My reading of the summary of the report and parts of the text is that the NAS has rendered a near-complete vindication for the work of Mann et al. They report does acknowledge that there are perhaps greater uncertainties in temperature reconstructions, reducing Mann et al.’s claim of warmest decade/year in 1,000 years down to 400. Nonetheless, I see nothing in the report that suggests that Mann’s research is significantly flawed, nor any calls for release of his data or algorithms, though the report does say in very general terms that such release is a good idea. I am not a climate scientist, but my reading of the section that deals with criticisms of Mann et al.’s work (starting at p. 105) is that while these critiques raise some interesting points, they are minor issues, and the committee find’s Mann et al.’s original conclusion to be “plausible.” I’d bet that the word “plausible” will be oft invoked as one of the take home messages of the report.

So what to make of this? The NRC has come to the conclusion that the hockey stick debate is much ado about nothing, and make the further point that this particular area of science is not particularly relevant to detection and attribution of human caused climate change. I am certain that research on this subject will continue, but hopefully this NAS report will allow the rest of us to focus on the policy debate rather than this particular issue of science.

I would have liked to see the report get into far more detail on science policy questions, such as release of data, methods, code, etc. and mechanisms of peer review, and IPCC authors reviewing their own work. However, I recognize that these issues may have been interpreted as outside their charge and the committee was not empanelled for this purpose.

Is this the final word on the “hockey stick”? My guess is that for most people, yes, especially if Representative Boehlert, who requested the report, is satisfied with the answers to his questions.