Prominent climate scientist Mann to speak at UW-Madison

Michael Mann, creator of the well-known “hockey stick” graph depicting a sharp recent increase in our planet’s temperature, will deliver the fifth annual Len Robock Lecture on Thursday, April 17 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Mann is a distinguished professor of meteorology at Penn State University. His graph was incorporated into an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change summary for policy makers, and became a rallying point on all sides of the politically charged public discussion of the human role in climate change.

In his talk, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From The Front Lines,” Mann will tell the story behind the hockey stick, using it as an example of and window to broader issues, such as skepticism in science, the uneasy relationship between science and politics and the influence particular economic interests can have on they way we debate policy-relevant areas of science.

Mann’s Robock Lecture begins at 7 p.m. April 17 in the Ebling Science Symposium Center, Room 1220 of the Microbial Sciences Building, 1550 Linden Drive. The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, visit here. 

UW–Madison’s Department of Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences is bringing Mann to campus with support from an endowment established in 2008 from the estate of Len Robock. Additional support was provided by the Center for Climatic Research in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.