From Jennifer Marohasy

By jennifer

Mark Steyn to pay punitive damages of US $1,000,000.  The wicked have won.

Michael Mann set out to sue a high-profile conservative magazine, The National Review, Inc., and a much-despised right wing think tank, The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), for questioning the cross of climate change denial, the infamous hockey stick graph.

After 12 years, and probably much more than $12 millions dollars in legal expenses, Professor Mann has never been sent a bill.  Others pick up this tab – Mann’s legal expenses – just as they might pay the tab, he has running at a bar.

That is a long time to keep the tab running, and there are some very rich people with very deep pockets in this world.  And those people are mostly on the side of virtue, when it comes to issues of ‘climate science’, as it is called.

A jury in the Washington DC Supreme Court has ruled in their favour.  And the damages are being awarded against the men who wrote the articles suggesting the hockey stick chart is a fraud.  The National Review, Inc. and the CEI, the publishers they stepped away from this fight, leaving the foot soldiers holding ‘the baby’, so to speak.

The compensatory damages are US$1 from each of Mark Steyn who wrote the article that was published by the National Review and Rand Simberg who wrote the article published at the CEI blog.

The punitive damages are $1,000,000 for Mark Steyn and $1,000 for Rand Simberg.  Though Steyn was actually quoting Simberg.

Punitive damages, to be paid to Michael Mann are punishment.

Doesn’t everyone believe in catastrophic human caused climate change.  Is that what the jury were thinking?

They have thrown the book at Mark Steyn, with three times the force, perhaps because Mark chose to represent himself.

Perhaps because Mark Steyn has not been to university.  Perhaps because Mark Steyn is the example that needs to be set.

1. Dr. Michael Mann qualifications:

Education: A.B. applied mathematics and physics (1989), MS physics (1991), MPhil physics (1991), MPhil geology (1993), PhD geology & geophysics (1998). Institutions: University of California, Berkeley, Yale University

Academic career: tenure-track assistant professor in the department of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia; associate professor in the department of meteorology Pennsylvania State University; Director of PSU Earth System Science Center; full professor in 2009; Distinguished Professor of Meteorology. Lead author on the IPCC Third Assessment Report

Awards: American Geophysical Union Fellow (2012); Hans Oeschger Medal (2012); Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2020), etc. etc..

2. Mark Steyn qualifications:

Went to school.

The above information as it pertains to Mann’s expertise and qualifications versus’ Steyn’s is, as far as I know true, and it is quoted from a guest post by Richard Law, at Matt Briggs’ blog.

How dare Steyn a well-read commentator and musician, question Mann the almost noble laureate, and much respected scientist.

Is Steyn saying the king has no clothes.

I guess, looking on the bright side, Steyn comes away with his head.  Simberg too.  In the olden days in England, that would not have been the case, they would have been beheaded for being on the wrong side of the mob and the King.

Judith Curry tweeted ‘a huge blow for freedom of speech’.  No.  This was always a trial about ‘climate science’.  It is also a huge blow for the integrity of historical temperature reconstructions.

Well may we say God bless Mark Steyn because nothing will save the climate scientists.  Not now.

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This is part 5 of ‘Men at War’, you can read part 4, part 3, part 2 and part 1, at the respective links.   And you can listen to the podcast series for much more background, the series by investigative journalists Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer entitled ‘Climate Change on Trial’.

I will be writing much more about all of this, particularly the interesting issue of statistical uncertainty that was discussed by one of the expert witnesses, Professor Abraham Wyner.  I will be discussing this issue as it applies to proxy temperature records but also the more recent and shorter instrumental record.   I will also be discussing it as it relates to assessments of coral cover at the Great Barrier Reef, and whether it is even possible to apply an uncertainty value to categorical data.  If you would like to follow along, please subscribe for my irregular email updates.