A Review of Climate Scientist Michael Mann's Talk: A Return to the Madhouse: Climate Change Denial in the Age of Trump

A Review of Climate Scientist Michael Mann’s Talk: A Return to the Madhouse: Climate Change Denial in the Age of Trump

As the talk’s title suggests it was mostly about the political aspects of climate change and Mann’s informed views but I did think there would be more science. There was some but only one graph shown by the man who formulated the famous “hockey stick” graph.

He began with superstorms, noting that Irma was the most potent hurricane on record in terms of wind speed while Harvey broke records for the amount of rainfall in a storm and Maria was the most destructive ever to Puerto Rico. He pointed out a paper he recently co-authored that calculated that the chances of the last 3 or 4 years to be the warmest on record had about a 1 in 4000 chance naturally so anthropogenic climate change is likely the main factor. He did note that talk about individual storms being caused directly by climate change was an incorrect way to depict extreme weather events – I agree – but that the correct depiction was that it may make storms stronger – more heat = more moisture for storms and so exacerbate storms. He talked about droughts and wildfires as well, noting that the recent extremely destructive Thomas Fire in California was completely out of season. Of course, there are many other factors in fires – human developments, previous forest and fire management, forest health, amount of fuel in the forest, etc. so most fires are not likely even connected to climate change let alone caused by it. He said that the recent California drought was the worst in 1200 years – not sure that is correct – it may be – but certainly there were far worse droughts in that area before that as the geologic and tree ring records show.

He talked about ‘false balance’ in journalism where an opposing view, even if way in the minority among scientists, is given equal weight in news stories. He talked a lot about the “deniers,” especially the ones in politics and congress.

He talked about being harassed by Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli who tried without success to summon his emails when he worked at the University of Virginia in order to go through them to find mistakes and proof of political manipulation of data. The Virginia Supreme Court and other bodies were of course right to thoroughly rebuke Cuccinelli although he came very close to becoming governor after that.

He talked about the military being on board about climate change being a major threat – or rather a ‘threat multiplier.’ He mentioned a major drought in Syria being a major influence in the development of the war there but I doubt that was much of an effect and I think its mainly a political ploy to claim that.

I must admit I was a bit disappointed by his advocating for certain people and organizations that have questionable integrity and excess of bias such as Bill McKibben, the Sierra Club, and 350.org. Although he disclosed that he worked with Hillary Clinton’s campaign and helped add a pro-carbon tax position to the Democratic platform he seemed to see her as someone less committed on climate change that he thought he could move to the left – he said as much. So regardless of his scientific knowledge he falls into the “progressive” camp and his opinions on various aspects of climate change support that. In addition, he is giving political talks in swing states - he also said as much. Thus, his presentation is quite politicized. His most recent book from 2016, published just before the election, included as co-author a Washington Post political cartoonist who often used climate change as a subject.

When asked about how we could get there with renewable energy he invoked the study of Stanford engineer Mark Jacobson who was recently rebuked in a Proceedings of the Nation Academy of Science paper with 22 authors. Jacobson claimed he could design the U.S. to be run entirely on wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and storage by 2050. The authors explained in detail how Jacobson’s paper made incorrect assumptions and assumed immature technologies would mature, and other errors. Mann said that Jacobson’s calculations were conservative, presumably because Jacobson said it. His immediate mention of Jacobson’s study “only” also put him squarely in the far left camp.  

Mann seemed a bit inflexible in his view that stopping the burning of fossil fuels was the only solution. He talked about the political will to do it but we are far far far away from that. He praised the Paris accord as a good first step. He made an off-color joke about Trump “pulling out.” He praised Obama’s Clean Power Plan and I agree it was a good proxy for a carbon price done by state and flexibly – at least for the power market. Even though many things have been rolled back by the current administration the utility companies are still focused on decarbonization as a long-term trend. He also noted that the U.S. will likely meet our initial commitments in the Paris Accord anyway. He did not mention, however, that the main reason for that is gas replacing coal in power plants along with some efficiency improvements and adding renewables, When asked about natural gas and fracking he immediately invoked methane leakage, yet another indicator that he was most influenced by the far left since the best science indicates that methane leakage from natural gas systems is less than often depicted and can be mitigated further. Just like the utility companies staying focused on decarbonization many oil and gas companies are staying focused on mitigating methane leakage as it can be cost-effective and good for public relations. He did not mention cows, landfills or deforestation at all as methane sources.

He said that the debate should not be primarily about whether climate change is real that we should be beyond that and the debate should be about things like what role should nuclear and natural gas have. I basically agree here. He did not address the question of how much of climate change, mainly temperature rise, is due to humans and how much is a part of long or short-term natural cycles. There is some uncertainty there., although that should not affect mitigation efforts. He did not address questions of climate sensitivity nor did he mention satellite data. He did say the notion of a global warming “pause” is bogus. As I understand it the so-called ‘pause’ is based mainly on satellite data which is not in accord with surface for global average temperatures. Perhaps he should have explained why he thinks it is bogus.  

He talked about the stages of climate change denial, things like pointing out the good parts of CO2 – actually there are good parts like increased plant growth and less freezing and longer growing seasons in some areas – he said that the implications were overwhelmingly bad or undesirable – likely true but he seemed to ignore any good outcomes. Another stage was saying that technology will come to the rescue – Bjorn Lomborg has said as much – and this seems to invoke geoengineering such as injecting aerosols into the stratosphere or putting iron oxides into the ocean. The complexity of the regional climate systems could be affected and he thinks the climate models show that most effects on those systems would be negative to people.

Talking about geoengineering he emphasized unintended consequences and while that may be the case we may be currently swimming in a soup of unintended climate consequences from all the things we do – deforestation, agriculture, fossil fuels, particulates, etc. He said he advocated more money for geoengineering research  and I agree but then indicated that he wanted that so that geoengineering solutions could be disproven. He said that some people saw geoengineering as “the” solution to climate change but most see it as only part of the solution to be used only if deemed necessary. There may be more benign forms of geoengineering we can do.

I agree with him that we need more money appropriated for renewable energy research. I also agree that the current administration seems hell bent on reviving coal and re-invigorating fossil fuels across the board. Scott Pruitt’s re-organization of the EPA and its mission has been a target for complaint and I agree he has gone too far. However, I do think many things are better regulated at the state level and that under Obama there was also some politicization of the EPA, though not nearly as much as now. Rick Perry’s efforts at reviving coal and nuclear have been rather embarrassing failures with the FERC unanimously rejecting the bid to prop up failing plants, especially with the PJM market’s own study that said coal is not at all necessary for baseload power even though it is used during cold weather events due to gas price spikes due to immediate availability of gas – in some areas this is strictly due to lack of gas pipeline capacity.  

He did not mention adaptation to climate change at all. That is something we need to work on regardless of how much climate change is anthropogenic and previous work on that could have lessened Harvey flooding in Houston and other places. He did not mention access to inexpensive energy being important for developing countries – more important than climate change mitigation for them.

Overall, I think the far leftists would say it was a great talk, the centrists like me not so impressed, those on the right seeing it was all politics, and those on the far right seeing it as another liberal conspiracy, like the very concept of global warming/climate change. They will see it that way as long as the solution continues to largely involve income redistribution, more taxation on wealthy countries that emit more – ie. the U.S. - and punishing fossil fuel companies. While Mann may be a Ph. D. expert in atmospheric physics he is not a policy expert and the same is true of others in his camp like Jim Hansen. They may be right – it may be best to act now and do it wholesale – but the personal and political upheaval necessary to codify the political will might cause significant social problems. People will not be happy to be paying more for energy, especially the poor. Convincing a majority of people that massively curbing fossil fuels right now is a daunting task. The most sensible scientific solution (weaning away from fossil fuels, also the most expensive solution) does not necessarily translate to the most sensible political solution.