Thursday
Mar222012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Thought for the day
Mar 22, 2012 Books Climate: HSI As we know, Mann doesn't mention The Hockey Stick Illusion in his new book. Is it a surprise that none of the reviews of his book have mentioned it either?
Reader Comments (88)
The broken stick,
Too weak to hold up science;
Strong enough to
Hang 'em high.
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Not really. It is only inside the sceptic bubble that the illusion is maintained that your musings are on a par with a worthwhile public discussion.
And really, 4 posts in a row on Mann? Obsessing much?
This creates a good question when we meet CAGW believers: Do you think Michael Mann should have mentioned THSI in his recent book? If not, why not? If I'm not mistaken the answer will either:
1. Quickly descend into circularity
2. Provoke genuine reflection.
There isn't a better, one-place critique of Mann's work that I know of (not counting Climate Audit as one place, though it's an interesting point why not). If Mann wishes to defend his work in a popular text he needs to deal with the most cogent critique in the public domain before it. If he fails even to mention it his own work is flannel. Most people will be able to understand the shape of this argument even if they fail to read either book. And those that continue to defend Mann, who almost certainly have not read THSI, can be made to look pretty ridiculous. Worth a try.
That was written before seeing 'Frank' so I now have a pseudonymous guinea pig for some questions.
Have you read THSI? What do you think are the most important points in it, getting closest to the level that you would consider Professor Mann should answer? What is a less important matter than that? Or have you not read Montford's book and are assuming it has nothing worthwhile in it, because Mann says so? Or do your beliefs have nothing to do with what you write, because you are being paid to say something in support of Mann, without reference to the facts and arguments?
And on the obsessing thing: you betcha. That's called real science or, alternatively, passion for truth. We fully support Andrew in seeking to correct the 'corruption of science' mentioned in the subtitle of his work and we'll keep pressing the point until real and lasting change takes place. You can't distract and detract from that with your weasel words.
Not sure why it would be a surprise. Mann's entire career is based on the hockey stick and if he allowed himself to reference the book that blows his main work apart all his arguments would go up in smoke. As for the reviews, they have to follow and talk about what Mann says on the book and not what other books do to his theory (regardless on whether it undermines it completely or not).
Well, I, too, am "obsessed" with Mann. He's a living proxy for everything that's wrong with "climate science", possibly even with the world..
DCSpotter, you clearly have very different requirements of a review than I do. I want to know about previous books in the area concerned and whether the latest one deals with their arguments well or badly. In this case once I knew Mann didn't even mention THSI I knew I had no interest in buying or reading it. Job done. But that wasn't learned from a MSM review but from someone here or on Climate Audit.
And they wonder why people no longer pay for the big names of the mainstream media.
Has Mann read THSI, I wonder?
Richard Drake I'd love to hear more from Frank too but I suspect the kind of people that think Manns's book is just peachy, and is the last word on the subject, can't sustain anything beyond a brief bit of drive-by snark.
BTW Frank, look on the panel at the right, you may notice our host has written a book about Mann's hockey stick. Relevant much? ;)
Who lives by the stick, dies by the stick.
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My comment to that effect never got published on the Macleans article (http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/03/15/climate-scientist-michael-e-mann-and-the-hockey-stick-graph/)
Haha Kim. Your pen is mightier than the stick.
Frank, hoi polloi is still obsessed and bewildered with the stick, policymakers are still obsessed and inspired by the stick, Michael Mann is still psychotically obsessed with the stick, so yes, we are still obsessed with the stick. But this too, shall pass.
====================
Memory holes append to other holes, wholly whole so long as nothing cracks the Green Gang's impenetrable carapace of willful ignorance. Since objective, rational discussion is beside the point, why bother?
"But this too, shall pass."
I doubt it. You are all too wedded to your tale. A little like Japanese soldiers stuck on a desert island unaware the war had finished years before.
Look up Churchill's definition of a fanatic.
Frank
Well said -- an excellent analogy. Fanatical individual ready to died for his "emperor", unwilling to to accept reality and remains isolated.
I hope you have plenty of coconuts.
I looked for Churchill's definition of a fanatic and found this:
Is that what you were thinking? Those who would sacrifice the current generation for such an uncertain future benefit would seem to fit the bill.
Surely even you can google?
Funny how Frank, like Hengist and Zed (and Mann, come to think of it) so rarely answer any of the questions put to them. Is it because they won't or because they can't?
Franks
If you mean “A fanatic is someone who won’t change his mind and won’t change the subject”, that wasn't Churchill, as you would have known if you'd looked a bit further down.
It seems to fit you, though. Most of us here have changed our minds in the last few years.
DNFT.
Frank, do you believe the Hockey Stick was wrong and unimportant to the science, or that it has been confirmed by subsequent studies and those are important to the science?
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I didn't use google, I went to my wiki and searched for something I'd read recently about Pol Pot's Cambodia and how US policy in Indochina had led to the situation which allowed the Khmer Rouge to come to power. The author, who is married to someone who endured that terror in Cambodia, looked back at whether anyone had criticised US policy ahead of time in a way that was borne out by events. A controversial area - but Bruce Sharp finds three such contributions, one from a former general who had served in Korea, one from a historian and one from a journalist.
I give the context because I think it's very relevant to the issue of fanaticism. The historian concerned was Arthur Schlesinger and the article Twenty-Twenty Foresight. You don't have to agree with every word to gain a great deal from it.
As for Churchill himself, would you say he was obsessed with Adolf Hitler? Everything depends on context. There is a fierce battle on and it is against that background each of us needs to judge who is unhinged and who is fighting the good fight, putting aside all distraction.
James P
I agree there is a similarity amongst them they (though Hengist can be more responsive) sometimes they seem almost like AI bots designed for simulating intelligence for a Turing test, yet prone to collapse if they risk engaging with a relevant response to pertinent subjects. I was reminded of the Eliza program and when I looked it up had to laugh when one of the first hits said this:
Shame really. I love to hear how people really love Mann's work I really want to see how people can manage wax lyrical about the mighty tome!
Hey Frank, maybe you enjoy being deceived by your heroes? It's an odd character trait, and I don't think you'll be winning any converts here.
Those of us who once had any faith in these charalatans and have seen the way they shamelessly defend their deceit will under no circumstances whatever be making the return journey.
It's a one way trip.
Please, Frank, I'm trying to figure out why you think we shouldn't obsess about the Piltdown Mann's Crook't Hockey Stick. To do so, I must know what you think of it. My 2:28 comment was awkwardly worded. Do you believe we illusively obsess because you still believe in the hockey stick, shaft and blade? Or do you believe we obsessively, wastefully obsess on the hockey stick because you no longer believe in it?
If you answer, I can explain the obsessions.
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In my opinion, Michael Mann has read the HSI and that is why he dared not mention the book.
He would have great difficulty debunking the HSI.
There is a spanish phrase which expresses great difficulty. "A trancas y barancas"
A tranca is a stick and a baranca is a chasm.
The inference being; How can I cross the chasm with this stick. Only with great difficulty.
Just ask Michael Mann.
Heh, the whole platoon is bellowing in unison down into the cave, but he's got headphones on, desperately seeking the signal from Tokyo.
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Well they are happy in their delusion they get fed watered piles of tax payer dosh and a free ride to any TV studio after a consensus slave or compliant media type ! so why would they want to mention the very large and very grey elephant in the room that H.S.I And Mr Montford put there to stamp on their toes!
Seriously it is a great book and the embarrassed silence of the AGW/CC/CD crowd is one of the best I have never heard.
Frank / Don -
It is a good analogy but on reading it I immediately thought of Michael Mann. One for Josh? Maybe give him an 'End is Nigh' placard and a hockey stick for good measure. I suggest the island is located in the Sea of Okhotsk or Sea of Japan so that he could also the hockey stick for trying to break a hole in the sea ice.
Tabu, the fragrance
Wafts to nostrils
Hooked to lobes
Plump with memories.
Jamais vu,
Never seen already.
==========
Oh don't make me add another troll to the troll-bin script....
Valkarkai, the location for the film "How I ended this summer" suggests itself . In the film, Russian meteorologists go mad at a weather station on a deserted island in the Arctic Ocean, and polar bears present almost as much a threat as the loss of sanity and radiation sickness.
Incidentally, the film makes you wonder amongst other things how reliable the meteorological records collected in such places can be.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1588875/
Mann does not address the substance offered by his critics. It is no surprise that he does not address HSI. His supporters behave in the same manner.
The review in the Wall Street Journal by Jolis addressed Mann's attitude toward any criticism of his work or behavior and was right in doing so because that is Mann's story and the story of his new book. If Jolis had focused on the specifics of criticisms then surely HSI would have been at the top of her list.
The positions of Mann and his critics are not symmetrical. Mann has received the uncritical embrace of institutions such as Penn State and they are quite happy to have him serve as propagandist rather than scientist. Fortunately, Mann's failure to engage in the give and take of science will soon make him irrelevant. The book just published is most likely his last hurrah.
As Simpson's Homer says "Doh!" (I said that to my sun but because he's Czech, he thought I said "Dok!" or "Duck!"). I know you're a little piqued ( I hope that sounds right!?) by his not mentioning you but don't be. Your book is well written, his, it seems to me, is just a scree of rants, projecting his paranoia and violence of mind on everyone and everything that he imagines are 'against' him. He doesn't realise, Mann, that he, personally, is of little concern.
Whilst it is perhaps not surprising that Mann does not mention the HSI, although it reflects badly on him, to respond to your actual question, it just shows the lamentable state of ignorance in the MSM.
And, of course, you know, Bishop, I think he wrote because of your book! What greater compliment could he give (imagining him not capable of compliments)?
Frank
Perhaps you would care to reflect on all the deaths that have been caused by policy decisions prompted by Mann's papers on the hockey stick and Gore's proselytising, whether from starvation caused by the diversion of agricultural resources to biofuels or from cold or other effects of inefficient energy markets. If you would be so good as to read His Grace's book, and some of Mr McIntyre's analysis of the seminal Mann papers, and the papers themselves, and of course you are numerate, then I defy you to reach any conclusion other than that his work is deeply flawed and that horrible policy blunders have been based on it. If on the other hand you prefer to rely on a "consensus" of climate scientists rather than do your own homework, please remember the Royal Society's motto "Nullius in Verba".
Frank is a true believer, like Mann. You could politely explain everything that is wrong with the HS and he would still object, based on ad hoc ideas such as funding, political views, being evil etc.
It's a waste of time trying to talk to an idiot who believes he is knowledgeable.
"Speak the Devil's name and he appears."
So I maunder on and wander without Frank. Mann's 'mentirita' has puffed into the 'Big Lie', and it's scary enough to obsess about.
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The good news is that Mann has been promoted by Penn State.
"I have gradually grown to embrace the role that I now find myself in - as a communicator"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztKFTxC6kVI ( reported and produced by Suzanne Goldenberg)
I wish the Bish had brought to our attention sooner his Northern neighbor Mr. Hume's review of The Hockey Stick Illusion:
"There is indeed a kind of brutish and ignorant scepticism... which gives the vulgar a general prejudice against what they do not easily understand, and makes them reject every principle which requires elaborate reasoning to prove and establish it.
This species of scepticism is fatal to knowledge, not to religion; since we find, that those who make greatest profession of it, give often their assent... even to the most absurd tenets which a traditional superstition has recommended to them.
They firmly believe in witches, though they will not believe nor attend to the most simple proposition of Euclid. "
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Russell you've obviously got something on your mind could you tell us in some clearer way?
Weird, both Russell and Frank show tendencies to make pseudo profound cryptic statements but it only comes out like idle muttering.
Nothing of substance to say? Why not tell us how great you think Mann's book is? Or haven't you read that either? ;)
"frank" does what all the $CAGW$ believers do when you ask them normal, polite questions.
Hides..
Could "frank" be some form of poorly written $CAGW$ bot perhaps.? :)
Michael Mann's results have long provoked huge controversy and everyone promoting them knew it.
Take the following extract from email # 0981859677.txt sent on Sat, 10 Feb 2001 at 10:47:57 am to a large contingent of the climate science community including Michael Mann at Virginia U concluding:
'Mann's theory simply does not stack up. But that was not the key issue.
Anyone can put up a dud theory from time to time. What is at issue is
the uncritical zeal with which the industry siezed on the theory before
its scientific value had been properly tested. In one go, they tossed
aside dozens of studies which confirmed the existence of the MWE and LIA
as global events, and all on the basis of tree rings - a proxy which has
all the deficiencies I have stated above.
The worst thing I can say about any paper such as his is that it is `bad
science'. Legal restraint prevents me going further. But in his case,
only those restraints prevent me going *much* further.'
Cheers
John Daly
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=0981859677.txt&search=+hockey+stick
NB John Daly died in January 2004
He left behind this observation
(Wiki)
Daly argued[2] that observed warming in the years leading up 2003 could be explained by the combination of a maximum in the sunspot cycle and two successive severe El Nino climatic cycles. As a result, he predicted
But it will pass. These things always do. The solar cycle is now heading down towards its expected solar minimum around 2006, while the current El Nino is expected to wane in the next few months, possibly being replaced by its cooling counterpart, La Nina. The greenhouse industry has thrived off Nature's climatic drama of the last 4 years, using a combination of public hysteria and bent statistics, but the pickings will be leaner in the months and years ahead - until we reach the next El Nino or the next solar maximum expected around 2012 (the same year the Kyoto Protocol expires).
Re: Russell
Euclid might be an good example.
From 300BC until the 19th century the consensus was that geometry based upon Euclid's 5 axioms was the only valid geometry. Then mathematicians worked out other ones where all right angles are not equal or parallel line meet etc.
I seem to remember that HSI was read by Judith Curry who followed with several vigorous discussions on RC with The Team.
So HSI is definitely on their radar.