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Judge Slashes Activist-Scientist Michael Mann's $1m Defamation Award To $5k

Being accused of 'molesting" data to promote climate alarmism is not worth $1 million in punitive damages, a judge ruled Tuesday in a 13-year-old defamation lawsuit that could have bankrupted the 
nation's most venerable conservative magazine. [emphasis, links added]

The District of Columbia Superior Court slashed the seven-figure punitive damages awarded to University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann, best known for his "hockey-stick" graph on 
climate change, to $5,000, rejecting Mann's "entire rationale" for preserving the $1 million award: 'deterrence and punishment." Just the News covered the trial.

Judge Alfred Irving wrote that Mann "presented no persuasive evidence suggesting that he suffered an injury to his business as a result of" Canadian writer and defendant Mark Steyn's 2012 article 
about him in National Review, a blog post that quoted co-defendant Rand Simberg's blog post for the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

It's the second blow to Mann's litigation in less than two months, with Irving forcing the climate scientist to pay National Review half a million dollars in legal fees for eight years of litigation, 
which ended with summary judgment in NR's favor in 2021.

"As was made clear during the discovery process, Mann's explicitly stated intention was to use a 'major lawsuit" as a vehicle with which to "ruin National Review, "??" the editors wrote on Jan. 10.

"Between 2012 and 2019 - with the courts inexplicably refusing to apply legal provisions ostensibly designed to prevent frivolous lawsuits such as Mann's - we were forced to spend a considerable 
amount of time and money defending ourselves against his malicious, meritless suit, " they wrote. "Between 2019 and now, we have been obliged to expend yet more effort trying to recoup at least some 
of our costs."

Pennsylvania State University officials" coverup of football coach Jerry Sandusky's child sexual abuse had just been detailed in former FBI director Louis Freeh's report when Simberg and Steyn wrote 
about Mann.

Simberg, whose $1,000 punitive damages award Irving refused to touch, wrote that Mann, who was also at Penn State at the time he filed the lawsuit, "could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate 
science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet." (CEI 
removed the comparison within two weeks.)

"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, " Steyn wrote, quoting the paragraph in full.

He added that the hockey stick graph was "fraudulent."

Judge Irving agreed with Steyn that the 'million-to-one ratio" of punitive to compensatory damages set by the jury, which awarded $1 each from Steyn and Simberg to Mann for direct harm, was 
completely out of proportion given that the D.C. Court of Appeals previously struck down a 145-to-one ratio as "staggering."

"Interestingly, Dr. Mann does not cite a single case involving claims of defamation or otherwise, in the District of Columbia or elsewhere, that supports" the million-to-one ratio, which even for 
hard-to-quantify emotional and reputational injury "raises a judicial eyebrow, " the judge wrote.

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Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² Explains EVERYTHING!

Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² makes for shorter winters, except for when it makes for longer winters. 

Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² means less snow, except for when Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² means more snow. 

And Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² causes droughts in California and floods in Texas and Oklahoma and generally makes wet places wetter and dry places dryer, except when it makes wet places drier 
and dry places wetter, except when none of that changes at all, and then Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² explains that too! 

And Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² causes more hurricanes at the same time as it causes less hurricanes. 

Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² causes more rain but less water... and less rain but more water?

And Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² causes more water vapour in the atmosphere, at the same time it causes less rain... and less water vapour in the atmosphere, when it causes MORE rain? 

Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² decreases the spread of malaria at the same time as it increases the spread of malaria. 

Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² makes San Francisco foggier... Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² makes San Francisco less foggy. 

Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² causes duller autumn leaves... Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² causes shinier autumn leaves. 

Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² makes for less salty seas... Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² makes for saltier seas. 

Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² causes the polar ice caps to melt... Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² also causes the polar ice caps to freeze. 

Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² makes the Earth hotter, unless the Earth isn't getting hotter... in which case, Climate Change/Global Warming/CO² can explain that too. 

What's the problem here? This sounds like the perfect scientific theory. It can explain literally everything including self contradictory things. 

This means it's absolutely perfect, doesn't it? 

Well no, not according to Karl Popper and the philosophers of science and within the philosophy of science there's something called the demarcation problem... how do you differentiate science from 
pseudo-science? 

The left won't LET you, and brands you a denierrrrrrr(whining).