Questioning Mann

Anne Jolis's review of Michael Mann's Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars is the only one I've seen in the mainstream media that approaches the book with anything other than a placid acceptance of Mann's utterances.

Mr. Mann closes "The Hockey Stick" with a passionate call for more scientists to join him "on the front lines of the climate wars." "Scientific truth alone," Mr. Mann writes, "is not enough to carry the day in the court of public opinion." It would be "irresponsible," he says, "for us to silently stand by while industry-funded climate change deniers succeed in confusing and distracting the public and dissuading our policy makers from taking appropriate actions." These are unfortunate conclusions for a scientist-turned-climate-warrior whose greatest weakness has always been a low estimation of the public intellect.

Questioning the scientists

Keith Kloor has an article at the Yale Climate Forum, looking at media reporting of science and climate change. In it, he quotes science journalist Ed Yong

Freelance science writer Ed Yong echoes this sentiment at his Discover magazine blog: “If we write something, and we put our names to it, the buck stops with us. If there is a mistake, it is our fault.” Yong sets the bar high for science journalists: “If the paper was rubbish, if the peer reviewers missed something, if the scientist lied, if the press release is distorted, it’s still our fault for producing something that is inaccurate or that fails to root out these problems.”

The idea that journalists should not be responsible for what they write is extraordinary, so Yong's comments are welcome. Unfortunately many science and almost all environment journalists do not see this as being part of their job. They see themselves as part of a movement and their job is not to question anything said by "the scientists".

Among all the reviews of Michael Mann's book published in recent weeks, can anyone recall one that challenged anything he said?

Brandon Shollenberger's review of 'The Hockey Stick and Climate Wars' by Michael Mann

At Lucia's blog, on Feb 15th, Branden Shollenberger commented:

"I just received my copy of Michael Mann’s book. The first sentence of it is (emphasis mine):

On the morning of November 17, 2009, I awoke to learn that my e-mail correspondence with fellow scientists had been hacked from a climate research center at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom and selectively posted on the Internet for all to see.

Two pages later, there are these two sentences:

Instrumental records from around the globe indicate that Earth has warmed by almost 1 degree Celsius (about 1.5°F) over the past century. That may seem a small amount, but it is already noticeable in glacier retreat, rising sea level, more frequent heat waves, and more intense hurricanes, among many other phenomena.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten, but it shows a disturbing trend. Ideas which are possible, but by no means known to be true, are stated as fact. If this is remotely representative of the book’s accuracy, there is no way the people giving it glowing reviews read it with an open mind."

Over the next few days Brandon finds more errors as he reads the book. It is quite fun to follow the unfolding story but you can download the whole review as a pdf here.

And there's more! This weekend Brandon hopes to share a second document covering other issues and which we will add as an update to this post.

Frank O'Dwyer has his own opinions on Brandon's review which you can read here - he doesn't like it.

Posted by Josh

Update on Mar 7, 2012 by Josh

H/t Hilary Ostrov How could I possibly miss that?

Update on Mar 10, 2012 by Josh

Brandon's next chunk of review:

Download the pdf here.

PR Mann

The PR Michael Mann is getting for his book is amazing - one has to remember that it is published by a university press, a route that was once described to me as "little better than vanity publishing" in terms of reaching new audiences. Yet despite this, the hockey stick illusionist has been almost ubiquitous in the media in recent weeks. I wonder if Columbia University Press is paying for this PR or whether there's somebody else involved?

Whoever is behind it, the message doesn't seem to be getting through. Despite clocking up nearly 100 Amazon reviews, the book is currently around 3500 on the Amazon chart (9500 in the UK). Is this a sign of the changed times or is it just that the market for climate books is dead?

The latest Mann media push was an interview on NPR - the transcript, for those who are interested, is here.

Watermelons

I try to keep anger out of my writing as much as possible - my USP is slightly detached, slightly amused, try to be civil. (That said, it's hard not to slip into angry mode occasionally, and there are still some moments of fury in the draft of the new book that may or may not make the final cut.)

James Delingpole isn't like me. His USP is angry; furious; appalled, disgusted, but he does it in such a funny way that you really have to be very green not to be amused by  his way with words.

Click to read more ...

Don't sell your coat

Harold Ambler's Don't Sell Your Coat is a general introduction to global warming from the perspective of a card-carrying liberal who has had his eyes opened to all the problems with the AGW hypothesis.

This is one for the non-technical friend who needs a primer, an antidote to the propaganda that still seems to be all-pervasive. It's written with a lovely lightness of touch which should make it accessible to just about anyone. It has also been rather beautifully put together, with some very nice photos to pep up the inevitable graphs.

Here (with permission) is a chapter so you can see what I mean.

Buy it here.

CMEP: the back story

With Climategate 2.0 putting the story of the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme into the mainstream media, I thought it might be useful to tell the full story of how I stumbled across the partnership between Harrabin and Smith and how Tony Newbery and I spent four years trying to uncover what it did.

The results are in a short ebook which I am making available today. Details of how to get hold of it are here.

Royal Society book prize

The Royal Society has shortlisted Jon Turney's Rough Guide to the Future for its annual book prize.

There is a report in the Guardian, which includes this:

The most powerful chapters of Turney's meticulously researched book deal not with far-off scenarios...but the remorseless statistical trends pointing towards a short-term future of rampant population growth, climate crunch, water and food supplies under increasing pressure and dwindling biodiversity.

In 2009, for example, the UK Meteorological Office predicted average warming of 4C if current carbon emission trends continue unchecked. According to the report this will almost certainly happen by the end of the century, but possibly as soon as 2060. The average rise conceals increases of up to 15C in the Arctic, and up to 10C in western and southern Africa, meaning 20% less rainfall in these regions. That rain will fall elsewhere. India will see 20% more rainfall and an increased risk of flooding.

It's interesting to compare this take on the future with Richard Betts' comments here a couple of days back.

Peter Foster on the Delinquent Teenager

H/T to Hilary O for this review of the Delinquent Teenager in the Financial Post in Canada.

In a meticulously referenced and deservedly praised page-turner, Ms. Laframboise, an accomplished journalist who turned to the skeptical blogosphere, demonstrates how the IPCC is a thoroughly political organization. Far from objectively weighing the best available science, it cherry-picks egregiously to support its main objective: to serve its government masters. Its lead authors are not the world’s leading scientists but frequently wet-behind-the-ears graduates, and/or ardent activists. They are also selected on the basis of gender and country “diversity” rather than expertise. The organization, Ms. Laframboise demonstrates, has also been thoroughly infiltrated by environmental NGOs, in particular the World Wildlife Fund.

Getting some MSM coverage can make a big difference to a book. The review in the FP is the first time I've come across an MSM outlet reviewing a self-published book, and to my mind this shows just how important Donna's work is.

More Matt

Matt Ridley won the Manhattan Prize for his brilliant book, the Rational Optimist. As well as the cash prize, he gets to give the Hayek Lecture. This is what he had to say:

H/T HaroldW

Bradley on the Hockey Stick 2

Time after time when reading Bradley's defence of the Hockey Stick, I was struck by how he avoided the criticisms that were actually made of the paper, preferring instead to knock down a series of strawmen. There are also parts that are grossly misleading.

Take this next excerpt for example, where Bradley describes McIntyre and McKitrick's Nature submission in 2004.

Click to read more ...

Bradley interview

Raymond Bradley is interviewed by Insider Higher Ed.

The story seems to be that the Hockey Team emphasised the doubts and caveats over their findings

Q: The debate around your study looking at past climate patterns seemed to explode after you extended it to include projections going all the way back to 1000. In hindsight, do you think this was overreaching? From a purely political standpoint, did this hurt the case for climate change?

A: Our reconstruction of temperatures over the last 1000 years was titled, "Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: inferences, uncertainties, and limitations" (Geophysical Research Letters 26, 759–762; 1999). In the abstract, we stated: "We focus not just on the reconstructions, but on the uncertainties therein, and important caveats" and noted that "expanded uncertainties prevent decisive conclusions for the period prior to AD 1400." We concluded by stating: "more widespread high-resolution data are needed before more confident conclusions can be reached."

This is true, but of course the earlier paper MBH98 was not similarly caveated. The other point to recognise is that any caveats and uncertainties were dropped long before Mann completed his work on the IPCC Third Assessment Report.

Bradley also steers into the realm of economics, claiming that controlling greenhouse gases will create new industries and jobs. True, but his erroneous conclusion that such controls are therefore good for the economy brings us back, once more, to the broken windows fallacy.

Old arguments

A new book has been attracting a few reviews recently: James Powell's The Inquisition of Climate Science looks as though it's going to be another screed about how sceptics are all funded by big oil and are all creationists in their spare time (reviews here and here).

The repetition of this narrative is looking increasingly bizarre to me. As Judy Curry has noted, the sceptics who have been making all the running in recent years have all been completely divorced from any of the oil companies or Washington think tanks that are said to be behind the alleged conspiracy. The arguments we are hearing from Powell and his ilk seem to have moved on little in the last twenty years - they are irrelevant to the reality of the climate debate.

Confirmation bias

This is a guest post by Matt Ridley

Dan Gardner’s superb book `Future Babble’ examines why expert predictions so frequently fail, and why we believe them anyway. I strongly recommend it. Gardner devotes very little of the book to climate change, and makes clear that he does not want to be thought too sceptical about it. This is standard procedure in the world of non-fiction these days: Tim Harford in Adapt likewise avoids pursuing the logic of his argument as far into the climate debate as he might. You can, of course, kiss good bye to good reviews, or even reviews, if you stray too far from the true faith on this subject these days. Even lukewarmers like me regularly get called `deniers’.

Click to read more ...

Fixing the sky

For centuries, farmers in Austria shot consecrated guns at storms in attempts to dispel them.  Some guns were loaded with nails, ostensibly to kill the witches riding in the clouds; others were fired with powder alone through open empty barrels to make a great noise -- perhaps, some said, to disrupt the electrical balance of the storm.  In 1896, Albert Stiger, a vine rower in southeastern Austria and burgomaster of Windisch-Feistritz, revived the ancient tradition of hagelschiessen (hail shooting)  -- basically declaring "war on the clouds" by firing cannon when storms threatened.  Faced with mounting losses from summer hailstorms that threatened his grapes, he attempted to disrupt, with mortar fire, the "calm before the storm," or what he observed as a strange stillness in the air moments before the onset of heavy summer precipitation.

From the new book, Fixing the Sky, a history of attempts to control weather and climate. H/T Marginal Revolution.