20120314_WS
Source: Wall Street Journal
URL: http://online.wsj.com/video/opinion-the-climate-kamikaze/7E12309E-7064-498A-BCD3-FEC6108C3D5C.html
Date: 14/03/2012
Event: The Climate Kamikaze - WSJ's Anne Jolis reviews Michael Mann's new book
People:
- Anne Jolis: WSJ Europe Editorial Writer
- Mary Kissel: Member of Wall Street Journal Editorial Board
Mary Kissel: Well, now we go to London - I hope - with Anne Jolis, Wall Street Journal writer there. And we're going to talk about a very, very interesting topic called climate change, and a new book that's been penned by a rather controversial figure. Anne, welcome.
Anne Jolis: Hi Mary, thank you for having me.
Mary Kissel: The book is called The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, and is authored by Michael Mann. Who is Mr Mann and why should we care about him?
Anne Jolis: Well, Michael Mann is a climate scientist currently at the University - at the Penn State - um, Mary, sorry -
Mary Kissel: That's okay, this is the fun of live TV - I'll just ask you again. So - new book, Michael Mann, who is he, why do we care about him?
Anne Jolis: Michael Mann is a climatologist, who in the late '90s authored a study, and a couple of follow-ups, known as the "Hockey Stick" graphs. And essentially these are paleoclimatic reconstructions of atmospheric and global temperatures, going back hundreds, and - in the 1999 graph - a thousand years. And what these graphs demonstrated, and the reason it got so much attention, and featured in the 2001 UN IPCC report, is that they indicated that basically for the last thousand years, temperatures had essentially been going on fairly steadily, and then in the 20th century, they showed this anomalous spike, this sharp rise in temperatures. And, er, Michael Mann -
Mary Kissel: So he's -
Anne Jolis: No, go on -
Mary Kissel: He's a big supporter of climate change, he thinks it's real, er... And does the book, basically, just repeat these arguments, and the Hockey Stick? What does the book say?
Anne Jolis: Well, yes, essentially. I mean, basically since they came out, Michael Mann's reconstructions, which involved a lot of complicated and debatable mathematical and statistical methods - they've been critiqued, fairly heavily, by various sceptics in math and science, who've pointed out, for instance, that in the early versions of the graph, the statistical method produced a hockey-stick shape, pretty much whatever data you inputted. So Mr Mann's book is his side, I guess, of what he calls these "climate wars". And, you know, essentially the main thesis of the book is that he, and other climate scientists and especially his Hockey Stick, have been the victims of this murky, corporate-funded conspiracy to deny climate science, to deny the realities of climate change, and, essentially, you know, just basically doom us all to a horrible climate catastrophe - death - for corporate profit.
Mary Kissel: We're talking to Wall Street Journal editorial page writer Anne Jolis about a new book by Michael Mann. So, he comes out with this Hockey Stick thesis, he's heavily criticised in the scientific community and elsewhere. He writes this book, and he's says it's not true. So does he come out with a strong scientific case, to rebut his critics, or no?
Anne Jolis: He doesn't come out with a new case to rebut his critics, let's put it that way. The book is fairly interesting that in a lot of sections it is a lot like IPCC reports, in that it's got some pretty heavy-going technical explanations, and he does, throughout in the book, if you read it carefully, if you give it a critical read, and if you go to his footnotes and you check the reference material, you'll get a pretty good idea of some of the more important uncertainties and caveats in the alarmist/global warming view. But, at the same time, this gets interspersed, for the layman's benefit, with sweeping claims about how - well, you know, never mind the uncertainties, this is what's happening, this is the reality and if you don't agree with me, you're anti-science and you're a denialist - and I think, honestly, one of the weaknesses in this book and Mr Mann's unwittingly revealed about himself, that he seems to not understand that reasonable minds - and layman minds - can grasp and comprehend how science works, that it is a lot of incremental developments, uncertainties, caveats, everywhere - reasonable layman minds can grasp all this, and understand the science as it stands, and simply disagree with Mr Mann on what is an appropriate response to -
Mary Kissel: Well, Anne I'm sorry, I think we have to leave it there, we've only got about ten seconds left. I understand you have a book review in the Wall Street Journal tomorrow, I'd encourage everybody to check it out. Wall Street Journal Europe editorial writer Anne Jolis, thanks for being with us.