Yesterday, the Supreme Court denied a cert petition in Competitive Enterprise Institute and National Review v. Michael E. Mann, letting a DC Court of Appeals order allowing the lawsuit to go forward to stand.
Michael Mann is the Penn State professor who developed the “hockey stick graph” that shows the dramatic increase in global temperatures in the 20th century. You’ve probably seen it, it’s the one that looks like this:
As described by Courthouse News:
The case centers on Michael Mann, a professor at Penn State famous for developing the so-called “hockey stick graph” that used ice core samples, tree ring analysis and other data to show global temperatures rising dramatically in the 20th century after a general trend of cooling for most of history.
Mann’s work has been instrumental in the charged debate over the threats posed by climate change, as the graph he helped develop was a key point of evidence that human activity is driving the warming of the planet.
The graph has been the subject of hot debate and some climate skeptics have called into question its validity, though peer-reviewed studies have largely backed up Mann’s findings.
Despite the overwhelming support for Mann’s work, climate change deniers — like those at the National Review and CEI — still like to pretend it doesn’t exist. And after hackers released a bunch of emails from climate scientists in the so-called “Climategate” scandal, those same sycophants deliberately misread the emails and took statements out of context to claim Mann was a liar who had manipulated data.
In response, a variety of organizations, from Penn State to the EPA to the British House of Commons, investigated Mann’s work. He was cleared of any wrongdoing.
But haters gonna hate and liars gonna lie, so outlets like CEI and the National Review continued their crusade against saving the planet.
In July 2012, CEI lackey Rand Simberg wrote a piece comparing Professor Mann to … Penn State pedophile Jerry Sandusky.
Yes, seriously.
Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.
Not to be outdone, Mark Steyn wrote a blog post for the National Review Online quoting from Simberg’s post and calling Mann’s work “fraudulent.” And all of this happened after Mann and his team had been cleared of wrongdoing
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