Bishop Hill Insurance, or does he know something?
May 31, 2011 Climate: Mann FOI Chris Mooney has posted up a article about the forthcoming release of Michael Mann's emails - it now appears likely that these will be disclosed to the public at the end of the day. Mooney looks to me as if he is trying to get his retaliation in first, spinning a story that a scandal will be found in the emails no matter what.
Those who went seeking went in with a theory--that wrongdoing has been done. They all believe "ClimateGate," shown by multiple investigations to be a fake scandal, was actually a real one. So that is their premise.
They will therefore read whatever emails they receive and find wrongdoing in them. They will find politics. They will find closed-mindedness and bias. And who knows what else they will find--but it will all be made to look bad.
Will any of the charges be valid? I don't know, although I seriously doubt it. One thing we can be sure of, though, is that things will be taken out of context and used selectively. That's what happened in "ClimateGate" and that's what will happen again.
Interesting stuff. Do you think he knows something or is he just writing this stuff "in case"?
Reader Comments (56)
Well, whatever IS released we can be sure of one thing: Mann and UVA have had months and months of additional time to prepare a solid defence / argument to present it in the best possible light. So in that respect they will be much better prepared than UEA.
On the other hand, there will be thousands of scientists and bloggists ready to present the discovery in a different context.
Is this really going to be settled in the court of public opinion?
I think what will happen will be that governments will gradually withdraw from their entrenched alarmist positions on CAWG bbut Mann will always have his supporters - the only difference being they will attract far less funding than they do now.
I was amused to see that one of the commenters on the original thread is not only defending Mann's involvement in the deletion of emails but also the entire hockey stick. So there you go.
He is afraid that the fishing expedition will prove bountiful for the detractors of his favourite climate scientist. He is correct. It is a fishing expedition and, should anything substantial be found, Michael Mann's remaining credibility will be kaput.
Chris Mooney was one of the few science journalists who actually championed Mann while everyone else kept their distance. In one of Mooney's Washington Post articles, Mann was moaning the absence of support from the scientific community following the climategate scandal. Only his own Hockey Stick Team stood up for him.
Now, for Mann and his court, matters may get even worse.
BTW, if he is reading this, I very much wish Nullius in Verba would drop in. He is the go-to-commenter on matters concerning Chris Mooney and his fellow Discover magazine blogger, Phil Plait.
This release is with redactions which are reviewed under seal, rather than just arbitrarily applied by the UVA, isn't it?
Well I think its "just in case".
For one thing, why would this guy know whats in the emails? He shouldn't anyway.
Secondly, I seem to recall that Mann admonished his correspondents to be careful about what they said on emails - that was in the Climategate emails, wasnt it??. Surely he would have been reasonably careful with his own emails.
I understand Prince Chuckles is on standby to fly across to the US to give his "support" to Mann in his hour of need and assuage any "unpleasantness".
It looks as though Mooney is charging us with wrongdoing prior to the fact.
Will any of his charges be valid? I don't know, although I seriously doubt it.
Of course, I have no basis to be sure, but I certainly expect, this won't be the last time he knows the facts before the data is in.
After all, that's the MO, isn't it.
The best form of defence is attack. Mooney is accusing Mann's detractors of confirmation bias when in fact that is what they seek to find in Mann. As evidence to support his assertion, he says he read a book about it: "In it, Shermer discusses the phenomenon of confirmation bias, invoking the biblical line "seek and ye shall find" to describe this pervasive cognitive flaw."
Americans really don't do irony
Mooney is all about politics. That's all he's ever been about, that's all he ever will be. So no, he doesn't know anything.
"And who knows what else they will find--but it will all be made to look bad."
Until the next lot of whitewash is applied and then all will be sweetness and light!
I assume Mooney has read HSI to get a balanced opinion........In truth Mann has already been tried, tested and found wanting. Who was the Prof that said he would not even bother picking up any future papers by Mann and his gang?
If he has seen the emails then that is an admission. If he hasn't seen them then it is a pretty poor endorsement of his</> favourite side of the scientist spectrum. He doesn't get it, what other type of science would you expect politics and closed-mindedness to be rife in? String theory? And if that is the underlying expectation with a climate alarmist then therein lies the problem with the science being practiced .
And no, don't blame the sceptics for making them be that way ;)
Not sure he knows anything concrete, but his risk analysis (based on his contacts etc.) tells him that there is a better than even chance these emails have food for the mean ravenous nasty denier hordes.
Jiminy Cricket has it, for me.
He might be laying the groundwork for a future piece which will start : "As I confidently predicted....."
These are words that a Catastrophic Man Made Global Warming proponent rarely gets a chance to use!
This reminds me of Bob Ward's scurrilous attack on the Bishop before the Bishop's Inquiry into the Inquiries for GWPF came out. Attack is the best form of defence or something......suggesting they are worried?
Looks like classic CYA.
I agree that it's probably CYA, but CYA with an eye firmly on the effort and monies that UVA expended to keep the e-mails from being exposed.
LITB: "what other type of science would you expect politics and closed-mindedness to be rife in? String theory? And if that is the underlying expectation with a climate alarmist then therein lies the problem with the science being practiced ."
Don't forget the emails of Soon, Balinus, and Michaels have been in the hands of Greenpeace for a long time now, and also, Wegman's have been given out over six months ago. If they had found anything in those emails that came remotely close to the bile we saw in the climategate emails it would have been bruited about by now. So not all climate scientists are in the same mould as the Hockey Team and their followers.
Chris Mooney, co-author of Sheril Kirshenbaum, slayer of the Republican party dragons, Kinght of Greenland, Chief Psychiatrist of the Order of the American Geophysical Union and Grand Steed of the Order of the Flaming Scientists of Climate,
Waiting at the edge of town for the horde.
If Mooney thinks that 'Climategate. and the so-called enquiries that followed it were not a real scandal, his reading and cognitive skills are somewhere around zero. His journalism school must be incredibly proud of him!
If the material published minus redactions is a cause for him 'getting his retaliation in first' and he has seen it, perhaps he may have cause for his worries that 'it will look bad'.
Does the man not realise he is part of a very small and increasingly isolated cheerleading section for Mann?
Isn't Mooney worried about his future employment potential, and his current employers may be a bit concerned about theirs too.
Going on the attack now, is his only means of defence.
Could there be an interesting. . (gasp).. R2 statistic amongst them?
It looks more like a puff piece for Michael Shermer's new book. That man writes a lot of books (gives a lot of talks and goes on cruises as well). When does he think?
RE: "Those who went seeking went in with a theory-- . . ."
Was this not the approach employed by the Team in the first place that has now lead to the present situation? I'm sure more smoke is on the way . . . someone hide the mirrors.
-barn
Is The Guardian applying a pre-emptive shatter attack against what the Mann story may come up with? I count 21 Climate Change stories ,including an Editorial in the past 4 days.
Does someone know why they are doing this?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change
Not everything will be released -- the two sides will barter over what can be withheld. You can be assured that Mann will have his finger in the pie advising UVA on what not to release, but who will counter argue on the opposing side? Unless one is intimately knowledgeable on the research Mann was conducting, the counter-argument expertise could be at a disadvantage.
The mails very heavily redacted and selected, of course. The 'climate decievers' have had a wonderful several months to make sure nothing detrimental gets out.
Even the most doctrinaire CO2ollah can size the likes of Michael Mann eventually, if not at a glance. As helpful as his contribution to their career prospects has been, they suspect, in a rare moment of self-awareness, that the facade of scientific integrity is just that and nothing more, as it was in the case of the CRU grant cottagers.
stephen richards
Jiminy Cricket has it, for me.
Me too, Jiminy has nailed exactly what happened. Mooney sees the storm coming. I can hardly wait :)
Sure he knows something, namely that the entirety of AGW climate science is based upon data manipulation, normalizing, tweaking, and cherry picking, and that more of this behavior will be revealed in Mann's UVA emails, simply because that's what climate "scientists" do.
Of course Mooney knows all of this, because no thinking person could conclude otherwise after reading the Climategate emails and especially Harry_Read_Me.txt. And this is despite the public pronouncements and denials of AGW believers, because in private they know that AGW climate "science" is perverse and corrupted.
So we'll see more of this in Mann's emails, it is predictable and Mooney knows that.
Not that these practices are limited to climate "science" because they're also endemic to other scientific fields (such as human nutrition and pharma), and in fact to many scientific fields where there are $$$ to be made.
Mann seems to be a devout follower of Stone's rules: "Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack."
He probably wishes that Phil Jones was made of the same 'right stuff'.
I wouldn't be surprised to see Mann mount a PR campaign around the release. I could imagine a phased campaign with things happening prior to release and other things happening after release. The first phase would be the 'assault on academic freedom' tour (which we have already seen). The next phase would be to get the bad news out before others do. This is a standard tactic for message control. It would happen just prior to the release and would involve intensive outreach to friendly journalists to make sure that Mann can preemptively frame the story. The final phase would come after the release and would likely center around messages of 'there's no new news here' and 'this has all been investigated before and I have been cleared of all charges' and 'this is just more of the politically motivated attacks against me perpetrated by the anti-science right wing extremists - the same people who obstructed tobacco legislation'. Many in the press are already sympathetic to these lines of narrative, so Mann will find a friendly audience.
@oakwood
I think the Guardian has gone into overdrive with scary global warming stories because of the climate talks in Bonn next week.
"BTW, if he is reading this, I very much wish Nullius in Verba would drop in."
Happy to oblige sHx.
Chris Mooney is still a committed believer, but just recently has been starting to shift his position slightly. I think he's found it extremely disturbing that some sceptics can be polite, reasonable, and fairly lucid on the subject of scientific principles, even in the face of those on his own side who are rude, ignorant, unscientific, and come out with an unending stream of blatantly illogical fallacies and non-sequiturs. Hostility and ugliness directed at him he can slot right into his mental picture of 'deniers', but he's been forced to the conclusion that at least some sceptics are neither corrupt nor stupid. His world view is shaken.
So he's seized on some research on 'motivated reasoning' as an explanation, in which the cleverer people are, the better they are at constructing intellectual defences of their ideas, and the more confident they are in their own competence to judge. He's still firmly of the opinion that it is the Republicans who are more at fault in this sense, but he has at least considered in a slightly hypothetical and non-specific sort of way that maybe Democrats might have a few blindspots too.
As a result, there have been a few posts recently in which faint hairline cracks in his certainty are starting to show, and he has been even been moved to defend sceptics against the charge that they are all ignorant of scientific reasoning. Considering where we started a year or two ago, that change is seismic.
He has a gig at DeSmogBlog, and as a professional journalist he obviously has to tailor his work to the audience. Outright doubt would not go down well over there. So at the moment there's an odd mixture of the usual warmist party line, and posts that appear to be exploring ways to reduce his cognitive dissonance about sceptics making more sense than warmists.
He doesn't 'know something' in his Mann post. He's just expounding on his theory that we all find what we're looking for in what we read. When he says "Will any of the charges be valid? I don't know, ..." those last three words are themselves a remarkable step, and not in accordance with his usual party line. And yes, I'm quite sure he's worried about it.
Don't expect too much. He's a long way from even Judith Curry's position; he's certainly not going to recant on his belief in the danger of AGW. But I don't think it's quite the cynical pre-framing of the coming Mann debacle that it might appear.
Considering Mooney's "assessment" of Climategate (and its aftermath) he's speaking either from complete ignorance about Mann and his world, or doing double-duty by carrying water for him. But speaking of Mann and the "defamatory" world in which he thinks he swims ... I had posted this in the thread on Lemonick's interview with Muller over at Judith Curry's last week; however, I've found that one's posts can often get lost in the traffic there ... but it does seem appropos to this thread, so please forgive the (slightly modified) "encore" ...
[cue music] With sincere apologies to any fans of the fab flick "Casablanca" (not to mention lyricist and composer Herman Hupfeld) …
[This day and age we're living in
Gives cause for apprehension
With speed and new invention
And things like circumvention
Yet some get a trifle weary
With post-normal climate theory.
So we must get down to earth at times
Relax relieve the tension
And no matter what Romms's progress
Or what may yet be proved
The simple facts of science are such
They cannot be removed.]
Please take note, Lemonick
A trick is not a trick, decline is not decline
My climate science shall apply
As time goes by
And when my tree-rings few
Still say, "disasters due"
On that you must rely
Or else you I shall sue
As time goes by
And when some experts say
Your stats cause great dismay
On them you can't rely
No matter what the science brings
As time goes by
Sea rise and mosquitoes
Increasing at such rate
Hearts full of passion
All 'cuz of Climategate
Science needs Mann
And Mann must have his mates
That no one can deny
It's still the same old story
A fight for pubs and glory
A case of do-as-I say or die
The world will always love my hockey-stick
As time goes by
Oh yes, the world will always love my hockey-stick
As time goes by
I popped briefly onto to post and had my bias confirmed, I looked at his photo and decided I don't like the look of him (too pleased with himself for his own good). Some of the comments are hilairious too!
Nullius good points, we won't know anything until ATI sees the emails. Its a big unknown at the moment.
@Jun 1, 2011 at 1:08 PM | oakwood
Does someone know why they are doing this?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change
Try this for size:-
http://unfccc.int/2860.php
NiV has it right, we and Mooney don't know nothing, totally useless to speculate. Just wait until the emails are in the open.
Yes, it is really nothing, that is why hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent to prevent this innocent stuff from being made public. Yea, and pigs can now fly.
The best possible strategy in these circumstances is to prepare a list with all that Mann's done wrong, or appears to have done wrong, and then drip-feed it to the world rather than reply to Mooney with a bigger bang. Evidently he's trying to "up the ante" and believes Mann can get an easy escape in the general confusion that would come with repeated large salvos from both sides of the debate.
Perhaps Mooney is indicating a lack of trust in the judgement and fairness of the skeptics approach. I wonder where he gets that from.
waves some illegal drugs under Hengist's nose to try to get him to wake up. The real denialists are having to fight now, Hengist, aren't they! No one believes the prophets of doom. All your evidence systematically being debunked...not in John Cook style, but properly., The coolaid bottle is being pulled away as you try to drink from it, Hengist.
"things will be taken out of context and used selectively."
- like temperature proxy data?
He's covering his arse pre-emptively. I think this guy don't know nothing - which is why he supports the Warmistas.
My god, a fake scandal? How does Mooney sleep at night saying such things?
@Nullius in Verba
Good to see you around and thanks for the update. You, sir, have a great command of English. It is a pleasure to read your comments wherever I chance upon. I hope you don't vote Republican. :)
Will any of the released e-mails be between be Mann and Mooney?
As one who has shared a beer with Mooney after his "Storm World" book release, at NOAA in Boulder, Colorado (July 2007), I want to thank "Nullius in Verba" for sharing his fine grained, insightful observations. Very astute!
In fact, I've become something of a Chris Mooney observer myself, but too lacking in the patience called for. I've been banned at his web-site for minor spleen-venting. (I rarely indulge, and stupidity doesn't inspire me - blindness does). But Mooney is smart enough not to become the shill he apparently wants to be.
Thus, I wonder if Nullius in Verba would get a hold of me; we could work together on something of mutual interest ullr20021 at yahoo
-Orson
At least out emperor isn't being killed every six weeks.