Besieged by Climate Deniers
The article “besieged by climate deniers, a scientist’s decision to fight back” was published on twelfth August 2012 by a climate scientist, Michael Mann (Besieged by climate deniers, a scientist decides to fight back, n.d.). Mann had faced constant attacks over the years from skeptics of climate change. According to the article, he believes that the operations of democracy had no place for bad-faith assaults on science. Mann also expresses his reasons as to why the truth about global warming would gain mass acceptance in society. He begins by talking about the issues or rather common occurrences involving scientists’ work questioned by other scientists. Such questions are usually asked to help them better their work and advancing their scientific knowledge.
Mann expresses how scientists’ work is also often questioned by politicians and ideologues simply because they dislike the scientists’ findings. Mann and his colleagues had fallen victim to these politicians who had self-interests and those who neither accepted nor believed there was a climate change, whose effects were caused by harmful effects to the atmosphere caused by harmful human activities such as the burning of products which include coal, oil and natural gas. The politicians later come to find evidence after differing with the scientist’s findings. Mann continued to receive death threats via emails as the political conversation regarding the changes in climate intensified. He states that he and the colleagues continued fighting back.
Mann says that the task of fighting back was made easier as time passed by because their findings were being validated slowly as the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continued to rise. Such a case prompts the rise to global warming, which is the gradual increase in the atmosphere’s temperature worldwide. The effects of global warming are as a result of air pollution. He proved that using a graph known as the “Hockey Stick” when the temperature showed a spike upward in the past century (Mann & Olson, 2018). During that period, there was increased use of fossil fuels coincidentally. He continues to say that the “hockey stick” graph prompted attacks and deniers, making him and his colleagues targets.
The central icon in the wars regarding climate became the hockey stick graph. Well-funded science deniers attacked the chart. The controversy stated seems to have little to do with the portrayed rise in temperature or rather the entire global warming case, which was backed up by extreme weather events, and how fast the Arctic sea ice was melting faster than expected and a bit more with the threat posed by the chart to the people opposing the regulations implemented by the government and other harmful activities that hindered the protection of the environment at large.
Local and state governments were already prepared for the changing climate and adopted policies meant to drive down the emission of greenhouse gas, causing global warming. Still, it was not even on their list of agendas (Mann, 2016). The man introduces some of the key figures in the energy and oil industries and some of the media groups who worked tirelessly in slick, bare-knuckled ways in casting doubt on the facts made by Mann and his colleagues. He also reveals the “Climategate” scandal where the emails of climate scientists were hacked in 2009.
Mann concludes that the science deniers’ role, abetted by the media group, which was uninformed, diverted attention from one of the main policy issues and the time’s central scientific discovery. He states that the functioning democracy had no place for widespread, bad-faith assaults on science. Mann was looking forward to having a national discussion regarding the climate change backed up with enough evidence that was uncovered. He continues to say that the action to be taken regarding climate change involves ethics, fairness, policy, and economics.
References
Besieged by climate deniers, a scientist decides to fight back. (n.d.). Yale E360. https://e360.yale.edu/features/climate_scientist_michael_mann_fights_back_against_skep tics
Mann, M. (2016). Preface: The hockey stick and climate wars. In Energy Accounts: Architectural Representations of Energy, Climate, and the Future (pp. xiv-xvii). Taylor and Francis.
Mann, M. E., & Olson, P. J. (2018). Keynote Address: The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines. Science Editor, 41(2), 48-9.

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