Wrapping up a 12-year lawsuit, Michael Mann, an early climate change theorist best known for developing the “hockey stick” graph, received a million-dollar defamation award against two conservative bloggers who compared him to infamous child molester Jerry Sandusky, the Associated Press reports.
“Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data,” Rand Simberg of the Competitive Enterprise Institute wrote on the organization’s blog. At the time of the blog post, Mann worked at Penn State, where Sandusky had coached. Calling Mann’s research “fraudulent,” Mark Steyn quoted the blog’s claim in his National Review column.
After a DC Superior Court found the pair acted with “maliciousness, spite, ill will, vengeance or deliberate intent to harm,” Simberg was ordered to pay one dollar in compensatory damages and $1,000 in punitive damages. Representing himself at the trial, Steyn was ordered to pay one dollar in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages.