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Saturday, August 24, 2019

Wildly untruthful at WUWT - Tim Ball did not "win" anything

Sou | 1:27 AM Go to the first of 24 comments. Add a comment
Over at WUWT there's jubilation in the air over...nothing. Anthony Watts is falsely claiming that Tim Ball won a court case. In fact, what happened was Tim Ball got the Court to dismiss the lawsuit because of delay. There was no finding. Tim got a lucky break (so far) and the case was dismissed without any judgement. Professor Mann may (or might not) appeal. Tim's going to be disappointed that Mann won't pay his legal fees. (See update below.)

I'll let Michael Mann correct the fake news.
There have been some wildly untruthful claims about the recent dismissal of libel litigation against Tim Ball circulating on social media. Here is our statement:

The defendant Ball did not “win” the case. The Court did not find that any of Ball’s defenses were valid. The Court did not find that any of my claims were *not* valid.

The dismissal involved the alleged exercise of a discretion on the Court to dismiss a lawsuit for delay. I have an absolute right of appeal. My lawyers will be reviewing the judgment and we will make a decision within 30 days.

The provision in the Court’s order relating to costs does NOT mean that I will pay Ball’s legal fees.

This ruling absolutely does not involve any finding that Ball’s allegations were correct in fact or amounted to legitimate comment. In making his application based on delay, Ball effectively told the world he did not want a verdict on the real issues in the lawsuit.
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UPDATE

The reason Tim Ball requested the court stop the case due to "delay" is because he says he's old and sick. He supported his request by claiming no-one listens to his ravings. No-one takes any notice of his defamatory words. The Alexa rating for his blog is low, he says. So he sees himself as an old, sick nobody (or so he claims to the court). A man who's lived a life of no consequence (except to Anthony Watts and his band of inconsequential conspiracy nutters). See here and here.


24 comments:

  1. I've added an update to the above.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Who does he think he is, Donald Trump?

    ReplyDelete
  3. It is great to see you blogging again, Sou! We've missed you!

    WUWT is desperate for "wins," as the world overheats and as sensible people increasingly reject the irrationality of denialism.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, DC.

      The way it looks, WUWT is stuck in it's same old unreality (ice age comeths etc.). On the other hand, the real world keeps shifting further and further away from all that.

      Delete
  4. If Tim Ball is old and sick, he will have to confront the reality that history will revile him for his part in wreaking additional and unnecesary damage on the planet as a consequence of delay in action to mitigate emissions. On the other hand, Mann will be remembered for his ground-breaking science.

    I hope that whatever money Ball made from selling his soul was worth it.

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    Replies
    1. I doubt there's been an article by Tim Ball anything close to reality or history since he wrote about Hudson Bay around 50 years ago. From the time I first came across him, he's only written and behaved like a crank conspiracy theorist. His life may have been one long fearsome paranoid nightmare. He probably relished it.

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  5. Not only has Timothy Ball just won this case but he had already won it once way back in 2014 https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/has-mickey-manns-case-against-tim-ball-collapsed/
    and then again in 2017 https://principia-scientific.org/breaking-fatal-courtroom-act-ruins-michael-hockey-stick-mann/
    Doesn't say much for their credibility, does it?

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    Replies
    1. Reading comprehension is not your strong suit, is it?

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    2. Sorry, I should have been clearer Bernard . My point was that the same people who are now telling us the case has been settled in Ball's favour told us five years ago and then again two years ago that the case was about to collapse with Mann being held to be in contempt of court. What's the chances that they are telling the truth now?

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    3. The trouble with our present situation is that NOTHING sounds too outlandish/outrageous to be automatically understood by the reader as sarcasm any more.

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    4. I'm the one who should offer a "sorry." I was battling others on Twitter and was in a frame of mind where I did not take the time to properly parse your post. My sincerest apologies.

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    5. No problem at all Bernard. I can see how under the circumstances my posting two links to nutty blogs wouldn't have helped.

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    6. The Frontier Centre for Public Policy retracted Tim Ball's letters and apologized to Michael Mann for publishing "untrue and disparaging comments" and that "it was wrong to suggest that Michael Mann was guilty of any dishonesty concerning his 1997 and 1998 research which produced the so-called "Hockey Stick" temperature graph."

      https://grist.org/article/michael-e-mann-took-climate-change-deniers-to-court-they-apologized/

      Delete
  6. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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    Replies
    1. This is not the place to promote an "understanding" from a defamatory conspiracy blog.

      The deleted comment infringed the HotWhopper comment policy.

      Delete
    2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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    3. Hey Eric, as you have apparently have time to waste, you might answer a question that puzzles me. Does the climate denial community still believe that Climategate uncovered a conspiracy to fiddle the temperature record. And if that is the case how come the temperature records has not changed since the supposed uncovering of the conspiracy? Indeed, it has subsequently been confirmed by BEST.

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    4. No response. I would have thought Eric would be happy to explain the position of climate change deniers rather than leaving me thinking the worst. Its almost as if Eric views his role in life to be to travel the internet leaving gobbets of nonsense behind him.

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    5. But of course, the temp records have changed. Surely you are aware of Karl et al and the ‘pausebuster’ SST temps? The adjustments down of the high temps in the 30’s? Lots for (scientific) disagreement about Karl, given Argo and satellites don’t agree with his adjusted ‘engine intake’ measures...

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    6. No, I am not aware of any change to temperature records as a result of the Climategate nonsense. The reason for that is there weren't any. While I am sure that climate change deniers are still manufacturing new phoney scandals nobody bothers reporting on the silly noises coming from them any more so I am happily ignorant of all their current nonsense.

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    7. Andy's right.

      Also, Taylor is wrong. Corrections to 1930's temperature were up, not down. The correction was made to buoy data, not engine intake data (for obvious reasons), and satellites datasets don't start till 1979 so they are hardly relevant. Also, satellites are for the atmosphere, not the surface. (Also, the trends of satellite data are consistent with data from the surface.) None of that has anything to do with defamation by Tim Ball.

      https://blog.hotwhopper.com/2015/06/noaa-no-pause-in-global-surface.html

      Delete
  7. Ball's version vs Mann's version, I don't suppose that anyone knows where I can find the courts version do they?

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    Replies
    1. No.

      Also, AFAIK Tim Ball hasn't given much of a "version" (probably feeling too old and under the weather - climate change could be partly to blame /s). That hasn't stopped defamatory deniers speculating everything from an ice age cometh to goodness knows what weird fantasy.

      The case wasn't about science, though you'd not know that if you read deniers aching and pining and whining.

      Delete
  8. This comment has been removed by the author.

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