In the Line of Fire - The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars - page 73

additional step in the Von Storch group's procedure that was not part of the MBH98/MBH99
approach or any other reconstruction approach. That step introduced a dramatic but entirely spurious
degree of apparent underestimation in the procedure. 21
There would nonetheless be many constructive scientific developments in the years to come. As
we continued to collect further data and refine our own methods and analyses, many other researchers
would introduce alternative approaches, challenge assumptions, and contribute positively to the
advance of the discipline. While none of this additional work would call into question the overall
hockey stick conclusions, the science undoubtedly would not have progressed nearly as much as it has
over the past decade were it not for these collective efforts of scientists, all seeking a better
understanding of the underlying scientific issues.
Contrarian Attacks
Not long after publication of our MBH98 hockey stick paper, many of the usual climate change
deniers stepped out to attack our work, which was generally perceived as providing a compelling
case for the reality of human-caused climate change. The criticisms were easily dismissed from a
scientific standpoint, but their intent wasn't so much to contribute to the scientific conversation as it
was to influence the public discourse.
Patrick Michaels was a prominent climate change contrarian at the University of Virginia
primarily known for his advocacy for the fossil fuel industry. 22 Michaels, who would later become
my colleague when I accepted a faculty position at the same institution in fall 1999, had put out two
critiques of our work in the months following the first version of the hockey stick, MBH98. These
critiques did not appear in the peer reviewed scientific literature, but on Michaels's Web site, the
World Climate Report, a recipient of funding from the Western Fuels Association. 23 The first piece,
“Science Pundits Miss Big Picture Again” (May 1998), was written by Michaels himself, while the
second, “The Summer of Our Discontent” (August 1998), had been invited from Sally Baliunas and
Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The pieces suggested that we had extended the MBH98 hockey stick no further back in time than
A.D. 1400 for fear of encountering the warmer temperatures of the medieval warm period—a charge
that, as noted earlier, is nonsensical, since the stopping point was entirely determined by objective
statistical criteria. Second, they claimed that our reconstruction suffered from an issue known as the
“divergence problem” that in fact was specific to an entirely different proxy reconstruction, not to
ours. 24 Michaels was gracious enough to allow me to publish a response on his Web site in
September 1998. This left me with the impression that climate change “skeptics,” while tough, might
be fair. I would later learn there was nothing fair in the way many contrarians treated either the
science or the scientists.
MIT atmospheric scientist Richard Lindzen attacked our work in a Scientific American article
penned by science writer Daniel Grossman. 25 Lindzen had claimed, quite incorrectly, that the hockey
stick reconstruction of MBH99 for the years prior to 1400 was based only on tree rings and from only
four locations. Grossman included my response, wherein I pointed out that the reconstruction for the
first four centuries was based on ice cores as well as tree rings, and the tree ring data came from
thirty-four independent sites in a dozen distinct regions around the globe. I was taken aback that a