Mark Steyn loses in Washington D.C. in the defamation trial surrounding Michael E. Mann’s unbelievable temperature ‘hockey stick’, while President Biden cannot be criminally charged for taking home state secret papers on the grounds that he is gaga. Only in Democrat America. There was initial relief in the usual quarters at the slaying of Steyn, but the ‘settled’ climate science crowd is now stuck with the ghastly Mann and his ludicrous hockey stick. That should be punishment enough for anyone saying the debate about climate change is over.
It has hardly begun, but now there is a new breath of life for the once ubiquitous poster temperature scare that was centre stage in the 2009 Climategate scandal, and has been stinking up the science joint ever since. With Net Zero coming apart at the seams as reality about mass deindustrialisation and starvation beckons, the politicised science stories forecasting climate Armageddon are starting to attract wider public scepticism. As all cults eventually find, the sandwich-board fearmongering starts to wear thin when the forecast disasters fail to come to pass. Self-appointed promoters of irrationality descend into wilder and wilder flights of fantasy to re-capture the fleeting moments when their emotional rantings offered them a temporary place in the spotlight.
Last week a jury in Washington D.C. awarded Mann $1 million in ‘punitive’ damages against Mark Steyn, although damages for Mann’s reputation was set at a derisory $1. In itself, this should see the larger award set aside, since in recent times the Supreme Court has been cracking down on punitive awards more than nine times the damage amount.
The disconnect between the two awards hints at the political nature of the case. Steyn and a fellow writer Rand Simberg had criticised the hockey stick which abolished the Medieval Warming Period. Running a 1,000-year slightly declining temperature line until a sudden claimed human-caused spike in the 20th century removed the concept of natural climatic variation for a whole generation. The court heard evidence from a senior statistician working at Mann’s own University of Pennsylvania that the graph was “manipulated”. First published in 1999, Mann spent years denying requests from other academics for information about his methods. The Climategate leak with emails referring to “Mike’s Nature Trick” and “Hide the decline” blew all that apart. At the end of the recent trial, his lawyer told the jury that Michael Mann was tired of being attacked. “You have the opportunity to serve as an example to prevent others from acting in a similar way,” he added.
The distinguished science writer Roger Pielke Jr. attended the trial and he has concluded the mistake Steyn and Simberg made was thinking that it would be sufficient to win by proving their case. Steyn’s frequent contention has been that the graph was fraudulent. “The case, at least in this particular venue, was simply unwinnable no matter what cases were put by the prosecution and the defence. Mann simply had to show up,” observed Pielke.
In a statement, Mann said: “I hope this verdict sends a message that falsely attacking climate scientists is not protected speech.” Pielke comments that he would not be surprised to now see a flurry of lawsuits against people who have been critical of climate science and climate scientists. “Such legal action may not be limited to climate – debate over COVID-19, also presents a target rich environment for unwanted speech to silence.”
Dr. Judith Curry blames Mann for destroying her academic career at Georgia Tech when he called her a “serial climate disinformer”. Her crime was to challenge the idea of a consensus around the science of climate and the involvement of humans in causing most if not all temperature change. After the verdict was announced, she tweeted that there was no justice from a Democrat, “climate-concerned” jury. “And a huge blow for freedom of speech,” she added.
She is right of course. The seven figure punitive damage was sought not to compensate Mann for any loss of reputation, but to deter anyone else arguing that the ‘settled’ climate activists backing the collectivist Net Zero project are wrong. For Steyn and Simberg to have lost an American defamation case, actual malice, defined as not believing what they wrote about Mann, needed to be proved. The reason many neutral observers of the case believe the result is perverse is that Steyn has spent over two decades criticising the methodology of the hockey stick, and no evidence has been presented that he doesn’t believe every single word he has written.
In commentary posted on Steyn’s website, it was noted that he was a member of the media and “supposedly afforded” First Amendment protections. “If a member of the media is no longer protected, what do you think that means for everyday citizens? And it doesn’t matter if you are in D.C. or Montana – anyone can file in the jurisdiction of his or her choosing.” It was noted that in 2019 the Supreme Court decided not to allow the case to be tried in the higher District of Columbia Court of Appeals, but there was a dissenting verdict from Judge Samuel Alito. He felt the case went to the “very heart” of the U.S. constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and the press. While not making any specific judgements on the case, he identified that the matter at issue was the “protection afforded to journalists and others who use harsh language in criticising opposing advocacy on one of the most important public issues of the day”.
The learned judge was also aware of the pitfalls of installing a jury to decide on the matter, noting, “the controversial nature of the whole subject of climate change exacerbates the risk that the jurors’ determination will be coloured by their preconceptions on the matter”. Climate change, he continued, has staked a place at the very centre of the nation’s public discourse. “The core purpose of the constitutional protection of freedom of expression is to ensure that all opinions on such issues have a chance to be heard and considered,” he said.
Not if the fake Nobel laureate Michael E Mann has anything to do with it, it might be said. A consistent abuser over the years of climate ‘deniers’, he was recently part of a gang of activists and journalists who persuaded Nature Springer to retract a paper by four Italian scientists who had investigated past weather data and concluded there was not a climate ‘emergency’.
Whether Mann gets his $1 million remains to be seen, but his trip to the libel courts, which has been spun out over a decade, will not cost him a cent. Wealthy benefactors are available to fund all his costs. Not so Mark Steyn.
Just over a year ago Steyn was in fine form on GB News serving up a scintillating prime time show on the fledgling channel – with a subversive subtext telling the state regulator of cable news to get stuffed. It was compulsive viewing, although it was never going to last in the highly-regulated Ofcom world of U.K. television. The same man, who in your correspondent’s view is incapable of writing or telling an uninteresting line, is pictured above outside the Washington D.C. court building. It might come as a shock to readers who remember him on U.K. screens as a dapper, bustling presence. Life has not been kind to Mark of late with rising legal bills and three heart attacks. White-haired, gaunt and confined to a wheelchair from which he conducted his own three-week defence in the trial. He clutches a Liberty hockey stick, a fund raising device. The stick has now sold out, but readers can provide support here.
Bravo Mark Steyn, a true radical, free thinker and brave defender of free speech.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Not surprising in the least. The establishment will not allow the fundamental premises of its ideology to be questioned.
You can just about discuss the problem of the costs without violent retribution and censorship. But challenge the basis of the whole thing? Never.
It was the same with covid. They quickly laid out the premises: it’s a pandemic, the virus is the deadliest threat to society in living memory, the only way out is farmacological
Those were and remain largely the unquestionable premises. And we were all left to squabble about the cost and the right approach, thereby not only leaving the flawed assumptions unchallenged but in fact reinforcing them by being forced to debate the logical consequences of them and only that.
This is how society has been mind controlled since time immemorial and it isn’t about to change.
This was a defamation case not a case about the fraudulent climate hooey and hockey stick. Steyn lost mostly because he equated Mann with the rapes of young athletes at U Penn (something to the effect that we should expect Mann to be raping climate science at a school which rapes young people and covers it up etc). That is why he lost.
We should be clear that this trial had nothing to do with the quackery and criminality called ‘climate science’. It was purely a case about slander and reputation degradation.
I am not quite sure why you have received a number of red thumbs down. It is true that the Hockey Stick graph is not a representation of temperature on earth over the last one thousand years. Steve McIntyre showed that to be the case, despite Mann refusing to provide data, methodology and computer code. ——This is a bit like me claiming Elvis Presley is alive and living in Egypt. When I am asked for my data, my evidence or my film of Mr. Presley I point blank refuse and call all those asking for it “”Elvis Deniers”. ——-It is true that this case is not about science or whether the Hockey Stick is some kind of ultimate truth regarding temperature, because it clearly is not. It is about “reputation” or “loss of earnings” or some other spurious stuff. ——–But as far as I am concerned, in science if you refuse to provide evidence, data etc for others to be able to reproduce your work then your reputation is in the gutter and you are a total imposter. —Mann is a total imposter.
I think FerdIII has received a number of red thumbs down for stating that “Steyn lost mostly because he equated Mann with the rapes of young athletes at U Penn”. That’s simply false. Steyn never “equated Mann with the rapes of young athletes at U Penn”.
It was Simberg who wrote, “Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science”, which Mark Steyn repeated, saying, “Not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr. Simberg does, but he has a point.”
Neither of them “equated Mann with the rapes of young athletes”, they compared Penn State University’s findings that allegations about a pedophile were unfounded with the university’s findings that allegations of scientific wrongdoing by Mann were unfounded. Although the jury may have been too stupid to understand the difference.
(Also, by the way, it wasn’t ‘U Penn’, it was Penn State University. It has nothing to do with the University of Pennsylvania. They are two completely different universities.)
While that may strictly be true, in practice this guy is able to bring this to court because he has the support of people that want to defend what he stands for.
Many people say many things about others that are defamatory but few make it to court.
On the other hand many things end up in court that never should. Ask Trump.
I don’t believe for a minute this man’s reputation was damaged to the tune of 1m dollars and if it was it was because the lies of his theories were exposed, not because of the rhetorical flourishes used to expose him.
Yep
Penn State looked the other way when their prize winning coach Sandusky was molesting young boys, and they looked the other way when their funding champion Mann was ‘molesting’ data. That’s a criticism of Penn State, it is not equating Mann to a rapist.
Good point. ———In the end though a charlatan is let of to continue being a government funded data adjuster and climate change imposter.
No he didn’t. He compare the treatment of both men. NOT both men. An entirely different matter.
He really didn’t do that, and you are accepting the MSM spin. All Mark said was a college that hid child abuse perpetrated on an industrial scale would have little compunction about covering up scientific fraud. He didn’t for a second equate scientific fraud with child abuse.
Bizarre quantity of downticks! The post was not a criticism of Steyn, you twits! It was merely a clarification of what happened. Steyn shouldn’t have lost, of course – and FerdIII didn’t say he should have!
This was supposed to be a defamation case, but it was all about climate quackery and the hockey stick. The Plaintiff’s closing statement made that clear – “These attacks on climate scientists have to stop.” and “Election denial is the same as climate denial”.
As plaintiff (Mann) was given the right to chose where the case was heard, it’s small wonder he elected to have it heard in DC. Mann’s senior counsel, in summing up, appealed to the jury to send out a strong message to stop attacks on other scientists out there and proceeded to conflate “science deniers” with “election deniers,” the precedent already having been set by the verdict against Trump for the january 6th 2021 ‘insurrection.’ The US justice system is a laughing stock. Cold comfort for the redoubtable and always excellent Mark Steyn.
The woke regime was never going to find against one of its own.
‘The core purpose of the constitutional protection of freedom of expression is to ensure that all opinions on such issues have a chance to be heard and considered’
So, an unconstitutional verdict; an absolute and shameful disgrace.
Life has not been kind to Mark Steyn or the climate realist community. This case could never be won on the basis of good science. That argument was lost a long time ago because people believe the narrative ‘The consensus of climate scientists blah blah…..’. But the battle isn’t lost and I pray, that one day, Mark is fully vindicated. He was and is one of the best journalists I’ve ever listened to. Principled, articulate, witty and a joy to listen to.
What a wonderful, brave and good man Mark Steyn is, and what a price he is paying for being such. A great encouragement to keep stepping up to the plate of truth.
Even a year ago one was walking on thin ice to go near this subject in anything but revered tones, regardless of the wall of scientific facts one might have had. But now address it with the ridicule it deserves and bystanders to a conversation start to see the emperor has no clothes at all.
I did this at dinner with a senior cabinet member and tory leadership contender recently, and they got very cross indeed – flak is heaviest when you’re over the target, etc. – and one could feel the table of 14 suddenly starting to question their beliefs.
The ground is shifting quickly now, and it doesn’t favour the liars.
What a good comment and so true.
We often underestimate the value of just one person being prepared to go against the grain and say openly what many only dare think privately.
And sadly these people tend to take bullets on behalf of many.
Thank god for people like Steyn.
Most in government already know that this climate change crisis issue isn’t really about science. ——-But as in all walks of life it is hard to get a man to disagree with something when his ability to feed his family and pay his mortgage depends upon agreeing. ——–That is why not a one person stood in Parliament in 2019 and asked a single question as to the cost/benefit of NET ZERO. ——-It was simply waved through. They waved it through knowing full well that the cost would be in the trillions, and that even if it was achievable (which it isn’t) it would have no measurable effect on climate. ——-So why did they do it? —-Because it isn’t about the climate and they know it.
Mark showed the nonsense up on his broadcasts and for that he will be hounded by the blob until he is gone. I have donated to help him with costs and will continue fighting in my own way and hope fellow Sceptics feel the same.
What a good comment, and what a sound decent chap (I assume) you must be raising the topic to an over preened fool in the cabinet. These idiots do need to hear the truth. I can only say thank you for doing it.
The Globalists were never going to let Steyn win. Their planned futures, and the one they have planned for us, depended on Mann’s Hockey Stick nonsense being upheld.
So sad to see Mark looking so frail and ill. He should never have allowed himself to be jabbed.
Mark Steyn has been very courageous. ——But what is courage? ——It is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it. ————————-Twain.
I enjoyed Mark Steyn’s presentations on GBNews. He was the only one tackling some particularly serious issues, which the rest of the media – and the UK government – studiously ignore. It was a shock to see his present condition, but I think, and hope, that he will regain his health and strength.
The regulator is there it seems to protect the establishment position. The position that we are all to be impoverished based on junk science and discredited temperature graphs. The position based on falsified Malthusian ideas about population and resources, with exaggerated fears about a climate crisis for which no empirical evidence exists.
What courage!
Steyn has more backbone than the rest of our MSM combined.
He knew a Washington Deep State jury wouldn’t give him a fair trial, but entered the Lion’s den anyway.
To the surprise of no one. The hockey stick fraud is repeated all over the internet. Every time you search for historical temperatures, there it is. Every time someone uses a graph to motivate their adherence to the cult, there it is. To admit that the hockey stick graph is fraudulent would be like NASA coming out and admitting the Moon landing was shot in a studio.
Do read Steyn’s book “Lights Out”. Based on articles he was writing in the 90s and early 2000s. Much of what he writes about rings alarm bells, and describes how Canada, in particular, was succumbng to the slow destruction of free speech in the name of one particular religion by the weaponisation of human rights.
Also “A Disgrace to the Profession”
Look at the face on Mann. ———Would you trust this piece of s..t?
Mann is evil. If there is a God, he will make sure that Mann gets his just desserts.
I heartily concur with praise for Mark Steyn he is brave and clever man, like many others I support him regularly at via his website – (buying his books is no chore as they are excellent).
He has of course taken UK’s Ofcom to court over his being forced to leave GB News….so another battle to come.
This wonderful brave warrior for Free Speech needs our support.
I followed this case and couldn’t believe the outcome. A disgraceful mockery, akin to the morons that were found not guilty for pulling down Cabot’s statue in Bristol.
This is not justice, it’s a travesty. Shame on the jury.
Free speech is dead, justice is dead,
Brilliant insightful article.
The problem is that it should never have been a jury trial. It was never going to be fair. This was bound to be biased by billions of dollars of climate change propaganda yearly. In cases of clear miscarriage of justice, the Judge can override the jury verdict. Hopefully he will do so in this case.
Only orthodox opinions are now allowed?
Free speech – it was nice to know you.
I have nothing but the greatest respect and admiration for the eloquent and witty Mark Steyn and it is tragic to see him looking so frail and battered. He was always uneasy about the jab. This is a sinister vendetta against him and we can only trust he will be given the strength to overcome it. Fighting for what is right is so very very hard. As Beethoven said, the cross a man bears is like the cross (sharp) in music – it raises you higher.