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| Author | A.W. Montford |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Climate change |
| Genre | Non-Fiction |
| Publisher | Stacey International |
| Publication date | 2010 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Pages | 482 |
| ISBN | 978 1 906768 35 5 |
The Hockey Stick Illusion (subtitle Climategate and the Corruption of Science) is a book written by Andrew Montford, author of the Bishop Hill Blog. Stacey International published the book in 2010.
The book covers the history of the "hockey stick graph", the first version of which was published by Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley and Malcolm K. Hughes in 1998, from then to its prominent use by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Criticisms by Ross McKitrick and Stephen McIntyre, as well as the ensuing hockey stick controversy, are also included in the book.
Background
In 2005, Andrew Montford followed a link from a British political blog to the Climate Audit Web site. He said new visitors were pleading for an introduction to the controversy and that there was nothing to help people get up to speed on the science.
Over the course of a few days, Montford summarized a series of Climate Audit posts into a long article on his blog which he called "Caspar and the Jesus Paper." He said this article made his site go from a couple of hundred hits a day to 30,000 hits over three days. From these beginnings, the author took the first steps in writing his book.
Synopsis
In its seventeen chapters, The Hockey Stick Illusion relates the story of Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley and Malcolm K. Hughes's "hockey stick graph". Starting with a brief summary of the consensus view prior to 1998, and the first incarnation of the hockey stick graph, the book traces the history of what it claims is the slow unraveling of that same graph.
The last few chapters of the book deal with the Climatic Research Unit email controversy. Here, the author compares several e-mails to the evidence he presents in The Hockey Stick Illusion. Montford focuses on those e-mails which dealt with the peer review process and how these pertained to McIntyre's efforts to get the data and methodology from Mann's and other paleoclimatologists published works.
Reception
Writing in Prospect magazine, Matt Ridley, the former science editor of The Economist, said that this book was one of the best science books written in years. Said Ridley, "It exposes in delicious detail, datum by datum, how a great scientific mistake of immense political weight was perpetrated, defended and camouflaged by a scientific establishment that should now be red with shame."
Nigel Calder, former editor of the New Scientist magazine and co-author of The Chilling Stars, wrote, "This is a thriller about codebreaking: computer codes that generated a false signal to the world about runaway global warming."
In an article for The Daily Telegraph, Christopher Booker wrote, "We can now read in shocking detail the truth of the outrageous efforts made to ensure that the same 2007 report was able to keep on board IPCC's most shameless stunt of all: the notorious "hockey stick" graph purporting to show that in the late 20th century, temperatures had been hurtling up to unprecedented levels."
Writing in Discovery News, Discovery Institute co-founder George Gilder, said that Stve McIntyre could be compared to the Columbo TV series figure, on how he has done a pursuit of what he calls the self-denominated "hockey team" led by Michael Mann and their claim about the unprecedented and anomalous anthropogenic global warming and the denying that any comparable or greater warming occurred in the Medieval Warm Period.
An article by Bruce Robbins in The Courier states that the book shows that the science involved in climate change has been corrupted by political and environmental agendas. Robbins concludes, "The evidence against man-made global warming is growing and the Hockey Stick Illusion stands as the definitive account of a pivotal point in climate change science."
Bibliography
- Montford, Andrew (2010). The Hockey Stick Illusion; Climategate and the Corruption of Science. Stacey International. p. 482. ISBN 1906768358.
See Also
References
- "Casper and the Jesus paper". www.bishophill.squarespace.com. 2008-08-11. Retrieved 2010-04-01.
- Ridley, Matt (2010-02-03). "The global warming guerrillas". The Spectator (spectator.co.uk). Retrieved 2010-04-09.
- Matt Ridley (2010-03-10). "The case against the hockey stick". Prospect (prospectmagazine.co.uk). Retrieved 2010-04-03.
- "The Hockey Stick Illusion, Back Cover". www.amazon.co.uk. Retrieved Thursday, Apr 01 2010.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - Christopher Booker (7:49PM GMT 27 Feb 2010). "A perfect storm is brewing for the IPCC". www.telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved Saturday, Apr 03 2010.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=and|date=(help) - Christopher Booker (MARCH 6, 2010). "The global warming alarmists". www.vancouversun.com. Retrieved Saturday, Apr 03 2010.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=and|date=(help) - George Gilder (2010-02-25). "George Gilder Hails "The Hockey Stick Illusion" on the Science Scandal of Global Warming". discoverynews.org. Retrieved 2010-02-25.
In this story, the Columbo figure is Steve McIntyre, a Canadian mining consultant, and A.W. Montford's book tells the gripping and suspenseful details of McIntyre's pursuit of the self-denominated "hockey team" led by Michael Mann, who wrote the key chapters on his own work for the IPCC, and Phil Jones, who maintains the temperature record used by the IPCC to document the "Hockey Stick" claiming allegedly unprecedented and anomalous anthropogenic global warming in the Twentieth Century while denying that any comparable or greater warming occurred in the Medieval period.
- Robbins, Bruce, "Climate of Change", The Courier, March 31, 2010.
Further reading
- Booker, Christopher (2009). The Real Global Warming Disaster. Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd. ISBN 1441110526.
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