (catastrophic) global warming was proven false.
Readers interested in gaining a deeper understanding of what is likely to eventually be exposed as a criminal conspiracy between Mann and other ‘elite’ researchers should see “The Hockey Stick Illusion” by Andrew Montford.
Victory that Comes at Great Personal Cost
Behind the scenes, gathering the resources, mental, scientific and financial, there is an untold burden of defending these cynical SLAPP suits.
Lest readers forget, it is mostly in the service of misguided public policy, with massive funding and connivance from political operators in play, that fake scientists like Michael Mann and Andrew Weaver acquired such esteemed public positions.
They are not only despicable human beings they are a disgrace to all decent scientists.
Readers will be aware that this author has been a staunch friend and ally to Tim throughout the hardships of this protracted nine-year legal battle. Our reputations were routinely trashed by our enemies, so it is sweet justice that the court has now given legal credence to Tim’s famous words that Michael Mann “belongs in the state pen, not Penn State,” a comical reference to the fraudulent ‘hockey stick’ graph that knowledgeable scientists knew to be fakery.
[Author Note: Being very much a party to these legal proceedings (having provided Dr Ball with the financial security of a legally-binding indemnity in the event Tim lost) it is a monumental vindication of my faith in Tim’s cause. In effect, I ‘bet the farm’ on Tim winning, as graciously reported by Jo Nova (below)]
Video: Dr Ball speaks on the Importance of the Mann Lawsuit
Knowingly Fraudulent and Corrupt
In 2o18, as Tim Ball was winning “concessions” from Mann’s legal team in Canada, south of the border, (on April 20) Mann wrote in Scientific American, still barking up the wrong tree pompously pronouncing:
“Yet, in the 20 years since the original hockey stick publication, independent studies, again and again, have overwhelmingly reaffirmed our findings, including the key conclusion: recent warming is unprecedented over at least the past millennium.”
Gullible greens and self-serving politicians swallowed up this garbage.
Dr Ball Expresses Gratitude to Principia Scientific International
Speaking in this 2018 video on the gravity of what some scientists have called “The science trial of the Century,” Dr Ball revealed his gratitude to his colleagues at Principia Scientific:
Dr Tim Ball:
I know John O’Sullivan who set up the Principia site and I know I wrote a foreword and a chapter in one of the books they produced called Slaying the Sky Dragon.
John O’Sullivan comes from his anti-government [stance], very legitimately and unfortunately, it’s not until you’ve actually directly personally experienced that; challenging the government – that you realize how nasty they can get. So John knows very well how nasty these things can get – that anyone that dares to challenge the authorities.
And so, Principia was set up for that reason, and John was the one that helped me set up the PayPal so people could help me financially so, that’s my disclaimer with that.”
As Jo Nova reported on the joannenova.com.au blog:
“John O’Sullivan is putting in above and beyond what any single skeptical soul ought to.
He’s already been a key figure helping Tim Ball in the legal fight with the UVA establishment, which has spent over a million dollars helping Michael Mann to hide emails. The case was launched by Michael Mann, but could turn out to do a huge favor to skeptics — the discovery process is a powerful tool, and we all know who has been hiding their methods, their data, and their work-related correspondence.
Tim Ball and John O’Sullivan are helping all the free citizens of the West. The burden should not be theirs alone. There are many claims for help at the moment, but that is a sign that the grand scam is coming to a head. Jo”
Two out of Two Major Court Wins By Ball Versus Junk IPCC Scientists
Dr Ball, now affirmed as a courageous champion of honest science, has assured his place in the history of climate science. His gift to the world was giving up nine of his senior years, when he could have been enjoying his retirement, to exposing key players in the biggest science fraud of all time.
People too easily forget Dr Ball has defeated in expensive legal battles not just one top UN IPCC climate scientists, but two!
This latest victory is the second this champion of climate skepticism has enjoyed in the last 18 months in this same jurisdiction – both for “defamation,” both multi-million dollar climate science claims.
We reported (February 15, 2018) on Dr Ball’s first crucial courtroom win against Dr Andrew Weaver (photo, above), another elite junk scientist (a UN IPCC Lead Author in climate modeling) and British Columbia Green Party Leader.
Pointedly, at the time, Dr Ball wanted to emphasize an extremely salient fact:
“While I savor the victory, people need to know that it was the second of three lawsuits all from the same lawyer,Roger McConchie,(photo, left) in Vancouver on behalf of members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”
In effect, there is more than mere coincidence that Dr Ball, a world-leading skeptical climatologist, was systematically targeted for legal retribution time and again by political groups such as the unscrupulous Climate Science Legal Defense Fund .
As a retired scientist in his 80’s, Tim was a ‘soft target’ and the stress of these lawsuits put an enormous toll on his health.
Not to be outdone, Tim has used his time wisely to write a damning book of the 30-year back story of the great climate fraud titled ‘The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science’ and I heartily recommend that interested readers buy it.
It is also not often reported that the funding in Canada for these extravagant SLAPP lawsuits is believed to be from the David Suzuki Foundation, a hot house for extreme environmental advocacy and Big Green policy promotion.
What is a ‘Strategic lawsuit against public participation’ (SLAPP Suit)?
Wikipedia offers a fair definition:
“A strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) is a lawsuit that is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.[1] Such lawsuits have been made illegal in many jurisdictions on the grounds that they impede freedom of speech.
In the typical SLAPP, the plaintiff does not normally expect to win the lawsuit. The plaintiff’s goals are accomplished if the defendant succumbs to fear, intimidation, mounting legal costs, or simple exhaustion and abandons the criticism. In some cases, repeated frivolous litigation against a defendant may raise the cost of directors and officers liability insurance for that party, interfering with an organization’s ability to operate.[2] A SLAPP may also intimidate others from participating in the debate.”
AN APPEAL
Assisting Dr Ball has been a huge honor for me and probably one of the greatest achievements of my life. But Tim only won this famous courtroom battle thanks to massive worldwide grassroots support.
We can only continue to fight these protracted lawsuits with your kind support. Please give generously to ensure we can take on more crucial cases, such as this.
