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ACLU, News Organisations Back Mann-Critics In Climate Libel Case

Earth Has Been Warming For 10,000 Years, Contradicting Studies That Humans Started Global Warming



Was the Earth in a period of global warming or cooling before the 20th century? Attempting to answer this question has thrown up a conundrum for scientists, with some studies showing a warming trend, while others suggesting it cooled until humans intervened. Now a new study hopes to settle the issue by arguing that data points to the fact that Earth’s climate has been warming over the past 10,000 years – long before human activity is thought to have changed the climate. It argues that previous research that showed a cooling trend was wrong because it used contradictory ice core data. --Ellie Zolfagharfard, Daily Mail, 13 August 2014
A who’s who of news organizations, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union, have sided with the conservative National Review and the free market Competitive Enterprise Institute in a libel lawsuit brought against them by climate scientist Michael Mann. In an amicus brief filed Monday, the ACLU and news organizations urged the court to reverse a lower court ruling that the statute didn’t apply in this case. They argued that it would be a blow to freedom of the press should Mann prevail: While Mann essentially claims that he can silence critics because he is “right,” the judicial system should not be the arbiter of either scientific truth or correct public policy. While amici may not necessarily agree with the content of defendants’ speech, they believe that, if left to stand, the decision below will chill the expression of opinion on a wide range of important scientific and public policy issues, and therefore urge that it be reversed. --Sean Higgins, Washington Examiner, 13 August 2014 What if the warmth the world has enjoyed for the past 50 years is the result of solar activity, not man-made CO2? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its acolytes pay scant attention to any science, however strong the empirical evidence, that may relegate human causes to a lesser status. If the world does indeed move into a cooling period, its citizens are ill-prepared. Cheap electricity in a colder climate will be critical. --Maurice Newman, The Australian,[Registration Required] 14 August 2014

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I get the sense that the Washington libel community and U.S. national media have belatedly woken up to the potential threat of Mann v Steyn and that the tide is now starting to run strongly against Mann in the anti-SLAPP proceedings. The most visible evidence of this is an impressive Amici brief from the ACLU and an imposing list of 25 other media organizations (the Reporters Committee for Press Freedom, the American Society of News Editors, the Association of American Publishers, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (The Village Voice et al), NBC Universal, Bloomberg News, the publishers of USA Today, Time, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Detroit Free Press, The Seattle Times, The Arizona Republic and The Bergen County Record) filed on August 11, 2014. – Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit, 13 August 2014 The support for Steyn et al. provided by the ACLU and the libel community plus the national news media re-emphasizes that this case is about the freedom of speech. It is very heartening to see this support for freedom of speech. It is particularly interesting to see liberal organizations, who would normally align to support an issue related to climate change, effectively take actions against Michael Mann. The link between ‘defending Michael Mann is defending climate science’ seems to have been broken. The ACLU has it exactly right with this statement: “Scientific controversies must be settled by the methods of science rather than by the methods of litigation. More papers, more discussion, better data, and more satisfactory models – not larger awards of damages – mark the path toward superior understanding of the world around us.”—Judith Curry, Climate Etc, 14 August 2014 In the last decade of his life, Alan Peacock (1922-2014) was closely involved with issues relating to climate change: these indeed became his chief single professional concern. Lawson’s cause was one which Alan Peacock was happy to make his own: he was involved with the Foundation from its inception till his death. As advisor, commentator, author and collaborator, Alan made over the last years of his life an outstanding contribution to the quality of the climate change debate in Britain. All of us who worked closely with him in this cause will miss him greatly and treasure his memory. --David Henderson, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 13 August 2014


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