PRESS

The Washington DC Superior Court convicted two people on February 8 of defamation, with more than $1 million (approximately 928,000 euros) in compensatory damages. Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn claimed that climatologist Michael E. Mann had tampered with his data and compared him to a child molester.

If you’ve been following the news, you know that last week, Climate scientist Michael Mann won a million dollar award against science denial grifter (and Lounge Singer) Mark Steyn.

“It’s perfectly legitimate to criticize scientific findings, but this verdict is a strong signal that individual scientists shouldn’t be accused of serious misconduct without strong evidence,” says Michael Gerrard, a legal scholar at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law in New York City.

Although the heyday of blogging is long past, and the consensus on global warming has grown stronger in the dozen years since Mann launched his case, climate scientists continue to face personal and professional attacks in the polarized battle over the future of fossil fuels.

The ruling is a victory for climate researchers who have been frequently attacked online over their work and especially for Mann, who has faced the brunt of it, says Lauren Kurtz, executive director of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. “The actual facts in this case are just so dramatic.” In a statement, Mann said, “I hope this verdict sends a message that falsely attacking climate scientists is not protected speech.”

Mann's trial comes at a time of increasing attacks on climate scientists, says Lauren Kurtz, executive director of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, who notes that her fund helps more scientists each year than the year before. "I don't think there's been anything like it. There's never been a case like this," says Kert Davies, director of special investigations at the Center for Climate Integrity, a climate accountability nonprofit, "No one has ever taken the climate deniers to court like this."

“Calling Michael Mann’s work fraudulent is just patently false,” said Lauren Kurtz, executive director of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, a group that helped defend scientists facing legal attack in 54 cases last year. Mann, she added, has been “exonerated” of wrongdoing by multiple investigations into his work.

Mann has “been attacked in all the ways that a climate scientist can be attacked,” Lauren Kurtz, the executive director of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, told DeSmog. “He’s been remarkably public about what’s happened to him, [and] willing to fight back in ways that other scientists haven’t necessarily wanted to take on.”

“Climate scientists have a responsibility to untangle fact from fiction and to communicate with society clearly about the dangers of climate change,” he said. “If we do not actively take on that role, others will fill the vacuum that our silence creates.

Thirty-odd years ago, Mann published the famous "hockey stick" graph that charted global temperatures through the ages. This made the urgency of the climate crisis much more easily understood by the general public. This got up the noses of the extraction industries and their various sled-dogs in politics and the media, and they launched an assault on Mann and his work.