Aaron Huertas of the Union of Concerned Scientists: Still defending the idea that in the late 1990s, Michael Man "demonstrated the earth’s temperature is higher today than it’s been in thousands of years"

Climate change is serious business - The Mercury

In the late 1990s, Mann and his colleagues wrote a scientific paper that demonstrated the earth’s temperature is higher today than it’s been in thousands of years. It was innovative research and it got a lot of attention. Unfortunately, political opponents of addressing climate change didn’t like it. So they attacked the messengers.

Rep. Joe Barton (Texas) sent invasive document requests to the scientists. Groups funded by the fossil fuel industry pounced on the paper. And bloggers tried to pick the paper apart. At first, Mann and his colleagues responded to them in good faith. But they found that the bloggers, front groups and congressmen didn’t care about the science. They just wanted to smear Mann and his research.

In the ensuing years, more than a dozen independent scientific studies have reaffirmed and built upon the original paper’s findings.