Bishop Hill The silence of the Manns
May 7, 2013 Climate: HSI Climate: Mann Climate: Sceptics
Judith Curry is highlighting a report by Emil Røyrvik of Norwegian outfit SINTEF, which looks at the climate wars in a not unbalanced fashion. Yours truly gets a mention:
[There are] allegations, not entirely unfounded (see section “Climategate” below), of for example seeking to “hide” the Mediaeval Warm Period (as well as the Little Ice Age) supposedly in an attempt to exaggerate and overstate the significance, unprecedentedness and man-made character of the current warming period. And when Mann in his book “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars” does not mention with a single word the comprehensive account and critique of the “hockey stick” made by Montford (2010) it just adds fuel to the fire.
I'm glad someone has picked up Mann's silence on Hockey Stick Illusion. It does cast Mann's protestations in an unfavourable light.
Reader Comments (23)
“A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.” — Samuel Johnson
I smell fear.
Ecofascist arguments are all based on emotion, demands that critics fall silent and accept their authority, and personal abuse of individuals and of ad hoc groups of individuals that only ecofascists consider to be homgeneous groups at all.
These must be their very best arguments for the consensus - why would they not deploy their best arguments? - and thus I conclude they are starting to feel a bit rumbled.
My comment just submitted to C etc:
The irresponsible scaremongering we have had to endure for decades about carbon dioxide is exemplified at the more sophisticated level of climate diplomacy by the profoundly foolish words of Brundltand, quoted in the report: ”doubt has been eliminated”, and that it is ”irresponsible, reckless and deeply immoral to question the seriousness of the situation”.
The report authors note:
These features alone commend the report to me as worth reading. The astonishing political success of the campaign against carbon dioxide (and in which CO2 sometimes seem to be proxy for ‘modern civilisation’) is surely worthy of deep and extensive research. I hope it will be one for decades to come, and I hope that that will help protect us from such extravagant excursions happening again soon.
Released at about the same time, I’d also commend this open-letter by 4 professors in Belgium: http://www.thegwpf.org/belgian-scientists-double-standards-climate-change/
John Shade
Thanks for the link. The name Henri Masson seems familiar. I assume this is he.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/9/24/another-resignation.html
This silence will prove golden for the sceptic cause, if readers will forgive the term.
John Shade
Thanks for the Belgium link. A very well written letter.
My impression is that the AGW-scare is mainly Anglo-Saxon led (and white middle class educated male), and I have been surprised that so many scientists from other countries and cultures seem to have taken to it (fallen for it) so easily.
(BTW, I am an Anglo-Saxon white middle class educated male)
It's obvious why Mann ignored his painful takedown by THSI. He is unable to counter-argue or refute because he lost that debate, and he knows it.
lolwot is doing a stalwart impression of Horatio in defending the gates of 'consensus'. Is there NO form of evidence that can make these people take a look outside their personal echo chamber?
May 7, 2013 at 11:56 AM | Unregistered Commenter oakwood
"...and I have been surprised that so many scientists from other countries and cultures seem to have taken to it (fallen for it) so easily. "
I'm not. It's been a lovely little earner...
Mann will forever declare that: scientists are united by a consensus, are of unimpeachable character and the science is unequivocal; sceptics are financed by oil interests, motivated by ‘ideology’ and are ‘anti-science’.
His ego and career depend on not retreating a micron from those positions.
If only he could see himself as others see him.......
oakwood, I've long called this absurd social mania a 'precious conceit of the Western elite', but use both 'precious' and 'conceit' somewhat archaically so I'm usually not understood.
======================
Hi!
Ive read the entire report, and it is great. Im a norwegian, and I happen to know the companyt which sponsored this report: Det Norske AS. Even though this report is great, and really balanced, it is going to get slaughtered. The reason? Det Norske is a norwegian oil company.
http://www.detnor.no/
"My impression is that the AGW-scare is mainly Anglo-Saxon led"
Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth. Norway has the dubious honour of contributing significantly to the whole milieu within with the AGW-scare was developed with it most famous recent politician (Gro-Harlem Brundtland) being the driver of the "sustainability" movement. Only a country as rich as Norway can contemplate some of the sustainability solutions they have dreamt up. What is refreshing is that this report has come out of SINTEF - my experience of Norwegian institutions has been that they will rarely make statements as definite as they have (some of which have been quoted here). The full report is certainly not a skeptical document, but it is very clear on the fake scientific concensus and the damage that such a political concensus has done to the impression the public has of scientists.
Ooh, evil Norwegian oil company conspiracy. Why don't they just send me checks? Or chunks off that frozen wall?
==========
“A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.” — Samuel Johnson
A man of genius? Mann??? What a joke!!
oakwood on May 7, 2013 at 11:56 AM
"My impression is that the AGW-scare is mainly Anglo-Saxon led"
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/
"The Nobel Peace Prize 2007 was awarded jointly to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change""
And the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by .....
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/prize_awarder/index.html
"The Norwegian Nobel Committee is responsible for selecting the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. The Committee is composed of five members appointed by the Storting (Norwegian Parliament). The Committee's composition reflects the relative strengths of the political parties in the Storting, and is assisted by specially appointed expert advisers."
Ho ho ho!
Norway is by far the worst country to be a skeptic to the AGW scare. Everything in the Norwegian society is permeated with the AGW dogma. Being a skeptic will surely disqualify you for a job in any profession, everything from being a gardener to a teacher. No country in the world are worse, believe you me.. I live here :(..
HLx, but you have Ole Humlum?
@Paul Hatthews: Yes, Humlum is a good guy among bad ones. The only way you can have a job and openly be a "denier", is when you are a government employee (as Universities in Norway are governmentally owned) - and the can't fire you. Try getting a new job! I'll bet he has very few people being openly friendly to his ideas at UiO.
I may be mistaken, but I think it was Humlum: An AGW-religious friend of mine actually got a bit skeptic to AGW after attending one of his lectures, where he talked about wrong interpretation of photos of glaciers at Svalbard.
Btw, we have the asshole Rasmus Benestad.
The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and The Corruption of Science is an indispensible source for comprehending the work of Steve McIntyre and the errors/sleight of hand of Mikey Mann.
Jacob @ May 7, 2013 at 4:20 PM
"A man of genius? Mann??? What a joke!!"
To Mann, Mann is a genius.
As one of those much-reviled people whose education and professional life has been generally in the area of the Fine Arts, I owe the Bish and his HSI (my first purchase in a rapidly-growing library of climate-related works) a huge debt of gratitude for laying out the chicanery of The Team so precisely.
The great advantage of a broad Arts education (and one that many who narrowly focus on Maths and Science seem to lack) is that us Arts people generally have an overarching view of the great sweep of civilisation and can identify periods of collective madness usually led, sadly, by those who falsely claim scientific and/or some other form of purity and (hopefully) engage ourselves in helping our fellow citizens see the sham for what it is.
Anyone who describes himself as Dr Mann does very obviously does not have both oars in the water.
Michael Mann's behavior has been rude from the start. His refusals to share data with people who were interested, and his constant accusations that anyone who differed with him was a "lackey of Big Oil," were obvious even before Climategate. All Climategate did was reaffirm that his character was as bad as it appeared.
The fact his science was suspect has long been known. What is amazing is that his torpedoed ship is taking so long to sink.
Little wonder he is silent about the large hole in the side of his science. He is quite aware he would have sunk long ago, were it not for the fact he is propped up on all sides.
Michael Mann is actually starting to bore me. The recent attempts to resurrect his hockey stick was mildly interesting, as would be the attempt to re-float both pieces of the Titanic. However the fact he has sunk very low is plain to see. Watching the sunken sink even lower is not all that inspiring.
What I'm more interested in is: Who backed him? He is actually a small potato, a minor character in a fraud so huge that future historians are likely to call it an "atrocity."