Famed climate scientist wins million-dollar verdict against right-wing bloggers

Michael Mann, a prominent climate scientist, won his long-standing legal battle against two right-wing bloggers who claimed that he manipulated data in his research and compared him to convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky, a major victory for the outspoken researcher.

A jury in a civil trial in Washington on Thursday found that the two writers, Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn, defamed and injured the researcher in a pair of blog posts published in 2012, and awarded him more than $1 million.

“I hope this verdict sends a message that falsely attacking climate scientists is not protected speech,” Mann said in a statement

Mann’s victory comes amid heightened attacks on scientists working not just on climate change but also on vaccines and other issues. But the case was one that some critics worried could have a stifling effect on free speech and open debate in science.

“Inflammatory does not equal defamatory,” Victoria Weatherford, an attorney for Simberg, repeatedly told the jury during the trial.

The verdict is a dozen years in the making for the climatologist, who for decades has been a target of right-wing critics over his famous “hockey stick” graph.

“We normally let scientists fight it out amongst themselves to discover what the truth is,” said Lyrissa Lidsky, a defamation expert at the University of Florida. “In these science cases, there’s a lot of leeway for opinion. It doesn’t mean there’s carte blanche to lie about another scientist.”

Early in his career, Mann used data from tree rings, ice cores and coral reefs to show global temperatures were relatively stable until the Industrial Revolution. But after humans started burning fossil fuels in large quantities, Mann and his colleagues found, temperatures spiked over the past century.

Today, Mann is one of the most famous climate scientists in the country, having written half a dozen books, appearing on numerous TV shows and amassing more than 200,000 followers on X (formerly known as Twitter). As a public figure, he faced a high bar during the nearly month-long trial to prove his defamation claim.

In a 2012 column titled “The Other Scandal in Unhappy Valley,” published on a website of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Simberg wrote that Mann had “molested and tortured data” of global warming and compared Mann to Sandusky, who was a Pennsylvania State University football coach who had been arrested for molesting young boys. At the time, Mann was a professor at Penn State.

In the National Review, Steyn quoted the article and added: “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.”

“Calling Michael Mann’s work fraudulent is just patently false,” said Lauren Kurtz, executive director of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, a group that helped defend scientists facing legal attack in 34 cases last year. Mann, she added, has been “exonerated” of wrongdoing by multiple investigations into his work.

“Climate scientists are still regularly targeted by climate deniers, even though the science is quite clear at this point,” she added.

The jury awarded Mann $1,000 from Simberg and $1 million from Steyn in punitive damages, meant to punish wrongdoing. And it granted Mann $1 in compensatory damages from each writer for Mann’s actual losses.

Simberg was found liable for statements that compared Mann to Sandusky but was cleared on other statements criticizing Mann’s scientific work.

“I am pleased that the jury found that in my favor on half of the statements at issue in this case, including finding my statement that Dr. Mann engaged in data manipulation was not defamation,” Simberg said in a statement. “In over a decade of litigation, the sanctions levied against Dr. Mann dwarf the judgment against me.”

During closing arguments, Steyn, a radio and TV personality who spoke for himself during much of the trial, said he still “stand[s] on the truth of every word I wrote about Michael Mann, his fraudulent hockey stick and the corrupt investigative process at Penn State.”

In a statement after the verdict, Steyn’s manager, Melissa Howes, suggested he would appeal the $1 million in punitive damages.

“We always said that Mann never suffered any actual injury from the statement at issue. And today, after twelve years, the jury awarded him one dollar in compensatory damages,” Howes said in a statement. “The punitive damage award of one million dollars will have to face due process scrutiny under U.S. Supreme Court precedent.”

For many, the trial was about more than just Mann, who said he suffered emotional distress and lost out on opportunities for funding and participating in studies.

The two sides spent days arguing about not just the blog posts but also the veracity of Mann’s “hockey stick” and the field of climate science itself, as well as over how far the First Amendment extends protections to critics.

“There is a bit more First Amendment leeway for hyperbolic statements,” Kurtz said. But she added that comparing Mann to a child molester is “false” and “grotesque.”