A Libel Suit Threatens Catastrophe for the Climate of Public Debate, by Michael Carvin.
The First Amendment provides robust protection for political and scientific debate, but it faces a new threat from a climate activist determined to silence his critics. In a case pending before the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, Penn State professor Michael Mann is waging an aggressive campaign of lawfare, accusing of defamation those who dare to question his work. So far, the courts have given this assault on free speech a green light.
Mr. Mann is famous as the creator of the “hockey stick” graph, which portrays a dramatic trend in global warming over the past century. Numerous critics have cast doubt on the quality and accuracy of his work. They argue that his historical temperature proxies are unreliable, his data presentation misleading, and his statistical techniques skewed.
Even among those who support the theory of global warming, some have singled out Mr. Mann’s work as sloppy and exaggerated. …
The hockey stick? Cannot comment for fear of being sued by Mann. Suffice it to say that Mann’s hockey stick was adopted by the IPCC for its logo, and it appeared six times in color in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report in 2001. However it was subsequently dropped from the logo, and there is no mention of Mann’s hockey stock in subsequent assessment reports from the IPCC. Here it is:
Mann’s lawfare campiagn is only possibly because the global elite, to whom most judges belong, regard climate change as such an important project that they bend rules and suspend normal operating procedure.
Not content to answer his critics in the public square, Mr. Mann has sued them. One target of his lawsuit is the political magazine National Review, which published a 270-word blog post criticizing Mr. Mann as “the man behind the fraudulent . . . ‘hockey-stick’ graph.” His lawsuit objects to the magazine’s decision to quote a critic who wrote that Mr. Mann “could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data.” …
Even a meritless defamation suit can be an effective weapon to intimidate critics and shut down debate through ruinous litigation costs. …
If Mann’s lawsuit succeeds, public debate will wither.
Those hoping Mr. Mann prevails because they agree with him about global warming are missing the point. If he succeeds in diminishing the right to free speech, he and his fellow climate activists have just as much to lose. Mr. Mann has attacked his critics for peddling “pure scientific fraud,” engaging in what he calls “the fraudulent denial of climate change,” and taking “corporate payoffs for knowingly lying about the threat climate change posed to humanity.” He accused Fox News of trying to “mislead its viewers” through a “deceptive” report about climate change.
None of this is particularly polite, but it is common in the cut-and-thrust of public debate. If such caustic criticism is now to be fair game for legal action, big oil companies and other well-heeled interests can launch their own lawsuits asking juries in Texas or Oklahoma to silence Mr. Mann and his allies.
The logic of Mr. Mann’s position threatens to convert political and scientific debate into a litigation free-for-all, with all sides seeking to sue one another into submission instead of resolving differences through the free exchange of ideas.
