Jury to decide on climate scientist Michael Mann’s defamation suit over comparison to molester

By SUMAN NAISHADHAM
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s been 12 years since a pair of conservative writers compared a prominent climate scientist to a convicted child molester for his depiction of global warming. Now, a jury is about to decide whether the comments made against Michael Mann were defamatory. Mann rose to fame for his so-called “hockey stick” graph first published in 1998 in the journal Nature. Mann’s graph plotted average temperature in the Northern Hemisphere that was mostly flat for 900 years before starting to rise sharply in the 20th century — and it made a dramatic illustration of the planet’s warming. The work brought Mann wide exposure, but also skeptics. Mann has argued that the comments cost him funding and research opportunities over the years. The writers say they were just expressing opinions.