Des Moines Register

John Burns did a disservice to your readership by promoting untruthful statements about my scientific work (Michael Mann is not a credible scientific source, Dec. 23).

Mr. Burns recycles false claims about the so-called “climategate” affair by James Taylor, who works for the Koch brothers-funded Heartland Institute, which peddles climate change denial propaganda to school children). Burns, though, is ironically correct when he refers to “climategate” as a “hoax.” Ten different investigations have all revealed that it was indeed nothing more than a fossil fuel-industry-funded smear campaign intended to delay policy action to deal with climate change.

Mr. Burns refers to the “Hockey Stick” graph my co-authors and I published back in the late 1990s as “infamous”. If by “infamous” he means, “overwhelmingly reaffirmed by subsequent research” then he is correct. The highest scientific body in the U.S., the National Academy of Sciences, confirmed our findings in an exhaustive independent review published in June 2006 (see e.g. "Science Panel Backs Study on Warming Climate", New York Times, June 22, 2006) as did an international team of nearly 80 scientists from around the world in 2013, publishing in the premier journal Nature Geoscience.

Mr. Burns perpetuates the baseless smear that I “conceal” my data (the data I have used in my studies has long been readily available), and falsely asserts that I claim “there is no need for statistics” in climate research (anyone can review my scientific publications, nearly a dozen from the past year, each of which employs sophisticated statistical approaches).

For readers interested in the truth behind the science, rather than the falsehoods and smears perpetuated by individuals like Mr. Burns, I recommend my recent book “The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy.”

— Michael E. Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University