Climate scientist Michael Mann was awarded more than $1 million on Thursday in a defamation lawsuit against two conservative bloggers — Mark Steyn, a National Review contributor, and Rand Simberg, a former adjunct scholar — over comments about his work.
The case goes back 12 years, during a time when global warming’s existence was hotly debated in the “blogosphere,” reported The New York Times.
The unanimous verdict in District of Columbia Superior Court was decided by a six-member jury following a four-week trial. Steyn and Simberg were both found guilty of defamation for making false statements with “maliciousness, spite, ill will, vengeance or deliberate intent to harm.”
Punitive damages were levied against both defendants — Steyn was ordered to pay $1 million, Simberg $1,000.
“I hope this verdict sends a message that falsely attacking climate scientists is not protected speech,” Mann said in a statement posted on social media.
Mann’s famous “hockey stick” graph published in Nature in 1998 showed the sharp upward trend of northern hemisphere temperatures in the 20th century, The Guardian reported.
In 2001, Mann’s illustration was included in a United Nations climate panel report, as well as featured in An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s 2006 documentary on climate change.
Claims by climate deniers of data manipulation were raised against Mann after a leak of emails between Mann and other scientists in 2009 — known as “Climategate.”
Mann was cleared of the charges after an investigation by Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) — where Mann was a professor at the time — and an evaluation of the correspondence by The Associated Press.
Then, in 2012, a blogpost by Simberg was published by libertarian think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in which the Penn State investigation was compared with a case involving convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky.
“Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data,” Simberg wrote in the blogpost, as reported by The Associated Press.
Later, in National Review, Steyn called Mann’s research “fraudulent,” referencing Simberg’s article.
During the trial, Mann had to show that the writings of the defendants were published with “actual malice,” under the 1964 Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan. The case held that public officials were limited in their ability to sue for defamation under the freedom of speech protections of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Mann said the blog posts had caused his reputation to suffer and for him to lose grant funding, The New York Times reported. Meanwhile, the defendants asserted that Mann continued to be successful in his field.
“Today’s verdict vindicates Mike Mann’s good name and reputation. It also is a big victory for truth and scientists everywhere who dedicate their lives answering vital scientific questions impacting human health and the planet,” said Peter Fontaine, a member of Mann’s legal team, in the statement.
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