| The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science (Independent Minds) |  | Author: A.W. Montford
Publisher: Stacey Intl
Category: Book
List Price: $18.00
Buy New: $11.48
as of 9/9/2010 07:41 CDT details
New (16) Used (7) from $11.48
Rating:  33 reviews
Sales Rank: 50,768
Media: Paperback
Pages: 482
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 1906768358
Dewey Decimal Number: 577
EAN: 9781906768355
Publication Date: March 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Here is the definitive exposé of the distorted science behind the iconic global warming graph centrally responsible for the global panic about climate change.
From Steve McIntyre's earliest attempts to reproduce the Michael Mann's Hockey Stick graph, to the explosive publication of his work and the launch of a congressional inquiry, The Hockey Stick Illusion is a remarkable tale of scientific misconduct and amateur sleuthing. It explains the complex science of this most controversial of temperature reconstructions in layperson's language and lays bare the remarkable extent to which climatologists have been willing to break their own rules in order to defend climate science's most famous finding.
The book also covers the recent leak of the email archives of the Climatic Research Unit which has led to the resignation of its Director, Professor Phil Jones, and exposed the degree to which climate scientists on both sides of the Atlantic have hidden and manipulated data to support their claims.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 33
 Please, please read this book August 20, 2010
Nnelg
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Just finished reading "The Hockey Stick Illusion". It is astonishing to read clear, compelling evidence (some would say proof)of a conspiracy to promote junk science in the name of selling a catastrophic climate change agenda. I know, I know. Many who will say that all the experts can't be wrong; the debate is over. Well, read this book and decide for yourself how they did get it very wrong. If you want to get a taste before delving in to the actual book, do yourself a favour and read Matt Ridley's review in Prospect Magazine first. Then READ THIS BOOK.
A book well worth reading August 20, 2010
J. Davis (San Diego, CA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Yes, there are hundreds of other books on this subject, but read The Hockey Stick Illusion anyway. It is an exciting story of fraud in climate science. The hero of the book is Steve McIntyre, a mining consultant who's an expert in statistics. With the help of a few other climate skeptics, he takes on the climate science establishment. The villain in The Hockey Stick Illusion is Michael Mann, a climatologist who he thinks is manipulating date to prove the 20th century was uniquely warm. Whatever your opinion is on global warming (I firmly believe it's real), you should be upset about climate scientists manipulating data in the service of a political agenda. Montford also has a interesting take on peer review, which he argues is not as useful or important as most people think.
Purchased for fear the truth would not be available August 19, 2010
papa
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
When I was looking for reference materials for my bookcase, I was not surprised that a book on global-warming would not be available from a USA publisher; that's right, the book comes from England (the same place where Al Gore's movie must be accompanied by an errata sheet).
The book is clear and concise, and when my children are old enough to ask about FACTS, TRUTH, and a intellectual honesty, I will have a source document for their investigation.
Triumph of Reason August 9, 2010
EdBhoy
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The Hockey Stick Illusion tells the story of the misguided attempt of a close knit group of palaeoclimatologists to defend the indefensible. The Hockey stick refers to a graph of temperature reconstructions which was widely brandished by the IPCC and subsequently by Western Governments to prove that the average global temperature rise in the last few decades of the 20th century was unprecedented in recorded human history. This book describes the attempt of establishment scientists to justify their poor scientific method in the face of a systematic dismantling of their conclusions by a small group of dedicated critics of their statistical and scientific method.
It is not just a text book but also a really well written detective story of the quest to shed light on the origins of one of the most hotly disputed graphs in the history of science.
If you are an open minded individual with an interest in science you will love this book.
Ed
 Lousy history July 31, 2010
John M. Sully (Bozeman, MT)
7 out of 23 found this review helpful
Montford sets up the whole premise of his book with his rather inaccurate and truncated history of paleoclimatology in the first chapter. To Montford (as related by Stevie Mac) legitimate paleoclimatology begins and ends with the poorly sourced figure in the IPCC FAR which was based on Lamb. From then on all of paleoclimatology was an attempt to "get rid of the MWP".
There is just a slight problem with this thesis. Or maybe more.
For one, the figure which appears to have based on Lamb's work was dropped in the 1992 supplement, as our esteemed host has pointed out. Secondly (aren't your glad I didn't say "Primo" and "Secundo"), during the early to mid nineties I was an active participant in the climate change debates on sci.environment and there was an active disagreement about the extent and "beneficial" effects of the MWP. Gavin cited Hughes and Diaz (1994), but this was only one line of evidence which was apparent at that time.
The truth of the matter, as opposed to Montford's account, is that there was an increasing body of evidence that the MWP was not a global phenomena. In 1998 MBH decided that there was enough paleo evidence to do a reconstruction which stretched back to 1400 CE on a global scale. Note that 1400 does not include the MWP! In 1999 MBH did a reconstruction which went back to 1000 CE for the Northern Hemisphere and showed a MWP which might have reached mid 20th century levels, given the uncertainties. This seems to have been in line with recent (90's) thinking on the subject, but the 98 and 99 papers were the first attempts to use all the available evidence to reach a conclusion on this subject. Since then there have been a variety of reconstructions using varying sub and supersets of the original MBH network and varying methods. They all come to the same conclusion (although most show greater long time scale variability than the original MBH study, which I consider to be one of the actual weaknesses of the original methodology. Of course Mann also recognized this...).
Montford's truncated and distorted history of paleoclimatology is the basis for his subsequent argument, but it must be accepted to make sense of anything else he says in his book. A good example is his argument (as related by Stevie Mac) is that using tree rings as climate proxies is worthless. In reality, work on using tree rings as climate proxies stretches back to the early 20th century and is fairly well established. But Montford (as related by Stevie Mac) boldly forges on trying to show that tree rings are lousy proxies, especially if they corrolate to local temperature! Of course the scientists who work with them admit that they are problematic, but so are all the other proxies -- that is what makes this science. If it was easy it would be engineering. As a physicist at Argonne National Lab said on a recent show about the hunt for the Higgs Boson said "I get paid to try and understand things we don't understand. The more things we don't understand -- that's job security!". Or, perhaps more famously, and unattributed AFAIK, "science is what we do when we don't know what we're doing".
The most fundamental flaw in Montford's book is his (as related by Stevie Mac) refusal to recognize that science is an ongoing process. The back and forth as seen in the scientific literature, or more informally in the dreaded emails, is how progress is made. Montford's (as related by Stevie Mac) refusal to see this is the basic flaw in the book. The fact that a plurality of the references are to CA posts with no attempt made to address the legitimate criticisms leveled at Stevie Mac's broadsides just makes the book weaker.
NB: Stevie Mac is Steve McIntyre proprietor of [...]. Gavin is Gavin Schmidt of [...]
Showing reviews 1-5 of 33
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