“Dr. Hockey Stick” Michael Mann sticks his neck out

A colleague directs my attention to a remarkable example of someone needlessly sticking their neck out, specifically “Dr. Hockey Stick” Michael Mann, whose fall I expose in detail in my book and again address on the Glenn Beck Special, “Exposed: The Climate of Fear” which ran on Wednesday night.

Sayeth Mann in a thou-doth-titter-too-much blog post, “However, there was one amusing moment: Beck asked Christopher ‘Incorrect’ Horner what the key thing to google was that would show that Al Gore was wrong. Horner suggested the lag between CO2 annd [sic] temperature in the ice cores. Of course, if you do google that , the first hit is the Realclimate debunking of the issue. Thanks!”

Uh, well, you’re welcome, but may I suggest that Dr. Mann possibly learn at some point that not everyone limits their research to whatever pops up first? It does seem that a false hope of such sloth is what landed him in the humiliating position of having his Hockey Stick “disappeared” from the UN’s Fourth Assessment Report, placement of which in the UN’s Third AR it turns out he ensured as the relevant author. Sure, the UN apparently didn’t bother checking his claims out, but a couple of Canadians I know neither granted him that grace nor limited themselves to “the first hit” while sleuthing out the scandal, and the result — see, first, Mann, Bradley and Hughes (2004) Corrigendum, Nature July 1, 2004, page 105…then of course proceed to other sources — was rather embarrassing . And an enormous black eye for the alarmist movement.

To which I can only reply, “Thanks!”