Climatologist, Michael Mann, the author of the infamous “hockey stick graph” has sued two of his biggest critics, and lost – badly. The graph famously displays the claim that between 1902 and 1995, global temperatures increased dramatically.
In each lawsuit, the defendants were accused by Mann of misrepresenting his claim – and in each case, the suit was thrown out by the judge.
On Mark Steyn’s website, he writes, “As that ludicrous fact testifies, it has been procedurally bollocksed by the District of Columbia courts, which is why it will almost certainly be headed to the Supreme Court. When it gets there, it will be the most consequential free-speech case since New York Times vs Sullivan fifty-five years ago.”
Steyn considers the dismissal of the case a victory for freedom of the press. He claims that Mann’s suit was a bald-faced attempt to stifle criticism of a scientific, journalistic report. If Mann’s claim had been upheld, it would have provided legal precedent for lawsuits against anyone claiming that any scientific journalist had made a weak or indefensible claim.
Steyn continues, “Those supporting our side in this battle include not only the chaps you might expect, such as Fox News, but an awful lot you might not – including NBC, The Washington Post, and the ACLU. Because they all recognize the threat that Mann poses to a free society in demanding the courts adjudicate public-policy disputes.”
The accuracy of the graph and the method used to produce it have been vociferously contested by many. As far back as 2007, author Michael Le Page wrote, “Since 2001, there have been repeated claims that the reconstruction is at best seriously flawed and at worst a fraud, no more than an artefact of the statistical methods used to create it. […] Michael Mann and his colleagues have reconstructed northern hemisphere temperatures for the past 2000 years using a broader set of proxies than was available for the original study. […] The new reconstruction has been generated using two statistical methods, both different to that used in the original study.”
Le Page goes on to explain that in times shortly before that covered by the graph, global temperatures were much higher than those shown on the chart. This information was taken from studies of tree rings and ice core samples- showing that temperatures during medieval times were significantly hotter than the temperature we experience today.
It has also not escaped the notice of many insightful commentators that the medical period was a particularly violent period of human history and that a connection between high temperatures and high rates of crime and interpersonal violence is well established.
According to court documents on the dismissal, “The Canadian court issued its final ruling in favor of the Dismissal motion that was filed in May 2019 by Dr. Tim Ball’s libel lawyers. […] Dr. Mann lost his case because he refused to show in open court his R2 regression numbers (the ‘working out’) behind the world-famous ‘hockey stick’ graph.”
Technologynews.com reports that Mann has been held in contempt of court in the ‘climate science denial case of the century.’ They write, “Prominent alarmist shockingly defies judge and refuses to surrender data for open court examination. Only possible outcome: Mann’s humiliation, defeat and likely criminal investigation in the U.S.”
The defendant in the second case, Dr. Tim Ball, is expected to direct attorneys to “trigger mandatory punitive court sanctions.” These include a finding that Mann acted with criminal intent when he used public funds to commit fraud.
To put it plainly, Mann has been found to have been dishonest in his efforts to foist his graph on the public, and that he used taxpayer money to obtain the false data which he used to create the fraudulent graph.
Technologynews.com goes on to explain the devastating effect Mann’s inevitable defeat will have on the argument that climate alarmists have been pushing on us for decades now.
Mann’s legal actions against his critics have been called a “SLAPP,” a (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) according to Technologynews.com. Legal experts have said that they have never seen such blatant bad faith as that displayed by Mann in his refusal to turn over all of the disputed data behind his graph.
If this story sounds familiar, you’re not alone. This is yet another case of a political leftist attacking those who criticize his claims and attempting to shut down the debate. While these tactics work well in the news media, in courts of Western law, they are almost always illegal.
