'I'm Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State, Ask Me Almost Anything!'

I’m Michael E. Mann. I’m Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State University, with joint appointments in the Department of Geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI). I am also director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC). I received my undergraduate degrees in Physics and Applied Math from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. degree in Physics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University. My research involves the use of theoretical models and observational data to better understand Earth’s climate system. I am author of more than 160 peer-reviewed and edited publications, and I have written two books including Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming, co-authored with my colleague Lee Kump, and more recently, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines”, recently released in paperback with a foreword by Bill Nye “The Science Guy” (www.thehockeystick.net).

“The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars” describes my experiences in the center of the climate change debate, as a result of a graph, known as the “Hockey Stick” that my co-authors and I published a decade and a half ago. The Hockey Stick was a simple, easy-to-understand graph my colleagues and I constructed that depicts changes in Earth’s temperature back to 1000 AD. It was featured in the high-profile “Summary for Policy Makers” of the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and it quickly became an icon in the climate change debate. It also become a central object of attack by those looking to discredit the case for concern over human-caused climate change. In many cases, the attacks have been directed at me personally, in the form of threats and intimidation efforts carried out by individuals, front groups, and politicians tied to fossil fuel interests. I use my personal story as a vehicle for exploring broader issues regarding the role of skepticism in science, the uneasy relationship between science and politics, and the dangers that arise when special economic interests and those who do their bidding attempt to skew the discourse over policy-relevant areas of science.

I look forward to answering your question about climate science, climate change, and the politics surrounding it today at 2 PM EST. Ask me almost anything!

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Go here to ask “almost anything”: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1yj3o7/science_ama_series_im_michael_e_mann/

h/t to WUWT reader “devijvers”