Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(149)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(39)

 

 

Professor Michael E. Mann's book is an eye opener, and if you're looking to learn about what is going on, and I mean what is really going on with our Earth, then READ THIS! It's so important to read because it's an insider's game. Us average American citizens don't spend our every hour researching climate science so our government is capable of keeping us in the dark on the manner. Michael E. Mann has put himself on the front lines of the climate battle, and gone from only a climate scientist to a soldier in a political and legal war over the subject. That's the great thing about reading The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars because it takes away all the political aspects, and gets down to the hard facts that so many are trying to cover up such as the conservative Republicans. Michael E. Mann is sure to become a hero of yours after reading the book. I especially love that he starts the book setting the record straight, which is so important in my opinion. His style of reading makes the complex relatively easy to understand, and his character shines through his writing. He covers topics that cannot be ignored any longer. Fossil fuel burning has reached 31.6 gigatons in 2011, which is up 3.2 percent since 2010!! He makes a great analogy to the way scientists are treated by politicians trying to cover up our warming Earth. He calls it "the serengeti strategy." He writes, "The climate change deniers isolate individual scientists just as predators on the Serengeti Plain of Africa hunt their prey: picking off vulnerable individuals from the rest of the herd." It's hard to deny Dr. Michael's data because he and his team have used thousands of years of evidence from around the globe, and used "principal component analysis" to target factors most responsible for change. Read it, you won't regret it.

I have been directly involved in the hockey stick war. I have been been an active research ecologist for over 20 years, and during the last 10 years I have focused on climate change and its effects on living systems. During part of my recent career, I was employed as science advisor to the Century Commission for a Sustainable Florida, a legislatively mandated commission. In March of 2007, while giving an invited report on climate change to a select committee of the Florida legislature, a conservative legislator rose from his seat and declared me to be a liar and demanded that I be dismissed. Indeed, I was asked to step from the podium. Only one newspaper in the state carried the story, and my employers, who were GOP appointees, did not so much as apologize for my treatment. Democracy in action, right?

My sin? I had shown the hockey stick. When I approached the legislator who had objected, I discovered that he did not know that the National Academy and reviewed Michael Mann's work and found it to be fundamentally sound. Indeed, it was not apparent that he even knew of the existence of the US National Academy. After the climate gate emails were released, the prestigious journal Nature referred to the push back from the oil soaked Irrational Right as a "street fight." I could not agree more.

I have carefully read and evaluated Mann's work and I find it to be of the highest standards of scientific integrity. He has been vindicated by numerous reviews. Despite continued harassment, he continues to find time to do excellent research. I have the greatest respect for him as a colleague and role model.

The story that Mann recounts in this book is horrific and indicative of the demise of our most cherished institutions. The primary strategy of the industry funded hacks who claim to be scientists is to attack the messenger. I recently spoke at a conference where one of these credentialed, unscrupulous scientists-for-hire began his talk by attacking the personal integrity of John Holdren, Ralph Cicerone, and Jane Lubchenco, all scientists who adhere to the highest standards of integrity. Later in his talk, this scoundrel showed slides of a crayfish and crab which had grown larger in acidified water. He used this as proof that ocean acidification was actually good for shelled organisms. The bald face lie in this is that these two organisms have chitinous exoskeletons, rather than calcarious shells. This is typical of the tactics that I have observed. It is a scorched-earth strategy to destroy the credibility of our most esteemed scientists and scientific establishments.

To date 32 national academies have endorsed the fundamental reality of human caused climate change. Numerous professional organizations have also made clear statements to support the mainstream science. 97% of all climate scientists agree. NSF, NASA, NOAA, USDA, the NPS, and the CDC have active research programs predicated on the reality of human-caused climate change. The clarity of the climate change threat could not be greater. It is most sobering to realize that our present emissions trajectory will result in a global average warming of over 5 degrees C by 2100. Such a planet will not sustain civilization in any recognizable form. The excess CO2 that is pumped into the air today will affect our planet for thousands of years into the future. I am not an alarmist, but I am alarmed. You should be too.

I urge everyone to read Mann's book. It is well written and compelling. Any publishing scientist who reads it will likely be chilled to the bone. I have contributed to the climate scientist legal defense fund, and urge all of you to do the same. [...]

Stephen Mulkey, PhD
President, Unity College
Unity, ME 04988

This is the story of a modern Inquisition, the persecution of innocent men and the courage and resolution of at least one man to stand up to the bullying of government, corporations and a press alternating between the psychopathic and the craven, irredeemably corrupted by the doctrine of meretricious balance and far too close to the politicians and directors it should be holding to account. It is the story of a war on science and on scientists tried for heresy. It is the story of the denialist David armed with only Republican Party orthodoxy, the Murdoch press and the backing of Exxon against a terrifying Goliath wielding the irresistible might of an academic salary. It might make you feel like slapping someone. It certainly made me feel that way.

The story ends well. It was issued before Sandy intervened in the US Presidential race, so it may end even better than Mann documents. Either way, even if US politics does not wake up this year, scientists seem to have done. The denialists have been poking the sleeping Zeus of scientific comradeship and now pebbles are starting to stir on the slopes of Psiloritis, ancient Olympus. Mann's last chapter details this awakening conscience and leaves one feeling soothed after the preceding apoplexy.

Mann is quite a man. The sustained barrage of defamation that he details here beggars belief, and while it was by no means focused solely on himself he has been the most consistently resolute and combative among its chosen victims. I'm not sure I wouldn't have been stirred to despair or violence. In the end, however, truth always wins out - as Feynmann observed, you can't fool reality - and Mann's resolution is vindicated. In case after case, investigations by Congress, Parliament and academe exonerate the defamed. In case after case,shoddy research by denialist stooges is torn down by the slow, finely-grinding wheels of subsequent research. Mann documents all this without resorting to polemic.

He also includes the clearest exposition of the technique of principal component analysis I have ever encountered, one informed by Stephen Jay Gould, another hero of mine. Feynmann and Twain are drawn into the mix, rendering a perfectly seasoned dish. It is worth commenting that Mann's objectivity appears to be above reproach. The only new feedback mechanism he has ever advocated - and I checked - was actually negative, and thus would have tended to undermine the strong conclusions on anthropogenic warming with which he is associated. A far cry from Lindzen, the sign of whose feedbacks you know before they are even published, or Christy and Spencer who were caught out with four consecutive errors of convenient sign without so much as a subtle clearing of the throat from Judith Curry.

I nominate the following heroes among this pantheon, aside from Mann himself: John McCain and Sherwood Boehlert, for having the intellectual courage to break party lines and stand up for the scientists. The list of villains is too long and depressing to recount, and of course I decline to plug them in to the oxygen mask of publicity. Fasten your seatbelt before reading this, and lay in a supply of chestnuts to roast in front of the pyres the inquisitors seem no longer to be destined to use.

Repeat something a sufficient number of times and, eventually, people will believe it, no matter whether it is true or not. It is one of the most effective tricks of propaganda and it has been used more than once against science, for instance in the demonization of the "Limits to Growth" study. During the past few years, it has been applied repeatedly, even obsessively, against the "hockey stick," the reconstruction of past temperatures on which Michael Mann and coworkers had been working from the 1990s.

It is rare in the history of science that a single piece of experimental evidence has been the object of so many attempts of demolition. Yet, all the serious reviews of the original data have basically confirmed the initial results. Being unsuccessful in demolishing the science, the attacks have moved against the scientist, Michael Mann himself, who has been subjected to an unbelievable denigration campaign, defamed, insulted, and even physically threatened. Recently, the campaign against Mann has targeted his new book, "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars", with a large number of negative reviews and derogatory remarks which appeared in the reviews of the book on the Amazon site. Most of these seem to be the work of web identities created expressly for this purpose.

What is amazing in this story is how people are fighting back! If you look at the comments on the Amazon site, you see how the derogatory comments have been overwhelmed by favorable comments written by real people who signed with their names. Climate science is still under heavy attack but, clearly, there is a core of concerned people who care about the future.

Michael Mann's "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars" is a book about our future. You need to read it to understand what kind of threats we are facing and how we can work for a better future.

Libeled, ridiculed, and maliciously harassed by climate deniers, Michael Mann at last fights back in this important book with dignity and grace. Unlike the way he was treated, Mann treats his critics fairly and truthfully. He tells the truth about what it is like to be a climate scientist when the most powerful corporate interests on the planet are not at all interested in the truth. They prefer lies, and, reading Mann's book, it is clear they have mobilized their vast resources to keep us in the dark about the harm they are doing to the planet. Michael Mann is a truth teller, and the book he has written is a terrifying story about how the truth is endangered. Buy it and read it!

I first became aware of the changed nature of the debate about the world's climate and what Mankind is doing to it a few years ago. For years, arguments batted back and forth over the science, in newspaper columns and across the internet. There had always been a palpable sense of hostility to the scientists doing the research but a few years ago there was a shift, so that it became the prominent theme. In 2009 I read the excellent Climate Cover-up (also recommended) and the events than then unfolded confirmed pretty much what that book was documenting - the emails incident, disproportional seizing upon small errors in IPCC sub-reports that for years had lain undetected and so on. And - in particular - the personal harrassment of the folk doing the science.

Mann's book brings the whole story up-to-date, and comes out at a time where we have recently witnessed, for example, the disgraceful intimidation of Texas climate scientist and committed Christian Katherine Hayhoe. What these guys are up against is an organised disinformation machine that gets personal when its other methods fail to gain traction and then pretends it was doing nothing wrong. On certain blog sites, links to this review page were posted together with the advice that people should read the book before reviewing it, knowing full well that some would simply swarm onto here and post unpleasant reviews (many of which have now been removed). If you want an example of how this machine works, there you have it! If you want to learn more, read and digest the contents of this revealing book, about what it is actually like to be out there, on the front line. Highly recommended.

Engrossing and well-written account of the famous "hockey stick" graph depicting the spike in temperature in the last few decades. The author spends some time explaining the statistical techniques and data sources used, and also devotes quite a few pages to detailing the various attacks on himself, colleagues, and their results by climate change deniers.

Mann's account is lucid and evenhanded, and is particularly valuable for pointing out that skepticism is in fact essential for science--but the skepticism must be honest and in good faith, rather than the faux skepticism of denialists who are, more often than not, in the pay of Big Oil et al, and who adjust their arguments and evidence to accommodate a conclusion to which they are committed from the start.

(It is really rather amusing, as the author notes in places, that climate change denialists so frequently accuse honest scientists of the kind of underhanded tricks that they themselves practice as a matter of course.)

Unfortunately to be a climate scientist in the US today, one needs to be prepared for a street fight, or worse. This book may aid a return to rational discussion, and allow these scientists to again concentrate on their science.

Definitely the book climate change deniers will fear. The war on science is politiclly and ideologically driven, and Mann shows that science knows no such political distinctions. Deniers are clearly entitled to their own opinion, but not their own fact. A must read where this all too important topic is concerned.

For the past 15 years, a largely invisible struggle, critical to the future of the planet, is being fought between the global community of climate scientists on one hand and fossil fuel companies-funded think-tanks and politicians on the other. During this time, climate scientists have reached an overwhelming scientific consensus that the carbon dioxide emissions caused by our reliance on coal, oil and gas have already caused significant global warming, and will ultimately endanger our planet unless all fossil fuel usage is rapidly phased out. Simultaneously, the fossil fuel industry has run a huge misinformation campaign to keep the public in the dark about climate change. Ground-breaking scientist Michael Mann writes about in this struggle in his new book.

The critical study which solidified scientific opinion about the truth of global warming was the "hockey stick graph" discovered by author Michael Mann himself in 1998, and highlighted in Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" documentary on global warming. Mann's graph showed global average temperatures slowly decreasing towards a distant new ice age for most of the past 1000 years, only to spike sharply upwards in the last one, like the end of a hockey stick. The hockey stick graph was strong evidence that man-made global warming was real, and was already happening. The hockey stick graph was confirmed by many subsequent scientific studies; the handful of studies, which contradicted it, were found to have critical errors. Among climate scientists, there is no longer any doubt about the reality and seriousness of global warming.

The fossil-fuel industry, composed of multinational coal and oil companies, sought to protect their business interests by sowing public doubt in global warming, and was quick to strike back at climate scientists. They funded think-tanks and websites propagating reports by their own "experts" who cast doubts on the hockey stick. These experts were usually economists and meteorologists/TV weathermen who knew little of climate science, as well as an ever-shrinking minority of climate scientists. The misinformation campaign took advantage of a public and media largely ignorant of science, and unable to appreciate that the real scientific debate on climate change was over.

US congressmen in the thrall of oil and coal lobbyists undertook an official witch-hunt of climate scientists in 2005. Congress was unable to find any problems with the climate scientists' views; but the damage was done. Widespread media coverage of politicians like Senator James Inhofe saying that climate change was "the single greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American public" ensured that doubts about global warming continued in the public mind.

The anti-climate science campaign ultimately descended to criminal acts of hacking and baseless accusations of fraud directed at Mann and his fellow scientists. In the "Climate-gate" incident in 2009, unknown hackers stole thousands of e-mail messages from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in the UK. One particular e-mail from another climate scientist to Mann was repeatedly used as evidence to claim that Mann had used a "trick" to falsify his hockey stick data and was thus able to "hide the decline" in global temperature.

Climate change deniers had a field day. In fact, the word "trick" is commonly used among mathematicians and scientists to describe a clever means of solving a difficult problem, seemingly by magic; it did not imply any wrongdoing. Likewise, the "decline" in that was being hidden was a series of temperature measurements from one particular study acknowledged by the original author to be doubtful due to pollution. A number of subsequent inquiries were conducted, and none found any wrongdoing on the part of climate scientists. Again, the damage was already done; public belief in global warming and political will to tackle it both fell dramatically.

The fog of public doubt created over global warming had long-term consequences; firstly, Barack Obama's attempts at regulating carbon emissions were rejected by the Congress. Secondly, the Climate-gate hacking had been timed to occur just before the Copenhagen summit on global warming in December 2009. Due to doubts raised by Climate-gate as well as Obama's failure to pass any carbon dioxide emissions legislation in the US, Copenhagen failed to produce any meaningful international agreement to prevent global warming.

This failure has left the planet in continued peril of global warming and consequent sea level rise, cyclones and drought. Hurricane Sandy, US/Russian crop failures and high food prices in 2012 are the beginnings of what is in store for us unless the public and politicians start taking real action to replace fossil fuels with nuclear, solar and wind power.

Hmmm, a lot of 5 stars and a lot of 1 stars. The reviews reflect the polarization of this issue within the US political realm. You have a choice: listen to the hate mongers who fanatically attack scientists for no good reason or read about the science and think for yourself. No wonder kids in the USA dont want to become scientists, truly sad state of affairs.