Case closed: "Climategate" was manufactured

It's not often you can actually say "case closed", but in this case it's literally true: climatologist Michael Mann has been cleared of all wrongdoing by the Inspector General of the National Science Foundation. Did I say "has been cleared"? I meant has been cleared once again, since there have been several investigations into his research and Dr. Mann has been cleared of all charges every single time (like here and here). All of this stemmed from the "ClimateGate" nonsense of the past couple of years, where leaked emails were taken hugely out of context by the press and climate change deniers, and used to smear scientists. Dr. Mann was at the center of the whole manufactured controversy, being the biggest target of the people who want to deny the Earth is warming up. This latest, and hopefully last, investigation into Dr. Mann's research (PDF) again shows he is not ...