Mann vs. Steyn: The Trial of the Century

realclearpolitics ^ | - February 12, 2014 | By Robert Tracinski

[dennisw]

When the "Climategate" e-mails were leaked five years ago, a lot of us speculated that it could all end up in the courts, given the evidence that climate scientists were pocketing large sums of government money on the basis of a scientific consensus they were manipulating behind the scenes. But it's typical of our upside-down political and cultural environment that when this issue does reach the courts, it will be in the form of a lawsuit against the climate skeptics.

Steyn and the others are being sued for criticizing Mann's scientific arguments. In the case of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, for example, they're being sued for Rand Simberg's complaint that Mann "has molested and tortured data." (See a summary of the case here.) Frankly, I'm not sure how I escaped this lawsuit myself. I shall have to review what I have written and see if my language was not sufficiently inflammatory. Perhaps I don't have pockets deep enough to be worth looting. Or perhaps I'm not a big enough target to be worth intimidating and bankrupting. Note the glee with which the left slavers at the prospect of taking out a prominent voice on the right, with one leftist gloating that "it's doubtful that National Review could survive" losing the case.

(Steyn points out that National Review is insured against such lawsuits and will survive. But it's interesting that no one asks who is going to go bankrupt funding Mann's lawsuit. A deterrent to the abuse of libel laws is the prospect of spending a lot of money on lawyers' fees for a lawsuit that fails. Who is insuring Mann against this loss?)

But along the way, the global warming campaign is already wrecking our science and politics by seeking to establish a dogma that cannot legally be questioned.

[hoosiermama]

Get out the popcorn!

[EDINVA]

I’d be a LOT more comfortable if it weren’t in a DC court.