No climate scientist has been subject to more attacks on their science and character than Penn State's Michael Mann, originator of the famed "hockey stick" graph of Earth's temperature history. Dr. Mann has an excellent new book called "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines" that takes the reader on a fascinating journey to the front lines the high-stakes battles between climate scientists and their detractors.
On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on, among other things, NOAA's fiscal year 2013 budget proposal. Of a possible $1.4 billion dollars in proposed spending cuts in the Departments of Commerce and Justice, the only thing the House of Representatives cut was a drop in the bucket: $542,000 for NOAA's climate portal website.
As it stands in my mind today, the variability in the North Atlantic temperature behavior is strongly influenced by aerosols in the atmosphere and a trend due to increasing carbon dioxide. If there is oscillatory behavior in the temperature, it is due to increases and decreases in atmospheric aerosols, perhaps on top of a smaller atmospheric-oceanic dynamic variation that still requires explanation. A good step forward, I think.
