Our friend and commenter, the indefatigable JK, sent along a link to a story that’s attracting lots of attention today: climate “scientist” and rent-seeking fearmonger Michael Mann has lost his libel suit against the Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball.

Dr. Ball had expressed in public his belief that Dr. Mann’s infamous “Hockey Stick” graph — which artfully flattened the historic temperature record in order to suggest that a recent warming spell was an unprecedented calamity brought about by human activity — was a flim-flam put together by a Procrustean torture of the actual data. He went so far as to make the amusing suggestion that Dr. Mann, rather than being at Penn State, ought to be in the “state pen”.

Mann sued Ball for libel, but as the trial dragged on year after year, Mann steadfastly refused to “show his work”, presumably because it would reveal him to be just the fraud that Dr. Ball had said he was. Now the clock has run out, and the court has ruled in favor of Dr. Ball — and has, for good measure, held Mann liable for all the court costs as well.

It isn’t over quite yet — Dr. Mann has 30 days to appeal — but the ruling in favor of Dr. Ball certainly does “warm” the heart.

More here.