Summary: SUMMARY: America's famous scientist Michael Mann unloads climate reality. Kristin Ohlson says "The Soil Will Save Us". Frances Moore: climate stalls European food production. Radio Ecoshock 150225 Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality or Lo-Fi Or listen on Soundcloud right now! Coming up in this Radio Ecoshock show: a frank conversation with one of the world's most famous and attacked climate scientist, Dr. Michael Mann, originator of the "hockey stick" graph of a rapidly heating world. Then we are off to the solutions corner, with Kristin Ohlson, author of the ""The Soil Will Save Us". We wrap this triple-header with new science about the impact of climate change on European crops. I'm Alex Smith. Dig in. Our music this week comes from Down Temple Dub, the Remix album of music from Desert Dwellers. Find them at blackswansounds.com. Great stuff. DR. MICHAEL MANN ON CLIMATE REALITY He's a super-star of climate scientists, even though he didn't chose that. Dr. Michael Mann was already a leading American climate expert in 2001 when he become a lead author for the Third Scientific Assessment Report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( the IPCC). That report featured a stunning graphic showing global temperature data for the past 1,000 years. It was gathered from a huge variety of measurements by scientists all over the world. Because this graph showed a steep rise upward over the past century or so, it was called "the hockey stick". That image, and its lead author became the target and punching bag for the fossil fuel industry and a wild bunch of climate deniers. Mann was attacked at his University. He was a target of the so-called "Climategate" hacked emails, carefully timed to damage the 2009 Copenhagen Climate talks. It got so bad that Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli demanded an investigation into Michael Mann by the University of Virginia. Thankfully, the University successfully fought off Cuccinelli in court, striking a blow for academic freedom. Michael Mann sued the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and the National Review for their attacks on the hockey stick graph and himself. We'll get an update on that. Through it all, Michael Mann has certainly taken on science as a contact sport, appearing many times in media, including debating climate deniers. He co-founded the authoritative voice of science, realclimate.org. Oh, and by the way, Dr. Mann also continued his prodigious scientific research to unearth evidence of climate change. His work has won too many awards to list them all. Dr. Michael E. Mann is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State University. He is part of the Department of Geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI), and he's director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center. It's tempting to spend lots of time talking about climate deniers, but our listeners are way beyond that. We know it's real. Some of us think it's too late to avoid wrenching changes to everything, for all the species. I ask Michael Mann: "have humans wasted too much time already?" Mann emphatically says we have wasted decades, meaning climate change will be worse. Just ten years ago, we had reports, like the Stern Report in the UK, which accepted greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would be safely reigned in at 550 parts per million carbon dioxide, or even higher. Now we know those emission levels will likely lead to a mass extinction event, with seas rising tens of meters over the coming centuries. If 550 is good for business, it is deadly for the species of this planet. I ask Dr. Mann to help us with a common problem, trying to judge where we really are with greenhouse gases. The common figure we get is that we are hovering around 400 parts per million of CO2 these days. But does that include the gradually rising levels of methane, and all the other exotic greenhouse gases humans are churning out? It does not. Scientists conclude we are really alr
