Ten Years After Climategate – Time To Prosecute Michael Mann

Precisely ten years ago the world was given hard evidence of a conspiracy among elite government climate researchers to trick policymakers and citizens around the world into believing humans were causing ‘dangerous’ global warming.

Ten years ago this month,  Dr Michael E Mann, the most culpable of the climate fraudsters, was exposed by an anonymous whistleblower. The whistleblower, someone inside the University of East Anglia, released thousands of emails from a server at the university’s Climate Research Unit (CRU). The emails were not stolen contrary to fake news media spin; no one was ever arrested or prosecuted.

The leaked emails showed damning revelations of scientific misconduct among a secretive elite of government researchers – Climategate permanently changed the debate on man-made global warming. It’s immediate impact was to derail the crucial UN IPCC Copenhagen Climate Conference that month, which was probably the intended goal.

But it also set on a collision the two most famous climate scientists – one an alarmist, the other a skeptic.

Right away, Canadian climatologist, Dr Tim Ball saw that Professor Michael Mann was a key figure in the trillion-dollar climate fraud. But little did Dr Ball know then that his outspoken criticism of Mann’s conduct, exposed so tellingly in the Climategate emails, would land him on the receiving end of an eight-year, multi-million-dollar libel suit.

Climategate Implicated Fraudster, Michael E Mann

Immediately known as “Climategate,” the leaked emails showed that the root of the clever deception about ‘unprecedented’ rises in modern temperatures was a 1998 study published in the journal Nature. That study, authored by Michael Mann, claimed to have recreated average global temperature for the past 1,000 years from tree rings from samples from around the world (it didn’t – it was a lie).

Tim Ball, more than any other skeptic of man-made global warming, took up the challenge and led the free speech fight back against the most organized, well-funded and cynical propaganda machine.

A retired university professor, Dr Ball made relentless public appearances, wrote articles, books, gave television interviews and selflessly gave his all in a heroic exposure of Michael ‘hockey stick’ Mann.

Ball, as an expert in this field since the mid 1980’s, understood that Mann’s sudden emergence on the scene in 1998 was critical. Dr Mann had only the year previously had his PhD “rushed through” – he was a newbie on the scene yet his work somehow was accepted without question in overturning everything paleoclimatologists had known for years.

Since 2000 Mann’s graph was the iconic image of doomsaying claims human emissions of carbon dioxide were causing ‘unprecedented’ temperature rises.

Because the graph depicted a more of less flat line trend until the 20th century when it suddenly shot upward, Mann’s graph became known as the “hockey stick.”

Even the first UN IPCC Report of 1995 accepted the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) as a non-controversial assessment of past temperature.

What should have been controversial was how Mann’s graph was so quickly and widely accepted despite the fact he would not reveal his R2 verification numbers (the secret science behind the graph).

Above: contrast and compare Dr Mann’s dodgy graph with Dr Ball’s more reliable version (based on that of the renowned H. H. Lamb) 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.

Until Mann’s miraculous appearance center stage the academic world had settled on the consensus view that the Medieval Warm Period (WMP) had temperatures from one to three degrees warmer than today (see here , here and Ljungqvist (2010). Thus, if the medieval climate was warmer than today, then today’s temperatures are likely neither man-made nor dangerous!

But Mann’s graph became the new ‘consensus’ and the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) subsequently made the hockey stick an icon of global warming by featuring it in its 2001 report on climate.

‘Secret Science’ Defended by Elites and In the Courts

Dr Ball and other skeptics could smell a rat. Repeated freedom of information (FOIA) requests to see disclosure of the working out the graph’s calculations were repelled, stalled or ignored.

Stubbornly and contrary to best scientific practice, Dr Mann refused to let anyone examine the R2 regression numbers (his secret science) which he had said were his private property, despite being paid for via public grants.

In arguably a more obvious crime, Dr Phil Jones, head climate professor of the CRU, initially admitted he had ‘lost’ key data, then admitted he destroyed it.

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) conceded a crime was committed but because the statute of limitations had expired, Jones would not be prosecuted. Shamelessly, Jones and Mann not only kept their prestigious posts, they were lauded and praised for defying the skeptics and abusing the scientific method.

It was clear – government research was based on secret science and no one was going to be able check it to see whether it was reliable.

As Steve Milloy writes:

“The contents of the emails were explosive. Coming amid heated congressional debate over the House-passed Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill and just days ahead of the UN’s December 2009 Copenhagen climate conference, the emails stole the spotlight and upended the climate debate.

The emails reveal that the hockey stick creators had, in fact, knowingly deleted tree-ring data that showed a decline in temperatures famously quoted as “Mike’s Nature trick… to hide the decline.”

One prominent climate scientist bemoaned that no one really understood the Earth’s energy system.

Most damning, though, were the emails showing that climate scientists were actively pressuring journal editors to not publish studies and criticisms from skeptics and deleting emails to cover their tracks.

After recovering from the initial shock, the climate establishment regrouped and tried to turn Climategate into a nothing-burger.

Numerous organizations conducted “investigations” bemoaning the theft of the emails and absolving the climate scientists from any wrongdoing.

The problem, however, is that not one of these institutions conducted an investigation into the substance of the emails. Only one investigation interviewed a single climate skeptic, MIT’s Dr. Richard Lindzen, and then ignored his testimony.

Though the institutional investigations were all whitewashes, the climate movement was permanently damaged. The rest of the interested world could read the candidly written emails that had validated many of the criticisms climate skeptics had been making.”

But Climategate and Michael Mann’s cynical data fraud still matters today.

According to the leftist The Guardian newspaper (Feb, 09, 2010), the wider importance of Mann’s graph remains 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.”

Mann-v-Ball in the Science Trial of the Century

The most comprehensive and useful resource in examining the Climategate emails themselves is ‘The Climategate Emails‘ compiled by Australian physicist, Dr John Costella.

Dr Costella wrote:

“This formerly hidden world was made up of a very few players. But they controlled those critical Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) processes involving the temperature records from the past, and the official interpretation of current temperature data. They exerted previously unrecognized influence on the “peer review” process for papers seeking publication in the officially recognised climate science literature from which the IPCC was supposed to rely exclusively in order to draw its conclusions.

The Climategate emails demonstrate that these people had no regard for the traditions and assumptions which had developed over centuries and which provided the foundations of Western science. At the very core of this tradition is respect for truth and honesty in reporting data and results; and a recognition that all the data, and all the steps required to reach a result, had to be available to the scientific world at large.”

https://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/climate-change/climategate-emails.pdf

In 2011, Mann became so frustrated by the success Dr Ball was having as the leading skeptic exposing his graph, that he sued Ball in the Supreme Court of British Columbia for boldly declaring that Mann “belongs in the state pen, not Penn State” (Mann’s university).

For the next eight years, and millions of dollars expended on legal fees, Mann pulled every trick in the book to evade showing in open court his ‘secret science’ (those R2 regression numbers). So dismayed by his conduct, in August 2019 the frustrated judge finally dismissed Mann’s case and awarded Dr Ball full legal costs. The Judge’s Decision is here:

https://principia-scientific.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/mann-judgement-canada.pdf

So, where does all this leave us now?

Dr Ball and the 5,000+ members of Principia Scientific International stridently maintain our long-held view that Dr Mann is a criminal – he and his co-conspirators must be prosecuted.

We say the Climategate emails plus Mann’s evasion and stalling in the aforesaid lawsuit are prima facie evidence for the US Federal government to initiate a full RICO investigation into the biggest scientific fraud of all time.


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Comments (14)

  • Avatar

    Geraint Hughes

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    He shouldnt be the only one they lock up, there’s dozens more ringleaders which need to face trail.

    Reply

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      geran

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      Lock up the ringleaders and cut off funding to the sycophants.

      Science is about a search for truth, not distorting reality to fit an agenda.

      Reply

  • Avatar

    Andy Rowlands

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    Nice one John, I sincerely hope you and your colleagues are able to present a case for a RICO prosecution of Mann, and anyone else you can show was involved.

    Reply

  • Avatar

    Carbon Bigfoot

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    RickyEmact get off our website, peddle your wares elsewhere.

    Reply

    • Avatar

      tom0mason

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      I’ve reported this to the site’s moderator, hopefully this SPAM gets removed shortly.

      Reply

  • Avatar

    Brian James

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    Nov 19, 2019 Are We Doomed?

    Climate alarmists spread myths and declare impending doom. “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change!” says Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Really? 12 years?

    https://youtu.be/b8JZo6PzpCU

    Reply

    • Avatar

      Herb Rose

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      Hi Brian,
      There is a better chance of the world ending in twelve years than her constituents realizing she is a complete idiot and returning her to a career of bartending.
      Herb

      Reply

      • Avatar

        Brian James

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        Thanks Herb Rose for your time and comment and you are spot on target!

        Reply

    • Avatar

      Steve Parker

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      That date will be extended annually.

      Reply

  • Avatar

    judy

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    Yes, I agree. It’s time to go on the attack. My research indicates that there is robust evidence of academic fraud by David Karoly, Will Steffen, Leslie Hughes; and that’s just to name a few. We need to start prosecuting in Australia because the level of media-fueled propaganda is higher than its ever been. I console myself with the thought that this might be the final death writhings of the dragon. But, unfortunately, the communist ideology that underpins this scam is almost becoming the norm in some states of Australia. The sooner we can successfully prosecute the fraudsters the more likely we are to prevent the collapse of our democracy.

    Reply

  • Avatar

    Steve Parker

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    Michael Mann and his accomplices have caused so many mental health problems and anguish to so many of our young activists.

    Reply

  • Avatar

    Martin Knox

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    Is there a leader who would pursue this indictment on behalf of myself and others? I would like to receive a plan with the legal strategy and financial arrangements. This would be less a reprisal than a deterrent to other bent scientists.

    Reply

  • Avatar

    Chris

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    They can brought up on charges of fraud. Being let off because of the statute of limitations does not give them license to continue to defraud. Every time that they renew the fraudulent statements resets the statute of limitations. The statute only applies to bringing charges, not against evidence so the emails can be used if they reaffirm the original fraud.

    Reply

  • Avatar

    julian

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    They will have to keep extending the deadline. By specifying 12 years they have set themselves up for failure. Like the Y2K predicted disaster, year 12 (2030) will come and there will be no warming disaster. So extend the date, or claim that Green (so-called) measures have been successful (difficult if CO2 levels rise or stay at current levels), or just fiddle the data and keep pretending as they do now.

    Reply

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