A jury on Thursday awarded $1 million to climate scientist Michael Mann, who sued a pair of conservative writers 12 years ago after they compared his depictions of global warming to a convicted child molester.
Mann, a professor of climate science at the University of Pennsylvania, rose to fame for a graph first published in 1998 in the journal Nature that was dubbed the “hockey stick” for its dramatic illustration of a warming planet.
The work brought Mann wide exposure but also many skeptics, including the two writers Mann took to court for comments that he said affected his career and reputation in the U.S. and internationally.
“It feels great,” Mann said Thursday after the six-person jury delivered its verdict. “It’s a good day for us, it’s a good day for science.”
Russia stopped being a communist state with the fall of the USSR (and Gorbachev loosened that up even before the fall). It’s more of a right wing kleptocracy today.
I mean Russia stopped being communist within about 5 minutes of beccoming communist, which is generally the problem with communism. Its a system that only works in a theoretical world where everyones nice and the first strongman to show up doesn’t sieze control and turn it into an autocracy.
Yeah, even without the strongmen or cults of personality that can completely upend things, communism is a system that just breeds resentment, I think even more so than capitalism plus social safety nets (as inadequate as they might be).