I recently read Professor Michael Mann's book "The
Hockey Stick and The Climate Wars". There are several reviews of the book
online, a couple of examples being
Shawn Lawrence Otto's review at The Huffington Post and
Jeff Masters' review at Wunderground. However, I found the book compelling,
engaging and valuable on several fronts and felt it was worth making a few
observations here. If you are a person who is not entirely familiar with the
recent history and politics of climate science, it offers a highly readable and
informative summary that captures some of the progress and setbacks over the
last two decades or so. Mann's passion for climate science comes through very
well in the book and in the process he also addresses in some detail the
following aspects of climate change.
I. Scientific Process, Climate Politics & Denialism
1) The IPCC scientific
process and rigor which is quite substantial to the point of making the reports
somewhat
conservative - despite the seepage of
occasional
errors into IPCC reports
2) The right role of true skepticism in scientific inquiry - and how this
differs from the practice of
climate change denial (or
climate denial) that uses a combination of (a) a veneer of
skepticism, (b) often incompetence in basic statistics and (c) the use of
deliberately misleading data
- Mann cites several examples in his book; a perusal of blogs like
Deltoid,
Skeptical Science,
Open Mind and
others provides interminable, yet dark, amusement on this front
3) The slow but gradual evolution of scientific knowledge, a process that is
self-correcting and generates better understanding over time
- Mann offers many interesting examples from the climate change field
contrasting them with the typical demands of the blog/media/news cycle that
might immediately trumpet a new research paper as if it almost
single-handedly destroyed the scientific consensus, without waiting for the
time-intensive scientific process to peer assessment, correction and
learning
4) The role of the key players in the fossil-fuels sector - whose future
assets, fuel reserves and stock prices
are at
significant risk if meaningful climate change policy actions are taken - and
that of
other ideologically aligned wealthy donors in funding climate denialism
5) The deplorable, often personal attacks on climate scientists who publicly
speak or write about the serious manifestations and consequences of climate
change through willful misrepresentation of their or others' work and/or false
accusations of fraud or misconduct
- As Mann shows, these attacks are usually fronted by certain politicians
(usually Republicans close to the fossil fuel industry), a handful of
scientists who are typically not climate science experts, and often by
denialist writers, bloggers and pseudo-scientists. Mann also suggests that
the manufactured controversy has often coincided with time periods when the
U.S. Congress was poised to pass climate change legislation - thereby making
it easier to kill such legislation.
- The attacks and their consequences are examined in much detail given
Mann's personal experience and the character assassination campaign he and
some of his peers have faced over the years; he particularly explores the
controversy over the "hockey
stick" and the
Climategate
episode
- Mann makes reference to another excellent, must-read book on this
particular topic - "Merchants
of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from
Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming" by Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway
6) The increasing use of blogs (e.g.,
RealClimate) by
climate scientists to communicate the science to the public and media, and push
back in real time on false, distorted or misleading presentations of climate
data
II. Science of Climate Change
7) The role that various natural (e.g.,
solar activity,
volcanoes,
various oceanic oscillations that operate over multi-year, decadal,
multi-decadal or multi-century periods - such as the multi-year oscillation
called
ENSO or
El-Nino/La
Nina) and human-induced/anthropogenic factors (CO2,
sulfur dioxide -
SO2,
etc.) play in influencing global warming and climate change
- Mann walks readers through how different factors can affect climate and
temperature in different ways, thereby providing a nuanced discussion of
climate change and warming, which is often missing or understated in
websites arguing against the evidence for anthropogenic global warming
8) The role of temperature proxies - such as tree rings, ice cores, lake
sediments, etc. - in the estimation of local, regional and global average
temperatures in past centuries and millennia when accurate temperature
measurements were not available
9) The use of statistical frameworks such as
principal component analysis (PCA) in the understanding of underlying
phenomena and variables driving temperature changes
Mann's book tries to cover all that and more and does a really nice job
overall in giving the reader an expansive view of the nuanced subject of climate
change, while passionately conveying the real urgency of acknowledging the
dangers of ongoing and future warming and the need for immediate action. I
highly recommend this book.
In terms of where the book could have been improved, I would suggest the
following thoughts for Mann and other climate scientists to consider. Unless
someone is an avid follower of the field of climate change and global warming,
it is difficult to grasp the nuances and subtleties inherent in understanding
climate, weather and the variables that can cause them to shift. I think Mann's
book can be further improved, perhaps in his next edition, by more explicitly
delving into common points of confusion for people I have talked to, such as:
- Dueling reports of record heat and record cold (recent
examples): This confusion might persist because typical discussions
on global warming, even by scientists, fail to adequately inform people that
warming refers only to
averages and that record heat and cold can co-exist in a warming
world as long as record heat events
significantly
outnumber record cold events as the average temperature rises
- Reports attributing certain seemingly contradictory climatic and
meteorological events to global warming (e.g., less snow v. blizzards,
flooding v. drought, etc.): It's important that scientists invest more
time in developing communication to explain how
both droughts and severe flooding could result from warming, that
both blizzards and reduced snow can be a consequence of warming, etc.
- Why seemingly modest increases in global temperature (e.g., 0.8
degrees C) should result in significant increases in extreme events: It
wasn't until the
excellent work of Hansen et al. in 2012 did a clear framework become
available to average readers like me to explain to others that a small shift
in averages can lead to a large increase in probability of 3-sigma, 4-sigma
and beyond temperatures, which in turn can lead to more extreme events over
time, relative to past experience
- Lack of clear understanding of the role of additional factors that
cause otherwise CO2-influenced temperature changes to be
non-monotonic: The recent work by
Skeptical Science is very welcome in this context but it is rare to see
scientists use simplified means of communication on such an important topic
Additionally, I would like to urge Mann and his colleagues/peers to invest
more time in discussing & explaining the role of the potent greenhouse gas
methane (CH4) and the pros and cons of migrating our energy use from
fuels like coal to natural gas, especially given the increasing
concerns of
methane
leakage during natural gas extraction.
Finally, while I very much like blogs like
Real Climate, climate
scientists need to do a better job of communicating their findings and
implications in plain English. Again,
Skeptical Science
is doing a fantastic job on this and newer initiatives like
Climate Communication
are welcome and overdue but scientists need to be more tuned to this need going
forward.