Nearly twelve years after he was sued for defamation, conservative pundit Mark Steyn finally got the opportunity in court on Thursday to grill his accuser, climate scientist Michael Mann.
In a 2012 blog post on National Review’s website, Steyn called Mann’s research “fraudulent.”
During his cross-examination of the University of Pennsylvania climatologist, Steyn, who is representing himself, questioned Mann about his association with a former Penn State University president whom he called an “enabler” of Jerry Sandusky, the school’s infamous former football coach and serial child molester who was referenced in Steyn’s blog post. He asked about controversial climate data that Mann and his colleagues used to create graphs documenting the earth’s changing temperatures.
The two also had a heated exchange over a private email Mann wrote in 2012, in which he said it was his “hope” that through the lawsuit he could “ruin this pathetic excuse for a human being,” referring to Steyn.
But the exchange was often interrupted by Superior Court Judge Alfred Irving, who repeatedly made the jury leave to admonish both Steyn and Mann. In the end, Steyn’s questioning was cut short because he repeatedly complained about the heat in the courtroom.
“I’m dying in here. This is cruel and unusual punishment,” said Steyn, who has had well-publicized health troubles in recent years.
The lawsuit, which Mann filed in 2012, stems from a blog post critical of Mann’s work that Steyn wrote on the Corner section of National Review’s website.
In his post, Steyn commented on a separate article by Rand Simberg of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who made a crude analogy between Mann and Sandusky. Simberg said Mann had “engaged in academic and scientific misconduct.” He added that Mann “could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate change, 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.”
In his post, Steyn distanced himself from the Sandusky analogy, but added that “he has a point,” and that “Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change ‘hockey-stick’ graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus,” a reference to climate data obtained through the analysis of tree rings.
Mann sued Steyn, National Review, Simberg, and CEI in 2012. National Review maintained that Steyn had offered opinion protected by the First Amendment and that it was posted by a non-employee. Both National Review and CEI were removed from the case in 2021.
During his cross-examination on Thursday, Steyn questioned Mann about the damages he suffered as a result of his blog post, and specifically about Mann’s claim that he once got a “mean look that expressed revulsion” while grocery shopping with his family at a Wegmans supermarket. Mann said he still had a “very vivid image” of the encounter in his mind, and that it made him feel like a “pariah.” Mann said shopping at Wegmans with his family used to be a highlight of his week, but getting the mean look from a customer “damaged that for me.”
“It was no longer the pleasurable experience I was used to having,” he said.
During a long period of questioning, Steyn asked Mann about including former Penn State president Graham Spanier in the acknowledgements of his books, including recent books published after Spanier was convicted of a misdemeanor charge of child endangerment in connection to the Sandusky case. Mann testified earlier that his family had been devastated by the comparison to Sandusky.
“You don’t like to be associated with Sandusky, but you’re happy to be associated with Sandusky’s disgraced enabler?” Steyn asked.
“I don’t like being compared directly to a child molester, which you did,” Mann replied.
Mann contended that he regularly adds people to his acknowledgements list, but rarely removes them. “I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking and editing the acknowledgment sections for my books,” he said. “They’re literally an afterthought. It’s the end of the book.”
“You make it sound like it’s some sort of master plan, and it’s not,” he added.
The two sparred over the data that Mann and his colleagues used in their research and in Mann’s controversial “hockey-stick” graph, and over Steyn’s comment that Mann was the “ringmaster of the tree-ring circus.”
Steyn asked why Mann didn’t consider that one could question the value of tree-ring data without questioning climate science generally. Mann said he is not a tree-ring researcher, and he said that Steyn’s contention “sounds to me like a more general attack, like you’re trying to intimate that the entire science of climate change is fraudulent.”
Steyn’s questioning ended with him asking Mann about the 2012 email about him. “My hope is that we can ruin this pathetic excuse for a human being through this lawsuit,” Mann wrote. “He has been libeling and lying his whole life. We will put an end to it.”
Mann said Thursday that he “was extremely upset about the things you had said about me.” Steyn accused Mann of being non-responsive to his questions.
Steyn’s questioning of Mann is expected to resume on Monday.
The long-awaited trial, which kicked off last week in Washington, D.C., has noted that Mann has feuded with other scientists over the years, and that he doesn’t have any debt for legal services over the last twelve years. Steyn, on the other hand, is selling “limited edition” “Liberty Stick” hockey sticks for $100 on his website to help pay for his defense.
In addition to writing that he hoped his lawsuit would “ruin” Steyn, Mann also wrote in private exchanges that there was “a possibility that I can ruin National Review,” which he referred to as “this filthy organization,” a “threat to our children,” and beholden to “greedy fat cat corporate masters.”