Sep 23, 2016 4 min read

CALIFORNIA – Dr. Michael Mann noted 2014 was the hottest year on record, until that record was shattered in 2015.

And, Mann said, 2016 is setting up to be even hotter, as he ticked off a list of extreme weather events that occurred in the United States this year.

Six thousand-year floods. Record drought in California. A dozen named storms. Wildfires in the western United States. Record heat.

“There is an overwhelming consensus among most scientists that human-caused climate change is real, that it is caused by human activity, and that bad things are already happening and that bad things (will continue) if we don’t do something about the problem,” said Mann, director of Earth System Science Center at Penn State University and leading climate change expert,

Mann spoke Friday before a near-capacity crowd in a lecture hall at California University of Pennsylvania as part of the Meteorology Club’s fall speaker series.

His talk was based on his new book, “The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy,” which he co-authored with Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post editorial cartoonist Tom Toles.

The book, which includes a series of Toles cartoons, is a satiric approach to climate change – in the spirit of TV personalities Stephen Colbert and John Oliver – that aims to clearly explain the science behind climate change and to push back against the fossil fuel industry, skeptics and climate change deniers whose efforts have been geared toward delaying political action in recent decades.

Mann said the scientific debate over the existence of climate change is over. We must accept the fact carbon dioxide levels have risen to ominous levels, and it will require “good faith participation from all parties” and cooperation to keep levels from crossing a dangerous threshold.

Mann noted when he ate dinner at a California restaurant Thursday night, the temperature was in the 80s, and it felt like a summer day.

“That seems nice, but we don’t appreciate the impact it has on living things, the disruption on the food chains, the timing of migrations and hibernations,” he said. “Sometimes we think warmer sounds good, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has thousands of scientists who have spent decades studying the impact of climate change on food availability, fresh water availability, human health, national security, you name it, across the board. Once we warm the planet by more than a couple of degrees Celsius, which we’re on course to do in a matter of decades if we don’t take action, the impact of climate change is quite negative.”

According to Mann, the availability of food, fresh water and land will decrease as the global population continues to increase, which will lead to global instability.

Mann also addressed how his research and publications – he is the creator of the “hockey stick” graph that illustrates recent rapid rises in global temperatures – made him a target of climate change deniers.

“By attacking me, my critics gave me a degree of prominence and allowed me to have a voice I might not have otherwise had,” he said.

While the reality of climate change is frightening, there are reasons for optimism, Mann said.

He noted U.S. and international efforts to lower carbon emissions, including the agreement between the United States and China, the world’s two largest emitters of carbon, to lower carbon emissions, and a show of international unity among the countries that have signed the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Mann said he believes the outcome of November’s presidential elections will impact continued efforts of the United States to combat climate change.

“We have a stark choice before us. We have a candidate (Hillary Clinton) who realizes climate change is a real problem and a candidate, Donald Trump, who says climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese,” said Mann.

Mann said the world has an obligation to work to reduce fossil fuel levels.

“To me, as the father of a 10-year-old daughter, it’s about the ethical responsibility we have to preserve this planet for future generations,” said Mann. “We have an ethical responsibility to leave this place a better place than we found it.”