Dr. Mann and his Hockey Stick

Al Gore - not very accurate

The AP also chose to ignore Gore’s reliance on the now-discredited “hockey stick” by Dr. Michael Mann, which claims that temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere remained relatively stable over 900 years, then spiked upward in the 20th century, and that the 1990’s were the warmest decade in at least 1000 years. Last week’s National Academy of Sciences report dispelled Mann’s often cited claims by reaffirming the existence of both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. See Senator Inhofe’s statement on the broken “Hockey Stick.”

Hockey Stick - NOT

“Today’s NAS report reaffirms what I have been saying all along, that Mann's ‘hockey stick’ is broken,” Senator Inhofe said. “Today’s report refutes Mann's prior assertions that there was no Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age.”

.: U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works :: Majority Page :.:

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, announced today that former Vice President Al Gore, one of the world’s leading voices on global warming, has agreed to appear before the Committee next month. Vice President Gore is expected to appear before the full committee on March 21, 2007 (details to follow).

So this Hockey Stick graph that shows a sudden spike in the average temperature of the Earth in the last one hundred years is completely bogus. The math is wrong, the data is wrong, and it's not any kind of secret that it's wrong. And yet Al Gore was just on the Oprah Show with this famous graph.

I hope Mr. Gore is asked by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works to justify his continuing use of the graph. Because it is a scary looking graph. And it's complete shit.

No wonder your average citizen doesn't believe in science or the scientific method anymore. Too many scientists don't practice it. The great thing, though, is that anyone can practice the scientific method - just search for results that are reproducible and useful for making verifiable predictions. That means ignoring most email you get! If someone sends you an email telling you anything at all - check it out before you send it on.