The defamation trial brought by climate scientist Michael Mann comes to a close this week after Mann, defendants Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn, and several witnesses took the stand. The trial began on 18 January in Washington, D.C., 12 years after Mann first sued Simberg and Steyn, climate change deniers and prominent right-wing voices, for years of defamation.
Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, came under attack for helping create the now famous hockey stick graph in 1998, which shows the exponential rise in global mean surface temperature after the advent of fossil fuel burning. The visualization was instrumental in communicating the urgency of climate change to the public.
A Sustained Defamation Campaign
After the hockey stick graph was published, Simberg, a policy analyst at the right-wing think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), and Steyn, a blogger at National Review and TV personality, accused Mann of falsifying the data behind the graph.
Experts have said that the attacks against Mann were part of a wider campaign against him and other climate scientists by a network of climate skeptics connected to fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch. (Both CEI and National Review have financial ties to the Charles Koch Foundation.)
“They crossed a line.”
Simberg went so far as to compare Mann’s conduct to that of convicted child sexual abuser and former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, calling Mann “the Sandusky of climate science” and saying that he “molested and tortured data.” Steyn used his platform to amplify and double down on the attacks on Mann, his research, and climate change in general.
“They crossed a line,” Mann told the jury from the witness stand. “They compared me to a convicted child molester and made false allegations of scientific misconduct against me.”
Simberg and Steyn continued their attacks even after, in 2011, the National Science Foundation, who had funded the research, and the Pennsylvania State University, where Mann worked at the time, found no evidence of scientific misconduct. Subsequent research has repeatedly confirmed that the hockey stick graph is accurate.
Mann sued Simberg, Steyn, and their institutions for defamation in 2012, though in 2021 the court ruled that CEI and National Review could not be held responsible for the attacks. The trial against Simberg and Stein began after 12 years of delays, during which time the diatribes against Mann continued, climate change continued to worsen, and attacks against science and its practitioners became more common.
“They were hostile to his findings and warnings about climate change, which showed climate change was real,” said Mann’s lawyer, John Williams, in his opening statement.
During the trial, Mann’s legal team argued that the attacks cost the scientist funding for his work and opportunities for collaboration with other scientists who were fearful of coming under similar attacks. The team also argued that Mann has suffered emotional harm from the Sandusky comments.
On the witness stand, Steyn and Simberg argued that their 2012 comments were protected free speech under the first amendment. They continued to deny climate change and repeatedly equated Mann’s research conduct with Sandusky’s child sexual abuse.
Climate Impacts and Attacks on the Rise
The trial comes at a time when larger and more intense wildfires, stronger hurricanes, thawing glaciers, and flooded city streets emphasize that climate impacts will continue to harm lives. Despite this, research has shown that 65% of Americans rarely or never discuss global warming with family and friends.
“We have people running for president who won’t talk about the phenomenon of climate change, they won’t even address it.”
Science communicator Bill Nye, who sat with Mann’s legal team at the start of the trial, told DeSmog that this trial could help bring climate discourse back into the public conversation. “We have people running for president who won’t talk about the phenomenon of climate change, they won’t even address it,” Nye said. “If this trial raises awareness and gets people talking, that’s a great value.”
Too, attacks against science and scientists, including students, have increased in recent years, Lauren Kurtz, executive director of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, told NPR. “We help more scientists every year than the year before,” Kurtz said. “We actually broke a record in 2023. We helped over 50 researchers.”
The Center for Countering Digital Hate recently released a report that details how social media platforms and digital content creators profit from spreading science misinformation and climate change denial.
“Climate scientists have a responsibility to untangle fact from fiction and to communicate with society clearly about the dangers of climate change.”
“The unprecedented dissemination of information (and misinformation) made possible by the Internet demands that scientists and their institutions evolve to meet the public’s growing appetite for credible science while also acknowledging political implications of their work,” Lucas Vargas Zeppetello, a climate scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote in an opinion for Eos. He urged climate scientists to speak up more and fight back against climate mis- and disinformation.
“Climate scientists have a responsibility to untangle fact from fiction and to communicate with society clearly about the dangers of climate change,” he said. “If we do not actively take on that role, others will fill the vacuum that our silence creates.
—Kimberly M. S. Cartier (@AstroKimCartier), Staff Writer
