Baby you need coolin'

Michael Mann, the originator of the famous (or infamous) hockey stick, has a book out. It is called "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines." I have not read it yet but the title is not promising. But what should one expect from one of the hotheads of the controversy?



As I said before on this blog, there are some telling metaphors to describe the climate change dispute. Stephen Schneider used the term "Science as a contact sport", Nature "street fight" and now Mann "war" (I intend to write a paper about this). Of course, a war is the extreme form of social conflict, where the scale of violence is highest. Gone are the days when Mann was considered (considered himself) as part of the hockey team which applied some robust "body checks". The war metaphor invites to apply all sort of dirty tricks, and the  the recent Gleick affair has provided some clues how this might look like. Since its inception, the Klimazwiebel blog  has tried to avoid this inflammatory rhetoric.

Here is a cover version of a famous song from Led Zeppelin, sung by French singer Alice Michel. For me it captures what is needed in such heady times. No head-banging outrage, but some coolness, beauty, and some melancholy, too. Could it be the Klimazwiebel soundtrack?