Rolling Stone
RS Interview: Climate Scientist Michael Mann
Michael Mann talks with Jeff Goodell about his forthcoming book, “The New Climate War,” what he’s learned from the pandemic, and the future of climate politics
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If there’s ever a Hall of Fame for climate scientists, Michael Mann will be among the first to be inducted. More than 20 years ago, Mann — now a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State, as well the director of the university’s Earth Systems Science Center — co-authored a paper that proved that the 1990s had been the northern hemisphere’s warmest decade in the past 1,000 years. It was an ingenious bit of science, using tree rings, ice cores, and coral to measure past climates. But what really grabbed people’s attention was the graph included in the paper, which tracked the temperature over the last 1,000 years. It was a flat line that jumped up at the end – it looked just like a hockey stick. “The hockey stick,” as the chart became known, is perhaps the most famous graphic in the history of climate science. It showed, in a simple, easy-to-read picture that even a third-grader could understand, that climate change was real, and that it is happening fast.