Michael “Hockey stick” Mann and Marc Moran0 recently made a joint BBC appearance to discuss the global warming debate, climategate, and other related matters. Morano — the skeptic — has posted the entire transcript of the segment online. You can determine for yourself who makes the better case about the (pardon the pun) hot topic of climate change.
Julian Marshall: Well, it’s one thing to discredit the science, but it’s another to mount personal attacks on those behind the science. Is that what’s been happening to you?
Michael Mann: Well, indeed. I’ve been personally threatened with violence, I’ve had death threats, I’ve had substances sent to me in the mail, where I had to have the FBI come in and do a test to make sure I hadn’t been subject to a dangerous substance. I’m constantly under attack in various right-leaning news venues – character attacks against me. I’ve had my family brought into the matter, I’ve had threats made against my family, where again I’ve had to call in the authorities. And all of this because I guess I had the temerity to publish a graph, more than ten years ago, that built on a vast array of evidence that tells us that in fact we are warming the planet and changing the climate. …
… Julian Marshall: But you do admit that you encourage climate change sceptics to get in touch with the scientists who are putting the science out there, is that right?
Marc Morano: Oh, absolutely. Here’s what’s going on. The ones like Michael Mann – he’s feted by the media, he wouldn’t know what a hostile interview was if it came up to him, he gets all this fawning praise, he goes to the United Nations conference. It was very refreshing when, after the Climategate emails, people could see the collusion behind the scenes, with Michael Mann and the other upper echelons of the U.N. crafting a narrative of how they were going to, basically, have a partisan campaign to present the science and exclude people they didn’t like. And to have the public to finally be able to reach these scientists and they can actually hear that their actions and their claims have consequences. And the idea of a [Hockey Stick] study built upon all this – there’s the Wegman Report in Congress, which Gerald North and other scientists agreed with the conclusions that showed this was an echo chamber of Michael Mann and his colleagues. And beyond that, new peer-reviewed studies – one just came out in the Journal of Global and Planetary Change – showing that the Earth was warmer 1,000, 2,000 years ago.
Julian Marshall: Okay, Mr. Morano, I’m going to have to leave it there, because we’re drifting slightly from the topic, which is –
Marc Morano: He plays the part of martyr very well, he plays the part of martyr…