Brandon Shollenberger's review of 'The Hockey Stick and Climate Wars' by Michael Mann
Mar 7, 2012
Josh in Books, Climate: Mann, Josh
At Lucia's blog, on Feb 15th, Branden Shollenberger commented:
"I just received my copy of Michael Mann’s book. The first sentence of it is (emphasis mine):
On the morning of November 17, 2009, I awoke to learn that my e-mail correspondence with fellow scientists had been hacked from a climate research center at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom and selectively posted on the Internet for all to see.
Two pages later, there are these two sentences:
Instrumental records from around the globe indicate that Earth has warmed by almost 1 degree Celsius (about 1.5°F) over the past century. That may seem a small amount, but it is already noticeable in glacier retreat, rising sea level, more frequent heat waves, and more intense hurricanes, among many other phenomena.
That’s as far as I’ve gotten, but it shows a disturbing trend. Ideas which are possible, but by no means known to be true, are stated as fact. If this is remotely representative of the book’s accuracy, there is no way the people giving it glowing reviews read it with an open mind."
Over the next few days Brandon finds more errors as he reads the book. It is quite fun to follow the unfolding story but you can download the whole review as a pdf here.
And there's more! This weekend Brandon hopes to share a second document covering other issues and which we will add as an update to this post.
Frank O'Dwyer has his own opinions on Brandon's review which you can read here - he doesn't like it.
Josh
At Lucia's blog, on Feb 15th, Branden Shollenberger commented:
"I just received my copy of Michael Mann’s book. The first sentence of it is (emphasis mine):
Two pages later, there are these two sentences:
That’s as far as I’ve gotten, but it shows a disturbing trend. Ideas which are possible, but by no means known to be true, are stated as fact. If this is remotely representative of the book’s accuracy, there is no way the people giving it glowing reviews read it with an open mind."
Over the next few days Brandon finds more errors as he reads the book. It is quite fun to follow the unfolding story but you can download the whole review as a pdf here.
And there's more! This weekend Brandon hopes to share a second document covering other issues and which we will add as an update to this post.
Frank O'Dwyer has his own opinions on Brandon's review which you can read here - he doesn't like it.
Posted by Josh