That the fringe-right – and possibly Donald Trump – cannot be bothered by the idea of anthropocentric climate change is not unknown. How they’ve fought that idea, though, may be – and may have knock-on effects. Skeptical Inquirer publishes an interview with climatologist and geophysicist Michael Mann, who made his career with the “hockey stick” of climate change. Since SI concerns itself with proper skepticism, which is skepticism informed by science, the interview concerns itself primarily with the improper, amateur skepticism Mann has faced over the years. The interviewer is physicist Mark Boslough
The original northern hemisphere hockey stick graph of Mann, Bradley & Hughes 1999.
Source: WikipediaMark Boslough: … Why do you think they have they singled you out from the scientific community as their poster child for sustained vilification?
Michael Mann: Well—there are certainly other leading climate scientists who have been frequent targets of climate change deniers. But I suppose there are a few things that are different in my case. For one, I am directly associated with one of the most prominent graphs in all of climate science, the “Hockey Stick” curve that my coauthors and I published back in the late 1990s. That curve became an icon in the climate change debate. It told a simple story—that the warming of the planet we’re experiencing is unprecedented. That made it a threat to fossil fuel interests and, as I detail in my book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, it made me a direct target of the industry-funded climate change denial machine. The Eye of Sauron was fixed on me. Rather than shrink from the battle, I chose to fight back—by defending my work in the public sphere and by devoting myself to public outreach and education. That no doubt further antagonized climate change deniers. Ultimately, they provided me a platform for informing the public discourse over what is arguably the greatest challenge we have faced as a civilization. I consider that a blessing, not a curse.
Literature research published in Skeptical Inquirer has indicated that > 97% of climate scientists agree with the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis – and that’s a conservative estimate. It’s safe to say that there is no major controversy within the scientific community on the topic, although there are always discussions about data collection and a thousand other topics. With this in mind, it’s a bit mind-boggling that fossil-fuel corporations and their politicians continue a fight that, frankly, endangers the continued existence of this country – and humanity. And how do they fight?
Boslough: … Do you think you were the main target of Sauron’s initial wrath because you were first author or because deniers mistook you for easy pickings?
Mann: That’s right. Interestingly, much of the focus was on me alone, rather than my two senior coauthors, Ray Bradley and Malcolm Hughes. I suspect the reason was two-fold. I was the first author and was quoted in most of the media coverage, so I was the scientist most directly associated with the research. But additionally, I was viewed as far more vulnerable to attack, as I was only a post-doc at the time, a far cry from the job security of a tenured faculty position (which both of my coauthors had). The climate change denial machine wanted to bring me down, to destroy my professional career before it even got going, to make an example of me for other younger scientists who might too consider speaking out about climate change. In The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, I refer to this as the “Serengeti Strategy.”
Boslough: Seems like this strategy backfired spectacularly in your case. Have they successfully destroyed anyone else’s career? Are they still pursuing the Serengeti method, or did they learn their lesson?
Mann: Well, yes—I like to think the hyenas tangled with the wrong zebra.
It’s worth talking about the assumptions behind this interview. In science, it is not – or should not be – about the scientists, but about the facts. The goal is to establish the truth about some hypothesis, using the strongest known methods in an attempt to pin down the slipperiest of targets, a the true/false property of an assertion about reality. By removing the personalities from the debate, the targeting, even assassination of proponents and critics, and focusing on the only factors that really matter, we have a chance to ascertain truth about reality.
What Mann describes are the actions of entities that inhabit other spheres, other sectors of societies, doesn’t it? People who think it’s all politics, that if enough of the populace believes their tale of reality, why, then reality will conform to their expectations. People who may think that nothing fundamental ever really changes. People for whom things, not principles, are the most important (but that’s for tomorrow’s post). Perhaps, most dangerously, people who think their God positively favors them, so how could burning fossil fuels be bad?
When men with power attack those who bear bad tidings, what negative impacts does that have on the field?
Mann: I suspect the real impact of the attacks is more difficult to detect. On the one hand, scientists coming into the field now appear to be more mobilized, more willing to confront misinformation and disinformation head on, more willing to engage in the public discourse, whether through social media or other means. But, what I worry about, are the young scientists we are losing to other fields, scientists confronted by a choice between those areas of science perceived as “safe” (e.g., dark matter, quarks, and black holes) and “unsafe” (e.g., climate change and other areas of environmental research) from attacks by vested interests and the politicians who do their bidding.
Unfortunately, given the general lack of science background in the older generations of Americans, I doubt it’s possible to run off such incompetents as Lamar Smith of Texas, who has been responsible for many of these shameful actions. That he permits the contributions he’s received from the fossil fuel industry to dictate his views is corruption; that he attempts to ruin the careers of men and women who are doing more for the world than himself is shameful.
It’s a good, if depressing, interview, well worth the read, and I have to admire the energy and spunk of Dr. Mann. For that matter, Skeptical Inquirer can be a thought provoking magazine, bringing a scientific viewpoint to subjects that are sometimes short on such viewpoints. I’ve subscribed for decades, and have learned a lot.
