by Michael Mann to the editor of the Payson Roundup, March 29, 2011
Editor:
An individual named Terry Putnam did a grave disservice to your readers by making false and defamatory statements about me and my climate scientist colleagues.
Mr. Putnam attacks the integrity of researchers at the UK’s University of East Anglia “Climatic Research Unit” (CRU), misrepresenting the content of stolen e-mails to falsely accuse them of “falsifying data.” He fails to note that seven separate external investigations in the U.S. and the U.K. have absolved the scientists of claims of wrongdoing manufactured by climate change deniers.
Mr. Putnam makes the libelous claim that the so-called “hockey stick”— work of my own published more than a decade ago showing that recent warming is unusual over at least the past 1,000 years—has been “proven to be a fraud.” He ignores the fact that the highest scientific body in the nation, the National Academy of Sciences, affirmed my research findings in an exhaustive independent review published in June 2006 (see, e.g., “Science Panel Backs Study on Warming Climate,” New York Times, June 22, 2006, among many others). Dozens of independent groups of scientists have independently come to the same conclusion, and more recent work by several groups shows that the recent warmth is unusual over an even longer timeframe.
Readers interested in the truth behind the science, rather than the falsehoods and smears perpetuated by people like Mr. Putnam, should consult the scientist-run Web site: http://www.realclimate.org, or scientifically based books on the topic like my “Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming.”
Michael E. Mann
Professor, Dept. of Meteorology,
Penn State University
Director, Penn State Earth
System Science Center
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