Mann: Richard Muller "has spouted all sorts of nonsense in his various interviews"

FDL Book Salon Welcomes Michael E. Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines | Book Salon

[Grandia] Welcome Michael E. Mann (RealClimate.org) (PennState – Director ESSC), and Host Kevin Grandia (Founder, Center for Democracy in Government)
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Mann’s Hockey Stick study was published in 1998, and 14 years later right-wing anti-science ideologues (many of the same people who think dinosaurs roamed the earth 6000 years ago) still attack it.
...Mann details this campaign in The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars and it is a campaign more insidious than the war leveled against cancer science by tobacco companies in the 1970′s – that war only cost millions of lives. The war against climate science, sponsored by major fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil, Koch Industries and Peabody Coal, puts the entire existence of the human race as we know it in jeopardy.
...With no end in sight, I have no doubt that 500 years from now high school kids will be reading about the vicious attacks on Michael Mann and other climate scientists much like today they read about the attacks on Galileo in the 1600′s.
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[Mann] A few thoughtful notes of support and encouragement outweigh the hundreds of nasty email messages (much of it coordinated it seems, sadly) full of vitriolic, mindless attacks…
...[Mann] Yes–Muller has spouted all sorts of nonsense in his various interviews, and much of it seems to feed a common narrative, i.e. that “yes, climate change is real, but its not that much of a threat really, and we can solve it by burning lots of natural gas”. Its naive at best, and mendacious or plain dishonest at worst :(
[Mann] There is also the worry that natural gas could end up crowding out/underselling renewable energy (wind, solar, etc.), and thus could end up putting us on the wrong trajectory. It seems ironic to me that while the rest of the world (China, India, etc) see that renewable non-carbon energy sources are the future of the economy, here in the U.S. (and now to some extent in Canada as well) the argument is instead over *which* fossil fuel we should be exploiting. It seems wrong-headed and misguided, but I hope that we’ll cross a tipping point in the public consciousness sometime soon when it comes to energy choices and priorities…
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[Mann] Well–you are absolutely correct that the market cannot act in a way to solve the problem until the externalities of fossil fuel burning are internalized in the economy, so that the playing field is leveled to the point where non carbon energy–wind, solar, etc—can compete fairly. Arguably the only way to do that is to place a price on the emission of carbon which incorporates the “social cost of carbon”. What form that should take is a topic of worthy discussion and debate. But whether or not we need to do that, is not…[Mann] I am familiar with (and greatly angered by) the Monnett ordeal. It is another example of how deep-pocketed interests (who presumably have some sway w/ BOEMRE) are literally to do just about anything they can to scientists whose findings prove inconvenient to them..