The “hockey stick” graph as published in IPCC TAR (Figure 2-20, 2001)
By Jo Nova
Climate deniers must be punished
For newcomers: Michael Mann’s hockeystick graph was wildly different from hundreds of studies of other studies and instantly became the pet graph of the IPCC. It used the wrong proxy, the wrong tree, and the wrong type of averaging. Whole books were written on how bad it was. But when Mark Steyn called it fraudulent Mann sued.
Twelve long years after the case was launched, the six person jury decided that Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg have defamed Michael Mann, but awarded Mann one whole dollar in damages, because he hadn’t been able to prove he suffered any damage at all. Remarkably, though, the jurors felt the skeptics had been so malicious they added punitive damages too. Usually these are limited to a mere four or five times the compensatory damage, but this time it was decided Simberg should pay $1,000 and Mark Steyn $1 million. It sets a new record.
According to Law.com punitive or exemplary damages are saved for truly dreadful acts:
exemplary damages n. often called punitive damages… are damages requested and/or awarded in a lawsuit when the defendant’s willful acts were malicious, violent, oppressive, fraudulent, wanton or grossly reckless. These damages are awarded both as a punishment and to set a public example.
So the jury agrees that Mark Steyn did no material harm to Mann but criticizing climate scientists is itself an unforgivably evil thing.
The point is to silence you
The lawyer for Michael Mann had pushed for these punitive damages in his closing arguments (since there weren’t any real damages). John Hinderaker reported that Mann’s lawyer specifically asked the jury to deter “climate deniers” who were apparently as dangerous as “Trump election deniers”. And to a Washington D.C. jury, somehow that made sense. It took thirty years of televised propaganda to create this payday. Cheap namecalling on the news makes for a whole city of hate, ready to pass judgement.
The jury probably couldn’t even imagine how anyone could believe a climate expert might be wrong.
John Hinderaker points out there’s no evidence there was any malice involved:
Buy a copy at the Steyn store.
In a sane world, this case never would have gone to the jury. The legal standard is actual malice, which means the defendants must have thought, subjectively, that what they said wasn’t likely true. In this case, there was no evidence whatever that Steyn and Simberg didn’t sincerely believe that what they said was true. Indeed, as Mark pointed out in closing argument, he has been saying the same things about Mann’s hockey stick for something like 21 years, and even wrote a book about it (pictured to the right).
As Mark Steyn so calmly explained at SteynOnline, he will take this all the way to the Supreme Court if he has to:
The latter number will likely get overturned at the United States Supreme Court, which generally reckons that “in practice, few awards exceeding a single-digit ratio between punitive and compensatory damages, to a significant degree, will satisfy due process” – and that’s when “the defamatory statements do not involve matters of public concern”. A “single-digit ratio” means four-to-one, five-to-one punitive-to-compensatory. Steyn’s jurors just set a record – a million-to-one ratio.
So, under the Supreme Court guidelines, the punitive damages of $1,000,000 could in theory be reduced to, er, four dollars. Mark may likewise be reduced, somewhat mortifyingly, to waving that US constitution around. Whether his health will hold out long enough to get him before Chief Justice John Roberts and the rest of the gang is a different question.
But as Mark has said in the past, the process is the punishment, and so this punishment will go on.
As Hinderaker explains, with these extraordinary punitive damages, Mann’s lawyer has succeeded in turning a defamation case into a free speech one. The whole point of the damages is to deter people speaking their minds freely:
… now Michael Mann’s lawyer has made it explicit: impose an arbitrary seven figure penalty on Mark Steyn, not to compensate the plaintiff Michael Mann, who didn’t suffer any damages whatsoever, but rather to deter anyone from ever again arguing that climate change alarmists are wrong, however flawed their science may be.
It is hard to imagine anything more anti-scientific or anti-American.
As Amy K. Mitchell points out, if the media can’t criticize a scientist, no one can:
Mark Steyn is a member of the media. As such he is supposedly afforded First Amendment protections. If a member of the media is no longer protected, what do you think that means for every day citizens? And it doesn’t matter if you are in DC or Montana — anyone can file in the jurisdiction of his or her choosing.
She quotes Justice Alito who accurately forecast how defamation suits in the right city could be used to silence dissent across the whole country on complex topics like climate change:
…the controversial nature of the whole subject of climate change exacerbates the risk that the jurors’ determination will be colored by their preconceptions on the matter. When allegedly defamatory speech concerns a political or social issue that arouses intense feelings, selecting an impartial jury presents special difficulties. And when, as is often the case, allegedly defamatory speech is disseminated nationally, a plaintiff may be able to bring suit in whichever jurisdiction seems likely to have the highest percentage of jurors who are sympathetic to the plaintiff ‘s point of view…
If citizens cannot speak freely and without fear about the most important issues of the day, real self government is not possible. To ensure that our democracy is preserved and is permitted to flourish, this Court must closely scrutinize any restrictions on the statements that can be made on important public policy issues. Otherwise, such restrictions can easily be used to silence the expression of unpopular views…
The sacred graph must be protected from critics
The HockeyStick graph underpins a trillion dollar industry. If the weather was just as warm in the medieval period then CO2 is not the control knob on Earth’s temperature dial and the models are missing some big natural drivers.
Even after all these years, the HockeyStick graph still forms a core part of the IPCC’s case, even though no one seems to be able to find any tree rings from the last 50 years so they can update it. We have no trouble finding 800 year old trees, but for some reason we can’t find ones alive today to tell us the temperature in 2023.
If only the planet still had trees, Mike wouldn’t need to use his Nature Trick to hide the decline.
In the immortal words of Professor Phil Jones himself:
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
Judith Curry has written an extraordinary exposition of the whole sorry saga of the Hockeystick, with all its gory details. Unfortunately, ain’t it the way, it was not admitted in court as evidence. It’s all at her blog. Savage.
Readers, be aware the word fraud is moderated here, so best to use other terms – like misleading, inept, incompetent, and a travesty of science. There are plenty to pick from.
Heartland are hosting: Mann vs. Steyn: A Disgrace to the Profession – Climate Change Roundtable #97
_________________
h/t to RickWill, David Wojick, Bill in AZ, El Gordo, Willie Soon, Joe Bastardi
Unfair Law Fare!
300
This just so wrong.
What is the matter with justice in the USA?
Activist Judges?
Is it any better here?
412
These are activist jurors in Washington DC. And in the United States it is jurors who decide damages and they are $1.
In comparison in British countries, damages are just the commercial damage and Mann cannot demonstrate any.
So in Australia, break a leg and it is the cost of the leg repair and any lost income.
But incredibly this case was heard in Washington, DC, a tiny place where 98.4% of voters preferred Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump.
It is comparable to the insane Higgins case in Canberra where the government prosecutor played politics and incredibly hid evidence and which could help the accused and faked covering documentation.
The idea that Mark Steyn faced an unbiased jury is comparable to the idea that innocent and now dead Cardinal George Pell faced an unbiased jury. And there is no apology for the fact that there was no evidence, there were no witnesses, one of the victims said it did not happen and no possibility the alleged crime occurred.
700
And like Australia, how many people in Canberra earn their living from Climate Change or are related to people who do? It’s a massive taxation industry paying the wages of tens of thousands, as in Washington. Climate Deniers must be punished.
And in the middle of the second Pell trial, ABC reporter Louise Milligan published a book nationally on why Pell was guilty! The judge had to rule that it could not be sold in Victoria, which is the limit of any Victorian Judge’s authority. And she won the Golden Quill twice for her investigation of Pell and missed the fact that he was innocent.
https://www.mup.com.au/authors/louise-milligan
So was the Victorian jury unbiased? According to the High Court of Australia, pigs might fly first.
And her ABC did not comment. And no one apologised for jailing an innocent man. Apparently Pell deserved a year in solitary confinement in jail anyway.
The farcical punitive damages in the Mann/Steyn case though are 1,000,000x the actual damages. The accepted maximum is supposed to be 4x. So Mann will savor punishing his adversaries, but he will have to enjoy his can of Bud Light because that’s all he can buy with $5, the preferred drink of drag queens. Apparently.
502
The real punishment for Steyn is that his legal bill will be massive anyway. But Mann boasted with a grin that he does not have to pay any legal bills? I would assume Penn State is paying or a few Climate Change moguls. Climate Change is a $1.5Trillion industry and Mann is their poster boy. Big Wind and Big Solar would fund him anyway.
As with Dr Peter Ridd’s case, the opposition were millionaire JCU managers with all the resources of the State of Queensland behind them. Robert Maxwell proved that if you have an infinite amount of other people’s money, you can own the legal system. Which is why he died in mysterious circumstances off the Canary Islands and no one saw a thing.
480
Should have known better than to have dared hope that some kind of justice would come out of this trial . .
100
The case was held in DC. That is not really the USA. They gave a senile career politician 95% of their vote against a sitting President making the economy work again but somewhat tarnished by Covid and the corrupt advice he was being given. Mark Steyn defended himself. He paid little deference to the jury and he underestimated Mann’s lawyers Trump card.
Throughout his closing statement, Mark Steyn punctuated his oration with the words “no case to answer”. Well the jury showed him who was boss. There was no way a denier would win a case in DC. If fact the damages awarded against Steyn are retribution for him holding the whole US legal system in contempt. Even though he did it with good humour it obviously did not sit well with most of the jurors.
150
As an English person it seems extraordinary to me that the plaintiff can pick the juristiction. It’s grossly unfair.
10
Activist judges do exist. Supreme court decisions or split decision explanations show that. But this case wasn’t decided by a judge. It was decided by a jury of six.
Reports I’ve seen don’t indicate an issue with the judge. The judge was sustaining objections to Mann’s legal reps closing arguments, and instructing the jury that the case wasn’t about some of the messaging from Mann’s lawyers.
80
Indeed Strop. John Hinderaker said:
140
Sit in the “peanut gallery’ in enough courts and you will be horrified but, ultimately unsurpassed, at the “legalist “creativity.
Even in Coronial courts.
10
I followed the case through the podcast “Climate Change on Trial”. The evidence to my mind was overwhelming that Michael Mann was a complete jerk, a nasty fellow and a hopeless scientist but as you say if you pick the right jurisdiction and the right jury then evidence doesn’t matter. We have seen the same results in the cases brought against Trump including the payment to a female grifter who can’t recall where and when a supposed crime happened but was given $83 million never-the-less. The US justice system is shot and no better than in a third world hell hole.
Jo’s report of BP deciding to do what it did best, drill for oil and gas, is by far the greatest rebuff to the climate clowns as reality bites. The world needs fuel and energy and wind and solar are not the answer. The calamities that were predicted to come from too much CO2 in the atmosphere have not come to pass, indeed quite the opposite, as the worlds climate appears to be getting more benign. The wheels are falling off the CO2 scare machine and Manns victory will be Pyrrhic at best. It is a shame that Mark will be kicked while he is down by one of the world’s greatest cowards.
620
The trial had extensive evidence of Michael Mann doing harm to the careers of Judith Curry and to a lesser degree Roger Pielke Jr. I applaud Mark Stein’s persistence and I think he will win in the end but we have something akin to the Spanish Inquisition where “Its ostensible purpose was to combat heresy in Spain, but, in practice, it resulted in consolidating power in the monarchy of the newly unified Spanish kingdom.” Today it might read “It’s ostensible purpose is to combat heresy in science but, in practice, it results in consolidating power in the government of the newly unified Justice department and Democratic party.”
We (the US) have a legal system that’s a crap shoot if you go to trial so primarily uses wrist slap plea deals under the threat of onerous penalties if you go to trial. Exercising your legal rights can only be done by deep pocketed defenders.
430
The Jury was apparently conned over the denier baloney thus discredited themselves because with no apparent damage or malice to decide on they chose name calling as their basis for the absurd decision.
That means Steyn and simberg are innocent.
420
They are innocent since the comparison that Simberg made and Steyn repeated was on the actions on Penn State and not climate crook Mann.
20
Unless I misunderstand US law, the judge showed extreme bias by allowing the plaintiff’s lawyers to speak again at the very end of the trial, after the defence case had closed.
330
You do misunderstand US law. That is the convention there in a trial of this sort. The judge was not very impressed with Michael Mann, based on various comments he made at various points.
Am I allowed to say where Mann can shove his hockey stick?
70
The complete corruption of the US courts and the deliberate dumbing-down of the education system leading to dumbed-down juries, especially in Leftist-dominated locales like DC (and similarly in other Western countries) is the ultimate fulfillment of Leftist take over of society and Rudi Dutschke’s 1967 plan of the “Long March Through the Institutions”.
This is the nightmare George Orwell warned about and prophesied in Nineteen Eighty Four.
Trump needs to be re-elected and ruthlessly “drain the swamp”. There is little or no hope otherwise.
Of course, they are doing the exact same thing to Trump to try and break him as well.
I wish Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg best wishes for their appeal. (I assume Simberg will appeal on principle even though his penalty was “only” $1,000).
481
You’re spot on regarding the “dumbing-down” of the education system. Even worse is the indoctrination that young minds are subjected to, especially in universities. Taken together, the education system should more accurately be described as the ‘sheep factory’.
110
I don’t understand the concept of punitive damages. A person is to be punished more than he or she otherwise would have been just to set an example to others?
It seems they are being punished for something that has happened. If no-one else has done what they did, then it’s punishment in anticipation of a potential crime/misdemeanor by someone else. But wouldn’t that other person be punished if they did whatever it’s anticipated they might do?
160
It’s a concept that some punishments do not fit the offence. A millionaire does not care about car parking fines, for example. So they park where they like. The concept is to make the punishment fit not just the crime but the offender.
$1 in reputational damages is an incredible insult to Mann. One dollar’s worth of reputational damage.
And a million dollar punitive fine for a member of the media in a country with a first amendment protecting free speech for everyone is extraordinary and wrong.
The fact that this went to trial at all is because Mann is not paying his bills. He is a pet of the Climate Change industry and fully funded. And as he was the one sued, he was able to choose the most advantageous district court, right in the heart of Climate Change Central. Washington, DC.
It’s another trick of the US legal system, the litigator chooses the field of battle. It pays to be the first to sue.
310
Absolutely, and BTW Assange, I believe, is to be tried in virginia where the biggest employers are the pentagon and CIA. American justice, Go figure.
90
It’s how it works. The person bringing the lawsuit chooses the venue. I have been advised in the US not to accuse anyone in writing but to sue them immediately. Otherwise they will sue you and they get the choice of venue. Usually where they are more likely to win or just closer to home or both.
120
Absolutely disgraceful result.
170
Victory for the Hockey Schtick,
A defeat for Justice.
210
Not really. $1 reputational damages in a four week million dollar trial, the minimum possible. That means Mann lost.
But it allowed the punitive damages which are patently absurd and these will be overturned. Perversely, it will create a huge amount of sympathy for Steyn because it is so obviously wrong and unjustified. Steyn is not a rich man, a man in a wheel chair who has fought for justice brought to ruin by telling the truth? It will not stand. However to many in Washington, he is a Heretic, a Denier, the devil incarnate. In the Dark Ages a Global Warming heretic would have been burned to a steak. By the rich Climate Clergy.
340
They are not content to only destroy someone financially, but also drive them toward three heart attacks and a wheelchair.
130
Stress is a major cause of heart attacks and strokes brought on by blood clots. As are the events of the last three years and the requirements placed on international travellers, like Mark !
100
It is no coincidence that my own heart attack came after years of high stress employment which also wrecked my mental health for a time. I had very strong grounds for a workplace injury claim but was too fragile at the time to even contemplate legal action. I don’t know where Mark gets the strength.
60
The USA now seems to be an anti science country and the country now seems to believe hurt feelings are more important than flawed science.
China and Russia etc will be laughing at these clueless cry babies and relishing their future against a very confused and soft so called enemy.
The Supreme court MUST overturn this absurd lunacy and I only hope Mark can go the distance.
270
Mann chose Washington DC for good reason, not his Pennsylvania. Finding an unbiased jury in Washington D.C. would be impossible. And the million dollar punitive award is utterly wrong in law and precedent, a stunt. I expect it will backfire badly on Mann and instead of punishing Steyn, will make the case famous as an example as you say of Climate craziness and extreme self interest.
Millions of people in the US, and especially in Washington D.C. earn their living from fake Climate Change or are connected to people who do. Ultimately I believe it will be a victory for Steyn as he and his judgement will be famous as a travesty of justice where Mann is cast as the infinitely wealthy evil villain funded by Big Wind and Big Solar. And Steyn as the sick journalist trying to broadcast the truth against incredible odds.
270
A reader (Jon) over at the Manhattan Contrarian web page made the following comment about punitive damages.
Comment was made below this article written by Francis Menton (Lawyer) who runs the Manhattan Contrarian blog.
Article is worth a read. Provides some commentary about the closing remarks by each side and the judges instructions.
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-2-8-trial-of-mann-v-steyn-part-v-jury-instructions-and-closing-argument
30
Wasn’t meant to be a reply to TdeF. Was meant to be a new post.
00
No, the USA isn’t “anti science”, just anti anything that threatens the elites’ agenda, which sometimes includes the wrong sort of science …
30
The defamation action arose because Mann was compared to a rapist
[From Andrew Lawton, True North]
There are plenty of “scientists” who have gotten it wrong either by deliberate manipulation of data or misinterpretation of data.
Correlation does not mean causation.
The science is never “settled” and a court room is not the place to do science.
[Link added. Please commenters, quote the sources. – Jo]
96
Steyn and Simberg did NOT compare Mann to a child molester.
They compared the actions by Penn State’s institutional handling of unhappy/distasteful events in a manner that was similar, ie. covering things up until they got out of hand.
At least that’s how I see things.
381
Steyn’s argument was that the man who protected both the rapist football coach and Mann was a criminal, convicted and in jail. That is factually correct in a defence based on the truth of the matter.
281
Correct. Punitive damages would have even if Mann’s 1998 paper had been flawed. But as we know, the ‘hockey stick’ has been independently validated by dozens of studies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_graph_(global_temperature)
The warming trend has continued to the point where the world has recently experienced more than a year where the average temperature is > +1.5C compared to the pre-industrial era.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68110310
649
Citing Wikipedia where subjects such as “climate change” are locked from non-believers from editing them and Their BBC who are fully committed to the Official Narrative are not good enough, Simon.
401
Yet here we are, producing record crops.
Things grow to their limiting factor, be it H2O, minerals or food (including sunlight and carbon). When all these are in balance, life thrives, as it is now.
240
To repeat a previous post. https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/19/what-is-the-greenhouse-effect/. “Greenhouse gases are part of Earth’s atmosphere. This is why Earth is often called the ‘Goldilocks’ planet – its conditions are just right, not too hot or too cold, allowing life to thrive. Part of what makes Earth so amenable is its natural greenhouse effect, which maintains an average temperature of 15 °C (59 °F).”
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202313. Average global surface temperature for 2023 was 15.08°C.
So, according to NASA, the earth should be 15 °C and it was 15.08°C. Seems to me that we are right on the money and exactly where we should be – according to NASA.
80
‘ … if Mann’s 1998 paper had been flawed.’
The Hockey Stick chart was flawed.
‘The chart was derived from “collation errors, unjustified truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, incorrect principal component calculations, geographical mislocations and other serious defects” — substantially affecting the temperature index.” (John McLaughlin)
100
Every hemispheric and global reconstruction shows the same pattern.
132
Except for all the ones that don’t, which is nearly every proxy, and all the unbiased reconstructions, the sea levels, glacier artifacts, viking history, Greenland ice cores, South African caves, and 6,000 boreholes drilled all over the world. I could go on and on… Lüning, S. et al looked at 60 sites in Antarctica. Rosenthal et al 2013 showed ocean temperatures were higher 1,000 years ago around Indonesia.
My first link in the post goes to many references.
Simon, you’ve been commenting on this site since 2013. Hard to believe you could have missed all this evidence, discussed many times.
310
Individual proxies vary. Your claimed ‘Medieval Warming Period’ varies anywhere in time from 800 to 1200 AD. When was it really?
Combined proxies show a sudden warming in the industrial era far faster than seen anywhere else in the Holocene.
Check out the PAGES 2k Network if you are genuinely interested in temperature reconstructions. https://lipdverse.org/project/pages2k/
025
The hemispheres are not in sync.
‘The Medieval Warm Period (950-1250AD) is apparent in the Northern Hemisphere reconstruction, while in the Southern Hemisphere there was an extended warm phase between 1200 and 1350. Both hemispheres then experienced a long-term cooling trend, with the peak of the Little Ice Age from 1594–1677.’ (Australian Antarctic Program)
100
“Combined proxies” always means adding in daily thermometer records.
If the warming was “so big” why is there not one single proxy of any sort that shows the HockeyStick in a continuous run from 1000AD to 2020 or even 2000AD – 2020?
Why is it that every temperature proxy stops working in the last 50 years?
80
Simon,
Re Lipdverse… They state:
“In 2014 we received our first round of funding from the National Science Foundation to support paleoclimate informatics.
This funding turned paleoclimate informatics from a hobby to a research focus.”
Hmmm.. Hobby to research…Good on them..
Do you know that one of the involved scientists’, personally linked university webpage, states:
“Human activity has caused large changes to Earth’s climate and landscapes, and has committed us to even more dramatic climatic and environmental changes in the not-so-distant future.”
Well, it seems they have made their position clear..non negotiable.. A supposed scientific Fact…. AGW.
Imho, there is a clear bias.
That is not science Simon.
I humbly ask, could they be wrong? Also, is it also wrong to question the narrative?.. Or is your funded “consensus science” infallible?
Just asking, my friend.
80
On a contemporary note, natural history repeats.
‘The UAH and HadCRUT5 records both show the Northern Hemisphere warming more rapidly than the Southern, but the amount of extra warming in the HadCRUT5 record is very anomalous. While the Southern Hemisphere satellite and surface rates are similar, the Northern Hemisphere rates are very different.’ (CO2 Coalition)
20
The uneven warming canard you people bring up over and over doesn’t dispute the existence of the MWP at all thus you went nowhere with this poor attempt to deflection, and it happened worldwide too but more significant in the Northern Hemisphere due to the higher level of land surface area.
50
The MWP was cooler than present day because warming was uneven and not consistent across the planet.
111
It was warmer over all since the there was no permafrost in areas during the Vikings living at SW Greenland where today it is year-round in those places and the tree line was much further north than now too.
40
Interesting argument, but to test your hypothesis we should return to the Roman Warm Period and see if it was also uneven.
10
‘The researchers found the same pattern of asynchrony when they looked at lesser-known events like the Roman Warm Period, which toasted the first few centuries C.E.; the Dark Ages Cold Period, which cast a chill from 400 to 800; and the Medieval Warm Period, which defrosted Earth from around 800 to 1200. As in the Little Ice Age, the warmest and coolest decades within those intervals didn’t occur everywhere in the world at the same time.’ (Science)
The authors go on to say that this modern climate optimum is in universal sync so must be caused by CO2.
00
And some sections of the media are reporting the result as a huge win for Mr Mann-made Warming.
See –
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/09/us-climate-scientist-michael-mann-wins-1m-in-defamation-lawsuit
or
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/02/08/michael-mann-bloggers-defamation-trial/
You might guess their take from the sources …
Neither seems at all concerned about freedom of speech. Oddly, as both rely on it.
Auto
250
Mann actually won $1 for reputational damage.
The $1Million punitive damages unique to America and in Washington, DC, is a ridiculous stunt. No one could suggest that it is appropriate punishment for a journalist of modest income just telling the truth, which is his job.
In a perverse way, it will ensure the case if famous, top news internationally and in time, the $1Million will not matter. The $1 will.
190
Taking it to the supreme court will cost money, so they’ll have to send the hat around.
I agree that the increased exposure the story gets will be good for the cause.
100
Yes, Steyn will need a lot of support. I am hoping he gets it. Americans are immensely generous to good causes.
141
As much as this verdict p155e5 me off, I sincerely hope Mark doesn’t appeal. He will have no trouble raising the funds to pay the damages from his supporters, if he needs to, but given the case has dragged on for twelve years already, he would be taking a huge risk with his health.
I recall a legal action I instigated against a supplier, who had caused my company to lose a big sum of money and also wreck my relationship with a good customer. The advice I received was all positive – we had a cast iron claim and the legals were gung ho. Well that lasted right up the the first ‘engagement’, which didn’t go well. I started to worry. Second engagement was no better and I realised that, despite having right on our side, the other guy had good lawyers who ran rings around mine. I had to call it off and take the loss on the chin rather than throw good money after bad.
I had sleepless nights for a month or more after that, and my relationship with my board of directors was severely tested. Almost twenty years later, I still feel frustrated by the whole saga and I’m much more cautious when it comes to such matters. I no longer trust confident lawyers with no skin in the game, either.
80
I think if one put themselves back in the 16/17th centuries and observed the witch trials that went on , you could see the same thing in this case and others. Heresy is a cardinal sin – especially concerning climate change. We have all looked into the glowering eyes of the zealot. Steyn had to deal with ignorant people who would – in other times ,had him burned at the stake.
280
Mann is litigious.
Don’t forget he also attempted to sue Prof. Tim Ball when Prof. Ball questioned Mann’s “science”. The court dismissed the case in 2019 after about eight years after Mann was unable to produce the documents they requested that would have proved Mann’s case. Why do you think he never produced the documents….? And then sadly Prof. Ball passed away in 2022.
Imagine having an argument so weak that it had to be settled in court, not settled by rigorous debate and analysis in accord with the Scientific Method.
341
Incidentally, when Prof. Ball came to Australia and spoke to the (pro-science) Australian Environment Foundation in Melbournistan on 9th November 2016, he made the comment that Mann’s Lawfare against him had cost him his life’s savings, even though the case was ultimately dismissed.
Losing your life’s savings is ultimately what this punishment is all about.
Similar punishment was applied to Prof. Peter Ridd and anyone else who questions the “settled science” (sic).
470
David
I think you highlight a major imbalance which needs to be addressed and that is the financial imbalance. People should not be subject to the financial risk of having a vexatious litigant that spends none of his own money in cases that by their nature are hugely expensive. Even if Steyn could afford it he should crowd fund the appeal. Whilst the money raised would come from sceptics the ever growing number of libertarians in the world who value free speech would contribute to protect freedom of speech.
I think such a fund raising is important because bankruptcy should not be the consequences of defending such a right but we need to send a message to the climate cabal that there is a body of support to counter the bullying of the left that is represented by these intimidating legal threats and actions. It would also be useful if such a funding process is as successful as I believe it would be that surplus funds are then put together as a fighting fund to deter the vexatious actions of these climate litigants.
50
The reason the case was dismissed was that Mann had undertaken to supply the court with his data. He did not. He had previously insisted that the data created as an employee of Penn State was personal, his property. But he achieved the delay by lying to the court and making a binding agreement and then breaking it. The case was abandoned and given it was a case about an allegedly defamatory statement, Ball won the case de facto.
So in Canada at least the funny statement that Mann was at Penn State but was more suited to the State Penn cannot be challenged again. And the University President who defended Mann ended up in the State Pen. Which is doubly funny given it is the basis of the second suit against Steyn this time. Steyn was proved right.
Mann did not make the same mistake in jurisdiction and made sure the case was heard in his choice of court, firstly America and secondly Washington D.C. in the heart of Climate Central where it would be impossible to get an unbiased jury. But even they awarded only $1 for reputational damages, the absolute minimum.
170
And all along this sordid tale Mann has not needed to spend a penny of his own money in these lawsuits. When questioned in this trial he had no idea who was paying his attorneys. The money is provided by the likes of the Union of Concerned Scientists and probably other members of the green blob. He basically knows he’s untouchable, and acts that way. One can only hope that a lot of previously dis- interested people have been following this case and are having a re- think on the whole climate change subject. Or am I being too optimistic?
140
Running afoul of the inquisition is to be expected for exposing the sins of the high clergy of the church of climatology. Swamp creatures all.
150
It’s tragic watching the collapse of the USA (and the West in general). Unlike previous civilisational collapses, this one we are watching in real time, online. And unlike previous collapses that took decades or centuries, this is happening in only years because of the instantaneous nature of information transfer today.
And, when dictatorships are established in all Western countries, the slave army of useful idiots of the Left who are helping to orchestrate this destruction, will not be spared by their masters either.
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Perhaps you could be a post-apocalyptic warlord, Mad Max beyond Thunderdome style, in leathers and a methane powered v8 with armour plating.
Maybe you can operate out of Alice Springs?
/you know you want it
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It’s happening in real-time, with plenty of information available but with little public reaction apart from complaining about rising COL bills. It’s happening at government direction but again people aren’t putting two and two together. Polling shows Labor 52:48 ahead. Is it because the younger brigade are now totally caught up in their social media stuff that they no longer even see or try to decipher for themselves how the world works? Even older ones are caught up in the fluff as most newspapers except The Australian seem to be dying on their feet.
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“How the world works”.
It works by governments spending as much money as is needed to give the appearance of caring.
Then they go and borrow more money which puts the nation into unimaginable debt that pushes interest rates sky high and crushes everyone who is trying to do the right thing.
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What would expect from a jury pooled from the Washington DC area? The punitive damages extension seems quite ridiculous.
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Back in the day, in the US when the Constitution and laws were observed, libel was extremely hard to prove because “actual malice” had to be demonstrated. And it was almost impossible for a public figure like Mann to sue, let alone win. Especially against news media as Mark Steyn is.
Defamation would require even a stronger case
Under Leftist infiltration of the US institutions, and the introduction of the false doctrines of “settled science” and scientific fact being established by “consensus”, such cases of questioning the climate religion have become routine.
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If the “judge” knew the law, this case would never have been heard. I’d be willing to bet he, she or it was a DIE (Diversity, Inclusion and Equity) placement based on gender or skin colour, not merit regardless of gender or skin colour.
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What a bum rap! It ain’t over yet though. Hang in there Mark.
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Perhaps there is hope
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The wheels are coming off the juggernaut, windmill generators on a stick are having massive problems, electric cars are tanking, apparently every virtue signaller already has one.
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The punitive damages are large, true. The core of the decision, however, based on US law, is that the defendants _libeled Mann_ – equating his work (which has repeatedly been confirmed, BTW) with sexual predation, and associating Mann with a convicted predator based on a University connection. Penn State University has ~75K students, it’s huge, and there is no connection between Mann and the described predator.
It’s fine to disagree with scientific conclusions, in fact that’s a basic function of science. That’s how we learn, how we progress. But that disagreement has to be based on _facts_, not ad hominem attacks, appalling ones in this case. Simberg and Steyn clearly crossed that line, and the court decision reflects that.
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Really? The litigation technicalities has nothing to do with it, in my opinion. It was a use of free speech in the context of a member of the press pointing out the corruption of a public institution. The litigation and the punitive damages are a vehicle to punish deniers. They are making an example out of Steyn because of his celebrity. Anybody else and it would never have reached this point. Additionally, it’s an affront to the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution.
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There was no corruption or illegal activity, that’s why punitive damages were awarded against Steyn for alleging that there were.
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Steyn probably shouldn’t have used the word fraud, because it has a particular meaning. Deception for personal gain.
There has been evidence presented that the chart does not accurately convey what is claimed that it does, or doesn’t come with the required caveats and disclosures, and/or is not well grounded scientifically in the methods and data used to create it.
Is that deception? If it is, was it done for financial gain?
Steyn may have used the word fraud as a synonym for dishonest. Most would have taken it that way.
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Read Judith Curry’s expert report. See point 2.
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Judges weight evidence based upon the credibility of the expert witness.
Judith’s objections have been covered ad nauseum in the literature and beyond. Did they affect the shape of the reconstruction. No.
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“Judith’s objections have been covered ad nauseum in the literature and beyond. Did they affect the shape of the reconstruction. No.”
Which is why you can detail exactly none of them right? You just “believe” by groupthink. Farm out your brain to the crowd and follow the mob.
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Fudging data is corrupt.
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Once again Simon you warmist/alarmists ignore the obvious that the Jury does admit there wasn’t any defamation at all which is why the $1 damage was assessed you really should stop lying to yourself.
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You as usual fail to understand the $1 million is illegal which MUST be greatly reduced as there is a SCOTUS decision already as pointed out in another blog:
Rud Istvan a Lawyer,
and another comment from Rud a partial quote,
There was no defamation!
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Nor have sceptics disproven it in any credible way.
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KR,
English comprehension isn’t your strong suit I guess. It would be a dull language indeed without metaphor — apparently not well understood in Washington DC. Here’s Simberg’s offending statement:
That clause starting with except … qualifies his metaphor. Mann has been interfering with the data, not with children. Simberg appears to have the expertise to make that call. That judgement is on Mann’s mathematical techniques, so is definitely *not* ad hominem.
Steyn quoted and attributed the above from Simberg which, as a journalist, he should be able to do, then distanced himself from it somewhat, before making the key point that the same university that had exonerated Mann of academic wrongdoing had previously exonerated Sandusky. Not much ad hom about that either. A reasonable person might suspect Penn State’s “investigation” was a kangaroo court.
A reasonable person might think the same of the Washington verdict.
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Instead of Penn State, he should be in State Penn.
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Did he win?
It has been said that reputation is very important because we only get one.
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Climate Science has become a self-fulfilling catastrophe.
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This stuff is coming here in spades when the federal government introduces its misinformation -Disinformation laws. The greens and teals will love it, so no chance of getting it held up in the Senate.
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And no one should forget it was the Liberal (pretend conservatives) faction of the Uniparty who were responsible for introducing the bill in the first place.
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Mulling over this for some time, the jury decision is a joke.
Firstly the jury found Mann has been slighted to the tune of $1. Not a cup of coffee or a can of beer.
Second, the punitive damages is optional to stop a recurrence of this action by the perpetrator who is not a rich man, has suffered three recent heart attacks, presented himself in a wheelchair to defend himself in court. And as a member of the press, had a perfect right to state what he saw as the truth, both the fraud in the work and that Manne’s defender was himself a convicted criminal who defended another convicted criminal.
And Mann has made it clear both to the public and the judge that he will pay no costs, that all his expenses are paid by others and without limit. This is the rich attacking the poor for daring to speak, even as a member of the press.
So the massive punitive damages make no sense for the purpose for which it is allowed. That is not justice but an abomination.
In fact it is the exact reverse of the logic in allowing punitive damages in the first place. Steyn has already been massively punished financially by someone who has no costs in the matter and cannot establish any financial or reputational damages at all.
So why did they do it? And why did the judge allow this travesty of justice. You do not massively punish someone to warn off others from reasonable and very slight criticism.
So it will be overturned, again at real financial cost to Steyn. What it will do is put Manne on a pedestal as the rich vexatious litigant he is. His fans may cheer, but in fact he retires in disgrace with his $1 winnings.
And his infamous and utterly discredited hockey stick remains the ridiculous fabrication it always was, a symbol of the financial corruption of science.
The real surprise is that the judge thought this was reasonable. And Mann has demonstrated once again he could not care less. He is the indulged child of the ultra rich wind and solar industry and the UN.
But this sort of blatant political execution happens in other countries, like the sentencing of Cardinal George Pell to jail by a judge in Victoria in a second trial which should have been abandoned for interference and the sentence was agreed by the two out of three judges in review but overturned by the Australian High Court as having no value whatsoever. And no one says sorry. Only one judge stood out, Winiarski the only experienced criminal barrister who disagreed that justice was done. And the others and the ABC cost George Pell his life which is a very high price to pay for doing no wrong.
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I am reminded of the jailing of Galileo. Or the Greek council members who sentenced Socrates to death. These events are infamous in history. No good will come of this for Michael Mann who has done as much damage now to the justice system as he has to science.
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Alarmists are all hockey stick,
Though not what the skeptics would pick,
Who prefer something flat,
Like a straight cricket bat,
To outplay the globalist bailiwick.
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This is from the Leftist Canadian government propaganda outlet cbc.ca
Here is a warning to anyone else who dares question the Official Narrative.
And Mann is still going after the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
It’s amazing what you can do when someone else is paying the legal bills.
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Does anyone know how long the jury deliberated for in this case?
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About 24 hrs, pretrial.
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Sounds like the “night of the long knives”.
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Mann vs. Steyn: A Disgrace to the Profession – Climate Change Roundtable #97
1hr 10min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWwle7R6PFk
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If any further proof is needed that the US has a two tier justice system that prosecutes those who don’t subscribe to the leftie globalist fascist creed and lets off those that do, while the true US President is being prosecuted over keeping documents his is allowed to at his home, the dribbling idiot Biden is let off for keeping classified documents in his garage even though they said it was a crime! Currently the way the US is run and its election system makes banana republics look very efficient and fair.
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Peter Hotez came out in defence of Mann, drawing parallels with anyone questioning the vax. Just in case the collusion of unscientific scientists wasn’t completely clear.
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I admire Mark Steyn and regret the decision but but I have to say that he was asking for it and it is perfectly possible to badmouth the climate establishment as corrupt and in the same article name its leading practitioners without asserting that they themselves are fraudulent.
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The reason that no one seems to be able to find any tree rings from the last 50 years, so they can update it, is because the morons still want to use the “Nature Trick” to “Hide the Decline” from 1960 to 2010
The “Nature Trick” is used to ignore Isotopic evidence in tree rings which show that the temperature does not determine the width of tree rings. Climategate emails, hacked or leaked by an insider, verified that the tree ring data would not show the upturn in temperature after 1960. In fact, they showed a decline. So the contrivers said, “hide the decline” by replacing it with grafted on thermometer measurements. Also, the reason that the temperature does not determine the width of tree rings is that sometimes the tree rings are thin because of hot droughts, as well as the assumed cold used in the Hockey stick. Isotopic evidence showed that many of Mann’s assumptions for tree rings were wrong, and therefore constitute evidence for “Scientific Fraud”.
The “Scientific Fraud” in the “Hockey Stick” and any other scientific paper, is manifested in the continued use of tree rings before 1960, without accounting for and correcting for the isotopic evidence taken for each year/ring, to determine whether it was thin because of a hot drought or a cold spell. Continuing to assume all thin tree rings are caused by cold when isotopic evidence shows most are caused by hot droughts is “Scientific Fraud”.
This moronic corruption is dragging society towards another insane dogmatic loony-left-wing collapse.
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Many of the tree proxies were adversely affected by air pollution. Remember when ‘acid rain’ was a thing? Fortunately, we have made significant environmental gains since the 1950’s. Modern temperature reconstructions consider much more than the just the width of a tree ring. Mann’s paper is 25 years old, the science has moved on.
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Technobabble, Simple Simon.
The tree ring proxy is just incompetent (“unskilled” in the climate jargon).
To preserve the holiness of the graph, which flattened known episodes of climatic variance and allowed great gasps of propaganda, a change of metric was used to pin the tail on the donkey and then hidden from obvious view.
This “divergence” characterises the incompetence, which is then blamed on … whatever.
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The Bristlecone Tree ring data was actually compiled by Dr. Isdo who never considered it as temperature data by a proxy for CO2 fertilizer effect as pointed out below,
The rest in the LINK
Here is the PDF paper of Graybill and Isdo research, PDF
The Hockey Stick was indeed FRAUD since the Tree Ring data he was using for temperature reconstruction was actually about the CO2 fertilizer effect.
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“Useful Idiot”. The scientific fraud exists in the tree rings used without reference to isotopic evidence used “BEFORE” 1960, and therefore without reference to temperature “BEFORE” 1960. Evidence from other proxies show that the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ was one degree warmer than today.
The sea surface temperature proxy has increased by 1.25 Kelvin in one hundred years. But the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ was one degree Kelvin higher than that. This was shown in the court case against Michael Mann by Tim Ball. Michael Mann gave up his libel suit against Dr. Ball rather than turn over his climate research data to the court.
Since then the fool has tried to give himself credibility amongst real scientists by ‘moving on’ to ‘rewrite the past’ before 1960, to produce a ‘Hockey Stick’ graph that now shows Tim Ball’s Medieval Warm Period, but cooler than today.
So he seems to have moved on from using secret faulty data (see above) to secret plagiarism of Tim Ball’s data without any credible reference to temperatures used before 1960.
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“Acid Rain” problem was scrubbed out by technology advances of which a friend of mine explained why Coal plants no longer a source of acid rain pollution which was only done 20 years ago.
Dr. Manns NORTHERN hemisphere only hockey stick was never replicated by a truly independent paper also that hundreds of science papers published over many decades showed that RWP, MWP and the LIA were real Historians also have published plenty of papers that mirrors these climate defining epochs very well.
His paper has long been shown to be garbage but climate cultists like YOU can’t let go of this millstone because you like stupid papers.
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Thank you Paul, the infamous ‘Hide the Decline’ statement answers the point made by Joanne above. (She probably knows). Yes the same kind of proxy data was available to complete the time series to the current time, but the key is the selection of data to get the desired result.
Your other points, agreed but to make those corrections would entail a big study.
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“Mark Steyn is a member of the media. As such he is supposedly afforded First Amendment protections.’
The First Amendment applies to all Americans, it does not create a special license of ‘the media’.
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It also doesn’t protect you from potential repercussions for lying.
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Mann should be sued for all the costs imposed on the citizens of the world through climate policies implemented as a result of his Hockey Stick.
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The real loser is science.
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Dear Ms Nova,
I am sure all hope no inadequate person tries this law fare out on you.
Regards,
Amr
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Michel Mann, the guy that photoshopped and forged a Nobel Prize certificate and presented it to the court stating twice to the Court that he was a nobel prize winner… And he knowingly presented to the jury evidence of damages that he KNEW was incorrect. If lying at a Court is now without consequences, there is no justice in DC.
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I didn’t realize until it was mentioned in another (UK) article that Mann’s hockey stick was never used in the IPCC’s main technical report, just on the cover, as though it were a cartoon. If not used, the IPCC must have realised it wasn’t ‘safe’ to use.
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