Pitched Litigation Battle Between Climate Change Adversaries Divides Liberals

An update on a controversy that goes back to 2012, when climate scientist Michael Mann, creator of the so-called hockey stick graph, sued Mark Steyn, the National Review, Rand Simberg and the Competitive Enterprise Institute for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The defendants are trying to get the case dismissed, but Steyn, an aggressive commentator and sometime colleague of Rush Limbaugh, has separated himself from the other defendants and wants to see the matter litigated. “I haven’t wasted two years on this guy to be denied my moment in court,” he says. The litigation battle divides liberals, with some – among them the the ACLU and Berkeley law professor Dan Farber – siding with the defendants on the grounds that defamation suits shouldn’t be used to stifle free speech. Farber in particular thinks Mann’s suit is unlikely to succeed because, per precedent, he would have to prove the defendants didn’t actually believe what they said about him. “I assume,” Farber writes, “that they actually did believe what they were saying, just as other people at those same institutions believe that President Obama was born in Kenya and is secretly planning to abolish private property, confiscate all guns, and institute Sharia law.”