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

This summer has been brutal here in the United States. Late in June, Nashville, Tennessee set an all time record high of 109^o F (~42.78^o C), and while it is a southern city it is normally only in the 90s and humid not 109 and bone dry in Nashville. Nashville wasn't alone June saw over 2000 record high temperatures set throughout the United States. These temperatures along with other climatic conditions created a Derecho which ripped through the east coast. Meanwhile a huge drought in the Western United States provided a tinderbox setting that allowed for the creation of wildfires in Colorado that are their costliest ever. As the summer has continued the drought has only gotten worse, expanding into the bread basket which is posed to make food prices over the next year skyrocket and lowering the Mississippi River to the point that it is making transport of goods on the river difficult. While most of the focus has been on the United States the Arctic also has reached a record low for sea ice extent, and what makes it even worse is this occurred weeks before the normal low. While it is true that no single event can be blamed on climate change it is the addition of all of these events, and the events in past years, that start to build a consensus toward climate change increasing the severity of overall events.

These leads us to a book published earlier this year by Dr. Michael Mann titled, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines. Dr. Mann is the lead author on two of the most important papers in climate science, the papers that show the long term temperature trends and have been termed the hockey stick graphs (so you can see where the title of the book comes from). This book starts while Dr. Mann is still in graduate school and in the beginning shows the point where climate research was in the early 90s. Once Dr. Mann gets involved in climate science the two stories converge and we see how his graph was just one piece in greater puzzle of climate change. Once the scientific consensus is truly established, around 2000, the book switches to a tone of how Dr. Mann had to defend himself from attacks against him, mostly from non-climate scientists, accusing him of doing bad science in the creation of the graph. He shows not only what these arguments were but how the scientific community refutes them and how his graph, with only minor tweaks, still survives to this day. This includes a brief description of the hacked emails from a few years ago and how they don't actually say what people think they say. This tells the tale of Dr. Mann's life and how it has changed since the publication of the hockey stick graph.

This book is, in my opinion, one of the most important books out there. Dr. Mann's telling of the story allows you to see him not as the man who is so often ripped on by climate "skeptics" but as a man who got caught in the middle of something just by doing the science. This is true of many scientists in fields of science where there might be some "controversy", such as climate science and evolution. The main difference is that Dr. Mann didn't ask for it he just ended up in this position because of a question he had been wondering for a while. The way the story is told allows the reader to build on knowledge learned earlier, as a true scientist would, but does not expect the reader to come into the book with all of the back ground. He also backs up his claims, scientific or accusations against him, through a many citations as well as many footnotes making it possible to look up all of his claims. You can see the evidence for climate change growing as the book goes on while the attacks against the graph get weaker and weaker till they seem to be just personal attacks, as prior attacks continue to fail.

One of the problems I do see with the book is the amount it does build on itself. I understand the need for this but citations in the book to see earlier chapters can make a reader get lost if, like me, they had to take several breaks from reading the book that spanned time due to other commitments. I understand the need for this, I am certain that it shortens the book and makes it less repetitive, it just made it hard for me as well. Part of the difficulty as far as this is concerned is that I was reading the Kindle version so flipping back to earlier chapters may wasn't as easy as having the physical book, so take this complaint with a grain of salt. My other problem is just how well cited the book is. I am not saying this is bad in and of itself but as I could click on a link and it would take me to the footnote/citation I wish that the citations had been cited as they would in a scientific paper whereas footnotes would be numbered. It would often lead to me getting a little lost as went back and forth a couple of times reading footnotes and citation. Some of the footnotes were also quite long and could likely have been put in the text itself as they typically only added to the information in the book and didn't really take the story off on long tangents.

Overall this book is a must read, not just for those who understand the science of climate change but for everyone especially those who question the science behind climate change because it will give you the full story and allow you to understand just how strong the science is. As I was finishing the book the Heartland Institute posted billboards with mass murderers touting climate change as happening. While this would end up blowing up in their faces it is important to understand the science so that these false comparisons can be shown for what they are, fear mongering pure and simple!

Book Citation
Mann, Michael E. 2012. The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines. Columbia University Press, New York, 384p.

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