GLOBAL CHALLENGES

ClimateGate Resolved: Man Guilty (Mann Not Guilty)

Michael Mann�s research was accused of being false after it found significant man-made causes of global warming. A four-month investigation has, however, shown that the study�s conclusions were, in fact, true.

Late last year, based on evidence drawn from e-mail threads hacked out of a University of East Anglia (U.K.) e-mail server, Pennsylvania State University professor and renowned paleoclimatologist Michael Mann and several colleagues were accused of having doctored long-term research data used to estimate the severity of anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) climate change. Predictably, the so-called "ClimateGate" affair was drummed to death by the usual suspects, eager to tar generations of methodical science as conspiracy and help ensure humanity a future of record corporate profits ... along with water wars, superhurricanes, coastal inundations, global diasporas, deforestation, despeciation and famine.

On Thursday, July 1, after a four-month investigation involving interviews with numerous sources and entailing careful review of thousands of documents in addition to the purloined e-mails, the committee tasked by Penn State to explore the ClimateGate allegations released its final report, exonerating Professor Mann of all charges by unanimous decision.

The report reminds us that�long before the ClimateGate allegations surfaced�Professor Mann's famous "hockey-stick graph" had been both replicated (using Mann's publicly available intermediate data and models) and independently confirmed by other researchers from fresh data, including recent Arctic studies by the National Center for Atmospheric Research.