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Simon Lewis gets to grips with a climate scientist's account of a conflict that began with a graph. How would you feel if a powerful politician demanded, with apparent legal authority, that you supply him with every piece of scientific data you had ever collected, every computer program you had written, and every detail that would allow his staff to replicate your work? How would you feel if an envelope of suspicious white powder was posted to you — and the police sealed your office? And if your family was threatened with violence?
Michael Mann knows how he would feel: he experienced all this after publishing a scientific paper. The book begins slowly, moving from happy anecdotes of childhood computer programming to the joys of responsibility-free postdoctoral research. But it becomes riveting when we reach what was in retrospect the turning point in Mann's life: his paper 'Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries' M.
Mann et al. Nature , —; Mann's study used proxy climate records, such as tree-ring growth and the ratios of oxygen isotopes in corals, to make estimates of surface air temperature extending back to AD — long before direct thermometer measurements were available. The results showed that in the Northern Hemisphere, temperatures were higher in the last years of the twentieth century than at any time in the previous years, and that the suspected dominant cause was anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.
Mann's result came to be known as the hockey stick, because the key graph showed a flat 'handle' — the low-level natural oscillations in temperature in the centuries before humans began to create large quantities of greenhouse gases — and a 'blade' representing the sharp uptick in surface air temperature in the twentieth century. The work invoked the ire of lobby groups opposed to political action on climate change, who launched an astonishing decade of attacks on the veracity of the result.
The bulk of Mann's book documents this ugly debate. Mann ably dissects how ideologically driven, industry-funded campaigns attack climate scientists and their work to obstruct the formulation and implementation of policies restricting CO 2 emissions.
We learn about Mann's bemusement when he is first assailed, and later his resigned anger. One would be wrong. 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 UN report on climate change and quickly became a central icon in the "climate wars. 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 "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. In this meticulous and engaging brief on climate change research and the political backlash to legitimate scientific work, Penn State professor Mann narrates the fight against misinformation from the inside. Publishers Weekly An important and disturbing account of the fossil-fuel industry's well-funded public-relations campaign to sow doubt about the validity of the science of climate change This blistering indictment of corporate-funded chicanery demands a wide audience.
Kirkus Reviews starred review And if you read just one book on climate change, make it Michael E. Irish Times The best part, in my science-geeky opinion, is readers of this book will enjoy a dazzling, informative tour of the science underlying climatology and especially the analysis that went into the diagram that caused all the ruckus.
DarkSyde, Daily Kos A harrowing ride through the politics of truth and denial. Shawn Lawrence Otto, Huffington Post The difference is dramatic. And fateful. James P. Lenfestey, Star Tribune A must read for every serious student of climate change science, and gets my highest rating: five stars out of five.
Jeff Masters, Jeff Masters WunderGround Blog I heartily recommend this book for an unusually clear view of the action on the front line of climate science from one of its principle palaeoclimate protagonists. Colin Summerhayes, Geoscientist Mann deserves our respect and admiration for what he has been through and for his willingness to discuss it. The narrative is a deeply honest scientific coming-of-age story. Naomi Oreskes, Physics Today This book is well written and tells a remarkable story that is likely to be of interest to a wide range of readers.
Australian Book Review Mann's honest and thorough testimony on the attacks against climate science is a critical step toward resolving the climate change debate. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer. In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. Correspondence to Mike Hulme. Reprints and Permissions. Hulme, M. An unwinnable fight. Nature Clim Change 2, —
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