A victory for science
For anyone interested in climate science, a US court has just awarded prominent climate scientist Michael Mann $1 million against anthropogenic climate change denier Mark Steyn for defamation. Here’s a question on it at the Quora site and my answer to it that I posted a little earlier.
Do you think Michael Mann’s defamation lawsuit will have a chilling effect on climate change skeptics?
It probably will or it should. Mann has just been awarded $1 million. This is a huge victory for science, not only climate science but in public health too where scientists have been subjected to a barrage of abuse over their work on coronavirus, vaccination, safety measures, etc. The fossil fuel industry has a large number of lawsuits against it for misleading people about climate change. I’d say that denier comments at Quora and on other social media probably won’t be a problem, but writing and posting an article on a denier blog site or other sites could be a problem if the writer accuses the scientist of fraud when none is apparent (except in the eyes of deniers).
Slander and libel against climate scientists has been rife since around 1990 when the fossil fuel industry invented anthropogenic climate change denial in response to moves to save energy and shift to cleaner energy sources plus the formation of the IPCC in 1989. The abuse probably increased after Michael Mann’s study that produced the so-called hockey-stick graph (not named by him) in 1998 and 1999 (which has been replicated by at least two dozen other studies and none showing otherwise) and again after the 2009 so-called “Climategate” episode where crook/s unknown stole emails from prominent scientists including Mann and tried to make out unsuccessfully that the scientists were into fraud. Six major inquiries cleared the scientists of any wrongdoing.
Mann brought two lawsuits, one against denier Tim Ball and denier outfit the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in 2011, and a second against deniers Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn and the denier outfits they posted blogs on, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Review magazine, in 2012. The CEI and NR tried to dismiss the lawsuit under anti-SLAPP legislation, which was denied and then denied again on appeal multiple times. Steyn had to pay legal costs. The cases against Simberg and Steyn dragged on although the two organisations wriggled free as the two writers were bloggers not employees.
Just a few hours ago, the Washington DC Superior Court awarded damages of $1 million to Mann to be paid by Steyn. Back in 2012, Simberg had compared Mann with Jerry Sandusky, a football coach convicted of sexually assaulting children. Simberg wrote of Mann that “instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.” What a total joke. We’re heading for dire consequences (environmental, economic and societal) if we continue indefinitely with fossil fuels. Steyn then reproduced the comment in an article in the National Review where he accused Mann of fraud. See the following among a heap of other articles in recent hours: ‘Climatologist Michael Mann wins defamation case: what it means for scientists’, at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00396-y#:~:text=Jury%20awards%20Mann%20more%20than,attacked%20because%20of%20their%20work.&text=US%20climate%20scientist%20Michael%20Mann,to%20a%20convicted%20child%20molester.
The case against Tim Ball went nearly forever too before finally being thrown out in 2019 due to Ball’s health and his claims having no credibility. See Tim Ball Pleads For Mercy As An Irrelevant Sick Old Man, Gets It, Declares Victory. In a similar case, the judge said: “a reasonably thoughtful and informed person … is unlikely to place any stock in Dr. Ball’s views.” In another case against Ball: “A B.C. Supreme Court judge has dismissed a libel action against ‘climate change sceptic’ Dr. Tim Ball on the basis that Ball’s writing is not sufficiently credible to inflict damage on the reputation of a professional climate scientist.” See Judge Dismisses Libel Claim, Climate ‘Sceptic’ Tim Ball Not Credible Enough To Take Seriously – DeSmog. In the Mann case, virtually none of the media (outside of denier blogs) picked it up as there was really nothing to report. There was no judgement made against the hockey stick or climate science. Ball only got into climate science in retirement.
But the latest victory against Steyn is big. Deniers have always hated Mann because he was seen as the person who snuffed out the idea that the Medieval Warm Period was global and warmer than now. It was one of the main things used by deniers to argue that the current warming is natural. He wasn’t the first person to do it and certainly not the last as more than two dozen other global studies have come to the same conclusion while none has found otherwise. Claims by deniers that the MWP was global and warmer than now are confined to rants on denier blogs and comments on social media rather than scientific studies. Mann is kind of the Charles Darwin of climate science. Darwin and his findings on evolution of course put paid to the ancient idea that everything was created by some god.
