Posted on 02/15/2024 5:29:02 AM PST by MtnClimber
Last week, the 21st century’s trial of the century came to a similarly ignoble end, but nearly without coverage, without interest, without outrage. Polymath Mark Steyn, appearing pro se, lost a defamation suit (ironically) defending against Michael Mann when a DC jury ordered Steyn to pay damages of $1 but imposed staggering punitive damages of $1 million.
Some background: Michael Mann co-wrote a paper in 1999 using tree-ring data as a proxy for temperature (thicker rings, warmer temperatures) to show that over the last 1000 years, temperatures declined slightly until 1960 when they dramatically spiked up—the shape of what would infamously be called the “Hockey Stick.”
The IPCC featured Mann’s work prominently in their 2001 report. It catapulted Mann to stardom and ignited the radical climate-industrial-political complex. The resulting Green agenda has consumed trillions and turned everyone’s life upside down.
The problem was that hundreds of scientists were highly critical of Mann’s work. Stephen McIntyre, for one, an Oxford-educated PhD in mathematics, published several papers, one in the same journal that published Mann’s original paper, concluding Mann’s result “lacks statistically significance,” and worse, he showed that Mann’s data manipulation “is so strong that a hockey-stick … is nearly always generated from (trendless) red noise.”
For McIntyre’s efforts, Mann called him “a professional liar,” a “denier-for-hire,” a “heinous climate villain,” “a barely perceptible $hitstain,” “a horrible, horrible person,” and a “white supremacist.” Comments like this were not isolated: Professor Emeritus Judith Curry, whom Mann called a climate denier, testified that Mann “violated norms of science and codes of professional conduct repeatedly and egregiously.” (The testimony can be found at 16:35 at the link.)
A few years later, emails were hacked from the University of East Anglia. One email read, “Let’s use Mike’s trick to hide the decline.”
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
About what you expect from a Washington, DC jury.
“Last week, the 21st century’s trial of the century came to a similarly ignoble end...”
Ridiculous hyperbole. The verdict is on appeal and will be overturned. I don’t think anyone was surprised by the verdict from that particular kangaroo court.
Steyn needs to get a good lawyer. The punitive damages are extreme in light of the nominal actual damages and therefore must be thrown out.
A good lawyer is not going to overcome the effects of a DC judge and jury.
It is long past time to remove the DC court. Which Congress can do.
bkmk
The verdict is yet more evidence that we are well into CWII.
It’s a shame that the right is so fractured (and convenient).
That's why there's "res judicia." This needs to be overturned.
I’m reasonably sure he will appeal. Too much at stake.
Alito was right, SCOTUS should have taken this case, it is too important to leave in the hands of a D.C. jury.
This country is falling apart.
Our future is in the hands of fat black females.
Polymath.... “A person with extraordinarily broad and comprehensive knowledge”.
Learn something everyday and in fact dictionaries should have a picture of Mark Steyn beside that definition...
“Our future is in the hands of fat black females”.
......who are awful people with nasty demeanors.
That comment sums up what the result will be in all the Trump cases filed in DC.
All I needed to read to predict the outcome.
Unreal
That is not entirely true.
DC also has “intelligence community” professionals, bureaucrats, lobbyists, and politicians of all races. DC’s population is also reported to have the highest fraction of homosexuals among US metropolitan areas.
Of course, it is generally true that these are people who hate traditional American values and virtues.
Good points. I should have stipulated “some people”.
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