Climate professor to sue makers of YouTube video for defamation

New York, Apr 27 (ANI): Penn State climate professor Michael Mann is suing the makers of a wildly popular YouTube video parodying his work on global warming.

The video titled 'Hide the Decline' is the brainchild of three Minnesota residents who jokingly claim to support global warming. It has registered over 500,000 views, and features a dancing figure with the image of Professor Mann.

Mann is suing the creators of the video for illegally using his image and defaming him.

The idea struck the Minnesotans after e-mail exchanges among climatologists were leaked from an England university. It emerged that Mann's 'hockey-stick' graph depicting the alarming rate of global warming had been tweaked by him to seem the way global warming scientists wanted it to look. The diagram correlated the use of carbon fuels to the rate of global warming.

The e-mails brought the methodology used by scientists to prove the phenomenon of global warming under the scanner. The ensuing public discourse gave rise to the phrase "Hide the Decline".

Meanwhile the creators of the video remain unfazed, "The guy is crazy to threaten legal action," Fox News quoted Jeff Davis, the President of No Cap and Trade as saying.

No Cap and Trade is the parent group of Minnesotans for Global warming. "A lawsuit would give us full discovery-and there's a lot to look at in his work." he added pointing out that the professor might drive himself into a corner as a consequence of legal inquiry into his work.

There has been an outpouring of support for the Minnesotans. Various groups are defending them causing them to post a sequel called 'Hide the Decline II' its

The first video resulted in a two probes being made into Mann's work, both of which found him in the clear. Critics have questioned the veracity of these probes. (ANI)