After waiting 12 years, this famed climate scientist fights his critics in court

Michael Mann spent much of his career poring over tree-ring and ice-core data, painstakingly piecing together how human emissions are warming the planet. Now, he’s at the center of a high-profile court case pitting science against a swelling wave of right-wing attacks seeking to undermine it.

Mann, known for his “hockey stick chart,” a reconstruction of global temperature over hundreds of years showcasing the effects of burning fossil fuels, is accusing a pair of right-wing bloggers of defamation while he was a professor at Pennsylvania State University. In commentary posts published in 2012, Mann said, they falsely accused him of academic fraud and likened him to Jerry Sandusky — a convicted child molester who once coached football at the school — with one saying Mann “molested and tortured data” to support his research.