News Limited columnist Piers Akerman is at risk of being sued for defamation after today revealing he misquoted the former head of the IPCC while accusing him of promoting climate-change alarmism. However, Akerman is not conceding that he made a mistake, but  is rather triumphantly flourishing a different quote as evidence of his vindication.

Entitled “Malicious bullets fired by the global warmists’ guns”, Akerman’s blog post in The Daily Telegraph today accuses “the little Crikey website” and the ABC’s Media Watch of “malicious attacks” on him after both outlets, off the back of a report by The Independent UK, reported that Akerman was the original source of a fudged quote.

In a column four years ago, Akerman quoted former IPCC chairman and British Met Office CEO Sir John Houghton of writing in his 1994 book Global Warming, The Complete Briefing

Unless we announce disasters no one will listen”.

Since then, the quote has been wheeled out repeatedly by global warming sceptics, including Christopher Monkton, as evidence of scientists using scary propaganda to frighten the public into believing the dangers of global warming.

Then came this article last week in the UK’s Independent:

The trouble is, Sir John Houghton has never said what he is quoted as saying.

So how did this misquote get so much traction? And where did it first surface? According to The Independent:

… the earliest record of the quote comes not from 15 years ago but from November 2006 when it appeared in a newspaper column written by the journalist Piers Akerman in the Australian newspaper The Daily Telegraph. Akerman, a controversial right-wing columnist and global warming sceptic, appears to be the first person to use the quote verbatim.

Akerman’s role in the affair was further highlighted by Crikey’s Pure Poison blog and later on this week’s episode of Media Watch, which reported that The Independent told them it didn’t receive an on-the-record response from Akerman until after it had gone to press, and that he’d then told them “that he cannot remember where he got the quote from but was going to check through some material he has. Not heard from him since.”

Today Akerman conceded, in his own special way, that he is unable to produce any evidence showing Horton made that exact remark:

Unfortunately for The Independent, Crikey and the ABC, my call to international scientists has borne fruit.

Yesterday I was forwarded an article published in The Sunday Telegraph (UK) on September 10, 1995, in which Houghton told writer Frances Welch: “If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster.”

How that remark came to be slightly paraphrased in the quotation sent to me we shall probably never know. It’s possible that someone, somewhere in cyberspace tidied up Houghton’s original remark before including it in the material which was sent to me. That sort of thing occurs in the blogosphere.

Such a statement doesn’t square with the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s Journalists Code of Ethics that instructs reporters to “Report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts. interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts.”

The same sort of disclosure that Akerman continues to ask of the “global warmists”. Besides, Akerman argues:

… Houghton had never and still has not contacted me. That did not alter anything as his agenda was clearly to discredit the messenger (me) and, through that, strike a blow for the warmists, those who have been distorting and withholding data, manipulating scientific evidence and falsifying reports.

Houghton told The Independent that the false quote is “not the sort of thing I would ever say”.

“It’s quite the opposite of what I think and it pains me to see this quote being used repeatedly in this way. I would never say we should hype up the risk of climate disasters in order to get noticed,” he said.

Houghton said he is considering taking legal action because he feels that the continued recycling of the misquotation — which appears in more than 130,000 web pages — has done damage to his reputation and the scientific evidence of man-man global warming. No word on what he plans to do in light of Akerman’s triumphant retort.

And judging by comments on Akerman’s blog, the debacle doesn’t seem to have shaken his devotees’ faith.

“Piers I am sorry that you are being attacked personally however your reputation is one that has been built on solid foundations not fanciful belief, negatives and libelling others,” wrote “Maggie” this morning.

“Your credibility was, is and remains intact.”