A jury on Thursday awarded $1 million to climate scientist Michael Mann, who sued a pair of conservative writers 12 years ago after they compared his depictions of global warming to a convicted child molester.
Mann, a professor of climate science at the University of Pennsylvania, rose to fame for a graph first published in 1998 in the journal Nature that was dubbed the “hockey stick” for its dramatic illustration of a warming planet.
The work brought Mann wide exposure but also many skeptics, including the two writers Mann took to court for comments that he said affected his career and reputation in the U.S. and internationally.
“It feels great,” Mann said Thursday after the six-person jury delivered its verdict. “It’s a good day for us, it’s a good day for science.”
How would it even occur to you to compare climate science to child molestation? Unless you just think that everything you don’t like is child molestation.
I think it’s probably got more to do with the “every accusation is a confession” principle that modern conservatism seems to operate under.
How would it occur to you that a guy rescuing kids trapped in a cave is a pedophile? Who knows, but Elon did anyway.
This is apparently what started many people realizing that he is actually an idiot and not a genius.
It certainly was for me. I was always a bit skeptical of him as I am of all cults of personality, but I didn’t realize he was also stupid until then.
That’s when I realized he’s a shithead.
Hey now, let’s be fair! He was also visiting Thailand a lot, and we all know the singular, only valuable thing in the entire country is young twink boys you can confuse for a girl.
… /s, just in case.
Its shit heel behavior, but there was the Jerry Sandusky revelations at Penn state, the same university where Mann worked at the time.
These shit heads just used an actually evil bastard that was in the news to drum up clicks and vilify Mann in the worst way possible at the same time.
They actually like child molestation, but only when their side is doing it, otherwise they use it as an insult.
They hate seeing others do it wrong.
Your sentence heavily implied that there is a right way to molest children. Which I am betting you didn’t intend but it is still funny.
When I was a kid everything my family didn’t like was satanic. Boy getting a piercing, wearing a sweatband, non-baby boomer music.
Conservatives really do build up this whole terrible world in which they are the only heroes and anything they do is ok. They don’t think he is a child molester, they said it for shock value alone and are now giving us the shocked Pikachu face.
Accusations like that are often confessions.
Wackos used to call everything they hated, “communist” but switch names because their beloved Putin is pretty communist.
Russia stopped being a communist state with the fall of the USSR (and Gorbachev loosened that up even before the fall). It’s more of a right wing kleptocracy today.
I mean Russia stopped being communist within about 5 minutes of beccoming communist, which is generally the problem with communism. Its a system that only works in a theoretical world where everyones nice and the first strongman to show up doesn’t sieze control and turn it into an autocracy.
Yeah, even without the strongmen or cults of personality that can completely upend things, communism is a system that just breeds resentment, I think even more so than capitalism plus social safety nets (as inadequate as they might be).
Putin is not in any way a communist. He’s a mobbed up, fascist dictator.
And he was that even when he was an official communist. Nothing has changed. The economic system used in a place doesn’t make people good or bad.
Whenceforth are you taking the claim from that Putin is a communist?
It’ll be a good day for science when we collectively take climate change seriously. Until then it’s all political grandstanding.
Media Bias Fact Check entry for Science 2.0 (science20.com): https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/science-2-0/
That should be Billion honestly
I love how their whole argument comes down to “well he became more famous because of what we said so how can there be damages?” Also some of the comments make them sound like Sovereign Citizens.
Rand Simberg was one of those authors and the article in question was for the Competitive Enterprise Institute which received 2 millions dollars from Exonmobile.
So here we see a classic example of a corporation paying thru a proxy someone to release propaganda to influence public opinion and then when there is a reaction to it they throw a low level guy under the bus.
Think of how much better of a world we would have if all the influence peddlers all the hired gun “journalists” had real jobs.
Notice how the judgement is always against flunkies like simberg and not the Exxons paying them. What would the jury have awarded if they had the whole story and the proper defendant? Probably more than 1M.
Interesting question. Can some clever lawyers go after the people who put out the hit? Exxon has to have more money than the “think” tank involved.
Congratulations Mann! It’s a win for the whole world.
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That’s not Mann’s chart. That’s a manipulated reproduction from a climate denier blog.
The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) is a US-based 501©(3) nonprofit organization founded in 1985 that advocates for free-market solutions to environmental issues. According to its mission statement, CFACT also seeks to protect private property rights, promote economic policies that reduce pollution and protect wildlife, and provide an “alternative voice on issues of environment and development”.[2][3]
The organization rejects the scientific consensus on climate change.[4][5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_for_a_Constructive_Tomorrow
And you think linking to that organization’s website will convince anyone here?
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