I am deeply disturbed by Lord Monckton’s rush to use whatever personal power and legal power he can muster to see if he can get Leif Svalgaard in trouble with his university and to bring legal action again. Perhaps that’s how Lords in England deal with the world …
on my planet, threatening legal action and threatening a man’s job, as Lord Monckton has done to Leif Svalgaard, has to date been the exclusive province of the worst actors among the alarmists, an action for which they have been rightfully excoriated.
witness this 1994 Public Radio transcript :
PRI's Environmental News Magazine
Global Warming Lawsuit
Air Date: Week of February 25, 1994
Roger Revelle is the grandfather of global warming theory. Shortly before his death, he co-authored an article which downplays the certainty and severity of the greenhouse effect. A former student claims that Revelle was coerced for political reasons into lending his name to the article. Co-author Fred Singer is suing for libel. He claims the article is an accurate reflection of Revelle's ideas. David Baron from member station WBUR reports.
Transcript
NUNLEY: This is Living on Earth. I'm Jan Nunley, in this week for Steve Curwood.
How real is the threat of global warming? And how seriously should the Federal Government try to reduce the production of greenhouse gases? Those are two of the biggest issues in environmental policy today. And they're at the center of a bitter legal battle brewing in a state court in Massachusetts. Although they're not actually involved in the dispute, two of its major figures are Vice President Al Gore, who's an advocate of strong action to reduce greenhouse gases, and Roger Revelle, often called the Grandfather of the Greenhouse Effect and the man most influential in shaping Gore's position. The lawsuit involves a much-discussed article which some claim shows that Revelle changed his mind on global warming shortly before his death. Others say the article misrepresented Revelle's views for political purposes. David Barron of member station WBUR in Boston explains.
BARON: Roger Revelle wasn't the first person to suggest that carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels might build up in the atmosphere and cause a warming of the Earth's climate. But in the 1950s he performed critical experiments that convinced scientists the threat was real. Revelle wrote ominously that mankind was embarking on a great, one-time geophysical experiment. Vice President Al Gore wrote in his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance, that Revelle inspired his efforts to counter the Greenhouse Effect. Revelle was Gore's professor at Harvard. But after Revelle's death in 1991, some politicians and commentators tried to use Revelle's legacy against Gore, who was calling for strict international curbs on emissions of greenhouse gases. Gore's critics claimed that Revelle changed his mind about global warming in his final years. Gore was asked about the issue during the 1992 Vice Presidential debate.
GORE: ... how he had been misquoted and had his remarks taken completely out of context just before he died. He believed up until the day he died (audience groans) - No, it's true.
MODERATOR: If the audience would stop please.
GORE: He died last year, and just before he died he co-authored an article which had statements taken completely out of context...
BARON: That article appeared in an obscure journal published by the Cosmos Club, a private, Washington-based organization with about 3,000 members. The article was titled, "What To Do About Greenhouse Warming: Look Before You Leap."
SINGER: Which means that we should think or a moment before we take drastic action. And this is further emphasized in the article itself.
BARON: That's Fred Singer. He co-wrote the article with Roger Revelle and Chauncy Starr, former president of the Electric Power Research Institute. Singer directs the nonprofit Science and Environmental Policy Project, and is a frequent critic of environmental activists. He explains that the article wasn't meant to dismiss the possibility of global warming, but it was intended to show that no one knows how serious a threat global warming poses.
SINGER: We say the scientific base for greenhouse warming includes some facts, lots of uncertainty, and just plain lack of knowledge.
BARON: The article argues there's no good evidence to suggest the Earth is heating up, despite predictions that global warming should already be underway. The paper questions the dangers of global warming, raising the possibility that the Earth's environment might in fact benefit from a warmed climate. The authors conclude that nations should take only modest and inexpensive steps to ward off possible global warming until more research is done.
LANCASTER: I don't see that Roger Revelle wrote this article.
BARON: That's Justin Lancaster, Revelle's former student and colleague at Scripps. Lancaster is being sued for libel, for claiming that Revelle's name was placed on the Cosmos Journal article despite Revelle's objections. The person suing Lancaster is Fred Singer. Like Singer, Lancaster directs a nonprofit organization devoted to environmental policy, but he considers global warming a much greater threat.
LANCASTER: I see a group of people taking this article, saying it's the last testimony of Roger Revelle, and essentially using it against his career. And I think it's a terrible thing. I'm as close a colleague as anybody on this issue of global warming, in the last years of Roger's life, and I'm not going to sit silently and let this happen.
BARON: Lancaster has been far from silent. In 1992 he complained repeatedly about the article to the editors of a book that was to include the controversial paper. Lancaster tried unsuccessfully to block republication of the article, calling it "misleading" and "unscholarly." He claimed that Fred Singer had taken advantage of Revelle at a time when he was weak. When the article was written, Revelle was 81 and had recently undergone open heart surgery.
Though Lancaster admits Revelle's mind remained sharp until the end. Lancaster suggested in his letters that Singer had pressured Revelle into accepting co-authorship so Singer could use the article for political purposes in his fight against environmentalists trying to combat global warming. It's because of these statements that Fred Singer is suing Lancaster for libel...
LANCASTER: That's the cleverness, in my mind, of this article, is that it incorporates enough of what is consistent with Roger Revelle's view to get him to pass on authorship. And then it's used after that against Roger Revelle's effect as a scientist trying to reach policy.
BARON: Lancaster's rival Fred Singer admits he wrote the first draft of the article. In fact, many of the key sentences expressing skepticism about global warming were copied verbatim from an earlier paper Singer authored alone for an American Chemical Society publication. But Singer adds both co-authors revised his draft to their liking. Justin Lancaster counters he has galley proofs showing that some of Revelle's desired changes in the manuscript never made it into the final version... He believed public policy should be based on hard data, not speculation...
For Living on Earth, I'm David Baron.
THE FINAL WORD ON THIS SUBJECT GOES TO THIS YEAR'S HEARTLAND KEYNOTE SPEAKER :
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher to Help Open Three-Day International Climate Conference in Las Vegas July 7
California congressman and outspoken global warming skeptic will give a keynote address at the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change.
(PRWEB) July 02, 2014
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), vice chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, will be part of the opening night of the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change (#ICCC9) on Monday, July 7 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. He will deliver his keynote speech, titled “Global Warming as a Power Grab,” at 8:25 p.m. PDT.
“One of the traits of a fanatic is the willingness to conduct personal attacks, to limit debate, to use questionable facts and to seek government to impose policy on others,” Rohrabacher said.
