WTE: Marriage counseling for a conflicted culture

A parish pastor is occasionally asked to help married couples work through conflict. The same counseling principles apply to conflicted culture. Here’s some free relationship advice that can also help to build community.

Frustrated couples typically come to counselling with a list of grievances. One spouse starts off complaining of ongoing bad behavior. The other may or may not admit to the sins. Either way, he is quick to respond with his own list of grievances. Sometimes, it is a bid to dilute guilt by comparison. Other times it is an attempt to justify his sins as necessary.

Then the fur flies. If the counselor has let the conversation go this far without intervention, it is very difficult to keep it from devolving into a shouting match right on the spot. Tempers flare. Voices rise. Unkind words are spoken. And still more damage is done.

The situation remains hopeless so long as husband and wife are looking to the counselor to be the judge. The peace of a home will never exist if both are depending on someone outside the home to come barging in to settle internal disputes. Unless the couple learns to create harmony themselves, harmony will not exist.

A married couple needs, first, to recognize that they are forever bound together—for better or for worse. Harm inflicted on one is harmful to both. Fighting is like your right arm stabbing your left arm.

The same is true in every community. Our commitment to the well-being of one another is foundational. The intrusion of power from outside exposes a fundamental failure of community. The chains of law can never replace the bonds of love. Voluntary obligation, not coercive litigation, is the foundation of harmony in homes, towns, states and nations.

Power seeks to control others. Love seeks to control self. Married couples eventually learn that every attempt to force their spouses to act will be ultimately unsatisfying. Laws, power-plays and manipulation can force behavior and words, but they can never produce love. Love comes from the heart, not from the law.

Love can only be given. It cannot be taken. The only control we have over love is the control of our own giving. Happy couples have learned this lesson. They focus infinitely more on their own behavior and attitudes than they do on the behavior and attitudes of their spouses.

To focus on changing one’s own attitude and behavior avoids the trap of magnifying the shortcomings of others. Instead, we can just appreciate what is given freely. As an added benefit, a clear-eyed admission of our own sins helps us become more understanding and forgiving of others.

Here again, what helps marriages also helps communities. One reason that our culture struggles is the incessant desire to control one another and the habitual neglect of self-control. Many are the experts who point out the errors of others, few are those capable of seeing their own.

The healthiest communities have no policemen because everyone is policing himself. Conversely, no police force in the world can make a community safe when its citizens are not community minded. John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

All this means that the most important activity that anyone can do to build a better home, town or state is courageous self-discipline. We are not advancing the ball when we have shouting matches on social media. We do not help matters by denying our own faults. We cannot build the bonds of love by ever more restrictive policies, statutes and laws.

In fact, it is just the opposite. The more freedom you have in your actions, the greater capacity you possess to love. The more restrictions and laws burdening you, the more love is stifled and resentment builds. Communities should be in the business of building the capacity to love, not tearing it down.

We are, after all, one body—the body politic. What is bad for one member of the body is bad the whole body. Imagine for a moment that some part of your body is hurting you. Your toe does not hurt you out of spite, but because you have stubbed it. The remedy is not to smash it with a hammer, but to do everything possible to heal it.

That’s also how we should approach community. Our communities are hurting yet we irrationally respond with more laws that hammer people down. That is not the way forward. It only causes more pain. The way forward is the way of freedom. The obligations of love are both stronger and softer than the chains of law.

Marriage counselling for a conflicted culture

A parish pastor is occasionally asked to help married couples work through conflict. As I survey our conflicted culture, it strikes me that the same principles apply there, too. Today’s column can kill two birds with one stone. While laying out some principles to help your marriage, we can also help to build community.

Marital counselling typically begins with one person calling out bad behavior on the part of the other. Frustration is voiced that the bad behavior continues even after many complaints. Sometimes, this rises to an ultimatum: “if this doesn’t stop immediately, I’m done.”

When there’s a chance for the other to respond, he may, or may not admit to the wrongness of the offending behavior. Either way he is in a rush to launch a salvo of his own. He, too, has a list of grievances. Sometimes, these are held out to counterbalance the weight of his own guilt. Other times they are cited as valid reasons and excuses for his bad behavior.

Then the fur flies. If the counsellor has let the conversation go this far without intervention, it is very difficult to keep it from devolving into a shouting match right on the spot. Tempers flare. Voices rise. Unkind words are spoken. And still more damage is done.

The situation remains hopeless so long as husband and wife are looking to the counsellor to be the judge. No matter how he judges, it will not solve the underlying problem. The peace of a home will never exist if both are depending on someone outside the home to come barging in to settle internal disputes. Unless the couple learns to create harmony themselves, harmony will not exist.

This is the point of comparison with every community. True community is created by the bonds of love—not by the chains of law. Peace in our culture will never be brought about by ever-increasing laws and judges. Not litigation, but obligation is the basis of a peaceful community—whether in our homes, towns, state or nation.

To foster the bonds of love, a married couple needs, first, to recognize that they are forever bound together—for better or for worse. Because of this bond, the well-being of both people is essential. For one spouse to tear down the other is like your right arm stabbing your left arm. Love recognizes that we live or die together.

Likewise, in any community we are stuck with one another—for better or worse. Rarely do people leave a community purely because they can’t get along with someone who lives there. When that does happen, the chances are extremely high that the problem will follow them wherever they go. Only when we have taken this reality to heart can we get on with the work of building either a home or a community.

Resisting the impulse to flee from one another, leads us to see a second vital reality. We have no control over others—only over ourselves. Married couples eventually learn that every attempt to force their spouses to act will be ultimately unsatisfying.

They find, inevitably, that no matter how successful they become at micro-managing one another’s behavior, there is still something missing. A person may do the desirable thing but grumble while doing it. Or, perhaps, he will not grumble but frown or roll his eyes or simply be unenthusiastic.

Love comes from the heart, not from the law. Laws, power-plays and manipulation can force behavior and words, but they can never produce love. Love can only be given. It cannot be taken. Every attempt to force it only leads to resentment, frustration and anger.

Since love can only be given and not taken, the only control we have over love is the control of our own giving. Happy couples have learned this lesson. They focus infinitely more on their own behavior and attitudes than they do on the behavior and attitudes of their spouses.

This frees them from the trap of magnifying a spouse’s shortcomings so that they can appreciate and reward the kindnesses that are freely given. By the discipline of self-control and self-criticism, happy spouses also become more aware of their own shortcomings. This helps them be less judgmental and more forgiving.

Here again, the same principle applies in our work to build communities. One reason that our culture struggles is due to the incessant attempt to control one another and the ubiquitous unwillingness to control ourselves. Many are the experts who point out the errors of others, few are those capable of seeing their own.

The healthiest communities have no policemen because everyone is policing himself. Conversely, no police force in the world can make a community safe when its own citizens don’t care about one another. As John Adams put it, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

All this means that the most important activity that anyone can do to build a better home, town or state is the activity of self-examination. We are not advancing the ball when we have shouting matches on social media. We do not help matters when we deflect and ignore the needs of others. We cannot build the bonds of love by ever more restrictive policies, statutes and laws.

In fact, it is just the opposite. The more freedom I give you in your actions, the greater capacity you possess to love me. Conversely, the more restrictions and laws that burden you, the less capacity you possess to express love. Communities should be in the business of building the capacity to love, not tearing it down.

After I have explained this to married couples, someone will often object. What about his or her hurtful behavior? Can’t I do something to fix it? Without a good answer to this question, the downward spiral will start all over again.

Remember earlier, when I likened spouses at war to the right arm stabbing the left arm? That applies here. We are, after all, one body—the body politic. What is bad for one of us is bad for all of us. A community that cannibalizes itself will soon die. So, think for a minute about when some part of your body is hurting you.

There is only one reason that something in your body hurts you. It is injured. Your toe does not hurt you out of spite, but because you have stubbed it against a chair. When you stub your toe, you do not curse it and smash it with a hammer. You do everything you can to help it heal.

That’s also how you should approach the person who hurts you. Nine times out of ten, the pain someone is causing you is a cry for help. Imagine how strong and wholesome our communities would become if we looked up from our cell phones and reached out to comfort that person.

Our communities are hurting, and most don’t know what to do about it. Many believe that micro-managing legislation is the way forward. But that is not helping. It is only causing more anger and resentment.

The way forward is the way of freedom. The obligations of love are both stronger and softer than the chains of law. Our way of government is only for a “moral and religious people.”

WTE: The people of Hong Kong are asking for your help

In Hong Kong millions have taken to the streets. They are opposing the Fugitive Offenders amendment bill proposed by Carrie Lam, the Chief Executive of the province. These demonstrations have become the focal point of the most significant developments in China since Tiananmen Square.

Hong Kong province was under British rule as far back as 1842. This British imperialism despite its evils, also was a blessing. When China’s communist revolution enslaved a nation and murdered 60 million Chinese citizens, the British government shielded Hong Kong from its evils. Democracy and capitalism made it, instead, one of the freest and most prosperous cities in the world.

But through a series of resolutions at the United Nations, China’s communist party maneuvered Britain into the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration surrendering Hong Kong to communism.

Her citizens were rightly alarmed. To appease them, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) included a “one country, two systems” clause. This promised that Hong Kong would remain self-governing for 50 years after the handover date and that the socialist system would not be implemented until 2047.

In the decade leading up to the July 1, 1997 handover, tens of thousands sought refuge in Britain. Few trusted the communists to keep their promise. Their fears were well-justified. Since the handover, mainland China has inexorably tightened its grip on Hong Kong. Then, on the 20th anniversary of the handover (June 30, 2017), China’s Foreign Ministry declared the declaration to be an historical document that no longer had any practical significance.

The Fugitive Offenders amendment bill is an expression of that posture. Designed to undermine self-governance, it would allow Hong Kong’s citizens to be extradited out of the province to be tried and punished under communist laws that free citizens refuse to enact.

News of the bill first filtered out in March. Scattered protests occurred until its official introduction in June. By then protesters numbered in the hundreds of thousands. By June 12, riot police were deployed using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the peaceful crowds.

Then, something remarkable happened. Crowds swelling to 2 million started singing. “Sing Hallelujah to the Lord” a Christian hymn, became the anthem of the 2019 protests in Hong Kong. Even though Christians make up only ten percent of the population, they set the tone for the crowds.

The corrupt government repeatedly sought to characterize them as rioters. But the anthem prevented this from happening. In Hong Kong laws that require a permit for public assemblies exempt religious groups. The anthem qualified the protesters to assemble lawfully. On another level, the decidedly Christian tone of the anthem kept the throngs peaceful.

Christians, especially, have a great deal at stake should the extradition bill be enacted. Recently communist China has torn down Christian churches, arrested Christian pastors, dispersed congregations and destroyed Bibles. They have made it illegal to evangelize, teaching their own children, build churches and other normal religious activities.  An extradition law in Hong Kong would suddenly put every Christian at risk of being extradited for crimes that are not crimes in Hong Kong.

Communists persecute religion generally because in the communist system, there can be no rivals to the central power. Anyone that acknowledges a transcendent authority above the government threatens its power. More particularly, the PRC sees Christianity as a threat because the heart of Western culture is Christianity.

This is not my assessment. It is China’s. In 2011 the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences concluded, “The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics.”

This can help explain why the democratic movement in Hong Kong is largely led by the minority Christian population. It also explains why Xi Jinping has ramped up the persecution of Christian Churches throughout the mainland.

After nearly three months of protests in Hong Kong, Chief Executive Lam (no doubt at the direction of Xi) finally announced the formal withdrawal of the extradition bill. If they hoped that this would diffuse the pro-democracy movement, the communist leaders have been disappointed.

The protesters continue to rally and “Sing Halleluiah to the Lord.” They are still calling for an investigation of the police brutality against then, a release of arrested protesters, and a return to the democracy that was part of the 50-year agreement.

They have also taken to waving American flags. Even though Hong Kong is a former British colony, they are not waving the Union Jack. They seem to know that America’s power for good remains “the last best hope of earth.”

Last weekend the protesters started chanting, “Resist Beijing, Liberate Hong Kong! Pray for us, U.S., pray for us!” We should heed their call.

The people of Hong Kong are asking for your help

Photo by Joseph Chan on Unsplash

For three consecutive months millions of the people of Hong Kong, in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), have been taking to the streets. They have been demonstrating against the Fugitive Offenders amendment bill proposed by Carrie Lam, the Chief Executive of the province. This proposed law has become the focal point of the most significant developments in China since Tiananmen Square. The story must be told.

Since the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, Hong Kong province was under British rule. British imperialism was wrong in many ways. But it also had a good side. When Mao Zedong came to power, the British government shielded Hong Kong from the evils of communism. Thus, while an estimated 60 million Chinese citizens were killed across the border, Hong Kong became one of the freest and most prosperous cities in the world.

Then, a series of diplomatic maneuvers beginning in the early 1970s led to the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984. In this declaration, Britain agreed to hand over Hong Kong to communist China.

Citizens of Hong Kong were rightly alarmed. So, as part of this agreement, the PRC promised to allow Hong Kong to remain self-governing for 50 years after the July 1, 1997 handover date. A “one country, two systems” principle guaranteed that the socialist system of the PRC cannot be practiced in Hong Kong until 2047. Until then, the province was to retain its own democratic system of legislation and universal suffrage.


July 1, 1997 Britain-PRC handover

It’s one thing to make a promise. It is quite another to keep it. Hong Kong citizens were wary of communist China’s intentions. In the decade leading up to the handover, tens of thousands of people attempted to escape to Britain rather than fall under communist rule.

Their fears were well-justified. As the years have passed since the handover, mainland China has inexorably tightened its grip on Hong Kong. Corporations and institutions that remain free on paper, find themselves increasingly under the control of the communist central government. Even elected officials in Hong Kong dance to the tune of the communist central leadership.

That’s where the Fugitive Offenders amendment bill comes in. Although it was introduced into the legislature by Hong Kong’s chief executive, it is designed to undermine Hong Kong’s self-governance. The bill would allow people from the self-governing province to be arrested and handed over for punishment to communist officials on the mainland.

The problem is that Hong Kong citizens would be instantly subject to laws that they did not and would not pass by self-governance. This end-run around the legislative process would effectively subjugate them to the PRC in violation of the agreement.

 

When news of the bill filtered out in March, there were scattered protests throughout the province. Beginning in earnest on June 9, protesters numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Numbers continued to grow. By Wednesday, June 12, riot police were deployed using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the peaceful crowds.

During the course of that week, something remarkable happened. Crowds as large as 2 million were heard singing a Christian hymn. “Sing Hallelujah to the Lord” became the anthem of the 2019 protests in Hong Kong. The remarkable thing is that there are only about 750,000 Christians in the province, yet the song was heard everywhere.

On June 15, Lam announced that she had suspended the extradition bill. But the crowds did not go away. They noted that “suspension” is not a meaningful category. Unless the bill is formally withdrawn, it can be brought back as soon as the crowds go home. This, along with four other demands, kept the demonstrations going throughout the summer.

The corrupt government repeatedly sought to characterize the demonstration as a riot and an unlawful mob. But the anthem prevented this from happening. Legally speaking, religious assemblies are exempt from laws that require a permit for public assemblies. The anthem qualified them to assemble lawfully without a permit. On another level, the song has colored the demonstrations with a decidedly Christian ethos of peaceful standing for the truth.

Christians make up only ten percent of the population in Hong Kong, but they have a great deal at stake should the extradition bill be enacted. Over the past year the world has watched communist China tear down Christian churches, arrest Christian pastors, disperse worshipping congregations and destroy Bibles with other Christian literature.


PRC demolishes an "illegal" church, January 11, 2018

The communist party has passed numerous draconian laws that prevent Christians from evangelizing, gathering, teaching their children, building churches and a host of other normal religious activities. An extradition law in Hong Kong would suddenly put every Christian at risk of being extradited for crimes that are not crimes in Hong Kong.

Of course, not only Christians are persecuted in communist China. The New York Times recently reported that 230,000 Muslim Uyghurs have been sentenced to prisons and re-education camps. Many have had children taken away to be raised by communist parents. In general, religious atrocities are picking up as Xi Jinping consolidates power.

Communists persecute religion generally because in the communist system, there can be no rivals to the central power. Citizens that acknowledge a transcendent authority above the government are threats to its power. More particularly, the PRC sees Christianity as a threat because the heart of Western culture is Christianity.

This is not my assessment. It is China’s. In 2011 the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences concluded, “The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics.”

This can help explain why the democratic movement in Hong Kong is largely led by the minority Christian population. It also explains why Xi Jinping has ramped up the persecution of Christian Churches throughout the mainland.

After nearly three months of protests in Hong Kong, Chief Executive Lam (no doubt at the direction of Xi) finally announced the formal withdrawal of the extradition bill. If they hoped that this would diffuse the pro-democracy movement, the communist leaders have been disappointed.

The protesters continue to rally and “Sing Halleluiah to the Lord.” They have also taken to waving American flags. I find this particularly interesting. Even though Hong Kong is a former British Colony, they are not waving the Union Jack. They seem to know instinctively that America is “the last best hope of earth.”

While Lam finally gave in to the protester’s demand that she formally withdraw the extradition law, there are still four more demands that the people of Hong Kong have put before her.

While they continue to seek democracy and justice, the protesters have added a slogan to their anthem. Last weekend as they marched with American flags they chanted, “Resist Beijing, Liberate Hong Kong! Pray for us, U.S., pray for us!”

The least we can do it to heed their call.

WTE: Is man-made global warming Mann-made?

Dr. Michael E. Mann is regularly promoted as the “world-leading climate change scientist.” He is a professor at Penn State University and the author of the famous “hockey stick” graph. The “hockey stick” graph was published in 1998 and presented a wildly new assessment of earth’s temperature over the past millennium.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its First Assessment Report in 1990. This included publicly available surface temperatures that rose to a high point of nearly 10.0 C during the Medieval Warming Period and dropped to 8.6 C in the Little Ice Age of the late 17th century. It indicates that the present temperature is only slightly higher than the 1,000-year average.

By contrast, Mann’s “hockey stick” depicts global temperatures holding flat for 900 years. Then, beginning in the late 1800s, rising rapidly 0.7 C above average. If this rewriting of history is accurate, it would indicate that the industrial revolution’s increased use of fossil fuels correlates perfectly with an increase in earth’s temperature.

The IPCC seized on Mann’s “hockey stick” as the smoking gun that proved man-made global warming and included it in its Third Assessment Report (2001). Since then, the “hockey stick” has become a sacred icon for the high priests of climate science.

How could Mann rewrite decades of settled science almost overnight? He claims that “r2 statistics” lie behind his rewrite of history. These use “proxy tree-ring data” to re-calibrate the data. But after 21 years, Mann still has not released his data. Absent these facts, the scientific world must take Mann’s word for it.

Not every scientist is willing to do this. Many have asked Mann to release the proxy tree-ring data along with his r2 statistics. Without this data, the entire “hockey stick” scenario remains a private revelation given to Mann and Mann alone, with no way to verify it.

Mann claims that these specifics are “intellectual property,” that he has every right to withhold. That’s fair enough. But intellectual property rights are about a person’s right to profit from his creativity. By this measure, Mann’s intellectual property has given him fame and fortune.

But science is not a creative enterprise. Scientists are not supposed to make up facts, they are supposed to discover them. The scientific method is not high priests who emerge from smoky laboratories to utter religious dogma. The scientific method is about data—hard facts, rigorous controls and careful calculations that can be duplicated by skeptic and believer alike.

One scientist who questioned Mann’s dogmatism is Dr. Tim Ball. After enduring a dozen years of Mann’s refusal to release the data, Ball told an interviewer that Mann “should be in the state pen, not Penn State.” This clever turn of phrase became the center of a nine-year, multimillion-dollar libel lawsuit.

Ball, a Canadian professor, responded that libel cannot be proved if Mann is, in fact, wrong. But in order to prove his accuser wrong, Ball needs to cross-examine the proxy tree-ring data and r2 statistic calculations before the jury.

Mann found himself maneuvered into a corner. In January 2017, a judge agreed that Mann would have to hand over the data and gave him two years to do so. Months passed as it became increasingly obvious that Mann had no intention of complying. The deadline came and went with no data ever produced.

In May, Ball’s legal team asked the judge to throw out the lawsuit based on Mann’s refusal to release the data. On August 23, the judge granted the motion to dismiss. Not only that, but he also took the unusual step of requiring Mann to reimburse all of Dr. Ball’s legal costs.

Mann remains defiant. He still claims that his rewriting of the climate data for the past 1,000 years is justified and accurate while refusing to let anyone subject his claim to independent testing. Until he does, nobody on earth has any way of knowing whether he has created his facts out of whole cloth, or whether he has discovered them through the discipline of science.

The Ball is in Mann’s court, so to speak. With help from a complicit media, he can continue to milk his fame for as long as the scientific community will permit it. But, doing so will continue to erode public trust in the science behind climate change—and the scientific community more generally.

Better, release the data. Let science be science. If man-made global warming is true, releasing the data will certainly establish it as fact. If not, errors will exposed and true science will advance. Either way, the truth will come out. Man-made global warming increasingly appears to be Mann-made. In such a climate, a real scientist doesn’t sue skeptics, he publishes the data.

Is man-made global warming Mann-made?

Dr. Michael E. Mann is regularly promoted as the “world-leading climate change scientist.” He is a professor at Penn State University and the author of the famous “hockey stick” graph. The “hockey stick” graph was published in 1998 and presented a wildly new assessment of earth’s temperature over the past millennium.

Openly available climate data traces a roller coaster line of warming and cooling over the past 1,000 years. This line averages about 9.2 C, rising to nearly 10.0 C during the Medieval Warming Period and dropping to 8.6 C at the Little Ice Age in the late 17th century. Today the earth’s temperature hovers around 9.4 C, just above the 1,000-year average. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published this data in its 1990 report.

By contrast, Mann’s “hockey stick” depicts global temperatures holding flat, just under average, for 900 years. Then, beginning in the late 1800s they begin a rapid rise topping out in 1998 at 0.7 C above average. This graph resembles a hockey stick, a flat and long handle with the blade jutting up starting with the industrial revolution. If this rewriting of history is accurate, it would strongly indicate that man’s increased use of coal and oil correlates perfectly with the earth’s increase in temperature.

The IPCC seized on Mann’s “hockey stick” as the smoking gun that proved anthropogenic (man-made) global warming and included it in its 2001 report. Since then, the “hockey stick” has become a sacred icon for the high priests of climate science.

From its first publication, however, scientists have been wondering what new data Mann possesses that could fundamentally rewrite decades of scientific measurements overnight. Today, 21 years after the publication of his earth-shattering graph, Mann still has not released this data to the public.

His public statement is that “r2 statistics” lie behind his rewrite of history. He claims that “proxy tree-ring data” should be used to re-calibrate the data of public record. Are you confused yet? This sounds scientific enough to satisfy the scientists and yet obscure enough to make an interested public despair of ever being able to follow the argument.



Most people have surrendered the need to see the data with their own eyes. They have contented themselves, instead, with the word and reputation of the vaunted “Dr. Mann, world-leading climate-change scientist.” While the IPCC report itself is careful to restrain its rhetoric, the mainstream media regularly overstates the case and treats man-made global warming as “settled science” with the “hockey stick” as a bedrock fact of nature.

Not every scientist, however, has been converted by the thunder and lightning of Mann’s authoritative-sounding claims. Many are asking him to release the specific proxy tree-ring data and the mathematical calculations that he applied to it in order to come up with his radical rewrite of history. Without this data, there is no way to test his claims.

The entire “hockey stick” scenario remains a private revelation given to Mann and Mann alone. For more than two decades he has maintained, “I have made available all of the research data that I am required to under United States policy as set by the National Science Foundation…. I maintain the right to decline to release any computer codes, which are my intellectual property…”

Dr. Michael Mann (left), Dr. Tim Ball (right)

By withholding “intellectual property,” Mann is refusing to let anyone subject his claims to the rigors of scientific cross-examination. One scientist who has not fallen for this dodge is Dr. Tim Ball. After enduring a dozen years of Mann’s refusal to release the data, Ball told an interviewer that Mann “should be in the state pen, not Penn State.” This clever turn of phrase became the center of a nine-year, multimillion-dollar libel lawsuit.

Many consider Mann’s lawsuit of Ball to be a SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation). It’s not so much designed to defend his good name as it is to punish anyone with the audacity to look behind the smoke and mirrors. In this case, however, the lawsuit came back to bite Mann both intellectually and financially.

Mann’s lawsuit worked slowly through the Canadian courts from 2011 until 2017. Ball, a Canadian professor, maintains that he is innocent of libel because he is telling the truth. He further maintains that in order to prove the truth of his words, he needs to cross-examine Mann’s proxy tree-ring data and r2 statistic calculations before the jury.

In January 2017 Mann found himself maneuvered into a corner. He was forced into a series of concessions. The judge gave him two full years to hand the pertinent data over to Dr. Ball. Finally, after two decades of obfuscation, Mann’s claims would be open to the scientific method of scrutiny by independent labs around the world.

Then months passed, and years. It became increasingly obvious that Mann had no intention of abiding by the judge’s order. By January of 2019 the deadline came and went with no data ever produced. Reportedly, the judge was furious that Mann reneged on his promise.

Finally, in May, 2019, Ball’s legal team moved to dismiss the suit based on Mann’s breach of his agreement. Last week, the judge granted the motion. Not only that, but he also took the unusual step of requiring Mann to reimburse all of Dr. Ball’s legal costs for the past nine years.

To this day Mann claims that his rewriting of the climate data for the past 1,000 years is justified and accurate. But he refuses to let anyone subject his claim to independent testing. That’s not the way science is supposed to work.

The scientific method does not consist of anointing certain scientists to be high priests and prophets whose word is believed religiously. The scientific method is about data—hard facts, rigorous controls and careful calculations that can be repeated over and over by different personalities in different labs over the course of years and decades.

“Intellectual property” rights, on the contrary, are about a person’s right to make money and gain prestige through his creativity. They have certainly served Dr. Mann well in this regard. For more than two decades he has been showered with accolades, grant money and prestige. But science is not a creative enterprise. Scientists are not supposed to make up facts, they are supposed to discover them.

Until and unless Mann releases his data, nobody on earth has any way of knowing whether he has created his facts out of whole cloth, or whether he has discovered them through the discipline of science. He, and he alone, has the power to answer that question.

He can continue to milk his fame for as long as the scientific community will allow. With continued help from the media he can probably ride the wave for a few more years. But if he chooses this route, public trust in the science of climate change—and the scientific community more generally—will continue to erode.

Better would be to release his data and let science be science. If man-made global warming is true, this data release will certainly establish it as fact. If not, the facts will overthrow the past 20 years of confident pronouncements. Eventually, the truth will come out. Man-made global warming increasingly appears to be Mann-made. In such a climate, a real scientist doesn’t sue skeptics, he publishes the data.