IN a rather satisfying development at the end of last week, a jury in the Washington, D.C. Superior Court unanimously found conservative commentators Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg liable for defamation against noted climate scientist Michael Mann, awarding Mann $1 million in damages. Although Steyn said he would appeal the verdict, it likely brings to an end a case that has dragged on for 12 years and sought unsuccessfully to put climate science itself on trial.
Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, led a landmark research study published in 1999 that provided the famous "hockey stick" graph, a chart showing global temperature variations over 1,000 years. The chart indicates relatively consistent temperatures — if anything, a slight, gradual cooling — until about 1900 when they sharply jump upward. The "hockey stick" was one of the first widely publicized pieces of evidence of human-caused global warming, and while it was challenged by numerous other researchers, as any research results ought to be because that's how science works, it has been confirmed as valid at every turn.
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