Thursday
Nov082012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Quote of the day
Nov 8, 2012 Climate: Mann Journals There are so many areas where there is still real uncertainty, where there is legitimate debate that occurs in good faith. That's expressed in the peer-reviewed literature and in the debates that scientists have with each other at scientific meetings.
Fair-minded promoter of free open debate in the peer reviewed literature, Michael E Mann, quoted at the Atlantic.
While it was easy to make sure that the worst papers . . . didn’t see the light of the day at [Journal of Climate], it was inevitable that such papers might slip through the cracks at GRL.
An apparently unrelated Michael E Mann in the Climategate emails.
Reader Comments (12)
I guess the solution comes with the need to redefine not just peer review, as Jones said, but 'legitimate debate'.
This Mike Mann?
Keith,
Of course, I agree with you. We both know the probable flaws in Mike's recon, particularly as it relates to the tropical stuff. Your response is also why I chose not to read the published version of his letter. It would be too aggravating. The only way to deal with this whole issue is to show in a detailed study that his estimates are clearly deficient in multi-centennial power, something that you actually did in your Perspectives piece, even if it was not clearly stated because of editorial cuts. It is puzzling to me that a guy as bright as Mike would be so unwilling to evaluate his own work a bit more objectively.
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2011/11/climategate-scientists-on-michael-mann.html
'There are so many areas where there is still real uncertainty, where there is legitimate debate that occurs in good faith. That's expressed in the peer-reviewed literature and in the debates that scientists have with each other at scientific meetings.'
The implication being that the core science is sound, as we keep being told. But email thread 0248 gives insight into that 'legitimate' debate, and the debate is more than peripheral, it concerns the very core itself.
http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=198
In other words, the high priests are allowed to dispute the details of their faith and its dogmas with each other in the hallowed temples of their meetings and the journals they largely control, but they must be on their guard for signs of apostasy elsewhere.
Manns definition of a scientist is somebody who agrees with him.
He would never consider the likes of Steve McIntyre to be a "proper" scientist and so would never engage in a debate with him or even publicly acknowledge his existence.
TerryS
'Manns definition of a scientist is somebody who agrees with him.'
Well Mann's idea of debate is that everyone says how much they agree with him and tells him how wonderful he is .
He just can't handle any criticism/comparison of his own work: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/07/tree-rings-and-climate-some-recent-developments/comment-page-2/#comment-240730
I believe McIntyre recently hinted that Mann is holding up the Wilson et al review referenced in that comment by requesting all their data from them. Interesting...
KnR -> posted what I wanted to say.
Scientist - anyone who agrees with Mann
Debate - agreeing with Mann
Scientific debate - a scientist (see definition above) agreeing with Mann.
It's hard to get rid of conmen like Mann and Trenberth when the whole US government machinery and financial sector is behind them. The banks and hedge funds can't wait for the US to get into carbon trading and Obama is praying the carbon taxes raised will help chip away at the $16 trillion debt he's got the US into. The whole game is stacked against honest people opposing the scammers like Mann and Trenberth. Dark times, bro, dark times.
Another case of "I AM peer-review." ?
Global-warming Scientist Sues Detractors, Defames Self
And I quote:
Mann, a professor of meteorology at Penn State University, made his name famous more than a decade ago with his hockey-stick graph, showing temperatures spiking abruptly in the late 20th century after holding relatively steady for most of the last millennium. The graph figured prominently in both the 2001 Third Assessment Report and the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and Al Gore cited it in An Inconvenient Truth in 2006. But many scientists and a congressional investigation found the graph to be fraudulent, and the 2009 Climategate controversy called Mann's research methods further into question.
How much longer can Mann hide his own decline?
DonB
"It is puzzling to me that a guy as bright as Mike would be so unwilling to evaluate his own work a bit more objectively."
As Richard Feynman said about science - "The easiest person to fool is yourself".