Simberg, R

sued by mann (nat rev appeal scotus)

seems to be keeping his head down, unlike steyn (tho migrated to islamophobe)

mostly about space and free mkt, 1 n USN&WR

http://www.usnews.com/topics/author/rand-simberg

AKA RAND?

 ===

===

cbc 2024

Canadian writer Mark Steyn ordered to pay climate scientist $1M US after defamation trial

Steyn, who represented himself at trial, plans to appeal jury award to Michael Mann

:{The Associated Press · Posted: Feb 09, 2024

Mark Steyn is shown in an undated appearance on CBC's Power & Politics. (CBC)

A jury on Thursday awarded $1 million US 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."

In 2012, a libertarian think-tank named the Competitive Enterprise Institute published a blog post by Rand Simberg, then a fellow at the organization, that compared investigations into Mann's work to the case of Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach at Penn State University who was convicted of sexually assaulting multiple children. At the time, Mann also worked at Penn State.

*WATCH l Academic research often no match for virality of social media climate claims:

Climate Misinformation: are you immune?

March 14, 2023|

Duration7:08

Despite the growing number of extreme weather events-- Climate change denial is still very much out there-- particularly on social media While a lot of people may ignore it, that doesn't mean it doesn't make a lasting impact. Jaela Bernstien looks into the issue.

Mann's research was investigated after his and other scientists' emails were leaked in 2009 in an incident that brought further scrutiny of the "hockey stick" graph, with skeptics claiming Mann manipulated data. Investigations by Penn State and others found no misuse of data by Mann, but his work continued to draw attacks, particularly from conservatives.

"Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data," Simberg wrote.

Canadian writer Mark Steyn later referenced Simberg's article in his own piece in National Review, where he referred to Mann as "the man behind the fraudulent climate-change 'hockey-stick' graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus."

"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.

Huge disparity in compensatory, punitive awards

The jury in Superior Court of the District of Columbia found that Simberg and Steyn made false statements, awarding Mann $1 in compensatory damages from each writer. It awarded punitive damages of $1,000 from Simberg and $1 million from Steyn, after finding that the pair made their statements with "maliciousness, spite, ill will, vengeance or deliberate intent to harm."

During the trial, Steyn represented himself, but said through his manager Melissa Howes that he would be appealing the $1-million award in punitive damages, saying it would have to face "due process scrutiny."

Scientist Michael Mann is shown on June 21, 2016, attending a screening of the HBO documentary How to Let Go of the World and All the Things Climate Can't Change. (Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for HBO)

Mann argued that he had lost grant funding as a result of the blog posts — an assertion for which both defendants said Mann did not provide sufficient evidence. The writers countered during the trial that Mann instead became one of the world's most well-known climate scientists in the years after their comments.

"We always said that Mann never suffered any actual injury from the statement at issue," Steyn said on Thursday through his manager. "And today, after 12 years, the jury awarded him one dollar in compensatory damages."

Simberg's attorney Mark DeLaquil said his client was "disappointed in the verdict" and would appeal the jury's decision.

*LISTEN l Some YouTube users find a way around climate denial ban:

Day 610:27A new kind of climate change denialism has taken hold on YouTube, says research group

Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, says the center's new report shows that climate misinformation has evolved in ways that make it possible for a lot of it to evade YouTube’s advertising ban on content that denies climate change while generating millions of dollars of revenue in the process.

Jury given specific instructions

Steyn, who has authored several books and written columns for the National Post and Maclean's, has provoked strong reactions with his writing before. The Canadian Islamic Congress launched complaints with the Canadian Human Rights Commission and B.C. Human Rights Tribunal over a series of articles wrote for Maclean's about Islam, though the complaints were dismissed.

In the Mann case, both writers argued that they were merely stating opinions.

Lyrissa Lidsky, a constitutional law professor at the University of Florida, said it was clear the jurors found that Steyn and Simberg had "recklessly disregarded the falsity of their statements."

Lidsky added that the discrepancy between what the jury awarded in compensatory and punitive damages could result in the judge reducing the punitive damages.

*WATCH l RCMP, government officials push back on false wildfire claims:

Who's fuelling the wild theories about Canada’s wildfires

June 14, 2023|

Duration5:44

False claims about the origins of Canada’s wildfires have been getting millions of views online. The National’s Adrienne Arsenault talks with investigative reporter Justin Ling about who’s behind the disinformation and why they’re pushing it.

Many scientists have followed Mann's case for years as misinformation about climate change has grown on some social media platforms.

"I hope people think twice before they lie and defame scientists," said Kate Cell of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "We are so far outside the bounds of a civil conversation about facts that I hope this verdict can help us find our way back."

In 2021, the D.C. Superior Court held that the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute were not liable for defamation in the matter. Mann said Thursday he still plans to appeal that ruling.

---

===

win defam

On February 8, climate scientist Michael Mann won a defamation lawsuit against two conservative writers Rand Simberg and National Review contributor Mark Steyn. Steyn was once a regular presence on Fox News where he appeared more than 300 times between 2017 and 2021, both as a guest and a guest host.

According to The New York Times, in addition to finding them guilty of defaming Mann, “The jury also found the writers had made their statements with ‘maliciousness, spite, ill will, vengeance or deliberate intent to harm,’ and levied punitive damages of $1,000 against Mr. Simberg and $1 million against Mr. Steyn in order to deter others from doing the same.”

On February 9, Mann appeared on CNN News Central to discuss the outcome of the trial. During his interview Mann explained how these ideological and politically motivated attacks "chill the discourse” and discourage scientists from sharing their findings. Mann said he hoped the verdict will “create some space where scientists feel a little bit more … comfortable in leaving the laboratory, in communicating their findings to the public.”

Video

CitationFrom the February 9, 2024, edition of CNN News Central

BRIANNA KEILAR (ANCHOR) Michael, what do you worry is the effect on whether it's public health, or even global health, the health of our planet, which affects us all, when you have people making bogeymen out of scientists like yourself?

MICHAEL MANN: Well, I really worry about that, right? Especially young scientists, who see the attacks on scientists like myself, scientists like Anthony Fauci and my good friend Peter Hotez. They look at that, and that chills the discourse. That potentially leads them to sort of withdraw into their laboratories. They don't want to get involved, get into the fray, and to be part of the effort to communicate their scientific findings to the public, out of fear that they will be attacked, that they will be viciously attacked, again, by those who have vested interest in discrediting science that's inconvenient to their economic interests or their political viewpoints. And so this is a message to my fellow scientists, that, you know, that it is not OK for people to attack you, to make false allegations against you, to defame you.

And hopefully, that will create some space where scientists feel a little bit more, you know, that they're more comfortable in leaving the laboratory, in communicating their findings to the public, because we rely upon the best available science, as you said, both when it comes to our own health and the health of this planet. What could be more important than the health of our -- of us and, and our fellow human beings, and the planet that we live on? That's -- those are really the stakes here.

KEILAR: Yeah. We don't want there to be that chilling effect. Michael, great to have you.

While Mann is certainly one of the most prominent climate scientists to be in the crosshairs of right-wing media, he is far from alone. Attacks against climate scientists have been on the rise the last few years, especially on Elon Musk’s Twitter/X where many scientists have left the platform due to harassment.

mma 2 24

===

free sp in sci bs:

big in CEI slapdown of walker; Baker Host, pal of rivkin, pow

lost mann defamation suit nat rev.

bs no names, the eds

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/no-michael-mann-you-arent-going-to-ruin-this-filthy-organization/

a few days before launching his lawsuit against what he called “this filthy organization,” Michael Mann wrote that there “is a possibility that I can ruin National Review.” Nearly a decade later, we are still fighting his attempt to do precisely that.

From the beginning of this affair, National Review has maintained that the case that Mann filed is frivolous, malicious, corrupt, and lacking entirely in legal justification. We maintain that still. The Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment is predicated upon “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open,” and that matters of political dispute are in consequence exempt from superintendence. By attempting to litigate against his critics, Michael Mann has chosen to stand firmly on the other side of that national commitment. Were he to prevail, he would set a host of terrible precedents against free inquiry and open argument, and in favor of censorship.

That this case has been open-and-shut from the start was obvious not only to National Review, but to all who believe in the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press — which is why the amicus briefs that have been filed in our behalf range so widely across the political spectrum.[note none listed]

We’ve said we’d use every tool and argument at our disposal to defeat Mann, and that’s what we’ve done. Mark Steyn posted the blog item in dispute in July of 2012. Mann sued in October of that year, and we filed our first motion to dismiss in December of 2012.

When that was denied by the trial court, we filed a motion to reconsider. When that, too, was denied, we appealed to the D.C. Court of Appeals — twice.This brings us to 2014. After oral arguments, the Court of Appeals sat on the case for two years. Then, the court denied our appeal. This was in December of 2016. Because the opinion had myriad obvious flaws, we petitioned for a rehearing. Incredibly enough, the court then delayed for yet another two years. When the court finally issued an amended opinion, all it did was add one footnote and amend another.

Because the amended opinion didn’t fix any of the flaws of the original opinion, we petitioned for a rehearing yet again. This, too, was denied. Then, last May, we filed a cert petition before the U.S. Supreme Court.All indications are that the court seriously considered it, before denying the petition (with Justice Alito issuing a strong dissent).

Now, we are back in the trial court, with expensive and time-consuming discovery underway.

Mann’s plan to “ruin” us, as he put it in an email produced under discovery, is plainly to get to a trial with a politically sympathetic D.C. juryand hope that the finer points of the law and the First Amendment are lost. (Short of that, he is surely happy for the case to drag out further, draining us of energy and resources.)

But it’s clear that the case should never get to that point — hence our latest motion. Under the First Amendment, Mann has to prove that National Review published the Corner post with “actual malice.” That would require him to show that National Review actually believed that the post was “false” (or likely false) at the time of publication. That is absurd for a number of reasons, including — given the nature of The Corner — we didn’t even know about the post until after it was published. The case against National Review is thus nonsensical at its core. It is also barred by a federal statute, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects online publishers for hosting content posted by outside contributors.

To be clear, the content of the post itself is also plainly protected First Amendment speech, as we have argued consistently and at length from the first letter our lawyers wrote in response to Mann’s initial legal threat to our brief before the Supreme Court.

It is a matter of considerable irony that the only “malice” that the discovery process has uncovered is that exhibited by Michael Mann. When planning his suit, Mann described National Review as a “threat to our children,” beholden to “greedy fat cat corporate masters.” His stated intention was to bring us “down for good.” Needless to say, this is not how a country with a First Amendment or a culture of free speech is supposed to work. It’s past time that this suit is dismissed as incompatible with both, and a failure on the facts and the law.So far, the courts have, to quote Churchill, elected to “go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.” They brushed past the anti-SLAPP statute that was designed to prevent this from happening. Our hope is that the same won’t happen with Section 230, which is also meant to protect the free-speech rights of online publishers.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/author/randsimberg/

eg

with ad for regent u

Do you think you know how to eat healthy? Your friendly neighborhood federal government doesn’t think you do. And they’re here to help.

Buried deep in the ObamaCare law, the gift from the Democrats to the nation that keeps on giving, chain restaurants are required to start labeling calories on all of their menu items. The law applies to vending-machine items as well. It’s proven to be a nightmare for small business and franchises, adding cost (which will have to be passed on to the diner, if they choose to pay it). In the case of things like “order your own” sandwiches or pizza, it is almost impossible to implement. As with much of the poorly written misbegotten law, it is unclear whether it applies to things like food trucks, or what the penalty is for non-compliance. Despite the uncertainty, overall cost has been estimated to be half a billion dollars, which will be “eaten” by consumers.

....

IRS "scandal" wake of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq during the Bush administration, the default assumption of the media was that it was a direct consequence of White House policies. Those who were particularly Bush/Cheney deranged imagined that the vice president himself probably spent his recreational time personally torturing Iraqi prisoners. But even more thoughtful people accused the administration of creating the environment in which the abuse could occur:

Defenders of the administration have argued, of course, that there is no “smoking gun”–no chain of orders leading directly from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to Pfc. Lynndie England and her co-conspirators. But that reasoning–now largely accepted within the Beltway–betrays a deliberate indifference to how large organizations such as the military actually work. In any war, civilian leaders set strategic aims, and it falls to commanders and planners at successively lower levels of command to refine that guidance into executable orders which can be handed down to subordinates. That process works whether the policy in question is a good one or a bad one. President Bush didn’t order the April 2003 “thunder run” into Baghdad; he ordered Tommy Franks to win the war and the Third Infantry Division’s leaders figured out how to make it happen. Likewise, no order was given to shove light sticks into the rectums of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Nevertheless, the road to the abuses began with flawed administration policies that exalted expediency and necessity over the rule of law, eviscerated the military’s institutional constraints on the treatment of prisoners, commenced combat with insufficient planning, preparation and troop strength, and thereby set the conditions for the abuses that would later take place.

Similarly, while we still don’t know what the White House knew and when it knew it (and the president’s non-responsive answer to a question that wasn’t asked on Thursday not only failed to clarify the issue, but increased cause for suspicion), the administration certainly created an environment in which IRS functionaries might have thought it was their job to go after his political enemies. If they weren’t doing literally to them what the Abu Ghraib rogue soldiers were doing to individual Iraqi’s fundaments, they were certainly doing it figuratively. This is particularly true because by the very nature of their job, and the ideology of the limited-government groups, many of the IRS employees probably viewed them as their own political adversaries.

==

still there:

https://cei.org/blog/other-scandal-unhappy-valley

So it turns out that Penn State has covered up wrongdoing by one of its employees to avoid bad publicity.

But I'm not talking about the appalling behavior uncovered this week by the Freeh report. No, I'm referring to another cover up and whitewash that occurred there two years ago, before we learned how rotten and corrupt the culture at the university was. But now that we know how bad it was, perhaps it's time that we revisit the Michael Mann affair, particularly given how much we've also learned about his and others' hockey-stick deceptions since.

To review, when the emails and computer models were leaked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia two and a half years ago, many of the luminaries of the "climate science" community were shown to have been behaving in a most unscientific manner. Among them were Michael Mann, Professor of Meteorology at Penn State, whom the emails revealed had been engaging in data manipulation to keep the blade on his famoushockey-stick graph, which had become an iconfor those determined to reduce human carbon emissions by any means necessary.

As a result, in November of 2009, the university issued a press release that it was going to undertake its own investigation, independently of one that had been launched by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in response to a demand from Congressman Sherwood Boehlert (R- N.Y.).[hmmn] In July of the next year, the panel set up to investigate declared him innocent of any wrongdoing:

Penn State Professor Michael Mann has been cleared of any wrongdoing, according to a report of the investigation that was released today (July 1). Mann was under investigation for allegations of research impropriety that surfaced last year after thousands of stolen e-mails were published online. The e-mails were obtained from computer servers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England, one of the main repositories of information about climate change.

The panel of leading scholars from various research fields, all tenured professors at Penn State, began its work on March 4 to look at whether Mann had "engaged in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities."

My emphasis.

Despite the fact that it was completely internal to Penn State, and they didn't bother to interview anyone except Mann himself, 

http://www.advocacyink.com/posts/news-milloy-comments-on-penn-state-scandal-and-investigation-of-michael-mann 404

2/10 repost of milloy:

https://web.archive.org/web/20120727055645/http://www.advocacyink.com/posts/news-milloy-comments-on-penn-state-scandal-and-investigation-of-michael-mann

and seemingly ignored the contents of the emails, the warm mongers declared him exonerated (and the biggest victim in the history of the world). But many in the skeptic community called it a whitewash:

This is not surprising that Mann's own university circled the wagons and narrowed the focus of its own investigation to declare him ethical.

The fact that the investigation cited Mann's 'level of success in proposing research and obtaining funding' as some sort of proof that he was meeting the 'highest standards', tells you that Mann is considered a sacred funding cash cow. At the height of his financial career, similar sentiments could have been said about Bernie Madoff.

Mann has become the posterboy of the corrupt and disgraced climate science echo chamber. No university whitewash investigation will change that simple reality.

Richard Lindzen of MIT weighed in as well:

"Penn State has clearly demonstrated that it is incapable of monitoring violations of scientific standards of behavior internally," Lindzen said in an e-mail from France.

But their criticism was ignored, particularly after the release of the NAS report, which was also purported to exonerate him. But in rereading the NAS "exoneration," some words stand out now. First, he was criticized for his statistical techniques (which was the basis of the criticism that resulted in his unscientific behavior). But more importantly:

The OIG also independently reviewed Mann’s emails and PSU’s inquiry into whether or not Mann deleted emails as requested by Phil Jones in the “Climategate” emails (aka Allegation 2). The OIG concluded after reviewing the the published CRU emails and the additional information provided by PSU that “nothing in [the emails] evidenced research misconduct within the definition of the NSF Research Misconduct Regulation.” Furthermore, the OIG accepted the conclusions of the PSU inquiry regarding whether Mann deleted emails and agreed with PSU’s conclusion that Mann had not.

Again, my emphasis. In other words, the NAS investigation relied on the integrity of the university to provide them with all relevant material, and was thus not truly independent. We now know in hindsight that it could not do so. Beyond that, there are still relevant emails that we haven't seen, two years later, because the University of Virginia continues to stonewall on a FOIA request, and it's heading to the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Virginia.[ati? cooch?]

Michael Mann, like Joe Paterno, was a rock star in the context of Penn State University, bringing in millions in research funding. The same university president who resigned in the wake of the Sandusky scandal was also the president when Mann was being whitewashed investigated. We saw what the university administration was willing to do to cover up heinous crimes, and even let them continue, rather than expose them. Should we suppose, in light of what we now know, they would do any less to hide academic and scientific misconduct, with so much at stake?

It's time for a fresh, truly independent investigation.

*Two inappropriate sentences that originally appeared in this post have been removed by the editor.

The Other Scandal In Unhappy Valley

Rand Simberg • July 13, 2012

==

skep sci legit: 

Most recently, Michael Mann, who himself has a long history being on the receiving end of abusive letters and death threats, as he detailed in his book, has been rather viciously defamed by the Competetive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and National Review.  CEI is a right-wing think tank with a long history of denying the health effects of smoking and human-caused :{climate change:(style="border-bottom:#004440;"):}:, having received major funding from the tobacco and oil industries (i.e. [over $2 million from ExxonMobil](http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?utma=1.2028257287.1343161522.1343161522.1343161522.1&utmb=1.3.10.1343161522&utmc=1&utmx=-&utmz=1.1343161522.1.1.utmcsr=google|utmccn=%28organic%29|utmcmd=organic|utmctr=%28not%20provided%29&utmv=-&__utmk=15606710), and more recently funding from the Koch Brothers and other groups whose wealth is based in fossil fuels like the Scaife Foundations).

Recently, Ryan Simberg published a post on CEI's blog accusing Mann of

"engaging in data manipulation to keep the blade on his famous hockey-stick graph"

The CEI blog post proceded to compare Mann to Jerry Sandusky, a convicted serial childmolester.  This extraordinarily inappropriate and offensive comparison has been removed from the CEI blog, but it remains in a National Review article written by Mark Steyn, which quotes Simberg's post.  We will not reproduce this reprehensible quote here.

==

Oct. 23, 2012

Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann sues National Review, Competitive Enterprise Institute for 'maliciously' attacking his personal reputation.

DailyClimate.org staff report

Michael Mann, an influential climatologist who has spent years in the center of the debate over climate science, has sued two organizations that have accused him of academic fraud and of improperly manipulating data.

Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center, on Monday sued the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, along with CEI analyst Rand Simberg and National Review reporter Mark Steyn. 

The lawsuit, Mann's lawyer said in a statement, was based upon their "false and defamatory statements" accusing him of academic fraud and comparing him to a convicted child molester, former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

Neither Mann nor his lawyer,John B. Williams of the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Cozen O'Connor, were available for comment Tuesday afternoon. But on Facebook, where news of the lawsuit was initially posted Tuesday, Mann said the lawsuit was part of "a battle" to assist climate scientists in the fight against those who attack their work.

There is a larger context ... namely the onslaught of dishonest and libelous attacks that climate scientists have endured for years. 

• Michael Mann

"There is a larger context for this latest development," he wrote, "namely the onslaught of dishonest and libelous attacks that climate scientists have endured for years by dishonest front groups seeking to discredit the case for concern over climate change."

But he faces a high bar: Mann has played a key role in climate science for decades, and the law generally requires a much higher burden of proof from public figures, said CEI general counsel Sam Kazman.

"I don't think he's got a shot at reaching it," Kazman said in an interview. "Our stuff may have been debatable, but it was solidly based and we had a perfect right to say what we did."

"We plan to defend the suit vigorously but we think it is a totally unfounded lawsuit."

hockeystick-300

In 1999 Mann published a timeline of global temperatures stretching back almost 1,000 years. The graph showed a fairly stable trend until 1900, when temperatures spiked sharply upward. That so-called "hockey stick" diagram became a lightning rod in the debate on whether humans were influencing the climate.

In 2007 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore and  authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report for work connecting human activities to global warming.

$500,000 and two years

Two years later a cache of emails illegally obtained from University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom purported to show climate scientists manipulating data. Many of the emails were to or from Michael Mann.

Upwards of seven organizations, from the National Science Foundation to Penn State, conducted investigations into Mann's work. All declared baseless allegations of academic fraud.

Yet the attacks persisted: Virginia Attorney General spent $500,000 and two years unsuccessfully suing to obtain email correspondence from the University of Virginia, where Mann worked from 1999 to 2005.

A separate attempt by American Traditions Institute, a conservative think tank headed by members of other conservative groups such as theCompetitive Enterprise Group [?] and Cooler Heads Coalition, was equally unsuccessful.

One Sandusky reference came in a July National Review blog post by Mark Steyn, who repeated CEI analyst Rand Simberg's comments comparing Mann to the disgraced football coach: "He has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet."

Kazman, CEI's counsel, said the organization removed "a sentence or two" relating to the Penn State sex abuse scandal shortly after it published a post. 

Lawyers for the National Review in New York City were not immediately available for comment Tuesday afternoon

==

cei nat Rev? steyn fired steptoe, rep himself

https://s3.amazonaws.com/ucs-documents/science-and-democracy/MannvNationalReviewCEI.pdf

DAVID B. RIVKIN, JR. (D.C. Bar No. 394446)

BRUCE D. BROWN (D.C. Bar No.457317)

MARK I. BAILEN (D.C. Bar No. 459623)

ANDREW M. GROSSMAN (D.C. Bar No.

985166)

BAKERHOSTETLER LLP

Washington Square, Suite 1100

1050 Connecticut Avenue, NW

NRO june 14 update; anon

In the libel suit brought against National Review by “Climate Inquisitor” Michael Mann, one of the key issues is whether NR can take an immediate appeal of the trial court’s refusal to dismiss the case at the threshold under the D.C. Anti-SLAPP Act. Like many who seek to use litigation as a weapon to silence their critics, Mann has been arguing that NR should be forced to submit to a lengthy and expensive trial on the facts of the case before the appellate court can decide whether his claims pass muster under the First Amendment as a matter of law. On this front, two recent items: 

First, after a full round of briefing on the question of immediate appealability, the D.C. Court of Appeals has ordered briefing on the merits of the case, including whether the First Amendment requires Mann’s claims to be dismissed outright. Although the Court has reserved judgment on the question of immediate appealability, we are very much looking forward to a fresh opportunity to present our arguments on the merits. 

Second, in the separate case of Burke v.Doe, the D.C. Court of Appeals issued a decision last week holding that a defendant anonymous blogger had a right to immediately appeal the denial of an Anti-SLAPP motion to quash a subpoena, which would have forced the blogger to reveal his identity. That decision, which includes a cogent analysis of the interplay between the D.C. Anti-SLAPP statute and the right of immediate appeal, is available here.

Most recently, Michael Mann, who himself has a long history being on the receiving end of abusive letters and death threats, as he detailed in his book, has been rather viciously defamed by the Competetive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and National Review.  CEI is a right-wing think tank with a long history of denying the health effects of smoking and human-caused climate change, having received major funding from the tobacco and oil industries (i.e. over $2 million from ExxonMobil, and more recently funding from the Koch Brothers and other groups whose wealth is based in fossil fuels like the Scaife Foundations).

Recently, Ryan Simberg published a post on CEI's blog accusing Mann of

"engaging in data manipulation to keep the blade on his famous hockey-stick graph"

The CEI blog post proceded to compare Mann to Jerry Sandusky, a convicted serial child molester.  This extraordinarily inappropriate and offensive comparison has been removed from the CEI blog, but it remains in a :{National Review article written by Mark Steyn:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}:, which quotes Simberg's post.  We will not reproduce this reprehensible quote here.

also RAND?

Michael Mann gets SLAPPed

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Anthony Watts

UPDATE: It is revealed that Mann gets $10,000 speakers fees, but he’s worried about some calendars I made.  See below.

From the “we are still laughing at him” department, comes this news via LeClair Ryan who writes:

bs 

Mr. Simberg is an expert on space technology and policy, particularly with regard to NASA and commercial human spaceflight.  He has published lengthy essays on these topics at The New Atlantis, and done many columns for Fox News,Popular Mechanics, AOL News, and Pajamas Media.  With over three decades of experience, including many years in aerospace engineering and project management at the Aerospace Corporation and Rockwell International Corporation in Los Angeles, he has been recognized as an expert in space transportation by the Office of Technology Assessment.

He also has consulted, to space businesses from startups to major corporations, on space systems engineering, business planning, and business development, including Kelly Space and Technology, the Boeing Corporation, ARES, XCOR Aerospace, Masten Space Technologies, and others.  He is the former editor ofThe Space Activists Handbook, and served as a technical editor for many proposals and technical reports.  He is currently working on a book on space technology and policy.

A native of Flint, Michigan, he has multiple engineering degrees from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and an MSE in technical management from West Coast University in Los Angeles.

As I predicted last month, Michael Mann’s suit against the National Review, Competitive Enterprise Institute and two of their contributors, has resulted in ananti-SLAPP motionfiled by the defendants, along with a companion Rule 12(b)(6) motion.

The Mann complaint is 24 pages long, and contains more than 100 paragraphs of allegations and assertions.  The gravamen of the suit is that Mann, who is allegedly “well known for his work regarding global warming,” (which would seem to make him a public figure requiring him to demonstrate actual malice), was allegedly defamed by a blog post that accused him of “academic and scientific misconduct.”  (Mann alleges that he had been previously investigated – and cleared).  The original post at issue, by defendant Rand Simberg, is here; the other post at issue, by defendant Mark Steyn, is here.  http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/309442/football-and-hockey-mark-steyn# The complaint asserts claims for libel and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Not to be outdone, the anti-SLAPP brief runs 60 pages,[BAKER HOSTETLER CF PDF  https://s3.amazonaws.com/ucs-documents/science-and-democracy/MannvNationalReviewCEI.pdf

rivkin brown bailen grossman]with more than 28 pages of that submission chronicling the factual background against which the allegedly defamatory publications were made and the suit brought.  After that extended background section, the brief succinctly (and thankfully!) shows that, because the suit arises from an act in furtherance of the right of advocacy on issues of public interest (the blog post, commenting on the global warming debate and Mann’s role in it), the statute applies and requires dismissal of the suit unless Mann can show that he is likely to prevail on the merits.   (The brief is also discussed by the Volokh Conspiracy here)

…

In a companion Rule 12(b)(6) memorandum, the defendants argue that, for all of the foregoing reasons, the suit should be dismissed.  They further argue that Mann has failed to allege facts to support a finding that they acted with actual malice and, instead, offers only conclusory allegations that they acted “maliciously” or “with actual malice,” and that, for this additional reason, the complaint must be dismissed.

Full story at LeClair Ryan

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/16/michael-mann-gets-slapped/

Penn State climate scientist files defamation suit

October 24th, 2012 in Space & Earth / Environment 

Penn State University scientist Michael Mann, whose work showed that Earth's temperatures have risen along with increased fossil fuel use, announced Tuesday he had filed a lawsuit against the conservative National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute for defamation, complaining that they falsely accused him of academic fraud and compared him to convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky.

Organizations denying that climate change is a serious problem have condemned Mann for years.

Mann was one of the scientists whose emails were hacked from a climate research center at Britain's University of East Anglia in 2009. Climate skeptics quoted portions of the emails in an attempt to discredit the scientists in what the critics dubbed "Climategate." But government and university investigations found no misconduct.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, argued that the two conservative outlets and two writers named in the suit, Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn, "maliciously accused (Mann) of academic fraud, the most fundamental defamation that can be levied against a scientist and a professor."

Simberg, in a Competitive Enterprise Institute blog post in July, wrote that "Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except for instead of molesting children, he molested and tortured data."

Competitive Enterprise Institute general counsel Sam Kazman said the institute withdrew the offending sentence within days when Mann's attorney complained. He said it was "an episode of rhetorical hyperbole." The institute didn't apologize, Kazman said.

"I do not believe he did anything wrong," he said of Simberg, an adjunct at the institute. Simberg said in an email his attorney advised him not to comment, "but I do stand by what I wrote."

In a blog post in National Review Online, Steyn quoted the Competitive Enterprise Institute blog's Sandusky comment in full.

"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. Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change 'hockey-stick' graph," Steyn wrote, referring to Mann's graph showing steady temperatures over centuries and a sudden rise in the 20th century. " ... And when the East Anglia emails came out, Penn State felt obliged to 'investigate' Professor Mann. ... And, as with Sandusky and (football Coach Joe) Paterno, thecollege declined to find one of its star names guilty of any wrongdoing."

David Rivkin, an attorney for National Review [baker host], said, "The lawsuit is utterly lacking in merit and we are comfortable predicting that we'll prevail."

Mann is the director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State and shared with other climate scientists in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

"There is a larger context for this latest development, namely the onslaught of dishonest and libelous attacks that climate scientists have endured for years by dishonest front groups seeking to discredit the case for concern over climate change," Mann said in an email. "It's why I wrote my book 'The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars' about my experiences as a public figure in the climate change debate, and it's why I filed this suit."

His book, published this year, was about being at the center of attacks on climate science.

:{ McClatchy Washington Bureau 

}: 

"Penn State climate scientist files defamation suit." October 24th, 2012. http://phys.org/news/2012-10-penn-state-climate-scientist-defamation.html