I also believe that Stephen McIntyre is one of the true heroes of the modern age, and I admire his dedication and determination in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds against him. The fact that he has managed to maintain his dignity and enthusiasm for the subject is remarkable, given the brickbats and brickwalls that he has faced. I feel humble just thinking of what he went through at the hands of the hockey stick team.

Mann? A charlatan of the modern age, I'm afraid. If he has any self-respect, it must be delusional. There is a really interesting audio interview available with him, here: http://www.pointofinquiry.org/michael_mann_unprecedented_attacks_on_climate_research/
It makes quite depressing listening.

The good Bishop Hill's book is amazing; a "page turner" as someone else said.

Finally, I would like to commend this blog post. A really nicely written summary of a shameful period of our scientific history; and excellent reference material for folk who won't or can't be bothered to read the good Bishop Hill's fantastic book.

This is not a defence of Mann, but maybe a partial explanation. When you have spent years pursuing a goal or acting on particular beliefs, it takes a Herculean effort to admit that they (and you) may be wrong.

This occurs regularly in medicine, as Barry Marshall, the Australian doctor who finally nailed stomach ulcers nearly 30 years ago, will attest.

The medical establishment, aided and abetted by the drug industry, whose most successful product was an unnecessary treatment, held out for decades. Marshall finally got his Nobel Prize in 2005.

Thanks for that gracious response. I fear that had you conducted yourself like Michael Mann or others in the Hockey Team you would have either refused to respond (on the basis that I am not a Popper "expert") or slandered me as a grandchild "denier" who is causing untold grief to any descendants of Popper.

On the subject of your post, you are far too kind to Mann who, while claiming to practise "science" succumbed to the temptations you describe. Evidently, he is a "poor scientist". Furthermore, he knew exactly what he was doing and (along with others in the Hockey Team and their political outriders) must have been aware that Steve McIntyre had rumbled him (or was, at least, asking questions which were difficult to answer honestly and frankly). Knowing that, I fail to understand, though, how you can describe him as "not a bad person". You let him (and all the other participants in this crooked construct) off the hook by implying that he should be partially excused because, although he chose to act badly, he acted with the best of intentions of which "bad persons" are apparently incapable.

By all means hate the sin and not the sinner. But Mann (and the other warmists) should also be enjoined to sin no more. As I write, the BBC keeps pumping out warmist propaganda, Gore ascribes the current winter in the US as a product of "global warming", Judith Curry still maintains that early scepticism was fuelled by a monolithic conspiracy financed by Big Oil and the UK prepares for a whitewash from the Muir Russell inquiry at the UEA and from another hopelessly compromised committee of the House of Commons

I think you're being a bit kind to the members of the Tree Ring Circus. The emails clearly reveal that they knew they were flouting the Scientific Method. Some even make so bold as to protest, but are soothed into compliance. Whether or not it was complied with, Phil Jones was able to make the request that the team delete sensitive emails and data without either expecting, or getting, a single cry of foul. The scientists at CERN publish their work contemporaneously in repeatable form on their site, so the example of best practice was there for all in the scientific community to emulate.

The trouble with these sorts of frauds is that when they are debunked they leave so many people looking so silly that a conspiracy of silence ensues, and the billions already wasted on forfending a mythical catastrophe are aggravated by pointless, growth-inhibiting leggislation festering on statute books, where it will be obeyed by the Anglosphere and the northern Europeans, and elsewhere ignored. That is why a desire to see Jones, Gore, et al pilloried and punished is not mere schadenfreude - although it will be fun ("strangely cheering"?) to watch - but a fear that if we spare the rod we'll spoil the child.

An excellent review except for this:

"Professor Mann is a poor scientist and a weak man, but not a bad person. He's sincere.."

That is your opinion. Certainly not mine. If he was not a deliberate fraudster I would be surprised. Surely he could not believe in his own fallacies, and the the cover-up, (see Bish's Jesus paper), was something very deliberate and dishonest.

"Professor Popper's grand-daughter"

Are you sure? I had always thought - and Who's Who 1981 appears to confirm - that, despite a long (and happy) marriage, Popper had no children, let alone grandchildren. Step-children /step-grandchild perhaps? But, there you are, what would I know? My only connection - if you can call it that - with the good prof was that I was an undergraduate at LSE when he was on the faculty.

Also a lot of the climate scientists knew all along that their own department was flakey but assumed that the other departments were solid.

This is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect - described by Michael Crichton:

...the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read.