Mann thinks that the attacks will continue, because many skeptics, such as the Greening Earth Society and the Tech Central Station Web site, obtain funds from petroleum interests. "As long as they think it works and they've got unlimited money to perpetuate their disinformation campaign," Mann believes, "I imagine it will go on, just as it went on for years and years with tobacco until it was no longer tenable--in fact, it became perjurable to get up in a public forum and claim that there was no science" behind the health hazards of smoking.
As part of his hockey-stick defense, Mann co-founded with Schmidt a Weblog called RealClimate (www.realclimate.org). Started in December 2004, the site has nine active scientists, who have attracted the attention of the blog cognoscenti for their writings, including critiques of Michael Crichton's State of Fear, a novel that uses charts and references to argue against anthropogenic warming. The blog is not a bypass of the ordinary channels of scientific communication, Mann explains, but "a resource where the public can go to see what actual scientists working in the field have to say about the latest issues."
The most challenging aspect today, Mann thinks, is predicting regional disruptions, because people are unlikely to take climate change seriously until they see how it operates in their backyard. In that regard, he has turned his attention to El Ni¿o, a warming of eastern tropical Pacific waters that affects global weather. In discussing the issue with his students over their Coronas, Mann notes that comparisons with the paleoclimatic record seem to confirm a mechanism proposed by other researchers. Specifically, radiative forcings--volcanic eruptions and solar changes, for instance--do in fact alter El Ni¿o, turning it into more of a La Ni¿a state, with colder sea-surface temperatures. Understanding how El Ni¿o has changed with past radiative forcings is a first step to understanding how it will change in an increasingly greenhouse-gassed world.
Mann remains somewhat mum on whether the U.S. should join the Kyoto Treaty, an international agreement to limit fossil-fuel emissions: "It's hard enough predicting the climate. I don't pretend to be able to predict the behavior of politicians." He sees the Kyoto accord as an initial step that is unlikely to curtail emissions all that much, but it will at least set in motion a process that can be built on with other treaties.
Such efforts are essential, because the blade of Mann's hockey stick will get longer. He notes that "we're already committed to 50 to 100 years of warming and several centuries of sea-level rise, simply from the amount of greenhouse gases we've already put in the atmosphere." The solution to global warming, he observes, "is going to be finding an appropriate set of constraints on fossil-fuel emissions that allow us to slow the rate of change down to a level we can adapt to."
This article was originally published with the title Behind the Hockey Stick.
Already a Digital subscriber? Sign-in Now
If your institution has site license access, enter here.
See what we're tweeting about
11 Comments
Add CommentI would expect more from your magazine. This is trash, and I can prove it ! Mann is politically motivated and oblivious to his (and his friend's) many errors and biases. For an OBJECTIVE assesment of this idiot's "science" I would hope that readers would go to: http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm and read an honestly researched scientific paper (with more than enough footnotes to make it credible!). If you mind is already made up, I would strongly avoid your reading this. You will be SEVERELY embarrassed!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems to me that if the proxy method was used to estimate global temperatures prior to 1850, then the same methodology should have been used for post 1850. I wonder what changes would be apparent in the graph then?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this--
Edited by pjnevada at 06/07/2008 8:45 PM
If Mann argues that the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age are simply regional phenomonon and not statistically relevant to Global Warming as a whole, then as a logical corollary, so called Global Warming science has no ability to predict or correlate to regional climates. Therefore, all the Chicken Littles out there would seem overwrought.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this--
Edited by pjnevada at 06/07/2008 8:31 PM
--
Edited by pjnevada at 06/07/2008 8:47 PM
--
Edited by pjnevada at 06/07/2008 8:47 PM
--
Edited by pjnevada at 06/07/2008 8:48 PM
This article is an embarassment to your magazine. The author would be better suited to be a PR manager for a political candiate than to be a journalist. The article extols Mr. Mann rather than examine the objections to his work. The problems are glossed over, and the reader gets the impression that they have been successfully addressed. I have studied the problems, and they are far from being addressed. In fact, if a university student of mine had tried the to handle issues like Mr. Mann did, he would not have received a passing grade. There is something seriously amiss in the academic and journalistic worlds when somebody gets free passes because he or she adheres to a popular political belief.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClimate change denialists have yet to produce a single shred of credible evidence to support their bizarre claim that anthropogenic climate change is a vast conspiracy perpetrated by >90% of professional climatologists and every single scientific organization of note in the world (e.g., all of the National Academies of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Physics, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the American Meteorological Society, ...). All you need to do, denialists, is produce a scientific paper that can actually survive a rigorous peer-review and be published in a reputable scientific journal and your views, politically motivated though they are, will suddenly acquire much more credibility. Until then, you deserve to be considered little more than wild-eyed conspiracy theorists of the same ilk as those who believe the U.S. Government staged the 9/11 attacks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn light of recent findings concerning BRiffa et al. I would never submit any work for publication in your journal until you seriously reconsider your policy of making ALL raw data available for independent analysis when requested to do so. It is a scandal that you have not formally withdrawn this work in the light of recent events concerning BRiffa's work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy would your magazine risk ridicule by putting out this type of trash given what we know about the Hockey Stick investigation by the Wegman Committee, Mann's unethical behaviour, and his likely academic fraud? I would expect a great deal more from a magazine that I used to read regularly and trusted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems to me Floyd that you have it backwards. It is the AGW movement that has yet to produce a single shred of credible evidence to support their bizarre claim that human CO2 emissions are responsible for climate change. Show us one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKeep in mind that the sceptics can point to the ice core studies that show that the temperature trend changed first and that CO2 concentrations followed. That makes CO2 the effect, not the cause.
Perhaps AGW advocates would consider reading Iam Plimer's essay: " Heaven and Earth" and viewing the DVD documentary " The Great Global Warming Swindle"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am new to SA. After just now reading the Mann interview Mar 2012 I logged in expecting to see scientists agreeing on science. Wow! Looks like a lot of really thoughtful, smart people are not agreed on the science. Is this a consequence of politics and egos (both sides)? Or a consequence of a valid 'more research is necessary' claim?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI spend a lot of time researching climate change and while it is clear that it, and the increase in co2, is something we should be concerned about, it is equally clear that Mann has played fast and loose with the truth. That should not be allowed, but it seems to be very common in AGW circles...such a shame.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this