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The Hockey Stick Illusion

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The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science
AuthorA.W. Montford
LanguageEnglish
SubjectClimate change
PublisherStacey International
Publication date
2010
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Pages482
ISBN978-1-906768-35-5

The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science is a book written by Andrew Montford and published by Stacey International in 2010. Montford, an accountant and science publisher who runs a blog which is sceptical of human induced climate change,[1] provides his analysis of the history of the "hockey stick graph" of global temperatures for the last 1000 years and the controversy surrounding the research which produced the graph.

The book, published in early 2010, describes the history of the graph from its inception to the beginning of the Climatic Research Unit email controversy. Since its release, the book has received favorable reviews in several general media publications, including one published by a learned society.

Background

According to Montford, in 2005 he followed a link from a British political blog to the Climate Audit website. While perusing the site, Montford noticed that new readers often asked if there was an introduction to the site and the story of the hockey stick controversy. In 2008, after the story of Caspar Ammann's "purported" (according to Montford) replication of the hockey stick became public, Montford wrote his own summary of the controversy.[2]

Montford published the summary on his Bishop Hill blog and called it Caspar and the Jesus paper. Montford states that word of his paper caused the traffic to his blog to surge from several hundred hits a day to to 30,000 in just three days. Montford adds that there was also an attempt to use his paper as a source in Wikipedia. After Montford saw the hockey stick graph used in a science book manuscript he was reviewing, he decided to expand his paper into book form.[2]

Synopsis

The Hockey Stick Illusion relates the story of Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley and Malcolm K. Hughes' "hockey stick graph" starting from when it first appeared in Nature.[3] The book describes how Steve McIntyre first became interested in the graph and his subsequent struggle to replicate the results of "MBH98" (the original 1998 study) and the refusal of Mann to release his source code and filtered dataset.[4] It details the publication of a paper by McIntyre and Ross McKitrick in 2003, and follows with Mann and his associates' rebuttals. The book recounts reactions to the dispute over the graph, including hearings held on the graph before a United States congressional committee. Efforts taken by other scientists to verify Mann's work and McIntyre's and others' responses to those efforts are described.[5]

The last few chapters of the book deal with what the book calls "Climategate". Here, the author compares several e-mails to the evidence he presents in The Hockey Stick Illusion. Montford focuses on those e-mails dealing with the peer review process and how these pertained to Stephen McIntyre's efforts to obtain the data and methodology from Mann's and other paleoclimatologists' published works.[6]

Reception

John Dawson in Quadrant magazine recommended the book. Dawson stated that the book is, "a textbook of tree ring analysis, a code-breaking adventure, an intriguing detective story, an exposé of a scientific and political travesty, and the tale of a herculean struggle between a self-funded sceptic and a publicly funded hydra, all presented in the measured style of an analytical treatise."[7]

A review by Joe Brannan in the Geological Society of London's magazine Geoscientist praised the book. Brannan wrote that "Andrew Montford tells this detective story in exhilarating style." [8]

Erwin van den Brink, writing in the Dutch magazine Natuurwetenschap & Techniek (Science and Technology) said, "The book The Hockey Stick Illusion by Andrew Montford, reveals a staggering picture of how those involved in climate science are dealing with criticism. The subtitle, “ClimateGate And The Corruption of Science”, was added at the last possible moment, as this final chapter is about "ClimateGate", the leaking of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia". [9]

Christopher Booker, in The Telegraph, recommended the book three times, once as a "full account" of the IPCC's use of the hockey stick graph in its Third and Fourth Assessment Reports,[10] and later describing it as "expertly recount[ing] a remarkable scientific detective story".[11] He added that the book gives a "full account" of the hockey stick controversy.[12]

Matt Ridley in The Spectator likened the book to a detective story and "a detailed and brilliant piece of science writing."[1] Ridley added that it was, in his opinion, "written with grace and flair" and "deserves to win prizes."[13]

Andrew Orlowski, writing in The Register, commented that in The Hockey Stick Illusion "[Montford] has provided the storytelling to match the detective work and persistence of another blogger, Steve McIntyre".[14]

Writing in Discovery News, Discovery Institute co-founder George Gilder compared the portrayal of Stephen McIntyre's pursuit of the data underlying the "hockey stick" graph with the lead detective character in the Columbo television series. He concluded with a recommendation that readers, "Don't miss this definitive book."[15]

The Courier's Bruce Robbins commended the way "that Andrew has managed to break the episode down and re-assemble it in a way that has transformed the Hockey Stick saga into a compulsive detective story."[16] In a second review he commented, "The Hockey Stick Illusion, charts in great detail the efforts of a sceptical mining industry consultant and statistician, Steve McIntyre, to take apart a graph that became known as the Hockey Stick".[17]

Peter Foster, in a column in the National Post, stated that for anybody who wants to understand the background of "Climategate, there is no better read" than Montford's book. He added that the book "might be accused of being one-sided," but "is required reading."[18]

Harry Eagar, writing for the Maui News, described Illusion as a classic book about science fraud, like Peter Medawar's The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice. He added that Montford was a good choice to tell this story even though he was not a scientist.[19]

The book was used as a source on the CRU email controversy and how the emails related to climate science and paleoclimate studies in a paper published by the University of Oxford's Institute for Science, Innovation, and Society. The paper was titled, The Hartwell Paper: A new direction for climate policy after the crash of 2009 and was authored by Mike Hulme, Gwyn Prins, Isabel Galiana, Christopher Green, Reiner Grundmann, Atte Korhola, Frank Laird, Roger A. Pielke, Jr., Steve Rayner, Daniel Sarewitz, Michael Shellenberger, Nico Stehr, and Hiroyuki Tezuka.[20]

The book was also used as an source to support that models used in environmental regulations involve a range of public and private institutions as the models in question are derived from a range of sources in a paper by Elizabeth Fisher that was published in the University of Oxford's Journal of Environmental Law.[21]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Matt Ridley (2010-02-03). "The global warming guerrillas". The Spectator (spectator.co.uk). Retrieved 2010-04-09.
  2. ^ a b Montford, Andrew (2010). "1". The Hockey Stick Illusion. Stacey International. p. 13. ISBN 1906768358.
  3. ^ Montford, Andrew (2010). "1". The Hockey Stick Illusion. Stacey International. p. 30. ISBN 1906768358.
  4. ^ Montford, Andrew (2010). "3". The Hockey Stick Illusion. Stacey International. p. 57. ISBN 1906768358.
  5. ^ Montford, Andrew (2010). "6–11". The Hockey Stick Illusion. Stacey International. p. 402. ISBN 1906768358.
  6. ^ Montford, Andrew (2010). "17". The Hockey Stick Illusion. Stacey International. p. 402. ISBN 1906768358.
  7. ^ Dawson, John, "Science: The Tree Ring Circus", Quadrant, July 29, 2010, Volume LIV Number 7-8.
  8. ^ Brannan, Joe, "The Hockey Stick Illusion - Climategate and the corruption of science", Geoscientist, August 2010.
  9. ^ van den Brink, Erwin. "The Hockey Stick Illusion". Natuurwetenschap & Techniek ([1]). p. 1. Retrieved 27 July 2010. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
  10. ^ 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)
  11. ^ Booker, Christopher (30 Jan 2010). "Amazongate: new evidence of the IPCC's failures". The Telegraph. Retrieved 14 May 2010.
  12. ^ Christopher Booker (2010-07-04). "Kidnap - as sponsored by the state". The Sunday Telegraph. p. 31. Retrieved 2010-07-14.
  13. ^ Matt Ridley (2010-03-10). "The case against the hockey stick". Prospect (prospectmagazine.co.uk). Retrieved 2010-04-03.
  14. ^ Andrew Orlowski (2010-02-08). "Bishop Hill: Gonzo science and the Hockey Stick". The Register. Retrieved 2010-04-14.
  15. ^ 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.
  16. ^ Bruce Robbins (2010-04-02). "Climate of Change". The Courier.
  17. ^ Robbins, Bruce (2 April 2010). "Bishop Hill: the blogger putting climate science to test". The Courier. The Courier. Retrieved 25 May 2010.
  18. ^ Foster, Peter, "Peter Foster: Checking the hockey team", National Post, July 9, 2010.
  19. ^ Harry Eagar (2010-07-11). "Author employs statistical sleuthing to reveal climate's 'Hockey Stick Illusion'". The Maui News. Archived from the original on 2010-07-14. Retrieved 2010-07-14. The Hockey Stick Illusion" deserves space on the shelf of classic books about science fraud like Peter Medawar's "The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice." Montford, though not a scientist, is a good choice to tell this story, for, as Medawar said, "There is poetry in science but also a lot of bookkeeping.
  20. ^ Prins, Gwyn (2010). "The Hartwell Paper: A new direction for climate policy after the crash of 2009". University of Oxford Institute for Science, Innovation, and Society. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-07-15. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  21. ^ Fisher, Elizabeth (2010). "Understanding Environmental Models in Their Legal and Regulatory Context". Journal of Environmental Law, Oxford Journals, University of Oxford. 22 (2): 251–283. doi:10.1093/jel/eqq012. Archived from the original on 2010-07-15. 1.1 The Prevalence of Models in Environmental Regulation […] In the policy sphere many of these disputes have been in relation to policy-catalyst models. This is not surprising. As such models are establishing the premises for potential state action, it is obvious they will be controversial with different actors arguing for and against such action.36 Moreover, these disputes will also involve a range of public and private institutions as the models in question are derived from a range of sources.37 […] Notes […] 37 A W Montford, The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science (Stacey International, London 2010). {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); line feed character in |quote= at position 57 (help)

Further reading

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