by Judith Curry
Some new angles in Mann vs Steyn et al.
Michael Mann’s brief
Michael Mann has now filed his brief in the DC Court of Appeals as part of his defamation lawsuit against the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute [link]. For reference, the briefs of the defendants were discussed in this previous post [link].
Mann’s brief is discussed in a post at ClimateScienceWatch, excerpts:
In its Introduction, Dr. Mann’s brief says (with underlining added):
Defendants’ and amici assert that this case is a threat to freedom of expression and involves a “scientific controversy” which courts are “ill-equipped” to referee. … They are mistaken. The issues in this case are simple, straightforward, and certainly capable of an effective judicial resolution. This is not a referendum on global warming, or climate change, or even the accuracy of Dr. Mann’s conclusions. This is a defamation case, no more and no less: did Defendants defame Dr. Mann when they accused him of fraud? As in any defamation case, the issues are limited: were the defendant’s statements true or false; did the defendant make a defamatory allegation of fact concerning the plaintiff; and did the defendant act with the requisite degree of fault? Those are the essential questions in this case as well—and they do not involve a search for “scientific truth, as Defendants claim. Nor is there, as Defendants suggest, any broad-based “science exclusion” in defamation law.
Here, there is no question that Defendants’ assertions were false, and Defendants do not even attempt to argue that their statements about Dr. Mann were true. They have accused him of “academic and scientific misconduct,” “data manipulation,” “molesting and torturing data,” and “corruption and disgrace”—all the while gloating in a disgraceful comparison to Jerry Sandusky, a convicted child molester who worked at the same institution that employs Dr. Mann. And they made these statements knowing that Dr. Mann’s research has been reviewed repeatedly and replicated by other scientists, and that Dr. Mann has been repeatedly exonerated: no fraud: no misconduct; no molestation; no corruption. Importantly, Dr. Mann brought this lawsuit not to squelch public debate, but rather to protect himself against those who have recklessly accused him of fraud and misconduct.
Rather than defending the falsity of their words, because they cannot, Defendants attempt to hide behind the inapposite “opinion defense” and the unsupported position that accusations of fraud are an accepted part of political discourse and thus protected under the First Amendment. Defendants say that their words are “protected speech” because they are “pure opinion and hyperbole” and cannot be construed, by any reasonable reader, to be assertions of fact. Not so, and the U.S. Supreme Court has been clear on this opinion defense. …
Defendants also argue that they really did not intend to accuse Dr. Mann of fraud. They now claim that they were just engaging in hyperbole; and that, in any event, their readers (or at least their reasonable readers) did not construe their statements to be factual assertions of fraud, but rather to be legitimate criticism of Dr. Mann’s scientific conclusions. These arguments are not only factually unsupported, they are flatly contradicted by the evidence. Defendants’ own subsequent statements make it clear that they intended to—and did—accuse Dr. Mann of fraud. …
Defendants’ secondary challenge to this lawsuit is that it should be dismissed because Dr. Mann is not likely to prove actual malice by clear and convincing evidence. … The allegations already of record without access to discovery demonstrate overwhelmingly that Defendants knew that there was no fraud, and, at the very least, proves that Defendants acted with a reckless disregard for the truth or a “deliberate effort to avoid the truth.” [emphasis added]
Scientific fraud?
In a scientific or professional context, ‘fraud’ is inferred to refer to research misconduct, which is characterized by falsification, fabrication and/or plagiarism. I don’t think that this is the case with regards to Mann’s hockey stick, and Steve McIntyre has said previously that he doesn’t think so either. The only one of the ‘inquiries’ which to my mind carries any weight at all in terms ‘exoneration’ of Mann is that conducted by the National Science Foundation, which did not find any evidence of scientific misconduct with respect to Mann’s NSF funded research.
Nevertheless, accusations of data cherry picking and flawed statistical analyses and interpretations seem to be justified. Steve McIntyre and Jean S are still on the case, see these recent posts:
Communicating the hockey stick to the public
Here is the general definition of fraud:
“Fraud is generally defined in the law as an intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact made by one person to another with knowledge of its falsity and for the purpose of inducing the other person to act, and upon which the other person relies with resulting injury or damage. Fraud may also be made by an omission or purposeful failure to state material facts, which nondisclosure makes other statements misleading.” (USlaw.com)
Mann’s intentional failure to disclose and efforts to hide the “dirty laundry” could be argued to be fraud. However, the arguments for ‘fraud’ are more convincing in context of the communication of the hockey stick to the public – the infamous ‘Mikes Nature trick’ to ‘hide the decline.’ Background on this issue is discussed at length in my previous post Hiding the Decline. I concluded:
There is no question that the diagrams and accompanying text in the IPCC TAR, AR4 and WMO 1999 are misleading. I was misled. Upon considering the material presented in these reports, it did not occur to me that recent paleo data was not consistent with the historical record. The one statement in AR4 (put in after McIntyre’s insistence as a reviewer) that mentions the divergence problem is weak tea.
It is obvious that there has been deletion of adverse data in figures shown IPCC AR3 and AR4, and the 1999 WMO document. Not only is this misleading, but it is dishonest (I agree with Muller on this one). The authors defend themselves by stating that there has been no attempt to hide the divergence problem in the literature, and that the relevant paper was referenced. I infer then that there is something in the IPCC process or the authors’ interpretation of the IPCC process (i.e. don’t dilute the message) that resulted in the scientists into deleting the adverse data in these diagrams.
Additional history is provided in a recent post at Climate Audit The Original Hide the Decline.
The most serious issue for Mann’s case is mentioned briefly in Mann’s brief, as described in this post at Climateaudit [link]:
Mann’s brief: “In their brief, the CEI Defendants suggest that the University of East Anglia’s investigation actually found that the hockey stick graph was “misleading” because it did not identify that certain data was “truncated” and that other proxy and instrumental temperature data had been spliced together. See CEI Anti-SLAPP Mem. at 16-17; NRO Mem. at 35. This allegation is yet another example of Defendants’ attempts to obfuscate the evidence in this case. The “misleading” comment made in this report had absolutely nothing to do with Dr. Mann, or with any graph prepared by him. Rather, the report’s comment was directed at an overly simplified and artistic depiction of the hockey stick that was reproduced on the frontispiece of the World Meteorological Organization’s Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 1999.41 Dr. Mann did not create this depiction, and the attempt to suggest that this report suggested an effort by Dr. Mann to mislead is disingenuous.”
McIntyre: CEI had raised both the WMO 1999 and IPCC 2001 diagrams, but Mann ignored the finding in relation to the IPCC 2001 diagram (where he could not dispute his association) and fired back only on the WMO 1999, claiming with faux outrage that Mann had had nothing to do with the WMO 1999 and was merely an attempt to “obfuscate” – a somewhat ironic accusation given the massive misrepresentation of the inquiries by Mann and his lawyers.
Now Climategate emails (especially CG2) showed that Jones had corresponded with Mann in the preparation of the WMO cover and that Mann had signed off on both Jones’ splicing of proxy and instrumental records and Jones’ truncation of the Briffa reconstruction. So Mann’s outrage seemed pretty stretched.
But Jean S has found something even more damning. In Mann’s own CV, Mann lists himself as a coauthor of the WMO 1999 diagram.
Mann’s claim that the WMO diagram “had absolutely nothing to do with Dr. Mann” stands exposed as yet another porky by Mann and his lawyers.
For further details, Climate Audit has a post Inventory Hide the Decline.
JC reflections
Scientific misconduct or ‘fraud’ has been traditionally constrained to fabrication, falsification and plagiarism. However, current thinking on responsible conduct of research is beginning to address ethical issues regarding how scientists interface with society regarding their research. Some of my previous essays on this include:
- Responsible conduct in the global research enterprise
- (Ir)responsible advocacy by scientists
- Questions on research integrity and responsibility
The responsibility of appropriately communicating to the public is starkly realized in context of the arrest of Italian geophysicists with regards to their communication of earthquake risk [link] .
So, were the WMO/TAR representations of the hockey stick that hide the decline fraudulent, in the sense of “intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact made by one person to another with knowledge of its falsity and for the purpose of inducing the other person to act.”? Was the misrepresentation merely a misguided attempt at simplification for the public? It is the issue advocacy of Mann that cements the motivation of ‘inducing the other person to act.‘
In this context, there is no need for Steyn et al. to ‘prove’ fraud in court; but merely to legitimize a public statement of ‘Mann’s fraudulent hockey stick‘ as not defamatory.
‘Fraud’ is generally a different beast than ‘scientific misconduct.’ Scientific misconduct is typically motivated by career advancement; fraud is motivated by inducing someone to act.
This situation may be the single most compelling reason for scientists not be issue advocates regarding their scientific research – efforts to induce other to act need to be very careful that they do not mislead the public.
I think Mann’s advocacy is a new angle in interpreting the issue of ‘fraud’; I look forward especially to the take on this from the lawyers among the denizens.
“Fraud” may be scientific, and whether Mann is guilty or not is really irrelevant to the case. However, “perjury” is a legal term that has landed many people in jail that were guilty of nothing else (See Scooter Libby, Martha Stewart, etc.).
Mann is committing perjury by submitting documents to the court which are clearly false. Judges hate being lied to more than anything else. They see it as someone taking them for fools. Given Steven McIntyre’s well documented research on the briefs filed by Mann, he will be lucky to avoid jail time regardless of the outcome of his case.
“Mann is committing perjury by submitting documents to the court which are clearly false”
Mann has not submitted any documents to the court. His lawyers have submitted documents which they wrote and signed. None of this is sworn evidence.
An interesting legal perspective. Is a client responsible for his lawyer’s action? Is it OK to lie in documents submitted to the court?
Nick,
If the case goes to trial, it will be interesting to see if anyone is held responsible for materially false submissions to the court. While I suspect the DC judge will be happy to ignore the falsities (lots of ‘liberal’ policies are being actively defended by the judges in this case), I suspect a higher court may not be so inclined. Is a judge that chooses to ignore materially false submissions making a judicial error? Perhaps a lawyer could comment on this?
Nick, forget that mate; defamation is at heart an equitable remedy for untruthful slurs on your character. If your submission about the alleged defamation itself contains untruths then your basis of claim is defeated by the “clean hands ” doctrine: “He who comes into equity must come with clean hands”. Mann’s lawyers will not have made submissions to the court without Mann’s instructions and such submissions will have the imprimatur of an Affidavit.
Coho, I was responding to
“Mann is committing perjury by submitting documents to the court “
Do you think he is?
Nick,
From a law information site:
“This maxim bars relief for anyone guilty of improper conduct in the matter at hand. It operates to prevent any affirmative recovery for the person with “unclean hands,” no matter how unfairly the person’s adversary has treated him or her. The maxim is the basis of the clean hands doctrine. Its purpose is to protect the integrity of the court. It does not disapprove only of illegal acts but will deny relief for bad conduct that, as a matter of public policy, ought to be discouraged. A court will ask whether the bad conduct was intentional. This rule is not meant to punish carelessness or a mistake. It is possible that the wrongful conduct is not an act but a failure to act. For example, someone who hires an agent to represent him or her and then sits silently while the agent misleads another party in negotiations is as much responsible for the false statements as if he himself or she herself had made them.”
http://law.jrank.org/pages/8487/Maxim–He-who-comes-into-equity-must-come-with-clean-hands.html
Nick,
As officers of the court, lawyers have an absolute obligation to protect the court from false submissions. False submissions (if willful) can lead to disbarment. Someone should be held responsible.
SteveF,
I’ll take that as a no.
Nick,
“I’ll take that as a no.”
How the false information is treated will depend on how that false information got in. Sloppiness? Poor communication between Mann and his lawyers? Failure of Mann to verify the accuracy of the submissions? Willful misstatement? There is no way to determine that at present.
Nick Stokes | September 11, 2014 at 7:49 am | Reply
“Mann has not submitted any documents to the court. His lawyers have submitted documents which they wrote and signed.”
You forgot to say on his behalf.
This is asinine rubbish, Nick.
But of the first order.
A comment like this illuminates your bias beautifully.
Thank you.
Generally, In pleadings containing assertions of fact submitted by attorneys, the represented party is required to review and sign a sworn affidavit they have reviewed the motion and the facts contained therein are true and correct.
” the represented party is required to review and sign a sworn affidavit they have reviewed the motion and the facts contained therein are true and correct.”
So who signs for the NRO submission?
Most of the alleged misstatements are matters of public record. For example, whether this or that inquiry “exonerated” Mann. The findings are there, submitted to the court. Whether they are correctly described is a matter of judgement, which the lawyers (or judge/jury) can make without Mann’s contribution or testimony.
stevefitzpatrick,
Thank you for your comments and the information.
“As officers of the court, lawyers have an absolute obligation to protect the court from false submissions. False submissions (if willful) can lead to disbarment. Someone should be held responsible.”
Absolutely true, in theory. If anyone finds a jurisdiction that actually enforces the rules of conduct for attorneys in this fashion, let me know. I’ll move there tomorrow.
Nicky, do you think it would be a good idea for that cop’s attorneys in the Ferguson, MO shooting to submit results from 9 or 10 investigations of various police officers in various jurisdictions, who were exonerated in cases where they shot dead unarmed civilians, and claim that those official investigations exonerated their client? What is that called, nicky? Exoneration by association?
“do you think it would be a good idea”
I actually think it is perfectly reasonable for the attorneys to submit a collection of inquiries which do relate to accusations that have been made against Mann, and claim that they help their case. We’ll see what argument they can make. But my point is that this is argument about public documents. It’s not about testimony from Mann.
In fact, the case is about whether words published by NRO and CEI are defamatory and constitute libel. There’s no obvious reliance on testimony from Mann at all.
RE: “Most of the alleged misstatements are matters of public record. ”
Good one, Nick. What number/colour are you wearing? Just so I know who to cheer for as you come around the Clubhouse turn . . . .
“Good one, Nick. “
OK, which alleged misstatement of fact in the motions depends on information not available in public documents?
nicky, nicky
Go back and review the threads on Climateaudit, wherein Steve went over all this stuff and schooled your silly butt. Or would that be too painful.
“Go back and review”
Simple question there. No answer?
public documents.
strange argument.
There are public documents that support manns claim to a Nobel
( written mostly by him)
Nicks request: Find a misleading statement that is based on a document you dont have access to.
As if presenting misleading information to the court is justified by the fact that it is public.
hey judge 2+2=5. Here is a public document that says so, therefore I can put it before the court as true.
Do your own research, nicky.
I almost missed this racehorseism:
“do you think it would be a good idea”
I actually think it is perfectly reasonable for the attorneys to submit a collection of inquiries which do relate to accusations that have been made against Mann, and claim that they help their case.”
How are the inquiries related to accusations against mikey, nickey? Is it because the inquiries took place within mikey’s lifetime? On the same planet?
Steven,
“strange argument”
No, it’s very simple. The lawyers are responsible for writing the motions. They get the facts wherever they can. They are supposed to check. They may sometimes need to rely on the client, as potential witness, but here very little. It’s all public documents which they (and the court) can read as well as anyone. The inquiries are included and discussed entirely as a lawyer responsibility (and quite reasonably, in my view).
“There are public documents that support manns claim to a Nobel”
The entire matter is public. The lawyers cited a USA Today report. They wrote that interpretation (now toned down) based on public facts.
“The lawyers are responsible…”
So, to be clear, you don’t believe Mann to have any responsibility to ensure the accuracy of documents filed, on his behalf, with the court. Is that correct?
perjury issues aside, if Professor Michael Mann allows inaccurate legal filings with any court, on his behalf … if he permits blatant inaccuracies on matters for which he should be a leading authority, then he is more incompetent than I had imagined….
“yes, it IS …. worse than we thought”
Not that easy nick. They cannot merely claim they didn’t mislead because they cite public documents.
But we will see. Judges decide not you. Not me.
Looking at Manns cv would you amend the filing?
Would you argue that he had nothing to do with the graph?
“Not that easy nick. They cannot merely claim they didn’t mislead because they cite public documents.”
My point is that the lawyers were working from public documents. It seems to me they had very little input from Mann. I think that is unwise. I don’t agree with most of the claims of misleading, but they clearly did stuff up badly in the original claim of Mann’s contribution to the science. That’s just a lawyer getting it wrong.
“Judges decide not you. Not me.”
If it goes to trial, it will be a jury that decides. And the motions will not be part of the evidence.
“Looking at Manns cv would you amend the filing?”
The filing says:
“Dr. Mann did not create this depiction, and the attempt to suggest that this report suggested an effort by Dr. Mann to mislead is disingenuous.”
It seems that is true; Phil Jones created the depiction. The WMO report has an attribution saying:
” (Sources of data: P.D. Jones, K.R. Briffa and T.J. Osborn, University of East Anglia, UK; M.E. Mann, University of Virginia, USA; R.S. Bradley, University of Massachusetts, USA; M.K. Hughes, University of Arizona, USA; and the Hadley Centre, The Met. Office).”
That seems to be the basis for the claim in Mann’s CV. WMO didn’t say Mann created the depiction.
Nick Stokes wrote
“It seems that is true; Phil Jones created the depiction. The WMO report has an attribution saying…”
Phil Jones informed Mann of what he was going to do, asked for any pointers, got approval from Mann. To say Mann didn’t create the depiction is to not say that Mann did have a hand in the creation of the depiction; he oversaw it.
Although Mann had direct knowledge of the hide and graft, he puffed up and denied knowing of any person in the field who had ever done such a thing, and took a broadside at fossil fuel funded disinformation spreaders.
Mikey is just rich. A wonder of nature.
“got approval from Mann”
Do you have a link for that?
The lawyers are his agents. As such, any false statements are in his name. So they are his. It is his responsibility to ensure authenticity. He can later sue his lawyers for malpractice if the mistake is theirs, but that is a separate case.
In addition, the submissions ARE sworn testimony. If they are determined to be intentionally false, that is the same as perjury. Mann cannot weasel out of this one. His signature is on them.
“In addition, the submissions ARE sworn testimony. If they are determined to be intentionally false, that is the same as perjury. Mann cannot weasel out of this one. His signature is on them.”
You’re just wrong there. They aren’t sworn testimony (where’s the jury? Who swore?) and his signature isn’t on them.
You’re mixing up the roles of a litigant and a witness. Did NRO swear to it’s motion? Who?
No, they are the same as an “affidavit” which is evidence, sworn to be accurate with the signature of the litigant. And why are you interjecting a Jury in this? Perjury is merely intentionally conveying false evidence to the COURT. It can be before the trial begins or during the trial. There is no mention of a “jury” in perjury (both may have the same root, but are hardly interchangeable).
MANN is suing the defendants. The lawyers are his AGENTS. They are not suing them. They have no case. So what they submit, is HIS testimony. And if proven false, even in a civil case, he is liable for perjury. If they ran around Mann and submitted false documents, he can later sue them for malpractice, but that is a separate case and not germane to the EVIDENCE submitted.
You are clueless, nicky. Judges decide whether they have been fooled or not. They also decide what get’s to be allowed in evidence that is presented to juries. The jury doesn’t decide on the motions, nicky. The judge controls the case, until it is handed to a jury for a decision. The decision of the jury is largely the result of decisions made by the trial judge. Don’t they have Perry Mason down there in Oz, nicky?
What public documents are mikey’s lawyers working from, nicky? The BS they find on SkS?
Whether a lawyer can commit perjury in your behalf – who cares?
Mann’s lawyers can certainly make a mistake that results in a judgement for the defendants. Unclean hands results in a judgement for the defendants. That’s far better than losing on the merits as far as Mann’s reputation. Be thankful for that Nick.
The only question to be answered is about free speech.
Is Mark Steyn’s speech protected by the First Amendment?
yes or no?
I’ve read the US Constitution so as a US citizen I say yes.
Doesn’t Mikie need to show how he was damaged?
I believe that’s why Gleick didn’t get sued.
His bad behavior helped increase skeptic’s cash flow so there was no damage to recover.
The rules of civil procedure for DC (based, apparently, on the same rule in the Federal courts), clearly makes the lawyers responsible for the pleadings that they file. See Rule 11 “Signing of Pleadings … Representations to Court; Sanctions” at: http://www.dccourts.gov/internet/documents/Civil-Rules-Jan-2012.pdf
If Mann has submitted an affirmative affidavit (as suggested by Texas95 may sometimes occur) then he would be on the hook for any false factual claims for which he was responsible, if such affidavit is filed with the court. Such affidavits, however, do not appear specifically to be required: Rule 11(a) “…Except when otherwise specifically provided by rule or statute, pleadings need not be verified or accompanied by affidavit. […]”
The obligation with respect to factual contentions is as follows:
“11 (b) Representations to Court. By presenting to the court (whether by signing, filing, submitting, or later advocating) a pleading, written motion, or other filing, including an electronic filing, an attorney or unrepresented party is certifying that to the best of the person’s knowledge, information, and belief, formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances, […]
(3) the allegations and other factual contentions have evidentiary support or, if specifically so identified, are likely to have evidentiary support after a reasonable opportunity for further investigation or discovery; and
(4) the denials of factual contentions are warranted on the evidence or, if specifically so identified, are reasonably based on a lack of information or belief.”
On the narrow point of direct responsibility for the pleadings, absent a supporting affidavit from Mann which includes untrue statements (and otherwise falls afoul of the exceptions in 11(b), and subsection 3 and 4 of the rules), the law firm is on the hook for the pleadings, not Mann (though, the lawyers may be very unhappy with their client).
There is a process for correcting pleadings and sanctions do not bite until after that process is completed. Rule 11(c) reads:
“(c) Sanctions. If, after notice and a reasonable opportunity to respond, the court determines that subdivision (b) has been violated, the court may, subject to the conditions stated below, impose an appropriate sanction upon the attorneys, law firms, or parties that have violated subdivision (b) or are responsible for the violation.”
(1) How Initiated.
(A) By Motion. A motion for sanctions under this rule shall be made separately from other motions or requests and shall describe the specific conduct alleged to violate subdivision (b). It shall be served as provided in Rule 5, but shall not be filed with or presented to the court unless, within 21 days after service of the motion (or such other period as the court may prescribe), the challenged paper, claim, defense, contention, allegation, or denial is not withdrawn or appropriately corrected. […]”
Note that the sanctions on “parties” appear to bite only when the party is representing himself or herself.
At this point in time, notwithstanding Nick’s speculative attempt to infer that the pleadings are drafted almost solely by the lawyers (comment on 11 Sept at 6:36) without reference to Mann (because Nick believes that much of the information is based on public documents), we do not have sufficient information on the process at work to arrive at such a conclusion. My experience (largely Canada and the UK; some experience with American pleadings as an off-shoot of work on a large international fraud case), is that lawyers always review the pleadings in detail with the clients. This is particularly true where factual claims about the client (and matters such as his role/involvement in certain matters) are being made. Such an approach is good practice and a law firm takes a great risk if they haven’t confirmed such information with the client in detail. Identification of the various inquiries which are claimed to have “exonerated” Mann (even though most such inquiries did not actually review his work), were likely identified initially by Mann to the lawyers. The content of the pleadings would then have been reviewed with him – in other words, he would have been asked by the lawyers to confirm that their interpretation was correct. While local practice may vary (and there may be nuances which have developed in the application of these rules of which I’m not aware), it’s would be a very brave or foolish lawyer who files principal documents in a case without a close and detailed review with the client.
“Most of the alleged misstatements are matters of public record.”
In effect Nick is making the same argument that Mann is making.
Mann is saying that “somewhere, in the corpus of human knowledge, there exists a statement disclosing the divergence. Therefore I (Mann) could not have mislead anyone, because the divergence has been disclosed making it obvious that I needed spliced the instrument record onto the proxy record.”
Nick is saying that Mann’s claim of being a Nobel Prize winner is not misleading because the Nobel committee provides a public record of all Nobel Prize winners and Mann’s absence on that list is clear and ample disclosure rendering Mann’s statement non-misleading.
I’m wondering how I might teach Nick’s rule to my kids. “Listen Bobby, you don’t ever need to worry about telling a lie. Just say what ever you want. Its the other persons responsibility to Google it”.
You may well be right Phil, but I have the possibly erroneous impression that Mann ( and/ or his lawyers ) are trying all they can to prevent any discussion in court of his actual scientific work. Will they be successful in this endeavor? I hope not because that is what is of great interest to all of us whilst narrow definitions of “fraud” have no real impact here in the real world.
Their stance ( Mann et al ) is quite puzzling as they claim repeatedly that Mann has been exonerated in many fora. If that is true, and I am not convinced of that, then why not nail this issue once and for all?
I think you are correct on Mann’s intentions. But as he has introduced the false testimony, Steyn’s crew is then free to pick it apart. If Mann had not introduced the false statements, they could argue it is off limits.
It is similar to when a defendant testifies that he is an outstanding citizen. It is at that time that past transgressions can be introduced as evidence to refute his testimony, whereas if he never says a word, that evidence is not admissible.
Jail time? This is not a criminal case.
What are the chances Mann won’t perjure himself.
Nobel laureate…
You mean Richard Tol? Likely not called
Tol seems well credentialed Eli; better than 97% of climate scientists I’d say.
This issue of whether Mann’s lawyers have made submissions containing errors of fact is something, as I said above, which can mitigate their probative value. The submissions appear to contain contradictions as JC has listed in the introduction to do with the 1999 and 2001 diagrams.
If Mann has in his own evidence detail which shows such inconsistency then they may tend to support the claim of fraud made against him. After all it is his character in issue here and whether there was truth in the comments made by Steyn. If his own submissions appear slippery than that has to reflect on him and undermine any claim he may make.
You did see his claim of the Nobel?
Richard Tol, “Nobel Peace Prize 2007 (together with Albert A. Gore Jr and some 5,000 IPCC members)”
Michael Mann’s complaint “It is one thing to engage in discussion about debatable topics. It is quite another to attempt to discredit consistently validated scientific research through the professional and personal defamation of a Nobel prize recipient.”
Which might have a sense of humor?
Eli, I think Tol was taking the piss; I’ve never seen a sign of a sense of humour from Mann; in fact apart from you and Nick I can’t think of anyone pro-AGW who is funny.
Perjury is a crime. Bill Clinton was not charged with a crime – until he committed perjury. It was a civil case where he committed perjury (that he actually won).
wagathon
It most certainly is.
Mann appears not to know the meaning of the word ‘validated’
Either Mann lied to the Court or he lied on his CV. Academics may think the former is a more serious lie.
So did Ed Wegman commit perjury when he claimed he duplicated McIntyre and McKitrick when he merely copied them?
It is interesting to note Eli Rabett is a schtick this guys plays, intentionally acting a buffoon and fool. It is interesting because it is incredibly obvious to anyone who looks into this issue Edward Wegman did not mere copy M&M’s results. One could easily suspect Rabett knows fully well what he said is false, but he happily said it to imply Wegman is a felon.
Which is at least as libelous as what Mark Steyn said about Michael Mann.
It’s interesting to note Eli Rabett is a schtick the user has admitted to putting on where he pretends to be a buffoon. It is interesting because anyone who has spent any time studying this issue should know Edward Wegman did not merely copy McIntyre and McKitrick’s work.
One could reasonably suspect Rabett knew this but intentionally pretended not to in order to imply Wegman committed a felony. A false accusation like that is at least as libelous as what Mark Steyn said about Michael Mann.
(Not that Wegman even claimed what Rabett says he claimed.)
More money will go into the legal battles than went into climate change research! The “Good Wife” legal profession is the BIG winner here. This is a gold mine for them! And what will be the final result? Nothing but new Mercedes for the lawyers.
More than to climate research, you say?
Are you aware that climate research in the US is publicly funded at a rate that 80% higher than what the NIH hands out to medical research every year?
Said in passing, talk about misallocation of funds.
The NIH budget is $30 Bn/yr. Last I looked into it, the (somewhat overstated) estimates of the climate science budget is $2 Bn/yr by comparison.
But that is mostly due to puffing it up: half of that is the NASA earth observation budget, which in my opinion ought to be greatly increased. Half the remainder goes to various climate impacts (hydrology, agriculture, wildlife management) and would exist independent of anthropogenic climate change.
Climate science as such, equipment, institutional overhead, lab expenses, supercomputer fees, and all, gets by on roughly a half billion. Given that the entire value of everything at stake, this is arguably inadequate, even if it is spent well.
Claims that climate science is funded comparably to medical research are baloney, putting it printably.
I do not know if “more” will go in, but you are definitely correct that the winners will be the lawyers.
I hope the emails are admissible.
Good to see you wandering around the globe and contributing. You could make some interesting contributions on this subject.
Hi Peter.
Of course they are. Mann has already sworn under oath
That they are real.
Mosh
As in due course I hope my own reconstructions will stretch back to the 11 Century I have looked at Mann’s work more than most, and also that of other researchers.
I would say he has a very high opinion of himself that no doubt came about when the IPCC promoted him to a star turn very early in his career. He also has a touching belief in the value of novel proxies such as Tree rings and bore holes as that has helped him to cement his status
This over confidence in you abilities seems to be a somewhat American trait (but not exclusively so) This belief in certain branches of science as the means to accurately reconstruct global temperatures seems to be a by product of the need to promote yourself, defend the methods you use and to some extent how much you WANT to believe in what you have created i.e being an advocate
In my opinion certain novel proxies such as tree rings are a hugely over promoted branch of science. They have a use, but not to the extent they have been used.
After looking at his work in considerable detail I would say he is a mediocre but not a bad researcher. I think Phil Jones for all his faults is much better.
So, is Mann fraudulently promoting the science, the hockey stick and his own place in the world? Not from his perspective where be genuinely believes himself to be a leading figure using state of the art science.
So on the count of fraud-as I understand the term-I don’t think he is guilty.
He uses mediocre data and mediocre skills and shouts a lot to make his case but as I have come to learn over the last ten years there are many in climate science doing that and as such that is not a crime.
As for the other wider implications of trying to close down the argument and stifling free speech, that issue has got so bound up in legalese that I can’t really judge if that is his intention.
tonyb
Tony B surely you are not suggesting that Americans are brash? :)
Tonyb,
you might find this email of interest, because in a debate about any possible “Medieval Warm Period” Michael Mann trashed the distinguished scientist Wally Broecker for daring to question the quality of data relied upon in Mann’s work. One thing I find “interesting” is that Mann uses the tendentious and politicized word “disinform” to refer to Broecker’s article. Usually “disinformation” is considered much worse than “misinformation” because it is by definition intentional rather than accidental. Mann’s idea of “constructive dialogue” is of course for others to kowtow to Mann, since Broecker clearly has not learned to be properly deferential from a “series of emails” to which Mann refers. The “disinform” statement is an extremely serious charge to lodge against a scientific colleague, but Mann does it casually (though privately) against someone of Broecker’s stature who dared to differ with Mann:
Mann trashes Wally Broecker
[emphasis added]
Peter
I was practising my diplomatic skills.
The truth is that a young scientists work was way over promoted and he decided to seize the moment and has ridden to the back of international acclaim on the back of a piece of research that needed much more work on it before it was released. The Americans often have ‘chutzpah’ in spades and Mann seems an over confident type anyway. It all went to his head and its very difficult to climb down from international stardom.
I do think he should have been called out much earlier in his career by other scientists.
Unlike many sceptics I certainly don’t have a visceral hatred of Mann I just think that he and his brand of science are way over promoted.
tonyb
skiphil
I think what you see in that email is all of a piece with what I have just said to Peter.
Someone else might have been more circumspect especially if early on other scientists had questioned his methodology and end results more vigorously.
He’s an international superstar (in climate land) and with a huge belief in his own science and abilities and ‘owner’ of the single most important climate science icon in the word-the hockey stick-his sense of self belief is only going to be reinforced by any ‘attacks’ on him.
tonyb
tonyb et al
From a retired U.S. High School Teacher
Mann in particular is antithetical to everything I taught. And, as a mentor what I encouraged to be taught. I believe that scientists are servants to humanity, and the more the gifts one receives, the greater should be the integrity of the servitude.
Briffa, Crowley, and the whole gang all appear to be self serving.
Too much, too soon is the worst thing that could have happened to Mann.
I find him to be an egotistical boy.
If the gang would really have been scientists at heart, they would have ran toward McIntyre or another accomplished statistician, instead of circling the wagons and hiding.
They were not serving others, only themselves and their ideologue.
Then again, I am from an older generation and I do no like some of the changes I see, while at the same time I appreciate our host. .
Wow. Pretty damning.
I think it is pretty clear that Steyn was using the general definition of fraud and was not alleging fabrication.
It’s a travesty that Mann will likely not face jail time or fines because politics.
Yes, it is clear that Steyn was not attempting an evaluation of the primary research in MBH.
The filter will be busy with this one!
Re-post, minus offending words.
Judith,
Hard to reconcile that with this;
“Michael Mann was the man behind the fr@udulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph” – Steyn.
If that was insuffiently clear, he later backed up with this;
“Michael E Mann: Liar, Cheat, Falsifier and Fr@ud”
But keep circling those wagons.
The filter will be busy with this one!
Re-post x 2 (it’s all Mark Steyns fault), minus offending words.
Judith,
Hard to reconcile that with this;
“Michael Mann was the man behind the fr@udulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph” – Steyn.
If that was insuffiently clear, he later backed up with this;
“Michael E Mann: Li@r, Che@t, F@lsifier and Fr@ud”
But keep circling those wagons.
In the political, public figure, space this is routine. Mann is a political activist first and the whole issue of the science professional (gag, spit-up-throat) is secondary to non-existent.
Regardless of the legalism, it looks like the usual totalitarian inclinations found everywhere in the modern democratic left;
http://deadline.com/2014/09/saturday-night-live-illegal-campaign-finance-reform-ted-cruz-constitutional-amendment-832330/#respond
Michael, you’re close to zombie status if you don’t realize the evil of Mann’s intentions. It’s about people in political power with aspirations limiting the dissent of the press, feeble and in the same pocket most of the time as it is. It’s also a great reflection of the cultural self-pity and desire to replace themselves as “cross-bearers” and victims. I have no doubt Michael Mann has been so deluded by the “cause” for so long he actually believes it himself, as for the rest of the world it should come to it’s senses. The suit is a joke coming from a little greenshirt twit, nothing more.
Even if you find an ideological judge or two along the way in the long run it’s likely to fail because it’s your political culture that is completely dependent on bombast, hyperbole and frankly name calling. Can you imagine Koch brothers responding in kind if they so inclined and had the same degrees of thin skinned pettiness that Mann is demonstrating and his somewhat ignorant supporting base? You would be the first to be singing a different tune if “shill for big oil” was forced out of the media lexicon by use of the legal system. This is all likely nonsense to a degree Mark Steyn’s expense but you should think about the sort of world where left-wing arbitrators of speech would have the world go. Climate science and “consensus” were certainly the canary-in-the-coal mine on that point. Just as the idiotic “Citizens United” whining or “Fairness Doctrine” indicate as well. Climate dissent is a thought crime in modern leftist politics, so much so Dr. Curry can’t even formally identify it’s political ID directly. Only through allusions and indirectly, how sad is that? That’s the sort of overbearing political correctness you are endorsing by supporting Mann’s claim.
I said “likely to fail” as I have shelves of books detailing how Republics and great states fail. I certainly don’t underestimate the social decline Michael Mann and his ilk (including you) represent. Climate science is exactly indicative of intellectual decline, cronyism, authoritarianism found in declining Western civilization. So is the loss of free speech, it’s hardly a surprise about who is lining up on this board in support of Mann’s efforts. So while Steyn might be victimized further the rest of us witness the abuse and culture supporting it. In the end tyranny will fall into itself and Mann will have his place among the tyrants so listed. You’ve cast your lot Michael.
“evil…intentions”
Hmmmm.
Maybe you need a nice new tin-foil hat?
The AGW meme was invented with tin hats Michael.
How about a few “big oil” rants while you’re at it? Tell us all you know about the Koch brothers?
Suppressing speech, dissent by lawsuit/consensus/politically correct coercion is “evil”. No problem standing on that ground Michael.
The lawsuit is legal thuggery from a greenshirt activist, nothing more.
“Maybe you need a nice new tin-foil hat?”
…to deflect the Global Warming all around us!
Oh the HuMannity!
Andrew
Yep. The back-radiation from all that ACO2 is becoming unbearable. I may opt for a space blanket instead of the tin foil hat, tho.
That’s typical Michael. Telling the Indians to circle the wagons.
cwon14 | September 11, 2014 at 12:12 pm |
“Suppressing speech, dissent by lawsuit/consensus/politically correct coercion is “evil”. No problem standing on that ground Michael.”
That’s a ground that exists almost entirely in your imagination
Michael,
As part of the same sentence regarding the hockey stick, did he not also say he was “master of the tree-ring circus”? That kind of gives it away that he is being sarcastic and thinks the work is crap. You know, like satirists do for a living …….
Michael said: “evil…intentions”
Hmmmm. Maybe you need a nice new tin-foil hat?
So Michael, can we conclude that you are saying that Mann is incompetent? Because intentional deception and incompetence are the only two possibilities here. Me, I lean toward the “incompetent and unaware of his own incompetence” explanation as best fitting all the facts.
Bill,
There is a great yawning chasm betwen saying that someone has done low quality work and saying that they are ” the man behind…..fr@ud”.
But I’m sure you know that.
Michael, In a satirical piece you have to read between the lines and with anything you should read it in context. Not pick out part of one word as you did with fraud.
There is not much difference at all, however, in saying “I think his methods were poor and I think the hockey stick is crap” and “he molested the data and I think the hockey stick is fraudulent”. Fraudulent in political discourse can mean fake or incorrect. He did not say “I think he deliberately intended scientific fraud”. ALthough, if he had, he could at least point to the fact that in the IPCC report, Mann did not explain in footnotes to the graph that part of it was truncated and other data spliced in some fashion.
What an interesting range of scrambling ‘explanations’ we have for Steyn’s stupidity.
Now it’s “satire”.
Where is the satire in “the man behind the fraudulent…graph”???
Yes, it is clear that Steyn was not attempting an evaluation of the primary research in MBH. – JC
Before the lawsuit, you would have been heehawed out of there for saying that.
@ Michael on 9/11 at 7:22 PM: “That’s a ground that exists almost entirely in your imagination.”
Tell it to Lennart Bengtsson and Tim Ball . . .
Potter,
What’s up with Lennie??
curryja | Yes, it is clear that Steyn was not attempting an evaluation of the primary research in MBH.
Michael | Hard to reconcile that with this;
“Michael Mann was the man behind the fr@udulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph”
“Michael E Mann: Liar, Cheat, Falsifier and Fr@ud”
But keep circling those wagons
—–
That the hockey stick was a fraud is known to all interested parties by now. You don’t need to be attempting an evaluation of research to mention this.
The only circling of wagons here, is around Mann (and the Consensus).
Michael, That’s the thing about language, particularly the English language, it is fun to play with and to create imagery. I thought his “man behind” comment might actually be a reference to the Wizard of Oz, as in “pay no attention to the Mann behind the curtain”, especially as he followed it with “the very master of the tree ring circus”. [Take my quotes with a grain of salt as I am too lazy to look up the exact words]. The point is NOT that he did not intend to say something derogatory, as he obviously did. The point is that one is allowed wide discretion in one’s choice of words and rightly so. Else we could all sue each other from what we sometimes say on this blog.
Dr. Curry,
I have no knowledge as to what Steyn meant specifically by his writing, but I’d like to throw out a possible interpretation that doesn’t require any fraud by Mann at all.
“Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph”
— one possible way to view this is as an indictment of the IPCC or the alarmist scientific community or the political forces who have used it. Without necessarily saying that Mann did anything wrong, the statement can be read as saying that the graph’s use — as a political weapon for global warming alarmists — has been fraudulent.
Stated differently — “fraudulent” is an adjective modifying climate-change rather than graph.
Now I’m not saying this was his intent or even that it is the most logical construction of the statement. I’m merely suggesting that it is a logical construction and one that has a number of advantages for Steyn.
Tuppence | September 13, 2014 at 4:46 am |
“That the hockey stick was a fraud is known to all interested parties by now. ”
Right, so no analysis.
Just consensus, recieved wisdom, an artice of faith.
OK then.
Here is the analysis for you, mikey:
https://hiizuru.wordpress.com/author/bshollenberger/
“the man behind the hockey stick fraud”
Isn’t a graph that sort of bears the shape of a hockey stick, but isn’t actually used to play hockey, a fraudulent hockey stick by definition?
Anti Slap Laws? Ref Thurber The Overt Act.
https://beththeserf.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/1-2.jpg
That’s the great war between men and women, an extremely amusing series.
The capture of three physicists was my favorite.
The war between men and women was called off as there was too much fraternizing with the enemy
When it’s written like that, it seems to me (a layman) like a pretty persuasive case of fraud.
Peter, the court will look to the legal meaning of fraudulent, because that is what Mann’s complaint uses. CEI cited to the court that WMO 99 was misleading in two ways. WMO is one of two UN sponsors of IPCC, and the equivalent IPCC 2001 was clearly intended to persuade actions on the part of the worlds governments. Definitional test meant.
Mann’s official court reply is that he was not responsible for WMO99, expressly deemed misleading. That is false, proven both by the WMO99 page two box on the chart, wherein Mann is specifically credited, and the fact he claims it on his current CV. The arguement that he did not know about the two misleading ‘tricks’ is refuted by both CG1 and CG2 emails.
It should be easy for Steyn’s lawyers to justify his label in both the colloquial and the legal senses of the characterization.
Rud Istvan,
Thank you. That’s interesting. It seems such a shut case, yet GaryM said recently he thinks Mannn will get away with it because his backers have much more money to defend him than the those claiming he was fraudulent.
By the way, i admit I haven’t followed this closely.
Peter, regards. Many don’t. Some do. I am one. And I am also a licensed but non-practicing lawyer.
By some sneaky suspicion, you might suppose Steyn’s very good noes lawyers are aware of all this. Mind you, just a ‘wink, nod’ hunch on my part.
Rud,
“…the court will look to the legal meaning of fraudulent, because that is what Mann’s complaint uses.”
Do you know for a fact that this is true? I ask only because I have posed the question several times without getting a response.
It is a crucial point. Mann’s lawyers are seeking the narrowest possible definition of the word “fraudulent”, for obvious reasons – it sets the highest hurdle for the defense. The defense, on the other hand, seek a broad definition; they argue that to describe a graph as “fraudulent” in the context of a journalistic commentary is the same as describing it as bogus or based on shoddy science.
As far as I can tell there is no existing definition of “scientific fraud” which is applicable in the DC Court. There is however a definition of “fraud” and there are sundry definitions of “scientific misconduct”, any of which might be adopted by the DC court. The problem is that while any (scientific) fraud falls within the definition(s) of scientific misconduct, the converse is not true. It is much easier to show, for example, that Mann hid adverse results and was guilty of cherry-picking data, than it is to show that he committed fraud by doing so.
If you know for certain whether the court is obliged to place a certain construction on the term “fraudulent hockey-stick graph”, then I would be really interested in your view.
Paul
I only hope the appeals court sees the case for what it is….. a SLAPP.
Of course, given the political leanings of the DC judges, I give Mann about a 70% chance of being able to continue to trial, where he will likely convince a very liberal DC jury to punish those who holds political views they disagree with. Considering Sullivan and the makeup of the Supreme Court, Steyn et al will likely win on appeal at some point, but the SLAPP strategy will already have been a success, since Steyn et al will have spent millions on defense. This is why anti-SLAPP laws have been passed.
Sadly, what you say here stevefitpatrick is a very likely outcome.
Justice will be in a different courtroom that day.
If the jury pool is that tainted, then Steyn has the right to request a judge rule in the case. it is up to the defendant to decide if it is a jury trial or not.
philjourdan on September 12, 2014 at 7:14 am
“If the jury pool is that tainted”
The pool of political hack justices is no less in the DC circuit. What’s happened in academics, media has certainly happened in judicial appointments. Mann and his supporters are only looking for symbolic “victory” that the tactic of silencing dissent is affirmed. Longer term or better short it gets thrown out as the essential dispute is political in nature.
I would revert the question. How can you explain hiding the decline has not the intention to deceive? Plain stupidity? Highly implausible. And, a “simplification” (to the public) may not change the implications.
Yeah, if it comes to questioning over that Mann surely has to either admit to being stupid (or possible shades thereof) or deceitful.
Pingback: Mann versus reality | Scottish Sceptic
Scientific and legal definitions of the term “fraud” are not relevant here. Whether or not the phrase “fraudulent Hockey Stick” is defamatory is evaluated within the context of it’s use, Steyn’s and CEI’s articles. What matters is what a reasonable reader would understand when reading the articles.
WJR, ” What matters is what a reasonable reader would understand when reading the articles.”
Defining “reasonable” could take a while. Based on a recent post or two, “reading” seems optional as well.
Defining “reasonable” could take a while.
If the court’s definition of “reasonable” is in line with the generation that has just left school, then the definition is “green”. Case over.
I believe “reasonable” is a fairly well defined term in legal proceedings.
timg56 “I believe “reasonable” is a fairly well defined term in legal proceedings.”
Which is why juries are often demanded.
The Verdict of the Court of Scientific Opinion Mann has won … because multiple independent studies have affirmed the reality of a climate-change “hockey-stick blade” that is well-grounded in thermodynamics and transport theory, in the paleo record, in the historical record, and in the satellite data record
The Verdict of the Court of Public Opinion Mann has won … because the rhetoric of the Competitive Enterprise Institute/Mark Steyn is publicly appreciated as being so egregiously juvenile and ignorant as to be severely harmful to the cause of rational conservative discourse.
The Verdict of the Court of Law To date, Mann is winning … with the overall scientific-public-legal verdict yet to be rendered.
Conclusion By every measure that matters to the public in the long run, Michael Mann’s climate-change worldview has *ALREADY* won, and bids fair to *CONTINUE* to win.
That’s obvious to *EVERYONE*, eh Climate Etc readers?
Thanks for leaving 3 non partisan, balanced, impartial links.
You wish!
if FOMT were not a delusional clown he would not dare to say “Mann has won” before the outcome of the present legal issues…. I won’t try to predict that outcome, but there are reams of material now documents falsities in the submissions of Mann and lawyers to the court.
IF the courts find against Mann on these matters then he has most assuredly not “won”….
Thus, FOMT as usual spouts his bizarre brand of ranting propaganda rather than any helpful analysis.
Trees record the growing conditions for trees. Could be temperature, humidity, rain, sunlight, or fertilizer. Joining a chart of “tree growth criteria” to an instrumental temperature one makes no sense whatsoever.
In the court of my opinion, Mann and the whole field of climate science have lost big time! If they’re not going to call out all the indefensible crap in “The Hockey Stick Illusion” or even debate in public, I”ll take anything they have to say with a huge grain of salt.
McShane and Wyner 2010 refutes your assertion.
I forgot to add McShane and Wyner was able to replicate Mann’s results, along with all the red noise becoming hockey sticks
Fan– a question for you
Because the results of the determination of temp records by proxy methods is probably quite important in determining worldwide actions, do you believe the scientists involved should take care to be as accurate as possible in determining their results?
FOMD is right.
The court of scientific opinion is indeed backing the hockey stick fraud.
“‘Fraud’ is generally a different beast than ‘scientific misconduct.’ Scientific misconduct is typically motivated by career advancement; fraud is motivated by inducing someone to act.
This situation may be the single most compelling reason for scientists not be issue advocates regarding their scientific research – efforts to induce other to act need to be very careful that they do not mislead the public.” – JC
My, that’s some desperate, and not at all convincing, attempts to re-define fr@ud.
But I think we can at least take it as a tacit acceptance that if the court takes Steyn’s comments as alleging scientific fr@ud (ie. just as he intended), then Mr Steyn is in deep do-do.
Highly doubtful. While nobody can actually derive “intent” from actions, a reasonable observer who was familiar with journalistic advocacy would almost certainly see it as metaphorical, pointed towards the “public policy advice context” context. Not the “scientific” context.
Of course, given the source of the above blockquote, we can see a clear intent to confuse the two contexts.
AK
What if the judge were FOMD? There’s a horror for you.
It’s not nice to fool…
Courts today are easy if you can afford the talent. It is to be the judge who one day, will remember your yesterday just like tomorrow. He won’t be played. Now, lets get back to Perry Mason.
notice that you said
“scientific fraud”
why the qualifier?
simple: because the meaning of the term fraud is not precise.
Consistent with other rulings on free speech the court should give wide latitude to the speaker.
In any case I have always advised people against using the word fraud
as it implies some knowledge of intention.
call it wrong, call it misleading, call it trickery, call it shady,
Steyn used the fraud word. People will now debate the meaning. which means of course that steyn couldnt have meant something precise, because the meaning is not under his control
“Consistent with other rulings on free speech the court should give wide latitude to the speaker.”
Generally yes, but if the speaker’s use of the term fraud is likely to damage the reputation of someone, the speaker needs to be able to defend the claim as accurate. How does the defendent show intent to mislead?
scientific fr@ud as opposed to financial fraud, given we have some lame sophistry at work trying to ague that maybe Steyn wasn’t referring to Mann’s professional activities, which is science.
Steyn was referring to the hockey stick.
Filter striks again! – any time you quote Mark Steyn!!
curryja | September 11, 2014 at 11:17 am |
“Steyn was referring to the hockey stick.”
Really??
“Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph” – Steyn.
“Michael E Mann: Li@r, Che@t, Falsifier and Fraud” – Steyn
Michael it’s clear we disagree on what steps meant
By fraud. It’s clear from previous rulings that
The court should give wide latitude to the speaker
And interpret his words in his best light.
What would a reasonable reader infer. As a reasonable reader and critic of many I infer that steyn
Was not speaking specifically of scientific fraud.
Will a court and jury find the same?
Good question
Manns letter about Mcintyre will be instructive to a jury.
Micheal –
==> ““Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph” – Steyn.”
I think he only meant that at one meeting, Mann was standing behind a poster of the graph.
Joshua,
Duh!!
Michael:
Your first Steyn quote is part of the lawsuit. You will notice the quote is calling his hockey stick graph fraudulent – and not calling Mann a fraud. These are two very different things.
Your second Steyn quote is not part of the lawsuit. It was made after the lawsuit was filed and is not part of the complaint. As far as I know, the complaint has not been amended to add in the second Steyn quote as part of the defamation count.
Rick,
Which bit of “…the man behind…” is not clear to you?
There surely isn’t a person alive who doubts that Mann’s intention is to mislead, is there?
Doesn’t mean alarmist wagon-circlers don’t SAY they disagree, of course.
Tuppence | September 13, 2014 at 4:59 am |
“There surely isn’t a person alive who doubts that Mann’s intention is to mislead, is there? ”
There! – you’d be hard pressed to find a neater example that encapsulates much of climate-‘skepticism’.
Actually, all that demonstrates is your bigotry.
No Michael, even truebelievers don’t believe the hockey stick – not even precommitted alarmist activists like the IPCC, who removed it from former prominence.
Only those wedded to the CAGW political cause regardless of the facts, SAY they believe it. Like you.
In the political, public figure, space this is routine. Mann is a political activist first and the whole issue of the science professional (gag, spit-up-throat) is secondary to non-existent.
Regardless of the legalism, it looks like the usual totalitarian inclinations found everywhere in the modern democratic left;
http://deadline.com/2014/09/saturday-night-live-illegal-campaign-finance-reform-ted-cruz-constitutional-amendment-832330/#respond
Michael, you’re close to zombie status if you don’t realize the evil of Mann’s intentions. It’s about people in political power with aspirations limiting the dissent of the press, feeble and in the same pocket most of the time as it is. It’s also a great reflection of the cultural self-pity and desire to replace themselves as “cross-bearers” and victims. I have no doubt Michael Mann has been so deluded by the “cause” for so long he actually believes it himself, as for the rest of the world it should come to it’s senses. The suit is a joke coming from a little greenshirt twit, nothing more.
Even if you find an ideological judge or two along the way in the long run it’s likely to fail because it’s your political culture that is completely dependent on bombast, hyperbole and frankly name calling. Can you imagine Koch brothers responding in kind if they so inclined and had the same degrees of thin skinned pettiness that Mann is demonstrating and his somewhat ignorant supporting base? You would be the first to be singing a different tune if “shill for big oil” was forced out of the media lexicon by use of the legal system. This is all likely nonsense to a degree Mark Steyn’s expense but you should think about the sort of world where left-wing arbitrators of speech would have the world go. Climate science and “consensus” were certainly the canary-in-the-coal mine on that point. Just as the idiotic “Citizens United” whining or “Fairness Doctrine” indicate as well. Climate dissent is a thought crime in modern leftist politics, so much so Dr. Curry can’t even formally identify it’s political ID directly. Only through allusions and indirectly, how sad is that? That’s the sort of overbearing political correctness you are endorsing by supporting Mann’s claim.
I said “likely to fail” as I have shelves of books detailing how Republics and great states fail. I certainly don’t underestimate the social decline Michael Mann and his ilk (including you) represent. Climate science is exactly indicative of intellectual decline, cronyism, authoritarianism found in declining Western civilization. So is the loss of free speech, it’s hardly a surprise about who is lining up on this board in support of Mann’s efforts. So while Steyn might be victimized further the rest of us witness the abuse and culture supporting it. In the end tyranny will fall into itself and Mann will have his place among the tyrants so listed. You’ve cast your lot Michael.
IANL, but as I understand what has been said by some lawyers about defamation law, it is Mann who has to prove “actual malice” (assuming he is a “public figure” which even he has acknowledged to be the case).
Thus, Mann’s team has to prove that Steyn, CEI, NR each “knew” that a general journalistic allegation of “fraud” as untruthfulness was false.
It is a very very high hurdle for Mann’s side to clear. Ethically, Mann has no case. Legally, I don’t see that Mann can do it, but ofc IANAL.
People who lie all the time are frauds. Mann lies all the time. Mann is a fraud.
Michael said “Which bit of “…the man behind…” is not clear to you?”
That part is clear to me.
Steyn is saying that Michael Mann made a fraudulent graph.
It is the graph which is fraudulent, in Steyn’s statement – not the Mann.
If you call a person a fraud you imply that everything they do or say (or write) is fraudulent. If you call one act (the graph) by a person fraudulent you are rather limiting your accusation of fraudulent to the specific item listed.
You attempt to conflate the fraudulent graph with Mann is a fraud is mistaken.
Calling someone a fraud could well be defamation. However, calling someone’s graph fraudulent (and providing numerous reasons to back up that opinion as truth) is merely opinion and protected by the first amendment.
The tactic of turning Steyn’s statement from merely opinion into an actionable accusation of calling a person a fraud will not work in the lawsuit.
Steyn and Simberg will win – it is only a matter of when. On appeal? On summary judgement or after a full trial?
The fact that the hockey stick graph fails to show the divergence (the proxy going down instead of up) makes it propaganda and attempts to mislead. That is one of the many many reasons why it is fraudulent – and why the truth is a valid affirmative defense.
Truth is a defense (and Steyn’s statement is true) and the statement is clearly protected opinion. So the outcome of the trail is a foregone conclusion in my opinion.
But I am enjoying the trial and have lots of popcorn – so let the games continue!
How does a career get advanced without someone acting?
It seems to me that we are all engaging in some serious fly f…. or what the French so poetically call mental masturbation.
Demonstrate to the court the realities of “hide the decline” ask McIntyre and JeanS to testify and educate the judge/jury on how Mann did it and with what intent, overlay this with a demonstrably similar case in corporate accounting that has gone before the courts and lead to a conviction, and you have all you need to demonstrate fraud.
Because if Mann had done what he did in a corporate setting, he would have wound up behind bars a long time ago. Only in climate “science”…
Seems to me what you’re doing here is breaking down the definition of “fraud” by context. In the “scientific or professional context,” Mann’s behavior wasn’t “fraud”.
In a financial context, what Mann and his co-conspirators did was clearly (per McSteve) tantamount to “fraud”.
In terms of “interfac[ing] with society regarding their research”? AFAIK there is no traditional framing of this context, but the need is obvious. Was the CIA management guilty of “fraud” (in collusion, hopefully tacit, with Bush) in their mis-representation of WMD facts? I would say “yes”.
The situations are clearly not entirely parallel, but there are similarities. CIA management was well aware that the facts available to them didn’t really support the conclusions publicly stated by administration spokesmen, and their formal reports (AFAIK) were at least slanted to facilitate that misrepresentation.
The IPCC reports, while not completely parallel, are offered, supposedly, as policy advice to governments, but like the CIA reports, like all public policy advice has, IMO, at least two aspects:
• The actual influence on decisions by government and bureaucratic decision-makers, and…
• Their use in justifying/rationalizing those decisions to the public, and/or other stakeholders.
It’s in the latter aspect especially, with its parallels to the financial context, that Mann was guilty of what, in clear and proper metaphor, may be called “fraud”.
I don’t know the exact legalities surrounding use of metaphor in public communications, however from a practical standpoint I would say that a great deal of public communication, especially by journalistic advocates, involves its use, often in a more tenuous context.
Whether or not he meant it that way, Steyn was clearly speaking metaphorically, highlighting the analogy between the public policy advice context and the financial, where Mann’s behavior clearly (per McSteve) would have been “fraud” within the legal definition.
I would see here (as I often do) a broader conflict of which this (the Steyn trial) is one battle: nailing down the functional definition of “fraud’ within the “public policy advice context”. The entire thrust of Mann’s suit, from this perspective, is an attempt to beg the question: to start from the assumption that Mann’s behavior wasn’t “fraud” in that context, and thus that Steyn’s use of the term was actionable.
But anybody who’s studied the evolution of languages very much will realise that they change: that a usage that’s purely “metaphorical” in one generation can become a new standard meaning in the next. This is, exactly what is more liable to happen due to Steyn’s use of the metaphor, and this is exactly what those behind Mann and his suit are (IMO) trying to prevent.
Steyn’s use of the term, following McSteve, represents an attempt to influence that evolution. So does Mann’s suit. I would say it certainly isn’t any court’s prerogative to decide how language is going to evolve. If the laws permit any court to usurp this prerogative, they should be changed. Centuries of journalistic tradition allow the use of metaphor in publications that are clearly opinion, among other purposes to influence the evolution of language.
All the foregoing points up the most important point, however: should the language evolve to the point that Mann’s (and others’) behavior would actually constitute “fraud” in the “public policy advice context?” As a recognized dictionary definition of the word, rather than the opinion communicated by metaphor that Steyn’s usage represents?
Desperate spinning.
Desperate would-be totalitarian instincts Michael. This is just more left-wing speech encroachment which is a cultural deficiency among your group.
Meaning you didn’t understand what I said.
I understood it, it’s just very……strained.
If it goes to trial in front a jury and this is the defence, Steyn is in trouble.
Michael may be right – judicial political bias and correctness may very well trump justice, leaving Steyn in trouble.
Michael should read the ACLU amicus brief. It cites lots of precedent that you can use words like “fraud” in complete safety if they are in the context of a political dispute or even a heated scientific dispute.
“Fraud is exceedingly subtle in its nature. There are infinite means by which it can be accomplished. In its conception human ingenuity is limitless in its capabilities. … It may be perpetrated by willful misrepresentations made by one person to another, with a design to mislead and which do actually mislead another. It may be perpetrated by signs and tricks, and even silence may in some instances amount to fraud.”
Wood v. Cincinnati Safe & Lock Co., 96 Ga. 120, 123-24, 22 S.E. 909 (1895).
“Suppression of a material fact which a party is under an obligation to communicate constitutes fraud. The obligation to communicate may arise from the confidential relations of the parties or from the particular circumstances of the case.” O.C.G.A. § 23-2-53.
“There is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. … It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty — a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it; other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked — to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can — if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong — to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it.”
Richard Feynman, Cargo Cult Science lecture. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman
Observation Michael Mann’s paleo-analysis and Curry/Khvorostyanov’s quantum-analysis alike fail Feynman’s directive “details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given.”
Corollary I The word “fraudulent” applies to neither Mann’s nor Curry/Khvorostyanov’s analysis, or alternatively to both.
FOMD’s View Assertions of “fraud”, as advanced by the Competitive Enterprise Institute/Mark Steyn, are just plain toxic and serve solely to *POLLUTE* rational public discourse.
Corollary II Both the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Mark Steyn owe a sincere apology and a retraction to the public at least — and arguably owe an apology and a retraction to Michael Mann too — that acknowledges the gross pollution by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Mark Steyn of rational public discourse.
That’s obvious to *EVERYONE*, eh Climate Etc readers?
False parallel.
Fanny Boy, with each of your obsequious praises of Piltdown Mann, your credibility sinks further and further. Surely you must realize he is a narcissistic, ego-maniacal, data-massaging runt who has tarnished not only climate science, but all science.
In the immortal riposte of AK, “You wish!” :)
Conclusion What’s good for the gander (Mann) is good for the goose (Curry/Khvorostyanov)!
And what’s *GOOD* would be a cessation from, and retraction of, the egregiously toxic rhetoric of “fraud” that CEI/Steyn have so irresponsibly promulgated.
That’s ordinary civic common-sense, eh Climate Etc readers?
LOL … if narcissists, egotists, data-massagers, and runts (?) were strictly purged from all professions … then there would be considerably fewer practicing scientists, physicians, and lawyers … and no pundits or politicians AT ALL!
Historical Note The renowned astronomer Caroline Herschel was only 4’3″ tall (1.30 meters) … surely a “runt”, eh Bob?
Conclusion Bob’s juvenile critique of Michael Mann (and by implication Caroline Herschel) is comparably nugatory to Mark Steyn’s!
The definition of “scientific fraud” given above is too narrow because it does not allow for the full scope of human ingenuity and rascality in perpetrating frauds. The legal quotes show the law adopts a broader view of what constitutes fraud, in order to accommodate the infinite variety of means by which it can be accomplished. The law is used to dealing with bad actors. There is no special rule for “science” – fraud is fraud.
Silence when there is duty to speak. The Feynman quote expresses that duty in the field of science. It does not have the force of law in itself, but it does express the customs of the field and is thus a circumstance that imposed a duty not to mislead by any method, whether by exceedingly subtle stratagems, suppression of material facts, or affirmatively false statements. The importance of the issue for public policy is another circumstances giving rise to the duty to disclose material facts and not mislead by omission.
The Mike’s Nature Trick/Hide the Decline email is direct evidence of intent to mislead by omitting and concealing material facts, to the reconstructions appear more valid than they would if the decline were frankly shown. This direct evidence of intent to deceive was confirmed by conduct in conformity with the scheme there described – in graphs presented in TAR, WMO 1999 and AR4. The scheme did in fact mislead as even sophisticated scientist consumers of those reports were mislead, as our host stated above. There is a great deal more evidence of intent to suppress material facts, suppress criticism, etc. Mann is hopelessly entangled in these schemes.
One cannot expect Mann or his partisans to agree with this view of the evidence, but that is not the test. There is certainly evidence of (1) intent to mislead by (2) suppression of a material fact which a party is under an obligation to communicate and (3) that people were in fact mislead. That is enough to permit a reasonable person to conclude there was a fraud, even if the perp vehemently denies it.
“That’s obvious to *EVERYONE*, eh Climate Etc readers?”
WRONG, FOMT, your blatherings are not “obvious to everyone” here, thus you continue to spout false assertions about what “everyone” here thinks.
Such assertions are so obviously false that your purported honesty and good will have been disproved repeatedly.
Since this has been pointed out to you many times, your feeble attempts at “rational public discourse” are not merely irrational but fraudulent, i.e., performed repeatedly with malice aforethought.
a fan of *MORE* discourse: Observation Michael Mann’s paleo-analysis and Curry/Khvorostyanov’s quantum-analysis alike fail Feynman’s directive “details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given.”
Corollary I The word “fraudulent” applies to neither Mann’s nor Curry/Khvorostyanov’s analysis, or alternatively to both.
That is a bizarre pairing, not least because K&C was not supported by the UN for policy purposes, but this case will not depend on Feynman’s directive. It will depend on US laws, precedents, careful reading of what exactly was written and had been written already in the public domain.
What is “Feynman”, a US Supreme Court ruling?
FOMD aka Smarmy,
What quantum analysis are you talking about? In what publication?
AFOMD,
More irrelevant and misleading analogies, eh, readers?
If you accuse Mann and Curry of fraud, only one throws a tantrum and plays the fraudulent Nobel Prize card. Notice the claim of Nobel status accorded to himself by the Mann who would be worshipped. Fraud by misdirection? By silence? Maybe he misspoke?
Guess which one, eh, Climate Etc readers?
Who really cares, apart from our own precious petal, the oh-so-easily wounded WonderMann.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Fernando Leanme – Feynman was a brilliant scientist who would have made many of the denialists/alarmists here look like what they are – not very bright spoiled children.
Quinn the Eskimo: Wood v. Cincinnati Safe & Lock Co., 96 Ga. 120, 123-24, 22 S.E. 909 (1895).
Thank you for quoting court decisions. I think that they will prove influential in deciding the outcome.
Quinn the Eskimo, when does “reckless disregard for truth” come into play? Ever?
It’s an element of the defamation claim that the Plaintiff has to prove. Plaintiff has to show defendants knew their statements were false or that they made the statements with reckless disregard for their truth or falsity. There’s layers of defenses before you get down to that, but if you eventually get down to evaluating the defendants’ state of mind with respect to truth or falsity, they would say “we reasonably believed it was true.” The test on the motion to dismiss under the anti-slapp statute is abstracted from all of that, and asks whether the plaintiff has a substantial likelihood of prevailing. Mann explicitly relies on the fake exonerations to say no one could reasonably believe his research was fraudulent. Upon examination, however, no one could reasonably believe he was actually exonerated by any of those investigations.
In this case it’s good to understand the scope of what can constitute fraud, because the narrower the definition of fraud, the harder it is to reasonably conclude that fraud was committed. And vice versa.
Since “fraud is exceedingly subtle in its nature” and since “there are infinite means by which it can be accomplished,” saying there was no fraud because the HS was merely misleading for omitting material facts that should have been disclosed to not be misleading is not a defense but is instead an explanation that it was actually fraudulent concealment.
Fraud by concealment where there is a duty to speak and fraud by affirmative misrepresentation are both fraud in the end.
And if you need to find an affirmative misrepresentation, a reasonable person could find that replacing downward trending proxy data with upward trending instrumental data to “hide the decline” and make the reconstruction appear more skillful than it really is, without fully and fairly disclosing then and there what was done, was sufficient to show an affirmative misrepresentation.
Quinn the Eskimo, thank you.
Steyn, call Quinn!
How about the twin issues of false precision and certainty? The whole point of the IPCC “climate science” is that it was couched in salesman-type certainty rather than in scientifically appropriate epistemic caution. It was essentially a public communications exercise shouting “head for the hills” rather than a sober scientific assessment. This brings it out of the domain of scientific discourse and into the domain of popular, public speech. And in this latter sense, calling something like the hockey stick a fraud is appropriate opinion and, therefore, speech.
IOW, it can be fraudulent as a public communications tool without constituting an act of actual scientific fraud.
Ball – thank you
comments like this are why I read CE
IMHO IPCC’s prime directive is politics and policy, “epistemic caution” must go to the back of the bus
Ball: +1 The original WMO hockey stock was an advertising gimmick, abetted by Mann.
Hockey Stick
> hockey stock
Did you mean hokey schlock?
It can be both colloquial and legal meanings). mR found WMO 99 met the latter meaning. That is why Mann’ s response said he bore no responsibility for it, when both the credits on WMO99 page 2 and Mann’s present CV say he did. The CV thing is real bad both for Mann and his attorneys under DC Civil procedure Rule 11 concerning the pleadings. Real, real bad.
Rud Istvan: The CV thing is real bad both for Mann and his attorneys under DC Civil procedure Rule 11 concerning the pleadings. Real, real bad.
Could you quote the relevant text?
Mathew,
McIntyre has a post on it.
To augment my Climate Audit posts, DC has its own rules of Civil Procedure (which closely follow the federal ones that all 1L students must study for a full year). Rule 11 says a court pleading like the complaint, amended complaint, and appellate response to defendants response) asserting any fact (not yet in evidence in court) must be backed up by the pleading ‘officer of the court’s (read attorney) personal knowledge that such fact is also supported by ‘provable evidence.’ (I am simplifying much the rules of evidence, full year 2L, here.) Bottom line, judges do not take kindly to attorneys lying on behalf of their clients. Common sense.
Mann lied, at least to his attorneys, and at least they did not check him out in passing those on in appellate court pleadings, since the proven facts in the above post are the opposite of what his response brief asserted! That is a REAL BIG nono in any US court. Let alone at the appellate level. Not just grounds for attorney sanction, is grounds for disbarment (meaning you are no longer an officer of the court, cannot practice law, and never will again.)
It will be fun to see how Mann and his lawyers try to jump off this sinking ship. There was a rat analogy in my previous sentence somewhere, although nowhere expressed….
Fraud takes on whatever meaning it has in context, not the dictionary definition or the legal definition.
In good prose, a couple of meanings will be active at once, played off against each other into a doctrine.
Mann didn’t like the doctrine.
People who play fast and loose with the data are impostors, would be the Steyn doctrine, both covered under fraud’s range of meaning.
Mr. Hardin has got it right.
def. fraud=noun: piece of trickery , trick (as in Mike’s Nature trick)
Case closed.
I don’t know diddley about the legal aspects of Mann vs. Steyn — its just not that interesting to me. What is of interest is the “Hockey Stick” — where general opinion seems to conclude that while some of Mann’s “methods” were suspect, the overall representation of the Hockey Stick is still valid.
But in the Culture Wars on AGW, terms like fraud, junk science, hoax, etc. are routinely made by many Politicians and Talking Heads to make their case that AGW is a “liberal conspiracy theory” and point to Mann and Climategate as prime Exhibits A and B.
I have a question really directed to Dr. Curry and Mosher (who I have a high degree of confidence in) — Could you provide a link (no explanation by you is asked as I know you are busy) to a site/study which you feel “objectively” shows CO2 ppm levels over time/history. Thanks.
“general opinion seems to conclude”
Stephen,
This is supposed to be science. General Opinion Seems does not meet the standard. This is the crux of the issue- some people trying to pass off squiggly lines as science, when they are just someone’s opinion.
Andrew
A fan:
Re the emboldened part: Only if you’re popping acid at the time.
Modern reconstructions do not resemble a hockey stick. MBH 98 does, but is clearly not consistent with more modern reconstructions (including Mann 2008 EIV, which he flags as being the most reliable reconstruction from that paper).
A hockey stick has two parts, a blade and a straight handle. Modern reconstructions do not have a straight handle and should not be properly described as “hockey sticks.”
Do you mean paleo time-scales (that plainly exhibit Milankovitch cycles)?
Or do you mean historical time-scales (that plainly exhibit a lengthening Mann-style hockey-stick blade)?
Conclusion Multiple lines of evidence establish the reality of lengthening CO2 hockey-stick blades *AND* lengthening climate-change hockey-stick blades.
See my comment above. I managed to put it in the wrong subthread.
Claim by Carrick, evidence by FOMD!
The Past Thousand Years Looks like a Mann-style hockey-stick blade.
The Past Million Years Looks like Milankovitch cycles.
That’s how *MOST* climate-scientists see it (especially young ones!) … because the evidence is mighty strong … and year-by-year gets even stronger … eh Climate Etc readers?
all forcings over time
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_Chapter08_FINAL.pdf
What a “fraudulent” statement, ha ha.
I think it is important to use the term “forcing estimates” here. Unless you are implying there are reliable global observations behind these numbers.
The fact that many of these forcings come from models is not a minor point, and is part of the circular reasoning charge that the only way models can resolve recent warming is through AGW, but this is based on historical forcings which came from…models. The specter of confirmation bias becomes stronger when modeling is involved.
Some forcing estimates are better than others of course, and we all know that aerosols are the whipping boy of forcings.
One would ask the question, what happens if these forcing estimates were materially incorrect? One thing that would happen is prediction skill would likely be poor.
go soak your head
Steven Mosher,
You wrote –
“go soak your head”.
Is this supposed to be an insult? It seems a little lame, but maybe your intent was to appear childish.
Could you please provide a little more detail as to your thought processes in the this regard? Is this possibly the final epithet from the Book of Warm, to be reverted to when all attempts to create the new State of Warm fall on deaf ears?
I wonder, even if the world may not.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Tom Scharf, Jim2, Mike Flynn, Carrick, Matthew R Marler, and Others — I have a question. Do you believe there is ANY Study that represents (using best available science) long term historical estimates of CO2 ppm levels?
Stephen Segrest: Do you believe there is ANY Study that represents (using best available science) long term historical estimates of CO2 ppm levels?
Yes.
I expect you have some refinements to “represents”, “best”, “available”, “science”, “long term”, “historical”, and “estimates” to make the answer “no”. For example, you might want 3 significant figures for the year 125 BC; that is not “available”.
Matthew R Marler — What is/are the Study/ Studies?
Steven Segrest,
You wrote –
“Tom Scharf, Jim2, Mike Flynn, Carrick, Matthew R Marler, and Others — I have a question. Do you believe there is ANY Study that represents (using best available science) long term historical estimates of CO2 ppm levels?”
My short answer is yes, but with the proviso that such studies may well be the febrile imaginings of Warmists who redefine science as they go.
I’m not really really sure if the term best science quite fits with the term historical estimates. I’m reasonably certain that the best available science assures me that the Earth’s surface cooled from white heat to what it is now.
Whether that is because of, or in spite of CO2, I have only opinion. I believe CO2 of any concentration was unable to stop the cooling which obviously occurred.
A lack of experimental verification of the rather odd hypothesis that one can increase the temperature of an object by surrounding it with CO2, puts climatology right up there alongside phrenology.
I must admit in phrenological terms, I have an extremely well developed bump of comparative sagacity, so maybe there is something to phrenology after all, unlike climatology, which is purely and simply the endless recalculation of the average of weather.
If you need answers to any any other scientific questions, please let me know.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Stephen Segrest: Matthew R Marler — What is/are the Study/ Studies?
First define the terms that I put in quotes. Every study can be criticized against some ad hoc standard.
Matthew Marler and Mike Flynn (and Others): Using whatever definition you believe of what “objective” or “best available science” should mean — what is/are the study/studies that you believe are a good representation of the long-term historical estimates of CO2 ppm?
Stephen Segrest,
You wrote –
“Matthew Marler and Mike Flynn (and Others): Using whatever definition you believe of what “objective” or “best available science” should mean — what is/are the study/studies that you believe are a good representation of the long-term historical estimates of CO2 ppm?”
Using my definitions, there are no good representations of long term historical estimates . . .
I leave estimates of history to Warmists, and people like Steven Mosher. I am sure you will find so called studies supporting whatever nonsense Warmists wish to promote. Whether you believe any of it to be factual or useful may well depend on your devotion to the Warmist religion.
Your query seems a bit vague to me, but then I’m a little vague from time to time, so it’s probably appropriate.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
From the article:
…
Record Greenhouse Gas Levels Impact Atmosphere and Oceans
Carbon Dioxide Concentration Surges
Geneva, 9 September 2014 (WMO) – The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a new record high in 2013, propelled by a surge in levels of carbon dioxide. This is according to the World Meteorological Organization’s annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, which injected even greater urgency into the need for concerted international action against accelerating and potentially devastating climate change.
The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin showed that between 1990 and 2013 there was a 34% increase in radiative forcing – the warming effect on our climate – because of long-lived greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide.
In 2013, concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 142% of the pre-industrial era (1750), and of methane and nitrous oxide 253% and 121% respectively.
The observations from WMO’s Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) network showed that CO2 levels increased more between 2012 and 2013 than during any other year since 1984. Preliminary data indicated that this was possibly related to reduced CO2 uptake by the earth’s biosphere in addition to the steadily increasing CO2 emissions.
…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/09/study-shows-record-high-increases-for-atmospheric-co2-in-2013-but-theres-still-no-warming/
Stephen: “the overall representation of the Hockey Stick is still valid.” The hockey stick was a representation of false advertising and was therefore not a valid representative of anything.
Stephen Segrest: where general opinion seems to conclude that while some of Mann’s “methods” were suspect, the overall representation of the Hockey Stick is still valid.
So what? Overall, general opinion is not that clear on the distinction between ethanol and methanol. This case will be decided by careful reading of all details.
Stephen Segrest: where general opinion seems to conclude that while some of Mann’s “methods” were suspect, the overall representation of the Hockey Stick is still valid.
further to my earlier point, I expect the writings of Stephen McIntyre (some on his blog, some in peer-reviewed journals) to carry more weight than “general opinion”.
Making a case for fraud requires the establishment of scienter
Steyn was rude, and thoughtfully and deliberately so.
He could have been better mannered.
Fraud requires dishonesty and intent.
and cannot be proved or disproved scientifically alone.
Prof Mann’s intent would be better shown in discussion with his critics rather than silencing them.
Truth in the work should be able to speak for itself.
The part that likely got the ball rolling was the comparison to a child molester. Unfortunately this reprehensible behavior on Steyn’s part is protected free speech, but describing Mann’s curve as “fraudulent” may not be.
Steyn could have avoided comparing Mann to a convicted child molester.
Steyn’s publisher NRO could have censored Steyn for making the comparison.
Steyn could have apologized when given the opportunity to do so. So could his publisher.
Placing this entirely on Mann’s shoulders is not fair. He does have the right to defend himself from scurrilous charges, even if he himself frequently makes them of other people.
Carrick – Steyn didn’t call Mann a child molester. That pretty much negates your comment. There was nothing for which to apologize.
From the article:
…
Steyn quoted a passage in which Simberg had stated, “Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.” Distancing himself from the Sandusky analogy, Steyn averred that he was “not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr. Simberg does.” “But,” Steyn continued, “he has a point.” After all, “Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change ‘hockey-stick’ graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus.” (This “tree-ring” remark refers to Mann’s reliance on controversial “proxy” data to gauge historical temperatures — about which more below.)
…
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/376574/climate-inquisitor-charles-c-w-cooke
yeah, you’ve been mislead by the climate campaigners again.
Steyn didn’t do that. He quoted the CEI doing that and wrote that he himself wouldn’t stretch the metaphor that far.
Steyn (and the CEI) were noting that Penn State has a history of “exonerating” no matter what the evidence. And he said the hockey stick was a “fr@dulent graph”.
Here is the post that launched the lawsuit (yes, it’s still live): http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/309442/football-and-hockey-mark-steyn
Jim2, read more carefully next time.
I never said Steyn called Mann a child molester. I said Steyn compared him to one:
“Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science…”
To follow up:
Why is that quoted passage in Steyn’s commentary if not for the purpose of making some sort of comparison?
It certainly didn’t get there by an accidental copy and paste. There was a obviously deliberate editorial intent on Steyn’s part to include it.
How could such an inclusion not inevitably evoke a comparison of Mann to Sandusky for anybody reading the text?
Carrick, is it defamation to metaphorically compare someone to a child molester? Suppose I said that someone looks like the child molester Jerry Sandusky? Is that defamation? Steyn plainly did not accuse Mann of molesting children. He did not accuse Mann of committing any crime. Fraud is trickery. Mike’s Nature trick.
Carrick, “There was a obviously deliberate editorial intent on Steyn’s part to include it.”
And it improved the impact of the article. It was noteworthy. So are you implying that nothing controversial be allowed in opinion articles? Perhaps that is why the ACLU has sided with Steyn?
Don is the Hitler of Climate Etc.*
* of course, I’m not actually comparing Don to a mass murderer. The fact that Hitler was a mass murderer isn’t relevant to my comparison. I only mean that both Don and Hitler can be characterized by forceful personalities..
Don Monfort:
Probably no (it does not result in an actionable lawsuit). I don’t expect the fraudulent=libel charge to hold up in court. It shouldn’t. But if it does it damages all of our civil liberties.s
My point was a bit finer, which I’ll take the time to make:
It is not professional behavior on Steyn’s part to have made the comparison. In my opinion this comparison crosses over the line of acceptable journalistic behavior.
We need to have some minimum standards for public discourse, otherwise all political arguments will devolve into name calling squabbles.
It was an obviously offensive comparison to make, and it is fair for somebody to ask that the comparison be withdrawn.
Given the opportunity, Steyn should have apologized for making the comparison, and as a journalist with some standing, should have known better than to have made it.
Instead he and his publisher “doubled down” in their response, leading inevitably to the situation we have today.
Cap’t Dallas—does my response to Don answer your question?
Carrick – Of course, the fact that Steyn referenced the Sandusky comment, which BTW WAS made by a third party, did focus the attention of the reader on the comparison. But the gist of the comment was to highlight Penn State’s states complicity in shoving inconvenient facts under the rug. Kind of like the NFL did with Ray Rice.
==> “But if it does it damages all of our civil liberties”
Indeed. How the court rules on one case, based on somewhat ambiguous interpretations of meaning and intent, will damage all of our civil liberties. Our judicial system will be in shambles. Might as well use the Bill of Rights to line bird cages.
If the court rules in Mann’s favor, civil liberties are pretty much a done deal. The reversal of the enlightenment will be complete. We may as well all go back to living in caves.
Well. Either that, or partisans are drama-queening the significance of one court case because, well, they want to leverage the case to fight battles in the climate wars.
Remote possibility I know, but theoretically possible, eh?
Carrick, Steyn is not a journalist. He is a commentator. Like Howard Stern. Steyn was commentating on a public figure. This is clearly a SLAPP case. Mann is a crybaby and serial defamer himself. I think we are in basic agreement on this story.
And thanks to joshie the runt for his illustration of my point.
Joshua,
“If the court rules in Mann’s favor, civil liberties are pretty much a done deal.”
Nah. Most likely the case will be finally decided in favor of the defendants, if not by the DC courts, then eventually upon appeal to federal courts. I think that the longer the case drags on, the more likely there will be other SLAPP cases, with careful venue shopping.
Don
Imo you are incorrect to think this is a SLAPP case. Mann does not appear to be trying to silence anyone from pointing out he did bad science, but he is wanting to stop people from calling him a fraud unless/until they can demonstrate he “intentionally mislead”
Carrick, “Cap’t Dallas—does my response to Don answer your question?”
Yes, in your opinion you have cast a vote that “journalists” should exercise more restrain to avoid printing things you find objectionable. I imagine pretty much everyone finds something objectionable somewhere. Steyn though still has a right to “report” on things he found published even if a bit objectionable to some or most. The only thing Steyn really did was say that Mann’s “hockey stick” was fraudulent without the already implied IMO. Mann seems to have felt that there was a conspiracy of sorts so he is suing the lot instead of considering the individuals.
Mann also “felt” that the old Penn State versus State Pen joke was over the top and I doubt he cares much for the Minnesotans for Global Warming videos that include his likeness. Like it or not he has become a celebrity and is spending others people’s money trying to strike back against everyone that says anything he finds objectionable. Isn’t that just special?
Perhaps the appropriate word is “association” rather than “comparison” — I *wish* that the whole spectacle of mentioning Sandusky had never occurred. I think that Simberg and Steyn quoting Simberg did not “compare” Mann to Sandusky, but the whole “molesting data” rather than perhaps “massaging” data or “playing fast and loose” with data has been a wasted of the time and energies of too many people.
(if Steyn had said “massaging” data would he then be accused of comparing Mann to the entire practice of “massage therapy”?? Every masseuse will be outraged….)
The good thing about these legal cases is that Mann is forced to defend his practices, to some extent, and that he runs a serious risk of losing in a court of law.
Steve Fitzpatrick –
==> “Nah. Most likely the case will be finally decided in favor of the defendants, if not by the DC courts, then eventually upon appeal to federal courts. I think that the longer the case drags on, the more likely there will be other SLAPP cases, with careful venue shopping.”
I am certainly not of the belief that court rulings are not influenced by the political/world views of the justices involved. One of my favorite examples of motivated reasoning is Bush v. Gore, where members on each ideological side of SCOTUS basically reversed their previously stated philosophies on States’ Rights to rule in a highly politicized case
But I think that your evaluation of “those lib judges in D.C. will rule for Mann because they’re libz” (paraphrasing) is a bit simplistic. It’s not clear, actually, how this case might break out along political lines for people who aren’t highly identified with the climate wars aspect of the case. As an example, look at the ACLU position – and how “conservatives” are turning themselves into pretzels to rationalize why they are supporting the ACLU.
But no matter the outcome, the results of this case will help to set precedent, and likely provide information about how different venues are likely to view the issues involved. Not a bad thing, in the end, IMO – no matter which way the court rules.
All the hand-wringing about the societal-changing outcomes of this case are merely same ol’ same ol’ in the climate wars, IMO. What’s particularly amusing is how irrelevant it all is w/r/t the science. It’s identity politics all the way down.
Don, generally I’ve seen the profession of journalism broken down into “reporter, analyst and commentator”. Since he earns his living from his commentary, I would say that makes Steyn a professional journalist.
Capt Dallas the question seems to be whether journalistic organizations should try to have some standards of decency, or whether they should devolve back into 19th century yellow journalism. Further there is a business question that organizations like NRO must grapple with, which is whether the costs of doing business when you go about allowing over-the-top derogatory comments to be published via your organization outweighs the putative increase in visibility from making derogatory comments.
My point is that the making of comparisons of this sort does not elevate one to “public hero” (or martyr) status. Nor does it serve the public interest.
I don’t see much to like about this state of affairs.
Carrick, I don’t recall seeing Steyn or anyone else describe Steyn as a reporter, or journalist. Maybe someone has called him a journalist, but he generally known as a commentator. Not a reporter of facts.
Don Monfort, I’ll go with this definition.
Again there are other types of journalists besides reporters of facts.
Steyn’s a political commentator, ergo by widely held definitions within the journalism community, a journalist.
Carrick…does anyone bother to check who wrote what or does everyone get painted with the same brush?
To review: Rand Simberg at the Competitive Enterprise Institute published a blog post in which he made the amusing suggestion that Mann
could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.
Steyn, a friend of mine for many years, cited Simberg’s piece in a post for National Review Online and added a shower of causticities of his own:
Not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr. Simberg does, but he has a point. Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus. And, when the East Anglia emails came out, Penn State felt obliged to “investigate” Professor Mann.…
If an institution is prepared to cover up systemic statutory rape of minors, what won’t it cover up? Whether or not he’s “the Jerry Sandusky of climate change”, he remains the Michael Mann of climate change, in part because his “investigation” by a deeply corrupt administration was a joke.
Neither Simberg nor Steyn was accusing Mann of any crime—the reference to Sandusky was a joke prompted by the fact that Sandusky and Mann were employed by the same university.
Carrick said “It is not professional behavior on Steyn’s part to have made the comparison. In my opinion this comparison crosses over the line of acceptable journalistic behavior.”
Everybody is entitled to their opinion.
I happen to think it was clever and funny – because both Sandusky and Mann were from Penn State and both the subject of whitewash investigations.
While journalism like Steyn’s may coarsen the culture (in your opinion) – it is allowed in the United States (and Canada). Yellow journalism was much tougher on public figures in the 1700’s and 1800’s.
So while I respect your opinion – and understand your wish that all journalists stay on a higher plane of discourse – it is my opinion that Steyn did not defame Mann.
Daniel, I am aware of the history, but I think you need to read through what I said a bit more carefully.
Again, I’m not saying that Steyn called Mann a child molester, I’m saying Steyn made the comparison between Mann and Sandusky. This was done through the inclusion of the text “Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science…”
The decision to include that sentence, written originally by Simberg but irrelevant to the point, certainly does evoke that comparison, even if Steyn then goes on to say “not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers”.
So the comparison is clearly made. Once again:
The cost of preventing a lawsuit that was likely generated by very poor professional judgement on Steyn’s part would have been minimal.
OK, Carrick. If we must call him a journalist let’s call it specifically what it is, so that those who are not so smart don’t think that Steyn holds himself out to be a reporter of fact:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_journalism
What’s relevant is that he is expressing his opinion, not reporting or asserting facts.
RickA:
I don’t think he defamed Mann either. But that doesn’t mean I think what Steyn did was right or within the bounds of appropriate behavior for an journalist.
Don, I agree: Steyn’s role is clearly as a stater of opinion not fact.
The trouble that Steyn could run into is in “the stating of an opinion that happens also to be a statement of fact, which itself is indisputably false.”
The judge ruled that the claim of fraudulent could be interpreted as a statement of fact. I think this is an overly broad interpretation on the judge’s part. But who knows?
I think the bigger problem for Mann here is that the graph in question is obviously wrong (contradicted by more recent measurements including those of Mann 2008). And when you have a result that is wrong, stating an opinion on why it is wrong, seems to me to just be an opinion, not a statement of fact. Even if that opinion is highly negative towards the person who produced the graph.
Carrick: How could such an inclusion not inevitably evoke a comparison of Mann to Sandusky for anybody reading the text?
How? By giving weight to the phrase “except that”. I have always thought that the really insulting part of the comparison was the insult to the PennState committee that “exonerated” each of them through the similar failures of procedure, and weight given to bringing in money and prestige (in both reports.) The committed that exonerated Sandusky was superceded by a federal grand jury. Before too much time passes, I hope that someone at PennState initiates a true investigation of Mann, as they ought to have done first time around.
Joshua,
If the case were between two unknown individuals over what Smith wrote about Jones’ honesty in business dealings, I would agree that virtually all judges would be quite impartial. But Mann V Steyn et al is most certainly NOT that kind of case. It is a conflict about a couple of sharp tongued conservative commentators who publicly dissed a well known and very aggressive green/liberal advocate. I rather suspect all the judges in DC who will make rulings on the case will agree with Mann on most public policy issues, including the need for immediate large reductions in fossil fuel use. I also suspect those judges strongly disagree with Steyn et al on most public policy issues. Same thing with the jury pool; all of which demonstrates wise venue shopping, if nothing else.
WRT the ACLU (and other) amicus briefs: There is surely a lot of nose-holding going on among some of the diverse groups supporting Steyn et al; many of those groups share little common philosophical ground with the defendants. But they all see the case as a threat to the settled law of free speech (Sullivan V NY Times, and other cases), and so a case worth spending time and treasure on. The puzzle to me is that you do not seem to think the case is important, when all those groups clearly do. Perhaps they have a somewhat broader legal perspective than you.
My personal view is that the DC judges are in way over their legal heads. That their rulings to this point have led to rather alarmed legal briefs from a wide range of organizations in favor of the defendants may make them step back and think a bit, but I am guessing they are not going to be swayed. Continuing to beat up on Steyn et al until they are financially forced to “settle” out of court, is just too delicious a prospect for ‘liberal’ judges to bring the case to an end. If the case settles, there is nothing to appeal, and Mann is permanently ‘vindicated’. Look for a series of rulings which severely limit the defendants’ scope of discovery and which add long and costly delays if the case goes to trial. SLAPP at its very worst.
BTW, I agree that Gore V Bush was a clear case of politics influencing judicial rulings. But IMO, so is Mann V Steyn et al.
Carrick:
I agree wholeheartedly. I don’t think I had even heard of Mark Steyn before he wrote that piece, and nothing I’ve seen since has given me any reason to like him. What he said about Michael Mann was a disgrace to journalism. If he wants to write things like that, he should label himself a pundit, and even then, he should be mocked and scorned.
The thing I find saddest is I’d forgive Steyn his failures if he was genuinely interested in the truth. I don’t think he is. I assumed he was until I had some the limited interactions with him. Those made me question my assumptions so I read up on more of what he’s written. I was not impressed by what I saw.
I think it is stupid this lawsuit was filed. I think Steyn should win it. And if Steyn was a three time white supremacist felon up on trial, I’d say he deserves good legal representation. That doesn’t mean I’d want to be associated with him.
Carrick said “Even if that opinion is highly negative towards the person who produced the graph.”
Steyn’s opinion was highly negative towards the graph – not the person who produced the graph.
This distinction will turn out to be very important – even though Mann’s Reply attempts to convert the criticism of the graph into criticism of the man (Mann).
Matthew:
When you say “except that” … you are still clear making a comparison. In this case you are saying how they are different instead of how they are the same.
Unless you can come up with a model where the text appeared without Steyn’s knowledge, I don’t think it’s fair to try and claim some comparison between Mann and Sandusky was not made.
Nor is it really fair to say Steyn was trying to defend Mann with the comparison that was made.
Nor is it really fair to say it was even necessary.
It was a cheap shot made by a writer with a record of making cheap shots.
I’m sure it entertained his intended audience and made angry off the demographic he wanted to make angry.
But it was unnecessary, and when called upon to rectify the situation, you can’t deny he doubled down. (On stupidity IMO.)
Carrick,
I think Mann is a remarkably disagreeable fellow who’s own public criticism of other scientists is consistently “no quarter given”. His public critiques of Judith and other scientists are so far beyond the pale that it beggars belief (A department chair with hundreds of publications is a “serial misinformer”? Really?). You may have higher expectations for opinion journalists like Steyn; I don’t. But I do I have higher expectations for scientists like Mann; it is hard for me to find even a shred of sympathy for someone so hypocritical as Mann.
Steve, I’m sympathetic on that point. There needs to be limits, otherwise everything turns into a food throwing contest.
Let’s quote mikey correctly:”On the other hand, serial climate disinformer Judith Curry (Georgia Tech) announced “Consensus distorts the climate picture.”
He called Judith a “serial disinformer”. And somewhere else, “anti-science”. That’s libel per se. Sue that little sucker, Judith. We will all contribute, except for the runts.
Steve Fitzpatrick –
==> “The puzzle to me is that you do not seem to think the case is important, when all those groups clearly do. Perhaps they have a somewhat broader legal perspective than you.”
I will admit that I have a bit of a reflexive reaction when I see all such dramatization from within the climate war zone – to go the other way.
But first, it’s only one case.
Second, I can see merits on both sides – so I don’t think that this case is likely to have some huge impact on our freedom of speech either way. Life will go on unchanged except in perhaps some rather specific and arcane circumstances.
Joshua,
Sullivan V NY Times was only one case.
Yes, the Union of the United States will survive Mann V Steyn et al, no matter its outcome. But whether the case enhances or diminishes personal liberty is not, I think, something so easy to discount. Lots of people and organizations seem to appreciate the importance of this case more than you do.
As someone who seems to care about these things, I imagined you would consider Mann’s arguments too corrosive to public discourse to merit support; honestly, I am surprised.
For me, the issue is a simple one: Mann has chosen to insert himself into a contentious political issue, and has chosen in the process to criticize other scientists (like our hostess) in terms at least as derrogatory as what he finds unacceptable from Steyn et al. This is someone who applies a very different standard of behavior for others than for himself; I think utter hypocrisy is the only suitable description. You may coutinance that, but I cannot.
Carrick, my preferred newspapers are The Australian and The Times, which maintain very high journalistic standards. Most media consumers prefer more downmarket and racy sources, and would not share your view on Steyn. That said, I enjoy and admire Steyn, his work on overturning anti-freedom of speech legislation in Canada was excellent, check out video of some of the hearings in which he was involved. I would not express myself in the way Steyn does, but have no problem with him choosing his own style.
Good comments (among many) by Matt Marler @ 3.12 & Steve Fitz @ 3.17.
Carrick:But it was unnecessary, and when called upon to rectify the situation, you can’t deny he doubled down.
When Steyn doubled down, he had a lot of direct quotes by Mann and others in his support.
Reference Joshua’s comment:
“Second, I can see merits on both sides – so I don’t think that this case is likely to have some huge impact on our freedom of speech either way. Life will go on unchanged except in perhaps some rather specific and arcane circumstances.”
Not too long ago I was invited to a debate in a blog, as it turned out the participants became very defensive when I mentioned Dr. Muller’s review of the Mann paleo climate graph. As the exchange evolved I felt I was threatened with legal action (something about having an adverse impact on Mann’s career which could presumably land me in hot water).
I’m not a lawyer but I have enough knowledge of American tendencies to resolve things via law suits that I called a friend who is a judge here in Spain. He mentioned that under Spanish law what I was writing was protected, but to be careful because Americans were like sharks in this field. Eventually I received assurance from US sources that the threat was empty, and was also told the use of these threats was common.
I do notice many of you are either Americans or have a background in English law, but this doesn’t apply to others. My conclusion is that a high profile case like this does have a tendency to silence people (maybe it doesn’t silence US residents, but it is likely the (empty) threat silences those elsewhere who don’t understand the law and have money to be siphoned by frivolous law suits).
Interestingly, my criticism of Mann is mostly based on the “False Hope” SciAm article, which I felt was written in a very confusing manner. I also like to criticize the Nature publishing house (it owns Sci Am). During that discussion I brought up “false hope” and my comments were mostly ignored. This told me I was facing a group of individuals primed to defend Mann fiercely – but they were only prepared to defend the “hockey stick”.
I thought that might trip the filter. I’ll see if I can find the offending word:
Steve Fitzpatrick –
==> “Sullivan V NY Times was only one case”
I don’t think that this case is likely to have the broad social implications that did Sullivan V. NY Times. I could be wrong, of course. But when I look at the context, I see this case as being about whether or not a vituperative, M*slim/liberal-baiting political commentator has libeled someone. I don’t think the depth of the context is parallel to Sullivan V. NY Times.
==> “Yes, the Union of the United States will survive Mann V Steyn et al, no matter its outcome. But whether the case enhances or diminishes personal liberty is not, I think, something so easy to discount. Lots of people and organizations seem to appreciate the importance of this case more than you do.
If the court rules Steyn guilty of libel – what do you think the significant implications might be. I’m not talking in some elegant theoretical sense. What do you think the danger of limitations of real live personal liberty might be? How does determining that comparing someone to a child molester, or throwing the word “fraud” around as did Steyn, will really limit personal liberty? We see all kinds of criticisms of Mann or other scientists occurring constantly. Do you think that a ruling against Steyn on this case will seriously diminish the degree of criticism of Mann or other scientists? Do you think that the WSJ will no longer be able to print articles comparing climate scientists to Lys*nko? Do you think that Lindzen will no longer be able to compare environmentalists to Eug*nicists? Do you think that Judith will no longer be able to complain about “climate McC*rthyism” or Spencer will no longer be able to compare people to N*z*s?
Personally, I don’t think that what Steyn did should be considered a criminal offense, but then again I do think that there it is reasonable to draw lines circumscribing the rights of free speech. Let the lawyers make their cases and the juries (or judges) decide. As the end result of the process, I think that we will be strengthened, no matter the specific outcome. IMO, what I see a great deal is that people on both sides are trying to leverage the case for the purpose of scoring points in the climate wars. Personality politics.
==> “As someone who seems to care about these things, I imagined you would consider Mann’s arguments too corrosive to public discourse to merit support; honestly, I am surprised.”
I don’t “support” Mann’s arguments, but I do see merits on both sides of this case. So I don’t condone Mann’s trib*listic rhetoric any more than I do that of my much beloved “skeptics,” or Judith, for that matter. But I don’t get that animated about any of it. It’s rather typical behavior. I’d like to think it’s behavior most commonly found in junior high school, but it is obviously not exclusive to adolescents.
==> “For me, the issue is a simple one: Mann has chosen to insert himself into a contentious political issue, and has chosen in the process to criticize other scientists (like our hostess) in terms at least as derrogatory as what he finds unacceptable from Steyn et al.
And Steyn has chosen to insert himself into a contentious political issue, and chosen in the process to engage in juvenile and pernicious name-calling to criticize a scientist. This is someone who applies a very different standard of behavior for others than for himself. I think utter hypocrisy is the only suitable description.
But that’s kind of “mother, mother” logic – so let’s look again at that last part.
==> “This is someone who applies a very different standard of behavior for others than for himself; I think utter hypocrisy is the only suitable description….”
I tend to agree…although I’m open to the possibility that within the judicial system, there is a distinction between Mann’s behavior and that of Steyn. But either way, I don’t defend Mann’s level of engagement in the climate wars. Never have. Never will. But I just don’t get all that animated about it. It’s same as it ever was. Such behavior is ubiquitous. So my interest is more on why this form of engagement takes place and perhaps whether anything can be done to elevate how people approach the discourse. Throwing J*ll-O is not the way to get people to stop throwing J*ell-O.
Steve Fitzpatrick –
I tried responding but for some indecipherable reason, the comment got caught in the moderation filter. We’ll see if it gets past Judith’s filter.
nice comment, angech.
Joshua | September 11, 2014 at 11:52 am |
Close to rational Joshua, so you’re in the “good cop” mode for your usual culture today? Libel suits usual don’t change social schisms very much, all sides will likely not get what they want. No emails and science records in discovery, No judgements for green activists being told they’re frauds.
Why don’t take a look at your political culture on the links I provided below? You’re with the wrong side on free-speech about 100% of the time.
You at least demonstrated half a brain that there is really nothing good for the AGW cause in Mann’s tinpot bully tactic of attacking media dissent. Prat-boy and our angry sullen Michael have yet to figure the larger picture out, even if Mann won the case (round one) the political losses would be even greater. The lesson forgotten it seems from the “Monkey Trial” is that Bryan WON THE CASE on merits only to be mocked for all time by his peers (in particular) for doing so. It was later thrown out on technicalities but the symbolism is was especially important in Progressive culture to this day. The atheist/communist/elite spitting from the rural poor and religious left essentially forever.
Mann is a total embarrassment to the new age left trying to keep the meme alive, the longer he’s on the front page the better it is for skeptical dissent. Privately, most of the left understand the baggage as you seem to have picked up on it also. The Hoi Polli of your peers here not so much.
Thanks, Joshua.
I didn’t think Steyn was rude at all.
He was 1. Funny and 2, Slapped an annoying little man with a big mouth upside the head for serious infractions of scientific method and hubris.
How’s that rude?
Judith said “In this context, there is no need for Steyn et al. to ‘prove’ fraud in court; but merely to legitimize a public statement of ‘Mann’s fraudulent hockey stick‘ as not defamatory.”
I agree with this 100%.
This was the point I was making yesterday (off topic in the previous thread – sorry about that).
In addition to arguing that Mann has failed to prove actual malice – Steyn and Simberg can also defend on the grounds that their statement was the truth and/or that it was merely expressing an opinion.
I think the statements will be found to be truthful (Mann did torture and molest data) as well as opinion (in my opinion the hockey stick is fraudulent).
If the case is not dismissed by the appeal – we will have another opportunity to see if the defendant’s win on summary judgement. This would probably be after discovery – which Mann will really not like.
A series of admission requests will be really fun to admit or deny.
A deposition of Mann will have many many opportunities to demonstrate both the truth of the statements alleged to defame – as well as to demonstrate that they are opinion.
This case is weak and Mann deserves to lose.
Mann’s entire reply brief is off point – in that he is trying to turn the statements into an accusation that he is a fraud – rather than what the statements are really opining – which is that his hockey stick graph is fraudulent.
Any graph which tacks on temperature data to a smoothed reconstruction could be seen to be fraudulent (I certainly think it is).
“Any graph which tacks on temperature data to a smoothed reconstruction could be seen to be fraudulent (I certainly think it is).”
Isn’t that only because he failed to say that is what he was doing?
Daniel:
Yes – if Mann had disclosed that he was removing the divergence of his proxy from the temperature record in order to make his graph a better propaganda piece – that would have prevented his graph from being fraudulent.
There are many different hockey stick graphs (some by Mann and some by others) – but they all attempt to hide the decline of the tree-ring proxy data (in many different ways).
Why?
Because if the tree-rings show cooling when it was warming post 1950, some may wonder if they showed warming when it was cooling in the past – some might wonder if tree-rings are a proxy for temperature at all. Some might wonder if it has to do with precipitation amounts, or being at the treeline, or something about a particular type of tree (strip-bark) or some other potential cause.
But it is very clear that Mann and many other IPCC authors did not want to water down the “message” with messy facts which might get in the way of trying to advocate for reduction of fossil fuels usage.
So the Mann hockey stick graph was fraudulent because it was modified to intentionally deceive – and did deceive – it was a piece of propaganda – and is therefore fraudulent.
So yes – it was fraudulent because Mann failed to say what he was doing.
There is watering down underground.
==========================
Ignoring adverse data (cherry picking, hiding the decline, whatever) is part of the definition of data falsification in defining scientific misconduct. Honest error (with absence of malicious intent) can provide an out, which I presume is how the NSF saw the case. It’s pretty clear that adverse data were ignored.
I’ll let others go down the rabbit hole of “fraud” definitions and just focus on the broader political implications of the case which is why the passions actually run high. The modern democratic left in the U.S and constant inclinations to define speech and limit dissent to their authority. It’s really no different than “campaign finance reform” which means limiting speech of opposition or the “Fairness Doctrine” which means orchestrating media messages to their liking.
Mann’s action is another version of the jackboot left on the day shift. We’re suppose to pretend Mann isn’t a committed green activist with all the usual features but instead was some guy buried in meaningful academic research dragged into the public arena. That’s worse then a joke….it’s….FRAUD!
The question in the lawsuit is not whether Mann’s work was fraudulent or scientific misconduct.
The question is whether or not Steyn’s characterization of the hockeystick as fraudulent defamed Mann.
The difference is important. Steyn should be able to state opinions, even controversial ones, without worrying about being sued for statements that are not outrageous, defamatory falsehoods.
I will be surprised if Mann does not win his court case. Imo, use of the term fraud in regards to Mann’s processes/procedures can’t be proven. Unless defendants lawyer’s can show that Mann intended to mislead they will likely loose.
Steyn doesn’t have to prove fraud. Try to catch up.
In your opinion. We will see. Try to stay civil
It’s not my opinion, it’s the law. If you want to express your opinion on the law, you should first familiarize yourself with the law. Or not.
Don
You state something as a fact when it is not.
Read the law, robbie. Read the briefs by the plaintiffs and see if they say anything about the defendant having to prove fraud. If they do, it’s another lie that they have submitted to the court. Read the amicus briefs. Read something for chrissakes, robbie.
Mann has the burden of proof. Defendant’s don’t need to prove anything. Mann can lose by failing to show actual malice. But defendants can also assert that what they said was the truth and/or was an opinion. But Mann has the burden of proof on defamation.
Rick- I do not think Mann has the burden of proof if someone described him as a fraud beyond showing how he was damaged. The defendent would need to be able to demonstrate that what was said was “reasonably accurate”. Imo, this means that they need to demonstrate Mann’s intent to decieve by various actions vs. just doing bad science or statistics.
You really don’t have a clue, robbie. Have you ever been a judge in the D.C. district? Why don’t you do some freaking research, before you contradict people who are familiar with the law and this case.
The ACLU and National Review’s most recent briefs and replies have lots of examples, Rob Starkey of use of hyperbole and the word fraud or fraudulent. Check them out.
those who accuse fraud have the burden of proof
er, accuse ‘libel’ have burdens, unbearable for this spindly mann.
===========
Markus said “those who accuse fraud have the burden of proof.”
True.
However, nobody is suing Mann for fraud.
Instead Mann is suing Steyn and Simberg for defamation.
Mann has the burden of proof on defamation in the DC court:
http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/district-columbia-defamation-law
According to District of Columbia law, defamation claims have four elements:
1. the defendant made a false and defamatory statement concerning the plaintiff;
2. the defendant published the statement without privilege to a third party;
3. the defendant’s fault in publishing the statement amounted to at least negligence; and
4. either the statement was actionable as a matter of law irrespective of special harm or its publication caused the plaintiff special harm.
So Mann has to show that Steyn (for example) made a FALSE and DEFAMATORY statement about Mann. Mann has to show the statement was False. Mann has to show that Steyn’s statement was not true. I hope the burden of proof is clear on this point. Mann has the burden of proving that Steyn’s statement that the hockey stick graph was fraudulent is not true. Beyond that, if Steyn’s statement is an opinion it cannot be defamation.
So Markus – I hope who has the burden of proof is now clear.
Rob Starkey: I will be surprised if Mann does not win his court case. Imo, use of the term fraud in regards to Mann’s processes/procedures can’t be proven.
We all have opinions, don’t we? I think this case will be decided by people who carefully read the briefs and the relevant laws and court decisions (or have those read to them.) There is plenty in the public record to support the use of the term “fraudulent” with regard to the hockey stick. Whether that is sufficient to decide against Mann’s claim of having been defamed by Steyn remains to be decided. My hope is that the decision goes against Mann, but my opinion is that I may be disappointed.
It is clear from context what Steyn meant. He quoted the CEI bit because 1. it is funny and clever and totally in line with so much political snarkiness over the last few hundred years in US, UK, Canada, France, etc., and 2, the CEI piece (though Steyn said he would not have gone so far as to take it into the locker room) clearly said “he tortures and molests data”. Then Steyn went on to call the hockey stick graph “fraudulent” and say he was “master of the TREE-ring circus” (also clever). Taken together it is clear that he is engaging in hyperbole, but more carefully than CEI, that he is implying that he does not agree with the way Mann handled the tree ring data (tortured, molested, circus) and that this is why he considered it fraudulent. Since Steyn is a satirist and tries to be funny, sarcastic, it would be ridiculous to expect him to break it down and explain exactly what he meant by each statement (which I tried to do at least partially). He quoted CEI because he really liked and agreed with the “tortured and molested the data” bit. Why that is not obvious to everyone who reads the article is unclear to me. The whole climate issue has been polarized, politicized, and taken up by activists (on both sides to some extent) so that it clearly falls into the realm of protected speech and Mann is clearly a public figure. It is also clear that much of what Mann says about exoneration is a stretch and that there are plenty of scientists in public and private who have expressed reservation about the hockey stick graph and believe it to be exaggerated or poor science, including many who are firmly in the AGW camp. In addition, Mann feels free to say whatever he wants, not sure if that will affect anything but it could piss off the judge as being hypocritical. That does not mean that a misguided judge or jury may not rule the other way, but I am hopeful. And if it does have to go all the way SCOTUS I am confident they would rule correctly on a free speech issue even though I have not agreed with some of their rulings over the years.
+ 1
Over on Climate Audit, Skiphil said of the Hockey Stick, in reference to a RealClimate article from 2005,”It seems that from MBH to CRU to WMO to IPCC to RealClimate (oversimplified sequence) there was a conscious effort to have a climate crisis “icon” in just the way that Ray P. describes as so useful for public “education.”
I said in response to Skiphil’s observation that regardless of what anyone on RealClimate or on any other climate science blog has to say about the Hockey Stick being just one line of evidence among many for the existence of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), it plays a crucial role in climate science in that it is being universally accepted within the mainstream climate science community as scientific fact for purposes of stating that recent warming is truly unprecedented.
When a mainstream climate scientist points the finger at carbon dioxide as the cause for recent global warming, and then has to defend the validity of the General Circulation Models, that climate scientist has the Hockey Stick to fall back on in saying, “Well, yes, there are problems with the GCMs, as we would expect of anything of this nature which is complicated and which is a work in progress. But, we know for a fact that recent warming is unprecedented in the last 1000 years; and so far, nothing else but the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere offers a credible explanation.”
As an analysis product which serves the needs of the climate science community, the Hockey Stick is the perfect solution to the problem climate scientists face when acknowledging that the CGMs are not producing accurate predictions, but then having to defend the further development of these GCMs by saying, “If it isn’t carbon dioxide, then what else is it?”
In my view, Michael Mann is a canny scientist-businessman who perfectly understands the market niche the Hockey Stick occupies within the Global Warming Industrial Complex. The Hockey Stick is a science analysis product which is brilliantly and exquisitely crafted to reach conclusions which are of indispensable value in promoting AGW to agendized government agencies and to the general public at large, and which at the same time have the look and feel of professionally done science.
Mann’s lawsuit is nothing more than an effort by a canny scientist-businessman to protect his Michael Mann LLC* line of climate science products from the scrutiny of public policy consumer advocates such as Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn.
* LLC — Limited Liability Climatologist
Beta Blocker: Mann’s lawsuit is nothing more than an effort by a canny scientist-businessman to protect his Michael Mann LLC* line of climate science products from the scrutiny of public policy consumer advocates such as Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn.
That’s a clever post.
So if they ask for meta data and code in discovery he can withdraw intact.
+ 1. e-mail it to Steyn.
Beta Blocker,
wonderful comment!
It also resonates well with what Steve M. has said about some of his original interest, comparing statements from Briffa and Mann to dubious practices he had seen in business, stock and mining promotion and manipulation etc.
If anyone here wonders about the “Ray P” reference, it is regarding a quotation from one of the founding gurus of RealClimate, the U. of Chicago’s Ray Pierrehumbert, who discussed in a 2005 comment at RC just how useful the Hockey Stick had been for having a simply “icon” to present to the public, a simplified image and argument to represent more complex issues:
Skiphil, as further background for what I said above, and repeating what I said on CA a few days ago, after eight years of following the debates concerning the scientific validity of the Hockey Stick, I have reached my own conclusion that the Hockey Stick is a contrived analysis product which is brilliantly and exquisitely crafted to reach conclusions which are indispensable in promoting AGW theory to agendized government agencies and to the general public at large.
Having once been a QA auditor in a scientific organization, I can say that on the surface, the Hockey Stick has the look and feel of professionally done science — but only on the surface.
Digging deeper into the Hockey Stick’s nooks and crannies, using the material Steve McIntyre and others have collected over the last eight years, reveals the kinds of data pedigree issues and the kinds of analytical methodology issues which, in their total aggregate, lead me to conclude that the Hockey Stick is most certainly a product of contrived research – contrived in the sense that both the foundational data and the analytical processes have been consciously cherry-picked and integrated in a way which guarantees that only one outcome is possible, a Hockey Stick shape having a long pronounced handle with a short but very strong blade at its tip.
Further, when one examines the analytical approach which has been employed in producing the Hockey Stick, doing so from a strict QA auditing perspective, one eventually comes to realize that the considerable bulk of the analytical approach is actually a facade whose purpose is to give the Hockey Stick the look and feel of Real Science while at the same time having sufficient methodological density and opaqueness so as to discourage someone who reviews the work from digging too deeply into the substance of the analysis. As a former QA auditor working in a scientific organization, there is no other conclusion I can reach when I look at both the weight of the evidence and the substance of the evidence that Steve McIntyre and others have collected.
Why I Love Climate Etc. by Joshua:
In two successive clicks I read, first (from mosher)
==> “People will now debate the meaning. which means of course that steyn couldnt have meant something precise, ”
And next I read this, from AK:
==> “Whether or not he meant it that way, Steyn was clearly speaking metaphorically,…”
And, of course, neither knows what Steyn actually meant, whether he was speaking metaphorically, whether he meant something precise.
But these much beloved “skeptics” don’t let a lack of precise evidence interfere with the process of them formulating absolutely certain opinions…
…and expressing them on a blog whose proprietor is concerned about respecting uncertainty.
Climate Etc. is a work of art and a thing of beauty.
Stop polluting this thread with your sophism.
Which sophism?
Have people been convicted of fraud for “cooking the books”?
They’ve been called bigots for burning them.
It seems Joshua isn’t going to go on the record of endorsing free speech suppression like Michael and Fanboy. He’s going into a Socratic coma for the purpose at hand.
Playing the long game Joshua are we??
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/02/20/free_speech_for_mann_but_not_for_thee_121649.html
Even when a metaphor includes the case represented by its literal meaning, it remains a metaphor.
Anyway, IIRC it was Aristotle, quoted by Pirsig, who pointed out that all language is metaphor, and my own studies of neurology suggest that even neural patterns can be considered metaphors. Or, putting it from a different perspective, even words are represented by patterns of neural activity in the brain that can be called (speaking metaphorically) metaphors.
==> “Even when a metaphor includes the case represented by its literal meaning, it remains a metaphor.”
OK, fair enough. I guess if he used a metaphor, he wasspeaking metaphorically. Point taken. I got a bit carried away there.
What is questionable (despite the assertions of some that it isn’t) is the intent of his metaphor.
Well, as a journalist engaging in advocacy, he was within his rights to accuse Mann of “fraud”, metaphorically in the context of “public policy advice”. As such, it would represent an effort to mould public opinion, as demonstrated by language changes.
Whether he was consciously aware of this at the time would seem irrelevant to me. Especially in the terms I expressed it. He may just have felt a sense of outrage, proper IMO, and expressed it in vague terms: Mann’s use of the “hockey stick” in the context of “public policy advice” (i.e. the IPCC) was “fraud”.
Unless he made a clear distinction in his mind between the “scientific or professional context” and the context of “public policy advice”, he would probably have been speaking unclearly, while trying to make a point he hadn’t precisely defined. Which, as a journalist, is his right. As long as he’s expressing outrage (or even disapproval), I don’t see how anybody could reasonably claim an intent to defame.
Joshua
“precise” would likely be a word not applicable to a court case about political commentary
“precise evidence” would count in science
apples and oranges
I try to be open to your point of view
Why I love Joshua
…….
…….
I stopped reading at the inevitable “skeptics“.
What Styne does is for driving ratings or increasing readership. He is usually doing one of the following: being sarcastic, being funny or witty, feeding the tribe or mocking the left. It’s all weighed for entertainment value.
What Steyn meant is not that terribly important
see page 14 and following from the ACLU
http://www.steynonline.com/documents/6515.pdf
Note the emphasis on the READERS understanding and not what the author may or may not have meant.
Mann claims harm because of what he purports readers would have understood steyns meaning to be, not what Steyn was thinking in his head when he wrote it.
nah, you’re reading too much into that.
the focus on the readers is just for determining what kind of setting the words are printed in, to say whether or not it’s an opinion piece.
A generalized definition of fraud;
A person commits an offense if he intentionally or knowingly makes a materially false or misleading statement to obtain property . . .
“… Mann’s own CV, Mann lists himself as a coauthor of the WMO 1999 diagram.
. . .
I was misled. Upon considering the material presented in these reports, it did not occur to me that recent paleo data was not consistent with the historical record.”
Purposeful misrepresentation to HIDE data and information which shows the complete and real picture . . .
“Man-caused global warming” is perpetrated on the populace in order to justify forcefully transferring billions and trillions of dollars to the politically connected . . .
The FRAUD, is the acquiescence of “the people” to pay higher prices for everything. Literally everything.
Everything individuals purchase must be created and transported. Nothing is made without energy. Nothing. From the food we eat, to the fuel we burn, to the goods we wear. We cannot exist in today’s world without energy.
EPA regulations make illegal small companies’ products and legalize favored companies’ products, which are more expensive to purchase… From food, to wood burning stoves, to air conditioning systems.
The “global warming” fraud has been used to steal money from every single American and enrich the political class and their supporters.
What is money? Value? Something all of us who work, exchange our time for. Our lives are nothing more than time spent. Dollars represent the time we spend our lives for.
The global warming “consensus” has been used to justify government FORCING (TAKING ACTION) all individuals to spend money they have exchanged their lives for. New laws. New regulations. Money taken, stolen, otherwise spent elsewhere if free choice were legal.
If the science is/was settled, the proponents of global warming (and the trillions of dollars in regulations and lost jobs to other countries) would not need to hide the data/information that contradict their claimed consensus.
“Global warming” FRAUD has been used to destroy many jobs, careers and lives, while at the same time used to enrich the proponents with millions in grants from government and it’s allies.
Mann’s continuing advocacy and misrepresentation of “truncated data” is purposeful fraud.
The new information in this post is Jean S finding Mann’s CV entry where he claims co-authorship of the WHO Cover Page which depicts The Hide the Decline Graph. In Mann’s legal brief he claims that he had no involvement with the WHO graph. So did Mann lie on his CV or did he lie to the Court?
Up thread I pointed out that page 2 of WMO99 contains a box explaining the cover chart, wherein Mann is expressly identified as having contributed. Therefor it is the new court pleading that is false. And that will NOT sit well with the court.
An ethical obligation of a scientist is to immediately correct or retract a paper in which an error has been found. Mann is extremely reluctant to admit any error. But errors there are. He has gotten geographic coordinates mixed up in his data on more than one occasion. He has used the Tiljander proxy upside down when the author of the proxy said after a certain data it was contaminated by road construction sediment which inverted the understood meaning of the proxy (etc) and meant nothing. He used a short-centering method of PCA that an expert in the field (Joliffe I believe) said was wrong and made no sense. and so on. These are not matters of opinion like whether frequentist or Bayesian methods are best, but factual matters. In only the rarest of cases has he corrected anything, and often secretly. Whether this is fraud or not, it is certainly not honorable behavior for a scientist.
How grown-ups do it:
> Understandably, posterity has not esteemed Kircher as one of the seminal figures in the genealogy of modernity—a Galileo or a Descartes. But in his day he was, without question, one of Europe’s most successful scholars. He embodied the contradictions of a moment when recognizably modern ways of thinking about the past had become available, yet older and conflicting models remained appealing and, to many, persuasive. As such, he allows us to explore a side of history too often lost to view. Without this view we cannot fully grasp the work of thinkers like Galileo or Descartes, much less understand the age on its own terms.
http://publicdomainreview.org/2013/05/16/athanasius-kircher-and-the-hieroglyphic-sphinx/#sthash.LHnmj5tT.dpuf
What does it say about the Sun and the Owl though, willard?
Usually, Sun is truth and night watchers guard wisdom, naq.
Speaking of owls:
http://consumerist.com/2014/09/08/john-oliver-on-for-profit-colleges-you-might-as-well-go-to-hogwarts/
Usually, Sun is truth and night watchers guard wisdom, naq.
Speaking of owls:
http://consumerist.com/2014/09/08/john-oliver-on-for-profit-colleges-you-might-as-well-go-to-hogwarts/
Get acquainted with the work of Jara da Cimrman, the Master of Blind Alleys.
His work is never finished.
Good analogy. Except Kircher got something right.
Now we know how grown ups handle mistakes in a field that doesn’t matter.
The better analogy is piltdown or stem cell shenanigans
It was not an analogy. That Mike got everything wrong remains to be seen. Mike matters more to the auditing sciences than anything else. The better analogy would be 24, but then the original is plausible.
Speaking of analogies, the recent accusations of fraud against McIntyre is interesting:
> t is alleged that McIntyre overcharged the institute by $100,000 (£66,000) when providing security for the group in Iraq during a break from army service. He faces eight counts of fraud and a possible 20-year jail term in an American prison.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2679603/British-army-veteran-served-Bosnia-Northern-Ireland-extradited-America-face-fraud-charges-Iraq-security-firm.html
Lots of theories.
Clever.
but it was an analogy. you may not have intended it as an analogy, but you dont control the meaning of your text. Ask Simberg. He would like to control the meaning of his text, but he doesnt.
Further, you’ll note that I didnt argue that Mann got everything wrong.
he obviously spelled his own name correctly.
nevertheless. That is how grown ups do it in a field that doesnt matter after the guy is dead and gone. Not exactly relevant to Mann.
‘stem cell shenanigans’
Haruko Obokata is trying to repeat her acid generated stem cell work in a monitored lab, where everything going in and out is logged, and is under 24 hr video surveillance.
Her former boss committed suicide.
+2
Piltdown man often seems like a particularly good analogy to me.
The original was two pieces of evidence placed together where they didn’t oughta’ have been. The perpetrator(s) would have known precisely the misleading effect it would have on those not aware of the deception.
In terms of reach and consequences, the hockey-stick is the most duplicitous piece of scientific “evidence” for over a century. It really takes the biscuit.
H/T willard, I had never heard of him either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius_Kircher
Timely.
Michael Mann is a good Party person, towing the same speech restriction of dissent as the rest of his peers;
http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/nancy-pelosi-backs-controversial-internet-powers-to-save-net-neutrality-20140908
Controlling the internet for the common good.
http://reason.com/blog/2014/09/08/senate-votes-to-consider-speech-restrict
“Advancing democratic self-government” as defined by a Democratic controlled Senate. A constitutional amendment proposal. Speech restrictions legalized.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/04/democrats_sixty_year_war_against_conservative_voices.html
The “Fairness Doctrine”, media political suppression, the IRS politicization and targeting of conservative dissent. Fruit of the same tree.
http://www.climatedepot.com/2009/06/03/execute-skeptics-shock-call-to-action-at-what-point-do-we-jail-or-execute-global-warming-deniers-shouldnt-we-start-punishing-them-now/
Why stop at speech Michael and Fanboy? Why not just come out and advocate jail or death sentences for “deniers”? Who needs trumped up “fraud” claims after all??
If you look at the climate debate rationally it’s simply another schism clash of traditional progressive political aggression being met by a variety of opponents. What thrives in tiny academic, political and media enclaves will only meet its end day in the larger open world. The social costs have been huge of course.
You are entirely correct cwon14!
Both Mark Steyn and the Competitive Enterprise Institute would be well-advised to forego personal smears, willful ignorance, and ideology-driven conspiracy theories.
Recommendation CEI/Steyn would do well to embrace the rational, well-mannered, gentle-humored, science-driven communications of Peter Cox and his colleagues at 97 Hours of Consensus
This simple, science-respecting course-correction would be mighty good for the long-term prospects and overall health of 21st century conservatism, eh cwon14?
These gentle communications are *FAR* more effective than the ignorant CEISteyn-style slogan-shouting that so egregiously smears Michael Mann and Judith Curry and Vitaly Khvorostyanov!
*EVERYONE* appreciates the combined merits of gentle humor, civic manners, and solid climate-science, eh Climate Etc readers?
Linkies fixed! :)
Best wishes for happy reading, to all smile-minded cat-loving Climate Etc readers!
Pingback: Hockey Sticks And “Fraud” | Transterrestrial Musings
As far as I know fraud has to have a victim. That would of course be the taxpayers. How would one prove that policy makers were convinced, after seeing the hockey stick, that they must act and spend the taxpayers money on policy? I could just see it: right there in the hearing you can clearly see the hockey stick graph up on the tripod and there’s some lawmakers slapping themselves on their foreheads ‘gasp, we must act’. There you go clear video evidence. Ah, now I know why they’re called alarmists.
The goes all the way to the tippy-tippy top.
In a court in DC, which is 90% CAGW demographic, and who’s resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave holds the highest office in the land and has called any CAGW skeptic a flat-earther and denier… do you actually think Mann will get an unfavorable ruling in this political environment?
I weep for the death of the truth.
It is interesting to imagine what would happen if Congress or the executive branch got to judge this lawsuit, but in this case, it is the courts that will decide. They are affected by political climates, but it’s not shaped so much by what the President says.
Of course, the problem is systematic. The infamous Skeptical Science consensus paper was accepted, defended and promoted by Daniel Kammen. Kammen is the Senior Environmental Policy Advisor for the President of the United States. This is the same president whose Twitter account was used to promote that consensus paper while grossly exaggerating its results, a tweet Kammen still promotes despite its falsity.
If politics and science can be that connected, who knows how the courts might be affected.
Walt, do not. Truth is alive, including via this blog. But it struggles for supremacy in a world full of deliberately politicized falsehoods.
The specific issue here is already WAY beyond DC. That is just the prejudicially selected initial judicial venue Mann chose.
I received my prized SCOTUS gold cufflinks in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court from Justice Thomas himself some years ago. Courtesy of being a multiyear guest speaker at the ABA appellate judiciary forums (State Supremes, Federal Appeals) concerning ‘venue in the internet era’. Super complicated legally. You might even say, unprecedented!
If your theory was right, I would not have been allowed to land at Reagan for that ceremony. I have faith that the citizens of this great land (and others) will ultimately educate themselves, vote, and make a difference.
Regards
I suggest that the scientists providing legal analysis in their comments limit them in the future to subject matter upon which they are qualified to discuss. Commenters grasp the relationship and responsibilities between lawyers and their clients, burdens of proof, relevancy and what constitutes admissible evidence are both limited and incorrect.
paddylol:
If people (even scientists) who are not qualified on legal matters cannot comment on legal matters, and people who are not qualifed on science matters (just extending your request into other areas) cannot comment on science, this blog will be pretty empty.
This is a blog.
Clueless comments are part of the fun of reading a blog!
“Clueless comments are part of the fun of reading a blog!”
But not for Holmes or Poirot.
Do you mean our posts should be like this:
Quoting from the 1964 US Supreme Court’s decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan:
“Erroneous statement is protected, the Court asserted, there being no exception “for any test of truth.” Error is inevitable in any free debate and to place liability upon that score, and especially to place on the speaker the burden of proving truth, would introduce self-censorship and stifle the free expression which the First Amendment protects*”.
*376 U.S. at 271-72, 278-79.
I seems appropriate to add the following:
“The teaching of Times and the cases following it is that expression on matters of public interest is protected by the First Amendment. Within that area of protection is commentary about the public actions of individuals. The fact that expression contains falsehoods does not deprive it of protection, because otherwise such expression in the public interest would be deterred by monetary judgments and self-censorship imposed for fear of judgments.**”.
**law.justia.com discussion about defamation in US Law.
I will use the “iudicio saeculari” principle to state Dr. Mann relies on “retorquendam veritatem” in order to have “vulgaris ideas favore suo lucro”.
Is this better?
This appeal is regarding the denial of defendants’ Motion To Dismiss, is it not? A FRCP 12(b)(6) MTD requires a defendant show plaintiffs “fail[] to state a claim upon which relief can be granted” and thus places a heavy burden on the defendant to show plaintiffs would fail as a matter of law. That means the court essentially has to assume matters of fact are in Mann’s favor. That includes things like “actual malice” that I doubt can be proven with the existing record. That’s the sort of thing that gets sorted out at discovery.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_12
I would be quite shocked if the appeals court rules for defendants/appellants. They’d basically have to say there’s no conceivable circumstance under which National Review’s statements could be construed as defamation. Mann will have quite a time winning on the merits in the long run (I think his chances are slim to none), but he’ll likely win at this stage. If/when he does, I wouldn’t read too much into it.
My guess is National Review will assert First Amendment privileges over their internal communications citing their special press position and the need for confidentiality in their deliberations. If they succeed in keeping that stuff out of the record, I don’t see how Mann could win. He’d practically need an internal e-mail stating “we’re gonna destroy this guy” or thereabouts to have a case.
John the grounds for dismissal was DC’s anti-SLAPP statute, not the merits of the case. It is the SLAPP ruling being appealed by CEI. That is why the ACLU filed an amicus brief. Slapp is about political freedom of speach, and the preventing abusive use of defamation lawsuits to supress it. Whichnis what we have here. Steyn has recused himself, and counter sued Mann on the merits. That is on hold until this appeal is resolved. But because of the separation and countersuit, even if Mann’s suit is dismissed per the SLAPP statute, Steyn can proceed. And that is why all this willful misrepresentation in Mann’s pleadings (for no other interpretation is possible given the facts Judith posted) is important. Mann is going to lose. Big time.
As a strong advocate of free speech I am hopeful that the judge will be non-partisan, apply the law, be swayed by the ACLU/NYT amicus brief, and dismiss under the anti-SLAPP.
Not so. The Defendants sought dismissal under DC’s Anti-SLAPP statute which certainly cannot be decided under the standards applicable to a 12(b)(6) Motion to Dismiss.
I don’t have the ECF access I used to, so I’m sure I missed something. But there was a 12(b)(6) motion.
“The Superior Court found, based on a review of legal doctrine and the pleadings submitted, that the plaintiff scientist had met his resulting burden of showing that he is likely to succeed on the merits of his libel claims, and denied the special motions to dismiss under the Act, and for similar reasons also denied the defendants’ motions for dismissal under Superior Court Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6).”
http://www.steynonline.com/documents/6517.pdf
I was wondering because I’d never heard of a 12(b)(6) being appealed. I’m not familiar with the Anti-SLAPP standards.
John M, there was also a denial of a 12(b)(6) as well, but it is not at issue in the appeal for the obvious reason. You can look at the Anti-SLAPP statute here.
I presume you were replying to John M, and not me.
Dr. Curry,
As you know, “research misconduct” is a term of art in regulatory requirements, and may or may not be the same as “fraud” as defined in the common law. I have no idea if the defendants in the litigation were using the term “fraud” in its technical legal sense or were using it as a synonym for “falsification” as used in definitions of “research misconduct.”
The definition of “research misconduct,” as commonly employed by U.S. Federal agencies for those funding of outside researchers, includes the following (quoting from the EPA Order 3120.5, Policy and Procedures for Addressing Research Misconduct, available at http://ori.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/epapolicy.pdf, which provides policy and procedures on reporting, procedures, investigations, and adjudication of research misconduct by the EPA’s employees, contractors, and recipients of assistance agreements, and is substantially similar to those of other U.S. Federal agencies):
A. Research misconduct is defined as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing or reviewing research, or in reporting research results [65 FR 76262. I], or ordering, advising or suggesting that subordinates engage in research misconduct.
B. Research, as used herein, includes all basic, applied, and demonstration research in all fields of science, engineering, and mathematics. This includes, but is not limited to, research in economics, education, linguistics, medicine, psychology, social sciences, and research involving human subjects or animals. [65 FR 76262. I, footnote 2]
C. Fabrication is making up data or results and recording or reporting them. [65 FR 76262. I]
D. Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record. [65 FR 76262. I]
E. Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit. [65 FR 76262. I]
F. Research misconduct does not include honest error or differences of opinion. [65 FR 76262. I]
In this definition, the most serious issue facing Dr. Mann in connection with his “hide the decline” conduct is the definition in paragraph D of “falsification,” which encompasses “omitting data … such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.” Dr. Mann’s best defenses are either that the research record was still “accurately represented” or the “does not include honest error or differences of opinion” language at the end of the definition.
I do not know if any of Dr. Mann’s research efforts in this regard were Federally funded and he or his educational institution constituted a “contractor” or had the benefit of an “assistance agreement” under an EPA or any other U.S. Federal agency program.
Note that some educational institutions, for their own internal research integrity policies, define “falsification” differently, not including the crucial “omitting data …” language, and leaving only affirmative changes and manipulation. The educational institution’s research misconduct policy applies to all of its employees, including professors, in their work under its auspices, but does not override U.S. Federal requirements where the research is subject to those Federal rules.
One way to think about the “omission” language is the parallel with the oath a witness takes before giving testimony in a court – “to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” The “omitting data …” language in the U.S. Federal definition of “research misconduct” parallels the “whole truth” requirement of that oath.
Another well-known analogy is to U.S. securities law, where Rule 10b-5 famously makes it unlawful for any issuer of publicly-traded stock or bonds:
***
(b) To make any untrue statement of a material fact or to omit to state a material fact necessary in order to make the statements made, in the light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading.
The “omit to state a material fact …” Rule 10b-5 language is analogous to the “omit data …” language in U.S. Federal research misconduct policy.
I hope this is useful.
Regards,
MK
Thanks Mark, this is indeed useful
mkantor
Thanks for the details on Falsification etc.
In 1991 I wrote a 330 page report on how solar energy could redress the IPCC’s 1990 warnings of global warming. Now after 24 years, I find the IPCC’s warming projections are twice as high as reality, and that there has been no statistical warming for about two decades.
I find Mann’s data truncations and refusing to acknowledge the serious errors of his statistical methods to constitute both “fabrication” and “falsification” in the definitions above. e.g., as detailed by McIntyre and Mckitrick’s evaluations of the hockey stick.
Mann’s efforts seem the opposite of Richard Feynman’s standard for integrity in science which is encapsulated by the EPA guidelines you quote.
Question: Are the EPA guidelines applicable and enforceable when the Administration/EPA Management themselves knowingly reproduce such “Falsification”, AND when they explicitly refused to include contrary information as required by their guidelines?
e.g. see the saga of EPA analyst Alan Carlin
Republicans are raising questions about why the EPA apparently dismissed an analyst’s report questioning the science behind global warming.
Comments on Draft Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act
By Alan Carlin, NCEE/OPEI, Based on TSD Draft of March 9, 2009
What about the OMB’s Information Quality Guidelines? February 22, 2002 (67 F.R. 8452), as detailed for the Environmental Protection Agency? http://epa.gov/quality/informationguidelines/iqg-list.html
Guidelines for Ensuring and Maximizing the Quality, Objectivity, Utility, and Integrity of Information Disseminated by the Environmental Protection Agency
E.g. when the EPA refuses to correct information such detailed by Alan Carlin. See Section 8, p 30.
It appears that the EPA is running roughshod over the Rule of Law. Furthermore, with the courts refusing to address matters of science, it appears that there is no recourse expect to “throw the bums out” in the ballot box and change the law. But that now requires 60% from the same party in the Senate – or 67% to throw out the President.
One more time, specific legal, criminal, professional, scientific, or other definition of “fraud” is not relevant here. What matters is what the reader would have understood Steyn and CEI to mean in the overall context of the articles in which the “hockey stick” was described as “fraudulent”. Furthermore, Mann bears the burden of proving that the phrase “fraudulent “hockey stick” is false as a matter of fact. If the phrase is a matter of opinion, it cannot be defamatory.
Will J. Richardson
Re: “Mann bears the burden of proving that the phrase “fraudulent “hockey stick” is false as a matter of fact.”
What does Mann have to do? Does that require that Mann must show the “hockey stick” and his representation of it were both accurate?
David Hagan:
Mann must prove all the elements of the cause of action in defamation, one of which is, “that the defendant made a false or defamatory statement concerning the plaintiff”. Blodgett v. The University Club, 930 A.2d 210, 222 (D.C.2007). Also, if the factual statement alleged to be defamatory is “substantially true”, generally, the statement cannot be defamatory. Armstrong v. Thompson, 80 A. 3d 177, 183-4 (D.C. App. 2013). Mann, as the plaintiff bears the burden of proving every element of his cause of action. He therefore must prove the falsity of the alleged defamatory statement. Last, statements of opinion, such are prevalent in scientific controversies, are generally not actionable in defamation. <iArmstrong at 184.
If a moderator would please fix my open html, I would appreciate it.
I wonder though, did Mann actually omit data or did he just hide it in the graphics. (ie, was the data still analyzed/discussed in his papers)
For the answer to this quesion, please see ClimateAudit and search for “CENSORED” directory on Mann’s FTP site.
Data and anaysis in these files clearly show that Mann was aware of material that called the published results into question – whether he was aware of it at the time of publication is debatable, however to suggest he was unaware of it as long ago as 2009 is clearly incorrect.
He did not retract nor correct his paper or SI in this respect. Does that amount to “research misconduct”? I don’t know. I certainly think it’s unethical and unhelpful behaviour that damages not just climate science, but the reputation of all science.
It seems that this would also prohibit the omission of even rejected data and also that data and code would have to be made available to others.
Spot on. In which case Mann is toast.
Is this what you’re reduced to Dr Curry? A blog post with a title that is blatant click bait for the lowest low life on the internet. Appalling behaviour for anyone but especially one who claims to be a thought leader. You are a professor aren’t you? Where’s your professionalism?
Hey me. She is the professional. She is the one trying to chase the skunks out of the barn. Amazing that you are so dense.
+
It actually doesn’t seem to have attracted the lcd in the comments. It’s rather tame, relevant and peaceful, other than the usual.
Judith Curry and I sometimes differ in regard to matters of math-and-science … but she always receives appreciation and high regard (from me and everyone) for her professional commitment, for her personal integrity, and for her gracious manners too.
Therefore, “me”, please let me join with Bob is saying (in surfer-lingo) “Get lost kook!”. `Cuz Judith deserves *FAR* better!
Fan
Well said
Tonyb
You are lower than low, since you obviously clicked on the link and then proceeded to call out Dr. Curry in a passive, aggressive fashion. Man (or woman) up and use your real name and debate the issue(s) next time.
Hmmm…how did you get here me?
Another astonishing post from “me” who has obviously been attracted by Judith’s blatant click bait. A shining example of bias for everyone to see.
Careful, or you’ll wake David Appell up.
“This situation may be the single most compelling reason for scientists not be issue advocates regarding their scientific research – efforts to induce other to act need to be very careful that they do not mislead the public.”
You mean like telling David Rose “”the Arctic sea ice spiral of death seems to have reversed.”
Judith’s post is obviously personal and political, because she doesn’t once mention that there were three co-authors on the MBH papers, not one. You’d never know that from all the accusations flying around.
This is starting to look like what was done to Robert Oppenheimer, also to score political points.
Appell,”Judith’s post is obviously personal and political”. Nothing could be further from the truth. The climate house is infected with mannian crawlers and she would like it disinfected. Bradley and Hughes were either bamboozled by Mann or didn’t have the statistical wherewithal to ferret out his nonsense.
The charge of ‘fraud’ most definitely does not involve coauthors BH. It involves those that hid the decline in WMO99 and TAR.
Perhaps Dr Appell could tell us why Dr Mann refuses giving up his meta data in dicovery in his case against Tim Ball required by Canadian law thus not only defaulting on the case but opening himself up to Ball’s suit against him. What is he hiding besides the decline?
Keep in mind that most of the criticism of Mann that borders on charges of academic misconduct is not for the MBH paper, but Mann’s professional behavior after its publication.
The sole issue in MBH98 that I am aware of is the withholding of adverse R2-verification results. Even this amounts to what I would term a judgement call gone wrong, and so shouldn’t be viewed as evidence of misconduct but rather just a junior researcher who made a bad call.
Anyway, when you co-author a paper, you take on a certain level of trust for the other authors behavior. I doubt Bradley or Hughes had much to do with the analysis section in question, so that’s all Mann, who wrote the code and made the bad analysis decisions.
Carrick, I don’t agree with what you say here because your first paragraph says “MBH paper.” Once we extend the discussion to MBH99, I think it’s fair to level charges of academic misconduct. I discussed why below, but basically, Michael Mann realized a central claim of robustness in MBH98 was false after he published it. Despite that, he went on to publish MBH99, building upon MBH98 without making any effort to correct the false claim.
I think it’s fair to accuse someone of academic misconduct when they knowingly direct people to work with central claims that are false in order to support their current work.
Carrick, “The sole issue in MBH98 that I am aware of is the withholding of adverse R2-verification results. Even this amounts to what I would term a judgement call gone wrong, and so shouldn’t be viewed as evidence of misconduct but rather just a junior researcher who made a bad call.”
I believe it is worse than you indicate. When asked at a congressional hearing whether he calculated an R2, he replied no and that would be a silly thing to do. So rather than a bad call, he was mendacious.(sorry I don’t have the link handy – correct me if wrong)
Brandon, again that’s a good point about how MBH99 affects the analysis of whether deliberate deception (what one would call “scientific fraud”) was at play. But case for misconduct is stilleasier to build, because motive doesn’t matter so much.
If this is true, then the standards for academic scientists have fallen pretty low. I am an engineer working in aerospace. If I withheld adverse results from my employer, let alone my customer, I would be fired. Same for persons working in investments and finance. Why do professors get to withhold adverse results?
Carrick, yup. There’s no need to focus on accusations of fraud. We can discuss other accusations instead. I personally don’t care to focus on “fraud” much because of the problems the word causes. I just get tired of people saying Michael Mann didn’t commit scientific fraud, but instead committed fraud in the lay sense. I think that’s wrong. I think the lay sense of the fraud is easier to demonstrate (and probably what Mark Steyn intended), but that doesn’t mean we should clear Mann of the more serious offense.
Tom C, it is true, but I don’t think it shows standards for academic scientists have dropped at all. From what I’ve seen, this sort of thing has been part of academia for ages.
Brandon, that is ridiculous. The fraud is deceiving political bodies and the public. It has little to do with academia.
It is neither personal nor political. For the sentient among us, we understand that only Mann is suing so who co-authored his works is irrelevant to the topic – Mann’s case.
Read it again so you can better understand that fact.
And they made these statements knowing that Dr. Mann’s research has been reviewed repeatedly and replicated by other scientists, and that Dr. Mann has been repeatedly exonerated:
It shouldn’t be beyond the ability of the court (especially a jury) to adjudicate that.
Was it “defamation” to point out that the same people (chair at least) who exonerated Sandusky later “exonerated” Mann, using similar language in both cases (referring to money accrued to the university, and fame), and in both cases not taking testimony from accusers? I say let all parties testify in court under oath and subject to cross-examination in front of a jury.
On the general subject og Mann’s behavior, I like this in particular.
“John Christy, who was seen as the lone sceptic on the panel, asked Mann about his R2 score. Mann tried to evade the question by denouncing its usage in general, but Christy pressed him further, asking whether he had in fact calculated the figure. Mann’s reply was sharp and to McIntyre, at lest, breathtaking:
‘We didn’t calculate it. That would be silly and incorrect reasoning.’
This was an extraordinary statement. Mann’s paper clearly stated that ‘For comparison correlation (r) and squared-correlation (R2) statistics are also determined’. He had presented R2 information in the paper. The commands to calculate R2 were in the code he had submitted to congress. He had told Crok the the Hockey Stick passed the R2 test, something he could only have determined if he had calculated its value in the first place.”
(The Hockey Stick Illusion, pages 241-242)
In this context, there is no need for Steyn et al. to ‘prove’ fraud in court; but merely to legitimize a public statement of ‘Mann’s fraudulent hockey stick‘ as not defamatory.
That’s the way I hope it works. The court, including the jury, can read or have read to them how much criticism of the hockey stick was already in the public domain, hear some of the definitions of “fraudulent” (possibly including excerpts from court decisions), and decide the issue.
I count six lies in that one statement.
David Appell: This is starting to look like what was done to Robert Oppenheimer, also to score political points.
What private citizen was sued by Robert Oppenheimer for writing an opinion piece? Oppenheimer did himself no favors by lying to the FBI and by his arrogance towards others; he lost his security clearance, not a fundamental civil right anyway. And the action was done by government, not a private citizen writing an editorial. The comparison of Mann to Oppenheimer is gross. Admittedly, not as gross perhaps as the Sandusky allusion, which is clearly more of an insult to PennState than to Mann.
More like the far-right Feynman-smearers
These smears (successfully) blocked Feynman’s appointment as Presidential Science Advisor.
Conclusion There’s a simple reason why CEI/Steyn work so diligently to smear scientists like Michael Mann: extreme-right smear-strategies have worked before.
That letter appears to have been written by Feynman’s ex-wife.
Some smear campaign.
LoL … little did Richard Feynman suspect that his ultra-conservative “ex” was busily denouncing *him* to J. Edgar Hoover as “the fire”!
Conclusion Smears are effective *AND* easy … that’s why ideology-driven demagogues — equally of the far-right and the far-left — have historically embraced them.
I’m just laughing at the thought of Feynman as a PSA. The man could barely get himself to put anything down on paper–he would have needed to have co-appointed with him a Presidential Amaneunsis. I would have given him two months before he exploded from having to deal with the White House bureaucracy.
not to mention that oppenheimer was a giant, who helped end the war with japan…a colossus…and mann is a gnat, a thin skinned gnat on the body of science. other than that, the analogy holds.
The definition of fraud in criminal law won’t be relevant here, or shouldn’t be, since it’s easy to establish that it’s not what people mean by fraud in scientific or scholastic settings. Also the way people use fraud as a noun for a person, “He’s a fraud” would have no relation to the criminal notion of fraud. Scientific fraud is a complex matter of judgment.
One definition of scientific fraud from Chop & Silva: “Scientific fraud, an act of deception or misrepresentation of one’s own work, violates these ethical standards. It can take the form of plaglarism, falsification of data, and irresponsible authorship.”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/875572239190051L
Irresponsible authorship is going to be a matter of judgment. I’m guessing the fact that readers of opinion pieces in political magazines don’t assume a crime occurred when they read a critique of a scientists work as fraudulent, especially if some further information is present that clarifies what the writer means, should matter.
The “dirty laundry” email has not received nearly the attention of “hide the decline”, but warrants attention. If someone in a controversy (be it Roger Goodell or Penn State President Graham Spanier or anyone) had sent an email to a close colleague saying that it contained his “dirty laundry”, pledging the colleague to ensure that the “dirty laundry” did not fall into the “wrong hands”, can you imagine any responsible investigator neglecting to examine the “dirty laundry” and failing to closely examine the subject of the investigation? And yet NONE of the nine so-called “inquiries”, including Penn State, asked Mann to explain his “dirty laundry” (or Osborn what he thought he was receiving) or sought interpretation of the email from people with specialized knowledge of the emails.
In my opinion, the “dirty laundry” connects directly to perhaps the largest conduct issue in the 2006 investigations – Mann’s failure to disclose his adverse verification r2 statistics, then a far larger issue than hide-the-decline. Mann was asked about the withholding by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, evading an answer. Mann was asked again by a NAS panelist and flatly lied to the NAS panel, though the NAS panel did not confront Mann about his lie either at the time or in their report.
Mann’s claims to statistical “skill” were a large part of the original persuasiveness of MBH98-99.
To independently calculate Mann’s verification statistics in 2003, one would need to see the residual series or equivalently the results from the individual steps. But Mann had not archived the results of individual steps, so the only way to check his results would be to run the gauntlet of trying to replicate his results from scratch, a process fraught with potential mis-steps due to quirky undisclosed procedures. So who would bother trying to do that?
Osborn requested Mann’s residual series. With residual series, one could trivially check his statistical claims. When I asked for his residuals later in 2003, Mann refused and, to their continuing shame, both NSF and Nature supported Mann’s refusal to provide residuals or even the results of individual steps (from which residuals could be easily calculated).
Mann knew that his verification r2 results were disastrous: he had already withheld this information from his article and even the fine print of the SI. In my opinion, that’s why Mann described the residuals as his “dirty laundry”.
Had the disastrous verification r2 results been widely disseminated in 1998, it would have impacted the reception of the Stick. At the time, Eduardo Zorita’s opinion of the Stick was hugely reduced when he learned of the disastrous verification r2 results. But by the time that the “community” learned of the misrepresentation of statistical skill, it was very difficult for them to walk back without appearing to capitulate to the “deniers”, a circumstance that Mann used to his advantage, by transforming himself from a minor paleoclimatologist to a hero of the revolution.
BTW, it is inconceivable to me that the 2006 inquiries would have ended as they did, had they known about the “dirty laundry” email.
I’ve been pondering a fresh review of the topic.
Thank you, Steve. You have have a great service to society and to the scientific community.
Why does O-man get to comment when Mann gets compared to Sandusky ?
Because people do not know the hypocrisy involved.
Funny that Curry got her krackpot ideas on applying Bose-Einstein statistics to cloud nucleation from O-man.
evidence: http://contextearth.com/crackpots-etc/
Yes, the r2 story from 2006 is the same affair that my quote from The Hockey Stick Illusion refers to (above). Just from reading the book, it seemed to be the clearest case of a flat-out lie from Mann.
Steve, please less pondering and more posting by you and yours. You are, after all, amongst the few acknowledged and published experts in this narrow topic. Gosh, even peer reviewed published–somehow (sarc off).
Please do air the “dirty laundry” R2 email. Soonest. No more pondering.
Regards.
Rud Istvan JD/MBA
Rud, just fyi, the “dirty laundry” email was previously discussed in a lead post at Climate Audit:
http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/01/dirty-laundry/
I think that Steve M’s comment suggests a new “fresh” post but it does not imply that he has not covered the issue in detail before. The challenge is to get the powers-that-be in Climate Scientology to pay attention.
also this, which goes beyond the specific 2003 Mann to Osborn email, to link the “dirty laundry” meme to Mann’s abuse of “upside-down Tiljander” —
http://climateaudit.org/2011/07/06/dirty-laundry-ii-contaminated-sediments/
This the email in question. Michael Mann to Tim Osborn, CRU, July 2003:
Ah, the neverinding trivial audit.
Always something tiny old thing to quibble over.
Dirty laundry in scare quotes. Ohhhh!!!
Even more interesting- who are these people who “try to distort”?
I’m not sure there’s any argument to say Michael Mann’s work isn’t fraudulent. I tend not to do it myself because I don’t think it’s necessary, but it’s certainly a defensible position. Consider:
1) When Michael Mann published his 1998 temperature reconstruction, he said:
This statement was untrue. Mann’s results were entirely dependent upon a relatively small amount of tree ring data. Not only do we know this now, we know Michael Mann became aware of it shortly after publishing his paper. On page 51 of his book, Mann tells us after MBH98 was published, he performed tests that:
It’s not clear how Mann managed to make the false claim in his original paper, but he was obligated to inform people of its falsity. We could perhaps forgive not correcting an earlier mistake except Mann went on to publish his 1999 paper, extending the 1998 reconstruction back another 400 years. By building upon his 1998 paper while knowing it made false claims about his results, Mann committed fraud.
Anyone reading MBH99 would be directed to MBH98 for information about the reconstruction. MBH98 contained important claims about his results Mann knew to be false (at the time he published MBH99). It is perfectly reasonable to say by directing people to information about his results he knew to be false, Mann committed fraud.
2) Michael Mann was responsible for text in the IPCC TAR which said:
Mann knew perfectly well his reconstruction failed r2 verification, a test he used multiple times in MBH98. By saying his reconstruction “had significant skill in independent cross-validation tests” while hiding the fact his reconstruction failed one of his own cross-validation tests, Mann committed fraud. That was fraud even if we ignore the fact Mann went on to lie about it and repeatedly try to cover up the fact he did calculate those scores.
We don’t have to call what Michael Mann did fraud if we don’t feel like focusing on the word, but if we are going to focus on the word, what Mann did was fraud.
Brandon, as I said above to David Appell, more issues are raised by Mann’s behavior after the publication of his paper, than occurred within it.
So maybe “it’s not the crime but the coverup.”
I personally believe that Mann saw the fact his proxies passed the RE-statistic test as evidence that his reconstruction was valid. (Many people now believe that the RE-statistics test was done wrong, but this speaks to competency more than motive.)
Because Mann did have evidence that his reconstruction was valid from the RE-statistic, I would say normally this would be an example of researcher misconduct but not a case of outright fraud.
You may want to look at these comments above
I haven’t seen the point about misconduct occurring specifically the 1999 paper. Are you aware of text similar to what you quoted above from the 1998 paper which appears in the 1999 paper?
Carrick, of course Michael Mann didn’t repeat that claim of robustness in MBH99. He didn’t discuss the robustness of his 1400-1980 AD results in MBH99. That doesn’t resolve anything though. When Mann directed people to MBH98 for a discussion of his 1400-1980 results, he implicitly repeated the claims of MBH98. He certainly endorsed MBH98’s contents by reusing its results and directing people to read it.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to defend his actions by saying, “He didn’t explicitly repeat the false claim; he only intentionally misled people into believing it.” Nobody reading MBH99 would have thought, “He’s reusing the 1400-1980 results from MBH98, but maybe he knows what MBH98 says about the robustness of those results is a lie.”
We can be lawyer-y and say he didn’t specifically lie in MBH99, but you don’t have to specifically lie in order to commit fraud. Intentionally causing people to believe your results are robust when you know they are not is committing fraud.
In response to Brandon’s point, Mann revisited these issues in Mann et al 2000 (Earth Interactions) and in this post-MBH99 article, reiterated false claims of Mann et al 1998. It also included a highly deceptive purported demonstration of “robustness”. Mann compared dendro and no-dendro reconstructions for the AD1760 (as I recall) step, a step in which the two didn’t seem to differ very much, but failed to report the non-robustness of the AD1400 step.
Good points, thanks.
Indeed Steve McIntyre. There are a number of things in Michael Mann’s less known publications which deserve more attention than they’ve received. I think there’s a case to be made that he lied in a number of them.
But as Carrick pointed out, most of those things involve behavior outside the publication of the hockey stick. I’ve always understood the IPCC TAR’s graph to be what is understood as the “hockey stick,” meaning it, MBH98 and MBH99 are what we should look at in order to decide if the hockey stick is “fraudulent.” Everything else is useful for determining whether Mann has engaged in fraudulent behavior in general.
> In response to Brandon’s point,
What was Brandon’s point, again?
Brandons point? More Mann porkies
Simple.
Don’t play dumb willard
Scratching my own itch, I think I found it:
“Porkies”. Now that was an interesting way to cloud the issue.
playing dumb and dumber
“In response to Brandon’s point, Mann revisited these issues in Mann et al 2000 (Earth Interactions) and in this post-MBH99 article, reiterated false claims of Mann et al 1998. It also included a highly deceptive purported demonstration of “robustness”.”
Mann’s porkies. deceptions, falsehoods, omissions.
Brandon’s Point: there be falsehoods
Brandon’s take: don’t fuss around, call it fraud.
Steve’s point: there be falsehoods
Steve’s take: I don’t call it fraud.
So, yes, you can ignore the fact that Steve talks about Brandon’s point,
there be falsehoods, and conflate the fact with the interpretation of the fact.
You can play dumb and dumber. Usually, you play dumb better than this.
Mann mislead. he told untruths. Did he commit fraud? See how that is an open question? So, yes, Steve and Brandon ca agree on the fact and disagree on the fraud question. Just as Brandon and I disagree on the fraud question.
How will you know when McIntyre or I believe Mann committed fraud?
Simple. When we say that.
But you can be un charitable and force any reading you want. Why?
because the meaning is not controllable. You are free to say any stupid thing you like to and usually do.
Since it’s my point being discussed, I’m going to step in. Neither of you is right about what my point is. My take is not:
I don’t care if people call it fraud. I’ve said so many times. I don’t find the issue interesting. People can call it whatever they want. We can discuss what Michael Mann did without using the word “fraud.” I usually do because the word “fraud” tends to become a distraction.
My “take” is quite different. My stated issue is with people saying Mann is innocent of fraud. I don’t think they should do that. I think there is too strong a case to be made for fraud to claim Mann is innocent. Refraining from accusing Mann of fraud is fine, but it is very different from saying he is innocent of fraud.
I don’t think this is true. I don’t think Steve McIntyre would necessarily state his belief on this issue. I think he, like many people, might believe things about a person he isn’t comfortable saying out loud. I don’t expect people to always state their views on an issue.
To my knowledge, McIntyre and I don’t disagree on this issue. We might, but I’ve never seen him say anything which indicates to me he does.
> I don’t care if people call it fraud.
Brandon’s point is a bit stronger than that:
https://hiizuru.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/michael-mann-committed-fraud/
Counterfactuals don’t always help not to say something.
***
> My stated issue is with people saying Mann is innocent of fraud.
An issue is not a point.
Brandon. You are wrong.
I wrote.
“How will you know when McIntyre or I believe Mann committed fraud?
Simple. When we say that.”
you wrote:
“I don’t think this is true. I don’t think Steve McIntyre would necessarily state his belief on this issue. I think he, like many people, might believe things about a person he isn’t comfortable saying out loud. I don’t expect people to always state their views on an issue.
First, You will Know that I believe mann committed fraud when I say that.
Before that you might speculate. There might be other ways you will know, but when I say it, you will know I believe it.
For Mcintyre The issue ISNT whether he would state his belief.
The fact is that IF he says it, then you know he believes it.
Yes, he might believe it without saying it. Yes, you might guess it from other other evidence, But Im say this. When he says it, you will know.
Mosher wrote:
“How will you know when McIntyre or I believe Mann committed fraud?
Simple. When we say that.”
Sometimes one might not wish to enter the court arena even though believing a certain truth of the matter.
Does Mosher talk for McIntyre now?
Willard: “Now that was an interesting way to cloud the issue.”. Back to the issue of clouds?
Mosher changed his spiel.
“How will you know when McIntyre or I believe Mann committed fraud?
Simple. When we say that.”
Now he’s saying
“When he says it, you will know.”
Which is different.
> The fact is that IF he says it, then you know he believes it.
The inverse of the point discussed.
But which point, about which issue, again?
Steven Mosher:
Nope. You’re just changing your tune. Pretty much anyone can recognize that. And seriously, if you’re going to drill down into the details, don’t say obviously wrong things like:
You saying you believe something does not mean I know you believe it.
Wrong again Brandon.
I am telling you that you will know I believe mann
Committed fraud when I say it.
Now you might think you don’t know it. But if I say it and you trust that you won’t be wrong.
You might think you are wrong but I will know you are not.
It’s pretty simple.
You will know it when I say it
Means I will say it when I believe it.
It’s another way of saying don’t try to read my mind.
Listen instead to what I say.
I’m on my phone now.
When I type from my computer you will know it
Cause I will tell you
Ya’ just gotta love the blogosphere.
Now Brandon, this is posted from my computer.
If you disbelieve it, I know you are wrong.
If you believe it, I know you know it, but you dont know that you know it, you only believe it.
That is I know that your belief is true. true belief is knowledge.
So, you think you believe that I am posting from my computer, But I know I am and I know that your belief is true. That is you have a true belief or knowledge. You know but you dont know that you know.
I don’t intend to pursue this any further, but I have to point one thing out because this sort of thing interests me:
Leaving aside the fact you couldn’t actually know what I believe, you’re wrong Steven Mosher. True belief is not knowledge. There is disagreement as to what qualifies as knowledge, but pretty much everyone accepts it requires some form of justification. Otherwise you could “know” something to be true for completely wrong reasons.
If I believe I just bought a winning lottery ticket, I do not know I bought the winning lottery ticket simply because it is the winning lottery ticket. Until I reveal that it is the winning lottery ticket, all I have is belief, not knowledge.
Mosher is dangerously close to pulling a WebHubbleTelescope.
re: “true belief”
For many philosophers, knowledge requires more than “true” belief, one must have “justifiedtrue belief” (or else, for example, one might base one’s belief simply on what one has been told and it can be effectively argued that does not constitute “knowledge”).
However, the seemingly plausible “justified true belief” formulation has been under serious debate over the past half century, since Gettier (1963). This review (link below) by a prominent philosopher does not accept that Gettier ultimately carries the day, but this is one of the more well known debates in recent epistemology, about “justified true belief” —
“Gettier and justified true belief: fifty years on”
Fred Dretske
http://philosophypress.co.uk/?p=1171
oops, did not mean to have all of my
Skiphil | September 12, 2014 at 5:54 pm |
in italics, only the phrase “justified true belief” should be in italics
Willard(@nevaudit): What was Brandon’s point, again?
1. Mann’s claim about the robustness of his result was false.
2. Mann was responsible for text in the IPCC TAR which was false.
If you have counter-arguments to his (you’ll want to read them in full so as not to misquote or mischaracterise them), you can count on an audience here to read your counter-arguments and consider them.
That would be two points, Matthew.
I’d call these arguments.
Arguments to reach a conclusion.
A point is usually a conclusion.
The conclusion is not about how to call what Mike did, but if we’re to focus on words, then we ought to call what Mike did by what Brandon believes is the proper word.
What’s that proper word, again?
Skip
“However, the seemingly plausible “justified true belief” formulation has been under serious debate over the past half century, since Gettier (1963). This review (link below) by a prominent philosopher does not accept that Gettier ultimately carries the day, but this is one of the more well known debates in recent epistemology, about “justified true belief” —”
Dont expect Brandon to keep up on things.
Try this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_paradox
You did your best to warn Brandon.
Let’s hope Matthew will let me move away slowly from the horse.
nice willard.
Steven Mosher, this is one of the dumber comments I’ve seen you make:
I’ll leave aside the fact you ignored the correction of your misrepresentation of my position I posted earlier in this fork. Nobody expects you to have enough intellectual integrity to admit your mistakes. There’s no point dwelling on such.
Instead, I’m going to just focus on the quote you pretend rebuts my statement. You tell people not to “expect Brandon to keep up on things,” but the reality is the issue you reference to rebut me actually agrees with me.
It is true Edmund Gettier challenged the classical formulation for “justified true belief” (often considered the definition of knowledge). He did not, however, attempt to argue the idea of justified true belief is wrong. He did not attempt to argue it is an inappropriate definition for “knowledge.” What he argued is our ideas on what qualifies as justification are wrong.
Anyone with any familiarity of Gettier problems, the items being discussed in the material cited in the quote you offered, would know the response to them has overwhelmingly endorsed the idea of knowledge requiring some form of justification. You can see a number of them listed in this article which describes responses to Gettier problems. Pretty much all of the philosophical responses listed in it (and available elsewhere) fit my remark:
There are only two issues which receive much debate in regard to the problems Gettier argued: 1) What counts as justification; 2) Is something more than justification needed. Neither of those disputes my claim “pretty much accepts it requires some form of justification.”
To put it more simply, while you repeatedly act as though you have philosophical training/knowledge, you don’t know even the most basic aspects of a major philosophical dispute. And that’s despite having the opportunity to research it before commenting. Instead, you just assume you know better than me, that I’m some poser/idiot/whatever, based upon a two second skim of a quote you didn’t understand.
Snideness and haughtiness don’t make you right. They just make you say stupid things.
Brandon
Interesting and excellent summary. I was not aware of those specifics.
If you want a detailed description and background on Mann see Brandon Mcintyre Jean S amac
Period
If mikey doesn’t sue Brandon, he’s got some splainin to do.
There’s no chance Michael Mann will ever sue me. Targeting a relatively high profile person makes sense when championing a cause. It generates publicity. It’s even better if the target has ready access to the media. If they do, you can be almost certain they’ll use it, drawing even more attention. That attention is good for Mann as long as he can spin it right.
Targeting a relatively no-name individual won’t have anywhere near the same effect. Targeting me would be like targeting the loud, obnoxious drunk who insults politicians at a bar. Mann would find it incredibly difficult to get publicity from his supporters for such, and I doubt he’d be able to spin such attention in his favor.
Don’t sell yourself short, Brandon. You are well known in the climate blogosphere, where more people are paying attention to this than there are attentive followers in the general public. Don’t be surprised if Steyn doesn’t quote the compelling case you have made against mikey, in his column. Just sayin.
So long as I stay within the blogosphere though, it’s true. To the average person, comments and posts on a blog don’t matter. At best, it’s viewed like a discussion at the pub.
It’s only when you start becoming a focus in the media a lawsuit might get pursued. That’s when you might be worth shutting up/be a way to get publicity.
Which is probably just as well. While I would be incredibly amused by being the target of a lawsuit, I don’t know that I’d want to deal with the attention. I’ve managed to avoid ever having anyone talk to me in person about my activities on blogs, and that’s kind of nice. I think it’d be weird to have those two aspects of my life start merging.
You wouldn’t be the first, Brandon:
https://www.google.com/search?q=can+a+blogger+be+sued+for+libel&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb
If Emperor Mann should turn his wrath to Brandonw or any blogger(s) we need hundreds or thousands of bloggers willing to rise up and state “I am Spartacus”… “I am Spartacus” … “I am Spartacus” ….
Of course, much too easy for me to say this, an anonymous webinator, but I don’t get involved in blogging or in speaking under my own name because (1) I don’t know anywhere near enough and can’t spare time to keep up; (2) related to (1) it’s not my field of career or expertise; (3) I do work in a field, related to environment, in which the pervasive atmosphere of climate political correctness makes it difficult for anyone to sustain a career openly outside or against the totalitarian “consensus”….
If Brandonw gets sued, I’m not standing by him. I bet that Brandon Schollenberger guy would though. He’s always looking for a way to get attention.
Brandon, I’m not sure where the “w” came from but I think my subconscious wants to confuse Mann’s lawyers…. send them on some impossible wild goose chase etc.
Skiphil, I approve of the misspelling no matter what its cause or motivation. I don’t know how I’d feel if everyone spelled my name correctly. Probably sad. The misspellings of my name are an eternal source of amusement:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/storage/97_stickers_scr.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1400261737384
Don,
Bandon is a no-one muttering in an obscure corner of the internet.
That’s all the ‘splaining’ required.
Brandon Shollenberger | September 11, 2014 at 4:15 pm |
“There’s no chance Michael Mann will ever sue me. Targeting a relatively high profile person makes sense when championing a cause. It generates publicity. It’s even better if the target has ready access to the media. If they do, you can be almost certain they’ll use it, drawing even more attention. That attention is good…..”
Absolutely right….of Steyn.
He thought he had a soft target in Mann – typical of bullies like Steyn to pick on someone they think won’t fight back.
Well, didn’t he get a surprise!
But, at least to his credit he had the balls to speak his mind.
Unlike other mealy-mouthed individuals who want to hint at it, and make snide innuendo, but never say the ‘f’ word, just encourage others to go there.
They are spineless snivelling cowards.
Superb summary of the critical points. Thanks, Brandon.
Thanks!
Great post Brandon. There seems to be a clear case of personal fraud as well as the HS being merely described as fraudulent, which is the main basis of Steyn’s defence.
So I would like to believe that Steyn’s legal team would be aware of the points that you have made so that Mann’s motions about Steyn and others making statements about his personal ethics can be rebutted.
Thanks Peter Davies. I actually uploaded this comment as a blog post so it is better preserved:
http://hiizuru.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/michael-mann-committed-fraud/
I don’t know who might read it though. I’d expect Mark Steyn and/or someone working with him would already be aware of the points I made, but I suppose it couldn’t hurt to forward him the content.
(But to be honest, the main reason I made it into a post is I liked how direct and to the point it was. I have trouble with that.)
I would think that mikey’s lawyers will be reading it too, Brandon. You are sticking your neck out. But don’t ever listen to me.
@ Brandon Shollenberger “(But to be honest, the main reason I made it into a post is I liked how direct and to the point it was. I have trouble with that.)”
That’s another reason that I liked your post. I always appreciate it whenever blog posts are concise and to the point!
Ah, but Don Monfort, I’m not ignoring your view on this. I think you’re wrong to believe I might get sued (as I don’t believe Michael Mann would feel it worthwhile), but I’m not so sure I’d act based upon my belief. If I were afraid of the idea of a lawsuit, I’d behave differently even if I didn’t think a lawsuit would happen.
The thing is I’m okay with the possibility I’m wrong. Getting sued over this would make my day. Heck, it’d make my year. The moment I got served with a lawsuit, I’d start laughing, and I wouldn’t stop until I couldn’t catch my breath. That’s why I’m okay with the risk of you being right. I don’t think you are, but if you are, the worst that’ll happen is I’ll be forced to have a great time.
I don’t really want a lawsuit, but at the same time, I would enjoy having one filed against me way too much.
eter Davies, I’m the same way. I almost always enjoy a wrong argument that’s concisely stated more than a right argument that’s wordy and convoluted. Unfortunately, my normal writing style tends toward the latter.
(Just count how many times I use the word “unfortunately” in a day, and you’ll see what I mean.)
OK, Brandon. If you would welcome a lawsuit, put an announcement and a link on one of the Team’s twitter accounts. Mikey’s would do, unless he has you blocked. But you should ask Judith to take down your takedown, as they would love to point out that Judith is hosting comments flat out accusing mikey of committing fraud and sharing in the liability. Have fun with it. I already have my popcorn and single malt.
If Judith Curry wants to delete any of my comments for legal concerns, she has my permission to (not that she needs it). I’m not going to ask her to do it though. I think people should make decisions like that for themselves. As for an announcement, after I turned that comment into a post at my site, I posted this on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/Corpus_no_Logos/status/510182029569167360
So I think I’m on the same page as you :P
Though I have to wonder if Michael Mann or anyone else on the “Team” would click on the link if they saw it.
Steyn is definitely following CA and Climate Etc. Don’t know if he reads every comment but he’s certainly aware:
Michael E Mann Repudiates His Own Hockey Stick
by Mark Steyn
September 11, 2014
Watch how easily I can distract Brandon from the valuable work he does on Mann…
Steven Mosher, if you think you’re distracting me from anything valuable, you’re a fool. I’m currently watching an episode of The Finder I’ve seen a dozen times while playing Final Fantasy VI. There’s practically nothing less productive I could be doing.
The worst you could do is derail conversations on this blog and make it more of a mess. Given the presence of Joshua, WebHubTelescope and a number of others, I don’t think that’d be noticeable.
well said Brandon, kudos!
As you allude to near the end of your superb comment, Mann also did some, er, egregious and ongoing misrepresentations regarding his “dirty laundry”… so to speak.
http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/01/dirty-laundry/
http://climateaudit.org/2011/07/06/dirty-laundry-ii-contaminated-sediments/
Brandon,
I don’t know how long it would take to put together the information but I would think it even harder to distill it down into a sequential, comprehensive, compelling, readable story that any 13 year old could understand and want to read. I picked 13 as that is the age for which hollywood directs it’s content.
ordvic, I made a comment below about how someone should write a step-by-step guide on how the hockey stick was made. The word part would be pretty easy for me to do. I could have that done in a day. The problem is most people need more than words to follow something like this, and getting together visual components is a huge chore. Even worse, I’d like to be able to provide step by step code people could work through to see what I describe in process. Getting that all together would be a lot of work.
That said, I did start toying with the process of creating “tutorial” videos recently, and I think it might be a viable tool. Imagine this script:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8PYZX-nEOY
With an actual visual component (and practice it so I don’t screw up so much). Then imagine a second video which walks through the methodology for Michael Mann’s hockey stick, explaining each step the data goes through up to the final result. I think that’d be a pretty good educational tool.
Of course, I’d have to find the motivation to actually do it. Writing a script and recording audio is no problem for me, but I hate doing visual stuff. I have trouble finding motivation to do even the simplest “storyboarding” like I did for that video.
Brandon,
Actually I was responding to your link below, I just hit the wrong button. Thanks for the video. Some thoughts after listening. There is nothing wrong with your voice but a Rod Serling type would be better. Having read many articles, comments, and even the NR court papers it seems some of the critiques are missing here? What I envisioned after reading your comment was not only the construction of the graph and how it rose to fame but it’s entire history. This could include Monkton and Manns book about climate wars. Of course McIntyre. It could also include that Swedish or Norwegian study that resurrected the MWP and Lindzens paper along with Phil Jones and others that corroborated the higher MWPin correl. It could also include climategate and hide the decline and all those phoney so called investigations if they even were. The IPPC use of the graph and then not and how the Manns graph replaced Tim Balls. Al Gores use of the graph, his movie, and presentation to congress and their reaction (moderate repubs such as Lugar very impressed). The political polarization and public policy. The name calling and labeling. The lawsuits. And probaby more. Athough this could be a book I was thinking more of a short story or a movie.
Thinking more about it that step by step is pretty good. I like especially all those proxies so why just the choice of one. Honing in on that alone has an impact. I noticed in the NR court papers they mentioned how he used proxy for pre 1960 and actual temperature date post 1960 even though when tested actual temps show up hot in comparison to proxy. I know you don’t have his code but can you make charts showing various algorithms used. I saw one presentation that showed how an algorithm could be used on any graph and ended up looking like a hockey stick. Just throwing out random thoughts. Good work! I learned something even though at first I thought I already knew that (bravado).
Brandon,
On slight tangent if I may – I’m a little confused by this Mann statement you cite,
“…revealed that not all of the records were playing an equal role in our reconstructions. Certain proxy data appeared to be of critical importance in establishing the reliability of the reconstruction–in particular, one set of tree ring records spanning the boreal tree line of North America published by dendroclimatologists Gordon Jacoby and Rosanne D’Arrigo.”
I was under the impression that the whole point of using PCA was to select (cherry pick, if you will), and weight accordingly, records that met certain criteria, e.g., (higher) correlation to an assumed temperature series. And would have become aware during the analysis output of the individual “record weights” contributed to the final “product”.
Does that square with the square with the statement quoted above?
Sorry if I’m confusing the context.
Bruce Andrews, your understanding is on the right track, but not quite right. PCA combines many data series into a smaller number of series (PCs) by looking for shared variance (similar patterns) in those series. Mann’s faulty implementation focused on variance in the modern period. That meant it would look for upturns or downturns in the modern period, giving them far more weight in the calculated PCs.
Correlation with the temperature series was not part of that. Correlation with the temperature series was used to rescale the PCs. That is, once you have the calculated PCs, you check to see how well they match the temperature series. The ones which match better are given more weight. That means the effect you had in mind is correct, but it is not part of the PCA process itself.
As for weights, it is definitely possible to calculate the weights of various series in all this. Michael Mann didn’t do that though (and I don’t think he knew how to). His testing was a cruder sort. He tested by removing portions of his data, rerunning his code and checking to see what happened. That was much less effective, but it was also much easier to do.
.
I should point out the PCA issue has been a bit misunderstood as PCA wasn’t used for every series. Of the 22 proxies which extended back to 1400 AD, only three were calculated PCs. The other 19 were data series used as is. If a hockey stick existed it one of them,* rescaling by correlation to the temperature series would have resulted in a hockey stick regardless of the use of PCA.
In other words, Mann’s faulty implementation of PCA is what he used to create a proxy with a hockey stick shape. Weighting proxies by their correlation to the instrumental temperature record is how he gave his hockey stick proxy so much weight. Mann gave undue weight to a few series when creating proxies with PCA, and he then gave undue weight to a for proxies when creating his reconstruction.
*One of the 19 non-PC proxies actually did have a hockey stick shape. It is the one Mann referred to in that quote. You can read about it here. Short version, Michael Mann had to do some messed up things to manage to include that proxy.
Brandon,
Thank you for taking the time to clear this up for me. I should have “studied up” a bit more before commenting but I’m pretty sure your response will help others also.
No problem Bruce Andrews. It’s not like there was any convenient resource for you to use. You’d have probably had to read lots of different blog posts/papers to understand it without asking. I wouldn’t expect people to do that.
Somebody really ought to write a step by step guide to how Michael Mann’s hockey stick was created. And by “somebody,” I mean me. I’ve intended to do it for quite a while, but the project has always seemed too tedious to me. That’s especially true since there are so many “quirks” to his methodology which don’t really matter but deserve attention because they’re so wrong.
I think I’m going to go get pizza instead. That sounds much more enjoyable.
Brandon,
Alrighty then.
You enjoy your pizza (and beer! – its Friday!) and I’ll hit the books.
Thanks again.
Brandon,
Your explanation helps elucidate the importance of the “short centering” issue, yes? Makes some proxies “stick out” (variation-wise) so they more heavily load the highest PCs. A form of “pre-cherry picking” I suppose – making them into cherries to be picked (or weighted).
I understand its all more complicated than my assumptions – I’ll review the subject more more but thanks for your helpful comments.
Bruce Andrews, yup. Short-centering causes PCA to look for variation from the modern period’s average rather than the series’ average. If the modern period varies quite a bit from the rest of the series, you have a hockey stick. Short-centered PCA takes that as the most prevalent signal in the data.
After that, you then have what’s basically the screening fallacy. You take proxies which correlate well with modern temperatures and give them lots of weight. You then give the rest of the proxies much less weight. The effect pretty much guarantees a hockey stick.
(The screening fallacy is a subset of this approach as in the screening fallacy, you give 0 weight to series which don’t correlate well. In the MBH method, you give some weight, but only a very little amount. Either way, when you select a signal to look for in the data, you ensure you get that signal while everything else averages out.)
Oh, and I want to point out I just wrote a quick script explaining the process used to create the hockey stick. I’m going to try doing a quick run through of it to see how it sounds recorded. It’s written with visual components in mind, but it can be followed without them.
I’ll try to have it uploaded in a little bit. I’m not sure I’ll do anything with it. I just wanted to see how simplified I could make things while still explaining them clearly.
I cringe at this recording. I wrote the script without editing, and there were a number of problems I tried to correct for while doing my first readthrough of it. The result was… less than ideal. And there were a couple paragraphs I read but couldn’t figure out why they were there.
Oh well. I have plans for this weekend so I’m not going to worry about spending time getting things done right. You may find it helpful or you may not:
https://soundcloud.com/brandonshollenberger/lecond-recording-first-try
Mann’s refusals appear to be a remarkable failure to provide:
Richard Feynman, Cargo Cult Science, Caltech commencement 1974
Mike Mann, whether he wins or loses, is not a good public advertisement for climatology and climatologists
I am amazed that so few of his colleagues have spoken out about his behaviour.
Professional associations in other fields take a dim view of those who ‘bring the profession into disrepute’. Mann has done more than anybody else to bring his into ridicule and contempt.
Their continued silence speaks volumes.
You are entirely right Latimer Alder!
The common-sense reason Nowadays, scientists and skeptics alike appreciate that diluting Michael Mann’s message by 96-to-1 serves to greatly strengthen 21st century climate-science.
Indeed, if Michael Mann never spoke or published ever again, the message of climate-science would scarcely be affected.
Conclusion Skeptics now are free to address the vigorous and evolving concerns of modern-day climate-science … rather than futilely obsessing over the aging papers of one lone scientist!
That’s good news regarding the robustness of 21st century climate-science, eh Latimer Alder?
The common sense reason is that his fellow scientists don’t want to be attacked like I have been – denier, anti-science, serial climate misinformer, and all that
@A Fan
If you can’t be bothered to write in plain English I sure as heck can’t be bothered to waste my time on trying to decipher your cryptic remarks.
Experience tells me the cost/benefit ratio you offer is way too high to be worthwhile.
“disinformer”
http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/25/misinformation-disinformation-and-conflict/
Don Monfort, I have to wonder if Michael Mann really meant Judith Curry spreads disinformation. Some time back, Richard Tol accused her of the exact same then insisted he didn’t accuse her of lying (or spreading lies). He apparently was unaware of the distinction between disinformation and misinformation. The same might be true for Mann.
It wouldn’t surprise me. He seems like the type of person who would throw around insults without knowing what they mean.
“Conclusion Skeptics now are free to address the vigorous and evolving concerns of modern-day climate-science … rather than futilely obsessing over the aging papers of one lone scientist!”
All past lies, propaganda and delusion of the climate science agenda are wiped clean in a memory hole. It’s on to the next meme reinforcement talking point.
Same people, same lies Fanboy. The stick is only indicative of the culture that remains dominate in the green activist community. The core of climate science.
I am pretty sure mad mikey knew what he was saying, Brandon. And calling a scientist’s work “anti-science”? Any ambiguity there?
Don’t worry. Some poor sap named Brandon Schollenberger will get sued.
===========
Don Monfort, actually, yeah. The phrase “anti-science” is usually intended to be vague. When working with smears, it is almost always better to be vague as that prevents anyone from rebutting what you say. How can someone do “anti-science” work? What is the opposite of scientific work? If you can’t say, how can you hope to prove the accusation wrong?
kim, I really hate that Brandon Schollenberger guy. He keeps stealing all my glory.
Calling a professional scientist anti-science is not good. Nothing vague about it. Enough of this. You better behave yourself, or webby will start stalking you again:)
Of course it’s not good. The point of smears is to cause damage (either to a person’s self-esteem or reputation). You just don’t need to be clear in order to do that. People generally don’t think about the nuances of smears and insults. As long as you create a general impression of wrong-doing, the details don’t matter. Just look at political attack ads. Their effectiveness has almost nothing to do with the viewers’ ability to translate what the ad says into a true statement about reality. That’s why 90% of people can’t give a clear (and correct) explanation of what a politician they dislike has done.
Smear campaigns are all about creating a negative impression. Facts, details and nuances matter very little for it.
More to be feared (by far!) than juvenile twitter-obloquy is the indifference of one’s scientific peers … the indifference that is meted to research that is either so inconsequential as to be not worth falsifying, or so nonspecific as to be incapable of falsification.
Conversely, cat-loving Peter Cox is entirely right that scientists *LOVE* to attack falsifiable conclusions … and *GREATLY* respect falsifiable conclusions that withstand sustained attacks!
By this measure (and by the quantitative measure of citations), James Hansen’s energy-balance worldview represents (by far) the strongest available climate-science predictions:
• Sustained radiative energy-imbalance driven by anthropogenic CO2.
• Sustained heat-energy increases of ocean, ice, air, and land combined.
• Observable changes Melting polar ice, heating oceans, rising sea-levels, increasing air-temperatures.
And (to the best of my knowledge) James Hansen very wisely refrains from juvenile twitter-games … preferring to state his conclusions impersonally.
Good on `yah, James Hansen! It is your good work, and your good manners too (not Michael Mann’s!) that are the foundation of the amicable modern-day climate-change worldview.
`Cuz at the end of the day, it’s the strongest science that matters, and the firmest conclusions, and the most outstanding collegiality, that recruits the most talented students.
*EVERYONE* appreciates *THESE* scientific realities, eh Climate Etc readers?
curryja | September 11, 2014 at 4:04 pm |
“The common sense reason is that his fellow scientists don’t want to be attacked like I have been – denier, anti-science, serial climate misinformer, and all that”
“Common sense”???
More like the conspiratorial reason – everyone knows Mike is “fraudulent(?)”. But those new grads, Bradley and Hughes, cowered in the corner while Mike hatched his evil scheme.
Get a grip Judith, your Mannian obsession is sending you a bit nutty.
And the Victim Card, again!!
Thankfully Judith disdains use of the Victim Card.
What’s that?….did someone say big-boy pants???
It’s funny how some say skeptics (and we lukewarmers) have contributed little to scientific discussion regarding climate change and how often, how rudely and how wrongly they say it.
From Fan’s Peter Cox cartoon quote:
Well, at least tigers like Dr. Curry aren’t herdable!
> The common sense reason is that his fellow scientists don’t want to be attacked like I have been – denier, anti-science, serial climate misinformer, and all that
They prefer to be called nephrologists, cultists, alarmists, groupthinking conformists, and all that.
I am struck by how few of his peers take any moment(s) to praise and defend his character and his science, given the seriousness of many criticisms. Of course they may disdain the need to do so, but it is remarkable how little public support he receives from climate science peers…. most of whom view him as a huge self-important a## blighting the field.
Judy, there’s some mystery to me about the terms of reference of the NSF inquiry. When I talked to them, they seemed to think that Mann’s hockey stick work had been done before he was in receipt of NSF grants and therefore not within their jurisdiction. I’m not sure that that is correct since Bradley was operating under NSF grants and Mann was then Bradley’s student. But without a clear record of the NSF terms of reference, one doesn’t know. NSF is resisting FOI requests on their investigation, thus far even refusing to identify the authors of the closeout memorandum.
Their report made no reference to verification r2 controversy which I described to them in detail.
Interesting points re the NSF inquiry. The NSF Inspector Generals are pretty thorough and unbiased I think; not clear exactly what their purview was tho in light of your points.
I’m pretty skeptical. The case against Murray Salby seemed pretty thin to me when I first read it, and as I understand his response he makes several counter-charges:
• The investigation was undertaken in support of his former employer after he sued them attempting to recover his work (data, etc.).
• There was no evidence for the charges involved, and the most serious of them appears to have been a matter of creating time-sheets long after they should have been submitted, which was pure speculation (per Salby).
• That the time-sheets “reflect a concentration of claimed hours on days seemingly outside the academic year of the University and in daily amounts and continuous days worked that are highly implausible.” Amazing that the OIG of the National Science Foundation doesn’t understand scientists:
I wonder what hours Mann works. If he’s a 9-to-5’er, that would explain how closely the OIG and he thought.
Salby was running his “company” from home and using UofC facilities. There are amusing corollaries.
For projects not involved with UofC? Can you prove it, from the OIG report I linked? IIRC there were lots of weasil-worded implications, but nothing they could point to. Which they would have, given how light their “time-sheet” case was.
And don’t forget the OIG recommended a 5-year suspension, he got 3.
Clouds the issue with salby.
Stay on point
The NSF memorandum stated: ” 1. The subject did not directly receive NSF research funding as a Principal Investigator until late 2001 or 2002″. I think that this was in the report for a reason.
Steve Mosher, we agree on something at last. Regards
> I think that this was in the report for a reason.
The truth is out there.
Steve my sense is the nsf will keep records of PIs but
Not other team members. The PI is the responsible party.
One theory.
Need more FOI requests…..
Lots of theories.
Cf. http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/1640585432
> the issue with Salby
Which issue, again?
I think I found my theme for this thread.
Auditors might appreciate that there’s already more than sixty hits for “issue” on this page.
Is it “ichew” or “hiss-hue”?
One step of the coreador, the fraudulence(red) is in the shaft.
==================
“All multifarious means which human ingenuity can devise, and which are resorted to by one individual to get an advantage over another by false suggestions or suppression of the truth. It includes all surprises, tricks, cunning or dissembling, and any unfair way which another is cheated.
Source: Black’s Law Dictionary, 5th ed., by Henry Campbell Black, West Publishing Co., St. Paul, Minnesota, 1979.”
“Criminal and civil frauds differ in the level of proof required. For civil cases that burden is a “preponderance of evidence.” In criminal fraud the standard is “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
WHAT CONSTITUTES FRAUD
Under common law, three elements are required to prove fraud: a material false statement made with an intent to deceive (scienter), a victim’s reliance on the statement and damages.”
“A material false statement.”
“Victim reliance.”
“Damages.”
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2004/Oct/BasicLegalConcepts.htm
Mann aside, the three elements above seem to apply to other larger situations.
Definition of SCIENTER – a degree of knowledge that makes an individual legally responsible for the consequences of his act
To whom much is given, much is expected. If one wishes to have the influence of a scientist, it comes with obligations in my opinion.
At times an accountant will find a gray area and recommend the option most beneficial to their client. An insurance policy used in that situation is full disclosure. A primary statement will be footnoted to an explanation that may weaken or call into question the primary statement. The footnote is now an integral part of the primary statement. If a defense is needed in the future, the accountant can point to the footnote.
JD Ohio?
I share your opinion of the political climate, but truth will not ultimately be defeated by untruth.
Regarding your point, Oliver, truth is the most massive weapon of construction there is.
Regarding your point, omanuel, truth is the most massive weapon of construction there is.
“I was misled.”
If the NRO/CEI appeal fails, I will be shocked if Dr. Curry does not receive a subpoena, for a deposition at the very least. She can testify both to the misleading nature of Mann’s graphs, and to his reputation in the climate science community.
Steve McIntyre should probably get one too. Though as a Canadian citizen, his participation will likely have to be voluntary. If Steyn’s lawyers are really aggressive, they will retain McIntyre as an expert witness on the statistics. Not just because of his long history with the various issues, but because the core of the case, if it goes to the trial, will be making all the math at issue clear to a jury.
Both Dr. Curry and Steve McIntyre have the communications skills and experience in the subject that would make them ideal expert witnesses.
Plus their participation would have the added benefit of causing Mann to jump up and down and scream with rage like Rumplestiltskin.
Gary,
If this does go to trial will Mann be required to submit his meta data and code in discovery or can the judge waive that?
ordvic,
Since one of the central charges against Steyn is that he falsely accused Mann of “torturing data,” that data and is code should be subject to discovery. The test is not just whether the information is admissible at trial, but whether it can lead to the discovery of relevant evidence.
I suspect the DC judges will want to protect Mann to the extent they can, but they have to know that a decision in Mann’s favor will end up in a federal appeal. If they try too hard to favor Mann on procedural and evidentiary issues, those could be reviewed as well, and put the whole proceedings in an unfavorable light.
But you just can’t predict what trial judges will do. When I first graduated from law school, I used to every so often hear a judge say “I don’t like this result, but I have no choice. The law requires I rule this way.”
I haven’t heard anything like that in over ten years. I have heard numerous judges complain about “all this due process stuff,” and then go on to rule in direct contravention of the law. Rules of procedure and rules of evidence were enacted in large part for the specific purpose of constraining the awesome power we grant to our trial court judges. But they are becoming less and less of a restraint at all, even at the highest levels.
Judith said: “In a scientific or professional context, ‘fraud’ is inferred to refer to research misconduct, which is characterized by falsification, fabrication and/or plagiarism. I don’t think that this is the case with regards to Mann’s hockey stick, and Steve McIntyre has said previously that he doesn’t think so either. ”
I haven’t said this. I’ve avoided using the word “fraud” in public commentary for a variety of reasons and, as Mann observed in his pleadings, have not publicly made such allegations. But, on the other hand, I haven’t said the opposite either. i spoke out against Cuccinnelli because I thought that Cuccinnelli was abusing administrative authority to target Mann as a political opponent.
I think that there were legitimate issues for a university inquiry. I think that much of the ongoing controversy could have been avoided if Penn State and UEA had done more balanced inquiries. Unfortunately they didnt and the odor lingers.
I think that Mann would have been wiser to let sleeping dogs lie, as I see little benefit to him in legal proceedings that closely examine whether he committed fraud.
Steve McIntyre,
Am I reading the double negatives correctly here, to infer that you hold out at least the possibility that Mann’s conduct may rise to the level of “research misconduct?”
Yes,
I think that’s the snide dog-whistle.
There are a wide variety of scientific practices which one can use or omit or just use improperly. Some of these would be mere differences of opinion if it was appropriate to use this statistical procedure or that averaging method. At worst, some of these could be construed as poor science but it could just be a scientific debate between different groups. One could also neglect to describe a procedure in enough detail. But who decides what “enough” detail is? Again, this might be poor or misleading science or may lead to a difference of opinion among groups of scientists about the practice. Few of these would be actual scientific misconduct. But one might describe a graph made using one or more of these methods as fraudulent. There are other scientific behaviors that may be more borderline (worse than the above) related to which data is thrown out and why. But it still might not be reasonably called “misconduct” – and likely would not result in having grant funding revoked. ALthough, if exposed it might lead future grant reviewers to be leary of providing more funds. THen you get to the clear-cut cases of scientific misconduct: making up data, throwing away any data you don’t like, deliberately misleading readers about what procedures were used, plagiarism, etc. No one has accused Mann of serious misconduct, merely of some poor practices, and some misleading descriptions (although if you show a continuing pattern of this and we may not know about all of them – it makes me wonder). If he were not so thin-skinned and such an activist, and was willing to admit errors rather than attack others on Twitter, more people would be willing to cut him some slack. But instead, people are angry that some of his shoddy work is being used for political purposes and he acts the way he does. Hence the labeling of the hockey stick graph as fraudulent. Even without considering his behavior, if one finds that he used several questionable procedures in analyzing the data and making the graph, including misleading ways of presenting it, then one is perfectly within ones’s rights to say they believe it is fake or fraudulent.
As could be predicted, many skeptical participants will go to any length and contortion in addressing the claim of “fraud” adding validity where little exists. Free speech restrictions have long been pursued by Mann’s political peers as has been cited by numerous examples and links. Here we the Teachers Union, a wholly partisan left-wing political machine at that, seeking to exempt itself from the very 1st amendment restrictions a Democratic Senate is proposing as a Constitutional amendment only this week;
http://dailycaller.com/2014/09/11/teachers-union-wants-to-amend-constitution-to-limit-everyone-elses-campaign-speech/
There is nothing all that surprising in Mann’s tactical legal abuses as he is the very epitome of academic decline into partisan operative status of the climate science segment. That’s the real substance of the story, the legalisms should really be secondary to the main event: political suppression via legal contortion. Climate science as political weapon, linked to legal processes as a political weapon by an overlapping serial abuser.
Steve said “I think that Mann would have been wiser to let sleeping dogs lie, as I see little benefit to him in legal proceedings that closely examine whether he committed fraud.”
I agree.
However, the defamation case will not be about whether Mann committed fraud.
It will be about whether his hockey-stick graph was fraudulent.
Quite different things, in my opinion.
Steve, stick to your fact knitting. It is always terrific. Let us lawyers take it the rest of the way.
Our private interactions in re Cook and Tol are perhaps a ‘good’ example.
“The person who was most instrumental in debunking Climategate scientist Michael Mann’s hockey stick chart, Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit, said last night that he did not believe his scientific misrepresentations rose to the level of fraud.” http://spectator.org/blog/22668/top-mann-nemesis-hes-not-fraud
This seems to contradict what you just said. Clarification would be appreciated, since I’ve been quoting this.
Dagfinn, if you notice, that article doesn’t quote Steve McIntyre as saying that even though they do quote him. That’s always a sign one should be cautious. I didn’t hear the speech he gave, but it wouldn’t surprise me if people misconstrued what he said. A lot of people take any failure to agree with them as disagreeing with them. I suspect what he did was neither agree (accuse Michael Mann of fraud) nor disagree (say Michael Mann didn’t commit fraud).
Brandon, yes, I realize that misquotes and misunderstandings happen all the time. I’m just wishing for clarification. Not least because it seems to me that this last statement (“I didn’t say that”, etc) is open to some interpretation.
Dagfinn, I think that Steve M’s statement speaks for itself on what he wishes to say publicly in relation to the F-word. He says he has a “variety of reasons.” Clearly, despite extensive writings on myriad topics, this is not one on which he wishes to be more specific. That is his right, for whatever reason(s). I don’t see that he gives a thumbs up or thumbs down on it, but this is not any “dog whistle” as some hostile commenter alleges — he says what he wishes to say and others can say what they wish to say.
Others, of course, can think and infer whatever they think is appropriate from the records and numerous articles, comments etc. which are available.
Dagfinn, does it seem odd to you that your citation, as Brandon points out, is from a news article http://spectator.org/blog/22668/top-mann-nemesis-hes-not-fraud rather than something that I directly said?
While I try to write clearly, I dont try to reduce things to soundbites if I don’t think that they reduce to soundbites.
The actual text of my speech is online here http://www.climateaudit.info/pdf/mcintyre-heartland_2010.pdf. At the time, the Cuccinnelli fraud investigation had been announced – an investigation that I had strongly criticized on civil rights grounds as administrative targeting (my grandfather McRuer, a prominent Canadian judge, wrote a leading Canadian report on civil rights and administrative targeting and this has been part of my DNA, so to speak.) I argued against the legitimacy of the Cuccinnelli investigation, a message that was not very welcome to the bloodthirsty Heartland audience which, as others have observed, had given me a standing ovation at the start of my speech and a very tepid two-finger clap at the end.
In retrospect, I think that my remarks were thoughtful and measured and properly expressed by somewhat nuanced position on fraud. I urged the audience not to be so angry – a point that has frustrated me over the years – and criticized their willingness to endorse Cuccinnelli’s investigation rather than trying to work through academic institutions. But at no point did I say that Mann’s work was not “fraudulent”.
In my introduction, I made the following criticism:
In saying the above, note that I did not express an opinion on whether I thought that Mann had or had not committed fraud.
In the close of the speech, I turned to the connection of non-disclosure of adverse data, something that is treated very very seriously in the financial world and seems like obvious misconduct to the “public”. I observed that academics were much less offended by misrepresentation through non-disclosure, citing a contemporary exchange with Pielke.
The contemporary exchange with Pielke Jr is relevant – he categorized incidents that would seem like “fraud” or “misconduct” to people familiar with financial institutions as mere “fudge”.
I continued with the following editorial comment that seems very apt in retrospect:
This seems entirely appropriate. If climate scientists want the public to make large decisions on their pronouncements, then they should observe a “full true and plain disclosure” standard, rather than hiding caveats like Philadelphia lawyers.
That the climate community endorsed sharp practice like the trick to hide the decline, rather than disavowing it, seemed to me like almost the worst possible crisis management if they wanted to maintain public confidence. I observed that there were a variety of ways in which this could have been done without public disemboweling of the scientists in question.
I also criticized Cuccinnelli’s investigation of supposed financial abuse as follows:
Again, in retrospect, these seem like sensible words.
The article cited above was not based on an interview but on a report of the above speech. Here’s what it said:
But I hadn’t actually expressed an opinion on whether or not Mann’s work was “fraudulent” – I urged the audience not to worry about such matters and to be less angry. However, if Mann chooses not to let sleeping dogs lie, as he had done in Mann v Steyn, then a consideration of whether he did commit fraud obviously becomes relevant. However, I’d be surprised if the appeal court finds that the defendants were obliged to accept the supposed “exonerations” as fact (thus triggering anti-SLAPP) and I expect the matter to peter out without anything being resolved.
Steve, thanks for a very interesting reply. I was not trying to imply that you had actually contradicted yourself. As for “does it seem odd to you”, no, not really. I know that news articles can be inaccurate, obviously. I was just interested to know what you had actually said that might be construed that way. I suppose I was expecting something at least somewhat more similar.
Steve McIntyre | September 12, 2014 at 8:56 am |
” …non-disclosure of adverse data, something that is treated very very seriously in the financial world and seems like obvious misconduct”…”
Ha!!
If ever there was a model we wouldn’t want science to emulate, it’s the financial world with its rampant nepotism and widespread fraud.
And ‘non-discolure of adverse data’ ?! Holy heck!! Just think of the banking sector and the GFC.
Anyone looking to the financial sector as a guide is in a very high state of delusion.
“If ever there was a model we wouldn’t want science to emulate, it’s the financial world with its rampant nepotism and widespread fraud.”
Fraud in the financial world is often times actionable. Generally the cows do come home and the undetected deceit crumbles after a certain length of time. With good accounting controls, detection generally happens sooner.
The presentation of financial (scientific) statements in conformity with generally accepted accounting (scientific) principles includes adequate disclosure of material matters.
For example, we don’t say we have $10 million of net income when that number might be $9 million. The margin of error is too large. If there is uncertainty, such as a pending lawsuit against the company, we may disclose that liability even though it’s not yet decided or the amount if any determined. Which brings up something that seems odd. The warmists are entering into the books an uncertain liability and then saying, Look what terrible shape we are in. This is from an accounting point of view, the preferred, conservative, stay out of jail approach. To look for reasons why it’s not as rosy as management says it is. If the threat to the company fails to materialize, the lawsuit against them fails, the accountants reverse the liability and the prior loss taken is then reversed. #
If management (the scientist) omits from the financial (scientific) statements, including the accompanying notes, information that is required by generally accepted accounting (scientific) principles, the auditor should express a qualified or an adverse opinion and should provide the (omitted) information in their report,
http://pcaobus.org/Standards/Auditing/Pages/AU431.aspx
An unqualified opinion means, without reservations. Qualified means with.
CPAs have rules upon rules. With in my opinion, with the condition that they follow them if the wish to remain a CPA.
# If you believe Wunsch’s latest paper, something similar happened. With his lower amount of heat in the ocean, most of an assumed liability turned out to not be there. So we get to go back to the statements where they said it was bad, and adjust them as well by that same amount, and it as we look at it now, it wasn’t so bad.
“I think Mann’s advocacy is a new angle in interpreting the issue of ‘fraud.'”
I think Mann’s use of the term “fraud” in his advocacy, in describing the work of others with whom he disagrees, will be highly relevant and persuasive, in deciding the proper definition of the word for defamation purposes.
But I don’t think his advocacy, in and of itself, brings the term within the scope of more specific definitions of the term within the scientific and legal communities.
Fraud can have the general meaning of misleading.
“Full Definition of FRAUD
…
b : an act of deceiving or misrepresenting : trick”
This is the definition argued by Steyn. It makes the issue of the “truth” of his statement more difficult to challenge.
It can also have a more specific definition.
“fraud
noun \ˈfrȯd\
: the crime of using dishonest methods to take something valuable from another person”
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fraud
Both trial judges in Mann v. Steyn went out of their way to say a jury “could” interpret Steyn’s comment as meaning this latter, more damaging type of definition.
“In context, it would not be unreasonable for a reader to interpret the comment , and the republication in National Review, as an allegation that Dr. Mann had committed scientific fraud.”
This benefits Mann in two ways.
1) The more specific definition requires some reliance on, and loss by, the “victim” of the fraud. Mann can argue there are no victims, nor was there a loss by anyone. It will be easier to argue that Steyn’s statement was false by this standard.
2) It makes the “libel per se” claim, added by Mann after the first appeal was filed, much easier to meet. The damage to anyone’s professional reputation would be more likely to be harmed by a specific claim of scientific misconduct, than a claim of merely being deceptive or misleading.
I think that the per se claim was added in direct response to the judges’ rulings on the definition of “fraud” in the context of denying the Anti-SLAPP motions.
Some may think that Mann’s advocacy makes it easier for Steyn’s statement to meet the narrower, more damaging definitions of fraud. But I think that is a stretch. The ‘reliance’ some might argue would be by voters and policy makers on Mann’s misleading graphs. But that type of non-economic loss is not the type of “loss” that you generally need to prove to establish fraud.
If Steyn’s statement is judged at trial by the more specific definition of scientific fraud, as the trial judges have done for purposes of the Anti-SLAPP motion, the case becomes more problematic for him. Mann’s repeated use of that same term against others in his own advocacy will be a good argument against this.
Some key points:
1) There is nothing wrong with hockey sticks. They occur all the time. For example, here is some random data:
https://xanonymousblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/ipccgarbage1.jpg
2) There is nothing wrong with splicing some data on to a hockey stick. It is scientific. It is creative. It may mean something. It may not mean something.
3) Given the random series above, the conclusion that warming is unprecedented (MBH 1998) and due to human forcing is indeed bogus. It was bogus then, and it’s bogus now. It was never supported by the literature of the day, and the paper should have been retracted.
4) Therefore, there is nothing wrong with calling a spade a spade, and while the national review probably when too far with personal attacks, it’s quite clear the CONCLUSIONS drawn from this ‘wonderfully creative’ scientific graph (by Mann, his co-authors, Nature Mag, the IPCC, and the idiotic governments that swallowed this crap) represent everything that is wrong or could go wrong with science.
I cannot think of a better word than bogus. What else would you call conclusions based on something that is random, and then subjected to a splicing process that is not statistically significant?????
If anyone is guilty of fraud in this it is their leader, the IPCC who did not properly investigate the 1910 to 1940 atmospheric global temperature rise. This mistake by the IPCC has clouded the climate issue ever since. In particular, by their failure to recognise the on/off nature of climate change as exemplified by the rapid fall in atmospheric temperature after 1940. They also failed to account for the long delay of the oceans (30-40 years) in catching up with the 1910 – 1940 atmospheric rise.
Even in the US, pointing out that someone has a big nose should not be actionable, even if the possessor of said proboscis would prefer you didn’t mention it, and feels hurt, distressed and deeply offended.
In the same vein, pointing out that Michael Mann was not awarded a Nobel Prize, that it is impossible to usefully determine the air temperature surrounding a tree in the past by examining the growth rings of that tree, that Michael Mann is bearded and balding, should not be actionable in any rational society, if the statements are statements of fact.
Has his reputation and standing in society been damaged because someone may have pointed out he didn’t receive a Nobel Prize? In all honesty, would you pay money to have this person teach your children? Is he a fool, a charlatan, or merely suffering from a form of delusional psychosis? Who knows, and, apart from Michael Mann, who really cares?
Or is he right, and is the world really warming – it’s just that the warming has been redefined to mean no increase in temperature. How precious!
The lawyers will get paid, sonorous and solemn judgements will be delivered, and the Universe will no doubt keep unfolding as it should.
Ah, the rich tapestry of life is indeed wondrous to behold.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Isn’t Mann a public figure?
Yes, which is why all this detail about Mann having any merit to his core libel claim is rubbish. What’s being proposed is that he only is speaking as a “scientist” instead of the partisan green advocate with the usual dweeb set of arm chair academic socialist talking points. His basic prayer to Gaia is finding a partisan judge willing to play the same make-believe regarding his actual social utility in the culture war. If you can find a court willing to accept EPA jurisdiction declaring co2 “pollution” without any empirical evidence all things must seem possible.
cwon14, I agree the EPA CO2 endangerment finding is ridiculous. And the deeper flaw is how CCA defines tests for a ‘pollutant’.
But the court ruling is actually on whether the CCA enables them to make such a finding, and whether they followed the rules in doing so. Unfortunately, it does and they did. Whichnis why the court upheld it.
There are two solutions. One, change Congress sufficiently that CCA can be appropriately amended and override an Obama veto. Unlikely in 2015 IMO.
Two, sweep the Dems out of the White House in 2016. Then amend the CCA. Plus a new EPA administrator re reviews the endangerment finding and nullifies it, the process showing how politically corrupted the original one was. Meanwhile, it appears evough states are filing suit on the proposed CO2 regulations that it is unlikely they will bite before the 2016 election.
So, the answer is in the political rather than the legal arena.
There were already over 300 comments by the time I read this, so I have not read them yet. Equating fraud with just trying to get people to act misses the legal point entirely. Fraud is saying or publishing something that you know to be wrong. To prove Mann did not actually believe in the hockey stick would be a very hard case to make. He likely still believes in it, and has said nothing to indicate that he doesn’t in the decade since. There is no fraud there. You can’t prosecute someone for a genuine belief they have. Think what kind of world that would lead to.
Steyn may also have the genuine belief that Mann committed fraud, but unfortunately that belief comes under the heading of defamation when made public and disputable by the accusee. It seems from the article that Steyn is trying to back off his language, but unsuccessfully given all the articles he still writes with the fraud word. He may be able to get out of it with a retraction statement, but is choosing not to.
You are clueless, jimmy dee. It’s obvious you didn’t read the thread. We wouldn’t expect a sensible comment out of you anyway.
You are very persistent, jimmy. We are going to sleep, but you can carry on with your foolishness.
This from Judith: ” fraud is motivated by inducing someone to act.” (or not)
Let’s have a hypothetical on the other side. If someone says that the IPCC warming attribution is almost certainly wrong in order to motivate people not to act politically in a particular way, knowing they they themselves are probably wrong in the face of the scientific evidence, would that be fraud? It is only fraud if you know you are wrong, not if you are just mistaken.
Steyn does not have to prove fraud, you dolt. Did Steyn say that mikey committed the criminal act of fraud, jimmy? Look the word up in a freaking dictionary.
fraud, noun: trickster, trick
example: Mike’s nature trick
Mann is a public figure, jimmy. Google “public figure defamation”
Or just stick with the BS you get from huffpo.
I have a reply for you in moderation, jimmy dee. I don’t know why I bothered. You are really no fun when you are so pathetically wrong.
Point is, good luck proving that Mann doesn’t, or at least didn’t at the time, genuinely believe in the fundamental truth of the hockey stick, which is what you would need to do for fraud.
No it is not. You do not have to examine the person’s state of mind. just what did he know and when did he know it.
Don says “I have a reply for you in moderation”. Can’t wait to see what it is. Probably just some more insubstantial name-calling.
It is only fraud if you know you are wrong, not if you are just mistaken.
Ok how about if Mann’s Papers are incoherent eg Berger 2010.
By avoiding the (calibrating) instrumental period, and by using
a fairly robust spectral measure for low-frequency performance,
the above coherence analysis has uncovered several
inconsistencies among the group of millennial reconstructions
that figured prominently in the latest IPCC report and
elsewhere. An immediate lesson from this is that simple visual
inspection of smoothed time series, grouped and overlaid
into a single graph, can be very misleading. For example,
the two reconstructions Ma99 and Ma08L, which have
previously been described to be in “striking agreement” (cf.
Mann et al., 2008), turned out to be the most incoherent of
all in our analysis.
maksimovich, courts of law don’t arbitrate on in-the-weeds stuff like that. Did he know he was wrong at the time of publication, or was it just an error found later, or difference in scientific opinion on a subset of results that doesn’t affect the whole? How would someone even prove which one it was?
Jim D said “Point is, good luck proving that Mann doesn’t, or at least didn’t at the time, genuinely believe in the fundamental truth of the hockey stick, which is what you would need to do for fraud.”
Jim D – you are very confused about the burden of proof in this case.
It doesn’t matter what Mann believes (I mean except to Mann).
What matters is whether the writer’s wrote the truth or stated an opinion.
Also – nobody has to prove Mann is a fraud.
If the hockey stick graph is fraudulent (if that is the truth) – then Mann loses. Or if that is an opinion – then Mann loses.
Mann can also lose because he cannot prove that the writers made their untrue statement of fact (he has to prove both that the statement is untrue and not an opinion) with actual malice (because he is a public figure – or at least a limited purpose public figure)
Rick, jimmy dee is not confused about the case. He is totally and willfully ignorant.
If Mann can’t be shown to have been fraudulent, Steyn would have been wrong, and it is defamation plain and simple. Other people are more careful about throwing such words around without question marks attached because they know the legal implications if they did.
Please remember that Steyn did not call Mann a fraud (at least not in the writing referenced by Mann’s lawsuit). He called the hockey stick fraudulent.
There is a big difference–a decline in the damaging effects, and one that Mann seeks to hide in his lawsuit.
“Did he know he was wrong at the time of publication, or was it just an error found later, or difference in scientific opinion on a subset of results that doesn’t affect the whole? ”
That’s the nut of it. Steyn called the graph a fraud because a “trick” was required in order for the graph to show what it’s authors wanted it to show. This is why the advocacy is relevant. When all the “errors” and “differences of scientific opinion” reinforce the advocacy, it’s perfectly reasonable to argue the work is bogus – especially when the advocates insist that obvious errors and differences never happened. This is a case about free speech, whether you can call out advocacy “science” or not.
The frog is in the frying pan and smells velly testy. Where’s the Pick-a-Peppa?
=======
I’m frankly too stupid to grasp Mann’s side of the case. Aside from the niceties of the arguments over the graph itself, Mann is most certainly a public figure by reason of his left wing advocacy…a role that by its nature is conducive to all sort of simplifications and hyperbole (kind words in MAnns regard). These are.things that some might well regard in the colloquial sense as “fraudulent.” Steyn’s a right wing provocateur also given to a certain extravagant rhetorical style. The notion that Steyn can be sued for essentially doing his job just doesn’t computer for me…
If Mann were to prevail the damage to our right to free speech in this country would be enormous. Certain cartoonists like to caricature Obama by drawing him with big ears. Would Obama then be able to sue for them making him look ridiculous? What exactly is the difference?
Jim D,
You are correct. If somebody suffers from delusional psychosis, are they acting fraudulently, if for example, they give the impression that they received a Nobel Prize for some outstanding scientific achievement?
If such a person were to claim that the world was warming, but temperatures were not increasing, would you offer them sympathy or condemnation?
Mann claims he was defamed – untrue accusations were made, lowering his standing and tarnishing his reputation.
Really? Does he really lay claim to a first rate mind? Has he really advanced the cause of science? He claims to predict the future by examining the past. What nonsense! He may have been defamed for all I know. All he has to do is prove some detriment accruing from untrue statements published with intent to do him harm.
My opinion of Michael Mann has not changed because of Steyn’s comments. Mann is an irrelevance in the scheme of things, although his name and appearance allow me to have some amusement at his expense. Unworthy of me, you might say, but he is perfectly free to reciprocate. I choose not to be offended, regardless of what others might demand.
Oh well.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Jim D: Equating fraud with just trying to get people to act misses the legal point entirely.
And you are an expert on the legal issues without having a single legal source to cite?
Can someone do an overlay of Mann’s original ‘Hockey Stick graphic’ with all those independently generated reconstructions and show that they are the same?
Is there anything left but bones on this one?
My interest in this is nearly zilch – but I am a little peeved still at commentators who come here to insult, berate, belittle and malign and then duck off to their blogospheric echo chambers – where dissent is not tolerated – to boast about how they have braved the dragon-lady and returned with tales of her perfidy.
The psychological stability of any of these people is certainly questionable. Mann seemingly as much as any with intemperate threats of lawsuits, unrestrained characterizations of opponents as fraudulent and wild conspiracy theories involving oil companies. .
Here is the hockey stick compared with a couple of other proxies.
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/mg18925431.400/mg18925431.400-2_752.jpg
The HS is obviously an outlier. To sell this to the public without full disclosure of the limitations and uncertainties is consumer fraud. False advertising.
The clearest fraud – however – is hide the decline and splice the instrument data. The rational behavior from the courts would be to throw it out with damages awarded for frivolous litigation.
Rob, your visual comparison is better than the verbal link I made above.
Is graphical proof that the deceitful intent wast to persuade others to act… the last element of legal fraud. I have archived this, with full credit to you. Just in case it is needed later.
Brilliant analysis. Steyn’s lawyers will be grateful.
“The HS is obviously an outlier. To sell this to the public without full disclosure of the limitations and uncertainties is consumer fraud. False advertising.
The clearest fraud – however – is hide the decline and splice the instrument data.”
So which one is not an outlier?
No one is selling MBH98/99 as the latest and best. That’s a sceptic fixation. Mann himself has produced more recent and rather different analyses.
Where is the decline hidden in this plot? Where is the splicing?
http://climateaudit.org/2014/09/10/inventory-of-hide-the-decline/
http://climateaudit.org/2014/09/06/the-original-hide-the-decline/
http://climateaudit.org/2011/11/28/severinghaus-and-hide-the-decline/
links are for anyone wanting more context and info on “hide the decline issues” — WordPress does not seem to like multiple links in one comment??
http://climateaudit.org/2012/05/26/myles-allen-and-hide-the-decline/
http://climateaudit.org/2011/12/01/hide-the-decline-plus/
Skiphil, I believe this site’s filter is set at four links in a single comment. If so, you can safely post three links in a single comment.
Where is the reproduce-ability?
Hide the decline refers to the divergence and removal of recent tree ring data from the instrument record – which was then spliced onto the end of the record in lieu.
Clearly not science at all – but public deception.
If I understand it the “divergence” is between Briffa’s large network of proxies which showed a decline beginning around 1960 and the ongoing instrumental record which showed continued increase.
The issue is not of hiding the instrumental record but rather of hiding the proxy record, because the reason(s) for such divergence is (still!!) not understood; yet, allowing people to highlight such divergence of proxies and instrumental curves would call into question whether the proxy network(s) could be considered any more reliable for temps. in earlier eras. If proxies prove unreliable for temps. 1960-90 then how can it be asserted that the same proxies are always reliable for temps., e.g., AD1000 to AD1800??
Also very interesting on hide-the-decline:
http://climateaudit.org/2011/03/31/disinformation-from-kerry-emanuel/
Yes – that’s what I said. So instead of the latter tree ring record which they removed – they spliced on the instrumental record.
ok, we agree, but it was the phrase “removal of recent tree ring data *from* the instrument record” which led me to think you were saying something else.
It’s worth remembering there were multiple cases of the “decline” being hidden, and different things were done in each. The instrumental record was directly spliced onto the end of the truncated series in one case, but in most, it wasn’t.
Keith Briffa just truncated his series and left it be at that. Michael Mann “spliced” the instrumental record onto the temperature reconstruction only for padding purposes with his smoothing algorithm. That is, he appended the instrumental data to the temperature reconstruction, smoothed the resulting series then truncated it at the original endpoint.
It was only in the WMO graph which fully spliced instrumental data onto a temperature reconstruction, and it did more than that. It combined both of the above processes. First, a temperature reconstruction was truncated to hide adverse data. Then, the instrumental record was spliced on. Then the resulting series was smoothed. Then, in a new twist, the series was not truncated at the original endpoint. Instead, the instrumental series was allowed to continue after the splice as though it was a single record.
It’s worth remembering each of these as a distinct case.
“Yes – that’s what I said. So instead of the latter tree ring record which they removed – they spliced on the instrumental record.”
Also I believe Steve has shown removal of proxy data in earlier times too, to hide when it went “the wrong way”.
Nice contrast. Do you think it would be possible for some wizard to redo the second chart with the truncations, splices and smoothing removed? Could Rob Wilson help?
Rob: Thank you. I still don’t see the MWP. Why not?
Try Pages 2000
It is utterly immaterial that M Mann’s Hockey Stick is a confluence of data manipulation, advocacy, and hubris, as he presents himself as a detached, white lab coat scientist, clipboard in hand uttering “of course I am right.” The reality of such a self absorbed, self promoter, oblivious to scientific and legitimate differences in interpretation of the same data set makes him an obvious target to all sorts of criticism; criticism to which he responds by the worst kind of name calling. Characterizing him as a pompous a## and throwing him and his bath water playmates out is appropriate
as one cannot discern fact from fiction on anything they might say. This group, entangled in Nobel Cause Corrupttion, are frankly, not believable.
As highly partisan lobbiests are embedded in EPA and other governmental agencies, including the Whitehouse, it is likely that Mann and his fellow travelers will continue to receive a pass for their misconduct until such time their protectors are thrown out of office. The battle is to elect a supermajority of climate pragmatists that will redirect environmentalism away from CO2, rather towards cheap emergy, revitalizing the soil and reducing energy subsdies.
A lot to ask for I know, but attainable.
Steyn has a brand-new post that relies on this CE post and McIntyre too.
http://www.steynonline.com/6555/michael-e-mann-repudiates-his-own-hockey-stick
Yup. So this revealing internet stuff actually works beyond naked actresses. Gosh darn… (said Mann and Putin).
There are even real lawyers reading the Mann briefs, researching, and commenting pro bono! What is a Mann to do…Oh Dear, he cannot fold because of Steyn’s complaint separation and countersuit.
Mann is boxed in. Whether his pathetic and about to be sanctioned for legal misrepresentation lawyers know that yet is not clear.
Order in more popcorn for the rest of this show.
I see Steyn showed us a “a screenshot in case Michael Mann is frantically hoovering his site even as we speak.” I hope he (or someone) had Wayback take a snapshot as well. Just in case.
Perhaps the whole issue is perception. If the liked, clear reasoning and calm speaking scientist (blog proprietor) had published the Hockey stick and the grumpy, irascible and seemingly incivil person was our blog proprietor instead was arguing against it I would have to think twice about it.
On the other hand she would have released her code and not spliced the data.
He is his own best propagandist and worst enemy and we are lucky to have him to focus on.
Angech, your courage-of-imagination is commendable. And very fortunately, your dream is coming true!
Namely, a large cohort of “liked, clear-reasoning and calm-speaking scientists” *ARE* independently affirming the Hockey-stick climate-change worldview (hint: try clicking the gray circle-arrow “
” at upper right).
Conclusion I Faux-conservative faux-skeptics are attracted to “Mann Derangement Syndrome” as a cognitive escape-hatch, that enables them to deny the scientific reality of a energy-imbalanced world whose ever-rising seas, ever hotter-oceans, ever-melting ice-caps, and ever-higher CO2 levels, are all too plainly evident to scientists, naturalists, businesses, political leaders, religious leaders, students, and (especially) ordinary citizens.
Conclusion II Weak scientists too are attracted to “Mann Derangement Syndrome”, which facilitates denial of the ever-strengthening scientific dominance of the energy-imbalance climate-change worldview, that increases organizes and synergizes our understanding of global-scale climate-change.
Main Conclusion Bad omens for faux conservatism and weak science are *GOOD* omens for foresighted conservatism and strong science!
*EVERYONE* appreciates *THAT*, eh Climate Etc readers?
*ESPECIALLY* ordinary citizens and ambitious science students!
What a “rational” person does is look at the evidence closely, not examine a haystack from a distance, weigh the papers printed out on a scale, then pronounce the science sound.
Thoughtful folks who review the “haystack” of evidence, and thoughtfully consider the moral and economic implications, thoughtfully conclude that we live in an energy-imbalanced world of ever-rising seas, ever hotter-oceans, ever-melting ice-caps, and ever-higher CO2 levels.
That’s why “Mann Derangement Syndrome” — so cherished by the peculiar inhabitants of the ever-shrinking bubble of ever-more-incomprehensible faux-conservative faux-skepticism — is becoming utterly irrelevant to the common-sense real-world, eh Climate Etc readers?
FOMD wrote, in apparent ignorance,
” TJA advocates “pick the individual paper that most strongly backs up the hockey stick”
But that’s not what rational folks do, is it TJA?”
Tell that to customs inspectors, Fanny. They often do not check every package in a shipment – most often samples are taken, but certainly not from every package.
If you had no worry, then you could pick one at random. Since TJA knows you have reason to be worried, having already looked into the matter himself, it’s a generous offer he extends to you.
Pick your best. Or look even more like a loonie windbag.
It is not generosity, it is frustration. I have been through these papers more times than I can count, and every time they always clam up, the way FOMD, the ironically named FOMD, BTW, seems to have, or they say I picked a weak one.
This is his chance to get me to shut up about it!
LOL … TJA, please let me encourage you to learn *MORE* about hockey-blade climate-science!
For me a personal favorite hockey-stick triptych (albeit a rather unspectacular one) is the following:
• The undoubted CO2-driven heat imbalance that radiation transport theory predicts (many sources), in union with
• The undoubted “hockey-stick” of increasing anthropogenic CO2 levels (many sources), in union with
• The undoubted “hockey-stick” of borehole temperature anomalies (many sources)
Individually, each of these three lines of evidence is strong. Collectively, they are *VERY* strong!
Now, it might be objected that the “CO2 hockey-stick blade” is sharper than the “borehole hockey-stick blade”. But that’s the point, eh? The borehole data provide a low-pass filtered view of Earth’s temperature record!
In consequence, the borehole data are robustly immune to many of the artifacts that plague the historical record, the satellite record, the meteorological record, and the paleo-proxy records. That’s why these data are attractive (to me) despite their rather coarse time-resolution.
This is *NOT* to say that scientific understanding of climate-change rests solely on borehole data … the borehole data are just one small part of the overall climate-change picture.
TJA, it is a pleasure to assist your quest for climate-change knowledge!
Fanny fears picking any because he knows he’s talking rubbish.
That’s what fear and bad conscience do to a soul, eh, honest brokers, churchfolks, the Vatican, and Climate Etc. Readers?
Short enough to miss the Medieval Warming Period. Oops!
All you’ve
gotoffered is theory, no temperatures. Oh yes, boreholes. Your link is paywalled, but I found a .PPT that appears to have it. The curve there is quite consistent with a much deeper LIA than “consensus Climate Science” recognizes, along with a much higher Medieval Warming. Here’s what Wiki says about borehole temperatures:More time-wasting non-answers from FOMBS
So why did the five-century borehole “hockey-stick” suddenly develop such pronounced “blade” in the late 20th century?
The world wonders … but climate-scientists, not so much!
We don’t know that it did. The reconstruction is consistent with a number of different shapes.
Perhaps you might have done better to offer us this link (look at Figure 22.8 on page 17/503).
Followup The University of Michigan Borehole Data and Climate Reconstruction website overlays hockey-stick borehole temperatures with hockey-stick meteorological temperatures; which match pretty darn well to hockey-stick CO2 levels.
Hmmm … theory and observation agree that something mighty odd happened in the latter half of the 20th century, eh AK?
It’s a continuing pleasure to help increase the hockey-stick climate-change knowledge of Climate Etc readers!
Fan
Your 4 .18 with link to boreholes proxies and actual temperatures.
Well it almost exactly matches my reconstruction from my article ‘the long slow thaw.’
What you have failed to comment on is that it demonstrates that the warming has been going on from around 1700 so giss and Hadley are merely staging posts of increasing temperatures and not the starting post.
My next article deals with the transion from lia to mwp supposedly around 1200 to 1400AD. Clearly there were very warm temperatures at times in this period so perhaps you can post the borehole temperatures to 1000ad to see if it matches my reconstruction?
Ps why do you think it has been warming for over 300 years?
Tonyb
AK, your borehole reference (like mine) affirms that “twentieth-century warming is a real and significant departure from preindustrial times.”
Short summary Borehole “hockey stick” temperatures robustly affirm that Michael Mann is right.
It’s mighty good to see us rationally arriving on the same scientific page, AK!
500 years…. The past 500 years is not in serious question, and does not support Mann’s claim which stretches 1500 years and proposes that the current warming is exceptional in that period. Are bore holes limited to 500 years? I didn’t think so, I know the resolution drops as the dates get older, but it does raise the question as to why stop at 500 years…
The rest of your links are irrelevant to whether Mann’s hockey stick is any good. What you are basically saying there is, “Look, according these arguments and our climate models, the temperature must be rising and so the hockey stick is right!’
Then the Hockey stick is used as an input to climate models. There is a bootstrap made out of circular reasoning being employed in this argument.
You were the one who introduced me to the technical term for something that was intuitively obvious, “backtest overfitting.” How did Mann avoid this pitfall? What would happen if one were guilty of it? Why, the data would diverge from your model as soon as you got new out of sample data, wouldn’t it? Such an effect might occur as a “decline” in the proxy data while temps rose. A dishonest stock tout who was using such a formula might be tempted to “hide the decline” by papering over the curve with other data so that his presentation was “technically correct” but misleading.
I am sure that is not what happened with Mann though.
But do you have an actual “replication” that covers the 1500 years with sufficient resolution as to actually reproduce the hockey stick, as you seem to claim?
You next reply, which must have been posted while I was writing mine, also wishes away the MWP. Face it FOMD, this is a losing argument for you, as long as you keep defending Mann, you are going to lose thinking people.
Note the lack of uncertainty limits. Given what I quoted above WRT “boreholes hav[ing] a temporal resolution of a few centuries”, I’d expect them to get wider the farther back you go. Can you find one with uncertainty included?
“Borehole “hockey stick” temperatures robustly affirm that Michael Mann is right”
except for the numerous non-hockey sticks around the world in both hemispheres. FOMBS is even more desperate-sounding than usual.
Tony
Look forward to your article on the transition. What reconstructions are reliable for the years prior to the CET records?
Rls
My reconstruction to 1538 is pretty robust.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/12/01/the-long-slow-thaw/
I don’t know if you saw it first time round but it’s several years old as it takes that long to research the new material needed to delve further back in time
Tonyb
Tony
Thank you. I did read that article, returned to it just now, and some more neurons formed. What type of information did Dr Lamb and do you use in the reconstructions prior to the CET network? It sounds like thermometer readings, perhaps recorded by the cities/towns. Thanks again.
Hi rls
If you go to Section five of the long slow thaw there is a link to
‘Supplementary information’ and at the very end of the articles a link to ‘references’
In this are many hundreds of items gleaned from a wide variety of sources. Basically thermometer temperatures cease at 1659.
Prior to that daries, observations, crop records and other sources tell us the nature of the weather at any one time and by teferencing Science papers as well these can be converted to temperatures using a formula described by such as Phil jones and van engelen.
CET has a relatively limited annual range so we can get somewhere close to the likely temperature but always remembering Lambs dictum that ‘we can understand the tendency but not the precision’ In other words reconstructions aren’t gong to be accurate to tenths of a degree.
Tonyb
Tony,
Thank you. Hope your day is sunny, warm, and loverly.
rls
Thank you. I have had a good week. A couple of days ago we visited nearby Widecome fair which seems to have acquired worldwide fame through the poem ‘uncle tom cobley.’
It is on Dartmoor which has more iron age and bronze age remains on its uplands than anywhere else in Europe. Even the Govt bodies that run it admit it was warmer during the bronze age and mwp than it is now.
As an example of the extreme weather of the past we can witness that widecombe was hit by a very violent storm in 1638
http://www.devonhistorysociety.org.uk/2009/10/widecombe-great-storm-1638.html
A bare 50 years later in 1703 Daniel Defoe wrote at great length about the first well recorded hurricane. Climate always changes and living where I do I can see that constantly.
Have a good day yourself
tonyb
FOMD, you pick the individual paper that you think most strongly backs up the hockey stick and we will look at it. I have been through those lists of “replications” time after time, they never turn out to be what is claimed, then the poster, if they reply at all, says I picked a weak one.
So you pick the “replication” you wish to defend.
why bother TJA?
Request fulfilled by FOMD!
But that’s not what rational folks do, is it TJA?
`Cuz rational folks (scientists especially!) consider the overall scientific evidence … not cherry-picked subsets of it, weighted by juvenile twitter-obloquy!
And the overall weight of evidence (both theoretical and experimental) strongly favors the hockey-stick onset of rapid climate-change driven by anthropogenic CO2-mediated energy imbalance
*THAT* weight of evidence has convinced almost *EVERYONE*, eh TJA? Including young scientists, ordinary citizens, business leaders, and religious leaders!
Convinced almost everyone … except for ideology-driven cherry-pickers and sufferers from Mann Derangement Syndrome, that is!
Fixed linky!
In light of the scientific evidence, “Mann Derangement Syndrome“ doesn’t make rational sense, eh Climate Etc readers?
Ideology-driven denialists will think differently … by definition!
Anybody who questions you is “ideology driven” but you are not? Is that what you are implying? Is that why you don’t have to address the science directly?
I have seen you write posts here that make it clear you have the science chops to look into these “replications.” Yet you won’t.
IOW “I can’t find one”
A committee of elephants. Once examined, they’ll be appalled. On this they staked their trumpets and their tails?
=========================
Request [for hockey stick exemplars] fulfilled by FOMD!
“What a “rational” person does is look at the evidence closely, not examine a haystack from a distance, weigh the papers printed out on a scale, then pronounce the science sound.” repeated from above where I posted it in the wrong sub-thread.
It’s only takes a small slip between the cup…
http://naturalsociety.com/gm-micro-human-farms-replace-animal-testing-within-three-years/
and lip but thank goodness they still will have their large shoes.
I am the Walrus!
============
Lurker with an honest question….
If I develop a hypothesis, go out and gather data to evaluate it then opt to use only the data that agrees with me out of those results what makes it fraud versus cherry-picking?
If fraud is a false representation of a matter of fact then in the sense of the definition cherry-picking and fraud are inseparable. I’d be really interested to here how in a scientific sense the two could be separate.
Career.
APF,
There is always some degee of screening and quality control on data. You don’t just use it, regardless of it’s quality, which is the sense I’m getting from your question.
Data gets ‘handled’ in a variety of ways.
data also gets Mann handled.
Of course there is QC.. you disclose it.
Of course there is screening, you A/B test.
and then you disclose the results of your tests. You DONT, as Mann did,
calculate verification stats and then deny that you did.
you dont fail to disclose material defects,
you dont hide the decline. You show the decline and explain the problems it causes
And you show the decline ALWAYS until you can explain why it happens.
And you can scream and whine for ‘raw data’….at least until you get a clue.
Or as Ray Bradley said referring to Mann:
“You just shouldn’t grab anything that’s in print and just use it ‘cos it’s there—that just perpetuates rubbish.”
Objection, Censored.
=======
APF, I hope this makes things clear.
It’s important to realize that the “fraud” was in using the deceptive picture in public relations efforts, including anything created by the IPCC. This is explicitly clear in Steyn’s reference to “fraudulent hockey stick”. Blaming it on Mann doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with “academic misconduct” unless you include his work with the IPCC as “academic”. Steyn’s efforts (IMO) had much more to do with deprecating the IPCC as “science”.
AK | September 12, 2014 at 11:45 am | Reply
“It’s important to realize that the “fraud” was in using the deceptive picture in public relations efforts, … This is explicitly clear in Steyn’s reference to “fraudulent hockey stick”. ”
AK,
Not quite.
You left out a bit on that last fragment of quote;
“Michael Mann was the man behind the fr@udulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph” – Steyn
Now it’s explicit.
Wasn’t he the “lead author” responsible for its inclusion?
The problem with the “was fraud committed by Mann?” question is:
1. It is premature.
2. No one has adequate knowledge of what Mann did to resolve the question because of interference by Mann.
3. It is doubtful that this case will get to the point of adequate discovery and the appointment of a special master to determine if Mann’s work is fraudulent.
4. The climategate emails and the UVA FOIA lawsuit would lead one to believe it is fraudulent.
I have noticed that individuals and groups involved in papers that support global warming are extraordinarily resistant to transparency and FOIA. The climate community has spent 10’s of millions if not hundreds of millions to resist FOIA, to avoid giving up their data, methods, or process. The UEA rolled data onto a laptop and deleted it from their servers to avoid FOIA and appears to have actually destroyed some data permanently to avoid releasing it. These efforts would undermine their claim it was “too much work” to respond to FOIA.
The push for FOIA and transparency were attempts to limit dishonesty and deceit. People who aren’t fully transparent, and responsive to FOIA should be regarded as deceptive and dishonest. Their results should be viewed as unreliable. The low percentage of studies that are reproducible underscores the need for full disclosure of data and methods.
This problem is easy to solve. The US government should be legally banned from using studies by authors that have not fully complied with FOIA and have not been fully transparent, or any study that relies on their works. Further the authors of any government funded climate study that are not fully transparent and responsive to FOIA should by law be required to reimburse the government for all grant funds received.
So, what do your principles say about the US IRS? :)
Well, the last I knew that IRS claimed to have “lost” the emails of 6 employees (and counting) in defiance of a discovery request.
Possible resolutions for the situation are criminal charges (for perjury and obstruction) or contempt citations. A journalist that failed to comply with a request for data was jailed for well over a year and a lawyer was jailed for over 14 years for contempt. A 14 year sentence for contempt would be an adequate substitute for criminal charges – simply jail the employees involved including Lerner until the emails are produced. I’m skeptical the IRS has been fully compliant and the judge should be skeptical as well.
The IRS should be above reproach, its actions are beneath contempt. I’m not sure the IRS in its current form can be relied on to accomplish its mission with honesty and integrity.
I am the Taxman!
=============
Throughout history, people of many cultures show their ability to completely disregard rationality and common sense, and blindly support random lunatics.
And here we are again. The juggler, the woodcutter, the death train soothsayer. Proof yet again that you can’t underestimate the intelligence of the average American – well, let’s include the UK and Australia – fair’s fair, after all.
Having wasted billions solving a problem which doesn’t actually seem to exist, except in the febrile imaginations of the collectively delusional, where to from here? When we discover that we have been impoverished by these self ordained latter day prophets of doom, do we repeat history, and take up pitchforks and torches?
I note that one of the players in this latter day tragedy is Professor Michael Mann. Indeed, he professes to be a climate scientist, in spite of having precisely no formal climate science qualifications. He professes to be more intelligent than Al Gore – at least I assume so. Possibly he thinks that Al Gore, with his bizarre theory that the Earth’s internal temperature is millions of degrees, is more intelligent than the average self proclaimed climate scientist. After all, Al Gore’s Nobel Prize is no less deserved than Professor Mann’s, surely.
All in all, Michael Mann richly deserves the title of professor. He professes to be defamed by someone who points out that he’s a little economical with the truth from time to time, or at least has a very poor memory. He professes to be able to divine temperatures from trees. Maybe he thinks the trees talk to him. I would not be surprised. Professor? Indeed.
We seem to live in an age of post modern doublespeak, whatever that means. Warming means not warming, truth is not truth, science is non science, and in general the lunatics are in charge of the asylum.
It doesn’t matter whether Steyn or Mann prevails, facts were, are, and will be, regardless of all the froth and bubble. Who needs TV?
This is much more fun – and you can help write the script, to boot!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Your assertion is entirely correct Mike Flynn! In this regard, the intellectual journey of Adm. David Titley is commended to your thoughtful attention:
Observation Organizations having high levels of scientific literacy and mathematical numeracy — the Federation of American Scientists and the AAAS for example — largely embrace the amicable 21st century climate-change consensus.
Why is this? The world wonders!
Whereas ideology-driven organizations and/or pundits, whose scientific and mathematical literacy is marginal — the CEI/Steyn come to mind — are highly susceptible to “Mann Derangement Syndrome” (and other well-known afflictions of ideology-driven denialist cognition).
Prescription The distressing symptoms of “Mann Derangement Syndrome” can be alleviated by the thorough study of science and mathematics, accompanied by the abandonment of ideology-driven cherry-picking reasoning!
FOMD
I am trying to study
My impressions of MM are so far not good … don’t think I’m deranged (yet) nor particularly ideological
honest question for you …
is there a stasis or “sustainable” point for the climate that would be “natural” and where is it?
Gavin S. seems say on RC that the that without human disruption recent temps would have cooled 30% (comments in response to Judith’s 50-50 post)
Is that good?
thanks for your patience, new to this issue
P.S. as a regular person trying to learn, that “denialist” thing really turns me off (very ideological)
Perhaps unsurprisingly, everyday experience and scientific research jointly affirm that denialist cognition commonly denies its own denial.
Conclusion Denialists intensely dislike talking about, or reading about, or even thinking about, the cognitive mechanisms of denial.
Fanny uses a scurrilous technique.
Like when one accuses someone of being overly argumentative, and they question that assertion.
Fanny needs to offer a dose of honesty in his postings if he wishes to get traction.
ok fan – good answer (ignored my question)
“one goes to heaven for the weather, hell for the company”
count me deranged …
Jeez
oh … and I absolutely deny that I’m in denial of my own denial … how dare you sir? :)
AFOMD,
You wrote –
“Observation Organizations having high levels of scientific literacy and mathematical numeracy — the Federation of American Scientists and the AAAS for example — largely embrace the amicable 21st century climate-change consensus.”
You then go on to ask –
“Why is this? The world wonders”
I don’t believe you are as mentally defective as you pretend. The possible answers are clear to anyone with the intellectual level of an average 12 year old.
They include –
Complete gullibility – intellectual impoverishment – hubris – arrogance – infectious delusional psychoses – ignorance – intellectual sloth – cognitive dissonance, and so on.
So the world need wonder no longer, eh, Climate Etc readers?
We need to show compassion for AFOMD, who is unable to think for himself, and seems to live in a world where sincere and heartfelt pious desire triumphs over fact. But be not fearful, AFOMD, you have the ability to think for yourself. Although it might prove difficult at first, you can free your mind from its Warmist servitude.
Be mindful that your idols may prove to have feet of clay. Any rational being would realise this, but the Warmist cult members have blind unswerving faith in the measurebators who endlessly recast historical temperature in their futile attempts to divine the future.
One day, you may come to appreciate the logic of my arguments, and join the ranks of the content.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
“Conclusion Denialists intensely dislike talking about, or reading about, or even thinking about, the cognitive mechanisms of denial.” – FOMD, Defender of the Faith.
My conclusion? AGW alarmists are much enamored of circular arguments, Eh FOMD?
1. This is currently a comedy not a tragedy. It will only be a tragedy if Mann wins.
2. If you goggle “Mann Fraud” there is hundreds of articles (just counting major blogs and sane news commentary).
For example, John H. Hinderaker (powerline blog), a lawyer, writes ” It is generally believed in the scientific community, I think, that Michael Mann is a fraud and a liar, as well as a bully. To understand why…” and proceeds to make the case.
If Mr. Mann were to claim that accusations that he is a fraud and/or a liar are unusual that would be inaccurate.
3. Further – Mann/UVA spent $570,000 on a legal effort to resist discovery by Virgina AG Ken Cuccinelli, the only person who actually tried to investigate whether Mann committed fraud to obtain government grants.
$570,000 is abundant evidence that Mann has something to hide.
UVA should be compelled to disclose who was the private source of the funds for the defense.
Further UVA/Mann spent more thousands defending a FOIA lawsuit by ATI. They were able again to resist disclosure and even got awarded damages ($250.00) by the Virginia Supreme Court. The massive award by the VSC speaks volumes (there are menu items in DC that cost more than that).
Since Mann has frustrated all attempts to honestly evaluate his credibility, a reasonable person would have some doubts about Mr. Mann’s credibility.
This invisibility cloak, this Veil of Mann
Is pierced by Steyn, who ran and ran.
===============
And, Kim, we will get information from this case. No matter how it is decided.
How can Mann “frustrate attempts at evaluation”???
Anybody can attempt to replicate his work – and many people have. Consider it evaluated. Mann’s work has been replicated and confirmed correct. It’s not very likely to be correct AND fraudulent, is it, now?
Here is yet another successful replication of Mann’s work:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/07/08/2261531/most-comprehensive-paleoclimate-reconstruction-confirms-hockey-stick/
Why are you still obsessing about work that was carried out 15 years ago, when there is plenty of much more uptodate work that says the exact same thing?
The ongoing attempts to vindate the Hockey Stick are laughable. Using the same unreliable data, they come to the same unreliable conclusions.
Judy, I am a lawyer and here is my take on the question you posed to lawyers. The two most fundamental aspects of fraud are deceit and reliance. (I am speaking of civil fraud here, which is most relevant, not criminal fraud.) If we take this outside of the contentious climate wars and the fact that Mann is public figure, it would be no big deal for a plaintiff to sue a defendant/speaker for libel where the speaker accused the plaintiff of having engaged in fraudulent behaviour. The reason that such a lawsuit would not be groundbreaking is that the accusation of fraud is one of dishonesty, which, if untrue, is obviously defamatory.
What is somewhat unusual in this case is that an academic is suing a political writer. This brings into play the complex protections afforded to speakers by NYT v, Sullivan. In my mind, the many deceptions made by Mann could potentially be characterized as fraud by a political writer without subjecting that writer to defamation liability. (However, I personally think it was stupid for Steyn to use the term fraud because it made it easier for Mann to argue that Steyn was not protected under the First Amendment.)
What may be truly groundbreaking about this suit is the attention paid to the briefs by online commenters. I can sure you that once intelligent lawyers realize that their briefs will be parsed online, their writings, and the cases they decide to take will change.
JD
JD, thanks very much for this, was hoping you would stop by
“it was stupid for Steyn”
I think there is a consensus on that.
Snide inneundo is clever.
Stupid of Steyn to leap into the briar patch.
============
Sometimes you must “leap into the briar patch” in order to get factual information, even if you suspect that you will not like the information you receive.
Parse for the course.
“Creative accounting is a euphemism referring to accounting practices that may follow the letter of the rules of standard accounting practices, but certainly deviate from the spirit of those rules. They are characterized by excessive complication and the use of novel ways of characterizing income, assets, or liabilities and the intent to influence readers towards the interpretations desired by the authors. The terms “innovative” or “aggressive” are also sometimes used.”…
You be the judge.
One thing that popped into my mind, seeing the deconstruction of Mann’s briefs, is that if the Massachusetts v. EPA case had been subjected to the same scrutiny as Mann’s case, the result in Massachusetts might have been different. I believe that the US govt (under Bush) poorly argued the Mass. case by conceding that the science of global warming was settled and by focusing almost solely on the standing issue.
If the govt’s trial briefs had been scrutinized in the same manner as Mann’s briefs are currently being scrutinized, I know a lot of people would have pointed out the many holes in “mainstream climate science.” If that had happened, it is possible that the government would have also challenged the science as being preliminary and not mature. If that had happened it is possible that Justice Kennedy’s vote may have been different.
The reason that Justice Kennedy’s vote may have been different is that it is quite common for judges to instinctively focus on the big picture merits of a case and to attempt not to rule on the case based on perceived technicalities. Therefore, in most cases, I believe that it is advisable, if you have a legitimate argument to make that justice is on your side, to make the argument supporting the ultimate justice of your case, even if you should win based upon a technicality. The govt. didn’t do so in the Mass. case, and I believe it very substantially hurt its presentation.
JD
Also, Judy, thanks for your kind comment.
‘The Big Picture’ is a silver screen painted on fog.
=============
JD, I recently re-examined Mass v EPA in the course of looking at EPA’s denial of reconsideration petitions (cited in Mann v Steyn). I was amazed both by misrepresentations by the movants and the weakness of the EPA resistance. Not on the climate science front, but on their failure to properly adduce the history of the act. It’s almost as though the EPA tanked the case. But this is a long story that needs to be discussed separately.
SteveM ” I was amazed both by misrepresentations by the movants and the weakness of the EPA resistance. Not on the climate science front, but on their failure to properly adduce the history of the act. It’s almost as though the EPA tanked the case.”
I am extremely suspicious of everything the EPA does because it appears to be using alleged science as a cover for non-science based agendas. I suspect that EPA findings pertaining to the health effects of various pollutants are based on skimpy science similar to its global warming findings. My guess is (I don’t have time to do the research) is that the EPA scours the literature for one small study that shows high risks and extrapolate it with very flimsy justification, to the whole United States and use it to justify onerous environmental regulation. I believe Gerard Harbison commented to this effect on Pielke Jr.’s blog several years ago. However, having represented claimants in workers compensation cases for 18 years and having lung diseases as an informal sub-specialty, the EPA figures on mortality and injury don’t ring true to me from my years in the trenches. Your comment on their substandard work in Mass. v. EPA just reinforces my strong suspicions.
Do Legal Definitions of Fraud Help Us in the Mann Libel Case?
Summary: I don’t think they help. A key problem is what definition of the word should apply in this case. Lawyers writing to a legally informed audience is a context where the legal definitions would reasonably apply; but that context does not seem applicable here. Thus, to paraphrase the comments of JD Ohio, “the many deceptions made by Mann could reasonably be characterized as fraud by a political writer”. While the legal definitions of fraud and fraudulent certainly have influence on the non-legal understanding of the term in the end the facts of this case thrown us back to customary, lay person definitions, not legal ones.
I was once accused of fraud in a California civil court so I studied up on the matter. In the process I learned more about law than I’ll probably ever use but I did find out just how much I think like a lawyer. The fraud charge was dropped, I assume, because California courts require a higher standard of specificity even to allege fraud in a complaint.
Civil or Criminal? Fraud can be civil or criminal but because libel is a civil matter I’ll confine this to civil fraud. In any case, I believe the difference between civil and criminal fraud have mostly to do with the penalties and not so much the offense.
On the other hand, in California civil courts “fraud” specifically applies to contract disputes. The plaintiff has to show that they “reasonably relied on the defendant’s representation” and that they were materially harmed. But the defendants were not writing legal briefs. Nor were they entering into a contract to transact business with the reader. So it’s not clear how much this legal definition helps us understand the meaning of fraudulent when it’s used in a political opinion piece.
In general it does not seem reasonable to expect the general reader to interpret words used in such writings the same way a lawyer would interpret a legal brief. Likewise the relevance of definitions of “research misconduct” and the like to this case seems questionable.
Aside: Since both fraud and libel can both be difficult to prove in many jurisdictions one might expect that putting the two together makes it extra difficult.
Fraud raises it head in other contexts in this case. In particular in the in the questions of “dirty hands” and fraud on the court. Dirty hands would include the plaintiff describing this critics work as fraudulent, fake, etc. In a contract case a dirty hands defense often means even if the plaintiff ‘wins’ the case they get zero damages. A fraud on the court requires clear and convincing proof but can result in dismissal – the case is thrown out. It seems to me that Mann’s legal motions could plausibly be judged a fraud against a California court.
Fraud on the court has been defined as:
“Some unconscionable scheme calculated to interfere with the judicial system’s ability impartially to adjudicate a matter by improperly influencing the trier of fact or unfairly
hampering the presentation of the opposing party’s claim or defense.” It seems plausible that a court might rule that Mann’s recent motions might have already unfairly influenced the prior judges and/or unfairly hampering the defense.
Another thing I learned all to well from my experience as a defendant is that many good defenses can’t be used until after discovery or after presenting evidence in court during trial. So for the time being it’s quite possible for Mann to get away with dirty hands and what we may understand as some level of fraud on the court.
Affirmative Defenses
California Civil Code specifies four kinds of deceit. The third is:
The suppression of a fact, by one who is bound to disclose it, or who gives information of other facts which are likely to mislead for want of communication of that fact [concealment or suppression of fact]. In general business law this is sometimes called “Silent Fraud”. By my lights Mann is guilty of some degree of this kind of fraud committed against society in general. While that is not legally actionable concept the the defendants in this case could use a similar argument as a affirmative defense.
Aside: Affirmative defenses go beyond showing that the plaintiff can’t prove their case, affirmative defenses try to show that the opposite is true. When the National Review magazine declined to back down under Mann’s threat of legal action they said in effect “we would welcome the opportunity to debate our affirmative defense in court”.
JD,
But isn’t this an exceptional circumstance due to the enmity that Mann has aroused in a sizable population and even more exceptional in that Steve has so well informed the public over a long course of unheard-of diligence ?
Scratch “unheard-of”
“Unprecedented”.
TNG ” isn’t this an exceptional circumstance due to the enmity that Mann has aroused in a sizable population and even more exceptional in that Steve has so well informed the public over a long course of unheard-of diligence ?”
Yes, that is a big part of it. However, the EPA appears to be an incompetent/dishonest agency, and if its briefs were analyzed by knowledgeable people, such as Steve, I believe their briefs would contain blunders similar to those of the Williams firm. For, instance, I strongly suspect that the EPA grossly exaggerates the dangers of coal (I want to make clear that coal definitely does cause injury, but I doubt to the extent claimed by the EPA), and underplays the benefit of coals as cheap source of energy. In any event, if knowledgeable doctors and epidemiologists would look at EPA briefs and claims, I believe it would be very interesting. Ultimately, I think it will eventually happen because so much is at stake and because there is so much preliminary evidence of the EPA’s incompetence.
JD
I’d say this is a very good thing, although it’ll have good and bad aspects.
It sounds as though you think the “anti-SLAPP” laws don’t really apply? They certainly appear to have been nullified (in intent) due to the extended litigation over whether they apply.
Alright, SLAPP stick.
===============
kim plus a lot.
AK “It sounds as though you think the “anti-SLAPP” laws don’t really apply?” They apply, but they don’t totally nullify the right of a plaintiff to bring a defamation suit. Steyn made it easier for Mann to sue him by using the term “fraud.” Personally, I thing the case should have been thrown out under the anti-Slapp law, but it is not totally unreasonable to claim that labeling someone’s work fraudulent should subject the speaker to defamation liability.
JD
Whatever the outcome, this court case will provide reliable information on reality – a reality that most skeptics do not want to accept.
Omanuel: Please explain.
From this court case I will get answers to a question I asked the Congressional Space Science & Technology last year
“WHY did our government deceive us ?”
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/WHY.pdf
I do not think I will like the answer, but I still want the information anyway.
Y’know, discussion here, amplified in/during the Steyn trial (if it ever happens), may well go a long way towards firming up what we expect of “scientific policy advice”. When governments rely on such advice for decisions that impact lots of people, people have a right to expect something in the way of integrity in behavior, with legal recourse if it’s not forthcoming. Question is: what?
We know what the Mann crowd wants: if it supports their agenda, anything goes, if it doesn’t, it’s open to attack on every little nit-
pickingpuking detail they can find. Any sort of attack. In whatever venue they can shop for.From Steyn
What are the implications for “scientific policy advice”, either way?
LoL … as every scientist knows, the historical truth is precisely the opposite: Young scientists make room at the top by pulling down senior folks from the top!
This keeps everyone on their toes … the senior scientists understand perfectly that the young scientists are always watching for signs of weakness, vulnerability, and flagging imagination.
`Cuz there’s nothing that young scientific lions like better than pulling down aging scientific water-buffaloes.
And needless to say, buffaloes fight back!
So it always has been in science; so it always will be.
a fan of *MORE* discourse: Young scientists make room at the top by pulling down senior folks from the top!
You must be completely oblivious to the processes of publishing papers, and the granting of tenure and research money.
==> “You must be completely oblivious to the processes of publishing papers, and the granting of tenure and research money.”
Yes. No doubt he’s “oblivious” to that process.
Fanny changes the subject again
Steyn talked about generally common goal of getting a position and tenure. Do not cross the line in the sand.
Fanny talked about the relatively rare event of an exceptional person making a name by taking down a senior
Question What fraction of young scientific “lions” are ambitious to pull-down a senior “water-buffalo”?
Answer 100% of the good ones. Plus, 100% of the ones who think they’re good. Together, that’s an overwhelming majority!
Fanny evasively changes the subject again.
It’s not how many young uns are ambitious to take down a buffalo, it’s how many do openly attempt to take down that buffalo, compared to how many want a secure position in a field that even organizes to take out journal staff who cross the line, boycott journals, run letter-writing campaigns etc.
Examples from thermodynamics Lars Onsager, Ilya Prigogine, Clifford Truesdell, and James Hansen were four giant “water buffalos” of 20th century science (only Hansen is still alive, and he’s not young).
Young lions tried hard to take them all down … Onsager’s and Hansen’s work has survived many attacks over many decades; Prigogine’s and Truesdell’s work succumbed decades ago.
The fatal weakness of Prigogine’s and Truesdell’s science What was good wasn’t new; what was new wasn’t good.
Conclusion Mark Steyn failed to appreciate that Michael Mann is an experienced scientific water-buffalo who has *ALREADY* survived *MANY* attacks.
FOMT, like Mann, is a fatuous gasbag who “survives” by ignoring criticism, changing the subject, asserting without substantiation, and providing many irrelevancies.
Although we have seen that Mann’s work has numerous glaring errors, this “water buffalo” does NOT face serious examination from younger scientists (and ofc Mann himself has been comparatively quite young in the field during these controversies). From the beginning of his career Mann was sponsored and protected by senior figures who promoted his work and turned with viciousness on the very few like McIntyre/McKitrick who dared to examine Mann’s work in a critical light (ofc it took outsiders to conduct such examination).
While there are some examples of the kind to which FOMT refers, there are many more of scientific ideas and theories surviving much too long because they suit the prejudices of people in the field. FOMT speaks as though “science” is perfectly self-correcting, which may be true in the long run but not in the short run.
• For 110+ years (since 1896) Svante Arrhenius’ water-buffalo of CO2 as a greenhouse gas has withstood all attacks.
• For 30+ years (since 1981) James Hansen’s water-buffalo of CO2-driven AGW has withstood all attacks.
• For 15+ years (since 1999) Michael Mann’s water-buffalo of a CO2-driven AGW “hockey stick” has withstood all attacks.
Conclusion CEI/Mark Steyn are playing the role of over-confident young “lions”, who have seriously underestimated the tough old “water-buffaloes” of climate-change science.
*EVERYONE* sees that *NOW*, eh Climate Etc readers?
a fan of *MORE* discourse: For 15+ years (since 1999) Michael Mann’s water-buffalo of a CO2-driven AGW “hockey stick” has withstood all attacks.
As you know now, Mann has disclaimed any association with one of the versions of Mann’s hockey stick that he has taken credit for. So it might not be as obvious as you have hoped that it has withstood all attacks.
It is interesting to think of Mann as a water buffalo, chewing his cud.
Regurgitation of stale cud Matthew? Uggh!
Peter Davies: Regurgitation of stale cud Matthew? Uggh!
Regurgitate, masticate, swallow. It’s called “ruminating”.
On quiet reflection I think that this process is similar to the circular arguments repeated ad nauseam by too many commenters on this blog.
AK: “people have a right to expect something in the way of integrity in behavior, with legal recourse if it’s not forthcoming. Question is: what?”
Problem is that government would probably do more harm than good in trying to assure integrity.
By “government” do you mean bureaucracy, elected administration, laws passed by Congress, or the courts? Of course, there needs to be some way to control the “governments” that “rely on such advice for decisions that impact lots of people”. Otherwise, they can just do whatever they please.
Come to think of it…
AK:
Government should be viewed as a cabal; the actions of the parts affect the whole. In the end, laws and regulations cannot be written to preclude a person of authority deciding what you or I can or cannot do. We need no more laws or regulations authorizing Dr Q to set the world on the right course.
Actually, AFAIK that’s pretty much what the “Founding Fathers” did. Called “checks and balances”.
However, are there adequate checks say, on judges making stupid decisions or EPA/IRS officials doing the same?
The “issue” count is now 86, 87 with this one, assuming there are no comments while I write this one.
There is one issue (88) that has not been raised so far. And I think it’s the most important issue (89) of all. It pertains to “one of the parties” related to one of the issues (90):
http://www.climateaudit.org/2014/02/17/mann-and-the-oxburgh-panel/
The issue (91) is this one: when will “one of the parties” finally pay the Auditor for his work? I mean, come on, Mark, I mean “one of the parties”: if you have not entered a consulting agreement by now, when will you?
Don’t become the J. Paul Getty of climate science interpreter of interpretations, Mark.
> Don’t become the J. Paul Getty of climate science interpreter of interpretations, Mark.
I mean, “one of the parties.”
IIRC there was a comment from Steve McIntyre some months ago (perhaps back in the winter) to the effect that he had been invited to work with or for Steyn’s legal team but that he preferred to keep his independence and comment on anything anytime in whatever way(s) he sees fit. So, if my distant recollection is correct, Steyn’s legal team wants McIntyre but McIntyre prefers to analyze and comment in his own ways on his own time and schedule.
Who is Mark?
I take it you mean Mark Styne but you posted a Steve McIntyre link and I’m not understanding your comment. Are you saying why haven’t you hired this fellow? Where are these numbered issues coming from?
He was suggesting that Mark Steyn hire Steve McIntyre.
> I’m not understanding your comment.
That’s a big issue.
***
> Are you saying why haven’t you hired this fellow?
No. I’m asking why Mark hasn’t hired the Auditor. This is the biggest issue among all the issues raised on this page.
***
> Where are these numbered issues coming from?
The function CTRF-F in my browser. We should be around 100 “issue”‘s on this page with this comment.
***
If there are other issues with my comment, feel free to ask.
> We should be around 100 “issue”‘s on this page with this comment.
99, 100 with this very comment.
That would be a waste of money for Styne wouldn’t it? All Styne has to do is name him as an expert witness and pay him just for that. It’s not as if Styne and his lawyers don’t read Climate Audit.
You must be cross-eyed by now counting all those issues. The main issue to me is whether or not Mann will be compelled to give up his data and code in discovery and whether or not he will.
my
September 12, 2014 at 6:08 pm |
was supposed to go here…. I get messed up in all this nesting of comments if I don’t watch the little “reply” links closely enough….
Point was that Steyn’s team wanted McIntyre (IRRC his blog comment), but he prefers to work independently in his own ways and not subject to anyone else’s agenda….
> That would be a waste of money for Styne wouldn’t it?
Mark is certainly entitled to get all the pro bono help he gets. But then Mark risks becoming the J. Paul Getty of climate science interpreter of interpretations.
Not a small issue.
Some “scientific beliefs” that I would call fraudulent without it meaning the legal type of fraud:
Vaccines cause autism
GMOs are going to kill us
The pyramids were built by extraterrestrials
Recovered memories of abuse
Solar power is “already cheaper than fossil fuels”
These things are closer to being delusionally wrong, and “fraudulent” is just a nice shorthand for them.
CL “Some “scientific beliefs” that I would call fraudulent without it meaning the legal type of fraud:
Vaccines cause autism
GMOs are going to kill us”
Craig, you make an interesting point. However, I can envisage situations where people asserting the above claims could be held liable for civil fraud where they injected themselves into business situations and blew up business deals with false claims.
JD
Thank you Craig Loehle for eloquently making the point I have been trying to make. Formal legal, scientific, academic, and other professional definitions of the term “fraud”, are not material to the meaning of the term “fraudulent ‘hockey stick'” as used by Steyn in the context of his article. I believe an ordinary juror will interpret the phrase as meaning the “hockey stick” is misleading, incorrect, and contrived. I can not imagine the trial court instructing the jury how they must interpret what Steyn wrote because that is an ultimate fact which only a jury may determine.
Will, I disagree to a substantial extent. Using the term “fraud” is generally considered to be defamation per se, which is what Mann is claiming. (The practical effect of a finding of defamation per se is that the plaintiff is not required to prove damages — they are presumed) Legally, as you know fraud can be a crime. Thus, if the case were to go to a jury on a defamation per se, the court would almost certainly have to give instructions regarding the legal definition of fraud in D.C. The court may also give an instruction that the jury could disregard the legal definitions, if it found that the use of the the term “fraudulent” was understood and meant in a different manner than the legal definitions. (I don’t know this for sure, not being a D.C. lawyer, but it would be a logical way to handle the issue.)
I do suspect that if the issue of the meaning of the term was litigated at the trial court level, the content of the jury instructions would lead to a huge battle among the parties.
JD
Regarding what Steyn meant, maybe other recent articles by him will make it clearer. These take less parsing.
http://www.steynonline.com/6333/michael-e-mann-liar-cheat-falsifier-and-fraud
My link is in moderation, but I said at 1:29pm
Regarding what Steyn really meant, maybe other recent articles by him will make it clearer. These take less parsing. A May 2014 article by Steyn has Michale Mann: Li@r, Che@t, F@lsifier and Fr@ud in the title.
Libel/Defamation Per Se
JD Ohio writes: “… if the case were to go to a jury on a defamation per se, the court would almost certainly have to give instructions regarding the legal definition of fraud in D.C. The court may also give an instruction that the jury could disregard the legal definitions, if it found that the use of the the term “fraudulent” was understood and meant in a different manner than the legal definitions.”
I’m thinking that the qualifications of “almost certainly” and “may” are reversed.
NOTE: Libel is a type of defamation.
In California “libel per se” means the statement is defamatory on its face; “the libel … is defamatory of the plaintiff without the necessity of explanatory matter, such as an inducement, innuendo or other extrinsic fact is said to be a libel on its face.” But if the defamatory character is not apparent on its face and requires an explanation of the surrounding circumstances (the “innuendo”) to make its meaning clear it’s “defamation per quod”. Case law applies the rule of what a “reasonable reader would perceive”. Case law definition of libel per quod uses a rule of “knowledge of specific facts and circumstances, extrinsic to the publication, which are not matters of common knowledge rationally attributable to all reasonable persons”.
From this I think it could be argued that the rational basis of libel per se implies that the jury decides on the meaning of the words used. The instruction that “the jury could disregard the legal definitions, if it found that the use of the the term “fraudulent” seems perfectly in line with defamation per se. (At least under California law.)
I’m not a lawyer but I have spent a lot of time in law libraries researching civil law and preparing answers and motions for review by a lawyer.
BACKGROUND:
In Barnes-Hind v. Superior Court (1986) 181 Cal.App.3d 377, the court said:
“If no reasonable reader would perceive in a false and unprivileged publication a meaning which tended to injure the subject’s reputation in any of the enumerated respects, then there is no libel at all. If such a reader would perceive a defamatory meaning without extrinsic aid beyond his or her own intelligence and common sense, then … there is a libel per se. But if the reader would be able to recognize a defamatory meaning only by virtue of his or her knowledge of specific facts and circumstances, extrinsic to the publication, which are not matters of common knowledge rationally attributable to all reasonable persons, then … the libel cannot be libel per se but will be libel per quod” (which requires pleading and proof of special damages).
Jim D: Regarding what Steyn really meant, maybe other recent articles by him will make it clearer.
As you pointed out, those articles were subsequent to the law suit, and Steyn was able to substantiate his pejoratives via reference to Mann’s court filings and other commentaries.
But the Pyramids WERE built by aliens! They told me so when they beamed me to their mother ship. ;-)
Ole Willy, my guess is you are not aware of your obtuse and cryptic style of writing. Thinking about that again, I think you are aware – you are too smart not to be. Your sarcastic tone re: “The Auditor” is getting long in the tooth. McI has accomplished more for science in the last year than you can hope to accomplish in a lifetime. Agree, Ole Willy?
In response to Bob’s point, I’m not sure where to put the auditing sciences in that analogy:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2014/09/12/348002248/why-atheists-need-captain-kirk
Ole Willy, without Inspectors General, we are all Bolsheviks.
Ole Willy, let’s play fill in the blank. Stalin is to Trofim as Obama is to______.
Ole Willy, you say, “They reject religion as an irrational and ungrounded burden of tradition”. Do you know of any scientist, Ole Willy, that can imagine the origins of DNA-Polymerase? – the ultimate chicken – or egg question.
In answer to Bob’s question, I would venture Uldus Bakhtiozina:
If I got a result like Mann’s hockey stick and my verification statistics were as low as his and the result changed with different methods and input data, I would write that “we do not know much” rather than insisting I got a robust result. As an example, in one of my earliest papers I found a cool catastrophe theory stability relation for grazing systems, but concluded that noise in the real world would preclude it from being either useful or ever observed in nature. I didn’t go out and insist it be used for management of cattle.
When your uncertainty bounds are floor to ceiling, it is dishonest to make a claim to certainty and correctness. The many reconstructions (just look at IPCC AR5 fig 5.7) are all over the map, meaning we can’t say if today is warmer than the past or not.
It always comes back to being fit for purpose. That is the problem with the model/paleo loop. The uncertainty is too large for the claims made. Too many caveats have been made.
The present discussion of “scientific fraud” centers around the caveats. Since Mann and company entered the public arena, what is one man’s caveat is another’s fraud. The question is will the judicial system determine that Mann is a public figure. If so, he has several probably insurmountable problems. One is his CV. Another is the email and public use of the word “trick.” Use of “Code” by persons is an accepted statement in court. It is apparent that the Team used “code” words describing how they hid the decline and other acts. The important part is that the code words were used as shorthand for acts.
All sorts of motions can and will be made, but acts are evidence, and code words can be argued for intent.
A male lion is usually challenged by a younger male from outside – who if successful will then kill all the cubs. Let’s try to keep the metaphors at least internally consistent – aye FOMBS? A male lion doesn’t turn into a buffalo last time I looked.
As an allegory of academic life it is facile. Surely it is more a case of standing on the shoulders of giants. Generations of patient stone masons in the city of knowledge. A Tower of Babel reaching to the stars – before the scattering.
‘And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.’ Genesis
Post the scattering it is all tribalism – insular, dishonest, using hatred and malice to reinforce compliance and punish dissent.
Rob,
What a cheerful thought! :)
You might be interested in the book “Straw Dogs” by John Gray. He cuts through all of our self-serving (he implies) illusions of altruistic behavior to make the claim, and support it with evidence, that we are “particularly rapacious” animals.
Consider also anthropologist Napolean Chagnon, who did his research among the Yanomamo in Venezuela. When he published his results that Yanamamo men that killed other men had more wives and more offspring, the anthro community destroyed his academic career. He challenged the then, and probably current, “nurture” paradigm. Very sad. His book, “Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes, Anthropologists and the Yanamamo”, is incredible. His description of one murderous headman is riveting. It is dangerous to run afoul of the ruling PC class.
Those Yanamamo, tsk! See me
http://beththeserf.wordpress.com/2014/08/02/18th-edition-serf-under_ground-journal/
Game Theory indicates that reciprocal altruism, a provisional
altruism, is an environmentally stable survival strategy and is
therefore as genetically based as aggressive self interest.
Beth, great blog post, thanks.
Thx Faustino, hope yer had a laugh.
bts
I tried embedding a TED talk on ‘moral behavior in animals’ I came across just this week. It disappeared? Seems more relevant than hockey fights – I’ll try again – it’s quite funny as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYfN79df02o&feature=player_embedded .
Someone suggested that wee willie’s discombobulated linkages to seemingly random cut and paste were obscurantist ravings over an abyss of nullity. There is a purpose. Somewhere there is an itch – a psychological instability – underlying the impetus for this mad caterwauling diversion from substance and reality.
The group dynamic – and there is a group with which they self identify – is to reject anomalies and this requires ever more vague ideas to bridge the chasm opening under them. There is a structural problem with vague ideas and bridges. It is a self reinforcing dynamic forged in an atmosphere of hatred and malice. Whatever native intelligence these people started with – it is now a madhouse mirror.
Their answer to specifics is therefore more mad handwaving bedlam in the blogospheric for the criminally incoherent.
Here are some specifics – Samuel Johnson like – thus I refute them. They all say pretty much the same thing – factoring in that Broecker’s was from 1975.
http://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/swanson-et-al-2009.png
http://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/broecker-1975.png
http://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/swanson-realclimate.png
The rate of warming is less than 0.1 degrees C/decade. The third graph suggests the warming not resuming until at least 2020.
‘This suggests that the climate system may well have shifted again, w’ith a consequent break in the global mean temperature trend from the post 1976/77 warming to a new period (indeterminate length) of roughly constant global mean temperature.’ Swanon and Tsonis, 2009, Has the climate recently shifted
These are the maps of the chasm opening up beneath them – pure science fundamentally unchanged since 1975. We have not progressed in any essential way – and here I am assuming that Wally’s wild beast is at the heart of everything. Including his 1975 paper that kick started this grand guignol cotillion.
Regarding Chief’s point, there’s this issue: from “wee willie’s,” it jumps to “these people,” “their answer” which turns into “them”, whom are alledgedly refuted.
Which raises another another issue: how can Chief refute “them”? People are not issues, nor are they points. Perhaps Chief is referring to them’s points. This would make sense.
But which point?
***
Chief seems to take issue with the issues he attributes to me — and by extension “them”. Something like a “structural problem with vague ideas and bridges.” Ideas, I seem to have shown an appreciation for their vagueness. Bridges? I must confess having a problem with vague bridges. All of them, except perhaps Jeff. Jeff Bridges is Ze dude, after all.
There’s no hatred and malice with Jeff.
QED?
If you can find any logical construction in there – you are imagining things and should seek professional help.
There is only an itch to divert from reality into some very scary mindscape. Something Dali like that has some semblance to something you expect should be recognizable – but in the end simply melts away leaving a mess that is vaguely pejorative. Itch scratched.
Don’t bother Chief. He’s vanquishing “the enemy.”
From behind his keyboard.
Day after day.
In thread after thread.
By posting the same comments.,
If he keeps at it long enough, his “enemy” will be vanquished.
If not in this universe, then certainly in some other.
Sooner or later.
As long as his keyboard holds out.
And thanks God Chief doesn’t read my comments (or at most 1 out of 20, and only the first part of those).
Because if he did, he might direct his keyboard warrior glance my way.
I live in fear that might happen some day.
But for now, I’m safe. Others will feel his wrath, but I can breathe for now.
But one day.
He might read all of one of my comments, you know, by “accident.”
And if that happens, surely he’ll be angry.
That will be my last day to smell the roses and enjoy the sunshine.
A fierce solider, that Chief. Leader of the 101rst Division of Chairborne Keyboard Commandos.
No one, and I mean no one, wields such a sharp and powerful sword of unintentional irony.
One snicker-snack and with my head he’ll go galumphing back.
Joshua has heard it all before – and replies with the same whiny substance less comments containing nothing new, nothing of any technical substance, merely the same words distracting from the reality of the issue. Nebulous, meaningless, but conveying a sense of ridicule. The ridicule is almost irrelevant to the me – no one much give’s a rat’s arse. It is important to them for engendering a sense of a community of superiority amongst them.
He simply skulks around here with vague whines about sceptics and then skulks back to the blogospheric echo chambers of the progressive left to whine about the recalcitrant dinosaurs found here – especially Judy of course. I say it only in the interest of full disclosure.
The science is quite evident – the rate of warming attributable in the latter part of the 20th century was 0.07 degrees C/decade, this is hardly likely to be repeated in the 21st century – even if the climate was not a beast – the world is likely not warming for decades at least.
This is a chasm under the ambitions of the left who respond with more vile lies, dishonesty, malice and hatred. The motivation is both psychological and sociological. Psychologically because they have been buttressed by ideas of consensus too long – and abused too many anti-science sceptics – to make acceptance of the science of complexity and uncertainty a bridge too far. Thus they need to stridently discredit Curry, Tsonis and whoever else is deemed to have stepped out of line. You will find it here with Joshua, Webbly, Willard, Michael, etc – and in the blogospheric echo chambers of the climate war where they hone their ‘talents’. Sociologically because it is linked to progressive ambitions to transform societies and economies. Thus a world that is not warming is undermines both the psychological constructs around in and out groups and the political ambitions that are the most potent expression. The ground they are finding is shifting under them and they are in a desperate and losing struggle to shore up the battlements crumbling around them.
Reading Joshua’s comment is far from a hoigh priority – they are meaningless trifles repeating the same words over and over – ideas may be too grandiose a term. But if he want’s to get my attention – responding to a comment with trifling diversions will do it.
Chief, Joshua has actually put boots into the Granuard guy and the just physics guy in the past for misleading rubbish.
I think he wants to be like you but has a left wing wife or kids (mine are all green, unfortunately).
It is only when you attack him that he is able to get a feeling of self worth,
If you really want to be mean give him some praise.
He may be on our side some day with a bit of nurturing.
Whether that’s a good thing??
Heck,he and Mosher might become mates.
Joshua, Nice point about SCOTUS. Though I don’t think it registered with many of the denizens
JFP –
How ya’ been? Haven’t seen you around much.
yeah, a lot slips by the denizens….myopia seeks to be a defining characteristic….
Angech –
You got me pegged, bro. When the ball and chain isn’t looking I hang out at Hotair
Yep. Joshua and Willard are the Small Beer delivery team.
Well, Joshua there is so much heat and so little light I tend to not comment. Yours was one that the denizens may not understand. I only say this because there was not a left/right in black and white discussion/prediction of what it meant. Yet, this quirk is what will decide the result as much as anything.
Pingback: Judith Curry Scores Own Goal in Climate Hockey – Greg Laden's Blog
Observation Michael Mann’s paleo-analysis and Curry/Khvorostyanov’s quantum-analysis alike fail Feynman’s directive “details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given.”
Corollary I The word “fraudulent” applies to neither Mann’s nor Curry/Khvorostyanov’s analysis, or alternatively to both.
FOMD’s View Assertions of “fraud”, as advanced by the Competitive Enterprise Institute/Mark Steyn, are just plain toxic and serve solely to *POLLUTE* rational public discourse.
Corollary II Both the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Mark Steyn owe a sincere apology and a retraction to the public at least — and arguably owe an apology and a retraction to Michael Mann too — that acknowledges the gross pollution by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Mark Steyn of rational public discourse. FOMBS
Absurdity 1: Thus the false assertion made by a malicious and unscrupulous person slips into usage as a fact. There is no reality to the idea that B-E statistics don’t apply at -13 degrees C.
http://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/be-stats.png
Never has and never will be. It is superficial claptrap – utter nonsense fueling a collective frenzy of character assassination.
Absurdity 2: There is no rational public discourse. There is coterie of cadres buttressing a failed ideologically while the ground falls away below them. It is done through vile lies, dishonesty, malice and malign dissimulation in blogospheric echo chambers where dissent is not permitted. Whatever native intelligence there was is distorted beyond recognition by a funhouse mirror of false appearances. They use hatred and malice to reinforce compliance and punish dissent. They grow desperate everyday to discredit any perceived source of anomaly in a campaign of scurrilous whispers.
Shall we take FOMBS as an example of this rational discourse? What we see is smarmy moralizing around links to poorly understood and quite irrelevant links. Vague handwaving in support of equally vague ideas presented in support of vague objectives. A perfect example of the type it would seem.
You are becoming a more scientifically literate and self-aware citizen, Rob Ellison!
I try. FOMBS interests lie in smarmy moralizing latex tags with a vaguely ponderable and mildly disconcerting S. Is it short for S……..? Is it an error? Do we really give a s…?
‘… smarmy moralizing (and) latex tags…’
This is getting serious, Fan. Here’s Conrad:
http://spectator.org/articles/58774/gospel-according-mark-steyn
Any hockey stick specialist knows that “Boom Boom” was nicknamed for the very reason that he was using his slapshot:
http://ourhistory.canadiens.com/player/Bernard-Geoffrion
I don’t know about you, but that is more than sixty years ago.
Another porky from Conrad.
Also note, Fan, that in hockey one uses a slapshot to score goals, not to encrust it into one’s opponent’s cranium, provoked or not, from the New York Rangers or not.
Also note that the Rangers were quite lousy in the 50s. It would have made more sense to pick the Detroit Red Wings.
Two more porkies from Conrad.
Funny Manns comments on the WMO chart reminded me of Umberger
heading up ice with his head down.
With Jean S playing Campbell
Brian Campbell is not known for his physical play.
On the other hand:
Mosher, :) As Gavin would say, apropos…
Willard –
I think that was a different Steve McIntyre…the climateudit guy usually swings and misses.
Looks more like another solid home run to me.
Joshua
I think that was a different Steve McIntyre…the climateudit guy usually swings and misses.
My nomination for Most Conceited Idiocy of 2014 award. Perhaps even for a whole decade.
How could you not recognize him, joshie? He is the same Steve McIntyre who tears you a new one every time you take your weak crap to his blog. He is not as kind and gentle as Judith.
> home run
Hockey is a true sport, not a salon matinée.
What a porky.
Speaking of which, perhaps Conrad’s subtlest porky was to say that Boom Boom was a pointman. He was, but one has to understand what this means. Boom Boom was first and foremost a winger, right or left does not matter much. He played both wings. He only played on the point during power plays. The Habs’ power play was so deadly that the league had to change its rules.
But according to my dad, Boom Boom did not play like Pointmen do today. That was Doug Harvey’s job. Boom Boom would move forward and shoot from the slot as much often as he could. The defensive box was not invented at the time. The hockey sticks did not have the same flexibility as today. The Have in effect invented the four forwards PP.
Perhaps Conrad should have sticker to examples he knows best:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/01/31/conrad-black-removed-from-the-order-of-canada/
Rob, ” There is no reality to the idea that B-E statistics don’t apply at -13 degrees C.”
That would be a good topic for a guest post by someone. I have looked at a few papers and the temperature range that is the biggest PITA is from ~-10C to ~-45C degrees.
If that is fraud or misconduct (referring to the Hockey Stick graph) than it is widespread and we must do something about it!!! See: http://tinyurl.com/conflating-data-in-graphs-ohmy
Well, it isn’t blatant self-advertisement, because you have to follow the link to see it re-direct itself to Greg’s own propaganda site.
AK below, just self advertisement and badly needed as very few people bother to read his blog. Worth a look just to remind oneself of how low a blog can go.
Apropos Greg’s argument he puts up a graph proving that man(n)y other graph(er)s agree with and verify Mike Mann.
There are 8 other graphs, 4 with Mann as author, 1 with Briffa whose work is in Mann’s graph and one by Jones who is listed as a collaborator on one of Mann’s other graphs.
The 2 others Esperanto and Crowley and Lowery may be independent???
Or pseudonyms for Mann.
The point being that of 8 “independent verification graphs by “others” 6 at least are by Mann or Mann and proxy, not independent.
Greg Laden has a strange disregard for language.
I visit his blog once in a while. I used to hang out there a little, till he banned me for calling down Gleick for one of his usual bits of pseudo-scientific glop. This was before Gleick crashed and burned with his Heartland fiasco. Which, of course, Laden was fully in support of (IIRC).
Banning interested people is so pointless, once you stop dissent no one wants to be involved. Judy is commendable in this regard.
Oh, there’s plenty of dissent. He doesn’t ban the kooks and threat-makers. I’d say the reason he has so few readers is that he’s such a schmuck.
But notice how they’re pushing him out front against our hostess. And another thing: notice his link to WHUT’s latest smear attack. This is what these types consider important, not the fact that he keeps spamming with his krackpot “iron sun” nonsense (AFAIK).
Fact is, I was amused at the vigor of his indignation when the whole Sandusky thing popped up. I mean, so what? For people supposedly interested in science (ScienceBlogs™?), his readers, like him, seem to see much more in the use of two names in the same sentence than anything having to do with real science.
Oh yes, and going through the comments, I discovered what his phrase “excessively tl;dr” refers to:
There you have it folks: science for the masses. in 140-character twitter-bytes.
WHUT is a piece of trash. I have ignored him in the past because he was an arrogant ignorant SOB. But that tweet is just pure scum, of which he is well acquainted with.
Dr. Curry is too much a lady to ban him, so we must endure someone who is worse than Sandusky haunting this hall. And he can sue me anytime he wants. But he made his bed. I am sure he is comfortable in it.
After reading this link below you might consider whether Monckton has produced his fair share of fraudulent graphs.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/08/monckton-makes-it-up/
For example, this one.
http://www.realclimate.org/images/bickmore_Fig6.png
Jim D: After reading this link below you might consider whether Monckton has produced his fair share of fraudulent graphs.
How does that relate to Steyn v Mann?
I don’t know about you, but I see a lot of people thinking that the center of the case is fraudulent graphs, as though Mann is the only person who might have done this. Monckton has shown his graphs to a fair number of policymakers too, and they are fraudulent(?) in the ways described. Monckton is also not afraid to threaten litigation against people who call him out on his presentations. It is a mirror image, which has had little or no attention on this blog site.
> How does that relate to Steyn v Mann?
We could say that Jim D never said that Monkton’s graphs were not fraudulent.
We could also surmise that Jim D has never seen any argument to the effect that no Monkton’s graph is fraudulent.
We could also remind Jim D that it is not necessary at all to say that any of Monkton’s graphs is fraudulent.
We could also claim that it would be defensible to claim that Monkton’s graphs are fraudulent.
We could also observe that this is not Jim D’s question at all, and that he was simply pointing out Monkton’s porkies.
Jim D.
The Monktopus squirts ink. The only people to attack him are Lucia and the guys at Sks.
Yes, he does the same shit that Mann does.
Its quite simple to criticize both.
Its telling that only a few do it
It’s just the good-ol-boy rotating his single goalpost again
Ho hum …
Jim D: Monckton has shown his graphs to a fair number of policymakers too, and they are fraudulent(?) in the ways described.
You know how this goes. If I commit a crime, and you commit a crime as well, the lack of prosecution of you for your crime does not render me innocent. Except for the question mark, you have just now accused Monckton of producing fraudulent graphs. I think you have the same right to say that as Steyn had to write that Mann had produced fraudulent graphs. Should Monckton sue you for defamation, I should hope that the case would be dismissed for the same reason that I wish that the court had dismissed Mann’s suit, and that I now hope eventually the court rules in Steyn’s favor.
However, at the time Steyn wrote of the fraudulence of Mann’s graph, it had already been the subject of much public criticism, and it had been removed from the IPCC web page. For Monckton, RealClimate has already criticized this graph and other products by Monckton, and almost everyone knows that, for RealClimate, “fraud”, “disinformation” and such merely refer to not believing their view on the completeness and accuracy of the consensus view. It is a standard rhetorical excess such as “torturing data”, or calling me a liar.
As you notice I put a (?) after the word, which as Judith knows and Steyn doesn’t, is ironclad protection from law suits.
Mosh
Monckton is an interesting character but I have criticised his work (when warranted) a number of times and have also said numerous times that neither he, Heartland or GWPF speak for me.
I think you underestimate the number of people who don’t automatically swallow every sceptical piece of work
tonyb
yes, if you look at monktons work and pat micheals work you will
find that they are attacked for the same kind of shit Mann did
Your comment might be relevant if Monckton was suing someone for calling him a fraud. He hasn’t, so there is no connection to Mann v. Steyn.
JD
He has made threats but not followed through for some reason. Just one example.
http://hot-topic.co.nz/monckton-is-a-fraud/
Per wiki, the IPCC prediction in AR3 was 1.4 to 5.8 °C or 3.6 (average) from 1990 to 2100. 7*3.6/110 = .23°C…
The “IPCC” shading in Monckton’s illustration is more or less accurate.
The problem was Monckton just fitted a line with a constant gradient when the prediction was a smaller gradient at the beginning of the century than at the end. The straight line is Monckton’s distortion, and is very typical of his graphic exploits, and many others besides yourself are taken in by it.
Well,China has put us above A1F1 from what I can tell and if you blend A1T and A1F1 (we are doing part of the A1T) you pretty much get a straight line.
The persistence (atmospheric lifetime) of CO2 seems to be in the 5-15 for over 30 studies. The most recent study I’m aware of says 5.6. Since the CO2 generation is above projections and the atmospheric CO2 is below projections, the 100 year IPCC claim appears indefensible.
This would mean the temperature growth is going to be more linear than exponential since there isn’t a back-ended accumulation.
Cited 1710 times to date:
Observation Mann’s Nature “Hockey Stick” article garners hundreds of new citations each year, mainly because the Hockey Stick has been robustly affirmed by multiple independent studies (like the borehole temperature studies cited above).
That’s how the strongest science is supposed to work, eh Climate Etc readers?
Conclusion I Borehole “hockey stick” temperatures robustly affirm that Michael Mann is right.
Conclusion II Over the past fifteen years, this guy Michael Mann has proven himself to be one tough water buffalo! The slogan-shouting far-right kitty-cats of CEI/Steyn/Heartland ain’t shown *ANYONE* that they’ve got the claws to take Michael Mann down!
*THAT’S* obvious to *EVERYONE*, eh Climate Etc readers?
AFOMD,
Over the past fifteen years, temperatures have not risen.
Over the past fifteen years, you say Michael Mann has proven himself to be one tough water buffalo! Indeed. No doubt possessing that devastating intellect which is a well known attribute of your average water buffalo.
But hey!, better to have the admittedly minuscule mental capacity of a buffalo than that of the average delusional Warmist, eh, Climate Etc readers?
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Mike Flynn, your posts show us that ideology-driven skepticism strikingly resembles Calvin’s class projects!
Thanks for the smiles, Mike Flynn!
AFOMD,
Thank you for the compliment.
What the blazes are Calvin’s class projects?
Do they prove that Michael Mann has less brains than a buffalo, or that Warmists elevate denialism to new levels from a deep seated fear of the future?
In any case, I believe I have discovered the cause of your confusion, wherein you mistakenly ascribe buffalo-like traits to Michael Mann. Although on the surface you might see a resemblance, due to the fact that a buffalo is regarded as dim, slow moving, and quite uninteresting except to fellow buffaloes, you may have inadvertently confused the buffalo with the buffoon.
Now the buffoon (buffoonis microsapiens) is probably what you meant. I would hazard a guess that the public pictures of Michael Mann resemble the Bearded Balding Buffoon rather than the common buffalo.
If you are looking for an object of derision, the butt of jokes, or a subject for ridicule, might I suggest that a buffoon would be more appropriate.
It is of course a pleasure to assist you in your taxonomic endeavours.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Over the past fifteen million years, this Mother Earth has proven herself to be one tough water buffalo! The slogan-shouting far-left kitty-cats of Mann/Gore/Hanson ain’t shown *ANYONE* that they’ve got the claws to take Mother Earth down!
Yes. Five hundred million years with CO2 getting in the neighborhood of 7000 ppm and still no runaway greenhouse effect.
That said, I wonder if someone could sue the sceptics for preventing the formation of mile-high glaciers in North America and western Europe? Or is there an expectation of a Goldilocks climate?
–That said, I wonder if someone could sue the sceptics for preventing the formation of mile-high glaciers in North America and western Europe? Or is there an expectation of a Goldilocks climate?–
There is little reason to suppose that after leaving the Little Ice Age in 1850, that “naturally” within 100 years of this we would return to LIA conditions. Or compared to all the other periods of warming and cooling
within our current interglacial period, other than LIA being bit longer and cooler, there is little reason not to expect a warming period to follow- which is what happened. Or if just look at solar activity and with significant increased solar activity during 20th century, it would be “surprising” if there was cooling rather than warming.
With the decrease in recent solar activity- it’s possible this could a beginning of lower solar activity for the 21 century, though of course possible we go back to levels of solar activity we saw in the 20th century.
Now, if we have very dramatic lowering of solar activity in 21 century, this does not necessarily mean we would return to the coolness of LIA- as LIA had centuries of low solar activity.
And addition to low solar activity during LIA, the LIA had 3 large volcanic eruption of the scale which we have not had in a hundred years.
So it seems that without one [or four or so] of volcanic eruption which which largest of LIA period [or larger] and one merely has low solar solar activity for next 50 years, we should not return period which is similar to coldest of LIA. Or rather global glacial advancing by any significant amount, I would is not in the cards for next 50 years.
And large glacial in middle North America [or Europe] is even further from likely. Or first one should probably see global glacial advancement for centuries before one would see a return to glacial period.
Nor do I think speptics had much to do with slowing or stopping governmental madness. Rather it seems, the nature of US government- it was designed to not act quickly to all kind of potential foolishess- played a small part in the global madness and prevented the US from wasting tens of trillion of dollars. Or the US was not as excessive as Germany, Japan and some other countries, because of the type of government that US has. Then other factors was weather [or global temperature] did cooperate with the foaming vision of the idiot Lefties- so The Pause put huge dent in the plans. And last major problem was the lefties had managed to give us a global recession- or the brilliant idea that government can spend as much money as they like and the result could only be good news. So when governments found out that this wasn’t true, wasting money trying to engineer global climate [in hopeless stupid fashion] was not considered spending priority. Or US thought spending money for government controlled national healthcare was a much higher priority [and many other goodies were also consider more important].
Or when there was shortage of amount funding, pols took the cheap route of talking about it, rather than actually spending a significant amount money. But even money were flowing, all global warming policy has ever seem to do, was getting politicians which supported it, booted out of office [globally].
Fan
You often don’t reply when someone points out your inconsistencies
I replied to you original borehole graph here
http://judithcurry.com/2014/09/11/fraudulent-hockey-stick/#comment-627276
I pointed out it confirms the temperatures has been rising for over 300 years and asked for your comments. Perhaps they have got hidden in the abyssal deep?
tonyb
Fan
Nesting seems messed up, will try again
——–
You often don’t reply when someone points out your inconsistencies
I replied to you original borehole graph here
http://judithcurry.com/2014/09/11/fraudulent-hockey-stick/#comment-627276
I pointed out it confirms the temperatures has been rising for over 300 years and asked for your comments. Perhaps they have got hidden in the abyssal deep?
tonyb
TonyB, here is a more complete response (that hopefully is better-formatted)
TonyB, the mathematical aspects of the above statement need to be appreciated! Here is an extended version:
Conclusion Within the inherent limitations of borehole climate-change studies, the scientific evidence from borehole temperatures strongly and robustly affirms that “Michael Mann’s 1999 climate-change hockey-stick has proved to be substantially and even quantitatively correct”.
Climate Etc readers are strongly encouraged to follow the above links, and to verify borehole-inversion mathematical details for themselves!
“Measurements down 12 boreholes in the Czech Republic have been taken to greater depths, indicating much earlier surface temperatures. The results show fluctuations of about 1 K, with a minimum in 500 AD, maximum in 1200 AD and a minimum in 1800 AD, approximately. The latter variations match similar variations of air temperatures in mid-England.”
http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap03/borehole.html
As I read it, the MWP is supported.
Interesting take on Huang & Pollack (boreholes):
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/climate3.htm
Huang before 2000
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/boreholes_1000y.jpg
Huang after 2000
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/Borehole_Temperature.jpg
Same 6000 boreholes…
It seems borehole temperatures, like the historic “adjusted” data are a moving target.
Wow, what other factor than ideologically motivated thinking could lead one to believe that 500 years of data, which convenient stop before the controversial part of the Hockey Stick, aside from tacking on different data to the end to make it more dramatic, affirm Mann’s 1500 year claim “robustly”?
I am going to rule out stupidity, I don’t really think you are stupid. I guess another possibility, and likely one at that, is that you understand how weak the stick is, but you think the issue is too important to give an inch.
I guess when somebody keeps on insisting on correcting a group who claim that 500 years = 1500 years, that first group is the “deranged” one, not the one who uses the word robustly to mean “partially”
BTW, how does Mann’s proxy data, map to boreholes once it is outside the range of data available for back test overfitting.
Climate Etc readers are invited to verify for themselves that Michael Mann’s highest-visibility and most-cited 1998 article covers six centuries.
Subsequent independent studies — borehole temperature studies in particular — have shown that Mann’s “hockey-stick” was right.
The World Wonders Why CEI/Steyn/WUWT/Watts/Heartland (et al.) consistently resort to (what many regard, rightly as it seems to FOMD) “character assassination, bad manners, and incivility“ in discussing Mann’s research?
Why do *YOU* think that is, TJA?
So FOMD, the “Defender of the Faith,” now shrinks Mann’s original claim of 1,500 years down to a trrvial reproduction of the Lamb curve? Go back five or six centuries on it?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=338
Really? Is that your position? That the Hockey Stick never even addressed the MWP?
Even you can see that your case is collapsing, Eh FOMD?
Fan
As has been pointed out to you THREE times and which necessitated you ‘amplifying’ the report on the bore hole temperatures, they actually show the temperature has been rising for over 300 years. I am still waiting for your explanation why.(rather than an ‘amplification’ which really said nothing)
Also can you please cite me several independent studies that detail how on earth tree ring data -sampled twice in the short growing season and then applied to a 50 year averaged smoothing-can bear any relation to real world highly variable global temperatures?
tonyb
‘You two have clinically insane perspectives on the physics. Both of you plainly don’t understand a thing about photonics, and especially are clueless on how Bose-Einstein statistical mechanics describes how electromagnetic radiation gets dispersed across an energy spectrum.
It’s a very straightforward concept that greenhouse gases have a scattering cross-section that can partially reflect specific bands of photon frequencies until they redistribute to maintain an energy balance. Nature will always juggle and redistribute the state space densities to conserve energy. This is analogous to how a black-body spectrum exists in the first place, as its all about redistribution of energies within a state space to maximize entropy.’ http://judithcurry.com/2012/04/03/authority-in-political-debates-involving-science/#comment-190259
http://judithcurry.com/2012/04/03/authority-in-political-debates-involving-science/#comment-190259
Webbly’s link earlier leads to an a new interpretation of an old discussion in which I supposedly led the way on a Bose-Einstein theory of climate. It was in fact his idea – as shown in the quote above. What he was really trying do was reimagine a way of preserving the IR notch in the context of statistical mechanics.
What he was really thinking about was the Planck radiation formula – http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/quantum/planckapp.html#c1 – which doesn’t help.
Nature juggling is a fairly non-specific mechanism. It seems to suggest that IR is absorbed and emitted in different frequencies. This is not the case. We are talking about specific molecules with specific resonant frequencies. Photons are absorbed and emitted at the same frequency – the essence of quantum mechanics. With more CO2 there are more photons absorbed and the atmosphere warms restoring the flow of photons out of the atmosphere. A new – but contingent – equilibrium in a warmer atmosphere. The difference is the degree of scattering in a CO2 environment – photons are emitted in random directions. The ‘notch’ is measured through a restricted field of view that excludes some scattered photons. The Planck formula is irrelevant to molecular resonance at specific frequencies.
What this shows yet again is webbly’s technical superficiality – he leaps to conclusions far too quickly and without the requisite background knowledge. More than that – this new interpretation of me leading a Bose-Einstein charge is delusional rather than fraud – I expect that he says what he believes and believes what he says. Whatever the reality is.
His latest tweets lead to this.
‘… So Judith Curry and the flock of winged monkeys and child molesters that comment on her blog…’
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/09/12/judith-curry-scores-own-goal-in-climate-hockey/
Winged monkeys as an example of rational discourse – I suppose – and child molesters courtesy of webbly’s campaign of highlighting a 25 year old conviction – of no possible public interest here – to discredit Judy. Seemingly on the basis of a conflict of interest because Jerry whatshisname was mentioned by Steyn. Solid.
I note that he is continuing his incredible assertion that Bose-Einstein statistics don’t apply at -13 degrees C because a B-E condensate happens at mill-Kelvins. He was too chickenshit to broach it on the appropriate post preferring to skulk around crackpot echo chambers muttering about a lack of professional achievement and immoral sources of income.
Neither the intellect or ethics of the webbly seem all that impressive.
‘Why does O-man get to comment when Mann gets compared to Sandusky ?
Because people do not know the hypocrisy involved.
Funny that Curry got her krackpot ideas on applying Bose-Einstein statistics to cloud nucleation from O-man. evidence: http://contextearth.com/crackpots-etc/ ‘
Webbly scuttles about the interweb spreading his technically insubstantial but personally malicious poison. Bose-Einstein statistics apply at room temperature. A cold – minus 13 degrees C – room in this case.
http://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/be-stats.png
And the value is determined by the rigour of the analytical solution it is used in. About which he knows less than nothing and is not remotely interested But that doesn’t stop dark mutterings about a lack of professional achievement and immoral sources of income widely in the blogospheric echo chambers of the fundamentalist warmers. Where they are predisposed to repeat unsubstantiated nonsense.
In the link above he seems to suggest I led the way in suggesting a Bose-Einstein theory of climate. Bose-Einstein started with webbly in fact.
‘You two have clinically insane perspectives on the physics. Both of you plainly don’t understand a thing about photonics, and especially are clueless on how Bose-Einstein statistical mechanics describes how electromagnetic radiation gets dispersed across an energy spectrum.’ http://judithcurry.com/2012/04/03/authority-in-political-debates-involving-science/#comment-190259
Juggling is wot dun it. As an explanation of ‘the notch’ – webbly is as usual fundamentally technically misguided – along with the always fractured syntax that is always vaguely disconcerting for a grammatical fundamentalist.
It is frankly a dishonest – yea fraudulent – reinterpretation of an old discussion where I say quite obviously that – no – it isn’t Bose-Einstein juggling.
His latest tweet leads to this – ‘… Judith Curry and the flock of winged monkeys and child molesters that comment on her blog…’ Winged monkeys is of course an example of the rational discourse we can expect in the Borg collective blogospheric echo chambers. This latter is morally repugnant malice solely for the sake of partisan rhetoric. Along with fractured syntax. Can these people please consult a grammarian.
Too bad (?) about the #OwnGoal
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/09/12/judith-curry-scores-own-goal-in-climate-hockey/
Web Pukite, be a man and defense your crap in the VItaly KHVOROSTYANOV thread instead of cowardly lobbing duds from a safe distance.
Well Mr Pukite
Perhaps you can tell me what ‘historical records’ were used in Dr Mann’s graph as depicted by Mr Laden. Also perhaps you can help resolve a conundrum in as much the novel proxies that Dr Mann used show a continual temperature decrease until modern times.
However bore hole temperatures show the complete opposite with a 300 year long rise
http://www.earth.lsa.umich.edu/climate/gst5.gif
The historic record also appears to show this 300 year plus warming unless Dr Mann has managed to find some records that contradict this?
Look forward to your clarification
tonyb
Paulie welcome back. I’m glad your self ostracism has ended and you are no longer behaving like an embarrassed teenager who feels shame for having been proven wrong in front of the world. We are a forgiving people and this blow to your ego, however enormous, will be gone with the wind. I do agree with Ballsofsteel, however, that you should go to the Vitaly thread and defend yourself. It will only hurt for a little while.
500=1500… robustly! – FOMD
Fan
Thanks for responding but may I remind you that it was YOU who posted the borehole data!
You call them robust yet they directly contradict Dr Mann in as much they show a steadily rising temperature for over 300 years yet his shows a steadily declining temperature until recent times. They contradict each other.
Please tell me how both can be right then for good measure you might like to comment on the observed 300 year temperature rise.
tonyb
Fan
BTW I meant to ask you where you learnt to backpedal so rapidly as your reply to me exhibits your skill in this.
You mention rather coarse time resolution. Precisely! I made this very point in this article;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/16/historic-variations-in-temperature-number-four-the-hockey-stick/
Please see figure 2 for the very coarse spaghetti paleo proxies and fine grain real world temperatures. The fine grain of the annual and decadal temperatures fall completely through the coarse sieve of paleo proxies don’t they?
Over to you for more fine displays of synchronised backpeddaling.
tonyb
The CET does a pretty good imitation of the hockey stick, as tonyb shows here. Question. How can one be fraudulent and the other not?
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/clip_image0081.jpg
You guys are skeert to actually do some research and apply Michael Mann’s proxy analysis to solving problems, such as using it to predict El Ninos.
http://contextearth.com/2014/09/13/azimuth-project-on-el-ninos/
The deniers of the world don’t realize how well the proxy data calibrates to modern day ENSO measures.
Mann and his colleagues in paleoclimate research do great work that advances the yardstick.
Contrast that to the krackpot theorizing based on Bore-Einstein statistics borrowed from the O-man and the nut (?) Ellison.
You are a real POS. Go slither with the slugs.
“The deniers of the world don’t realize how well the proxy data calibrates to modern day ENSO measures.”
Well… the predictions of a super El Nino… or any El Nino this year so far haven’t panned out.
Better luck with that proxy data in the future.
HI Jim
Its a shame you didn’t show the NEXT graph in the sequence
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/clip_image010.jpg
From it we can see the remarkable 1995 to 1740 hockey stick, we can see that remarkably the glaciers managed to advance AND retreat whilst the temperatures were, according to Dr Mann, nearly constant AND the period of reconstructed CET stops short of the warmer MWP type (?) episodes in the 16th and 14th Century let alone anything that MIGHT have gone before from the 9th to 13th century but which falls outside of my current research.
tonyb
tonyb, even 50-year averages from a small region like CE have never shown anything like the last two 50-year averages before. It really is a blade compared to the previous record.
JimD, right. To have a true “global” teleconnection tonyb needs to include PC#1 from the ITRDB. He really cannot assume that such a small region is of any consequence without creative math skills.
He again says I led the way in suggesting a Bose-Einstein theory of climate to Judy. It is just an example of the ludicrous fantasies he indulges in. On the basis of some dredged up blog comment made in response to a Bose-Einstein mention from webbly about ‘the notch’ being the result of energy smeared all over the spectrum like utter on toast. But with gaps.
‘You two have clinically insane perspectives on the physics. Both of you plainly don’t understand a thing about photonics, and especially are clueless on how Bose-Einstein statistical mechanics describes how electromagnetic radiation gets dispersed across an energy spectrum.’ http://judithcurry.com/2012/04/03/authority-in-political-debates-involving-science/#comment-190259
Juggling is wot dun it. As an explanation of ‘the notch’ – webbly is as usual fundamentally technically misguided – along with the always fractured syntax that is always vaguely disconcerting for a grammatical fundamentalist.
It is frankly a dishonest – yea fraudulent – reinterpretation of an old discussion where I say quite obviously that – no – it isn’t Bose-Einstein juggling.
The resort to lies, fraud and calumny goes on after some physic regrouping obviously. He gets an opportunity here to be both abusive and to reinvent reality in the strangest way possible – but dissent is blocked at the fetid inteweb echo chambers he then repairs to boast of how he has bearded the dragon.
He has squibbed the opportunity to defend his grossly inadequate mumblings about Bose-Einstein condensates in an open forum – and continues not merely to insult in terms of calling Judy a crackpot but to spread personal abuse and to cast contemptible aspersions. Utterly contemptible and irredeemably unconscionable. This is not how responsible and self respecting adult is meant to behave. This is not behavior that allows for rational discourse to evolve – and it has been this way since he decided to commence ‘monitoring’ the ‘Krackpots’ on CE – as he sycophantically conveys to the to the collective.
Jim D > The CET does a pretty good imitation of the hockey stick, as tonyb shows here. Question. How can one be fraudulent and the other not?
Fraud is about methods, not results.
Was CET too created by deleting recalcitrant data, for example?
Tuppence, I think the skeptics haven’t quite figured out what about the hockey stick is fraudulent. Is it its general shape, supported by other evidence, or is it deleted wiggles that hardly anyone could see in the first place? A lot of the argument here centers on the latter, but tries to imply the former. Very confusing to the general public who hardly follow this or only see headlines, including that of this blog post.
Jim D I think the problem is rather than you are remarkably uninformed about the hockey stick, as well as about skeptics. Who hasn’t heard of hiding the decline, attempts to destroy evidence of hiding the decline, bogus algorithms conjuring up hockey sticks out of red noise … .
The “decline” is one tree-ring record against many concurrent ones that don’t have a decline. Many skeptics don’t even know this fact about that phrase. They just read the headline and assume things.
So all because of one tree-ring record, the decline-hiders felt they had no option but to truncate N decades of data? I hardly think so.
may be the WHOLE hockey stick was based just one tree?
Jim D.
The actual record of CET from the Hadley website is much less convincing:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/graphs/HadCET_graph_ylybars_uptodate.gif
The Met office data starts after the LIA which would have been 0.5-1°C cooler.
As far as Mann is concerned the arguments as I understand them are:
1. Data manipulation – he data padded some records that didn’t match inclusion criterion (they weren’t long enough) to include them.
2. He included some data upside down presumably to get 20th century warming from data which showed cooling.
3. He included some data such as YAD06 that didn’t match the local temperature records or nearby tree records but showed a strong 20th century warming signal.
4. He used an algorithm multiplied the effect of records with strong 20th century variation.
5. He did some other tweaking and cherry-picking and excluded valid series that didn’t show a strong 20th century signal.
Mann included some data
No, Jim D, it’s you who assumes things about sceptics.
“The “decline” is one tree-ring record against many concurrent ones that don’t have a decline. ” Jim D.
So you explain to me Jim D, why, if it doesn’t work now, as soon as it got outside of Mann’s sandbox of data, we should have any reason to believe that it worked then?
I would bet a thousand dollars that you couldn’t even recapitulate my argument, even in an attempt to prove it wrong.
WebHubTelescope: You guys are skeert to actually do some research and apply Michael Mann’s proxy analysis to solving problems, such as using it to predict El Ninos.
http://contextearth.com/2014/09/13/azimuth-project-on-el-ninos/
The deniers of the world don’t realize how well the proxy data calibrates to modern day ENSO measures.
From the link: I think my approach is much more tractable and it may be on the verge of producing some predictive power by piggybacking on the more periodic QBO.
You may recall that some of us encouraged you to tell us your ENSO predictions before. I am looking forward to them.
Marler, No need to predict ENSO for now, as we can do all sorts of backtests on the excellent proxy records provided by Michael Mann, and Kim Cobb and the unified model by McGregor.
If you want to play, then pay your dues and contribute something useful. We are getting so close that we can taste it.
web
https://www.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/9933585
25K?
clowns.
Do you know how much data goes un touched and un looked at?
its criminal.
Mosh, yes, I know that $25K is nothing as a challenge award.
I will submit something because it is all based on work I did before. $25K is chump change for what NASA can get out of it.
Terrabytes of data generated daily has nowhere to go but in the archive, and it keeps on accumulating. All the surface station temperature records taken together look puny in comparison.
WEbHubTelescope: If you want to play, then pay your dues and contribute something useful. We are getting so close that we can taste it.
We eagerly await your success. That can be read as sincere or sarcastic, but I prefer the sincere reading. I always like good fitting models that have been well-tested against out of sample data.
Too bad about lacking the balls to discuss your incompetent and malicious rants in the last post.
You have accomplished something. There is a new shorthand for a blogospheric brain fart.
Chucking a webbly.
That Greg Laden shows an elliot wave chart as a scientific chart and he thinks we’re a bunch of monkeys? Should read: Greg Laden scores own goal by Robert Prechter (famous for predicting the 1995 crash).
I scanned it previously without paying much attention – the usual crap from a Borg collective blogospheric echo chamber. It misrepresents the nature of the fraud – insists that stringing together different sources without explanation is SOP and is therefore OK. Not even close in fact. Expecting scientific clarity – or even fair and objective analysis – from these sources is like expecting goldfish to do calculus.
Indi,
That’s a bit unfait to poor Webby.
I think he was misled by the somewhat random appearence of the BE references.
And given that he was miseld,I think it fair to say (hat-tip Judith), that the text must have been misleading.
The question then is, is this dishonest?
Just questions.
Willard, Joshua, Michael & Co, Ltd. Purveyors of Bitter Small Beer.
Michael, The webster saga is ongoing.
Anyone else notice that jim2 has been considerably more hostile lately?
What’s that about?
Joshua,
It’s hard to tell if this is more than just natural internal variability.
Do you see a hockey stick?
Michael –
The the impression I’ve gotten over time:
When he first showed up, he would engage on political issues and sporadically go on the offensive . But mostly his contributions consisted of hatin’ on government and explaining how Hayek was right about everything.
Then he seemed to throw up his hands – seemingly confident that his difficulty in convincing others was due to their intransigence and inability to see the infallibility of his politics – disengage, and be content back-slapping his political compatriots and linking to one polemic after the next.
But in the last couple of weeks – something seems to have shifted and he’s gone on the offensive again. But perhaps you’re right, and that some natural variability lead to a pause that temporarily overwhelmed and masked the long-term trend.
Before mentioning a scientific clarity, please tell us what a horizontal axis of your graph is – is it a mu or E? In any case, please supply a value of the other parameter. Thank you.
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I have not been following this case much (and I lost interest in the comments here after the 10th or so), but I’ll just jump in with my opinion anyway. Although I disagree with how the “hockey stick” was presented to the public, I feel that Mann has a legitimate issue with Steyn. What I have read is simple character assassination, bad manners, incivil. Steven McIntyre has the only useful approach in my opinion.
rmdobservations,
So it’s not fraudulent to hide inconvenient data, and urge destruction of any evidence that this has been done ?
Merely a business as usual.
I am just saying that Steyn has gone about things the wrong way.
As a political commentator, they usually do.
rmdobservations,
So pointing out wrongdoing and fraud is wrong. People should keep quiet and let crooks get on with it. Even when an obvious crook calls honest folk crooked.
Some sort of political correctness argument you have there, I take it.
Jeepers. Steyn is a shock jock, an opinion columnist, not a scientist. What he said is exactly the kind of thing one sees a thousand times a day on Huffington Post, or on the conservative equivalents for that matter. There’s a good reason that the ACLU, the LA Times, the Washington Post, and other liberal publications came out in favor of Steyn.
“Defendants’ and amici assert that this case is a threat to freedom of expression and involves a “scientific controversy” … [but] This is a defamation case”It sh
But of course defamation legislation is itself inherently and by design a threat to freedom of expression.
The “crimes” of libel, defamation etc etc, should all be summarily scrapped.
Tuppence,
Hear hear!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
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It would be interesting for a judge – nudge, nudge! wink, wink! – to ask for parties to explain the relative merits of climatology, phrenology and astrology.
Astrologers examine the relative positions of heavenly bodies, and then attempt to divine the future.
Phrenologists examine bumps on peoples’ heads, and then attempt to divine the future,
Climatologists examine past temperatures, and then claim they have divined the future.
Which of these should governments pour billions of dollars into for no benefit at all?
As to law in certain jurisdictions –
“Can fortune tellers or astrologers testify in court?
No. Case law has ruled that the evidence given by astrologers or witch doctors will not be accepted if they are testifying in such a capacity.
Sure it’d be fun to believe that our fortunes can be foretold, but case law has taken a more pragmatic approach because: “There can be no real telling of fortunes, for no one can foresee the future”, as Murray CJ pointed out in Smith v O’Sullivan [1921] SASR 349. Despite what some people may want to believe. ”
However, courts in the US have their own rules. Possibly claiming to foretell the future for money is not a criminal offense, providing you assure the authorities that you are a self proclaimed climatologist, rather than one of those quack astrologers or phrenologists.
So there you are, judge, three supposed sciences. All equally incapable of telling the future. Which one holds its practitioners immune to criticism?
Is this just, or indeed legal?
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Mike, in the US, fortune telling is not illegal. It falls under the premise of “caveat emptor” and the old adage of a “fool and his money”. But as you correctly point out, courts do not like to be made fools of, so yes, they do not accept testimony from phrenologists and astrologists, in their “professional” capacity. At some point we can hope to add other hucksters as well, but that will take time and common sense.
Yes … *EVERYONE* sees *THAT*!
The World Wonders *WHY* are CEI/Steyn/WUWT/Watts/Heartland (et al.) resorting to (what rmdobservations’ comment rightly calls) “character assassination, bad manners, incivility”?
Common-Sense Answer Multiple independent studies — for example, the borehole temperature studies discussed above — have robustly affirmed that Michael Mann’s 1999 climate-change hockey-stick is substantially and even quantitatively correct.
Conclusion CEI/Steyn/WUWT/Watts/Heartland (et al.) consistently resort to “character assassination, bad manners, and incivility” because their ideology-driven worldview is weak in science, weak in logic, weak in the law, weak in civic responsibility, and weak in common-sense.
*THAT* common-sense science-and-civics reality is obvious to *EVERYONE*, eh Climate Etc readers?
“rmdobservations concludes “Mann has a legitimate issue with Steyn. What I have read is simple character assassination, bad manners, incivil.”
How silly, Steyn’s a polemicist, a provocateur, an entertainer. Bad manners? Are you kidding me? Have you read any Paul Krugman columns lately? Shall we sue him? How about Bill Maher? Or more to the point, Mann himself who’s repeatedly accused our esteemed host of being ‘anti-science?”
The cluelessness beggars belief.
William Buckley (1925-2008), the founder of National Review, was witty, erudite, and charming.
How dismayed Buckley’s ghost must be, to see watch Marc Steyn leading conservatism (and Buckley’s cherished National Review) into the morass of willful ignorance, illogic, and gutter language!
Needless to say, the cause of conservatism has been tremendously harmed by the anti-scientific ‘character assassination, bad manners, and incivility’ of CEI/Steyn/WUWT/Watts/Heartland (and their ilk).
Nowadays, the banner of Buckley-style rationalism, learning, good manners, and enduring conservative values has been taken up by … amicable climate-science consensus.
Aye Climate Etc lassies and laddies, nowadays it’s the climate-scientists who carry the banner of enduring conservative values!
*EVERYONE* who respects William Buckley’s brand of conservatism appreciates *THAT*, eh Climate Etc readers?
Good on `yah, climate-scientists!
I never heard of William F. Buckley refusing to debate anyone. And about that “amicable climate-science consensus”. When I think of climate consensus types, the word “amicable” does not come to mind, but I will give John Cook some credit. That’s a nice piece of cartooning.
“consistently resort to “character assassination, bad manners, and incivility” because their ideology-driven worldview is weak in science, weak in logic, weak in the law, weak in civic responsibility, and weak in common-sense.”
Yup, describes Mann and mainstream climate science to a T.
Finally! FOMD gets something right.
I genuinely do not understand people like Fan. To tell you the truth, such willful blindness is depressing to me. Or is it even willful? If not, I find that even more disturbing. I’m a reasonable person with I’d say a better than average capacity for seeing both sides of an argument, but try as I might I can’t find a legitimate way to take Mann’s side in this.
We have to try to disregard FOMT’s provocative manngers, too. However, I think that the FOMT is less deranged than he used to be, so perhaps criticism has begun to register there. Nowadays at least he makes an effort to offer non-ranting, lucid points. I will grant him that…. it is refreshing.
Why does Tammy Wynette say “stand by your mann”?
Canman, because, after all, he’s just a Mann.
Not really Fan.
There are no “Independent studies”
See Greg Laden for instance whose indecent studies confirming Mann were Mann, Mann, Mann, Briffa, Mann and Jones and then Jones et al.
Very few studies have been done. None have been “Independent”.
You know this yet you put up your statement knowing the falsity of it.
If you used good arguments you would have some traction here.
As it is you have irrelevance other than the needed corrections.
Incivility indeed.
FOMBS does have an interesting post every so often. The interesting ones sport science content. The other 99% – pretty useless.
The Defender of the Faith FOMD is back to his 500 robustly = 1500 shtick again, or is it now that Mann only claimed 600 years? That claim is beneath even you. And that is saying something.
Mann and the hockey stick had nothing to say on the MWP? There is no evidence in the Hockey Stick that today is exceptional? The Hockey Stick makes no claims about whether the temp is any warmer today than 1000 years ago? If it was as warm or warmer a thousand years ago, WHAT ARE WE WORRIED ABOUT?
Wow, if that is Mann’s only claim, 600 years, I pronounce the controversy settled, on your terms FOMD,, on your terms. 600 year.
Borehole temperature analysis plainly shows us a present-day “hockey-stick blade” of warming, thereby robustly and independently affirming the 1998 Mann-Bradley-Hughes “hockey stock”
Meanwhile William Buckley is rolling in his grave, in consequence of faux-conservative denialism’s anti-scientific addiction to willfully ignorant “character assassination, bad manners, and incivility”
Nowadays these plain facts are *EVIDENT* to *EVERYONE*, eh angech?
“Meanwhile William Buckley is rolling in his grave”
I doubt it:
“Critics are correct in insisting human enterprises have an effect on climate. WHAT THEY CANNOT DO is specify exactly how great the damage is, nor how much relief would be effected by specific acts of natural propitiation. ”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/business_of_global_warming_fee.html
“Business of Global Warming Feels a Lot Like Inquisition”
Hmm Sounds more like faux liberal incivility to me.
I think it more likely he would be rolling in his grave if he was forced to read Fans mythological muses.
Stock?? Considering that Steve McIntyre has said that he first took interest in Mannian manipulations because the “hockey stick” reminded him of deceptive stock promotions in business, FOMT’s typo may actually be revealing.
Mann and his “hockey stock” ….. would anyone be foolish enough to buy stock from that Mann??
Borehole temperature analysis is a very poor example Fan
Borehole analysis is subjective cods wallop.
First only 7 sites whole of South America. So useless for the world.
Second ignore the top 20 metres as subject to Climate variability
What!!!
Thirdly pretend that depth temperature changes can be related to 100’s of years in the past.
Not bleeding likely.
And changing the subject.
A bit of Isaac Asimov Foundation really
The last refuge of the scoundrel and all that
Defend the fact that all the supportive stuff for Mann was reissued by Mann and not independent at all.
Go on, discuss and defend that please.
Waiting.
Whoops typo, indecent should read independent. Sorry everyone.
I liked it the first way. ;-)
Professor Curry, are you being paid to attend the Marshall Institute and Texas Public Policy Foundation events? Aren’t both of these groups overtly political and overtly partisan?
Prior to the Montreal Protocol do you believe that CFCs were affecting ozone in the atmosphere? Was the Marshall Institute fraudulent(?) for claiming otherwise? Do you believe that secondhand-cigarette smoke has deleterious health effects? Was the Marshall Institute fraudulent(?) for claiming otherwise.
Recently Dr Roy Spencer, one of the “star studded” (sic) experts who will also be at the TPPF event, questioned whether the global increase in atmospheric CO2 was anthropogenic. Was Dr Spencer being fraudulent(?) with this claim? Is it not easily shown that the increase is anthropogenic? Shouldn’t we characterize anyone that questions the nature of the atmnospheric CO2 increase as either ignorant, a charlatan, or a fraud(?)? And anti-science too – since multiple lines of scientific evidence show the anthropogenic origins?
If a scientist publishes a paper accusing other scientists of “circular reasoning” – but it is then shown the reasoning is *not* circular, is the original charge just wrong or fraudulent(?)? In either case, should the scientist then cite the paper to others – say for instance congress – without including the caveat that parts of the paper have been shown to be in error? Is failing to do so fraudulent(?).
Is making an accusation by including a question mark a coward’s way of avoiding responsibility?
Does Greg Laden wins the internet today?
Here’s someone who was making pompous pronouncements about Bose-Einstein condensates in the incestuous backblocks of the interweb. Is he at all the type deserving of a response to a smarmy and supercilious cross examination on trivial and obvious tendentious crapola? Or is he just another of the Borg collective making a brief foray out of the Collective echo chambers? To beard the dragon-lady in her den and then skulk back to their habitual fetid blogosphere swamps to preen and boast?
The curious demand answers from little Kevie.
I note – btw – Michael castigating Judy for misleading the webbly by mentioning Bose-Einstein without specifying that a Bose-Einstein condensate was not a relevant consideration. Or indeed Bose-Einstein juggling wot done the notch. It is thus her fault that he spouted nonsense – and cast scurrilous and contemptible aspersions – all over the interweb. She is guilty because she should have anticipated that webbly is an incompetent and unconscionable twit who will seize on any pretext to spread lies and calumny? Got it.
Just questions Robert.
Just questions.
I guess science blogs is desperate for traffic.
Greg Laden doesn’t appear very wise or well informed.
The problems with the hockey stick are numerous. This thread mentions a number of them. A number of blogs cover the details – Climate Audit (Steve McIntyre) is good reference. The basic problems with the chart is the methodology is poor (cherry picking etc. etc.), the numerical manipulations increase twentieth century warming, and in spite of that, if you take away the instrumental data and show the full proxy data the results are underwhelming warming.
The allegations of fraud with Mann come from the climategate emails and the above mentioned chart which has methodology, numerical manipulations, presentation issues that are so bad that it can be argued that Mann is either deceitful or grossly incompetent.
I can’t find any facts in your post just aspersions so there isn’t much else to respond to.
Paid? – highly unlikely, not that it matters much one way or another.
Nothing wrong with scientists giving their view of the science to any group.
But those loudly advocating against advocacy or for ethical advocacy might be cautious about dealing with ‘think tanks’ with a track record of trying to push political positions under a veneer of science.
He of course agrees with you.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/13/richard-branson-failed-climate-change-pledge
Though his heart is bigger than your wallet.
Kevin O’Neil
Did the Marshall Institute or Spencer do anything even remotely like hide data or Hide the Decline? No, they didn’t indulge in systematic d*sh*onesty like Mann does. So, no comparison.
And as regards politically partisan funding, the odd talk here or there is less than peanuts compared to the tax $billions spent on politically-funded and politically-directed climate science, which cannot but be skewed towards the vested interest of government – its paymaster. This vested interest is of course to promote alarmism – ICAGW*- since that supports the argument for government getting fatter at the expense of our pockets and freedoms – ie more taxes and more political controls and powers.
* Imminent Catastrophic AGW
Well, until they were made to <a href="http://rabett.blogspot.com/search?q=UAH+code"Christy and Spencer hid their cheese till about 2011-2012 and strongly resisted making it public
Also this
It is interesting to me that no one even hints at the evil partisanship funding of NOAA, NASA, ONR, Dept of Energy, and — bless ’em — the National Science Foundation.
There is NO research money available except for “research” confirming some aspect of climate hysteria or a sorry story about climate mitigation. The money tree here drops nuts into the billions of dollars!
And the hysterics worry about chump change funding and the work of brilliant bloggers, operating on their own time? Silliness, indeed.
The climate funding milkshake tree made possible by the government should be exposed, by someone, big time.
At the core, this is dishonest science. And, all who participate know it.
….Lady in Red
On what basis does the “Lady in Red” conclude that all federal agencies are in collusion?
I find it strange that scientists call ‘a camel through the eye of a needle’ an obvious falsehood’, yet have no problem with Black Holes. Then there is God.
omanuel | September 24, 2014 at 12:42 pm |
On what basis does the “Lady in Red” conclude that all federal agencies are in collusion?
Well, they are all answerable to the same ultimate boss, all funded by the same source, all trying to achieve maximum benefit and power for themselves and government in general.
Michael –
Far more pernicious, rich and powerfull than think tanks – and with a far worse track record of pushing political positions under a veneer of science, is government-funded climate science. Govenment has so much more money, and stands to benefit so massively from a public scared into submission by the prospect of thermogeddon. So it allocates funding in such a way as to make sure climate science keeps closely to a politics-promoting script. That what drives Climategate and other such finagling and bias.
Kevin,
a big YAWN…. Writing your florid rant with 15 questions is truly adolescent and pitiful. I did think this one cuts to the heart of your tedious method, though:
Well, Mr. Laden unsurprisingly censors at his place of stupidity. So I doubt if he’ll win the internet. The only reply he needs is below. The only comment he is capable of making is ‘your comment is awaiting moderation.’
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
I comment on Judith Curry’s weblog. I am not a child molester nor do I associate with them. Being falsely labeled as such affects my reputation, employability, opportunities for promotion, ability to publish in my chosen field.
But then, that’s what you do, isn’t it? That’s ‘how you roll.’
It’s also why you’re losing the fight for public opinion regarding effective action to deal with climate change.
You see, you idiot, I am not a skeptic. I firmly believe and have frequently published that climate change will be a large scale problem for us that we would do well to begin addressing now.
But because the discussion is dominated by idiots like you, puffed up incompetents like Michael Mann, thieves like Peter Gleick and clueless airheads like Stephan Lewandowski, the science is hidden behind your collective and recurrent brain farts.
Would you please do the cause of climate change a big favor and shut up forever?
Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. I have no sympathy for somebody who describes himself as “somewhere to the left of Marx”, IIRC, then discovers himself shut out when he fails to support their (particular version of) socialist agenda. Of course it’s common knowledge, acknowledged by most “leftists”, that the “left” is far more into internecine squabbling, often lethal, than anybody else. But don’t expect anybody who really understands socialism/collectivism/“somewhere to the left of Marx” to have much sympathy for you.
I wish they’d debate.
I have long wondered if people such as Tom Fuller exist – CAGW believers but with integrity, who decry the bias, corruption and politicising agenda that characterises the government-funded alarmist consensus, the IPCC, etc.
I can only imagine your frustration with the profession, Tom. Are you a lone voice, or do you think there are others? If so, why not form some sort of group to distinguish yourselves from the mainstream of charlatans?
Kevin, it might improve your credibility, if you didn’t link to a post in which the author makes a case that the fr*ud discussed here was that IPCC printed the hockey stick in B/W (which, in fact, they even didn’t do). Just my two cents.
Well, he did it in a question. And it’s par for the course for that blog.
> Just my two cents.
I count more than two cents. One, a paraphrase. Two, “fraudulent (?)” becomes “fr*ud”. Three, an unclear fact: what is it that the IPCC didn’t do? Four, an implicit inference step between that fact and Greg’s point. Fifth, a jump from that inference to Greg’s credibility.
Interestingly, it looks more plausible when you do it in the order Jean S did. This rhetorical trick reminds me of a preemptive strike. This is a common trick in auditing sciences.
What blinkered alarmists like FOMD, as well as the climate establishment as a whole, don’t seem to realise, is that circling the wagons round a blatant crook like Mann, gives the impression the whole body of climate science is built on equally flawed foundations.
If on the otherhand such people were punished in some way, and honest types made known their disapprovale of them, climate science would start gaining some credence.
The science is in, global warming is happening. Whether you believe it or not is irrelevant you are paying for it in your insurance premiums and in many other ways. Hitting the deniers just where it hurts most,in the wallet.
The science is in, global warming is happening.
Not according to the thermomemeters. But then much of the science prefers to ignore themometers, since they fail to reproduce what the climate models are doing. This is the only science that is “in”.
Whether you believe it or not is irrelevant you are paying for it in your insurance premiums and in many other ways.
Do please feel free to point these out some time.
Are you sure that RSS uses thermometers?
That is the only place the pause lives.
Bob,
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/trend
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/trend
you are counting on La Nina events of near record strength, and you’re not likely to get them
‘This paper provides an update to an earlier work that showed specific changes in the aggregate time evolution of major Northern Hemispheric atmospheric and oceanic modes of variability serve as a harbinger of climate shifts. Specifically, when the major modes of Northern Hemisphere climate variability are synchronized, or resonate, and the coupling between those modes simultaneously increases, the climate system appears to be thrown into a new state, marked by a break in the global mean temperature trend and in the character of El Niño/Southern Oscillation variability. Here, a new and improved means to quantify the coupling between climate modes confirms that another synchronization of these modes, followed by an increase in coupling occurred in 2001/02. This suggests that a break in the global mean temperature trend from the consistent warming over the 1976/77–2001/02 period may have occurred.’
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL037022/full
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ts.gif
It seems much more likely that there will be an increase in La Nina frequency and intensity over decades – as seen in the mid 1940’s to 1976.
Edim, Try the trend from 2000, just one additional year and the value jumps to 0.042 or an additional 0.053, which means it is very uncertain, or a cherry pick.
Which is it?
The uncertainty monster or a cherry pick?
La Nina either has very big teeth or it has no bite. An average La Nina is not going to hold off the CO2 March.
bob droege | September 14, 2014 at 9:23 am |
“Edim, Try the trend from 2000, just one additional year and the value jumps to 0.042 or an additional 0.053, which means it is very uncertain, or a cherry pick.”
There is a plot here which shows trends over periods going backward in time. Yes, the date is right on the edge. And the plot shows that HADCRUT (for reasons explained by Cowtan and Way) is the one showing most negative trend. The plot is from this post, and if you scroll down, it shows that such periods are rapidly diminishing.
The requirement of a trend of exactly zero is unreasonable. I think the simple linear regression is good enough to see that the trend is fairly flat from around 1998 til now. Jumping through hoops may be fun, but seems like a lot of effort in an attempt to debunk the pause.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1950/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/to:2002/trend
That’s no pause.
Global temperature continued rising past 2002:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1950/mean:12/to:2007/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/to:2002/trend
The full trend up to 2007:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1950/mean:12/to:2007/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/to:2007/trend
What about since 2007, has it paused since then? No, the trend since 2007 is positive.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1950/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2007/trend
No pause.
Jeez, marcus, it’s about time someone settled this. The alarmists have worked themselves into a frenzy worrying about the pause. This will be very reassuring.
=================
There is excellent proxy data on ENSO tabulated by McGregor [1] which features analysis by Michael Mann and others. This work demonstrates that ENSO reverts to a mean of zero and shows bounded behavior over the last 300+ years.
The fact that the ENSO can potentially be modeled by simple physics may be too disconcerting for Team Denier:
http://azimuth.mathforge.org/discussion/1451/enso-proxy-records/#Item_47
[1]S. McGregor, A. Timmermann, and O. Timm, “A unified proxy for ENSO and PDO variability since 1650,” Clim. Past, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 1–17, Jan. 2010.
Yeah, because we all know that insurance companies woudn’t jack up rates unless absolutely needed!
97% Climate scientists agree it is happening. You go to see 100 doctors 97 say you have cancer and 3 say you have a cold, here is some aspirin go home. Who do you believe?
Though I do agree that global warming has happened before. During the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum the temperature went up by 6C, it killed 50% of all life onEarth.
As trolls go, you are definitely second class.
Worth checking to see how you feel in the morning.
===========
Padbrit,
Ask yourself
– who is paying this 97%
– who has a vested interest in the alarm they preach
Answer in both cases : Government.
So what the 97% say has very little credibility, they are just paid stooges. And as we know from the Climategate affair, they are corrupt too. You’d need to be mad to believe them.
The climategate affair was a load of nonsense. Why is it that most Global Warming Deniers are financed by big business? All you have to do is follow the money. http://www.exxonsecrets.org/index.php?mapid=831
Why is it most are not. Indeed, “Exxon” gives millions to alarmists. And almost nothing to skeptics.
And your ad hominem is duly noted. Which negates any point you were trying to make.
BigPrat shows us some stuff.
======
Yeah, my check from big oil was a little late this week, so I could only put about 5K worth of gas in the Jet. It came today though, so I will be able to get back home!
Padbrit, you’re wrong. Global Warming hysteria is financed by big business. Follow the money.
Bigprig, please stop with the leftist nonsense. Not even the lefties here are buying any of that. (At least other than maybe Joshua.)
ROTFLMAO
Padbrit
Your head is in the sand – Climategate was anything but nonsense; it showed deep dishonesty at the highest level. And the ensuing deafening silence from the profession as a whole, and the corrupt coverups run by the fraud-generating universities involved, provided incontrovertable proof that the profession is riddled with dishonesty.
You are right about following the money though. Very close to 100% of the money in climate science comes from government, which explains why it predicts disaster unless its paymaster – govenrment – is allowed to increase its controls over society with more taxes and bureaucrats.
Abuse the usual response from people who have no actual scientific come back. Can you point me to some peer reviewed papers refuting the 97% consensus please?
Right. OK, maybe you can find some junior climate debate site where you can practice. Maybe somebody there will not have heard and dismissed every argument you are making.
Peer Reviewed.
Hey, are your comments peer reviewed? If they are not, I can’t read themm
TJA, “Hey, are your comments peer reviewed? If they are not, I can’t read themm”
Perhaps he can be webster and Grogg Laden to review them?
The funny thing is just downthread he posts a graph from a blog, with great fanfare, btw, that has no attribution to any data source and a statement that NASA disagrees.
It is almost as if he is not as …sm@rt… as he thinks he is. I would go shred him on twitter, but he would just block me.
I see California has broken it’s temperature record, highest since measurements began in 1895. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-california-heat-record-20140912-story.html
…and, according to the same graph, it was colder two years ago than it was in 1896.
You can always find broken records some place, some time, somehow.
Padbrit
And you ignore that globally, temperatures have not budged for about 20 years now, even though CO2 emissions go ever higher.
They love to cite the 97% but avoid details. Yes CO2 is a greenhouse gas – but what does that mean? Most warming in the last two multi-decadal climate regimes – 1944 to 1998 was anthropogenic? Well yes – we may assume that was the case – but what does it mean in hard numbers?
Wally Broecker’s 1975 (234 citations) ‘Are We on the Brink of Pronounced Global Warming’ seems still germane. It shows a combination of factors.
http://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/broecker-1975.png
It would certainly suggest that we were on the brink of a cooler regime in 1998. Many people were aware of this. There are a couple of profound implications.
Residual warming from CO2 is modest at best – some 0.07 degrees C/decade.
http://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/swanson-et-al-2009.png
Non-warming – or even cooling – is likely to persist for decades.
http://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/swanson-realclimate.png
Climate is a beast as Wally tells us – there is no guarantee that the next climate shift will not be yet cooler conditions as we leave behind a 1000 year high.
Here’s a scientific consensus for you. See what you make of it.
‘A vigorous spectrum of interdecadal internal variability presents numerous challenges to our current understanding of the climate. First, it suggests that climate models in general still have difficulty reproducing the magnitude and spatiotemporal patterns of internal variability necessary to capture the observed character of the 20th century climate trajectory. Presumably, this is due primarily to deficiencies in ocean dynamics. Moving toward higher resolution, eddy resolving oceanic models should help reduce this deficiency. Second, theoretical arguments suggest that a more variable climate is a more sensitive climate to imposed forcings (13). Viewed in this light, the lack of modeled compared to observed interdecadal variability (Fig. 2B) may indicate that current models underestimate climate sensitivity. Finally, the presence of vigorous climate variability presents significant challenges to near-term climate prediction (25, 26), leaving open the possibility of steady or even declining global mean surface temperatures over the next several decades that could present a significant empirical obstacle to the implementation of policies directed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (27). However, global warming could likewise suddenly and without any ostensive cause accelerate due to internal variability. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, the climate system appears wild, and may continue to hold many surprises if pressed.’ Swanson et al 2009
I doubt that it can get past the internal filter fitted in Borg Collective blogospheris echo chambers – a filter that is both psychologically and sociologically primed. Psychologically because they have been buttressed by ideas of consensus for too long – and abused too many anti-science sceptics – to make acceptance of the science of complexity and uncertainty a bridge too far. Thus they need to stridently discredit Curry, Tsonis and whoever else is deemed to have stepped out of line. You will find it here with Joshua, Webbly, Willard, Michael and now this shallow twit bravely venturing into the realm of the dragon. Sociologically because it is linked to progressive ambitions to transform societies and economies. Thus a world that is not warming is undermines both the psychological constructs around in and out groups and the political ambitions that are the most potent expression. The ground they are finding is shifting under them and they are in a losing struggle to shore up the battlements crumbling around them.
Their world is one of smug self satisfaction buttressed by the groupthink – and vile behavior, dishonesty, and stunning hatred and malice as a standard way to deal with the bete noir of climate dissent. This routinely includes castigating the other for unfairly calling them names. Funny as hell really – welcome to the real world where there are far fewer limits to free expression than in the echo chambers of the progressives. If he stayed – he might discover the science of complexity and uncertainty but neither seems very likely. Too much of a challenge to the smug personality constructs inadequately buttressed with too few and too silly Borg collective memes.
A peer reviewed paper disagreeing with the 97% consensus:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/03/cooks-97-consensus-disproven-by-a-new-paper-showing-major-math-errors/
Tol?? You jest. Dickie has a hard on for Cook, other than the fact that he agrees with Cook et al that there is a strong scientifi consensus about climate change.
Thank you Eli Rabett. Another paper disagreeing with the 97% consensus:
“A new paper by Dr. Richard Tol published today… …shows that the Cook et al. paper claiming that there is a 97% consensus among scientists is… …a veritable statistical train wreck rife with bias, classification errors, poor data quality, and inconsistency in the ratings process.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/04/tol-takes-on-cooks-97-consensus-claim-with-a-re-analysis-showing-the-claim-is-unfounded/
It’s more a paper criticizing C13 than a paper showing different results than C13, Ragnaar.
Just like Richard endorses the gist of C13, that critique could also agree with C13. A nice editing effort, though.
You do not “refute” a consensus. A consensus is like a committee. Worthless outside of its existence.
Until you learn that, you will always be looking in all the wrong places. No one needs to refute a band of simpletons.
It’s official: 2013 is tied with 2003 as the fourth warmest year for Planet Earth since modern record-keeping began more than 130 years ago. The mean global temperature rose 1.12°F above the 20th century average. That means the 10 warmest years on record have all happened since 1998, with 2010 still on top as the warmest of all. http://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/graphics/10-warmest-years-globally
Sure Padbrit, we believe ya. I take you are a fan of hockey.
Is that graphic peer reviewed?
The only source I saw at the link was to NASA, which said this: NASA also released their global numbers — putting 2013 in a tie with 2009 and 2006 for the seventh warmest year on record. Their records also go back to 1880.
Kind of weird, that somebody who came into this thread making claims about only getting “facts” from peer reviewed literature, that you post an un-sourced graph from a blog. Please post the link to the peer reviewed data that support the graph. It is your graph, not mine. You must know where it came from and how they get higher billing than NASA.
‘As for your question: at the end of the century we were sitting on the highest global temperature value of the modern record. Since then we have leveled off and we may in fact be cooling. We have reached the top of the mountain, therefore it’s not surprising that the last decade is one of the warmest on record. Think about it! The important aspect is that the warming of the 80s and 90s has stopped and the models missed it completely! The important issue is that we have entered a new regime in global temperature tendency. In fact, I find it very misleading that scientists will present “the warmest decade” argument to justify their beliefs (or failures).’ Anastasios Tsonis
The fact remains that the rate of residual warming is a max of 0.07 degree C/decade – it’s unlikely to warm for decades at least – and there is every chance that natural variability will decline this century from 1000 year high. The science of uncertainty and complexity – as opposed to pissant nonsense learned in blogospheric echo chambers of the Borg collective.
Please – a modicum of originality along with some depth of analysis would be appreciated. Let’s see if he can rise to the challenge.
When they do this “warmest X in last Y” nonsense, they don’t understand that all they are doing is constructing a low pass filter that drops out recent trends.
They do it because all of their knowledge and attitudes is gained in blogospheric echo chambers. There is little science at a level they can understand and think that what they do understand is the height of sophistication. It is because they are never challenged to understand but simply to agree and learn the lines. This keeps the memes at a simplistic level because real discourse doesn’t happen – there is no dialectic – and there is no impetus to the evolution of ideas, to read more widely or to develop skills in scientific synthesis or even cogent argument. Departure from the memes is vigorously extirpated
They are ill prepared to do anything but repeat the same simple ideas over and over. They are utterly unprepared for the science of complexity and uncertainty – cognitively and technically unprepared to process it even if it weren’t the antithesis of the groupthink. It may as well be an alternate universe.
Well, that’s nice.
2013 should have been over 0.4°C (about 0.49°C) warmer than 1998 according to the IPCC and I am just not seeing the love in the data.
That’s it Padbrit, you get the idea!
Temperatures went up, CO2 went up, therefore CO2 caused temps to go up. I reckon you’re about ready for a Nobel Prize for Political Correctness like Gore got.
Next he will prove that headstones are deadly because almost every time you find one, there is a dead body close by.
We can be truly glad if planet earth is no longer in the lows of the “Little Ice Age” — what a relief!!
In the summer of 2003, temperatures peaked at a record 40C here in the UK.
They haven’t come within 10C of that since.
Go play your records somewhere else, where they haven’t all been heard before ad nauseam.
One of many blindingly obvious things Padbrit hasn’t the grasped, is that the peer reviewers too are paid by government, and so gatekeep the journals to keep them politically correct / alarmist and so serving the interests of government.
Judging by the goofy things the skeptics have put online over the years, I think most of them have some way to go before they get to a level that can be considered for a serious journal. On the other hand skeptical things have been published by Lewis, Schwartz, Humlum, Spencer, Lindzen etc., that show that it can be done.
We have actually not progressed all that much from 1975.
http://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/broecker-1975.png
Jimmy Dee has in fact gone backwards. He has a quaint delusion that anything that goes in one ear and out the other is actually science. He is in complete denial of complexity and uncertainty. Instead – he eyeballs it in with complete confidence.
Rob E, I don’t know if you look at the graphs you post, but if you consider that the 0.7 C warming since 1950 is pretty well accounted for by what they label as a CO2 effect, how do you interpret that in your own special way?
Broecker’s 1975 abstract from “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” published in Science,
“If man-made dust is unimportant as a major cause of climatic change, then a strong case can be made that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide. By analogy with similar events in the past, the natural climatic cooling which, since 1940, has more than compensated for the carbon dioxide effect, will soon bottom out. Once this happens, the exponential rise in the atmospheric carbon dioxide content will tend to become a significant factor and by early in the next century will have driven the mean planetary temperature beyond the limits experienced during the last 1000 years.”
His prediction had 403 ppm for 2010 with about a 1 C rise over preindustrial temperatures. The sensitivity he used was near 2.4 C per doubling. The title, by the way, is regarded as the first use of the term “global warming”.
Jimbo – you have to remember that this was done in 1975. Natural warming stepped up in 1976 – hardly precisely predictable – and stepped down in 1998. Broecker posited his graph on the end of the cooling regime that had offset warming since 1944.
In hindsight – it is hardly rocket science. Neither is the nonsense you spout – the rate is 0.07 degrees C/decade and warming is quite likely to not warm – or even cool – for decades. It is the science of complexity and uncertainty you are utterly unable to process.
http://judithcurry.com/2014/09/13/week-in-review-22/#comment-627793
‘The climate system has jumped from one mode of operation to another in the past. We are trying to understand how the earth’s climate system is engineered, so we can understand what it takes to trigger mode switches. Until we do, we cannot make good predictions about future climate change… ‘ Wally Broecker
Rob E, apparently it has switched into the CO2 mode now, as Broecker predicted it would nearly 40 years ago.
Yes – this was the first mention of global warming. He first of posits that I haven’t looked at the graph and then assumes I haven’t read the paper.
Utterly incredible. He then proceeds to over-interpret a 1975 paper based on 2014 ideas ignoring the reality of what has occurred since.
He assumes that early century warming was CO2. Utter nonsense. The increase in CO2 stepped up post war – and the increase since is 0.4 degrees C.
I can’t even bring myself to discuss climate sensitivity in a sensible manner – there is not a sillier idea in climate science.
http://watertechbyrie.com/2014/06/23/the-unstable-math-of-michael-ghils-climate-sensitivity/
Jimmy Dee seems quite fraudulent – or perhaps just cognitively unprepared to process the science of complexity and uncertainty.
It would be helpful if you stopped to see a reply occasionally Jimmy Dee.
CO2 doesn’t mean that natural modes of climate variability cease to operate.
Rob E, it is hard to match your statement with Broecker’s graph. He shows a total rise of about 1 C from the CO2 effect mostly in the later part of the 20th century, and largely in line with how much the temperature rose since 1950. He derives natural variability from the Greenland record and attributes the early 20th century warming to that as well as the pre-1975 cooling. Do you see how his abstract and graph matches what actually happened after 1975, and is explained in terms of the growing expected importance of CO2 effects?
Have you actually seen the paper, jimmy-jimmy?
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/files/2009/10/broeckerglobalwarming75.pdf
Broecker predicted that CO2 would cause a rise of 1.10C, from 1900 to 2010, with a .3C rise from 2000 to 2010. What he said was that the CO2 effect would dominate. He predicted the coming of the era of CO2 induced warming. He didn’t say anything about the possibility of any pause.
Which statement?
The post 1944 rise is 0.4 degrees C. The rate of rise is 0.07 degrees C/decade over the post period of most – by far – of the CO2 increase. A new cooling regime started after 1998 and is likely to persist for decades.
Did Wally get all of the details – the prediction – right in 1975? Of course not – it is the ideas that matter. Natural variability and greenhouse gases combined.
You are just being silly now.
The graph matches what happened after 1975 only in your fantasies Jimmy.
The reason I introduced it was to suggest that conceptually we have progressed far at all. Same ideas and we would be similarly pressed to predict the next 40 years.
The CO2 prediction was pretty good – but that’s orders of magnitude easier.
The multi-decadal that Wally predicted would end within a decade ended within a year and a multi-decadal warming regime kicked in. We can tell that form hindsight. It also implies that the warming regime had a similar shelf life. So it did. Ideas are what are important – and not the details of a 1975 paper.
The other bright idea that Wally had was that climate was a beast. Try to process that idea for God’s sake.
… not progressed far at all..
Broecker thinks we will go beyond doubling 280 ppm and reach 3C this century.
‘The climate system has jumped from one mode of operation to another in the past. We are trying to understand how the earth’s climate system is engineered, so we can understand what it takes to trigger mode switches. Until we do, we cannot make good predictions about future climate change…’ Wally Broecker
Reality suggests that the climate and models are multiply coupled, nonlinear systems and that prediction of future states is impossible.
JCH and reality are strangers.
Rob E, the temperature in 1950 was near 0.5, and in 2010 was near 1.2, a rise of 0.7 C, mostly from CO2 offset by natural variation. The actual rise was also 0.7 C, averaging 0.1 C per decade but much faster later than earlier. What were you talking about?
Don M, he used 80 and 180 year Dansgaard cycles for natural variation which modeled the 1910-1940 rise and the 1950-1980 fall. It seems he did predict a small downturn after 2000, but it didn’t do much against the growing CO2 trend.
Look at the graph, people. I am not saying anything difficult to see here.
Also Broecker’s abstract ends with “the exponential rise in the atmospheric carbon dioxide content will tend to become a significant factor and by early in the next century will have driven the mean planetary temperature beyond the limits experienced during the last 1000 years.” in case you still don’t know what this paper was about.
Again, said in this century, Wally Broecker thinks it will be ~3C by 2100.
‘Lorenz was able to show that even for a simple set of nonlinear equations (1.1), the evolution of the solution could be changed by minute perturbations to the initial conditions, in other words, beyond a certain forecast lead time, there is no longer a single, deterministic solution and hence all forecasts must be treated as probabilistic. The fractionally dimensioned space occupied by the trajectories of the solutions of these nonlinear equations became known as the Lorenz attractor (figure 1), which suggests that nonlinear systems, such as the atmosphere, may exhibit regime-like structures that are, although fully deterministic, subject to abrupt and seemingly random change.’ http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1956/4751.full
Did Wally say it was a good prediction? You got a reference for that?
The problem is as always distinguishing anthropogenic from natural variability – and determining what natural variability is doping next.
This is the graph (Fig. 2) from Camp Century.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/camp-century-data-wb.png
Broecker predicted 40 years of more rapid increases modulated with 40 years of less rapid increases (due to the hypothetical Dansgaard type of natural variation with 80 and 180 year cycles) until this type of fuel consumption is dramatically reduced. This natural variation had an amplitude of a couple of tenths of a degree. This was very prescient for 1975. He didn’t say anything about 2100 in this paper but did say that the 1 degree rise would be beyond anything in the last 1000 years (which he bases on the Greenland O18 record).
jimmy, jimmy
“It seems he did predict a small downturn after 2000, but it didn’t do much against the growing CO2 trend.”
Wtf you talkin bout, jimmy?
The D stands for Disingenuous. We can read the Broecker paper for ourselves, jimmy. He projected a .3C increase from 2000 to 2010. Didn’t happen, jimmy. We are almost into 2015. Where is the missing heat. Where is the CO2 domination as CO2 continues accumulate. We are supposed to be scared? the pause is killing the cause. And I am tired of your lame and tedious BS.
Don M, you can look at the lines Rob E so helpfully posted above. The lowest one is natural variation and it dips down negative at the end. It was just an extrapolation of the 80 and 180 year cycles fitted to the multi-century Greenland variation, which has no guarantee of being correct. Even Broecker couldn’t predict natural variation phases that far ahead.
He predicted that CO2 would be dominant, you dope. He predicted that CO2 would cause an increase of .3C from 2000 to 2010. But you keep claiming he got it right. You have no credibility. Shut up.
You are utterly tedious Jimbo.
‘Broecker predicted 40 years of more rapid increases modulated with 40 years of less rapid increases (due to the hypothetical Dansgaard type of natural variation with 80 and 180 year cycles) until this type of fuel consumption is dramatically reduced.’
He superimposed sinusoidal curves with 80 and 100 year frequencies on the data. The data is far from hypothetical – it is in fact empirical. The rise we have had since 1944 is 0.4 degrees C.
Post 1975 natural variation added to warming. CO2 warming was a fraction of what Wally ‘predicted’. I am not even saying that Wally was wrong – it is simply that you are radically overinterpreting a 1975 paper.
The ideas are important not the details.
‘This natural variation had an amplitude of a couple of tenths of a degree. This was very prescient for 1975. He didn’t say anything about 2100 in this paper but did say that the 1 degree rise would be beyond anything in the last 1000 years (which he bases on the Greenland O18 record).’
He says that a change a 1 per mil of the oxygen is 1.5 degrees C. How that translates into global temps I don’t know. A few tenths is your usual pull it out of your arse nonsense.
Will we get a degree this century? The rate of rise – 0.07 degrees C/decade since 1944 – would suggest not. But the future is entirely unpredictable.
Don M, did I say he predicted the pause? No, that was in your own brain. Did I say he predicted 0.7 C since 1950? Yes, and that is what happened including the pause and all.
Where Rob E keeps getting that 0.4 C from, I don’t know. Possibly he cherry-picked a single warm year rather than a representation that eliminates ENSO peaks. It certainly doesn’t come from Broecker’s graph.
Rob E, and it is not my interpretation, it is reading the abstract.
Rob E, a few tenths of natural variability comes from scaling the Greenland temperatures, that you plotted, by a quarter to match them with the global temperature record in recent centuries, which is a way to allow for polar amplification seen at Greenland.
I didn’t say that you said he predicted the pause, you dope. You made that up. How many times do I have to say it?
Watch this, jimmy. Don’t blink:
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
He predicted that CO2 would be dominant and that the result would be an increase of .3C from 2000 to 2010.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Did you catch it that time, jimmy?
OK! Everybody can see he got it wrong. You keep insisting the dope got it right. What does that make you? Think hard, jimmy.
What he shows is a more than 1 degree of late century rise. The actual rise since 1944 is 0/4 degrees C. 1944 is when the multidecadal regime changed from warm to cool. We can see these regimes in the data.
The rate of rise that might be attributed to CO2 is 0.07 degrees C/decade.
Natural variability is turning down this century. This is not a sin curve superimposed on a trend. More like a 1000 year peak with radical shifts and an ultra slow burn.
A few tenths is pulled out of your arse and I am really not interested.
In 1976 the regime switched to warming – augmenting warming. This he got wrong – we know in hindsight.
Wally got the ideas right in 1975 – the exact detail is less relevant. He is distinguished researcher with many decades of contributions. There are a number of studies – including this one – that remain outstanding achievements.
Monford is a pugnacious buffoon whose main talent seems to be quibbling with morons and making a fool of himself when attempting anything of any technical substance.
Don M, you said “He didn’t say anything about the possibility of any pause.” That is what I answered. Regarding the 0.3 C, there were several things missing from Broecker’s prediction, the sun, volcanoes and aerosols, plus his CO2 growth rate was 50% too high in the last decade, that could have led to an over prediction, but his negative natural variability phase may have accounted for some of that, so in the end his 0.7 C was right. Skeptical Science went into the Broecker prediction in 2011.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/lessons-from-past-climate-predictions-broecker.html
Blah…blah…blah. He got it wrong and you keep insisting that he got it right. We are at 400 ppm CO2. Where is the freaking heat predicted by allegedly dominant CO2? Do you know what dominant means, jimmy? Rhetorical question. I am done with your silly disingenuous highknee.
Don M, the part he got right was that the late century warming rate would be increasingly dominated by CO2, and that by the time we reach 400 ppm we would be at global average temperatures not seen in the last 1000 years.
Don
I hate to contradict you but it is well known that the heat is hiding under a large stone in an as yet unexplored abyssal trench in some unspecified location in some unspecified ocean. As Thomas Stocker said in front of me a couple of months ago (I paraphrase) ‘we do not as yet have the technology to measure the temperature of the abyssal depths.’
But he and I know the heat is out there SOMEWHERE waiting to be discovered and one day it will leap out and bite us
tonyb
You are lost in the weeds, robbie. Jimmy is just blithely dancing around in your haphazard bombardment of copy/paste technical stuff. Try to focus, robbie. This isn’t science here, it’s propaganda. Jimmy has got you stymied. All tangled up in a sciencey hairball. And it would not be fair of me to fight with you, robbie. Wait for your North American alter ego to recover a bit from his humiliating boson beating. You and he are well matched. Good luck, robbie! Don’t stay mad at me. Unlike a lot of others here, I like Aussies. Even the cranks.
I will just post Broecker’s prescient abstract again. The paper is well worth a look too. I was not aware of this until Rob Ellison drew my attention to it.
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/files/2009/10/broeckerglobalwarming75.pdf
Broecker’s 1975 abstract from “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” published in Science,
“If man-made dust is unimportant as a major cause of climatic change, then a strong case can be made that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide. By analogy with similar events in the past, the natural climatic cooling which, since 1940, has more than compensated for the carbon dioxide effect, will soon bottom out. Once this happens, the exponential rise in the atmospheric carbon dioxide content will tend to become a significant factor and by early in the next century will have driven the mean planetary temperature beyond the limits experienced during the last 1000 years.”
Jim D said “Don M, the part he got right was that the late century warming rate would be increasingly dominated by CO2, and that by the time we reach 400 ppm we would be at global average temperatures not seen in the last 1000 years.”
Jim D – how do you know that global average temperatures are higher than in the last 1000 years?
We really do not know that (in my opinion).
You are comparing a daily temperature record to an annual proxy record. I don’t think this is a fair comparison.
Really – do you think one tree ring tells you if it was the hottest global year in a particular year? Ditto for ice core data. Proxies average daily things out and mute the highs and lows. You really cannot compare a proxy to daily temperature records.
If you compare the tree-ring data to the tree-ring data – that shows a divergence between the data and the temperature record. The tree-ring proxy went down, while the temperatures went up. But at least that is an apples to apples comparison. The reason for the divergence is still not clear – but merely points to problems with the proxy. Does it really follow temperature? All the time? We don’t know.
In my opinion we have no clue whether the global mean temperature today is higher than in the last 1000 years. I personally think that if we could go back in time and install thermometers at all the sites in the global network and take data during the last 1000 years, we would find several times during the last 1000 years in which the global temperature was at or even slightly higher than it is today. But that is just speculation and not based on any data.
I feel that if we could also obtain daily temperature data over the last 4000 years, their would be 3 or 4 or 5 times during that period when the global temperature was at or even slightly higher than it is today.
The proxy data is just not that clear.
One thing you should take note of is that a natural variability which is enough to cancel out AGW over 15 or 20 years means that climate sensitivity is probably 1/2 of the 3 degrees C they thought it was. 1.5C seems more in line with all of the recent analysis anyway (which seems to range from 1.2 to 1.8C).
My guess is that since .3C/decade is the maximum rate – and this is probably when natural variability is in sync with human contributions (they add together) – that this means that natural variability is about .15C/decade. Sometimes it adds to the background human rate of .15C (.3C rate) and sometimes it subtracts (like since 1998 – 0 rate).
I am not that alarmed by the .15C human contribution.
Each ppm of CO2 added has less effect than the one before, because of the log nature of the warming effect of CO2.
Maybe by 2113 we will have burned all the fossil fuels we can easily access and will be forced to switch to nuclear, wind, solar and other non-carbon energy sources. Than our .15C contribution will slowly level off and we will be back to the background rate of natural variability again.
However, until these alternatives are actually cheaper than fossil fuels (I am talking about out of pocket cash – not fake pricing which trys to work in externalities) – the world will not switch.
So – how sure are you really that the global temperature on an annual basis has not been higher than in the last 1000 years?
RickA, Broecker used the Greenland ice core proxy analyses available to him in 1975. From there he can see the variations back 800 years, and that the variations during that period did not exceed that during the time since 1800 when global temperature estimates were also available from thermometer data. So he calibrated those variations with the temperature data as a proxy for 800 years of global temperature. That was his method. You can complain if you want. Basically Greenland gives no evidence of much wider swings in the past than since 1800, and so what we have now, as Broecker predicted, is outside that range.
JD, #OwnGoal perhaps (?)
Unlike the global warming signal, not unprecedented.
Nice work Rick, but jimmy says Broecker’s predictions have been realized. We know, with the exception of CO2 reaching 400 ppm, they haven’t panned out. We know about the pause. We know that CO2 is not dominating the climate. Jimmy is impervious to reality. He will just keep repeating the same tedious and disingenuous claptrap. It seems to be his reason for living. Pathetic.
Perhaps I am biased, but you can judge for yourself. It looks like 0.7 C since 1950 to me, which would make it a correct 35-year prediction that started from a period of flat or cooling temperatures in 1975.
http://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/broecker-1975.png
Jim D:
Broecker’s paper is very interesting. It is Broecker’s knowledge of the annual global temperatures over the last 1000 years that I question. I am not sure we can be as sure (even today) of what the global annual temperature was each and every year based on a Greenland ice core (regional).
If the MWP is merely regional (as many AGW proponents say) – how can we take an ice core record from one region and generalize it to the entire globe?
I do note that Brocker states that the cooling over the last 30 years (1945 to 1975) was greater than the human caused warming – so he is saying natural variability is enough to swamp the human warming over 1/2 of his cycle. Once again – that seems to indicate that CS is way smaller than 3C – and more like 1.5C.
If you go back a few cycles to 1880 – isn’t the total warming over that period to present about .8C? His 1C estimate seems to be running a little high – correct?
But certainly – I do agree that there is a warming trend – I just question how much of it is natural and how much human caused. It could be about 50/50 – who knows?
If I am still alive in 2100 I will let you know how this argument turns out. With modern medicine – who knows how long I might live?
RickA, he isn’t talking about individual years. He is doing a 5-year smoothing in his plots, and probably looking more at decadal temperatures where the 1000 year claim would make more sense given the time resolution of the proxy record. Broecker’s transient sensitivity was 2.4 C per doubling, and he didn’t consider negative aerosol effects. The larger part of the trend from 1950-2010 was about correct, even so, possibly because his natural component was net negative in that period.
I have said it many times – most recently.
http://judithcurry.com/2014/09/13/week-in-review-22/#comment-627793
Think – Jim – think harder.
So there you say 0.1 C per decade since 1950 was anthropogenic in agreement with both the IPCC’s attribution and Broecker’s prediction. OK, then.
Well – 0.07 degrees C/decade as an upper estimate from 1944 when the regime changed. The 1976 to 1998 rate was wind assisted – so not likely to continue. Oh right.
Most of the increase in CO2 happened post war – a total of 0.4 degrees C for a 33% increase. No real problem – except that climate is wild and sensitivity is dynamic. As I keep saying. It is still not warming for decades.
“Goofy” to Jim D and fellow truebelievers being anything that blasphemes against the Church of True Alarm. Like looking at measurements instead of models, failing to deny and denounce the Pause, not believing Al Gore’s Nobel-winning prediction that New York will be under water by 1990 (or whenever it was), etc etc. Generally, anything that searches for actual correctness in preference to political correctness, is “goofy”.
As regards journal articles, it is indeed very difficult to get non-alarmist articles published, since government/tax dollars are preferentially funneled to alarmist stooge scientists, since that is what benefits govenment. The journal referees are made up of the same politico/stooges as well of course.
Judith, when real fraud has taken place you have called those exposing it “reprehensible.” Not only that, despite the fact the expose led to a university letter of reprimand and the retraction of a paper, you have never apologized .
Some of us don’t forget – and will remind those that do. Judith Curry on Edward Wegman: “Let me say that this is one of the most reprehensible attacks on a reputable scientist that I have seen, and the so-called tsunami of accusations made in regards to climategate are nothing in compared to the attack on Wegman.”
From John Mashey’s guest post at DeepClimate, September 26, 2010 regarding The Wegman Report:
“[It] was promoted to Congress by Representatives Joe Barton and Ed Whitfield as “independent, impartial, expert” work by a team of “eminent statisticians.” It was none of those.
A Barton staffer provided much of the source material to the Wegman team. The report itself contains numerous cases of obvious bias, as do process, testimony and follow-on actions. Of 91 pages, 35 are mostly plagiarized text, but often injected with errors, bias and changes of meaning. Its Bibliography is mostly padding, 50% of the references uncited in the text. Many references are irrelevant or dubious. The team relied heavily on a long-obsolete sketch and very likely on various uncredited sources. Much of the work was done by Said (then less than 1 year post-PhD) and by students several years pre-PhD. The (distinguished) 2nd author Scott wrote only a 3-page standard mathematical Appendix. Some commenters were surprised to be later named as serious “reviewers.” Comments were often ignored anyway. People were misused.
The Wegman Report claimed two missions: #1 evaluate statistical issues of the “hockey stick” temperature graph, and #2 assess potential peer review issues in climate science. For #1, the team might have been able to do a peer-review-grade statistical analysis, but in 91 pages managed not to do so. For #2, a credible assessment needed a senior, multidisciplinary panel, not a statistics professor and his students, demonstrably unfamiliar with the science and as a team, unqualified for that task. Instead, they made an odd excursion into “social network analysis,” a discipline in which they lacked experience, but used poorly to make baseless claims of potential wrongdoing.
In retrospect, the real missions were: #1 claim the “hockey stick” broken and #2 discredit climate science as a whole. All this was a facade for a PR campaign well-honed by Washington, DC “think tanks” and allies, underway for years.”
Wegman never caught on to McIntyre’s 100:1 cherry-pick. Wegman never caught on to what was actually behind McIntyre’s “trendless red noise” scheme. Wegman deceptively displayed only upward-pointing ‘hockey sticks’ – though half of them would have had to be downward pointing.
The list of errors, deceptions and plagiarisms probably takes up more space to document than the report itself. None of this is ever acknowledged by Professor Curry. No, instead the people who revealed these egregious errors are called “reprehensible”. Apparently Professor Curry doesn’t even recognize real fraud.
You are hopelessly out of date. Read just the last month re: Piltdown Mann.
http://climateaudit.org/2014/09/10/inventory-of-hide-the-decline/
http://climateaudit.org/2014/09/10/another-porky-from-mann-williams-and-fontaine/
http://climateaudit.org/2014/09/06/the-original-hide-the-decline/
http://climateaudit.org/2014/09/04/manns-new-memorandum/
http://climateaudit.org/2014/09/03/rule-n-revisited/
“You are hopelessly out of date.”
What has any of that to do with Wegman?
“You are hopelessly out of date.”
What have any of those links to do with Wegman?
Are with the topic police now, nicky? What does that clown Mashey and Deep Climate have to do with Wegman? Is Bob obligated to argue about that trash? You are really sinking, nicky.
John Mashey and Deep Climate simply made up one of their central claims (that the Wegman Report misrepresented a source by inverting its conclusion) by failing to comprehend relatively simple sentences. They are terrible sources for any sort of analysis.
There’s no way I’m going to try to explain everything intellectual uncurious/dishonest people say about the Wegman Report. I have, however, written a post responding to one of the dumber points Kevin O’Neill wrote. You can find it here.
For a short version, O’Neill (and Nick Stokes) claim it was dishonest for the Wegman Report to only show right-side up hockey sticks in their test examples. They base this claim on the fact half of any hockey sticks which show up in test examples would have a upside down hockey stick. However, (as Stokes even admits), the orientation of the hockey stick in these examples is completely irrelevant. Upside down hockey sticks would, in fact, be flipped rightside up by the methodology Michael Mann used.
Think about that. These people claim it is dishonest not to show something which couldn’t possibly have any effect on the results. That’s how desperate they have gotten with their accusations.
These people claim it is dishonest not to show something which couldn’t possibly have any effect on the results. That’s how desperate they have gotten with their accusations.
Deliberately misleading dishonesty – it’s the Consensus way.
That’s why they won’t disown even the likes of Climategaters like Mann. They’re one of a kind, and an injury to one alarmist fraudster is an injury to all.
Nick Stokes, ” What has any of that to do with Wegman?”
Nothing per se, Nick. Kevin obviously is trolling, he must know Mann is discredited. So, what does he do? Drag up Wegman. By my links I just wanted to remind him that Mann’s credibility continues to sink and he should be aware of it.
All Kevin would have had to say, Bob, was to consider the auditing crew’s silence on Wegman’s affair as an “example” of conceit or what not:
http://judithcurry.com/2014/09/05/what-exactly-is-going-on-in-their-heads/#comment-625117
How did you call this practice, again?
INTEGRITY ™ – All About the Angle
Seems Kevin O’Neil’s claims of fraud are wrong then.
Did O’Neil know this as he wrote it though?, which would mean his claim of fraud, is itself fraud.
Is dear little Kevvy still smarting over pontificating about Bose-Einstein condensates – and using the opportunity to badmouth Judy? Incompetence, maliciousness and – as he was parroting webbly – utter stupidity.
However.
‘In a statement to GMU faculty, provost Peter Stearns said that one investigation committee unanimously found that “no misconduct was involved” in the 2006 Congressional report. “Extensive paraphrasing of another work did occur, in a background section, but the work was repeatedly referenced and the committee found that the paraphrasing did not constitute misconduct,” he said, in the statement.
A second university committee found unanimously, “that plagiarism occurred in contextual sections of the (CSDA) article, as a result of poor judgment for which Professor Wegman, as team leader, must bear responsibility.” Wegman will receive an “official letter of reprimand”, Stearns said, as sanction for the plagiarism.’
So the extent of fraud was? Precisely zilch. Poor judgment by someone or other in background material that as team leader he has to take responsibility for? That’s why they pay him the big bucks I suppose.
As opposed to an extreme beat up in a Borg collective blog for which Kevvy demands that Judy abjectly beg forgiveness for suggesting the collective is capable of vile behavior, dishonesty, and stunning hatred and malice? If it was me I would suggest very nicely that he go phuck himself.
Having actually tried to slog my way through the 250 pages of vicious garbage behind these accusations, all I can say is that the people responsible, and anybody who attempts to use it against Wegman or anybody else, are scum.
Wegman is a thorn in the side of the religious alarmists. They have to trash him because they cannot trash his report. Just as they trash McIntyre and McKittrick. Their science is non-existent. Their, data compromised. All they have left is their faith. It is ugly. But then that is not new. They seek to “re-educate” (at best) or exterminate (at worst) those who refuse to convert to their religion.
C’mon, you guys, that’s stellar communication. Can’t you see the stars a blazing, Dinah blows a bubble.
==================
Well, I assume anyone that takes government grant money and doesn’t release their data, methods, and respond to FOIA as required by law – is a liar and their research is dishonest.
Mann doesn’t release his data, methods, and respond to FOIA as required by law.
Res ipsa loquitur.
Global warming scientists have transparency problems. Honest people don’t have transparency problems.
While it might be lazy practice, plagiarized background material ought to at least be accurate.
climateaudit just began a series refuting these allegations, beginning with the “upside-down” meme. I imagine the rest of the allegations will be refuted as completely, given the history.
http://climateaudit.org/2014/09/24/kevin-oneills-fraud-allegations/
Okay? Doctor Curry doesn’t acknowledge your claims of “fraud” because they are _wrong_.
Steven McIntyre has a good point., If Kevin is correct (and he is not saying he is), then Kevin is calling Mann a fraud as well, and that does not bode well for his case against Steyn or CEI. He may find himself called as a witness for the defense.
I call that delicious irony.
Kevin O’Neill, You mention that: “A Barton staffer provided much of the source material to the Wegman team.”. Who was the staffer.
But sadly no links to peer reviewed papers refuting the 97%. Anthropogenic Global Warming Denial seems so easy when all it takes is your opinion. So I return to my original premise, what you think does not change the science, it is rock solid. I admire your fortitude in sticking to your personal denial, but global warming is quietly stealing your money, and this is the AGW deniers Achilles heel. You can say to me what ever you want it makes no difference, money is bleeding out of your bank accounts and there is nothing you can do about it.
Send in the clowns. This post has rattled the cages of the alarmist buffoons in the hockeystick crowd. Some smarmy new visitors bringing their best low information agitprop trash. We are amused.
Peer Reviewed.
clown
Not bringing anything to the table are you Don? Come on Peer Review me, you know you wan to.
Here is a peer reviewed paper that lowers the consensus by 12 points. It’s going down fast! You better jump off the bandwagon, clown!
http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2014/08/11/survey-confirms-scientific-consensus-on-human-caused-global-warming/
The problem Don is that one study is measuring opinions and the other is a study of papers, so the two aren’t directly comparable.
I don’t care if you think the two papers are not directly comparable, joe. They both purport to survey scintists opinions on global warming and they are bot BS. Close enough to be comparable. At least Bart’s paper actually attempts/claims to survey the actual opinions of scientists, instead of having a bunch of partisan hacks (the Cook paper’s SkS kidz) pretend to divine the opinions from abstracts of papers. This discussion of BS consensus papers is silly and I ain’t having it any more. Out.
‘Abrupt climate changes were especially common when the climate system was being forced to change most rapidly. Thus, greenhouse warming and other human alterations of the earth system may increase the possibility of large, abrupt, and unwelcome regional or global climatic events. The abrupt changes of the past are not fully explained yet, and climate models typically underestimate the size, speed, and extent of those changes. Hence, future abrupt changes cannot be predicted with confidence, and climate surprises are to be expected.
The new paradigm of an abruptly changing climatic system has been well established by research over the last decade, but this new thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural and social scientists and policy-makers.’ http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10136&page=1
The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) defined abrupt climate change as a new climate paradigm as long ago as 2002. A paradigm in the scientific sense is a theory that explains observations. A new science paradigm is one that better explains data – in this case climate data – than the old theory. The new theory says that climate change occurs as discrete jumps in the system. Climate is more like a kaleidoscope – shake it up and a new pattern emerges – than a control knob with a linear gain.
The theory of abrupt climate change is the most modern – and powerful – in climate science and has profound implications for the evolution of climate this century and beyond. A mechanical analogy might set the scene. The finger pushing the balance below can be likened to changes in greenhouse gases, solar intensity or orbital eccentricity. The climate response is internally generated – with changes in cloud, ice, dust and biology – and proceeds at a pace determined by the system itself. Thus the balance below is pushed past a point at which stage a new equilibrium spontaneously emerges. Unlike the simple system below – climate has many equilibria. The old theory of climate suggests that warming is inevitable. The new theory suggests that global warming is not guaranteed and that climate surprises are inevitable.
I expect it only takes one new paradigm to upset the consensus applecart.
There is plenty of peer reviewed science referenced here – http://watertechbyrie.com/2014/06/23/the-unstable-math-of-michael-ghils-climate-sensitivity/
I suspect this guy is far from capable of understanding it. His intellect seems strained by – but 97%. Pathetic.
Rob loving the empirical science of “cut and paste” it really is bangin with me brother.
You have the option of actually reading the primary source to determine whether the quotations are fairly represented.
But as I have not interpreted the NAS quote at all – you would be hard to show that your smarmy snark has any substance at all. As it is – you seems merely a clueless prevarication.
I guess you are not used to reading primary sources but get all of your so called ideas from fetid Borg collective blogospheric echo chambers.
Padbrit:
You say “money is bleeding out of your bank accounts . . .”
Could you further explain this statement.
How is global warming costing me money?
I live in Minnesota and am saving a bundle on heating bills (although last year was the 3rd coldest winter since 1884 – overall our winters have been fairly mild over the last 20 years or so)..
Our lake levels are the highest they have been in 30 years and our ground water aquifers are recharging from our multi-year drought.
We had a pretty mild summer and I probably saved a little bit on air conditioning also.
I am not sure global warming is costing me money – it might be saving me money.
I am sure other parts of the country are different – but not everybody believes global warming is going to be an economic disaster.
What is there a 97% consensus about?
Farnsworth and Lichter, 2011[edit]
In an October 2011 paper published in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, researchers from George Mason University analyzed the results of a survey of 489 scientists working in academia, government, and industry. The scientists polled were members of the American Geophysical Union or the American Meteorological Society and listed in the 23rd edition of American Men and Women of Science, a biographical reference work on leading American scientists. Of those surveyed, 97% agreed that global temperatures have risen over the past century. Moreover, 84% agreed that “human-induced greenhouse warming” is now occurring. Only 5% disagreed with the idea that human activity is a significant cause of global warming.
Stolen from wiki since this is hardly worth the time to rehash. Now what do you think the 97% believe? That all of them that believed it has warmed over the last century think doomsday is right around the corner?
The credulous truebeliever Padbrit thinks “The science is rock-solid”.
What you think, Padbrit, counts for nothing. It’s easy to believe when you just put your head in the sand and ignore uncertainty, models that don’t match the real world, the inability to separate the natural and man-made variarions, the monoply funding of climate science by a party – government – with a vested interst in alarmism, widepread bias and corruption of the climate profession, etc etc.
Where exactly is this money bleeding out of accounts due to man-made global warming ? – global warming that hasn’t happened for about 20 years now.
Link Impaired? You were given links. But I guess with a closed mind, you cannot recognize a link.
The 97% is a bogus number – extracted from Madison Avenue ad agency (that does the GEICO commercials) and has no bearing in any statistical methodology on the planet.
But that takes brains to realize.
Don – I don’t think the Wegman Report even rose to the level of agitprop trash. I think the appropriate term is just ‘load of crap.’
“I think the appropriate term is just ‘load of crap.’” Kev this is you opinion, have you got any thing to back this assertion up mate?
“McIntyre did the same – he selected only the 100 random samples from the 10,000 which exhibited an uptick at the end.
And that’s the whole point. As long as the ‘blade’ is present in the data, the straight handle will appear. It doesn’t matter what the data did before the uptick at the end, hata averaging out to zeroow many previous upticks or downticks were present, or how big they were, as long as they all had upticks at the end, that is the bit that would get accentuated, with the rest of the data averaging to zero – or at least a slight downward trend to the bottom of the blade.”
The hilarious thing is this: THERE IS A CONSENSUS on this very point.
Mcintyre merely demonstrates what everybody in the field knows but only whispers. Id showed the same thing
You think what Deep Climate tells you to think, clown.
Don being abusive is not an argument, it is just being abusive. You are just coming across as disengaged, come on lets do some science.
Here’s another peer reviewed consensus paper for you, clown.
Forgot the link. But you won’t read it anyway:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/03/cooks-97-consensus-disproven-by-a-new-paper-showing-major-math-errors/
Don, you really don’t know what you’re talking about -do you?
1) Are you claiming the Wegman report does not contain obvious plagiarisms?
2) Are you claiming the Wegman Report does not reference dozens of sources not cited in the text (many of which are dubious or irrelevant)?
3) Are you claiming the Wegman report does not mischaracterize the results of scientific papers?
4) Are you claiming that Wegman independently verified McIntyre’s results?
5) Are you claiming McIntyre’s code did not sort and select the 100 most extreme cases out of 10,000?
6) Are you claiming that McIntyre’s code only produced upward-sloping ‘hockey sticks’?
7) Are you claiming that McIntyre’s ‘trendless red noise’ was not created from proxy data that contained the climate signal?
8) Are you claiming Wegman was not reprimanded for plagiarism by his university employer?
9) Are you claiming Wegman was not forced to retract a paper due to plagiarism?
10) Are you claiming I misquoted Professor Curry when she called the people who exposed Wegman “reprehensible”?
11) Are you claiming that plagiarism isn’t fraud?
Please Don, rather than contentless comments – tell me what you believe is incorrect in what I wrote. If you disagree with a point I’ll be more than happy to provide references, links, and details.
Don, Don, Don, so much abuse, so little actual science. Come on smack me up with some peer reviewed papers refuting the 97%
I don’t have time for your clowning, kevie. I suggest you could save some wear and tear on your nerves and your ego by going back to your Deep Climate echo chamber. Take your smarmy little sidekick with you. That’s all the time I have for you clowns.
Well just read that and I cannot find any science to be peer reviewed. Lots of opinion and linguistic obfuscation but no actual paper to be reviewed. Couldn’t find any citations from, I don’t know Nature Magazine for example.
When asked for specifics Don writes: “I don’t have time for your clowning, kevie.”
Translation. Yes, all those numbered points are true, but Don’s never going to admit their truth.
Yes Kevvy – it is pretty much opportunistic claptrap on a par with your vile denigration thinly masked by Bose-Einstein condensate incompetence.
http://judithcurry.com/2014/09/11/fraudulent-hockey-stick/#comment-627852
And we are all part of the consensus. Carbon dioxide has vibrational modes in specific IR frequencies? You say that like you understand it – but it doesn’t get uncertain and complex until way after that.
http://judithcurry.com/2014/09/11/fraudulent-hockey-stick/#comment-627736
“5) Are you claiming McIntyre’s code did not sort and select the 100 most extreme cases out of 10,000?”
This being the “1 in 100 cherry pick”, mentioned, I assume.
I’d like you to explain everything about this claim yourself, show that it’s true and why it’s bad, if you are capable.
Thanks
Yes, Kevvy, I second that. Can you explain why one might want to sort on a dimension of a monte carlo to select out the top 1% on that dimension? Or is it by definition a scurrilous practice? Or what? We await your erudition.
TINGTG
Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t Mc’s code an attempt to replicate Mann’s code including the screening process? The screening process would pick the best matches for the “calibration” period out of potential 10s of thousands and since the calibration period was the “blade”, only proxies that had a blade would be properly weighted. Then since the test “proxies” were red noise, the shaft would tend to average to zero. Then is the available proxies were “trimmed” because they tended to diverge from instrumental which just happen to be the calibration, the best trimmed proxies would be screened as being the better matches.
Some have mentioned that the people producing the proxies that were trimmed are as much or more at fault than Mann, but I would think a statistical wizard should have noted the potential bias up front doncha know.
CaptDallas,
I’m waiting for Kevin to explain, since he’s seeming to make claims.
I’ll just say that other similar claims by people that should know better came out regarding M&M “reconstruction”, but that was not a reconstruction of theirs, it was pointing out what Mann had done and what it would do if Piltdown’s monkey business was taken into account.
Over to Kevin.
TINGTG, “Over to Kevin.”
You are right. Where are my manners? I just get so excited when statistical wizards pop in.
There will be a more or less brief intermission while Kevvy scurries back to his source. Popcorn in the lobby while u wait.
thisisnotgoodtogo
“I’d like you to explain everything about this claim yourself, show that it’s true and why it’s bad, if you are capable.”
Well, I certainly can – I did it here. A major, much repeated claim from the Wegman report was spelt out in the caption to Fig 4.4:
“One of the most compelling illustrations that McIntyre and McKitrick have produced is created by feeding red noise [AR(1) with parameter = 0.2] into the MBH algorithm. The AR(1) process is a stationary process meaning that it should not exhibit any long-term trend. The MBH98 algorithm found ‘hockey stick’ trend in each of the independent replications.”
The figure showed 12 HS like results. Here’s how they got them. They did indeed feed red noise into the algorithm 10000 times. But then they chose the 100 results with the top HS index. That is, that looked most like a HS. Then they randomly selected 12 from those to show. That’s how you get a HS in “each of the independent” replications. Nothing was said about this selection.
thisisnotgoodtogo
“I’d like you to explain everything about this claim yourself, show that it’s true and why it’s bad, if you are capable.”
Well, I certainly can – I did it here. A major, much repeated claim from the Wegman report was spelt out in the caption to Fig 4.4:
“One of the most compelling illustrations that McIntyre and McKitrick have produced is created by feeding red noise [AR(1) with parameter = 0.2] into the MBH algorithm. The AR(1) process is a stationary process meaning that it should not exhibit any long-term trend. The MBH98 algorithm found ‘hockey stick’ trend in each of the independent replications.”
The figure showed 12 HS like results. Here’s how they got them. They did indeed feed red noise into the algorithm 10000 times. But then they chose the 100 results with the top HS index. That is, that looked most like a HS. Then they randomly selected 12 from those to show. That’s how you get a HS in “each of the independent” replications. Nothing was said about this selection.
> Can you explain why one might want to sort on a dimension of a monte carlo to select out the top 1% on that dimension? Or is it by definition a scurrilous practice?
I have no idea, NW. What about you?
***
In any case, here’s a good template for a script I often heard at Steve’s:
Always useful.
Nick stokes wrote
“The figure showed 12 HS like results. Here’s how they got them. They did indeed feed red noise into the algorithm 10000 times. But then they chose the 100 results with the top HS index. That is, that looked most like a HS. Then they randomly selected 12 from those to show. That’s how you get a HS in “each of the independent” replications. Nothing was said about this selection.”
Nick, I went to your linked site and saw that you depended on what DeepClimate and Mashey produced.
Further, on that thread you claim that McIntyre has not responded, with ah link to climate audit, where you fail.
NAS panel
“McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) [actually 2005]demonstrated that under some conditions, the leading principal component can exhibit a spurious trendlike appearance, which could then lead to a spurious trend in the proxy-based reconstruction. To see how this can happen, suppose that instead of proxy climate data, one simply used a random sample of autocorrelated time series that did not contain a coherent signal. If these simulated proxies are standardized as anomalies with respect to a calibration period and used to form principal components, the first component tends to exhibit a trend, even though the proxies themselves have no common trend. Essentially, the first component tends to capture those proxies that, by chance, show different values between
the calibration period and the remainder of the data. If this component is used by itself or in conjunction with a small number of unaffected components to perform reconstruction, the resulting temperature reconstruction may exhibit a trend, even though the individual proxies do not. Figure 9-2 shows the result of a simple simulation along the lines of McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) (the computer code appears in Appendix B). In each simulation, 50 autocorrelated time series of length 600 were constructed, with no coherent signal. Each was centered at the mean of its last 100 values, and the first principal component was found. The
figure shows the first components from five such simulations overlaid. Principal components have an arbitrary sign, which was chosen here to make the last 100 values higher on average than the remainder.”
Nick, MBH selected their proxies by the fact that they all had an uptick (or downtick?) at the end which could be ‘calibrated’ to instrumental data.
McIntyre did the same – he selected only the 100 random samples from the 10,000 which exhibited an uptick at the end.
And that’s the whole point. As long as the ‘blade’ is present in the data, the straight handle will appear. It doesn’t matter what the data did before the uptick at the end, hata averaging out to zeroow many previous upticks or downticks were present, or how big they were, as long as they all had upticks at the end, that is the bit that would get accentuated, with the rest of the data averaging to zero – or at least a slight downward trend to the bottom of the blade.
It’s not the blade of the hockey stick which is in question – that was always there from the selection process – it’s the shaft which is the ‘manufactured’ bit.
Oops, my comment above got mangled – the relevant bit should read: It doesn’t matter what the data did before the uptick at the end, how many previous upticks or downticks were present, or how big they were, as long as they all had upticks at the end, that is the bit that would get accentuated, with the rest of the data averaging to zero – or at least a slight downward trend to the bottom of the blade.
@phatboy | September 14, 2014 at 12:29 pm |
…
It’s not the blade of the hockey stick which is in question – that was always there from the selection process – it’s the shaft which is the ‘manufactured’ bit.
******
I would say the blade is also manufactured because the code selected only proxies that sported a blade. The shaft is flattened because the parts of the proxies before the blade were averaged together and contained inconsistent “signals.”
@Jim2: Yes, I probably could have phrased that a bit better – I know what I meant ;-)
phatboy | September 14, 2014 at 12:29 pm |
“McIntyre did the same – he selected only the 100 random samples from the 10,000 which exhibited an uptick at the end.”
This isn’t pre-screening to find temperature sensitivity. It’s selecting based on the outcomes. PC1.
No-one said that is what they were doing. Wegman said: “The MBH98 algorithm found ‘hockey stick’ trend in each of the independent replications”
thisisnotgoodtogo
“Nick, I went to your linked site and saw that you depended on what DeepClimate and Mashey produced.”
Nope. DC pointed it out first. I read and ran the code Wegman used.
“Further, on that thread you claim that McIntyre has not responded, with ah link to climate audit, where you fail.”
Not sure what you’re referring to there. As I said to AK, it’s been raised at CA here, or here. Only response is Mann-bashing bluster.
Nick,
It seems people may have been misled by MM05?
I wouldn’t say it’s fraud.
But I’m definitely not saying it isn’t.
Michael,
Although Wegman was using MM05 code, the issue here is mainly the Wegman report which made those claims. MM05 GRL was more nuanced, and didn’t have the equivalent of Fig 4.4. It did show a “sample” synthetic HS, but avoided saying it was representative. And it provided a file of 100 PCs which I think are selected by this scheme, but I doubt if anyone downloaded them and was misled (except maybe Wegman). They did describe in some detail how they were They did say
“Indeed, the effect of the transformation is so strong
that a hockey-stick shaped PC1 is nearly always generated
from (trendless) red noise with the persistence properties of
the North American tree ring network.” but kept it qualitative, mostly.
Nick, you seem to be attacking it over semantics. Whether the data was truly random or not is scarcely the issue.
Michael, it seems a lot of things may mislead you.
phatboy
“Nick, you seem to be attacking it over semantics. Whether the data was truly random or not is scarcely the issue.”
No, it’s not semantics. If you make statements like “Indeed, the effect of the transformation is so strong that a hockey-stick shaped PC1 is nearly always generated from (trendless) red noise”
then it makes a difference if you mean in a representative sample, or in one where you have collected the most HS-like 100 out of 10000.
phatboy | September 15, 2014 at 1:29 am |
“Michael, it seems a lot of things may mislead you.”
So it seems.
But I’ve heard that this implies someone/something was misleading.
Very concerning……apparently.
Nick, this post is not about Wegman. Why drag him into it, unless as a straw man?
“Nick, this post is not about Wegman”
Why me? The discussion was well under way before I got involved. You wrote quite a bit yourself.
Nick, look again. In my original reply to your comment I spoke about McIntyre. I hadn’t even mentioned Wegman up to that point.
I don’t believe the Wegman report was a “peer reviewed” document. Not listing every “boiler plate” reference isn’t unusual when reports are prepared for congress. Time limits tend to get in the way of such details occasionally.
From wikipedia,
“George Mason University provost Peter Stearns announced on 22 February 2012 that charges of scientific misconduct had been investigated by two separate faculty committees, and that the one investigating the 2006 Wegman Report gave a unanimous finding that “no misconduct was involved”. Stearns stated that “Extensive paraphrasing of another work did occur, in a background section, but the work was repeatedly referenced and the committee found that the paraphrasing did not constitute misconduct”
Now the Wegman paper is a different issue. the rest of the Paragraph, “He said that the 2008 social network analysis paper was investigated by a separate committee which unanimously found “that plagiarism occurred in contextual sections of the (CSDA) article, as a result of poor judgment for which Professor Wegman, as team leader, must bear responsibility”, and Wegman was to receive an “official letter of reprimand”. The investigation reports were to be sent on to federal authorities, but would not be made public. Bradley described the split result as “an absurd decision” which would encourage GMU students to think it acceptable to copy work without attribution.”
Had climategate not happened?
http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2011/05/wegman-a-surprising-reaction/
capt says “I don’t believe the Wegman report was a “peer reviewed” document. ” From the very same wiki page you cite Wegman told congress that it had undergone “informal peer review”:
“He [Wegman] listed 6 people who had participated in his own informal peer review process via email after the report was finalized and said they had no objection to the subcommittee submitting it. He defined the social network as peer reviewers that had “actively collaborated with him in writing research papers” and answered that none of his peer reviewers had.
One of those listed by Wegman was the statistician Grace Wahba, who told North by email “Hey they used my name and they said I was a referee. He sent it to me about 3 days beforehand and I sent him a bunch of criticisms which they didn‘t take into account.”
The problem is that some people want to regard the Wegman Report as a peer-reviewed scientific document and use it to claim McIntyre’s results were verified. In fact Wegman did nothing of the sort. He reran McIntyre’s code and got the same result – surprise, if you run the same code you usually *do* get the same result. Except of course that since these were supposedly random processes he had to have used the same random seed as well. Hmmmmm…….
Nowhere did Wegman mention that the supposedly representative figures were actually drawn from a sorted selection of the top 100 most exaggerated results. That’s what McIntyre wrote the code to do and Wegman obviously never analyzed the code. And while Wegman in the text acknowledges that half the results will be downward sloping all of his results show upward sloping hockey sticks. Why? Pretty obvious that a downward sloping hockey stick wouldn’t look like MBH.
The Wegman Report was a political hatchett job.
“The Wegman Report was a political hatchett job.”
There is a political side to this issue, isn’t there? A legal side as well.
Comments like Kevin Oneill’s show the individual has little intellectual curiosity or honesty. For instance, anyone who understands the MBH process knows the orientation of the PCs is completely irrelevant. All PCs were rescaled by their correlation to instrumental data, a process which will automatically cause negatively oriented PCs to have a positive orientation.
These sort of comments are especially idiotic when you realize NOAMER PC1, the PC upon which all the controversy rested (and to which the example PCs should be compared to), had a negatively oriented hockey stick shape.
That’s right. O’Neill, Nick Stokes and others accuse Edward Wegman of wrongdoing for not showing negatively oriented PCs in his examples, but they have no problem with people flipping over NOAMER PC1 in graphs.
There’s no way I’m going to try to explain everything intellectual uncurious/dishonest people say about the Wegman Report. I have, however, written a post responding to one of the dumber points Kevin O’Neill wrote. You can find it here.
For a short version, O’Neill (and Nick Stokes) claim it was dishonest for the Wegman Report to only show right-side up hockey sticks in their test examples. They base this claim on the fact half of any hockey sticks which show up in test examples would have a upside down hockey stick. However, (as Stokes even admits), the orientation of the hockey stick in these examples is completely irrelevant. Upside down hockey sticks would, in fact, be flipped rightside up by the methodology Michael Mann used.
Think about that. These people claim it is dishonest not to show something which couldn’t possibly have any effect on the results. That’s how desperate they have gotten with their accusations.
Additionally, O’Neill seems not to understand the difference between a proxy and a reconstruction. Mann used PCA to create proxies which would then be combined with one another in a separate step. That a proxy when first created wouldn’t look like the infamous hockey stick reconstruction (because it is upside down) is completely irrelevant if the proxy would later be altered to look like the reconstruction.
Brandon Shollenberger
“For a short version, O’Neill (and Nick Stokes) claim it was dishonest for the Wegman Report to only show right-side up hockey sticks in their test examples.”
The issue isn’t that they chose from the half with correct orientation. The issue is that they selected the 100 with the best HS shape. And rejected thousands that didn’t look like a HS in any orientation. Then “randomly” selected from that top 100, but presented it as a random selection from the 10000.
@Nick Stokes…
See here.
Nick, there were two points to this. One is that it does pick HS’s because of the methodology. You seem to want to forget that the proxies were chosen post facto from a larger number of proxies, not by a priori means by Mann and others. If you condemn McI and Wegman, please be honest and condemn Mann and the others.
The second part is that the methodology would flip the upside down series to orient with temperature. This was also done by Mann and others. It has been a problem with several series used opposite of what the original authors or where the authors used one orientation because it matched and flipped another of the same type claiming something else. Examples are in sediment record proxies.
The reason for these two points was to call into question the validity. Especially the CI’s. I can understand why the “team” wants to keep the light off the CI’s. As Briffa pointed out, Mann used 2 SD not 3, and it was already “floor to ceiling”. The problem is that the claim from TAR to AR5 that the models can be used as they are, that pseudo natural cycles greater than 60 years can be ignored depend on this agreement with models and the reconstructions.
From the use since TAR till present, it is proper that this issue be not just examined, but explained. This includes the decline which calls into question the use of tree ring proxies. For those who say it has been explained, please provide the work; AND please do not bother to quote Briffa and others handwaving stating that it has to be nonclimatic. The study to back your claim will have a priori large sample with statistical validation of the claim. That is science. The other is speculation.
More than anything else, the lack of a priori selection is at the heart of this issue, and others.
There seems to be a consensus that Mann’s method as replicated by M&M and Wegman is suspect.
johnfpittman
“Nick, there were two points to this. One is that it does pick HS’s because of the methodology. You seem to want to forget that the proxies were chosen post facto from a larger number of proxies, not by a priori means by Mann and others. If you condemn McI and Wegman, please be honest and condemn Mann and the others.”
This has nothing to do with selection of proxies. It is a claim that the algorithm will generate hockey sticks from random noise. So they submit 10000 samples of random noise, get PC1 outputs, select the top 100 by HS index (shape conformance), select 12 randomly from those, and then Wegman says: “The MBH98 algorithm found ‘hockey stick’ trend in each of the independent replications”
With the flipping, you’re getting mixed up with Mann 2008, which is a different methodology. Here the sign doesn’t matter. But the sign selection isn’t the issue. The fact is that in 10000 tries, he found 100 good HS shapes, and showed 12 of them. But he claimed he got one every time.
@Nick Stokes…
See here.
Nick Stokes, your response is blatantly dishonest. You know fully well Kevin O’Neill made the argument I responded to. You know fully well you’ve made the same argument in the past. To claim the issue is something else is to effectively lie. There are many different potential issues, and you two chose to raise this one.
The fact you two chose to make a stupid argument does not mean people should ignore your stupid argument. If you don’t want people to discuss stupid arguments you make, don’t make those stupid arguments.
In the meantime, quit pretending I’ve changed the subject because I happen to respond to an argument of yours you’ve realized was stupid.
Nick Stokes, “This has nothing to do with selection of proxies. It is a claim that the algorithm will generate hockey sticks from random noise. So they submit 10000 samples of random noise, get PC1 outputs, select the top 100 by HS index (shape conformance), select 12 randomly from those, and then Wegman says: “The MBH98 algorithm found ‘hockey stick’ trend in each of the independent replications”
Weren’t each of those independent replications based on data “selected” to relate to the temperature record and weighted based on how well they correlated to temperature whether or not they were trim to get rid of divergence? It looks like MM and Wegman were attempting to replicate that selection process which would be a part of Mann’s algorithm. Then if you “deweight” the ones that don’t match as well, but still include them, then that would just help smooth out the handle. . The whole process will just blur the past and amplify the instrumental.
Since just about every new “verification” of the hockey stick shows more variation and a deeper LIA period, it would kind of imply that the Mannomatic versions 98&99 weren’t quite ready for prime time.
> I don’t believe the Wegman report was a “peer reviewed” document.
There was an interesting exchange between Stupak and Wegman on that matter:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-109hhrg31362/html/CHRG-109hhrg31362.htm
There’s an interesting story about Waba and Cressie:
http://moyhu.blogspot.ca/2011/06/effect-of-selection-in-wegman-report.html?showComment=1307840917736#c5486395307016742830
So I guess that depends what one means by “peer reviewed”.
Must be a vocabulary thing.
Willard, “So I guess that depends what one means by “peer reviewed”.
Must be a vocabulary thing.”
Pretty much. You have a peer review process for publications which isn’t always the same as the peers reviewing parts of the Wegman report.
Indeed, Cap’n, and when Edward got asked if his worked has been peer reviewed, he tried to wiggle away by name dropping names he should have not dropped.
Under oath, as auditors might insist to add.
Willard, the Wegman report was made to congress in 2006, the Wegman social network analysis paper was published in 2008 and would have undergone a standard peer review for CSDA. GMU panel found the report, acceptable and the paper, not acceptable.
Using the paper to assassinate the character of Wegman doesn’t really change the findings of the PCA methods that Mann used which will be the focus of the Steyn suit along with the inconsistencies mentioned in the post. Since Bush was in the White House at the time, perhaps you can expand the conservative conspiracy a bit more?
My take:
pal review is not peer review.
The critical sections relate to Mann’s reconstruction, and these do not appear to be sufficiently original to warrant a separate publication.
So not peer reviewed.
My two cents other than that: It’s a mistake to consider the effects of each processing error separately. It’s certainly wrong to use uncentered PCAs, it certainly has an effect on the reconstruction, but you can’t determine the total magnitude of the effect without looking the interaction between this error and the multitude other boneheaded mistakes (e.g., inclusion of GASPE).
Had there been only one error, what Mann’s jockey-strap-carrying brigade have done is a reasonable approach. It is not here, because we know there were a multitude of processing and conceptual errors in this paper, and you can get interaction between the mistakes that substantially compound the effect of the mistakes over what would happen with just one error.
The converse is also true, Cap’n: using the PCA stuff does not evade the fact that Wegman simply ran a code he could not run without an help (to an extent still undisclosed) and obtained the very same misleading selection of super hockey sticks than in MM05.
Please remind me what Ed was saying about method and science.
***
JohnF,
If you could show me what an a priori selection looks like, that would be nice.
“Fraud” issue raised by Kevin O’Neil
“6) Are you claiming that McIntyre’s code only produced upward-sloping ‘hockey sticks’?
:)
BS writes: “Nick Stokes, your response is blatantly dishonest. You know fully well Kevin O’Neill made the argument I responded to. “
Brandon – I call BS. I never said it affected the math. You’ve built a strawman. You’re responding to an argument I never made.
In my response to Don I listed nearly a dozen points.
1) Are you claiming the Wegman report does not contain obvious plagiarisms?
2) Are you claiming the Wegman Report does not reference dozens of sources not cited in the text (many of which are dubious or irrelevant)?
3) Are you claiming the Wegman report does not mischaracterize the results of scientific papers?
4) Are you claiming that Wegman independently verified McIntyre’s results?
5) Are you claiming McIntyre’s code did not sort and select the 100 most extreme cases out of 10,000?
6) Are you claiming that McIntyre’s code only produced upward-sloping ‘hockey sticks’?
7) Are you claiming that McIntyre’s ‘trendless red noise’ was not created from proxy data that contained the climate signal?
8) Are you claiming Wegman was not reprimanded for plagiarism by his university employer?
9) Are you claiming Wegman was not forced to retract a paper due to plagiarism?
10) Are you claiming I misquoted Professor Curry when she called the people who exposed Wegman “reprehensible”?
11) Are you claiming that plagiarism isn’t fraud?
Nowhere in this list or anywhere else have I claimed the upward-slope/downward-slope changes the math, but it’s obvious from this that the selection wasn’t random (and it visually gives the appearance that the noise is equivalent to the MBH graph– which is entirely misleading).
Kevin O’Neill says:
But as anyone who reads my comment will see, I never claimed he said the orientation of the graphs affected the math. What I said was the orientation of the graphs is completely irrelevant to the maths, thus there is nothing to be gained by displaying negatively oriented graphs.
Any upside down hockey stick one created would get flipped over in a future step. As such, all PCs, when used, would have a positive orientation. It is perfectly reasonable to show them in the orientation they would be used in.
The text discussing the figure makes it abundantly clear the methodology produces graphs with a negative orientation. A figure just a couple pages before explicitly shows half the results have a negative orientation. No reader of the Wegman Report should have been misled into believing only graphs with a positive orientation were produced.
It could have been more explicit about why it only showed positively oriented hockey sticks, but any reader could have easily guessed the reason.
The orientation of a proxy should be determined by the physics of the proxy, not if it matches some arbitrary curve.
jim2, you would think so (though perhaps with biology more than physics). That’s never been the case though. Proxies have been used “upside down” for decades now. There’s no indication that will ever change.
It’s absurd how little consideration is given to whether or not the proxies being used are suitable for the problem at hand. One of the strangest things I’ve seen was in a paper by Christiansen and Ljungqvist. They sought to test their reconstruction’s results by removing proxies and seeing how their results changed. It was a sensible idea, but it failed to account for the fact they had over a dozen proxies known to be incredibly problematic. They even used one proxy which didn’t meet their stated standards (its resolution wasn’t fine enough, something you could see in a graph they included) while using another proxy in the opposite manner their own source said it should be used (and that’s ignoring the question of whether or not it could even be considered a temperature, rather than a precipitation, proxy).
It’s great to make sure your results don’t rely upon one or two questionable proxies, but it doesn’t help to just add in more questionable proxies.
Kevin, you really don’t know what you’re talking about do you?
The Wegman report essentially showed the shallow deceit and statistical incompetence in the bosom of alarmist dogma.
It contained no plagiarism. Plagiarism arose only in an a uncontroversial passage in something Wegman was supervising, that was not credited. Wegman (and/or his assistants) failed to pick this up.
From the Wegman Report, caption to Figure 4.4
“Figure 4.4: One of the most compelling illustrations that McIntyre and McKitrick have produced is created by feeding red noise [AR(1) with parameter = 0.2] into the MBH algorithm. The AR(1) process is a stationary process meaning that it should not exhibit any long-term trend. The MBH98 algorithm found ‘hockey stick’ trend in each of the independent replications.”
So Wegman, through McIntyre, claimed that the red noise produced hockey stick like trends in *each* of the replications.
This is fraudulent. No question mark needed.
We know from looking at McIntyre’s code what actually happened. Wegman thought he was looking at a random selection, instead he was only seeing a selection from the top 100 results.
What’s even more damning is that the noise M&M fed into the algorithm was *NOT* “AR(1) with parameter = 0.2″ Wegman apparently never realized that M&M had used a different noise function. As David Ritson pointed out years ago in his request to Wegman:
“To facilitate a reply I attach the Auto-Correlation Function used by the M&M to generate their persistent red noise simulations for their figures shown by you in your Section 4 (this was kindly provided me by M&M on Nov 6 2004 ). The black values are the ones actually used by M&M. They derive directly from the seventy North American tree proxies, assuming the proxy values to be TREND-LESS noise.
Surely you realized that the proxies combine the signal components on which is superimposed the noise? I find it hard to believe that you would take data with obvious trends, would then directly evaluate ACFs without removing the trends, and then finally assume you had obtained results for the proxy specific noise!”
BTW, Wegman has never released the supporting material all these years later – despite his initial promises to do so.
Kevin stands on his head. The blood sags toward it.
============
Have you posted this at McIntyre’s blog? If not, why not? I see these kind of posts get detailed responses within hours from the commenters there.
Otherwise it’s just a drive-by attack. Why should I take it seriously if you won’t ask directly?
> If not, why not?
Don’t know about Kevin, but my comments never appear anymore.
But RC moderation.
Kevin, Out of context much? Now if you want to learn out of context like a real master you should study with Eric Steig. The man has true talent.
Nick’s do.
And when he actually finds an error, McSteve acknowledges it.
Here’s what AK refers as an acknowledgement:
http://climateaudit.org/2014/09/10/inventory-of-hide-the-decline/#comment-728995
The IPCC Made the Auditor Do It in between two squirrels.
Perhaps we don’t share the same paradigm about acknowledgments, AK.
***
If you could tell me where the Auditor admitted anything about Wegman’s fig. 4, AK, that would be nice. Please beware that unless the Auditor explicitly repudiates (or is it only disavows?) any porky it may contain, etc.
Kevin argues “fraud” by proxy. Using his style we can surely say that he welches on wagers. See “Climate Sanity/ Kevin “O”Neil.
Stiffing “Save the Children”. How low can you go?
Right in your blockquote. That’s what he acknowledged. Now, just because a dwarf claimes there was a mistake…
Let Nick show on Climate Audit where these “tricks” take place. In fact, the inventory thread is a perfect place. Then we’ll see what Steve says.
So Nick seems to have said here. I want to see what he says at Climate Audit. And what answers he gets.
My question is, “the top 100 results” from what “selection” process?
“AK | September 14, 2014 at 3:05 pm |
Wegman thought he was looking at a random selection, instead he was only seeing a selection from the top 100 results.
So Nick seems to have said here. I want to see what he says at Climate Audit. And what answers he gets.”
You can see that here, or here. No answers. Just routine Mann-bashing.
ps I have similar comment problems to Willard. That’s why I’ve been lately using my Twitter ID, which sometimes works better, but has its own problems. You’ll see duplicate comments. They are ones that disappeared and somehow resurrected.
Sorry Nick, but you have it backwards. There was no Mann bashing, and there were answers. I take it from your rebuttals you did not like them, but while Steve Mc will answer you, he may not give you the answer you want.
> I want to see what he says at Climate Audit.
Let’s see how the magical thinking paradigm works.
I want the Auditor to appear over there:
http://moyhu.blogspot.com/2011/06/effect-of-selection-in-wegman-report.html
It’s been more than three years, now.
> You can see that here [http://climateaudit.org/2011/05/29/mosher-on-the-provenance-of-said-et-al-2008/#comment-280884]
What is “that”?
You should have read pete’s comments before necromancing that thread, AK. For instance:
http://climateaudit.org/2011/05/29/mosher-on-the-provenance-of-said-et-al-2008/#comment-280928
Cherish the Auditor’s reply, for that’s the only place where he comments on Wegman’s performance.
Notice the wording.
One reason why Nick did not respond is because piling on is ungentleman-like.
Nick you made no point there at climate audit as to our McIntyre discussion here. You made claims but have nothing.
> Nick you made no point there at climate audit as to our McIntyre discussion here.
An interesting comment I just noticed, dated Jun 8, 2011 at 8:50 AM:
http://climateaudit.org/2011/05/29/mosher-on-the-provenance-of-said-et-al-2008/#comment-284742
Under “here” there’s a link to this post:
http://moyhu.blogspot.com/2011/06/effect-of-selection-in-wegman-report.html
miker may appreciate that the Auditor has yet to comment on that thread.
When I said:
> You should have read pete’s comments before necromancing that thread, AK.
I thought AK himself was referring the final thread on CA about Wegman.
Sorry, Nick and AK.
I’ll try my Twitter account to see if I can bypass Aksimet crap.
Nick Stokes, “You can see that here, or here. No answers. Just routine Mann-bashing.”
I am not sure why you think Steve should answer for Wegman. Steve would answer what Steve did and Wegman would answer what Wegman did. I kind of doubt that Wegman would be all that willing to answer anything after the treatment he has received. You might need to try an audit. It is odd though that y’all seem to think there is some kind of cover up because you ask the wrong person a question and never get an answer after three whole years. I admire your perseverance, but don’t you think rephrasing the question or asking the right person would be more productive?
No prob. A lot of what you say doesn’t seem to make sense, I just skipped it.
But really, I’m interested here. I try to keep an open mind WRT the possibility that there are some valid points buried in the mass of garbage being aimed at anybody who questions the “consensus”. (Although Mashey is clearly out-of-bounds.) So I’m happy to see those threads,
evenespecially if they include something that changes my mind.Having looked into the “plagiarism” bit, I find it hard not to apply ad hominem dismissal of any argument from anybody who repeats it. But for the moment I’m overcoming the temptation.
Despite the fact that I’m (mostly) convinced most of this is just an attempt to waste any objective observer’s time to the point that they give up and take sides on tribal grounds.
Willard, have you made efforts there to get your comments fixed? Or do you prefer paranoia? RC moderation is not some theory; they boast about it. I have been going to climateaudit for an awfully long time, seen lots of critical comments and very little moderation except for Off Topic. See Nick’s response. I saw Robert Way do an excellent job of defending his paper there, and others.
Willard,
Are we to take it that whenever someone, person A doesn’t go to a site to argue with someone, person B, then it means that person A is lacking and to be judged unable to respond ?
“Cause if that is your game, Willard, a lot of climate scientists should be on your list.
Is your list of those very very long, Willard, or is this something special your reserve to apply to McIntyre?
captdallas
“I am not sure why you think Steve should answer for Wegman. Steve would answer what Steve did and Wegman would answer what Wegman did.”
Wegman was using Steve’s code. His caption again was:
“One of the most compelling illustrations that McIntyre and McKitrick have produced is created by feeding red noise [AR(1) with parameter = 0.2] into the MBH algorithm. The AR(1) process is a stationary process meaning that it should not exhibit any long-term trend. The MBH98 algorithm found ‘hockey stick’ trend in each of the independent replications.”
thisisnotgoodtogo | September 14, 2014 at 7:30 pm |
“Are we to take it that whenever someone, person A doesn’t go to a site to argue with someone”
The initial discussion that lead to my post was at CA.
Kevin:
You rely too much on Ritson. His statement below shows only ignorance:
“Surely you realize that the proxies combine the signal components on which is superimposed the noise? I find it hard to believe that you would take data with obvious trends, and then finally assume you had obtained results for the proxie specific noise!”
From McKitrick, 2005 (note “trendless random noise”):
“To test the power of Mann’s data-mining algorithm we ran an experiment in which we developed sequences of random numbers tuned to have the same autocorrelation pattern as the NOAMER tree ring data. In an autocorrelated process a random shock takes a few periods to drift back to the mean. Initially we used a simple first-order autocorrelation model, but later we implemented a more sophisticated ARFIMA12 routine that more accurately represents the entire autocorrelation function associated with tree ring data. In statistics these kinds of models are called “red noise.” The key point was that the ARFIMA data is trendless random noise, simulating the data you’d get from trees in a climate that is only subject to random fluctuations with no warming trend.”
Nick Stokes, “The MBH98 algorithm found ‘hockey stick’ trend in each of the independent replications.”
Right. If you take 10000 random noise series and do a decentered PCA you would get a hockey stick some percentage of the time. If you do a centered PCA on the random series you would get a smaller percentage of the time. If you “select” or data mine the 10000 random noise series for the ones that would produce a hockey stick you would get a hockey stick all the time. For what ever reason you assume Wegman means “each” to be the 10000 instead of the each of the “selected” 70 to 100 would have a hockey stick, even though you have replicated the work yourself. I think everyone pretty much knows what happens.
You even noted that if you remove the hockey stick selection routine that other “part” of the method produces fewer hockey sticks, but you have asked Steven to produce Wegman’s random “simulations” prior to the selection process as some kind of gotcha. Ain’t gonna happen.
So when I ask you how often the “method”, that would be all of the stages, produces a spurious hockey stick, you already have enough information to determine if the “method” is valid or not. Instead you focus on nits.
So once again, would you recommend “screened” de-centered PCA as used by Mann 98 and 99 to the world as the greatest statistical method time series analysis? I assume not, but as long as an i might be missing a dot I doubt you would actually comment to having an opinion.
The pity of all this is you seem to be extremely competent and creative, but touch dense, IMHO.
An advocate pounding the table in a forest where only the trees hear.
==============
Little paddy must also be blind.
Don more abuse, come on lets get empirical, you know you want to.
We are living in an empirical world, I tip my hat to that, to that, my hat.
=====================
JC and others,
I see some new names commenting here. They seem to be posting some inflammatory comments. I wonder if some of them may be the same people who regularly post inflammatory comments on OnlineOpinion. They may have come here to stir CE up as a result of me suggesting to Jardine K. Jardine he contribute on CE instead of wasting his time on OnlineOpinion. Jardine K. Jardine is an economist and posted some interesting comments on recent posts. The latest was a post by Professor Don Aitkin, a reader of CE and occasional contributor to comments here. Don’s latest post is here and you can see Jardine K. Jardines comments (select “All pages” and search for Jardine K. Jardine):
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=16661
My comment is here:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16661#292395
My guess is they come from Laden’s blog. Pingbacks do that.
Yes. That’s more likely.
They should scurry back to Laden’s deservedly obscure blog and take you with them, jimmy dee.
Snarling dogs. Must be angry about something. Throw them a mound of pink slime and walk away.
Pingback: climate change and the “one stick pony” … | pindanpost
OMG! Google “hockeystick fraud”:
https://www.google.com/search?q=hockeystick+fraud&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb
No wonder mikey is running around suing people. He is desperate to salvage his tattered reputation.
What’s he going to do about this?
https://hiizuru.wordpress.com/author/bshollenberger/
That is what you call an unambiguous accusation of fraud.
Eli Rabett
On your site you make the claim that McIntyre is a rent seeker, using Freedom of Information to force others to hand over their hard work – that he uses the coercive power of the state to force other people to give him, gratis, the fruits of their labor.
The work in question being paid for by the public, it by rights should obviously be freely available to the public. Far from using the coercive power of the state to rent-seek, he is ensuring that these public employees do NOT rent-seek and/or steal from the public.
So your claim is misleading drivel.
Tanglewood,
Rabbethead is much worse than that, he is utterly dishonest. He knows that McIntyre has devoted more than a decade with no salary to extensive research furthering understanding in this area. Unlike all academics and govt scientists sucking on public funding, McIntyre pursues his research where it leads without fear or favor for bureaucratic funding decisions.
For McIntyre it is obvious that there is no economic “rent” to be obtained — he is working on behalf of both his conception of the public good and his insights into how climate sciences could be improved.
Thus it is utterly loathsome and dishonest to try to smear Steve McIntyre as a “rent seeker” — the Rabbet knows this is not true at all. The Rabbet is simply a dishonest propagandist for a cause, and will say anything to try to further his cause.
That is how real science is done. It’s how real science was always done until the government bought out science.
Eli Rabett, misleading drivel, spot the redundancy.
In other news:
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/aug/23/hospitals.healthhttp://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/aug/23/hospitals.health
Firms are people too.
padbrit and the ‘consensus’.
What difference does it make if 97% or 80% or … % of govenment climate science stooges agree that a catastrophe requiring government action looms ?
There is a built-in, systemic bias at work here. Which means believing government science on global warming, is as stupid as believing drug company science on how safe their drugs are. Or tobacco company science on how healthy smoking is. They are all obvously going to say what is in their employers’ financial interest – because that is what they were selected for in the first place. And if they suddenly didn’t, they’d soon find their grants and opportunities drying up.
A thousand replies?! What?!
I don’t like Judith at all.
I searched for Marcott. ZERO hits. Why didn’t Judith mention the biggest hockey stick scam of all in her intro?
Because she’s not a good person?
Most likely.
http://s6.postimg.org/jb6qe15rl/Marcott_2013_Eye_Candy.jpg
WTF?
I don’t like Marcott for starters. So, your point?
Peter Davies,
You wrote –
“WTF?”
To which I can only respond WTF? in a feeble attempt to increase the totally irrelevant comment count to 1000.
WTF, I say, why not?
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Mike Flynn, do you understand what NikfromNY meant with his post? I don’t.
Peter Davies,
Not at all. I’m just trying to increase the comment count.
Sorry if I gave you the impression that I had the faintest idea what he was talking about.
I fully support your pithy, yet appropriate comment, ie WTF!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
I think that we have made great progress with FOMD, Defender of the Faith, on this thread. First, he allows that the hockey stick doesn’t address the MWP but only goes back 600 years. Then he has conceded that the hockey stick only shows “unusual” warming, not “unprecedented,”
If this becomes the common understanding of the Hockey Stick, then I think that we can all drop the controversy as an episode of a second rate scientist coming up with an unremarkable finding.
TJA,
I wonder if characterising Michael Mann as a second rate scientist belittles both second raters and scientists.
You may find yourself attacked by both second raters and scientists for daring to elevate Michael Mann to their lofty heights.
Be brave. I fully support Michael’s aspirations. I am sure that given time and effort, he may well achieve both!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Scientists say that the circle is flat,…
Isaiah 40:22 New International Version
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
Go Grasshoppers.
Can I just say thank you, this has been great fun winding the Flat Earthers up.
Padbrit,
You must own a Flat Earther doll. You wind it up, and it goes in erratic circles, waving its little arms, and squeaking “The world is warming . . . The world is warming . . . ”
The problem is that they are all defective. No matter how often you wind them up, they eventually run down. You can’t get a refund, either. The money is all gone. So sad.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Posting for bite, waiting for a bite, getting a bite. Crunchy.
Padbrit,
Waiting for bite.
Getting bitten. Ow!
Logical.
Come back to me Padbrit – only 9, I mean 8, comments to go. Come on, take one for the Team! You know you can do it!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Those who don’t look back, are condemned to hear the footsteps gaining.
===================
You obviously got attracted by Judith’s outrageous clickbait. You (and Kevin) have have a problem, however, in convincing anyone here that either of you are genuinely attempting to engage with other commenters on Judith’s blog. So… slim pickings I’m afraid. Better luck next time! We would have liked to engage with others on Laden’s blog but he probably would not let us do what you have done here. Is there a message in that?
If you think you are having a laugh, you have no idea the humor you are providing to us.
It’s not often a credulous truebeliever as ignorant as Padbrit comes along. Makes even Michael and Joshua look informed.
YOu really should not wind yourself up that way.
Come on chaps and chapesses – only 25 – er, 24 comments to go. We westerners have a bizarre preoccupation with multiples of 1000 – so let’s all pull together, set our differences aside, and achieve the glorious thousand in a spirit of unanimity! Yes we can!
Live well,and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Mean while the Californian drought continues. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/12/los-angeles-heat-alert_n_5812170.html?&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000048
Padbrit we both know that the hiatus/pause or whatever is just short term weather, so how do you believe that regional weather being experienced in California has any bearing at all on a climate time series extending over thousands of years, of which our friend Dr Mann, has been want to point out with his clever little splicing of modern temp data with paleo proxies?
Must be all that global warming causing the atmosphere to hold more moisture.
Oh, hang on …
Padbrit:
California had two centuries of drought about 900 years ago. Was that caused by humans?
Can you find a link to the one you are talking about please?
Apparently you do not know the difference between weather and climate. I know you think there has never been a drought in California before.
Mikie’s backers will never let this go to trial.
They have way too much money and power to lose when the truth comes out.
It’ll never get that far.
Constitute amend.
Know without a shade of doubt;
Mann’s silence is sold.
================
@Nick Stokes…
You’ve repeatedly claimed that Wegman, and McSteve, are guilty of “fraud”:
Etc.
Here’s my question: did this selection procedure look at the handle of the hockey stick, or only the blade? IOW, did they reject every reconstruction that didn’t match the known 20th century shape, or are you claiming that they rejected every reconstruction that didn’t also have a “straight” handle?
If you are making the latter claim, you should be able to prove it, or I suspect most people would consider you to be the one guilty of “fraud”.
El Toreador
Slips sideways, shaft red-flagged fly.
Who weeps for Carmen?
===============
It is more subtle than that. The proxies selected for the 20th century “hockey blade” such as YAD06 didn’t match the known temperature data or nearby tree proxies. So the rest of the proxy was basically random noise. If you combine a number of random noise samples and smooth it you get zero signal.
The effect of cherry picking and algorithmically enhancing 20th century blade proxies reduced historic (pre 20th century) variation by adding samples that were essentially random noise. Adding random noise in essence is the same as adding zero signal samples. Adding 10 zero samples to 10 strong signal samples cuts the amplitude of the averaged signal in half.
The late 20th century is very likely the warmest such period in the last 2000 years. And the early 21st century is already surpassing that. That’s the problem folks. The rest is, as they say, noise.
Well… they can’t grow wheat in Greenland or navigate the Northwest passage in Viking boats at will…
So I’m still dubious about the “all time record” temperatures.
And the arctic is getting colder.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2014/09/NWP-2014-August.png
Yeah the Arctic is getting colder according to that graph, it’s called “winter” FFS!!
And to think that Pad saw it on MulParry Street.
=================
Noisome markus raises a ruckus stick.
=============
2013 was close to the 1981-2010 average and 2014 is significantly above the 20th century average.
Ice volume (which shouldn’t even be rising during the summer) will probably be 2 standard deviations above the trend this year (ie Arctic sea ice is increasing not decreasing).
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.1.png
Not even close, Markus. Temperature of ice in Greenland indicates it was 1C or more warmer, plus or minus 0.3C, than today both 1000 and 2000 years ago.
AK,
“they selected series with a large difference between the mean for the end (simulating 1902–1980), and the mean for the whole series (simulating 1400–1980)”
The HS index is used in MM05 papers. In the GRL paper, Fig 2 has the histogram of Wegman’s 4.2. In the caption they define it thus:
“Histogram of ‘Hockey Stick Index’ for PC1s. For the 10,000 simulated PC1s described in text, the histogram shows the distribution of the difference between the 1902– 1980 mean and the 1400– 1980 mean, divided by the 1400– 1980 standard deviation. “
It’s their choice of a number that best characterizes HS shape. Straightness of the shaft is determined by the random noise process used.
PA
“Well… they can’t grow wheat in Greenland or navigate the Northwest passage in Viking boats at will…”
The grass is greener at Igaliku
Haven’t heard the one about the Vikings navigating the NW passage at will.
> You’ve repeatedly claimed that Wegman, and McSteve, are guilty of “fraud”:
That’s some faithful paraphrase AK got there,
Must be paradigms.
Actually, I may have confused him with Kevin O’Neill. But since he seems to have jumped into the conversation over Kevin O’Neill’s explicit accusation(s) of fraud, he’s responsible for the accusation until he disavows it.
And Kevin O’Neill’s clearly not worth asking, since he has no idea what the stuff he links to means, or (AFAIK) even what it says.
> he’s responsible for the accusation until he disavows it.
Words of wisdom, AK, words of wisdom.
Beware next time you jump into a conversation. Bring all your paradigms. You might need them.
AK – Does the caption for figure 4.4 misrepresent what was actually done? Yes. In not one, but two regards: the noise model used was not what was claimed and Wegman did not independently verify the results.
Fraud.
That doesn’t even get into the plagiarism that was rampant throughout the document.
More fraud.
All of this has been known for years. The echo chamber of places like this seem immune to the facts of the matter.
Don’t know yet. This “David Ritson, Emeritus Prof of Physics” looks like another dwarf to me. Playing the same game as Joshua and willard. So do you.
I’ve seen Nick Stokes make the claim about selection, no answer to my question yet. I haven’t seen him say anything about this “David Ritson, Emeritus Prof of Physics” nonsense. And, of course, nobody has any use for Mashey or his junk. Nobody with any integrity, anyway.
So probably not.
> nobody has any use for Mashey or his junk. Nobody with any integrity, anyway.
I thought the libertarian paradigm let people decide for themselves. Here’s a link to Mashey’s “junk”.
INTEGRITY ™ – All Mine
Here’s a simple proof that Nick is wrong:
(1) When Nick has a point, the Auditor acknowledges it, however grudgingly.
(2) The Auditor has yet to reply to Nick’s 2011 analysis.
(3) Nick has no point.
That ought to open up a new paradigm in informal logic.
AK | September 14, 2014 at 10:39 am
“@Nick Stokes…
You’ve repeatedly claimed that Wegman, and McSteve, are guilty of “fraud”:”
I haven’t, anywhere. I simply explained what they did. They ran the program on 10,000 samples of noise. Then they calculated what they call a hockey stick index. This is the difference between a mean for the calibration period and the remainder (or maybe the total). That is described in the MM05 paper, and Wegman shows a histogram of it in Fig 4.2. It is used as their measure of HS shape.
So they sorted the 10000 by HS shape, and proceeded with the top 100, which they sampled to provide the 12 displayed.
@Nick Stokes…
If you didn’t actually mean to support the charge of “fraud”, I apologize for misunderstanding.
I’m wondering how well you understand what they did? I don’t claim to be an expert, but as I understand it, they selected series with a large difference between the mean for the end (simulating 1902–1980), and the mean for the whole series (simulating 1400–1980). They did not, AFAIK, at any point select for straightness of the shaft.
Yes, they selected the 100 with the biggest difference between the mean for the blade region and the mean for the whole length. AFAIK. All 100 of these demonstrated a (comparatively) straight shaft. This was what he was trying to prove: that if you select for a large difference between the mean of the blade and the mean of the whole, you get a straight shaft. Despite the fact that the original red noise had as much variation along the shaft as in the blade.
AFAIK that was the original contention. If you don’t agree, or don’t understand why that was tantamount to proving that Mann’s method would “always generate hockey sticks”, why don’t you go ask him. The current thread would be perfectly relevant, seems to me.
> So they sorted the 10000 by HS shape, and proceeded with the top 100, which they sampled to provide the 12 displayed.
Perhaps, Nick, but can you explain why one might want to sort on a dimension of a monte carlo to select out the top 1% on that dimension? Or is it by definition a scurrilous practice? Or what?
Denizens await your erudition.
While we wait for Nick to answer, let me try a guess: because nobody is really trying to say the 20th century isn’t in the high range for the overall mean since 1400, or 1000, or whatever. The question is whether or not there have been periods prior that were just as warm or warmer.
So any “red noise” whose mean for the last part isn’t larger than the mean for the whole wouldn’t simulate the actual conditions trying to be replicated.
And it isn’t the same dimension. Just because he called it a “hockey stick index” doesn’t mean it measures whether it looks like a hockey stick. In this case, as far as I can tell, it measures whether it looks enough like the conditions being simulated to test the contention that the method will always generate hockey sticks.
> nobody has any use for Mashey or his junk. Nobody with any integrity, anyway.
INTEGRITY ™ – All Mine
***
Here’s a simple proof that Nick is wrong:
(1) When Nick has a point, the Auditor acknowledges it, however grudgingly.
(2) The Auditor has yet to reply to Nick’s 2011 analysis.
(3) Nick has no point.
That ought to open up a new paradigm in informal logic.
Nick Stikes, “So they sorted the 10000 by HS shape, and proceeded with the top 100, which they sampled to provide the 12 displayed.”
Since you ran Wegman’s code and have access to Steve’s, how many times out of 10,000 red noise samples does a method have to produce spurious results to be considered suspect?
Then if you “screen” samples, how often does the method have to produce spurious results to be considered suspect?
Now would you show all 10,000 simulations or pick out a number that illustrate spurious results and say provide statistics on the rest?
Just curious.
AK,
“they selected series with a large difference between the mean for the end (simulating 1902–1980), and the mean for the whole series (simulating 1400–1980)”
The HS index is used in MM05 papers. In the GRL paper, Fig 2 has the histogram of Wegman’s 4.2. In the caption they define it thus:
“Histogram of ‘Hockey Stick Index’ for PC1s. For the 10,000 simulated PC1s described in text, the histogram shows the distribution of the difference between the 1902– 1980 mean and the 1400– 1980 mean, divided by the 1400– 1980 standard deviation. “
It’s their choice of a number that best characterizes HS shape. Straightness of the shaft is determined by the random noise process used.
ps I originally put this reply upthread – apologies.
captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.2 | September 14, 2014 at 6:35 pm |
“Since you ran Wegman’s code and have access to Steve’s, how many times out of 10,000 red noise samples does a method have to produce spurious results to be considered suspect?”
I showed in my here that if you use the same selection on output from the approved centred differencing, you get hockey sticks. 100 out of 10000 is fairly extreme selection.
Nick Stokes, “you get hockey sticks. 100 out of 10000 is fairly extreme selection.”
What do you mean by fairly extreme selection? Is that enough for the method to be suspect?
> What do you mean by fairly extreme selection?
Perhaps something like “substantially over-stated”, to borrow MM05’s wordology [1].
[1] See #1 below:
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/mcintyre-grl-2005.pdf
captdallas
“What do you mean by fairly extreme selection? Is that enough for the method to be suspect?”
As in, if you select 100/10000 for sine waves, you’ll get sine waves. If you select for parabolae, you’ll get parabolae.
As I said, the non-suspect centred differencing also gave HS shapes on this selection.
Nick Stokes, “As I said, the non-suspect centred differencing also gave HS shapes on this selection.”
So what do you think causes the hockey sticks?
Oh and Nick, Marcott looks a bit different with your limited emulation.
http://www.moyhu.org.s3.amazonaws.com/misc/marcott/recons.png
http://moyhu.blogspot.com/2011/06/effect-of-selection-in-wegman-report.html?showComment=1307625930181#c2520313753335294595
Just in case anybody wants to know what the comment Steven Mosher linked to says (and is too lazy to click a link):
What I’m trying to understand is whether Nick Stokes is (acting as?) a dwarf picking nits, or whether he’s actually pointing out a real problem with, well, whatever.
I’m going to spend some time studying it, before making any other comments. Here. About this. Except that I just got a surprise on another subject, and now I’m suspicious of everybody. Guess I should have been from the start.
Is nicky being clumsily evasive, again? And he used to be somebody.
Steven, WOW! You get a whole passel of hockey sticks one way and still get 1% Hockey Stickiness the other way. Pity that Wegman didn’t check those attributions ain’t it?
I too prefer unlimited emulations.
***
Nick,
You might be interested about TCO’s comment about “appleness” and “badness”:
http://deepclimate.org/2010/07/19/open-thread-4/#comment-4586
Beware that “So what do you think causes the hockey sticks?” can conflate the two issues.
I can try to find back where Eduardo asked his question about badness if you want.
Willard, this is still in the red noise phase which would be some part of the method. Appleness and badness would likely be data related which is a whole new can of worms.
> Appleness and badness would likely be data related which is a whole new can of worms.
Are you suggesting that “what do you think causes the hockey sticks?” refers to red noise, Cap’n?
If that’s not the case, then I suggest I’m not the one who’s opening a new can of worms.
Willard, “Are you suggesting that “what do you think causes the hockey sticks?” refers to red noise, Cap’n?”
No Willard, it would be part of the method used. De-centered produces about 75% hockey sticks and centered produces about 1% hockey sticks using red noise. I would think a solid method would have 0.1% error or less given that the actual paleo data has quite a bit of uncertainty. Since the data is more often than not combined in a reconstruction by the original researchers, a method like the one Nick uses for surface temperature is probably about a good as any. That still needs a little work on actual uncertainty IMO, but better than most I have seen.
> Pity that Wegman didn’t check those attributions ain’t it?
It might be wiser to drop counterfactuals about Wegman. It might be even wiser to drop Wegman altogether. A tight defense may be best, e.g.:
http://climateaudit.org/2014/09/10/another-porky-from-mann-williams-and-fontaine/#comment-729540
The first sentence, emphasized, is interesting considering Steyn c. Mann, don’t you think?
> De-centered produces about 75% hockey sticks and centered produces about 1% hockey sticks using red noise.
Thank you for the clarification, Cap’n. We’re still far from the “nearly always” in MM05, and from the “each of the independent replications” in Edward “wrong method” Wegman’s report.
Speaking of “independent replications”, isn’t it interesting that the “nearly always” from MM05 and the “each” from Wegman’s are virtually identical quantifications?
Willard, “Thank you for the clarification, Cap’n. We’re still far from the “nearly always” in MM05, and from the “each of the independent replications” in Edward “wrong method” Wegman’s report.”
Well enjoy picking that nit, but any method that produces a significant number of false trends, as in say over 5%, would be pretty limited. About 75% might be considered “nearly always” by some less anal.
captdallas
“De-centered produces about 75% hockey sticks and centered produces about 1% hockey sticks using red noise.”
Those are the subjective assessments of oneuniverse, a Wegman sympathiser. I don’t agree. I’ve shown the plots.
But as an argument, it’s a bit like saying that it’s OK to salt the assays, as long as there really is some metal there.
> About 75% might be considered “nearly always” by some less anal.
You mean that you’d be cool if the IPCC started to claims “nearly always” when it reaches 75%, Cap’n? A bit lower than “nearly always” and we could get to Judy’s 68-31 argument.
You seem to be trying to make it about MBH98, Cap’n, while this discussion is about M05-GRL (let’s add “GRL” to please Brandon) and Edward “method wrong” Wegman’s report, a product that has been used in a testimony under oath.
Nick Stokes, ““De-centered produces about 75% hockey sticks and centered produces about 1% hockey sticks using red noise.”
Those are the subjective assessments of oneuniverse, a Wegman sympathiser. I don’t agree. I’ve shown the plots..”
I noticed how strongly you disagree with, “about” “some” “part due” and the ever present “but”.
https://sites.google.com/site/moyhudocs/pics/jun11/ranMM.jpg
Willard, “You mean that you’d be cool if the IPCC started to claims “nearly always” when it reaches 75%, Cap’n? A bit lower than “nearly always” and we could get to Judy’s 68-31 argument.”
There isn’t much difference is there? “nearly always” (>68%) the method produces spurious results. I think that method wouldn’t be my first choice if there is anything else that would more reliable. If that were clearly stated about the method, there would be fewer research lemmings jumping on the band wagon to replicate questionable results.
Even when the method is centered, there is still the possibility of spurious results. Once the normalizing step is added, that error can be amplified. Just choosing a baseline period can add to the distortion. I see lots of reason not to defend the method, but then I am not a “scientist”.
And how do you define a hockey stick, again, Cap’n?
The Crook’t Hockey Stick is ‘The Big Lie’, willard; funny you should wonder, well?
============
Willard, “And how do you define a hockey stick, again, Cap’n?”
I believe my opinion would be “subjective”. The figure I posted from Nick’s blog is there as an example. I “see” one hockey stick and a couple that are hockey stickish. Nick doesn’t “see” any hockey sticks in that particular figure if I read his comment correctly. This is where Nick’s “subjective” opinion and oneuniverses “subjective” opinion differ. Since the method tends to produce a range of “subjective” opinions, I consider that one strike against the method.
I seriously doubt that you follow that, but I took a shot.
Well, Cap’n, there are problems with eyeballing.
First, one does not simply eyeball 10,000 plots and classify them by hand. If you do that, Richard Too will ask you for your all kinds of stuff. And if you don’t abide, he’ll start sending threatening demands tto your superiors.
Second, the notion of HS shape seems to refer to a geometrical concept. If that’s true, then we might be able to bypass eyeballing altogether. This is how the 75% would get any formal meaning. In fact, that’s the only way that one can talk of spurious results.
Third, red noise is not perfect noise. One needs to remove the small HS shapes that are injected with that noise. Unless you do that, you can’t even determine how much spuriousness could not be attributed to it.
This is where the conflation between badness and appleness occurs.
“Marxism isn’t just compatible with environmental concerns, but it provides a distinct approach to ecological problems that contrasts with that of the mainstream and establishment environmental groups: it puts its finger on problems that the establishment wing of environmentalism wants to sweep under the rug. ”
UN climate negotiator endorsing Marxist policy and totalitarianism;
http://www.globalwarming.org/2014/01/14/uns-top-climate-diplomat-communism-is-key-to-doing-it-right-on-global-warming/
In their own words;
http://www.communistvoice.org/40cMarx.html
Tinfoil right Michael or are you ready to endorse??
Ah the penny has just dropped this is nothing to do with global warming its about good old fashioned American paranoia regarding Socialism. It is well known that Merkans don’t care about anyone but themselves and their tiny minded little consumer economy. Well all I can say is get out there and consume it’s what you are here for.
Actually, what happened, Padbrit, is that you just unknowingly “dropped a dime” on yourself.
Welcome to paradise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WmJxZP_tAI#t=101
You turned up in 1941 after Britain had faced Germany on it’s own for 2 years (Also turned up late in WW1 in 1917) when you saw a profit was to be made from the war. 29 Million Russians died in WW2 and let us remember they faced 200 divisions of Wehrmacht troops while in the west we only faced 20 Divisions. Russia won the war in Europe. Oh and Prescott Bush was still doing business with Hitler’s regime at the time. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
You’re welcome.
You also forgot to mention that we suck all of the best talent and ambition out of every other country on the planet with our evil plethora of free market entrepreneurial collaborations. Perhaps it’s our superior University research institutions. Cheap gasoline, hot women and cold beer? Tacos and margaritas? We need to be more empathetic and do more to help your inferiority complex. Perhaps we could send over our spare testosterone and orthodontists… a lend-lease for the 21st Century. Huzzah.
Beer, what beer, Howard?
You can see that willard, is a prime example.
So the threading is broken again. The only redeeming factor is that Padbrit is a caricature of the type. With friends like that they no more enemies. Talking of own goals.
WebHubTelescope (@WHUT) | September 14, 2014 at 2:02 pm |
“I was not aware of this until Rob Ellison drew my attention to it.”
JD, #OwnGoal perhaps (?)
Unlike the global warming signal, not unprecedented.
Reading Wally Broecker’s original ‘global warming’ article from 1975 is an own goal?
Here’s one from 20 years later – http://web.vims.edu/sms/Courses/ms501_2000/Broecker1995.pdf
You need to look for the big picture guys – synthesis is always more fun than analysis. It is the difference between data and understanding what the data means – and its limitations.
Go away webbly – you are not welcome. It is astonishing that you have the front to even try after your total and embarrassing meltdown. An utterly incompetent critique providing a vague justification for vicious and utterly reprehensible innuendo. You come here to insult and malign and blather about how good you are at eccentric science on a fringe blog – and then go elsewhere to prattle about the ‘Krackpot’ and her ‘Klimate Klowns’. Does he imagine that this exceptional example of poor judgment and vicious polemic will be forgotten?
Ole Webby, stick a sock in it. Schmuck
A single quote that isn’t in response to webbly’s incompetent Bose-Einstein theory of the ‘notch’. He again says I led the way in suggesting a Bose-Einstein theory of climate to Judy. It is just an example of the ludicrous fantasies he indulges in. On the basis of some dredged up blog comment made in response to a Bose-Einstein mention from webbly about ‘the notch’ being the result of energy smeared all over the spectrum like butter on toast. But with gaps.
‘You two have clinically insane perspectives on the physics. Both of you plainly don’t understand a thing about photonics, and especially are clueless on how Bose-Einstein statistical mechanics describes how electromagnetic radiation gets dispersed across an energy spectrum.’ http://judithcurry.com/2012/04/03/authority-in-political-debates-involving-science/#comment-190259
Juggling is wot dun it. As an explanation of ‘the notch’ – webbly is as usual fundamentally technically misguided – along with the always fractured syntax that is always vaguely disconcerting for a grammatical fundamentalist. Bose-Einstein here has to do with the distribution of energies emitted by a blackbody. This is not even remotely the physical mechanism of the ‘notch’. A ‘notch’ that exists as a measured reality. It is measured on a narrow footprint and exists because photons are emitted in all directions. Photons are ‘scattered’ and miss the aperture.
It is frankly a dishonest – fraudulent – reinterpretation of an old discussion where I say quite obviously that – no – it isn’t Bose-Einstein juggling.
The resort to lies, fraud and calumny goes on after some physic regrouping obviously. He gets an opportunity here to be both abusive and to reinvent reality in the strangest way possible – but dissent is blocked at the fetid inteweb echo chambers he then repairs to boast of how he has bearded the dragon.
He has squibbed the opportunity to defend his grossly inadequate mumblings about Bose-Einstein condensates in an open forum – and continues not merely to insult in terms of calling Judy a crackpot but to spread personal abuse and to cast contemptible aspersions. Utterly contemptible and irredeemably unconscionable. This is not how a responsible and self respecting adult is meant to behave. This is not behavior that allows for rational discourse to evolve – and it has been this way since he decided to commence ‘monitoring’ the ‘Klimate Klowns’ on CE – as he sycophantically conveys to the collective blogs.
Go away webbly – you are either a complete liar or have an inadequate grasp of reality. Either is a complete waste of everyone’s time.
Does he think he can divert attention from his ongoing and vicious campaign – and the meltdown of his credibility – by inventing more lies and more calumny?
You just can’t get anything right, can you Paddy?
“The Second World War[1] officially began on 1 September 1939, with the German invasion of Poland. Britain and France declared war on the Nazi Third Reich, two days later, on 3 September 1939. Seven days later, on 10 September 1939, Canada likewise declared war on Germany, the country’s first independent declaration of war”
“1941 after Britain had faced Germany on it’s own for 2 years
You just can’t get anything right, can you Pad?
“The Second World War[1] officially began on 1 September 1939, with the German invasion of Poland. Britain and France declared war on the N@# azi Third Reich, two days later, on 3 September 1939. Seven days later, on 10 September 1939, Canada likewise declared war on Germany, the country’s first independent declaration of war”
The Strange Ending of WWII
Government science was transformed into a propaganda campaign in 1946, beginning with two government-funded falsehoods:
1. Neutrons attract other neutrons
2. Hydrogen-fusion powers stars
Nine pages of precise experimental data expose those sixty-eight year old falsehoods [1]:
1. “Solar energy,” Advances in Astronomy (submitted 1 Sept 2014) https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Solar_Energy.pdf
Speaking for everyone else here Eli invites O to put a sock in it.
I enjoy his theories Eli. If the sun is really iron, then maybe we can use some large magnets to move it further away if it gets too hot?
They’re O/T.
I must say you have to admire his single minded purposefulness in promoting his project. The articles themselves are interesting if somewhat opaque though. Mind you they could be opaque because I lack the education to fully understand it.
Oh, and there is no way Eli speaks for me, I find O Manuel’s Quixotic commitment to his quest in the face of so much skepticism and some disdain rather refreshing.
The smarmy little rabbette is very smart, Bill. He is a generally avoided prof. of chemistry at a generally avoided university. His classroom is for the tired, but not the lonely. They still pay him.
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=543236
Don, granted that internet student evals. are not exactly scientific, that’s the worst set of professor evals. I’ve ever seen (and I used to be responsible for monitoring many thousands of them internally, pertaining to faculty at a large university). The Rabbett must be a masterful classroom presence….
Yes Skip, the few reviews that were favorable were from the sleepy slacker type. They appreciate the professor’s soothing somnolescent droning.
Can I post this again at the bottom. It is just such an astonishing claim made here and elsewhere repeatedly.
Ellison, What century were you born? Who uses the word “calumny” ?
You really have to go back and read how often you brought up Bose-Einstein statistics and Bose-Einstein condensate. You and your buddy the O-Man. The internet does not forget.
Calumny – noun
1. the making of false and defamatory statements about someone in order to damage their reputation; slander.
Did he have to look it up? Does it makes me a person with a vocabulary who uses the appropriate word?
So I did a search on Chief Hydrologist, Climate etc and Bose-Einstein – and of course it leads here. All somehow in relation to his totally mad idea that Bose-Einstein statistics don’t apply at room temperature and therefore can’t be used in an analytical derivation of cloud nucleation. He has not a clue about the derivation and cares not a bit. It was all a mad justification for vicious calumny. Apparently the theory now is that we were all madly pushing a Bose-Einstein theory and contaminated Judy. This is so much crazier than ever that I can only wonder where it will end.
Crackpots Etc
Vitaly Khvorostyanov and Judith Curry wrote a textbook on the science behind clouds…
In the text, they applied the theory of Bose-Einstein statistics to model the condensation (8.2.3) and freezing (8.3.2) nucleation rates of water vapor…
The blog site that Curry runs attracts many a crackpot. I have interacted with these cranks over the last few years and I googled all the exchanges I had with them concerning Bose-Einstein statistics. I can imagine that since Curry condones their behavior, some of their crazy ideas rub off on her. Many of these exchanges involve Rob Ellison aka Captain Kangaroo aka Chief Hydrologist. His misunderstanding and misapplication of Bose-Einstein statistics is almost overwhelming, as if he wants to wallow in his scientific ignorance. What follows is a couple dozen exchanges with Ellison and other cranks..
(me)
Bose-Einstein statistics relate to indistinguishable particles that condense at low temperatures. Statistical mechanics deals with regions in thermal equilibrium – particles in the region have the same statistical properties at room temp as these other indistinguishable particles – but don’t condense. That is there are a number of microstates possible and probabilities of particles being in some energy state or other can be calculated – but really we’re interested in the average state.
Spectral sorption is important only in that greenhouse gases are resonant at those frequencies – the region warms and reemits according to SB for a grey body.
You guys have such funny ideas.
(again)
Your explanation said that energy was reflected from CO2 and smeared across the ‘energy spectrum’ explaining why the Earth didn’t radiate in specific frequencies and this was measured from space. None of that is true.
You used the term Bose-Einstein (bosons) and now introduce Fermi-Dirac (fermions) instead of Maxell-Boltzmann as you should of in the first place. You have so little knowledge of atmospheric physics or anything much else in climate and then embellish it with lies, dissimulation and insults. It is very boring.
(and again)
So electrons, the velocity of gas molecules and a Bose-Einstein condensate (?) have climate applications?
Stochasticity – probability – whatever – are explanations for things not understood and have little relevance in climate other than as stochastic generation of cloud, rainfall or other parameters. Marginal in other words.
Except for the obnoxiously and eccentrically opinionated.
(and yet again)
‘Rogue waves, also called freak waves, begin with a deep trough followed by a wall of water reaching 25-30 meter high. They occur in deep water where a number of physical factors such as strong winds and fast currents converge, in the presence of different mechanisms that include interference effects and non-linear interactions and modulation resonance. We refer to Heller (2005) and in particular to Akhmediev and Pelinovsky (2010). This special volume reviews the evidence and possible mechanisms for rogue waves occurring in oceans, plasmas, nonlinear optical systems, and Bose-Einstein condensates. These studies suggest that rogue waves are indeed outliers compared with the rest of the fluctuations and result from specific initial conditions and/or particular amplifying mechanisms. Rogues waves are thus candidate dragon kings.’
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1205/1205.1002.pdf
So there we are – Bose-Einstein resonance modulation.
(So we were talking Rogue waves – and I quote a paper mentioning rogue waves in Bose-Einstein condensates. I then ironically reference the quote. Sue me.)
Why thank you Peter. I am a little embarrassed now at claiming to be as smart as Lisa Simpson. In truth I would rather be more like Bart or Homer – but not to be.
Webby you keep referring to things like Bose-Einstein statistics – things that have no great significance in climate science – but get the basics wrong. Diffusion of heat from the atmosphere to the oceans for instance. Something that is fundamentally unphysical. And you imagine that what you do is climate science. I think it is fundamentally misusing power rules in both epistemic and aleatory uncertainty. The parameters for the power rules – in other words – you pull out of your arse.
You make no admissions of your errors – but just popup again and again like a bop bag with silly and offensive comment. So sad – too bad.
(and yet again and again)
I think you can tell by the content David. Bose-Einstein boson statistics (webbly) keeps (bringing up) is amusing me lately. The comment I link to above uses a novel concept of statistical mechanics – instead of a far more obvious role for absorption and reemissions of IR photons. I don’t mind people being wrong – after all if being wrong were a hanging offence…well. It is being so emotionally committed to a position that it is defended with copious arm waving and gutter level brawling. They just keep coming back with it relentlessly. Back to the battle of meaningless drivel passing back and forth. I am more than a little bored with it.
(and yet again again)
‘In statistical thermodynamics, Bose-Einstein statistics determines the statistical distribution of identical indistinguishable bosons over the energy states in thermal equilibrium. Bose-Einstein (or B-E) statistics are closely related to Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics (M-B) and Fermi-Dirac statistics (F-D). While F-D statistics holds for fermions, M-B statistics holds for “classical particles, i.e. identical but distinguishable particles, and represents the classical or high-temperature limit of both F-D and B-E statistics.’ Here is the first paragraph from the Australian kids physics site.
You called it Bose-Einstein rather than Maxwell-Boltzman which I correct you on and then you insist that I made the error and then embellish it with insult to me – see if I give a rats arse – and my country. You are a very ugly American.
Here is what I said – ‘These condense at low temperature to form a Bose-Einstein condensate. A volume of atmosphere in thermal equilibrium has similar energy distributions at room temperature but it is not a BEC. It is irrelevant at any rate as we are interested in the average of the macro state and not the statistics of the micro state.’
I think we know who wins the crackpot award.
(tra la tra le)
So apart from rogue waves in BEC – it is really just a rehash of quite unexceptional comment in response to blather from webbly. It is a compendium of comments out of context – none of which apply Bose-Einstein to climate – and which he uses to support an incredible theory of the head ‘Krackpot’ being misled by a coterie of ‘Klimate Klowns’ into misapplying Bose-Einstein statistics to cloud nucleation.
Hmmmmm.
Just so we have the identities right. Chief Hydrologist has an origin in popular culture – but webbly has always had a problem in vacillating between accusing me of taking an authoritative non de plume – and on the other of self identifying with a clown.
My name was known from the beginning – http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/09/decadal-variability-of-clouds/ – I stopped using it because I just got quite bored with unending drive by snark.
Captain Kangaroo was field promoted to Generalissimo Skippy in the climate war. His true identity is a secret of the climate war known only to a few. All we know is that he is a cowboy – in the Prairie Home Companion sense.
GK: Kind of quiet out there, Dusty.
TR: Well, it gets quiet in Minnesota in January. People get thoughtful.
GK: Nobody moving out there. Makes me nervous something bad is just about to happen.
TR: That’s why you didn’t want to camp under a tree?
GK: That’s right. Cougars jump out of trees. Anvils fall out of trees.
TR: What anvils?
GK: That’s the problem. You don’t know until it’s too late.
TR: Never heard of an anvil falling out of a tree.
GK: You never heard of it because the people they fell on couldn’t pass on the word.
TR: What’s the anvil doing up in the tree?
GK: Somebody put it there because that’s the last place you’d look.
TR: You are crazy. You know that?
GK: Just telling you what I think.
TR: Loneliness has driven you over the brink into paranoia and insanity, pardner.
GK: Ha! I’m a cowboy. Loneliness is what I crave. Insanity is what we eat for breakfast. No, sir, solitude is a gift, Dusty. We are cowboys. Lonesome is part of the iconic nature of the calling.
Webbly lives in Minnesota – and apparently an anvil fell on his head.
Generalissimo (Retired) Skippy rides a blue horse called Shibboleth.
http://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/blue_horse.jpg
It all comes from a much more free flowing and civilized CE – where discussions were broad ranging and quibbling was a hanging offence. Webbly has done more than most to poison the well. His latest and ongoing perfidy in this is irredeemable – he should just go away. He is not welcome to continue his abuse and aggression and then repair to his usual blogospheric haunts to impugn and malign.
Cor lumme, the Webby is rummy.
========
WebHubTelescope (@WHUT) | September 15, 2014 at 1:13 am | Reply
Can’t hide from it Rob Ellison. All that stuff you wrote about Bose-Einstein condensates are buried in these comments pages. Maybe you can beg to have them deleted.
Far from hiding from it – I copied it from his site and posted it. What does he think it says? This is seriously warped. There is some quite mad insinuation that I had some Bose-Einstein theory of climate that influenced Judy to posit a Bose-Einstein derivation for cloud nucleation.
This is to divert attention from the quite mad assertion that Bose-Einstein statistics couldn’t be valid because a Bose-Einstein condensate doesn’t form at atmospheric temperatures. Quite irrelevant – but itself a thin excuse to indulge in malicious character assassination and to post ‘Krackpot and her Klimate Klowns’ on Borg collective websites.
He now seems to want to divert attention from the meltdown with this new and quite mad theory. Go away webbly – you no longer get the benefit of the doubt. No doubt remains – you are you’re own cracked pot
Ellison, I think you have flipped your wig, showing pictures of little ponies, and referring to cartoon characters that exist inside your head.
Humour, great art and The Simpsons. Go away webby – and the site might revert to civilized, cultured and diverse. You are not welcome with your habitual shallow gibes, philistine sensibility, comic book policy and eccentric science. But most of all because you are an irredeemable schmuck.
or put it in a sock.
YOu do not speak for me unless you are saying the “in it” is your own yaw.
Padbrit
That is a somewhat selective view of history.
Russia and Germany were effectively allies for the first two years of the war and their non aggression pact meant that each were able to pursue their territorial ambitions with invasions of various countries and killing their populations.
Russia only turned against Germany when hitler invaded them and needed our help via the Atlantic convoys over the arctic in order to keep going. That of course involved the northern sea route which opened up in the 1930’s as the arctic warmed to levels broadly similar to today.
Tonyb
Padbrit, you are immensely ignorant, despite your smug arrogant confidence in your inaccurate factoids.
(1) The USA did not show up “late” in either World War, they were not “our” fights until incompetent European nations had allowed the Kaiser and then Hitler to run all over them. Nowadays, when the USA takes much more interest in preserving security worldwide, smugs twits like you then attack us for being too involved beyond our borders. Such hypocritical confused double-standards.
(2) It is a stale and propagandistic cliche that Russia did or could have won WWII alone. While there is much reason to doubt that Hitler could have been overcome without the immense contributions and sacrifices of the Russians (and their subordinated peoples!!), Russia never could have done it alone, either. Their military efforts benefitted enormously from vast Lend-Lease supplies, western Allied drains on German troops, steel and fuel, other resources… the bombing campaigns destroyed huge volumes of German war production which would have gone to the Eastern Front. Also, whatever one thinks of moral issues in the bombing campaigns, a huge neglected strategic aspect is that the western allies pinned vast Luftwaffe and anti-aircraft resources within Germany — had those thousands of fighter aircraft and thousands of 88mm anti-aircraft guns (dual-use anti-tank guns) not been pinned down in Germany due to UK/US bombing campaigns, they would have been deployed to the Eastern Front with devastating effect against the Russians.
(3) Finally, your figure of “20” German divisions in the West is wildly inaccurate, too low, and shows that you don’t understand the subject. . By the time of D- Day the Germans deployed around 60 divisions in the West, plus ofc vast steel and concrete for defenses, many large gun batteries, huge U-boat resources over 4-5 yrs, independent (non-divisional units etc.). No doubt that Russia shouldered the largest burdens, but Hitler likely could have been victorious in either East or West had he not taken on the infamous 2-front war. It took ALL of the key Allies working together to bring him down (not to mention what it took to bring down the Japanese military in the Pacific, with no assistance from Russia).
Indeed it was a regrettable error for the US to enter WW2 when it did.
They should have left the two bloodthirsty socialist dictatorships to annihilate each other before making a move. There would then have been no era of neo-marxist imperialism in Eastern Europe, no Cold War … no Ukrainian crisis right now.
You two have clinically insane perspectives on the physics. Both of you plainly don’t understand a thing about photonics, and especially are clueless on how Bose-Einstein statistical mechanics describes how electromagnetic radiation gets dispersed across an energy spectrum.
It’s a very straightforward concept that greenhouse gases have a scattering cross-section that can partially reflect specific bands of photon frequencies until they redistribute to maintain an energy balance. Nature will always juggle and redistribute the state space densities to conserve energy. webbly
This is webbly with his idiosyncratic explanation of why certain frequencies are missing in the Earth’s emission spectra. They aren’t – and it is Boltzmann I believe – and said – that was used to derive the Planck spectrum for a blackbody. As I went on to say – it is not relevant to absorption and emission of IR in the atmosphere. What I said was that it was not Bose-Einstein juggling wot causes ‘the notch’.
Now we have a story that my Bose-Einstein musings – in response to his odd narrative – influenced Judy to include Bose-Einstein statistics in a derivation of an analytical cloud nucleation formula. Now I don’t know much about cloud nucleation – but I doubt that there is a connection here.
It just seems so vanishingly unlikely a story that it is either a complete fabrication or totally loony tunes. I’m leaning to loony tunes at this stage.
While there are some that think that would have been good, the reality is that Germany was way ahead of the allies in rocket technology, and was very close to the US on Nuclear technology. Think about a world where Hitler had A-Bombs and the rockets to deliver them.
It was closer than you think.
The Germans in World War II were never close to getting a nuclear weapon. They knew the basic theory, but they hadn’t allocated nearly enough of their industrial resources to producing the fissionable material, or to doing the practical experimentation work, needed to develop a working atom bomb. By late 1944, the German’s complete lack of real progress in developing an atom bomb had been confirmed by a series of secret technical reconnaissance missions conducted against Germany by scientists working for the Manhattan Project, one of whom was the late Dr. Philip Morrison.
Close is a subjective measure. Had the US not entered the war, there is no telling how much longer it would have gone on. And even the Manhattan scientists acknowledge that within a year or 2 they would have had a working model. And a 1 or 2 year extension of the war without the US intervention is not unlikely.
Sorry Phil, but immediate post-war surveys of the German’s nuclear program in 1945 revealed they were nowhere close to acquiring the industrial capabilities and the detailed knowledge of chemical separation technologies needed to build a nuclear weapon.
Yes, philjordan, Germany was ahead in rocket science. But the theoretical physicist advising Hitler’s atomic bomb project, Carl von Weizsacker, did not understand nuclear stability nor nuclear energy.
To save the world from nuclear annihilation, the flawed Weizsacker nuclear binding energy equation was inserted in nuclear physics textbooks to replace Aston’s nuclear packing fraction after WWII.
Consensus science had long been a tool of totalitarian governments. It re-emerged, after WWII, as an indication of the real winner of WWII.
George Orwell reported warned us in the book he started to write in 1946 – “Nineteen Eighty-Four.”
Thanks to 2009 Climategate emails – and incredulous official responses – we now know Stalin was victorious in WWII. Information hidden from the public by a news black-out of CHAOS and FEAR of Earth’s destruction in Aug-Sept 1945 [1]
The UN was formed in Oct 1945 to take totalitarian control of science and society worldwide [2]
The primary goal was to save the world and it’s leaders from nuclear annihilation by forbidding public knowledge of the source of energy that destroyed Hiroshima [3].
References:
1. “Unreported CHAOS & FEAR of nuclear destruction in Aug 1945″:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/CHAOS_and_FEAR_August_1945.pdf
2. “Misinformation become consensus science in 1946″:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/WHY.pdf
3. “Solar energy,” Advances in Astronomy (submitted 1 Sept 2014): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Solar_Energy.pdf
Padbrit,
And your point is?
People die during wars. They die anyway, as far as I know.
You can’t bring them back to life. They’re dead. They don’t care any more.
Neither you nor any other Warmist can see into the future any better than I. The difference seems to be that not only do you think you can, you want to bend me to your will and go along with your deluded fantasy.
Sorry. Not interested. You live your life, I’ll live mine. Feel free to worry twice as hard if you like, on my behalf. I can relax, knowing that my share of worry in safe hands.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
What scientists tell us all today is really,
http://online.wsj.com/articles/humans-naturally-follow-crowd-behavior-1410543908
just Mad Crowd disease. Anyone with a brain will tell you.
Another instance of your smug squalid ignorant blundering “superiority” — to the extent anyone in the US was looking at WWI as a profitable activity, the “profit” was in staying out not in getting in. The US could have been truly neutral and insisted upon full trade with both sides. Going into the war was due to increasing outrage at the “unrestricted submarine warfare” (USW)(sinking and killing many neutrals trading with the UK) by the Germans that was swinging American opinion toward joining the Allies (as an “Associated Power”… we were never formally in an alliance). Without the German resumption of USW in early 1917, there is virtually no chance that the US would have joined the war. Making “profits” had nothing to do with it, since we could have achieved the best profits by forcing both sides to truly respect neutrality, which we could have done. Had the US not been strongly opposed to German war policies we could have made a highly “profitable” trade with both sides, and forced the Brits to acquiesce in neutral trade with Germany, at the risk of the UK pushing America closer to Germany with continued blockade. US policies were not all about “profit” at all.
The addition of the release of the “Zimmerman Telegraph” — Germany’s foreign minister unwisely making promises to Mexico about gains in southwestern US — added to public and political pressure to take on Germany, but it would not have happened without the German resumption of USW.
In 1917 German leadership took the gamble that they could defeat Britain and France with the aid of the tightened USW blockade before the EXPECTED entry (Germans knew the likely effects of USW on American opinion) of the US into the war could As usual, Padbrit, you have no idea what you are talking about. Not wrt history and not in your speculations about the future of CAGW and “our childrens’ children”….
[clarification: rather, it was not the expected entry of the US, per se, (which could be and was nearly immediate), but that German leaders thought they could win the war before enough US forces could be brought to bear in Europe to make a difference…. which was not an entirely unreasonable gamble, given that it would take more than a year by any estimate for the US to begin affecting ground combat on the western front with major numbers of troops.]
broken threading: this comment is ofc about WWI and the German resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, not about WWII
Padbrit, the Face of Addle.
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What a whiner. You would be speaking German right now, that is if they decided to tolerate your parents or grandparents, were it not for the good ole USA. We stepped in and fought a fight we didn’t have to and you are an inveterate ingrate.
yet the united nations fascists masquerading as saviours of the planet will make that death toll seem a drop in the ocean .
Unless a Higher Power intervenes, bit chilly.
Padbrit, you dropped your own penny, you are an unreasoning blinkered bigot. That’s all….
The thing I despise most about you anthropogenic global warming deniers is the fact that you are prepared to destroy your children’s, your children’s children futures for a profit today. What’s that joke? Oh yeah “what if global warming isn’t happening and we create a better future for nothing”
Nobody cares.
Paddy Boy, you need to get it through your thick liberal brain – there is no CO2 control knob or positive feedbacks and we are hoping for a little warming (1-1.5 degree/century) because some of us understand how important CO2 is to life. We need about 600 ppm to feed the poor. Troll.
Padbrit, you know nothing about “our” children’s future. You are simply a misty, mushy socialist longing to seize control of the world’s economy.
Must not be a very well known joke.
having been alerted to the definition of schizophrenia by a commentator on another blog ,and the resemblance to the behavioural traits of believers in cagw ,i have to thank you for your posts in this thread. quite possibly the strongest confirmation i have witnessed to date.
in case of doubt,the previous post is addressed to padsh*t
Apparently Padbrit and Michael been lauding the glories of socialism. They represent a cohort that are perhaps 5% of western populations – they are connected – sometimes powerful individuals – who have agenda of transforming societies and economies in some utopian (perhaps dystopian) fantasy. We know this because they say so – http://judithcurry.com/2014/03/21/growth-versus-sustainability/#comment-502318
Most people find these sorts of statements to be morally repugnant – they raise the specter of an unimaginable 21st century holocaust. It always puts me in mind of Hayek. ‘From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.’ They require catastrophe to justify societal transformation and so catastrophe becomes the core belief in some infinite regression. The science of uncertainty and complexity is anathema. They require complete faith and sonorous proclamations.
”The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
Emeritus Professor Daniel Botkin
They are noisy extremists who are little more than an annoyance. They impede progress on emissions because their goal is transformation of economies – which everyone rightly rejects – rather than practical and pragmatic multi-gas strategies and technological innovation consistent with critical economic and social development. They then whine the consumer society via their ipad.
They presumes that we want need and want western civilization to change. We don’t. We have achieved unprecedented health, education, peace and prosperity outcomes. We have a perfect system based on scientific enlightenment principles of democracy, the rule of law, principled and transparent governance and free markets.
‘Why do some countries experience civil war and others don’t? Is it to do with political systems, perhaps ethnic or religious tensions? Perhaps a more important question is what needs to be put in place so civil war does not happen in the first place?
According to the 2014 Index of Economic Freedom Australia rates third behind Hong Kong and Singapore. New Zealand is ranked at 5, Canada at 6 and Denmark rounds out the top 10. All of the countries in the top 10 are considered to be Free.’ http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/counterpoint/free-markets-and-civil-peace/5671116
The perfect society involves government at some 25% of GDP – giving optimum growth – personal freedoms, a transparent rule of law, a consensual social contract, efficient and transparent governance and practical things like balancing budgets and managing interest rates.
This is the perfect society and not the perfect world. The two cities – of man and God – are ever separate.
‘As I see that I have still to discuss the fit destinies of the two cities, the earthly and the heavenly, I must first explain, so far as the limits of this work allow me, the reasonings by which men have attempted to make for themselves a happiness in this unhappy life, in order that it may be evident, not only from divine authority, but also from such reasons as can be adduced to unbelievers, how the empty dreams of the philosophers differ from the hope which God gives to us, and from the substantial fulfillment of it which He will give us as our blessedness.’ St Augustine – The City of God
Nonetheless – the spread of scientific enlightenment – the pinnacle of the reasoning of men – very practically leading to maximum economic growth – is the sin qua non of the creation of a truly global civilization – a shining city of man – this century.
Well said.
Niall Ferguson elaborated on this theme in his book “Civilization: The West and the Rest”. There was also a video version of same, but I haven’t seen it. The book is excellent!
Justin
Willard:
Red Tail Ale… Hopland Brewery
They started brewing back in the Pleistocene when I went to work in the Steam Fields near Big Sulfur Creek.
Thanks, Howard. Here would be my second choice if I still drank beer:
http://www.unibroue.com/en/beers/15/product
My first choice would be my buddy’s stout.
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Sung to the tune of “Spam”, from Monty Python –
“Fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud . . . ”
You get the general idea. Subsequent verses, same as the first.
All together now, lads and lassies . . .
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
What a zoo this place is. I don’t see why anybody with anything useful to say would ever comment here. Presumably lurkers like me are the great majority of people attempting to read comments & maybe learn something; it’s usually not worth the effort.
Moderation isn’t that hard and comes down to three main principles:
– No personal comments about other posters.
– Nothing off-topic.
– No spam.
I wish JC would put something like that in place.
skiphil et alia, we have a true hermeneutically sealed Marxian here. No amount of argument will do anything. Work your fingers to the bone and whaddaya get–woo hoo!–bony fingers!
Ellison, What century were you born? Who uses the word “calumny” ?
You really have to go back and read how often you brought up Bose-Einstein statistics and Bose-Einstein condensate. You and your buddy the O-Man. The internet does not forget.
Web is still stinging from the shellacking he got by Vitaly and others who clearly are his superiors. Be careful when you begin licking your wounds.
Skip, you did a nice job of schooling the maroon on his total lack of understanding of certain historical facts. It’s rare that one runs into a Brit, who is such an ignorant ingrate. Maybe he is actually French ingrate.
I bet you would be interested in the American Generals program airing on Nat Geo channel tonight.
Can’t hide from it Rob Ellison. All that stuff you wrote about Bose-Einstein condensates are buried in these comments pages. Maybe you can beg to have them deleted.
markus > That’s no pause.
Yes that’s right Markus. The government climate establishment, hell-bent on proving CAGW at all costs, has foolishly admitted the Pause is real for no reason whatsoever.
Ellison, I think you have flipped your wig, showing pictures of little ponies, and referring to cartoon characters that exist inside your head.
WebHubTelescope: Ellison, I think you have flipped your wig, showing pictures of little ponies, and referring to cartoon characters that exist inside your head.
I liked the art work.
It ranks way above the inaccuracies and calumnies that you wrote about Khvorostyanov and Curry.
They laughably misapplied Bose-Einstein statistics to cloud nucleation.
WebHubTelescope: They laughably misapplied Bose-Einstein statistics to cloud nucleation.
If that had been all that you had written, there might not have been much of a problem, except that the “laughably” part was never justified, and the “misapplied” was confined to two short speculations that were never actually applied.
Are you forgetting what you wrote? Do you think “At this point, what does it matter?” or something along those lines?
Keep laughing, WHT.
What did I write? It doesn’t matter — I didn’t publish it.
I would be kicking myself if I had published a Bose-Einstein statistics theory like that. But I didn’t and so am OK.
He had his chance to discus his loony tunes quibble and squibbed it. He screwed the pooch and is reduced to blogospheric inanities and insane theories about the head Krackpot. Utterly pathetic. Go away webbly – no one cares – no one believes you. On top of this you are an irredeemable schmuck.
What did I write? It doesn’t matter — I didn’t publish it.
That’s hard to top. You have not published your csalt model either.
Made my point. I didn’t publish something as ridiculous as an IronSun-like model of cloud nucleation.
Re: McIntyre’s alleged errors
Kevin, Nick and others : if you’re sure of this, the obvious move would be to put them to him on CA.
You’re sure to get a hearing. (As you can see from CE, skeptic sites differ from believer sites in that deep dissent is accepted. Indeed treated as normal).
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Say WHUT?
Why would you expect a civil engineer such as Rob Ellison to understand anything about photonics?
Steven Schneider has eloquently described what he perceives and characterizes as the ethic double bind confronting scientists who wish to make the world a better place: A scientist’s ethical obligation to tell the whole truth with all the caveats conflicts with his efficacy as an advocate. However, as soon as a scientist abandons candor for efficacy, they open the door to charges from people like Steyn that they have misrepresented their science for political purposes. How much exaggeration (“scary stories”), distortion (“simplified, dramatic statements), omission (of doubts), and mis-direction can be tolerated before a scientists loses the right to sue his critics for defamation when his honesty is criticized? SInce Schneider holds ethical scientists to extremely high standards when communicating with peers, such defamation is especially painful for a scientist.
It’s not defamation if it’s true.
Taken literally, characterizing Mann as the “Jerry Sandusky” of climate science certainly could be defamation – even if Mann has intentional misrepresented of his science. The law may allow that remark to be taken figuratively.
Imagine calling someone the ‘Michael Mann’ of something or other. His type is a lot more prevalent than that of Sandusky.
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I guess we have no choice but to leave it to the courts to decide. I’ve got my stock of popcorn.
I knew one of these guys. He was good friends with my Aunt, and she went with him on this trip. He’s in some of the photographs with the Russian soldiers.
Always a difficult choice whether to believe some Noobs with ridiculous opinions on an interweb forum or real scientists like NASA. http://www.climatecentral.org/news/nasa-globe-warmest-august-18031
Judith Curry is not only a real scientist, she is honest.
Argument from “authority”.
with the level of homagicisation applied to the raw data ,i am truly surprised it was not the hottest day in earths history.
I think the only way to deal with you Flat Earthers is to laugh at you.
http://www.salon.com/2014/07/06/comedy_vs_anti_science_10_amazing_videos_that_show_how_humor_can_make_a_difference/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
Panbrit:
I have asked you two questions on this thread, which you have not answered.
Search for RickA – find them and please respond.
Can only find one. California had a two year drought, I will have to take your word for that. Did man cause it. I I doubt it.
This is the nugget right here from Bill Maher.
When appeal to authority fails, send in the looney leftwing clowns.
Maher is a racist misogynist jerk. If he is the authority for the resident clown, the alarmists are in big trouble.
climate science is made up by climate scientists ,on that point we do agree,now who is laughing at who ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAlMomLvu_4
Oh and here is the Mike Shermer at TED.
https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strange_things?language=en
Interesting no comments on this great TED talk. Which of course leads me to ask the simple question. if the Anthropogenic Global Warming Deniers are so confident in their science why do they not turn up at things like TED or climate conferences and present the evidence to their peers so they can be judged and discussed in open forum.
i believe some skeptics recently turned up at a university of bristol event hosting michael mann. i understand they were not allowed to ask any questions .you would have to ask mann and his censor in charge lewandowsky why.
I read the Watts Up summary of Steyn’s latest commentary on the lawsuit. Steyn mentioned something very significant, which I missed in quickly reading Mann’s latest brief. On page 21 of Mann’s brief, his lawyers drop their opposition to the jurisdiction of the Appeals Court. This is a huge change in strategy for Mann.
Mann’s lawyers claim that they did so because the appellate court asked for briefs addressing the merits and that could possibly be their actual reason for doing so. On the other hand, Mann’s lawyers invested a substantial amount of time and money in claiming that there was no jurisdiction in the appellate court. (Undoubtedly, in substantial measure, because they believed that the trial judge bought into their claim). Something significant is going on here, and I can’t say exactly what.
One potential explanation is that Williams has realized that the case is much more difficult than he thought and is bailing. Supporting that theory is the fact that his latest brief is not even posted on his website which is an indication that the firm is embarrassed by its work or doesn’t want to draw further attention to the case. There are other potential explanations for Williams conceding the appellate court’s jurisdiction (for instance, he could believe that the court will rule in his favor, and he merely wants to get an inevitable appeal on basic issues out of the way.)
Also, I would note that the Appeals Court is not bound by Williams’ concession. If it decides that there is no jurisdiction, it can decline to hear the case on its own motion.
JD
JD thanks for this analysis
Heh, Steyn’s a born litigator and Mann is not.
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“One potential explanation is that Williams has realized that the case is much more difficult than he thought and is bailing.”
Yes, it could be that it’s dawning on them that the little round bald one has not been exonerated by 47 investigations, and he is not a Nobel Laureate, and they can’t get away with submitting numerous lies to courts, cause McIntyre is watching them.
JD Ohio I am a bit confused about a portion of your comment:
Are you saying the court will NOT rule in his favor, so he is preparing grounds for his appeal? Or that if the court rules IN his favor, by dropping the jurisdiction portion of the brief, he removes an avenue of appeal to the defendants?
Thanks, and as Dr. Curry said, many thanks for your analysis.
No, that is not what he is saying. The defendants are appealing the non-dismissal of the case. If they win, the lawsuit against most of them is over (all except Steyn). If Mann wins this appeal, the case goes to discovery and then on to the actual trial.
The part about jurisdiction is Mann saying the Appeals court does not have the ability to even hear this appeal from the defendants, which if true would mean he wins the appeal and the trial goes on. To remove the jurisdictional challenge means they are going to allow the Appeals court to decide the matter (which you basically would only do if you think you are going to win, or want to quickly drop the case because you figured out it is going nowhere fast and want an easy out).
I think Anders has finally figured out that his second bullet point depends upon the Hockey Stick, which is fraudulent. And the rest depend upon #2.
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Anthropogenic Global Warming Denier James Delingpole gets owned by a scientist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuQLvK6kxeU
Padbrit, are you one of James’s watermelons by any chance?
The thing I like most about the Hockey Stick graph is that the temperature rise curve follows exactly the moment man started digging up and burning fossil fuels, known colloquially as the “The Industrial Revolution”. All that carbon that had been captured during the carboniferous period that was absent in the carbon cycle being burnt and reintroduced to the atmosphere after 350 million years. Current CO2 levels are 400 ppm +. Wow look at all these graphs, CO2 levels rising, temperatures rising. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=CO2+levels&num=100&newwindow=1&safe=off&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=8DUlVP36FqbnygOX0oHgDw&ved=0CDkQsAQ&biw=1193&bih=627
Oh did I mention that I am an atheist and Jesus is a character in a work of fiction called The Bible? And no the Earth isn’t 6000 years old and no dinosaurs did not live with Adam and Eve.