I have been both a scientist and a political activist for most of my 76 years. But the situation regarding Michael Mann is very different. I just finished a very moving experience reading The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines and I have lots more to say than I can fit in a single diary. So I will devote this diary to trying to convince you that this Mann is a hero. There are too few heroes among the scientific community because of the nature of what we do. Michael Mann was not someone who chose his role. Military persons can anticipate the possibility of being in situations where acts of heroism are called for. Scientists are certainly not in the same situation. Or at least, they have not been for a long time. Galileo comes to mind and it was the Church then that made his life one of great sacrifice. In these times the situation has deteriorated so rapidly that few of us have had a chance to evaluate the impact of what is going on. Science is a threat to the dark forces that are moving to control us all. People like Carl Sagan and Stephen jay Gould were out there early on fighting against these dark forces. They did a lot for us. Rachael Carlson and many others were on the front lines. Yet the situation with Professor Mann is something beyond all that. He has become a symbol for what our future is all about and he did not chose his role. No sane person would have. Read on below and I will try to paint a broad picture of how much is at stake and give you a perspective on how this one Mann has focused on the threat to all of us.
This book does more to document in painstaking detail the way the dark forces have organized. It seems vlear to me that they are determined to destroy science and replace it with their own thing which is a sophisticated, modern propaganda and mind control machine. We already know that the press is easily used by these people, but Mann has exposed some of the depths to which it has descended.
I want to credit him for his willingness to tell his own story in a way that helps us see beyond him as an individual player in all this and turns our eyes toward the extent of the threat his experience has taught him about. His book is a warning. It can be a call to action, in spite of the fact that that is not his mode.
In case you do not yet know who he is :
Michael E. Mann is a member of the Penn State University faculty, holding joint positions in the Departments of Meteorology and Geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (ESSI). He is also director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC). He received his undergraduate degrees in physics and applied math from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. degree in physics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in geology and geophysics from Yale University. He also received an outstanding publication award from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and, in 2002, was named one of fifty leading visionaries in science and technology by Scientific American. He was awarded the 2012 Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union, and in the same year was inducted as a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. With Lee Kump, he coauthored the book Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming, and is a cofounder and avid contributor to the award-winning science website, www.RealClimate.org. Along with other scientists who participated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
Hardly the credentials of a modern hero? Wait just a bit and I'll explain why he is. His book is described this way by Columbia U. Press:
In its 2001 report on global climate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations prominently featured the “Hockey Stick,” a chart showing global temperature data over the past one thousand years. The Hockey Stick demonstrated that temperature had risen with the increase in industrialization and use of fossil fuels. The inescapable conclusion was that worldwide human activity since the industrial age had raised CO2 levels, trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and warming the planet.
The Hockey Stick became a central icon in the “climate wars,” and well-funded science deniers immediately attacked the chart and the scientists responsible for it. Yet the controversy has had little to do with the depicted temperature rise and much more with the perceived threat the graph posed to those who oppose governmental regulation and other restraints to protect our environment and planet. Michael E. Mann, lead author of the original paper in which the Hockey Stick first appeared, shares the real story of the science and politics behind this controversy. He introduces key figures in the oil and energy industries, and the media front groups who do their bidding in sometimes slick, bare-knuckled ways to cast doubt on the science. Mann concludes with an account of the “Climategate” scandal, the 2009 hacking of climate scientists’ emails. Throughout, Mann reveals the role of science deniers, abetted by an uninformed media, in once again diverting attention away from one of the central scientific and policy issues of our time.
You can google your heart out and you will find garbage like this
First, I would like to summarize some of the recent developments in the controversy over whether or not humans have created a climate catastrophe. One of the key aspects that the United Nations, environmental groups and the media have promoted as the “smoking gun” of proof of catastrophic global warming is the so-called ‘hockey stick’ temperature graph by climate scientist Michael Mann and his colleagues. This graph purported to show that temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere remained relatively stable over 900 years, then spiked upward in the 20th century presumably due to human activity. Mann, who also co-publishes a global warming propaganda blog reportedly set up with the help of an environmental group, had his “Hockey Stick” come under severe scrutiny. The “hockey stick” was completely and thoroughly broken once and for all in 2006. Several years ago, two Canadian researchers tore apart the statistical foundation for the hockey stick. In 2006, both the National Academy of Sciences and an independent researcher further refuted the foundation of the
“hockey stick.”
This is but one example of the lies and deceit out there on the web. These blogs and postings are part of a coordinated effort financed by the oils and coal industries, among others, linked into a right wing dominated set of publications and news channels.
Mann describes the way they work. It is something that makes the Nazi propaganda machine look primitive. To counter this, without the massive amounts of funding the deniers have, Mann created RealClimate, a blog where rapid responses to the lies and organized attacks could be countered.
RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science. All posts are signed by the author(s), except ‘group’ posts which are collective efforts from the whole team. This is a moderated forum.
The investigation after investigation all over the world have been going on for years and often have to be duplicated because the deniers simply ignore their results. here's one example from
Climate Science watch
NSF IG report on Michael Mann investigation: “No research misconduct. Case closed.” Don't bother telling Rick Perry.
Posted on August 22, 2011 by Rick Piltz
This is getting old. Completing yet another investigation of the co-author of a seminal study of the 1,000-year temperature record (commonly referred to as the “Hockey Stick”), the National Science Foundation Inspector General concluded: “Finding no research misconduct or other matter raised by the various regulations and laws discussed above, this case is closed.” But don’t waste your breath telling that to global warming denialist Rick Perry, oil-money governor of Texas and would-be president.
See Joe Romm, Climate Progress: Climate Secret: NSF Quietly Closes Out Inspector General Investigation with Complete Vindication of Michael Mann
Two things we know with extremely high confidence:
1. Recent warming is unprecedented in magnitude and speed and cause (so the temperature history looks like a Hockey Stick).
2. Michael Mann, the lead author on the original Hockey Stick paper, is one of the nation’s top climatologists and a source of first-rate analysis.
We know these things because both the Hockey Stick and Mann have been independently investigated and vindicated more times than any other facet of climate science or any other climate scientist.
I could go on and on but by now you should have the picture. Please read this book. It is the scariest story ever written as a straightforward narrative of modern history. We can tell which way the wind is blowing by reading this weatherman!
