| The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | A.W. Montford |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | Climate change |
| Publisher | Stacey International |
| Publication date | 2010 |
| Pages | 482 |
| ISBN | 978-1-906768-35-5 |
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 publishes a climate sceptic blog[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 describes the history of the graph from its inception to the beginning of the Climategate controversy.
Since its release, the book has received a mixture of positive and negative reviews; The Guardian referred to it as "Montford's entertaining conspiracy yarn",[2] while The Spectator described it as a "a detailed and brilliant piece of science writing"[1] and The Sunday Telegraph described it as "a remarkable scientific detective story".[3]
The book was Amazon UK's second bestselling environment book of 2010.[4]
Contents |
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" replication of the hockey stick became public, Montford wrote his own summary of the controversy.[5]
Montford published the summary on his Bishop Hill blog and called it Caspar and the Jesus paper.[6] Montford states that word of his article caused the traffic to his blog to surge from several hundred hits a day to 30,000 in just three days. Montford adds that there was also an attempt to use his article 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 article into book form.[5]
The Hockey Stick Illusion first outlines a brief history of climate change science with particular emphasis on the description of the Medieval Warm Period in the first IPCC report in 1990, with its inclusion of a schematic based on central England temperatures which Montford describes as a representation of common knowledge at that time, with global medieval temperatures apparently higher than modern temperatures. He then argues that a need to overturn this "well-embedded paradigm" was met by the 1998 publication by Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley and Malcolm K. Hughes' of their "hockey stick graph" in Nature.[8] The book describes how Steve McIntyre first became interested in the graph in 2002 and the difficulties he found in replicating the results of "MBH98" (the original 1998 study) using available datasets, and further data which Mann gave him on request.[9] It details the publication of a paper by McIntyre and Ross McKitrick in 2003 which criticized MBH98, and follows with Mann and his associates' rebuttals. The book recounts reactions to the dispute over the graph, including investigations by the National Academy of Science and Edward Wegman and hearings held on the graph before the United States House Energy Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Efforts taken by other scientists to verify Mann's work and McIntyre's and others' responses to those efforts are described.[10]
The last chapter of the book deals 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.[11]
Many reviews have praised the book for its content, writing style and accessibility. Climatologist Judith Curry called The Hockey Stick Illusion "a well documented and well written book on the subject of the 'hockey [stick] wars.' It is required reading for anyone wanting to understand the blogosphere climate skeptics and particularly the climate auditors," such as Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick. She wrote that the book "presents a well reasoned and well documented argument".[12] Among those also praising the book was S. Fred Singer, who called it "probably the best book about the Hockey Stick."[13] A number of other newspaper and magazine articles have praised the book, including reviews in Geoscientist,[14] Quadrant,[15] The Telegraph,[3][16] The Spectator,[1] Prospect magazine,[17] The Courier,[18] and the National Post.[19]
However, several reviewers criticized the book as providing cover for individuals opposing action on climate change. Alastair McIntosh, writing in the Scottish Review of Books, criticised the book as only being able to "cut the mustard with tabloid intellectuals but not with most scientists." Noting that Montford has not made any relevant scientific contributions, he commented that the book "might serve a psychological need in those who can't face their own complicity in climate change, but at the end of the day it's exactly what it says on the box: a write-up of somebody else's blog" and criticised the book as "at worst, ... a yapping terrier worrying the bull; it cripples action, potentially costing lives and livelihoods."[20] Montford's book was also reviewed unfavorably for similar reasons by Bob Ward in both The Guardian and Geoscientist,[2][21] by Nick Hewitt in Chemistry World[22] and by Richard Joyner in Prospect review.[23]