Michael Mann Wins One

Michael Mann, one of the world’s leading climate researchers, found himself in 2012 (in his words), “the central object of attack in what some have characterized as the best-funded, most carefully-orchestrated assault on science the world has known.”

Those attacks come from front groups for the fossil fuel industry, right-wing politicians, and climate change deniers — and they were vicious. Two conservative writers compared his depictions of global heating to the work of a convicted child molester (read about the case here). But I’m happy to say that Mann has just been awarded $1 million by a jury in a defamation lawsuit against them.

Mann detailed the attacks he had to endure, while explaining the science behind the rise in Earth’s temperature and the human causes behind it, in his book, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.” When it was published in 2013, he joined me on my America Weekend show to discuss what it’s been like to be on the front lines of this battle.

You can listen to our conversation here.

Also on Harris Online…

• My conversation with Michael Mann about a report from the IPCC about how climate change was already affecting us (4/5/14)
• My conversation with Andrew Rosenberg of the Union of Concerned Scientists about what happens when science meets politics (4/6/14).
• My conversation with Andrew Frumkin of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which sounded the alarm on climate change (3/23/14).