Friday
Jul302010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Mann vents
Jul 30, 2010 Climate: MWP Climate: Mann Michael Mann has a letter in the Star-Tribune mainly discussing his conduct over the Soon and Baliunas affair and the use of the word "denier".
Read it here.
Reader Comments (58)
Can we now call this "Tabloid Science"?
Sometimes less is more, and I think Mann is doing himself a disservice by an article like this.
An article without class...
Interesting that he claims the deleted emails charge is cleared. Yet none of the inquiries have addressed that point explicitly, and the 6 months statute of limitations only saved them in the UK.
This is a classic: "Readers interested in the truth behind the science, rather than the falsehoods and smears perpetuated by people like Havanac, should consult the scientist-run website realclimate.org" Hmmm.... it is clear that they believe they are the owners of Climate Science. And as he states, a denier is anyone who disagrees with the obvious truth of "their science".
So when you attack "their science" you are attacking them - nice to see the persecution complex is developing nicely...
That Mann has no class,,, a short but very illuminating article. It is why "their science" must always be challenged.
"(...) this fossil-fuel-industry-funded study was heavily criticized by a large number of other scientists."
Perhaps Michael could be more specific and tell us which member(s) of the fossil fuel industry funded Soon's study and to the tune of how much, also give a list of the names of the the large number of other scientists who heavily criticised the study.
Mann is consistently deceptive. He has not faced one critical review of his work or his role in covering up the well established failures of his work.
He has been given softball forum after forum where he gets to pose as an aggrieved party. It is long past time for him to face a critical, forceful review of his work and methods.
Since Mann helps run Real Climate, it is circular and sort of creepy that he refers people there to get the truth.
His insistence that Soon and Baliunas (2003) was "deeply flawed" because it "claimed that recent warming is not unusual" says it all.
My reading of the reports of that paper is that it was a review of numerous other papers and the authors came to the conclusion that they did quite legitimately based on the research they carried out.
Mann trots out the hoary old canard that it was sponsored by the fossil-fuel industry and therefore must have been flawed. Those of us who have long been cynical of the science underpinning AGW only have their prejudices confirmed when the reaction of scientists in the relevant discipline is to go into a huff when other scientists take a differing view. If they only engaged with their critics at the scientific level the rights and wrongs of climate change (not to mention the 'ifs', 'buts, and 'maybes') could be properly considered.
A quick of CRU website shows that support includes amongst others the following fossil fuel and energy companies:
British Petroleum
Central Electricity Generating Board
Eastern Electricity
Irish Electricity Supply Board
National Power
Royal Society
Shell
Sultanate of Oman (major oil producer)
UK Nirex Ltd
Oh, and somehow the following organisations repsonsible for "grey" reports can also summon the resources to fund CRU as well:
Greenpeace International
World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF)
So that's all ok then - when funding CRU its ok, when (allegedly) funding non-AGW views it becomes the "fossil-fuel funded denial machine". If Mann believes in that then he needs to get out more. Interestingly the (then) private Climategate emails show similar phrases - brderline paranoia or fixation? McCarthyism springs to mind.
Mann by his actions has damaged his public reputation, and he knows there is very little he can do to recover it.
A scientist at UEA sends e mails to fellow scientists at UEA and across the water and including Mann, asking them all to delete certain other e-mails.
There is no record of any responses refusing this request because it would be unethical.
We are expected to believe that no e-mails were deleted.
Fine, just another example of Mannian logic.
Is it just me who gets the impression that Michael's first, and possibly only, comic was Pravda?
It's not just his drab and cheerless literary monotone nor his repetitious use of stock party phrases, it's his choice of words, reminiscent of the Cold War, that do it for me!
He reminds of the typing exercise.
"Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party"
I wouldn't want to go to any of his parties.
"Mann by his actions has damaged his public reputation, and he knows there is very little he can do to recover it."
I don't think he does, he's a legend in his own mind.
I think Mann is 100% convinced about his science and his own special status within the climate science community. In his mind everything he says is true, I don't think its an act. He's seriously deluded, his psychosis should be obvious to everyone including his colleagues and there's some hint of this in the CRU emails.
I think Mann considers his statistical techniques to be completely reasonable, after all his techniques show the results he expected when 'traditional' techniques 'failed', that's a vindication of his method in his mind.
It is also apparent that Mann is the schoolyard bully, while most of the other participants are a bit wet he's very aggressive & intolerant of any dissent.
Of course Mann's statements all sound the same, "big-oil funded", "industry-funded", "deniers", "false allegations". "misinformation" etc, etc. There's never anything real and factual from man, just smoke and mirrors, fortunately his skill in this area is limited, he loves his own words but they only convince the weak minded.
Mad Mann has really put his foot into it this time. He uses the word "false" or "falsehoods" seven times and never once shows how. People see that. He sounds like a politician caught in bed with another man's (no-pun) wife.
Very stupid move on his part. But he is clearly losing it. This is a Mann (a pun) under great stress.
Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius!"
Jaffa
If you read the ClimateGate emails, you'd see that the others in the team were aware of Mann being difficult to have a reasonable argument with.
More or less, they said flat out that his Hockestick didn't really hold water
Has Michael Mann ever testified "under oath" that he never deleted any of the subject Climategate e-mails? Did the Penn State Inquiry examine Mann's computer versus the master server to see if any of the subject Climategate e-mails were deleted on Mann's computer?
P.S. Yesterday was my birthday. My wife presented me with a copy of HSI.
DrCrinum:
Happy birthday, and no, no he's escaped any requirement to testify under oath unless the congressional inquiry counted. That may yet to come though. Penn State inquiry seemed to consist of asking him if he was a naughty boy and accepting his response. Bit like the inquiries we've had over here in that respect.
Happy Birthday DrCrinum :)
Royfomr
I really like the "Pravda was a comic" idea!
Grrrrrrrats
Btw Thinking Scientist I need to print off your post about funding for CRU :)
Dung:
Royal society is of course NOT an evil fossil fuel company - my mistake when editing. They should have been on the second part of my list. The list came from CRU at:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/
It inlcudes nice little photos of the several well known "climate scientists" and of course Hubert Lamb as well.
"Mann by his actions has damaged his public reputation, and he knows there is very little he can do to recover it."
One of my biggest issues is the deafening silence from the majority of very good scientists in the climate field. They may not be dendroclimatologists (though they could spend about 2 hours learning everything useful about the field) but people like Mann are the public face of the entire field. Going from his science and his public persona, he isn't the most difficult person to challenge, especially from someone is well respected in the field. The whole field, and science in general, is being dragged into the gutter by politics and activists when there are still some useful bits to keep after the whole AGW stuff is pulled out.
Dr. Mann has forever tarnished my PSU science degree. Citing exoneration by an investigation by PSU is the height of hubris, apparently something he has in abundance. Shame on him. (His true calling may be as a carnival barker, something I did when in high school.) Many alums will continue to deny donations until he is dismissed. Count me in that number.
In the absence of the Bish, welcome to the blog dfbaskwill :)
IF you have posted before then pls accept my apologies for being out of date (yet again hehe)
As he demonstrated previously with his response to Lawrence Solomon, Mann's worst enemy is himself. In basketball, the playground term for a player whose skills are so bad he need not be 'checked' (i.e. defended) is a "self-check". Michael Mann is a self-check. It would go a long way toward sinking the alarmist hype machine if we could get Mann to publish a weekly column.
In terms of getting some kind of resolution to the scientific arguments I have long thought that getting both sides into the same room and letting them sort it out, is the only solution. Fred Pearce said the same at the Guardian debate.
However at the so called debates that we see (like the Guardian one) everything is too formal, nobody gets to say all that they want and nothing gets solved.
I would like to suggest some ideas and I would be prepared to help fund them :)
1) Create a new blog (and find a good name for it).
2) Only those who register and who are accepted can post.
3) Initially the invites would be to Mann, McIntyre, Schmitt, Keenan, Jones and Lindzen.
4) Decide on what fair basis others would be invited.
5) All the accepted can create threads and post.
6) None can delete threads, delete posts or in anyway edit content.
7) Find moderators with high integrity and minimum knowledge of the subject matter. Their remit would simply be good manners/language.
I see deniars being happy to debate but I am not sure about the other side but whatever I think we would benefit from this.
Comments?
We are just supposed to trust him that the Soon and Baliunas paper was flawed? He said scientist should be skeptical, but I guess we are not allowed to question him? Perhaps he feels the general public could not possibly fathom the deep thinking analysis required in climate science. I am so sick of these guys not showing their work. Do NOT give a conclusion unless you can demonstrate how you got there. I am also sick to death of warmists claiming you can find all the formulae and algorythms on the net. That may be so, but never any justification as to why, where and when these "adjustments" are made. Showing me the formulae is not good enough.
The mission brief, we are to assume, is to torture the data to confess, leaving no trace of incriminating evidence. If traces are however detected, masters will not be best pleased, especially when an extensive damage limitation campaign requires to be mobilised.
July 30, 2010 | David Ball
Showing the formula is sufficient, I think.
But as the formula remains unshown, we remain be-baffled.
The paradox, the enigma wrapped in BS, can be simply explained by invoking this spell.
We, the Scientists with the Proof
We see the future, gOD help your youth
We tell you how bad mankinds become
but some of you decry our fun!
We work with numbers, every day
but some of you laugh, and say,
SMc, the anti-Christ, has pointed out
the most
That when 2 plus 2 makes five
that's just an RC post!
Gotta admit, I've always been a sucker whose been fascinated by the motives of those who've latched onto the sweater, or wetter, glands of alarmist notables who've risen to the bottom of the CIF table of Honour.
Now that I've seen denialism from the infra-red to the uber-violent, I'm less fascinated than repulsed.
Dr. Mann in the StarTribune article was quoted as having said: "Havanac parroted the false claim that I sought to "undermine" a journal that "contradicted views held by ... global-warming alarmists." His claim was based on a thorough misrepresentation of a single example: a deeply flawed paper published in 2003 by the journal Climate Research. That paper, by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, claimed that recent warming is not unusual.
"Deeply Flawed Paper?" Here I defer to Dr. Mann as I freely admit he qualifies as an expert on Deeply Flawed Papers. By incorrecly employing the mathematics of Principal Component Analysis, he reconstructed a historical temperature record using a temperature proxy (bristlecone pines from a limited region of the globe) that the dendrology community says is a no-no, and thereby with a stroke of his genius he wiped out both the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period. Other than those two minor details, his original paper was "flawless". To compound matters, after these "minor details" were pointed out to him, he vigorously defended his methodology. I'm tempted to add "Michael Mann" as a synonym for chutzpah on WIKIPEDIA, but it wouldn't last very long.
btw re the use of the term "denier". does anyone know of its use by any media prior to the following by Johann Hari of the Independent in 2005? Hari got this one published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as well:
24 April 2005: Johann Hari: The shame of the climate change deniers
http://www.johannhari.com/2005/04/24/the-shame-of-the-climate-change-deniers
29 May 2005: Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Johann Hari: Global warming? A small few non-believers say no
For more than a decade now, the climate change deniers have been in retreat, humbled by the thumping weight of scientific evidence...
http://www.seattlepi.com/opinion/226175_climate29.html
by 2006, we had Monbiot and CBS:
19 Sept 2006: George Monbiot: The Smoke Behind the Deniers’ Fire
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/09/19/the-smoke-behind-the-deniers-fire-3/
23 March 2006: CBS: Brian Montopoli : Scott Pelley And Catherine Herrick On Global Warming Coverage
Pelley's most recent report, like his first, did not pause to acknowledge global warming skeptics, instead treating the existence of global warming as an established fact. I again asked him why. "If I do an interview with Elie Wiesel," he asks, "am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?" He says his team tried hard to find a respected scientist who contradicted the prevailing opinion in the scientific community, but there was no one out there who fit that description. "This isn't about politics or pseudo-science or conspiracy theory blogs," he says. "This is about sound science." ...
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500486_162-1431768-500486.html
also Hari is still up to his same tricks:
4 Dec 2009: Independent: Johann Hari: How I wish that the global warming deniers were right
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-i-wish-that-the-global-warming-deniers-were-right-1833728.html
Pat
The term "denier" is a derogatory term used by those who disliked some questioning the Holocaust of WWII. It has been in use for at least 40 years. It is illegal to be a denier of the Holocaust in most of Europe. It is a very emotion packed term.
DPLDS, "Denier" is somewhat more than a mere "derogatory term used by those who disliked some questioning of the Holocaust".
In his judgment on Irving vs Penguin Books & Lipstadt, in the High Court of London (April 2000), Justice Gray wrote (and agreed with):
Hmmm ... a "politically motivated falsifaction of history" ... considering our host's eminently readable book, one might be forgiven for concluding that there are some remarkable parallels between the efforts of the "Hockey team" and those of the real deniers.
In light of the above, "climate scientists" and their acolytes (and lesser lights) who choose to characterize as "deniers" those of us who have the temerity to suggest that science should be conducted in accordance with the scientific method are - in effect - conferring a highly undeserved measure of credibility on Irving and his ilk.
I say this because in my previous virtual incarnation, I spent many years in the trenches of the real deniers' favourite posting ground (the newsgroup alt.revisionism). I'm very much a "newbie" to the climate wars - having arrived on the battlefield approx. 10 days BC (Before Climategate). Consequently, this is the only way I can resolve the cognitive dissonance of seeing myself labelled as a "denier".
If one needed anything more than Mann's referral to RC as a 'proper' source for climate debates, then his use of 'illegally hacked e-mails' to brush of any critics puts the cherry on the pie.
I, for one, didn't know that there are also computer files or e-mails which can be 'legally' hacked.
And that doesn't even address the fact that a leak ain't no hack.
If this little phrase is evidence of Mann's state of mind - no wonder he's still clinging to his broke hockey sticks.
hro001
We should stick to the present topic. While the use of the term "denier" clearly comes from the issues surrounding the Holocaust of WWII, I was merely trying to explain to Pat not only the origin but also some of the emotion surrounding its use. It was NOT my intention to drag this topic off-topic.
This from Amazon, it is a nice response to a revive of THI that gave it 1 star:
I think you make some good points. " If you want to know the truth about climate change (as do I), it appears we will all have to wait a bit longer. " This is clearly told from one point of view, and I share your frustration that it seems impossible to find a balanced treatment anywhere, as I too have been looking recently. I also felt that the book submerged one in so much detail it was very difficult sometimes to get a picture of what the really important issues are. On the other hand I did chase up one or two of the references, and they seem to have been accurately reported in the book. Actually, much of what is said, if true, is quite alarming as far as the way the scientific community has behaved. And I saw a quote yesterday by Mann saying the NAS report completely exonerated him.
This is from the Telegraph online:
Prof Hand praised the blogger Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit for uncovering the fact that inappropriate methods were used which could produce misleading results.
"The Mann 1998 hockey stick paper used a particular technique that exaggerated the hockey stick effect," he said.
Prof Mann, who is Professor of Earth System Science at the Pennsylvania State University, said the statistics used in his graph were correct.
"I would note that our '98 article was reviewed by the US National Academy of Sciences, the highest scientific authority in the United States, and given a clean bill of health," he said. "In fact, the statistician on the panel, Peter Bloomfield, a member of the Royal Statistical Society, came to the opposite conclusion of Prof Hand."
Having read the book, the claim that the article was "given a clean bill of health" is ludicrous (the NAS panel chairman said that actually they didn't disagree at all with the extremely critical Wegman report). In fact I came across this yesterday, when following up a reference in the book to a critical comment by Brad Delong (which, indeed, seemed badly informed and apparently missed the main point of the MM critique):
"Dear Brad:
I enjoyed skimming through your discussion of the hockey stick. I was a referee on the National Academy Report on the hockey stick (I am named in their report for this service), and so I am very familiar with what the report actually says. It is frequently misrepresented as "verifying" the hockey stick. That is very inaccurate.
The report concluded that Mann's assertion that there was no medieval warm period was not supported by the data. (Mann really did have an error in his analysis.) The National Academy explicitly concluded that the most we can say about the last 2000 years is that we are now in the warmest period of the last 400 years.
[...]
As I mentioned earlier, I was chosen by the National Academy of Sciences to be an expert reviewer on their review of Mann's work. Michael Mann, who had a major mathematical error in his published analysis, is considered an expert but I am not?
[...]
Rich"
So, what ever the truth, when you see this sort of seemingly completely false claim by the hockey stick author, on the issue of the hockey stick, the subject of the book, I think Mountford's treatment is probably right, if a bit biased.
And what is really most shocking is the consistent refusal to divulge data and routines. And when our very standard of living depends on how the governments of the world respond to things like the hockey stick.
Trade-mark Mann terms
parroting
spurious
scurrilious
fossil-fuel funded campaign
denier
false information
misinformation
disinformation
falsehoods
smear campaigns
misrepresentation
fossil-fuel industry funded
blatant falsehood
deeply flawed
Shub
I suspect he has "hot keys" set up to write them :)
Shub
Trade-mark Mann terms. Don't forget:
Academic fraud
Shub
Trade-mark Mann terms. Don't forget:
academic fraud
I've got a bone to pick with Dr. Michael E Mann, Ph.D.. First off, Dr. Mann's confidants have repeatedly been caught authorizing, promoting, celebrating, and legitimizing incompetent tribalism. I had expected better from him and his vaunted peuplade, but then again, Dr. Mann and his drones are, by nature, raving scofflaws. Not only can that nature not be changed by window-dressing or persiflage, but Dr. Mann has inadvertently provided us with an instructive example that I find useful in illustrating certain ideas. By burning our fair cities to the ground, Dr. Mann makes it clear that I know some repulsive grafters who actually believe that ethical responsibility is merely a trammel of earthbound mortals and should not be required of a demigod like him. Incredible? Those same people have told me that people are pawns to be used and manipulated. With such people roaming about, it should come as no surprise to you that he should clarify his point so people like you and me can tell what the heck he's talking about. Without clarification, his rantings sound lofty and include some emotionally charged words but don't really seem to make any sense.
pat, Don Pablo:
But the term also has a second meaning or shade of meaning: the idea that the subjects are in denial in the psychological sense, or something like it. This analogy goes back to at least 1988, with two 1990 appearances, in WaPo and New Internationalist. Later instances run through 1996 (WaPo) to 2000 (Grist article by Ross Gelbspan) and 2000 (The Ecologist, someone or other). CAGW supporters have been accused of denial in this sense a few times too.
However, Gelbspan's previous "The Heat is On" article in December 1995's Harper's claims a "persistent and well-funded campaign of denial" to promote "disinformation", and it's the earliest case I've found where 'denial' clearly suggests deliberate deception rather than self-delusion. (In his 1997 book The Heat Is On (1998 ed. on Amazon) Gelbspan seems to blur back and forth between the two meanings, something else we've seen a fair bit of since.) Here's another "campaign of denial" from 1999. But the earliest clear Holocaust-denial analogy I've been able to find is in the pages of ... Nature. It seems that Stuart Pimm and Jeff Harvey compared Lomborg to a Holocaust denier in their 8 November 2001 review of The Skeptical Environmentalist. Apparently the suggestion was still unexpected enough at the time to attract a bit of attention in its own right. That December, Multinational Monitor denounces Exxon-Mobil for sponsoring "greenhouse denialists". "warming deniers" then appears in the 1 August 2003 edition of Bob Park's "What's New" column/blog. And in fact the subject is Soon and Baliunas - small world. ("What's New" has used the term periodically since. Up to July 2006, Park was the Director of Public Information of the American Physical Society and "What's New" was published weekly by the APS with the disclaimer "Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the APS, but they should be.") "climate-change deniers" then appears in the June 2003 New Internationalist's "Toxic Sceptics" article. Basically, it seems likely that the climate-denialist label was simmering under the surface until breaking into the mainstream around 2005. (Here's a 2004 number from Monbiot.) Further examples: some blog posts from 2002, 2003, and 2004, a reader's letter to the Cape Cod Times in 2003. Someone on debunker James Randi's forum is already used to seeing the term in 2003.
But this is only the result of fiddling around haphazardly with Google, not a proper search with Lexis/Nexis or whatever.
Has anyone better skilled in analysis than me ever looked in detail at the psychology of The Hockey Team and its members....it could make a fascinating case study.
Latimer Alder "Has anyone better skilled in analysis than me ever looked in detail at the psychology of The Hockey Team and its members....it could make a fascinating case study."
Also, anyone wanting to do further research into the tru nature of bullshit could use climate science as presented by the Hockey Team as a good source of material to analyse.
Harry Frankfurt has done some fundamental work in establishing its nature.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CBgQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Facademic.udayton.edu%2FWilliamRichards%2FIntro%2520essays%2FReflections%2520on%2520Bullshit.doc&rct=j&q=%22reflections%20on%20bullshit%22&ei=qThVTMqgC8yQjAfU-oDDBA&usg=AFQjCNHtOv3OWgOOb0HcYapA11El3q2b-g&sig2=sTj6chrPjMBH64TIadQhow
It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction
(...)
By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.
A thing I have noticed is that bullshit of the highest grade is produced by people who believe the rubbish they are spouting with the utmost total sincerity.
The pioneering hockey stick team:
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/photo/statistics-hockey-team
Trade-mark Mann terms. Don't forget:
Contrarian
@pharos
But none of them look very Mannish! :-)
Anonym
I am a psychologist, and the term "denier" is not a psychological term. It first came into use in the late 1960's in relation to the WWII Holocaust. As hro001 demonstrated above, it is an emotion-packed term. And as he points out, it generally means "politically motivated falsifaction [sic] of history"
All the references you give come from the 1990's and later, and clearly derived from the earlier use, typically for the emotional impact.
The term "denial" as in "he is in denial" is a psychological term. I have no idea who used it first, but it is very, very old. I think Freud used it, but I read the English translations of his work so I don't know the German word he used. It is typically used in the sense of refusing to accept reality.
Latimer Alder
Has anyone better skilled in analysis than me ever looked in detail at the psychology of The Hockey Team and its members....it could make a fascinating case study
There is, and it is. :) Now that I am retired, I have started to look at behavior again and find the 'true believer' totally fascinating.
Martin A
Yeap. :) The bullshit of Climate Change is very fertile ground. What I find interesting is the number of others, such as Latimer Alder who have an interest as well.
For those of you similarly interested, I do suggest Eric Hoffer's 1951 True Believer available in paper back from Amazon and soon Kindle ebook. Its ISBN is
ISBN-10: 0060505915
ISBN-13: 978-0060505912
All other 'True Believer' books are based on his work, and he was a stevedore and migrant worker. So if anyone proves that it is what is between the ears that matters and not the fancy degrees on the wall (BS, MS Ph. D often means BullShit, MoreShit, PiledHigherandDeeper) it is Eric. He was self-taught and got it right.
I wonder what he would have to say about Mann, Jones et al?
I see he's still obsessed with the idea that the e-mails were obtained illegally. Where's his proof?
Either way, illegal or not, it doesn't alter the veracity of their content.
sunderland steve
Proof? Proof? Why he ran an RE statistic on it, submitted it for peer review by Jones et al, and that makes it true. Absolutely! God's Word! Settled Science!
sunderland Steve:
The Russell review team's website chose to refer to the emails as having been stolen, which to me suggested a mindset on their part to be prejudgemental. I did venture this opinion, but Kate Moffat, who handled their email correspondence, made it clear that they considered 'stolen' to be entirely appropriate. At least she provided an answer to that one, I suppose, which is more than can be said for the other questions I asked.