Hockey Stick Researcher Begins to Doubt Climate Change Alarmism

Commentary

Is Michael Mann, the creator of the Hockey Stick graph, becoming a secret “New Denialist”? Or is a division occurring within the pro-climate change camp?

These are two interpretations of Mr. Mann’s latest book “Our Fragile Moment.”

Both scenarios would be positive, and combined even more so.

The “new denialists” is a term used to describe those who believe that while climate change is real, the extent to which it is man-made and what the policy response should be is still an open question.

Mr. Mann is not someone typically associated with this stance.

He rose to prominence in 1998 as a newly-qualified doctor of geology and geophysics, co-authoring Mann, Bradley, and Hughes 1998 (MBH98), which popularly became known as the Hockey Stick graph—a paleoclimate reconstruction demonstrating unprecedented warming in the late twentieth century over 1,000 years of earth’s temperature.

This went against the consensus view that had held that temperature variability was significant over centuries, and that it had been cooler in the Roman climatic optimum and the Medieval warm period than it was at present.

Many are familiar with its portrayal in Al Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” a film which a British court deemed unsuitable to present to students without corrections due to containing numerous scientific errors. Mr. Gore dramatically used the graph as a backdrop, emphasizing the sharpness of the increase, and the urgent need to reduce CO2 emissions by rising up beside it in a scissor lift while holding a large pointer in his hand.

Concerns With the Origin of the Hockey Stick

The hockey stick, and its successors, have been used as symbols of climate change catastrophism, applying pressure to “climate deniers.”

However, I have never trusted the hockey stick. Not only did it strive to refute the consensus based on a single reconstruction, but its statistical methods were found to create hockey sticks from random data, making it improbable to be accurate. In addition, Mr. Mann engaged in impermissible statistical practices by merging actual temperature records when the proxy data clashed with thermometer records after coming into the modern era, without disclosing the reason.

This is how Mr. Mann earned the title “Piltdown Mann.” The one “n” Piltdown Man is a scandal in which an amateur paleoanthropologist claimed to have found the “missing link” between man and ape, but it was a forgery where a modern human cranium had been combined with an orangutang jaw and teeth. Mr. Mann’s methods were similarly fallacious and misleading. If the proxies do not measure real temperature currently, it is difficult to accept that they accurately assessed real temperature in the past. The proxy exercise had clearly failed and should have been dropped.

If you are interested in further information about the Hockey Stick, I recommend referring to the judge in the Mann. v. Simberg and Steyn case, currently being heard in court 132 in the District of Columbia Superior Court. Mr. Mann is suing the two defendants for their strong criticisms of his hockey stick graph. Presiding Justice Irving stated: “As to Mr. Steyn, his statements about the bogus, fraudulent nature of the Hockey Stick graph in his mind were substantially and entirely true.”

Not the End of the World?

My apprehension of reviewing Mr. Mann’s new book was met with caution. Someone who misleads his scientific peers is likely to be even less reliable with the general public.

I was not entirely disappointed. There are certainly unsubstantiated claims, but there are also insights that appear valid. Mr. Mann, unlike Greta Thunberg, is relaxed about the immediate future of the world, which enrolls him in the ranks of what is being called the “new denialists.”

His book exemplifies the temptation to submit to expert opinion. Mr. Mann asserts that CO2 is the thermostat controlling Earth’s temperature, although he occasionally allows for the sun to have a role at times through Milankovitch cycles. Unlike most climate scientists, though, he understands geology and has a long-term view of the world.

My suggestion is to read the book and then seek disparate opinions. The future might be speculative, but beyond yesterday’s dinner, the past is equally so. Maybe CO2 serves as a genuine thermostat, but how then do you explain the graph where the earth experiences high concentrations of CO2 yet is cold, and low concentrations but is warm?

Mr. Mann addresses some of this through the concept of Earth System Sensitivity, suggesting that there is inertia in the earth system, causing changes to take a considerable time before they manifest.

He suggests that sensitivity may be higher in interglacials and lower during glacials. One reason for this is that ice sheets, which dominate glacials, reflect a lot of sunlight thereby keeping temperatures low despite CO2 changes pushing in the opposite direction. As such, ice sheets melt very slowly, thereby causing temperatures to warm at a slow pace.

This effect is not present when most of the ice sheets have melted, as they have today, meaning that warming can become more instantaneous. Universe.

Perhaps.

I believe it warrants further research, but I encourage you to read the book. It is rich in detail that cannot be accurately, or fully, conveyed in a brief review. Definitely read the final chapter, where I will let Mr. Mann speak for himself:

“But breathless claims of imminent climate-driven ‘human extinction’ and ‘runaway warming’ are both scientifically unsupportable and unhelpful.”

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