NAS hockey stick report

Posted by David Roberts at 5:02 PM on 22 Jun 2006

Read more about: James Inhofe

So the big climate news today is the release of a report by the National Academy of Sciences (coverage from: AP; NYT; WaPo; MSNBC; NPR; Boston Globe). It's being spun every which way, but at its root it's (yet another) confirmation of basic global warming science.

You've probably heard of the climate "hockey stick." It's a graph from a study led by Penn State's Michael Mann that shows global average temperatures sharply spiking in recent years. A couple of guys named Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick -- a statistician and an economist, respectively -- took issue with the study and claimed that Mann had cherry-picked his data and his statistical tools to produce the result he wanted.

In recent years, the hockey stick has become a cause célèbre among right-wing global warming denialists. It is mentioned with mind-numbing regularity by every crank given the keys to an op-ed page, and has become something of a white whale-style obsession for the Mayor of Cranktown, Sen. James Inhofe.

Mann and his fellow researchers, you may recall, were the guys that got a bullying letter from Rep. Joe Barton last year demanding a detailed accounting of their research. After Barton's ham-handed intimidation, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert got fed up and commissioned the NAS to assess the study once and for all -- so that, if nothing else, Inhofe and Barton would STFU.

The report from NAS today reaffirms the long-standing consensus of the climate science community: Mann's analytical tools were flawed and there are lingering uncertainties about early temperature records, but the basic finding -- that temperature has recently spiked, and the globe is warmer than any time in 1000 years -- is likely sound and has gained support from numerous other scientists and studies.

So, I'm sure the denialist community will drop it now, right?

Ha ha. Here's a press release from Inhofe:

"Today's NAS report reaffirms what I have been saying all along, that Mann's 'hockey stick' is broken," Senator Inhofe said.

And so it goes ...

More comment on the report can be found from RealClimate, Tim Lambert, Roger Pielke Jr., Coby Beck, Kevin Drum, and probably all sorts of other place too.

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