Haven't digested this yet and won't get to it until later, but I'll put this here now. Comments welcome.
Reason.com: DC Court Grants Summary Judgment for CEI In Michael Mann Defamation Suit
Haven't digested this yet and won't get to it until later, but I'll put this here now. Comments welcome.
Reason.com: DC Court Grants Summary Judgment for CEI In Michael Mann Defamation Suit
2 comments:
Personally, I think Dr. Mann is ill-advised in going to law in these cases, although I understand why he might believe he has to stand up to the charlatans.
No doubt this will be trumpeted as the latest 'nail in the coffin' for AGW. Point folks towards this from the judgement ...
"This is not a lawsuit over the existence or legitimacy of climate change. Nor is it a lawsuit over the veracity of the hockey stick graph"
Having had a closer look, I don’t think Dr Mann ever could have won this one. For legal purposes he is a 'public figure', which means the bar for defamation gets set higher, basically he would have to prove CEI acted with actual malice. The summary judgement makes the point that CEI merely hosted the venue where Rand Simberg posted the article in question, describing the platform as:
"a blog designed for low-effort management on the part of CEI, where outside writers enjoy a platform for their opinions, with only cursory review by a relatively low-ranking CEI employee prior to publication."
So Mann had little chance of proving actual malice by CEI. That this took nine years is astonishing.
Note though that requests for similar summary judgements by Simberg and Steyn have apparently been denied.
And never forget that these legal actions are nothing more than a sideshow, nothing to do with the reality of AGW or even the merits of the Hockey Stick.
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