A jury on Thursday awarded $1 million to climate scientist Michael Mann, who sued a pair of conservative writers 12 years ago after they compared his depictions of global warming to a convicted child molester.

Mann, a professor of climate science at the University of Pennsylvania, rose to fame for a graph first published in 1998 in the journal Nature that was dubbed the “hockey stick” for its dramatic illustration of a warming planet.

The work brought Mann wide exposure but also many skeptics, including the two writers Mann took to court for comments that he said affected his career and reputation in the U.S. and internationally.

“It feels great,” Mann said Thursday after the six-person jury delivered its verdict. “It’s a good day for us, it’s a good day for science.”

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    1038 months ago

    How would it even occur to you to compare climate science to child molestation? Unless you just think that everything you don’t like is child molestation.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      63
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      I think it’s probably got more to do with the “every accusation is a confession” principle that modern conservatism seems to operate under.

    • Flying Squid
      link
      268 months ago

      How would it occur to you that a guy rescuing kids trapped in a cave is a pedophile? Who knows, but Elon did anyway.

      • @stoly
        link
        128 months ago

        This is apparently what started many people realizing that he is actually an idiot and not a genius.

        • Flying Squid
          link
          108 months ago

          It certainly was for me. I was always a bit skeptical of him as I am of all cults of personality, but I didn’t realize he was also stupid until then.

        • capital
          link
          38 months ago

          That’s when I realized he’s a shithead.

      • @MotoAsh
        link
        118 months ago

        Hey now, let’s be fair! He was also visiting Thailand a lot, and we all know the singular, only valuable thing in the entire country is young twink boys you can confuse for a girl.

        … /s, just in case.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      11
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      Its shit heel behavior, but there was the Jerry Sandusky revelations at Penn state, the same university where Mann worked at the time.

      These shit heads just used an actually evil bastard that was in the news to drum up clicks and vilify Mann in the worst way possible at the same time.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      88 months ago

      They actually like child molestation, but only when their side is doing it, otherwise they use it as an insult.

      • @Agent641
        link
        48 months ago

        They hate seeing others do it wrong.

        • @afraid_of_zombies
          link
          18 months ago

          Your sentence heavily implied that there is a right way to molest children. Which I am betting you didn’t intend but it is still funny.

    • @afraid_of_zombies
      link
      58 months ago

      When I was a kid everything my family didn’t like was satanic. Boy getting a piercing, wearing a sweatband, non-baby boomer music.

    • @stoly
      link
      38 months ago

      Conservatives really do build up this whole terrible world in which they are the only heroes and anything they do is ok. They don’t think he is a child molester, they said it for shock value alone and are now giving us the shocked Pikachu face.

    • SeaJ
      link
      fedilink
      18 months ago

      Accusations like that are often confessions.

    • @rayyy
      link
      08 months ago

      Wackos used to call everything they hated, “communist” but switch names because their beloved Putin is pretty communist.

      • @Buddahriffic
        link
        108 months ago

        Russia stopped being a communist state with the fall of the USSR (and Gorbachev loosened that up even before the fall). It’s more of a right wing kleptocracy today.

        • @CheeseNoodle
          link
          English
          38 months ago

          I mean Russia stopped being communist within about 5 minutes of beccoming communist, which is generally the problem with communism. Its a system that only works in a theoretical world where everyones nice and the first strongman to show up doesn’t sieze control and turn it into an autocracy.

          • @Buddahriffic
            link
            08 months ago

            Yeah, even without the strongmen or cults of personality that can completely upend things, communism is a system that just breeds resentment, I think even more so than capitalism plus social safety nets (as inadequate as they might be).

      • TurtleJoe
        link
        98 months ago

        Putin is not in any way a communist. He’s a mobbed up, fascist dictator.

        • @stoly
          link
          18 months ago

          And he was that even when he was an official communist. Nothing has changed. The economic system used in a place doesn’t make people good or bad.