Interview with Michael Mann

Last Sunday, I interviewed climate scientist Michael Mann on Atheist Talk Radio. I do occasional interviews there on science related topics (see this list of previous shows).

You can listen to the interview here:

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I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Minnesota Atheists for giving me the opportunity to do these science interviews, which are admittedly different from the usual topics covered by the show.

Prior to the show, I wrote a post indicating that we would be doing this interview, noting that people were welcome to past questions I might ask Mann during the interview. I tweeted that blog post, and Dr. Mann retweeted it, a couple of times. I promoted the show in a number of other places as well. There was a call in number and an email address to send in questions.

The show runs early in the morning on Sunday and the listening area of 950AM radio is fairly small (though it is possible to listen live on line using the Internet or other means). So, frankly, we don't get a lot of live listeners. The usual number of call in or emailed questions we have (for my interviews, anyway) is usually about two. But, the podcast is much more widely listened to.

There have been some rather intense and lengthy discussions related to Michael Mann's work on my blog here and here over the last few weeks (see: Steve McIntyre Misrepresents Climate Research History and I hope Judith Curry apologizes for this).

Putting all of this together, the several dozen people who have been tweeting at or about Mann or me over the last month about the Hockey Stick research, and those heavily and actively engaged in the conversations on my blog, must have known about the opportunity to ask specific questions about that work. What actually happened, though, was this:

Why? How is it that there can be so much yammering about Michael Mann's research and the Hockey Stick graph, but when the opportunity arises to actually ask a direct question about it, the dozens of people making all that noise end up sounding like this:

Crickets. Crickets is all they've got, apparently.

Meanwhile, here is a talk Michael Mann recently gave at The Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas: