- JoNova - https://joannenova.com.au -

Tim Ball wins — Andrew Weaver case dismissed after 7 years

Great news (though how low is our bar, that it’s “great” that after seven long expensive years Tim Ball can speak freely?). As reported on WUWT: Tim Ball’s free-speech victory over Andrew Weaver – all charges dismissed!

Anthony Watts: I got word tonight from David Ball, son of Dr. Tim Ball via Facebook messenger:

This morning the judge dismissed all charges in the lawsuit brought against Tim by BC Green Party leader Andrew Weaver. It is a great victory for free speech.

Andrew Weaver launched the suit in 2011.

In 2014 Ezra Levant’s wrote: “Silencing Critics instead of debating them”

Weaver sued climatologist Dr. Tim Ball for, amongst other things, saying Weaver was “lacking a basic understanding of climate science,” according to a glowing New York Times article, cheering on his SLAPP suit.

Seriously? Suing someone, in a court of law, for saying you don’t understand global warming? This from a scholar, an academic, a teacher? And now a politician – an opposition politician, no less. Weaver is now a Green Party MLA in British Columbia, someone who hurls insults as part of his job description.

That’s not what true academics do. That’s not what politicians do – especially opposition politicians. Andrew Weaver is acting like a thug, not a scholar or a public servant. He is trying to censor and punish his enemies, not debate his opponents.

And from DeSmog in 2011 — all the prescience we’ve come to expect:

The suit arises from an article that Ball penned for the right-wingy Canada Free Press website, which has since apologized to Weaver for its numerous inaccuracies and stripped from its publicly available pages pretty much everything that Ball has ever written.

Ball, famously slow to notice the obvious, apparently didn’t realize that he was overmatched.

Richard Littlemore, Feb 4th, 2011 at DeSmog Blog:

Congratulations to Tim Ball today, but most of all, a big thank you. Thanks for taking the harder road. We, all of us who value free speech, are sorry you had to do it, but so grateful you did.

See also Tim Balls Blog (though there is no announcement there yet).

 

*Headline edited. Weaver didn’t drop the charges. The judge dismissed the case. If only it had been done 6 years sooner.

9.3 out of 10 based on 113 ratings