Monday
Nov082010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Mann cannot live by science alone
Nov 8, 2010 Climate: Mann Michael Mann is rapidly developing a full-time career as a media personality. After the WaPo article, the BAS article and the Britannia Blog interview comes an appearance at the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing meeting.
After running through the evidence supporting human-caused climate change, Mann concluded that “there’s not just a hockey stick — there’s a hockey league.” Some scientific uncertainties do remain about climate change, such as the precise effects of clouds in a changing climate. “There are legitimate uncertainties,” Mann said, “but unfortunately the public discourse right now is so far from scientific discourse.”
Reader Comments (60)
My oh my, he really is sputtering with incandescent rage at the moment. I wonder if its the thought of the new balance of power in Congress?
Mann replied simply: “We have to make it clear that the ice sheets are not Republican or Democrat. They don’t have an agenda as they disappear.”
Yep, another article from him with lots of science included....remind me guys, what is Mann's expertise in, is it ice sheets or tree rings?
The headless Chicken Little is now rushing round in ever-decreasing circles.
Let's hope he'll disappear soon up his own rhetoric.
Clearly frustrated, Mann told the science reporters about how he saw the mainstream media as having abandoned their critical faculties in reporting the East Anglia story.
Well that's something we can all agree on then.
Desperate times call for desperate measures
He He !!!!
Says it all really. Pure unadulterated BS.
Mann is quoted above as saying:
"but unfortunately the public discourse right now is so far from scientific discourse.”
Isn't he one of those, along with others, who conspired to have editors of scientific journals sacked/removed because they were writing/publishing articles which questioned his pseudo scientific claims?
Peter Walsh
A problem with American science and ours is that the way to get fame and fortune is to be early in a bandwagon and to milk it by showmanship. Mann is one of the fall guys because he is shown up for having claimed fake relationships. So, he's bleating as the grants dry up. Others like Judith Curry who didn't go down that track are filling the gap with genuine scientific leadership.
The problem with the science though is far more basic: at the heart of the models is a relationship which claims that when you pollute thick clouds, the albedo always increases, the so-called 'cloud albedo effect' cooling, nearly half claimed median GHG-AGW in AR4.
The relationship is entirely wrong because despite coming from Sagan, it assumes constant Mie asymmetry factor when it's obvious this is not the case [Mie calculated it for a plane wave only] and just diffuse scattering in clouds. As you get 'cloud albedo effect' heating from the second process [direct backscattering at the upper cloud boundary which is greater for larger droplet size], some maybe all recent warming has been from a process other than CO2-AGW.
AR4's predictions of CO2-AGW are high by at least a factor of three.
Some hilarious posts at WUWT today on the new "Climate Inqisition"........
......NOBODY expects the Climate Inquisition!
I almost can't believe he made that polar bear comment.
I can kinda understand a half-witted lazy journo spouting such emotive drivel; but the AGW scientific poster boy?
To me, and hopefully many others, such a statement shows just how far he's strayed from science into activism.
I wonder why Mann seems to restrict his interviews to the broadly sympathetic staged situations.
Is it that he is such a poor public speaker or debater that he cannot be let loose into a more open and dynamic environment. I can understand that Phil Jones keeps his head down... he is clearly ill-suited to the world outside of academe, but why should MM be so averse to genuine engagement with his critics? There are only a very few live appearances of his that I can find on youtube and they too are highly structured.
He is clearly a smart guy..at least in his own estimatiom. He is not short of opinions and he has been around long enough and in an important enough position to have an intimate knowledge of all the major controversies. Surely he could swat away all criticisms in an extended interview with a serious well-briefed interviewer? Somebody like the American equivalent of Humphrys. Paxman or Neill.
So why does he limit himself to anodyne interviews preaching largely to the converted? He seems to have nothing to gain. True believers will stay true believers ...one or two may read the articles and see the shallowness of his arguments and be turned away. The best he can hope for is to be no worse off than he was before.
I pondered a while back about how the warmists were completely unable to deal with the Climategate revelations for weeks..and that their eventual response was pretty pathetic. It seems that they have learnt nothing from that sorry episode about how to convey their message.
Stuck into the time warp of believing that all their woes are due to 'Big Oil funded denialism by scientifically illiterate shills who wish to condemn their grandchildren to the fiery furnace' they sound like the dying embers of the Soviet Empire..blaming all their self-generated ills on the running dogs of capitalism and the evils of the West. A sure sign that they are losing the war.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEZHZHNByCs
The journalist, Alexandra Witze, seems to be much better at reading people than at reporting on science as such. If you leave out the tiresome story about the NAS having confirmed the science of the hockey stick etc, it is actually a good personality study of Mann, as she seemed to understand very well what he was doing with the theatrics of his story about his daughter and polar bears.
I think it is a mistake to read too deeply into Mann's reasons for what he has been writing and saying recently. He is a person far more driven by emotions than by logical analysis - much less by any logical analysis of whether he should be talking so much or not at this point. I think the best way to understand him is to see him as a more vicious version of Seinfeld's George Constanza who happened to get into a career in science - something for which he is painfully unsuited, intellectually and emotionally. The real question is why he thought he should get into an academic career in the first place.
Think of the polar bears!
Think of the children!
Think of the polar bears EATING the children!
And it's all YOUR fault!
@ Latimer
Agree with all that. For me, the alarm bells about CAGW started flashing early on, when it became clear the warmists were trying to close down any discussion - before it started - by falsely claiming the debate had already happened, you missed it, and oh, by the way, the warmists had won.
They then went on to dehumanising and demonising their opponents as cranks and deniers. They arrived, as the left always does, at their position today, which is that deniers are eternal liars and criminals against humanity who deserve to be killed.
The initial basis of my suspicions was this dishonest meta-debate. One side has chosen to argue on terms that are not about the science at all. Warmists are abusing science as an argument from authority (a meta-argument in itself) that they can cosh you with, in a way they never could when they were arguing for socialism versus capitalism. It was never possible to say "You are simply not allowed to disagree with Tony Benn" to win an argument, but for a time there, it looked like if they replaced Benn's name with Mann's, they could get away with doing so.
Not all lefties are that obnoxious, of course. There are lots who've arrived honestly and sincerely at their views. I believe Steve McIntyre is a lefty. I suspect, though, that this meta-argument is the underlying reason "why Mann seems to restrict his interviews to the broadly sympathetic staged situations". I reckon activists like Mann recognise that debating sceptics honestly in front of an unaligned audience is a lose-lose for them. They either lose the debate on the science, which is bad, or if they win it, they gain nothing because their best arguments aren't about science anyway. Their best argument is "I hate you".
So what's to gain, exactly? Mann's public forays are intended to energise the useful idiots and to big himself up, but I see no other value in them to his side.
It's fully paid up Climate Agenda Mann.
You'll never break his resolve, you know - like others of his ilk, he is programmed with a Bilderberg implant somewhere beneath his skin. Our mission, should we accept it, is to find it, and rip the bugger out!
Nov 8, 2010 at 10:06 AM | Paul Boyce
You've just given Frannie and her 10:10 crew an idea for their next video.....
I laughed out loud at the bit in that WUWT link where the ecofascists said they were going to start sending "a handbook on the human causes of climate change...to U.S. high schools".
Isn't that roughly what the Gideons do with hotels?
"After running through the evidence supporting human-caused climate change"
I wonder if it's worth asking the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing for a copy of this "evidence" they find so convincing.
I suppose the public discourse does not discuss getting journal editors fired or refusing to publish in those journals, it does not wish to meet it's opponents down a dark alley and does not involve itself in rubbishing peoples qualifications.
I agree with Mann.
So not just a Hockey Team, but a Hockey League. That sound like a competition. It about what Team get's promotion, who can earn the biggest salary, who gets to where the big money is made, who can get one over the competitors, who can get the most fans and followers and adulation, who can get the newspaper coverage, who can become a celebrity, who can get away with a foul when the ref's not looking, but cry foul when they're losing etc.
Yeah, we saw that in all their disgusting, degraded and sordid details in the Climategate emails. Mann hasn't changed a bit. What you read is what you get. Squirts like Mann make a right fool of themselves by whingeing on like this. What a cry baby! He's behaving like a petulant, immature footballer, not as a scientist worthy of the name. He is the very enemy of science.
"unfortunately the public discourse right now is so far from scientific discourse". Indeed, but let's not forget that it was Mann who corrupted the scientific discourse, never mind the public discourse of the same. Whatever Mann in his delusions might think, I'm sure that when the history of science is written up in fifty years time, Mann's corruptions will go down as one of the worst atrocities in the history of modern science, whereas the reputations of the defenders of proper method and accountability in science are secure.
In interview with Thomas Fuller, Judith curry talking about Mann "Surely there have been OTHER papers published by University of Virginia faculty members that have been incorrect or haven’t stood the test of time." (my emphasis). What is she saying here: that Manns work hasn't? It certainly sounds like that and if so, what has caused her to reach that conclusion for Mann has certainly never bowed to more recent papers correcting his findings. He could of course know that he is wrong but continues to protect his work, not by building on it with additional scientific research but by claiming a conspiracy against him by those (big fossil fuel) who do not accept it. If, as Dr. Curry seems to suggest, the work is out of date, Mann's continuing support for it looks odd in the extreme, even illogical. If it is flawed, then that continued support looks furtive and if so, what could Mann be hiding?
Rustum Roy, ironically from Penn State University suggests a possibility in this clip at 3:30 mins in -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGT0FO0-Ejo
He is followed by Leon Kamin, psychologist, on the same theme.
Nov 8, 2010 at 10:17 AM | Justice4Rinka
Nice observation!
And as to your later post, has anyone ever opened a Gideons Bible in a hotel?
I self snipped my next line but beer and mat were in the sentence!
What do the greenhouse gases put into the atmosphere have to do with Mann's work?
98.75% of Mann's 2000 year reconstruction occurs in a period in which humans put no greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
In the remaining small 0.25% of the period, when man actually put his contribution of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere - data actually 'diverges' from the instrumental series, which going by the IPCC, is caused by the greenhouse gases, showing the opposite of the overwhelming consensus.
(In the case of Mann's own work, it is caused by construction activities - certainly man-made warming indeed)
Advice for any AGW zealots feeling a bit down on their luck:
Avoid public debates - your side generally (or is it always?) loses them.
Avoid sharing platforms with knowledgeable critics - you will only have bluster to fall back on.
Only talk science with non-scientists - with real scientists, talk conspiracy, funding, libel, politics - better still, don't talk at all, because, whisper it, 'computer models/PCA/lost data/climate cabals/emotive language/weak conjectures' don't impress them much.
Avoid interviews with neutral but bright, or hostile (any IQ), journalists - they will not let you paint the picture you have in your mind, far less publish it.
What can you do?
You have to keep polishing up your old stuff - seeking the advice of PR folks to include whatever seems to spin well. They are your friends. At least in the short term.
Seek sympathetic outlets and spray them with your words - someone somewhere will be grateful for a filler, and many will be glad to publish reinforcements of their own strongly held views.
Form associations to 'fight back', or some such grandiosity - your faithful followers just need to know you are still around and 'leading from the front'. They don't need substance, just proof of life. Press releases go a long way in that respect.
Gather Straw Men - you can't have too many of them. They are your friends. At least in the short term.
Mentally prepare by envisioning yourself as a hero, a fighter for the truth, a crusader for humanity assailed on all sides by the forces of darkness. This will take a lot of effort, and a lot of practice - but you need firmly-held, supportive and flattering delusions to help you keep going with that other - how shall we put it? - less noble stuff.
Latimer Alder wrote:
Perhaps because he has never learned the art of actually defending his claims. IOW, Mann is a bully who is only comfortable within the confines of, well, a bully pulpit ;-)
Mann was given a golden opportunity back in July to reach an audience at least as large as that of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He initially ignored The Daily Caller's Scott Ott's requests for an interview, then sent Ott an E-mail with a link to:
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/details/michael-mann-interview-penn-state-final-report/
and a few paragraphs from the transcript.
Ott then sent some politely worded follow-up questions, which Mann declined to answer. Ott decided to give him a second chance - and was rewarded with an autoresponse.
http://hro001.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/the-surprisingly-reticent-michael-mann/
I think Mann's PR antics have a hidden agenda. I think he is attempting to influence the pool of future jurors.
John asks above:
Gavin ponders in his Realclimate post
Look at the Mannian narrative over the years - he is a crusader, lone, singled out, and attacked incessantly because of the damage he has wrought on the entire fossil fuel/diesel industry, losing a marriage in the process, harassed and hounded by Congressional hearings, subpeonas and requests for data. But he still survives...He fights on, his 'jaw clenched', 'frustrated', but yet 'keenly aware of the political import of every word', the fate of the polar bears weighing heavily in the back of his mind even as he protects his favorite piece of 'sports equipment'.
Gavin Schmidt potrays Roger Pielke Jr and Judith Curry as crackpots because of the narrative they seek to construct. What does he think of Michael Mann and the narrative that has been constructed around him over the years?
People!
Are we ignoring the possibilities offered by this particular venue in connection with a particular aspect of Mann's evident skills?
"After the WaPo article, the BAS article and the Britannia Blog interview comes an appearance at the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing meeting."
I'm certain that few interested in "Science Writing" can match Mann's talent for stringing cut-and-pastes together. Maybe he might have explained to them how easy it is to set these up with function keys in combination with shift, CTRL, ALT, FN and so forth such that a simple combination of keys can produce entire paragraphs of carefully vetted text which might have some wild connection with the subject at hand.
It does look as if Mikey is losing it. Knowing that some of the patrons of this blog are learned in the detection of deteriorating mental states from the subject's murmurings, perhaps they could share their observations in this regard.
j ferguson
Knowing that some of the patrons of this blog are learned in the detection of deteriorating mental states from the subject's murmurings, perhaps they could share their observations in this regard.
It would be best to leave this subject alone. Clearly he is under great stress and that does bad things to some people. We all have "issues" to some degree and it is all relative. Also clearly, he behavior is counter productive and will only worsen the pressures he is under.
The Greeks had a saying, often attributed to Euripides:
Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.
I think it is best to watch the play play out. It will soon be over.
Nov 8, 2010 at 11:51 AM | Unregistered CommenterShub
Shub, better than any comment that I have posted so I am now going to sit back and watch you rip his "cut and paste" to bits.
I admit to frustration when it comes to Mann!
In my line of work he would be referred to as...........
lol, self snip or it would be linked to some Latin phrase!
Have fun guys....bed time here in China...land of pollution my ass!
simpleseekeraftertruth (Nov 8, 2010 at 11:41 AM)
"Mann has certainly never bowed to more recent papers correcting his findings."
Well, his newer reconstructions use different techniques, and consider (to some extent, at least) the effect of individual proxy series on the result. So I would conclude that he has accepted that the methodology of the original 1998 paper was flawed.
I don't think I've ever seen him acknowledge that explicitly in print, though.
@shub
'Gavin Schmidt potrays Roger Pielke Jr and Judith Curry as crackpots because of the narrative they seek to construct. What does he think of Michael Mann and the narrative that has been constructed around him over the years?'
I think you'll find that Gav was a co-designer, project manager and enforcer for large chunks of it. I doubt if he'll be inclined to criticise his own work. And it wouldn't be in keeping with his courteous, even-handed and persuasive persona.
Re Latimer
Any idea why this is? I'm not an academic, but I thought part of academic life was to lecture and debate with students, or peers at conferences. Other scientists in the climate debate seem far better at public speaking. Schmidt's debate skills (or lack of) I can understand given he works in an office rather than a university, but shouldn't a professor at a uni be better at it? I wonder who gave them PR advice, or whether some of their natural personalities just come through when they're pressured and they ignore that advice.
Hi Atomic!
I have a few suggestions, but no evidence for any. Perhaps the truth lies in some combination...
1. Not all professors have undergraduate teaching duties - at least in UK. Tow of my old chums are professors (in fields unrelated to this debate) and the lowest level they get down to is DPhil supervision. And it would be a brave young climatologist indeed who had the effrontery to question Mann or Schmidt too closely. Career suicide lies over that particular cliff.
2. Climatology is a small field and the Hockey Team are the heroes and elder statesman. They also have considerable powers of patronage and advancement. I guess that they are almost always the keynote speakers at conferences and make sure that they get an easy ride. See 1. above.
3. The dreadful example of Gordon Brown and Gillian Duffy show the perils of how an unscripted public encounter can easily lead to downfall...especially when your case is already weak and your guarantee of hushed respect to your utterings has long expired. Perhaps that's why 'St Al' Gore has disappeared from public view too.
I occasionally see PR guru Max Clifford in the local supermarket. Should I alert him to a vacancy at Penn State?
Best wishes....keep those locks flowing!
"Some scientific uncertainties do remain about climate change, such as the precise effects of clouds in a changing climate."
How about in a stable weather pattern. Can you (Dr. Mann) show me a set of calculations that would specify the effects of any given amount of coverage or cloud pattern over say the North America?
Just curious... It must be simple really compared to pesky climate calculations...
@HaroldW "I don't think I've ever seen him acknowledge that explicitly in print, though."
He continues to defend his work, not by bringing anything new, work or otherwise, to the discussion. His argument relies on conspiracy motivated by money, not facts. This does not further the argument about quality of his research but only highlights the fact that it is research into a controversial subject made controversial by the lack of evidence that is not in dispute.
As Dr. Curry has pointed out, the rise of Mann is surprising. I agree with her but specifically that he emerged with the right answer at the right time for the IPCC agenda. Possibly a coincidence? Hal Lewis stated "Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudo-scientific fraud I have seen in my long life". If Lewis is right, what would the actions of Mann be that are different from what we observe of him now?
Incorrect science discoveries can take years to disprove. In the case of Piltdown Man, the hoax continued, not because the evidence was strong but because people wanted to believe it (mankind was originally English). Those who did not go along with that were considered in the same way as sceptics on the AGW topic, and I suspect on the same reasoning although it is Green and not English superiority in this case.
@Atomic Hairdryer
I remember that someone in a blog - not sure if at CA, the Blackboard, the Air Vent - managed to find examples of students evaluating Mann's performance as a lecturer - I think from his time in Virginia. My recollection is that they were overwhelmingly negative, as in "he seems to be talking to himself" and "he just assumes that everyone already understands the statistics" etc etc (FWIW). Besides, he was catapulted into the IPCC and fame due to the hockey stick only - I don't think that any lack of lecturing skills would have had any importance in that process.
Sorry, Mike - I've stopped believing you. Try again after you repair your shredded reputation.
Good to note how united the rest of the Hockey Team are, in their deafening support for the self proclaimed Team Captain.
I, for one, do not "warm" to is personality, and much like Pachauri, the more he says, the less credible he becomes. So I hope he keeps the "science" in the media.
Does anyone know about this doubt he expresses about the effect of clouds? Is he developing an exit strategy for himself?
Does anyone know about this doubt he expresses about the effect of clouds? Is he developing an exit strategy for himself?
Perhaps its just vibes, something in the ether, perhaps something more, but I am intrigued by the current comment on Nigels Calder's blog
'Im all too aware of the sluggish rate of new posts recently. That’s because of other fascinating and urgent work that I hope you’ll all hear about before too long.'
This of course, could mean anything, but Calder and Svensmark co-authored Chilling Stars, reviewed here
http://www.londonbookreview.com/lbr0037.html
And the full Cloud Experiment at CERN has been running for quite a while...
Further to the above, I have just now noticed Calder's comment below his intriguing current blog post.
Max_b says:
02/11/2010 at 12:57
I hope it’s summat to do with Svensmark’s hypothesis…
Reply
calderup says:
03/11/2010 at 20:53
Thanks, Max. Yes it is.
Nigel
Reply
Max_b says:
04/11/2010 at 18:11
My appetite has been well and truely whetted…
I have just looked up Svensmarks Theory on Wikipedia.
Wiki does not entirely support Svensmark
I checked the hstory of the article and the usual suspects, including WM Connelly are all over it.
Should this be used as evidence in favour of Svensmark
Interesting that the communications of the team and supporters are increasing at a similar rate to the threats of legal action. Lots of worried people.
BTW Is someone who loses data on which energy policies are decided, refuses to reveal code and is involved in at least one dubious publication really suited to a life of academia?
Now I understand why the team came to Portugal!
http://ecotretas.blogspot.com/2010/10/climategate-secret-meeting_22.html
Here we're one of the best countries in the World in roller hockey!
Ecotretas
G Watkins
Who else would employ such an idiot? Only a political or PR outfit, and AGW needs both to survive.
The politicians in the US are waking up, so its time to blitz the PR
Golf Charley
It was digging below the surface of Wikipedia's article on Svensmark that alerted me to the liability to villainous bias of both Wikipedia and those who "faulted" Svensmark, that WP quoted.
One valuable lesson Climate Fraud has taught me is how villains operate - always they seem to try to use pre-emptive strikes to accuse another... of their own sins. NEVER BELIEVE ACCUSATIONS without checking in the mirror.
Thus I have to admit that Mann himself has had a positive function for me, in goading me to consider the real wisdom of the universe - even though, at present, he reminds me of nobody so much as Wormtail (Harry Potter's sneak betrayer).
However, though his shrieking accusations convince me of his own guilt, I don't want to forget he is still a fall guy for more exalted and more hidden pushers of the original fraud - Maurice Strong, Al Gore, etc.
Lucy Skywalker
Thank you for your response. I have read all the Harry Potter books! There is a thread on WUWT where the host is urging people not to view malice as the original objective (I have paraphrased)
To summarise my career, I am a trouble shooter, with an engineering bias. Find out what has gone wrong, fix it, try and prevent it happening again.
All too often human error is the problem. The problem is exacerbated when the human who caused the error then tries to cover up the problem, and has to resort to ever increasing amounts of deviousness to try and escape blame.
The plotline of "Fawlty Towers" almost always followed this line, with Basil simply making everything worse, with everything he did, to cover up some minor mistake.
So I hold with the basic theory, that if in doubt between "cock up" or "conspiracy", assume "cock up" first. In the instance of AGW, what I see is cock up, but a subsequent conspiracy to cover it up.
Please note that the term cock up comes from the brewing industry, to mean a mistake, and has no sexual innuendo
alexandra witze - didn't u feel any embarrassment writing the following?
"I’ve seen Mann in this frame of mind before; several years ago he testified in front of some of his staunchest critics at a National Academy of Sciences panel set up to review the hockey stick work. The jaw I saw clenched back then seemed not to have loosened, even when the audience was a group of friendly journalists rather than aggressive panel questioners"
more laughs in here:
8 Nov: MNSBC Cosmiclog: Alan Boyle: Life after Climategate
(Michael) Mann praised the American Geophysical Union for setting up a "rapid response task force" to parry efforts aimed at discrediting climate scientists. He said journalists also should exercise their traditional role as a "critical and independent arbiter" of the policy debate, particularly in the midst of "politically motivated inquiries that we haven't seen in this country since the 1950s."...
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/08/5426675-life-after-climategate
oh dear!
8 Nov: AGU: Inaccurate news reports misrepresent a climate-science initiative of the American Geophysical Union
An article appearing in the Los Angeles Times, and then picked up by media outlets far and wide, misrepresents the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and a climate science project the AGU is about to relaunch. The project, called Climate Q&A Service, aims simply to provide accurate scientific answers to questions from journalists about climate science.
“In contrast to what has been reported in the LA Times and elsewhere, there is no campaign by AGU against climate skeptics or congressional conservatives,” says Christine McEntee, Executive Director and CEO of the American Geophysical Union....
http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2010/2010-37.shtml
7 Nov: NYT Dot Earth: Andrew C. Revkin: Scientists Join Forces in a Hostile Climate
The news was first reported by Neela Banerjee of the Los Angeles Times (a former colleague)…
This came up when I taught a graduate seminar at Bard College on communication and environmental policy in 2007, the year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change rolled out its fourth report.
I divided the class into two groups. One had to defend the presentation style of Susan Solomon, the co-leader of the climate panel’s science report team. Solomon rebuffed reporters trying to get her to interpret the findings and said her job was to lay out the science, not discuss how to respond. The other group defended James Hansen, the NASA climatologist who has become a passionate advocate for a quick end to coal combustion…
If a scientist wants to join the policy fray and retain credibility, a vital step is to distinguish between assertions supported by data and those framed by personal values.
Nobody explained this better than Stephen H. Schneider of Stanford University, who passed away this year after decades of work on climate science, communication and policy…
There’ll be more from my Schneider files on uncertainty and climate down the line.
[*The post has been corrected to reflect that Scott Mandia teaches at Suffolk County Community College, not Stony Brook University. It has also been updated to clarify that the "rapid response" team is separate from the American Geophysical Union's project; the team is being organized by Mandia, Abraham and colleagues.]
[3:13 p.m. | Updated * I intended to convey irony with the term "Schneidergate," in that these e-mails are the antithesis of what anyone searching for clues to a climate conspiracy would want. Steve would have chuckled (here are his thoughts on "Climategate"), but some readers have complained, so I'll be dropping that term going forward.]
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/scientists-join-forces-in-a-hostile-climate/?partner=rss&emc=rss
andy drops "schneidergate" in a heartbeat, with no complaint in the "published" comments that i can see, yet "deniers" continues to be used by the faithful in virtually all their comments.
The good news is that in a few years we will all be saying "Mike Mann, who???"
He is history in the making. Watch it and remember. And unlike Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, he will not be remembered 50 years from now. Already how many of you can tell me who was Martin Fleischmann or Stanley Pons? Surely there are some who know because I am referring to 1989. But 30 more years from now?
The man is a jerk, pure and simple. I am waiting for Darryl Issa to take him apart, which will happen.
Don P
Seems to me that Fleischmann and Pons were into cold things. Did I miss something here?