UPDATE! Having touted the "great piece" that re-confers his fake Nobel prize, Michael E Mann (who seems increasingly short of real scientific defenders) is now reduced to linking to Big City Lib - otherwise known as ovine fornication specialist M J Murphy. Mann seems to be acting on the old maxim that "the enemy of my enemy is my go-to sheep-sex guy". Anyway, it is heartening to see the grand convergence of all my bêtes noires and moutons noirs. By the way, if you enjoy M J Murphy's insights into the Ayatollah Khomeini's "Precepts of Ejaculation", they're collected in my book Lights Out, which is now available in eBook by clicking the various options on the banner above and in hardback, personally autographed to you or your embraceable ewe, right here at the SteynOnline bookstore.

If Dr Mann is not yet au fait with the Ayatollah's "Precepts of Ejaculation", they're regarded as the settled science of his field. Settled semen, as it were.

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Yesterday Michael E Mann Tweeted excitedly:

I can't reTweet it directly, I'm afraid, because the #PansyRTBlocker has blocked me from reTweeting him. However, like Dr Mann, I was excited, so I clicked over to see what this "great piece" by Oshkosh "communications studies" professor Tony Palmeri actually says. First paragraph:

Dr. Michael E. Mann, Director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center, is best known for the iconic "hockey stick" temperature graph. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and environmentalists worldwide use the graph to create a sense of urgency around warming. For their efforts, Mann and other climate scientists in 2007 jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize.

The second sentence is actually the nub of the case: The IPCC and others "use the graph to create a sense of urgency". Indeed.

But the third sentence is a lie, and Professor Palmeri can't be much of a "communications studies" guy if nobody has managed to communicate it to him by this stage of the case.

Don't take it from me, take it from Geir Lundestad, director of the Nobel Institute in Oslo:

Michael Mann has never been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Don't take it from me, take it from the actual winner of the Nobel Peace Prize:

It is incorrect to refer to any IPCC official, or scientist who worked on IPCC reports, as a Nobel laureate or Nobel Prizewinner.

Don't take it from me, take it from Mann's fellow scientists:

He was not entirely truthful in a court case.

Mann's claim to be a Nobel Laureate is not a small thing. It is characteristic of the lies and exaggerations and misrepresentations that have characterized his entire career - right up to his legal complaint. Judith Curry again:

Michael Mann is having all these problems because he chooses to try to muzzle people that are critical of Mann's science, critical of Mann's professional and personal behavior, and critical of Mann's behavior as revealed in the climategate emails. All this has nothing to do with defending climate science or academic freedom.

It says a lot about Mann that so many naive defenders like Professor Palmeri repeat the fraud that he is a Nobel Laureate. That speaks to his credibility, as the lawyers say, on what follows.

~If you'd like to chip in and buy a SteynOnline gift certificate or one of my books, it will help support my legal offense fund. We're preparing to serve Dr Mann with my initial discovery requests.