On September 5, Michael Mann (Penn State Professor of Meteorology and Geosciences and director, Penn State’s Earth System Science Center) spoke about his latest book, “The Hockey Stick and The Climate Wars” at the Cook Campus Center to an audience of approximately 200 students, faculty and members of the public. Mann’s lecture, and the book signing that followed, was sponsored by the Rutgers Climate and Environmental Change Initiative, Rutgers’ Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the School of Arts and Sciences, and the Office of Community Engagement at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. The term “hockey stick” is used to describe in simple terms a chart of how the average temperature of earth has changed over the last 1,000 years demonstrating the link between temperature rise and the increase of fossil fuel use from industrialization.
It was first reported in the scientific literature in 1999 in a paper in which Mann was the lead author but has become an icon in the climate change debate since its inclusion in the 2001 Third Assessment Report by the International Governmental Panel on Climate Change. Since then, the work of Mann and his colleagues has often been attacked by those attempting to discredit the evidence. Despite this, Mann has stayed resolute and urges that talk about climate change must move away from whether or not it’s happening, towards developing and implementing policies to solve the problem. Read more on the Office of Community Engagement’s website.