Climate bully Michael Mann, with mixed results, has been suing those who criticize his “hockey stick” graph of climate history. This 1998 graph purported to show that global temperature was stable until about 1900 when human-induced warming struck. In February, Mann scored a $1 million libel judgment against Canadian columnist Mark Steyn in a court in the District of Columbia. Steyn has responded with an appeal.   

Punitive damages are typically calculated as a ratio to actual damages. With only $1 in actual damages, the ratio in this case is a staggering million to one. This amount is so excessive that there doesn’t seem to be any precedent for it, according to Steyn’s appeal.

On the other hand, the appeal does cite numerous precedents to support a decision to reduce an excessive award. In one example, the DC court of appeals referred to a 1:145 ratio as “staggering.” An award can be overturned based on DC law, on the First Amendment, or as a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. A more reasonable five-to-one ratio would result in Mann taking home $6 instead of a million.

Steyn called Mann’s graph “fraudulent."* Opinions are protected free speech, a principle that should cover both of these statements.

Mann’s lawyer stressed the need for punitive damages to punish “climate deniers.” This is a propagandistic description designed to encourage association with “holocaust denier” and “election denier.” To punish a defendant for his political opinion is to turn the First Amendment on its head.

Steyn’s case has been before the courts for twelve years. Nobody involved lives in DC. Mann won through the use of court shopping. In 2019, he lost a similar case against Tim Ball in the Supreme Court of British Columbia.

DC would not seem to be a promising jurisdiction for Mann’s lawsuit. In 2010, the district adopted an “anti-SLAPP” (strategic lawsuits against public participation) law to limit libel suits that attempt to influence a debate on public policy. This law allows a defendant to file a “special motion to dismiss” if the underlying issue is a subject of an official proceeding or concerns a matter of public interest.

At trial, Steyn represented himself, but with the assistance and advice of an appellate lawyer who was present for the entire trial, and who continues to make post-trial motions. Mann also sued National Review, his publisher. NR used the anti-SLAPP law to get the case dismissed in May 2019. Steyn also filed an anti-SLAPP motion, but it was denied.

Where did Steyn go wrong? For one thing, he defended himself instead of hiring a lawyer. One juror laughed at Steyn’s jokes during the trial. But humor is a funny thing and the other five jurors were less appreciative.

Here is an example of Steyn’s humor from his opening statement: “But in Mr. Mann's world, there's his take and everyone else has to be Hockey Sticked into submission and silence.” Here is another one: “I thought life is too short to waste even three minutes on a cable news hit in talking about complete codswallop like that.” So Steyn is an acquired taste. Not every juror responds to a good codswallop joke. Lawyers exist for a reason.

The judgment against Rand Simberg, Steyn’s co-defendent, was only $1,000. Legally, the two cases are almost the same. In fact, Steyn was sued for quoting Simberg, even though he distanced himself from it and made his own observations. Yet Steyn’s quote was judged to be a thousand times more libelous than the original statement.

One might think that an application of the First Amendment would be of interest to journalists, yet news reports in the liberal media make little to no reference to the legal aspects of the case. Instead, commentary has focused on how Steyn, a mere climate denier, had insulted a “climate scientist,” as if climate scientists are a modern priesthood. Mann has no academic qualifications relevant to climate. His PhD is in geology and geophysics.

Reconstructions of temperature history play a prominent role in the climate debate. After the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a report in 1990, some readers noticed a graph buried deep in the report that showed that global temperature has declined since the Middle Ages.

To Mann, this was a problem and he was determined to correct it. In 1999, he published the hockey stick graph, which purported to show that global temperature was stable until about 1900 when human-induced warming struck. Here is a side-by-side comparison of the IPCC’s 1990 chart and Mann’s chart.These days, the hockey stick is the pride of the IPCC.

Graphic: IPCC reproduction, permission granted.

In 2003, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick wrote a peer-reviewed takedown of Mann’s graph. They concluded that the hockey stick “is primarily an artifact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components.” When they inputted “red noise” into Mann’s model, it still produced a hockey stick. 

As far as more recent reconstructions go, here is one by Andy May from 2016. (Like Mann, May is a geologist.) May’s graph is based on ice cores from Greenland. It shows a temperature upswing in the tenth century at the beginning of the Medieval Warm Period, as well as one in early eighteenth century at the end of the Little Ice Age.

The Hockey Stick is the rotten soul of climate “science.” Although it has been debunked many times, the foundations that fund climate research insist it is “consensus.”

Peter Kauffner lives in Vietnam.

Correction: *an earlier version of this piece mischaracterized part of what Steyn wrote.