Michael Mann, The Hockey Stick, and the Vindication of Climate Science

Michael Mann, author of the forthcoming The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines (due out in Spring 2012), has become a target of anti-science activists and global warming deniers.

As reported by Joe Romm’s Climate Progress, Mann’s work has been vindicated by yet another organization — the National Science Foundation (NSF). Doubters of Michael Mann’s research cited research misconduct but the NSF concluded in its report: “Finding no research misconduct or other matter raised by the various regulations and laws discussed above, this case is closed.”

The NSF report was in part a response to an earlier report by Penn State University, which also supported Mann’s “hockey stick” thesis. Romm cites some of the key findings from Penn State’s report including their praise for Mann, “His work clearly places Dr. Mann among the most respected scientists in his field…. Dr. Mann’s work, from the beginning of his career, has been recognized as outstanding.”

Romm concludes by writing:

So Mann isn’t merely a competent researcher. He is one of the leading climate scientists in this country, which of course is precisely why the anti-science crowd has gone after him, much as they have with other leading climate scientists, including Hansen and Santer.

And that’s one more reason why the major media outlets who smeared and defamed him owe him an apology and a retraction — loud ones!

For more on “climate-gate” and science’s battle against deniers of global warming there is James Powell’s The Inquisition of Climate Science.