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Column: The climate scientist who just won a $1-million judgment against climate change deniers

Published

2 years ago

February 13, 2024

Column: The climate scientist who just won a -million judgment against climate change deniers

One of the major issues confronting scientists today — especially those working in the heavily politicized fields of global warming, vaccines and the origin of COVID-19 — is how to deal with the torrents of misinformation and disinformation, some of it personal, pushing back against their work.

Climate scientist Michael E. Mann just found an answer. Sue the critics — and win.

Last week, a Washington, D.C., jury awarded Mann more than $1 million in punitive damages against two right-wing writers who had accused him of research fraud.

I hope this verdict sends a message that falsely attacking climate scientists is not protected speech.

— Climate scientist Michael Mann

The jurors didn’t appear to find this a close question. They ruled that the online posts written by Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn breached the legal standards applied to defamation lawsuits involving a public figure such as Mann — that their writings asserted facts that were “provably false” and that they knew or should have known that their assertions were false.

The jury awarded Mann $1 in compensatory damages from each defendant, plus $1,000 in punitive damages from Simberg and $1 million in punitive damages from Steyn. The verdicts capped a painful 12-year battle that Mann waged to protect his reputation from trolls questioning his integrity.

“I hope this verdict sends a message that falsely attacking climate scientists is not protected speech,” Mann said after the verdict.

There’s more to the case than the exoneration of a single scientist. The verdict scored a direct hit on personal attacks on scientists using innuendo and outright lies, all aimed at advancing partisan and economic ideologies by undermining scientific research.

“The attacks denigrating science and trying to undercut science, both for climate science and biomedicine, [are] not just about the science,” Peter Hotez, a leading authority on medicines and vaccines and a prominent foe of anti-science politics, told PBS.

“It’s now gone the next step to attack the scientists and portray us as public enemies,” said Hotez, who is collaborating with Mann on a book about the anti-science movement. “Both Michael and I are stalked regularly. We receive threats online, phone calls to the office, sometimes physical confrontations. So it’s gone out to that new level.”

Scientists working in all fields subjected to partisan critiques have lamented that the flow of lies about their work and about established science can be unrelenting.

The critics are financed by right-wing foundations and their claims repeated at congressional hearings — typically, these days, chaired by House Republicans aiming to pump conspiracy theories into the mainstream. Sometimes, as many targets have experienced, the criticism degenerates into personal threats and physical confrontations.

Much is at stake in these battles. Global warming is an elemental threat to life on Earth, and ignoring it as its deniers advocate is a recipe for extinction. Campaigns by anti-vaccine activists can cause sickness and death for untold millions in the U.S. and worldwide.

To understand Mann’s case, it helps to start at the beginning.

In 1998 and 1999, Mann and colleagues published two papers reporting that global temperatures, which had been stable for at least a millennium, began rising sharply during the 20th century and especially in the last 50 years. They used evidence from tree rings, sediment cores from oceans, caves and lakes and ice cores from glaciers to reconstruct climate patterns of the distant past.

The famous “hockey stick” graph developed by Michael Mann and colleagues showed average climate temperatures soaring sharply over the last century as burning of fossil fuels increased.

(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)

The 1999 paper illustrated their findings with what became known as the “hockey stick” graph because it resembled that implement with a long horizontal shaft (the distant past) ending with a nearly upright blade (recent times).

Mann’s research and the graph drew immediate pushback from global warming deniers, who questioned his data and methodology. After 2009, when emails among climate scientists including Mann were hacked from the files of the University of East Anglia in Britain and cherry-picked to suggest that the scientists were manipulating their data, they also questioned his integrity.

The attacks on Mann should have been ended by a series of official investigations through 2021 that cleared him of research wrongdoing, including two by Pennsylvania State University, where Mann taught from 2005 to 2022, and another by the National Science Foundation.

In all, eight separate investigations by official bodies found Mann innocent of wrongdoing or validated his research findings; the results all were made public. But the attacks continued, even up to this day. (Mann is now at the University of Pennsylvania.)

That brings us to the noxious posts by Simberg and Steyn.

Simberg’s post, titled “The Other Scandal in Unhappy Valley,” was published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute on July 12, 2012 — after Mann had been cleared. It’s worth noting that the CEI is a free-enterprise think tank that has been funded by the Koch network, other far-right moneybags and the tobacco industry, and that global warming denial has been one of its favorite themes.

Simberg drew a connection between the scandal in the Penn State football program involving a cover-up of sexual molestations by Jerry Sandusky, an assistant coach, and the university’s purported “whitewash” of Mann’s hockey stick deceptions. (The headline referred to the nickname of Penn State’s scenic location, “Happy Valley.”)

“Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science,” Simberg wrote, “except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science.”

CEI has left Simberg’s post up on its website but has excised his references to Sandusky as “inappropriate.” However, the full post, including its original references to Sandusky, was reprinted in a 2016 decision by a Washington, D.C., court of appeals that allowed Mann’s case against the writers to proceed to trial.

Steyn followed Simberg’s post with his own, published in the conservative organ National Review on July 15.

While writing, apropos of Simberg’s Sandusky reference, that he was “not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers,” Steyn asserted that Simberg “has a point.” He called Mann’s hockey-stick graph “fraudulent.”

Steyn and Simberg both questioned the investigations that cleared Mann. Simberg noted that Penn State’s investigators were all tenured professors on its faculty. Steyn wrote, “If an institution is prepared to cover up systemic statutory rape of minors, what won’t it cover up?”

Simberg also referred disdainfully to a 2011 investigation by the National Science Foundation’s inspector general, which exonerated Mann, writing that it relied on information from Penn State and therefore was “not truly independent.”

A couple of points about that. First, Simberg wrote that the investigation was by the National Academy of Sciences, which is different from the NSF. (The NAS conducted its own investigation upholding Mann’s work, in 2006, but that’s not the one Simberg quoted.)

Second, the NSF’s office of inspector general specifically stated that in its investigation it did not rely on Penn State.

Rather, it examined “a substantial amount of publicly available documentation concerning both [Mann’s] research and parallel research conducted by his collaborators and other scientists” in the field of global warming, and also interviewed Mann, “critics, and disciplinary experts” before finding that there was no evidence that Mann “falsified or fabricated any data.”

National Review defended itself and Steyn’s column with the sort of vacuous braggadocio that is its stock in trade.

In a 2012 editorial headlined “Get Lost,” its editor, Rich Lowry, laughed off Mann’s threat to file a lawsuit by pledging that if Mann did so it would be pleased to engage in “extremely wide-ranging” discovery — “we will be doing more than fighting a nuisance lawsuit; we will be embarking on a journalistic project of great interest to us and our readers.”

In any event, National Review turned tail and ran. It persuaded the D.C. court to drop it from Mann’s lawsuit in 2021 by pleading that Steyn wasn’t its employee but merely an “independent contractor” and that none of its employees had reviewed his posting until it was published on its website, which it portrayed as sort of a neutral landing place for posts to appear. That “journalistic project of great interest”? Fugeddaboutit.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute also got itself dismissed from Mann’s lawsuit in 2021 via a similar argument that a judge described as “an assertion of ignorance”: It said Simberg wasn’t its employee and that the low-level employee who did review his article before it posted checked it only for “formatting error and typos,” not for content.

National Review continued to ridicule Mann. In January, as the trial against the writers began in a D.C. courtroom, it labeled Mann “a darling of fashionable opinion,” placed his case in the category of “runaway snowflakery” and called it “laughably weak.” (Whoops.) Given the publication’s court-ordered immunization against liability, it appeared to be taking on the role of a bully who goads others into waging battle with the words, “Let’s you and him fight.”

Now that the verdict is in, National Review is wrapping itself in the U.S. Constitution. It editorialized that a few blocks from the courthouse, “at the National Archives Museum, the 1st Amendment faded a little on its parchment.”

It asserted that Mann won the $1-million verdict merely for a blog post that did no more than “ruffle [his] feathers.” It charged that Mann’s “mendacity and egomania” motivated his lawsuit.

“Ultimately, this lawsuit is not about Mark Steyn or about conservative magazines or about climate change,” National Review wrote, “but about the integrity of free speech in these United States.”

The truth is, however, that Steyn and Simberg lost only after the jury applied the most stringent standards for defamation lawsuits — standards that have been developed precisely to protect “the integrity of free speech” and that protect serious journalism. Mann had to show that the authors knew or should have known that their factual assertions about his work were false, and that’s exactly what he did.

The lesson embodied in the jury award is not that you can’t smear or defame your targets. The jury didn’t rule that you can’t express an opinion about them or their work in the course of robust debate.

What it did rule, and it isn’t alone in honoring this principle, is that you can’t smear them by parading lies and misrepresentations as though they’re facts — not without paying a price.

That may be a frightful lesson for National Review and other publications like it, but it should be comforting for the rest of us.

Business

Snoopy is everywhere right now — from jewelry to pimple patches. Why?

Published

4 hours ago

December 23, 2025

Press Room

Snoopy is everywhere right now — from jewelry to pimple patches. Why?

As a child, Clara Spars, who grew up in Charles M. Schulz’s adoptive hometown of Santa Rosa, assumed that every city had life-size “Peanuts” statues dotting its streets.

After all, Spars saw the sculptures everywhere she went — in the Santa Rosa Plaza, at Montgomery Village, outside downtown’s Empire Cleaners. When she and her family inevitably left town and didn’t stumble upon Charlie Brown and his motley crew, she was perplexed.

Whatever void she felt then is long gone, since the beagle has become a pop culture darling, adorning all manner of merchandise — from pimple patches to luxury handbags. Spars herself is the proud owner of a Baggu x Peanuts earbuds case and is regularly gifted Snoopy apparel and accessories.

“It’s so funny to see him everywhere because I’m like, ‘Oh, finally!’” Spars said.

The spike in Snoopy products has been especially pronounced this year with the 75th anniversary of “Peanuts,” a.k.a. Snoopy’s 75th birthday. But the grip Snoopy currently has on pop culture and the retail industry runs deeper than anniversary buzz. According to Sony, which last week acquired majority ownership of the “Peanuts” franchise, the IP is worth half a billion dollars.

To be clear, Snoopy has always been popular. Despite his owner being the “Peanuts” strip’s main character and the namesake for most of the franchise’s adaptations, Snoopy was inarguably its breakout star. He was the winner of a 2001 New York Times poll about readers’ favorite “Peanuts” characters, with 35% of the vote.

This year, the Charles M. Schulz Museum celebrated the 75th anniversary of the “Peanuts” comic strip’s debut.

(Brennan Spark / Charles M. Schulz Museum)

But the veritable Snoopymania possessing today’s consumers really exploded with the social media boom of the early 2010s, said Melissa Menta, senior vice president of global brand and communications for Peanuts Worldwide.

That’s also when the company saw the first signs of uncharacteristically high brand engagement, Menta said. She largely attributed the success of “Peanuts” on social media to the comic strip’s suitability to visual platforms like Instagram.

“No one reads the comic strips in newspapers anymore,” Menta said, “but if you think about it, a four-panel comic strip, it’s actually an Instagram carousel.”

Then, in 2023, Peanuts Worldwide launched the campaign that made Snoopy truly viral.

That year, the brand partnered with the American Red Cross to create a graphic tee as a gift for blood donors. The shirt, which featured Snoopy’s alter ego Joe Cool and the message “Be Cool. Give Blood,” unexpectedly became internet-famous. In the first week of the collaboration, the Red Cross saw a 40% increase in donation appointments, with 75% of donors under the age of 34.

“People went crazy over it,” Menta said, and journalists started asking her, “Why?”

Her answer? “Snoopy is cute and cool. He’s everything you want to be.”

Art of the Peanuts characters hangs at the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center.

The Red Cross collaboration was so popular that Peanuts Worldwide brought it back this year, releasing four new shirt designs. Again, the Snoopy fandom — plus some Woodstock enthusiasts — responded, with 250,000 blood donation appointments made nationwide in the month after the collection’s launch.

In addition to the Red Cross partnership, Peanuts Worldwide this year has rolled out collaborations with all kinds of retailers, from luxury brands like Coach and Kith to mass-market powerhouses like Krispy Kreme and Starbucks. Menta said licensed product volume is greater than ever, estimating that the brand currently has more than 1,200 licensees in “almost every territory around the world,” which is approximately four times the number it had 40 years ago.

Then again, at that time, Schulz enjoyed and regularly executed veto power when it came to product proposals, and licensing rules were laid out in what former Times staff writer Carla Lazzareschi called the “Bible.”

“The five-pound, 12-inch-by-18-inch binder given every new licensee establishes accepted poses for each character and painstakingly details their personalities,” Lazzareschi wrote in a 1987 Times story. “Snoopy, for example, is said to be an ‘extrovert beagle with a Walter Mitty complex.’ The guidelines cover even such matters as Snoopy’s grip on a tennis racquet.”

Although licensing has expanded greatly since then, Menta said she and her retail development associates “try hard not to just slap a character onto a T-shirt.” Their goal is to honor Schulz’s storytelling, she added, and with 18,000 “Peanuts” strips in the archive, licensees have plenty of material to pull from.

Rick Vargas, the senior vice president of merchandising and marketing at specialty retailer BoxLunch, said his team regularly returns to the Schulz archives to mine material that could resonate with customers.

“As long as you have a fresh look at what that IP has to offer, there’s always something to find. There’s always a new product to build,” Vargas said.

Indeed, this has been one of BoxLunch’s strongest years in terms of sales of “Peanuts” products, and Snoopy merchandise specifically, the executive said.

Bejeweled keychains of Snoopy and Charlie Brown.

Daniella Yacobovsky, co-founder of the celebrity-favorite accessory retailer BaubleBar, reported similar high sales for the brand’s recent “Peanuts” collection.

“Especially for people who are consistent BaubleBar fans, every time we introduce new character IP, there is this huge excitement from that fandom that we are bringing their favorite characters to life,” Yacobovsky said.

The bestselling item in the collection, the Peanuts Friends Forever Charm Bracelet, sold out in one day. Plus, customers have reached out with new ideas for products linked to specific “Peanuts” storylines.

More recently, Peanuts Worldwide has focused on marketing to younger costumers in response to unprecedented brand engagement from Gen Z. In November, it launched a collaboration with Starface, whose cult-favorite pimple patches are a staple for teens and young adults. The Snoopy stickers have already sold out on Ulta.com, Starface founder Julie Schott said in an emailed statement, adding that the brand is fielding requests for restocks.

“We know it’s a certified hit when resale on Depop and EBay starts to spike,” Schott said.

The same thing happened in 2023, when a CVS plush of Snoopy in a puffer jacket (possibly the dog’s most internet-famous iteration to date) sold out in-store and started cropping up on EBay — for more than triple the original price.

The culprits were Gen-Zers fawning over how cute cozy Snoopy was, often on social media.

Yellow and white pouches with Snoopy pimple patches.

Hannah Guy Casey, senior director of brand and marketing at Peanuts Worldwide, said in 2024, the official Snoopy TikTok account gained 1.1 million followers, and attracted 85.4 million video views and 17.6 million engagements. This year, the account has gained another 1.2 million followers, and racked up 106.5 million video views and 23.2 million engagements.

Guy Casey noted that TikTok is where the brand experiences much of its engagement among Gen Z fans.

Indeed, the platform is a hot spot for fan-created Snoopy content, from memes featuring the puffer jacket to compilations of his most relatable moments. Several Snoopy fan accounts, including one dedicated to a music-loving Snoopy plushie, boast well over half a million followers.

Caryn Iwakiri, a speech and language pathologist at Sunnyvale’s Lakewood Tech EQ Elementary School whose classroom is Snoopy-themed, recently took an impromptu trip to the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa after seeing its welcome center decked out with Snoopy decor on TikTok. Once she arrived, she realized the museum was celebrating the “Peanuts” 75th anniversary.

Two red construction-paper doghouses with Snoopy on each roof.

It’s a familiar story for Schulz Museum director Gina Huntsinger.

“Last December, we were packed, and I was at the front talking to people, and I just randomly asked this group, ‘Why are you here?’”

It turned out that the friends had traveled from Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas to meet in Santa Rosa and visit the museum after seeing it on TikTok.

According to Stephanie King, marketing director at the Schulz Museum, the establishment is experiencing its highest-ever admissions since opening in 2002. In the 2024–2025 season, the museum increased its attendance by nearly 45% from the previous year.

Huntsinger said she’s enjoyed watching young visitors experience the museum in new ways.

In the museum’s education room, where visitors typically trace characters from the original Schulz comics or fill out “Peanuts” coloring pages, Gen Z museumgoers are sketching pop culture renditions of Snoopy — Snoopy as rock band Pierce the Veil, Snoopy as pop star Charli XCX.

“When our social media team puts them up [online], there’s these comments among this generation that gets this, and they’re having conversations about it,” Huntsinger said. “It’s dynamic, it’s fun, it’s creative. It makes me feel like there’s hope in the world.”

A white wall with "Passport to Peanuts" art.

Laurel Roxas felt similarly when they first discovered “Peanuts” as a kid while playing the “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” video game on their PlayStation Portable. For Roxas, who is Filipino, it was Snoopy and not the “Peanuts” children who resonated most.

“Nobody was Asian. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not even in the story,’” they said.

Because Snoopy was so simply drawn, Roxas added, he was easy to project onto. They felt similarly about Hello Kitty; with little identifying features or dialogue of their own, the characters were blank canvases for their own personification.

Roxas visited Snoopy Museum Tokyo with their brother last year. They purchased so much Snoopy merchandise — “everything I could get my hands on” — that they had to buy additional luggage to bring it home.

For some Snoopy enthusiasts, the high volume of Snoopy products borders on oversaturation, threatening to cheapen the spirit of the character.

Growing up, Bella Shingledecker loved the holiday season because it meant that the “Peanuts” animated specials would be back on the air. It was that sense of impermanence, she believes, that made the films special.

Now, when she sees stacks of Snoopy cookie jars or other trend-driven products at big-box stores like T.J. Maxx, it strikes her as a bit sad.

“It just feels very unwanted,” she said. For those who buy such objects, she said she can’t help but wonder, “Will this pass your aesthetic test next year?”

Lina Jeong, for one, isn’t worried that Snoopy’s star will fade.

Jeong’s affinity for the whimsical beagle was passed down to her from her parents, who furnished their home with commemorative “Peanuts” coffee table books. But she fell in love with Snoopy the first time she saw “Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown,” which she rewatches every Valentine’s Day.

This past year, she was fresh out of a relationship when the holiday rolled around and she found herself tearing up during scenes of Snoopy making Valentine’s crafts for his friends.

“Maybe I was hyper-emotional from everything that had happened, but I remember being so struck,” that the special celebrated platonic love over romantic love, Jeong said.

It was a great comfort to her at the time, she said, and she knows many others have felt that same solace from “Peanuts” media — especially from its dear dog.

“Snoopy is such a cultural pillar that I feel like fads can’t just wash it off,” she said.

Soon, she added, she plans to move those “Peanuts” coffee table books into her own apartment in L.A.

Business

Fight between Waymo and Santa Monica goes to court

Published

16 hours ago

December 22, 2025

Press Room

Fight between Waymo and Santa Monica goes to court

Waymo is taking the city of Santa Monica to court after the city ordered the company to cease charging its autonomous vehicles at two facilities overnight, claiming the lights and beeping at the lots were a nuisance to residents.

The two charging stations at the intersection of Euclid Street and Broadway have been a sour point for neighbors since they began operating roughly a year ago. Some residents have told The Times they’ve been unable to sleep because of the incessant beeping from Waymos maneuvering in and out of charging spots on the lot 24 hours a day.

Last month, the city ordered Waymo and the company that operates the charging stations, Voltera, to stop overnight operations at the sites, arguing that the light, noise and activity there constitute a public nuisance. Instead of complying, Waymo has turned around and filed a suit against the city, asking the court to intervene.

“Waymo’s activities at the Broadway Facilities do not constitute a public nuisance,” the company argued in its complaint, filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. “Waymo faces imminent and irreparable harm to its operations, employees, and customers.”

A spokesperson for the city did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the suit, the city was aware that the Voltera charging facilities were to operate and maintain a commercial electric vehicle fleet 24 hours a day, and the city approved its use when it approved the permits for the stations.

The rift between the company and some Santa Monica residents began as soon as the vehicles began utilizing the 24-hour charging stations, which have overnight staffing, lights and cars beeping as they reverse in and out of parking spots. Tensions got so bad that some residents took to blocking the path of the driverless vehicles, blocking the driveways into the charging stations, and placing orange cones in the area to hinder their routes and create backups, a practice several have called “stacking the Waymos.”

Meanwhile, employees at the charging stations have called police several times as a result, although no arrests have been made. Waymo also unsuccessfully attempted to obtain a temporary restraining order against one resident who had allegedly repeatedly blocked the vehicles.

On Nov. 19, the city ordered Waymo to stop charging its autonomous cars at the two lots overnight or face the possibility of legal action. Waymo declined and instead sued the city last week after negotiations with the city on mitigation measures to the lots fell apart.

According to the lawsuit, Waymo and Voltera representatives reached out to the city after the Nov. 19 order, looking for ways to mitigate the noise and lights from the lots, including initiating a software update that would change the vehicles’ path to the charging stations. But after a meeting on Dec. 15 with the city, no agreement was reached, the company said in its complaint.

“We are disappointed that the City has chosen an adversarial path over a collaborative one,” a spokesperson for Waymo said in a statement.

“The City’s position has been to insist that no actions taken or proposed by Waymo would satisfy the complaining neighbors and therefore must be deemed insufficient.”

The company also blasted the city’s handling of the dispute, arguing that despite facing a budget crisis, city officials have adopted a contentious strategy against business.

“The City of Santa Monica’s recent actions are inconsistent with its stated goal of attracting investment,” the company said in a statement. “At a time when the City faces a serious fiscal crisis, officials are choosing to obstruct properly permitted investment rather than fostering a ‘ready for business’ environment.”

The lawsuit is just the latest legal battle for the Alphabet-owned company, which has been rapidly expanding across California, making the white, driverless vehicles more commonplace.

Two years ago, the company was sued by the city of San Francisco, which argued that the California Public Utilities Commission shouldn’t have handed Waymo permits to expand and operate in the city, and that the regulatory agency had abdicated its responsibilities.

The California 1st District Court of Appeal disagreed, and ruled against the city.

This past June, Waymo announced it would expand its service area to 120 square miles in Los Angeles County, with Waymos operating in Playa del Rey, Ladera Heights, Echo Park, Silver Lake and Hollywood.

In November the company launched its ride-hailing service to now operate across Los Angeles County freeways, as well as in the San Francisco Bay and Phoenix.

Since it launched in Santa Monica, the company argues it has done more than a million trips in the city and in November alone, recorded more than 50,000 rides starting or ending there.

“The [charging] site has enabled Waymo to provide a safe, sustainable and accessible transportation option to city residents,” Waymo said in the statement.

Business

Video: Uber Clears Violent Felons to Drive

Published

1 day ago

December 22, 2025

Press Room

Video: Uber Clears Violent Felons to Drive

new video loaded: Uber Clears Violent Felons to Drive

Our reporter, Emily Steel, found that in many states, Uber’s guidelines allow people with serious criminal convictions to drive, as long as those convictions are more than seven years old. Some of those drivers have gone on to sexually assault or harass passengers.

By Emily Steel, Christina Shaman, Zach Caldwell, David Jouppi and Thomas Trudeau

December 22, 2025