Our Take, by Doug Sheridan
William McGurn writes in the WSJ, Michael Mann, the climate scientist who gave us the iconic “hockey stick” graph showing a sharp rise in the global temp in the 20th century, has been pursuing two of his critics—Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg—through the courts for 12 years, saying they defamed him by attacking his personal and professional integrity. Their fate will soon be decided by a DC Superior Court jury.
In 2011, Mann sued geographer Tim Ball in Canadian court for saying “Michael Mann at Penn State University should be in the state pen, not Penn State.” In 2019, a Canadian judge dismissed the charges because of the “inexcusable” delay in the trial and ordered Mann to pay Ball’s legal costs.
Mann’s hockey stick charts the Earth’s temps since the year 1000, showing a slow decline that turned sharply upward in the 20th century. Critics question Mann’s statistical methods and the proxies he used, which include data from tree rings with which he estimated surface temps in medieval times.
In a 2012, post, Simberg let it rip. He likened Mann to a Penn State football coach found guilty of having sexually abused boys, “Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except 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.”
Steyn then quoted Simberg in his own post for National Review Online, and referred to leaked emails from scientists at the Univ of East Anglia. Those emails show there was far from a scientific consensus about the IPCC decision to feature the hockey stick in its 2001 report. Both Steyn and Simberg suggested Penn State had covered for Mann.
So Mann sued. He pointed to independent investigations by the National Science Foundation and Penn State that had cleared him of any research misconduct. Three years ago, a judge dropped National Review and CEI from the suit, ruling they weren’t liable because Steyn and Simberg weren’t their employees.
On the stand, Mann has admitted that 12 years of litigation had cost him nothing, though he declined to name who was funding it. In sharp contrast, National Review’s legal defense has gone through millions in insurance claims and significant out-of-pocket expenses.
That seems to be the goal, judging by one of Mann’s emails explaining his rationale, “Going to talk w/ some big time libel lawyers to see if there is the potential to bring down this filthy organization [National Review] for good.” This is lawfare. The message is if you don’t like a critic’s tweet or blog posts, just drag them through the courts. It’s especially sweet if someone else foots your bill.
With Mann and so many other scientists today, the real issue is not so much if they got things wrong, but that they try to suppress the robust debate that is necessary for scientific truth. That isn’t the way science ought to be practiced.