Stanford professor’s defamation lawsuit puts chill in atmosphere of climate scientists

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Washington Times

A Stanford University professor’s defamation lawsuit in defense of his green energy research has raised the temperature on the climate change debate, fueling fears that such a precedent could put a chill on scientific inquiry.
Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, sued for $10 million after a group of researchers published a paper in June challenging his high-profile study contending that U.S. power demands could be met with 100 percent non-nuclear renewable energy by 2050.
The researchers charged that the 2015 Jacobson paper was marred by “errors, inappropriate methods, and implausible assumptions,” while Mr. Jacobson argued that the rebuttal contained “many falsehoods and misrepresentations of fact,” and that the journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, refused to correct them.