CNN
—
A jury has awarded climate scientist Michael Mann more than $1 million
in a defamation lawsuit he brought against a former scholar and a media personality who lampooned Mann’s work.

The legal battle has been ongoing for more than a decade. Mann initially
filed a lawsuit in 2012, after Rand Simberg, a former scholar for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Mark Steyn, a TV and radio
personality who wrote for the National Review, wrote blog posts
ridiculing Mann’s scientific research that warned of rising
temperatures, and compared him to Jerry Sandusky, the former
Pennsylvania State football coach who was convicted of child molestation.

“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 and Simberg wrote. Steyn
and Simberg also ridiculed Mann’s research on the “Hockey Stick” chart that illustrated the dramatic rise in average global temperature since pre-industrial times.

A jury in the Washington, DC, Superior Court civil case awarded Mann $1
million in punitive damages and a dollar from each defendant in
compensatory damages.

Defamation is notoriously difficult to prove in the United States,
because the First Amendment provides wide protections for speech.
However, Mann’s is the latest in a recent string of defamation trial victories for plaintiffs or large settlements – most notably including
E. Jean Carrol’s $83.3 million verdict against former President Donald
Trump. And last year, Fox Corp. agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems
$787 million in a settlement.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/09/media/michael-mann-national-review-climate-defamation/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc

So what's the common denominator in the "string of victories"? The
losers are all conservative hacks. Way to go.

--
"And off they went, from here to there,
The bear, the bear, and the maiden fair"
-- Traditional

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