Apparently there are some things you can only find in a podcast. On this week’s Heartland’s Climate Change Round Table #84, Marc Morano was a guest to report on attending a hearing in the Mann v Steyn case where Mann was actually forced to appear in person. At 18 minutes in, a little more than 20 minutes of this hour long panel discussion is devoted to the case:

I don’t seem to be able to find anything else on this hearing, but there’s quite a few revelations in this podcast. The trial is set to start within a couple of weeks. Judith Curry, Richard Lindzen and Naomi Oreskes are scheduled to testify. Mann’s lawyers are working to prevent Steven McIntyre from testifying and if all that’s not enough, Mark Steyn is acting as his own lawyer! It seems like a lot of people would be commenting on this, but I can’t find any posts, even at Climate Depot (Marc Morano’s site).

This case has dragged out for more than a decade. I don’t know how nobody, including me, didn’t note the ten year mark. I’ve been arguing about this case in blog comments at places like Climate Etc. and Rabett Run since the beginning. My views are echoed by Sterling Burnett at 23:00 in the above video. This is a first amendment case that should’ve been promptly dismissed. Steyn received amicus briefs from the ACLU and several major news organizations while Mann received none. So much time has passed and with the revelations unveiled in the Twitter files, one has to wonder if these still even apply. In the video, the panelists have trouble remembering details correctly. Steyn’s book, A Disgrace to the Profession, is referred to as The Hockey Stick Delusion and no one picks up on it. The outrageous delaying is clearly from Mann’s side. Steyn promptly submitted to discovery requests and has waited years for Mann to respond. In the meantime he’s even suffered from a couple heart attacks.

There are a few worrisome things. This will be a Washington DC jury that one might suspect will be sympathetic to Mann. Steyn will be acting as his own lawyer. It will be hard to chide him considering how long the court system has let this drag on, but I wonder how well he’ll be handling the objections which there are bound to be for nearly everything he says. At 34 minutes in, Morano talks about how Steyn says that a convicted criminal presided over the investigation of Mann and the Sandusky case and whitewashed both. Morano notes that this official may have been charged and even gone to jail. He is correct. This official is former Penn State president Graham Spanier who got charged with several felonies, went to trial, got acquitted on all the felonies, but was convicted on one misdemeanor. This conviction was then thrown out, because this statute did not exist at the time that the alleged crime occurred. But Pennsylvania had a grandstanding district attorney named Josh Shapiro who put Spanier in jail anyway. Shapiro is now Pennsylvania’s governor.

Did Graham Spanier deserve to go to jail for covering up the Sandusky case? NO! He did not cover up for Sandusky, because there is nothing to cover up. As unlikely as it sounds, the whole case is mass hysteria, stemming from a moral panic caused by a false account of graduate assistant, Mike McQueary, seeing Jerry Sandusky sodomizing a boy in a Penn State shower. There’s an actual email record of McQueary complaining to a prosecutor that his words were twisted. I have a previous Climate Scepticism post entitled: Is Mark Steyn Walking into a Trap? where I try to summarize this very intricate and complicated case. For a good updated summary I would recommend Frederick Crew’s review of the book, In the Lion’s Den by the above mentioned Graham Spanier. For people who want more details (perhaps fans of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul) there’s an epic 70+ hour podcast series called With the Benefit of Hindsight.

If you’re still with me, Mann’s lawsuit is over two blog posts that are about comparing Penn States handling of the Sandusky case with their handling of their inquiry into Michael Mann and the controversy over his hockey stick. At the time, there was no reason for anyone to doubt what they were hearing in the media about the Sandusky case and most people have not heard about all the unreported stuff that’s come out later. Mark Steyn most likely believes the widespread view. Why should he believe the odd Twitter responder who goes by the handle Canman? At 34 minutes in, Morano talks about how Steyn interrupts the judge when he mentions child molestation and says “Excuse me judge. This was not child molestation. This was child rape. We got multiple counts. This guy’s convicted. We can’t whitewash this. ..” This might not be verbatim, but it makes it clear that Steyn intends to use the emotional appeal of the sensationalized charges against Sandusky. It’s irritating to see these false charges used in a case that many say is about truth, but it’s probably a winning tactic/strategy. Looks like it worked wonders for Josh Shapiro.

I actually think there is a small chance that Steyn could get blindsided. Mann looks to me like he’s more of a left wing political pundit than a climate scientist. He’s up to almost 175 thousand tweets and seems to tweet as much about politics as he does climate. he seems to have a regular column at Newsweek. As I mention in my previous post on Steyn, Mann does acknowledge Graham Spanier in his last two books. Could this be some kind of doomsday weapon being held in reserve? In a worse case scenario, what if Steyn subpoenaed Spanier and Mann’s Lawyers convinced the jury and possibly the press that Spanier and Penn State did nothing wrong in the Sandusky case so they likely did not whitewash the Mann inquiry, which they clearly did. If Mann and his lawyers could pull this off they would divert attention away from all the bad hockey stick science and make Mann a rock star in left wing politics. I know this is all pretty far-fetched, but you never know what a mann will do when he’s cornered and Mann is cornered.

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51 Comments

  1. Mike,

    Thanks for the update, and for the background complications. Let’s hope the case proceeds on the legal issues strictly relevant to it, and nothing else. I don;t know enough about the US legal system, but I am concerned about how this case will be dealt with. I suspect that, whatever the outcome, it won’t be the end of the matter, with every likelihood of the decision being appealed.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Thanks Ron – those links offer very useful reminders of what this case is about. It will be interesting to see how the Court handles those issues at the forthcoming trial.

    Like

  5. This may be regarded as O/T, but I’ve decided to post it here, because of its implications for the hockey stick:

    “Brazil drought reveals ancient rock carvings of human faces”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-67204409

    A drop in water levels of the Amazon has revealed rock carvings which had been mostly submerged since they were carved more than a thousand years ago.

    A severe drought means that the human faces carved into rocks on the shore can now be easily spotted.

    Some had been sighted during a previous drought but archaeologists say they have been able to locate a greater variety of the carvings this time.

    The discovery was made in the city of Manaus, in northern Brazil….

    The obvious inference is that there must have been an extended drought there 1,000 years ago, when it is said that the carvings were created, for only extended habitation below what until recently was the water level, would justify such huge effort, and enable enough time to be available to make the effort. As, indeed, the report would seem to confirm:

    …Archaeologist Jaime Oliveira told local media that they were carved by people who lived in the area in pre-Columbian times.

    “This region is a pre-colonial site which has evidence of occupation dating back some 1,000 to 2,000 years,” he said….

    None of which stops the BBC from ending the report thus:

    …The Brazilian government attributes the drought to climate change and the El Niño weather phenomenon, which has caused the volume of rainfall in the northern Amazon to fall below the historical average and river levels to drop to near record levels.

    One might have thought that the fact that the site was allegedly occupied for up to 1,000 years before it was flooded might have given pause for thought before making such claims. It’s a bit like the receding glaciers that, as they retreat, reveal the relics of forests that grew there before the glaciers advanced. Claims about the exceptional nature of things today rather overlook that what we are seeing now is what our ancestors witnessed not that long ago in the scheme of things.

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  6. That same story was in the Guardian in 2010
    Same place, same carvings
    they’ve changed the dating , cos then they estimated 7,000 years old
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/10/amazon-brazil-stone-age-etchings

    I tweeted, https://twitter.com/No2BS/status/1717043779419418739

    on checking I see they’ve said this year is slightly lower
    But basic premise is that at carving the Amazon was lower than today.

    I don’t rule out other things like meterorites and earthquakes shifting ground
    or the old Amazon being in a completely different place etc.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. Or not postponed, after all?

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  11. Ron, thanks for the links. So the case is delayed by judicial illness.

    Regrettably Steyn (albeit ill and understandably frustrated by yet more delays) isn’t doing himself any favours by using an abusive epithet to describe the Judge who will (eventually) hear the case.

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  12. An interesting tidbit from the latest Steyn Online post on the trial. A group of actors is planning on doing nightly dramatizations:

    For Defendant Steyn, this was devastating – and not inexpensive, once you add up the costs of flights, hotels, etc. And he wasn’t the only victim of this capricious and ill-disciplined court. Our friends Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer had also flown in, from California and Ohio, to provide nightly dramatisations of the daily trial transcripts by a cast of A-list actors. So they too were out of pocket thanks to Judge Alfred S Irving’s last-minute decision.

    https://www.steynonline.com/13905/steyn-on-the-ann-phelim-scoop

    Like

  13. Perhaps the latest delay is finally over:

    “US climate scientist’s defamation case over online attacks finally comes to trial
    Michael Mann alleges, in lawsuit first brought in 2012, that attacks on his work by climate denialists amount to defamation”

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/17/michael-mann-climate-scientist-defamation-lawsuit

    …Opening statements in the case will begin on Wednesday afternoon and will be livestreamed, with the trial scheduled to run through at least 6 February, and its completion to be decided by a jury verdict….

    I think it’s fair to say we know whose side the Guardian is on. The plaintiff is referred to as an “esteemed climate scientist” and as a “renowned scientist” who has been “bombarded” with freedom of information requests. Meanwhile:

    …The case comes amid concerns that online abuse of climate scientists has increased in recent years while misinformation about the climate crisis is also on the rise.

    The attacks on Mann came as part of a wider campaign against him by a network of climate skeptics connected to the fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch, experts have said.

    The Competitive Enterprise Institute, which claims to fight “climate alarmism”, has financial ties to the Charles Koch Foundation, while the National Review regularly publishes articles dismissing climate concern science as alarmist and has also accepted Koch-linked funding….

    No mention of the unsuccessful defamation case against Tim Ball, of course.

    Liked by 3 people

  15. The trial is on right now! I’m watching it on WEBEX and listening to it on my phone since I can’t get the sound to work on my computer.

    Like

  16. Mann’s lawyer just made a false statement! He said Sandusky was convicted of sodomizing dozens of boys! Only one trial accuser claimed to have been sodomized. That was Sabastion Paden who made the preposterous claim of being locked in the basement for days, wrote,”Shit I’m balling like a motherfuck Hell ya Money” on his Facebook page and got a settlement for $20 million!

    Like

  19. John William’s (Mann’s lawyer) opening statement was pretty bland. The only thing that stuck out were quotes from Steyn and Simberg’s blog post. He seems to be making Steyn and Simberg’s case for them by emphasizing that they considered them whitewashes. IMO he’s a terrible lawyer.

    Like

  20. Opps. Williams statement is still going on after a 15 min break. He’s going over strategy. reading nasty emails to Mann, blah blah blah.

    It looks like they only allow sound that the jury hears. Williams says Mann didn’t choose his data — Bradley and Hughs did — shifting blame? LOL. Now he’s talking about statistical tricks. He’s talking about McIntyre. Now he’s talking about Judith Curry (and her extreme views?). Says Mann has teaching dutys and may not be there every day.

    Like

  21. Rand Simberg’s opening statement coming up. His Lawyer has set up a chart. She’s good! Says Mann suffered no damages and defends the 1st amendment. Brings up a Mann email that says “coover our a$$es”. Wow, she’s good!

    Like

  23. This woman has a brilliant career ahead of her! Definitely someone for the legal set to watch. I’m about ready to call it now. Mann is toast!

    Like

  24. Oh no! She just brought up Graham Spanier and it looks like she might be planning to slime him. Could this be an opening for Mann’s team with the unlikely strategy that I’ve proposed? Mann’s lawyer doesn’t appear to be competent enough to try it, but you never know.

    I will note that there is a YouTube channel that will be summarizing the case every day.

    https://www.youtube.com/@TheAnnandPhelimScoop/videos

    On their first report at about 17 minutes in they talk about how Mann’s team try to bring in 5400 pages in at the last minute and get admonished by the judge.

    Like

  25. I’m a little perplexed by the suggestion that Mann has teaching duties and may not be at the trial every day. Of course, most people have to work to earn a living, and I get that. But after all, he is the plaintiff, this is his case, and I assume he was given a reasonable amount of notice regarding the trial date that might have enabled him to rearrange said teaching duties. It’s not a big point, but it’s still a little perplexing, to me at least.

    By the way, Mike, thanks for the running summary. I wish I could share your confidence.

    Liked by 1 person

  26. Mark, listening to Rand’s lawyer and Williams is like day and night. She’s going to be the star of this show. Steyn has a high bar as his own lawyer. That jury is going to have to be mostly fanatical Greenpeace activists for Mann to win. She’s whip smart and very organized. She made it clear that the trial is not about whether global warming is true, but about free speech.

    Like

  28. Oh, No. I think I missed Steyn’s opening statement. The court room had been empty for quite a while and I thought it would be tomorrow. A tab in my browser just went off with the sound of Graham making some sort of statement in that courtroom. I do NOT consider that good news. For some reason my browser will not play the sound from the trial so I have to listen to it on my phone and I had it shut down.

    Like

  30. The trials still going for 20 minutes. Williams has called Bradley or Hughs as a witness. It looks like their strategy is to bore the jury to death.

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  31. Lots of dramatic pictures of scientists using complicated looking machines to get tree core and ocean bed samples. Wowing them with thick textbooks. Now he’s whining about political intimidation. He just dropped Bill McKibben’s name. The witness is Raymond Bradley(from MBH).

    Now it’s getting boring. I’m pretty sure their strategy is to make the jury drowsy.

    Like

  34. Apparently, Bill Nye has engaged in blatant jury tampering. He reportedly walked into the jury pool and announced that he was a friend of Michael Mann.

    Like

  36. Note from the video Steyn played it down
    So Mann had his friend Nye come into the courthouse
    and then when Nye caught a jurists eye Nye said hello
    and the jurists replied, hey you are the climate guy off the telly.

    Bit like a sex crime guy might turn up at court with his wife and kids ..to send a signal to the jury “pure family man”

    Like

  39. One has to respect Steyn all the more given this financial revelation from yesterday:

    Liked by 1 person

  40. It is a very powerful statement from Steyn. I wonder if Mann is yet regretting bringing this case? Leon Uris’ novel QB VII springs to mind (and, as I don’t want to be sued, I hasten to add that I am not comparing Mr Mann to a Nazi).

    Mann said after he lost his case against Ball and was ordered to pay costs, that he wouldn’t pay a penny. I assume that’s because the Climate Defence Fund, or whatever they are called, is paying. It’s strange that a “defence” fund keeps paying the costs of bringing cases, rather than defending, but I guess they regard attack as the best form of defence.

    Liked by 1 person

  41. Mark: Without knowledge of US libel law and procedure I have assumed something worse. That Mann refuses to pay up and help Ball’s widow in her affliction, being advised that her fight to get what she is due to her will add to her suffering. Pour encourager les autres as they say.

    Liked by 1 person

  42. Correction to my comment of 11:58am: Mann’s suing of Tim Ball from 2011 was not in the US but in Canada, ending up in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. The judgment on 22nd August 2019 dismissed the case on account of delay. A mere eight years of lawfare there. I hope Ball’s widow has received her due by now. More at:

    https://climatecasechart.com/non-us-case/michael-mann-v-timothy-tim-ball-the-frontier-centre-for-public-policy-inc-and-john-doe/

    Like

  48. Extraordinary goings-on over the Pond with regard to the fallout from the Mann litigation against Steyn and National Review. Funny that the BBC and the Guardian don’t seem to be interested in reporting it:

    “”In Bad Faith”

    A DC court sanctions climate scientist Michael Mann and his lawyers for misconduct “extraordinary in its scope, extent, and intent.””

    https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/in-bad-faith

    and (for the law reports themselves):

    https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/yixcqfv4h1idp1xt5elo7/2025.03.12-Order-Granting-Def-s-Sanctions-Mots.pdf

    https://medialaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/03.04.25mann.pdf

    Liked by 2 people

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