Tag Archives: Michael Mann

Unsure of Climate Science's Predictions? Do it yourself!

Well before mid century we will probably pass a threshold beyond which we’ll really regret having not curtailed the release of fossil Carbon into the atmosphere in the form of Carbon Dioxide. The best case scenario for “business as usual” release of the greenhouse gas is that some of the carbon, or some of the heat (from sunlight) gets taken out of the main arena (the atmosphere and sea surface) and buried or reflected somewhere for a while, and this all happens on a slightly delayed time scale.

The reason we know this is a little thing called science. And, more exactly, physics. And physics is math embedded in reality (or reality draped on math if you like), so there’s also math. And here is the formula:

the formula
the formula

For instructions as to how to use this formula to understand the statements in the first paragraph of this post, including the data you need to do the calculations, visit this new item on Scientific American’s web site, Why Global Warming Will Cross a Dangerous Threshold in 2036, by climate scientist Michael Mann. He’s also got an article in the print edition of Scientific American, which I’ve not seen because I let my subscription lapse.

The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines

51c9ZYOtkvL._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_You probably already know about Michael Mann’s book, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines.”

The ongoing assault on climate science in the United States has never been more aggressive, more blatant, or more widely publicized than in the case of the Hockey Stick graph — a clear and compelling visual presentation of scientific data, put together by MichaelE. Mann and his colleagues, demonstrating that global temperatures have risen in conjunction with the increase in industrialization and the use of fossil fuels. Here was an easy-to-understand graph that, in a glance, posed a threat to major corporate energy interests and those who do their political bidding. The stakes were simply too high to ignore the Hockey Stick — and so began a relentless attack on a body of science and on the investigators whose work formed its scientific basis.

The Hockey Stick achieved prominence in a 2001 UN report on climate change and quickly became a central icon in the “climate wars.” The real issue has never been the graph’s data but rather its implied threat to those who oppose governmental regulation and other restraints to protect the environment and planet. Mann, lead author of the original paper in which the Hockey Stick first appeared, shares the story of the science and politics behind this controversy. He reveals key figures in the oil and energy industries and the media frontgroups who do their bidding in sometimes slick, sometimes bare-knuckled ways. Mann concludes with the real story of the 2009 “Climategate” scandal, in which climate scientists’ emails were hacked. This is essential reading for all who care about our planet’s health and our own well-being.

The book is now available in paper back, and as a reader of Greg Laden’s blog I’m happy to give you a way to get it at 30% off.

Just go to the Columbia University Press site for the book and use the promotional code HOCMAN. It is an important book, if you don’t have it, go get it!

Climate Change Denialism

There are two very important posts out there that I’d like to make you aware of related to climate change denialism. Here’s the teasers, please click through and read them. If you like them, tweet them!

First, from The Scientist, an opinion piece by Michael Mann, author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines:

Life as a Target: Attacks on my work aimed at undermining climate change science have turned me into a public figure. I have come to embrace that role.

As a climate scientist, I have seen my integrity perniciously attacked. Politicians have demanded I be fired from my job because of my work demonstrating the reality and threat of human-caused climate change. I’ve been subjected to congressional investigations by congressman in the pay of the fossil fuel industry and was the target of what The Washington Post referred to as a “witch hunt” by Virginia’s reactionary Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. I have even received a number of anonymous death threats. My plight is dramatic, but unfortunately, it is not unique; climate scientists are regularly the subject of such attacks. This cynicism is part of a destructive public-relations campaign being waged by fossil fuel companies, front groups, and individuals aligned with them in an effort to discredit the science linking the burning of fossil fuels with potentially dangerous climate change…..

CLICK HERE to read the entire post.

The next item is related to a recent screw up by a commenter at Christian Science Monitor who accidentally took science denier Anthony Watt’s interview at Oilprice.com seriously (we discussed this here). This is a new interview at Oilprice.com with my friend and colleague Professor John Abraham:

Real Pragmatism for Real Climate Change: Interview with Dr. John Abraham

At a time when extreme weather incidents are causing billions in damages, businesses, governments and the public need the right information to make the right decisions. The bad news is that nature of superstorms like Hurricane Sandy has a human fingerprint. The good news is that if man is harming the climate, man can also do something about it….

CLICK HERE to read the entire interview. Anthony Watts has responded on his blog but if I put a link to it he will discover that I’ve written about him and instruct his winged monkeys to fill my comment section with hate.

Congratulations to Michael Mann

Michael Mann is one of the key climate scientists of the day. History will crown Mann as one of the great heroes who defended the freedom to do science rationally despite constant attacks from mean spirited and ignorant, self interested, politically motivated, oil-money-soaked climate science denialists. You know of Michael Mann as the coiner of the term “hockey stick” to refer to the alarming uptick in temperature and related measures connected to the human caused release of copious quantities of fossil Carbon into the Earth’s atmosphere, causing one of the greatest disasters this planet has seen in tens of thousands of years.

If you want to know more about Mann’s work and the complex and difficult world of being a sincere climate science in an age when such science if often found inconvenient by the powers that be, have a look at his book: The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines.

Michael Mann, together with his colleague, Long-Qing Chen, was awarded the status of Distinguished Professor in Penn State’s college of Earth and Mineral Sciences:

Chen and Mann were recommended to EMS Dean William Easterling by a selection committee consisting of highly regarded faculty from across the college that screened faculty candidates nominated by faculty, staff and students of the college.

Chen, professor of materials science and engineering, has earned world-wide recognition and acclaim for his leadership in computational materials science. He is attributed with pioneering the development of phase-field models to explain grain growth, domain evolution, interactions between defect and phase microstructures, and strain-dominated microstructure evolution in cutting-edge elastically inhomogeneous systems.
Mann, professor of meteorology and director of the Earth Systems Science Center, is an acknowledged leader in the climate change community. He has achieved research breakthroughs in the area of climate change science, especially the reconstruction of global temperatures over the past 1,000 years. His work has garnered national and international recognition, including his most recent election, by his peers, as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society; as well as the 2012 Hans Oeschger Medal and Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

“These are both outstanding and highly accomplished members of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences faculty,” said Bill Easterling, dean. “I am delighted that we are able to honor them both with the distinguished professor designation.”

According to Penn State Policy HR10, the number of distinguished professors in each college may not exceed 10 percent of the number of faculty members who hold standing academic appointments at the rank of full professor. With the recent retirement of Digby Macdonald, distinguished professor of materials science and engineering, and the awarding of an Evan Pugh Professorship to James Kasting, professor of geosciences, the college had two prospective appointments available this year.

Again, congratulations Michael.

Michael Mann on Climate Scientists and Smear Campaigns

Climate scientist Michael Mann is no stranger to smear campaigns. Man has the distinction of having made important contributions to climate science, for which he shared the Nobel Peace Prize. He is famous to many of you for having come up with the “hockey stick” metaphor.

Michael Mann is a good scientist who has done honest, important, and high quality work, but there are those who don’t want to hear about the results he and other climate scientists have come up with. So, they hate him. And by “hate” I don’t mean that they sit there not liking him. I mean, they actively hate him. They wake up every morning and try to think of things to do to ruin his life, and they conspire with each other to carry out these nefarious acts, and in some cases, they are paid by special interests to do these things.

We all get this hate, to one level or another. I was amused the other day when one of the haters, someone who had made death threats against me, had apparently pressed the button on his Linked In account to “find people to link to” and thus accidentally sent me an invitation to “Link In.” I get an email that says “I want to kill you” then I get an invitation to link up. Made me laugh.

But in reality this is no laughing matter. Even though we all take a certain amount of crap for either being a climate scientist or a person who teaches about climate change or a blogger or journalist who covers these issues honestly and critically, no one has taken the crap that Michael Mann has had to take. I don’t know how he does it.

Anyway, Michael has written a commentary for CNN that covers not so much the attacks on him, but rather, the attacks on climate science more generally. He talks about the theft of emails and subsequent dissemination and misuse of their contents and related events:

In the most infamous episode, somebody stole thousands of e-mails and documents from leading climate researchers, including me. They cherry picked key phrases from the e-mails and published them out of context, like a black-and-white political attack ad with ominous music. Fossil fuel industry-funded groups gleefully spread the e-mails online and badgered the mainstream media into covering the “controversy” they had manufactured.

It was no accident that this happened on the eve of a major international climate change meeting. … The dozen independent investigations that did follow — all of which exonerated the scientists — got much less media coverage than the original nonscandal.

Go read his essay. Also, please, please check out the comment section and say something not horrible there to help diffuse the crap that I’m sure is going to appear there over the next few days!

Michael Mann is the author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines.

An Important Victory for Climate Science

You’ve heard about “ClimateGate.” ClimateGate was a very successful but illegal campaign by anti-science to discredit climate science and climate scientists. Rest assured, the climate science is fine and the climate scientists are just trying to do their jobs, and doing quite well at that. Nonetheless, a combination of inaccurate representation of the contents of various emails written between climate scientists and what amounts to unethical treatment of climate science by the press resulted in a shift among the general populous in the US from about half of the people thinking that Global Warming is some sort of hoax (at worst) or bad science (at best) to something closer to 80% of citizens thinking this to be the case.
Continue reading An Important Victory for Climate Science