Michael Mann’s $1 Million Defamation Verdict Resonates in a Still-Contentious Climate Science World
By Marianne Lavelle
In winning a $1 million verdict against a pair of right-wing bloggers on Thursday, climate scientist Michael Mann scored a victory that is reverberating through a world of climate discourse that many say is no less disputatious than when the bloggers penned their attacks 12 years ago.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.