JWST M51 image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the FEAST JWST team

Sometimes, the good guys win.

Back in early 2012 I was writing the Bad Astronomy Blog, hosted on Discover Magazine’s website. Even at that point I had been writing about climate science denial for a while; I spent a lot of time writing about anti-science chuckleheadery like creationists trying to take over school boards, UFOs, astrology, and the other usual suspects.

Covering the climate did have an upside; I wound up (virtually) meeting a handful of climate scientists, many of whom were the subject of pretty bad attacks by people on the far-right who were — SHOCKER — funded by fossil fuel interests. The attacks were usually on the actual science, though of course the ad hominems went flying as well.

Michael Mann, a climate scientist then at Penn State, was a frequent target. He was the lead author on a famous paper showing that global warming had taken a sudden and sharp upward turn in the 20^th century, so stark that the plotted data came to be nicknamed the “hockey stick graph” due to its shape like the blade of a hockey stick [link to paper]. This of course pointed a finger right at fossil fuel use, and just as of course the fossil fuel machine fought back. Sometimes viciously.

And, sometimes, worse. 

On July 16^th of that year, I read an article by Mark Steyn in the far-right National Review that was egregiously terrible and, frankly, nauseating. It attacked Michael personally, and referenced a blog article written by Rand Simberg for the Competitive Enterprise Institute which said that, to make his graphs, Michael had “molested and tortured” the data, and even compared him to Jerry Sandusky.

In case you’re not familiar, Sandusky was an assistant football coach at Penn State, and was convicted of 45 counts of sexually abusing young boys over a 15-year period. The conviction came in June 2012, a month before these articles came out, and was huge national news. Given that Michael was at Penn State as well, this made the comparison very, very clear.

I was stunned by the horrid and appalling nature of this attack. I was aware of how awful some deniers could be, but this was the worst thing I had ever seen. As soon as I read it I emailed Michael, using the subject line, “Wow. Is this libel?”

Here’s what I wrote:

Michael replied back, and told me he was contacting his lawyer 

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